Fate, however, had decided that such was not to be their good fortune. Fate, assisted by the radio back at the desert camp, and three Messerschmitt 109 single seater fighters sent streaking away from the nearest Nazi air base. Fate, plus the marvel of radio, plus the speed of Messerschmitt 109s. What Dave's instruments told him really didn't have anything to do with it at all.
The first indication that all was not to be nice, pleasant sailing came at the end of some thirty-five minutes, when Freddy suddenly banged him on the shoulder and pointed up and off to the left. He looked in that direction and saw the three dots high-tailing down out of the dawn sky with the speed of comets gone absolutely crazy.
"Company, Dave!" Freddy shouted. "The blighters got on the radio, of course, and contacted Tripoli air base. Looks like we're in for a bit of trouble."
"Not Tripoli," Dave said with a shake of his head. "Those birds couldn't have come this far so soon. Sure, they probably got on the radio, but to some spot much closer. If you ask me, it looks as if they've started moving the planes up closer. Set up a few emergency fields out in the desert so they wouldn't have to fly so far to give air support to the ground forces."
"That's probably it," Freddy agreed. "But right or wrong, it doesn't make any difference now. Think you can skip past before they catch up with us?"
Dave stared at the three dots coming down from the left and then glanced ahead at the seemingly endless expanse of desert. It stretched to the north as far as he could see, and there wasn't a single sign of any British outpost or desert village garrison. He couldn't tell for sure, though, because a strange copperish color was crawling up over the northern horizon.
"No, we can't fly away from them," he told Freddy with a shake of his head. "We'll have to make a running fight of it, and hope for the best. Okay, Freddy, they're asking for it, so let's give it to the bums."
Freddy made no answer. He went back to his guns and checked them to make sure everything was in order. Dave fed the two Daimler-Benz engines every ounce of gas they would take and eased the nose up to get as much altitude as possible before the three Messerschmitt 109s could close in from the left and give battle. The lull before the battle lasted less than a minute. Flying by hand, Dave kept his eyes glued on the diving attackers, and was set and ready the instant he saw the little stabbing tongues of flame dart out from the nose of each German plane.
In that instant he acted, and at lightning speed. He tossed the Messerschmitt One-Ten up over on wingtip and pulled it around in a steep bank and headed straight for the three One-Nines. It was obviously not what the German pilots had expected. They had undoubtedly counted on Dave to wheel around the other way and attempt to race away from them. So when, instead, they saw the "victim" plane flash around toward them and open up with a withering fire from the nose guns and two 20-mm. cannon, they broke diving formation at once, and each pilot tried frantically to skid out into the clear.
Two of the planes succeeded in doing just that. The center plane of the formation, however, was doomed. Dave had it square in his sights, and a blind man could not have missed from that distance. His savage fire covered the German plane like a tent. The craft staggered forward a short distance, then suddenly fell off on one wing and went down, leaving behind a long trail of oily black smoke.