"Absolutely!" Freddy Farmer spoke up. "And quite a person, too. She has killed no less than three hundred and six Nazis!"
"Good Gosh!" Jones choked out. "What a bloodthirsty damsel!"
"Not at all!" Dawson corrected him with a chuckle. "Senior Lieutenant Nasha Petrovski just doesn't like Nazis, that's all!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Land of the Dead
It was just as Senior Lieutenant Petrovski had predicted. The night had no moon, and even the stars were blotted out by a five hundred foot thick layer of overcast. Pitch darkness engulfed everything in all directions. Dave Dawson couldn't see a single speck of light, save one. And that one bit of light, which was no more than a faint pale glow, was from the hooded single bulb on the instrument panel of the North American B-Twenty-Five medium bomber. Just enough light to let him read the automatic compass, and a couple of other essential instruments.
However, apart from that bit of faint light, he might well have been in the middle of a throbbing, inky dark world. The throbbing was from the two Wright Cyclone engines that were driving the B-Twenty-Five up higher and higher into the night sky. Just half an hour before he had lifted the aircraft off the square field on the western edge of Urbakh. Major Saratov, and a few other Soviet officers, had been present to wish them all well, and Godspeed back. But Dave had not missed the look half hidden in the Russian Major's eyes. And spotting that look certainly hadn't added to the joy of the dangerous flight to be undertaken. In other words, it was quite evident that Major Saratov was inwardly bidding them a very permanent farewell. Should he ever meet them again, he would undoubtedly be the most surprised man in all of the Soviet.
Whether the Russian girl officer of Soviet Intelligence, or Freddy Farmer, or Agent Jones, had noted that same look, Dawson didn't know. And, naturally, he hadn't tried to find out. If they had seen it, talking wouldn't help any. And if they hadn't, then what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Just the same, the little lumps of bouncing cold lead had returned to Dawson's stomach as he cleared the field and sent the B-Twenty-Five nosing upward.
Now, though, the bouncing lumps of lead were all gone. No, not because courage and all the rest of that sort of thing had driven them away. It was simply because he had other things to think about, and he was too busy to check and recheck his personal feelings. Some eighteen thousand feet of air were between the bomber's belly and the earth, and the layer of overcast now below the aircraft blotted out the ground just as completely as another layer of overcast higher up blotted out the stars.