The last statement was quite true. Hardly had the words left Agent Jones' lips when six Messerschmitt One-Tens went tearing by no more than three hundred feet over the spot where the three youths crouched hidden. A moment later a second flight of Nazi planes roared by toward the front. And then a third flight, and a fourth. Dawson squinted up at each flight, and saw that his guess had been correct. Half of the planes were single-seater Messerschmitt One-Nine fighters. And the other half were Messerschmitt One-Tens. And when the last flight had passed over he sat down on the floor again, scowled darkly, and scratched his head.
"Just ducky, just dandy!" he groaned. "We hide our ship just a hop skip and a jump from a mess of high speed Nazi jobs. What a sweet hope we'd have trying to take off. Or is there some way of getting a B-Twenty-Five into the air without using the engines?"
"Lots of ways!" Freddy Farmer grunted unhappily. "But I can't seem to think of one, right now."
"Well, keep thinking, pal!" Dawson told him. "Because I guess we're going to have to do just that. Darn it! Where is that Senior Lieutenant, anyway? She's one bright girl, and always has the right answer. Maybe she'll have the right answer to this one."
"I hope!" Agent Jones echoed fervently.
"I fancy that makes two of us who hope, old thing," Freddy Farmer sighed. "A bit strange, though, there was no sign of the airfield on that mosaic map of Major Saratov's," he went on after a split second pause. "Or could all of us have been so blind as to have missed it?"
"Hardly," Agent Jones said with a grim laugh. "If you ask me, we didn't spot it because you wouldn't even spot it from the air. The Jerries, as you well know, are absolutely top-hole in the art of camouflaging. I think that's the answer, frankly. A very cleverly camouflaged air base that Soviet pilots haven't discovered yet."
"And we have—too late!" Dawson grunted. "Say, listen, you two. What say we give the Senior Lieutenant twenty minutes more, and if she hasn't returned by then we go take a look-see at that airfield, huh? To my way of thinking, we can't count too much on the B-Twenty-Five, with a nest of Messerschmitts this close. Better have a look-see, anyway. Am I right, or wrong?"
"Perfectly right!" Freddy Farmer said.
"The same for me," Agent Jones echoed. "Twenty minutes more for the lady to show up, and then we start snooping around on our own."