Hardly had the last left Dave’s lips before Freddy Farmer’s rear guns spoke their piece. The second Waco had come out of its wild dive, and its pilot—perhaps a little jarred by the sudden death of his flying mate—had tried the absolutely crazy maneuver of cutting around and getting in under the Vultee’s tail. With a sharp-shooter like Freddy Farmer, that maneuver was just about as sane an effort as stepping out a ten story window and trying to walk across the air to a building on the other side of the street.
The English youth’s rear guns slapped out no more than a two second burst each. But that was more than enough. It was as though a giant’s steel fist crashed down, and one ripped up, and the Waco were caught between the two. The biplane simply came apart at the seams and the pieces were showered all over the place. Unlike the other Waco pilot, however, the second Waco pilot managed to get away with his life. Both Dave and Freddy saw him arc out from the shower of wreckage as though shot from the mouth of a cannon. A moment later, though, as he went slowly spinning head over heels downward, a puff of white shot up past his head. And in another moment he was swinging like a clock’s pendulum at the ends of taut shroud lines. Dave glanced back at Freddy and nodded.
“Nice shooting, Freddy!” he cried. “Help yourself to a cigar, my little man!”
“You didn’t miss, yourself!” the English youth shouted back. Then, casting his eye down at the dangling parachutist, he muttered, “At times like this I almost wish I were a Nazi. Then I could do plain murder, and it wouldn’t come back to me in my dreams. That lucky blighter will probably be up to more dirty Axis business tomorrow.”
“No, not tomorrow!” Dave echoed as he stared downward. “He’s got one awful long walk out of those mountains. And if you must know how I feel about it, I kind of hope that he doesn’t make it, if you get what I mean.”
“I do,” Freddy said grimly. “And the feeling is mutual. I see that our light plane friend isn’t around. As soon as his work was completed he got away in a hurry. How about tooting around a bit to see if we can pick up the beggar? I’d at least like to give him the scare of his rotten life.”
“I’d like to give him just a little more than that!” Dave echoed as he cast his narrow-eyed gaze about the surrounding air. “But I guess we’ll have to pass up that little pleasure. I don’t see hide nor hair of him, and we’ve got places to go, anyway. Well, Freddy how’s for handing me that fur-lined propeller I won?”
“Fur what?” Farmer gasped. “What are you raving about?”
“Colonel Welsh’s tapped phone lines!” Dave said, and grinned at him. “Kind of close to being right, wasn’t I?”
“You modest blighter!” Freddy snapped. “When will you learn your manners, and wait for praise to come, instead of asking for it?”