“Take a good look, and remember it, old thing!” Freddy Farmer said dryly. “Next time don’t be so blasted heroic, and give the other bloke first cracks. Don’t give him first cracks at all.”
“Don’t rub it in!” Dave growled. “Besides, I couldn’t open fire on them first. We weren’t sure about them until they started shooting.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Freddy said as a sort of apology. “But just the same, don’t give the next bloke the same kind of opportunity.”
Dave shrugged and turned to the taller of the two mechanics.
“We’re heading south,” he said. “Just where, you can guess. When we leave depends on the Commandant here at Albuquerque. We won’t be taking this Vultee. But getting back to poor Tracey, did you happen to see anybody hanging around near his ship? Did you see much of him? I mean, we got the idea that he discovered somebody was on his tail, and sort of kept out of sight while he was here. Do you know if that’s right?”
The two agents, serving at Albuquerque as mechanics, frowned in deep thought, and then exchanged glances at each other.
“If we’d only known who Tracey was, we’d have kept our eyes open,” the tall mechanic said, and gave a little shake of his head. “It so happened, though, we did see him around and about a couple of times. He was with the field Commandant, Major Larkin, for a while. And we saw him with a couple of the pilots, whom he seemed to know. He told us that he was pulling out of here first thing in the morning. But it wasn’t until close to noon when he appeared on the field. Naturally, we didn’t ask any questions. As I’ve said, we didn’t know a thing—then.”
“I wish we had!” the shorter of the two mechanics muttered. “He didn’t look so hot to me. I mean, I thought he’d had a big night with the boys, and had cracked his head on something. He had a fair sized piece of plaster on his forehead over his left eye. He certainly didn’t look so good. But of course we didn’t say a thing.”
Dave Dawson was silent for a moment. His brain was turning back in memory to those moments he had spent with the dying Tracey in that desolate mountain valley. He remembered the gash on the man’s forehead. The surgeon’s plaster had probably been torn off in the crash. At the time, though, Dave had believed the head injury to have been caused by the crash.
“So an attack was made on him here?” he murmured more to himself than the others. “That’s pretty positive. But he survived it, so somebody—probably the same rat—doctored his oxygen tank, knowing that he’d go for altitude to get over the mountains. Maybe this is a dumb question, but who here would know he was headed for Frisco Air Base?”