“I’ll remember that when I get my strength back!” Freddy Farmer snapped, and allowed Dave to lead him into the Officers’ Mess.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Flames Of Doom
With her four Wright “Cyclone” engines thundering out their synchronized song of power, the giant Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress lifted clear of the Albuquerque Air Base runway and nosed up for altitude and the start of the nine hundred odd mile flight to Brownsville, Texas. Back aft by the middle bomb bay, Dave Dawson and Freddy Farmer relaxed comfortably and watched the falling ground through one of the side ports.
“Nice!” Dave grunted. “This is the life, at times. Let somebody else do the flying for a change, hey, Freddy?”
“A fine thing to ask me!” Freddy snorted. “I’m usually a passenger anyway. But it does make a chap feel good not to have any flight responsibility for a change. These are certainly wonderful airplanes.”
“Plenty good, plenty good,” Dave agreed. “I bet before long that Hitler will shoot anybody who mentions 'Flying Fortress’ in his presence. And the day will come, too, and soon, when these babies will be regarded as the smaller type of bomber. We’ll have six and eight engine jobs dumping them off on Adolf’s head. But, by the way, during all the rush this morning I forgot to ask you how the old head was. You look okay from here.”
“I’m fine,” the English youth replied with a smile. “Had a restless night, though. No pain. Just dreams, crazy ones. I dreamed that little cross-eyed men were shooting at me from all directions, and not missing by much.”
“But they missed, like that rat yesterday,” Dave murmured, and squinted down back at the Albuquerque Base that was fast losing itself in the general landscape. “In a way I’m sorry to leave Albuquerque. I mean, it’s sort of like unfinished business. There’s a dirty rat down there, and we didn’t even get close to him. He knows we were there, and he knows we’ve taken off for Brownsville. But there’s one thing in our favor—if you could call it that.”