"Quite!" Freddy Farmer echoed his words. "But keep us going up, Dave. England's thirty minutes away still. Just look at that! That flame and smoke over Le Havre way. I guess the other chaps fulfilled their mission, too. What a mess they made of the whole attack area!"
Dave squinted ahead at the ocean of flame and oily black smoke that towered up above the Le Havre area. It was a horrible sight to see, but just the same it filled him with pride and joy to be a member of a force that could slam into Adolf Hitler's boasted strongholds and make that kind of a mess of things. One look at that flaming, smoking chaos and he knew that the United Nations Commando attack had been a success, in spite of what it may have cost. First Dieppe, now Le Havre. Next time, with luck, it would be all of France! All of conquered Europe!
"Say, Freddy?" he suddenly spoke aloud. "One thing not quite clear. Just why did you have those two Luftwaffe pilots sent for, anyway?"
"Don't tell me you didn't get it!" Freddy echoed with a laugh. "I should think it would be obvious, now. I realize I took an awful chance, but that was the only way I could find out. And, of course, I needed one of them to make the orders to start up the Dornier's engines authentic."
"Hold everything!" Dave cried. "I get that part, sure. But what was it you had to find out?"
"Why, how many pilots were about, of course!" Freddy said with a chuckle and a gesture. "Would have been silly, you know, for us to kidnap von Staube and von Gault, and then have some Jerry pilots fly off in the planes we were going to use. That's why I asked to speak to their pilots. Plural, see? And—well, thank goodness there were only two at that field. Everybody else was a ground soldier or officer. It would have been frightfully annoying if a dozen or so Jerry pilots had been there. My whole stunt would have gone up in smoke!"
"Jumping catfish!" Dave breathed in awe. "So that was the reason! Ye gods! Supposing there had been more than two? But I don't want even to think of it. And I think you'd better leave that part out of your report, pal. Nobody would believe we had that much luck. Hey! A mess of R.A.F. Spitfires! Holy smoke! They don't know who we are, and—!"
"So we'd better surrender," Freddy Farmer said quietly. "And about time we did, too, I'm thinking. Hold her level, Dave, while I give the chaps the surrender signal."
Freddy shoved open the greenhouse, stood up on the seat so that he was head and shoulders in the air, and waved both arms in the well known gesture of aerial surrender. The flock of R.A.F. Spitfires swooped down, looked them over cautiously, and then took up escorting positions as the Dornier drilled on out across the Channel toward England.
"That's what I like, pal!" Dave cried happily, and motioned toward the Spitfires. "To come home in style. Aerial escort, and everything."