"I was wondering if you had forgotten that bit," he said with a chuckle. "Yes, there's still a little extra job for you two. But little is hardly the word. Your fighter plane unit will go as far inland as the village of Salernes, just north of Rouen. That's where your bunch of Commando Para-troops will step off, and go down. But you will not return to this side with the Two Hundred and Third Spitfires. You two will bear south and across the Seine to Evaux."
"Evaux?" Dave echoed, and gulped. "And when we get there?"
There was no grin on the Major's lips now. Neither was there a smile in his eyes.
"When you get there," he said in a calm, steady voice, "you will kidnap von Staube and von Gault and fly them back here to England. That is the little extra job that has been selected for you two to carry out. Think you'll like it, eh?"
For all the gold in the world Dave couldn't have spoken a single word at that moment. His head had seemed to fly up off his shoulders and go floating away. The rest of him was frozen to his chair as solid as Arctic ice. It was impossible for him to move, and doubly so for him to think. Kidnap Field Marshal von Staube, and Luftwaffe Marshal von Gault?
CHAPTER NINE
Orders For Eagles
It seemed a lifetime to Dave before the ability to think fully returned, and three times as long before the power of speech was once again his. He turned his head slowly and stared at Freddy Farmer. The English youth was sitting like a statue of stone, eyes fixed on Major Barber, and blank amazement spread all over his face. In an abstract crazy sort of way the picture he saw made Dave think of somebody socked by a five pound blackjack loaded with buckshot. Freddy Farmer wasn't exactly out cold. But he might just as well have been.
"Did you hear what I heard, pal?" Dave finally compelled his lips to say.