"That goes for me, too, sir," Dave grinned at the Commando Chief. "The only thing left, now, is to pull it off. And of course, we'll both pitch our arms off to do just that."
"And, please God, may your arms hold out!" the Major said fervently.
CHAPTER TEN
Victory Wings
Black night hung like a velvet curtain over the southeast coast of England. As though even the gods had decided to give the United Nations forces a break, not a single star was showing. Sullen dark overcast stretched from horizon to horizon, and just off the coast a thin protective fog hovered above the waters of the Channel. On the drome of the Two Hundred and Third R.A.F. fighters, twenty-one Merlin-powered Spitfires, Mark Fives, stood waiting to be streaked aloft into the night sky. From prop to trimmer flap on the rudder, every plane had been checked and rechecked by skilled mechanics as well as the pilots themselves. Not a nut, bolt, or strand of bracing wire had been overlooked, or taken for granted. Upon those Spitfires, and the steady-eyed eagles who would fly them, depended the lives of many brave men. The Commando Para-troops who would be taken over by transport plane, and then dumped off to go down and do their job of destruction, and later fight their way back to the seacoast and the British Navy boats waiting to take them back to England. In many wars, and before many battles, had elaborate and detailed plans and preparations been made. Never, though, in the history of all the world, had any military operation been as minutely arranged and prepared for as this morale-jolting raid about to be launched against Hitler's blood-letting forces in Occupied France.
For a while Dave and Freddy had gathered together with the other pilots of Two Hundred and Three and hashed and rehashed the part that the squadron was to play in this lightning bolt blow against the two-legged forces of all things dirty and evil in Europe. In time, though, they drifted away from the general gathering and started wandering alone and aimlessly about the field faintly marked out by tiny flares. They had covered quite a bit of ground before Freddy finally broke the silence.
"Gives a chap a bit of a spooky feeling, all this, doesn't it?" he said. "Like sort of sitting around waiting for an unexploded bomb to go off."
"Something like, yes," Dave grunted. "But this'll be more than just a bomb when it goes off. More like an ammo dump, I'd say. And a couple of dozen of them, too. How do you feel, Freddy?"
"Scared stiff, and absolutely pink!" was the prompt reply. "And you?"