Dave Dawson with the Eighth Air Force

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"Right-o, old thing!" came Freddy's instant reply. "The beggar to the left with the blue nose. Give it to him, Dave!"

Dawson had already spotted the blue-nosed Focke-Wulf One-Ninety, and was kicking his Mustang that way. A split second later his guns, and Freddy Farmer's, sang their song of concentrated destruction. This particular Nazi plane didn't blow up, however. It simply lost a wing, and what was left went screaming earthward like ten ton of brick in high gear.

Neither Dawson nor Freddy Farmer took time out to watch their second victim hurtle downward. If they had, the Grim Reaper would have tapped them both on the shoulder right then and there. The remaining Nazi pilots, infuriated by the loss of their leader and one of their vulture comrades, veered toward the two zooming Mustangs and let go with everything they had. That is, they started to do that little thing, but that's about as far as they got. By then the other Mustang pilots were up there with Dawson and Farmer, and when they opened up Nazi planes started fluttering earthward like dried leaves in a stiff autumn breeze.

Before the Nazis broke off the fight Dawson and Farmer had nailed one more apiece. By then, though, dawn was coming up fast, and there was no more time left to fool around. With a feeling of deep regret Dave looked at a Nazi plane not over a quarter of a mile away, shook his head, and waggled his wings to attract Freddy's attention. Young Farmer saw him make the wash-out sign with his free hand, and nodded.

"Sure would like to wish you luck over the radio, kid," Dave whispered as he shoved open his glass hatch, and knocked down the catch of his safety harness. "But maybe it's best to keep mum, this time. No telling who might be listening in on the ground. Just the same, pal, a million in luck. A trillion, what I mean!"

With a faint nod for emphasis, and a wave of his hand at Freddy Farmer, Dawson peered over the cockpit rim and carefully studied the shadowy ground below. Recco plane photographs of the area were indelibly stamped on his brain, so it did not take him more than half a minute to spot the exact location of the factory where Freddy and he would touch ground by parachute. As luck would have it, the spot was about a mile off to his right, well on the eastern outskirts of the city, and the drifting flak-burst smoke that still was in the sky told him that the wind direction was just as he wanted it. That knowledge made his heart pound with wild hope.

"Almost as if it had all been made to order!" he breathed softly. "For once the elements are cooperating, and that, at least, is something. Okay, here we go. And don't be far behind, Freddy!"

For a few seconds longer Dawson remained in the pit of his plane, making doubly sure that he would take nothing American-made down with him. From head to toe he was garbed in German uniform, and German flying gear, with even the conventional German Luger automatic at his belt. But rather than take chances he checked the contents of his flying suit pockets, found all of them empty as a matter of fact, and then took a deep breath.

"And this time we mean it!" he grunted.

Slamming the Mustang down in a shot dive, he fired all of his guns at thin air, and then leveled off and jammed open the compensator throttle. The result was that a wrong mixture was fed to the engine, and the power plant started spewing back a long trail of oily black smoke. The instant it showed in the air, Dawson rolled the Mustang over on its back, let go of the stick, and allowed gravity to pull him down into the open air. With the fingers of his right hand curled about his rip-cord ring, he let his body free fall down through the air, and counted slowly.