Silly, crazy words? Certainly! But Dave Dawson's brain was afire with the excitement of battle. And besides, words shouted and screamed aloud are simply a warrior's escape valve in the heat of conflict. Sure! Crazy, silly, inane words! But there was nothing crazy or silly about Dawson's guns, or the light strafing bombs fitted under his wings. Nor was there anything silly about the way he and the others tore right down until their props were practically flipping off the helmets of the Jap troops. And nothing silly about the way they blasted ammunition truck after ammunition truck on the roads, and knocked scores and scores of the little brown devils out of the world at practically every tick of their wrist-watches.
Before those Flying Tiger P-Forties had arrived, the Japs had been turning the opposite bank of the river bend into a smoking, blazing graveyard. But now it was all very different. The graveyard had been moved to the other side of the Salween's bend, and the Japs were getting the savage, relentless back-fire of something they had started.
"So? Think so? Well, think again, but good!"
The words automatically burst from Dawson's lips as he caught sight of two heavily loaded ammunition trucks rocking down one of the roads straight for the river's bend. Chinese troops relieved from the terrific pounding of Jap fire were starting to swarm across the shallow river and get at close quarters with the enemy. Some Jap officer had spotted them, though. Or perhaps it was just a suicidal idea of the drivers of those two ammunition trucks. At any rate, the two trucks were hurtling down to the river's bank to plow into the water among those swarms of Chinese troops, and blow them all to bloody pieces.
That was the mad Jap suicide idea. But two steel-eyed eagles spotted what was taking place. Two steel-eyed eagles who had been feasting on juicy roast beef in London just four nights before. And down they streaked like two man-made birds of vengeance straight for those two trucks hurtling toward the river's edge. And when he was little more than a few feet over the leading truck, Dawson dumped the last of his light strafing bombs, and instantly nosed upward for altitude. On that load of exploding death he could practically have dropped a lighted match!
Hardly had his P-Forty started to prop-scream for the sky before the whole of Burma below him exploded in a world-shattering thunder of sound. He had purposely dropped down low so that he would be sure not to miss his target. And so his zooming plane was caught by a thousand invisible hands, spun around like a top and flung high and far across the sky. Instinctively he tried to battle the helpless plane, but he might just as well have tried to jump out into thin air and hold it back with his two hands.
Earth, sky, fire, smoke, and sections of airplane spun around in a mad race before his eyes. He saw the Jap hordes retreating from their positions in mad, frenzied flight. He saw wave after wave of Chinese soldiers swarming across the river and lighting out after the heels of the fleeing Japs. He saw a section of his left wing let go, and go sailing off into space. He even saw Freddy Farmer's P-Forty come tumbling down past him. And a split second later his own plane broke in two right at the cockpit, and popped him out into thin air as a pea pops out of a pod.
In a dazed, abstract sort of way he knew that he was falling through space. He knew also that his right hand clutched the rip-cord ring of his parachute. He thought, but he wasn't sure, that he had yanked the ring, and that the lifesaving white parachute silk was billowing upward. He had just a vague idea that the parachute had mushroomed out, and that his fall had been checked. However, there was no time to get control of his neck muscles and twist his head around and up to look. There wasn't time because at that instant jet black night sky seemed to drop straight down on him—and he knew no more!