“Coming!” Jan bounded into the lookout. “What’s up?”
“Plenty! Off a hundred miles due east the sky is filled with planes. Looks like a raid. Get headquarters at once!”
“Here you are,” Jan announced twenty seconds later.
“Headquarters?” Gale tried to keep her excitement out of her voice. “This is G. G. J. Looks like a raid. Many planes two hundred miles straight out.”
“Right,” was the answer. “Report again in five minutes.”
Five minutes later Gale’s report was:
“G. G. J., Refer to last report. No change except approaching at two hundred miles per hour. That’s all.”
That was all for Gale, at least for the time being. But for the pilots, radio men and gunners of two hundred of America’s finest fighter planes, it was but the beginning of something big, and for some, disaster.
“They know we’re here and now they’re after us,” Danny Dean, the pilot of a two-seater said to his gunner.
“Let them come,” was the prompt answer. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be. The more we knock down here the less we’ll have to fight when the big business starts.”