“He sure is. It’s the work of the enemy. That’s what it is. He knows. He’s after us, after you and Sparky, Don and me. He’s got us coming down in a jungle and we’re only just out of good, old U.S.A. And think of the dizzy miles still ahead of us! And the enemy dogging our luck all the way!”
“I thought of him before I started,” Mary replied quietly. “Let him do his worst. We’ll win, you’ll see!”
For the swift, powerful twin-motored transport plane flown by Mary Mason, the distance to that native clearing on the Rio Branco was just a jump, but she did not jump. Instead she followed doggedly on behind her limping companion. And as she followed, she found time to think. Those were long, long thoughts.
She was a member of the WAFS, Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, this slender girl with the flashing black eyes and trigger-quick fingers. For six wintry months she had flown planes from east to west, from north to south, and all the way back again. Sometimes these planes were transport planes or bombers with comfortable, heated cabins. More often they were open-seated trainers or fighters. She flew them in wind, rain, and snow. Mile after weary mile in lonely solitude she had gone roaring through the night sky to arrive at last at her destination only to be ushered aboard an airways plane and hurried back again.
“It was hard,” she said to Janet Janes, her companion.
“Sure it was,” the other girl agreed. “Looks as if this would be harder.”
“Perhaps,” Mary answered. “But just think! In the past two days it’s been San Francisco to Denver, to Chicago, to Miami!”
“To Caracas, and then to the heart of a jungle where headhunters beat on hollow logs inviting their friends to a feast.” Janet laughed in spite of herself.
“This will be just a pause,” Mary insisted stoutly. “After that it will be Para, to Dakar in Africa, Dakar to Egypt and the pyramids, Egypt to Persia—”
“Under the Persian moon,” Janet sang softly.