Sweeping in a few yards above the runway, Stan laid over just a little. He checked the wrecks and saw that one of them was Sim's ship. The other was an FW fighter minus one wing. The Germans behind their hidden batteries opened up with a savage burst of fire. Stan went straight toward the hill, flying low to keep out of the flak. As he shot up off the runway he stared hard at the hillside ahead, then blinked his eyes.
"So," he said softly. "So that's the way it is."
He went up and over the hill, spiraling into the sky in a climb steeper than any ship had ever carried him. The FW's had been joined by five Me 110's, but the Jerries did not close with him. Stan headed for home as fast as the P-51 could travel, which topped four hundred miles per hour by a wide margin.
He was roaring along with no opposition in sight and a clear sky around him when he suddenly spotted a plane in his mirror. It was overhauling him rapidly. Suddenly Stan grinned. He eased back on the throttle and waggled his wings as O'Malley roared over him. Picking up speed, he dropped in beside his pal and signaled that his radio was dead. They roared on home, wing to wing.
CHAPTER V
HIDDEN DROMES
Stan sat at Colonel Holt's desk along with O'Malley. It had taken them just twenty minutes to get from the operations room to the colonel's office. Holt had called in Major Kulp of the photography wing and General Ward from the command staff.
"When I came in to check the wrecked planes," Stan said, "I was able to see how they do it. They have a screen on tracks. It is covered over with brush and leaves and looks from any angle, except squarely in front, like the side of the hill. They just roll it out and it covers the planes."
"You wrecked quite a few of them on the ground?" the general asked.