"I see what you mean, sir," Dawson said, and grinned sheepishly. "We would have thought we"d been victims of some holdup."
"Exactly," the colonel agreed. "A crazy little twist of fate over which you had no control whatever. Yet the damage would have been done. So I had to do what I could to find out if there had been any crazy twist of fate. In other words, each of those sealed envelopes contained the information, in code of course, that the _next_ bombing plane to pa.s.s through would carry the President, and members of his party."
Dawson blinked, and suddenly the truth hit him between the eyes.
"What, sir?" he gasped. "You--you mean this B-25 is _supposed_ to be carrying the President?"
"I mean just that!" the colonel confirmed grimly. "_If_ enemy agents have learned what was in those envelopes, they will believe that this bomber is carrying the President as a pa.s.senger. The President has already left Washington in secret, and it wouldn"t take much checking by enemy agents to find out that he isn"t at the White House. Naturally they"d believe he was aboard this plane."
"Anything funny happen on your flight down, sir?" Freddy Farmer asked, as the senior officer paused for breath.
"Nothing that I noticed," Colonel Welsh replied with a shake of his head. "But just because things don"t happen doesn"t mean that they _won"t_, in time. So, as I said, we won"t know for sure until we arrive at Casablanca."
"And maybe not even then," Dawson mumbled to himself.
Colonel Welsh gave the Yank air ace a sharp look, and then nodded his head.
"That"s right," he agreed. "And maybe not even then. Just another reason why an Intelligence man gets gray hair so early in life. You never can tell about a job until it"s all finished and you"re working on another.
Then it"s the same thing all over again."
The trio lapsed into silence, but not for long, because the question that had been plaguing Dawson just had to come out.
"Supposing we make it to Casablanca okay," he said, "and you feel sure that the enemy hasn"t learned a thing about the President"s trip, what then? The sealed orders Farmer and I were to have delivered at the rest of the stops are destroyed, and you say you collected the envelopes we left at Miami and Puerto Rico. How will they know about the President"s plane when it does come through?"
"A good question, but I"ve got the answer, Dawson." The colonel smiled and pointed to a brief-case on his little table. "In there are duplicates of the orders, _without_ the part about the next bomber through being the President"s plane. If we reach Casablanca safely, we"ll turn around and head south for Liberia, cross the South Atlantic to Natal, and deliver one of those sealed envelopes to each of the stops as we fly north to Washington. I"ve allowed sufficient time for us to do that, in case that"s the way it works out."
"Well," Dawson remarked, and shifted to a more comfortable position on his chair, "there"s nothing like a two-way hop across--"
But he never finished his sentence, because at that moment the pilot of the B-25 came back into the made-over bomb compartment and spoke to Colonel Welsh.
"A surface ship just ahead, sir, sending up distress flares," he reported. "Probably a merchantman with a torpedo in her plates. We"re about three hundred and fifty out, due east of Barbados. Do you want me to radio the ship"s position? You gave orders, you know, to maintain radio silence."
"Sending up distress flares?" Colonel Welsh queried with a frown. "What good does she think flares will do? The captain of any other ship near by would be a fool to come close to her. The U-boat might still be lurking around."
"I know, sir," the pilot said. "Maybe she hears us and wants us to send out her position because her radio shack is gone. Maybe she thinks we"re a flying boat on patrol."
For some unknown reason a sudden eerie chill rippled across the back of Dawson"s neck. He looked at Colonel Welsh and tried to convince himself that this was none of his business, but that eerie chill forced him to blurt out, "And it could be something _else_, sir! I mean, if we send out the ship"s position, our radio will reveal _our own_ position."
The pilot of the bomber glared quickly at Dawson, and the corners of his mouth stiffened. "It isn"t fun to be torpedoed at night," he said quietly. "I lost a brother that way."
Dawson flushed slightly, but he didn"t drop his eyes before the other"s stare. Before he could say anything, though, Colonel Welsh addressed the pilot.
"Circle her and continue to maintain radio silence, Captain," he said.
"Just before you pa.s.s her to port, drop a flare so that we can get a good look at her. If she seems in trouble, then maybe we"ll do something for her. Meantime, though, I want all members of the crew to go to battle stations."
The bomber pilot"s eyes widened in surprise, but he had sense enough not to ask any questions. He nodded, glanced at Dawson, turned and went forward to his compartment. Dawson waited until he was out of earshot, and then gave Colonel Welsh an apologetic smile.
"I"m sorry, speaking out of turn like that, sir," he said. "I guess the captain must think I"m a little cracked."
"Let him think so," the colonel remarked quietly. "All he knows is that he"s flying me to Casablanca for a meeting with my agents, and that it"s up to him and his crew to get me there. If he"d been through what you have, he"d be the first to agree with you. Maybe the flare will tell us something. If it is a torpedoed ship, I think I will take a chance and have her position radioed. Poor dev--"
That was as far as the colonel got. The savage yammer of aerial machine-gun fire interrupted him. An instant later they all heard a yell of pain from the pilot"s compartment. Even before the echo had died away, the North American B-25 heeled over on one wing and started to slide off and down with both engines wide open.
"The pilot"s. .h.i.t!" Dawson yelled, and lurched to his feet. "Pilot hit and his co-pilot, too, I guess. By what? How the heck--"
Dawson didn"t finish, either. At that instant the night outside was lighted with a brilliance like that of high noon. A terrific roar seemed to slam into the B-25 from all sides and spin her around until she was as helpless as a dried leaf in a gale.
CHAPTER TWELVE
_Fighting Hearts_
The crazy motion of the bomber knocked Dawson off balance and sent him lurching heavily against the flare rack as he reached the navigator"s nook just aft of the pilot"s compartment. The air whistled out of his lungs, and b.a.l.l.s of colored fire danced before his eyes. Fortunately, though, his outflung hands caught hold of something, and he was able to prevent himself from pitching headlong on his face.
The B-25 was still flooded by brilliant light, and above the screaming roar of the over-revving Wright-Cyclones, Dawson could hear the chatter of aerial machine guns. He gave no thought to the thing that was happening. He had but one idea in his head, and that was to fight his way forward to the pilot"s compartment. As he dived past the navigator"s nook, a hand grabbed him by the arm, and he heard voices, but he could not understand the words above the din of other noises. With a savage wrench of his arm he freed himself, and piled forward into the pilot"s compartment.
One glance gave him a complete picture, and his racing heart seemed to stand still. The gla.s.s of the pilot"s compartment was shattered to bits.
The pilot was slumped over against the Dep wheel, and the weight of his limp body was pushing the control forward so that the bomber remained in its mad dive. Beside the limp pilot was the co-pilot, flopped over against the side of the compartment and looking for all the world like a man dead tired who had simply leaned over to brace himself and catch a couple of minutes of sleep. That is, he looked like such a man except for the crimson blood that gushed from a gaping wound in his neck just below the left ear.
After one look at the hideous sight Dawson flew into action. Bracing himself behind the pilot"s seat, he grabbed the limp figure by the shoulders and pulled him back on the seat. Holding him upright with one hand, he reached around and opened the catch of the pilot"s safety harness. That done, he braced himself again and eased the man to the floor boards. The pilot"s eyes fluttered open, and his lips sprayed drops of blood as he tried to speak. Dawson didn"t have time to listen.
He leaped into the pilot"s seat, grabbed the control wheel with one hand, hauled back on it steadily, and eased off the throttles with his other hand.
Little by little the crazy downward plunge of the B-25 eased off. The plane began to climb back into the sky. There was still brilliant white light all about. It had a silverish tint to it, and Dawson had the impression that he was flying straight through a phosph.o.r.escent ocean.
In an abstract way be realized the white light was caused by flares that had been dropped from high above the bomber and were bringing it out in clear relief for a mysterious aerial night raider.
"Where is it, and what?" Dawson gasped as he squinted his eyes in the brilliant glare. "It"s just one ship. I can tell it from the guns. But what--"
He cut the rest off short and heeled the B-25 way over on its wing and brought it around and up in a climbing turn with the engines wide open.
He did so because he had caught a glimpse of a shadow boring in and up at him from the left. Just a shadow, but he knew instinctively that it was another plane. At the top of its climb, he whipped the bomber over and around in the opposite direction. The bomber was neither a P-40 nor a Lockheed Lightning, and his heart seemed to stand still in his throat as he waited for the big craft to come around. With each pa.s.sing second, he expected to hear the savage yammer of guns blazing away at him.
As a matter of fact, a moment later he did hear guns, but they came from the B-25, not from the other plane. They came from the port side, and impulsively he jerked his head around in that direction. As he did so, he saw a sight that brought a wild cry of joy from his lips. Silhouetted against the brilliant background of light was a n.a.z.i-marked Arada AR-95 twin-pontoon seaplane. He could see the silverish disc described by the spinning propeller, but the aircraft seemed to be standing still.
Rather, it seemed to be held motionless in the air by twin streams of tracer smoke that reached out to it from the B-25.
It was motionless for only a moment, and then suddenly a sheet of flame spewed out from under its engine cowling. Fire mushroomed out in all directions, and in the wink of an eye, the Arada completely disappeared, and there was just a great cloud of fire hanging in the flare-lighted heavens. To Dawson the cloud seemed to hang not for seconds, but for minutes. And then, as though an invisible cable had been cut, the cloud of fire dropped straight downward.
"Sweet shooting! Pretty!" Dawson heard his own voice yell. "And I"ve got a hunch that it was good old Freddy who nailed her! If it--"
He stopped short, as he happened to glance ahead and to the left. By now the flares were burning out, and were down close to the water. Because of that he was able to see the seven-or eight-thousand-ton tramp steamer that was leaving a broad, churning wake as it made off at top speed toward the darkness to the north. The surface vessel flew no flag, and there was little to distinguish her from any of the thousands of tramp steamers.
She was no mystery to Dawson, however. One look at her racing away from the light of the fading flares was all he needed to know the truth. That ship was one of the few n.a.z.i sea raiders left, and the Arada seaplane had come from her decks. By looking carefully he could see a cradle on the forward deck, and a huge hoisting crane that must have lifted the seaplane over the side.
"The dirty dogs!" Dawson grated as he glared down at the fleeing vessel.
"If only we had some bombs or depth charges aboard, what a finish we could put to that sea murderer! We"d--"
"Dawson! Thank G.o.d!"