"Nope," Dave replied. "But we"re only at eight thousand now. Whoever"s signalling is sure a persistent guy, isn"t he? Is he so deaf he can"t hear us coming down, do you suppose? You haven"t caught any different signals, have you?"
"The same two groups of signals over and over again," young Farmer replied. "I fancy they"d stop, though, if we acknowledged. But I wouldn"t, Dave, if I were you. I still have a funny feeling about this business. It just doesn"t seem quite right to me, but blessed if I know why. I ..."
Freddy never finished the rest. He never did for the reason that at that exact moment a stab of orange red flame showed down by the blinking light. Dawson saw it and had only time to stiffen slightly in the seat before the night darkness all about the Fortress was lighted up as brilliantly as high noon by a bursting star sh.e.l.l. And hardly had the white light virtually exploded in front of Dawson"s face before the air all about was filled with the roaring thunder of bursting flak sh.e.l.ls.
For the infinitesimal part of a split second Dawson sat as a man struck dead. Then with a wild yell he shook himself out of his trance, rammed all four throttles wide open and threw the Flying Fortress up and around in a steep climbing turn. The first star sh.e.l.l had died out by then, but a second and a third one had taken its place, and the silvery brilliance that seemed to flood everything was punched red and orange here and there by flak sh.e.l.ls seeking out the Fortress.
"A trap, a trap, and I all but flew right down into it!" Dawson yelled angrily. Then as he looked down over the side of the plane, cold rage shook him from head to toe. "Freddy!" he shouted into his inter-com mike. "Do you see what I see, Freddy? It"s a submarine. A j.a.p submarine.
The dirty rats! They pulled us almost down to the muzzles of their c.o.c.ked anti-aircraft guns. The stinkers. If they"d waited just a minute longer they couldn"t possibly have missed. Hey, Freddy! You okay, kid?
Did we get hit by anything?"
"Not that I can see from here!" young Farmer called back. "But I guess my feeling meant something, what? The dirty beggars! I wonder how often they"ve pulled this killer"s trick on lone planes flying out to the Islands? Praise be they"re rotten shots. Look! They see that they can"t get us now, so they"re preparing to dive. They"re ... I say, Dave! What the devil"s wrong? Is the plane out of control?"
"Out of control, nothing!" Dawson roared as he sent the huge bomber over on wing, and down. "I mean it to go this way. Show me some of that sweet shooting of yours, Freddy! I"ll take you right down on top of them, and nuts to their flak fire. Boy! If we only had a depth charge or two, or a bomb. But give them what you can, Freddy!"
"Right you are!" young Farmer"s voice echoed in Dawson"s earphones.
"Just get me a little lower, and level us off. I"ll make the dirty blighters dance."
The j.a.p submarine"s fire was still pretty heavy, but Dawson sent the Fortress thundering right down through it as though it didn"t even exist. The submarine was getting under way, and one by one the deck guns ceased fire as the gun crew quit them and scampered along the wet decks to the conning tower. Two or three of them reached the ladder leading up to the bridge, but that"s as far as they got. Freddy Farmer"s port-slot fifty-caliber guns started to speak their piece, and the running j.a.ps were knocked flat as though invisible hands had jerked their feet out from under them. Those behind the ones that fell kept on coming like men crazed by fear who didn"t know any better. Anyway, they ran straight into the withering fire that had cut down the others, and their rotten lives were promptly snuffed out in exactly the same way.
Not a gun fired back at the Fortress, now, as Dawson kept circling the target so that Freddy could work his slot guns continuously. The undersea craft was driving hard through the water with its diving planes undoubtedly all set to be run out for a crash dive the instant those who survived the death that sprinkled the deck were inside and the conning tower hatch closed tight. But Freddy Farmer was seeing to it that none of those scampering j.a.ps on deck survived his withering fire.
He relentlessly cut them down one after another like tenpins. And then as Dawson veered the Fortress even closer to the trapped submarine, young Farmer sent a hail of explosive bullets practically straight down the still partly opened conning tower hatch.
"Have some of those, you filthy beggars!" Dave heard Freddy"s voice screaming over the inter-com. "Pull a trick like that on us, what? Well, how do you like some of the same? How do you like it, what?"
"They don"t like it even a little bit, pal!" Dawson shouted impulsively into his own flap mike. "Not even a ... Hey! Ye G.o.ds! You"ve hit something, Freddy!"
Hit something was right! A column of livid red flame suddenly belched up out of the conning tower hatch. The silver light from the floating exploded star sh.e.l.ls had just about died away, but now the sky and the sea were bathed in a blood red glow as the column of flame mounted higher and higher, and then fountained outward in all directions. It came so close to the circling Fortress that Dawson gasped out a strangled cry of alarm and quickly banked off in the opposite direction.
As soon as he was clear of the area of falling fire he banked the Fortress again so that he could look back at the doomed j.a.p submarine.
And doomed it was. Even as he saw it again there was another violent internal explosion that seemed to lift the craft clean out of the water.
It actually seemed to hover motionless in mid-air for a moment, and although Dawson was not sure, he thought he saw the thing break in half, and both halves fall back into the water with mighty splashes, and then disappear completely beneath the flame-tipped waves. At any rate, an instant later the submarine just wasn"t there any more. There was nothing but a blazing whirlpool of oil to mark the spot where it had been. There was not even a single piece of floating wreckage in that ever widening circle of blazing oil.
"And that"s one Tojo can sure mark off as gone for good!" Dawson muttered, and nosed the Fortress up for alt.i.tude. "What a way to die, even for a dirty j.a.prat."
With a little shuddering shake of his head he took his gaze off the blazing patch of oil slick, and turned his attention forward.
"Okay, Freddy, boy!" he called into his inter-com mike. "Come on up front and get your cigar for hitting the bull"s-eye. And how you did, pal. How you did!"
There came no reply from Freddy over the inter-com, nor did the English youth come up forward in person.
"Hey, Freddy!" Dave shouted, this time even louder. "Can you hear me?
Anything wrong back there? Hey, Freddy!"
Ten full seconds of silence ticked by, and an eerie chill started to close about Dawson"s heart. Why hadn"t Freddy at least answered if he wasn"t coming forward just yet? Was something wrong? Had a chance shot from that rotten j.a.p submarine nailed old Freddy? But that couldn"t be.
He"d heard Freddy"s port-slot guns still slugging away long after the last gun on the submarine had gone silent. Then what was wrong?
Those, and a hundred and one other torturing thoughts raced through Dawson"s brain as he put the Fortress back onto the automatic pilot, unhooked his safety harness, and scrambled out of the seat and went aft.
As he pushed through the door leading into the bomb bay he stopped dead in his tracks and then instantly dropped flat on his hands and knees. A sea of acrid smelling smoke had come swirling through the compartment door opening, and although his own heart seemed to be pounding against his very eardrums he was able to hear the faint crackling of flames. And he could see that the swirling smoke inside the bomb-bay was tinted by fire.
"Freddy! Freddy!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Are you trapped in there? Can you hear me? Where are you, Freddy?"
"Back here, Dave!" came the m.u.f.fled reply through the swirling smoke.
"Give me a hand, quick. The mail sacks. The blasted things are on fire.
Mind the bomb-bay doors, Dave! I"ve opened them to toss these things out. Give me a hand, Dave. I don"t think I can make it alone. Blast!
That thing"s hot!"
Long before Freddy Farmer had stopped speaking Dawson was crawling through the door opening on his hands and knees. It was like crawling into the middle of a blast furnace. The acrid smoke stung his eyes and almost blinded him. It seemed to pour down his throat and gag him, and he was frightfully afraid that he might misjudge his movements and go hurtling down through the opened bomb-bay doors.
But he did not misjudge, and after what seemed an eternity spent inside a hot stove, he reached Freddy Farmer, who was hauling smoking and flaming mail sacks along the floor of the compartment and then dropping them down through the opened bomb-bay doors. Young Farmer looked like a smudged-faced ghost in the red glow of the burning sacks. His helmet and goggles were gone, and his flying suit was badly scorched in a couple of places.
"What happened, Freddy?" Dawson choked out as he grabbed a smoking mail sack off the pile and hurled it down toward the night-shrouded Pacific.
"We stop some of their flak? But how the d.i.c.kens did these sacks catch on fire?"
"Don"t know!" Freddy choked through the smoke. "Can"t understand it.
Just happened to look back in here to check if anything had been hit, and found the whole blasted place full of smoke. Saw a couple of stabs of purple light, and then the whole business broke into flame. Didn"t dare waste time calling you. Think the fire got the inter-com wires, anyway. Boy! Suppose I hadn"t happened to look in here!"
Dawson simply shuddered and dragged another sack off the pile. He didn"t bother to make any comment. It was horrible enough just to think about the whole rear end of the Fortress catching fire. Besides, there was too much of the stinging smoke in his nose and throat to permit any unnecessary talk. They still weren"t out of danger. No, not by a jugful.
At that very moment, as Dawson kicked a smoking sack toward the bomb-bay opening, a tongue of purple white light shot out of its heavy canvas covering. A hissing sound filled Dawson"s ears, and then the mail sack went tumbling down through the air. Dave"s breath seemed to stick in his throat, and his heart turn to stone, as the terrible realization came to him. He heard Freddy Farmer cry out in stunned amazement but he could not have turned his head Freddy"s way at that moment, even if not doing so had cost him his life. Half frozen with fear, he stood gaping at the bomb-bay opening down through which the flaming mail bag had just disappeared.
Then, snapping out of his trance, he whirled around and practically threw himself at the three or four smoking mail bags left. Fire burned his hands a little, but he hardly felt the pain. His only thought at that moment was to get every last one of those mail bags out of the plane. And a few moments later the last one of them went spinning down through the opening out of sight. By then an up-draft had cleared away most of the smoke. For a moment Dawson and Freddy Farmer stared at each other in the pale glow of a single bulb in the compartment ceiling that had not been reached by the flames. Then, as though still in a trance, Dawson reached out and pushed the b.u.t.ton that closed the bomb-bay doors.
And then the two of them more or less reeled back to the pilot"s compartment and dropped gasping for air into their seats.
"The first aid kit, beside you, Freddy," Dawson finally managed to force the words from his lips. "Better get it out and use some of the tannic jelly on our hands. No sense taking chances. Good grief, Freddy! There were time fire bombs in some of those sacks. Somebody figured to make us bail out, and flame this thing down onto the deck!"
"Yes!" Freddy Farmer said in a tight voice. "A little j.a.p friend of ours. Who else could it have been? It couldn"t have been anybody else, Dave. The dirty blighter. He probably didn"t trouble to use his gun.
Didn"t even have to get close to us ... But, good gosh, Dave! How in the world did he get the chance to do it? How did he know when he shadowed us up to Los Angeles that we were going to take the very first plane off, and that we"d carry the mail?"
"I don"t know," Dawson mumbled, and rubbed some of the tannic jelly on his smarting hands. "It"s like one of those impossible c.o.c.keyed things you read in dime thrillers. Maybe he didn"t do it, himself. Maybe he has pals at the L.A. Base. He certainly had one at Dago. Maybe he didn"t even show his face to anybody, except a pal or two of his. And maybe we"re just kidding ourselves. Maybe he didn"t have a thing to do with it. Maybe it was just plain sabotage by some other rats he never even met. I--gosh! I"m almost beginning to feel sorry that you belted that submarine down to the bottom, Freddy. Believe it or not, those rats, while trying to knock us down with their little trick, actually saved our lives."
"What"s that?" Freddy asked sharply. "Dirty j.a.ps save anybody"s life?
Not a bit, they would!"
"Not knowingly, no," Dawson said, and absently checked the course of the Fortress that was still droning along on the automatic pilot. "But those submarine birds did, just the same. Supposing that sub hadn"t showed at all? Supposing you hadn"t gone back to work the guns, and looked into the bomb-bay? We would suddenly have found ourselves sitting on the front end of a flying ball of fire. See what I mean?"
"Too vividly!" young Farmer said with a violent shudder. "Why, the blasted fire might even have reached the gas tanks before we could have bailed out. Gosh! maybe I am a little sorry that I sent the lot of them to the bottom."
"Well, don"t be too sorry," Dawson said grimly. "They"re still j.a.ps. And there"s still a lot of their cutthroat brothers on the face of the earth that need the same kind of treatment."
"And will get it, too, if I have anything to do with it!" Freddy Farmer echoed, tight-lipped.
CHAPTER SEVEN
_Spy Trap_