"No, no, not now!" he groaned as he kicked his h.e.l.l Cat around and down toward that layer of fog. "Not at this late date, please, Lady Luck!"
But if Lady Luck answered it was simply the mocking laughter that he still imagined to be ringing in his ears. And then a moment or two later the n.a.z.i"s Grumman was in the fog layer and no more than a faint shadow ripping forward. A shadow that grew fainter and fainter as precious seconds slipped by. In the frantic hope that he could keep track of the speeding plane by not plunging down into the fog layer, Dawson pulled out a few hundred feet above it and held his course to the south. But presently there was no more moving shadow to be seen. The fog had thickened, and the n.a.z.i was gone! As a matter of fact, when Dave took an impulsive glance back over his shoulder he discovered that he was in an aerial world all his own. There was no longer any sign of the carrier force, nor was there any sign of carrier planes in the air. There seemed to be fog and clouds all about him, yet curiously enough the light from the setting sun seemed to cut through and lend a pinkish glow to everything in that part of the world.
"Freddy, Freddy Farmer!" Dawson suddenly gasped, as he suddenly remembered his pal taking off. "Didn"t Freddy see this bird and me go down? Didn"t ... You dope! Find out!"
He snapped the last at himself when it occurred to him there was such a thing as a radio. He had neglected to hook it up during the excitement of his take-off. He did so now, but before he could call out over the air to Freddy he heard the flight officer aboard the Trenton recalling the planes. The planes that had taken off from the other two carriers were being recalled, too. In code, of course, so that no listening j.a.p ears anywhere on the broad expanse of the Pacific would understand what it was all about.
As Dawson heard the orders he was tempted to break in and tell what had happened and request that all available planes be sent out in an effort to block off the n.a.z.i. But he checked himself even as the desire was born. The recall was being sent out for a very, very obvious reason.
Weather was closing down fast and it would soon be impossible for any of the carriers to take their aircraft aboard. They would have to circle about waiting for the weather to clear, or find a large enough hole to get down through. Failing either, they would finally run out of fuel and be forced down into the sea, perhaps to be lost forever. And a mighty aircraft carrier task force about to go into battle could ill afford to lose any great number of its fighter aircraft protection.
"Skip it!" Dawson grunted with an unconscious shake of his head. "They wouldn"t be any help, anyway, in this weather. You just can"t ask Vice-Admiral Macon to run the risk of losing so many planes, and not even find the rat. No, it"s up to you. You, and Freddy Farmer, wherever he is. But call him and ..."
He stopped himself with another and more vigorous shake of his head. And for several moments he droned forward at full throttle, striving to stab the fog layer that stretched out endlessly beneath him. With reaches of cloud scud a couple of thousand feet above him, it was like flying down a long, long, pink-tinted corridor in a world of beautiful make believe.
But it was not beautiful or make believe to Dawson. He hated that sun-tinted fog layer with his entire being. And it was cruel, ugly, heartless reality, and not make believe.
"No, don"t call Freddy on your radio!" he said to himself. "He may not be even close. Keep radio silence. You"ve got to. That n.a.z.i rat has ears, and he certainly understands English. At least don"t let him know that you"re trying to hunt him out. He"ll ..."
And it was at that instant that the light dawned on Dawson. It was at that moment that his stupid thinking left him, and he got a little horse sense to take its place. What he should really do was so simple, so obvious, and so clear that his cheeks went oven hot from a blush of shame.
"You ten-cent, c.o.c.keyed, bat-brained dope!" he ranted at himself. "Of course, of course! That rat is trying to make Truk, isn"t he? That"s _his_ objective, isn"t it? Certainly! Then why flub-dub around in this stuff hoping that he"ll break up through to let you see where he is? You sap, get this air wagon hitting on everything it"s got, and high tail for Truk yourself. Don"t try to smoke this rat _out_! Get to the Truk area first, and smoke him _down_!"
With a savage nod of his head to emphasize his words, he quickly made a check of the course and speed he had flown since taking off from the Trenton"s flight deck, and then plotted a course that _should_ take him to that little cl.u.s.ter of pin point islands, surrounded by a coral reef, thirty-five to forty miles in diameter, known as Truk. Yes, it should take him there, and he hoped and prayed so with all his heart and soul.
Just the same a cold lump of lead formed in his chest and came up to lodge fast in his throat no matter how much he swallowed to get it back down.
"If only Freddy were with me!" he sighed as he swung his h.e.l.l Cat on course, and gave the Pratt & Whitney in the nose every ounce of high octane it would take. "Blindfolded, that guy can find any spot in the world just so long as you give him wind direction, or something. Yeah, if he were only here, but he isn"t. This is strictly up to you, Captain Dumb Dawson. And I do mean dumb, too. You took so long to get this one logical idea that maybe that n.a.z.i rat is miles and miles on his way there now. And when you show up you"ll get a sky full of j.a.p Zeros thrown in your face for your efforts. Oh well ... Aw, skip it!"
As though to silence the little taunting, ribbing voice, he banged his free fist against the side of the c.o.c.kpit. That done, he hunched forward a little bit in the seat and concentrated every bit of his attention on his flying. Eight hundred miles to Truk? Well, a h.e.l.l Cat can do four hundred miles an hour plus. So in a little under two hours he would be there, and ... it would be yes, or no. Success or failure. And if it was failure, it would be complete failure for him. There would be no turning back to the carrier force with his tail between his legs. There just wasn"t enough gas in his tanks for that. If he didn"t find the n.a.z.i rat in time, and if he didn"t get shot down by Zeros that certainly must be patrolling the Truk area, he would run out of gas and be forced into enemy waters.
"And that will be the same as being shot down, and maybe worse!" he said with a slight shudder as the thought forced its way into his brain.
"Wouldn"t those j.a.p butchers love to find a Yank pilot floating around in his rubber life raft! Wouldn"t they just love _that_! A nice little pleasant session of target practice, and then ... Cut it, Dawson! Cut it, fellow, or you"ll be driving yourself bats, do you hear?"
He laughed a dry laugh at his ranting words, and then sobered instantly.
He happened to glance impulsively off to his left and for the fleeting part of a second he thought he saw the shadowy silhouette of another plane sliding along through the pinkness that fused and engulfed everything. But when he took a second and longer look there was nothing but a limitless expanse of cloud and fog.
At the end of a half-hour or so the fog beneath him thinned out considerably. He could see faint patches of the Pacific. And then after ten minutes of that the fog disappeared entirely. Rather it rose up to merge with the clouds and leave an area of clear air some five hundred feet high, and the horizon-to-horizon reaches of the mighty Southwest Pacific at the bottom.
Holding the h.e.l.l Cat to its course Dawson scanned the surface of the water in all directions, but he did not see a single sign of a ship. Nor did he see any planes when he searched the area of clear air all about him. He was still alone in a world of his own, and for a couple of minutes he toyed with the idea of climbing above the clouds, just in case the fleeing n.a.z.i had done that, and he might be able to spot him.
He finally killed off that idea, though, for the princ.i.p.al reason that it would slow down his speed, and he did not have to have anybody tell him that speed right now was the most precious thing in his life.
Speed and time. The two things that can change the whole course of the world. And which have many times, as history will prove. Right now, they hung in the balance again. At least for him. The speed of his roaring h.e.l.l Cat. And the time it would take him to get to the Truk area so that he might cut that n.a.z.i rat down into the depths of the Pacific to stay there for all eternity. And so that the information he was taking to one Admiral Shimoda might be food for the fishes, too.
"And there won"t be any little item of him getting me, instead," Dawson grated softly, as a little inner voice seemed to mention that possibility. "I"ve never sc.r.a.pped him in the air, but he"s one guy I _know_ I can nail. I know it, because I know I"ve _got_ to! So that"s how it stands, Lady Luck. Just give me the break of being able to catch up with him, and then leave the rest to me. Swell-headed and c.o.c.ky?
Okay, so I am! But let me at him and I"ll get him, just the same!"
Those and other tidbits of thought rambled through his brain and came off his lips as he guided his h.e.l.l Cat forward under the low-hanging overcast. This was the flight of flights for him. It was, because even if he won he would still lose as far as his own life was concerned. Even if he shot the n.a.z.i spy down into the Pacific he himself would soon follow the rat down there. Not because he had been hit, or wanted to.
Because he would have no choice. There would not be any gas left in his plane. And all the guts and courage in the world; all the fighting spirit and will-to-win determination that ever existed, cannot make an airplane stay in the air when the last drop of gas has been sucked into the engine. The age-old law of gravity comes into full force then, and down you go whether you like it or not.
"Okay, I go down, so what?" he argued with his other self. "What does it matter, if I"ve already sent that rat down where he belongs? A fellow can"t live forever, can he? All right, so why cry over it when your time comes? Didn"t some great man once say that the most beautiful experience in life is death? Didn"t...?"
He cut off the rest with a slow shake of his head, pushed up his goggles, and drew his free hand across his eyes.
"When a guy starts talking to himself this way, he must be going nuts,"
he grunted. "Boy! Do I wish old Freddy were here with me to steady me a little, like he"s done so many times. Good old Freddy! I wonder where he is, now? Did he go back to the Trenton when the recall went out? Or is he...?"
He stopped and swallowed hard. Sure, why not? Freddy had brains. Twice as many brains as he had about lots of things. It wouldn"t be any miracle for Freddy Farmer to figure the situation out the same way he had, and to be doing the very same thing that he was doing right now.
And as that thought built itself up stronger and stronger in his brain he searched the clear air about him again. But he saw nothing. If Freddy Farmer, too, was winging all out toward the Truk area, then he was somewhere up in those clouds.
No sooner had he figured that one out than two brand-new thoughts rushed into his swirling brain to taunt him, and cause little beads of nervous sweat to form on his face. Supposing Freddy Farmer by some miracle had stumbled across that fleeing n.a.z.i and slammed him down, just as a marksman such as Freddy could do? If so, then _he_ was simply flying to his death by drowning, or ultimate capture by the j.a.ps, for no earthly good reason.
That wasn"t a pleasant thought, and it sent a clammy shiver rippling throughout his body. And the other new thought made him shiver all the more. Supposing--just supposing this cursed cloud weather carried all the way to Truk? Supposing the n.a.z.i spy stayed up in it until he was well within the protective ring of Truk"s Zeros? If that turned out to be the case, he wouldn"t get a crack at that rat in a hundred years. Ten to one that n.a.z.i knew some secret radio signal he could send out to tell the j.a.ps who was approaching and not to attack simply because it was a Yank plane. Supposing ...
And right then and there Dave Dawson stopped his supposing about things.
In fact, he stopped thinking of all crazy things. The clouds above him suddenly ceased abruptly. The Pacific ahead suddenly became as though on fire from the dying rays of the setting sun. It was like flying out from under a huge pink roof. He came out like a shot from a gun, and almost in the same instant he saw a flash of red ... a flash of sparkling crimson caused by the sun rays dancing off the wings of a plane way off to his right and perhaps two or three thousand feet above him.
The n.a.z.i rat, or Freddy Farmer? That question burned in letters of fire a foot high in his brain, as he banked his h.e.l.l Cat to the right, and sent it nosing upward.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
_Kismet_
Never before had Dave Dawson been so eager, so all on fire, to establish the ident.i.ty of a sighted plane as he was now. Every nerve and muscle in his entire body became tensed, and actually ached from the strain. Time and time again, as the prop clawed his h.e.l.l Cat upward and to the right, he shoved up his goggles and dashed his free hand across his tired eyes as though by so doing he would improve his vision.
Truth to tell, under any other conditions he would have been able to get a clear view of the plane even before he started to climb toward it. But the position of the dying sun, the glossy red surface of the Southwest Pacific below him, and the tiny patches of cloud that still hung in the sky were all against him. They all worked to distort the distant plane into all kinds of shapes and outlines. It was something like trying to study a fly through red-colored gla.s.ses as the fly circled about a brilliant white light. One instant he would almost see it clearly, and the next it would seem to fade from view altogether, and send his pounding heart racing up into his throat.
"That n.a.z.i rat, or you, Freddy?" he muttered aloud. "And forgive me, Freddy, but I hope that it isn"t you. Because if it is you, fellow, then we have lost. He"d have to be out in the open now. So if that ship is yours, Freddy, it can"t mean anything else but that he is way out in front of us, and too close to Truk for us ever to hope to get him. You see ..."
But Dawson didn"t finish the rest of that sentence. It was as though a thin curtain had been pulled across the face of the setting sun. A mighty shadow pushed eastward across the face of the world, and there was considerably less blinding crimson light. The plane, now little more than half a mile away, and less than a thousand feet above Dawson"s aircraft, stood out sharp and clear. And the plane was a U.S. Navy h.e.l.l Cat.
"The markings, the markings!" Dawson breathed, and strained his eyes hard to see something besides the sharp, clear silhouette of the other plane. "Is it F Dash Fourteen? Or Freddy"s number F Dash Twenty? Please make it Fourteen, Lady Luck! If you never give me another good break, please give me just this one. Make it Fourteen, please!"
Five, ten, fifteen seconds ticked by. They seemed as years in length to Dawson. Cannons boomed in his brain, and he felt pins and needles in his veins, not blood. He wanted to shout and yell at the top of his voice.
He wanted to do anything that would make it possible for him to see the identification markings on that other plane. The urge was great to let fly a few blasts from his fifty-caliber guns to attract the attention of the other pilot, but with an effort he fought down that urge.
If the n.a.z.i was flying that other h.e.l.l Cat, it would be the worst thing in the world for Dawson to fire his guns. At least at this early moment.
It would be bad because the other h.e.l.l Cat was still some distance away and slightly in front of Dawson"s plane. In other words, there was still time for the pilot of that other plane, if he was the n.a.z.i, to keep a safe distance from Dawson and outrun him to the protection of Zeros from Truk.
No, this was a cat-and-mouse play. If that was Freddy Farmer then this stealing up unnoticed was a waste of time. But if it was the n.a.z.i then this maneuver was the best bet in Dawson"s bag of air fighting tricks.
Right! Get in close, and make sure. Make sure, and then tear in for the kill. And a kill it would be, if that pilot was the n.a.z.i.
"Steady, guy, steady!" Dawson murmured as his nerves began to tw.a.n.g like harp strings. "No matter who it is you"ll find out soon. So don"t overplay it, fellow. If it"s him, then this will be your last chance. No more chances after this one. No. This is the pay-off, the old make or break. The ..."
Perhaps Lady Luck smiled upon Dave Dawson at that moment, but most likely it was the result of action by the other pilot. At any rate, the other h.e.l.l Cat veered slightly toward the south and the rays of the dying sun played full upon the side of the fuselage. And like magic the plane"s markings stood out in bold relief. The markings, F Dash Fourteen!
"You, it _is_ you!" Dawson panted, and slid his thumb up to the stick b.u.t.ton that controlled the electric firing of his gun. "It is you, and I"ve got you cold. Cold as a chunk of Arctic ice!"