The Dive Bomber

  “Before we go into this,” Bullard said, “you still have to test the cross-country ability to make it official. I’ll want to know if I need any more of your engineering advice and if we have to make any changes before we ship. I’ll put these bills in your safe, just to make sure you get them and I’ll send Smith with you to see that you don’t run off. Is that clear?”

  Flynn, in the doorway, stabbed a warning glance at Lucky.

  “That’s clear,” said Lucky, ambiguously.

  “All right, you,” said Bullard, indicating Flynn. “Fill this crate’s tanks to the brim, see she’s got plenty of oil, and take a listen at her engine. You’ll have a fine flight, Martin.”

  “Will you be gone long?” said Dixie.

  “It all depends,” said Bullard.

  “Yeah,” muttered Flynn, nursing a gas hose, “it all depends!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  With a Machine Gun

  at His Head

  THE sensations of a man who knows definitely that he is to be shot in the back of the head are not nearly as acute as those of a man who is in doubt as to both the deed and the time it will be performed.

  In the latter case there is still hope of salvation, in the former there is only fatalistic resignation. According to Sing Sing guards, members of firing squads both Chinese and Russian, and the accounts of executioners, a condemned man is docile only when he knows definitely that there is no chance of being spared.

  Darting south at six miles a minute, four thousand feet up, presumably testing the cruising range of the ship at full throttle, Lucky Martin, the man who always rode the skies with death’s scythe an ever-present shadow in the clear blue about him, rode now with a jittery skeleton of a man less than four feet behind him, a man who held the butt of a machine gun throwing slugs the size of a pecan with enough power to somersault an elephant.

  Desolate, rolling, brown hills were stretched below the scudding belly of the dive bomber. Spring had not yet brought its green to southern Virginia.

  A good place for it, if it was to happen.

  Lucky could not help glancing back every fifteen seconds. Cased like a mummy in a glass coffin, Smith gave him stare for stare. It was not necessary to remove the hood to fire the mounted gun. Lucky had his engineering skill to thank for that.

  It was impossible to reach out of his own cage and get at the man. Smith would, of course, shoot away Lucky’s hood as well as his head and drop the corpse into a sluggish river.

  It was near this place that Lucky and Flynn had been attacked by the gray pursuit ship.

  The long, flared snout of the gun pointed forward and up, which was as it should be. But when the bomber jarred into an infrequent bump, the snout wavered—which was not as it should be, because it meant that Smith held the butt, instead of keeping it lashed down.

  The muzzle came down. Lucky caught the shadow of it on his shoulder.

  He sensed that Smith already held the controls.

  Lucky had set the tab-trimming control. The plane would stay in level flight with or without guidance.

  He knew he would not go out passively, shot in the back.

  With a lunge, he slammed his shoulders against his hood, knocking it open. In the same motion he unsnapped his belt and whirled to his knees in the seat, facing Smith.

  The machine gun was aimed. Lucky grabbed at the muzzle.

  Smith’s eyes dilated like a cat’s. His hand snatched the triggers.

  The gun would not move in Lucky’s grip! He was staring down its black tunnel.

  A roar shook the plane as a shell went off.

  Lucky flinched.

  The slipstream battered him. The bomber started to climb.

  Dazed with disbelief, Lucky saw coils of blue smoke oozing out of the gunner’s pit. Smith’s bloody right hand was pounding at the action.

  Lucky, staking everything on one last try, amazed that he could still move, jabbed his fingers under the rear cockpit’s hood and shoved it back in its groove.

  Smith left the gun and strove to get a revolver out of his coat.

  Like an avenging angel in a power dive, Lucky swooped down on Smith.

  Precarious as his position was, he held to his cockpit with his heels over the dizzy earth, and hauled the struggling Smith clear of the belt and gun and seat.

  Smith’s screams went unheard. Lucky knocked his holds loose. With the finality of a steam shovel, Lucky handed Smith to the blast of chilly air.

  Smith, sliding backward, hit an elevator fin as he fell. The bomber lurched drunkenly. Smith went spinning away with four thousand feet under him, growing smaller and smaller against the diminutive dun landscape.

  But Smith still had his luck and he still had his chute and presently the canopy of white silk cracked open and hid him from view.

  Lucky got back into his own pit with difficulty. The plane was trying to fall off into a spin, the maimed fin dragging. Barely able to keep on an even keel, Lucky had no time to watch Smith. He could not turn. He had to fly straight ahead, or get into a fatal bank.

  Somewhere on his course he would find a field—he hoped.

  Skidding, yawing, diving and then zooming, the bomber carved an erratic path along the sky.

  Three miles ahead lay a clearing which looked big enough for the hard task of bringing this locoed Pegasus to earth.

  He kissed the tops of trees, flirted with a fence, and finally, after nervous wooing, came secure to the soft bosom of the earth.

  Shaking with reaction, remembering now that it had been very dangerous, Lucky climbed down.

  A glance at the machine gun showed that it had exploded its breech. Just why that was, Lucky could not immediately find. But a few minutes of probing into the maimed metal disclosed that a wing bolt, its end filed off, had been driven forcibly into the breech end of the barrel.

  Lucky mopped his face again. Good old Flynn had done that. He had fixed it while he was making his inspection, as per Bullard’s orders.

  A gentleman who chewed tobacco and, rather unnecessarily, smoked a pipe as well, shuffled along the furrows, looked intently at the bomber and finally, after spitting a couple quarts of brown juice, remarked, “It’s an airplane.”

  “Right. Where’s the nearest machine shop?” demanded Lucky.

  “Well, now, let me see. If yuh go to Jackson, it’ll take a long time, but if you goes to Beauregard, you’ll find it closer.”

  “Is there a machinist in Beauregard?”

  “No, can’t say as there is.”

  “Damn it man, I’ve got to get this repaired right away!” Lucky, recalling the rest of Flynn intelligence about the scheme, knew that an hour’s delay might prove fatal to Dixie.

  “Looks like you hit somethin’ with it, suh.”

  “I ran into an air bump. I’ve got to get to a machine shop. Is there one in Jackson?”

  “No, don’t think so. Roanoke is over there about sixty miles, and Richmond is up that way, but you couldn’t get it done today. Be dark before you got there.”

  The gentleman loafed along the fuselage and took hold of the broken fin and shook it leisurely, as though shaking hands with the plane.

  “I’ve got to get it fixed!” wailed Lucky.

  “Well, now, a piece of tin might patch it all right, if a feller had a piece of tin. I reckon—”

  “Sure it would!” cried Lucky. “I’ve got to get out of here. Isn’t there a machinist close by?”

  “Well, I reckon there is.”

  “Where?”

  “Well, I’m a pretty good machinist. I got a shop on the farm, over there a piece. If you could run this thing…”

  Lucky was already in the pit, taxiing the ship. He got as close to the sheds as the fences would allow, and the machinist went to work with thoroughness if not speed.

  Fuming and consu
ming whole smoke screens of cigarettes, Lucky watched the work go slowly forward. At last, satisfied that the task would not be done before dark and that he could not depart before the first grayness of dawn, he walked up a road and found a telephone line and pursued it to a connection in a general store.

  Remembering that Smith had probably been the pilot of the gray ship, and that the gray ship was somewhere near at hand, and supposing that Smith would find it before night, he started to call Washington.

  But with the number already given, he stepped back and hung up.

  He could not do this until he was certain that Dixie was safe. Any hint of official interference—and he could not trust to governmental speed—would immediately seal Dixie’s fate. Chances were that she would not be near the plant, but at her home, with Two-Finger close at hand. And he could not even guarantee that he would find her at her house.

  Dolefully he trudged back down the road to the toiling farmer.

  “Be done about noon tomorrow,” said the machinist-elect.

  “What’s the delay now?”

  “Why, there ain’t a bolt the right size on the place, and I’ll have to run them down from Jackson first thing in the morning.”

  Lucky sank weakly down on a rail and stared dismally at the empty, twilight sky.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Takeoff

  for Trouble!

  IT was one o’clock before Lucky could take off. It was two-twenty-five when he flashed down out of the sky upon the O’Neal plant.

  He spent a very few seconds looking down at the doll-size buildings because they were obviously deserted. Neither smoke nor dust stirred in the listless breeze.

  The dive bomber yawed to a stop before the tarmac and Lucky lit running. The outer door was locked but his shoulder remedied that. Catapulted into the gloom, he came to a startled stand before the blasted safe.

  No money in there or anything else. No plans, no papers.

  He heard footsteps outside and spun about to face the door. Flynn limped through the opening.

  Flynn’s face was bruised and bloody. He was covered with mud and his clothing was torn.

  “God, I’m glad to see you, Lucky.”

  “What’s happened to you?”

  “Those two bulldogs that was guarding you started to guard me. I managed to knock one out and get his gun and kill the other one. I got away, but I was too late.”

  “Where’s Dixie?”

  “Halfway to Europe by this time.”

  “But…but that steamer couldn’t have gotten out of the Chesapeake so quick! It must be close to Hampton Roads.”

  “No,” said Flynn, passing a shaky hand carefully over a black eye. “That ship left here three days ago. Bullard grabbed Dixie right after you left. Ninety-nine planes are aboard the steamer. Smith was to blast you, make you crash, get his own plane in the south and meet the steamer at sea. Bullard and the others caught the boat at Norfolk, and they’re halfway to Europe by now.”

  “We’ve got to do something!” wailed Lucky. He grabbed the phone and begged for the Treasury Department and the Coast Guard. He rapidly told them the details about the dive bomber, but the Coast Guard knew all about Bullard, his export permit, the planes. They also had been carefully coached about Lucky Martin. The answer was, “Sorry, Mr. Martin, I am afraid you are a little excited.” Lucky thought wildly for an instant and then remembered that the steamer was registered under the US flag, that Dixie would be an excuse for the Coast Guard. Rapidly he spilled this data over the wire with a thousand assurances. Tardily, the Coast Guard guessed that in a case of kidnaping, if it could be proved, they could act.

  Lucky looked at Flynn. “You feel all right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Look here, that dive bomber has full racks. We’ll stop that steamer at sea. It may be piracy for us and jail forever, but—”

  “What about Dixie?”

  “We’ll solve that when we come to it. Gas up and let’s go!”

  Twenty minutes later the all-metal plane zoomed out of the dust of the field, banked and, full out, streaked twenty degrees short of south, ASI flickering at six miles a minute. Lucky had figured out, as close as possible, the intersection of courses.

  The afternoon was free from haze. Few clouds marred the turquoise of the sky. Below, the waves made an even crisscross pattern on the painfully bright bay.

  The steamer had had to sail south, the length of the Chesapeake Bay, but Lucky took a corner off Delaware, raced over Maryland’s Eastern Shore and was presently roaring over the Atlantic, leaving the friendly coast far behind.

  His mathematics told him that this, a land plane, could travel one thousand miles without refueling, and that he would probably cover that without again seeing the shore. Failure was, in any case, his goal, unless he could get the bomber to float until the Coast Guard came up. That is, if the Coast Guard ever found him.

  Enveloped in the monotony of wide and watery horizons, he began to realize what a small chance he had of ever finding the steamer. Somewhere within a circle at least two hundred miles in diameter, the vessel, if he sighted it at all, would look no bigger than a match floating on the water.

  He went up to fifteen thousand to increase his visibility and bless the lack of clouds.

  “There’s a steamer!” yelled Flynn into the tube.

  The bomber veered from its course, dashing toward the faint smudge, rolling back the curve of the world.

  “Nix,” said Flynn. “Great White Fleet.”

  The bomber snapped back to an easterly route.

  For ten minutes they spotted nothing and then Flynn shouted, “A plane down around five thousand, to the south of us, heading east.”

  “Anything else?”

  Flynn adjusted his binoculars, stared for a moment and then yelped, “It’s the same ship that attacked us over Virginia!”

  “Good! He can’t see us. We’re too high in the sun. Smith started later than I thought, and he’s bound to know where that steamer is. We’ll pull the throttle a notch.”

  “We haven’t anything to fight with, Lucky.”

  “We’ve got the wing guns, haven’t we?”

  “But I ain’t got anything back here. Look at him, Lucky. Cold meat!”

  Easing back to two-eighty, the evident speed of the gray pursuit ship below and ahead, Lucky tagged hopefully.

  “That pursuit ship was never built in America,” volunteered Flynn. “Too square. Too many wires.”

  “We know where it was built.” It was four o’clock before a smudge could be seen ahead. The spring day was almost over. Night would fall before the bomber could get more than halfway to land and the gas would be gone long before that time—and the bomber would ride waves less than two hours.

  “Oh, for a radio,” mourned Flynn. “Even if we win, we lose.”

  “Is that the right freighter?” said Lucky.

  Flynn methodically inspected it with his binoculars and declared that it was. “She’s flying the American flag, too, the damned pirates.”

  The ship was five miles ahead and three miles down, about the size of a needle floating in a glass of water, black smoke no more than a dot against the enormous bowl of the sea.

  The gray pursuit ship was a gnat flitting through the dusk, almost invisible against the pattern of the waves.

  The sunset was turning to flame, the sky was deepening to indigo in the direction of Africa.

  The waves were long, thin shadows, as close together as the threads of black gauze.

  Presently the white wake disappeared as the steamer swung to. Smith would land in the sea, to be picked up by a lifeboat.

  Flynn could see the davits swing out and then he shouted, “They must have sighted us! They’re signaling Smith not to land!”

  “We’ll bomb first and fight second,” said Lucky. br />
  “But with Smith still in the air to pick us off—”

  “We’ll take that chance.”

  Lucky opened the engine wide, and the gleaming plane, blood-red in the setting sun, leaped ahead, a Pegasus stung by a spur.

  The gray ship banked in a climbing turn, scrambling for altitude.

  Fifteen thousand feet under the dive bomber, three miles straight down, the steamer began to get under weigh once more, rapidly picking up speed, already starting a zigzag.

  Verticaling tightly, tipping the sea until it was certain that all the water would run out of it, Lucky looked sideways at the faraway vessel.

  Flynn was busy with the binoculars. “Three machine guns mounted aft, all manned and waitin’ for us. It sure ain’t much of a bomb target; I’d rather shoot at a mile-away penny.”

  “See any sign of Dixie?”

  “There’s something white—”

  “She was wearing a light-colored polo coat, wasn’t she?”

  “That’s her!” cried Flynn. “They got her on the forward well deck, just ahead of the superstructure. Good God, Lucky, we can’t bomb that ship!”

  “Forward well, is it. We’ll bomb aft.”

  “But, Lucky, a pullout at three thousand… We don’t know if we can hit the afterdeck!”

  “We won’t pull out at three thousand. Hold your breath. We’re going down!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Ship

  Shows Her Mettle

  FLYNN’S agonized protest was blasted aside by the rising snarl of the engine.

  The dive bomber went over the hump and then, like a silver arrow, shot itself against the sea.

  Up, up, up sirened the engine. Down, down, down flashed the wings. Up to terminal velocity, back on the throttle. No engine on earth could drive the ship any faster now. Air was a solid wall against the cowling, shrieking, ripped asunder by the racing bullet’s thunder.

  The steamer grew longer. The sea was a bowl, a whirlpool. Lucky could see the masts, then the halyards, then the caulked seams in the planking.

  The gray pursuit whipped by, left at five thousand feet as though standing still. It came around, nosed over, opened up and started after them, hopelessly lost for the moment, but ready the instant Lucky came out.