“You've got your men on a Snorter and the carrier-transport?” he asked.
“Yes,” Scotty said. “But you didn't tell me about equipment. I don't know where you're going.”
“Alaska,” Bill said. “Arrange for a supply of fuel in Seattle and find out whether we can get more in Juneau, Alaska. Double the emergency equipment and ammunition supply. Put the regular crew in the carrier. Be sure to check Sandy's ship carefully. We may need her. How soon will they be ready?”
“I ought to have a couple of days to be sure. Bill,” old Scotty said cautiously.
“A couple of days!” Bill roared. “You mean a couple of hours! Check the Lancer, too. Shorty will fly her. Bev will have the Snorter. Sandy and I will handle the carrier-transport. Make it three hours. I want 'em on the line then.”
Scotty MacCloskey spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders. He was a careful man and he wanted to be certain that the ships were ready. But he knew there was no use in arguing because Bill knew the condition of his ships as well as he did.
A few minutes later Bill, Shorty, Bev Bates, and young Sandy leaned over a chart spread out on a drawing board in Bill's private office. Shorty spread a caliper and laid it on two points along the string of mountainous dots that were the Aleutian Islands.
“From what I find,” Shorty said, “it's one of those small ones between Rat and Andreanof Islands. It is almost directly on the route the
“What about steamship lines?” Bill asked.
“It's about a hundred miles north of the Yokohama-Vancouver lane and tour hundred north of the Yokohama-San Francisco route,” Shorty said.
“Listen, Bill,” Bev Bates broke in, “have you formed any opinion about this thing? Have you any ideas?”
“No,” Bill snapped, “I haven't.”
“Do you think young Reynolds' attempted flight to Russia has anything to do with it?” Bev asked.
“No,” Bill said. “That was just one of those stupid gestures that do more to harm aviation than to help it. It wasn't a drunken flight as the news-papers intimated. It was quite thoroughly planned. But it had no purpose. Like a lot of other people, young Reynolds wanted to get himself some publicity. Some one wants to get us up there and is using this method to do it.”
“What for?” Sandy asked, his freckled face serious.
“Hell, kid,” Bill said, “I'm no gray-bearded oracle.”
“Say, Bill,” Shorty said, “you didn't ask Ruth Reynolds about the man who sent the phoney secretary to her. Maybe, if we could locate him, we could get a lead.”
“I thought of it,” Bill said, “but decided against it. She said she met him at a party in a night club. That was part of this game. He was supposed to meet her and plant that girl in her house.”
“I don't get it,” Bev said. “Why all that elaborate planning if Reynolds or his sister have nothing to do with it?”
“They do have something to do with it,” Bill said. “They served some one as an authentic and reliable background to get Red up there so that some one could grab him. They want us up there, too. They knew that we would come after Red. It's a clever little trap.”
“Anyway, we'll be ready for them,” Shorty said.
“I hope so,” Bill said and reached for a telephone. He asked to be connected with Scotty.
Barnes Field was a bedlam of feverish activity when Bill and his men went out on the apron at dusk. The sixteen-foot props of the big carrier-transport gleamed dully as Martin, the head mechanic, blasted the three thousand horses in the two Barnes-Diesels. The twin props of the Snorter and the silver Lancer were ticking over slowly on the apron beside the transport. The goggled, white-helmeted heads of Shorty and Bev Bates jutted above the rims of the two fast amphibians a moment later.
Bill climbed into the commander's seat of the bomber-carrier with Sandy just behind him. He flicked the inter-cockpit telephone switch and checked Bailey, the bomber and machine gunner, in the forward cockpit; McCoy and Neely in the cockpits abaft the engines; Miles, who rode down under the belly of the ship in the retractable gun pit when they went into action; and old Charlie, the cook, who operated the gun in the extreme tail.
Above and behind Bill's head was a circular platform on which was mounted a rapid-firing one-pounder that could throw over one hundred shells in a minute.
In the midship section of the big amphibian was the hangar of the Eaglet, Sandy's fast little fighter. Suspended by its landing hook from an overhead girder, the Eaglet was locked rigidly in place on the girders, and hung with its cockpit just above the level of the deck.
Behind the Eaglet's hangar was a retractable machine-gun turret that could be lowered below the bottom of the fuselage. Farther back were showers, lavatories, and Bill's private cabin-also a dining salon, with seats that could be converted into berths for the crew. In the tail was the galley, with an electric stove, ice box, and storage closets.
On the bridge of the monster were dual controls, a Sperry automatic pilot under the commander's seat, wireless equipment, a new Kreusi radio compass “homing device” and every other known navigation instrument.
From the bridge and pilot's compartment steps led downward to a machine gunner's cockpit in the nose, mounted with a .50-caliber Browning. Beneath the gunner's feet were bomb releases. In each of the wings, abaft the engines, were inclosed machine gunners' pits similar to the one in the nose. A runway connected these two cockpits with the main fuselage. The big ship was a carrier, a bomber, a flying fortress all in one.
Bill smiled as he switched on the two-million-candle-power landing lights of the “BT-4.” An instant later the transverse bands of yellow-and-black pigment painted across the runways became visible as the huge floodlights were turned on in the traffic tower. He slipped his boots into the rudder stirrups and gunned the engines as Scotty MacCloskey went out the port gangway.
The monster transport rolled down the runway like some huge, prehistoric animal. Two hundred yards from the electrically wired fence surrounding the field. Bill eased back on the wheel and took the ship into the air in a long, low climb.
Far off to the right the spires and turrets of New York's lighted skyscrapers gleamed above the city as
Shorty whipped the Lancer down a runway and into the sky, followed by
Bev Bates in his Snorter.
“Level off at ten thousand and take a position on each side of me,” Bill ordered over the radiophone. “I'll give you our course in a few minutes.”
The hum of their engines changed as they adjusted them to cruising speed and Bill gave them their course. The million and one lights of New York disappeared behind them and the world ahead became a black void. Hour after hour the three ships droned on and on through the cold night air. From time to time Bill played the beam of a large spotlight on the port and starboard motor nacelles, the props, and the wing surfaces. As the spotlight snapped off, the exhaust pipes glowed deep red and the port and starboard running lights blinked to life.
They had all set their automatic pilots to work and both Bev and Shorty were half asleep when Bill altered their course over Salt Lake City.
“We'll get a few hours' sleep at Seattle and have 'em refuel the ships,” he said to his men. “I want to take that long hop up the coast and across the Gulf of Alaska during daylight. We've got to have our eyes open.”
V—DUEL
AT eleven o'clock that same morning they were back in the air again. But they had had several hours' sleep in the beds of a good hotel and a morning meal that was both large and good.
“How in the name of your aunt Hester's pink donkey does he do it?” Shorty asked Bill as he watched Sandy stow away food. He was eating with the gusto and appreciation of a seventeen-year-old appetite. ! “He must stow some of it away in an auxiliary tank,” Bill said, grinning.
Sandy started to answer with his mouth full but he couldn't speak. Instead, he thumbed his nose at Shorty and went on with his eating.
He was half asleep in the co-pilot's seat of the transport when Bill roused him from his reverie.
“I want you to take the Eaglet out, kid,” Bill said.
“Swell, Bill!” Sandy said. He leaped to his feet and started toward the Eaglet's hangar.
“Hey! Wait a minute. Come here!” Bill shouted at him. “Sit down a minute and I'll tell you what I want you to
