“But, my gosh, he's a fighting fool!” he said aloud.
The next time the black-and-red ship flashed across his sights he kicked his rudder ever so little as his finger gripped hard on his trip. The nose of the Eaglet followed the course of the biplane for that split fraction of a second that is enough. His bullets wove a pattern from the engine housing to the tail assembly. The black riddled ship skidded off dangerously on one wing and yawed wildly. Sandy whipped the Eaglet around and went .in for the kill. His breath was coming in short gasps now and his body was saturated with perspiration. He poured round after round at the other ship as the pilot tried to take it out of danger.
Sandy jammed the stick forward to follow the biplane in its frantic dive. Then he eased it back as the other ship came up and over in a dazzling Immelmann turn. Now he was above Sandy and diving on him with his guns flaming.
Only two thousand feet from the ground and diving at terrific speed, Sandy pushed the stick even farther forward to come up in an outside loop. He nearly blacked out as he hung, head downward, at the bottom of the loop. T He opened his mouth and began to scream as the pressure became terrific.
Then he was up and climbing and his stomach felt as though it had climbed up into his throat. He gulped and probed the air for the black-and-red biplane. He knew where it was a second later when its bullets came drumming up through the belly of the Eaglet. He barrel-rolled and the bi-plane zoomed past him.
Then he was under its belly, with his guns vomiting. He could see his tracers find their marks before it side- slipped out of range again.
Sandy's hands and arms were trembling now they were so tired. His body felt as though it had been racked with fever. He whipped around as he tried to draw air into his tortured lungs and find his enemy. His mouth dropped open, and he could not believe his eyes. He saw the black-and-red ship racing eastward at terrific speed. It had peeled off and was running away!
For a moment Sandy deliberated on whether or not he should follow him. The plane was headed back toward Juneau. Perhaps he would be forced to land there because of damage to his ship.
“He must have something to do with our being up here,” Sandy said to himself. “But why did he attack me?”
He kicked the Eaglet halfway around and then changed his mind. He decided that Bill would want him to follow orders and make contact with him as fast as he could. He studied his chart for a moment, took his bearings and laid the nose of the Eaglet on the tip of the Alaska Peninsula.
Then he went back to the task of repairing his radio.
VI—ONE MISSING
BILL BARNES probed the air ahead of him with anxious eyes as the afternoon wore on and no word came from Sandy. He made contact with Bev and Shorty time after time to learn if they had picked up any word from him. He thought that possibly his own radio receivers were out of order.
“How could you pick us up if there was anything wrong?” Shorty wanted to know, laughing. “You have the jitters, Bill. The kid is all right.”
“Yeah,” Bill said. “Probably he is. But it doesn't stay daylight forever. I'm worried about this whole layout, Shorty. Things have gone too smoothly. The only thing that has happened since that gal came to ask me to look for young Reynolds is the disappearance of Red. And he may be perfectly all right.”
“He may be,” Shorty said. “I don't want to make you worry any more, but I think we'll find out only too soon why we're here. It didn't just happen, Bill. This whole thing has a clever brain behind it. We want to keep our eyes open and our powder dry.”
It was nearly dusk when Bill set the BT-4 down on the landlocked harbor of the little trading town of Unalaska, that last outpost of ships passing from the Pacific into the Bering Sea. The sun was down and the night was cold, as the Lancer and Bev's Snorter left twin wakes on the still waters. Rain, driven by a stiff gale, began to pound on their overhead hatches as they put out their sea anchors to ride out the night.
Bill Barnes had become frantic with worry. He went over and over different possibilities as to what had happened to Sandy as he spread out his charts to study them.
McCoy and Neely blew up the rubber boat on the transport and paddled it over to the Lancer and Snorter to bring Shorty and Bev aboard the transport.
“We'll stay aboard,” Bill said curtly to Shorty in answer to a question. “Charlie will throw together some supper. We've got to take turns standing watches at the radio. We'll go ashore in the morning and make inquiries about Bed. I can't understand our not hearing from Sandy. He wouldn't have left Juneau if his radio had been out of order.”
“You can't tell what that kid might do. Bill,” Shorty said. “And don't forget it was right in this section that Red disappeared.”
“I wish I could forget it,” Bill said bitterly. “I wish I'd never heard of it. This whole thing is getting to be a hell of a mess and we don't even know what it's all about.”
“Sandy may have had trouble with his motor and headed for Kodiak,” Bev said.
“Yes and he may be down with his radio out of commission,” Bill said. “I don't want to send out a distress signal yet.”
“I might hop back over the Gulf and look for flares,” Shorty said. “He would be on the course we took.”
“Sit tight,” Bill snapped. “I want the rest of you here, then I'll know where you are.”
Old Charlie, the machine-gunner-cook, opened some cans of stew and concocted a huge salad from canned green vegetables. They ate it while the rain continued to beat down on the metal skin of the transport with increasing fury.
They could barely see the lights in the low, squat buildings along the waterfront through the sheets of water and the inky blackness of the night.
“I hope that Sandy ain't down on the Gulf of Alaska on a night like this,” old Charlie said to Bill. Shorty threw him a dirty look and Bev Bates kicked him in the ankle.
Bill didn't answer. He pushed his plate away from him as though the sight of food choked him and got to his feet. He went back on the bridge, threw the radio switch and began to chant Sandy's call letters for the thousandth time.
All through the night they took turns standing watches at the radio. And all through the night nothing came to them from the ether but the scratching roar of the storm and silence.
The rain had stopped when the first eager streaks of light crept out of the east. Bill Barnes was tossing back and forth on the cot in his cabin trying to get some sleep. Bev Bates was standing by the radio. He had just finished a short contact with Tony Lamport on Barnes Field and had thrown the radio key when the scarlet light on the panel brought him up in his chair again.
“BB—BB—BB—calling BB,” came to his ears. “BBG—calling BB. BBG calling BB.”
“Oh, Bill,” Bev shouted, “Red is checking in!”
Bill's feet hit the deck with a thud. His powerful legs drove like pistons as he raced by the Eaglet's hangar and up the steps to the bridge.
“Gimme!” he said and spoke into the microphone.
“BB answering Red. BB answering BBG. Go ahead! Go ahead!” he shouted.
The voice that came back to his ears was barely a whisper. He could just hear it above the crackle of static.
“Can you speak louder. Red?” he asked. “Are you all right? Where are you?”
“O.K., Bill,” Red said. “I've got to talk fast and I don't dare talk too loud or they'll hear me. I'm a prisoner. Bill. I was forced down four or five days ago by a half dozen red-and-black, single-seater Barton Hawks. They all mounted two machine guns. I couldn't get away from them. They knew how to use their guns. I had to land or take plenty of lead. They flew me to a little island east of Rat Island. It has a small landlocked harbor like the one at Unalaska. They forced me to talk to Tony yesterday with a couple of guns on me. The only thing I could say, except what they told me to say, was that I'd had trouble with the nozzle injectors, on my Diesels. Did you get that?”
“I got it,” Bill said. “Who's holding you, Red? What's the layout?”
“I don't know. Bill,” Red said. “I'm being guarded by a couple of gangsters that would rather shoot me than speak to me. Their names are Ugly and Lippy. I managed to slip down to my Snorter while they're asleep. They made me talk to Tony and told me what to say. They told me you were on the way to Unalaska. Is that where you are?”
