he stuck the nose of the Lancer up in an abrupt climbing turn until it almost stalled. There he kicked his rudder and rolled to the right.
He could feel bullets slashing through his tail and hear the tat-tat-tat of machine guns as the biplanes came up under him. He sent the Lancer sky-ward in a desperate zoom and then chandelled back to the attack.
The Lancer, with its terrific speed and maneuverability, was up and over and diving head-on at the five biplanes as though it had gone berserk. They dove and zoomed, skidded and rolled to get out of its flaming path. Bill's finger was fastened down hard on his gun trip. He raked one of the red-and-black ships with a withering fire, but the pilot slipped it out of range before his bullets struck a vulnerable spot.
He gunned his engine again and came over in a normal loop to roll right side up at the top. The five ships had spread out now and were trying to form a circle around him so that they could get him in the vortex of their fire. He wished, as he had never wished before, that Sandy was in the tail to help break their circle with the swivel gun.
Then the air seemed choked with slashing streaks of red and black as they circled on their prey. They were everywhere, charging in from all angles, their guns screaming lead.
Bill tried to break through that circle without having to run a death-dealing gantlet of lead. He realized that these five pilots knew all of the old and all of the new tricks of combat flying. They were a bunch of veterans who never made a mistake. Their tactics were flawless as they converged on him. He felt as though he was hemmed in by a band of steel from which there was no escape.
When those five ships formed an echelon and dove on him, he had taken it in his stride. It had seemed similar to a hundred other attacks. But now he knew it was different. These men were all masters at their craft. He could picture their lined, hard-bitten faces behind their windshields. He knew that they were men like Red and Shorty, veterans of a thousand battles in the air.
He whipped the Lancer up and down, skidded and sideslipped, zoomed and crabbed to avoid the streams of death that were aimed at him. He knew that if he could cut out of that circle without being annihilated he could run away from them. But he couldn't cut out without putting himself in a position where they could chop his head from his shoulders with their bullets. They knew how to anticipate every move he made.
And he was getting tired, desperately tired. He opened the throttles of the Lancer even wider, taking a chance on “blacking out” to increase the speed of his maneuvers. But still they clung to him like blood-sucking leeches. Each one did his part as though he had rehearsed it a million times.
For the first time in his life Bill Barnes knew stark terror in the air. It wasn't that he was afraid of the death they were trying to mete out to him. It was something else that he couldn't understand himself. It was as though he was inclosed” in an air-tight chamber from which there was no escaping— where he must surely and slowly strangle to death.
Cold, damp perspiration oozed out all over his throbbing body. He thought, “This is the end. The premonition I had this morning is coming true.”
They were closing in on him now. He braced himself like a man who is about to take a blow in the face. Opening his throttles wide» he yanked the control column back into his stomach as he decided to go through or die trying. As he came up and over on his back and started to roll right side up, black despair seized him.
The Lancer skidded off to the right and the nose dropped. As it spun once, then twice, he warped and managed to bring the nose up. He was aware that the red-and-black ships were holding their fire as he started a glide toward the waters below. They fell in on each ' side and above and below him. The pilot on the port side leaned over the cowling and motioned downward with one hand. They knew he was helpless, that he could no longer maneuver for combat.
For one black moment rage surged through him. They had got him the way they got Red. And, probably, the way they had got Sandy.
He flipped over his radio switch and began to chant his own call letters into the microphone. “BB calling all ships,” he said. “BB calling all ships!”
But no voice answered him. Once the scratching increased in his ear and he thought he heard a voice. He shouted into his mike, but the voice faded away and there was only silence.
Spume and spray that was like ice shot high in the air as he sat the Lancer down on the waters of the Bering Sea. The five red-and-black amphibians landed beside him. He slipped an automatic out of a pocket and stuck it in his overall as they taxied toward him.
They made motions for him to kill his engines and he obeyed. The five pilots had pushed their goggles back on their foreheads and were laughing at him when he climbed out to catch the line one of them threw him.
“Bill Barnes, the boy wonder, eh?” one of them shouted at him. “Throw that gat you have in your pocket over the side!”
Bill remained silent as he watched his automatic disappear beneath the water. As the line tightened, he manipulated his steerable water rudder to follow the course of the red-and-black ship in front of him. The other four ships taxied along beside him as they headed toward the little harbor.
The five hard-faced pilots weren't laughing as they ordered Bill out of the cockpit of the Lancer into a boat one of them rowed. They didn't even speak to him. But he could tell by the glitter in their eyes that any one of them would have been glad to cut his throat.
Two men, who were even harder-' looking than the five pilots, took charge of Bill when he stepped out on the dock.
“Git up there with your pal, punk,” one of them said to Bill.
Bill didn't even look at him. He started toward the crude little hut a hundred feet from the waterfront and saw Red Gleason standing in the doorway. He was so tired he could hardly walk.
VIII—THE PLAN
“THEY got you, too, did they?” Red said. “I didn't think you'd try to come alone.”
His face was cut and battered. Both his eyes were half closed and tinged with yellow, blue, and black. But his carrot-colored hair flamed as brightly as ever.
“I slammed one of those plug-uglies on the nose,” Red went on in answer to the question in Bill's eyes. “They tied my hands behind my back and went to work on me.”
“Who are they?” Bill asked as he slumped onto a bench and put his head in his hands. “I'm tired. They wore me down and shot my controls in half.”
“They're fighting so-and-sos,” Red said. “They did the same thing to me. Whoever is running this show is smart. Things have been clicking perfectly for them. They forced me down, then forced me to fly my ship in here. They let me know that you would be at Unalaska, then gave me a chance to slip away and make contact with you. They knew you'd come to get me and then they could get you.”
Bill lifted his head as the motors of the five red-and-black ships roared. He watched their pilots whip them into the air with admiration in his eyes.
“They're going after the BT-4 now,” Red said.
“Why do they want it?” Bill asked.
“I don't know,” Red said. “I never found any information about young Reynolds. That story was a stall to get us up here.”
“I know that now,” Bill said. “But what's behind the whole thing? If they wanted my bomber why didn't they steal it down on Long Island without all these elaborate plans? Why——-”
A shadow loomed in the doorway and the man who stood there said, “Maybe I can help you out with that one.” He laughed. “I'm glad you arrived this morning, Barnes. It is going to make things a lot easier for me.”
“The pleasure,” Bill said with no little trepidation as he gazed into the eyes of Slip Ogden, “is entirely yours.” He knew without asking that this was the enemy he had been fighting in the dark. He knew that only such a man would be capable of the cold, ruthless efficiency with which he had been lured to the Aleutian Islands.
“I imagine it is,” Slip Ogden said. “You're younger, than I thought you would be—young to have such a reputation.”
Bill didn't answer him. He would have liked to have answered him by crashing his fist into his cool, insolent face.
“I wanted you up here with your bomber, Barnes,” Slip went on. “That's why I didn't get it on Long Island. You'd probably like to hear all about it.” He sat down. “But let me warn you first not to try to get rough. Two of my men are outside—Ugly Barillo and Lippy Freeman. You may have heard of them. They have quite a reputation, also.
