'em up.”
“Let's go!” Bill roared.
He kicked the Lancer around and stuck the nose down as he unfolded his retractable landing gear. He set his flaps well down and cut his engines, but he was still doing a hundred miles an hour as he skimmed the surface of the great flat rock with his landing wheels. At the far end, when it seemed that nothing in the world could keep him from plunging over the side, he kicked his rudders and swung the big ship around.
Shorty fish-tailed in a few feet behind him and brought the slower-Ianding Snorter to an abrupt halt.
“Sit tight for a moment until we see what happens,” Bill said into his microphone.
They didn't have long to wait. The whole top of the stone plateau suddenly swarmed with men. They popped up along one edge and came storming up like a regiment of Sikhs going over the top, their robes streaming out behind them, their faces contorted with hate.
“Swing your ship around and let 'em have it!” Bill shouted into the microphone. At the same time he fastened his fingers down on his own 50-caliber guns. His two fixed guns stuttered out their song of death, to be joined a moment later by the louder roar of his cannon.
But his guns were set too high. His bullets ripped harmlessly over the heads of the charging mob of madmen.
“Bill!” Shorty's voice called in his earphones. “They're bringing up one-inch rapid-firers and machine guns. They'll tear us to pieces!”
“0.K., guy,” Bill said, and now his voice was calm and steady. “Give your ship the gun. Take a run the length of the top and then give her all she's got when you strike the edge. It's our only chance. We'll have to bomb them out.”
How Bill and Shorty ever got through that frightful hail of lead no one will ever know. The charging tribesmen broke before the scream of their propellers and the roar of their engines as Bill and Shorty headed their ships into their midst. But when they broke they I dropped to their knees and emptied their rifles into the fleeing ships. From the edge of the plateau came the death rattle of a dozen machine guns and the louder bark of one-inch rifles.
The speed of their ships was the only thing that kept Bill and Shorty from being annihilated before they reached the edge of the plateau. They could feel bullets drumming into the skin of their ships and could feel them trembling like mortally stricken animals under the impact.
But they made the edge, with a prayer on their lips that when they went over the edge their motors would be functioning.
For one awful second the two ships sagged, then the noses settled, the tails lifted, and they began to climb.
“Are you 0.K., fella?” Bill asked, Shorty.
“O.K., Bill,” Shorty answered, “but my ship is a sieve.”
“Get some altitude,” Bill instructed.
“What about Sandy?” Shorty asked.
“We'll get him,” Bill said grimly. “If they hurt that kid I'll—-” He stopped. His bronzed face was white and strained as he gazed over the side of the Lancer. As his eyes fastened on the top of Umm el Biyara he gasped.
A dozen of those fast single-seaters belonging to the Royal Air Force were standing in a line on the far end of Umm el Biyara. Their props were turning over, and they were facing into the wind. Men were climbing over the sides into the cockpits.
“They're coming after us, Shorty,” Bill said, and there was a ring of real anticipation in his voice.
“Good!” Shorty Said. He leaned over the side of the Snorter as the first of the little ships whipped into the air, followed by another and another.
“Stay up where you are,” Bill instructed. “Kestrel will send some bombers. He can break up this uprising before it gets really started.”
Bill whirled the master tuning control on his radio panel and chanted the call letters of the Ma'an airport into his microphone again. Suddenly he was aware that Shorty was flying in close to him, trying to signal with his arms and plane because his radio wave length had been tuned out. Bill twirled the wave-length control and barked Shorty's name.
“Look down below, Bill!” Shorty gasped: “They have Sandy spread eagled out on the top of Umm el Biyara. They must have tuned in our wave length and heard you say you were going to send for bombers. That's their answer.”
Bill's heart climbed up into his mouth as he grabbed at a pair of glasses and turned them on the figure stretched out on the ground five thousand feet below. He turned the glasses directly on Sandy's tortured face. Then he took them away as his stomach turned over from horror.
In that one glimpse he had seen that Sandy's face and head were battered and bloody. His arms and legs were spread out and pegged to the ground. His face was a twisted blotch of agony.
Cold perspiration popped out on Bill's face and his hand gripped the control column so tightly it seemed he might rip it from its socket.
“ All right, Shorty,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Those twelve single-seaters are above us now. They're in four V formations of three planes each. They're swinging back to attack. Remember what they did to Douglas!”
“I'll remember!” Shorty snarled, “We've got to get to Sandy, Bill!”
“We'll get him!” Bill said, so quietly Shorty could hardly hear the words.
XII-ATTACK
AS the twelve British ships completed their turn they broke the four V formations and formed two stepped-up columns of six planes in a line, each a little above and behind the one in front. Bill saw the leader rock his wings and knew the instant they were going to dive. He spoke into his microphone softly.
“The column on the left is yours,” he said to Shorty. “When they're five hundred feet away, dive under 'em and then chandelle back to get on their tails. Give 'em hell, fella!”
“Give 'em hell!” Shorty echoed. “One for Douglas, one for Red, and one for Sandy!”
Bill eased the control column back and sent the Lancer up into an abrupt climbing turn until it almost stalled; then he whipped the nose level and down again. For an instant he pushed his throttles all the way open. A gale whined and snarled over the cantilever wings and streamlined body of the Lancer as the silver plane plunged toward the stepped-up column of single-seaters below it.
Bill's fingers clamped down on his gun trips when he was only two hundred feet above and behind that straight column. His bullets tore into the last ship as it came under his telescopic sight. They drew a pencil line down the center of the fuselage until they reached the open cockpit. There they drove into the head of the man whose hand was wrapped around the controls.
He died before he knew what manner of thing had hit him. His ship skidded off to the left and stuck its nose downward. It dived into the earth with its wings folded back, like a gannet diving for a fish.
The next man in line threw one desperate look back over his shoulder and sideslipped his ship out of the way of Bill's deadly fire.
Bill caught the third one from the rear with his .37-mm cannon as he started a barrel roll. A great cloud of black smoke and orange flame took the place of the one-seater as the shells detonated on the engine block. Debris flew in a hundred different directions. There was no indication that a man had been at the controls as the smoke cleared away. He had become a part of the scattered debris.
The three leading ships in the column peeled off in three different directions. Bill saw one of the biplanes whirling toward the earth like a falling leaf as Shorty riddled it with bullets. Then he zoomed the Lancer up underneath one of the three ships that had broken formation.
For a split fraction of a second the lean fuselage came under his sights. His fingers clamped down on the triggers in the stick. His powerful .50-caliber bullet ripped the bottom out of the rugged little fighter. The pilot shot up in his seat as the bullets drove through his body. His arms sprawled over the cowling as the doomed ship fell into a spin.
“They asked for it!” Bill said to himself viciously. There was no mercy in his heart now. He knew these men had murder in their hearts. They had tried to live by violence, and they must die by violence.
