The fifty yards to the unguarded Messerschmitt One-Ten seemed more like fifty miles to Dave as he and Freddy sprinted across the sand. His heart hammered against his ribs, and not just because of his running efforts. With every step he expected to hear the roaring challenge and the sharp bark of rifles and Lugers speeding bullets toward him. With every step, also, a hundred wild, crazy thoughts flashed through his brain. Was the Messerschmitt in condition to fly? Was there enough gas in the tanks to take them to British held ground? Would the engines start? Would he be able to make a good desert take-off? Hundreds and hundreds of wild thoughts, each one stabbing his brain like a pin point of fire.

And then, suddenly, they had reached the German plane and had vaulted into the cockpit. Dave's fingers fairly flew to the starter buttons, the throttles, and other gadgets all marked in German. A soul torturing eternity dragged by, and then the twin 1150 hp. Daimler-Benz engines roared into life. The instant he heard the first peep out of the engines, Dave kicked off the right wheel brake, gunned the engines slightly and started the One-Ten moving around to the left. Every ounce of his flying skill was in his fingertips as he nursed the throttles and got the plane to moving faster and faster. Whether they had been seen, whether they were already being pursued and fired upon, he did not know. He didn't even bother to find out. He simply concentrated every bit of his effort on taxiing the Messerschmitt away from the desert camp and "nursing" the throttles so they would get maximum power out of the engines.

One moment—two—three—Finally the One-Ten was fairly skipping across the surface of the sand. A high dune rose up straight in front of Dave. He gulped, swallowed and pulled back hard on the control stick. The wheels seemed to stick to the sand for one last moment, then the plane practically leaped into the air, and the dangerous sand dune rushed by underneath. Dave whistled, wiped sweat from his face, and twisted around in the seat to look back. The desert camp was rapidly falling away and down. The column of flame and smoke from the burning fuel truck still mounted into the sky. He saw several other tongues of flame spitting his way, and realized at once that they were Germans trying to knock them out of the sky with rifle and machine gun fire. The bullets, however, weren't even coming close. And Freddy, hunched over the rear guns, wasn't even bothering to pull the triggers.

A moment later the English youth let go of his guns and turned front to grin happily at Dave.

"Clean as a whistle, Dave!" he cried. "The beggars are only just now realizing what happened. Good grief, don't ever remind me that this actually happened, because I won't believe you. Talk about your fairy stories! This is certainly one nobody would ever swallow."

"Oh, that was child's play!" Dave chuckled, and made a mocking bravado gesture. "You should see me when I'm really hot, pal. Heck! That was just fun. Let's go back and do it all over again just to make them madder, huh?"

Freddy made a face and stabbed a finger to the north.

"Just get going that way, and quickly, my friend," he said, "or I'll boot you out of that seat and take the controls myself. No, thanks! I've jolly well had all I want of the nasty Nazis for a while!"

Dave laughed and sticked the Messerschmitt out of its roaring power zoom, then banked around toward the north. He took one last look back at the desert camp that was now little more than a darkish patch on the distant desert, and then turned front and gave all of his attention to the instrument panel. The things he noticed brought a happy smile to his lips. The tanks were full, the engines were performing perfectly, and there was not the slightest indication that the plane would not carry them safely to British-occupied Bengazi.

Fate, however, had decided that such was not to be their good fortune. Fate, assisted by the radio back at the desert camp, and three Messerschmitt 109 single seater fighters sent streaking away from the nearest Nazi air base. Fate, plus the marvel of radio, plus the speed of Messerschmitt 109s. What Dave's instruments told him really didn't have anything to do with it at all.

The first indication that all was not to be nice, pleasant sailing came at the end of some thirty-five minutes, when Freddy suddenly banged him on the shoulder and pointed up and off to the left. He looked in that direction and saw the three dots high-tailing down out of the dawn sky with the speed of comets gone absolutely crazy.

"Company, Dave!" Freddy shouted. "The blighters got on the radio, of course, and contacted Tripoli air base. Looks like we're in for a bit of trouble."

"Not Tripoli," Dave said with a shake of his head. "Those birds couldn't have come this far so soon. Sure, they probably got on the radio, but to some spot much closer. If you ask me, it looks as if they've started moving the planes up closer. Set up a few emergency fields out in the desert so they wouldn't have to fly so far to give air support to the ground forces."

"That's probably it," Freddy agreed. "But right or wrong, it doesn't make any difference now. Think you can skip past before they catch up with us?"

Dave stared at the three dots coming down from the left and then glanced ahead at the seemingly endless expanse of desert. It stretched to the north as far as he could see, and there wasn't a single sign of any British outpost or desert village garrison. He couldn't tell for sure, though, because a strange copperish color was crawling up over the northern horizon.

"No, we can't fly away from them," he told Freddy with a shake of his head. "We'll have to make a running fight of it, and hope for the best. Okay, Freddy, they're asking for it, so let's give it to the bums."

Freddy made no answer. He went back to his guns and checked them to make sure everything was in order. Dave fed the two Daimler-Benz engines every ounce of gas they would take and eased the nose up to get as much altitude as possible before the three Messerschmitt 109s could close in from the left and give battle. The lull before the battle lasted less than a minute. Flying by hand, Dave kept his eyes glued on the diving attackers, and was set and ready the instant he saw the little stabbing tongues of flame dart out from the nose of each German plane.

In that instant he acted, and at lightning speed. He tossed the Messerschmitt One-Ten up over on wingtip and pulled it around in a steep bank and headed straight for the three One-Nines. It was obviously not what the German pilots had expected. They had undoubtedly counted on Dave to wheel around the other way and attempt to race away from them. So when, instead, they saw the "victim" plane flash around toward them and open up with a withering fire from the nose guns and two 20-mm. cannon, they broke diving formation at once, and each pilot tried frantically to skid out into the clear.

Two of the planes succeeded in doing just that. The center plane of the formation, however, was doomed. Dave had it square in his sights, and a blind man could not have missed from that distance. His savage fire covered the German plane like a tent. The craft staggered forward a short distance, then suddenly fell off on one wing and went down, leaving behind a long trail of oily black smoke.

"Let that teach you to stay home where you belong!" Dave shouted impulsively, and pulled up for more altitude.

"And you, too, my little Jerry!"

Freddy's words were drowned out by the yammer of his guns. Dave jerked his head around in time to see a second Messerschmitt appear to fly right into an invisible meat chopper. The left wing came off and broke up in a hundred pieces. The fuselage buckled just in back of the cockpit, and the right wing crumpled like so much tin foil. Never had Dave seen a plane come apart so completely in the air, and he gazed pop-eyed at the shower of debris slithering downward.

"Man, oh, man!" he gasped aloud. "What are you throwing at him, Freddy? Naval shells?"

"Wondering, myself!" the English youth called back in an awed voice. "Good grief, that ship must have been made of cardboard!"

"Or maybe china!" Dave added. "Gee, I never—"

The savage chatter of German Rheinmettal-Borsig aerial machine guns didn't give him a chance to finish. The third Messerschmitt One-Nine had cut around in a flash turn and was boring in with all guns blazing. A handful of death slammed into Dave's plane, and he felt the One-Ten shake and shiver under the savage impact of the shower or bullets. He jumped on the left rudder with every ounce of his strength and slammed the plane around in a turn that made a pinkish haze rise up before his eyes. Just the same he held the plane in the turn as long as he dared. Then, just before the terrific turning force would have rolled his eyes back and made him temporarily blind, he eased out and zoomed for altitude. Five hundred feet higher he flattened off at the top of the zoom, banked to the left and looked down and back for a sign of the Messerschmitt One-Nine.

It wasn't there, gun spewing up after him, however, and he swallowed in relief. That surprise attack had come much too close for comfort, and he was positive that had the German followed up his advantage one Dave Dawson, and one Freddy Farmer, would have been in a mighty bad fix right then. Then Freddy's hand rapped him on the shoulder.

"Don't look down, look west, Dave!" the English youth called out. "There he goes, and bad luck to him, I say. The blighter took twenty years off my life. I could have reached out and caught his bullets as they went by."

"Reach out?" Dave echoed, and watched the attacking plane race farther and farther westward. "Boy! If I hadn't ducked I would have caught them with my head! Well, it's nice the guy decided he'd had enough, anyway. Now, we can—"

But it suddenly wasn't so nice after all. The German pilot had gone racing away, but he had left his calling card. And the gods of war, wherever they were sitting huddled together, laughed with glee at the unfortunate turn of events. The right engine (right outboard engine) started sputtering out its story that it was all through for the day. Dave instantly cut the ignition and throttle to prevent the possibility of fire. With the right engine gone, the force of the left outboard engine tried to veer the ship around in that direction, and Dave was forced to put on a lot of opposite rudder to keep the plane flying straight.

That, however, didn't help much. With one engine completely dead, the plane began to lose altitude slowly. Even with the left outboard engine running full blast, the Messerschmitt One-Ten became logy in the air, and it was all Dave could do to keep it on an even keel, and stop it from whipping over and down into a spin. Presently, after he had almost lost control a couple of times, he was forced to nose down slightly and keep the nose down. He turned around and shook his head sadly at Freddy's bitter expression.

"This doesn't seem to be our lucky day, either," he said. "We have a little altitude, but not much. In ten minutes or so we'll be down so low we'll have to land. These jobs just won't fly on one engine. Would you like to take a stroll on the nice desert, my little man?"

Freddy groaned aloud and flung a look of hate down at the stretches of desert sand below.

"If I come out of this alive," he declared in harsh tones, "I'll shoot the blighter who even mentions the word, sand, to me. Well, tough luck for us, Dave. Thank goodness, though, that beggar got scared and went barging on home. I fancy he'd be enjoying himself a lot right now, if he had hung around."

"Being a Nazi, he sure would," Dave nodded. "Crippled ships are their favorite dish. It was the same in the First World War, too, I understand. What a race of people! But, darn it, this desert landing burns me up. And I don't mean that as a wise-crack. It's getting to be a habit with me. I probably won't know what to do if I ever see a real airdrome or carrier flight deck again. I wonder how far we are from the British lines."

"A long, long walk over this blasted desert, I'm afraid," Freddy said gloomily. "And we've got to get there long before dawn tomorrow, too, or the information we have won't be worth much. It will take a few hours at least for the British garrisons west of Tobruk, at Derna and Bengazi, to fall back to the main body, or they'll be cut off by the Germans blocking the way at Tobruk."

"That's right," Dave said, and guided the plane downward. "And that's exactly what the Nazis plan to do to make their attack a complete success: smash right through the middle of the British defenses; cut British strength in half, and then mop up a half at a time. But, darn it, we can't let them get away with that even if we have to run all the way to Tobruk, or some British outpost that has a radio. No, darn it, we'll beat those Nazis yet. We're not through, and all washed up."

"Well, we are with this airplane, anyway," Freddy grunted. "Here comes that blasted desert. Oh, how I hate the very sight of sand! But don't think I'm giving up hope and quitting, Dave. Don't crack us up. I'm just talking aloud, you know."

"It'll be a rainy day when you up and quit, Freddy," Dave said with a chuckle. "Don't worry. I feel just the same way. I could chew nails plenty right now. Oh well, hold your hats, children."

Dave cut the ignition of the left outboard engine, leveled off just over the sand, and then let the plane sink down to one of the finest landings he had ever made in his flying career. When he had braked the plane to a stop, he sank back in in the seat and sighed heavily.

"And I'd go and waste a nice landing like that way out here!" he grunted. "Well, I guess—Hey! Hey, Freddy! Look over there! That cloud of sand. What in thunder is it?"

To the right and far ahead, a cloud of swirling sand was moving swiftly toward them. Both boys stared wide-eyed as the approaching cloud seemed to grow bigger and bigger and spread up to the sides. Then suddenly they saw dull colored objects under the cloud and moving over the sand. Freddy found his tongue first.

"Tanks or armored cars heading for us!" he cried. "Blast them, I'm jolly well going to make them pay for taking us prisoners. I won't just walk into their waiting arms this time!"

As the English youth shouted the words, he stood up in the pit and swung his mounted guns around to bear on the rapidly approaching cloud of sand. Dave reached back and grabbed him by the arm.

"Hold it, Freddy!" he cried. "That would be just plain dumb. We've got more than just ourselves to think about. It would be just plain foolish to fight it out. They can blow us right out of the desert without half trying. Then where'd we be? Keep your shirt on, and just keep thinking of the maps and papers you've got stuffed under it."

The English youth's eyes blazed with anger, and he hesitated a moment before he slowly dropped his hands away from the guns.

"Yes, of course you're right," he mumbled. "Getting ourselves killed would simply spoil everything. But, good grief, what I wouldn't give to—"

"Freddy, shut up, and look!" Dave interrupted in a wild voice. "They're armored cars, but they're not German! Take a look! See? See the type? Those are from a British unit. They're English! For cat's sake start waving your arm before they start pegging bullets at us. This is a Nazi plane, you know. And maybe those guys don't feel like taking prisoners today!"

Freddy Farmer didn't bother wasting breath agreeing. He had seen for himself. He popped up onto his feet, as did Dave also. And together they started waving their arms at the most comforting sight they had seen for many long hours—British made and British manned armored cars of the desert!