"Here they come!" rang the voice of the Mustangs' leader in Dawson's earphone. "Don't let a single tramp down through, or you'll hear from me. At 'em, fellows! Shoot their whiskers off!"

Young Farmer saw him look, nodded, and waggled his wings. And then in perfect team formation they hauled their two Mustangs right up on their props and went up toward the diving Nazis. As though by secret signal they fired their guns and air cannon together. Nothing that flies could have withstood that concentrated blast of fire, and the leading diving Nazi ship was certainly no exception to the rule. The plane seemed to stop dead in mid-air, and then broke up into a million flaming bits that went slithering down like the sparks from a spent rocket.

"One, Freddy!" Dawson shouted, though he didn't know whether young Farmer heard him or not. "Now one more to make it one apiece, and then we go to work."

"Right-o, old thing!" came Freddy's instant reply. "The beggar to the left with the blue nose. Give it to him, Dave!"

Dawson had already spotted the blue-nosed Focke-Wulf One-Ninety, and was kicking his Mustang that way. A split second later his guns, and Freddy Farmer's, sang their song of concentrated destruction. This particular Nazi plane didn't blow up, however. It simply lost a wing, and what was left went screaming earthward like ten ton of brick in high gear.

Neither Dawson nor Freddy Farmer took time out to watch their second victim hurtle downward. If they had, the Grim Reaper would have tapped them both on the shoulder right then and there. The remaining Nazi pilots, infuriated by the loss of their leader and one of their vulture comrades, veered toward the two zooming Mustangs and let go with everything they had. That is, they started to do that little thing, but that's about as far as they got. By then the other Mustang pilots were up there with Dawson and Farmer, and when they opened up Nazi planes started fluttering earthward like dried leaves in a stiff autumn breeze.

Before the Nazis broke off the fight Dawson and Farmer had nailed one more apiece. By then, though, dawn was coming up fast, and there was no more time left to fool around. With a feeling of deep regret Dave looked at a Nazi plane not over a quarter of a mile away, shook his head, and waggled his wings to attract Freddy's attention. Young Farmer saw him make the wash-out sign with his free hand, and nodded.

"Sure would like to wish you luck over the radio, kid," Dave whispered as he shoved open his glass hatch, and knocked down the catch of his safety harness. "But maybe it's best to keep mum, this time. No telling who might be listening in on the ground. Just the same, pal, a million in luck. A trillion, what I mean!"

With a faint nod for emphasis, and a wave of his hand at Freddy Farmer, Dawson peered over the cockpit rim and carefully studied the shadowy ground below. Recco plane photographs of the area were indelibly stamped on his brain, so it did not take him more than half a minute to spot the exact location of the factory where Freddy and he would touch ground by parachute. As luck would have it, the spot was about a mile off to his right, well on the eastern outskirts of the city, and the drifting flak-burst smoke that still was in the sky told him that the wind direction was just as he wanted it. That knowledge made his heart pound with wild hope.

"Almost as if it had all been made to order!" he breathed softly. "For once the elements are cooperating, and that, at least, is something. Okay, here we go. And don't be far behind, Freddy!"

For a few seconds longer Dawson remained in the pit of his plane, making doubly sure that he would take nothing American-made down with him. From head to toe he was garbed in German uniform, and German flying gear, with even the conventional German Luger automatic at his belt. But rather than take chances he checked the contents of his flying suit pockets, found all of them empty as a matter of fact, and then took a deep breath.

"And this time we mean it!" he grunted.

Slamming the Mustang down in a shot dive, he fired all of his guns at thin air, and then leveled off and jammed open the compensator throttle. The result was that a wrong mixture was fed to the engine, and the power plant started spewing back a long trail of oily black smoke. The instant it showed in the air, Dawson rolled the Mustang over on its back, let go of the stick, and allowed gravity to pull him down into the open air. With the fingers of his right hand curled about his rip-cord ring, he let his body free fall down through the air, and counted slowly.

When he reached twenty he yanked the rip-cord ring and let his body relax. He was upside down then and looking toward the pale heavens, so he saw the pilot 'chute whip up past him, and pull out the silk folds of the main 'chute. And an instant later invisible hands seemed to grab hold of him, spin him over until he was feet first to the ground, and then jerk him slightly skyward. And right after that he was dangling comfortably at the ends of his taut shroud lines, and floating slowly toward the earth.

"Okay, Freddy, where are you, kid?" he murmured, and threw back his head to stare upward.

It was not until that moment that he realized that the Nazi fighters had come whirling back to try again to break through the Mustang umbrella and get at the bombers that were now some distance east of the Duisburg area. There they were, and there were the Mustangs, too, zooming and whirling all over the sky with guns yammering and pounding, and tracer smoke making a crazy crisscross pattern in the dawn air.

No more than a couple of seconds after Dawson stared upward he saw a Mustang explode in a tremendous flash of blood-red light as a dozen Nazi pilots caught it in a withering cross-fire. In nothing flat all that remained of the Yank fighter plane was a shower of bits smoking earthward. Icy fingers curled about Dawson's heart; and he slipped his 'chute this way and that in a frantic effort to get a look at that patch of sky directly above him but blocked out by the spread of his own 'chute envelope. By slipping his 'chute, however, he managed to get a look at it a section at a time. And when he had seen it all his heart seemed to stop beating, and become nothing but a solid chunk of ice in his chest.

For there was not a single sign of Freddy Farmer floating down by parachute anywhere in that tracer bullet and flak burst-filled sky. There wasn't even a sign of a Mustang plunging earthward. His own had struck solid earth by now, but there was no other Mustang, that might be Freddy's plane, diving earthward. There was nothing but the showering debris of that one Mustang he had seen blasted into oblivion with his own eyes.

"Freddy!" he choked out. "Freddy, boy, was that you? Did they nail you as you rolled over to bail out? Oh, dear God, please, no! Please, no!"

Hot tears stung the backs of Dawson's eyes, and for a moment or two everything was just a great swimming blur before him. He ripped up his goggles, brushed both eyes with his hand, and peered at the air above and about him. He saw two Nazi planes, and one more Mustang, go hurtling earthward in a mass of flame, but there was not a soul in the air, save himself, floating earthward by parachute. All the other pilots, Nazi and Yank alike, had been killed in their pits, or so wounded that they were unable to throw themselves clear of their blazing planes.

"Freddy, boy, where are you?"

Dawson's own words echoed back to taunt him. In that moment he felt as though a part of him had actually died. And presently it took all the courage and will power that he would ever possess to stop scanning the heavens for a sign of Freddy Farmer, and give all of his attention to himself. He was close to the ground now, and if he was to carry out his end of the job, and touch earth close to that large factory, he would have to forget all about Freddy Farmer's fate and concentrate on himself.

In spite of his determined efforts to do just that, it was quite impossible. No man on earth could have given every thought to himself, had he been in Dave Dawson's shoes. A memory picture of that single Mustang exploding into bits was constantly before his eyes. In the matter of seconds countless memories of Freddy Farmer paraded across his brain. It all seemed to sap the strength right out of his body; to turn his muscles to rubber, and his bones to jelly.

It was almost as though he were two separate persons. One was striving to slip his 'chute so that he would drift closer to the factory that now stood out in clear detail just a little ahead and below him. And the other person was living over again in memory, heartbreaking memory, the many, many things that Freddy and he had done together. So certain was he that Freddy Farmer had gone to a hero's reward that he was almost overcome by a wild, mad urge to unsnap his 'chute harness and let his body drop straight down like a rock to his doom. Only a fighting heart, and the determination to carry on for Freddy's sake made it possible for him to retain his sanity, and guide his movements.

And then the ground was close, very close. The factory was like a gigantic mountain looming up in his path. He saw figures running toward the spot where he would touch earth. Some were in uniform and some wore the unmistakable clothes of factory workers. There seemed to be quite a number of the factory workers, and in an abstract sort of way he wondered for a moment if it was the rest period, or the changing of factory shifts.

But only for a brief moment did he absently wonder about that. In the next moment, just as his feet were about to touch earth, Fate in the form of a crazy cross wind played its dirty trick. His 'chute seemed to lunge to the left, and drag him with it. As he jerked his head around he caught the fleeting glimpse of a parked truck. Then the crazy cross wind slammed him up against that truck. He flung out both hands to soften the blow, but that action didn't help much.

From out of nowhere something slammed him on the chest. Something else crashed down on his head. And something else hit him a terrific blow in the middle of his back. The side of the truck, seemingly no farther away than the end of his nose, exploded in a mighty display of colored lights, sparkling pin-wheels, and golden rockets. Then as though by magic a black curtain was drawn down over everything—and all was as silent as the grave!