THE SEA DOGS GROWL
Stan stepped out of the barracks and stood for a moment watching the scene on the field before the hangars. A row of Defiants had been rolled out. Men worked around them or scurried to and from the hangars. There was an uneasy feel about the scene. Stan scented action and a feeling of irritation filled him. Red Flight was on barge patrol when it should have been on combat. It was fools like Garret who messed up battle plans.
He was about to turn toward the mess division and had turned into the narrow alley leading to the building, when he halted and stepped back, close to the wall. Garret was coming out of the doorway of the mess and beside him walked a tall man. The man had a lean, weathered face with a scar across the right cheek. He wore a checked suit and a pearl-gray hat with a broad brim. The hat could have come from no place but the western part of the United States.
Stan recognized him at once as Charles L. Milton. He didn’t have to guess twice why Garret had him in hand and why he had taken him to the squadron mess. Garret wanted Milton to see Stan. Quickly moving around a corner, Stan headed for a hangar. He was sure they had not seen him.
As he strode swiftly along, Stan faced the ghost of his past. Milton was an American aircraft engineer. He had designed at least two of the newest models and knew everyone in the industry over in the United States. He knew Stan Wilson very well. As he entered the hangar Stan reflected bitterly that he should have known the British Isles would be swarming with American experts and engineers, now that a great effort was being made to help the besieged English nation. He had about as much chance of hiding in a Royal Air Force squadron as Joe Louis would have in not being recognized at Madison Square Garden.
He might be able to dodge Milton for a while. If he could only shake Garret he might do it for quite a while. Not that his conscience wasn’t clear. He had been framed. Framed by Nazi saboteurs, Fifth Column operators. That was the reason he was so eager to get in every lick he could against the monster Hitler had built to swallow the world.
He stood inside the shaded doorway to the hangar and watched Milton step into a car. When the car had rolled away he turned back toward headquarters. Within an hour he had to be back where he could hear the blare of the intersquadron speaker, to be on call for duty. He was moving along, scowling at the busy scene upon the field. As he passed the door of the O.C.’s office it opened and Wing Commander Farrell stepped out. Stan saluted and the commander returned the salute. He halted abruptly.
“Well, well,” he said. “Just the man I’m looking for. Come in, Lieutenant.”
Stan’s heart dropped with a thud. This likely meant a lot of questions to be answered, questions put into the O.C.’s head by Garret.
“Yes, sir,” he answered and followed the Commander inside.
Farrell seated himself behind his desk. He motioned toward a chair. “Sit down, Wilson.”
Stan sat down and waited. The Commander fished into his desk and took out a cigar. He clipped the end off with a silver knife, then lighted the weed and looked at Stan.
“Allison tells me you have had a lot of experience with various types of fast planes. Testing over in Canada. Most of the American ships have been going through trials up there. Did you have a chance at any of them?”
Stan breathed more freely. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“We have a new type American plane here.” The Commander fished through some papers, found a blue sheet and studied it for a minute. “They call this one the Hendee Hawk. We have tested it and found it to be rather fast but very tricky.” The Commander frowned at the report, then looked up at Stan.
Stan could hardly hold back a grin and a whoop. Did he know the Hendee Hawk? He knew the Hawk from her prop to her tail assembly. The Wing Commander was being very conservative when he said the Hawk was rather fast. Stan had squinted at her air-speed indicator when it was jiggling crazily at 600 miles per hour. He waited for the Wing Commander to go on.
“Ordinarily we would train enough special men to handle these ships, but we are pressed for fighting ships at the moment.”
Stan’s face did not reveal anything of what he was thinking. The Britisher was talking calmly and appeared not to be worried. Stan knew the need for Hendee Hawks was desperate, and he knew the ships would deliver.
“Have you many of them, sir?” he asked.
“No. This ship is a test job.” The Wing Commander dropped the blue sheet. “Have you ever flown a Hendee Hawk?”
“Yes, sir.”
The question Stan expected to follow did not come. Wing Commander Farrell said nothing for more than a minute.
“Would you like to take this one? Into action?”
Stan restrained a smothering eagerness. He wanted to jump up and down and shout, to slap the Commander on the back. A lot of experts had turned thumbs down on the Hawk. But the saboteur boys had known she was the super-plane and had done everything they could to get her junked, including a nice frame-up on himself. He knew they had just about succeeded if there was only one ship here in Britain.
“I’ll fly her, sir,” he said and added eagerly, “she is the greatest combination of fighter and strafing plane ever built. She packs enough bombs to do real damage, as well.”
The Wing Commander smiled. “We shall see,” he said.
The way he said it convinced Stan it was up to him to show both the British and the Jerries just what the Hendee Hawk could do. If this ship failed, there would be no more of the machines he had worked so hard to help perfect.
“She carries two men,” Stan said.
“I have been considering that.” Suddenly the Wing Commander laughed outright. “Do you suppose your friend, the pie-eating Irishman, would care to work with you? I should like to have Allison become familiar with the ship, too. In that way we would have three men able to instruct others if we order more of these fighters.”
“I don’t know,” Stan said honestly.
“I could assign them to you, but I prefer to let you ask them,” Farrell said. Then he got to his feet. “You will report to 7-B at once.”
Stan grinned broadly. It would take him away from Garret, at least until the snooping Lieutenant was able to locate him again. He saluted and hurried out of the office.
Stan actually sneaked into the mess. He couldn’t afford to have this chance smashed by a cluck like Garret. The coast was clear. Only a few fliers were lounging about, with Allison and O’Malley among them. Stan crossed the room and sat down between his pals. He did not notice, in his excitement, that they seemed to be expecting him. The clock over the counter showed that in one minute Allison and O’Malley would go on duty. He wondered who would fill in for him in Red Flight.
“Sure, an’ you’ve been shunnin’ us,” O’Malley greeted him.
Stan came to the point at once. “How would you like to copilot a real ship, an American ship?” he asked, looking from one to the other.
“I’d prefer a glider,” Allison said with a wicked leer.
“How about you, Irisher?”
“I wouldn’t mind if me pal didn’t hog the controls all the blessed time.” O’Malley grinned.
“She’s a stinger. You’ll see something you never thought was in the bag. She’s tricky as a Navaho Indian.”
“Is that a Canadian tribe of wild men?” Allison drawled.
“Sure,” Stan came back. “Hudson’s Bay.”
Allison snorted.
“I’m with you,” O’Malley cut in. “Anything to get off this deadhead beat the muckle heads have us on. Mrs. O’Malley’s boy came down to London to see some action.”
“Good. I’ll get in touch with the O.C. at once.” Stan got to his feet.
“Really, old chap, you’re not going to rush off without my final answer. I’m in on this if I have to fly a kite,” Allison said with a wide smile.
Stan put on a cold expression. Allison hadn’t fooled him. He had known the lank Britisher would come in. Allison had that look in his eye he always got when something was up.
“Thanks, Allison.”
“You should thank me. I’m giving up a flight lieutenant’s job.”
“You’ll still be leader and we’ll demand the Red Flight label. We’ll have three of the meanest brutes that ever rolled out on a line to make the other boys jealous.” Stan slapped Allison on the back. “Let’s go.”
They reported to the Wing Commander, then shifted their things to B-7. Later they went over to the hangar to have a look at the Hawk. Allison said very little, but O’Malley was as tickled as a kid with a new top. He went over everything and the only thing he crabbed about was the cramped quarters furnished for the copilot, who handled the bomb release and the extra guns.
They checked in at their new mess and Stan felt better. He looked in at the briefing room and found it presided over by a fat young man with a broad smile. In the mess he met no one he knew. Everything looked fine and he settled down to watch O’Malley devour a pie.
O’Malley finished his pie and looked hungerly across the room at the counter in the corner. He shook his head sadly.
“If I eat one more me lunch will be spoilt sure.”
Stan grinned as he glanced at his wrist watch. It lacked a half-hour until official eating time.
After lunch they made further arrangements for their new job. Allison was to fly with them in a Spitfire. O’Malley went along with Stan as a gunner and student, with care of the bomb racks in his hands. With everything set and ready to go, the revised and rehashed Red Flight prepared to take a little outing. Being on test work gave them plenty of freedom to choose their own jobs.
They slipped away without much notice being taken of the new ship. Everyone was busy with his own job and paid no attention to the big fighter sliding out on its tricycle landing gear with a Spitfire nosing right after it.
Stan settled back to have some fun with Allison. Out of the corner of his eyes he watched the vertical speed indicator and a wide grin spread over his face. The Hendee Hawk was going up at a terrific pace. Already the Spitfire was far behind. Stan knew Allison would fly the wings off the Spitfire to keep him from getting away. He laughed softly.
He kicked her over and into a tight bank and she zoomed around, boring away. He kicked her back and looped in a dizzy blur of speed. Allison shot in below him and Stan came around to knife past his pal. He glanced back and there was a happy, vacant grin on O’Malley’s homely face, as he absorbed the drone of the 2,000-horsepower, two-row, radial motor.
Allison dipped his wings as Stan went boring past him. It was really a salute and it meant a lot, coming from Allison with his dislike of radial motors.
They roared out over the channel at 15,000 feet. As the French coast line began to show through a thin mist, Stan laid over and started to climb again. Very soon they were nipping at their oxygen, flying at 26,000 feet. They saw no planes at all and the excursion seemed doomed to be no more than a spring frolic.
O’Malley growled into his intercommunication phone. “The Jerries must o’ heard we were comin’ out for a spin.”
“There’s a cloud or two down and to the east,” Stan answered. “We’ll drop down and pick up Allison, then go have a look.”
“That’s where the bushwhackin’ spalpeens will be lurking,” O’Malley agreed.
They knifed over on one wing, peeled off, and roared down. The gyro-horizon did a lot of strange maneuvers and the altimeter was unrolling like ticker tape off a Wall Street machine. They picked up Allison and Stan decided to give the Irishman a lesson. He set the air flaps, and before the startled O’Malley could save himself, he had lost a couple of inches of skin off both shins. The Hendee Hawk seemed to have decided to stop in mid-air. She was pointing her nose straight at the ground, but she had slowed to a steady 350 miles per hour.
“Mother o’ pearl!” O’Malley shouted. “What a nice day for dive bombing. Show me how you do it.”
“Just watch.” Stan pulled the Hawk out of her dive and then sent her in again with O’Malley watching him closely.
Then Allison’s voice cut in. “You fellows better cut out the grandstanding and have a look west.”
Stan looked and saw that Allison was streaking away toward a formation of nine Junkers Ju 87’s. The Stukas were bent upon business and were moving toward the English coast, undoubtedly bent upon intercepting a ship they had received a spotter’s report upon.
“Me bye, you may now show Mrs. O’Malley’s son a few things,” O’Malley bellowed. Stan sent the Hawk sizzling away after the Stukas. The Jerries had now sighted the two fighters, but they were keeping on their course, which meant that up in the big clouds above lurked a fighter patrol of Messerschmitts. The Junkers were slow and low-powered, not being able to exceed 170 miles per hour. Stan zoomed up and passed Allison who was also going up with the cloud ambush in mind.
Suddenly the Stukas broke formation and scattered, each diving for cover and cutting loose their sticks of bombs. Stan banked and selected a bomber as his victim. Through his windscreen he caught a glimpse of Allison and his hand stiffened on the control. A cloud of Jerry fighters had dropped out of the blue upon the Spitfire. Allison had gone wild as he always did. His Spitfire was a whirling, twisting demon, its eight wing guns flaming. But Allison hadn’t a chance against that swarm of Jerries.
Stan shot upward to get into the play. He cut loose the bombs from his racks and gave the Hawk all she had. He had a wide space of blue to cut through and as he bored in he saw Allison’s ship lay over in a wabbly, sickening lurch and then nose down.
“Guns out, motor stuttering. Have to go in,” Allison’s drawl came over the radio.
The Hendee Hawk roared into the whirling mass of Jerry fighters and its banks of guns roared. The Jerries slid away after they had tasted the terrible gun power of this new ship.
Stan nosed down and plummeted after Allison who had two Messerschmitts on his tail, but when the Hawk overtook them in one terrific spurt they swerved aside, each sending a final spray of lead over Allison’s ship. Stan picked the one on the right and laid over to cut across the Messer with all his Brownings drilling. A wing sheared away from the Messer and shot up and out of sight. The Messerschmitt went rolling down.
Stan dived after Allison. He didn’t like the way the Spitfire was wobbling and turning. He had once seen a ship come in that way and when the boys got to it the pilot was dead. All he could do was trail Allison who failed to answer his frantic calls.
The Spitfire kept going until she was almost to the field. As she slid out over the turf she wavered and her nose went down. She dived a few hundred feet, straightened, then slid off on one wing. Again she straightened and leveled out, close to the ground now. Suddenly she put her nose down and plunged to earth, landing with a smash that made her ground loop and pile up close to a hangar door.
Stan set the Hawk down and slid over to the wrecked Spitfire. He and O’Malley leaped out and ran to the ship. The ground men had dragged Allison out. He was slumped between two of them, his face bloodless, his lips tight with pain. The old, mocking flicker was in his eyes as he shoved aside the arms of the men and smiled at Stan.
“I take back everything I’ve said about Yank planes,” he said, then he slid gently into Stan’s arms, a limp rag of a man.
Stan gathered him up and carried him toward a field ambulance which was roaring toward them with its siren screaming, while O’Malley trudged along behind muttering savagely to himself.
A white-coated ambulance surgeon leaped out to meet them as the ambulance slithered to a stop. Stan laid his burden down gently and stepped back out of the way, dragging O’Malley with him. The surgeon knelt beside the unconscious man and made a swift examination, then turned and snapped to a couple of internes hovering behind him:
“Get a stretcher down here. This man is badly wounded.”
Stan surged forward and clutched his arm. “How badly?” he queried through bloodless lips. “Not...?”
The surgeon smiled and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “No,” he replied simply. “I promise you he won’t die. England needs all her fliers, and we’ll pull him through to go into the air again. I can’t tell how soon,” he ended briskly. “Not until I get him to the hospital and make a complete examination.” He turned away and leaped into the ambulance behind the stretcher, and it sped away with its unconscious burden.
“Glory be to God,” breathed O’Malley fervently. “Come along with you now, we’d best make our reports.”
In the briefing room the flight officer met them with more eagerness than was usual with such an official. Nodding toward the chutes, neatly piled on the floor, he said:
“You usually take care of those things, don’t you know.”
Stan nodded grimly. He was thinking about Allison. O’Malley just grunted and planked his bony elbows on the high desk. Thrusting his chin out, he remarked:
“What you limeys need is more fire wagons like I just slid meself out of. I want one for my own use.”
“I heard the new ship was a bit of all right,” the flight officer said. “I’ll take your report. The Wing Commander wants it rushed right over.”
“We’ll be after blushin’ to give you the actual facts of what happened,” O’Malley said slowly.
“One Messerschmitt to us and three to Allison,” Stan answered.
The officer nodded and began scribbling. “Fill out one for me right away.” He shoved a blank across the desk.
“How about the varmint I dissected with me guns?” O’Malley asked.
“Did you hit one of those Stukas?” Stan asked.
“Sure, an’ I did that,” O’Malley said.
“One Stuka badly damaged,” Stan added.
They went into the mess and for once O’Malley did not order a pie. He sat down and stared at the ceiling, his big mouth clamped shut, his Adam’s apple sliding up and down. Finally he said:
“Next time I get to take her, I can fly her like she was me own wings.”
“You might as well. This job is half yours,” Stan said. “Until we find out about Allison this flight will have only two men and one ship.”
“Allison’s going to be right back with us. The bye wouldn’t kick off until he had had a chance to wind up this new colleen we got.” O’Malley said it grimly, as though trying to make himself believe.
“Here comes Wing Commander Farrell and I think he’s looking for us,” Stan said.
“Sure, an’ ’tis the big man himself and no other. An’ comin’ to see us instead of us tramping over there. Me bye, the first thing we know, the King will be dropping in to have a spot of tea with us two intrepid fliers.” O’Malley’s big mouth was spread in a wide grin.
“Don’t get up, men,” the Wing Commander said as he came up. He seated himself and started in briskly. “I hear the Hawk is better than anyone thought.”
“Not better than I thought,” Stan said.
“Well, better than the inspectors and test men thought. They said she wasn’t reliable.”
“She is sensitive and temperamental,” Stan agreed.
“She chops up a Messerschmitt and spits out the pieces like me auld granddaddy used to whack up a box for kindlin’,” O’Malley broke in.
“Fine.” The Wing Commander smiled broadly. “I just dropped by to ask you boys to stay very close to quarters. We have reports of activity at sea and there may be quite a bit of action. I’d like to find out if this ship is really a dive bomber.”
O’Malley grinned happily and saluted the Wing Commander. He had not taken the trouble to get to his feet. Farrell returned the salute without so much as the twitch of a facial muscle.
“We’ll be ready, sir.” Stan stood at attention.
The Wing Commander walked away and Stan scowled down at his pal. “A fine officer you are.”
“Naval action, and my turn comin’ up,” O’Malley gloated.
An orderly called Stan to the telephone. When he returned he was smiling.
“Allison will make it. He won’t be laid up very long.”
“Hooray!” O’Malley shouted and leaped into the air. He headed straight across the room toward the counter. The corporal saw him coming and slid an apple pie off the shelf.