“Man all the guns!” Barry’s order crackled in the headsets. “Cracker, be ready to strafe any antiaircraft before they can pot us....” He broke off as the white lines of tracer bullets streaked upward from a patch of bushes at one side of the field. Other guns opened fire. Small bullet holes appeared suddenly in the bomber’s fuselage and wings. But four of _Rosy’s_ .50-caliber machine guns were talking back—the twin weapons of her bottom and tail turrets. Seconds later she had swept out of range. “Well, whaddyuh know about that?” Hap Newton blurted. “New Guinea Gardens Grow Grass-skirted Gunners. Who’d ever believe that headline?” “Why didn’t they throw any flak at us?” Curly Levitt asked. “A field as big as that ought to be protected by more than machine gun fire.” “The airport isn’t completed yet,” Barry pointed out. “The Japs probably haven’t had a chance to bring in heavier installations. There wasn’t even a camouflaged plane in sight—nothing but those steel-mat runways dressed up to look like vegetable gardens. Of course it’s possible that there were some bigger guns but no time to man them, before we were past.” “It’s worth risking them to give the field a thorough pasting,” Chick Enders said. “Let’s go back at about five thousand and give it every bomb in our racks.” No shellfire greeted them as they made their run over the Jap airfield. Even the machine guns were silent. The grass-skirted gun-crews were fleeing through the surrounding grass and scrub like scared rabbits when the first stick of bombs whistled down. They left the runways looking like a raw, black wound in the earth, with a thick cloud of dust hanging over it. All their bombs had struck with the accuracy of rifle bullets, five-hundred-pounders that flung the twisted steel matting high in the air. “Get the exact position of this spot, Curly,” Barry Blake said, as he climbed into the hot blue sky. “The sons of Nippon won’t be using their little mountain playground as long as our fliers can keep an eye on it.” “That’s right,” agreed the _Rosy’s_ navigator. “We’ve wiped out an air base from which the Nips could have raided Queensland, Port Moresby, and any of our northeast airports with equal ease. And we’ve discovered some of their latest tricks of camouflage, thanks to Chick Enders. Headquarters will be glad to know about it.” For the rest of the trip _Rosy O’Grady’s_ pilots and bombardier kept their eyes peeled for suspicious looking “market gardens,” but none appeared. An hour after they crossed the height of land the ocean was again in sight. Soapy Babbitt contacted their new airport on the Mau River and received the answer to come in.