Not a gun fired back at the Fortress, now, as Dawson kept circling the target so that Freddy could work his slot guns continuously. The undersea craft was driving hard through the water with its diving planes undoubtedly all set to be run out for a crash dive the instant those who survived the death that sprinkled the deck were inside and the conning tower hatch closed tight. But Freddy Farmer was seeing to it that none of those scampering Japs on deck survived his withering fire. He relentlessly cut them down one after another like tenpins. And then as Dawson veered the Fortress even closer to the trapped submarine, young Farmer sent a hail of explosive bullets practically straight down the still partly opened conning tower hatch. "Have some of those, you filthy beggars!" Dave heard Freddy's voice screaming over the inter-com. "Pull a trick like that on us, what? Well, how do you like some of the same? How do you like it, what?" "They don't like it even a little bit, pal!" Dawson shouted impulsively into his own flap mike. "Not even a ... Hey! Ye gods! You've hit something, Freddy!" Hit something was right! A column of livid red flame suddenly belched up out of the conning tower hatch. The silver light from the floating exploded star shells had just about died away, but now the sky and the sea were bathed in a blood red glow as the column of flame mounted higher and higher, and then fountained outward in all directions. It came so close to the circling Fortress that Dawson gasped out a strangled cry of alarm and quickly banked off in the opposite direction. As soon as he was clear of the area of falling fire he banked the Fortress again so that he could look back at the doomed Jap submarine. And doomed it was. Even as he saw it again there was another violent internal explosion that seemed to lift the craft clean out of the water. It actually seemed to hover motionless in mid-air for a moment, and although Dawson was not sure, he thought he saw the thing break in half, and both halves fall back into the water with mighty splashes, and then disappear completely beneath the flame-tipped waves. At any rate, an instant later the submarine just wasn't there any more. There was nothing but a blazing whirlpool of oil to mark the spot where it had been. There was not even a single piece of floating wreckage in that ever widening circle of blazing oil. "And that's one Tojo can sure mark off as gone for good!" Dawson muttered, and nosed the Fortress up for altitude. "What a way to die, even for a dirty Japrat." With a little shuddering shake of his head he took his gaze off the blazing patch of oil slick, and turned his attention forward. "Okay, Freddy, boy!" he called into his inter-com mike. "Come on up front and get your cigar for hitting the bull's-eye. And how you did, pal. How you did!" There came no reply from Freddy over the inter-com, nor did the English youth come up forward in person.