"Yes!" Freddy Farmer said in a tight voice. "A little Jap friend of ours. Who else could it have been? It couldn't have been anybody else, Dave. The dirty blighter. He probably didn't trouble to use his gun. Didn't even have to get close to us ... But, good gosh, Dave! How in the world did he get the chance to do it? How did he know when he shadowed us up to Los Angeles that we were going to take the very first plane off, and that we'd carry the mail?" "I don't know," Dawson mumbled, and rubbed some of the tannic jelly on his smarting hands. "It's like one of those impossible cockeyed things you read in dime thrillers. Maybe he didn't do it, himself. Maybe he has pals at the L.A. Base. He certainly had one at Dago. Maybe he didn't even show his face to anybody, except a pal or two of his. And maybe we're just kidding ourselves. Maybe he didn't have a thing to do with it. Maybe it was just plain sabotage by some other rats he never even met. I--gosh! I'm almost beginning to feel sorry that you belted that submarine down to the bottom, Freddy. Believe it or not, those rats, while trying to knock us down with their little trick, actually saved our lives." "What's that?" Freddy asked sharply. "Dirty Japs save anybody's life? Not a bit, they would!" "Not knowingly, no," Dawson said, and absently checked the course of the Fortress that was still droning along on the automatic pilot. "But those submarine birds did, just the same. Supposing that sub hadn't showed at all? Supposing you hadn't gone back to work the guns, and looked into the bomb-bay? We would suddenly have found ourselves sitting on the front end of a flying ball of fire. See what I mean?" "Too vividly!" young Farmer said with a violent shudder. "Why, the blasted fire might even have reached the gas tanks before we could have bailed out. Gosh! maybe I am a little sorry that I sent the lot of them to the bottom." "Well, don't be too sorry," Dawson said grimly. "They're still Japs. And there's still a lot of their cutthroat brothers on the face of the earth that need the same kind of treatment." "And will get it, too, if I have anything to do with it!" Freddy Farmer echoed, tight-lipped. CHAPTER SEVEN _Spy Trap_ The new dawn sun was well up over the eastern rim of the world and was driving the shadows of night over the western lip in a hurry when Dave Dawson and Freddy Farmer sighted the flight of American patrol planes. They were Navy long-range Catalina flying boats and they were coming straight on toward the Flying Fortress. "Nice!" Dawson grunted with a nod of his head. "That's something I was hoping that we'd see just about now. Asleep at the switch once, maybe, but not twice. Nope, not a chance." "All of which sounds very interesting," Freddy Farmer murmured, and rubbed a dirty hand over his tired-looking face. "But do you mind explaining what you mean? I'm afraid I'm a little bit too done in this morning to bother making guesses. What about those Catboats, Dave?"