The words had come from Freddy's lips, but as far as Dave Dawson was concerned they were just a waste of breath. He was well aware of the two Zeros closing in for a cross-fire attack. And he was well aware of the fact that he'd have to just about fly the wings off the Zeros in order to skip free of this air trap. As a matter of fact, the only thing he could possibly do was to play a long shot; to take a one in a million chance, and pray as he had never before prayed in his life. Take a long shot chance, and pray. "Hold tight, Freddy!" he shouted. "I'm going to twist this baby plenty. I--" He cut off the rest of what he was shouting because his chest was filled with sharp pains again, and his lungs felt as though they were breathing liquid fire. It suddenly seemed to take every ounce of his strength to move the control stick, and to kick on rudder. But somehow he managed it, and he sent the MK-11 curving upward and around toward the Zero on his left. And at the same time Freddy Farmer let fly with his guns at the Zero on the right. Dawson's Jap saw him coming and, rather than chance the full fury of the Yank's fire, he pulled off and upward. In that same split second Dawson steeled himself to the effort, slammed the stick over, booted opposite rudder and brought the MK-11 around and up in the opposite direction. In other words he cut off his expected attack on the first Zero to cut in up at the Zero on the other side. As a result of that double maneuver, which was carried through with split-second accuracy, he not only broke up the two Zero plane attack, but forced each Jap pilot to careen upward and away. Too late the two Japs realized what was going to happen. Instead of both charging straight in on the MK-11, they both were streaking straight at one another! Both Japs saw that a midair crash was about to take place, and both frantically tried to swerve off into the clear. And perhaps they might have succeeded if it hadn't been for the deadly aim of Freddy Farmer. The English youth's guns snarled out their song, and one of the Jap pilots was stone dead before he could turn off into the clear. And his failure to do so spilled the beans for the other Jap. He couldn't check his plane in time, and he flew straight into the other faltering Zero.