Yes, twenty minutes more, but each sixty seconds seemed well nigh a lifetime to Dawson as he guided his Mustang eastward. At the end of two of the minutes somebody sang out the alarm that he had spotted another flock of Nazi planes at a higher altitude. And he was not wrong, as Dawson saw for himself a couple of seconds later. At least a hundred Nazi planes were circling about three thousand feet higher up. But as the minutes wore on they made no effort to try and slice down through the fighter umbrella and get at the big bombers. Maybe they saw that the fighters were the deadly Mustangs, and they wanted no part of them. Or maybe they were simply waiting for a more favorable moment in which to start their attack. Or maybe they were even waiting for reenforcements. At any rate they stayed right where they were and tagged the bombers and their Mustang escort eastward. "Come on down and fight, you rats!" Dawson muttered time and time again. "If you think we're going to leave our big boys unprotected and go up after you, you're nuts. So come on down here, and mix it up, if you dare. Come on!" Minutes, and a few more minutes, and then as Dawson glanced downward he discovered that they were over the Duisburg area. Because the light was still bad he could not pick out definite landmarks, but the general picture was that of Duisburg across the Rhine River from Krefeld. And even as he looked downward he saw the first shower of incendiary bombs strike and create the impression of a thousand street lights suddenly being switched on. "This is it!" he heard his own voice cry. "This is the end of the line!" And as though the Nazi fighters higher up in the sky had been waiting for just that instant, they peeled off and came down with guns blazing! CHAPTER ELEVEN _Winged Fury_ "Here they come!" rang the voice of the Mustangs' leader in Dawson's earphone. "Don't let a single tramp down through, or you'll hear from me. At 'em, fellows! Shoot their whiskers off!" Young Farmer saw him look, nodded, and waggled his wings. And then in perfect team formation they hauled their two Mustangs right up on their props and went up toward the diving Nazis. As though by secret signal they fired their guns and air cannon together. Nothing that flies could have withstood that concentrated blast of fire, and the leading diving Nazi ship was certainly no exception to the rule. The plane seemed to stop dead in mid-air, and then broke up into a million flaming bits that went slithering down like the sparks from a spent rocket. "One, Freddy!" Dawson shouted, though he didn't know whether young Farmer heard him or not. "Now one more to make it one apiece, and then we go to work." "Right-o, old thing!" came Freddy's instant reply. "The beggar to the left with the blue nose. Give it to him, Dave!"