"Oh, so what?" Dave snapped. "Use the old brain, Freddy! Are you and I carrying water pistols? With this rumbling and shouting all over the place, you wouldn't hear a shot three feet from the ship. Those three mechanics are our only worry. Then, plus the distance to the plane, and the little item of getting it off, and getting altitude." Freddy Farmer turned his head and looked straight into Dawson's eyes. "Right you are," he said quietly. "Anything to stop them all from taking off. And even if we can't get enough altitude--" Young Farmer stopped, then tried to continue, but all he seemed able to do was swallow rapidly. Dawson forced his own lips to pull back in a forced grin, and nodded. "Yeah, Freddy," he said softly. "The least we can do, for Dartmouth's sake. If we can get enough altitude to give us a fighting chance for our own hides, then we slam the plane down into the middle of them, and go up with the whole works. Tough on us, but--but a lot of swell guys have died for far less, Freddy." Freddy continued to look at Dawson without speaking. Then presently he simply smiled, and pushed up onto his hands and knees. "Let's get on with the blasted thing, Dave," he said with all the calmness of voice of a man going down to the post office to buy a stamp. "Always did hate to sit around jawing when there was something that had to be done. So let's get on with it--one way or the other." "And it's going to be the way we want, kid!" Dawson whispered as they stepped out from behind the shrubs, and started walking along the rim of the field. "I've got the old hunch." To that Freddy Farmer groaned, crossed two fingers of his left hand, because he was carrying his gun in his right, and kept on walking. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN _Something For Hitler!_ Twenty yards. Sixty feet. Just seven hundred and twenty inches. That was the distance Dave Dawson and Freddy Farmer finally were from the Flying Fortress at the rear end of that half-circle of bombers. Twenty yards more to go, but there were two Luftwaffe mechanics between them and the plane. And at that distance a blind man could see that each of the mechanics carried a holstered Luger. A Luger that was in a holster and _not_ in the man's hand. And it was the realization of that that made Dawson breathe a faint prayer of thanks, and then suddenly snap on the beam of his flashlight, and walk the last twenty yards at a rapid pace. As one the two mechanics spun around, blinked at the light that hit them in the eyes, and started to open their mouths. But Dave didn't give them a chance to say anything. He took a page out of Freddy Farmer's book, and played it for all that it was worth. "We're Gestapo, sleeping swine!" he snarled at them, fairly throwing the words in their flat moon-shaped faces. "Is this the way to guard a plane? We could have killed you both minutes ago, and with ease. What have you to say, fools?"