Yes, there were two Japs coming in on him. Now where did they come from, Scoot wondered. But he didn’t spend much time on that question for he had other things to do. If these Japs weren’t familiar enough with what the new Hellcats could do he’d show ’em. So, instead of diving to get away, as he knew they expected, he put his fighter into a steep climb that pulled him up toward the clouds as if a giant hand had reached down and grabbed him. That took the first Jap by surprise, as Scoot hoped, but the second had just enough time to meet the maneuver. As Scoot closed in on the first, he knew that the second was coming in behind him. He concentrated on one thing at a time. Maybe, he thought, he could take care of the first one fast and get away quickly enough. With a roar of speed, he brought the first Jap into range, opened fire, saw smoke, and waited no longer. He plunged into a diving turn, looked back over his shoulder and saw the second Jap ship already plunging earthward in a cloud of smoke. “Who did that?” Scoot demanded, almost to himself. “I did, my friend!” It was Turk Bottomley’s voice. “What are you doing here?” Scoot demanded. “No Jap planes showed up at the carrier,” Scoot said, “so the Old Man let a few of us come over to have some fun. I just got here.” “And just in time, lad,” Scoot said. “Thanks.” “Don’t mention it,” Turk laughed. “The pleasure was all mine.” So that is how Scoot managed to paint two little Jap flags on the side of his plane the next day, as the _Bunker Hill_ steamed westward, away from a smoking and flaming Truk. “That’s something like it!” Scoot exclaimed to himself. “I’ll bet poor old March isn’t having any fun like this, cooped up in that stuffy submarine.” It was at that moment that March was listening with pleasure to the explosion of the _Kamongo’s_ torpedoes against the sides of a Jap tanker at Wake Island. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER FOURTEEN CRASH LANDING _Kamongo_ was ranged with fourteen other submarines alongside the tender _David_ at the little island base in the southwest Pacific. The crossing after the sinking at Wake Island had been uneventful, since they had run submerged most of the time during daylight hours. Always on the lookout for enemy ships, officers and crew alike had been disappointed to run into nothing but an American task force, consisting of a carrier, a cruiser, and three destroyers racing north at full speed. March had tried to make out the name of the carrier, and he would have been delighted to know it was the _Bunker Hill_ carrying Scoot and his companions from their Truk attack to a small action against another Jap-held island farther north. But even American subs submerged and ran deep and quiet when American ships were near by. The destroyers would have started to toss depth charges like snowflakes if they had sighted a periscope of any kind.