Bill skidded the Lancer out of range and eased back on the stick as the three ships passed by him. As he saw their rudders bite into the air to return to the attack, he yanked the stick back and came up and over on his back just as they began their turn. At the top of his loop he neutralized his controls for a moment, then eased the nose down in a steep inverted dive.
He got the first of the three ships under his hair sights for one brief instant. His finger came down on the trip of his 37mm. cannon. The rapid-firer threw five high-explosive shells within the space of a second, but Bill's speed was too great and his dive too steep for accurate shooting. Between the time he had the ship under his sights and when he tripped his trigger the little fighter had passed out of his range of fire.
Bill cursed, leveled off and half-rolled the Lancer upright. The single seaters were coming around on one wing tip as he lifted the nose for altitude. He knew he could get away from them if he wanted to, but the thought of the whole-sale murder he had seen them perpetrate had enraged him almost beyond reason.
He knew he should broadcast what he had witnessed, but something held him back, something he did not understand.
“Why,” he asked himself as he spiraled upward; “did they do it? What is behind it?”
His hand started forward toward his radio switch, to open it and tell the radio station at Foynes what had happened and ask them to send him aid. But something stopped him. Suppose, he thought, I lure these three ships in toward shore to meet planes that are sent out to help me, and in the mixup that follows they escape; then they will never get what is coming to them. They may escape entirely.
He was trying to justify his desire to give battle when he became aware of a screaming prop that roared underneath him. He rolled the Lancer completely over and whipped it up and around to reverse his direction. He dropped the nose and poured a burst of ten shells at the little dun-colored ship arrowing up at him. But again his aim was bad and the little ship kicked its tail in the air and dived out of danger.
“You don't have to make any decision,” he said to himself. “If they want trouble give it to 'em!”
He gunned his engine and dived on the tail of the single-seater. His line of tracer smoke curled above the head of the pilot. He eased his stick forward a little and his bullets crashed into the tail assembly and climbed forward along the fuselage to the engine block. A half-dozen of those powerful .50-caliber bullets nearly tore off the pilot's head. He slumped forward over the stick, while the ship kept straight on toward the waters pf the Atlantic.
And then the air seemed to be choked with slashing, roaring dun-colored biplanes as the other two fighters came back into the battle. Bill realized instantly that these fellows knew their jobs as combat pilots. They were like darting hawks as they converged their fire to get Bill between them. They were everywhere, charging in from all angles, their guns screaming lead.
Bill's mind and muscles had to coordinate with the speed of light if he were to survive that terrific onslaught. He eased the throttles of the Lancer open another notch and took it through the air with the speed and fury of a flaming meteor. He saw his bullets tracing designs on the sides of the dun biplanes, but his own speed was too great for accurate shooting.
He felt the Lancer buck and shiver as bullets drove into it from that never-ceasing hail of lead. But he fought on while he gasped for breath, his face tense and terrible in its absolute concentration on the horrible job before him. He whipped the Lancer up and down, skidded and side-slipped, zoomed and dived and rolled to avoid the fire of those two fast fighters. He knew, only too well, that one single error in judgment would be his last.
He could hear Sandy's gun chattering at intervals as he drove them off his tail and he could hear Sandy complaining in his ear that he, Bill, never gave him a chance to get in a telling shot.
“Can't you level off and give me a straight shot at 'em once!” Sandy pleaded.
“I can't, kid,” Bill gasped. “They are almost as fast as we are and they have as much maneuverability. I can't give 'em a chance to get set or they'll get us. They'll smash you into bits if I do.”
Then the two ships got him inside a tight circle that he could not break. Each time he tried to break out a terrific burst of fire would cut across his path, forcing him to deviate from his course, and then they would be on him again, forcing him back so that one of them could get him under his sights.
Bullets drummed all around them, and Bill's breath was coming in quick, agonized gasps. His right hand seemed to be frozen to the control column, so tight was his grasp. He was using all his inherent genius as a flyer, getting the utmost from the Lancer's great speed and maneuverability, while Sandy desperately tried to keep the enemy off their tail.
Then the two ships began to tighten the circle again, their guns spewing fire and lead and death. Bill waited until they almost had him between a crossfire. He waited until one of the biplanes became overconfident. Then, for that brief moment that is enough, he got the dun ship under his sights. His finger clamped down on his 37mm. gun. He fired a burst of five shots as he pushed the throttle of the Lancer wide open and nosed down in a power dive.
The dun biplane became a great mass of black smoke and orange flame, the explosive shells taking it apart with a finality that was appalling. The other dun ship zoomed upward to escape the shooting debris as it exploded.
Bill looked back and up as he pulled the Lancer out of its dive. The remaining biplane was diving on their tail, and Sandy tried to get him under the sights of his gun. As Bill began a tight turn to the right, the other ship went underneath him and nosed up eight hundred yards away. Then they were roaring toward each other headon, each striving to find the other under his sights.
When only fifty yards separated them, the pilot of the single-seater suddenly swerved it in fast to the left for a death-dealing burst of fire just before they passed. Bill shouted, involuntarily, then threw the Lancer out of its mad path to avoid the crash that for an instant seemed inevitable.
Bill yanked back on his stick and zoomed the Lancer up and over on its back, while the biplane continued on its course. At the top he half-rolled level and gazed over the side. His face was white and his eyes were wide with disbelief as he watched the dun ship flip over and come back. He couldn't believe what he had just seen and yet he knew it was true.
He knew that he had come in contact with only one man during all his aerial combats who used that particular swerve in to the left before he tripped his guns. And that man was his most deadly enemy. Yanking back on the control column. Bill took the Lancer high into the heavens as the tear-drop biplane tried to come up beneath him. He wanted to get some place where he could think. He took the Lancer steadily upward until his altimeter read 25,000 feet.
“Hey, Bill!” Sandy shouted. “Where the—where are you going? That other ship can't get up. here. He's wallowing!”
“I know it, kid,” Bill said calmly. “Close your hatch and turn on the oxygen. I don't want him to get up here. I don't want to shoot him down. I want to follow him and take him alive.”
“Who is he?” Sandy asked. His voice was a combination of anger and disgust because they were peeling off in the middle of a fight.
“He's our old friend,” Bill said. “And by a coincidence that is stranger than fiction he had another chance to try to murder me.”
Through Bill's mind were racing a thousand and one thoughts. Only his own loyal men knew that he was flying the Atlantic that morning. It had been his men who had urged him to do it, even insisted. Had one or more of them betrayed him—got him out where he would be at the mercy of the man who hated him above all else?