Free The Dive Bomber by L. Ron Hubbard

was torn.
    â€œGod, I’m glad to see you, Lucky.”
    â€œWhat’s happened to you?”
    â€œThose two bulldogs that was guarding you started to guard me. I managed to knock one out and get his gun and kill the other one. I got away, but I was too late.”
    â€œWhere’s Dixie?”
    â€œHalfway to Europe by this time.”
    â€œBut…but that steamer couldn’t have gotten out of the Chesapeake so quick! It must be close to Hampton Roads .”
    â€œNo,” said Flynn, passing a shaky hand carefully over a black eye. “That ship left here three days ago. Bullard grabbed Dixie right after you left. Ninety-nine planes are aboard the steamer. Smith was to blast you, make you crash, get his own plane in the south and meet the steamer at sea. Bullard and the others caught the boat at Norfolk , and they’re halfway to Europe by now.”
    â€œWe’ve got to do something!” wailed Lucky. He grabbed the phone and begged for the Treasury Department and the Coast Guard. He rapidly told them the details about the dive bomber, but the Coast Guard knew all about Bullard, his export permit, the planes. They also had been carefully coached about Lucky Martin. The answer was, “Sorry, Mr. Martin, I am afraid you are a little excited.” Lucky thought wildly for an instant and then remembered that the steamer was registered under the US flag, that Dixie would be an excuse for the Coast Guard. Rapidly he spilled this data over the wire with a thousand assurances. Tardily, the Coast Guard guessed that in a case of kidnaping, if it could be proved, they could act.
    Lucky looked at Flynn. “You feel all right?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œLook here, that dive bomber has full racks. We’ll stop that steamer at sea. It may be piracy for us and jail forever, but—”
    â€œWhat about Dixie?”
    â€œWe’ll solve that when we come to it. Gas up and let’s go!”
    Twenty minutes later the all-metal plane zoomed out of the dust of the field, banked and, full out, streaked twenty degrees short of south, ASI flickering at six miles a minute. Lucky had figured out, as close as possible, the intersection of courses.
    The afternoon was free from haze. Few clouds marred the turquoise of the sky. Below, the waves made an even crisscross pattern on the painfully bright bay.
    The steamer had had to sail south, the length of the Chesapeake Bay, but Lucky took a corner off Delaware, raced over Maryland’s Eastern Shore and was presently roaring over the Atlantic, leaving the friendly coast far behind.
    His mathematics told him that this, a land plane, could travel one thousand miles without refueling, and that he would probably cover that without again seeing the shore. Failure was, in any case, his goal, unless he could get the bomber to float until the Coast Guard came up. That is, if the Coast Guard ever found him.
    Enveloped in the monotony of wide and watery horizons, he began to realize what a small chance he had of ever finding the steamer. Somewhere within a circle at least two hundred miles in diameter, the vessel, if he sighted it at all, would look no bigger than a match floating on the water.
    He went up to fifteen thousand to increase his visibility and bless the lack of clouds.
    â€œThere’s a steamer!” yelled Flynn into the tube.
    The bomber veered from its course, dashing toward the faint smudge, rolling back the curve of the world.
    â€œNix,” said Flynn. “ Great White Fleet .”
    The bomber snapped back to an easterly route.
    For ten minutes they spotted nothing and then Flynn shouted, “A plane down around five thousand, to the south of us, heading east.”
    â€œAnything else?”
    Flynn adjusted his binoculars, stared for a moment and then yelped, “It’s the same ship that attacked us over Virginia!”
    â€œGood! He can’t see us. We’re too high in the sun. Smith started later than