Suddenly the Old Man, Colonel Holt, turned and faced them. There was an immediate hush.

"A lot of people think we just go along with the bombers to catch a bit of fresh air and to keep from going stale. This mission promised to be our chance to crack the enemy, but unfortunately, Weather reports clouds up to our return point." The Old Man stared unwinkingly at his men. He read the disappointment in their faces. "We are hoping that for once Weather will be wrong."

This brought a few grins and a snort or two from the pilots. The Old Man went on talking.

"You are to fly formation as planned. This will be strictly a team job. There will be no free-lance hunting. Understand?"

Everyone looked glum. O'Malley scowled. It was not his nature to like strict rules. He had learned what he knew in the days of the Battle of Britain and later in the South Pacific and then over Africa and Italy. O'Malley always had been a rip-roaring fighter who accepted battle against any odds. If trouble did not come his way, he went looking for it.

Stan wondered if that last warning was not aimed at O'Malley and himself. All of the other fliers were trained to this sort of fighting. Stan and O'Malley were the only old heads in the flight.

O'Malley and Stan marched out with the others and climbed into heavy flying suits. The Thunderbolts were high fliers and worked best at twenty-three thousand feet or more. That meant heavy equipment with oxygen and all of the other trappings, including heated undergarments.

The pilots waddled out to their planes and climbed up. Ground crews moved back. They had serviced and checked the fighters and now their Pratt and Whitney twin bank radial engines were turning over smoothly. Exhausts flared blue flames which sent wavering shadows across the wet cement of the apron. Flight Officer Mickle was running about like an old hen with a scattered brood of chicks.

Stan glanced down the wet and gleaming runway. An Aldis lamp winked down toward the shadow bar. Stan eased himself back against the shock pad. He glanced at his temperature gauge and across his instrument board. The throb of his Pratt and Whitney engine hinted at power, though it was rolling over smoothly and effortlessly. Stan remembered other nights many months past when he had sat in a Hurricane waiting for the flash of the lamp and the order from the tower to go up through the blind alley between the barrage balloon 

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