Previously on Jake Hammer:  After observing and talking with the soldiers in the front lines, Jake discovered that the American forces were unable to stop the enemy’s armored unit.  Returning to the Lockheed plant in Burbank, Jake learned that their engineers had worked with scientists at Caltech to develop a powerful, but untested, air-to-ground rocket that could be used to destroy tanks.  Now,

 

     Early the next morning, Jake banked Lady Luck over the Lockheed plant, and, after receiving a visual signal from their private tower authorizing his landing, touched down smoothly on a secret runway.  Miguel had worked like a madman all through the night to make and install the rocket racks under Lady Luck’s wings, wiring each firing position to a button on the instrument panel.  And now the Lockheed technicians would load the eight deadly rockets Jake needed to destroy the enemy’s tanks.  He had no sooner come to a stop when Bill Mobley and a crew of weaponeers rolled out of a hanger on a tractor pulling a heavily loaded bomb carriage.

     Mobley hopped off the tractor, ducked under Lady Luck’s wings and ran his hands over the rocket racks.    “Well Jake you’re as good as your word.  It looks like your mechanic has done an excellent job fabricating the racks.”  He removed his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes.  It was evident he had spent long hours coordinating the attack plan with the military officials.  “I wish there was time for you to practice firing the rockets; aiming them is a little tricky.  But we’re out of time.  If the Mexicans push us back again today, LA will fall.”  He put his glasses back on and opened a folder.  Jake didn’t have to be told that it contained secret documents.

     Mobley began his briefing. “Here’s the plan.  We’ll send up the remaining P26s on combat air patrol.  After the Blue Wolf shoots them down or chases them away, he’ll return to his base.  That’s what’s happened every day so far.  Without any air cover, our infantry hasn’t been able to stop their armored attack.  But today we’ll have a nasty surprise for them, namely you.”  Jake hated the idea of sending a squadron of pilots on what was sure to be a one-way mission for some of them, but the Blue Wolf must not suspect there was anything out of the ordinary.

     Mobley continued with the plan. “The tanks have no identifying insignia, but we’ve never seen more than six of them in battle.  You’re only going to have a short time window to destroy them, because as soon as the enemy figures out what’s up, you can be sure the Blue Wolf will be back.”  Mobley took off his glasses again, his bloodshot eyes not detracting from his earnest expression.  “He’s going to be gunning for you Jake.  And only one plane is coming back.”

     “I know.  But this is our only chance.”

     Mobley looked over at the chief weaponeer, who nodded.

     “You’re fully armed Jake, guns and rockets.”

     “Then let’s crank props and get this ship in the sky.”

     Minutes later, Jake was in his assigned position, high above, and several miles behind the front lines.  He watched as the fighters of the final squadron flew to their own positions directly above the front, their squadron leader saluting him as they zoomed by.  Jake returned the salute.  “And now it’s a waiting game,” he thought.  But the wait was short.  The support squadron had hardly arrived in position when the Blue Wolf roared out of the cloud deck, guns blazing, blasting one American craft in seconds.  Jake watched helplessly as the plane went down in flames.  He had to fight the overwhelming urge to join the battle immediately.  Meanwhile, the Blue Wolf continued to show how he had earned Germany’s highest combat decoration, the Pour le Mérite.  He sliced through the American formation with ease, his guns seldom silent.  One by one the Americans were outclassed, most shot down, a few lucky ones simply driven off by a superior aircraft with a superior pilot at the controls.  Jake strained his eyes to see as much as he could of the Blue Wolf’s tactics, without giving away his own presence.  What he saw impressed him.  Immelmann, barrel roll, hammerhead:  The Blue Wolf was a master of every known tactical maneuver.  In a few minutes, it was over.  There were no American aircraft left to protect the infantry below.  And now, like an animal whose thirst for blood had been slaked, the Blue Wolf skulked over the battlefield, and with one exultant barrel roll, disappeared as suddenly as he had come.

     Then, as if tightly choreographed, the formation of enemy tanks, gray and hulking, lurched onto the battlefield.  This was the moment Jake had been waiting for.  He pushed his throttles forward and aimed Lady Luck at the nearest tank, her engines screaming like a hawk diving for prey.  He fired a rocket, shocked by the kickback as it left his wings.  But he was just a little too far away!  The commander in the tank’s cupola pointed up, and barked an order as the tank swerved at the last second, the rocket embedding itself harmlessly in the ground with a deafening blast.  Jake brought his plane around as quickly as possible, this time attacking from the tank’s rear.  He dove as close to the ground as he dared and fired his second rocket.  This one struck home on the rear of the tank’s turret ring, lifting its five-ton mass skyward, the resulting vacuum sucking the entire crew out of the tank and hurling them in every direction where they landed like broken dolls.  Jake roared overhead and banked immediately to take on the next tank.  Its commander grabbed the machine gun on the turret and began firing furiously, but to no avail.  Jake fired another rocket—this one easily pierced the tank’s side armor and hit its fuel cells which promptly exploded, creating a bone-rattling shockwave that Jake felt in his chest as he zoomed above the wreckage.  He banked left and rolled his airplane into position for a flank attack on the next closest tank.  Now he dove down to an insane altitude and fired the next rocket before pulling up a split-second before crashing.  The tank never had a chance as it blew up with a concussive roar.  Jake flew through the smoke of the explosion to mask his maneuvers for the next group of tanks.  But when he banked right to return to the action he found that the crews of the remaining tanks had already decided to bail out, running to the rear, and leaving their massive armored vehicles immobile and defenseless.  Jake had no trouble picking off each of the remaining enemy tanks, and soon the battlefield was littered with charred and burning vehicles.

     He was about to breathe a sigh of relief when suddenly, he heard and felt the whizz of tracers just inches over his canopy.  He jerked his head to the right just in time to see the Blue Wolf bearing down on him!  Jake dove immediately to gain speed and space to plan his attack.  Over in his own aircraft, the German ace Hans Dietrich, the famous Blue Wolf, was thrilled:  Not only was there another plane for him to shoot down, it was the same one who had overflown the tramp steamer!  Revenge would be so sweet!  He deliberately fired a burst of tracers over the pilot’s head and measured his response.  Alone in his cockpit, Dietrich tsked-tsked the American’s flying.  “Oh no, my little American flyboy, you’ll have to do much better than that if you want to last a few minutes in the sky with me before I blast you to pieces.”

     Jake tried an evasive maneuver, but the Blue Wolf headed him off, deliberately missing him again with another burst of machine-gun fire.  Jake knew then the Blue Wolf was simply toying with him.  He eyed the cloud deck above and realized he had only one more card to play.  He dove again, this time at the steepest angle his body could stand.  He hoped the Blue Wolf would follow him all the way down, as close to the ground as he dared.  He craned his head around to the rear, happy to see that his enemy was complying, at least so far.

     In his plane, Dietrich was already becoming bored.  He had no idea why the American was diving so close to the ground, but he would play along.  He cranked his dive klaxon up to full volume for the maximum psychological effect and chased the American down.  At the last second, Jake pulled up, his body absorbing at least 3gs in the process.  Now he knew Lady Luck must climb for her life, into the cloud deck and out the Blue Wolf’s sight.  Jake blasted through the clouds and, in just a few seconds, burst through the brilliantly lit cumulus and climbed toward the sun at the steepest angle his mighty aircraft could achieve.  Lady Luck’s powerful engines strained to their maximum RPMs as she climbed as high as she could.  Then, finally reaching her stall speed, for just a split second, the plane hung motionless and vertical in the sky, beautifully silhouetted against the blazing California sun.  Jake completed the wing-over, kicking the rudder to starboard, and feathering the port engine for a second until Lady Luck rolled over on her port wing and began a furious descent, her engines shrieking at their highest pitch as though she was eager to get back in the fray.  Jake knew his timing would have to be perfect and all he could do is hope that it was.

     Meanwhile Hans Dietrich was slightly disappointed to find that his plane couldn’t keep up with the American on the climb, as his enemy disappeared into the clouds.  But it didn’t matter too much:  He would kill him above the cloud deck.  Dietrich followed Jake into the clouds, completely enveloped in their blinding whiteness for a few seconds.  “Wo bist du, meine Amerikanische welpen?” (Where are you, my American puppy?), he sang out.  When Dietrich finally popped out of the clouds, he was momentarily blinded by the brightness he hadn’t expected.  He didn’t notice the tiny speck against the sun, no bigger than a fly at first, hurtling down on him at 400 mph.  Then his eyes widened as the speck’s size quickly grew.  Too late he realized it was the American!  He tried to barrel roll out of the path of the American’s blistering gunfire, but to no avail as he was hit with a burst of the 20 mm slugs Jake fired.

     The first slug smashed through the hood of the forward engine, and tore away the valve cover, letting the hot fuel leak onto the engine manifold, where it burst into flames immediately.  The second slug hit Dietrich in the left shoulder, shattering the bones of his arm and neck and rendering his arm useless and dangling.  The third slug caught him in the bottom half of his face, snapping his skull back, and ripping off his jaw and tongue.  Blood gushed from his neck in a torrent, spurting over the inside of the canopy as Dietrich futilely clutched his throat in a vain attempt to regain an airway, his bright red blood in the sunlight soaking his flying suit and pooling up on the floor of the aircraft.  “So,” he thought as black smoke began to erupt all around him, the flames licking through the instrument panel; “So,” he began again, as his right hand, slippery with his blood grappled to find the controls through his blurring vision and mounting unimaginable pain.  “So,” he thought finally, “this is what it’s like to be shot down...”

     Jake banked hard immediately after passing no more than 15 feet over the Blue Wolf’s plane on his descent from the wing-over.  He caught up to the Blue Wolf as the propeller of the plane’s forward engine stopped turning, and the enemy aircraft began to lose airspeed.  In the dazzling sunlight, Jake saw that blood covered the glass of the entire cockpit canopy, and he knew the Blue Wolf would not be ejecting from his aircraft.  Just then the slowing airplane rolled over onto its side and, like a broken angel seeking a soft pillow, began to sink slowly into the coruscating cumulus clouds below it, the blue wolf insignia on the fuselage flashing its malevolent grin one last time.  As the black plane disappeared languorously below him, Jake saw the port wing’s red light winking out in the misty cloud deck.