Three days later Jake was again in the cockpit of the boxy Avro. As he revved the crate’s small engine in the dead of night, the flimsy crate of wood and canvas rattled and groaned.
Darkness hung like the Grim Reaper’s hallowed cloak on the trees.
Yet the heat of the day simmered and fumed–sapping the strength from everyone and fraying the nerves of all. At the far end of the landing field he was preparing to take off. Shrouded in blackness it seemed more like a graveyard than a landing field. Some yards off, just barely visible in the night, a row of winged-dinosaurs sat silently staring at them. It was, as the colonel so eloquently said a few minutes earlier, time to pluck Captain Smyth from out of the midst of Philistines. Yet there was a worrisome addition tonight. The Avro’s engine
