JOHNNY ACTS BOLDLY Off to the right and flying high, two government planes circled slowly over the boundary line.

Long before the Thunder Bird had put the map of Mexico behind her the two planes veered that way, their fishlike fuselages and the finned rudders gleaming like silver in the moonlight.
Cliff, happening to glance that way, moved uneasily in his seat and cursed the moon he had so lately blessed.
"Better duck down somewhere; can't you dodge 'em ?" he yelled back at Johnny, who was himself eyeing perturbedly the two swift scouts.
"You let me handle this.

It's what I'm paid for," he yelled back, and banked the Thunder Bird sharply to the left.

He had not yet crossed the border; until he did so those scouting machines dare not do more than keep him in view.

But keeping him in view was absurdly simple in that cloudless sky, white-lighted by the moon.
To a person looking up from the earth, the situation would have appeared to be simple--a matter of three planes zooming homeward after a long practice flight.