The Hunters (10 page)

A fight seemed to have started already. They could hear the loud, excited transmissions of one flight among the MIGs. They were late, Cleve thought angrily. He pushed the nose of his ship down slightly, lowering the rate of climb and increasing the forward speed. He wanted to get to the Yalu as soon as possible.

At thirty-four thousand feet they began to leave smooth, persistent trails in the air. Cleve stopped climbing and dropped down several thousand feet to remain below the contrail level where they would be less visible. The river seemed deserted when they reached it. They could not locate the fight. Cleve asked several times where it was, but was unable to get any clear answer over the radio jammed with voices. He heard the ground control radar
calling out train number four. There were many MIGs in the air, he knew, somewhere.

“Bandit train number five leaving Antung.” In the tunneled voice of a stationmaster another one was announced. “Train number five leaving Antung, heading three five zero.”

“Drop tanks,” Cleve ordered.

He felt a buoyancy that was both fear and expectation. From here on, he was working against time to find them. He headed up the river, passing occasional elements, all friendly. He scanned the wide sky meticulously, high and low. There was a speck of dirt on the plexiglass canopy that looked like a distant airplane every time his eye passed over it. Despite himself, it tricked him again and again. Aside from that, there was nothing. As he turned to go down toward the mouth of the river he saw four ships chasing two MIGs far below, flashes of silver against the snowy ground. The radio was cluttered increasingly with cries of battle.

“Bandit train number six leaving Antung.”

It seemed impossible to be traveling through so big a fight without finding anything. A desperate sensation of futility seized him. He was certain he was heading in the wrong direction, but he had turned less than a minute before. He could not cover ground fast enough. He felt as if he were merely hanging in air.

Someone called out sixteen MIGs heading south.

“Where?” Cleve asked.

No answer.

“Where are the sixteen MIGs?”

“Heading south! Sixteen crossing the river!”

“For Christ's sake, where?”

There was no answer.

Suddenly Pell called out something at three o'clock. Cleve looked. He could not tell what it was at first. Far out, a strange, dreamy rain was falling, silver and wavering. It was a group of drop tanks, tumbling down from above, the fuel and vapor streaming from them. Cleve counted them at a glance. There were a dozen or more, going down like thin cries fading in silence. That many tanks meant MIGs. He searched the sky above, but saw nothing. They were somewhere in that deep blue, though; they had to be. At great distances planes could appear and vanish before the eye as they turned or rolled out, depending upon the surface they presented, but these must be close. He had to see them. Segment by segment he checked and discarded the sky above. Then, from nowhere, there were two MIGs sailing past, headed the other way.

“There's two on the left!” Cleve called. “Let's go.”

He turned—a delicate, speed-killing proposition at altitude—and fell in far behind them. It was another chase, long and useless, but they were going south. Sooner or later the MIGs would have to turn back. Cleve took a chance on that. He would never catch them otherwise, in the extended straightaway.

He looked back to check Hunter. DeLeo and Pell were not following. DeLeo called that he was breaking off to go down after some others. Cleve could not see them. He looked forward again. A moment later the MIGs he was trailing started a wide, climbing turn. It was sooner than he had hoped for. He cut to the inside, gaining on them.

“You're clear! You're clear!” he heard Hunter calling.

They continued to turn. He drew nearer. It all seemed childishly simple. He wondered if they had seen him yet. He was almost in range, closing on the second MIG steadily. He ducked his
head to see the gunsight reflection on the armor glass. The MIG was growing bigger and bigger in the bright reticle.

“Keep me cleared.”

“You're all right.”

Before he could fire, the MIG banked steeply and tightened the turn. He's seen us, Cleve thought. The limber sight computed itself off the glass screen as Cleve turned hard after him. The MIG began to climb. The sight swam back into view. Everything seemed to be going at a sleepy pace. They were not moving. They were all completely motionless in a glacier of space. The leader had disappeared. There was just this one. He fired a brief burst. The tracers lined out and fell short, like a bad cast. He pulled the pipper forward a little as the MIG turned, still climbing. He squeezed off another burst. It fell around the wing. He could see a few flashes there and the minute debris of glancing hits. He managed to move the pipper forward again, leading more.

“There's one coming in on us,” Hunter shouted. “We'll have to break.”

“OK,” Cleve said, “tell me when.”

“It's two of them.”

With just a few grains of time he could do it. He had no thoughts but those that traveled out on a line of sight to the plane ahead of him. He needed only seconds. He fought the impulse to look behind. The pipper refused to stay in the right place. He kept calmly adjusting, holding his fire. It was like standing on the tracks with his back to an express already making the earth tremble. He fired again. A solid burst in the fuselage. The silver lit up in great flashes of white. He was playing a machine in a penny arcade. Suddenly he saw something fly off the MIG. It was the
canopy, tumbling away. A second later the compact bundle of a man shot out.

“Did you see that, Billy?” he shouted.

“Break left!”

Cleve turned hard, straining to look back. Two MIGs, firing, sat close behind. Their noses were alight. He was turning as hard as he could, not gaining, not yet feeling himself hit, thinking no, no, when at the last moment they were gone, climbing away, in the direction of the river.

Cleve saw nothing more of the fight. He headed north for a while, but it had all ended. There was only the meager conversation of flights withdrawing from the area. It was over. The fight had dissipated. The MIGs were gone.

Cleve had never felt so fine as when finally they headed back through the quiet sky. This was the real joy of it all. He understood at last. He looked across at Hunter. His ship, far out, was like a silver, predaceous minnow with an abrupt, featherish tail. It seemed to be fixed against the azure blue of altitude. At that moment, Cleve could not remember ever having doubted that he would know this heady, sweet surfeit. Instead, it was just as he had always felt it would be. He knew then that he would never lose.

He was unprepared for what happened soon after they had landed. He thought he heard a crew chief say it, and then they told him as they walked to debriefing: Pell had gotten one, too. Cleve saw DeLeo waiting for him outside the sandbagged operations building. He appeared angry, tight with fury.

“What happened, Bert?” Cleve asked.

“Haven't you heard?”

“They tell me that Pell got a MIG.”

“That's right. The son of a bitch went off alone and got one.”

“Alone? By himself?”

“Sure, by himself,” DeLeo said.

“He didn't say anything to you?”

“Not about leaving me. I was going after a flight of four of them. It was after we left you, later, and he called that he had some more of them out to the side of us. I said OK, and the first thing I knew he was gone, and I had two right in back of me that I damned near never got away from.”

Pell came up, his face circumspect, but subduing a grin.

“How'd it go?” he said to Cleve casually. “I understand you got a MIG.”

“That's right. I hear you got one, too.”

“I did,” Pell said happily. “I guess I was pretty lucky. I got hits all over him, though.”

“Where did you get the idea that you could take off alone in the middle of a fight?”

Pell's expression was innocent.

“I didn't know I was alone,” he protested, “until I was just about to start firing on this MIG, and then it was too late to do anything else. I lined up behind him . . .”

“What do you mean you didn't know you were alone?” Cleve interrupted. “What made you think you could go off and leave your leader?”

“He said it was OK. I asked him.”

“Listen, you son of a bitch,” DeLeo began, “you never asked me a thing.”

“Yes, I did. I called out two MIGs to the right of us, and you said it was OK to go after them. I thought you were with me all the time.”

“I didn't tell you to go after anything,” DeLeo said flatly.

“I thought you did. Well, that's probably what caused us to become separated.”

“I don't care what caused what, Pell. You never said a word to me, and even if you did, I didn't tell you anything about going after them. When you're flying wing, your job is to cover me, and you stay there and do that no matter what you see or think. You almost got me killed today.”

Pell did not reply.

Cleve was tempted to let it go as a misunderstanding. Things like that could happen easily enough in the excitement of fighting, he reasoned. Meanwhile, it seemed as if a dozen people were crowding around him, offering handshakes and asking how he had done it. He found it difficult to sustain any displeasure. He was swept along in a flurry of rejoicing. There were two MIGs in his flight.

“Cleve,” Imil said, punching him on the flat of the shoulder, “I knew you'd do it. It took a while, but I knew you would.”

“He bailed out,” Cleve grinned. “I could have kissed him.”

“You should have given him a squirt.”

“Oh, no. That one's my friend. He may be back tomorrow with another MIG for me.”

Imil laughed.

“It's only the beginning,” he said. “You're on the way now. I hear a wingman in your flight got one, too.”

“That's right.”

“Who was it?”

“Pell. He's a second lieutenant.”

“Pell, eh? They tell me it was only his seventh mission at that. Well, that's good work.”

Everybody was saying nice going. Nolan came by, and Desmond. The debriefing was continually interrupted. A sergeant was standing by to take pictures for press releases. Cleve felt the full warmth of exhilaration devouring him. So this was what it was like to win. Already he could no longer recall the hunger and despair of days past.

DeLeo stood in the background silently. Cleve took the opportunity to talk to him as soon as he could. He wanted to smooth it over.

“It won't happen again,” he said.

“He's going to get shot down,” DeLeo swore. “They'll get him up there alone and murder him. He's a smart one, but I don't care how smart he thinks he is or how good he thinks he is. If he's alone, he can't cover himself, and they'll get him. I don't give a damn if they do. He's asking for it. He'll never leave me again, though. I won't fly with him.”

“He's all right,” Cleve argued, feeling the words awkward in his mouth. “It was probably a misunderstanding, that's all. Give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“It was no misunderstanding.”

“It might have been. Those things happen.”

“Who do you believe anyway?” DeLeo asked. “Me or him? It has to be one of us.”

“It's not a question of that.”

“It's not, eh?”

“I'm just trying to bring out that it could have been an honest mistake.”

“Honest?” DeLeo said. “He knew what he was doing.”

“We'll see.”

They stood there for a while close to one of the flat, interior
walls of the quonset, not talking. Pilots still thronged about the map-covered tables, explaining what they had done and seen, and the room was filled with voices. Cleve caught sight of Colonel Imil talking to Pell near the doorway. The colonel seemed happy. Pell must have been elated, too, but his expression was composed, a smile both modest and assured.

Hunter came by. He was brimming with words and excitement.

“You should have seen it,” he told DeLeo. “MIGs in front. MIGs in back. It was a circus.”

He turned to Cleve. “I still don't know how we got away with it,” he said.

“You played it just right, Billy.”

“Oh, no,” Hunter cried. “You were the cool one in there. I was scared. I admit it. I was keeping my eye on the ones behind, though. I was trying to judge it just right. You know, the last second, like you said.”

“You were perfect. I mean it.”

“It worked out, didn't it? Just right. We'll get them again, too.”

“You bet we will, Billy.” Cleve was grinning.

For a time, everything was good. He was light, almost frivolous with satisfaction. He walked against the bitter wind, along roads frozen into stone, with a feeling that all of it was his dominion, bleak but his own. His name had some meaning. Moving among the others or alone, he was again and again conscious of victory. He had found himself. It was easy to laugh and nothing to smile. He hardly felt it wearing thin until suddenly it had happened, like an awakening after a night of love.

It was five days later that he sat listening to a mission in combat operations. Colonel Moncavage was leading it. Half an hour before, it had taken off in a dawn as calm as a sea of glass. Four of his flight were on it: DeLeo leading, Pettibone, Daughters number three, and Pell. The weather briefing beforehand had indicated it would be nothing more than a milk run. North Korea was heavily clouded over. In addition, they were flying to provide escort for a photo-reconnaissance ship, and those missions seldom developed into anything. Cleve stared through the window at the sky. He could see only small portions of it through the stratus decks. It was a dull, chilly morning, streaked with a grittiness that made all conversation seem stilted. His mind wandered to the thousand other places that life could have taken him to instead of this one.