The Hunters (16 page)

“This morning.”

“How are things back at Kimpo?”

“Haven't you heard?”

“What?”

“Where have you been all day?” DeLeo asked.

“Bicycling around town.”

“Bicycling. Well, that's living, I suppose. Have a drink.”

Cleve ordered one. The bar girl, her mouth hiding its smile, brought it.

“Thank you. You're a lovely girl, Mary, do you know?”

The smile broke out.

“Well, Bert,” he said, “here's to your children.”

“Whoever they are. Have you really been riding a bicycle all day?”

“Absolutely. Most of the day, anyway.”

“You have, eh? Have you heard the news?”

“No. Is the war over? Nothing would make me happier right now.”

“There was a big fight yesterday afternoon. We lost three ships.”

Cleve's stomach went empty as if under a blow. There had been a big fight, and he had been in Tokyo. He felt like a man washed overboard a thousand miles from shore.

“Who?” he asked.

“Desmond in your squadron for one,” Guthrie said.

“Desmond? How did it happen?”

“He got hit and had to bail out. They saw his chute open.”

“Where was it?”

“Right on the river.”

Up at the Yalu. It seemed a planet away. Desmond was alone up there, on the green bottom of the great sea of air in the most crushing solitude. In one agonizing moment of departure he had fallen from loftiness to doom, to the hostile earth where he became trembling prey.

“Did they get any MIGs?” Cleve asked.

“Eight.”

It was even worse than he had thought. He felt his mouth weaken.

“There must have been a lot of them up,” he said.

“More than I've ever seen, but that's not all.”

“Christ, what more? Pell make ace?”

“No, nothing like that,” Guthrie said.

“What?”

“Casey Jones is back.”

Cleve could suddenly hear his own heart and beyond it a faded Guthrie talking about markings, the black stripes. The words were indistinct. He was back. He had come back, like a lost planet, a dark star, changing the whole firmament. There was nothing
but that, like a cry of plague. Cleve stared at his watch. Guthrie was still talking.

“I'm going up to pack.”

“Pack?” DeLeo said.

“There's a plane we can go back on tonight.”

“We've got two days left,” DeLeo protested.

“And we'll be there in the morning.”

“For Christ's sake,” DeLeo complained, “what's the hurry? Use your head. We won't get another leave for months. I've got a regular volcano lined up at the Bacchus tonight.”

“Guthrie can take care of her.”

“The hell he can.”

“I don't care,” Cleve said. “Stay if you want to. I'm going back.”

“Goddamn it,” DeLeo began, but he was already alone. He finished his drink in a swallow and followed.

“Get one for me,” he heard Guthrie call from the bar.

There was no way to telephone her. In his room, Cleve sat down and hurriedly wrote a note.

. . .
I'd hoped to see you tomorrow, but I've
just
learned that I must go back to my squadron tonight. The war.

As they left the hotel, he gave the addressed envelope to a cab driver to deliver.

Riding out to the airfield, he watched the lights of the city grow thinner as they passed to its shallows and beyond. It seemed, somehow, that the leave had vanished in a few crowded hours.

They landed at Seoul at 5:30 in the morning. It was chilly, with mist lying gray in the land hollows. The wind blew fitfully and shifted a fine dust across the ground. The flight had been miserable. Imprisoned in the cold, sepulchral cabin of the transport, they had sat for almost five hours listening to the clamor of the engines and the chorus of shrill rattles that continually traveled the whole length of the ship in resonant phases. A pale dawn had at last appeared outside the windows and ended their sleeplessness, although it was some time before the strewn, crowded interior became light. There was the hush of early day over the countryside when they drove on to Kimpo, shivering a little and feeling a metallic emptiness in their bellies.

In the mess, everything seemed the same. There were a few tables of sleepy men, up for the early mission, eating breakfast in a silence broken only by the ring of utensils. Cleve had two pancakes, as thick as his thumb, with butter and thin tart syrup, and drank three cups of the canned orange juice, cold and tongue-puckering. He asked around about the day's missions. There were four scheduled. The second one was to brief at 1015. They walked down the road to the barracks. It was still before seven. Everyone in the room was asleep. He lay on his cot for a
long while before he was able to summon up his weariness to possess him.

The sound of ships returning from a mission awakened him. He listened in semi-awareness to them passing overhead and then looked at his watch. 0915. He sat up, his face near the window. Some more were coming. Their sound preceded them slightly. He saw them go by, moving like thrown spears, two of them, without tanks. After a minute came two more. He left the window and stood up, feeling drugged. The water on his face, as he shaved, revived him somewhat. He noticed DeLeo beginning to stir. It was soon 0930. In a few minutes they would have to start down for the briefing. While he was waiting for DeLeo to get dressed, Daughters came in.

“I wanted to make sure you were up. I thought you might want to go on this next one,” he explained.

“Have the names been posted yet?”

“Nolan's waiting for you to give him ours.”

“Nolan. Is he taking Desmond's place?” He tried to sound matter-of-fact.

“I guess so,” Daughters said.

“I see.” He did not, though. There was an unwanted silence.

“We didn't expect you back so soon,” Daughters said. “Was Tokyo closed?”

“We were having too good a time,” DeLeo muttered.

“We had a bad one here. I suppose you heard.”

“We heard all right,” DeLeo said. “Has there been any word on Desmond?”

“No, nothing.”

As they waited outside for a ride, Cleve noticed three small locust trees between the barracks that were turning green. They
stood huddled together on an embankment like three lost children. Suddenly he realized that it was relatively mild out. The winter had gone at last. The air was alive. It felt good to breathe it. Walking into combat operations, he saw that a fringe of palest grass was growing in the seams of the rotted sandbag barricades.

Pell was waiting for them inside.

“Hey, welcome home,” he said. “Thought you were safe in Tokyo.”

“Don't be wise.”

“You sound mean, Captain. Well, you might see some action today.”

“What happened on the last mission?”

“They sighted a lot of MIGs, that's all,” Pell replied. “No fight.”

They went in to the briefing room and sat down. In the row behind him, Cleve heard someone talking about the black-striped MIG.

“Diagonal. Five diagonal markings.”

“Five? How do you know it's five?”

“Ask anybody. Ask Intelligence if you don't believe me.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Yes, I've seen him.”

“You and the colonel, eh?”

“It was from a distance, but I tell you I saw him.”

The word had spread through the group like a stain. Everybody was looking for Casey Jones, secretly, guarding their motives. Whether they sought to fight or avoid him, they were full of restless expectation. He was being seen everywhere, sometimes simultaneously.

The briefing began. Cleve listened mechanically. Only the weather seemed to make an impression on him. It was forecast
to be fair all through the area with visibility unrestricted. The sun would be high during the period they were north. The weather officer gave its azimuth and elevation in degrees. Cleve felt like a patient listening to a description of an operation he was going to undergo.

Imil stepped onto the stage.

“They'll be up this time,” he said, “so watch out. Don't take any chances, especially with that striped one. He may look alone, but he never is, and if you want to get back, keep your eyes open. Look high. That's where the ones you don't see until it's too late come from. That's it. Remember you're fighter pilots. Let's fight!”

After the briefing, Cleve lay down on one of the benches in the locker room and tried to sleep a little. There was more than an hour before start-engines time, and he was still tired. It was difficult to even doze, however. The hard bench denied any comfortable position. Sluggish flies buzzed about and found any bare skin. He was constantly brushing them off his hands, face, and ankles. He spent half an hour that way, dropping off to sleep sometimes but never relaxing. At the end he felt irritable and less rested.

He stood up and started to dress slowly. The room was filling up. There was talking and slamming of locker doors. Pell was assuring Hunter that the MIGs would be up this time, too.

“We'll catch them crossing at the reservoir,” he said. “That's where they've been coming over.”

He turned to Cleve.

“We ought to stay close to the reservoir,” he advised, “and high.”

“I'll decide where we go.”

“Only trying to help you out,” Pell smiled.

“When I need help, I'll ask for it.”

Pell shrugged.

“If you don't want to be where the MIGs are . . .” he began.

“We'll be where they are.”

“We'd better stay close to the reservoir, then.”

“Oh, shut up, Pell,” DeLeo said. “You don't know as much about it as you think.”

“How many MIGs have you got?” Pell asked.

DeLeo reddened. “Don't brag on your luck,” he said angrily. “Luck? There's no luck involved.”

“Don't talk so much, Pell,” Cleve interrupted.

“Say, what's going on here anyway? What's the problem?”

“You're boring everybody.”

“Too bad. We'll see who gets the MIGs, eh?”

The room had grown quiet. Everybody was listening. It was a moment Cleve and even all of them had been expecting.

“That's right, Pell,” he said. “We'll see.”

He turned and continued putting on his equipment. It seemed unusually heavy and restrictive. The dinghy felt like a loaded suitcase. He picked it up, then his parachute, and walked out toward his ship. His feet scuffed at the ground. He inspected his airplane. As he moved around it, he looked up several times at the sky. The first fair-weather cumulus was there, like spring flowers showing in the fields. He felt as if under the influence of a strong stimulant. He wanted to move his hands, to let his body take the tempo, absorb the energy that was inside him. Even after he had climbed into the cockpit and strapped himself down, he sat uncomfortably, thinking of what had been said, honing himself. His fingers ran blindly over the switches. His feet tapped the rudder pedals.

On takeoff, he noticed for the first time that the rice paddies surrounding Kimpo were turning green. He watched the ground flowing beneath him. There was one small farm that had three tall poplars in front of the house, giving it shade. They swept across it. Now, in motion, he felt somewhat better. They picked up speed and began to climb. He was aware of an elusive, mystic sensation supporting the physical as they went up.

It was a beautiful day. The coarse, brown peninsula looked peaceful. The snow had vanished from the mountains, and the rivers were free of ice. The sea was like an immense piece of jade through his sunglasses. Along the many crestlines were veins that gleamed like silver when the sun hit them. Thick green crowns were beginning to appear, and even the clay and sand seemed brighter. Low, scattered puffs of clouds looked like foam flecks on an even surf.

Just past Sinanju, there was a call: dust was rising from the runway at Antung. A rush of uneasiness came over him. His forearms and shoulders felt loose. There was a high, inaudible tone in the air, the thin skewer of fear. Every sensation was as if it had never happened to him before. The sky seemed plagued with invisible dangers.

As he reached the Yalu near Antung, he heard a flight dropping tanks for six ships passing above them at thirty-six thousand feet. They were all heading down the river. He looked up toward the reservoir, but saw nothing. He started a turn in that direction.

“Two o'clock high, Black,” DeLeo called.

He had spotted them at the same instant, four of them out to the south at a higher altitude. He turned toward them to put them at twelve o'clock. They were headed in his direction. He could not
identify them yet. He watched them intensely, as the slow seconds brought them together.

“They're MIGs,” he heard Pell say.

Suddenly they were close, and there was no longer any doubt. Cleve felt an awesome disbelief as they passed above him, and he saw the detached-looking tails, like those on the celluloid birds that twirled at circuses.

“Drop tanks,” he said.

The empty containers fell away, leaving his ship light and fast. It was like kicking off a pair of shoes in the water. The turn to follow the MIGs as they passed had put DeLeo and Hunter closer to them than Cleve, but still not close enough it appeared. There would be a long, useless chase. Just as Cleve was assessing it, he suddenly saw two more MIGs off to his right that would be crossing overhead in a moment as evenly as if it were all happening at an intersection. He called them out and began turning immediately to come out parallel to or behind them. Too high, he thought quickly. They were just a little too high.