James Salter - Cassada

He sits there trying to think. He has hold of the forked ejection grip and is beginning to squeeze when there’s another hesitation, mortal, abrupt. A surge as the engine catches again. The last of the fuel. He forces his head back against the heavy plate, tenses his legs bringing them close, and before he knows what has happened, with a shock, a hunching jolt, his fist holding the two leaves tight together, he is gone, through the darkness, into the black air.

The rain is falling steadily now. “Zero six four, White,” the controller is saying. “You’re five and a half miles out.”

Harlan and Godchaux are crowded into the doorway. The runway lights are bright in the darkness.

“Zero six four,” the controller repeats.

“Here, load this again.” Dunning hands Godchaux the flare gun.

From the cardboard box of cartridges Godchaux takes several and tries to read the printing on their base.

“A green one,” Dunning says.

“Yes, sir.”

Harlan lights a match and holds it so they can see.

“Your final cockpit check should be complete. Your gear should be down and locked. Zero six four,” the controller says.

The fire trucks are parked together halfway down, their red lights flashing and swinging around.

“Stand there, Billy. Fire it when he’s close enough,” Dunning orders.

Godchaux is searching for a second green shell.

Bail out, Dunning should be ordering but can’t bring himself to say it. Perhaps Cadin will. If just one of them gets down. Isbell’s they can probably get away with. Materiel failure, the radio. The board will buy that.

“Zero six four is your heading, bringing you in nicely towards the center line. Glide path coming up in ten seconds. Zero six four.”

Ten seconds. His last call was two hundred pounds, Dunning thinks. He’s down to fifty by now, waiting for it to flame out, to drop from under him. He should be bailing out. Why wasn’t he told to, they’ll want to know? Because we thought he could make it, is all Dunning can think. After he missed three attempts? There must be an answer to that.

“Left three degrees to zero six one.”

Dunning appears calm.

“Begin your rate of descent.”

Supervisory error, they will say. No, he wasn’t told to bail out. I felt he had a good chance.

“Zero six one has you lined up tracking the right side of the runway. Zero six one.”

They are all peering outside into the slanting rain.

“Dropping slightly low on the glide path, White,” the controller announces. “Ten feet. Twenty feet.”

“Get ready, Billy.”

“Right.” Godchaux goes down a couple of steps.

“Coming back now, correcting nicely. Ten feet low. Back on glide path again. Left to zero six zero.”

If he lands, when he climbs down from the cockpit his legs will be shaking like leaves, his face will be white. If he lands he will be unable to speak.

The telephone rings. Harlan picks it up.

“Dropping slightly low, White.”

“It’s for you, Major.”

“Ten, twenty feet low.”

“Tell them to hold on.”

“You’re dropping forty feet low, White.”

Dunning’s heart skips.

“Get ready, Billy. He may break out any second.”

“Seventy-five.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“He’d better bail out. Tell him to bail out,” Cadin says.

“Bail out, White!” Dunning calls.

“A hundred feet. You’re dangerously low. You’re dropping into our ground clutter, White. Pull it up!”

“Bail out, White! Bail out, do you hear me?”

There is silence.

“Fortify White,” the controller says, “execute a missed approach. Climb straight ahead to twenty-five hundred feet.”

There is no answer.

“Fortify White, acknowledge, please.”

“Pull it up, White, and get out!”

“Fortify White,” the controller calls, “Fortify White.”

“White from mobile! Pull up and eject. Do you read?”

There’s a long pause. It’s quiet. The silence is now rising like water, deep, deeper.

“Did you hear anything?” Dunning asks Godchaux.

Godchaux shakes his head and comes inside, the flare gun dangling from his hand. The controller continues to talk, the same things over and over, like a telephone ringing somewhere. Everything else is still, the air, the lights, the nearly silent rain. Harlan holds out the telephone receiver. Dunning takes it.

“Major Dunning,” he says.

No one is there. There are voices in the background.

“Hello! Major Dunning here!”

Someone picks up the phone and says, “Stand by for a second, please.” It must be the tower.

The fire trucks are backing up and turning around, heading away from the runway. Dunning hangs up the phone.

“Let’s go,” Cadin says. “We’ll take my car.”

At the bottom of the steps his foot slips on the wet grass and he goes down on one knee, stands again and makes it to the car.

Godchaux and Harlan follow in the Volksbus, bouncing over the turf. They turn onto the taxiway and head for the squadron gate. The window of Dunning’s office is still open and the lights on as they pass. Below, on the road past the airmen’s barracks, the fire trucks, alarmingly lit, are speeding.

The year before, at Landstuhl, they had one where half the base was out searching and they didn’t find the pilot for two days. Of course, that was in thick fog, you couldn’t see ten feet.

Both of them, Dunning thinks as they drive. Jesus Christ. They slow down at the gate. The guard steps out of the shack, bending over to see.

“Emergency. Plane crash,” Cadin says, rolling down the window.

“Yes, sir.” He waves them through.

On the way, thinking of the one at Landstuhl, “We might have to organize search parties,” Dunning says.

“Let’s see what we’ve got, first,” the colonel says.

About a mile down the road are the fire trucks, blocking it. There’s also an ambulance with headlights on. The rain, now white, floats through the beams shining like bits of tinfoil.

“Which way is it?” Cadin asks a figure standing there. A flashlight is swung and shines in his face. “Turn that goddamn thing off,” he says.

The beam flicks to his shoulder for a second and then goes out.

“Sorry, sir.” It’s one of the firemen. There are voices out in the darkness shouting to one another.

“Have they found the pilot?”

“Sir, I don’t know. It’s straight ahead, about a quarter of a mile. I’ve been here with the truck.”

“Let me borrow your flashlight,” Cadin says, taking it from him. He and Dunning get out and begin to walk, first along the road and then off, in the direction of some handheld lights. The ground is soft and gives underfoot. The rain sweeps down. From time to time, moving in silence, they break into a trot. Godchaux and Harlan come behind.

Ahead is a small pond and beyond it blackness. There are wandering lights and soon the first pieces on the ground.

“Here’s something,” Godchaux calls.

He picks it up. Cadin’s flashlight plays on it. Impossible to say what it is. A metal shard. Perhaps part of a hydraulic cylinder—it has a sticky sheen.

A trail of debris begins. There is ammunition scattered on the ground, some of it linked together, the rest strewn like teeth. Then a large piece, one of the gun bay panels. The drop tanks. Cadin stands, moving the beam back and forth over a large section of wing. Harlan kicks at something, stoops and picks it up gingerly.

“Shine it this way, Colonel.”

The first ominous chord. It’s a shoe. Harlan holds it slightly away from himself and turns it so he can see inside.

“It’s empty.”

He places it alongside his own foot. It’s smaller.