James Salter - The Hunters

“Try shaking it off,” Cleve said.

“It won’t come off.”

“Try again,” he said angrily.

He watched the MIG. The smoke had almost stopped, but he was still drawing closer to it. There was no question about that. He had nearly halved the original distance already.

“I can’t get it off, Black Lead,” Pell complained.

There was only one thing to do.

“Go home, Pell,” he said. “Get out of the area.”

There was no answer. Cleve looked back. He could not see any wingman. Finally he made him out, far behind.

“Did you get that, Black Two?”

“There’s twelve MIGs back here,” Pell said clearly.

“Get out of there, Pell. Head for home.”

“Do you have me in sight, Cleve?”

“Negative. Withdraw, Pell! That’s an order.”

“I can’t. You’d better come back here.”

There was a pause.

“Oh, oh,” Pell said.

Cleve looked at the MIG. He was very close to it, almost close enough to fire. He could not have been more than two thousand feet behind it, and just about level. It was only a matter of a little more time, perhaps twenty seconds or thirty. He began lining up to fire, leaning into the moment of climax.

“…two of them on me,” he heard Pell shout. “Do you have me yet, Lead?”

“Negative.”

“Outmaneuver them, Pell,” somebody interrupted icily. It sounded like DeLeo.

“…can’t turn with this tank on…”

Cleve sat watching the ship grow very slowly in his gunsight. “He’s outturning me!” Pell cried. “Cleve!”

Before he even answered, Cleve began turning back. He had not fired.

“Don’t let them get away, Pell,” he said coldly, “I’m on the way now.”

He looked over his shoulder. He had not completed ninety degrees of turn, but the MIG was already disappearing rapidly, sailing off into the size of a ship he would not see again, shrinking to a speck. When he rolled out, he glanced back once more. It was gone. He searched the sky ahead to find Pell.

“How high are you, Pell?”

He heard no reply.

“Pell, what altitude are you at?”

“Thirty-eight, no, twenty-eight, twenty-seven thousand! I can’t shake him! He’s turning inside me!” It was a clear, chilling voice.

Cleve trimmed the nose down. They were slightly below him. He was at thirty-three.

“Where are you, Pell?” somebody in another flight called.

There was the noise of overlapping transmissions.

“Did you get that?” somebody shouted.

“Negative.”

Just then Cleve saw two ships, or three, off to his left and low, turning with each other. He rolled down toward them, straining to be able to identify them at the earliest moment. They were still too far off, as anonymous as insects.

“What’s your position, Pell?” somebody asked again.

They were MIGs, two MIGs and Pell’s ship. Cleve could see them positively now. He looked high, but he did not notice any others above him. He looked behind himself, on both sides.

“It just came off,” Pell shouted. “I got rid of the tank!”

“Somebody tell me where he is.”

“About ten miles east of Antung,” Cleve said.

“Thanks.”

Suddenly, as he was diving down toward them, Cleve saw the MIG immediately behind Pell snap and begin to spin. The pilot had pulled too hard to stay in the tighter turn. It was common enough with inexperience. Cleve looked for the second MIG. It took him a moment to pick it up again. He could not tell at first, but then he was certain. It was going away. He could not catch it. He started a turn to keep Pell in sight. Did he see it? Pell was shouting. He was turning outside the spinning MIG, ready to close. Cleve watched the MIG spin down from twenty-five thousand feet, leisurely, like a piece of paper. A parachute finally appeared. Even after that, it seemed minutes before, in some wooded hills, the shadow of the MIG grew quickly to meet it. There was a soft explosion. The smoke began to rise, gray and leaning.

“Did you see him hit?” Pell shouted.

“Roger.”

“Who went in?” It was Imil calling. “Are you all right, Pell?”

“Sure. No sweat.”

“Who went in?”

“It was a MIG.”

“Did you get one?”

“Roger,” Pell said.

“Good show.”

Back at Kimpo, at debriefing, the colonel stood with his arm around Pell and his other hand hooked by the thumb in his cartridge belt. At the opposite end of the table, for the short time that he remained, DeLeo was like all the unheard voices of the world. His face was expressionless. He would not say anything. Even under the obligation of that, however, of those who believed in him, Cleve could not bring himself to try to explain. Nothing could possibly have been made different by then, anyway. Pell had credit for the MIG, his third.

They swarmed around him, to be near him because the colonel was, and to hear what had happened. They came to see the magician, to wonder at the sleight of hand and be fascinated by the glibness. Toward the end, in a quiet moment, Pell walked up to Cleve.

“I haven’t had a chance to thank you,” he said.

“Don’t bother.”

“If you hadn’t come back like you did…”

“Forget it, Pell.”

“…I don’t know how I’d have gotten that MIG confirmed, I didn’t have any film of it, naturally. Of course, somebody else might have seen it crash, but you never know.”

Colonel Imil appeared beside Pell.

“Let’s go on up and grab some lunch,” he said. “How about you, Cleve? Want a ride?”

“No, thanks.”

He watched them stroll out together and climb into the jeep. They backed into the road and then lurched away, as the colonel put it into gear.

“What’s eating him?” the colonel asked Pell over the clatter.

“He’s a little hard to get along with.”

“You’re the first one that’s ever said that.”

“It’s not just me. It’s the whole flight, sir, more or less.”

“That’s bad.”

“I don’t think he goes for this combat flying too much, Colonel, if you want to know the real truth.”

“Come on, now,” Imil denied.

Pell shrugged. There was a silence. The jeep rattled through it.

“It’s just too bad you can’t have a flight,” the colonel mused thoughtfully.

Pell did not reply. He preferred to leave that hanging, unadorned, in the air. Later, when he returned to the room, he found Cleve writing a letter. He drew a chair close to the table and sat down. Cleve did not look up.

“Dutch certainly thinks a lot of you,” Pell said.

“Some other time, Pell. I’m busy.”

“He thinks you’ve got the best flight in the group,” Pell continued. “He said that more than once.”

“That’s good.”

“You knew him before this, didn’t you? In Panama.”

“Not as intimately as you do. I used to call him Colonel Imil.”

“Oh, I don’t call him Dutch to his face.”

Cleve went on writing.

“He mentioned that he’d known you for a long time,” Pell said. “He thinks you’re going to get MIGs, too. He has a lot of confidence in you.”

“Where do you get your nerve?”

“I mean it.”

Cleve said nothing.

“I think he’d like to see me leading elements now instead of flying wing,” Pell continued. “He asked about that.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said I thought I would be after I told you about it.”

“Well, go back and tell him you were wrong,” Cleve said, “because you’re in my flight, and you’ll be a wingman until I say otherwise. If you ever lead, it will be when I think you’re able to.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t talk to me like that. Not maybe. Absolutely.”

“Afraid of what I might do if I had the chance?”