James Salter - The Hunters

“There go your boys, Monk,” Imil cried, sweeping a hand in their direction. He upset his glass. The drink spilled out over the bar. He ignored it. “Gives you the feeling, doesn’t it?”

Moncavage agreed.

“Always does when you don’t have to go,” Imil said. He knocked the overturned glass to the floor with an abrupt movement. It bounced to the wall but did not break. Moncavage reached behind and got another one out.

The noise of engines finally receded. Pell was leaning on both elbows. He stirred himself to wave a hand meaninglessly

“The way it is,” he said indistinctly.

“What?”

“You know,” Pell said. “I thought of something.”

“What is it?”

“His receiver could have been out,” Pell said. “Right?”

“Ah, forget that. It’s finished with.”

“Is it? Really?”

“You did the best you could,” Imil said. “It was one of those things, that’s all.”

“I did call him.”

“Look. You got two MIGs, didn’t you?”

Pell pulled at an imaginary trigger. He made a sound with his tongue like guns firing.

“Hosed ’em,” he said. “That’s the important part, isn’t it? What’s so hard to believe?”

There was a silence.

“He should’ve been looking around,” Pell said. “He’d have seen ‘em if he was. You’d have seen ’em, Colonel.”

“Forget it, Pell.”

“I don’t know what they told you,” Pell said slowly. He was very serious. “But this is a fact. Just want to get this one thing straight. I called him.”

Imil picked up the bottle and dumped another drink out for the three of them. He paused. Then he began evenly.

“Listen,” he said, “you’ve got five kills.”

“Right,” Pell cried fiercely.

“That’s a real distinction.”

“I know.”

“People’ll remember that as long as you live. They’ll point you out. Understand?”

“Damned right.”

“Well, don’t forget it, Pell. Remember what you are.”

“You and me, Colonel.”

Imil drew an audible breath.

“That’s right, isn’t it?” Pell asked.

“Yeah.”

“Couple aces,” Pell laughed.

The colonel stared at him, but Pell didn’t seem to notice. “You know you’ll be going to Tokyo this afternoon,” Imil explained in a different tone.

“Roge.”

“Shaking hands with all the generals. You understand.”

“Shake hell out of ’em.”

“You stay there three or four days, anyway,” Imil ordered. “Get everything off your mind, you know?”

“Sure.”

“Come back when you feel like it.”

“Don’t worry,” Pell said.

There was not much talking then, until the glasses were empty; and after Pell had gotten to his feet and made his way to the door, none. Imil watched him leave. He looked briefly at Moncavage and then turned further to stare out the window through which they had seen the ships taking off.

“Well, what are you going to do?” Moncavage asked at last. He was inwardly pleased at the whole affair.

“You’re the group commander. What are your ideas?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

“Do you still believe him?”

“I don’t know,” Imil hedged. “It’s the same as what I told him, though. He’s an ace. We might as well be proud of it.”

Pell left for Tokyo that afternoon to be interviewed by the press and Headquarters people. Hunter and Pettibone went with him. The colonel had granted them permission to take leave and go, too. Pell had requested it, and though it was an unusual thing to ask for, it had been arranged so promptly that the three of them were aboard an airplane for Japan long before the customary telegram from General Muehlke arrived. This was delivered to the room at about five o’clock, a yellow sheet of teletype paper beginning: PERSONAL FROM MUEHLKE TO PELL. It continued with congratulations on Pell’s becoming an ace. Cleve saw it when he returned after the last mission of the day, which had been uneventful. He picked it up and read it. The late sunlight was coming through the windows in level, clearly defined rays along which dust as fine as smoke floated. DeLeo, tired, too, from the full day of flying, read it over Cleve’s shoulder. They said nothing to each other. Cleve tossed it back on the bed.

It was very quiet, the part of the day when time was at top dead center, the hours when everybody always seemed to have gone somewhere. He could hear the gentle fluttering of the damper in the stovepipe as the wind moved it. He was tired. His body felt as if it were wrapped uncomfortably in his skin. He took off most of his clothes and lay down on top of the blanket on his cot. Suddenly he was very mortal. The sun coming through the window warmed his face and chest, where the band of it fell upon him. He closed his eyes. They were dry, but slowly the fluid came to soothe them. The sun felt good. It lay like a balm on flesh that was so easily pierced and torn. It smoothed out the perspective of life somehow. His thoughts drifted free.

And his heart ached for Daughters. He could feel, as if it were happening to himself at that moment, the last terrible anguish as the dark, vacant maw of the MIG swung in behind, fat and merciless, pumping out shells, the lashes of tracer sailing past like high voltage or third rails to be touched by. He shrank as Daughters must have to avoid them, straining to look back, turning hard but too late through the heavy fire. Perhaps he had been hit in the cockpit. If that were true, it would not have been too bad. A man was small in the airplane, though. He might not have been hit when his ship was, but have been trapped instead, sitting there fighting the gone controls, the airspeed winding up higher and higher, the green earth rushing fast to meet him. On a warm day, and all alone, it was not easy to die. Death could be slighted or even ignored close by; but when the time came to meet it unexpectedly, no man could find it in himself not to cry silently or aloud for just one more reprieve to keep the world from ending.

His thoughts lingered over his own chances to live. It was not the first time, but he had never been so isolated before, so open to the tortures of imagination. Every contact, from the lieutenants he led to the commanders he followed, had been severed. The reputation he had worn so lightly had vanished into dust, and with it any strength he had drawn from disdaining it. He felt assailed from every side and unable to force his thoughts away from himself. The difficult thing to think about was having to bail out deep in North Korea and being hunted in enemy country. What mattered most in a case like that was the sustained will to live, much different from the instinctive will. He was not sure he had enough of that in him any more to survive, if it happened to him. It was like being a hemophiliac and competing for a boxing championship. He listened to the hordes of sparrows chattering under the eaves. Spring, he thought, and then all of a long summer.

And Casey Jones. He thought of him. He had questioned DeLeo dry and for the first time felt the possession of hard knowledge, the thrill and disappointment of finding an enemy to be human. Alone now, retreating, hating them all, drawing off as if down a long corridor continuous but concealing, away from them and the things they admired, he could almost feel the presence, dark and strong, of his chosen enemy, more than that, his friend. He had never seen him. Imil had, though. DeLeo. It was almost as if he were working closer, along a chain of men. He could not help dreaming of it. Casey Jones, whoever he was, to meet and take him high in the piercing blue of those northern skies, and then to stand up spitefully before them, to earn that gesture, that final voice. He discarded it as narcotic again and again, but it kept returning, one thing of merit, out of anonymity, out of failure. One clean mark for them all to see. To kill a champion. To know once more the breath of excellence, compared to which everything else was dross.