James Salter - The Hunters

After the briefing, they dressed in a locker room grim with the light from the early day and a single unfrosted bulb. Desmond always loaded himself with equipment in excess of that which everybody carried in standard seat packs. His pistol he wore at his waist, the holster tied down against his thigh with leather thongs. On the other hip was a heavy hunting knife and a canvas packet of extra ammunition clips. Besides that, he filled his flying-suit pockets with plastic boxes of jellied candy, cigarettes, and hand warmers, wrapping friction tape on the outside of the pockets to hold them firmly Everything had to be secured or it would be lost upon bailing out, ripping right through cloth at the shock of the parachute opening.

There was some erratic humor. Robey, one of the flight leaders, read an imaginary telegram he had received from Big Stan Stalenkowicz—“You all remember him as tackle on last year’s team.” Stan was going to be at the game today, and he wanted they should get out there and really fight. In reply, there were some pledges to win this one for Big Stan.

Robey was credited with four victories. He was the leading man in the squadron, and he did not look the part at all. He had a small, pale mustache, which seemed to have been pasted as an afterthought onto the face as bland as a piece of fruit. His complexion was bad. The one thing that distinguished him was the self-assurance of an heir. One more aircraft destroyed, and he would have his title. Because of this, he was treated with deference. In return, he was patronizing. He moved among them as if they were, even unknowingly, his flock.

“Going to open up a hardware store, Des?”

“Very funny.”

Cleve dressed himself slowly to reduce the time he would have to spend standing around and taking little part in the talk. He was not fully at ease. It was still like being a guest at a family reunion, with all the unfamiliar references. He felt relieved when finally they rode out to their ships.

Then it was intoxicating. The smooth takeoff, and the free feeling of having the world drop away. Soon after leaving the ground, they were crossing patches of stratus that lay in the valleys as heavy and white as glaciers. North for the fifth time. It was still all adventure, as exciting as love, as frightening. Cleve rejoiced in it.

They climbed higher and higher, along the coast. It became difficult to distinguish earth from water where they met. The frozen river mouths blended into white land areas. The rice paddies south of Pyongyang looked like cracked icing on pale French pastry. He saw the knotted string of smoke go back as Desmond test-fired his guns. He checked his own. The sound of them was reassuring.

They climbed into the contrail level. Long, solid wakes of white began flowing behind them. Formations left multiple ribbons of this, streaming sky pennants. Frost formed on the rear of Cleve’s canopy. He was chilly, but not uncomfortable. They were north, and he was busy, looking hard, clearing himself, Desmond, and the two other ships in his flight. The sky seemed calm but hostile, like an empty arena. There was little talking.

In half an hour they had reached the Yalu, an unreal boundary winding far below. The sun was higher now. The sky was absolutely clear. His sunglasses made it a deeper blue, like deep ocean. He could see a hundred miles into a China that ended only with a vast horizon, beyond the lives of ten million rooted people. At forty thousand feet they patrolled north and south, turning each time in great, shallow sweeps.

They had been doing this for about ten minutes when somebody called out contrails north of the river. Cleve looked. He could not see them. Then he heard,

“They’re MIGs.”

He heard Desmond: “All right, drop them.”

He dropped his tanks. They tumbled away. He looked north. Still he saw nothing. He was leaning forward in his seat, intently. He stared across the sky with care, inch by inch.

“How many of them are there?” somebody asked.

“They’re MIGs!”

“How many?”

“Many, many.”

He looked frantically. He knew they must be there. He began to suffer moments of complete unreality. He felt he was staring holes in the sky.

“Where are they crossing?” somebody called.

“Just east of Antung.”

Then at last he saw them, more than he could count. It seemed unbelievable that he had been unable to locate them only seconds before. He could not make out the airplanes, but the contrails were nosing south unevenly, like a great school of fish. They were coming across the river. They were going to fight.

Soon they were near enough to distinguish: flight after flight of from four to six ships, the flights in a long, tenuous stream, all above them, at forty-five thousand, he guessed. The van of this column was approaching fast. Suddenly, he understood why these formations were called trains. He expected the fight of his life momentarily.

“Let’s take it around to the right,” he heard Desmond say.

They started a turn toward a position beneath the MIGs, with unbelievable lassitude it seemed, and began traveling south with them. Cleve felt very alone in the cockpit. He was acutely aware then of being far into enemy territory. He squirmed in his seat. His mouth and throat were dry. It burned to inhale. Still they went south, the MIGs staying above. It was like watching a fuse burn.

At that altitude they could not climb the five thousand feet up to the MIGs without losing speed and falling behind or else leaving themselves almost motionless in the air to be attacked, so they continued underneath and a little to one side, watching the ships and contrails floating high above like the surface after a deep dive. Cleve was shocked by the number of them. He could count more than fifty. At that moment he had only one friendly flight besides his own in sight. There were sixteen friendly ships altogether, four flights.

Suddenly, the radio exploded with voices. The fight had started somewhere. He felt his nerves twitching. Then there were four of them, Desmond called them out, turning down for a pass. They did not come all the way, however. They swept overhead, going at an angle. Cleve saw them closely for the first time. He watched the nearest one sail across, silver and abrupt, with speed fences on the wings, as soundless as a great fish. Then they were gone.

Two others started down in a high side pass. They turned into them, and the MIGs pulled up and continued on. It was all sparring. Desmond was cautious. He kept them out of trouble, but constantly turning so that there was little chance for him to make a pass himself. He flew like a boxer who keeps moving away, waiting for an opening.

Even though Cleve could see the MIGs easily now with the contrails marking them plainly at great distances, he still had a pressing sensation that they might be coming in from all sides, unseen. He sweated, twisting in the cockpit, straining to look everywhere. They turned indecisively among the MIGs for about ten minutes. Once he saw one firing at him from a long way off. The cannon shot firm, heavy tracers that arced through the air like Roman candles.

Finally, he and Desmond were chasing four of them north, unable to close; and when they broke off, it was all over. The MIGs were gone, vanished, as characteristically as they had appeared. The sky was empty except for the fading traces of contrails, left like ski tracks in blowing snow.

They turned toward home. Cleve felt tired. As he listened to the talk of the withdrawal over the radio on the way back, he realized that he could not remember having heard anybody except Desmond after they were once in it, he had been so absorbed.

“It looks like they came up early in the morning for a change,” Desmond said when they had landed and were waiting for the truck to throw their equipment on and ride back to operations, “but it wasn’t much of a fight.”