Cassada (8 page)

“Where are they?” he asked.

“They're on the downwind.”

“Have they said how much fuel they have?”

“I'm not sure. About a thousand pounds, I think.”

Dunning felt a moment of relief, not at the number but at having made it out in time, like someone who finds a piece of wreckage to cling to in a stormy sea. He looked to the north as he waited for the voices. All was calm. The sky was the cold grey of lead. It touched the hills. Three birds were standing in the middle of the empty runway, almost on the white center line. There were about twenty
more minutes of daylight. The beacon had become brighter. It was skimming the base of the clouds, increasing in contrast each time around. No, he was imagining that. All was quiet, closed until morning, when the voice of the controller who was in a yellow and white checkered van at the far end of the field came up clear,

“Fortify White, turn left to one five zero and descend to two thousand feet for base leg.”

Godchaux, crowding in beside them, pulled the door closed behind him.

“Leave it open,” Dunning ordered. “I want to hear them if I can.”

“Perform final cockpit check,” the controller said. “Gear should be down and locked. Final flap setting at pilot's discretion.”

After a moment or two came the reply,

“White has gear down and locked.”

It was a hurried voice, a little nervous and high. Dunning tried to think; they were his planes, Fortify, but the voice . . .

“That's not Isbell,” he said. He turned to Harlan. “That isn't him.”

“No, sir.”

“What's wrong? Why isn't he leading?”

“His radio's out,” Harlan said.

His radio was out. He wasn't leading. The wingman was leading. In an instant everything had changed.

On the flight line in Tripoli forty or fifty planes were parked in a long, glinting row. Behind them where the blacktop ended the ground dropped away to a broad depression where seawater was evaporated in great, shallow beds. The first rule of gunnery camp was always the same, “Don't piss in the Salt Flats.” Facing the planes was a line of corrugated iron huts with an occasional tent or some canvas rigged on poles to provide shade. The ground crews, many of them stripped to the waist, were squatting under the wings with wrenches, dropping the external tanks. Two of the three squadrons had landed. The first yellowtails were just taxiing in. The 72nd. Another flight of them was on the break. Pilots sat on their gear in the afternoon sun, waiting for the bus to take them to their tent area.

All of it echoed the war that had been fought here, not so many years earlier, along the narrow band of desert near the sea. The same brown tents, the sun, the dust, the overriding focus. In all likelihood the same bus, a tilting wreck with an Arab driver and no
fixed schedule. Usually it would leave just when someone was coming to board or running towards it. The driver, a hand on the door lever, would start the engine in no apparent hurry and, as if unable to hear the shouts, swing the door shut and drive off. Twenty minutes later, sometimes more, at the far end of the parking area, white dust rising behind, the bus would return, the brakes squealing as it slowly came to a stop.

Struggling with their bags, pilots climbed aboard and lurched down the aisle. In the back, Grace sat down near Wickenden.

“Five dollars a man, what do you say?”

Wickenden shook his head.

“Five dollars, the same as last time. That's fair enough.”

Wickenden only smiled a little, like a man reading a book.

“How about it?” Grace said. “That's reasonable. What's wrong? Don't you think you can outshoot us?”

Harlan, grinning, turned in his seat. Wickenden looked out the window.

“Don't you have any confidence in your boys?”

“I have confidence in them,” Wickenden said. “More than I have in yours.”

“OK then.”

“I also have a new man who's never fired before.”

“Who? Cassada?” He had not flown a plane down. He was coming, with several others, in a transport. “Hell, he'll probably make expert,” Grace said.

“I'm sure.”

The bus was full. “Hey, driver,” they were beginning to call, “let's go!”

“I'm just as bad off,” Grace said. “I've got Fergy.”

“He's an experienced man,” Wickenden countered wearily.

“You're damned right!” Ferguson called out.

“You know yourself,” Grace went on, ignoring this, “that it's
usually two weeks before he can even find the tow ship much less get hits.”

“That was
one
day when the visibility was lousy!” Ferguson called.

“Driver! Let's go!” they were shouting.

The driver sat with his hands in his lap. He was wearing the jacket from a blue suit, chalky and worn. It looked as if he'd been carrying bags of flour. He sat staring ahead as if that were his only duty.

“Then it's another two weeks before you can get him to come in any closer than fifteen hundred feet,” Grace went on. “You know that.” He had a white spot of bone in his nose that gleamed when he smiled.

“Driver! Let's go!”

“You're no worse off than I am,” Grace said.

Wickenden's mouth was set in a line.

“Everybody else is willing. Reeves is, I know.”

Silence.

“How about it?”

Instead of answering, Wickenden raised his hands to his mouth and in a surprisingly powerful voice commanded, “Let's get going, driver!”

As if in response the driver bent forward and lazily turned the ignition key. The engine started. With a jolt the bus began to move.

Grace had given up. Most of it had only been for show; he knew Wickenden wouldn't gamble—too humiliating if he lost. Wickenden liked to read military history. He could explain that the essence of generalship was to fight only when you were thoroughly prepared and certain you could win. Maybe that was what they taught them up there, Grace thought. It certainly wasn't like the
ROTC
.

These were the days, the airplanes clean—without external tanks—at their fastest and most maneuverable, the maintenance hardworking, weather flawless, the competition intense. In North Africa it was gunnery and only gunnery. The first tow ship took off early at eight, climbing at a steep angle with the target, a long, fabric panel, trailing behind. A few minutes later the first flight of firing ships, trim as hornets, followed.

Isbell was leading. The three others were in string, behind. They hadn't spotted the tow ship yet. Finally they found it crossing the shoreline, insect small, and circled above watching it over the dark water, slow, deliberate, like a ship sailing to Malta with, instead of wake, the dash of white behind.

The sun was always bad early in the day, naked and low, the reflections drifting across the windshield glass. Sometimes they blanked out the target, even the tow ship, in sky that had a soft blue cast to it, the light pale and lacking contrast. But it was smooth then. The air was still. Not a tremor.

Banking from side to side, hand held up to block the sun, Isbell kept the tow ship in sight. The familiar excitement mounting within, he watched it reach altitude and roll out on course.

“Red Tow on station, on course.”

“We have you in sight, Red.”

“Roger. You're cleared in to fire.”

Isbell led them alongside, several thousand feet above.

“Lead in,” he called and started down towards the strip of white, an inch long it seemed.

The tow ship was at twenty thousand feet, ten or fifteen miles from shore, red desert to the south, hard blue sea below. There was a full, damp quality to the air. Long streamers curved through it marking one's path. All unhurried, all unalterable. There was a rhythm, mostly of pauses but regular, like section hands driving a spike.

“Two in,” Phipps called.

Isbell had reversed his turn and was coming in from the rear of the target which shone in the light like a grail. His gunsight had locked on. His speed was increasing. He quickly checked it, three forty. He could feel the G's as he held the turn and then, in a rush, the climax when he was in range for a second or two with the target suddenly expanding in size until the final instant when he broke off.

“Lead off,” he called.

“Three in,” he heard and as he was climbing back up, “Two off.”

He had not fired on the initial pass, but on the five following ones, all just so, not a single bad one, bursts of about a second, long and even. He was getting hits, he was sure of it. It felt exactly right. The ship seemed firm under his hand, obedient to the last moment, the white rectangle slowly enlarging, not much at first then faster and faster like an express going by. The bullets left traces of smoke as they vanished into the cloth.

If the sight was any good, that was the only thing. When the
aircraft were listed he had given Cassada his choice, then Phipps, then Harlan. He had taken the one that was left.

“I have a feeling I'm going to hit today,” Cassada had said.

“Glad to hear it.”

“I just have the feeling.”

On the way back, as they were joining up, Isbell asked, “Red Four? How'd you do?”

“I got hits,” Cassada said confidently.

They came in over the bay, the boats at anchor beneath them, the buoys, and turned just short of the city, white in the early day, to line up with the runway five miles off. Isbell looked to the side. They were in echelon, one motionless canopy beyond the other.

“Red Lead,” he called as he whipped to the side, “on the break.”

After debriefing they stood around and waited for the tow ship to come back. Harlan had picked up some pebbles and was shaking them in his fist.

“How'd you do?” Isbell asked.

Harlan shrugged. “All right, I guess.”

“What color were you firing?”

The heads of the bullets were dipped in paint to identify who had fired them.

“Blue,” Harlan said.

“Yellow,” Cassada murmured, almost to himself, as if to cards or dice.

Along the far side of the runway, the tow ship came in sight, flying low, ready to drop.

“What color did you say?” Isbell asked.

“Yellow,” Cassada repeated.

A truck came from the direction of the runway, the dust rising. It pulled up and the bundled target was thrown off. It was unrolled and hung lengthwise on the scoring board. Isbell was at the tail end hooking the nails through. The end was slightly frayed but it was still almost full length, twenty-eight feet. They stood with the first
look at it. There were red and blue spread through it and one burst of green in front near the bar, but no yellow.

“Damn it,” Cassada said in disbelief. “Where's the yellow?”

Finally Harlan found one at the very bottom near the edge.

“Here you are,” he said.

Cassada stood helplessly. It was as if he had lost the power to move.

“Here you are, dead-eye,” Harlan said. “You're right. You did hit it.”

Cassada looked at the single hole. He seemed dazed. He took the fabric in his hand.

“I can't understand it,” he said.

“You had a good airplane,” Isbell said. “You were probably firing out of range.”

Cassada shook his head.

“How do you know?”

“No, sir. I was in there.”

“Well, you were doing something wrong.”

“I can't understand it. I did everything right. I had the right airspeed, the G's. The pipper was right on.”

“We'll have to look at your film.”

“I forgot. It's still out in the airplane.”

“You'd better go get it before it gets lost.”

Looking at the ground, carrying all the disappointment he could bear, Cassada walked towards the ramp. Phipps had picked up the clipboard and was marking down the hits as Harlan called them out. Blue. Red. Blue. Three reds. Blue. When they had finished, Isbell had forty-six and Harlan forty. A crowd had gathered around to watch the scoring. It was the best target thus far.

“Damn fine shooting,” Wickenden commented.

Dunning strolled up with a cup of coffee in his hand. They were unhooking the target.

“Just a minute, gentlemen, just a minute. Let it hang up there for a while. Give these other squadrons a chance to look at it.”

He picked up the score sheets. He was reading them when Cassada came back. Dunning did not look up.

“Were you firing on this one, Lieutenant?” he asked blandly.

“Yes, sir.”

“What color?”

“Yellow.”