The Hunters (7 page)

There were coughs at the briefing and a constant shifting of feet. A pointer moved about the map, tapping the important locations, and every last detail of the mission down to the password at the front line was covered. The weather officer made wisecracks about the poor conditions up north. They filed out like men going to be inoculated.

“It'll be scrubbed,” Daughters said.

Cleve agreed.

“I wouldn't be surprised,” he said. “I think it's going to snow.”

The sky looked gray and depressing. Hunter and Pettibone listened unhappily.

“But we've had the briefing,” Hunter suggested.

“They'll scrub it, and we'll brief again,” Daughters said. “It's all taken into consideration.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's a hundred missions or a thousand briefings, whichever you get first.”

At 1300 they were waiting in the locker room, the equipment hanging on them, loose and unzipped. Daughters was cleaning the inside of his oxygen mask with a handkerchief. Hunter and Pettibone sat together on one of the benches.

“What was that minimum fuel again? I swear I can't remember.”

“Fifteen hundred pounds,” Pettibone said.

“That's right. I keep forgetting. They certainly have a lot of figures for you.” He glanced at Cleve and laughed apologetically.

“God, don't they?” Pettibone said.

“They didn't tell you the most important thing,” Cleve said.

“What's that, sir?”

“Just get on my wing and stay there.”

At 1325 they were in their ships, waiting. The minutes flickered by slowly. At last the chill whine of the first engines being started came through the air. They were definitely going.

At 1400 they were far beyond all memory of earth, near the Yalu, among great floes of clouds. They flew in silence. It seemed as if the war was over as they moved through the gray, deserted skies. Shreds of cirrus hung in the air, like icicles along the edge of a roof. The quiet was more ominous than clamor. They flew a track where the river might be, but any position was an approximation. They were unable to see the ground. The fuel gauge was the only reality as its needle retreated slowly from full internal load: twenty-six hundred pounds . . . twenty-five hundred.

At 1450 they were nearing home. It had been very significant for Hunter and Pettibone, but Cleve had little sense of achievement. As he landed, there was nothing but the emptiness of a wasted mission. White condensation poured from the tailpipes
like steam when they shut down their engines. Individually, they trudged in toward the warm buildings.

At the debriefing it was definite that nobody had contacted MIGs. The greatest anxiety went then. It was not so bad after all. The failure was communal, and a sense of comradeship began to return.

Cleve walked slowly back to the barracks in the late afternoon. It had been a strange, lonely mission. Hunter had done all right, holding good position most of the time, saying something only when it was necessary, and then with rare brevity; but Pettibone, Cleve thought uncomfortably, was a little weak. He was either lagging or shooting ahead. He didn't seem to hear instructions. That was always a bad sign. Flying with him was like being responsible for a child in a crowd. He would require work and attention. He almost seemed to be in the wrong element, like a cat wading. Well, some developed more slowly than others.

The knob on the door to the room was loose. He had never been able to manage it with gloves on. He took the right one off and put his bare hand on the smooth, freezing brass. The door opened. He stepped gratefully from the cold into warm, shadowy comfort.

“Chung!” he called the houseboy

“He's not here. I sent him out to get some blankets for me.”

It was a stranger, a second lieutenant sitting on the sixth cot, his bags already unpacked. He was sorting through a file of papers, apparently straightening them out. There were several sheafs spread beside him. He offered his hand without standing up, as Cleve approached.

“I'm Ed Pell,” he said, “but everybody calls me Doctor.”

It was the pale lieutenant from Tokyo, the pursuer of waitresses. There was no mistaking those eyes. They were like acid.

“Have you been assigned to this flight?”

“That's what they tell me. How about you?”

“I've seen you before, haven't I? At Fuchu.”

Pell regarded him closely.

“Maybe,” he said. “I don't remember it though.” He glanced at Cleve's name tag. “Connell?”

“Connell. I'm the flight commander.”

“Good deal,” Pell remarked calmly, rising to his feet.

It was all over him, the unfortunate wisdom of knowing enough to think he knew everything. Cleve could see that Pell was somewhat older than his fellows. It was to develop that he was twenty-five, and as free of idealism as a boy raised in the slums, although he actually came from open country in Michigan.

Cleve took off his winter flying jacket and then his pistol, lifting the harness from his shoulder and over his head. He tossed everything onto his cot.

“Just back from flying?” Pell inquired.

Cleve nodded.

“How did it go on the mission? Did you run into anything?”

“No.”

Cleve sat down in one of the chairs near the stove and removed his shoes. The leather had become chilled and hard. He warmed his feet, massaging them with his hands as he did.

“Not a thing, eh?” Pell said, shaking his head sympathetically. “Tom.”

“What?”

“Tom. You know, Captain, bad.”

Cleve nodded slightly. The idiom was new to him. After a few minutes he put his shoes on again. He picked up a towel and some soap and stepped outside to jog to the showers, which were in another building. In the steamy room where taps branched out of rows of pipes running along the ceiling, he stood for a long time under the hot, devouring water. Warmth began to reclaim him, from the outside in, with delicious languor. He stayed until the skin on the tips of his fingers grew soft and puckered. Then he dried and dressed himself in another room, where two stoves maintained a good, high temperature. He returned to the barracks. Pell was gone. In the club Desmond was sitting at the bar.

“How was the mission, Cleve?” he asked.

“No good. All we saw was clouds.”

“Did your new boys do all right?”

“There wasn't much they could do wrong. They didn't get lost anyway, which wouldn't have surprised me. One of them seems like a pretty good pilot, but I don't know about the other one.”

“Pettibone?”

“Yes.”

“I put a new man in your flight today,” Desmond said after a pause.

“I know.”

“Another second lieutenant. His name is Pell.”

“Yes, I met him a little while ago. Have you talked to him?”

“Sure. He seems all right,” Desmond said, “a little cocky maybe. They tell me that he's a good pilot, though.”

“I hope so. He calls himself Doctor.”

“What?”

“Says that's what everybody calls him.”

“He'll be all right,” Desmond assured him.

Cleve did not reply. Everything had changed somehow. It was like a passionate marriage suddenly palled by an in-law coming to stay indefinitely in the house. He fought a sense of disappointment.

It turned out that the three second lieutenants had been classmates all through flying school until they were separated before coming overseas. Pell was soon telling them what had happened to him since that time.

“You guys missed it. I came over on this Pan Am ship with a real babe for a stewardess.”

“Don't give us that.”

“I don't understand how it happened,” Pell admitted, “but when we walked out to the plane in California, there it was, a big luxury job. The stewardess was smiling, and I said to myself, ‘Doctor, this is an omen. Your luck is going to hold.'”

“It must have been pretty soft.”

“Terrific. Hot coffee, sandwiches, reclining seats. The best.” Pell picked a kiss from his lips with thumb and forefinger.

“I think we were pretty lucky to get assigned to this group,” Pettibone said.

“You said it. I was really sweating back there at Fuchu. They held me up for ten days, trying to stick me in those lousy fighter-bombers.”

“How did you get out of it?”

“Oh,” Pell said, “I got to know the guy who was giving out the assignments. He finally fixed it up. What happened to everybody else in the class, though? Where did they go?”

“Let's see. Mullins, Boyd, Bechtel, and Tom Slazac went to fighter-bombers.”

“The poor bastards,” Pell commented. He had a lean, expressive mouth.

“They say they like it. They've already driven up here to see us once.”

“What do they know about it? This is the deal.”

“It surely is,” Hunter agreed.

“Have you flown any missions yet? You probably have ten apiece, you weenies.”

“We were on a mission this afternoon.”

“Veterans, eh?”

Hunter shrugged.

“Have you seen MIGs yet?” Pell said.

“No.”

“The weather was pretty bad today” Pettibone added.

“It was, eh? Tough.”

Rummaging around in his belongings, he pulled out a full box of cigars and expertly slit the seal with a fingernail. He offered them around.

“How about one?”

Hunter accepted. Pettibone shook his head.

Pell picked out two for himself. He lit one and inserted the other in his shirt pocket. He was feeling more certain of himself.

“Have you run into any gin players around here?” he asked. “I'd like to find a game somewhere.”

“How have you been making out?”

“Tom. I almost got cleaned in Japan.”

“Don't tell me you lost.”

“Not really” Pell admitted. “I managed to get well at the very end.”

“Oh.”

“I was playing with this old major. He had me way down, but the last couple of days I began getting to him and came out a little ahead.” Pell grinned. He had a sly, condescending way of doing it.

“How much?” Hunter finally asked.

“Four bills, that's all.”

“Four hundred dollars?”

Pell nodded.

“That's more than a month's pay. You didn't really win that much, Doctor.”

“I didn't, eh?”

“Did you?”

“What's the difference? How about a quick game?” Pell said. “You and I?”

“No, I don't feel like it just now.”

“Too bad,” Pell said casually. “Well, I'll catch you some other time.”

He stood smoothing his hair with his hand. Then he put on his hat and walked out. The door slatted shut behind him.

“Always some big deal,” Pettibone muttered.

Hunter looked at the door without answering.

“Did you hear him?” Pettibone continued. “This is the place to be. He hasn't even been here twelve hours yet.”

“He's something all right. Winning four hundred dollars. What do you think of that?”

“From a major,” Pettibone said. “It had to be a major.”

“That sucker knows how to play cards, though. I've seen him.”

“So have I. Who cares?”

They glanced at each other in the darkened room, feeling the vague discomfort.

“He's the same old wise guy,” Pettibone said finally.

Later, Cleve listened to Hunter obsessively describing Pell as a card player. He loved to gamble, and he was lucky. He always won. There was one night in Las Vegas when he lost eight or nine hundred dollars, and the club gave him cab fare to get back to the field; but then he came back and beat the blackjack game for over three thousand. Cleve did not doubt it. He had noticed Pell's hands. They were probably the most educated thing about him, thin and ascetic, with exceptionally long fingers.

“They must have been sorry they ever gave him the carfare,” Cleve said.

The room had become confining for him, a regular closet. He stood up. He felt like a man who puts weight on a bad leg for the first time. Suddenly he was conscious of his position, uncomfortably. He was the leader. There seemed to be something artificial and repugnant about that, as if he were wearing a bright shirt with the word printed on it. Everything had been so effortless until now. Unexpectedly, the simplicity of things was gone. It had been a bad day.

Like the hand that bears the orb, the pilots—there were actually not many of them, about a hundred altogether—carried alone the ultimate strength of the wing. In each of the three squadrons there were some thirty, and in the rest of the structure perhaps fifteen others, who flew missions. It was a small complement; but even of the few there were only three who were recognized wherever they went: Imil, Bengert, and Robey They stood out like men moving forward through a forest of stumps. Their names were gilded. They had shot down at least five MIGs apiece. Bengert had seven, but five was the number that separated men from greatness. Cleve had come to see, as had everyone else, how rigid was that casting. There were no other values. It was like money: it did not matter how it had been acquired, but only that it had. That was the final judgment. MIGs were everything. If you had MIGs you were a standard of excellence. The sun shone upon you. The crew chiefs were happy to have you fly their ships. The touring actresses wanted to meet you. You were the center of everything—the praise, the excitement, the enviers. If you did not—although nothing was shameful about it, and there were reasons, allegedly valid, for any man, no matter how capable and courageous, to have failed to get victories—still you were only one of the loose group in
the foreground of which the triumvirate gleamed. If you did not have MIGs, you were nothing. Every day as he walked among them, Cleve knew it more truly.