Chapter V
They were racing through densities, uneven, unending. One minute Cassada’s plane was clear, iron-hard in the gloom, and the next almost gone except for the wingtip light. When Isbell rode a little high he could see the red glow in the other cockpit, the aura of the instruments and even their circular faces, Cassada’s head bent forward towards them, motionless, intent. It was dusk in the clouds. It was deep rain-grey.
They broke out low the first time and off to the side. Isbell had one real look. Cassada saw it himself and they began turning, banking steeply across the runway at about two hundred feet and then reversing, cutting back hard. Isbell wasn’t sure what they were doing, if Cassada meant to try and put it down there with half of the runway or even more behind them. He felt a moment of panic and suddenly saw Cassada was pulling away from him. Speed brakes in. He had missed the signal. Perhaps it hadn’t been given. He caught up using full power just as Cassada held out a fist with thumb extended: gear up. Then flaps. They were climbing, into the overcast again, turning north.
Isbell was sweating. His legs felt light, the knees missing. Don’t watch the fuel, he said to himself, don’t look at it. He kept trying the mike button, not in desperation but there might be a loose connection somewhere, it might kick in again. He talked but no sound came, his voice was dead in the oxygen mask, trapped in it. His right hand, on the stick, kept tightening. He had to think to make it relax. Don’t look, he told himself. Forget it. It hasn’t changed. It hasn’t even been a minute. All right. Robert, don’t be in a hurry now. Don’t get excited. It’s a little bad maybe, but just do it right. Set it up this time. Make it perfect. Don’t be in a rush. Everything in order. Everything so.
They had leveled at twenty-five hundred feet, still heading north. Isbell was following things by glances at his own instruments. He sat waiting for the turn. His mind was racing ahead. He was trying to think, trying to stem the anguish, force the runway to appear dead ahead with them settling in towards it together, whistling, fast, and the sudden jar of the wheels hitting.
Cassada still hadn’t turned. Isbell stole a look at the clock. It meant nothing. Finally, when he felt he could not bear it another second, he realized they were banking. The unseen world was tilting, heeling over on a blind axis. They were talking to Cassada, he knew. They were telling him things, giving him numbers more precious than safe combinations. Every so often his head would nod a little.
The downwind was interminable. At last they turned onto base leg, the gear coming down with its faint, assuring quake. The last preparations. Isbell pushed back in the seat, sitting straighter. A glance at the fuel. One warranted look. Nine hundred pounds. He could feel his heart starting in.
All right, Robert, he said. Now exactly the way they give it to you. Easy, smooth, not paying attention to anything else, just as if it were clear as a bell here, as if it were only practice.
PART V
Chapter I
Finally Cassada answers. He’s on top at nine thousand, orbiting the beacon. Dunning doesn’t need to ask but can’t prevent himself,
“Do you have White Two up there?”
“Negative. I can’t see him anywhere.”
“How’s your fuel?”
“I’ve got five hundred pounds,” Cassada replies. It’s like a heavy door closing.
“Look around. Can’t you spot him?”
A pause.
“You’d better get him down,” Cadin says.
Godchaux steps out of the doorway and his eyes meet Harlan’s. They each know what the other is thinking.
After a few moments the controller comes on just as Cassada says something, and the transmissions block each other out. It’s brief but it seems to introduce something, an unwanted confusion. Either no one is talking or they all are.
“Do you have White Two?” Cassada asks the controller.
“Roger,” the controller says.
“Where is he? What’s his position?”
“Four miles northeast. Heading inbound.”
“What altitude?” Dunning breaks in.
“You were blocked, White,” the controller says.
“What’s his altitude?”
“Who am I talking to?”
“Mobile Control.”
“… together?” It’s the last part of something Cassada is asking.
“Take up a heading of three three zero,” the controller instructs.
“What’s his altitude?” Dunning is shouting. “What’s White Two’s altitude?”
“Stand by one,” the controller says.
It seems minutes pass. Dunning pulls out a handkerchief to wipe his nose and jams it back in his pocket, the tip hanging out. Then Cassada’s voice says,
“This gauge is jumping around.”
No one answers him. There is no answer.
“It just dropped,” he says. “It’s down to three hundred pounds.”
His voice has a lost quality. No one replies.
“Now it’s going back and forth between three and five hundred.”
“White Lead?” the controller says, unable to address the matter of fuel.
“Roger.”
“White Two is three miles out,” the controller reports. Then, “He’s holding level at fifteen hundred feet.” It means in the densest clouds.
“Say again his altitude,” Dunning calls.
“White Two is at one thousand five hundred.”
There’s a silence.
“Did you receive that, White Lead?”
“Roger.”
“What are your intentions?”
He doesn’t answer. He had climbed up, low on fuel, in a last attempt to find his leader. Should he abandon him now? Was it too late?
Dunning, stripped of hope like someone who has just lost all his money, everything, but unwilling to show it with the colonel beside him, stands with the microphone in one hand, a microphone that is useless. Abruptly coming to life again, he says,
“Come on down, Cassada. You can make it. The runway lights are showing up good now. You’ll spot them this time.” His eyes sweep the length of things outside. “Come on, boy. Penetrate right from where you are.”
“Roger.”
“How much fuel do you have?”
“Three hundred pounds. I can’t tell. It’s jumping around.”
“You can make it,” Dunning says. You can make it, you can make it, he says to himself.
Chapter II
Get us on, Isbell was thinking, get us on. They were trying the third time but everything was running the wrong way, he could feel it, a tide in the dark pulling at his legs. Get us on. He was either saying or thinking it when suddenly they came skimming out of the clouds in the moment of revelation, his heart rising up into his throat.
This time he saw it all. They had come down even lower, a hundred feet off the ground, bursting in and out of the ragged scud. Instants of vision, then into it again. The runway, the yellow mobile, everything passing by on the left as he saw it was like the others, no good. There welled up in him without thinking, oh, God, and looking down for a second too long he was late as Cassada turned. He turned hard himself, following, watching the ship ahead, the ground, clouds, the control tower almost straight on. Then Cassada was gone into a cloud lower than the rest. Isbell was in trail. He would see Cassada on the other side in a moment. Two moments. Longer. The cloud did not end. They never emerged. Isbell was on his own instruments, climbing. The tops were far above. The bases were frightening. He was climbing alone.
He was unable to think. He didn’t know what heading he was on. It meant nothing just then. He was watching the fuel gauge. They were sometimes off by a couple hundred pounds. On top, he was thinking, on top. He could not concentrate on anything but that. The brightness above. To circle for a moment there within sight of the sky. He did not know whether there was something else he might be doing or not. He had to climb.