“You oughtn’t to joke about that. I’ve prayed here more than once.”
“How’d you make out?”
“I mean it.”
“Well, I know. That’s why I asked.”
“They haven’t been answered yet,” Hunter said truthfully. “They will be, though.”
“It’s always a possibility, I guess.”
Not much later, almost unexpectedly, there was the sound of the first ships starting their engines. Cleve looked toward it. The black ramp seemed to be melting in the heat. Upon it, like mirages, stood the baking aircraft. He could see the wash of curdled air that was the jet exhaust billowing up behind the starting ships. He walked inside with Hunter and dressed slowly.
He was bathed in sweat when he carried his equipment out to the ship. The sun lay on his shoulders and back with a weight almost equal to that of the parachute. He felt thirsty. His mouth and throat were dry.
They were still working on something on his airplane. He laid his things on the left wing and walked around to the nose to see what was being done. The armament man was having some trouble. A defective magazine had become jammed in the gun camera, and he could not remove it.
“It’s stuck halfway in there,” he explained. “I can’t get it in or out either one now.”
“Let me try,” Cleve said.
He reached into the narrow opening with his own hand and tried to force the film package to move. His fingers were slippery, and in the confined space a good purchase was difficult. He could not move it either.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Leave it as it is. You can work on it when I get back.”
“Yes, sir.”
He walked around the airplane, inspecting it, and then climbed into the cockpit and began strapping himself in. This occupied him for a while. When he was finished, he looked at his watch. Still several minutes remaining. He felt he had been waiting for hours. His thirst was very strong by now, and he seemed to be sitting in a pool of searing air. Every piece of metal about him was too hot to touch. He could feel the sweat going down his legs in hesitating streams. Finally, it was time. He started his engine.
It was even hotter taxiing out, but by that time a kind of transition had been completed. He was immersed in discomfort. He no longer noticed it. It was even satisfying to be so baptized. The interior of his oxygen mask was as slippery as fish, and the air he drew from it was warm and flatulent, but at last he was fully involved in the mission and far beyond any of the trivialities that went with it.
As he taxied through them, pools of soft tar at the end of the runway sucked at his wheels and splattered up in oversized drops to stain the underside of the wings. He lined up and waited until Hunter drew alongside him. They ran up their engines. He looked across. Hunter nodded. Cleve dropped his raised right hand, and simultaneously they released their brakes. Gathering speed, they moved down the runway together. It was the highest moment of confidence forever renewed upon taking off, the soaring of spirit. Cleve felt light and new again, invincible. They were moments of well-being that did not last long. They were gradually replaced by nervousness. Cleve could feel it running through him, as they started north.
24
Flashing like fish silver, they broke through a low, billowing surf of clouds and into unmarked sky. They climbed. They crossed the Han and into enemy territory, passing the invisible line beyond which little was forgiven. Time seemed to be going quickly. The tempo of landmarks was greater than usual. The compounding hands of the altimeter seemed to be moving more rapidly. Over the radio, nothing except for routine traffic. The fight had not started. Cleve felt elated. He had not hoped for such luck.
He looked back toward Hunter, and his courage and pride swelled. There was nothing to compare with the happiness of leading. Toward the final test and winnowing they flew together, and though a man on the ground could neither see nor hear them, they were up, specks of metal moving through a prehistoric sky, contaminating an ocean of air with only their presence, electrifying the heavens. Cleve felt a distilled fulfillment. For these moments, no price could be too high.
As they neared the Yalu, the cloudiness increased, and above a spotty floor of white there was one huge cumulus buildup, a towering mushroom of brightness as big as a county. It looked like a cosmic fungus, like layers of wrath. They were at forty thousand feet then and climbing. The river was still five minutes away. Suddenly, cutting through the lesser voices, there was Colonel Imil’s.
“Dust on the runway at Antung, boys,” he called. “Heads up.”
It was as if they had waited for him, Cleve thought slowly. He tried to see the reddish plumes rising, but the cumulus was in the way. Beyond that vast cloud and beneath it, they were taking off to fight. He began searching the sky with the intensity of a man who has lost a diamond on a public beach.
The first train was called out, a confirmation of the colonel’s sighting. Less than a minute later, they were announcing a second. Then a third.
“They’re climbing to altitude north of the river,” Imil said. “It won’t be long.”
As Cleve reached the river, they were up to five bandit trains. He turned northeast, toward the dam and reservoir already marked by noiseless explosions that seemed as small as those made by stones dropped into lake silt. He watched as they appeared irregularly in unexpected places. Smoke from a big fire was starting to rise. He looked behind. Hunter was in good position, steady as a shadow. Over the radio an unemotional voice was tolling again:
“Bandit trains numbers six and seven leaving Antung, heading north. Trains six and seven leaving Antung.”
He reached the reservoir and turned back toward the south-west, high, higher than the others, climbing very gradually all the time. There was a brittle expectancy running through the flights. Urgent, confused calls came continually over the radio, but nobody had made definite contact. Nobody was in a fight yet. The eighth and ninth trains were announced. It would all happen at once. He felt himself living by individual seconds. He flew along the river, turning at the mouth.
“Bandit train number ten is on a heading of three three zero. Train number ten heading three three zero.”
Ten was more than he remembered ever having heard. The eleventh was called, and twelve, like compartments filling in a stricken ship. It was a flood. Strangely, he could feel the skin all over his shoulders and back, as if there were eyes staring at it. His sensitivity was almost unbearable. Then he heard Hunter’s quick voice:
“Bogies high at ten o’clock!”
He looked up into the vacant sky to his left.
“Five, six of them,” Hunter called.
Six. That number made it a certainty. Cleve started a gentle turn to the left, trying to locate them as he did.
“I don’t have them.”
“They’re at ten o’clock, high, way out, passing to nine now!”
Cleve looked. The sky was bright, empty blue. He stared hard at it, fighting to see, working painfully across it.
“Do you have them?” Hunter cried anxiously.
Surely they would appear at any second. The effort made his eyes water.
“No,” he said at last. “I don’t have them. Go ahead, you take them.”
Hunter did not turn. Cleve watched him and waited.
“Go ahead. Take them.”
There was still a pause.
“Aw,” Hunter said, “I’ve lost them now.”
In silence they took up a track along the river again. The last of the fighter-bombers were going in toward the dam, serenely, but he knew how they must feel. Everybody was uneasy. It was unbelievable that the MIGs would not strike, but slowly, as the minutes sank away, he began to accept it. Flights were starting to leave the area, low on fuel. He heard Imil turning toward home. He checked his own gauge: twenty-one hundred pounds.