With Pettibone on his wing, he flew north on his ninety-seventh mission. There was not a cloud in the sky. They crossed the Haeju Peninsula and then the edge of an unblemished sea that lay like a sheet of foil in the sunlight, climbing again to those great heights where the mind was transmuted. A fight was developing. The MIGs were taking off from Antung. Somebody was describing the cloud of dust rising there. Cleve could hear the tempo of talk on the radio increasing, like a current as it nears rapids.
Free of the gravitational forces of reality, he sat in the sunshine and looked out over a crystal empire. Antung lay under a dome of clear air that reached every horizon. The river, its bridges, and the earthen town beside it were as small as a history book map. It was almost sleep-inducing. He knew a tranquillity as timeless as a dream of deepest waters. If death were ever to touch him here, it would be with a gesture of equality, with fingertips only. In this high, sterile realm he would fight and, conquering, it seemed, become immortal. He heard a flight dropping tanks. They had sighted MIGs crossing at the reservoir. His heart beat as wildly as ever while he listened. He would be there in a few minutes at the most. There was a joy unlike any he had known going north that day, penetrating farther and farther, north into Casey's country, into his own.
He was not disappointed. There was a big fight. High and low,
in great numbers, the MIGs came streaming south. Every man who wanted to found them, and some who did not. Pell got his seventh.
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The debriefing room was wild after they returned, with the first flushed men gathered at the tables and talking all at once. Others came through the door in twos and threes, their flying suits dark with sweat, their faces creased and dirty where the masks had been. They crowded to the tables, talking excitedly as they did, interrupting each other and pausing only briefly to listen.
The room was in sustained confusion. There was a flow of faces moving continually by, faces glistening, reflective, exuberant, dulled. Among them was Pell's, followed by that of a correspondent interviewing him on his seventh victory. They paused in the very center of the room. Pell continued giving the details, watching the tablet on which they were being scribbled, upside down. He paced himself by the man's pencil. There were long hesitations. During one, he could hear a voice behind him that was topping the steady surf of those in the room.
“We were separated right at the beginning. I wasn't able to pick him up again after the first time we broke. They were all over me from then on.”
It was Pettibone. Pell turned around and saw him standing between the two colonels, looking from one to the other as he talked.
“Didn't you call him?”
“I called him half a dozen times.”
“Well?”
“He never answered. I never heard anything. I called and called.”
“All right,” Colonel Imil said. “Where did it happen?”
They bent over the map as Pell pushed his way through to them and forced a space for himself at the table. Pettibone had trouble locating the spot. His finger wandered over the paper hesitantly as he tried to indicate where the fight had taken place. Finally he traced out an area about ten miles square. It was right on the Yalu.
“Somewhere along in here, I think,” he said.
“Set up a couple of flights right away in case we have to cap him, Monk, and check around. Somebody else may have seen him.”
Colonel Moncavage hurried off.
“What happened?” Pell asked. “Where's Connell?”
Pettibone looked up at him pleadingly.
“I don't know.”
“You don't know?”
“I lost him in the fight, and he's not back yet.”
They stood there, looking down at the map that covered the entire surface of the table.
“Right in here somewhere,” Pettibone added, pointing again to the place.
After a few minutes, Colonel Moncavage was back with a pilot from one of the other squadrons who was able to tell them something more. He had been in that same area with his flight at the time. He remembered hearing Pettibone's calls. A little later he had seen Cleve's ship. One wing had been shot off it. He had watched it going down in a long, shallow trajectory near the river, spinning over and over like an elm pod all the way.
“Are you sure it was him?”
“I don't know who it was, Colonel.”
“It was one of ours, though?”
“Yes, sir. The MIGs were still shooting at it.”
“Did you see a parachute?”
“It looked like the canopy was still on the ship, the last I saw of it, Colonel.”
There was a pensive silence.
“Then you didn't see it crash,” Imil said at length.
“I couldn't even keep it in sight. We were right in the MIGs ourselves, then.”
“Well,” the colonel said, “I guess that's it.”
He drummed his fingers on the table as he thought about it. Then he turned and walked out of the room toward the switchboard, to report to Fifth Air Force.
The correspondent, who had strolled over behind Pell, had heard it all. He brought it up as he resumed his interview: “Did you know him, Lieutenant?”
“Cleve Connell?”
“Is that who it was?”
Pell nodded, listening to the hurried sound of the pencil. He knew its magic. He paused at length. He had a thoughtful expression on his face. His eyes, those exceptional eyes, had apparently seen things he could not tell about, and that he never could be old enough not to be too young to have seen.
“He was a george guy,” Pell said.
“George?”
“That's right. The best, the greatest. He taught me everything I know about this business. It was just that he didn't get the breaks himself.”
“You were pretty close to him?”
“He was my flight leader,” Pell said, “but he was like a brother. I just don't know what to say, I can't believe they got him.”
The correspondent lived on his judgment, too, and he was no fool. He watched Pell closely. He could not subdue a sense of suspicion, but then he became a little ashamed of himself. They were fighting here, up in the hostile skies of North Korea. There was no fraud in that. Pell seemed a littleâwas it aware? but every word rang poignantly true.
“Don't write any of that, though,” Pell said unexpectedly.
“These are just my notes.”
“I know, but people don't understand what it's like. It wouldn't mean anything.”
“That depends on how well I handle it.”
“Well, I hope you're a good handler,” Pell said. He smiled wanly. His candor was disarming.
The article was carried in a national magazine. It was a great success. There was a photograph of Pell in the cockpit, stark and memorable. A whole country found its heroism in his face.
For Cleve, the war had ended in those final minutes of solitude he had always dreaded. He was carried as “missing in action.” If there had been a last cry, electrically distilled through air, it had gone unheard as he fell to the multitudes he feared. They had overcome him in the end, tenaciously, scissoring past him, taking him down. Their heavy shots had splashed into him, and they had followed all the way, firing as they did, with that contagious passion peculiar to hunters.
Copyright © 1956, 1997 by James Salter
Originally published by Harper & Brothers, 1956. This Counterpoint edition has been revised by the author.
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All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Salter, James.
The hunters/James Salter.
1. Korean War, 1950â1953âFiction. I. Title.
PS3569.A4622H86 1997
813'.54âdc21 97-21361
eISBN : 978-1-619-02128-0
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