by James Salter
“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.
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.
It became a little easier the higher he went. The airplane was flying as if it could go on forever. It was powerful, light. He didn’t wonder about Cassada, where he had gone. There was nothing left but a silent, darkening world, rock-hard, waiting for him to fall. He looked again at the fuel gauge. He was unable to keep his eyes from it, no matter how hard he tried.
Harlan stands with Godchaux near the doorway. All of them are listening. The controller reports Isbell two miles out, and he’s switching to guard channel, the emergency channel, in case Isbell can receive—as if he is receiving—giving him corrections. There’s no response to them. As if flown by a dead man, Isbell’s plane is coming straight in.
The GCA van, beside the runway, has no windows. The plane may come right out of the clouds, directly at it or towards mobile.
“Get ready to move out of here in a hurry,” Harlan says in a low voice to Godchaux.
“What’d you say?”
Harlan repeats it.
“Don’t worry,” Godchaux whispers.
They have Isbell a mile and a half out. The rain is still falling, like drops of ice. Harlan stands close to the side of mobile, partly sheltered, listening. The visibility is worse, if anything. He looks at Godchaux.
He ain’t going to get down, Harlan thinks. If he does, they’ll go crazy. They’ll make a big hero out of him and we’ll never get done hearing about it. Not that he will, but things are funny sometimes. You never know.
One mile now. Dunning ducks a little, looking all around. He turns the volume down slightly to listen. Godchaux touches Harlan on the arm.
“What?” Then Harlan hears it himself. He nods.
It’s Isbell for certain. They barely hear him. They stand there peering into the rain. The sound gets no louder.
“Major,” Godchaux says.
Dunning quickly comes to the door, Cadin behind him.
“Do you hear him?” Dunning says.
“I think so.”
Suddenly the sound is closer, unmistakable. It comes beating, like waves.
“That’s him!” Dunning agrees.
They stare in the direction of the sound but see nothing. It feels as if he’s headed straight for them.
“Where is he?” Dunning asks. He has the flare gun in his hand and holds it outside the door. The sound is becoming louder, rushing at them like a roof collapsing. There’s a sudden explosion as Dunning shoots off a green flare.
“Do you have him?” he shouts.
“There he is!”
Almost straight up with a roar as it passes overhead, almost on top of them. Black gear wells, a great smooth belly, and then it’s past. For a second the sound doesn’t fade, it even increases and then begins to fall away, faster than it came. Harlan is shaking a little, he can’t help it.
“Shit,” Dunning says.
Then, despite the low volume, Cassada is calling. They have him on downwind. Dunning seems not even to hear. He stares out the glass towards where Isbell moments before has disappeared. Cassada is turning onto base. He’s down to two hundred pounds.
In his mind Isbell prepares it. The details merge, become entangled. He forces his way through them, striving to make them distinct. He watches the instruments as he climbs, it seems to take a minute to read each one. A hundred and fifty pounds. He has made the decision but cannot move. He sits frozen, trying to believe.
Twenty-five hundred feet. He is delaying but can’t think why. At any moment there’ll be a surge, the gauges dying then coming back. The expectation makes him hollow. His hand won’t move. He looks down at the red handle that blows the canopy. He can’t touch it. The first, warning lurch will make him jump like a cat but he does nothing. The engine is steady, the plane intact.
One hundred pounds. The agony of the end. With an abrupt movement he levels the wings. He was rolling into a bank unaware. Pull it now, he thinks. Then sit erect. Squeeze the forked handles. He knows it from a thousand recitations. Pull. He can’t.
The safety pin. Suddenly he thinks of that and looks down. It’s out. Three thousand feet. Should he begin slowing? The clouds are a death shroud. He is climbing for the last time, sick, clinging to a dream that is over. The cockpit lights gleam in the glass above his head. Fifty pounds. He levels off and reduces power. He feels nothing. He is a ghost who is flying. Then in an instant that passes. He thinks: I have to do it now. I have to move my hands.
He tries. They glide across his lap, independent, light. The left takes the stick. The right drops down and takes hold of the handle, round in his palm. He tightens his fingers and gathers himself. Ready. Pull!
Nothing happens. His hand will not do it. It’s like trying to pull out a tooth. Mechanically, like a child, he starts counting. One . . . two . . . The next word jams. He begins again, resolute. One . . . Two . . . A pause. Three! He yanks up. The air explodes, icy, vast. The canopy is gone. A roaring surrounds him. He almost feels regret. Scraps of paper flash by. The maps inflate, rise past him and are torn away. The wind is tearing at his clothes. I’ve done it, he thinks! The relief is so great he could laugh.
Suddenly he feels a heave. The ship hesitates for a moment and goes forward again. He can’t make out the instruments. It doesn’t matter. He could smash them with a hammer, break everything. All is profaned, all is going and at any moment, a terminal sounding, fierce and ultimate. The death dive. Get out, he thinks. He realizes he can’t tell what attitude it’s taking. He might be rolling over, blind, out of control. Get out!
He sits there trying to think. He has hold of the forked ejection grip and is beginning to squeeze when there’s another hesitation, mortal, abrupt. A surge as the engine catches again. The last of the fuel. He forces his head back against the heavy plate, tenses his legs bringing them close, and before he knows what has happened, with a shock, a hunching jolt, his fist holding the two leaves tight together, he is gone, through the darkness, into the black air.
The rain is falling steadily now. “Zero six four, White,” the controller is saying. “You’re five and a half miles out.”
Harlan and Godchaux are crowded into the doorway. The runway lights are bright in the darkness.
“Zero six four,” the controller repeats.
“Here, load this again.” Dunning hands Godchaux the flare
gun.
From the cardboard box of cartridges Godchaux takes several and tries to read the printing on their base.
“A green one,” Dunning says.
“Yes, sir.”
Harlan lights a match and holds it so they can see.
“Your final cockpit check should be complete. Your gear should be down and locked. Zero six four,” the controller says.
The fire trucks are parked together halfway down, their red lights flashing and swinging around.
“Stand there, Billy. Fire it when he’s close enough,” Dunning orders.
Godchaux is searching for a second green shell.
Bail out, Dunning should be ordering but can’t bring himself to say it. Perhaps Cadin will. If just one of them gets down. Isbell’s they can probably get away with. Materiel failure, the radio. The board will buy that.
“Zero six four is your heading, bringing you in nicely towards the center line. Glide path coming up in ten seconds. Zero six four.”
Ten seconds. His last call was two hundred pounds, Dunning thinks. He’s down to fifty by now, waiting for it to flame out, to drop from under him. He should be bailing out. Why wasn’t he told to, they’ll want to know? Because we thought he could make it, is all Dunning can think. After he missed three attempts? There must be an answer to that.
“Left three degrees to zero six one.”
Dunning appears calm.
“Begin your rate of descent.”
Supervisory error, they will say. No, he wasn’t told to bail out. I felt he had a good chance.
“Zero six one has you lined up tracking the right side of the runway. Zero six one.”
They are all peering outside into the slanting rain.
“Dropping slightly low on the glide path, White,” the controller announces. “Ten feet. Twenty feet.”
“Get ready, Billy.”
“Right.” Godchaux goes down a couple of steps.
“Coming back now, correcting nicely. Ten feet low. Back on glide path again. Left to zero six zero.”
If he lands, when he climbs down from the cockpit his legs will be shaking like leaves, his face will be white. If he lands he will be unable to speak.
The telephone rings. Harlan picks it up.
“Dropping slightly low, White.”
“It’s for you, Major.”
“Ten, twenty feet low.”
“Tell them to hold on.”
“You’re dropping forty feet low, White.”
Dunning’s heart skips.
“Get ready, Billy. He may break out any second.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He’d better bail out. Tell him to bail out,” Cadin says.
“Bail out, White!” Dunning calls.
“A hundred feet. You’re dangerously low. You’re dropping into our ground clutter, White. Pull it up!”
“Bail out, White! Bail out, do you hear me?”
There is silence.
“Fortify White,” the controller says, “execute a missed approach. Climb straight ahead to twenty-five hundred feet.”
There is no answer.
“Fortify White, acknowledge, please.”
“Pull it up, White, and get out!”
“Fortify White,” the controller calls, “Fortify White.”
“White from mobile! Pull up and eject. Do you read?”
There’s a long pause. It’s quiet. The silence is now rising like water, deep, deeper.
“Did you hear anything?” Dunning asks Godchaux.
Godchaux shakes his head and comes inside, the flare gun dangling from his hand. The controller continues to talk, the same things over and over, like a telephone ringing somewhere. Everything else is still, the air, the lights, the nearly silent rain. Harlan holds out the telephone receiver. Dunning takes it.
“Major Dunning,” he says.
No one is there. There are voices in the background.
“Hello! Major Dunning here!”
Someone picks up the phone and says, “Stand by for a second, please.” It must be the tower.
The fire trucks are backing up and turning around, heading away from the runway. Dunning hangs up the phone.
“Let’s go,” Cadin says. “We’ll take my car.”
At the bottom of the steps his foot slips on the wet grass and he goes down on one knee, stands again and makes it to the car.
Godchaux and Harlan follow in the Volksbus, bouncing over the turf. They turn onto the taxiway and head for the squadron gate. The window of Dunning’s office is still open and the lights on as they pass. Below, on the road past the airmen’s barracks, the fire trucks, alarmingly lit, are speeding.
The year before, at Landstuhl, they had one where half the base was out searching and they didn’t find the pilot for two days. Of course, that was in thick fog, you couldn’t see ten feet.
Both of them, Dunning thinks as they drive. Jesus Christ. They slow down at the gate. The guard steps out of the shack, bending over to see.
“Emergency. Plane crash,” Cadin says, rolling down the window.
“Yes, sir.” He waves them through.
On the way, thinking of the one at Landstuhl, “We might have to organize search parties,” Dunning says.
“Let’s see what we’ve got, first,” the colonel says.
About a mile down the road are the fire trucks, blocking it. There’s also an ambulance with headlights on. The rain, now white, floats through the beams shining like bits of tinfoil.
“Which way is it?” Cadin asks a figure standing there. A flashlight is swung and shines in his face. “Turn that goddamn thing off,” he says.
The beam flicks to his shoulder for a second and then goes out.
“Sorry, sir.” It’s one of the firemen. There are voices out in the darkness shouting to one another.
“Have they found the pilot?”
“Sir, I don’t know. It’s straight ahead, about a quarter of a mile. I’ve been here with the truck.”
“Let me borrow your flashlight,” Cadin says, taking it from him. He and Dunning get out and begin to walk, first along the road and then off, in the direction of some handheld lights. The ground is soft and gives underfoot. The rain sweeps down. From time to time, moving in silence, they break into a trot. Godchaux and Harlan come behind.
Ahead is a small pond and beyond it blackness. There are wandering lights and soon the first pieces on the ground.
“Here’s something,” Godchaux calls.
He picks it up. Cadin’s flashlight plays on it. Impossible to say what it is. A metal shard. Perhaps part of a hydraulic cylinder—it has a sticky sheen.
A trail of debris begins. There is ammunition scattered on the ground, some of it linked together, the rest strewn like teeth. Then a large piece, one of the gun bay panels. The drop tanks. Cadin stands, moving the beam back and forth over a large section of wing. Harlan kicks at something, stoops and picks it up gingerly.
“Shine it this way, Colonel.”
The first ominous chord. It’s a shoe. Harlan holds it slightly away from himself and turns it so he can see inside.
“It’s empty.”
He places it alongside his own foot. It’s smaller.
Twenty feet farther on there is something pale floating in a small puddle. Godchaux reaches down. The water is deeper than it looks. He pulls up a map, soggy and dripping, a course drawn on it in grease pencil. There are other scraps of paper around, pages from the maintenance forms. At the edge of some woods they come to the end of it. The emblem of disaster, the engine, huge, with dirt packed into it, is at the base of a tree, the trunk marked with a great, white gouge.
They stand, looking over the scene.
“I don’t see the seat anywhere,” Dunning says.
“No.”
It may be elsewhere, part of an ejection.
“We ought to work back.”
“Yes,” the colonel agrees. “Spread out more.”
&nbs
p; Feet soaked, they walk through the rain, moving slowly. Ahead are two or three lights jerking from spot to spot on the ground. The sky is invisible, absolutely black. It’s like being in a mine or a deep, underground cave. They stumble over rocks. Then Harlan calls,
“Over here!”
The flashlight glides to something, hard to make out.
“Here’s the cockpit,” Harlan says.
The flashlight stays on it, then other lights as searchers converge. The seat is lying on its side, ripped free. It’s empty. Cadin’s light moves to a section of the instrument panel and picks out the black gauges. Harlan is bending over something a few feet away.
“What is it?”
“Canopy frame,” he says.
They look at the seat again. The safety belt is unbuckled. Dunning tries to calculate what that might mean. The ejection handle hasn’t been raised. The seat wasn’t fired.
“That’s where we found him,” somebody says.
Cadin’s light comes up and holds there. It’s a corpsman, white uniform visible beneath a raincoat. He wears a pair of rubber boots.
“Dead?” Cadin says.
The corpsman nods. “Yes, sir.”
The cold is making them shiver. Rain runs down their faces. Dunning has borrowed a flashlight and goes off by himself, poking his way from piece to piece, making small, slow circles at his feet with the light. He stops and then goes on, aimlessly it seems. He is gathering the catastrophe, wandering in it like a sleepwalker. The wreckage is total. Nothing can recombine it.
“Do you suppose he blacked out or something, Lieutenant?” the corpsman asks Godchaux who lingers behind.
“Do I suppose what?”
“Blacked out. You know.”
“No. He ran out of fuel.”
“Oh,” the corpsman says, nodding. He turns half away. “It really broke up, didn’t it?” He turns back to Godchaux, the beads of water shining on his raincoat and running off. “It doesn’t look like they’ll be putting this one back together again, does it?”
“Sure,” Godchaux says. “They’ll have it flying again inside of a week.”
He walks towards the major, shaking his head.