Cassada Read online

  Wickenden only smiled a little, like a man reading a book.

  “How about it?” Grace said. “That’s reasonable. What’s wrong? Don’t you think you can outshoot us?”

  Harlan, grinning, turned in his seat. Wickenden looked out the window.

  “Don’t you have any confidence in your boys?”

  “I have confidence in them,” Wickenden said. “More than I have in yours.”

  “OK then.”

  “I also have a new man who’s never fired before.”

  “Who? Cassada?” He had not flown a plane down. He was coming, with several others, in a transport. “Hell, he’ll probably make expert,” Grace said.

  “I’m sure.”

  The bus was full. “Hey, driver,” they were beginning to call, “let’s go!”

  “I’m just as bad off,” Grace said. “I’ve got Fergy.”

  “He’s an experienced man,” Wickenden countered wearily.

  “You’re damned right!” Ferguson called out.

  “You know yourself,” Grace went on, ignoring this, “that it’s usually two weeks before he can even find the tow ship much less get hits.”

  “That was one day when the visibility was lousy!” Ferguson called.

  “Driver! Let’s go!” they were shouting.

  The driver sat with his hands in his lap. He was wearing the jacket from a blue suit, chalky and worn. It looked as if he’d been carrying bags of flour. He sat staring ahead as if that were his only duty.

  “Then it’s another two weeks before you can get him to come in any closer than fifteen hundred feet,” Grace went on. “You know that.” He had a white spot of bone in his nose that gleamed when he smiled.

  “Driver! Let’s go!”

  “You’re no worse off than I am,” Grace said.

  Wickenden’s mouth was set in a line.

  “Everybody else is willing. Reeves is, I know.”

  Silence.

  “How about it?”

  Instead of answering, Wickenden raised his hands to his mouth and in a surprisingly powerful voice commanded, “Let’s get going, driver!”

  As if in response the driver bent forward and lazily turned the ignition key. The engine started. With a jolt the bus began to move.

  Grace had given up. Most of it had only been for show; he knew Wickenden wouldn’t gamble—too humiliating if he lost. Wickenden liked to read military history. He could explain that the essence of generalship was to fight only when you were thoroughly prepared and certain you could win. Maybe that was what they taught them up there, Grace thought. It certainly wasn’t like the ROTC.

  These were the days, the airplanes clean—without external tanks—at their fastest and most maneuverable, the maintenance hardworking, weather flawless, the competition intense. In North Africa it was gunnery and only gunnery. The first tow ship took off early at eight, climbing at a steep angle with the target, a long, fabric panel, trailing behind. A few minutes later the first flight of firing ships, trim as hornets, followed.

  Isbell was leading. The three others were in string, behind. They hadn’t spotted the tow ship yet. Finally they found it crossing the shoreline, insect small, and circled above watching it over the dark water, slow, deliberate, like a ship sailing to Malta with, instead of wake, the dash of white behind.

  The sun was always bad early in the day, naked and low, the reflections drifting across the windshield glass. Sometimes they blanked out the target, even the tow ship, in sky that had a soft blue cast to it, the light pale and lacking contrast. But it was smooth then. The air was still. Not a tremor.

  Banking from side to side, hand held up to block the sun, Isbell kept the tow ship in sight. The familiar excitement mounting within, he watched it reach altitude and roll out on course.

  “Red Tow on station, on course.”

  “We have you in sight, Red.”

  “Roger. You’re cleared in to fire.”

  Isbell led them alongside, several thousand feet above.

  “Lead in,” he called and started down towards the strip of white, an inch long it seemed.

  The tow ship was at twenty thousand feet, ten or fifteen miles from shore, red desert to the south, hard blue sea below. There was a full, damp quality to the air. Long streamers curved through it marking one’s path. All unhurried, all unalterable. There was a rhythm, mostly of pauses but regular, like section hands driving a spike.

  “Two in,” Phipps called.

  Isbell had reversed his turn and was coming in from the rear of the target which shone in the light like a grail. His gunsight had locked on. His speed was increasing. He quickly checked it, three forty. He could feel the G’s as he held the turn and then, in a rush, the climax when he was in range for a second or two with the target suddenly expanding in size until the final instant when he broke off.

  “Lead off,” he called.

  “Three in,” he heard and as he was climbing back up, “Two off.”

  He had not fired on the initial pass, but on the five following ones, all just so, not a single bad one, bursts of about a second, long and even. He was getting hits, he was sure of it. It felt exactly right. The ship seemed firm under his hand, obedient to the last moment, the white rectangle slowly enlarging, not much at first then faster and faster like an express going by. The bullets left traces of smoke as they vanished into the cloth.

  If the sight was any good, that was the only thing. When the aircraft were listed he had given Cassada his choice, then Phipps, then Harlan. He had taken the one that was left.

  “I have a feeling I’m going to hit today,” Cassada had said.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “I just have the feeling.”

  On the way back, as they were joining up, Isbell asked, “Red Four? How’d you do?”

  “I got hits,” Cassada said confidently.

  They came in over the bay, the boats at anchor beneath them, the buoys, and turned just short of the city, white in the early day, to line up with the runway five miles off. Isbell looked to the side. They were in echelon, one motionless canopy beyond the other.

  “Red Lead,” he called as he whipped to the side, “on the break.”

  After debriefing they stood around and waited for the tow ship to come back. Harlan had picked up some pebbles and was shaking them in his fist.

  “How’d you do?” Isbell asked.

  Harlan shrugged. “All right, I guess.”

  “What color were you firing?”

  The heads of the bullets were dipped in paint to identify who had fired them.

  “Blue,” Harlan said.

  “Yellow,” Cassada murmured, almost to himself, as if to cards or dice.

  Along the far side of the runway, the tow ship came in sight, flying low, ready to drop.

  “What color did you say?” Isbell asked.

  “Yellow,” Cassada repeated.

  A truck came from the direction of the runway, the dust rising. It pulled up and the bundled target was thrown off. It was unrolled and hung lengthwise on the scoring board. Isbell was at the tail end hooking the nails through. The end was slightly frayed but it was still almost full length, twenty-eight feet. They stood with the first look at it. There were red and blue spread through it and one burst of green in front near the bar, but no yellow.

  “Damn it,” Cassada said in disbelief. “Where’s the yellow?”

  Finally Harlan found one at the very bottom near the edge.

  “Here you are,” he said.

  Cassada stood helplessly. It was as if he had lost the power to move.

  “Here you are, dead-eye,” Harlan said. “You’re right. You did hit it.”

  Cassada looked at the single hole. He seemed dazed. He took the fabric in his hand.

  “I can’t understand it,” he said.

  “You had a good airplane,” Isbell said. “You were probably firing out of range.”

  Cassada shook his head.

  “How do you know?”

&nb
sp; “No, sir. I was in there.”

  “Well, you were doing something wrong.”

  “I can’t understand it. I did everything right. I had the right airspeed, the G’s. The pipper was right on.”

  “We’ll have to look at your film.”

  “I forgot. It’s still out in the airplane.”

  “You’d better go get it before it gets lost.”

  Looking at the ground, carrying all the disappointment he could bear, Cassada walked towards the ramp. Phipps had picked up the clipboard and was marking down the hits as Harlan called them out. Blue. Red. Blue. Three reds. Blue. When they had finished, Isbell had forty-six and Harlan forty. A crowd had gathered around to watch the scoring. It was the best target thus far.

  “Damn fine shooting,” Wickenden commented.

  Dunning strolled up with a cup of coffee in his hand. They were unhooking the target.

  “Just a minute, gentlemen, just a minute. Let it hang up there for a while. Give these other squadrons a chance to look at it.”

  He picked up the score sheets. He was reading them when Cassada came back. Dunning did not look up.

  “Were you firing on this one, Lieutenant?” he asked blandly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What color?”

  “Yellow.”

  “I don’t see too many yellow hits here,” Dunning said, pursing his mouth speculatively. “What seemed to be the trouble, bad sight?”

  “No, sir,” Cassada said. “The sight was good.”

  Dunning waited.

  “Major, I don’t understand it,” Cassada admitted.

  Dunning made a slight sound of acknowledgement.

  “Oh, let’s face it,” Harlan muttered. “You’re not about to hit anything.”

  Cassada looked at him, unable to speak. The words were jammed in his throat.

  “What did you get?” he said. His cheekbones were burning.

  “I don’t know,” Harlan shrugged. “Forty-eight percent. Something like that.”

  Cassada stood there, humiliation coloring his fairness.

  “Good enough for you?” Harlan said. He was dropping the pebbles from one hand to the other.

  “I’ll beat it,” Cassada said.

  Dunning was watching with a cool, remote smile.

  “You will, eh?” Harlan said.

  “Yes, I’ll beat it.”

  “You’ll be lucky if you even qualify.”

  Cassada’s hands were trembling. He had put them in his pockets.

  “I’ll beat any score you make,” he said.

  “Just put up your money.”

  Cassada stood there. He tried to think for a moment of what he was doing. Harlan was pouring the pebbles from hand to hand. That was the only sound. The vehicles passing, the aircraft engines being started, all of it seemed far off.

  “Well?”

  “All right,” Isbell broke in. He was about to say, that’s enough, but Dunning lifted a hand in restraint.

  “Look . . .” Isbell nevertheless began.

  “Captain Isbell,” Dunning warned.

  “I’ll bet,” Cassada said. “How much?”

  “Just whatever you want,” Harlan said.

  “Fifty dollars.”

  Isbell was shaking his head in disgust.

  “Hell. Is that all?” Harlan said.

  “I’ll bet whatever you want to bet. A month’s pay. Is that good?”

  “Yours or mine?”

  “I don’t care. Yours,” Cassada said.

  Harlan sniffed calmly. He dropped the pebbles he was holding to the ground. “All right, that’s a bet.” He held out a hand.

  Cassada ignored it. “My word’s enough,” he said.

  “Your word, hell. Shake on it.”

  Cassada didn’t move. “You have enough witnesses,” he said.

  He stayed at the target afterwards, alone, staring at it as one might at some construction where everything had gone wrong. Isbell went back into the operations hut. Wickenden followed him.

  “That’s about what I would expect of him,” Wickenden said. “Didn’t surprise me at all. He’s a fool.”

  “Somebody should have stopped them. I wanted to,” Isbell said.

  “What for?” Wickenden said. “That’s the only way someone like that ever learns.”

  In Sunday quiet, in the creaking of canvas, Wickenden lay on his cot reading. When he turned a page he folded it back, doubled, so he could hold the book in one hand. With the other he brushed at his arm or leg from time to time, at an annoying fly. Dumfries sat writing a letter. From the next tent a voice occasionally drifted over, a voice that was confiding to Grace, confessing to him. He had to hit—something like that—it was hard to make out the exact words. In any case, Wickenden ignored them and the slight they represented. He read on.

  Idle Sundays. Dunning was off playing golf with the group commander and group ops on a course that was mostly sand dunes. Godchaux and Phipps had driven the silken black road that ran along the coast—the same road on which the guns and sun-baked armor of the Afrika Korps and British Eighth Army had fought back and forth—to one of the ruins, Leptis Magna, with its chalk-white columns and vacant amphitheater scorched by the sun, a great tumbled quarry near the sea. He and Phipps wandered the wide avenues. The Romans had built three cities along the coast, Phipps explained. “Tripoli, three cities. That’s what it means.”

  “Is that right? Where’d you find that out?”

  “Sabratha is the other one.”

  “Why’d they build this? What did they do here?”

  “This was a big city. Everything.”

  “Let’s go this way,” Godchaux said. He had seen a man and two girls walking along a nearby street of what, ages past, had been shops.

  They turned out to be Italian and stopped for a moment. One of the girls, dark-haired, was wearing a tight top, a sailor’s shirt. She stood with the sunlight gleaming on her while Godchaux tried to make conversation, but none of the three spoke English.

  “You know any Italian?” Godchaux turned to Phipps.

  “Cunati does.”

  “That’s not going to help us. So, listen,” he said to the Italians, “you live here, in Tripoli?”

  They didn’t understand, however, and wandered off. Godchaux watched them. The shirt was above white pants, also tight. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “Let’s go down to the harbor,” Phipps said.

  “Yeah. You can throw me in.”

  “What for?”

  “Take a cold shower. That’s what they used to say.”

  “The girl?”

  “Jesus.”

  They wandered on. The sea was strewn with brown sea grass. They didn’t catch sight of the trio again.

  Harlan and Ferguson were in town at the Del Mahari, sitting among the short dark men in business suits and the heavy-looking women. Cassada had been over talking to Grace about gunnery again, Ferguson commented.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “He’s really focused on it.”

  “Is that right? Well, he can talk all he wants.” Harlan was reading the menu. “The bird that talks the most is the parrot,” he added, “and it can’t fly.”

  “Teniente?” the waiter asked.

  “I’ll take the sirloin, rare. Capisce? Rare.”

  “I’ll have the same thing,” Ferguson said. He was wearing sunglasses. His blond hair looked dirty. He was the same size as Harlan but more amiable. Everyone liked him.

  Grace hadn’t been able to tell Cassada much. It would have been disloyal to Harlan, to a member of his flight. He just went over the usual things. Make sure the ball is in the center, you don’t want to be even the slightest bit uncoordinated. Try and shoot at a low angle off. The best scores have hits nearly as long as your little finger. Hits the size of your fingernail are no good.

  Day after day. Gradually the men on the line became darkened by the sun, and the pilots, too, their hands and faces. Officers and men grew together here, more t
han anywhere else. They pitched in. They knew one another’s names. The men had their champions, the pilots their favorite crew chiefs and armorers.

  Abrams, the operations clerk, worked long hours, as well. He was short and overweight with red cheeks. Isbell was not his favorite nor was he Isbell’s. Too many mistakes, Isbell said. He went over the figures, the gunnery reports.

  “What are seven and sixteen?” he said.

  “Where is that, sir?”

  “Right here.”

  “Seven and sixteen,” Abrams said. “Twenty-three.”

  “You’ve got twenty-two.”

  Abrams looked at the sheet.

  “I don’t know what happened there,” he said.

  “It’s a mistake is what happened.”

  “I’ll fix it,” Abrams said. He knew Isbell wanted to humiliate him. The figures were not that important anyway. Who would find out they had fired three thousand and eighteen rounds instead of three thousand and seventeen? Who would care? There were mountains of ammunition out there. They could lose track of a whole case of it in supply, no one would bat an eye, but let it be just one bullet off. . . . In the other squadrons it was nothing like this. That was his luck, to be in this one.

  The projector in the film room—a plywood booth with a blanket over the entrance to make it dark—was running. From time to time it would stop, go into strained reverse, then start forward again. The two of them were in there; Abrams could hear their voices plainly in the empty building.

  “You wasted rounds on every one of those passes. You started to break off before you were finished firing. You have to follow through, just like everything else. Let up on the trigger, track for a split second, then break off”

  “Let’s run it through again.”

  “No, that’s enough. It’s hard on the eyes.”

  Lifting a corner of the blanket, Isbell came out rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He waited until Cassada rewound the reel and put it away.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” he said when Cassada emerged. “You’re pressing in a little too close. You’re going to fly right into the target one of these times. That target bar is made of iron. Start breaking off at six hundred feet like you’re supposed to.”

  “I’m not going to run into it, Captain.”