The Hunters by James Salter Page A

misunderstanding.”
    â€œIt might have been. Those things happen.”
    â€œWho do you believe anyway?” DeLeo asked. “Me or him? It has to be one of us.”
    â€œIt’s not a question of that.”
    â€œIt’s not, eh?”
    â€œI’m just trying to bring out that it could have been an honest mistake.”
    â€œHonest?” DeLeo said. “He knew what he was doing.”
    â€œWe’ll see.”
    They stood there for a while close to one of the flat, interior
walls of the quonset, not talking. Pilots still thronged about the map-covered tables, explaining what they had done and seen, and the room was filled with voices. Cleve caught sight of Colonel Imil talking to Pell near the doorway. The colonel seemed happy. Pell must have been elated, too, but his expression was composed, a smile both modest and assured.
    Hunter came by. He was brimming with words and excitement.
    â€œYou should have seen it,” he told DeLeo. “MIGs in front. MIGs in back. It was a circus.”
    He turned to Cleve. “I still don’t know how we got away with it,” he said.
    â€œYou played it just right, Billy.”
    â€œOh, no,” Hunter cried. “You were the cool one in there. I was scared. I admit it. I was keeping my eye on the ones behind, though. I was trying to judge it just right. You know, the last second, like you said.”
    â€œYou were perfect. I mean it.”
    â€œIt worked out, didn’t it? Just right. We’ll get them again, too.”
    â€œYou bet we will, Billy.” Cleve was grinning.

11
    For a time, everything was good. He was light, almost frivolous with satisfaction. He walked against the bitter wind, along roads frozen into stone, with a feeling that all of it was his dominion, bleak but his own. His name had some meaning. Moving among the others or alone, he was again and again conscious of victory. He had found himself. It was easy to laugh and nothing to smile. He hardly felt it wearing thin until suddenly it had happened, like an awakening after a night of love.
    It was five days later that he sat listening to a mission in combat operations. Colonel Moncavage was leading it. Half an hour before, it had taken off in a dawn as calm as a sea of glass. Four of his flight were on it: DeLeo leading, Pettibone, Daughters number three, and Pell. The weather briefing beforehand had indicated it would be nothing more than a milk run. North Korea was heavily clouded over. In addition, they were flying to provide escort for a photo-reconnaissance ship, and those missions seldom developed into anything. Cleve stared through the window at the sky. He could see only small portions of it through the stratus decks. It was a dull, chilly morning, streaked with a grittiness that made all conversation seem stilted. His mind wandered to the thousand other places that life could have taken him to instead of this one.

    He listened to the curt radio transmissions. The familiar ominous feeling that he could not quell grew within him. He wished he had gone himself. Nothing specific had caused it. That was the way he always felt. It was the old recurring apprehension. Whenever they went off without him, he was certain he had made a mistake. He could not be on every mission, however; it was a question of picking the right ones. But he sat nervously, for no reason that he could isolate, other than a deap-seated doubt.
    It was like an alarm sounding when he heard them report the target area being relatively clear. No clouds. He should have known it. The damned forecaster was wrong half the time; if he said fair, it was likely to flood. The fear of having decided badly grew stronger. He waited uncomfortably. Now he was in for half an hour or more of sickening suspense.
    He stood up and wandered about the room, trying to occupy himself. He looked over the maps on the walls again, the rows of charts, the claims board. The last he stood before for some time. On