Cassada

by James Salter

  “What’s the story?” Isbell said.

  “Doesn’t look good up there,” Leeman told him. “I don’t think you’ll get home today.”

  “Where are you headed for?”

  “We’ve got a taxi coming. We’ll give you a ride if you want.”

  “I think we’ll just have a look at things.”

  The French forecaster repeated what he had told the others. There was the influence of a deep low, he said, down to Lyons, on which city he tapped a knowing finger. Elbows on the counter, Isbell looked at the surface chart. There were no station sequences. The regular teletype net had been out since the day before, the forecaster said.

  The big chart was twelve hours old, a forest of purple numbers and knotholes of pressure. There might be an alternate in England. Isbell felt a slight temptation. There were pilots who were apprehensive about weather and others for whom dense rain and fog were a lure, part of a reputation.

  “Don’t decide because of me,” Cassada said. He was standing beside Isbell. “I can fly your wing through any of that.”

  Isbell felt the temptation.

  “I’m with you, Captain.”

  “We’d have to penetrate, who knows, maybe from thirty thousand,” Isbell said.

  “I’ll touch down right beside you.”

  There was the seductive image of the two of them, wheels folding birdlike beneath as they rose from the runway and headed north where no one else would go, where no one would dare to, but he was too wise to succumb to it. What was to be gained? Nothing useful.

  “How much weather time do you have?” Isbell said.

  “Actual weather?”

  “Real weather, not under the hood.”

  “Twenty, twenty-five hours.”

  “Twenty-five?”

  “Twenty. But the main thing is, how much do you have?”

  Isbell looked at him. After a moment he acknowledged, “Plenty.”

  “Why don’t we try it? We could always come back to Marseilles?”

  “We can’t file with Marseilles as an alternate. We’d have to find something closer. I don’t know if we can find anything.”

  “Couldn’t we stretch the regulations a little?”

  “No.”

  “Just to show these guys. Day, night, up, down, whatever, we do it better.”

  For a moment Isbell saw them suddenly appearing beneath the heavy, low clouds like couriers and taxiing in with somebody, Grace maybe, maybe Dunning leaning out of the window of the Volksbus and calling up. Isbell couldn’t hear what they were saying. Chocks were being put under the wheels. He took off his helmet and cupped his ear.

  “What?”

  “We’d given up on you for today.”

  Isbell looked up at the ominous clouds just above his head that represented the thing he was meant to avoid despite any pride: the act that was indefensible, that proved nothing.

  He looked at Cassada, the blue of his eyes, a pure undaunted blue.

  “You suppose they’re still out there?” Leeman asked.

  Sparrow was pouring a beer. “What are you worried about?” he said.

  “I just don’t want to be sitting around for nothing. I don’t want to have left Tripoli hours before them and get home a day later.”

  “Yeah. Humiliating.”

  “That’s the trouble with you.”

  “What’s wrong?” Sparrow said. “I do what I’m told. You say Marignane—here we are. Captain Pine says log two hours every flight, I log two hours. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I may not do everything on the dead run, but hey, the perfect wingman. I pad my flying time, I go to beer call, I know all the songs.”

  Leeman interrupted him with a slight, dampening motion of his hand.

  “Why don’t you have a beer?”

  “Shut up a minute.”

  “What is it?”

  “You hear that?”

  Sparrow looked at the floor. He heard nothing. A car went by outside. “What?”

  “That’s them.”

  Sparrow listened again.

  “It’s somebody,” he said. “It might not be them. It could be French.”

  “No.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I know. I know Isbell.”

  “Just by the sound of his engine? You’re all right.”

  “That’s them,” Leeman repeated.

  They listened. The sound rose a little, then faded.

  “I’m going to call the field,” Leeman said, “but that was them. I know it.”

  After a few minutes he came back, vindicated. He’d spoken to the forecaster who had finally come up with an alternate, Eindhoven. The weather there was at the edge of the low.

  Ahead lay Valence, half in sunlight, half in shadow, grey against white with touches of gold. They were still climbing, passing twenty-five thousand. Off to the left was an autumn sun in the light of which Cassada’s contrail gleamed, a late sun, emptied of heat. Long, clear rays. A sun that infused the canopy like crystal. Isbell could see the minute scratches in the plexiglas and in the rosy brown of his visor, unexpectedly, a huge eye, the size of a plum, his own. Moist pupil, dark watery iris, lashes. It was staring at something, unwary, intent. At itself.

  He looked down toward the earth again and watched the line of the first clouds that, very low, divided Valence in two. Slowly all of it disappeared beneath the nose of the plane. The clouds were a vast glacier extending in all directions as far as he could see. Behind, like a departed shore, the last sight of the earth fell away. Brown hills were vanishing, a thin, polished river. Still in a climb they flew toward Lyons.

  The clouds deepened as they went, the tops mounting. At thirty-five thousand Isbell leveled off. The tops were about twenty—it was difficult to say because they weren’t solid though they looked it at first. There were large breaks in them. There were shaftways and passages. Milky rays of sunlight shot along them revealing caverns, abysses.

  Nearing Lyons the needle of the radio compass began to waver. It fell off halfway, returned, then swung completely around. Isbell watched it, listening to the steady tone of the beacon and thinking not so much of the distance ahead but of how far they had come and how long a way it was back. The cockpit heat was not working well. His feet were cold and the top of the canopy had become white with little stars of frost, as exact as if they had been etched in the glass.

  The sun fell lower. It was in the last quarter of its elevation, the light flat. The white of the clouds had faded like an old wall. Everything seemed silent and still as they headed towards Dijon. There was a strange, lost feeling, as though they were in an empty house, in rooms without furniture, looking through windows that had no glass. The world seemed abandoned. The last being had vanished from earth. There were ghostly cities below, desolate highways, meadows bathed in dead light. He had the map unfolded across his lap, looking ahead, listening to nothing. One lone sound reassured him, steady, unending, the sound of the engine, closer to him than breathing, more familiar than his heart.

  As they swung Dijon, Isbell made a small x on the map, the point of his pencil going through. Beside it he wrote the time. A few minutes later he called Chaumont. He was already picking up their beacon.

  There was no answer. After a pause, he called again. He was about to try a third time when he heard Cassada,

  “They’re answering you, Lead.”

  Cassada’s transmission was weak. Isbell barely heard it.

  “I can’t read them,” he said.

  “White Lead from White Two,” Cassada called.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Chaumont Tower is calling you.”

  “Ask them for destination weather.”

  “Say again?”

  Isbell was pressing the mike button harder, as if he could force his wingman to hear.

  “The latest . . . destination . . . weather,” he said very slowly. Chaumont was an American base, their weather information would
be current.

  “You want the latest weather?” There was something more that could not be made out.

  “Roger.”

  “Say again?”

  “Roger. The latest weather. The latest weather,” Isbell said.

  He could hear Cassada transmitting but not clearly. There was a long silence. He began to be uneasy. It was hard to wait. They were traveling seven or eight miles each minute. The sun had sunk lower and a different cast was coming over the sky. In the distance, purples were appearing, the last faint reds. He looked to the east. There, past Italy, were the pillars of night, the deep, welling blues following in the wake of the sun, crossing the invisible Alps, darkening tidelike the clouds of Salzburg, Munich.

  “Did you get that?” he heard.

  “Negative.”

  “Did you get the weather, Lead?”

  “Negative, negative,” Isbell said.

  “I can’t read you. It’s five hundred overcast and two miles. . . .” There was something else, unintelligible.

  “What do they have at Chaumont?”

  “I can’t read you at all. You’re very weak and garbled.”

  Isbell repeated his transmission four or five times. Finally he was understood. He waited. They were past Chaumont by then. The sun was just above the top deck of clouds. The quiet was unnerving. There was an immense, long silence. Time slowed. The minutes grew.

  Isbell heard nothing more. His radio was dead, there was not even a side tone. He switched from one channel to another, trying to call or hear anybody. There was nothing. Five hundred and two, he was thinking, trying to consider it calmly. The sun was just touching the clouds, tangent to the highest layer, turning it dark as if an act were ending. They had been flying more than an hour. Five hundred and two.

  He looked out at Cassada and began rocking his wings. He looked at the map. It was more than four hundred miles back to Marseilles. Cassada hadn’t moved. Isbell rocked his wings again. Cassada banked gently in towards him. He watched him curve in slowly, the white wake bending, and slide perfectly to Isbell’s wingtip.

  Isbell passed a hand in front of his face two or three times and touched the side of his helmet. He saw Cassada nod. He tapped his oxygen mask. Another nod. Transmitter and receiver both out. He was still turning things over in his mind. They were only ten or fifteen minutes out. He could feel Cassada waiting, watching, wondering perhaps, though able to talk to the ground. I’m going to touch down right beside you. It would be the reverse. Finally Isbell pointed a finger at him, then pointed straight ahead. Cassada’s ship moved forward.

  Isbell was now flying wing. In the silence he hung there. All that remained in the world was the other airplane. He stared at it. Every detail was terrifically clear. He read the black numbers on the tail. He watched the other plane move, rising slightly, sinking, as if borne by the calmest sea. It seemed incredibly heavy against the sky. He watched Cassada’s head move, nod—he was talking to someone—then look this way and that. What was he saying? What were they telling him? Isbell began switching channels again, fumbling blindly for the set which was behind his left elbow. He called on each frequency, aching to hear something. He saw then that they had started to descend. He glanced at the clouds beneath. They were dark, profound.

  They were at twenty thousand, the station still ahead. A thousand years had passed since Marseilles. Isbell glanced quickly at the needle. It was steady. They were close. It was holding dead on as if anchored. When he looked again it had begun to waver, darting from side to side. Speed brakes, he thought, and almost at that moment saw Cassada give the hand signal. In unison they put them out. The noses pitched down. The attitude steepened.

  At twelve thousand feet they began the turn to come back inbound. The cloud tops were streaming just beneath them, the threatening grey domes. Cassada’s wingtip lights came on. Isbell reached for his own, the panel lights also. Ten thousand feet. In a bank. The clouds were skimming below. In a silence that existed for Isbell alone they went down together towards the hidden earth.

  They were racing through densities, uneven, unending. One minute Cassada’s plane was clear, iron-hard in the gloom, and the next almost gone except for the wingtip light. When Isbell rode a little high he could see the red glow in the other cockpit, the aura of the instruments and even their circular faces, Cassada’s head bent forward towards them, motionless, intent. It was dusk in the clouds. It was deep rain-grey.

  They broke out low the first time and off to the side. Isbell had one real look. Cassada saw it himself and they began turning, banking steeply across the runway at about two hundred feet and then reversing, cutting back hard. Isbell wasn’t sure what they were doing, if Cassada meant to try and put it down there with half of the runway or even more behind them. He felt a moment of panic and suddenly saw Cassada was pulling away from him. Speed brakes in. He had missed the signal. Perhaps it hadn’t been given. He caught up using full power just as Cassada held out a fist with thumb extended: gear up. Then flaps. They were climbing, into the overcast again, turning north.

  Isbell was sweating. His legs felt light, the knees missing. Don’t watch the fuel, he said to himself, don’t look at it. He kept trying the mike button, not in desperation but there might be a loose connection somewhere, it might kick in again. He talked but no sound came, his voice was dead in the oxygen mask, trapped in it. His right hand, on the stick, kept tightening. He had to think to make it relax. Don’t look, he told himself. Forget it. It hasn’t changed. It hasn’t even been a minute. All right. Robert, don’t be in a hurry now. Don’t get excited. It’s a little bad maybe, but just do it right. Set it up this time. Make it perfect. Don’t be in a rush. Everything in order. Everything so.

  They had leveled at twenty-five hundred feet, still heading north. Isbell was following things by glances at his own instruments. He sat waiting for the turn. His mind was racing ahead. He was trying to think, trying to stem the anguish, force the runway to appear dead ahead with them settling in towards it together, whistling, fast, and the sudden jar of the wheels hitting.

  Cassada still hadn’t turned. Isbell stole a look at the clock. It meant nothing. Finally, when he felt he could not bear it another second, he realized they were banking. The unseen world was tilting, heeling over on a blind axis. They were talking to Cassada, he knew. They were telling him things, giving him numbers more precious than safe combinations. Every so often his head would nod a little.

  The downwind was interminable. At last they turned onto base leg, the gear coming down with its faint, assuring quake. The last preparations. Isbell pushed back in the seat, sitting straighter. A glance at the fuel. One warranted look. Nine hundred pounds. He could feel his heart starting in.

  All right, Robert, he said. Now exactly the way they give it to you. Easy, smooth, not paying attention to anything else, just as if it were clear as a bell here, as if it were only practice.

  V

  FINALLY CASSADA ANSWERS . . .

  Finally Cassada answers. He’s on top at nine thousand, orbiting the beacon. Dunning doesn’t need to ask but can’t prevent himself,

  “Do you have White Two up there?”

  “Negative. I can’t see him anywhere.”

  “How’s your fuel?”

  “I’ve got five hundred pounds,” Cassada replies. It’s like a heavy door closing.

  “Look around. Can’t you spot him?”

  A pause.

  “You’d better get him down,” Cadin says.

  Godchaux steps out of the doorway and his eyes meet Harlan’s. They each know what the other is thinking.

  After a few moments the controller comes on just as Cassada says something, and the transmissions block each other out. It’s brief but it seems to introduce something, an unwanted confusion. Either no one is talking or they all are.

  “Do you have White Two?” Cassada asks the controller.

  “Roger,” the controller says.

  “Where is he? What’s his position?”

/>   “Four miles northeast. Heading inbound.”

  “What altitude?” Dunning breaks in.

  “You were blocked, White,” the controller says.

  “What’s his altitude?”

  “Who am I talking to?”

  “Mobile Control.”

  “. . . together?” It’s the last part of something Cassada is asking.

  “Take up a heading of three three zero,” the controller instructs.

  “What’s his altitude?” Dunning is shouting. “What’s White Two’s altitude?”

  “Stand by one,” the controller says.

  It seems minutes pass. Dunning pulls out a handkerchief to wipe his nose and jams it back in his pocket, the tip hanging out. Then Cassada’s voice says,

  “This gauge is jumping around.”

  No one answers him. There is no answer.

  “It just dropped,” he says. “It’s down to three hundred pounds.”

  His voice has a lost quality. No one replies.

  “Now it’s going back and forth between three and five hundred.”

  “White Lead?” the controller says, unable to address the matter of fuel.

  “Roger.”

  “White Two is three miles out,” the controller reports. Then, “He’s holding level at fifteen hundred feet.” It means in the densest clouds.

  “Say again his altitude,” Dunning calls.

  “White Two is at one thousand five hundred.”

  There’s a silence.

  “Did you receive that, White Lead?”

  “Roger.”

  “What are your intentions?”

  He doesn’t answer. He had climbed up, low on fuel, in a last attempt to find his leader. Should he abandon him now? Was it too late?

  Dunning, stripped of hope like someone who has just lost all his money, everything, but unwilling to show it with the colonel beside him, stands with the microphone in one hand, a microphone that is useless. Abruptly coming to life again, he says,

  “Come on down, Cassada. You can make it. The runway lights are showing up good now. You’ll spot them this time.” His eyes sweep the length of things outside. “Come on, boy. Penetrate right from where you are.”