Read Online Cassada by James Salter - Free Book Online

turned to Harlan. “That isn’t him.”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong? Why isn’t he leading?”
    â€œHis radio’s out,” Harlan said.
    His radio was out. He wasn’t leading. The wingman was leading. In an instant everything had changed.

On the flight line in Tripoli forty or fifty planes were parked in a long, glinting row. Behind them where the blacktop ended the ground dropped away to a broad depression where seawater was evaporated in great, shallow beds. The first rule of gunnery camp was always the same, “Don’t piss in the Salt Flats.” Facing the planes was a line of corrugated iron huts with an occasional tent or some canvas rigged on poles to provide shade. The ground crews, many of them stripped to the waist, were squatting under the wings with wrenches, dropping the external tanks. Two of the three squadrons had landed. The first yellowtails were just taxiing in. The 72nd. Another flight of them was on the break. Pilots sat on their gear in the afternoon sun, waiting for the bus to take them to their tent area.
    All of it echoed the war that had been fought here, not so many years earlier, along the narrow band of desert near the sea. The same brown tents, the sun, the dust, the overriding focus. In all likelihood the same bus, a tilting wreck with an Arab driver and nofixed schedule. Usually it would leave just when someone was coming to board or running towards it. The driver, a hand on the door lever, would start the engine in no apparent hurry and, as if unable to hear the shouts, swing the door shut and drive off. Twenty minutes later, sometimes more, at the far end of the parking area, white dust rising behind, the bus would return, the brakes squealing as it slowly came to a stop.
    Struggling with their bags, pilots climbed aboard and lurched down the aisle. In the back, Grace sat down near Wickenden.
    â€œFive dollars a man, what do you say?”
    Wickenden shook his head.
    â€œFive dollars, the same as last time. That’s fair enough.”
    Wickenden only smiled a little, like a man reading a book.
    â€œHow 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.
    â€œDon’t you have any confidence in your boys?”
    â€œI have confidence in them,” Wickenden said. “More than I have in yours.”
    â€œOK then.”
    â€œI also have a new man who’s never fired before.”
    â€œWho? 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.
    â€œI’m sure.”
    The bus was full. “Hey, driver,” they were beginning to call, “let’s go!”
    â€œI’m just as bad off,” Grace said. “I’ve got Fergy.”
    â€œHe’s an experienced man,” Wickenden countered wearily.
    â€œYou’re damned right!” Ferguson called out.
    â€œYou know yourself,” Grace went on, ignoring this, “that it’susually two weeks before he can even find the tow ship much less get hits.”
    â€œThat was one day when the visibility was lousy!” Ferguson called.
    â€œDriver! 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.
    â€œThen 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.
    â€œDriver! Let’s go!”
    â€œYou’re no worse off than I am,” Grace said.
    Wickenden’s mouth was set in a line.
    â€œEverybody else is