The Hunters Read Online Free PDF

formations and tactics employed by the group. There were also some lectures on combat procedures, use of the radio, navigation aids, recognition, codes, and so forth. It was all very informal, and the biggest thing was to accomplish the preliminary flying. Aircraft were available only between missions, which usually meant in the middle of the morning or afternoon. Frequently there were none to spare, so for a number of days he had little to do. In bed in the mornings, he could see the sky through a window, a rectangle of blue between the tiled roofs of the buildings.
    On the fourth morning, he woke up early. The sky, he noticed, was topped with a high layer of cirrus, as even and regular as the roof tiles or a cobbled street. For a while he lay still in the warm bedding. He could hear the first-light reconnaissance ships running up their engines at the near end of the strip. Beneath the eaves of the barracks the sparrows scurried, ruffled by the wind, giving chilled cries.
    It was an effort to swing his feet out over the cold concrete floor and put on his shoes. He did it finally in one hurried moment, not without shivering. Up at last, he shaved in a pan of
water that had been on top of the stove all night. It was as hot as a man could stand. He rinsed the shaving cream off with clear hot water dipped with a canteen cup from another container that had been on the stove, and then opened the door and threw it all from the pan onto the bare, hard earth outside. It steamed as it hit the ground and sank in. Then he combed his hair before a blackened mirror, put on a woolen shirt, sweater, and flying jacket, and stepped out to walk down the road to breakfast. The cold air made his nose run and shocked his eyes into complete awakeness.
    The Korean mess boys brought him his food on a tray: salty bacon, eggs, toast, and steaming coffee poured from steel pitchers. When he had finished, he smoked a cigarette. This was, so early, contrary to a mild resolution of his, but he did not resist the desire. He made of it the first of that day’s concessions to the shortness of life. After a while he got up and started walking down toward the flight line about a mile away. It was a cold, damp morning. There was a raw wind that made his bones feel brittle. The sun was just rising, its light low across the hills and over the flatlands in which the field was located.
    The first mission was taxiing out. The ships, some painted with black-and-white zebra stripes, others with a solid band of yellow, moved along quickly, but they seemed strangely inept on the ground, rolling like cable cars or trolleys. A few of them had red stars stenciled under the cockpit rim. He saw the pilots hunched inside, faceless and inhuman under the helmets and black oxygen masks.
    They lined up in pairs on the runway, twelve ships altogether. The engines were run up. The smoke shot backward and skyward. A sustained roar filled the air, a deafening eruption, like
an ultimate wind of flame. The noise was brutal, but deep and assuring. It seemed endless. The rear ships quivered in the river of blast. He watched the first two finally go, their rudders flicking slowly from side to side as they began to roll, like the tails of fish holding quietly against a current, rolling very slowly at the start and then quickening until they flowed down the far end of the runway and nosed into the sky. The others followed at close interval.
    Desmond was the squadron operations officer, and Cleve had known him, too, in Panama. He was in his office listening to the command radio when Cleve walked in. The whole mission could be followed like that. It was the way the broadcast of a football game would be if there were a microphone in the huddles.
    â€œSit down, Cleve,” he said. He motioned toward the radio. “They’re just going out.”
    â€œI saw them on my way down here.”
    â€œI don’t expect there’s much of a chance of their running into anything.