Free Cassada by James Salter Page 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.
    â€œYou know any Italian?” Godchaux turned to Phipps.
    â€œCunati does.”
    â€œThat’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.
    â€œLet’s go down to the harbor,” Phipps said.
    â€œYeah. You can throw me in.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œTake a cold shower. That’s what they used to say.”
    â€œThe girl?”
    â€œJesus.”
    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.
    â€œOh, yeah?”
    â€œHe’s really focused on it.”
    â€œIs 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.”
    â€œ Teniente? ” the waiter asked.
    â€œI’ll take the sirloin, rare. Capisce? Rare.”
    â€œI’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 than 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.
    â€œWhat are seven and sixteen?” he said.
    â€œWhere is that, sir?”
    â€œRight here.”
    â€œSeven and sixteen,” Abrams said. “Twenty-three.”
    â€œYou’ve got twenty-two.”
    Abrams looked at the sheet.
    â€œI don’t know what happened there,” he said.
    â€œIt’s a mistake is what happened.”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œYou wasted rounds on every one of those passes. You started to break off before you were