Once Upon the Congo

by Applewhite, Claire; Harper, Chap

  “John, would you hand me the camp soap?” she asked, as she came back up the steps to take it from him. “Are you coming in?”

  “I am standing guard so a bunch of hard dicks don’t jump in and screw you to death.”

  “Well, you have already tried that with little success.”

  “I felt it was a noble effort on my part,” he said, laughing.

  Through the water, Vikki noticed a dark object coming towards her and yelled, “John there is something in the water!”

  “Get out! Get out!” John pulled his machete from his belt, and dove into the water behind Vikki.

  The object preferred Vikki, and angled for the attack. Suddenly a giant snake raised his head a couple of yards from Vikki, and exposed a mouth full of curved teeth. She realized she couldn’t get up the steps before it struck, so she grabbed the huge snake directly behind its head. The snake instantly started to move his enormous coils around her. Before the snake could complete the first phase of constriction, John had his hand next to Vikki’s on the giant snake’s throat, and made his first full strike with his machete on the spine of the creature. The snake reacted by quietly wrapping death coils around John. He could feel the breath leaving his body, and knew that once he breathed out the snake would compress more and more until he died. To make the situation worse, he was being pulled into deep water. He might drown before all the bones in his body were crushed.

  The explosion of a bullet fired through the skull of the huge snake was a sweet noise for both John and Vikki. A second, and then a third shot caused the snake to go limp.

  “John…Miss Vikki? Me hopes you okay. Did snake bite you?” Zuka said. The tall Zulu warrior was genuinely concerned.

  “No Zuka. We are fine,” Vikki said.

  “Speak for yourself—my ribs will never be the same,” John said, uncoiling the snake. Several people had joined them in the water with hands on the snake, pulling it to shore. John and Vikki both thanked Zuka profusely, who had just climbed down from the wall when he heard Vikki scream.

  Jan checked for injuries. Vikki got examined first and it appeared to John for way too long. A naked blonde lady really needs to have everything checked out. Several members of the expedition looked at her with a perverted concern for her injuries. Vikki began to protest, so Jan turned his attention to John’s ribs. Some may have been cracked or at least bruised, so Jan wrapped them and told him to take it easy for a few days.

  Vikki pulled the blanket around her and began the walk back to her tent. Laid out next to the cottage was the snake. Marc declared the creature was a twenty-one foot long African rock python sebae. Its den must have been close by the cottage, and after further investigation Marc said it was a very old female that had not laid eggs in a while.

  Vikki and John went back to the tent. After both were dressed, Vikki looked at John and with tears in her eyes she said, “John, thanks for saving my life. You were almost killed, and I don’t know what I would do without you.” She started crying and pulled John close to her. John felt it was a release of emotions from the terror that she had just gone through, and let her cry. He felt that the sex later would be really intense.

  Once she had her composure, they both headed for the stone building to see about opening the second airlock. Jan met them there and explained they had to be extremely careful once they were sealed off below.

  “John, I believe that you and Vikki are certified scuba divers—is that correct?” he asked.

  “Yes we are, but we have not been diving together,” John said.

  “I don’t know how deep this tunnel might be, but we must treat it like a dive. We believe that air has been forced into the lower parts of the tunnel not only to keep the water out, but also to provide the air for you to breathe as though you had on a scuba tank, since the air has been pumped in at pressure. I will bring a tape measure and you guys will have to remember your no-decompression dive limits as we go down,” Jan said.

  Vikki had been certified a year ago with a PADI instructor. “I don’t have the tables memorized, but I do recall that anything over one hundred feet deep would only allow for a 5 to 15 minute dive without decompression.”

  “That’s correct plus, you must consider our altitude and compute that figure in with the table readings,” John added, not really knowing much but wanting to sound smart.

  “As I recall, you would need to make an adjustment from an eighteen meter dive to that of a twenty one meter dive at 5000 feet. We may be 1000 feet above sea level so it wouldn’t require much of an adjustment—maybe a slight one for diving in fresh water instead of sea water,” Vikki said, giving more information than John wanted.

  “We ain’t diving anyway,” John said.

  “John, we don’t have to be diving if that damn tunnel is pressurized. We will have to follow the same rules as if we had tanks on our back,” she reminded him.

  “We’ll have to get that antique to…what the hell!” As he spoke, he heard the hit and miss of the steam air compressor come to life.

  “These old things are simple as hell. Don’t take much to fix,” Sony said, who had a huge grin on his face. “Hope it’s powerful enough to pump some good air.”

  Hoses were attached and air began flowing into the airlock and the lower tunnel. The airlock wasn’t keeping the air pumped in since the hatch was open, but the lower tunnel was doing fine. The gauges were crude with no pressure per square inch markings. The crew decided to let the pump run for an hour, put six people into the airlock, and run air for thirty minutes. Next, they would open the hatch into the lower tunnel and four would go in, two staying at the top near the hatch. John and Vikki had elected to hurry to the bottom of the tunnel, scout around and come back to the hatch where they would perform a safety stop. They would wait about ten minutes to release any stored up nitrogen in their system. After that, they would go into the airlock for a few minutes, sealing the lower tunnel below them. They would measure the distance with a long tape Jan had. Everyone knew there wasn’t a decompression chamber in the Congo and very few in South Africa. Any mistake and they could color themselves dead.

  Six of the crew went into the airlock. After thirty minutes, the group placed a metal rod through the screw mechanism and four strong men started turning the wheel of the hatch cover. The oiled cover opened more easily than the airlock hatch. Hissing air and a really foul smell caused Vikki to cover her mouth and almost vomit.

  John wanted to go first. He used a ladder attached just below the hatch. As he climbed down on the tunnel floor and shined his flash light around, he saw two skeletons lying next to each other, partially clothed.

  “Vikki, don’t be alarmed by the skeletons in the tunnel,” he said, dreading her reaction.

  “What the hell are you saying…oh my god!” She had seen them.

  “Jan, will you check to see if you can find a cause of death,” John said.

  “Unless there is a knife stuck in the bones that will be damn hard to determine,” Jan said.

  “We are headed down and won’t stay long,” Jon said. He and Vikki followed a winding path that included steps and gouged out areas where mining had taken place. They fed out the tape and hurried as fast as the passageway would allow. The air was dank, smelled horrible, but was breathable. After about fifteen minutes they spotted a pool of water they assumed would join up eventually with the blue hole. Lying next to the pool were two full diving suits with helmets. Two skulls stared into the glass port holes. Vikki screamed but didn’t back away.

  “Vikki, we have about three minutes to take these off and start back.”

  John removed one helmet with the skull inside. He helped Vikki unscrew the one from her unfortunate diver.

  “We are at 127 feet from the bottom of the lower hatch and about 137 to the ground level. We are going to be cooked if we don’t move fast.” John studied Jan’s tape as he spoke.

  They arrived at the hatch exhausted from carrying the heavy brass diving helmets. Jan’s eyes opened wi
de when he saw the skulls. Ernie, the other member of the crew, let out a yell when it was his turn to examine the helmets. They looked at the clothing left on the other skeletons, and created wild theories about what happened to the people in the tunnel. An easy theory stated that something happened to the men topside who were running the compressor, that in turn caused the divers to die first and the others later. Maybe someone jammed the hatch so they couldn’t get out. Maybe a methane gas leak or the whole expedition may have been attacked by natives and all were killed, with those below left to die.

  “If any of those theories were true, then who stacked the equipment so neatly, and sealed the stone building so securely? And why didn’t they go get the people below and bury them?” John asked.

  “Survivors may have come back after a few days just to seal the place out of respect and had no time to recover the dead. Probably got killed later, left no records—no survivors,” Jan said.

  “Whatever occurred, they never got the chance to come back down here. I’ll tell you why,” Vikki said. She held up an old leather sack. “Wait till you see what’s inside.”

  Chapter 10

  Diamonds and Snakes

  Vikki opened the sack and flashlight beams caused an explosion of sparkling reflections, illuminating thousands of uncut diamonds. Around the skeletons and on the other side of the tunnel were dozens of leather sacks all full of diamonds in different shades of color.

  “Holy shit!” John said.

  After a short stay in the airlock the subterranean crew walked out of the stone building carrying leather sacks of diamonds and two diving helmets with skulls inside.

  It was raining so hard their tent was taking on water in a few places. John and Vikki ate lunch in the tent alone in the company of four bags of diamonds. They celebrated the discovery of the diamond cache and their narrow escape, with passionate lovemaking. They both knew this time in their lives would end someday. Their intense passion was as rare and delicious as their new found diamonds. Vikki took a position on top of John, taking care not to further damage his ribs, and directed their love making, moving up and down slowly and sensuously, creating an act of such pleasure that John explained to her later as ‘wonderful sexual torture.’ At this moment in time, they both felt that life could not get any better, even if they had all the diamonds and money in the world.

  After they rested, they decided to sort the bags of precious stones. Most were white, but a few were pink, light blue, yellow and some were brown. About half the gem stones were three karats or less, quite a few were between five and ten karats and a small number were huge rocks that looked like large hunks of glass. They placed the stones back in the bags and listened to the torrential rain.

  After an hour or so, Sony yelled for everyone to meet in the stone cottage. The rain had slowed, so everyone made a dash for the building. Except for the guards on the walls and the gate, all the expedition members were present.

  “Found a load of diamonds. Need special diving gear to do more mining. So, we need to get out of Dodge quick. Our guards have been spotting pygmies in the trees—a whole herd of them. Attack is coming soon. We ship out tomorrow. Take the shields and protect the rubber boats from arrows. Some of you men, carry the equipment back in here. Use those sacks of mortar we found to seal this baby again. We have three new boats. Protect the hell out of them. Check our old boats that we brought up the hill for holes. Keep patches ready. We’ll make a new trail in the morning—old one booby trapped. Stay on east side of river. Arrows can’t go that far. Hippos and crocs on east—be careful. All diamond bags in something that will float. You die—we’ll catch the diamonds down river. Mostly be floating—rapids we’ll go inland. Eat big in morning—won’t stop much till we get to vehicles. Should go fast. Good luck.” Sony wasn’t much on speeches, but the whole crew got the message. Unless they were careful, they would have poisoned arrows stuck in their asses, their rubber boats would sink, and all the while they would be fought over by hippos and twenty-foot-long crocodiles.

  John and Vikki sought the sanctuary of their leaking tent. The pair placed the diamonds into plastic bags filled with air. Vikki wrapped her journal in plastic after she made her last entry. Her writings were more like a diary that included a scientific log and contained her intense feelings for John. Jan, Marc and Sony all kept a type of journal. Jan had many medical references, and Marc concentrated on the geological findings. Sony’s was an account of the men, the work and the equipment. Most of his sentences were less than five words long and absent of adjectives or adverbs. John just made notes when something interested him.

  Everyone in camp found it difficult to sleep that night, because of the rain and the impending doom that would most likely occur the next day. Vikki lay on John’s shoulder and told him she was really scared about going back on the river.

  “If anyone can make it back, I believe it will be us, since we have so much to live for,” John said.

  “John, thanks—but you are full of shit.” She laughed and kissed him on the cheek.

  Suddenly, there was a ‘thunk’ sound near their tent—and then another and another.

  “Vikki, those are arrows hitting our shields!” John yelled.

  Both of them moved to the center of the tent to obtain the maximum shelter given by the four large wooden shields propped next to the tent. Within minutes, arrows began to tear through both ends of the tent, which were not protected. Now they could hear automatic gunfire and pistol shots. More arrows stuck up in the shields, and very heavy gunfire could be heard all over camp. As quickly as the attack started, it came to an abrupt stop.

  Sony came over to the tent to say, “Stay in your tent. Antoine and Ike killed. Arrows to the skull. We killed bunches of those bastards. We have two wounded—not bad. Doc will give the medicine.”

  Later, they would learn that Sani and Joseph were the two who had minor arrow wounds. Minor, except for the little problem of poison and human feces on the arrows.

  There were no more attacks that night, but no one got much sleep. At first light everything was packed up. Everyone walked out in continuing rain, and they noticed the great doors were functional again. Not far from the front gate, were two more graves plus the four that contained some of the skeletal remains of the old expedition.

  With Zuka and Ernie leading the way, the group cut a new path through the dense jungle and tropical forest and finally reached the edge of the cliff. Gunners were posted at the edge of the drop-off to protect the climbers as they descended from the top. Vikki was in a trance-like state since the death of the two men. She now knew she or John could die at any minute and realized the expedition was likely to get more dangerous once they got on the river. John had a determined look on his face and watched every movement down below as he climbed off the high ridge. The climb down was made even more difficult because everyone was carrying a shield, with ropes lowering down extra ones. Once everyone was down from the cliff, several members of the crew stood in a semi-circle holding up the shields to protect those airing up the boats and repairing any that had holes in them.

  Two pygmies who shot arrows from the top of the cliff were killed with a short burst from Ernie’s AK-47. The projectiles hit shields before they could do any damage. With the boats inflated, the expedition made a launch from the east part of the island. This was the first test of the shields while floating downstream. Five bright yellow inflatable rafts caught the current and moved nicely between the large island and the eastern shoreline. As the little flotilla approached the southern part of the island, pygmies let fly dozens of arrows from the top of the cliff. Their aim was surprisingly accurate. Had it not been for the shields, no expedition member would have survived without at least a wound from a foul smelling, sharp metal point. Zuka and Ernie blasted several pygmies off the cliff, and the rest took shelter in the trees. Two boats took hits and had to be quickly patched and air added. Sony calculated the eight day trip on foot would be shortened to a couple of days if they also t
raveled at night. He reminded the group there were two bad sections of rapids they would have to walk around, meaning there would be times they would have to choose between territorial hippos and pygmy poison arrows.

  The Aruwimi River had been three or four hundred yards across most of the first day. As they rounded a bend and headed almost due west, the river narrowed to about a hundred yards and became very shallow. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except for a large herd of forest elephants enjoying a bath in the shallows. They bellowed when they saw the crew and made menacing charges towards the group from a great distance. As the boats drew closer, Sony asked everyone to fire their weapons in the air. The elephants took off-all but one. The elephant that remained was the dominant bull. He stood his ground at the edge of the river.

  “That bastard ain’t afraid of shit!” John said.

  Almost immediately, all the little boats moved next to the opposite shore line and trained their guns on the big bull. He headed directly toward Sony’s boat, where Jan and Marc were passengers. Zuka and Ernie opened up with automatic fire and struck the skull of the big beast several times. None of these hits from large caliber weapons stopped the determined patriarch. As all the men bailed out of the craft, the elephant slid his trunk under the rubber boat and tossed it over his head. The two men with automatic assault weapons were closer now and filled his brain with steel jacketed bullets. The monster fell in the middle of the stream.

  Quickly the survivors of the tiny ship wreck swam after the boat and made quick repairs. After everyone was moving again, the crew frantically set about fixing damage not noticed on the first repairs. Sony yelled to the rest of the crew if the repairs didn’t hold they would be abandoning their boat for one that didn’t resemble a sponge.