Once Upon the Congo

by Applewhite, Claire; Harper, Chap

  The group Joseph Kony contacted was called UCFF, an acronym for Union of Congolese Freedom Fighters, not to be confused with the UPC or Union of Congolese Patriots, to whom some of the group had migrated. Unlike most rebel units who wore uniforms and combat boots, the UCFF wore T-shirts and tennis shoes. Most dressed in camo slacks, commonly available, but some UFCC even wore shorts. Why not be comfortable while shooting, killing, and raping? Kony told his followers that untold riches awaited them if they ambushed an expedition on its way out of the area.

  The UCFF, aware of the Sony group from a source in the DRC army, felt they could attack the expedition’s vehicles as they left the quarry. Kony wanted a squad of men to move quickly from the Ituri region. Twelve UCFF men were given orders and directions. Part of their trip would be by truck and the rest by foot. Kony instructed that fifty percent of the loot be sent to him by courier after the encounter. The UCFF officer hung up, and laughed at the audacity of a man hidden in the jungle, changing locations every night and demanding proceeds from an unfamiliar raid. However, Kony felt he had the same power he had held in his so-called glory days. Since UCFF was cash-strapped, they proceeded with the raid. They had no intention of sharing with anyone—especially Kony.

  Sony and Carol heard the ruckus, and poked their heads out of their tents to see the girls arrive on the helicopter. They both exclaimed all four girls were drop dead beautiful. Carol noticed Roland’s movie star looks but kept most of her comments to herself. She didn’t want to dampen the mood inside the tent. A battery-powered lantern on a makeshift table, made from a flat board laid across a camp stool, cast the only light in their tent. To say they were “enjoying themselves” would be an understatement.

  “I don’t see why I can’t be on top. Is it because I’m a woman and you need to—like dominate another human?” Carol asked. She started stripping off her clothes.

  “Wait…wait! I want the perverted pleasure of slowly undressing you myself,” Sony said. He removed her hand from her blouse and starting the unbuttoning process.

  “Is this going to be like a Harlequin Romance where the ‘get ready’ lasts for most of the book?” She smiled and watched him fumble with her buttons.

  “Don’t tell me you read those things? My grandmother reads them.”

  “Is your grandmother a horny old lady?” Carol positioned her smiling face under his gaze, and kissed him.

  “That has not been a part our conversations, but on her 95th birthday, I’ll be sure and ask her.”

  “Sony, we have two flimsy cots and a couple of thin foam pads. Where are we going to consummate our jungle marriage? I was thinking of a brass bed under a banana tree, with monkeys watching from above. I love monkeys watching me have sex—don’t you?”

  “Of course, dear. Are your medications nearby?”

  “Are you going to use one of those rubber socks during sex? I take birth control pills you know,” she said. The top part of her body was exposed. He was feverishly working on her pants but couldn’t master the fastening device on the front of her slacks.

  “Are these pants or a chastity belt? I won’t use a condom, if you promise you don’t have a disease where I wake up in the morning and find my dick has fallen off.”

  “Honey, I don’t think my germs are that strong—at least when the doctor gave me those antibiotics he felt everything would clear up in a few months,” she said. He overcame the fastener and removed her pants. His hands were on her lovely lace-fringed Victoria’s Secret panties, and he couldn’t resist asking a certain question.

  “You cannot have sex with me unless you give me this answer. I’m sure they tell you girls when you buy things there. What is Victoria’s Secret?” He lowered her last undergarment. Gracefully, she stepped out of her panties. She was indeed a beautiful naked lady. Sony couldn’t help staring at her, up and down.

  “Sony, are you ready for this? Victoria was a man! It’s true. He had an operation. All of his junk removed, and now he has a makeshift vagina. Well, he was a fashion designer named Victor and even though he is a she, there was a need for cool women’s underwear—so voilà—it was he/she to the rescue,” she said. Both hands undressed Sony, who rolled his eyes and smiled at her ability to make up stuff on the fly.

  “And Carol, again, where do you keep your crazyass meds.?” Sony was now completely undressed. Carol didn’t mess around with slowly relishing button after button.

  They decided to move the pads and sleeping bags to the floor of the tent. Sony gladly let Carol get on top. Just as Sony suspected, she proved to be a fun lover. Recalling an earlier conversation, she told Sony his size was fine, and her ring size was six and a half. If she made a serious statement, the purpose was to set up a punch line later. They consummated their phony jungle marriage that night several times and would be very sore the next day. Neither one cared.

  A few yards away, tension completely filled a different tent. Lu and Chris sat on their cots and looked at the ground, saying nothing but breathing heavily. Lu had moved from the melting point to somewhere around just simmering. Chris fidgeted like a young boy who had a porno site going on his computer when his mom came into his room for a sit down chat and had just enough time to turn the screen away but couldn’t remember if the sound was turned off. Any minute the boy and his mom would hear, “Oh yes, fuck me! Oh my God! Yes!” and his life would be over.

  Lu waited for something to come out of Chris’s mouth that would make everything better. Maybe some words from him that would explain the deceit. Technically, he hadn’t lied to her. He really did go on a lion hunt. He and the other guys just left off a few details about the aftermath of the great hunt. The side trip was a big deal omission. If they had gone to a titty bar and had drinks, that would have been something guys do and would have garnered a small ass chewing. If they had snuck in a golf game or took in a football game, all would have been forgivable breaches of conduct. To fly to another country and meet up with an expedition that had taken five lives the last time around and held the possibility of injury or death, well, he knew he had stepped over the line.

  “Lu, I love you. I made a promise to be with you until I die. I plan to do just that. I also made a promise to Plato to help find what Papa Doc had hidden from his country and to help the earthquake victims of Haiti. Plato held the key to that mystery in a second log he had in his possession. All the gold Papa Doc secretly mined in Haiti went to the BIOA bank in the Ivory Coast. That gold would be sold off to help the Haitian people. Even more important to the people was the result of the 1966 Cole expedition. What Cole found was a long lasting funding source and a boost for the economy of the Congo as well—we believe. Our expedition has the twin purpose of exploring the potential value of mineral here and creating a plan to mine them that’s acceptable environmentally. Surely you don’t have a problem with these lofty goals.” He stared right into her eyes that were red from crying.

  “Don’t call me Shirley.” After the short bypass to tired humor, she verbally let loose with all guns a blazing. “We had something special, Chris. It’s called trust. You just shit all over that and left me in the position of picking up your dead body in the Congo and telling your son, Reid, ‘Daddy’s not coming home anymore.’ Do you think he wants to lose his daddy? What in the fuck were you thinking?”

  “Lu, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but if I had you would’ve refused to let me go. We’re here now—so deal with it!” Lu sensed the frustration and anger in Chris’ voice, which somewhat calmed her down.

  “So, what are we going to be doing tomorrow—besides killing snakes and swatting tsetse flies?” Lu realized that she had sufficiently chewed on Chris. Further talk would be counterproductive.

  “You and the girls can…what is that sound?” Chris said. Something hit the roof of their tent.

  “Is it rain or hail?” Lu said.

  “Arrows! Lots of frigging arrows!” Chris and Lu could see the points protrude in some places on the sides of their tent. Arrows stuck to the top o
f the tent. A rain fly prevented them from entering the tent. The couple pushed their cots together. Chris shielded Lu’s body as best he could.

  Bruny yelled, “Move your cots to the center of the tents. Don’t touch the arrows—they are most likely poisoned. Stay inside. Guards stay behind your shields and fire rounds into the trees.”

  The expedition leader was glad he had told the guards to take the wooden shields that lined the interior wall of the enclosure. Tomorrow, he would have everyone place the shields on the outsides of their tents.

  The big Barrett .50 caliber as well as the M-16 could be heard firing off rounds into the tree line around the enclosure. Jean-Jean and Osse were shooting wildly as if to say, We are armed and we’ll kill you dead if you come out of hiding.”

  After a short while, the two Haitian brothers stopped firing. No more arrows came over that night, and snuggling in the middle of tents became very popular. Many slept under their cots. Most did not sleep at all.

  Chapter 24

  Pygmies

  Rain—very heavy rain with thunder and lightning greeted everyone in the morning. The tents leaked around the arrows. Dr. Devine was the only one allowed to remove them since he wanted to study the poison on the tips. Expedition members began patching where the arrows had been and placed more shields on top of and next to the tents. As the rain continued, the mechanics worked to knock loose rocks on the side door to the cottage. The cottage’s front door opening to the blue hole appeared to not have been unsealed in a hundred years. Since divers would be using the steps, this large door was also being put to use.

  Except in Bruny’s command tent, the activity was subdued because of the downpour. He had called the two anthropologists, Carol and Charlie, to discuss strategy on dealing with the area natives. Everyone was in agreement the quarry was a sacred site to them, therefore the group needed a proper method of showing respect for native beliefs. Bruny had been in contact with the land forces cutting their way through the jungle, and expected them to be at the quarry before dark. The interpreter for the Efe tribe, who was with the expedition, could hopefully call together a meeting with the natives. Bruny had brought with him a small loud speaker system. He was curious about the beliefs and habits of these forest people who had tried to kill everyone the night before.

  Bruny inquired, “Tell me why you think the Efe are so protective of this place and how many different tribes of natives are we dealing with?”

  “Two tribes. The Efe who are pygmies and the Lese who are normal sized natives. The Efe are one of the oldest races of humans on earth. Some say Efe bones go back ninety thousand years. Not much is known about their religion, but we can safely guess it is primitive. What I’ve read says they have a God, “Tore,” who created them, lost interest, and went off to live in the sky. Once they die their “Borupi,” or rhythm, is taken by a fly to Tore. They also recognize a jungle spirit they call “Jengi,” Charlie said.

  “From what I know, this spot is a source of great danger. First on my list are the snakes around the blue hole and the pitchblende. I believe sometime in the past, natives tried to live here. They may have built huts right on top of the pitchblende, with devastating results. I understand they believe in witches, so they left the quarry to rid themselves of the witches. Maybe they fear anyone who enters is firing up the anger of a badass witch. The non-pygmy Lese tribe, who work in a symbiotic relationship with the Efe, believe pygmies have the power to find and dispose of witches. Maybe we could use the angle of telling the Efe and Lese we are removing witches from inside the quarry,” said Carol.

  “Will you have to ride out on a broom and a pointy black hat to prove they’re leaving,” asked Sony, who had come in to listen. Carol smiled and gave him the finger.

  “Keep that idea in mind for your sit-down pow-wow with their chief,” Bruny said. He dismissed their meeting to start another one with his mechanics about the equipment in the cottage.

  Unless the steady rain slacked off, the men hiking through the jungle would not reach the quarry before dark. The geologists, in rain coats, were taking samples and heading back to their shelters. Carol and Charlie ran to collect shields, dolls, spears, and artifacts lining the walls. Both grabbed some objects to study and ran back to their respective tents. Everyone predicted the rain would not stop, as a foot of rain in a day was not abnormal for the Congo. Dry inside the stone cottage, the mechanics worked on a 180-year old steam engine that no one doubted these guys could fix.

  Several miles upstream, Barbos Vieux had found a large clearing and had set the helicopter and plane down without incident. He had a total of eight people with him and four could pilot a plane, but only he and one other of his men could fly a helicopter. Flying the copter and plane in the best of conditions was tricky and most certainly impossible in a driving rain. The group of nine had set up small tents they had carried in their knapsacks. All were cramped and tired of a diet of energy bars and water. Barbos didn’t really have a plan other than to ambush the expedition when they were vulnerable. He did not have a specific time for the attack, and he would have to take into account the four vehicles he saw parked at the edge of the jungle plus all the people from the large helicopters. They had seen a few natives in the area and assumed there were more. He and his men couldn’t do anything in the rain except lie in their sleeping bags.

  He thought about his brother and how they had worked together during the glory days of their drug empire. Jon Jon Vieux had been arrested the same time as Barbos when U.S. DEA agents infiltrated the ring and caught them at an airstrip in the Everglades right after a huge delivery of cocaine. The two Vieux brothers weren’t at the airstrip but were captured in Miami making a drug deal. Since there were no drugs on them, a conspiracy charge held up in court and they each got ten years. Jon Jon escaped without spending any time in big boy prison. He had a prison insider mess with some paperwork which resulted in his name being left off the list in the transfer from Dade County lock-up to the Florida State Prison bus. He walked out of jail and took a friend’s boat back to Haiti.

  Barbos was locked up at Bay Correction Facility south of Youngstown, Florida, a medium security prison vastly overcrowded and prone to excessively liberal early parole policies. In two years he was out and on a boat back to Haiti. He arrived a few months after Lu killed his brother, and Barbos began to piece things together. Although he had spilled much blood wresting back firm control, he ended up in the Congo jungle having no idea what he was doing. Maybe the rain would quit and he might figure out the best plan of action. Ideally, if he could find out when the Sony expedition was leaving, he could attack when they’d be carrying booty from the quarry. Posting someone as a look-out to radio him might work, or doing fly overs once a day, but those options would spook the members of the expedition. Also on his mind was the possibility of Kony sending men to retaliate for killing two of his soldiers. A long shot, he thought, and he couldn’t dwell on wild speculations. The sleeping bag in his tent had managed to stay dry so he inched down and went to sleep.

  Pygmy tribes had guarded the quarry ever since the wall had been built and for hundreds and maybe thousands of years before then. The Efe had been in the area for at least fifty thousand years and possibly close to ninety thousand. Scientists believe the Efe are direct descendants of the oldest human race on planet earth.

  In the last seventy or eighty years some forest natives were encouraged to move close to roads in a government attempt to develop a market type economy and modernize the natives. However, when roads were not maintained, trade stopped and the natives moved back to surviving in the jungle. Amidst all the civil unrest, rebel and government forces took over food supplies, then killed and raped the native tribes. A few tribes held out in remote areas and remained largely unchanged since the beginning of recorded time in the Congo. Such was the case for ten Efe pygmy and eight non-pygmy Lese tribes along the banks of the Aruwimi River upstream and downstream from the quarry.

  The elderly leader of the largest trib
e of the Efe was Bok Ande. He was no longer able to raid honey trees and shoot duiker antelope in the forest. Bok Ande was wise and experienced with the old ways and had some knowledge of things modern. Many years ago the Efe traded for shot guns, but they laid them aside, because of the expensive shells, in favor of the bow and arrow. He kept a few shotguns and shells for protecting the village if needed. To Bok Ande, possessing those weapons was similar to having nuclear warheads in a bunker.

  The pygmies maintained a strong relationship with the Lese natives, providing meat in trade for vegetables and fruit. The complicated relationship was one of mutual dependence in order to survive. Kombutu, chief of the eight Lese tribes, stood over a foot taller than Bok Ande yet neither appeared to have power over the other. As the expedition helicopters landed in the quarry, both tribal leaders knew they had to meet to decide their next steps. After runners from both villages carried messages to the chiefs, the leaders called a meeting the next day at Kombutu’s village. No arrows would be sent into the quarry that night since a large group of men were moving in from the jungle. The natives wanted to see how many would stand guard on the big wall and where would be the best place to shoot poison arrows.

  Isaac and Rishi had reached the river across from the island but the heavy rains had made the river swollen and rushing very fast. They decided to put their inflatables upstream where the river was wider with fewer rapids. Their goal was to transport all the men and equipment to the island before dark. Isaac led the first party and had to fight to stay out of the currents that would have pulled them into a series of deadly cataracts. Thankfully they landed safely on shore. The men on the island waded into the river and grabbed the other rubber rafts to pull them to safety. On shore they could hear chain saws cutting a trail through the heavy growth of trees. Several people from the quarry came to help the men up the wet bluff by hanging ropes over the side. All the ground forces made it ashore, scaled up the slippery cliffs and hiked through the forest to the quarry.