Once Upon the Congo

by Applewhite, Claire; Harper, Chap

  Chapter 31

  The Attack

  When the two Efe natives were sure the soldiers had returned to the jungle, they pulled a dugout into the river and landed on Binza Island, named for Dr. Parke’s tent boy. It was still light, but a half-sun hung in the shadows on the horizon. The tiny natives waved at the men in the bunkers, and started up the ladder. One of the men stood up and greeted them when they reached the top. The guard could not translate what they were saying. He escorted them to the enclosure, and radioed ahead. Rishi, Isaac and Bruny met them at the gate and ushered them inside to sit by the fire.

  Since Isaac had not heard from his vehicle guards all day, the entire camp was on alert. The news that soldiers had been seen across the river was unwelcome, but appreciated. The description of a rocket on both soldiers’ backs was more bad news. Since Isaac’s Haitian troops had only two of them and ten rounds, RPGs sent the odds over to the invader’s side,

  “Radio the men and have them move out of their bunkers as soon as it’s dark,” Isaac said. “They will be the first to be targeted. Have them find secure positions at the edge of the bluff and pull all the ladders up—make them climb. Once the aggressors are on top, they can be engaged.” Rishi immediately carried out the order.

  Modesto rushed to Isaac’s side. His battle experience and tactics were well known to Isaac, who welcomed the help. They reviewed their assets and firepower. Modesto remembered they had a Barrett .50 caliber long-range sniper rifle—but wasn’t sure it had a night scope. They radioed the two Haitian brothers, who assured them they had a Star Light scope with excellent night vision capabilities and an additional five hundred rounds for the Barrett.

  “These guys either miss a lot, or just expect war at every turn,” Isaac said.

  “I fired one of those bastards for ten rounds and my shoulder was ground beef—500 rounds and your arm would fall off. Maybe we need to know who else is checked out on the Barrett, so we can pass it around,” Modesto said. Isaac instructed Rishi to get information on the Barrett back-up shooters.

  “Put the Barrett on the bluff where we can see targets,” Modesto said. Once the scope’s capabilities had been discussed, Osse and Jean-Jean came off the wall. They were running full out for the edge of the bluff.

  Modesto estimated the enemy force to be small—maybe ten to twenty.

  “If they were large in number, they would have sent a patrol out to assess the area of attack,” Modest said. “But we need to assume they are experienced and well-armed. What is your assessment of our troops?”

  “DRC troops have seen a lot of action against rebel militias. We are down to nine, since one is in the hospital, plus Rishi. The Haitian soldiers have fought against uprisings where the opposition were poorly trained and equipped forces. Different ballgame here. The four Haitian mercenaries are game changers. Each is worth five to ten men out there. They need to be in the mix, and we need to keep them safe,” Isaac said. “You, Mit, and Chris have been in some fire fights. You are our aces in the hole.”

  “Don’t discount these girls. Gretchen fought it out with a bunch of pirates. Bullets were buzzing all around her, and she nailed at least one while she was buck naked,” Modesto said.

  “I hope you don’t get mad when I say I wish I had seen that gun fight,” Isaac said, laughing. “Right now they’ve just got pistols, and hopefully, we can keep them out of the fray.”

  The two natives asked if they could leave, as there was very little light left. Bruny couldn’t make them stay. Rishi told them to be careful, and they were gone in a flash. Shortly after they left, darkness fell heavily over the tent city. The night was cloudy and threatened rain.

  A few wooden buildings had been constructed: a men and women’s latrine with a center divider, a set of showers built along the same design, two showers on each side, with a cistern on top to collect rainwater and one large building, still under construction. This multipurpose building had a plywood roof and sides, but at this point, no doors or windows. All the rooms were divided and chopped up spaces. At completion, this multipurpose structure would have an equipment room, lab, computer room, communication room, a medical clinic, and ammo storage. The diamonds were located there, as were the quarters for Bruny, Isaac, and Dr. Devine.

  The helicopter had delivered construction supplies. A couple of the other helicopters also made runs, even though they were not set up for large deliveries. A huge Russian helicopter would arrive the next day to carry a front end loader from a nearby truck. Bruny wished he had ordered a small army to be placed aboard the big chopper.

  In rapid succession, the three bunkers on the edge of the cliff exploded. Debris sprayed several hundred feet. The flash temporarily blinded anyone who had been looking in that direction. Clearly, the two natives had saved several lives by scouting out the incoming enemy soldiers. Ringing ears and terror paralyzed everyone’s mobility. The men on the cliff’s edge hunkered down and prayed there would be no more blasts. More random explosions dashed their hopes. Basically, the insurgents were carpet bombing the top of the bluff. So far, the RPGs had scared the men from the quarry and locked them down in their positions.

  The defenders lacked leadership and decisive action. Osse and Jean-Jean rushed out of the smoke, carrying assault weapons and a Barrett .50 caliber. Modesto and Isaac were behind them with AKs, sharing the load of a heavy box. They all ran to the edge of the bluff, and motioned the Haitians to climb down to the next landing and set up the Barrett. They did, and Modesto and Isaac ran to each position of the soldiers who had escaped the bunker blast and gave them grenades. They were to start throwing them over the cliff where the invaders might approach. Explosions were now pretty constant, yet the RPGs still rained down on the top of the cliff. Isaac and Modesto climbed to the place where the Barrett was set up.

  Osse looked through the FLIR thermal night scope and picked up on warm reddish heads coming across the river. He sighted and pulled the trigger. The head disappeared. He spotted another which went underwater. Osse was patient. Everyone around him was wearing earplugs, since the big gun can cause permanent ear damage. When the next man surfaced, Osse erased him from the scope viewer. Immediately after he pulled the trigger, incoming fire assaulted their position.

  Bullets tore into the rocky hillside, and one grazed Osse’s shoulder. Another went through the top of Jean-Jean’s Kevlar helmet, but only hit his hair. Modesto had brought a pair of Night Scout binoculars that Peter had handed him on his way out of the quarry. Not only was Peter a Star Wars freak, he was into every new tech device he could find. Modesto started scanning, and as he looked to the left, he saw a couple of infrared images by a rocky area near the water. Before he could say anything, a blinding light went off in his eyes. Rounds started hitting all around him. One buzzed his ear and thudded to a stop on the hillside behind him. A round skidded under Isaac, and bounced into his flak jacket, leaving him breathless and bruised. Another hit the tripod on the big rifle and slammed into the dirt. Osse wasn’t blinded by the round, so he turned the rifle in the direction of the fire. He spotted the image and opened up just as the image dove behind a rock.

  “What happened? Did you get him?” Modesto asked, still fighting to get his vision back.

  “No. He has ducked under an overhanging rock,” Osse said.

  “Move out to the edge, and see if you can bust it up,” Modesto suggested, while more grenades exploded at the bottom of the bluff.

  The .50 caliber broke off part of the rock on the first shot. More and more multiple rounds pulverized the stone. Now Osse was beginning to see not one, but two images as they ran from the rocks. The last man to run from the cover of the rock was blown into the river. The second image was running, and Osse caught him in his sights, blowing off one leg completely. The gun clicked and Osse replaced the ten round clip in lightning speed. He found his target, hopping on one leg, and finished him.

  The RPGs were not raining down as hard as before, which possibly meant Bahati’s men were climbing up t
he cliff, but there was no way to tell where they were. Isaac and Modesto guessed they had moved around to a more difficult place, where there were fewer grenades. Modesto suggested they redirect all the men away from potentially exposed flanks, if the invaders went through the forest and came at their backs in the dark. Isaac issued the orders. Soon everyone was jogging at a fast pace down the new trail towards the quarry walls.

  Isaac asked if anyone would volunteer to be a sniper and got two brave takers. If they took a shot and the invader spotted them, the snipers would be at great risk of being blasted out of the trees. Some considered it a suicide mission. Isaac really wanted the volunteers more as spotters with radios, and they were only to fire if a group could be taken out quickly. He placed the two sharp shooters close together to cover each other. Still, a sniper was on a mission that few survived.

  The two chosen soldiers climbed and then hid in the big date palm trees, a few hundred yards from the front gate. One sniper had a night scope and the other had infrared binoculars. The men posted on the wall could see them clearly. Being twenty feet up was an advantage for a pure frontal assault, but if anyone got as far as the wall, they were out of view of most of the soldiers twenty feet up. If the guards on the wall leaned over to see the invaders, they risked being shot. Since pouring burning oil was not an option, they would have to wait until the enemy troops were in the killing field to take them out. The tree sniper could handle that task if they were in their line of sight.

  Inside the quarry, everyone had been moved to the stone cottage. The first part of the pressure chamber was open and a ladder secured, for use as a very good bomb shelter.

  “I want to shoot one of those fuckers,” said Lu. She patted her Rhino 357 pistol.

  “Sony doesn’t like my gun,” Carol said with a puckered lip.

  “It will just piss someone off,” Angel said. “But this bugger will kill them,” she said. She gripped the 9mm that saved Mit’s boat from a take-over a few years back.

  The geologists, mining engineers, Dr. Devine and Gretchen were in the stone cottage. Devil Man stood guard outside. Jackie was on the wall by the front gate.

  The night sky was full of rain clouds. Moonlight was sparse. In what appeared to be a freak display of celestial meteor showers, the whistling trails of rockets rained from all directions.

  Chapter 32

  The Battle

  The three helicopter pilots in the compound had been staying in a tent near their aircraft. When the shooting started, they all climbed aboard the supply chopper and laid face down on the cargo floor. It was a good thing, since one of the RPGs hit dead center of their tent. Their personal items were vaporized. The second series of RPGs were about half as numerous as the first volley. One hit the edge of the stone cottage and blew some rocks loose on a corner. By this time, everyone was in the first chamber with the lid closed.

  Isaac and Modesto instructed their men on the walls to refrain from firing their RPGs. Instead, they advised them to answer with shots aimed at the initial rocket flashes. Someone screamed from near the rear wall of the quarry. The scream probably indicated that one of Bahati’s men had been blown over the edge of a 500 foot cliff.

  After small arms fire became the main weapon of attack, expedition members concluded the invading rebels had used up their allotment of explosive rounds. The expedition returned fire to each small arms muzzle flash with a rocket until their ten rounds were exhausted. Insurgent AKs hit the sand bags on the gun placements around the wall, but firing upwards was not working.

  Inside the enclosure, Chris and Mit assessed the damage. Their tents, along with many others, had been blown up. One rocket hit the corner of the big wooden building and blew off part of a wall. Dr. Devine and Gretchen were inside sheltered by interior walls so they weren’t injured. They moved to the stone cottage fallout shelter with the others shortly after the attack began. A couple of the rockets landed in the blue hole and blew water everywhere. Several craters appeared in the kimberlite ore, but none in the pitchblende site. Since it contained the highly radioactive ore, it was fortunate that a round hadn’t found it way there and spread the dangerous ore on top of everyone. It would have caused a panic.

  The snipers in the date palm trees radioed that three of the attackers had moved next to walls and were working their way towards the gate. Isaac gave the snipers permission to take them out and notified the men on the wall to cover them in case they were spotted by their fellow soldiers. The tree snipers laid into the attackers with heavy automatic fire. Although the insurgents fired wildly, they didn’t see the snipers until it was too late. Two of their friends ran to the date palms, looked up and started to fire. The Barrett .50 caliber struck one, penetrated his flak jacket causing him to drop lifelessly to the ground. The men on the wall opened up on the other man, but only after he fired several rounds into the palm tree. The sniper screamed that he had been hit and was climbing down. Only a couple of militia men remained, exchanging small rounds fire.

  The injured sniper saw it was too dangerous to cross the space from the tree line to the wall. He slid down the tree with his rifle slung on his back, his upper leg covered in dark blood. Some two hundred feet away, a Bahati soldier stepped out of the tree line and raised his weapon to fire. Like a silent movie, the enemy soldier grabbed his throat, and then his chest. Dozens of pygmy arrows entered his body. He died an agonizing death from arrows that had pierced his skull, neck, chest and groin. For fear of being shot, no pygmies came out of the tree line. Rishi got on the loud speaker and thanked them profusely.

  Although silence had replaced gunfire, everyone was on alert. Dr. Devine and Gretchen had moved back to the wooden building to attend to the wounded. The sniper was rushed into the quarry and to the makeshift clinic where medical cots had been set up and attended by the two doctors who made the sniper’s bullet wound their first priority.

  Inside the dark enclosure, the expedition leaders got busy doing damage assessments around camp. Chris, Mit, and Modesto came down from the wall, where they had gone to observe the fighting. Roland and Zoe followed Gretchen to the multi-purpose building to help with the wounded soldier who because of his profuse bleeding, was lucky to be alive. Lu, Angel, Carol, and Charlie climbed the ladder from the first chamber, and asked Devil Man if they could come out. He gave them the go-ahead, and walked the backside of the cottage to relieve himself. While the four girls were standing outside the stone structure, a uniformed man carrying an automatic weapon walked up to them. They didn’t recognize him, but they didn’t know all the soldiers in the compound.

  “Hello, ladies. I trust you are all unharmed,” the soldier said.

  “We are fine, thank you. I don’t believe I have met you,” Lu said.

  “Unlikely. I am Captain Ismael Bahati of the United Freedom Fighters of the Congo. I have come here to collect my share of the diamonds. Could you be so kind as to lead me to them? Then I’ll be on my way,” he said, while he raised his weapon and held a grenade with a finger on the pin. “I will pull this pin and take several of you with me if you don’t lead me to the diamonds in the next five seconds,” he said. He herded the ladies in front of him towards the wooden building where he was told by everyone the diamonds were stored when in reality they were just a few feet from him in the stone cottage.

  When they walked past the cottage, Devil Man moved quickly between the girls and Bahati. The sight of the huge man with a white eye and jagged scar caused just a millisecond of hesitation from Bahati—enough for Devil Man to blast his AK-47. It dropped Bahati before he could pull the pin on the grenade.

  Bahati did get off a short blast and one caught Devil Man in the mid-section of his flak jacket where he had placed a metal insert. The other rounds went upward and away, except for clipping away a piece of his one good ear. The girls ran to check him out. He loved the attention and assured them he was okay. They were not sure so they unzipped his flak jacket. They found an ugly bruise but no penetration by the bullet. Lu and Angel grabbe
d a first aid kit and worked on his ear.

  “Devil Man,” Lu said, “I will pay for the repair on your ear. It’s high goddamn time you got some work done on those other scars and that eye as well. I know a very pretty plastic surgeon, and I am taking you to her when we get back. No argument,” she said. Devil Man knew her well enough to know that resistance was useless.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

  A few wounds required attention among the fighters, including pieces of shrapnel from the RPGs and nicks from bullets. They were extremely lucky that no one else was killed in the attack, except for the two vehicle guards in the jungle. The most serious injury was the sniper’s leg, but even that wound would be all right in time. Gretchen and Dr. Devine were busy for a while, but by dawn, everyone was patched up. The soldiers were sent out through the forest to bring the bodies of the insurgents to the quarry. They would be buried in an area by the back wall that seemed to contain some low grade coltan ore. A cemetery already existed outside the wall, but it was reserved for those that died in the quarry. Isaac would send a squad of men by helicopter to properly handle the return of the dead guards to their families for burial. A special fund would be provided for their next of kin.

  Gretchen was tired, and the other ladies had not gotten much sleep, but Lu insisted they keep their appointment at the Hotel Grand Congo for the spa treatments and Charlie’s makeover. At first Gretchen was reluctant to go along.

  “We will get a few rooms. Then, you can sleep over there in royal ass comfort,” Lu said.

  The supply helicopter transported the wounded sniper so he could be observed in the hospital. The chopper would also carry replacement tents and plywood to fix the damaged building. Lu was taking the big helicopter, which was going to be loaded with six young women.

  Barbos Vieux was getting bored hanging around the hotel, so he decided to book a massage for later in the day. After breakfast, he stopped by the front desk, and he said wanted to book a deep tissue massage. They directed him to the spa which was located on the same floor. He smiled when he approached the pretty receptionist at the African Jungle Spa.