“Commandante Tutu,” Lieutenant Holt remarked drily, “has slapped us across the face with his gauntlet.”
“Commandante Tutu” was Che Guevara’s nom de guerre.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THE LOUISIANA CAJUNS REASSEMBLED the first Swift Boat within ten days; the second was ready for action two days later. After that, yearning for home, they airlifted out and returned to Louisiana, leaving only a small maintenance crew of three volunteers behind to help my Tanganyika force quell communist arms smuggling along nearly five hundred miles of lake. I found some irony in that my Cuban boatmen would be fighting Cubans on a continent halfway around the world from their homeland.
“Por favor, boss,” enjoined Raphael Cruz, whom I appointed chief over the other boatmen fighters. He was older than the others, about forty, skinny with big sad eyes. “Por favor. Do not refer to Che’s scum as Cubans. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and all who are traitors with them are not Cubans. They are communists.”
Communists were indeed a different breed of reptiles whose allegiances lay first of all with Khrushchev and the other comrades.
I divided my force into two elements and placed each of my SEAL lieutenants in charge of one. They took care of scheduling patrols and the day-to-day business of chow, rest periods, fuel, and the other necessities of maintaining our craft and keeping operations going. Whenever a Swift left our little makeshift marina, which consisted of a single short pier and a tin shed, it went armed to the gunnels with twin 50-caliber machine guns, a 50-caliber anti-aircraft gun, 3.5-inch rocket launchers, and small arms and grenades for the crew.
The two separate crews rotated on twenty-four-hour shifts. At least one Swift and crew prowled the lake constantly, hunting; the second remained in reserve/rest status as an immediate reaction force. I hired African women cooks from Albertville to supplement our daily C-rations and keep our Quonset hut–type barracks clean. One of the Cubans placed a hand-lettered sign above the barracks doors: CASA DULCE CASA. “Home Sweet Home.” Below which Lieutenant Holtz attached another sign: HOME OF THE COMMIE KILLERS. THEIR DAYS END WHEN OURS BEGIN.
I felt in my element. I took patrol shifts same as the other men, running the lake, nosing up into streams, pulling night vigils at likely crossings to listen and look with night vision devices, searching for signs of activity. It was tedious and time-consuming.
Once or twice one of my boats spotted a fishing-type craft speeding across the upper end of the lake and darting into a channel too narrow and shallow for a Swift to enter. We questioned local fishermen through a Swahili interpreter and searched their boats; some of them were undoubtedly Simbas keeping a lookout on behalf of smugglers.
Soviet Komar gunboats kept a low profile, but sooner or later we were bound to run into them.
I kept in contact with the CIA station at Leopoldville through encrypted radios. Through it the American government supplied the Congolese Government with T-28 trainer-fighter planes, B-26 bombers, and C-130 cargo ships along with U.S. crews and support staff. Officially, none of the American planes and crews existed.
Our little airstrip near Albertville frequently bustled with planes skimming in and out to airlift ANC troops into hot spots to fight Simba rebels or run battlefield recons. I sometimes solicited T-28 pilots to run aerial recons. So far, nothing. The Komars were biding their time. For the moment I dominated Lake Tanganyika.
Nearby Albertville provided access to the lake and served as a staging base for offensives against Simba rebels to the north and west. Mad Mike Hoare’s 5 Commando operated out of the town with the ANC. Together, they began to squeeze Simba-controlled territory from all sides, forming a loose perimeter to push in on the Simbas with a variety of shallow and deep pincers. Mad Mike’s fighters-for-hire became particularly adept at using the wilderness to outflank and reduce Simba positions. His cutthroats were brutal sonsofbitches, but they were fighting brutal sonsofbitches. I developed a great deal of respect for him and his soldiers-for-hire.
Hoare on a personal level turned out not to be quite the bloodthirsty psychopath I expected. He was a genial but flamboyant forty-six-year-old from Dublin with a ruddy Irish face, a bit of a burr in his voice, and a way of laughing at himself and the world. He played rugby, drank beer, lived for the fight, and took life as it came.
“What, you’re a fighter pilot too, Hamilton?” he remarked during one of his visits. “I can pay you more than whoever’s paying you now, what?”
“I suspect we may be getting paid by the same sources.”
He let out one of his hearty laughs, not admitting it but not denying it either. “Chap, the nature of my sugar-tit nanny has been greatly exaggerated.”
We walked down to the lake and stood on the pier. He pointed north up the lake.
“Hamilton, there is a creek that flows out of Uganda into the upper end of the lake. It’s not on the maps, and the mouth of it is well-camouflaged. Some of the locals,” he continued, “tell me there’s a lot of activity upstream, may even be a Komar base up it. The Cuban named Kappes you sent in ahead says you’re looking for Commandante Tutu? You might find him there.”
CHAPTER FORTY
I CONCENTRATED PATROLS IN THE north end, where Uganda reached in and touched the lake. I requested one of the CIA trainer-fighter pilots fly over the area.
“There’s a stream there all right,” he reported. “Not much to it. It’s overhung by woods. Looks to me like it may be too shallow for anything as big as a Komar.”
Two nights later, Lieutenant Hawes’s boat radar picked up a Soviet Komar screaming west across the lake toward the opposite shore. He maneuvered on it in moonlight, finally sighting it as it slowed to approach a blinking light signal coming from a narrow beach. Arms smugglers.
Hawes ordered his cox’n to pull throttle and wait. There was no way of knowing how many Simba warriors might be hiding in the woods. It was my night to sleep, but the radio watch at base awoke me. Hawes on his mike gave me the lowdown.
“Take the boat when it leaves,” I advised. No way could he assault on land with only himself and four Cuban riflemen. “I’m scrambling the other Swift now, but we won’t be there until midday. I’ll see if I can get Hoare or the ANC to intercept the guns on land.”
The Komar pulled out of its rendezvous, having apparently unloaded, and headed toward the concealed stream mouth. Hawes’s Swift laid on full throttle and closed in. The Komar’s machine gun went to work, blossoming red and yellow flames. Hawes’s two 50-cals spat back. The speeding boats swerved and shifted and side-slipped to avoid targeting themselves, filling the night air with spray, the booming crackle of machine-gun fire, and dueling green or red tracers crisscrossing.
This first encounter between my people and theirs ended as suddenly as it began, with the Komar vanishing into the night-blind, forest-shrouded stream, leaving only the sound of its diminishing engines. Apparently, the creek was deeper than we thought.
“Pull out,” I ordered.
The CIA chief at Leopoldville, whose station monitored all radio traffic, picked up an in-the-clear transmission between the Komar and another source identified as Che Guevara, a.k.a. Commandante Tutu. He sounded in a rage, vowing to kill every gringo on the lake and send him to hell in the belly of a crocodile.
“Boss, I will kill him myself, verdad?” pleaded Raphael Cruz, my appointed Cuban chief. “Che, he take to his prison my brother, my cousins, and he murder them with a bullet from his pistol. He kill for the pleasure of it. He laugh when he shoot them, and I am tell he piss in their dead faces.”
I had heard such stories before of this sadist. If anyone deserved to die, it was Che Guevara. I clapped Raphael on the back.
“We will do what we can do,” I promised.
“I will piss in his face,” Cruz said.
It seemed Guevara might be directing his arms-smuggling racket from a hidden base somewhere upstream in the secret river. Since we couldn’t approach him by water without being discovered and ambushed, I radioe
d Kappes, who showed up at our marina the next day with about thirty fighters from Hoare’s 5 Commando. Those and my nineteen, including the lieutenants and me, added up to a good-sized, heavily armed platoon.
The Swifts dropped us off in the jungle at the mouth of the secret river where we cautiously made our way upstream. On the third day, while dodging crocodiles and snakes through a swamp, we came upon a crude camp of native-like huts concealed in the forest. The dwellings appeared hurriedly abandoned and professionally sanitized so that nothing remained behind to identify the previous occupants. Not a scrap of paper, a tin can, a bottle cap …
I ordered the camp torched. Flames popped and crackled and black smoke twisted into the sky as the column trudged back to the lake. Guevara had escaped again, but there was a new sheriff in town, and Che had to find a new base if he intended to stay.
* * *
Things settled down for about a week, until Leopoldville intercepted and cracked an encrypted transmission from Commandante Tutu. It seemed Guevara was planning a big powwow with Simba leaders near a village called Mpala on the Congo side of the lake.
I seeded out scouts and coast watchers to keep vigil and notify me of any movements. Intel from the station chief proved valid and timely. We had to move fast when one of my scouts spotted a Komar filtering in under darkness from a stream flowing out of Uganda.
As dawn approached, we located and trapped two Komars and an arms-supply trawler concealed back in a cove. I swung our Swifts wide to land troops down-lake while Mad Mike and his mercenaries slipped into the jungle to close in from the rear.
It was almost too easy. The Soviet Cubans and the raggedy-ass Simbas were either drugged up on khat or so overconfident they didn’t hear us coming. They were laughing and hooting and chattering around a big kettle on a fire in the center of the little village when Lieutenants Hawes and Holtz planted M-79 incendiary rounds directly in the center, breaking up the party in dramatic fashion.
Caught in a crossfire between Mad Mike’s fighters and my shooters, they didn’t stand a chance. I saw two Soviet Cubans bite the dust, riddled with bullets but going down fighting with their boots on. One died immediately. The other screamed his guts out before somebody put him out of his misery.
Several Simbas took off into the jungle while a handful of Che’s Cubans put up a fight from one of the grass huts. I emptied a clip into the hootch from my M-2 carbine, popped out the empty box, and slapped in another. When I looked up, I spotted a slight figure wearing camouflage fatigues and a black beret escaping out the back and racing for the trees. He carried a long package of some sort tucked underneath one arm.
“It’s him. It’s him!” Rafael Cruz shouted. “Kill him!”
He got off one shot from his M-14 rifle before Guevara vanished into the jungle. I gave chase with Rafael and Lieutenant Holtz spread out to my either side. We had the sonofabitch. He was fifty yards from the goal line and no chance of scoring a touchdown.
Or so I thought.
Ahead, two Cubans from a brush pile cracked down on us with rifles. Che had left a rear guard. Raphael yelped and went down, wounded. I hit the dirt and opened up with my carbine, throwing lead at muzzle flashes in the shadows.
“Cover me!” I yelled at Lieutenant Holtz.
He laid suppressive fire into the brush pile. I sprang to my feet and dragged Raphael back into the trees. He was conscious, but blood was spreading rapidly across his chest. He opened eyes filled with pain.
“Boss,” he said, his voice cracking. “Kill him for me. … Kill him for my … brother and my cousins.”
Suddenly, a Beechcraft appeared seemingly from nowhere, flying low and slow out of rifle range beyond where I was pinned down. It circled downwind, then returned almost immediately trailing a big hook attached to a long cable.
I couldn’t believe it. Boehm and I and our men had experimented with skyhooks at Fort Bragg during the train-up for the commissioning of SEAL teams. They were developed by Army Special Forces for snatching spies and other operators into the air and out of danger. Guevara was one wily bastard with a contingency plan for any situation.
The big package he carried when he fled must contain his harness and grab bar for the hook.
The Cubans in the brush blocking the way realized they had accomplished their mission by delaying us long enough for Guevara to escape. They tossed out their weapons and surrendered. I saw the Beech gaining altitude as it fled. At the end of its cable clung Che Guevara, grabbed from the crocodile’s jaws and whisked back into Uganda.
Right out of James Bond. You had to admire the little bastard’s élan.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHE GUEVARA WAS HAULING ass out of Africa the last we heard of him. The Simbas proved to be a poor investment for Castro and the commies, so Khrushchev concentrated his support elsewhere. Communist presence in the Congo collapsed.
I went home.
While I was away, DCI John McCone resigned in a dispute with President Johnson over the Defense Department’s takeover of CIA covert responsibilities in Vietnam. Kicking out the CIA left the agency in turmoil, confused by exactly what government expected of it not only in Vietnam but in other hot spots around the world. A man I trusted and valued for his cool common sense was replaced by Vice Admiral William Raborn, a squarely built man with thinning hair, gray sideburns, and a jaw, as wags asserted, that was as hard as his head. Why would LBJ appoint a man with absolutely no intelligence experience as DCI? Perhaps to reduce the CIA’s influence in making national policy?
Vietnam was quickly ramping up into a real war. The U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, General Maxwell Taylor, who opposed introducing combat troops, provided the president with disturbing assessments of conditions in the tiny besieged nation:
“We are faced here with a seriously deteriorating situation characterized by continued political turmoil, irresponsibility, and division within the [South Vietnamese] armed forces, lethargy in the pacification program, some anti-U.S. feeling which could grow, signs of mounting terrorism by VC directed at U.S. personnel and deepening discouragement and loss of morale throughout South Vietnam. Unless these conditions are somehow changed and trends reversed, we are likely soon to face a number of unpleasant developments ranging from anti-American demonstrations, further civil disorders, and even political assassinations to the ultimate installation of a hostile government which will ask us to leave while it seeks accommodation with the National Liberation Front and Hanoi.”
Pitched battles occurred after August and the Gulf of Tonkin “sea battle.” On October 31, 1964, Viet Cong disguised as farmers floated sampans past the U.S. airbase at Bien Hoa and let loose with mortars that killed four Americans, destroyed five bombers, and damaged eight more.
On Christmas Eve, a driver parked an explosive-crammed truck by the Brink Hotel in Saigon, where a crowd of U.S. soldiers waited for entertainer Bob Hope. The explosion ripped through the building, killing two Americans and wounding more than seventy.
The event that prompted LBJ to take more extreme action occurred on February 7, 1965, at Camp Holloway near the provincial capital of Pleiku. About three hundred VC crept up while Americans of the 52nd Combat Aviation Battalion were sleeping and turned the base into a conflagration of exploding ammunition and burning aircraft, killing seven Americans and wounding one hundred.
“They are killing our men while they sleep in the night,” President Johnson raged. “I can’t ask our American soldiers to continue to fight with one hand behind their back.”
He activated Operation Flaming Dart in retaliation. American and South Vietnamese pilots targeted NVA bases near Dong Hoi in North Vietnam with forty-nine sorties; a second wave targeted VC logistics and communications centers near the DMZ.
Soviet Union Foreign Minister Alexei Kosygin happened to be visiting Hanoi when the raids commenced. Khrushchev was furious and promised to provide additional assistance to Ho Chi Minh.
A few days later, VC sappers blew up a hotel used as an enliste
d men’s barracks in the coastal city of Qui Nhom, killing twenty-three American soldiers.
Apoplectic, LBJ responded with Flaming Dart 2—155 sorties and air strikes against North Vietnam.
The USSR increased its aid to North Vietnam by supplying SAMs, jet fighter planes, technical support, and more “advisors.” China said it was ready to send its personnel “to fight together with the Vietnamese people to annihilate the American aggressors.”
Escalation of the war from a clandestine affair carried out in the dark seemed to be spiraling out of control. The 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade began sending Marines. The first Marines ashore at Da Nang found the sleepy little place I remembered from my OP-34 days—bunkers left by the Japanese in 1945, blockhouses deserted by the French, a single unimproved three-thousand-yard runway. Their initial orders were to guard the base. They were not to “engage in day-to-day actions against the Viet Cong.”
The airbase was soon to become one of the three busiest airports in the world. U.S. force levels increased from 23,000 to 185,000 within the year.
PFC Craig Roberts was among Marines in a follow-up landing on the beaches near Da Nang. Word on the USS Pickaway, a Navy World War II assault ship bobbing offshore, had it that VC were everywhere, that attacks could come from any quarter. The countryside belonged to the Viet Cong, Charlie, the gooks, VC—the enemy. For the first time, U.S. combat troops were going in with permission to shoot back if fired upon.
Christ, it was hot. The sun itself became a burden. Marines would get to know it like they would get to know the shit-smeared punji stakes, the Malaysian whips, the black-pajamaed Viet Cong who sniped at them during the night and turned farmer again with the rising sun, but they would never get used to it. It sucked the moisture through the pores in their skin until they felt like fish left on a gray and weathered pier.
“Ladies, get your fuckin’ asses in gear,” gunny sergeants shouted. “We goin’ to war, Marines. Not to some old lady’s tea party. You want to live, make damned sure you are locked and loaded when them boats hit the beach and the gates drop. Make damned sure.”
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