Mac raised his tin cup and toasted his crew. “Okay—let’s gas up and go,” he said, then drank down the strong coffee. They walked out of the village in the dark of night, using night vision goggles. The moon provided some light, but it would have been almost impossible to travel without the night vision equipment. They were traveling fairly light, with only their weapons, some water, and the small computers for navigating through the grass and scrub land.
For the most part, the terrain from their camp to their target was hilly and open, with stands of trees and occasional small forests. They were traveling north by northwest, basically due west of Buwali, the closest village. They were about halfway through their hike when Ripper, on point, held up his hand and squatted down into the tall grass and shrubs. All of the team members were wearing throat mics and ear pieces, and could communicate quietly with each other.
They stayed silent and waited, watching the green world of their night vision goggles. Finally, they could see what Ripper had seen—people moving quietly up ahead of them in the stand of trees. They all went prone in the grass and froze. The group ahead of them was fairly close, and they could occasionally see a pair of eyes light up in their night vision.
Ripper spoke quietly into his mic. “Boss, I can’t see much, looks like quite a few of them. They don’t see us. Wait one.” Ripper belly crawled closer to the group ahead of them moving slowly and silently through the grass. When his voice finally came back over the headset, he sounded like he was fighting back laughter.
“Uh, Skipper, you might want to move up and see this,” said Ripper.
“What is it?” asked Mackey.
“Fucking chimps!” he said, finally laughing out loud. His laughter startled the group of chimpanzees, which had made large nests in the low trees. They started grunting and moving around faster.
Mackey told Ripper to move back. They’d go around the group of chimpanzees and give them a wide berth rather then get them riled up and noisy. While the chimps would most likely not get aggressive towards a large group of humans, now was not the time to find out. The team moved quickly and quietly around the chimps and continued northwest towards the PAC headquarters.
At almost oh-one hundred hours, they could make out the camp in the distance. There was no apparent activity, but that didn’t mean that no one was patrolling. They broke into the preassigned groups and fanned out as they moved closer to the camp. Generators had been set up to run lights along the perimeter fence, although they were fairly dim and spaced far enough apart that an elephant could probably walk through the fence without being seen.
Jon and his group moved silently to the right, while Mackey and his group went left. Cascaes took out his night vision binoculars and crawled closer to the fence until he was about a hundred yards out. He lay on his belly with his high-powered night vision binoculars on a very small tripod and zoomed in tight. There were a few sleepy looking Africans up in the towers half dozing, and the camp was completely dark.
They spent the next two hours comparing the buildings to their satellite photos, making notes on which buildings were most likely sleeping quarters, and which appeared to have electricity and could possibly be communication buildings. There was nothing that could link anything they were looking at to China, other than a large sign in French that read China aid station. Some buildings appeared to be warehouses where food or medicine might be stored, but they could just as easily house a few thousand rounds of ammunition.
By two am, Mackey recalled his group and they silently melted away from the compound. They regrouped a quarter mile away and began their walk back home. Occasionally, an animal would stir from sleep and run through the scrub, causing everyone to drop and grab weapons, but other than that, the trip home was uneventful. By three fifteen, they were back in their compound changing clothes and washing up. They would be getting about three hours of sleep before the sun came up. Just another day at the office.
14.
The singing from the lake sounded sweeter than a rooster crowing, but only barely. The men and women of the team groaned and bitched as they woke up to fisherman calling up the fish from Lake Tanganyika, their deep voices echoing throughout the camp. On a different morning, it would have been charming, but today, on three and a half hours sleep, it was plain old annoying.
As the team assembled at their usual spot around the fire, they were greeted by Jon Cohen, who looked pretty darn chipper all things considered.
Moose took a cup of coffee from him and asked, “What are you so happy about?”
“We’re going diving this morning. I’ll finally get to see what’s in the lake,” he answered, sounding genuinely happy.
“Alligators,” said Moose.
“Crocodiles, actually, but not around here. They’re further south. We should be pretty free from large things that want to eat us up here.”
“Well you have a good time, Jon. Personally, I’m planning a nap,” mumbled Moose.
Jon laughed and sat down with Pete McCoy, Ray Jensen and Ryan O’Conner. The four of them would be diving the Lake together. As soon as they had eaten powdered eggs and some plastic looking thing that was supposed to be bacon out of a foil pouch, they headed down to Fish Central. With Hodges and Jones helping, they loaded their wooden dive boat, purchased from the previous owners, and headed out.
Hodges and Jones waved goodbye from the shore, and as the boat chugged away with its single outboard motor, Jones shook his head. “Man, those SEALs are crazy muthafuckers. Would you go diving in that water? There’s fucking crocodiles and sharks and shit in there.”
Hodges laughed. “You weren’t paying attention in class, young man. There are no sharks in there—it’s freshwater. And Jon said the crocs are further south or something. The fish they’re catching are little. They’ll be fine.”
Jones rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, my ass is staying right here on the land. I’ll fight a thousand of those PAC mutherfuckers before I go swimming around in that shit. You remember Paraguay? Fucking piranhas, man! No way—uh-uh. This marine ain’t getting wet this trip.”
Hodges laughed. “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.”
***
General Shen Xun-jun was observing the firing line where twenty five PAC soldiers were target shooting at the far end of the compound. For the first two months, the soldiers had trained carrying spears and poles and whatever else they could use for “rifles.” When the Chinese weapons arrived inside a huge shipment of rice—enough to fill two rail cars—the soldiers finally were issued real guns.
While many of them had fired weapons before, and some of them had fought in the Second Congo War, none of them had ever seen a Chinese made assault rifle. The Chinese Type-81 Assault Rifle offered the reliability of the Russian AK-47, with accuracy closer to an American M-16. In the right hands, it was a formidable infantry weapon. Just not in these hands.
Shen Xun-jun cursed and screamed at his officers as he watched the Africans firing long bursts and wasting ammunition. Most of the rounds they fired were nowhere close to where they were aiming. The soldiers that did have combat experience had for the most part had fired either ancient rifles, or AK-47s at very close range. Usually while slaughtering enemy women and children. These new Chinese weapons required much more finesse, and they sprayed everywhere in nervous and excited hands.
Shen Xun-jun’s officers relayed the screaming back at the firing line in French, and the shooting stopped. The Chinese officers moved the men twenty-five yards closer to the targets, cutting the distance almost in half. One of the Chinese officers picked up a weapon, fired five short bursts, all of which were dead-on the target, and handed it back to the PAC soldier. He screamed in French for the men to slow down and fire single shots. The Type-81 had an effective range of four hundred meters. With the PAC forces, it was well under one hundred.
Shen Xun-jun watched for another ten minutes, and th
en ordered his men to unpack the bayonets. If they couldn’t shoot straight, they would at least learn to assault using the working end of a bayonet.
15.
Jon Cohen, Pete McCoy, Ray Jensen and Ryan O’Conner were sitting in the large open wooden boat. According to their fish-finder, they were in sixty-five feet of water, over a rocky bottom.
“Figure your weights about the same as saltwater,” said Jon, referring to buoyancy weights divers used to remain “neutral” underwater. “The lake water is so hard it should be pretty close.” The team already had their BCD vests and fins on, and were just adding weights to the vest pockets of the BCDs to adjust their buoyancy. They were wearing “two millimeter shorties,” short-sleeve wet suits designed for warmer water.
McCoy checked his o-ring and attached his tank to his regulator. “I’m looking forward to getting wet,” he said with a smile. “Man, I haven’t been underwater in almost two months—that might be a record in the last six years.”
“Yeah, I hear ya’,” said Jensen. “And I can’t even remember the last time I was diving just for fun.”
Jon laughed. “Hey man! This isn’t for fun! We’re working.” He threw a very large net attached to a wooden pole at Jensen. “Now catch me some fish!” Ray laughed and caught the net.
“Aye, aye,Skipper!” he said sarcastically, and snapped a salute.
The four of them finished getting ready, and then made sure their anchor was secure at the bottom of the lake. Once they were secured, they pulled their tanks on, held their hands over their masks, and did a giant stride entry off the back of the boat. They descended slowly, pleasantly surprised by the numbers of fish. As they descended, a school of Cyprichromis leptosoma, commonly called “Cyps,” engulfed them. The small fish, about the size of sardines, numbered in the thousands. While the females were a fairly plain-looking grayish-brown, the males glowed blue orange and yellow and flashed their fins at the females, trying to find mates.
At first, the divers just stopped and watched as the thousands of fish swamed all around them. They appeared to go on forever, in a giant moving wall that changed shape as the fish moved together through the water. It was McCoy who was the first to remember they were supposed to be catching the fish. He laughed underwater as he opened his net and watched as dozens of fish swam right into it.
“Not the brightest creatures on the planet,” he thought to himself as they swam right into his giant net. The others saw what he was doing and opened their nets to allow the fish to swim right into them. They had thought it would take hours to catch fish—instead, their nets were full of hundreds of fish and they hadn’t been in the water for five minutes. Jon gave a “thumbs-up” signal to ascend, and the group closed off their nets and began surfacing. Jon broke the surface first and swam to the boat, where he took off his tank while still in the water and gave it to McCoy to hold. He climbed aboard and dumped his net full of fish into one of the large drums of water on the boat. The others handed up their nets one at a time until the drum was full of Cyps, oblivious to being inside a container, and still trying to mate.
Jon stepped back into the water, pulled his tank back on and told the others to ignore the fish until they got to the bottom. He was curious about the lake’s bottom and what types of life he would find down there. They descended again, the Cyps now gone from their location, and dropped slowly towards the bottom. A few larger fish swam by, obviously predators by their large mouths, but the deeper part of the water column seemed “calmer.”
When they reached the bottom, they adjusted their buoyancy until they were all neutral, and slowly swam a large circle under their boat. The bottom was sand and rocks, with some sponges, snails, crabs and an occasional eel. They stopped when they reached a large sand pyramid where a pair of fish was doing their courtship dance. The four divers watched for almost five full minutes as the male flashed his beautiful colors and put on quite a show for his female, who eventually began laying eggs. She picked them up in her mouth as he fertilized them. Instead of having the same crude thoughts that they had made in Langley, now they watched in awe at one of nature’s marvels. The female would hold her brood in her mouth for almost three weeks, not eating in that time period in order to give her young a chance at life. It was pretty amazing to watch.
Jon finally signaled the group to move on, and they were fortunate enough to come upon a group of Frontosas. “Fronts,” as they were called in the hobby, were known for the large nuchal hump on top of their heads. They were a light bodied fish with five wide dark purple stripes. Their faces and long ventral fins were a bright powder blue. At over a foot long and half as high, they were powerful fish, although very slow moving unless startled. They were most active at dawn and dusk, when they tended to feed on the large schools of Cyprichromis. Having just eaten, they were now being lazy on the bottom, watching the divers as they approached.
Jon signaled the others to prepare their nets, and they slowly moved around the colony of fish. Frontosas didn’t live in large schools, but rather small colonies. The divers circled around the fish, as if practicing an ambush, and then very slowly opened their nets. The large fish could easily have scattered and out-swam the divers, but they had never seen humans before and naively watched as the men approached and opened the large nets. By the time the “fight or flight” mechanism in their tiny brains triggered the “swim like hell” signal, they were already inside the nets. The divers surfaced slowly and repeated the process of loading the fish into the drums.
The Fronts were so big that they filled the other two drums. The group called it a day and stripped off their wetsuits to warm up in the late morning sun.
“I tell ya’ man, I could get used to this,” said McCoy, lying back on the side bench of the boat to warm up.
“A whole new way to fish,” said Jensen with a laugh. “I think it’s cheatin’.”
They enjoyed another thirty minutes of relaXun-jung conversation and then headed for the fish farm, feeling like real fish farmers.
16.
Shen Xun-jun was drinking a cup of hot tea, missing China, as he sat in a small chair watching a few hundred soldiers attack straw dummies with bayonets. The PAC soldiers had a warrior spirit, and appeared to have a good attitude so far in training, but nonetheless, they were terrible marksmen. The only thing that kept Shen Xun-jun from feeling totally despondent was the possibility that the DRC soldiers couldn’t shoot any better than his own. In any case, at least his soldiers would have Chinese machine guns. At the very least, they could “spray and pray” when they got close enough to the enemy.
As he sat watching the Africans mercilessly attack bags of straw, Major Wu Liling approached him and saluted. The general returned the salute and grunted from his seat.
“I have received word on the heavy shipment, General,” said Shang Xiao Wu.
The “heavy shipment” was a delivery of high explosives, anti-tank weapons, RPGs, and heavy machine guns they had been waiting for. Before they could make a move against the capital, they would have to be prepared to take on armor. While the DRC owned very few operable tanks or armored personnel carriers, even a few was too many when you had poorly trained infantry and no air or artillery support.
“And what is the status, Mr. Wu?” asked the general.
“It is being flown in, Shao Jiang. Beijing was concerned about transporting it by ship through the port city of Banana for fear of the shipment being stolen or discovered along the long rail route to our camp. Instead, the shipment will arrive in two large transport aircraft.”
“They are flying into Lubumbashi?” asked Shen Xun-jun, surprised that they would risk such a shipment to the DRC’s largest airport.
“No, sir. They are flying here.”
The general didn’t understand for a moment. “Here? They are going to try and land here?”
“Yes, sir. We have been instructed to provide an adequate landing
strip here at the compound. We have one week.”
They stared at each other. Shen Xun-jun was dumbstruck. Two large military transports heavily loaded with cargo of that magnitude would need a large runway. They had no equipment to clear the land and make a runway—this in a part of the country that didn’t even have a real road.
Shen Xun-jun stood up and put his hands on his hips, his usual pose when he was very serious. He looked back at his colonel. “We built the great wall. We can build a flat piece of dirt. Assemble the entire camp on the parade ground. Cancel whatever else is planned for the week.”
The colonel snapped a salute and ran off to inform his sergeant major, the “liu ji shi guan” of the change in plans. Shen Xun-jun finished his tea and lit a cigarette. He felt cursed. Perhaps he would feel better when his heavy weapons arrived.
By the time the general had finished his cigarette, the camp was in total chaos. Thousands of PAC soldiers were trying to assemble at the same time on the parade ground, with only nine Chinese officers there to organize them. The handful of Africans that had been made “sergeants,” designated by a white star with crossed rifles on their shoulders, tried desperately to get their platoons into neat rows, but it was a mess.
Shen Xun-jun watched, disgusted, and lit a second cigarette. One company of Chinese infantry could annihilate this whole army. He shook his head and smoked, trying not to listen to the screaming of his officers. When he finished the second cigarette, he walked to the front of the assembled men. There were almost six thousand men now assembled at the open end of the camp. While the rows and spacing were not to his standards, at least they had finally shut up.
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