African Dragon

by David M. Salkin

  Jones, the only black man on this trip, couldn’t help himself. “Yeah—don’t think I don’t see what’s goin’ on here, man. The brutha’ gotta’ sit in the back of the bus while the man sits up front!” He was joking, of course, and Mac honked his horn and yelled at him. “You’re just lucky I’m not making you jog alongside the truck!”

  They drove north along a path in the foot-high dry grass. The path was probably a few hundred years old, worn into the ground by thousands of feet, some horses and wagons, and now cars. It was twenty-five minutes later, and a thousand years back in time, when they arrived at the village of Buwali. Theirs was the only vehicle in the entire village, except for an ancient pickup truck that sat in the center of the village with no tires, glass, seats, or anything else. It had been stripped over the years, and only its rusted frame was a reminder that it used to be an automobile of some kind.

  By the time they stopped in the center of the village, almost everyone had followed them, and surrounded the car waving and smiling and speaking in French and their tribal language. Visitors to the village were a special event, and the children smiled and cheered. Mac and his crew got out of the truck and smiled and waved and said “bonjour” about a hundred times—about as much French as most of them could muster.

  The village elders walked out to greet their visitors and gave hearty two-handed handshakes and formal welcomes. Julia spoke to them in her fluent French and they were very excited to hear that their friends from Canada would be operating the farm again. Mac told the elders that he had brought them a payment for some of the fish they had brought so far—a large sack of rice. This brought giant smiles from the three old men who patted their hands and arms and thanked them profusely.

  Jones unloaded the huge sack, threw it over his shoulder and walked it to them. “Where do they want it?” he asked Julia, who translated into French. The elders led them to the center of the village, where a large cook-pot was suspended over a fire. While each family had their own food, they all did share some of it in the town center each day at their large evening meal. Julia spoke with them for a long time, and then the elders spoke to some of the children who ran off to get water from the lake. They would boil the water and make the rice, and then the fishermen would add some fish and some of the women would add some local vegetables, and pretty soon, there would be a giant pot of food for everyone to share.

  Mac and his crew watched as the villagers worked together, singing and smiling, and evidently very happy for the rice and visitors. They smiled at the simplicity of this village life—everyone very content just to know where the next meal was coming from.

  Mac whispered to Cascaes, “If the PAC came in here with food, clothes, and medicine; how hard would it be to bring the whole village into their fold?”

  “I hear ya,” said Cascaes. “But seriously, do these people look like soldiers to you?”

  “Put a Chinese Type-81 into their hands and they all look like soldiers to me,” said Mac. “But remember, I’m an old fucker—I was in small villages like this in Vietnam. The skin color was different, but it was the same shit. Smile by day, kill us at night.”

  “That’s a pretty big leap,” said Cascaes.

  “Yeah? Was it different in Iraq? Villagers smiling and waving during the day and planting IEDs at night when they were finished mortaring our base?

  “Come on, Mac. Don’t get so cynical. Let’s go win some heart and minds.”

  Julia interrupted their conversation. “The old man with the white beard is the chief. His name is Ma-fafe. He says you would honor them if you would eat with them. The rice was a pretty big deal.”

  Mac looked at Cascaes. “I can almost feel the diarrhea already,” he said quietly.

  “The water is right out of the lake, Mac. Seriously—we better pass,” said Cascaes quietly.

  Mac looked at Julia and was quick on his feet. “Tell him we just ate, maybe next time. Ask him if we can talk somewhere.” Julia translated, and Chief Ma-fafe smiled and took his hand and led him to his small thatched hut. He sat on the woven mat floor with Julia and Cascaes and Mackey while Jones and Koches stayed outside and tried to communicate with the children, who found them most entertaining. Jones was trying his best to teach a small boy how to say “muthafucker,” which he found absolutely hilarious. Each time the child would repeat it, Jones would scream in fits of laughter, which only encouraged the boy to do it again. By the time Koches found Jones, Jones was on his back hysterical with a small boy standing over him saying “muthafucker” over and over again. It wasn’t long before Koches was on his knees laughing hysterically next to them.

  Inside, Julia was translating for Mackey. She asked the chief how things were in the village, and the chief smiled and said the weather had been a blessing this year. There were good crops, plenty of fish, many cows and goats had been born this year, and the village had grown by twenty-two people. Evidently, population was one way to know how things were going. If more died than were born, things weren’t going so well.

  The chief reiterated how happy he was to have them as neighbors again, and that his fishermen were the best in the world. Cascaes smiled and thought about the old man he used to call Pop—he was a helluva fisherman and might have taken issue with that claim. After they spoke for almost twenty minutes, Mac began asking more specific questions.

  He asked the chief if he had ever heard of the PAC or People’s Army of Congo. The chief said no, and told them they were safe. The war had ended years ago, and he didn’t want them to get frightened and leave. Mackey took a picture of Nigel Ufume out of his pocket and showed it to the old man. Julia asked him if he knew this man. The chief smiled and said yes, it was his friend. Then the chief asked Mackey where the man called Ufume had gone. Mackey explained through Julia that he was hoping the chief would answer that question.

  They spoke for a while longer, but it was apparent that this isolated village had no idea what the PAC was, and while Nigel had been here before a few times, he was gone now and the chief had no idea where. Either that, or the chief was a really good liar.

  20.

  The early morning hours brought chaotic activity to the PAC “aid station.” The word was out that anyone who showed up would be guaranteed work building a road and entire nearby villages were showing up. Men, women and children arrived with primitive tools or nothing at all, anxious for a chance to earn “double rations,” as it had been explained to them.

  The PAC soldiers helped organize the huge crowd into smaller work groups that would be led by either village elders or PAC soldiers. Shen Xun-jun and two of his officers had informally surveyed the fields around the base the night before. They had chosen the flattest ground and aligned the runway with the prevailing winds as best they could. Using diesel for the generators, they had torched the area in the morning and burned off as much of the brush, grass and trees as possible. With the thousands of workers they now had, leveling and clearing what amounted to a quarter mile road wouldn’t be an enormous undertaking. It also provided the PAC with another recruiting opportunity.

  Shen Xun-jun was driven out to the huge crowd by Sergeant Major Han. When they had arrived near the center of the chaos, the general stepped out of the car and handed his bullhorn to Sergeant Major Han, who would translate into French. The thousands of Africans would in turn retranslate into another half dozen tribal languages—Swahili, Kongo, Lingala, Kingwana, Kikongo, and Tshiluba.

  Shen Xun-jun put his hands on his hips and walked stiffly as he addressed the huge crowd, looking more like Hitler than a Chinese officer. “People of the Democratic Republic of Congo! The People’s Army of Congo is here to help rebuild your country. We will build an airport and bring in food and medicine for your children! We will build hospitals and schools and end the government corruption! Today, you will build a runway for relief planes to bring your people the help you need! Work hard! Work to rebuild your country!”
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  The people cheered and clapped, although a bit half-hearted. Many of them were still trying to translate from the sergeant major’s poor French. They understood “work,” “food” and “medicine,” and that was enough for most of them. Sergeant Major Han then began barking out orders to the PAC soldiers, who quickly began shouting at the huge crowd. Within moments, thousands of men, women and children began digging out rocks and stumps to clear the long runway.

  The PAC soldiers had the huge crowd spaced out along one long end of the runway, and basically had the crowd work their way across the marked out area. Children pulled out small rocks and burnt wood while men and women worked like animals digging out rocks, some of which weighed hundreds of pounds. The most interesting obstacle was a seven-foot termite mound. Its hardened shell required dozens of strong men using hammers, sticks and rocks to break it apart. As the termites swarmed, women and children eagerly picked them up and collected them for later—they would add to the evening’s dinner—a local delicacy.

  By noon, the temperature was over eighty degrees, and the villagers had stripped down to shorts or loincloths. The PAC soldiers wore their uniform pants and boots, something new for most of them, and they were having a hard time with the heat because of the extra clothes. The smallest children were used as water porters, and they moved through the huge crowd bringing water from a well the Chinese had drilled. For themselves, the Chinese treated the water; for the Africans, it was drawn and served right out of the ground, but it was a deep well, and the water was cleaner than what the villagers drank from the lake.

  The workers sang African songs and worked cheerfully, even though the sweat ran down to their feet. The soldiers wearing boots sloshed in their wet socks. General Shen marveled at how fast they were working—as good as any Chinese work crew he had ever seen—and thought they would make good workers at their new uranium mines in the coming months. Shen Xun-jun walked to his truck and barked at Sergeant Major Han to drive him back to his office. Once there, he instructed Sergeant Major Han to take some PAC soldiers and a truck and drive out to one of the lake with some villagers to get some fish. He would feed these people well, and continue to build his army.

  Sergeant Major Han snapped a salute and ran to find a few reliable PAC soldiers and a large truck. They would drive out to one of the larger villages on the lake, a place called Buwali.

  21.

  While Mac, Cascaes and the others sat around the morning campfire back at the fish farm discussing their next move, a Chinese Army transport vehicle rumbled into Buwali. Two Chinese soldiers and two PAC soldiers stepped out in the center of the village. Unlike the “Canadian” fish farmers, these men made no bones about showing off their new Chinese machine guns. The Chinese officers, in particular, looked about as much like relief workers as Nazi storm troopers.

  Sergeant Major Han spoke to his PAC soldiers in French. “Tell them we need as much fish as they can provide. We have rice, corn, flour and powdered milk. We also have Congolese francs if they want cash. We will buy their cattle, too, if they will sell them.”

  The PAC soldier translated to one of the village elders who had come out to speak with them. The old man was more cautious with these men than he had been with the Canadians. These men were armed, and the village elder vividly remembered the last Congo war. The armed Africans were scarier to him than the Asians. The old man smiled and told him their fishermen would love to sell them fish. He didn’t mention Canadians visiting the day before.

  The chief of the village, Ma-fafe, approached the men with a cautious smile. He too, saw the weapons and was worried. Whole villages had disappeared during the last war between the Hutus and Tutsis, and men with weapons were a scary sight in Africa. Ma-fafe greeted the guests and spoke with the other elders about their request to buy fish. The chief was very pleased—two new customers in the same week, this was big. He asked how much they needed, and through the translators was told “all they could catch, as fast as possible.” The chief tried to explain that there were more fish in the lake than would fit in the truck, but the Chinese man in charge said they would get more trucks if needed. They had many mouths to feed.

  The chief asked when he wanted the fish and was told “now.” He smiled and started speaking out loudly to his people. Word traveled fast, and within moments, every able-bodied person in the village was getting into a boat. The entire village was singing and preparing to fish while the PAC soldiers were unloading the bags of supplies. Buwali was a busy place.

  ***

  Jon Cohen and his three divers were north of their fish farm looking for Frontosas. While it really didn’t matter what kind of fish they caught, after all, this was just a cover story, Jon really liked the big striped fish with the huge bumps on their heads. They hadn’t traveled this far north before, and were surprised by the number of fishing boats.

  “Looks like the whole village is out today,” said McCoy.

  “Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing,” said Jon. As they moved further north, more and more of the small boats appeared until there were hundreds out on the lake.

  “Damn, man. I didn’t think there were that many people in the whole village!” exclaimed O’Conner.

  Jon watched and turned his boat towards the fishermen. Buwali was off in the distance, visible along the dry rocky shoreline less than a kilometer away.

  “You going to the village?” asked McCoy.

  “Let’s just go check it out,” said Jon. “If these guys bring us all these fish, we’re screwed. We can’t handle this kind of quantity.”

  Jon revved the outboard and skipped over the small chop towards the old village, fishermen waving as they cruised by. As they neared the village, they had to slow down to avoid upsetting the small canoes that were everywhere. Villagers used nets as well as hand lines and were pulling up fish everywhere. As they passed one small dugout canoe, a young boy held up a giant carp almost as big as he was. The men slowed down and applauded the boy, who was smiling ear-to-ear and puffing out his chest proudly. He was maybe eight years old.

  Jon slowly maneuvered their boat through the canoes as they approached the shoreline. It wasn’t a sand beach, more like gravel and hardened earth and rock. McCoy hopped off the bow into the water and grabbed the bowline to lead the boat into the shallow water as Jon killed the engine and raised the outboard.

  Jensen was the first to see them. “Hey, Skipper—be cool, but there are two guys up there with machine guns. Shit—make that four. Two Chinese with the Africans.”

  Jon’s stomach dropped. “Shit,” was all he could muster. “We can’t split without raising suspicion. We’re Canadian fishermen here to buy some fish for our camp, that’s all. Try not to talk too much. O’Conner, your French is better than mine, you do the talking.”

  All four of the men were trying to be cool, but none of them had weapons, unless you counted fishing nets. McCoy pulled the boat in until the bow brushed the grassy bottom, and then he threw the anchor off into the water and pulled it tight into some rocks. The other three hopped into the water, wearing only shorts and swim shoes, and walked up the shoreline to where dozens of women cleaned hundreds of fish of every shape and size. The fish guts and scales were collected by small children for use as fertilizer in their small home gardens. The cloud of flies that followed them was proof of the wonderful aroma.

  The four men walked up towards the village and saw Chief Ma-fafe walking towards them. He looked a little nervous, but smiled and greeted his friends from Canada.

  O’Conner tried his best. “Bonjour, je voudrais acheter les poisson.”

  Jensen looked at McCoy. “What did he say?”

  “I think he tried to ask him to buy some fish,” he whispered back.

  The chief spoke too quickly for O’Conner to understand, but he was pointing at the Chinese men up the hill and sadly shaking his head at the request. O’Conner listened for a while and f
inally turned to Jon and said, “I think the Chinese guys are buying all the fish. Sounds like he already has a deal to sell them and can’t spare any. But honestly, Jon, my French is so bad he might have just asked to marry your sister.”

  Jon laughed. “Which one?” he asked. Jon smiled at the chief and said goodbye, then started to move backwards towards the boats, but it was too late. The Chinese officers and their two PAC goons approached them with their weapons slung under their arms. The uglier of the two Chinese men spoke first to the four white men, first in French, and then, when they gave no sign of understanding, in English.

  “What you doing here, American?” asked the pug faced man.

  Jon smiled and extended his hand. “I’m Canadian, actually. Name is John Murphy. You speak Engrish?”

  The Chinese man didn’t shake his hand.

  “We run the fish farm down the river. We export tropical fish. Live fish, not the kind you eat.”

  “What you do here?” he repeated, sounding more than slightly menacing.

  “We were trying to buy some fish for dinner,” said Jon, dropping his hand.

  “You said you fisherman. Why you come here buy fish?”

  “Like I said,” repeated Jon, “We catch tropical fish to export alive as pets. We don’t have fishing hooks and gear for larger food fish.”

  The two Chinese men spoke to each other quickly in Chinese, perhaps deciding whether or not to make fish food out of the four visitors, while the four SEALs stood, feeling helpless in front of the men with the assault rifles.

  “Well, if you guys need all the fish, I guess we’ll try and figure out something else,” said Jon. He turned his back and started walking back to the boat waiting for bullets in his spine.

  The Chinese men continued speaking to each other and ignored the dive team as they went back to their boat. They ordered the villagers to just throw the fish into the trucks without bothering to clean them. They were in a hurry. McCoy walked quickly next to Jensen and O’Conner and whispered, “Just keep moving…”