African Dragon

by David M. Salkin

  Although the mining operation didn’t answer directly to the army general, the mining company was under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government and answered to the highest-ranking Chinese government official in the country—currently Shen Xun-jun. The Engineer, Dr. Fong, was surprised when the general answered his own phone. He explained to the general that his mining camp had apparently been visited by a team of Americans. The MREs and canteen were American issue, and the boy had said they were four white people—three men and a woman. The conversation was brief, and Shen Xun-jun was not happy when he slammed the phone down.

  Shen Xun-jun stormed out of his cabin to where his army was preparing to load up for the trip to Kinshasa to take the capital. The plan called for his army to link up with another smaller PAC force from the south, just outside of Kinshasa, by tomorrow night. They would camp secretly in the woodlands to the south of Kinshasa and wait for Shen Xun-jun’s army to take out the president and prime minister. Once the heads of state were assassinated, his army would sweep into the city, and Nigel Ufume would lead the coupe, which hopefully wouldn’t last more than a few hours. Having Americans on the scene operating nearby was unacceptable, particularly with the ship full of United States Marines off-shore that Shen Xun-jun was very much aware of.

  Shen Xun-jun screamed for Sergeant Major Han, who was directing troops into vehicles in the total chaos that was the camp. Sergeant Major Han grabbed a Congolese sergeant to keep everyone moving as he ran off to the general. He snapped a salute.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “There is a slight problem. Americans have been spying on us. I want patrols sent around the perimeter of this camp, and two platoons sent to find those Canadian fishermen. They may be our American spies. I want them now!”

  Sergeant Major Han snapped a salute. “Shall the rest of the men proceed according to plan?”

  “Yes. You lead the patrol personally to find the Americans—you can catch up to us tomorrow. I want you to round up everyone you find and bring them along to the rendezvous point south of the city. I will be with my men and will deal with the Americans there. There are three men and a woman that we know of.”

  The sergeant major snapped a salute and ran off to pull two platoons for a trip southeast to find the fish farm. He also began shouting orders for guards to begin moving out into the grass surrounding the camp to make sure there were no spies watching their camp.

  Out in the grass, Moose radioed back to Mackey again. “Hey Skipper, you read me?”

  Mackey was seeing Cascaes and his crew off to Kinshasa when his radio buzzed.

  “What have you got Moose?”

  “Skipper, I’m not sure, but I think we’ve been made. We’re in the wind, boss. They’ve got patrols moving out all over the place, and about twenty vehicles just took off in your direction. We are going to head south, parallel to your location, due west one klick, you copy?”

  “I copy,” said Mackey, now getting anxious.

  “And, Skipper, it looks like the rest of them are all mounting up and breaking camp. Might be the big move to the capital. I think they’re taking every weapon they got off those planes. I need to sign off and beat feet, Skipper. Out.”

  Mackey listened to the radio go dead and exhaled slowly. He was used to running a tight operation where every detail was well planned ahead of time. They were now reacting and trying to keep up to events as they occurred, and he hated being on his heels. He hustled out of his cabin and yelled to Smitty and Ernie P.

  ***

  Ernie P. and Smitty were digging in the dirt outside “Fish Central” when Mackey found them. They had been planting their explosives and coordinating the firing sequence in the event of an assault. The one that they were about to find out about.

  “Hey!” yelled Mackey as he approached. “I hope you boys are almost finished.”

  Smitty stood up from the hole and smiled. “As a matter of fact, we are just finishing up now. What’s up?”

  “Looks like you are going to get a chance to play with your firecrackers. What’s the maximum range from which you can detonate?”

  “Shit, boss, we can set these puppies off from a few miles out. We gonna have company?”

  “Yeah, and maybe a lot of it. I’m thinking we observe from the lake, draw them into camp with some bait, and then bring the whole thing down on their heads as we take off. There will be too many of them to take on in a firefight, but at least we can beat them up a little and take out some personnel.”

  “Roger that, boss. Give us another ten minutes and we’re finished here. Look around you—you see anything suspicious?”

  Mackey glanced around quickly. Everything looked normal. “No,” he said suspiciously.

  “Exactly. And neither will they.” He smiled and knelt down to finish covering the box in the hole.

  38.

  Cascaes drove the truck as fast as he could and still maintain some control on the bumpy dirt roads. Getting to Kinshasa before the PAC was vital. By the time the United States was able to speak directly to the president and prime minister and convince them that the PM’s chief of staff was a traitor, the PAC forces would be driving through the gates of the Presidential Residence. They hung on as tight as they could and bounced and swerved all over the dirt road—more like a path, really, until they made their way to the train station.

  Once at the station, they grabbed their duffle bags full of weapons, night vision equipment, gear, and camos out of the back of the truck and walked to the platform. They were the only ones there, except for the two old men who ran the station. “Station” was being kind. It was really more of a simple platform with a tiny house next to it. The house served as the area train station, post office, local news stand, and gossip column.

  Julia approached one of the old man. He was dark, with a grey beard and hair, and only a few remaining teeth. He smiled broadly when she approached and said hello in French. She asked when the Kinshasa Express would be here, and he laughed and shrugged.

  “Should have been here an hour ago, but she comes when she wants,” he said with a smile. “Where are you coming from?”

  She told him about the fish farm, and explained they had business to conduct in Kinshasa. Time was of the essence, of course. This led to the two old men chattering for a few minutes in Swahili, then the man switched back to French. “If you have enough money, I could get you a plane,” he said. He saw her surprised expression. “It’s a good plane—a new one. And it could fit all of you in one trip.”

  “Who is the pilot?” she asked.

  “My nephew,” he said with great pride. “He has the plane down in Lubumbashi—a private charter company. I can call him and you could speak to him.”

  “You have a phone here?” she asked, not seeing any signs of electricity.

  To her amazement, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket—life in the twenty-first century—no lights or toilet, but a cell phone. She smiled and giggled quietly, which got Cascaes’ attention. He asked what was up and she told him. “Hell, yeah!” he said. “Get us a damn plane!”

  The old man called his nephew the pilot, who answered right away and was happy to find new customers. He would arrive within the hour, instead of the half day truck journey it had taken the team when they first arrived from Lubumbashi. Things were looking up. Cascaes radioed Mackey, who sounded out of breath when he picked up at his end.

  “You okay, boss? You on the run?” asked Cascaes.

  “No—not yet, anyway. Just getting our ‘welcome’ prepared. You at the train station?”

  “Yes, and good news, we have a plane for transport.”

  “A plane? No shit? You trust the pilot?”

  “Well, we haven’t seen him or the plane yet, but it’s the railroad guy’s nephew from Lubumbashi. He runs charters. It will save us an entire day.”

  Mackey chewed his bottom lip. “All ri
ght, Chris. If you think the guy is on the level and the plane is safe, go for it. You’ll get way ahead of the PAC. And we plan on decreasing the number heading your way,” he said as he watched Ernie P. and Smitty run down to the boat with boxes of ammunition and weapons.

  “Hey, boss—does the name Custer ring a bell? You don’t want a firefight with the whole PAC army—what are you doing?”

  “I have no intention of a standup fight, just some good old fashioned booby-traps and daisy chains. Then we’ll be across the lake and show up somewhere nice and quiet when the dust settles.”

  They said their good lucks and Cascaes briefed Hodges and Jones about the plane. They sat on old benches at the platform and waited for the plane. Julia tried to get the latest gossip from the old men, who were free enough with sharing whatever they knew, until she mentioned the PAC. Their smiles disappeared instantly, and it wasn’t lost on Cascaes, even though he didn’t speak much French.

  She pressed them further, in her diplomatic and disarming way. Stories of the last Hutu-Tutsi War came out of the old men. They had seen the killing and behavior that made them ashamed to belong to the human race. By the time they finished chatting, Julia and the old men were both in tears, holding each other’s hands. As far as the PAC was concerned, he had only heard rumors about the aid station to the east, but he was old enough to know the ancient wisdom of “no such thing as a free lunch.” They were still speaking and sobbing when they heard the noise of the plane.

  The plane circled twice, waving its wings as the old man walked out to the grassy plain and waved back. The plane landed on the grass, and slowly drove up towards the station. It was a Beechcraft twin prop eight seater, maybe twenty years old—new to the old man at the station. The engines cut off, the door opened, and a tall skinny African in a white captain’s shirt complete with epaulettes stepped out. Somehow, the blue shorts made him look even taller and the shiny black shoes with no socks made him look goofier. He smiled and gave a huge greeting to his uncle, and they hugged and chattered a hundred miles an hour for a few minutes, until the old man introduced him to the ‘Canadians.’

  It would be thirty-six thousand Congolese francs per person, roughly a hundred bucks each, to go to Kinshasa. Cascaes asked Julia to ask the pilot if the price was firm. He explained it was a fair price, and Cascaes agreed, but said he would have to pay in Canadian dollars. They ended up settling on four hundred Canadian, and quickly loaded the plane. Chris and Julia intentionally took the two rear seats so they could at least occasionally hold hands, or touch a leg, or something without Jones and Hodges seeing them.

  39.

  Sergeant Major Han was not happy about being pulled from his original assignment leading the assault against the prime minister’s house. While he still might be given that honor if he made it back in time, being sent to go round up these Canadians or Americans seemed beneath him. The odds of these four people just sitting around the fish farm waiting to be arrested seemed unlikely. He was merely wasting his time and being distracted from his more important mission. As he sat in the cab of the truck rumbling towards the village of Buwali, he remembered the chief there telling him the Canadians had been there for years. Perhaps the old chief was a liar. Buwali was on the way to the fish farm, and the villagers would know the exact location. They would stop on the way for a ‘heart to heart’ with the old man.

  As they approached the village, the sun was setting behind them in a brilliant red fireball, just like the painting that Sergeant Major Han had in his small apartment outside Beijing. He didn’t like Africa, and would be happy when this business was finished and he could return home where he could get a good cup of tea and bowl of properly cooked rice. The longer they drove, the angrier he became. By the time the trucks rumbled into the quiet village, Sergeant Major Han was at a rolling boil.

  The villagers saw the trucks and ran out to greet their best customers, the Chinese from the aid station. They were singing and waving as the trucks started to unload with angry looking soldiers wielding Chinese assault rifles. Most of the singing stopped as the PAC soldiers began pushing the villagers away with the butts of their rifles as Sergeant Major Han began screaming orders in his “rousy” French. He walked through the crowd, which backed away from him in fear as they read his angry face. His hands were on his hip and holster as he walked bow-legged to the center of the village.

  Chief Ma-Fafe read his face and was confused. Had they not been happy with the fish? They were all freshly caught—what could be the problem? He approached the sergeant major and respectfully clasped his hands together and bowed, giving blessings and greetings in traditional fashion. This was met with an overhand right to his ear, which knocked him to the dirt. Sergeant Major Han began screaming in French that the chief was a liar and was hiding American spies. Ma-Fafe looked up at the bulldog of a man standing above him. He was completely shocked. One of his sons ran to his aid, and Sergeant Major Han pulled the pistol from his holster and aimed it at the man’s face, cocking the hammer. The chief screamed from the ground for everyone to stop. His son froze, Sergeant Major Han’s gun only a foot from his nose.

  The chief placed his face and palms against the ground and began begging the sergeant major not to kill his son. Sergeant Major Han slowly holstered his weapon, now that several PAC troops had come up behind him.

  “Where are the Americans? The woman and three men?” Sergeant Major Han demanded.

  The chief looked up bewildered. “I have seen no woman,” he said. “I only have seen the Canadians from the fish farm…”

  This brought a kick from Sergeant Major Han’s boot to the old man’s face, sending him rolling across the dirt road into some grass, where he howled in pain. Sergeant Major Han pulled his gun again and once more pointed it at his son’s head.

  “Tell me now or I will shoot,” he said slowly.

  Ma-Fafe knelt, holding his bleeding left eye. “The fish farm is not far—just down along the lake. I don’t know if there are Americans there.”

  The villagers crowded in the center of the village, frightened to see their chief cowering before armed men. Many of them remembered similar scenes during the last Congo War, when entire villages disappeared overnight.

  Sergeant Major Han tried to get a more exact location, but clearly, kilometers meant nothing to the old man. His son was the one who finally said it wasn’t more than fifteen minutes by truck. Sergeant Major Han squatted down by the chief’s face.

  “If I find out you have been lying to me, I will come back here and kill everything that lives in this village including you.”

  Sergeant Major Han barked the order for his men to reload into the trucks, and they left in a roar of diesel engines and cloud of dust. Ma-Fafe’s son ran to his father as soon as Sergeant Major Han left, helping the old man up and asking him what was happening. The chief answered that he didn’t know, but he could smell blood coming.

  40.

  Near Kinshasa

  n two hours, Cascaes and his crew travelled the distance it would have taken the train an entire day to cover. Assuming the train ever arrived at the station to pick them up, which still hadn’t happened. The pilot yelled back to Hodges, sitting behind him, that they would be at Kinshasa airport in twenty minutes.

  Cascaes handed up a piece of paper with map coordinates and two hundred dollars Canadian. “Ask him if he can drop us off here instead. It’s closer to where our meeting is.”

  The pilot looked at the coordinates and adjusted the GPS computer on his dashboard. “There isn’t much out there. Are you sure?” he asked. No one responded so he just shrugged and banked hard to the right as he adjusted for their new heading. They touched down on a grassy savannah in the middle of nowhere. The pilot again asked if Cascaes was sure about the location—they were several miles from the outskirts of Kinshasa, and it would be dark soon. They assured him they would be fine, thanked him for the ride, and told him they
would call him again one day soon.

  As soon as the plane took off, the four of them stripped from their civilian clothes into camos. Hodges and Jones tried their best to be inconspicuous as they watched Julia get changed, her beauty much more evident in a bra and panties. Cascaes cleared his throat when he saw them gawking, and they quickly pulled on their clothes.

  “Looks like about an hour walk due west to get to Zabanga’s house. If we get lucky and he’s there, we’ll try and take him out from a distance and just disappear. If you can’t get a shot at him, then we’ll figure out a way into his place, but I have no idea what kind of security or surveillance he has. We’ll just take this nice and slow and sort it out when we get there.” With that, they began the long walk to find the traitor’s hideout.

  Seven hundred miles to the east, Shin Xun-jun’s column of troops rumbled through the Congolese highlands, like an African serpent winding its way to its prey. Major Wu had the plans of the prime minister’s residence, and would be leading that assault, although now perhaps without Sergeant Major Han. He hated relying on the poorly trained PAC guerrillas, but the decision wasn’t his. In another truck, Nigel Ufume reviewed the maps of the city and planned on how they would use a small team to infiltrate the president’s compound while the remainder of the troops waited for the signal to begin the major assault that would bring the ruling government to its knees.

  They would drive all night, stopping only to refuel, and rendezvous with the twenty-five hundred other PAC guerrillas that had been formed further west. Many of these men were mercenaries, trained during the last Congo War, and very content to kill anyone so long as they were paid and fed. The relative peace of the past few years had many of them desperate to keep food on their tables. The Chinese paid well, kept them fed, and offered shelter in the camp they had built. Although a much smaller camp than the one Shen Xun-jun ran to the east, these men made up in skill what they lacked in numbers. The general who ran that “aid station,” a man named Wong Fu-jia, was almost as fanatical as the guerrillas in that camp. While Shen Xun-jun didn’t know him personally, he had seen his file, and was pleased to have him and his men joining them outside Kinshasa.