“If you will take your machete and cut us wood for a fire, Sergeant First Jette, I will share my tent with you.”
“Major, sir, if I cut wood, it will not burn. It is wet.”
“If you do not cut wood, you will stay there in the rain,” Thomas said. “It’s up to you.”
“When do we kill the Simbas, Major, sir?”
“Not now, Sergeant First Jette,” Thomas said. “In the morning. Now you cut wood and I clean my weapons and then eat. Or, if you do not cut wood, then you stay there in the rain and you do not eat.”
Sergeant First Jette rose effortlessly to his feet from his squatting position, unhooked his machette from his web belt, and disappeared into the bush.
Thomas field-stripped his Car-16 weapon, sprayed the mechanism with Three-In-One oil, reassembled it, chambered a round, and then laid it on the floor of his tent. Then he did the same thing with his .45 automatic, except that instead of laying it on the tent floor, he carried it with him while he went to the tree where he had hung his rucksack and web gear. He took another plastic-wrapped package from the rucksack and returned to his tent to wait for Sergeant First Jette to finish his wood collecting.
Jette came in about five minutes, his arms full of small limbs of trees.
“Shave some slivers from the bigger pieces,” Thomas ordered. “Put them on the bottom, with some leaves from the ground, and then put the larger pieces over them, leaving enough room for air.”
“With respect, Major, sir, I know how to lay a fire.”
“But you do not know, you tell me, how to make a fire with wet green wood?”
“Wet, green wood, Major, sir, will not burn.”
“Lay the fire, Sergeant First Jette, and then as we watch the fire burn, we will have our supper.”
When Jette had laid the fire, making a nice conical shape of it, Thomas raised the netting and stepped out into the rain, carrying with him his machete and the plastic bottle that had once held shampoo.
He disappeared into the bush, returning in no more than two minutes with more tree branches, thick with leaves. He sharpened the ends and jammed them into the ground so that they shielded the fire Jette had laid from the rain.
Then he sprayed the fire bed with the contents of the former shampoo bottle, took a Zippo lighter from his pocket, and ignited the liquid.
Sergeant First Jette’s eyes widened in appreciation.
“When you have to build a fire in the rain, Sergeant Jette,” Thomas said, “there’s nothing like a little avgas. Write that down.”
“I cannot write, Major, sir,” Jette said.
Shit!
Thomas waited until the burning avgas had the leaves and chips burning well, and then added larger pieces of wood.
Without waiting to be told, Jette loped off into the bush and returned with another armful of wood.
“It seems to be burning nicely, Sergeant First Jette,” Thomas said. “Put a few more pieces of wood on it, and then come in the tent.”
Jette squatted before the fire and nurtured it until he was confident it would remain on fire, then went under the nylon netting.
Thomas handed him dinner: fried chicken and a cold baked potato from the kitchen of the Hotel du Lac.
“There is also two bottles of beer,” Thomas said, “but you will have to get them from my rucksack. I forgot.”
“I have beer,” Jette said. “I did not know if the Major, sir, would approve.”
“The major approves.”
“You have been in the Bush before, Major, sir,” Jette said.
“Not this bush, Sergeant. And not for as long as you. You are a master of the bush.”
“What is your tribe?”
“I have no idea,” Thomas said. “For all I know, my family may have been from here. I look like you.”
Jette nodded his acceptance of that.
“You talked to the airplane, Major, sir?”
“He told me the reaction force is at Outpost George. He will tell them to come here. I could not talk to them on the radio.”
“When they get here, we kill the Simbas, Major, sir? When the rain stops? When it is dark?”
“It is best, Sergeant First Jette, to know all you can about the enemy and his position before you attack, and it is better to attack with twenty men than two.”
Jette nodded his acceptance of that philosophy.
“Tonight, you and I will locate the Simbas precisely. And in the morning, with twenty men, and with a little luck, a machine gun, we will attack them.”
Jette nodded again.
“The airplane will come back if I cannot talk to the reaction force on my radio, and he will tell us when they are coming.”
Jette nodded again.
“Get the beer, Sergeant First Jette,” Thomas said. “I always like a beer with my supper.”
“Yes, Major, sir.”
They had just finished their chicken and cold baked potato dinner when both heard the sound of the L-19’s engine.
“Oh, shit,” Doubting Thomas said aloud. “That means no reaction force radios.”
He got to his feet and motioned for Jette to follow him.
It had stopped raining, but the ground and the tree were still rain-slick.
Here lies Master Sergeant William E. Thomas, who busted his ass climbing a fucking tree.
“Birddog, Hunter, I’m back in the fucking tree. How read?”
“Five by five,” Geoff Craig replied. “All their batteries are dead.”
“Oh, shit!”
“Yeah. Well, they’re on their way. Twenty shooters, no machine gun, and a jeep, no trailer.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to Woolworth. There’s batteries there. I’ll be back at first light—first light here, I can take off from there in the dark—and I’ll drop the batteries to the smoke clearing. When you hear my engine, pop yellow smoke.”
“I have one only yellow. Can you get me more?”
“Sure.”
“And four bottles of beer, and enough fried chicken for two.”
“Done, and don’t get yourself eaten by a hungry lion while I’m gone.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant.”
“Be careful, Bill. See you in the morning. Birddog out.”
“Hunter out.”
When he’d reached the ground again, Sergeant First Jette had a worried look on his face.
“What’s bothering you?” Thomas asked.
“If we can hear the airplane, the Simbas can hear the airplane,” Jette said.
“It’s almost impossible to tell the direction of an airplane from the sound,” Thomas said. “And he was flying close to the tree-tops, so they couldn’t see him.”
Jette considered that for a long moment, then nodded.
“If the Major, sir, wishes to sleep, I will stay awake,” he said.
“We will take two-hour turns, Sergeant First Jette,” Thomas said. “That way we both get some sleep.”
Sergeant First Jette nodded.
[ THREE ]
Stanleyville Air Field
Stanleyville, Oriental Province
Republic of the Congo
1845 8 April 1965
“Woolworth, Woolworth, Birddog Three,” Geoff said into his microphone.
“Where the hell are you?” the tower operator replied.
That was not the standard response of a tower operator, but the tower operator in this case was not a tower operator but rather Major George Washington Lunsford, and Major Lunsford had been troubled over the past six, even seven hours over several things.
For one thing, no one had been able to establish radio contact with Outpost George, and Major Lunsford had been unable to establish contact with Colonel Jean-Baptiste Supo to report the situation.
The last time Major Lunsford had seen Colonel Supo was when, after they had dropped off the corpse of SFC Withers, Colonel Supo and Lieutenant Jacques Portet had taken off in the Beaver for Costermansville. Inasmuch as neither Colonel Supo nor
Lieutenant Portet was in Costermansville, the possibility existed that they and the L-20 were down somewhere between Woolworth (Stanleyville) and Costermansville.
Further, although it was unlikely, the possibility that Outpost George had been overwhelmed again had to be considered. It was not possible to dispatch the reaction force to Outpost George, because the reaction force had already been dispatched to Outpost George, which opened the possibilities (a) that it had been ambushed after Major Lunsford had flown over it on Route 5 when it had been en route to Outpost George, or (b) that it had been overwhelmed after it reached Outpost George.
Under that circumstance, Major Lunsford had deemed it unwise to dispatch a reconnaissance team from either Outpost Fox or Outpost Item (the nearest outposts, on either side of George). Such reconnaissance teams would stand a high risk of ambush if, in fact, the reaction force had been overwhelmed before or after reaching Outpost George.
It would be wiser, Major Lunsford had decided, to wait until contact was established with Birddog Three (Lieutenant Craig), which, at Lunsford’s order, was engaged at overflying all the outposts to determine (a) how long it actually (as opposed to theoretically) took to fly from one to the next and, (b) to test and judge the efficiency of the ground-to-air communications thereof.
Birddog Three’s ETA at Woolworth had been 1630, opening the possibility that Birddog Three, now two hours and fifteen minutes overdue, was down somewhere, God only knew where.
If the reaction force had been overwhelmed, that would mean that it had been attacked by a superior force, which meant that everybody was now in a much larger ballgame, the ramifications of which Major Lunsford did not even wish to think about, but privately thought was going to be a three-star fucking mess.
In addition to which, of course, he had considered the possibility that he was going to have to be a notification team of one to tell Mrs. Jacques Portet that her husband was missing and to tell Mrs. Geoffrey Craig very much the same thing.
“I’m over the river, about ten minutes out. Will you light it up, please?”
“You sonofabitch!” Major Lunsford said, tossed the microphone to Spec7 Peters/Captain Weewili, and stormed down out of the control tower to see if he could find someone who could turn on the generator to power the runway lights without fucking that up, too.
“Birddog Three, Woolworth,” Captain Weewili called. “Roger your request for runway lights. They should be on by the time you get here. The winds are negligible, and you are cleared for a straight-in approach to Two-seven. Report when you have the lights in sight.”
“Roger, Woolworth.”
“And have we got a surprise for you!”
“I heard,” Lieutenant Craig replied.
Major George Washington Lunsford was waiting when Lieutenant Geoffrey Craig taxied the L-19 to the door of Hangar Two and shut it down.
“Where the fuck have you been, you sonofabitch?” he greeted him. “You’ve had everybody scared shitless.”
Lieutenant Craig knew Major Lunsford well enough to know that if he really had his ass in a crack, Major Lunsford’s greeting would have met the requirements of military courtesy and protocol in every minute detail. What he had here was a concerned friend.
“I tried to call,” he said. “All I can do is talk into the microphone. I can’t make the radio work.”
“What’s going on at Outpost George?”
“I just came from there. Aside from their shit-for-brains commo officer not having brought one—not-fucking-one— undead battery for their radios with them, they’re in pretty good shape. Doubting Thomas has tracked the Simbas about fifteen klicks into the bush, and asked for twenty shooters and a jeep to be sent to him. They’re on the way. I’m going to take off from here at oh dark hundred, to arrive over his position at first light and drop batteries to him.”
Lunsford nodded but didn’t respond.
“The Beaver’s missing,” he said.
“They should be in Léopoldville by now. They didn’t get there?”
“Léopoldville?” Lunsford asked.
“The last I heard—Portet put out an ‘anybody listening’—they were on their way to Léopoldville. He told me Supo decided he wanted to see Mobutu before he went to Costermansville.”
“You talked to him?”
“Yeah. I asked him if he wanted the message relayed, and he said no. Supo would send word on a landline. They didn’t get there?”
“I don’t know,” Lunsford said. “Since I didn’t know they were going to Léopoldville, I didn’t call Léopoldville to ask if they got there.”
Lunsford shook his head, then marched purposefully toward the terminal building, which served as the command post for the Congolese soldiers guarding the field.
The guard outside was squatting on the ground, his rifle between his knees.
“The next time you don’t get to your feet and salute me when you see me, I’m going to stick that rifle up your ass,” Lunsford said in Swahili.
The guard quickly started to get to his feet as Lunsford walked past.
The officer in charge of the guard detachment was asleep in an office chair. Lunsford pushed it, hard, with his foot. The chair spun around as it moved across the floor.
“I hope I didn’t disturb you, Lieutenant,” Lunsford said politely.
The lieutenant got to his feet.
“I thought the colonel was gone for the day,” he said.
“Have there been any messages for me?”
“I don’t think so,” the lieutenant said.
“Why don’t we look?” Lunsford asked, and walked to a teletype machine, marked with the logotype of Sabena, the Belgian airline, but now connected to the Army network in Léopoldville. There was a large pile of teletype paper on the floor behind it.
Lunsford ripped it off the machine and started reading it.
“Here it is,” he said finally, after he’d pulled about half of the coiled teletypewriter paper through his hands. “Sent from Léopoldville at two-fifteen this afternoon.” He read from it in English: “Quote ‘Immediately inform Lieutenant Colonel Dahdi that I am in Léopoldville and will come to Stanleyville tomorrow. Please meet me there and delay departure of supply aircraft until my arrival. Supo. Colonel Commandant.’ End quote.” He looked at Craig. “I wonder what the hell that’s all about?”
Craig shrugged.
The lieutenant was now standing at rigid attention.
“I should kick his ass around the block,” Lunsford said, “but I don’t think it would do any good.”
He switched to Swahili. “Lieutenant, I don’t think that Colonel Supo will be pleased that I had to find for myself a message at night that was supposed to be delivered to me at two-fifteen this afternoon. He will be here tomorrow.”
The lieutenant winced.
“Well, for the good news,” Geoff said. “I see the 707 made it in.”
Lunsford looked at him.
“Lieutenant, have you ever heard that when you deliver a message that you feel will greatly surprise the individual to whom you are giving it, you should make him sit down first? So that he won’t fall over and break his head, or his ass, or both?”
“Yes, sir, I’ve heard that. Should I sit down?”
“I think that would be a very good idea,” Lunsford said. “Sit down, Lieutenant.”
At first, Geoff had thought Lunsford was making a joke. When he saw that he was serious, he looked around and found a small chair, and sat down on it.
When he had, Lunsford told him that his wife, son, and Mary Magdalene were in the Immoquateur, probably having their dinner.
[ FOUR ]
Gregory & Gregory Funeral Home
730 North Main Street
Laurinburg, North Carolina
1350 8 April 1965
“I’m James L. Gregory,” the somberly dressed, pale-skinned man said to Captain Stefan Zabrewski. “How may I be of service, sir?”
“There has been a death,” Zabrewski said.
&nbs
p; “May I offer my most sincere condolences?” Mr. Gregory said.
“And we’re here to arrange for the funeral,” Zabrewski said.
“And your relationship to the deceased?”
“I’m a friend,” Zabrewski said. He nodded at Sergeant Major Tinley. “We’re both friends.”
“I see.”
“SFC Withers’s parents live here,” Zabrewski said. “On a farm. Outside of town.”
“SFC Withers?”
“The man who’s dead,” Zabrewski said.
“I see. Oh, I see. I take it you’re speaking of Mr. and Mrs. Delmar Withers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’re fine people,” Gregory said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Normally, the family makes the arrangements. . . .”
“We’re trying to spare them that,” Zabrewski said.
“I understand.”
“When did . . . What did you say, SFC?”
“Sergeant First Class, yes, sir.”
“When did Sergeant Withers pass?”
“The day before yesterday.”
“And you’re just coming to us now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And where did he pass?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, sir.”
“Really? Why not?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified information, sir.”
“I see. And where are the remains?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, either,” Zabrewski said. “But Withers is on his way either to the States or to Pope Air Force Base right now, or shortly will be. He should get here the day after tomorrow, or the day after that.”
“I presume the documentation is in order?” Gregory asked.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“I’m presuming Sergeant Withers passed outside the United States?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, as I’m sure you can understand, there are certain procedures that have to be followed. We’ll need, of course, a certificate of death, as issued by the appropriate authorities. If death occurred in a foreign county, that will need verification by the Consul General—the United States Consul General—serving the country in which death occurred. Then there will have to be a copy of the autopsy, again verified by the Consul General, stating the cause of death, and that the remains are not infected with any of the contagious diseases. . . .”
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