"You can never be absolutely sure of anything, Mr. President, but I don't think that Lieutenant Wagner, or any of the others, would permit themselves to fall into enemy hands." The President looked at him thoughtfully. "You're pretty goddamned unemotional about that, aren't you?"
"These are all pretty special people, Mr. President," Felter said. "They understand what is involved. And being very cold blooded about it, I think they would all decide that being a Simba prisoner was the worst possible scenario and take whatever action was necessary to keep that from happening."
The President grunted. "Save the last round for themselves? Like a John Wayne cowboys and Indians movie? Why do they do it, Felter?"
"There is an element of adventure, Sir. And probably what they call peer-group pressure. But I happen to believe that they believe in what they're doing. Using your John Wayne. analogy, they see themselves as standing between the Indians and the wagon train."
"I'm not sure I could do something like that," the President said.
". . ." Felter stopped saying whatever his open mouth was about to say.
"Say what you were going to say, Colonel."
"I was about to say, Mr. President, that I think you could."
The President looked intently at Felter for a moment. "Didn't you ever hear that you can't bullshit a bull shitter, Felter?"
"I have something else, Mr. President."
"I'm afraid to ask what." Felter reached in his pocket and handed the President a single sheet of white typewriter paper, folded in thirds. The following was intercepted at 2120 Zulu 7 October. It originated in Kindu and was a voice transmission in the Swahili language. The message was recorded off the air and our translation confirmed by a Belgian priest fluent in Swahili.
Attention-this is a message from Lieutenant General Olenga, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Liberation, to His Excellency President Christophe Gbenye, His Excellency Minister of Defense Gaston Emile Soumialot, and Colonel Opepe.
[repeated three times] I give you official order. If NATO aircraft bomb and kill Congolese civilian population, please kill one foreigner for each Congolese of your region. Only chance which remains for us is to die with foreigners inhabiting liberated zones. If no bombing, please treat foreigners as honored guests in accordance with Bantu custom. Give them food and drink.
[repeated three times] The entire message, with minor variations, is being repeated at approximately thirty-minute intervals.
The President raised his eyes from the sheet of typewriter paper, and looked at Felter. "What's out of place here?" he asked. "What's different?"
"Sir?"
"I got it," he said. "Why isn't this stamped Top Secret-Presidential? Why is it on a regular piece of paper? This didn't come from the DIA did it? Where did you get it, Felter?"
"I have an intercept team in the Congo, Sir," Felter said. "It came from them. I'm sure the DIA will have it shortly and get it to you."
"Explain that," the President ordered. "Where the hell did you get your own intercept team?"
"There are several tactical ASA intercept teams attached to STRICOM, Sir," Felter said. "General Evans loaned me one of them. " The ASA's----or Army Security Agency's-original (and basic) function is the interception of enemy battlefield communications.
"What you're telling me is that there is civil war between the Congo, Working Group and you and STRICOM to the point where one of you keeps the other in the dark?"
"I wouldn't put it quite that way, Sir. . . ."
"How would you put it, Colonel?" the President asked, coldly sarcastic.
Felter did not reply.
"Get out of here, Felter. I want some time to think before I get this latest bit of information through the proper channels. "
(Six)
Kongolo, Democratic Republic of the Congo 0600 1 November 1964
Kongolo is on the left bank, of the Lualaba River, some 470 miles south of Stanleyville, where the Lualaba becomes ,the Congo River.
The senior military officer of the- Democratic Republic of the Congo present in Kongolo was a Belgian, Commander (Captain) Albert Liegeois, who was on loan to the Leopoldville government. He was small, soft-spoken, and old (forty-eight) by American standards for his rank. But he was strong-willed, and he had been a soldier since his youth, working his way up from the ranks.
Liegeois had swapped his Belgian captain's insignia for that of m ANC colonel after Michael Hoare showed up wearing the pips of an ANC lieutenant colonel.
Albert Liegeois was the officer commanding, and he wanted there to be absolutely no question about that. He had been charged with the recapture of Stanleyville and the liberation of the population (including the 1600 plus Europeans), as rapidly as humanly possible.
He was operating under a great handicap. In the interests of maintaining peace, both the United States and Belgium (90 percent of the Europeans in Stanleyville and elsewhere in rebel occupied territory were Belgian nationals) and declined to open the doors of their military warehouses to Liegeois. His arms and equipment were what could be gathered together from ANC stocks already in the Congo and from stocks left behind by the U.N. Peace-keeping Force.
The original plan called for a force made up of 300 mercenaries and 1800 Congolese, transported in two hundred vehicles behind an "armored force." He had been provided with fifty vehicles, 500 Katangese solders, and Michael Hoare had brought with him 120 mercenaries, of whom 100 spoke English, and of whom perhaps 35 had bona fide previous military service.
For the spearhead of a column which was to fight its way through 470 miles of Simba-occupied jungle, he had four armored vehicles, all of which had been left behind by the UN Peace-keeping Force. Three of these were Swedish armored cars, manufactured by Scania- Vabis. They were ungainly and heavy (eight tons) and both underpowered and thinly armored. And they could not be relied upon to turn either .30 caliber or 7mm rifle bullets. They were armed with three Browning .30 caliber machine guns, a dual mount in front and a single machine gun firing toward the rear. The fourth armored vehicle was an ex -Royal British or Royal Army Ferret reconnaissance car, armed- with one .30 caliber Browning machine gun.
Liegcois organized these assets into something he called Limarone. His name began with an L, and the Belgian military phonetic code for L is Lima. And One because this was the first task force under his command.
Ligeois's fifty vehicles-most of them ordinary (as opposed to military, multiwheel-drive vehicles) two-ton trucks, including some pickup trucks and even some jeeps-could carry only so many people. It was decided that all of Hoare's mercenaries would go in these. And when space for them was set aside, there was room for only 150 Congolese soldiers.
It was necessary for Lima-One to take with it its own fuel, food, water, ammunition, and spare parts. And Colonel Liegeois agreed with Lieutenant Colonel Hoare that although it was hazardous to load fuel and ammunition and troops on the same truck, it would have been more hazardous to the mission to risk losing a truck full of gasoline cans or ammunition all at once to a lucky shot by the Simbas.
It had been made quite clear to Liegeois that he could not expect resupply by air (or for that matter in any other way) during his operation, and there was no chance at all that he would be able t6 replenish his supplies of anything from captured enemy stocks.
So ammunition, parts, gasoline (in five-gallon tin containers -not Jerry cans), food, water, and personnel were divided among the vehicles. And Lima-One waited for permission to set out to recapture Stanleyville and other places in between.
Liegeois had supposed that permission would be automatic once he reported that he was ready to move out. But it hadn't come right away. One of Hoare's captains, a one-time officer in the East German Army, offered the theory that permission to move was waiting for the Presidential elections in the United States. He theorized that once they were over, permission would come.
Permission came at 0500 1 November. The former East-German officer claimed that did not disprove his theory. It wou
ld be forty-eight hours, at least, for news of what they were doing in Kongolo to appear on American television or in American newspapers. That would be election morning at the earliest too early to affect the outcome of the election.
At 0600 Lima-One moved out, with the Ferret in the lead. The ferret was driven by a Congolese, visibly proud of his responsibility. Its .30 caliber Browning was manned by a French mercenary.
Lima-One crossed the Mulongoie River, a tributary of the waba, shortly after noon. The bridge there had been destroyed by the Simbas, but Liegeois had thought of that and had designated two Belgian noncoms and a platoon of the Congolese, were to remain behind to build a temporary bridge immediately after he had radioed Leopoldville that Lima-One was ready.
The heat was brutal, and the chemically purified water carried along tasted bad. And the troops, both Congolese and mercenary, were not well disciplined. Every time the convoy stopped near running water, the troops drank it. By nightfall diarrhea.. was ~on. On 2 November, Lima-One reached and captured without resistance Gaston Emile Soumialot's home town, Samba. It had been stripped of everything of value and deserted. They spent the night there, and in the morning, moved out again. There was a delay at the Lufubu River, another tributary of the Lualaba. The simbas had tried but failed to destroy their bridge. But they did manage to blow up the approaches to it. Liegeois ordered the construction of a ferry, on which the vehicles were floated across the river. He sent a small truck back to Kongolo with orders to send the Belgian noncoms to repair the bridge approaches. That day in the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had acceded to the Presidency on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, was elected to that office in his own right.
Lima-One encountered its first resistance the next afternoon, 4 November, at the outskirts of Kibombo. Simba riflemen hidden here and there in the jungle brought the column under fire. The Scania Vabis armored cars and the Ferret returned the fire and the Simbas fled. Captain Wagner, who was 'operating' from a jeep equipped with a .50 caliber Browning on a pedestal mount, ordered one of the kania Vabis reconnaissance cars (by now, perhaps inevitably, known as "the Sons of Bitchs") to take the point. He followed in his jeep. Two hundred yards down the road they found a grievously wounded Belgian sprawled; in the road. He had been shot in the head with a shotgun; much of his face-had been blown away.
Wagner sent his jeep back for a medic, then, -motioning his driver to follow him, -moved farther down the road. He came to a European house, on the veranda of which sat three elderly European men in rocking chairs. They did not respond to Wagner's hail, and when he got closer he saw that they were all dead. They had been shot in the chest and stomach with shotguns, one of them at least five times.
He returned to- where he had found, the wounded man. By then medics in a pickup truck-and his jeep were at the site. He radioed to Colonel Liegeois, reporting what else he had found. Liegeois responded that he was coming up. The man in the road was beyond help, but the morphine the medics, gave him, to ease his pain brought him around. When it became apparent that he was trying to say something, Colonel Liegeois and Captain Wagner were summoned.
He told them the Simbas were holding a total of seventy five Europeans in Kindu, approximately seventy miles to the north.
And he said he had heard Olenga himself vow to kill them.
Wagner was ordered to prepare to move out for Kindu immediately. The rest of Lima-One would follow as soon as they had secured Kibombo. The wounded man died before Wagner's force, headed by the Ferret and one of the Sons of Bitches,-had formed up.
Shortly after dark, Wagner's column; running as fast as the Son of a Bitch could manage, turned a curve and found itself facing a Simba armored car. It was a Chevrolet stake truck to which the Simbas had welded steel plates, and on which they had mounted a Browning .50 caliber machine gun.
As, the Son of a Bitch and Wagner's jeep slid to a stop and began to turn, the, Ferret raced past them, its .30 caliber Browning blazing. The fire wiped out the Simba crew and did enough damage- to make the truck unusable.
The machine gun was added to Lima-One's stock. Wagner examined the weapon and the ammunition. The ammunition, was head stamped FA 50, which meant-that it had been made at the U.S. Army Frankfurt- Arsenal in 1950. It could have been exBelgian stock, or for that matter exChicom. In the early days of the Korean War, the Chinese had captured vast quantities of United States armament from the O. S. Army!
If there was one "armored car," it was reasonable to presume there would be others. Wagner's column now moved much more slowly through the night, they were sniped at, and there we're two failed attempts to ambush the column. Just after day the balance of LimaOne caught up with them.
It was midafternoon before Lima-One was in position, outside Kindu and prepared to strike. At 2:40, local time, six B'-26K bombers appeared ,and made several passes, strafing and rocketing known or suspected Simba positions. Lima-One attacked before the B-26Ks were even out of sight, under orders from Colonel Liegois -to drive straight through town to the river and then, turn and mop'up" The Simbas took the truck-borne force underfire, but, they were no match for the automatic weapons and the machine guns of Lima-One. After several ferocious firefights, the Simbas broke and ran for the river. Two hundred and fifty Simbas managed to board the ferry and other boats and to push off into the Lualaba before the mercenaries arrived.
But the mercenaries arrived in time to take the--ferry and the other boats under machine-gun fire. They raked the boats until all the Simbas were dead. Wagner, charged with -locating Europeans, found a total of 125. Twenty-four of them were white men, Belgians and Greeks, who were wearing only their undershorts. The Simbas had selected them for immediate execution to coincide with the arrival of Lima-One. They had been ordered to strip (their clothing would be of use to the Simbas) and were being-led to the rear yard of a house for the actual execution when the B-261's made their first strafing run. When a rocket landed near their captors and designated executioners, they fled.
Wagner found the Kindu monument to Patrice Lumumba. The pavement around the monument was cracked and fire-blacked, and Wagner sent Sergeant (Brevet Captain, Katangse Special Gendarmerie) Edward C. Portley, whose Swahili was pretty good, to find out what had been burned there.
"They were saving their ammo to use on you-honkies, Dutch," Portley, visibly shaken, reported a few minutes later. "So when they wanted to put their own people down, they brought them here, made 'em kneel, and poured gas on 'em." "Blow it up, Portley," Wagner ordered.
"The, guy I talked to said they did that to eight hundred people."
"Blow it up, Ed," Wagner repeated:
"Maybe we ought to, find a photographer and take pictures of it and send them to those candy-asses in the State Department."
"Ed, all it would show would be some buckled pavement," Wagner said. "Nobody would believe what it was. Blow it up." There was the sound of aircraft engines. They searched the sky and finally located the source. Two Curtiss Commandos.
"I thought we weren't going to get resupplied," Portley said.
"Liegeois's been radioing everybody he can think of," Wagner reported. "Maybe they're finally going to get off the dime."
"Sure," Portley said bitterly. "Two lousy C-46s. You know how fucking far we are from Stanleyville?" He is pretty close to being hysterical, Wagner realized.
"You know how long, at this rate, it's going- to take us to get there?" Portley went on furiously. "You know, I suppose, that Geoff Craig's wife and baby are in Stanleyville? You are a cold blooded sonofabitch, aren't you? Don't you really give a shit?"
"Geoff Craig's wife is my sister," Wagner said quietly.
"Jesus Christ."
"Would you please blow this fucking monument up?"
"Dutch, I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"Do a good job," Wagner said. "Don't just knock it down. Blow it up."
"You got it, Dutch."
XXII
(One)
1301 Kildar Street Alexandria, Virgini
a . . . September 1964
When the door chimes sounded, Colonel Sanford T. Felter was sitting before the television set in his living room watching the NBC "Evening News". He could not, if his life depended on report what he had just seen. He had other things on his mind.
He had turned the television on because Sharon Felter probably would not try to cheer him up while he was watching the news.
"You want me to get that?" she asked from the kitchen.
"No," he said, rising from the chair almost as a reflex action. Then, realizing how abrupt he had been, he added: "I was already up anyway, honey."
He pulled the door open..
"Good evening, Sir," Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell said. "I'm working my way through college selling magazines and the lady next door suggested you know how to read."
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