a man who was counselor to the President of the United States, to look like a clerk of the Internal Revenue Service.
“Sir, is there anything I should know about the airplane?” Jack asked.
“You really don’t have to worry about the airplane, Lieutenant, ” Anderson said. “Believe it or not, Air Simba runs a first-class maintenance operation.”
“That’s nice to know,” Jack said.
I wonder how long that reputation will last when one of Mobutu’s friends takes over?
“What you have to worry about is flying in the Congo,” Major Anderson said, and asked: “Have you got much L-23 time?”
“No, sir,” Jack replied truthfully.
“How many hours is not much?”
“I’m rated as an instructor pilot in L-23 series aircraft, Major, okay?”
“I’m just trying to keep you—and your passengers—alive,” Anderson said.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s a long way from here to Stanleyville,” Anderson said. “You sure you don’t want me to come along?”
“Thank you, sir, but no thanks,” Jack said.
“You want some help with your flight plan?”
“No, sir,” Jack said without thinking. “But thanks.”
Then he saw the look on Anderson’s face—You arrogant little inexperienced sonofabitch—and quickly added: “With full tanks, and four people aboard, I figure that will give me about 1,200 nautical miles. . . .”
“I think the manual says about 1,500, Lieutenant,” Anderson corrected him. There was a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Jack ignored him.
“Stanleyville’s about 785 nautical miles from here,” he went on. “According to the manual, I’d have enough fuel aboard to make it nonstop. But I don’t trust manuals.”
“Is that so?” Anderson asked, and now the sarcasm was clear.
Father looked as if he was about to shut him up, but Jack signaled him with a small movement of his hand not to.
“What I’m going to do, Major, is fly up the Congo River to Colquilhatville; their ADF usually works. That’s 350-odd miles. I’ll top off the tanks there. Then it’s a little under 500 nautical miles from Colquilhatville to Stanleyville. Their ADF is supposedly working again, but I don’t want to count on that. If there’s weather and I can’t find it IFR, or if I get there and see that I can’t land, I’ll have enough fuel, with a reserve, to go back to Colquilhatville, or maybe, probably, even enough to make it to Costersmanville. If there’s anything wrong with that, I’d be grateful if you would tell me what it is.”
Anderson now examined him carefully.
“You’ve flown in the Congo before, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir, I have.”
“Have we got some sort of a problem here, Major?” Father Lunsford asked, not very pleasantly.
“No problem, Major,” Anderson said. “But if I wasn’t under orders not to ask questions, I would have a couple.”
“But you are under orders not to ask questions, Major, aren’t you?” Felter said, softly.
Jack hadn’t seen him walk up to them.
“My orders, sir,” Anderson said, “if it turned out I wasn’t to fly the aircraft, were to ask about the qualifications of whoever was to fly it.”
Felter turned to Jack. “I’ll deal with this, Jack. You get going.”
“Yes, sir,” Jack said.
He called out in Swahili to some Air Simba mechanics to open the hangar doors and push the L-23 outside.
Anderson was visibly surprised to hear Jack speak Swahili.
[ THREE ]
Stanleyville Air Field
Stanleyville, Oriental Province
Republic of the Congo
1340 17 January 1965
The weather en route to Colquilhatville had been perfect, and Jack picked up the Colquilhatville beacon long before he expected to. There had even been an English speaker in the Colquilhatville tower, which didn’t always happen in the Congo. They touched down almost exactly three hours after they’d broken ground in Léopoldville.
A Mobil Oil truck had rolled up to them as they stopped, and Jack didn’t even have to remind them to run the avgas through a clean chamois. There was even pastry and coffee in the terminal building.
From there, however, things had gone downhill. The station manager told Jack that he’d had in-flight reports of bad weather between Colquilhatville and Stanleyville and that he knew the Stanleyville ADF was down. Further, what before the Simba Uprising had been alternate airfields at Lisala, Bumba, and Basoko were no longer available. Wrecked trucks and cars and earthmoving equipment had been placed by the Simbas on the runways to deny their use to the Congolese Army.
Jack had decided the thing to do was try to make Stanleyville; if the weather was really bad, he could turn around.
An hour out of Colquilhatville there had been proof that the popular understanding of “Darkest Africa”—as in “The Heart of Darkest Africa,” understood as a reference to the skin pigmentation