“I’m going back with the airplane,” Felter said. “But I wanted to bring them here to you, myself.”
“How long will it take you to unload the aircraft?”
“In practice at Fort Bragg, they did it in forty-four minutes, twenty seconds,” Felter said.
“But you will have time for lunch?”
“Of course,” Felter said. “Very kind of you, sir.”
Captain Portet of Intercontinental Air came down the ladder and put his arm around the shoulders of Captain Portet of Air Simba.
“Well, aren’t you the fashion plate?” he asked. “What’s that all about?”
“I’ll tell you over lunch,” Jack said. “Every time I called and got through, you weren’t there, and I thought you’d rather hear about my conversation with Mobutu straight, rather than relayed through Hanni or Marjorie.”
“Okay. There’ll be time. Marjorie has visions of you up to your ass in lions and cannibals in the bush,” he said. “Shall I disillusion her?”
One hour and twenty-three minutes later, Intercontinental Air Ltd.’s Flight 1002 lifted off from Stanleyville, bound for Kamina, where it would take on fuel for the return flight to the United States.
It had left behind one partially disassembled DeHavilland L-20 Beaver; one partially disassembled Cessna L-19 Birddog; and other supplies, ranging from 10-in-1 rations and ammunition through aviation and ground radios and aircraft parts, so many of them that the airplane had been more than a little over the prescribed maximum gross takeoff weight when it left Pope Field, North Carolina.
It would return to Stanleyville, Colonel Felter informed Colonel Supo, just as soon as it could, within a week at the latest, bringing another partially disassembled L-19, a partially disassembled Bell H-13 helicopter (capable of use as either a medical evacuation aircraft or as an aerial gun platform with two .30-caliber machine guns, depending on what was fixed to the skids), additional supplies of all kinds, and, with a little bit of luck, two more aviators.
XVIII
[ ONE ]
Apartment B-14
Foster Garden Apartments
Fayetteville, North Carolina
1730 12 March 1965
When Mrs. Marjorie Bellmon Portet, who was wearing blue jeans and a sweater, answered her door, she found her father-in-law, Captain Jean-Phillipe Portet, and Colonel Sanford T. Felter standing there. Both were in full uniform, and neither looked very happy.
Her heart sank and her face went white.
“Jesus!” she said.
“If I can read your mind, honey,” Felter said, “Jack is fine.”
"Hello, Marjorie,” Captain Portet said, and leaned forward and kissed her cheek.
“The other thing happens, as you damned well know,” Marjorie said to Felter. She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. “Come on in—you have just solved my booze problem.”
“What booze problem is that?” Captain Portet asked.
“I had just—although I really wanted one—talked myself out of a double scotch because I know you shouldn’t drink alone.”
“Then we can all have a double scotch—I need one, too,” Felter said. “And then we’ll take you out for dinner.”
She led him into the kitchen, where an unopened bottle of scotch sat on the bare kitchen table.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Strange,” Felter said, “I would have thought your first question would be ‘How’s my Jack?’ ”
“I have also been trying to force myself not to think about my Jack,” Marjorie said. “Okay. How’s my Jack?”
“When we left him, beer glass in hand, he was fine. He was all in white,” Portet said. “Shirt, shorts, knee-high stockings, and shoes.”
“What’s that all about?” Marjorie asked, handing him a whiskey glass. “Jack, in white shorts?”
“And knee-high stockings,” Felter said. “It’s an involved story, but Jack is operating Air Simba, and that, apparently, is the uniform for that.”
He touched her glass with his.
“I’ve had visions of him stalking around the steamy jungle while a lion, three lions . . . what do they call it?—a pride of lions—stalked him.”
Portet chuckled.
“The only thing Jack’s being stalked by is the number-one boy with a fresh supply of cold beer.”
“We had lunch in the roof garden on top of the Immoquateur building,” Felter added. “Broiled fish, steamed vegetables, white linen, crystal, china . . . very nice. But a little strange, really.”
“How strange?” Marjorie asked.
“Stanleyville is a ghost town,” Captain Portet answered for him. “You don’t see much evidence—except for vandalized trucks and cars—that the Simbas were ever there, or for that matter very much evidence of the hell of a fight the Simbas put up when the Belgians jumped on it. A few bullet holes here and there, and lots of missing glass, but—”
“And there’s virtually no whites, no Belgians,” Felter interjected. “I don’t know how many want to come back, but Jack said the