and a radio able to maintain contact with our aircraft in the area, and with at least one other airstrip on each side. At every third or fourth airstrip, there will be a Swahili-speaking Special Forces soldier, and a platoon of Congolese soldiers.
“Until aerial reconnaissance was made available, Colonel Supo’s forces have had great difficulty in locating the enemy, who can move two hundred yards off the roads and become invisible. Now they can be found, and kept under surveillance until ground forces can make contact.”
“And you don’t think the—what did you call them, Simbas?— are going to take out your outposts once they know what they’re up to?”
“Colonel Supo believes that once they come to understand that as soon as an outpost learns of their presence, either accidentally, or by having friendly natives inform the outpost—and obviously Major Lunsford believes that twenty-five thousand dollars in gold is going to buy some friendship—or, especially, by attacking an outpost, that they will thereafter immediately become the hunted, that the outposts will be avoided at all costs.”
“And how many of your outposts will have been overrun before they get that message?” the Chairman asked.
“That will probably depend, sir,” Felter said evenly, “on how fast and how hard we can react when the first one, the first two, are attacked. I suspect that it is why Major Lunsford wants access to the T-28s and the B-26s. The only aerial gun platform he has available to him is the H-13, on which he can mount a couple of air-cooled Browning .30-caliber machine guns. He plans to bomb the Simbas with a technique developed in Vietnam. You pull the pin on a fragmentation grenade, and then place it in a quart Mason jar. The walls of the jar keep the firing mechanism from operating. The Mason jar is then dropped from an L-19. If the jar shatters, the grenade is activated.”
“Jesus Christ!” the President of the United States said.
“And since the outposts are all on, or next to the few roads that pass through the bush in that area,” Felter went on, “this will also deny the roads to the enemy as supply routes.”
“You seem to be placing a hell of a lot of faith in the ability of this Major Lunsford,” the Director said.
“It’s well-placed,” the President said. “Major Lunsford ran around in the jungles for four months passing himself off as a Simba. He’s quite a character.”
“There are certain things Supo’s men cannot handle without assistance,” Felter said. “They are short of transportation. The more jeeps and three-quarter-ton trucks they have available, the quicker they can respond to the detection of the enemy, and the easier they can keep the outposts resupplied. I wasn’t aware that the agency had vehicular assets in the Congo. If I had been, I’d have asked for them. As it is now, I am flying in jeeps on our chartered 707.
“Tactically, if Supo can call on our—the agency’s—black B-26s and T-28s when they encounter a large enemy force, or to interdict boats attempting to move men and matériel across Lake Tanganyika, it will make his job that much easier.”
“I’ve heard about enough of this,” the President said.
“Sir?” Felter asked.
“When you arrived, Colonel Felter,” the President said, “we were discussing whether I should order sending the Marines or the Eighty-second Airborne Division into the Dominican Republic. In either case, we are talking about thousands of men, hundreds of transport airplanes.”
“Yes, sir?” Felter asked.
“I don’t like the picture I’m getting of one of Lunsford’s men all by himself in the middle of an African jungle, having to worry, if he’s attacked, if anybody’s going to come help him,” the President went on. “So I’ll tell you what’s going to happen.”
“Yes, sir?”
“When that satellite comes on again, Felter, you’re going to get on the horn with Major Lunsford, you’re going to give him my best regards, and you’re going to tell him I said he’s going to get everything he asked for. And then you, Paul, are going to tell your man over there that if I ever hear he didn’t give Lunsford whatever he asked for, I will stick a spear up his ass myself.”
[ THREE ]
The Office of the Ambassador
The Embassy of West Germany
Washington, D.C.
0900 2 April 1965
“Good morning, Erich,” the ambassador said to the embassy’s military attaché. “What have you got for me?”
They were both slight, trim, bald men of the same age who wore spectacles. They looked so much alike that when both were to attend a