call, don’t matter the hour, when you know something, I’d be grateful.”
“Of course, sir,” Hanrahan said. “The moment I get word, I’ll call you.”
“We going to get his body back?”
“I think we will.”
“I don’t want his mama to even suspect they ate him, or part of him,” Mr. Withers said. “Sonofabitch. Excuse me, Chaplain.”
Chaplain Martin waved his hand, indicating no apology was necessary.
[ SIX ]
The Hotel du Lac
Costermansville, Kivu Province
Republic of the Congo
0445 7 April 1965
Lieutenant Jacques Portet, using a rubber prophylactic, bloused the legs of his Suit, Flying, Tropical Climates, around the top of his parachutist’s jump boots and then stood up and moved around to make sure that he had done so properly.
He looked up and saw his wife, who was in the bathroom in her underwear, looking thoughtfully at his reflected image in the medicine cabinet mirror.
“What are you thinking, baby?” he asked.
“You really want to know?”
He nodded.
“I came over here so I wouldn’t have to sit in the apartment in Fayetteville, not knowing what you were doing,” she said. “Now I’m here, and I don’t like knowing.”
“I’ll probably be back for supper, baby,” he said.
“Sure, you will.”
“Are you going to put some clothes on?” he asked. “Or are you going to breakfast like that?”
“Are you actually hungry?”
“If that’s a suggestion, baby, I don’t think we have time.”
“No. I really want to know. Are you actually hungry?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“I have no appetite at all for reasons I can’t imagine,” she said.
“You don’t have to go down there for breakfast, baby.”
“Yeah, I do,” she said.
[ SEVEN ]
3 Degrees 60 Minutes 52 Seconds South Latitude
28 Degrees 9 Minutes 15 Seconds East Longitude
(Above Outpost George)
0705 7 April 1965
The DeHavilland L-20 Beaver came in over the crest of the enormous grass-covered gently sloping hill and flew over the Outpost George dirt strip at five hundred feet.
“There’s a body down there,” Major Tomas said, quite unnecessarily; everybody had expected to see a body—in the rear baggage compartment of the Beaver was a Container, Zippered, Impermeable, Human Remains, known as a “body bag”—and everybody had seen one.
The Beaver was painted flat black, and bore no markings of any kind. Before Jean-Phillippe Portet had gone into business with the Gresham Investment Corporation and the Intercontinental Air Ltd. Boeing 707 had become available, Felter had thought it was going to be necessary to covertly insert the Beaver—and all the other aircraft—into the Congo from South Africa, and had ordered the paint job so that it could be “credibly denied” that the United States was supplying matériel of war to the Congo.
Although it had been decided by Colonel Supo—just about as soon as the Beaver had been reassembled in Stanleyville—to paint it in the camouflage pattern of the Congolese Air Force, and affix credible-looking but spurious Congolese registration numbers to it, it was still painted flat black. Aircraft paint, and paint-spraying equipment, was not available without raising questions. Both were scheduled to be on the next 707 supply flight, which was due possibly today, and more likely tomorrow.
No one saw—and everyone was looking hard—any bright little flashes that would mean someone was shooting at them. That meant one of two things: that no one was down there, or that there was someone down there smart enough to realize that it’s much easier to shoot up an airplane on the ground than one flying five hundred feet in the air.
Jack flew across Route Nationale Number 5, and everyone tried to see something in the bush on the other side of the road.
“It’s not Vietnam,” Lieutenant Colonel Dahdi opined, “but it’s close.”
“Yeah,” Major Tomas agreed. “But it’s easier to track people if they have to hack their way through something like that. And even if there are paths down there, there’s no way to hide footprints on them—they’re bound to be wet.”
Jack then dropped to two hundred feet and flew up and down Route 5 for about a mile in each direction.
One of the two trackers, both senior sergeants, got the attention of the other and pointed, with a grunt, to something he saw on the ground.
“With your permission, Colonel,” Jack said, “I will make one more pass, lower, over the strip, and then land.”
Supo, who was in the copilot’s seat, nodded.
Everybody looked hard again, and no one saw anything on the dirt strip that suggested it wouldn’t be usable. And everybody saw the body again. The head was separated from the torso, and so was one leg, from the knee down.