question before you, Captain Dugan and Lieutenant Matthews, is do you want to stay here and help us stop the sonofabitch, at considerable risk to your skin, and no bands playing when you get home—if you get home—or do you want to get on the 707 when it goes back to the States tomorrow?”
“Sir, we volunteered for this assignment,” Matthews said.
“You just think you did,” Lunsford said. “You were recruited by Pappy Hodges, who could show the Virgin Mary how he’d marked his cards, then talk her into playing strip poker with him.”
“Father, that’s terrible!” Mrs. Craig said, but she was smiling.
“I don’t want anyone here who doesn’t want to be here,” Father said. “And I think anyone who would want to be here is certifiable. ”
Matthews and Dugan looked at each other but said nothing. “Just to make sure you know what you might be letting yourself in for,” Lunsford said. “That coffin you saw us making at the field? We’re sending a damned good soldier home in it with Captain Portet. He was on an outpost; the Congolese soldiers with him got scared and took off. He stayed and fought, and lost, and after he was dead, I hope, they cut off his head.”
Captain James J. Dugan looked at Lieutenant Matthews, then at Lieutenant Craig.
He wet his lips.
“What time did you say we were taking off in the morning, Lieutenant?” he asked.
[ EIGHT ]
SECRET
Central Intelligence Agency Langley, Virginia
FROM: Assistant Director For Administration
FROM: 8 April 1965 2330 GMT
SUBJECT: Guevara, Ernesto (Memorandum #72.)
TO: Mr. Sanford T. Felter
Counselor To The President
Room 637, The Executive Office Building
Washington, D.C.
By Officer Courier
In compliance with Presidential Memorandum to The Director, Subject: “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara,” dated 14 December 1964, the following information is being furnished:.
From CIA Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika (Reliability Scale Five):
1. In the last 96 hours thirty Negro males of military age bearing Cuban passports have arrived in Dar es Salaam, all on tourist visas issued by the Tanganyikan Embassy in Mexico City, Mexico. No names are available at this time.
2. They arrived variously, in groups no larger than six, aboard various commercial flights from Cairo, Egypt (3); Prague, Czechoslovakia (3); and Paris, France (2).
3. Immediately on arrival all were transported by car or light truck to the farm in the vicinity of Morogoro, where Guevara and Dreke are known to be.
4. It is the opinion of the undersigned that most, if not all, of the group will leave the farm within the next seven days and attempt to enter the Congo, probably by crossing Lake Tanganyika from Kigoma in the Western Province.
Howard W. O’Connor
HOWARD W. O’CONNOR
SECRET
XXII
[ ONE ]
5 Degrees 27 Minutes 08 Seconds South Latitude
29 Degrees 11 Minutes 19 Seconds East Longitude
(The Bush, Near Lake Tanganyika, Kivu Province, Congo)
0440 9 April 1965
Doubting Thomas was surprised, and at first annoyed, that Lieutenant Colonel Henri Coizi, Colonel Supo’s Chef de Cabinet, who had elected to personally command the reaction force, had also elected to personally command the reinforcement force of twenty shooters he had asked for.
Like most senior sergeants with something important to do, Master Sergeant Thomas believed the last thing needed to accomplish his mission was a goddamned lieutenant colonel to get in the way.
But at least the bastard’s leading the column on foot, Thomas thought when first he saw Colonel Coizi, not riding standing up in the jeep, like Patton.
He had then stepped out of the bush.
Here lies Master Sergeant William Thomas, who was shot in the middle of the jungle at oh dark hundred by a trigger-happy African.
“Hold fire!” Lieutenant Colonel Coizi barked in a command voice that would have made him perfectly at home on the parade grounds of Fort Bragg.
Thomas saluted crisply.
“Good morning, sir.”
Coizi returned the salute as crisply.
“Major,” he said.
“I expected the colonel a little earlier,” Thomas said politely.
Like maybe at ten o’clock last night.
“We moved up from Outpost George last night, but I thought it best to wait just out of range until light,” Coizi said. “I didn’t want to get past your position, for obvious reasons. And I thought sending a scout to find you and Sergeant First Jette would be a good way to lose a scout. And, of course, I have no radios.”
“Yes, sir,” Thomas said.
“Where is Sergeant First Jette?”
“At our camp, sir. About a hundred meters into the bush.”
“And the Simbas?”
“About two klicks—two kilometers—down the path, sir. Jette and I reconnoitered last night. There’s about sixty of them, including some women.”
“Well, why don’t you and I go have a look? While we’re gone, Jette