Special Ops - By W.E.B. Griffin Page 0,251

can brief my men.” He picked up on Thomas’s hesitation. “Unless you would prefer to brief the troops while Jette and I go to see what we’ll be facing?”

“Sir, what I would like to do, with your permission, is wait for the L-19 to drop batteries for your radios. I expect the aircraft at first light—right about now. And then, when we have your radios operating, you and I can have a look at the Simbas.”

“Of course,” Coizi said. “I should have thought of that. You’ll have to forgive me. I am not used to being supported by aviation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are the batteries going to be dropped?”

“In the clearing, sir,” Thomas said, and pointed.

Coizi turned, called a name, and a Congolese officer walked quickly and silently up to him and saluted. He was young, very tall, and very black.

“Lieutenant Breque, do you know Major Tomas?”

“No, sir.”

Tomas and Breque shook hands.

“Establish a perimeter guard,” Coizi ordered. “We have what, four back radios?”

“And one in the jeep, sir.”

“My radioman can’t carry them all,” Coizi said. “Give me two strong men. I don’t want Major Tomas carrying his own radio.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Send them to us,” Coizi ordered, pointing toward the bush. “Batteries will be dropped to us from one of the little airplanes very shortly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When they are, I will send Sergeant First Jette here to brief you and the men, and to test the radios. Major Tomas and I will then perform a reconnaissance.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You may go,” Coizi said.

Lieutenant Breque saluted and returned to the column of shooters.

“I think he will do,” Coizi said.

“Sir?”

“I promoted him yesterday—he was a sergeant—to replace the lieutenant who was responsible for our having no batteries,” Coizi said matter-of-factly. “I reduced him to the ranks. I probably should have had him shot.”

“Well, the problem is solved,” Thomas said.

“He’s not the soldier Jette is,” Coizi said. “I would have liked to have made Jette a sous-lieutenant, but Jette can’t read or write.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

Almost at the moment Tomas, Coizi, and the two soldiers carrying the radios stepped into the clearing, they could hear the sound of an L-19 engine.

Tomas hurriedly popped a yellow smoke grenade.

Three minutes later, just as Thomas reached his radio lashed to the tree trunk and turned it on, a black L-19 flashed over. It disappeared, and came back a minute later, this time much lower.

A few seconds after that, there was a crashing sound in the branches above Doubting Thomas, and as he snapped his head upward, a padded canvas bag crashed though limbs toward him, stopping—when the canopy of its parachute encountered the upper branches of the tree—no more than three feet from where he had propped himself in the tree.

By the time he had detached the bag from the shroud lines of the small parachute, and before he could start to lower it to the ground, the sound of the L-19’s engine announced another pass, and this time, after it had flashed over again, the small cargo ’chute delivered its load to one side of the clearing, landing not far from where Lieutenant Colonel Coizi was standing.

“That had to be dumb luck,” Thomas said aloud.

He finished lowering the battery bag to the ground, waited until Jette had untied the cord, hauled it up, and then unlashed his radio and started to lower it to the ground.

By the time he got to the ground himself, Coizi’s radioman had already installed the batteries in one radio and Colonel Coizi was talking to the reaction force at Outpost George.

“That’s very interesting,” Coizi said to him when he was finished. “The other tracker, Sergeant First Nambibi, brought in two of the deserters at first light.”

“What’s going to happen to them?” Thomas asked.

“They’ll be hung as soon as we get back to Outpost George,” Coizi said, as if the question surprised him.

Thomas dropped to his knees by his backpack radio, switched it on, and picked up the microphone.

“Birddog, Hunter.”

“Go, Hunter.”

“We have both of them,” he announced.

“You sound surprised,” Geoff Craig’s voice responded.

“George is on the air,” Thomas asked. “Coizi’s been talking to them.”

“I heard,” Craig responded. “We went there first. What happens now?”

“The bad guys are about two klicks due east. Coizi and I are going there now. Can you hang around? If they run, I’d like to know in what direction.”

“I told you, Thomas, all I can see is treetops.”

“You might get lucky,” Thomas replied. “I’ll stay on this frequency. ”

“Give me a call when you’re ready,” Craig replied.

“Thank you, Hunter, out,” Thomas said.

He tried to