CIA, and then, in two flights, had flown Master Sergeant Thomas and a Congolese sergeant first named Jette to the site.
They would remain overnight, preferring that to a sixty-plus-mile trip in a jeep or three-quarter-ton truck from Kamina.
Doubting Thomas told him it was his military creed: “Never stand if you can lie down; never run if you can walk; and whenever possible, go by air.”
Like he was about many things Doubting Thomas said, in what appeared to be absolute sincerity, Smythe was really not entirely sure how serious he was.
Trucks under SFC Jensen had set out from Kamina at first light, carrying a platoon-plus of Congolese paratroopers. They were now in the bush a half-mile on either side of where Thomas and Jette were in position.
“You should be able to see them any moment now, Jesse James,” Captain Darrell J. Smythe said into his microphone. “They’re about halfway up the hill, about to make the turn.”
“I have a visual, Aunt Jemima, thank you very much. I think you can have the cavalry sound the charge,” Thomas said into his microphone.
He laid the microphone on the ground beside him and picked up a black pistol that looked something like the legendary Luger 9-mm Parabellum. It was, in fact, a Ruger Mark II .22 Long Rifle Caliber semiautomatic pistol, to which had been added what the Army called a “suppressor”—the term “silencer” was either not wholly accurate, or politically incorrect. There was an eight-inch cylinder attached to the forward end of the barrel.
When fired, the sound was a soft thut.
Sergeant First Jette had required a practical demonstration of the weapon—Thomas had set up quart cans of tomato juice beside one of the Kamina runways—before he was willing to accept that, although it went thut instead of bang when fired, it was still a real pistol.
Once convinced, Jette was enthralled with the weapon, and Thomas realized he was going to have to fabricate yet another wholly dishonest official document, this one stating that One Each Pistol, Ruger, .22 LR, SN 14-48070 had been lost while conducting operations against a hostile force. It was either that or fight Jette to the death to get it back.
Thomas also had a little trouble convincing Jette that his concept of shooting tires out on a truck—firing a clip of 7-mm rifle ammunition at them—would not be as efficacious in this situation as what he intended to do.
“We don’t want these guys to hear gunfire, Jette,” he had explained. “That would make everybody in all four trucks nervous, and they would come out of the trucks with their weapons ready to shoot anything they saw. This way, they won’t even hear the thut thut as we shoot little holes in the front tires. The tires will not blow out, but they will quickly go flat, and they will get out to see what happened, leaving their weapons in the truck. And then the cavalry will roll up, from behind and in front of them, with machine guns over their cabs, and their beds full of shooters with their weapons trained, and if these people have the brains to find their ass with both hands, they will just put their hands up. Get the picture?”
“You have done this before, Major, sir?”
“I have done this before.”
Thomas stood up and signaled that the trucks were about to be upon them. He couldn’t see Jette, but he knew that Jette could see him.
Then he went back into the bush, no more than two meters from the road, behind a large tree, and took up a position where he could rest his elbows while holding the Ruger with both hands.
The sound of the first truck grew louder, and then he could hear the sound rocks made when they shot out from under tires as the trucks entered the bush.
Here lies Master Sergeant William Thomas, who took a rock between the eyes on a deserted road in the Congo bush.
And then he sensed the truck next to him before he actually saw it.
When he saw the tire, he squeezed the trigger.
Thut, thut, thut, thut.
The second truck appeared. He didn’t fire at it. The second and fourth trucks were Jette’s.
The third truck appeared.
Thut, thut, thut, thut, and, what the hell, thut, thut.
The Ruger’s magazine held ten cartridges.
The fourth truck passed him.
When it was out of sight around the bend, Thomas stood up and signaled Jette to have a look through the bush.