“When you have the field in sight,” Jack ordered, “do three-minute three-sixties at the north end. Do not try to follow me in. We’ll replenish the lights.”
“Got it,” Aunt Jemima said.
The flare disappeared.
“Shit,” Jack said. “Thomas, I’ve lost the flare. Pop another one.”
There was no acknowledgment, but thirty seconds later another bright light appeared in the sky, close enough so they could see the parachute under which it floated.
“Got it, light it up,” Portet ordered.
There was a sixty-second wait, and then an orange light appeared on the ground and quickly turned into a line of fire. A moment later, another light appeared, and the second line chased after the first.
“You may begin praying now, Major,” Portet said as he turned on final. He turned on the landing light, but Lunsford could see only the two parallel lines of burning gasoline.
Thirty seconds later, there was a rumble as the landing gear touched down on Katanga Provincial Route 23.
Jack stopped the airplane, turned it around, and taxied down the “runway” toward the headlights of a jeep. By the time he reached it, the gasoline “runway lights” were flickering out.
The jeep—now visible in the landing light—was parked to the side of the road. Portet taxied past it fifty yards farther down the road, turned around again, and shut down.
By the time they climbed down from the Beaver, Thomas was waiting for them.
He saluted Lunsford as a reflex action, and Lunsford returned it.
“I thought you’d come in an L-19,” Thomas said.
“Aunt Jemima’s up there in an L-19,” Jack said. “Can we light the runway again?”
Thomas shouted orders in Swahili, and two jeeps—both with pedestal-mounted air-cooled .30-caliber Browning machine guns—that neither Lunsford or Portet had seen, suddenly started their engines and turned on their headlights, and started moving slowly along the runway. Congolese paratroopers kneeling in the rear seat poured gasoline from five-gallon jerry cans.
“Why the Beaver?” Thomas asked.
“Weewili suggested we could use a better radio to talk to Kamina or Colonel Supo,” Lunsford said. “Weewili’s in the L-19 with Aunt Jemima.”
“That’s good news,” Thomas said. “Boss, you’re going to have to talk to Supo.”
“About what?”
“The situation is this,” Thomas said. “Guevara and maybe thirty Cubans and a mixture of maybe two hundred, maybe more, Simbas and Tutsis are on the lakeshore about eight klicks from here. Kelly and Jette—you know Jette?”
Lunsford nodded.
“SFC Kelly, Jette, and another tracker are in a tree keeping an eye on them. The bad guys are all fucked up. Chaos time. They know the boats are coming for them tonight, and they suspect there’s not going to be room for everybody.
“When I was up there a while ago, with SFC Kelly—he understands Spanish—he told me he heard Guevara trying to talk himself into staying—doing a George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn—but that Dreke finally talked him out of it.”
“Good,” Lunsford said.
“The problem is the Congolese—our Congolese—and the mercenaries. They’re about twenty klicks from the beach. They smell blood. The Congolese I understand—the Simbas have been killing their people, raping their women, and they want revenge for that, plus they have this warrior idea that when you have the chance, you kill your enemy. I don’t know what’s with the mercenaries, but they want to wipe everybody out, too. I had a nasty session with a mercenary ‘captain’—who just about told me to go fuck myself when I said the plan was to let everybody get in the boats.”
“Shit,” Lunsford said.
“Major,” Thomas said, very seriously, “Colonel Supo told me I had his permission to take down any mercenary who refused my orders.”
“Hoare told me that was his version of Company Punishment,” Lunsford interrupted.
“Now, I’ll do it, if you tell me to—”
“No. Once Aunt Jemima gets on the ground with Peters, we can get on the radio with Supo. He can deal with his troops and the mercenaries.”
“They should be about through pouring gas . . . ,” Jack said.
“Get on the horn with Aunt Jemima and tell him,” Lunsford ordered.
Jack crawled back into the Beaver and turned on the master buss.
Lunsford turned to Thomas.
“Bill, you did the right thing, telling me to come here.”
“I want to go back to the shore, okay?”
“If you think that’s where you should be,” Lunsford said.
“That’s where I belong, Father,” Thomas said.
“Mr. Thomas,” Major Lunsford said formally, “your orders are to take whatever action you deem necessary to ensure that Guevara is allowed to get on