"What they should have done was drop the 502nd in here," Geoff said.

The 82nd Airborne Division, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, of which the 502nd Parachute Regiment was part, was charged with being the first U. S. Army unit to move into action. One regiment was always on standby, combat-loaded. The Air Force kept sufficient transports on immediate standby at the adjacent Pope Air Force Base to fly a regiment anywhere in the world.

"With what's happening in Vietnam," Karl-Heinz said, "it's probably a question of priorities. He may have to send the 82nd Airborne over there."

"And maybe the sonofabitch doesn't want to do anything that might make him lose the election," Geoff said.

Karl-Heinz shrugged. "What are you doing here?"

"Mostly standing around with my finger up my ass," Geoff said. "We try to keep an eye on the Simbas. Once a day, at night, I fly over there and try to talk to Father."

"How many people does he have with him?"

"He ran everybody else out," Geoff said. "The Simbas kill each other, especially if they get a little suspicious. Father is the only one who really speaks Jungle Bunny."

"They're here?" Karl-Heinz said.

Geoff nodded. "Some of them."

"Get to them, make sure nobody shows they know me," Karl Heinz said.

"I'm way ahead of you. I was about to say the same thing to you. "

"What do you mean?"

"You guys are going to be the point when you head for Albertville," Geoff said. "You will be accompanied by units of the Arrnee Nationale Congolaise." Karl~Heinz nodded his understanding of that, but he was still confused.

"If you see familiar black faces in the ranks of your support forces," Geoff said, "don't smile and say 'Hi, there, Sergeant Portky, long time no see, how's the wife and kids?"

"Portley's here? He's going with us?"

"Of course not. The participation of American personnel in any combat operation of the ANC is expressly forbidden."

"I don't understand," Karl-Heinz said.

At that moment an ANC corporal, a short, squat, very black man in battered, mostly unlaced boots, his web equipment hanging loosely over his mussed and sweat-soaked fatigues, came trotting across the airfield, carrying his FN assault rifle by the muzzle.

He was smiling broadly. When he reached Karl-Heinz and Geoff, he stopped, came to an absurd approximation of the position of "attention," and loosing a quick torrent of Swahili, saluted in the British manner with his palm outward.

Karl-Heinz returned the salute, a conditioned reflex reaction.

"Mein Gott!" he said.

"What do you say, Dutch?" the ANC Corporal said. "Long time no see."

"I suppose you two think this is funny," Karl-Heinz said.

"Funny?" Sergeant First Class Edward C. Portley said. "Why funny? I'm just doing what I'm told. I was over there sunning my ass when some Limey honky wearing major's pips points his finger at me and says, in really bad French, by the way, 'You, there, Corporal, go out to the airplane and tell the Captain I wish to see him.'" Geoff started to laugh, and it was contagious.

The mercenaries under the wing of the Commando looked at them curiously.

( Four) Kamembe Airfield Republic of Rwanda 28 August 1964 Enrico de la Santiago, wearing a gray cotton USOF tropical climate flight suit, put his wallet, his gold bracelet (because his name was engraved on it), and everything else that could identify him into a manila envelope and then walked to a table behind which sat two men in civilian clothing.

"How about your watch?" one of the men asked.

"I forgot," de la Santiago said and unsnapped it from his wrist. The stainless-steel back of the Rolex was engraved Enrico de la Santiago, con amor, Louise, 12/12/60.

The man behind the table took it and put it into the manila envelope. Then he handed him a stainless-steel Omega chronometer. Enrico wound it several turns to start it and then pulled the stem out.

"Seven oh eight," the man behind the desk said, and Enrico set the time and pushed the stem in.

The second man went to de la Santiago and patted him down to make sure that there was not in any of the many zippered pockets of the flight suit a second wallet, or a photograph, or anything else that could identify him.

De la Santiago felt humiliated. He understood the rules and the reasons behind them, but it was still too much like a criminal being searched.

"Clean," the man, an American, said.

Enrico walked to the next table, where a cardboard tray was pushed to him. The tray held a heavy, sealed manila envelope in which there was supposed to be a thousand dollars worth of gold Swiss francs and two thousand dollars in Belgian, French, and Swiss currency.

De .la Santiago put the envelope in the lower left ankle pocket of the flight suit and closed the zipper. Then he took a Michelin road map-"Congo Belge 1 :20,OOO"-and put that in the lower right ankle pocket of the flight suit.

Next, he picked up a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, loaded it with the six cartridges lying in the cardboard tray, and slipped it into a shoulder holster. He was aware that he had become the obstruction in the pipeline. The other pilots, having given up all their personal property, were lining up behind him.

He put the shoulder holster on. There were a dozen other .357 cartridges in loops on the webbing that ran over his right shoulder.

Finally he picked up the last item in the cardboard tray. It was a clipboard to which was clipped a plastic-covered aerial navigation chart and two grease pencils.

Then he stepped away from the table and went to the door. There was a white Chevrolet carryall waiting there, with the Air Simba winged lion painted on its doors. It was, he realized, the one he had ridden into Bukavu with Jack Portet the first time he had ever come to Kamembe, in the right seat of an Air Simba Commando.

He got in the front seat beside the driver and waited for the others to draw their equipment. When they were all inside, he turned on the seat.

"We won't make a production of this," he said. "I'll take off as soon as you all check in and fly down the river. Form up on me, in a line, not too close." There was a murmured chorus of, "Si, Captain." He was no longer a captain. He was a civilian employee of a company called Supportaire, Inc., which allegedly had its home office in Nicaragua. But of the five pilots who would fly with him today, four had been in the Cuban Air Force, before Fidel, and remembered him from then.

The carryall drove down the parking ramp. When it reached the first T-28 it stopped and one of the pilots got out. Then it drove another hundred feet to the next T-28, where a second pilot got out, and so on down the line until it reached the last plane, which de la Santiago would fly.

There were three people at each aircraft. Two white men and an ANC officer in a flight suit. The white men Americans, employees of Supportaire, Inc., were the crew chief and the armorer. The Congolese was officially the reason for the flight. He was to observe the Simbas on the ground. It was certainly within the sovereign rights of a nation to dispatch its officers to reconnoiter its own territory when the territory was in the hands of insurrectionists. Just as legal as Union Cavalry patrols reconnoitering Northern Virginia when it was under the control of General Lee of the insurrectionists.

And if that sovereign government wished to contract for the services of a civilian firm to facilitate the reconnoitering by flying the observer around, that was their legal right, too. And if the reconnoitering aircraft were fired upon, certainly an officer about the legal business of his sovereign government had the right to defend himself, even to strike back.

Six hardpoints had been added beneath the wings of the T-28s, a low-wing, single 1425hp piston-engine aircraft originally designed to serve as trainers for the U.S. Air Force and 'Navy.' Each hardpoint could carry a bomb, or a cluster of rockets, or a machine-gun pod. The T-28s on the Kamembe parking ramp were armed with bombs, rockets, and machine guns, although not all in the same way. There was a shortage of rockets. All had machine-guns and bombs.

The Congolese Lieutenant who would fly with de la Santiago looked more than a little nervous, but he smiled-and saluted and offered a polite "Bonjour, M'sieu," as de la Santiago got out of the carryall.

He followed de la Santiago as he preflighted the airplane, looking over his shoulder as de la Santiago probed inside access ports and drained gas from the wing tanks, checking for water.

"Put a chute on him, will you please?" de la Santiago said to the crew chief as he picked his own chute up and shrugged into it.

Then he climbed on the wing root. And then, pushed from behind by the crew chief and hauled upward by de la Santiago, the Congolese Lieutenant struggled onto the wing and then into the front seat.

Enrico crossed himself, climbed in, and strapped himself in.

The crew chief handed him a helmet, then strapped the Congolese officer in and handed him a helmet.

As soon as the crew chief was on the ground, de la Santiago called, "Clear," and started the engine.

As it was warming up, he checked with the other five pilots.

They were all running and ready.

"Kamembe, Congo Hawk."

"Go."

"Ready for takeoff."

"How are you going to do it?" The voice from the tower was obviously American and probably, de la Santiago thought, yet another employee of the oh so helpful Supportaife, Inc.

"Thirty-second intervals," de la Santiago said.

"Kamembe clears Congo Air Force Hawk flight as number one to take off on the active, at thirty-second intervals. There is no traffic in the immediate area. The winds are negligible. The-altimeter is two niner eight fiver. The time is thirty-two past the hour."

"Hawk one taxiing to the active," de la Santiago said, releasing the brakes and nudging the throttle open. By the time he reached the threshold, everything was in the green. He stopped just long enough to close the canopy and to test the mags.

"Hawk one, rolling," he said to the microphone and pushed the throttle forward.

He broke ground and pulled the wheels up, went into a very shallow climb, due south, over the Ruzizi River, and waited for the others to catch up.

Hawk flight was headed for Albertville, via Uvira.

The Simba rebellion had begun in Albertville, on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika. Olenga's columns had moved northward along the, shoreline and taken Uvira, which is near the northern end of Lake Tanganyika and then pushed on northward toward Bukavu at the southern tip of Lake Kivu and northwest to Stanleyville.

A line down the middle of Lake Tanganyika is the international border. At its lower end it's the border between the Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and for the upper seventy-five mites, between the Republic of the Congo and Burundi, in what once had been German East Africa.

Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, is almost in a straight line across the northern tip of Lake Tanganyika from Uvira. The Ruzizi River, which enters Lake Tanganyika at its extreme tip, is the international demarcation between the Republic of the Congo and Burundi for sixty miles farther northward. There, about twenty miles south of Bukavu, the Ruzizi River becomes the northern border of the Republic of Rwanda.

Olenga and his Simba army had failed to take Bukavu. Two things had happened. A remarkable ANC officer, Colonel Leonard Mulamba, was by coincidence in Bukavu. When he saw the situation deteriorating, he arranged for the ANC Commander to go to Leopoldville for "consultation" and assumed command himself.

Colonel Mulamba, who was short, stocky, and in his midthirties, put on a steel helmet and began his command by reminding his officers that the penalty for cowardice in the face of the enemy was death. He reminded them further that it was Simba practice to execute captured officers in the most unpleasant way they could dream up. That gave them, he said, two options: getting shot for cowardice by their own army or being beaten or slashed to death by the Simbas. Except, of course, for the third option, which was to stand and fight.

And then something useful happened. The Republic of Rwanda, learning that the Chinese (communist) Embassy in Bujumbura in adjacent Burundi was arming Rwandan insurgents and encouraging them to take over the Rwanda government, informed Joseph-Desire Mobutu, Commander-in-Chief of the Congolese Armed Forces, that Kamembe Airfield, across the Ruzizi from Bukavu, was open to him for any purpose he desired.

The first planes into Kamembe had been T-28s, which, because of range limitations, had previously been unable to come to Colonel Mulamba's assistance. They struck at Olenga's Simbas and then landed at Kamembe. Their engines had barely time to cool before the first transport aircraft from Leopoldville and Kamina began to land, bearing fuel, troops, ammunition, rations, and even a couple of jeeps.

Inspired by both Colonel Mulamba's strong leadership and the sight of aircraft coming to their aid, the ANC chased Olenga's Simbas from Bukavu.

It was his first defeat. And it was now intended to hit him again while he was still reeling. Albertville was to be retaken, and then Uvira, and ultimately Stanleyville.

Hawk flight was part of that plan.

Ten minutes after breaking ground at Kamembe, Enrico de la Santiago looked over his shoulder to make sure that everybody was on his tail and then pushed the nose of the T-28 down and lowered his flaps. He flew down the road at 2500 feet until he saw a half dozen, maybe eight, trucks behind a crude barrier.

"Hawk leader," he said to his microphone, "two and I will take out those trucks. The rest maintain your positions." He pushed the nose down again and flew toward the trucks.

"One bomb each," he said to the microphone.

"Roger," number two replied.

De la Santiago's 250-pound bomb landed in the ,middle of the trucks. The 250-pound bomb from the second T-28 missed the mark by at least a hundred yards. The pilot had been excited, Enrico de la Santiago thought, and dropped it early. It didn't matter. The trucks were destroyed.

He pulled the flaps up and climbed slowly back to 2500 feet.

"Three and four," he ordered. "Strafe targets of opportunity in Uvira. . . trucks if possible. Five and six, when we're past the city, you take the point and strafe, or bomb, if you think it's worth a bomb, anything that looks worthwhile. But save some ordnance for Albertville itself. And we'll come "back the same way." Hawk flight had taken off at 0732. They were back on the ground at Kamembe at 1005. All of their ordnance had been expended. De la Santiago estimated to the debriefing officer, to whom he had taken. an instant dislike, that they had destroyed twenty-two vehicles, mostly trucks; had probably inflicted wounds on one hundred people; and that, when the flight had reached Uvira on the trip back without having encountered any previous targets worthy of that exotic ordnance, he had ordered the expenditure of the rockets on the Hotel Uvira.

"Christ, why did you do that? You know we're short of rockets."

"I presumed the senior officers of the force would establish themselves in the hotel."

"That was a bad choice," the debriefing officer said.

"Fuck you," de la Santiago said evenly and got up. "If you want to make on-the-spot decisions, get in the front seat." Then he walked out. The Air Simba carryall took the pilots to the Hotel Lac Kivu in Bukavu. They showered and then sat on the balcony off the dining room, drinking the very good local beer and throwing the empties off the balcony into the clear blue waters of the lake below.

By the time it was dark, they were a little drunk, and they talked about Camagiiey, and Bayamo, and Cienfuegos, and Havana. De la Santiago noticed that one of them was gone and went looking for him. He found him around the side of the hotel, very drunk, leaning on the wall.

"Rico," he asked when he saw de la Santiago, "what do you think my Manuelo looks like now?"

"Like you, unfortunately," de la Santiago said.

"He's nine now," the mercenary pilot said. "No longer a baby."

"I know," de la Santiago said. "My oldest is twelve."

"Oh, my God!" the mercenary pilot said. "I miss them!"

"Me, too," de la Santiago said. "Go to bed, Manuel. We're flying" in the morning."

XIX.

(One) Near Albertville, Democratic Republic of the Congo 30 August 1964 Captain Karl-Heinz Wagner sat behind the wheel of his jeep, which was parked to one side of the road. A sergeant sat beside him and a private stood in the rear of the jeep, ready to fire the pedestal-mounted Browning .50 caliber air-cooled machine gun.

The rest of what the English-speaking mercenaries had begun to call "The Congo Foreign Legion" were lined up beside the road. The jeeps of small trucks were pulled to alternate sides of the road and separated by enough distance so that should it be necessary they could make a wide sweeping turn and head in the other direction.

They heard the sound of Lieutenant Colonel "Mad Mike" Hoare's jeep before they saw it coming back. Hoare had decided to make this reconnaissance himself, with only a sergeant to man the Browning in his jeep going along with him.

When he reached Karl-Heinz's jeep, Hoare stopped.

"Don't see a goddamn thing," he said, and then added: "Get out, Sergeant. And you please, Captain, come with me." Karl-Heinz got out of his jeep and into Hoare's. He was not surprised at being asked to go off with Hoare. A commander often wishes to say things to his officers he doesn't want anyone else to hear.

Hoare, from time to time calling out softly to officers and noncoms, drove to the end of the assault element (that is to say, to the end of The Congo Foreign Legion's vehicles) and then continued down the road through and past the vehicles of the reinforced company of Armee Nationale Congolaise infantry.