"I got it," he said. "Why isn't this stamped Top Secret-Presidential? Why is it on a regular piece of paper? This didn't come from the DIA did it? Where did you get it, Felter?"

"I have an intercept team in the Congo, Sir," Felter said. "It came from them. I'm sure the DIA will have it shortly and get it to you."

"Explain that," the President ordered. "Where the hell did you get your own intercept team?"

"There are several tactical ASA intercept teams attached to STRICOM, Sir," Felter said. "General Evans loaned me one of them. " The ASA's----or Army Security Agency's-original (and basic) function is the interception of enemy battlefield communications.

"What you're telling me is that there is civil war between the Congo, Working Group and you and STRICOM to the point where one of you keeps the other in the dark?"

"I wouldn't put it quite that way, Sir. . . ."

"How would you put it, Colonel?" the President asked, coldly sarcastic.

Felter did not reply.

"Get out of here, Felter. I want some time to think before I get this latest bit of information through the proper channels. "

(Six) Kongolo, Democratic Republic of the Congo 0600 1 November 1964 Kongolo is on the left bank, of the Lualaba River, some 470 miles south of Stanleyville, where the Lualaba becomes ,the Congo River.

The senior military officer of the- Democratic Republic of the Congo present in Kongolo was a Belgian, Commander (Captain) Albert Liegeois, who was on loan to the Leopoldville government. He was small, soft-spoken, and old (forty-eight) by American standards for his rank. But he was strong-willed, and he had been a soldier since his youth, working his way up from the ranks.

Liegeois had swapped his Belgian captain's insignia for that of m ANC colonel after Michael Hoare showed up wearing the pips of an ANC lieutenant colonel.

Albert Liegeois was the officer commanding, and he wanted there to be absolutely no question about that. He had been charged with the recapture of Stanleyville and the liberation of the population (including the 1600 plus Europeans), as rapidly as humanly possible.

He was operating under a great handicap. In the interests of maintaining peace, both the United States and Belgium (90 percent of the Europeans in Stanleyville and elsewhere in rebel occupied territory were Belgian nationals) and declined to open the doors of their military warehouses to Liegeois. His arms and equipment were what could be gathered together from ANC stocks already in the Congo and from stocks left behind by the U.N. Peace-keeping Force.

The original plan called for a force made up of 300 mercenaries and 1800 Congolese, transported in two hundred vehicles behind an "armored force." He had been provided with fifty vehicles, 500 Katangese solders, and Michael Hoare had brought with him 120 mercenaries, of whom 100 spoke English, and of whom perhaps 35 had bona fide previous military service.

For the spearhead of a column which was to fight its way through 470 miles of Simba-occupied jungle, he had four armored vehicles, all of which had been left behind by the UN Peace-keeping Force. Three of these were Swedish armored cars, manufactured by Scania- Vabis. They were ungainly and heavy (eight tons) and both underpowered and thinly armored. And they could not be relied upon to turn either .30 caliber or 7mm rifle bullets. They were armed with three Browning .30 caliber machine guns, a dual mount in front and a single machine gun firing toward the rear. The fourth armored vehicle was an ex -Royal British or Royal Army Ferret reconnaissance car, armed- with one .30 caliber Browning machine gun.

Liegcois organized these assets into something he called Limarone. His name began with an L, and the Belgian military phonetic code for L is Lima. And One because this was the first task force under his command.

Ligeois's fifty vehicles-most of them ordinary (as opposed to military, multiwheel-drive vehicles) two-ton trucks, including some pickup trucks and even some jeeps-could carry only so many people. It was decided that all of Hoare's mercenaries would go in these. And when space for them was set aside, there was room for only 150 Congolese soldiers.

It was necessary for Lima-One to take with it its own fuel, food, water, ammunition, and spare parts. And Colonel Liegeois agreed with Lieutenant Colonel Hoare that although it was hazardous to load fuel and ammunition and troops on the same truck, it would have been more hazardous to the mission to risk losing a truck full of gasoline cans or ammunition all at once to a lucky shot by the Simbas.

It had been made quite clear to Liegeois that he could not expect resupply by air (or for that matter in any other way) during his operation, and there was no chance at all that he would be able t6 replenish his supplies of anything from captured enemy stocks.

So ammunition, parts, gasoline (in five-gallon tin containers -not Jerry cans), food, water, and personnel were divided among the vehicles. And Lima-One waited for permission to set out to recapture Stanleyville and other places in between.

Liegeois had supposed that permission would be automatic once he reported that he was ready to move out. But it hadn't come right away. One of Hoare's captains, a one-time officer in the East German Army, offered the theory that permission to move was waiting for the Presidential elections in the United States. He theorized that once they were over, permission would come.

Permission came at 0500 1 November. The former East-German officer claimed that did not disprove his theory. It would be forty-eight hours, at least, for news of what they were doing in Kongolo to appear on American television or in American newspapers. That would be election morning at the earliest too early to affect the outcome of the election.

At 0600 Lima-One moved out, with the Ferret in the lead. The ferret was driven by a Congolese, visibly proud of his responsibility. Its .30 caliber Browning was manned by a French mercenary.

Lima-One crossed the Mulongoie River, a tributary of the waba, shortly after noon. The bridge there had been destroyed by the Simbas, but Liegeois had thought of that and had designated two Belgian noncoms and a platoon of the Congolese, were to remain behind to build a temporary bridge immediately after he had radioed Leopoldville that Lima-One was ready.

The heat was brutal, and the chemically purified water carried along tasted bad. And the troops, both Congolese and mercenary, were not well disciplined. Every time the convoy stopped near running water, the troops drank it. By nightfall diarrhea.. was ~on. On 2 November, Lima-One reached and captured without resistance Gaston Emile Soumialot's home town, Samba. It had been stripped of everything of value and deserted. They spent the night there, and in the morning, moved out again. There was a delay at the Lufubu River, another tributary of the Lualaba. The simbas had tried but failed to destroy their bridge. But they did manage to blow up the approaches to it. Liegeois ordered the construction of a ferry, on which the vehicles were floated across the river. He sent a small truck back to Kongolo with orders to send the Belgian noncoms to repair the bridge approaches. That day in the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had acceded to the Presidency on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, was elected to that office in his own right.

Lima-One encountered its first resistance the next afternoon, 4 November, at the outskirts of Kibombo. Simba riflemen hidden here and there in the jungle brought the column under fire. The Scania Vabis armored cars and the Ferret returned the fire and the Simbas fled. Captain Wagner, who was 'operating' from a jeep equipped with a .50 caliber Browning on a pedestal mount, ordered one of the kania Vabis reconnaissance cars (by now, perhaps inevitably, known as "the Sons of Bitchs") to take the point. He followed in his jeep. Two hundred yards down the road they found a grievously wounded Belgian sprawled; in the road. He had been shot in the head with a shotgun; much of his face-had been blown away.

Wagner sent his jeep back for a medic, then, -motioning his driver to follow him, -moved farther down the road. He came to a European house, on the veranda of which sat three elderly European men in rocking chairs. They did not respond to Wagner's hail, and when he got closer he saw that they were all dead. They had been shot in the chest and stomach with shotguns, one of them at least five times.

He returned to- where he had found, the wounded man. By then medics in a pickup truck-and his jeep were at the site. He radioed to Colonel Liegeois, reporting what else he had found. Liegeois responded that he was coming up. The man in the road was beyond help, but the morphine the medics, gave him, to ease his pain brought him around. When it became apparent that he was trying to say something, Colonel Liegeois and Captain Wagner were summoned.

He told them the Simbas were holding a total of seventy five Europeans in Kindu, approximately seventy miles to the north.

And he said he had heard Olenga himself vow to kill them.

Wagner was ordered to prepare to move out for Kindu immediately. The rest of Lima-One would follow as soon as they had secured Kibombo. The wounded man died before Wagner's force, headed by the Ferret and one of the Sons of Bitches,-had formed up.

Shortly after dark, Wagner's column; running as fast as the Son of a Bitch could manage, turned a curve and found itself facing a Simba armored car. It was a Chevrolet stake truck to which the Simbas had welded steel plates, and on which they had mounted a Browning .50 caliber machine gun.

As, the Son of a Bitch and Wagner's jeep slid to a stop and began to turn, the, Ferret raced past them, its .30 caliber Browning blazing. The fire wiped out the Simba crew and did enough damage- to make the truck unusable.

The machine gun was added to Lima-One's stock. Wagner examined the weapon and the ammunition. The ammunition, was head stamped FA 50, which meant-that it had been made at the U.S. Army Frankfurt- Arsenal in 1950. It could have been exBelgian stock, or for that matter exChicom. In the early days of the Korean War, the Chinese had captured vast quantities of United States armament from the O. S. Army!

If there was one "armored car," it was reasonable to presume there would be others. Wagner's column now moved much more slowly through the night, they were sniped at, and there we're two failed attempts to ambush the column. Just after day the balance of LimaOne caught up with them.

It was midafternoon before Lima-One was in position, outside Kindu and prepared to strike. At 2:40, local time, six B'-26K bombers appeared ,and made several passes, strafing and rocketing known or suspected Simba positions. Lima-One attacked before the B-26Ks were even out of sight, under orders from Colonel Liegois -to drive straight through town to the river and then, turn and mop'up" The Simbas took the truck-borne force underfire, but, they were no match for the automatic weapons and the machine guns of Lima-One. After several ferocious firefights, the Simbas broke and ran for the river. Two hundred and fifty Simbas managed to board the ferry and other boats and to push off into the Lualaba before the mercenaries arrived.

But the mercenaries arrived in time to take the--ferry and the other boats under machine-gun fire. They raked the boats until all the Simbas were dead. Wagner, charged with -locating Europeans, found a total of 125. Twenty-four of them were white men, Belgians and Greeks, who were wearing only their undershorts. The Simbas had selected them for immediate execution to coincide with the arrival of Lima-One. They had been ordered to strip (their clothing would be of use to the Simbas) and were being-led to the rear yard of a house for the actual execution when the B-261's made their first strafing run. When a rocket landed near their captors and designated executioners, they fled.

Wagner found the Kindu monument to Patrice Lumumba. The pavement around the monument was cracked and fire-blacked, and Wagner sent Sergeant (Brevet Captain, Katangse Special Gendarmerie) Edward C. Portley, whose Swahili was pretty good, to find out what had been burned there.

"They were saving their ammo to use on you-honkies, Dutch," Portley, visibly shaken, reported a few minutes later. "So when they wanted to put their own people down, they brought them here, made 'em kneel, and poured gas on 'em." "Blow it up, Portley," Wagner ordered.

"The, guy I talked to said they did that to eight hundred people."

"Blow it up, Ed," Wagner repeated: "Maybe we ought to, find a photographer and take pictures of it and send them to those candy-asses in the State Department."

"Ed, all it would show would be some buckled pavement," Wagner said. "Nobody would believe what it was. Blow it up." There was the sound of aircraft engines. They searched the sky and finally located the source. Two Curtiss Commandos.

"I thought we weren't going to get resupplied," Portley said.

"Liegeois's been radioing everybody he can think of," Wagner reported. "Maybe they're finally going to get off the dime."

"Sure," Portley said bitterly. "Two lousy C-46s. You know how fucking far we are from Stanleyville?" He is pretty close to being hysterical, Wagner realized.

"You know how long, at this rate, it's going- to take us to get there?" Portley went on furiously. "You know, I suppose, that Geoff Craig's wife and baby are in Stanleyville? You are a cold blooded sonofabitch, aren't you? Don't you really give a shit?"

"Geoff Craig's wife is my sister," Wagner said quietly.

"Jesus Christ."

"Would you please blow this fucking monument up?"

"Dutch, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Do a good job," Wagner said. "Don't just knock it down. Blow it up."

"You got it, Dutch."

XXII.

(One) 1301 Kildar Street Alexandria, Virginia . . . September 1964 When the door chimes sounded, Colonel Sanford T. Felter was sitting before the television set in his living room watching the NBC "Evening News". He could not, if his life depended on report what he had just seen. He had other things on his mind.

He had turned the television on because Sharon Felter probably would not try to cheer him up while he was watching the news.

"You want me to get that?" she asked from the kitchen.

"No," he said, rising from the chair almost as a reflex action. Then, realizing how abrupt he had been, he added: "I was already up anyway, honey."

He pulled the door open..

"Good evening, Sir," Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell said. "I'm working my way through college selling magazines and the lady next door suggested you know how to read."

"Hello, Craig," Felter said and immediately raised his voice.

"Sharon! " Felter saw one of the White House motor pool Oldsmobiles parked at the curb.

"You flew Evans up?" Felter asked.

Lowell nodded.

"Craig!" Sharon Felter called happily and ran across the room to him. She hugged him quickly; "What brings you here?"

"They threw me out of the White House too," he said, "and I thought I could mooch a meal here."

"Too?" Sharon asked, looking at her husband.

"Not actually thrown out," Lowell said, "but it was made plain that I was as welcome as a hooker in church."

"How'd you get the car?" Felter asked.

There was a procedure, invariably scrupulously followed, for authorized personnel to avail themselves of cars in the White House fleet. There was a man in charge of the fleet. You or your secretary called him, gave him the destination, and if your name was on the proper list and a car was available, he would schedule a car for your use. Lowell was not on any White House list, and Felter's curiosity was aroused.

"I walked outside, walked up to it, and told the driver to take me to Colonel S. T. Felter," Lowell said. "He said, 'Yes, Sir' and opened the door for me and here I am." Felter shook his head. There was no doubt in his mind that Lowell had accurately described what had happened. He had had since he was second lieutenant - an aura of authority about him. When he told people to do things, they simply didn't question his authority."

"You probably will get the driver in trouble," Felter said: "I didn't hold a gun on him."

"I don't understand," Sharon said.

"It's not important," Felter said.

"What did he mean about getting thrown out of the White House, too?" Sharon asked.

"They are having a meeting to which we were not invited," Lowell explained. "My orders were to keep myself available. I had my choice between waiting in the chauffeurs and, errand boys lounge or coming here. I figured no matter what happens, Sandy would be among the first to know."

"And what if Evans sends for you?" Felter said.

"Why would he do that?"

"In case there were questions about-"

"Dragon Rouge?" Lowell asked. "Impossible. I wrote Dragon Rouge. When I write an OPLAN, as you should know by now, there simply aren't any ambiguous areas." "God!" Felter said in exasperation.

"They aren't debating how, Sandy," Lowell said, now seriously. "They are debating if."

"Dragon Rouge'?" Sharon quoted. "Red Dragon? Can I ask -"

"No," Felter said.

"It's the operations plan to drop Belgian paratroopers on Stanleyville," Lowell said.

"Goddamn it, Craig!" Felter snapped. "Doesn't security, mean a thing to you?" "He obviously suspects you're an enemy agent, Sharon," Lowell said. "For my part I consider you absolutely trustworthy."

"You really push things, Craig," Felter said. "I really don't understand you sometimes."

"You'll have to forgive me, Colonel," Lowell said, a little irritated now. "But you will recall that I have kin in Stanleyville. We should have executed Dragon Rouge long before this; It may be too late now." Felter didn't reply.

Lowell warmed to his subject.

"There is a new twist to military operations, Sharon. first, having concluded that some military action is necessary, they tell the military to plan an operation. And then, when the OPLAN is all done and all the services are agreed that this is the way to do it, then they have a meeting. First -they decide all over again whether or not they really want to do it. Most of the time they decide it isn't really necessary after all But if they decide it should be executed, then every sonofabitch and his brother gets a chance to play soldier. They 'modify' the OPLAN. You can't really consider yourself a bureaucrat of importance unless you've made a major modification to a plan drawn up-by military professionals-"

"I think I better get you a drink," Sharon said. "I understand how you feel, Craig. And I'm sorry for you."

"Running off at the mouth isn't going to change things, Craig," Felter said.

"If 1 can't run off at the mouth at you, who then?" Lowell asked reasonably.

"I know what Craig drinks," Sharon said. "That really awful Scotch. Do you want something Sandy?"

"Give me the same, please," Felter said.

There was surprise on his wife's face.

"Make his a weak one, Sharon," Lowell called to her. "It's liable to be a long night, and you know "What happens when he gets a snootful. He sings bawdy songs and makes passes at strange women." She laughed.

There was a buzzing sound.

"That's that phone," Sharon said.

"They have just found out they have a missing car," Felter said. "They haven't had time to decide on tea or coffee yet, much less, anything more important." Then he started up the stairs quickly, taking them two at a time. A few minutes later, just, as Sharon was handing Craig Lowe}l a drink, he came back down the stairs, slowly this time. There was a troubled look on his face.

"Aw, come on, they can't be that pissed-off about a lousy car," Lowell said.