"Thank you very much, Sir."

"Don't get your hopes up about anything else, Sergeant," General McCord said. "I know they won't let you go."

"Yes, Sir," Jack said.

(Five) Leopoldville, Democratic Republic of the Congo 15 November 1964 URGENT FROM US EMBASSY LEOPOLDVILLE DEM REPCONGO TO SECSTATE WASH DC STANLEYVILLE SITUATION UPDATE AS OF 2400 ZULU 14 NOVEMBER 1964 FRENCH LANGUAGE 1800 ZULU BROADCAST OVER RADIO STANLEYVILLE SAID MAJOR REPEAT MAJOR PAUL CARLSON HAS BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH BY WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL.

BROADCAST SAID CARLSON HAD-BEEN DEFENDED QUOTE BY CONGOLESE OFFICERS OF HIS OWN CHOOSING ENDQUOTE FOLLOWING FULL TEXT TRANSLATION STATEMENT FRONT PAGE LE MARTYR NEWSPAPER STANLEYVILLE 13 NOVEMBER 1964 SIGNED GBENYE QUOTE WE HOLD IN OUR CLAWS MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED AMERICANS AND MORE THAN EIGHT HUNDRED BELGIANS WHO ARE- KEPT UNDER SURVEILLANCE AND IN SECURE-PLACES. AT THE SLIGHTEST BOMBARDMENT OF OUR REGION OR OF OUR REVOLUTIONARY CAPITAL, WE SHALLBE FORCED TO MASSACRE THEM. QUOTE CONTINUES ALL AMERICANS AND BELGIANS LIVING UNDER OUR PROTECTION HAVE WRITTEN AND SIGNED THEIR WILL. WE SHALL SEND THESE DOCUMENTS SHORTLY TO THE RESPECTIVE DESTINATIONS. THE SECURITY OF THESE INDIVIDUALS IS SUBJECI TO THE RETREAT FROM THE CONGO OF THE BELGIANS AND AMERICANS WHO MASSACRE- OUR .,.HE CONTINUOUSLY. QUOTE CONTINUES .WE SHALL MAKE FETISHES WITH THE BODIES OF THE AMERICANS AND WE SHALL DRESS. OUR WIVES IN THE SKINS OF THE BELGIANS AND THE AMERICANS THERE HAS BEEN NO REPEAT NO CONTACT WITH INTELEGENCE STANLYEVILLE IN FORTY EIGHT HOURS.

DONNELLY DEPUTY CHIEF OF MISSION.

WASHINGTON, D.C. . . . .november 1964 FM SECSTATEWASHDC TO AMBASSADOR NAIROBI KENYA IMMEDIATELY SEEK AUDIENCE WITH JOMO KENYA ITA AND RELAY FOLLOWING:.

MR. PRIME MINISTER:.

PERSONALLY AND ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLEE I IMPLORE YOU TO USE YOUR GREAT PERSONAL INFLUENCE THROUGHOUT AFRICA TO SPARE THE LIFE OF DR. PAUL CARLSON U.S. GOVERNMENT DECLARES UNEQUIVOCALLY THAT DR. CARLSON IS NOT IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH THE US MILITARY AND HAS BEEN ENGAGED ONLY IN, HIS ACTIVITIES AS A MEDICAL MISSIONARY. DR. CARLSON IS A MAN OF PEACE AND HAS SERVED THE CONGOLESE PEOPLE WITH DEDICATION FOR YEARS HIS EXECUTION ON PATENTLY FALSE CHARGES WOULD BE AN OUTRAGEOUS VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND OF CIVILIZED STANDARDS OF HUMANITARIAN CONDUCT.

END MESSAGE.

STATE CONSIDERS DELIVERY OF THIS MESSAGE EARLIEST POSSIBLE TIME ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL.

(Seven) Kleine-Brogel Air Base, Belgium 2225 Hours 16 November 1964 Brigadier General Harris McCord had asked for permission to go along. But it had been denied. But the pilot of Chalk One was a friend of his, and he was not able to resist going to the flight deck and standing between the seats and chewing the fat a little as they waited for The Word.

The Word came.

"Chalk One."

"Chalk One, go."

"The Word is go, repeat go."

"Chalk One understands go," the Colonel said, and made a wind-it-up motion with his index finger.

"Clear!" the copilot shouted out the window.

"Good luck, Don," General McCord said.

"Thank you, General," the pilot said.

Three of the C-130's engines were turning by the time General McCord walked down the passenger compartment to the open door, past the rows of red-bereted Belgian paratroopers. And then he stopped and looked very closely at one of the paratroopers. "I see your skin has cleared up."

"Yes, Sir, thank you, Sir." General McCord nodded to the Belgian paratrooper and then exited the aircraft.

"Kleine-Brogel, Chalk One taxiing to the active."

"Kleine-Brogel clears Chalk One as number one to take off."

"Roger, understand number one." Chalk One turned onto the threshold. Without stopping it turned onto the runway.

"Chalk One rolling," the copilot said to the microphone.

Seven minutes later, having followed Chalk One at thirty second intervals, the remaining fourteen C-130Es of Dragon Rouge were airborne. They climbed to twenty thousand feet and headed for Moron de la Frontera, an air base in Spain, where they landed, took on fuel, and immediately took off again, this time headed for a small speck of volcanic matter in the Atlantic Ocean known as Ascension Island.

McCord looked at him. Before he could frame a reply, the Captain handed him a telephone.

"Colonel Aspen, Sir."

"Colonel, this is General McCord. This may sound a little odd. But I want you to dispatch, immediately, one of your best medical officers. I am in the U.S. Embassy and I have a young sergeant with, me who, if my diagnosis is correct, has been rolling around in poison oak." There was a pause. "No, Colonel, he cannot come there. I don't want to argue about this. I expect to see either you or one of your doctors here within twenty minutes. " He hung up the phone and turned to smile at Jack.

"They give you a shot," he said. "It clears it up in a couple of hours. I had it in survival school in Utah a couple of years ago."

"Thank you very much, Sir."

"Don't get your hopes up about anything else, Sergeant," General McCord said. "I know they won't let you go." "Yes, Sir," Jack said.

XXIII.

(One) _'!'-~"':;-M.e, Democratic Republic of the Congo: 15 November 1964 Captain Karl-Heinz Wagner of the Katangese Special Gendarmes was more than a little worried that Colonel Hoare would notice that the men in the jeeps were not drinking coconut juice from the coconuts they had in their hands.

Hoare's sometimes violent temper flared when he found the men drinking when an operation was scheduled.

Karl-Heinz Wagner wondered whether his decision-to turn a blind eye-was proper behavior for him as an officer.

He rationalized his decision. They didn't have that much to drink, and as soon as they got under way, the brutal heat would sweat the alcohol from their bodies. If he raised hell about it, not only would there be bitter resentment (and they were already, but a nasty confrontation was -likely), but Colonel Hoare would probably be curious about the uproar and then there would be hell to pay.

It's just that I am just so damned tired that I no longer give a dam.

Hoare came walking down the line of vehicles. When he got to Wagner's jeep, Karl-Heinz started to get out. Hoare motioned him to stay where he was. He walked up to him.

"I see that the men have taken to coconut milk," Hoare said. He let Wagner stew for a moment and then Went on: "I think that I had better wait until we get to Stanleyville, don't you?"

"Yes Sir."

"Get it moving, Wagner."

Karl-Heinz made a wind-it-up gesture to his jeep driver and then stood up in the jeep, resting on the .50 caliber Browning until he saw that all of his vehicles had their engines turning.

"OK, Ed," he said. "Move it out."

"We're supposed to be sixty miles from Stanleyville," Portley said. "And the last twenty miles are supposed to be paved. Do you think that's so?"

"I would be very pleasantly surprised," Wagner said.

(Two) Stanleyville, Republic of the Congo 060025 November 1964 As a tradition, the men of the First Battalion, the Paracommando Regiment, Royal Belgian Army, continued to use the English-language jump commands the battalion had learned in England in World War II.

"Outboard sticks, stand up!" The two outside files of men inside Chalk One stood up and folded up their nylon and aluminum pole seats back against the fuselage wall.

"Inboard sticks, stand up!" The two inside files rose to their feet and folded their seats.

"Hook up!" Everybody fastened the hook at the end of his static line to a steel cable.

"Check static lines! Check equipment!" Everybody tugged at his own static line to make sure it was securely hooked to the cable and then checked the harness and other equipment of the man standing in front, that is to say, in the lines which now faced rear and led to the exit doors on either side of the aircraft.

Now the jumpmaster switched to French: "Une minute!" and then back to English: "Stand in the door!" Chalk One was down to seven hundred feet or so and all dirtied up: flaps down, throttles retarded, close (at 125 mph) to stall speed.

"Go!"

Jack Portet was the sixth man in the portside stick.

He felt the slight tug of the static line almost immediately after exiting the aircraft, and a moment later felt his main chute slithering out of the case. And then the canopy filled and he had a sensation of being jerked upward.

There was not enough time to orient himself beyond seeing land beneath and slightly to the left of him, and to pick out the Immoquateur building downtown, before the ground suddenly rushed up at him. He knew where he was now.

He was on the tee of the third hole of the Stanleyville Golf course. He landed on his feet, but when he started to pull on the risers to dump a little air from the nearly emptied canopy, there was a gust of air and the canopy filled and pulled him off his feet. He hit the quick release and was out of the harness a moment later and looked over and saw that the sky was full of chutes from chalk two and Chalk Three.

Then there were peculiar whistling noises, and peculiar hisses, and after a moment Jack realized that he was looking at tracers but that there didn't seem to be anybody to shoot back at. All of a sudden, there was.

There were Simbas firing from the control tower, of all places.

Jack went to the ground, worked the action of the FN assault rifle and took aim at the tower. Which, as he lined his sights up, disappeared in a cloud of dust. In a moment he had the reason for that. Two paratroopers had gotten their machine gun going.

Jack got to his feet and ran toward a trio of Belgian officers.

There was transportation-either something captured here- jeeps or the odd-looking three-wheelers which the aircraft were supposed to land-the officers would get first crack at them and Jack wanted to be there when it arrived. He had to get to the Immoquateur and he needed wheels to do that.

Someone drove up in a white pickup with a Mobil Oil Peg--~ on its doors.

One of the Belgian officers looked around and then pointed to Jack- l'americain-knows the town. Put half a dozen troops in back and make a reconnaissance by fire." Then he made his little joke: you better hope you get killed, because Ie grand noir was here for you and couldn't find you." He paused and looked at the other man. Le grand noir-the Big Black-was of Lieutenant Foster. "He said he was going to kill you if he ...... .... in Belgium, and if you managed to come along, he would pull your legs and arms off, one by one, if you came along."

Jack smiled and climbed on the running board of the Mobil Oil pickup, holding the FN in one hand.

But he was suddenly very frightened. Not of fighting, or even of dying, but of what he was liable to find when he got to the Immoquateur.

They first encountered resistance three hundred yards down the road, just past the Sabena guest house. A Simba wrapped in an animal skin, with a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other, charged at them down the middle of the road. Behind him came three others armed with FN assault rifles. They were firing them on full automatic. The pickup truck screeched to a halt. Jack went onto his belly his rifle to his shoulder. As he found a target, he was baffled to see that the Simba's weapon was firing straight up into the air There was a short burst of 7mm fire over his head. The Simba with the sword stopped in midstride and then crumpled to his knees. Before he fell over, a torrent of blood gushed from his mouth.

The Simbas with him stopped and looked at the fallen man in absolute surprise. Then they stopped shooting and started to backup. There was another burst of the fire from the pickup, this time from several weapons. Two of the tree Simbas fell down, one of them backward. The remaining Simba, the one in Jack's sight; dropped his rifle and ran away with great loping strides. There was another burst of fire from the truck, no more than five rounds from a paratrooper's assault rifle. The Simba took three more steps and then fell on his face to the left.

Jack scrambled to his knees and turned to look for the truck. It was already moving. He jumped onto the running board as it came past, almost losing his balance as the driver swerved, unsuccessfully, to avoid running over the Simba who had led the charge with a sword.

There was a furious horn bleating behind them, and the pickup pulled off the shoulder of the road. A jeep raced past them, the gunner of the pedestal-mounted .30 caliber Browning machine gun firing it in short bursts at targets Jack could not see.

The pickup swerved back onto the paved surface, almost throwing Jack off.

There was the sound of a great many weapons being fired, but none of the fire seemed directed at them. They reached the houses. There were more Simbas in sight now, but none of them were attacking. They were in the alleys between the houses and in the streets behind them.

The jeep that had raced past them was no longer in sight, but they could still hear the peculiar sound of the Browning firing in bursts.

The Mobil Oil pickup truck came to an intersection and Jack looked at the driver.

"You're supposed to be the fucking expert," the driver said to Jack. Which way do we go?"

"Right." Jack ordered without really thinking about it. The Immoquateur was to the right.

The pickup jerked into motion.

A hundred yards down the road they came across the first European, three of them, mother, father, and a twelve- or thirteen year old. They were sprawled dead in pools of blood in the road.

They had obviously been shot as they had tried to run.

~ :ell nausea rise in his throat, but managed to; hold it back.

Then over the roofs of the pleasant, pastel-painted villas, he saw the big bulk of the Immoquateur.

Rifle fire was fire directed at them.

The pickup screeched to a stop in the middle of the street.

Jack felt himself going, tried valiantly to stop himself, and then, he fell off the fender, fell onto the pavement on his face.

He felt his eyes water, and then they lost focus.

"Jesus Christ! I've been shot!

He felt his head, then put his hand to his face. There was blood, warm on it.

I've been shot in the face!

Someone rushed up to him. Indistinctly, he made a face, the paratroopers leaning over him, felt his fingers on his head and then the sonofabitch laughed.

"It's right," he said. "All you've got is a bloody nose."

He slapped Jack on the back and ran ahead of him.

When his eyes came back in focus. He looked at his lap and saw blood dripping into it.

He circled around and saw his assault rifle on the street six feet away from where he was sitting. He scurried on his knees to it, and fired a burst in the air to make sure it was still working and then looked around again, this time at the Immoquateur. There were bodies on the lawn between the street and the door on the ground floor. Simba and European. He got to his feet and moved toward the Immoquateur.

(Three) Jack recognized one of the bodies on the lawn before the Immoquateur. It was the Stanleyville station manager of the Congo River Steamship Company. He had met him when they had shipped in a truck. The man had been shot in the neck, probably with a shotgun, from the size of the wound. The stout, gray haired woman lying beside him with an inch-wide hole in her forehead was almost certainly his wife.

Jack ran into the building itself. There were two dead Simba in the narrow elevator corridor. One of them had most of his head blown away. The other had taken a burst In the chest as he came out of the elevator. It had literally blown a hole through his body. Parts of his ribs-or his spine, some kind of bone anyhow were sticking at awkward angles out of his back.

He was lying in the open elevator door. The door of the elevator had tried to close on his body. When the door encountered the body, it reopened and then tried to close again. It had been cycling like that since the man fell there.

Jack laid his FN assault rifle against the wall, put his hands on the dead man's neck, and dragged him free. The elevator door closed, a melodious chime bonged, and the elevator started up "Shit!" Jack went to the call button for the other elevator and pushed it. It did not illuminate. He ran farther down the corridor and pushed the service elevator call button. It lit up, but there was no sound of elevator machinery. He went back to wait for the first elevator. One of the Belgian paratroopers from the pickup truck came into the corridor. He was in a crouch with his rifle ready.

"The Sergeant said you are to come back to the truck," he said.