Genocide of One: A Thriller (13 page)

As the sun was setting Yeager’s satellite phone rang once, then cut off. He left his
decoy luggage in the hotel room and went out the front door of the hotel empty-handed.
The main street was full of an endless stream of people making their way through clouds
of diesel exhaust. Lights from the rows of shops along this central part of the capital
lit up the people and cars that filled the streets.

Yeager noticed that traffic traveled on the left and remembered that Uganda was a
former British colony. Everyone he passed called out
Mzungu, mzungu
to him—“white person” in Swahili. Everyone on the street was black, and he didn’t
come across a single Westerner or Asian. Not wanting to stand out so much, Yeager
slipped into an alley behind the shopping street until he located the truck with the
canvas canopy over the back and quickly climbed aboard.

A middle-aged African man was in the driver’s seat. He wore an old shirt, and his
arms were muscular. He looked like a civil servant, a man with a wife and family.
In accented English he said, “Your key, please.” Yeager took his hotel key out and
handed it to him.

“I’ll take care of checkout for you,” the driver said as he slowly drove through the
jammed street. He reached out his right hand. “I’m Thomas,” he said.

Yeager shook his hand and told him the fake name on his passport, James Henderson.
“Call me Jim,” he said.

“All right, Jim. Here you are,” he said, and passed Yeager a paper bag that was on
the seat. “Dinner.”

“Thanks.” Inside the bag was a hamburger from a fast food chain Yeager had never heard
of. A Ugandan franchise, apparently. He was hungry. He opened the bag and dug into
the burger. “This is really good.”

“Glad you like it,” Thomas said, and smiled.

Yeager surmised that this friendly driver was a local CIA operative. No doubt Thomas
wasn’t his real name. But he didn’t inquire any further. He knew no matter what he
asked he wouldn’t get the truth. The need-to-know principle on covert ops meant that
no one was told more information than he absolutely had to know. Thomas, too, probably
hadn’t been told who this man calling himself Jim Henderson really was or why he was
taking him to the war zone in the neighboring country. But as they talked, Yeager
did find out that he was Ugandan.

“If only we had a decent government and education, this country could become an advanced
nation,” Thomas said with a sigh, his tone serious.

“But it’s already developing, isn’t it?”

This halfhearted compliment brought a hard-to-decipher smile. “For the last few years
minerals from the Congo have been coming into our country,” Thomas said.

Yeager remembered that Uganda was one of the countries involved in the Great War in
Africa. “Looted material?”

“Exactly. If you count underground resources, the Congo is the wealthiest country
in the world. The Ugandan army encouraged the racial killing in the eastern Congo
and then took over in the name of restoring order. A lot of smuggling is still going
on. Still…” Thomas made a wry face and continued. “I really hope this isn’t what people
judge Uganda on. It’s the crazy leaders who decide we have to go to war, not the ordinary
people.”

“The same’s true in America,” Yeager replied. “And every other country.”

It took an hour to get free of traffic. Yeager was surprised to find that none of
the intersections in Uganda had traffic signals. A few kilometers more, and the face
of the city changed completely. There was no electricity here, apparently, and the
dim residential area looked overwhelmed by the broad, dark African night sky. As he
saw the candlelight filtering out of the homes they passed, Yeager wondered what sort
of lives these people led. Surviving tough times, struggling to make it from one day
to the next. There might be a huge difference between them and Americans in terms
of material wealth, but inside, as human beings, they were probably much the same.

The truck, moving along a red clay road, slowed down. The headlights illuminated a
man standing beside the road. Garrett. Yeager slid over and greeted his team member
as he got in the truck.

“How’d you get here?” Yeager asked.

Garrett smiled and pointed at something beyond the windshield. “Rode one of those.”

A minivan tore down the opposite side of the road. The seven-passenger van was stuffed
with twice that many people.

“It’s a taxi. Quite the experience.”

The canopy-back truck picked up speed and drove for close to an hour until it came
to a deserted plain, where it came to a stop. The sound of the parking brake was swallowed
up in the African darkness. For a moment Yeager was entranced by the star-filled sky.
Each and every star that covered the heavens seemed to be murmuring to him, and he
couldn’t sense the quiet around him. The scene made him feel intuitively that the
earth was merely a planet floating in the universe.

Thomas got out and, flashlight in hand, walked to the rear of the truck. The bed was
loaded with stacks of wooden crates, but this was just on the outside. Beyond was
an open space big enough for the men to lie down in. Thomas pulled aside a crate,
and there were Meyers and Mick, just getting to their feet. They’d been in the truck
before Yeager had boarded.

“So we’re finally taking a break?”

Thomas motioned to the four backpacks and AK-47s. “Your luggage is over there.”

The mercenaries began preparations to cross the border. They put on tactical vests
and leg holsters and strapped on pistols. They loaded their weapons, both pistols
and rifles, getting them ready to fire. They stored the night vision goggles in pouches
they would keep close at hand, but to save battery power they wouldn’t use the goggles
until it was absolutely necessary.

Next they sprayed insect repellent on their skin and clothes, even drenching their
backpacks. Once these preparations were complete, Thomas took out portable transceivers
from one of the crates and distributed them. They each checked the frequency, slipped
the device in a shoulder pocket, and put on a headset.

“Are you all set?”

They nodded, and Thomas went back to the rear of the truck. He lifted up the heavy
crates and made a double wall so the interior of the truck was out of sight. Using
Meyers’s penlight, the men sat down inside, leaning back against the crates on either
side.

The engine started up again, and the truck lumbered into motion. Meyers turned off
his light, and the back of the truck was pitch dark.

“What’s in the crates?” Yeager asked.

“Scrap and all kinds of random stuff,” Meyers’s voice said. “At least they’ll serve
as sandbags if we need them.”

Yeager shone his flashlight at the line of crates between him and the rear of the
truck. There were narrow cracks deliberately left between the crates, perfect as gun
ports. Thomas was a real professional.

They bounced around on the long journey, and every time they felt the road get smooth
beneath the tires they knew they were passing through a village. Yeager tried to get
some sleep, but only dozed fitfully.

About the time one day changed to the next the truck came to a halt, and Thomas whispered
to them through their headsets.
“We’re crossing out of Uganda.”

The four of them listened carefully for any sounds. Thomas was saying something, an
exchange of words in Swahili. The other person must be a Ugandan border guard. Thomas
got out of the truck and went off somewhere, but he soon was back and began driving
again.

“
We’re out of the country,”
he reported.
“We’re in the Congo neutral zone.”

Three kilometers ahead should be the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But a few minutes
later the truck stopped again.

“
One Congolese soldier, two boy soldiers, all with rifles.”

Yeager and the others quietly picked up their AK-47s and got up on one knee in case
they had to defend themselves.

High-pitched voices came from outside the driver’s side. Boys’ voices that had not
yet changed. “Five hundred dollars,” they were saying, over and over, obviously seeking
a bribe. Thomas was saying something back to them in a determined tone, and finally
the negotiations seemed to settle on
tumbako
—cigarettes—as payment to let them pass.

The truck moved on, but the four men in the back remained at the ready, waiting until
they’d cleared the border. Finally the truck slowed down, and Thomas reported,
“Three soldiers with rifles. Immigration control station. There should be another
dozen inside, but don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”

This area was under the control of insurgents who received aid from Uganda, so a Ugandan
such as Thomas should be able to find a way to get through. Still, Yeager and his
team switched on their night vision gear just in case. The world turned a phosphorescent
green before their eyes. At Yeager’s hand signal the other three took up positions
at the wall of crates.

The truck halted. Thomas spoke briefly with someone through his window and then got
out, probably to go to the immigration control office. But still they heard someone
walking around the truck. Yeager peered through a crack between the crates.

A uniformed soldier was walking back and forth, obviously interested in the freight
they were carrying. A second soldier appeared, and they started talking. Probably
telling jokes, since they both started laughing. The two soldiers held on to the back
of the truck and swung up inside.

Yeager motioned to Garrett and Mick that they would do the shooting. He and Meyers
would drag the bodies into the back of the truck.

The soldiers lifted one of the near crates off the truck. They opened it, and when
they found nothing of value inside they clucked their tongues in disappointment. Garrett
and Mick planted themselves—their Glocks, fitted with silencers, held firmly in both
hands. As soon as the soldiers removed the second row of crates and revealed the men’s
hiding place they’d put a bullet in each of their foreheads. Fortunately for all of
them, though, the soldiers weren’t so greedy. They put the crate back and leaped down
from the truck.

Thomas was soon back. As before, he seemed to have deftly handled the soldiers seeking
bribes, this time apparently handing over a bit of cash, and was now safely back in
the driver’s seat.

The engine gave a low growl as it started up, and Yeager and the others settled back
as it began to move. Thomas came on the radio.
“We’re in the Congo now. This isn’t the time of day the insurgents are generally active,
but please remain alert.”

Yeager and Meyers stood watch while Garrett and Mick tried to catch some sleep. After
two hours, they shifted, and Garrett and Mick stood watch while Yeager and Meyers
tried to sleep. The hard-and-fast rule of special ops was that you should grab sleep
whenever you could get it.

But as soon as they entered the Congo the roads were so awful that sleep was out of
the question. This was the sole main road through this region, but it was an unpaved
dirt trail, too narrow to avoid all the terrible bumps and potholes. The truck jolted
violently up and down, and occasionally Thomas had to climb out and lay down boards
he’d stored in back in order to coax the truck over the massive holes and swaths of
mud. It was a tiring job, but he did it all alone, without a word of complaint.

At 4:00 a.m., their journey was finally over. The truck, forced to move slowly, backed
into a side road. Tree branches brushed against the canvas canopy, some of them snapping.

“We’re here.”

The four men stood up, stretching their stiff muscles. They took apart their bulwark
of crates, picked up their gear, and alighted from the truck.

It was still dark out. The air was thick with the smell of foliage. It was cool, and
they felt a slight chill in their long-sleeved shirts.

Yeager switched on his flashlight and was surprised at what he saw. The path the truck
had stopped in was a sort of tunnel. The tree branches of the jungle on either side
formed an archway that stretched off into the distance. Yeager, from a modern, developed
country, was forced to readjust his perception. It wasn’t so much that there was a
forest on either side of the road, but that in the midst of a deep, massive, forest,
insignificant little creatures called men had managed to carve out a primitive path
that looked ready to be overwhelmed by the jungle bearing down on them.

The men broke down their combat equipment, stored it in their backpacks, and put on
their photographers’ vests with the GPS equipment inside. They all had on cotton shirts
and cargo pants, and there was little chance that, from their outward appearance,
at least, anyone would see through their disguise.

Yeager unfolded a map. “Let’s check our position.”

Thomas explained where they were, pointing at the map. “This main road running north
and south is the dirt road we took from the border. Cars can’t go any farther than
this. The road is too rough, and the rebels have a headquarters in a town called Mambasa,
at the end of the road. We’re at this small path that branches off west from the main
road.”

The GPS coordinates confirmed this. They were just short of a village called Alafu.
Yeager and his team would go into the jungle and proceed north, paralleling the main
road. It was about seventy kilometers to the area where the Kanga band had its camp.
If things went well Yeager figured they could take care of business in five days.
Two days to reach the target area, one day to identify the camp the Kanga band was
in, then two days for reconnaissance and carrying out the operation.

“The latest report is that the rebels and the Congolese army clashed a hundred kilometers
northeast of here. The Congolese army lost sixty men, and tens of thousands of people
in the area became refugees. Also, an antigovernment force ambushed PKO soldiers and
killed some of them.”