b. MITOUDIDI IS SPENDING MORE AND MORE TIME IN KIGOMA AND LESS TIME ANYWHERE IN THE CONGO. THERE IS REASON TO BELIEVE THAT HE BOTH LIKES THE BROTHELS AND OTHER ATTRACTIONS OF KIGOMA AND IS ALSO AFRAID OF BEING CAPTURED BY HOARE’S OR SUPO’S FORCES IN THE CONGO. INASMUCH AS COLONEL SUPO NOW HAS COMMAND OF ALL CONGOLESE FORCES IN THESE PROVINCES, THIS SITUATION WILL CERTAINLY BECOME WORSE FOR HIM.
c. COLONEL SUPO BELIEVES, AND MATA HARI AND UNDERSIGNED CONCUR, THAT SHOULD IT BE POSSIBLE FOR GUEVERAN FORCES, WITH SOME SIMBA ASSISTANCE, TO RECAPTURE ALBERTVILLE, MITOUDIDI COULD CLAIM A MAJOR SIMBA VICTORY, AND HIS HEARTS AND MINDS PROBLEMS WOULD BE DIMINISHED. SHOULD AN ATTACK ON ALBERTVILLE FAIL, HE COULD PLACE THE BLAME ON GUEVARA AND HIS FORCES. THEREFORE, HE WILL PRESSURE GUEVARA TO MAKE THE ATTACK AT THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE TIME.
d. ALTHOUGH, SINCE HE HAS ENCOUNTERED GREAT DIFFICULTY IN AUGMENTING THE SMALL FORCE HE HAS WITH HIM AT LULUPLAT, GUEVARA MAY BE RELUCTANT TO MAKE THE ATTACK, HE WILL PROBABLY BE FORCED TO DO SO IN ORDER TO SOLVE HIS OWN HEARTS AND MINDS PROBLEMS WITH MITOUDIDI. IN THIS CONNECTION, IT MUST BE REMEMBERED THAT GUEVARA THINKS OF HIMSELF AS THE LEADER OF THE AFRICAN LIBERATION MOVEMENT. IF AN ATTACK ON ALBERTVILLE SUCCEEDED, HE COULD AND ALMOST CERTAINLY WOULD CLAIM THE CREDIT FOR BEING THE GENERAL.
e. BASED ON HIS ASSESSMENT OF THE STRENGTH AND ABILITY OF THE MITOUDIDI FORCES, AND PRESUMING THAT CURRENT INTERDICTION EFFORTS OF CUBAN REINFORCEMENTS FROM BOTH TANGANYIKA AND CONGO BRAZZAVILLE WILL CONTINUE TO BE SUCCESSFUL, SUPO BELIEVES THAT WITH THE AUGMENTATION OF, OR REPLACEMENT OF, HOARE’S MERCENARY FORCES IN THE ALBERTVILLE AREA BY CONGOLESE ARMY FORCES, ADEQUATELY SUPPLIED, CURRENTLY TAKING PLACE, IT WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE FOR GUEVARAN FORCES TO RETAKE ALBERTVILLE. MATA HARI AND UNDERSIGNED CONCUR.
f. MATA HARI AND UNDERSIGNED CONCUR THAT IT MUST BE KEPT IN MIND THAT NEITHER MITOUDIDI OR GUEVARA ARE TRAINED OFFICERS, AND THAT BOTH ARE DESPERATE AND EGOTISTICAL AND MAY TAKE ACTION AT ANY TIME THAT OTHERS WOULD REGARD AS ILL ADVISED.
HELPER SIX
TOP SECRET
[ NINE ]
TOP SECRET
2015 GREENWICH 8 JUNE 1965
FROM STATION CHIEF, LÉOPOLDVILLE, CONGO 00025
TO DIRECTOR, CIA, LANGLEY
COPIES TO SOUTH AMERICAN DESK
MR SANFORD T FELTER, COUNSELOR TO
THE PRESIDENT
THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON
1. AT 0635 8 JUNE 1965 A MESSAGE FROM “TATU” (GUEVERA) IN LULUPLAT TO CUBAN EMBASSY DAR ES SALAAM WAS INTERCEPTED BY HELPER PERSONNEL, DECRYPTED FROM CUBAN CODE SUGAR FOUR, AND FURNISHED BY HELPER SIX TO THE UNDERSIGNED.
2. GUEVARA REPORTS PROBABLE DEATH BY DROWNING IN LAKE TANGANYIKA OF COLONEL LAURENT MITOUDIDI, CHIEF OF STAFF OF REVOLUTIONARY STAFF MILITARY COUNCIL WHILE MOVING BY LAUNCH FROM KIMBAMBA TO NEW LOCATION OF HQ FOR GENERAL STAFF.
3. AIRCRAFT OPERATING IN SUPPORT OF COLONEL SUPO REPORT INTERDICTION AND SINKING OF LAUNCH KNOWN TO BE CLANDESTINELY TRANSPORTING MATÉRIEL AND PERSONNEL FOR GUEVERAN OPERATION IN THIS AREA AND AT THIS TIME.
4. IT IS PROBABLE THAT COLONEL LAURENT MUDANDI WILL REPLACE MITOUDIDI. MUDANDI, NOW IN DAR ES SALAAM, IS A CHINESE-TRAINED RWANDAN TUTSI AND MAY DEMONSTRATE MORE INITIATIVE THAN MITOUDIDI HAS.
C.R. TAYLOR
STATION CHIEF LÉOPOLDVILLE
TOP SECRET
[ TEN ]
TOP SECRET
2015 GREENWICH 14 JUNE 1965
00031
FROM STATION CHIEF, LÉOPOLDVILLE
TO DIRECTOR, CIA, LANGLEY
COPIES TO SOUTH AMERICAN DESK
MR SANFORD T FELTER, COUNSELOR TO
THE PRESIDENT
THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON
5. REFERENCE MY 00025 8 JUNE 1965
6. INTEL FROM COLONEL SUPO’S AGENTS IN LULUPLAT RELAYED BY HELPER SIX PERSONNEL
A-CONFIRMS PRESENCE OF COLONEL LAURENT MUDANDI IN LULUPLAT REPLACING MITOUDIDI AND EXERCISING CONTROL OVER GUEVERAN FORCES. B-REPORTS MUDANDI HAS CANCELLED ATTEMPT TO RETAKE ALBERTVILLE AND INSTEAD HAS ORDERED ATTACK “BY END OF MONTH” ON HYDROELECTRIC PLANT AT BENDERA.
7. BENDERA IS CURRENTLY GARRISONED BY APPROXIMATELY THREE HUNDRED (300) CONGOLESE TROOPS, NOT PARACHUTISTS, AND APPROXIMATELY EIGHTY (80) MERCE NARIES UNDER MAJOR MICHAEL HOARE PRIMARILY CHARGED WITH SECURITY OF HYDRO-ELECTRIC PLANT AND DAM.
8. COLONEL SUPO WILL SECRETLY IF POSSIBLE REINFORCE BENDERA WITH APPROXIMATELY FIFTY (50) PARATROOPS WHO WILL BE ADVISED BY HELPER PERSONNEL AND SUPPORTED BY HUNTER RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT.
C.R. TAYLOR
STATION CHIEF BUENOS AIRES
TOP SECRET
[ ELEVEN ]
Bendera, Katanga Province, Congo
0540 29 June 1965
Master Sergeant William “Doubting” Thomas was having very disturbing doubts of the wisdom of his having taught Sergeant First Jette the fine points of rifle marksmanship as they applied to a U.S. Springfield Caliber 30.06 Rifle, Model 1903-A4 equipped with a Bausch & Lomb 4- to 8-power telescopic sight.
On the one hand, Jette had been an apt pupil. He was a natural shot. They came along every once in a while. Thomas had known a few. Although he had never in the last decade failed to qualify as High Expert with every weapon in the special forces arsenal, Thomas knew he was not a natural shot; he had to work at it. Jette, on the other hand, had apparently been endowed at birth with a degree of hand-eye coordination that had permitted him to do at least as well—after firing no more than 200 rounds through the first ’03-A4 he had ever seen—as his teacher.
While Jette could not put a 168-grain bullet into the eye of a gnat at 100 yards, as the phrase goes, he could regularly hit the neck of a Simba beer bottle bobbing in Lake Albert at 250 yards— invisible to the naked eye at that distance. This told Thomas that Jette’s brain was able to compute the time it took the bottle neck to swing from one side to the other and the time-in-flight of his bullet, and send the appropriate message to his muscles.
There was no problem vis-à-vis Sergeant First Jette’s marksmanship, but rather with his military/political sophistication. Jette was having a good deal of trouble understanding why he was absolutely forbidden to shoot any of the Simbas and their Rwandan and Cuban allies who were about to attack Bendera without having first obtained the permission of Major, Sir, Tomas in every instance.
The concept of permitting an enemy to escape when one had the ability to shoot him in the forehead was just about out of Sergeant First Jette’s ability to comprehend, although Thomas had tried to explain the situation to him many times.
Sergeant First Jette had also had trouble with the concept of protecting one’s hearing by the insertion of earplugs, and was going along with that strange idea solely because of his respect for Major, Sir, Tomas, whom he respected both as a soldier and as someone who knew how to move silently and invisibly through the bush almost as well as he himself did. Perhaps even a little better.
“Now what I think will happen, my friend,” Major, Sir had explained, pointing at a map, “is that our friends will come out of the bush here, into this open area. Their primary objective will be to take the power-generating plant, here. It’s about half a klick— five hundred meters—from the edge of the bush.”
Jette nodded.
“We know they don’t have artillery,” Thomas had gone on, “although they may have mortars, and they know that the power station is guarded by Major Hoare’s mercenaries. They also probably know that there will be no more than fifteen mercenaries on duty, and that the rest of the mercenaries will be in Bendera, and that it will take from ten to fifteen minutes for them to come to the power station from Bendera, once the attack starts.
“So what they will probably try to do is sneak up to the power station, overwhelm the mercenaries, and set themselves up to repel the mercenary counterattack fifteen minutes later. Then, when everybody—mercenaries and Congolese soldiers—has rushed to the power station, they will attack Bendera with the bulk of their forces. You understand me, Sergeant First Jette,
my friend?”
Jette nodded.
“What they don’t know is that we expect them; the attack will not be a surprise. And they don’t know that we have twenty-five paratroopers with a machine gun here, on this side of the field, and another twenty-five with another machine gun here, on the other side of the field.
“And they don’t know about you and me, my friend. We will be here, on the roof of the power station building. What you and I are going to do is take down their officers. Now, we don’t want to do this until they have come—probably crawled—most of the way across the field. The paratroops will not open fire until the Americans with them tell them to, and the Americans will not do that until we fire. You understand?”
Jette nodded again.
“The idea is that if the Simbas and the Rwandans are most of the way across the field before we fire at them, the paratroops will be able to kill more of them before they retreat back into the bush than they would if we shot a couple of them the minute we saw them. We are going to have to be patient. Understand?”
Jette nodded.
“I have my orders from Colonel Dahdi that this man is not to be shot,” Thomas said, showing him—for the tenth time—a half-dozen photographs of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, M.D. “Colonel Dahdi will be very angry with me, and Colonel Supo will be very angry with you if we kill this man.”
“Why is that, Major, sir?” Jette asked for the tenth time.
“Because those are our orders, Sergeant First Jette,” Thomas replied, “and we as soldiers obey our orders even if we do not understand them.”
“Yes, Major, sir,” Jette said. “But what if he is killed by the paras?”
“Then you and I will still be in trouble,” Thomas said. “Life is not fair, my friend.”
“No, it is not, Major, sir,” Sergeant First Jette agreed solemnly.
“You and I will be side by side on the roof,” Thomas said. “I will tell you which of them to shoot. You are not to shoot anyone unless I tell you, you understand?”
Jette nodded.
“Let’s go,” Thomas had said, getting out of the jeep and then reaching in the back for the cased sniper’s rifles, a rucksack, and a backpack radio.
The mercenary sergeant in charge of the power station guard detail was standing in the dark by the door of the power station. He was a short, stocky Frenchman with a pockmarked face.
Thomas had met him the night before, in Bendera, when finalizing the plans for the defense of the city and the hydroelectric plant with the mercenary commander, Major Michael Hoare.
Hoare knew that Thomas and the two Americans who had come with Supo’s elite paratroopers were Americans and Green Berets, but that information was not shared with any of his officers or men. If Hoare suspected he was dealing with a master sergeant, a sergeant first class, and a staff sergeant, rather than a major and two captains, he gave no sign.
He was actually very charming—Thomas had liked him at first sight—and completely agreed with the plan for the defense of the city and hydroelectric plant Supo and Father Lunsford had drawn up, but not before he had studied it carefully and asked what Thomas thought were intelligent questions about it.
There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that the Simbas had spies all over the area, and that the Simbas knew many—perhaps most—of the details of Hoare’s defense plans. The spies would immediately report anything out of the ordinary to the Simbas. It was therefore necessary to keep from both Hoare’s mercenaries and the regular Congolese troops that there was a ninety-percent certainty that the power station would be attacked at first light, and Bendera itself, once the power station had been attacked and reinforcements had been sent to defend it.
The Congolese paratroopers had moved into the area in trucks with their tarpaulins in place, and there was no reason to think that anyone knew they were in the bush, and would move into their positions in the predawn darkness.
But the mercenary sergeant who would be in charge of the guard detail at the power station from 0600 had to be told that “a Congolese officer and his sergeant” would go into the roof of the building before dawn, and Hoare had sent for him, and told him.
The mercenary sergeant had made it clear that he did not like the idea of having a Congolese officer and a sergeant first on “his” roof, especially when Major Hoare told him it was none of his business what they would be doing, and, further, that he was to do whatever Major Tomas told him to do.
Hoare had picked up on the concern in Tomas’s eyes, and when the mercenary sergeant had been dismissed, asked him if something was bothering him.
“I’m wondering, Major, if I have to tell that guy what to do, if he’ll do it.”
“He will do it,” Hoare said. “I’ve ordered him to do it.”
Tomas had still looked doubtful.
“We instill a high degree of obedience in our enlisted men by a swift system of punishment,” Hoare explained conversationally. “The first instance of disobedience is punished on the spot by shooting them in the fleshy part of the leg. The second instance, we shoot them in the forehead. Sergeant Taller has already been shot in the leg. By me.”
Jesus H. Christ! He means it!
“I suppose that would work,” Thomas had said.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” Thomas said, in French, to the mercenary sergeant. “I didn’t see you standing there. And I guess you didn’t see me; otherwise you would have saluted.”
With obvious reluctance, the mercenary sergeant saluted, and Thomas returned it.
“It will not be necessary for you to tell your men that we are here,” Thomas said. “Just show me how to get to the roof, and keep everyone off it until I tell you otherwise.”
The mercenary sergeant nodded.
“What have you got in those long cases, Major? Rifles?” he asked.
“I could have sworn I heard Major Hoare tell you that what we’re doing is of no concern of yours,” Thomas said coldly.
The mercenary sergeant turned and wordlessly entered the building, waving his hand for Thomas and Jette to follow him.
The flat roof of the redbrick building turned out to be ideally suited for Thomas’s purposes. There was a small wall, three feet high, more than high enough to conceal a prone body. Every ten feet or so along the wall—presumably to allow rain to drain off—the wall was level with the flat floor of the roof.
Thomas took two pillows marked “Hotel du Lac” from the rucksack, tossed one to Jette, and then, bending it double, laid his in one of the depressions in the wall. Then he slid his Springfield from its case and laid the forearm on the pillow.
When he looked for Jette, he saw that Jette had finished doing the same thing. Thomas reached into the rucksack again, found the two pair of 8 ¥ 57 Ernst Leitz, Wetzlar binoculars and handed one to Jette. Finally, he took out two bandoliers of .30- 06 ammunition in five-round stripper clips and tossed one of them to Jette.
Then he dragged the backpack radio to his left side, checked the frequency, and turned it on.
“One, two, Hunter,” he said to the microphone.
“One, go Hunter.”
“Two, go Hunter.”
“One more time, try not to shoot any white men,” Thomas said.
“My mother warned me there would be days like this,” a voice Thomas thought was probably One—Sergeant First Class Omar Kelly—replied.
There was immediate confirmation of that.
“Hunter, Two.” (Staff Sergeant Leander Knowles). “Say again daylight.”
“Oh-five-fifty-five. It’s getting to be that time. Four minutes.”
“I hope they’re late,” One said. “I really like to lay a machine gun before I shoot it.”
“That’s enough radio chatter,” Thomas said.
He propped himself up on his elbows and studied the vague visible end of the bush. He could see nothing.
Five minutes later, he could.
He picked up the microphone.
“Got what looks like a point
man thirty meters from the right,” he said.
“One, got ’em.”
“Two, I got him.”
Thomas set the binoculars down and put the rifle to his shoulder. He glanced at Jette and saw he had already done so.
When he put his eye to the telescopic sight, he could not see the man he had seen before.
Shit, don’t tell me they know how to make like a snake!
He picked up activity at the edge of the bush. Four men stepped into the clearing, then dropped out of sight in the grass.
Thomas moved the scope ten yards into the field and saw movement, then a leg, or an arm.
“Ten meters ahead of the ones who just came in,” he called to Jette.
“I see him,” Jette said.
“Don’t shoot him. Use him to show you where the others are.”
Another man appeared at the edge of the bush and put binoculars to his eyes. Thomas examined him carefully through the scope.
He was black, but probably—because of the binoculars; the neatness of his uniform, and the fact he was wearing boots—a Cuban.
Thomas had already made up his mind to take down only Cubans. They had come here to cause trouble; if they didn’t know what they were letting themselves in for, they should have. Simbas and Rwandans were going to have to be taken down, but let the Congolese do that.
“The man with the binoculars is mine, Jette,” Thomas said softly.
“Yes, Major, sir.”
Thomas found the point man again, and tracked him for a minute or so.
Special Ops Page 77
