'A' for Argonaut

by Michael J. Stedman

  A huge, power-driven blast of water nearly overturned the craft.

  “Help us! Oh Christ,” another soldier screamed.

  The craft rocked precipitously, careened almost to its side. The water rushed across the deck and took most of the cockpit out. Maran struggled to his feet, inched his way to the control panel. Dos Sampas shouted orders.

  Maran gripped the propeller controls, forced them forward, pushing, straining against the connecting cables to the propellers. The hum of the propellers at cruise speed rose to a whine. They picked up force, rocketed toward an island, away from the threat.

  Maran’s body was propelled off balance, rocked over with the force of the newly opened propulsion. His shoulders cleared the rail. His feet left the deck.

  “Sampas!”

  The rebel leader let go of the wheel, leaped to Maran’s aid, grabbed him by the collar to yank him back in the boat.

  Maran came off the gunwale. His feet hit the deck. Both men shot forward as one unit and slammed into the front control panel with a thud.

  Blood trickled down Maran’s face. He helped dos Sampas to his feet as the propellers screeched. The craft skittered over bumps against the bank of the river. Branches raked the men’s faces. They had no choice but to stand and make it back to the controls. Boxes of equipment were raked overboard as the craft shimmied down the bank until the current wedged it into a tangle of trees, vines, and shrubs. It came to rest between a felled umbrella tree trunk and a boulder. A flock of hornbills flew out of the branches above them. A dwarf mongoose scooted down the trunk to escape into the forest.

  Maran stripped to his shorts. He slipped over the side into the shallows. It took all his strength. Slowly he pushed the boat out, away from the branches.

  “Mack,” dos Sampas yelled. “We’ve got company.” Downstream. A rebel gunboat equipped with an old 105mm howitzer in its central turret and two .50 caliber machine guns charged up the river, throttle wide open, wake plume flying behind it like a Tibetan prayer flag. Soldiers on the rebel boat signaled dos Sampas to pull alongside. Maran pulled himself out of the river. He climbed over the rail. Tracha pulled out the crates. Maran dove into the storage cabin perched on the afterdeck. He pulled out one of the navigation maps and found their location. A narrows lay ahead just around the bend at the mouth of their next objective, the Kasai.

  Tracha held an automatic weapon.

  “Put that down,” Maran ordered. “We have to outrun them. Sampas! We need a rope.” He looked out over the shallows, spotted a large uprooted baobab tree trunk, stripped of all but several branches that anchored it loosely in the river bottom.

  Dos Sampas opened a hatch below the control panel. He pulled out a coil of hemp.

  “Will this do?”

  Maran grabbed the rope, leaping overboard again. After he secured it to the craft, dos Sampas eased the tree trunk out of its bed. They dragged it up the river.

  The soldiers on the enemy gun boat fired the howitzer that was bolted into the armored turret. A shower of water exploded in front of dos Sampas’ boat, spraying the men with water, mud, and shredded water hyacinths. Dos Sampas opened up the engines. River debris flew into the air. The after-propellers roared, firing their craft forward. The bow rose into the air. Gradually, with its tree trunk cargo in tow, their boat moved up the river.

  Back on the boat, Maran showed dos Sampas on the map how, ahead, the river wound through a narrow channel for miles. If they could make it to the narrow towing the deadwood, they could then cut loose and speed up the river. As the tree gained momentum, fighting against the muddy water and the current, they managed to put it between themselves and the patrol boat. Their pursuers had narrowed the gap from a half-mile to five hundred yards.

  The narrow was two hundred yards ahead.

  They heard shouts from the men on the rebel gun boat. Then the automatic fire from their two machine guns began; jets of water exploded behind Maran and his team. Chips of wood and leaves flew from the trunk of the umbrella tree.

  The rebels gained.

  Maran made his decision.

  “Break out that gun!” he snapped. “What the hell is it, anyway?”

  “Objective Individual Combat Weapon,” Tracha answered. “Fires a high-explosive shell and nine hundred and fifty rounds of ball ammunition a minute.”

  Maran took the weapon. He slung it over his shoulders, grabbed the towrope, and swung his feet over and around the rope. He climbed along, clung with his body tight against the rope onto the tree that trailed behind. The engines whined, the chatter of the machine gun from the patrol boat rose in pitch, and the overcoming boat screamed. Its pilot pushed its engine to its outer limit, egged on by Maran’s bait‌—‌himself.

  Just as Maran was about to switch the safety off and begin firing, their boat nose-dived into the swirl. Its aft section rose. It twisted and somersaulted like a toy. The machine gun stopped. The gap between them widened. They slammed into the narrows. The trailing tree dragging between the banks snagged and stopped their boat. Its big engines revved. Muck flew everywhere. Maran knew what to do, instinct drove him to action. Adrenaline pumped his heart to racing speed, spurring him on. His mind sharpened as he leaped to the rear of the boat holding his field knife. Visions of Amber egged him on. He cut the towrope.

  They planed ahead through the narrows and up the river fifty more miles without incident to Ranbundu, the small village dos Sampas had promised. Then: drumbeats.

  “They’re announcing our arrival,” dos Sampas said.

  More than a dozen pirogues appeared. In their native canoes, traders, naked except for loincloths, toiled at wide-bladed paddles. In the rear of the canoes, bare-breasted women waved at them. Piled high in front of them were stacks of blackened monkey carcasses, in mock amazement, mouths wide open. In the trees above, live monkeys howled, registering fear and anger. The large leaves on the palms and tamarinds shimmered, illuminated by the metallic moon as hundreds of red and gold parrots, nervous sentries, screeched and flitted from tree to tree.

  Dos Sampas waved off the welcome party.

  Outside the village, they came upon three young women, splashing each other with soapy water in the shallows alongside the riverbank. The late afternoon sunlight played off the water, throwing highlights of orange, red, and violet shadows over their bodies.

  The girls laughed. They shouted hello, “Nbahtey, mandale!” Dos Sampas pulled the craft closer. The girls swam to them, climbed aboard.

  “How far is Mbuji-Mayi?” Maran asked.

  They led Maran’s team up the steep trail to climb the embankment and followed the trail through the jungle to the village.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Ranbundu, on the Sankuru River

  The trail was lined by heavy machine gun and mortar bunkers fortified with sandbags.

  That night Maran sat with dos Sampas and Tracha around a campfire in the center of the kitente, the clan’s royal compound. The silver glow cast by a full moon joined with the orange flicker from the blaze at their feet. It painted the grass shacks and surrounding foliage like surreal metallic set pieces. The village kikolo, clan chief, wore a tower-shaped headpiece of dyed multi-colored animal skins, fur, and river shells. He sat erect with a long scepter in one hand on an ornately carved mahogany armchair. His two medicine men, one wearing a light blue Nike watch cap and Adidas sneakers, sat with them on overturned red plastic Coca Cola crates. Each of the men wore a totem facemask; the chief’s was adorned with a long, curling black beard of horsetail hair. His name was Moise Ngoye, head of the Bambudye, a secret society faction split off from the Luba tribe, still dominant in the area.

  They hated Vangaler.

  The human spirit knows no bounds, and, in that vein, it didn’t shock Maran when he saw, in spite of the primitive mud hole-pocked roads in the area, Ngoye’s car, a black Cadillac Esplanade. It sat proudly parked outside his thatched bamboo hut that, lined up with several dozen others, stood above ground on stilts next to a Catholic church design
ed and supported with sweeping legs like flying buttresses.

  “A cathedral?” Maran asked.

  “They’re Catholic,” dos Sampas explained. “With a few distinctions. When Vangaler’s terror squads raided the village, parishioners took refuge under then Archbishop Marcel wa Ilunga. Vangaler’s butchers killed half of them, including the older women and wa Ilunga.”

  “What about the rest?”

  “Cut off the lips of the men, forced them to work in the mines, raped all the girls. Not long after that Ngoye named himself Archbishop, brought in new recruits. Surrounded the place with artillery.”

  An old American M48 Patton American tank stood sentry in front just outside the door. Inexplicably, the snout of its 90mm cannon was pointed high for maximum range. A laundry line led from the cannon to Ngoye’s shack, book-ended by umbrella racks, laden with brightly colored silk men’s shirts, designer jeans, and several military uniforms.

  A woman wearing a yellow, green, and red, flower-patterned cotton wrap appeared at the door atop the wooden planks that served for stairs. Red gemstones centered a pair of large gold hoops hanging from her ears. She joined them in the ring and dropped next to Ngoye. He introduced her as his daughter, Miriam. Proud that he had sent her to Mbuji-Mayi University, he nodded his permission for her to speak.

  Miriam responded to a question about women’s rights in the DRC from Tracha. Television, computers, and cell phones had penetrated this area like so many of the most primitive areas of the world; the march of contact with the world was stamping out the footbeat of tradition.

  “It’s not as bad in the city,” she said. “But even there. Kin is the worst for a woman. There is no help from the police. Women are raped at whim, by the police, militia‌—‌even by government officials and doctors. If a young woman resists, the man will go to her family and just buy her, even if she’s only eight or ten.”

  The three soldiers dos Sampas had brought along were inside one of the shacks on the perimeter of the village ring. Their incongruous gaiety sounded like they had an orgy going for themselves.

  “See what I mean?” Miriam sighed.

  The men sat around the campfire. They passed around a gourd of manioc wine. When it came to him, Maran passed it on to Tracha.

  “I’m allergic,” he said.

  Two men chattered in Kingwana, a form of Swahili. They spoke to dos Sampas.

  “They want to know what you mean,” dos Sampas told Maran.

  “Strange things happen to my blood,” he answered, winking at Tracha.

  Dos Sampas conveyed Maran’s message. The men weren’t satisfied.

  “Like what?” dos Sampas asked.

  “Gets it all over the street,” Maran grinned.

  Dos Sampas translated. The men hooted. Toasted him with two huge gulps.

  “Boyko has ruined their diamond business,” dos Sampas said. “The mine is a ruse to cover his scheme to sell diamonds for guns and guns for diamonds, depending on the customer. No one knows where he’s getting his stones, but he’s not mining them here. MecaMines used to be our biggest employer. Now there’s no work for anyone except a handful of Boyko’s toadies.”

  “Who are they selling to? Who are they getting the arms from?”

  Dos Sampas turned to Ngoye. He nodded.

  “Sales are split. Largest stones go over the Diamond Road into Cabinda. From there, shipped to Antwerp.”

  “The others?” Maran asked.

  “Not politically correct, you might say. Dubai. The villagers hate the Arabs as much as they hate Boyko and Vangaler; it was the Arabs who sold off their ancestors as slaves five-hundred years ago. Now it’s the Arabs using diamonds to buy weapons for resale to al Qaeda and their ilk, radical Islamist maniacs.”

  “From?”

  Ngoye looked at dos Sampas. He shrugged.

  “Big mystery.” Dos Sampas knew the game, a strange world of spiraling loyalties: need, greed, and sheer malice. “Sometimes fate forces your hand. Then you have no choice but to pick the lesser evil.”

  “How do we get to Boyko?” Maran asked. He spread out his map on the ground.

  Ngoye took the scepter, laid it down on the cushion with the mask and picked up a smaller version cut from Blackwood. A wooden bowl sat behind him. He reached back and brought it to the front of the fire. Inside the bowl, Maran saw a pile of bones, teeth, and dried stuff he knew were sacred objects. Ngoye stirred the batch with the short staff and gazed into the bowl. He gazed. He gazed. His eyes rolled back so that only the red-veined, yellowed whites showed. In a trance, the tribal leader began slowly to stir the contents of the bowl. His disciples rose. They each picked up one of the twisted hemp torches that protruded from the top of a dried elephant leg used as an urn to hold them. They lit the torches in the campfire and began to walk, heads lifted to the bright moon, in a circle around the sitting men and Miriam. Maran’s nostrils filled with the aroma of incense.

  Finally, after the worshippers had made a dozen loops, Ngoye leaped from his throne. He threw his arms in the air. Then sat down on the ground and asked Maran for his map. He picked up a stick and pointed to the location of the MecaMines. Most of the facility, he said, was underground.

  “We need specifics,” Maran said.

  Dos Sampas spoke to Ngoye. He took out a pad and pen. Wrote a note. Handed it to Maran. He looked at it. Folded it into his wallet.

  He punched Tracha gently in the shoulder.

  “Hey, man,” Tracha said with rare warmth, surprising Maran with its uncharacteristic hint of inebriation. Tracha’s eyes drooped. He looked blankly into the fire. The men sat back down. The gourd was passed.

  “This country is the world’s biggest producer of diamonds. It’s also one of its poorest countries. Like it or not, we, the U.S., are the world’s protector of last resort. Have to be,” Tracha slurred.

  “That Communist bullshit again?” Maran needled.

  “Communist? You fascist! Wouldn’t know Communist from a Democrat!”

  “You got that right!” Actually, Maran considered himself a tolerant man. It was only the flag-burners and spoon-fed defeatist offshoots of phony leftist privilege that bothered him.

  “Commie,” Maran laughed. “You remind me of those idiots Stateside who rail on us for not doing enough to save their sorry asses; then stop our surveillance teams from monitoring radical fundamentalist mosques where the rubber hits the road, where the imams are recruiting kids to attack us.”

  “What have you got against liberals? Latin root of freedom. Equality. Something’s wrong with that?”

  “I don’t have anything against liberals or Democrats it’s only the Anti-Americans among them that I can’t understand, or stand. Every kid in America has a chance to succeed. It may not be an equal chance, but the Constitution doesn’t include success as an ‘inalienable right.’ The way I grew up we thought: ‘It all depends on me.’”

  Dos Sampas shook his head in sympathy.

  The next morning, after a quick breakfast of grilled dried monkey and boiled manioc root, the men were on the river. Maran stowed the Ninja paraphernalia Ngoye had given him: crocodile hoodies with heads and skins.

  Before long, the river narrowed. The lush banks closed in. Maran stood at the wheel next to dos Sampas. Tracha stood at his side. He peered into the vegetation along the riverbanks.

  “Most beautiful river I’ve ever been on,” Maran said.

  “Whole country’s beautiful. Congo! A cliché maybe, but deep, powerful, mysterious. Like its people,” Tracha observed.

  “Take Jazz,” he added. “Thelonius, Bird, Miles, Mingus. Where would we be … jazz be … if it weren’t for African history?”

  They moved into a large pool that Maran had seen on his maps. A herd of wildebeest crashed through the shallows at the far side, climbing over one another as they scrambled up a muddy path through the vegetation, up the embankment.

  They approached the far end. A wide span of white water thundered over rapids; boulders jutted out of the
river ahead. Tracha came out of the cabin of the boat juggling two sandwiches on a plate with two cups of coffee. Steam swirled off the cups. He stumbled. The plates and mugs crashed on the deck.

  “Goddamn!” Tracha screamed. “What the bejeeziz?”

  The craft veered to the left, arcing.

  “The left propeller, Mack!” dos Sampas shouted. He pointed at the still blades of the propeller bolted on the left side of the boat’s tailgate. The blades on the right propeller continued to fly with a low whine, forcing the boat into a long, circular path.

  Maran ran to investigate. He felt utterly insufficient for the task.

  “What the hell do I look for?” he shouted.

  “Check the battery connections and…Oh!”

  Dos Sampas looked over Maran’s head out into the river behind them.

  The camo-painted rebel patrol boat they had eluded the day before raged into the pool at a high boil.

  Dos Sampas turned the wheel frantically and gunned the engines. Tracha passed Maran the weapon he had unpacked. Maran steadied the gun with its tripod on the after deck, adjusted its laser range finder to set the airburst detonations automatically for the right distance.

  Before he could fire, the machine gun on the assaulting rebel boat swept their deck platform with cannon fire. Smashed glass fragments flew in every direction; pieces of metal and splinters of wood slashed the air. Dos Sampas unfurled an Uzi. Bounced by the rocking craft, he fired wildly at the oncoming patrol boat.

  The howitzer on the enemy craft belched fire and smoke.

  The shell hit the cockpit and exploded. Dos Sampas’ body flew into pieces. Maran rocketed into the air, landing in the river ten feet from shore. Miraculously, he still held on to the gun. He dragged himself up onto the crest of the riverbank and took stock, grateful to find that, other than a few additional bruises, he wasn’t seriously injured.

  Dos Sampas was dead.