Laughter in the Shadows (28 page)

A covert standoff. The MiGs canceled out the
American Chariot
.

The film went into the archives at Langley. After the loss of his plane in the MiG attack, President Bongo demanded two million dollars to replace the Fokker. He reluctantly accepted a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the going price of a used Fokker on a lot in Texas.

On the Ground

The war was heating up, and the FLA was going on the offensive. Rebello had recently acquired two foreign military advisers, Colonel Joao Castillo and
Captain Luis Bentavo. Castillo, a former Portuguese army colonel, was short, bald, and carried a swagger stick, a martinet of the old school. Bentavo, an ex-captain in Brazil’s special forces, was stocky and muscular. A jagged scar ran down his left cheek.

Castillo and Bentavo went with me on one of my visits to Rebello’s FLA base in Ambrizio.

Ambrizio is a small fishing village on the Atlantic about twenty miles north of Lunda. Gentle swells lap at pirogues laying on the beach next to the fishing nets splayed in the sun. The town square is lined with coconut palms shading an Evangelical church with empty teakwood pews. In the cemetery behind the church, bleached teak crosses mark the graves of three shipwrecked American seamen.

Rebello’s driver was waiting at the airstrip north of Ambrizio. We had just climbed into the jeep and driven off when two planes appeared overhead. The driver slammed on the brakes, and we scrambled out of the jeep, diving for cover. I thought the MiGs were staging a repeat performance, but when I looked up from the ditch, I saw Castillo and Bentavo standing nearby, waving at the planes, which flew off wagging their wings. Bentavo came over and told me they were Portuguese air force planes flying reconnaissance for the PMFA. He and Castillo had recognized the pilots, who were old friends, adding they wouldn’t report having seen us when they returned to Lunda.

It was becoming harder to tell friend from foe.

Rebello’s headquarters was in a former schoolhouse. He was standing in front of a map when we arrived, and after a cursory greeting, he began his briefing. He pointed to a line of green arrows on the map, which he said indicated recent FLA advances. He then moved his pointer to Lunda, the capital of Angafula. The capital was circled in red.

“Two weeks from today my forces will be in Lunda, having driven out the PMFA. Lunda is our first objective. After we have taken the capital, we will move south and capture Caxico, where the PMFA has a large base. This will give us complete control of western Angafula.”

It was a grand plan, but I noticed Castillo hadn’t reacted. The ex-colonel remained stone-faced, and Bentavo, who had crushed out his cigarette, sat staring at the ceiling. The two military men were unimpressed by the grandiose plan of the religious mystic standing in front of them.

Without commenting on his briefing, Castillo stood up and asked Rebello to take us to the FLA command post (CP). I saw that Rebello was crestfallen, because his two new advisers had dismissed his plan out of hand. We all got in his jeep and drove up to the CP.

The CP was on a knoll overlooking the Kwanza River. The sun had just gone down, and off to the south in the distance we could make out lights flickering on.
The lights marked the outskirts of Lunda. Pointing to the lights, Rebello again brought up his plan for capturing the capital. He was immediately cut off by Castillo, who berated Rebello for being naive, unrealistic, and overconfident. He told the FLA leader his forces would be lucky to advance two or three miles down the road before being cut down by the PMFA, which would have set up ambushes and planted land mines. The PMFA, with their superior force, would counterattack and probably drive the FLA into the sea.

Rebello shifted uneasily. When Castillo finished, Rebello told the colonel he had a “surprise” to show him that might change his mind and led us down a path to a clearing. A group of men in camouflage uniforms were standing around a fire. One of them stepped out to greet Rebello, who immediately introduced us to Colonel Piet, his “artillery adviser.” Colonel Piet spoke English with a Dutch accent that indicated he probably came from a country further south.

Prompted by Rebello, Colonel Piet pointed to two 105-mm howitzers under camouflage nets. The two howitzers were pointed toward Lunda, and I understood why Rebello had seemed so confident back in Ambrizio. The two 105s would provide artillery support for his march on Lunda, and even Castillo and Bentavo seemed impressed by this surprise addition to the FLA. With two 105s to back up their offensive, Rebello’s FLA might take Lunda after all.

Rebello’s plan might have succeeded, if the PMFA hadn’t come up with a “surprise” of its own. Rebello’s forces had advanced less than three kilometers toward Lunda when they suddenly came under a withering rocket barrage. In less than an hour, the heralded FLA advance to Lunda suddenly turned into a disorganized rout.

105-mm howitzers versus multiple-rocket launchers. The war was, as Alice had said, becoming “curiouser and curiouser.”

On the Sea

Before the advent of Uhuru, I had been invited by John, an English friend, and his Portuguese partner, Sebastian, to visit their tuna processing plant in Angafula on the Atlantic coast sixty miles south of Lunda. The plant was new and was equipped with modern machinery and the latest in cold storage refrigeration. After they took me on a tour of their plant, we went out on one of their fishing trawlers, sailing down the coast as far as the port of Iguano.

Six months after my visit, the PMFA attacked the “capitalist” tuna processing plant and destroyed most of the machinery. John and Sebastian escaped on the newest of their trawlers, the
Christina
, the two older trawlers, the
Pilar
and the
Santa Lucia
, following in the
Christina’s
wake. Three days later the fishing fleet
pulled into the Buwanan port of Hatapi, where, after paying hefty “landing fees” to local harbor officials, they were granted asylum.

They had been in Katapi for several weeks when John and Sebastian began to feel uneasy. The local fishermen had begun eyeing their trawlers, which were bigger and more modern than Buwanan fishing boats. The two men had wanted to sell their trawlers but were now worried that the boats would be plundered before they could find a buyer. They had heard about Uhuru through the Portuguese grapevine and came to see me in Bintang to inquire if the American embassy could use some fishing boats.

I hadn’t thought about an Uhuru maritime capability, but since some of our land offensives weren’t doing too well, I decided a sea option was worth considering. I remembered the World War Q-boats, merchant ships with concealed cannons preying on vulnerable cargo vessels. Why not armed Uhuru trawlers flying the Jolly Roger to prey on Soviet ships supplying UTIA?

Getting back to reality, John proposed offering Bongo two of the fishing trawlers, the
Pilar
and the
Santa Lucia
, in exchange for guaranteeing the security of the
Christina
. The
Christina
would be leased to an unnamed American fishing company.

It was a good plan. The two trawlers would be profitable additions to the Buwanan fishing fleet in Katapi, and with their catch, could help feed the local population and Buwanan troops. Uhuru had no maritime assets, and Angafula’s coastline and harbors presented a number of tempting targets. Soviet ships were frequently docking in Lunda with munitions and supplies for the PMFA. There were also several PMFA bases along the coast, bases vulnerable to attacks from the sea.

The
Christina
would add a new dimension to Uhuru.

When I met with Bongo, he was enthusiastic about the addition of two free trawlers to his fishing fleet and immediately gave orders to the naval commander in Bintang to ensure the security of the
Christina
.

Uhuru now had a maritime capability.

Tom Maree, known to colleagues as the “old seadog,” was already in Katapi offering training to Buwanan crews on the operation of the two new Swift boats the Buwanans had on loan to provide security for the presidential yacht, the
Anne Marie
.

Swift boats were not new to Buwana, two of them having been shipped over piecemeal to assist in the pursuit of Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary who was stirring up trouble in the Lakes Region. The Buwanans had pursued the elusive bandito for several months, until finally the two Swift boats disappeared without a trace.

The “old seadog” never got the chance to train the Buwanan crews. The officer in charge said they didn’t need any training or instructions on the maintenance of the boats and insisted Maree turn over the keys. We learned afterward that the Swifts were never used as planned to provide security for the presidential yacht. They were mostly taken out and used by Bongo’s ministers and generals for fishing excursions and chasing crocodiles. Eventually, both Swifts had to be beached for lack of maintenance.

I asked Maree to check out the
Christina
. He reported back that the trawler was in good condition and could easily be converted for use in maritime operations. He recommended bolting a gyroscopic mortar on the forward deck and acquiring a fast powerboat to provide security for the slower trawler. A Gatling gun and grenade launcher to ward off any pursuers should be installed on the power boat.

I asked Sebastian if he knew where I could get a powerboat. He knew just the place: the Lunda Yacht Club.

As the security situation in Lunda deteriorated, yacht club members put their boats up for sale. Escudos or dollars, no questions asked. Sebastian sent a message to his cousin, a member of the yacht club board of directors, advising him that two “friends” would be coming to Lunda to purchase a twin-engine powerboat. He asked his cousin to help them find what they needed.

Jack Torrance, a maritime expert, and Ernesto de Silva, his Portuguese interpreter, were provided with fake Brazilian passports for the trip to Lunda. They stashed an air-to-sea radio in the false bottom of one of their suitcases and packets of dollars and escudos in the other.

When they arrived in Lunda, they took the only available taxi to the yacht club, where Pinto’s cousin, Alonzo, was waiting in his office. Once Alonzo satisfied himself that the two men were Pinto’s bona fide friends, he went down with them to the boat slips. There were a number of powerboats for sale, from small runabouts to luxurious yachts. Torrance settled on the De
Gama
, a red-and-white Chris-Craft with twin eighty-horsepower Mercury engines. They then returned to Alonzo’s office, where they paid for the boat and signed a bill of sale. Alonzo gave them two fishing rods and a picnic basket packed with sandwiches and a bottle of Portuguese wine. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, Alonzo lifted the napkins covering the sandwiches. Two smoke grenades had been stashed on the bottom of the basket.

The new owners of the De
Gama
returned to the slip, gassed up the tanks and auxiliaries, and cast off, pointing the De
Gama
toward the outer islands. In less
than an hour, the De
Gama
was skimming alongside the barrier reef ringing the islands. Torrance throttled back the engines so Ernesto could begin trolling off the back of the boat. Torrance took out the sea-to-air radio to contact Obie’s Beechraft, which was flying surveillance for the operation. On Torrance’s second try, the pilot answered, saying he had the De
Gama
in sight and advised Torrance to swing the boat around and head north toward Matadi.

Ten minutes later the pilot radioed that he had spotted an armed patrol boat leaving Lunda harbor heading in the direction of the De
Gama
. Torrance throttled the engines forward and yelled at Ernesto to get out the smoke grenades.