African Dragon (8 page)

15.

Jon Cohen, Pete McCoy, Ray Jensen and Ryan O’Conner were sitting in the large open wooden boat. According to their fish-finder, they were in sixty-five feet of water, over a rocky bottom.

“Figure your weights about the same as saltwater,” said Jon, referring to buoyancy weights divers used to remain “neutral” underwater. “The lake water is so hard it should be pretty close.” The team already had their BCD vests and fins on, and were just adding weights to the vest pockets of the BCDs to adjust their buoyancy. They were wearing “two millimeter shorties,” short-sleeve wet suits designed for warmer water.

McCoy checked his o-ring and attached his tank to his regulator. “I’m looking forward to getting wet,” he said with a smile. “Man, I haven’t been underwater in almost two months—that might be a record in the last six years.”

“Yeah, I hear ya’,” said Jensen. “And I can’t even remember the last time I was diving just for fun.”

Jon laughed. “Hey man! This isn’t for fun! We’re
working
.” He threw a very large net attached to a wooden pole at Jensen. “Now catch me some fish!” Ray laughed and caught the net.

“Aye, aye,Skipper!” he said sarcastically, and snapped a salute.

The four of them finished getting ready, and then made sure their anchor was secure at the bottom of the lake. Once they were secured, they pulled their tanks on, held their hands over their masks, and did a giant stride entry off the back of the boat. They descended slowly, pleasantly surprised by the numbers of fish. As they descended, a school of
Cyprichromis leptosoma
, commonly called “Cyps,” engulfed them. The small fish, about the size of sardines, numbered in the thousands. While the females were a fairly plain-looking grayish-brown, the males glowed blue orange and yellow and flashed their fins at the females, trying to find mates.

At first, the divers just stopped and watched as the thousands of fish swamed all around them. They appeared to go on forever, in a giant moving wall that changed shape as the fish moved together through the water. It was McCoy who was the first to remember they were supposed to be
catching
the fish. He laughed underwater as he opened his net and watched as dozens of fish swam right into it.

“Not the brightest creatures on the planet,” he thought to himself as they swam right into his giant net. The others saw what he was doing and opened their nets to allow the fish to swim right into them. They had thought it would take hours to catch fish—instead, their nets were full of hundreds of fish and they hadn’t been in the water for five minutes. Jon gave a “thumbs-up” signal to ascend, and the group closed off their nets and began surfacing. Jon broke the surface first and swam to the boat, where he took off his tank while still in the water and gave it to McCoy to hold. He climbed aboard and dumped his net full of fish into one of the large drums of water on the boat. The others handed up their nets one at a time until the drum was full of Cyps, oblivious to being inside a container, and still trying to mate.

Jon stepped back into the water, pulled his tank back on and told the others to ignore the fish until they got to the bottom. He was curious about the lake’s bottom and what types of life he would find down there. They descended again, the Cyps now gone from their location, and dropped slowly towards the bottom. A few larger fish swam by, obviously predators by their large mouths, but the deeper part of the water column seemed “calmer.”

When they reached the bottom, they adjusted their buoyancy until they were all neutral, and slowly swam a large circle under their boat. The bottom was sand and rocks, with some sponges, snails, crabs and an occasional eel. They stopped when they reached a large sand pyramid where a pair of fish was doing their courtship dance. The four divers watched for almost five full minutes as the male flashed his beautiful colors and put on quite a show for his female, who eventually began laying eggs. She picked them up in her mouth as he fertilized them. Instead of having the same crude thoughts that they had made in Langley, now they watched in awe at one of nature’s marvels. The female would hold her brood in her mouth for almost three weeks, not eating in that time period in order to give her young a chance at life. It was pretty amazing to watch.

Jon finally signaled the group to move on, and they were fortunate enough to come upon a group of Frontosas. “Fronts,” as they were called in the hobby, were known for the large nuchal hump on top of their heads. They were a light bodied fish with five wide dark purple stripes. Their faces and long ventral fins were a bright powder blue. At over a foot long and half as high, they were powerful fish, although very slow moving unless startled. They were most active at dawn and dusk, when they tended to feed on the large schools of Cyprichromis. Having just eaten, they were now being lazy on the bottom, watching the divers as they approached.

Jon signaled the others to prepare their nets, and they slowly moved around the colony of fish. Frontosas didn’t live in large schools, but rather small colonies. The divers circled around the fish, as if practicing an ambush, and then very slowly opened their nets. The large fish could easily have scattered and out-swam the divers, but they had never seen humans before and naively watched as the men approached and opened the large nets. By the time the “fight or flight” mechanism in their tiny brains triggered the “swim like hell” signal, they were already inside the nets. The divers surfaced slowly and repeated the process of loading the fish into the drums.

The Fronts were so big that they filled the other two drums. The group called it a day and stripped off their wetsuits to warm up in the late morning sun.

“I tell ya’ man, I could get used to this,” said McCoy, lying back on the side bench of the boat to warm up.

“A whole new way to fish,” said Jensen with a laugh. “I think it’s cheatin’.”

They enjoyed another thirty minutes of relaXun-jung conversation and then headed for the fish farm, feeling like real fish farmers.

16.

Shen Xun-jun was drinking a cup of hot tea, missing China, as he sat in a small chair watching a few hundred soldiers attack straw dummies with bayonets. The PAC soldiers had a warrior spirit, and appeared to have a good attitude so far in training, but nonetheless, they were terrible marksmen. The only thing that kept Shen Xun-jun from feeling totally despondent was the possibility that the DRC soldiers couldn’t shoot any better than his own. In any case, at least
his
soldiers would have Chinese machine guns. At the very least, they could “spray and pray” when they got close enough to the enemy.

As he sat watching the Africans mercilessly attack bags of straw, Major Wu Liling approached him and saluted. The general returned the salute and grunted from his seat.

“I have received word on the heavy shipment, General,” said Shang Xiao Wu.

The “heavy shipment” was a delivery of high explosives, anti-tank weapons, RPGs, and heavy machine guns they had been waiting for. Before they could make a move against the capital, they would have to be prepared to take on armor. While the DRC owned very few operable tanks or armored personnel carriers, even a few was too many when you had poorly trained infantry and no air or artillery support.

“And what is the status, Mr. Wu?” asked the general.

“It is being flown in, Shao Jiang. Beijing was concerned about transporting it by ship through the port city of Banana for fear of the shipment being stolen or discovered along the long rail route to our camp. Instead, the shipment will arrive in two large transport aircraft.”

“They are flying into Lubumbashi?” asked Shen Xun-jun, surprised that they would risk such a shipment to the DRC’s largest airport.

“No, sir. They are flying
here
.”

The general didn’t understand for a moment. “
Here
? They are going to try and land
here
?”

“Yes, sir. We have been instructed to provide an adequate landing strip here at the compound. We have one week.”

They stared at each other. Shen Xun-jun was dumbstruck. Two large military transports heavily loaded with cargo of that magnitude would need a large runway. They had no equipment to clear the land and make a runway—this in a part of the country that didn’t even have a real road.

Shen Xun-jun stood up and put his hands on his hips, his usual pose when he was very serious. He looked back at his colonel. “We built the great wall. We can build a flat piece of dirt. Assemble the entire camp on the parade ground. Cancel whatever else is planned for the week.”

The colonel snapped a salute and ran off to inform his sergeant major, the “liu ji shi guan” of the change in plans. Shen Xun-jun finished his tea and lit a cigarette. He felt cursed. Perhaps he would feel better when his heavy weapons arrived.

By the time the general had finished his cigarette, the camp was in total chaos. Thousands of PAC soldiers were trying to assemble at the same time on the parade ground, with only nine Chinese officers there to organize them. The handful of Africans that had been made “sergeants,” designated by a white star with crossed rifles on their shoulders, tried desperately to get their platoons into neat rows, but it was a mess.

Shen Xun-jun watched, disgusted, and lit a second cigarette. One company of Chinese infantry could annihilate this whole army. He shook his head and smoked, trying not to listen to the screaming of his officers. When he finished the second cigarette, he walked to the front of the assembled men. There were almost six thousand men now assembled at the open end of the camp. While the rows and spacing were not to his standards, at least they had finally shut up.

The general stood, hand on his hips, and screamed a salutation to his army. “People’s Army of the Congo!” His colonel, speaking through a megaphone, translated into French. When he did, the six thousand men began cheering. (It seemed like the right thing to do.) “Our army grows stronger every day!” After translation, this was also met with a great cheer. “We have great weapons coming to defeat the worthless regime that is destroying your country.” Another cheer. “We have two planes coming in seven days, and you will make a road for them to land on.” No cheering, just confusion. Many of them had never seen a plane up close.

Shen Xun-jun walked back and forth, very agitated. “Tonight, we will have a great feast to celebrate. And then tomorrow we will begin working. Anyone who works on this road will get double rations. That includes your families. They may work as well. We need lots of workers.” This translation took a few minutes to sink in. One of the Africans screamed out that they could bring their families to work, and they would all get double rations—this led to the loudest cheer yet. Shen Xun-jun grunted. Perhaps this would work after all.

Shen Xun-jun stormed off the parade ground to his cabin to pick the best location for the airstrip. The ground was fairly flat around the camp, which was good, but it was also covered with large rocks, stands of trees and underbrush that would all have to be cleared. He walked into the large cabin that housed himself and all of his officers, and sat at a large table across from Nigel Ufume.

17.

Jon and his dive team chugged back to the fish farm wearing big smiles. Their first day of fishing had proven to be very successful, and they had thoroughly enjoyed the dive. As they slowly pulled in next to the rickety wooden dock by Fish Central, a few of the others walked out to meet them. Most of the team was sitting around the fire eating lunch together.

Eric Hodges and Earl Jones, the two marine recondos, helped secure the boat and tie it off.

“So how was it?” asked Hodges. “See any crocs?”

Jon laughed. “No, man, no crocs. But we caught a ton of fish. We might actually have a good little business going here.”

They bantered back and forth for a while, and then began the process of unloading the live fish. The Canadians that had run the farm before them had devised an ingenious way of unloading the fish without having to remove the fifty-gallon drums from the boat. At almost nine pounds per gallon, a fifty-gallon drum was pretty darn heavy when it was full of water and fish. Instead of unloading the drum, a large open pipe was extended from the “fish corral” to the boat. The pipe, or half-pipe, really, was full of water. The men merely re-netted the fish, dropped them into the half pipe, and let them swim to the large holding tub at the other end. Any fish that were reluctant to move along the pipe were merely “shooed” along by hand. In less than an hour, all three drums were emptied of fish, drained, and then refilled with fresh lake water for the next day.

Jon was supervising the men when two boats paddled into the dock. One small canoe was manned by a single fisherman; the other older man had brought his son with him. As they tied to the dock, they began speaking in French to Jon, who began waving frantically to Julia to come and translate. She was sitting with Chris Cascaes and the others back at the campfire.

The men pulled up large nets that were full of live fish, being towed behind their canoes, and began emptying the fish into the half pipe. They had obviously done this many times before with the old Canadian crew that was here before. They were finishing up when Julia arrived with Cascaes. She greeted them, and received giant smiles and two men speaking at once, obviously excited to see the woman who spoke French again. They chatted for a while and then the men waved and said goodbye, rowing off towards Buwali again.

Julia looked over at Jon and said, “Well, bwana, looks like you are officially a fisherman.”

“The drivers from Kalemie will be here in another day or two to transport the fish to Luano Airport,” said Cascaes. “Good job. You look like you’ve been doing this for years, which is exactly what we were hoping for.”

Jon thanked him and told him a little bit about the dive, and then the four divers unloaded and cleaned off their gear. They brought the tanks back to the compressor at Fish Central to be refilled for tomorrow’s dive. Cascaes told Julia to get in the dive boat. He wanted to take a quick scout up north towards Buwali to see what the coast looked like. Jensen offered to drive the boat again, but Chris told him to finish up here, and he’d be fine.

Julia hopped in and cleared the lines while Chris cranked up the outboard. They chugged off out into the lake turning north. Chris stood at the center console of the open boat and Julia walked up behind him. When they were out of sight of the fish farm, she put her arms around his waist and rested her head against him. Neither of them spoke for a while as they enjoyed each other’s company and beautiful scenery of the giant lake. The water was smooth and there was barely a breeze.

“Where are we going?” Julia finally asked.

“Nowhere,” said Chris, smiling, as he turned the throttle down to its lowest speed and turned the boat out towards open water. He turned around and started doing what he had wanted to do since arriving in Africa a few days earlier. Julia was just as anxious as he was, and it wasn’t more than a minute before both sets of clothes were on the floor of the boat, beneath the bench seat where they were entwined. The rocking of the boat was not from the waves.