A Green Beret's True Story of His Jack Lawson with Sully de Fontaine

16
Tmbwfs’’’’’’’’’ (t!Xiffm
de Havilland Beaver faded to a distant purr, another noise—the
chorus of thousands of flies buzzing around the corpses—became
an almost overwhelming sound. It didn’t take long for something
dead in the Congo to attract flies and ants from miles around. They
covered white and black African dead alike for a feast that was of
biological equality.
By the looks of the smoldering buildings and the decomposition
and bloating of the bodies, Sully calculated the slaughter had taken
place about two days ago. However, Frenchy, his radioman, had
made contact with whites from this village early this morning. The
missionaries from Sona-Bata were insistent that there were still
whites alive somewhere in Inkisi or one of the surrounding villages.
Sully didn’t think the main group of rebels was in the village, but
this seasoned, thirty-three-year-old U.S. Army Special Forces lieutenant
would not trust to chance that they had all left. The rebels
were on drugs or drunk the majority of the time and Sully’s suspicion
that a few hung-over stragglers may still be here kept him on edge.
In the missionary church and attached living quarters he found a
dead Catholic priest and three sisters. The sisters lay stripped naked,
dead on the floor by the altar, where they had been repeatedly raped
and then gruesomely killed. The priest had been savagely beaten
before being hacked open, his intestines pulled from his abdomen.
Flies and ants covered him and the rest of the dead.
Sully yanked off the curtains and covered the bodies. It seemed
an almost pointless gesture among all the carnage, but he felt it was
decency of some sort for these departed souls at least until they
could be properly buried. In the priest’s quarters he found a radio
set that had been smashed to pieces. It was the only one he’d found
in the village.
The few native Africans he came upon in the huts and buildings
were cowering in any place they could hide that would give them
some sense of security from the terror they knew could revisit them
at any moment. When Sully appeared, they cried and begged him