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

Silence in Inkisi
for their lives, speaking their native Lingala language. The lucky
few, who had escaped through the cordon of rebels that had surrounded
the village before attacking, were hiding deep in the surrounding
jungle.
He could do little to comfort the ones he discovered in the buildings
other than to say in French and Lingala, “Don’t be afraid, I am
your friend. People are on their way to help you.”
He knew, though, it would be weeks before order would be restored.
He hoped his words would provide some sense of relief and
lessen the anguish and terror they had suffered. But he knew those
were empty words just the same.
Much of the village had been set on fire and the remnants of the
structures were still smoldering, set ablaze by the rebels as they left.
Entering mud huts, the church, shops and small stores stripped of
their goods, the scene was always the same: Dead bodies littered
the grounds and merchandise was strewn everywhere among the
carnage. After searching the entire village for rebels and the whites
he had come for, he knew he was alone with only the few Africans
he’d discovered in hiding.
He’d been searching now for almost an hour and moved to the
center of the village when he saw it. To the side of the main street
was the Portuguese slaver’s oxcart wheel. He walked slowly toward
it. As odd looking and as out of place as the wheel was, he remembered
it from a story he had read a few years earlier while teaching
classes on African history and geography to Special Forces troops
at the Unconventional Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
It was the Slaver’s Wheel.
For a moment Sully was in awe of the history at which he stared.
The sight of the wheel gave him goose bumps and a cold chill
despite the heat in this jungle village. There it stood, the monument
to the victors of that battle for freedom generations ago.
The thought suddenly struck him that the village founders would
weep again if they could see their offspring now around the Slaver’s
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