FINALLY MAJOR JOHN RANDAL BEGAN READING THE DOCUMENTS inside the briefcase. They told a strange and fascinating tale. When he finished with a page, he handed it to Captain Terry “Zorro” Stone, who was reclining on the other lounger. As the Commandos read, the sensation of being transported into the great unknown on a desperate venture grew.
The island protectorate of Rio Bonita was first claimed by a Spanish navigator in 1473. Spain sent settlers to the island, named after the spectacularly beautiful river that ran through it and emptied into a tiny harbor they called San Pedro. But most of the settlers died of scarlet fever.
In 1785 Rio Bonita was ceded to Portugal for reasons not made clear. The Portuguese brought in more settlers, set up cacao plantations, and leased timber concessions. Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards and Portuguese, the only inhabitants of the island had been a tribe of playful pygmies who hunted in the mountainous triple-canopy jungle that covered the western third of the island and frolicked on the white sandy beaches on the eastern side.
Being hunters, not gatherers, the pygmies refused to work for the Portuguese on the cacao plantations or to harvest timber. Manual laborers, primarily from the East African Bone tribe, were imported to supply the workforce. These new laborers were housed in conditions approaching those in the most unspeakable prison camps and were treated as virtual slaves. The Bones, a tribe with skeletons in their closet so to speak, eventually took culinary matters into their own hands. They ate pygmy.
The result was a greatly diminished pygmy population to the extent the little people became well-nigh extinct except in the isolated western third of the island, which was cut off by the breathtaking Rio Bonita River. Reports that some highly antisocial pygmies inhabited the western bank of the river went unsubstantiated because no one who crossed it ever came back alive to confirm the sightings. Equally uncorroborated were lurid accounts that the surviving pygmies were headhunters who had turned into cannibals themselves.
Emissaries out from Lisbon made an inspection tour of Rio Bonita in 1805. They reported to the Portuguese Colonial Department there were not enough “white women” on the island for the Portuguese and few remaining Spanish men who had survived the scarlet fever epidemic. Miscegenation had occurred, resulting in a high number of mulatto children. It was not the kind of report an expansionist colonial European country like Portugal wanted to acknowledge, much less publicize.
What to do? Being a practical-minded people, the Portuguese simply introduced a policy that they had used from time to time in other colonies, protectorates, and territories around the globe—with varying degrees of success. They shipped every white woman in Portugal who had been convicted of prostitution to Rio Bonita straightaway. Problem solved. Well, almost.
There was a finite number of hookers in Portugal. Their sudden departure to darkest Africa created an outcry from the sporting element of the male citizenry. To quiet the local unrest and simultaneously resolve the harlot supply-and-demand problem, Portugal adopted an entrepreneurial approach.
The government advertised throughout Europe for “white prostitutes who would like to resettle on Rio Bonita, all travel expenses paid, and become honest women.” To everyone’s delight, the first group of volunteer strumpets who traveled out to the island actually liked the place and wrote letters home to that affect. Some of their girlfriends visited, liked what they saw, and in short order there were plenty of European women to go around. “Do you think SIS or NID is making this up?” Captain Terry “Zorro” Stone demanded incredulously. “This is outrageous!”
“Why would they?” Major John Randal said, passing him another page. “Didn’t England stock Australia with convicts? What’s the difference?”
“Excellent point,” Captain Stone said going back to his reading. “The original Australian settlers used to shoot aborigines for sport. Now that I think about it, the Portuguese may have had the superior plan.”
On Rio Bonita the terrain consisted of two-thirds flat, lush cacao plantations. The timber concessions were mostly closed down. Nearly all the hardwood had been harvested long ago and the land converted into more cacao plantations. The other one-third of the terrain was the unsettled triple-canopy jungle, mountainous country—inhabited by headhunter pygmies, possibly cannibals—previously mentioned.
The climate was mild, if a tad humid. The sun shone virtually 365 days per year. There was only one large town, and it was located around its namesake, the tiny harbor San Pedro.
Approximately three thousand Europeans, primarily Portuguese plus a few Spaniards, lived in San Pedro. The major industry besides the cacoa trade was tourism from West Africa, primarily from visitors coming over from the British Gold Coast or the French colonies adjoining it to party in the bars lining the harbor. The British and French colonists liked to stay at the small, quaint hotels in San Pedro because of their European flavor. The architecture, an eye-pleasing Spanish-Portuguese-Tuscany blend, gave San Pedro a mellow ambience.
Most tourists arrived in San Pedro by private yacht, the occasional touring steamer, the flying boat that serviced West Africa biweekly, or the daily ferry from Accra, eighteen nautical miles away on the Gold Coast. It was a common event for private boats and fishing craft of various sizes to call on San Pedro at any hour of the night or day.
An immigration official was stationed in the port of San Pedro. His primary responsibility was not immigration, however, of which there was very little; it was to collect docking fees from the tourist steamers and merchant ships. Docking fees were a major source of revenue for the port. Even so, the inspector was on duty only during the daylight hours. If a ship came in at night he collected her docking fee the next day.
The system was very casual. No real attempt was made to inspect passports or to log the comings and goings that took place round the clock. What would be the point?
Rio Bonita did not have an army, a navy, or an air force. But the protectorate did station a fifty-man Defense Force in small outposts dotted along the length of the west bank, non-pygmy side of the Rio Bonita on anti-headhunter patrol. Though the force did not see much action, successive governors-general of Rio Bonita felt it was better to be safe than sorry; you just never knew.
A single Defense Force antiaircraft battery of three Oerlikon 20-millimeter towed guns guarded the Port of San Pedro. The air-defense weapons could also serve in the ground-defense role in the event of an amphibious assault from the sea, though none was anticipated. Mainly, the cannons were used for ceremonial purposes.
The San Pedro Police Department was ten men strong. There were no other military, paramilitary, or police forces on the island except for a few individual police constables in one-man posts dotted around the eastern, civilized two-thirds of the island to handle domestic disputes.
Somewhere between 180 and 200 German and Italian sailors from the Ems, Egadi, and Giove were interned on their ships in San Pedro Harbor for the duration. Under international law, they were not armed. Theoretically, some authority in Rio Bonita had disarmed them, but exactly which one was not clear.
Not to worry, the interned sailors were purported to be civilian merchant marine types who did not pose any threat. But then again, they were supposed to be idly vegetating on the beach until the war was over, not operating a highly effective clandestine naval intelligence radio station.
Aerial photos showed the three Axis ships anchored bow and stern. All three were permanently moored, their anchors encased in concrete as stipulated by international mandate. In the photos, the ships had their boarding ladders down, presumably so water taxis could ferry their crew to and from the shore at all hours.
Knowledgeable sources reported that many of the Italian sailors were broke most of the time because Italy had to send money to them via neutral Lisbon, which took a long, long while to accomplish. Generally the men had already spent all of their pay before it arrived, leaving them in a vicious never-ending cycle of debt. The intelligence report stated “some of the Italian crew members are barely able to sustain themselves.”
The captains of the Egadi and Giove had jumped ship, moved ashore, and taken up residence with local women. The two ship’s captains were clearly no longer interested in the health or welfare of their sailors. In fact, the report claimed they virtually never set foot on board their ships.
Discipline on board the Italian flagged ships was rated nonexistent, morale low. The crews had stripped their two vessels of all their brass fittings—along with anything else of commercial value—and sold them at fire-sale prices to buy food and supplies. Some of the Eyetie sailors had been forced to take part-time, menial jobs in San Pedro in order to earn enough money simply to eat. The locals generally looked down on the Italian seamen and treated them as second-class citizens. Only the Bones were lower on the social pecking order.
On the German ship Ems it was a different story. Captain Wolf Steiner was a practicing martinet. The aerial photos showed his men standing inspection, chipping paint, mopping, splicing ropes, making repairs, and working like galley slaves. She was clearly still operating as a warship with a purpose, and her skipper was not going to tolerate any decline in efficiency. If there was going to be a problem Major John Randal knew it was going to happen on the Ems.
After he had completed reading the intelligence dossier, Major Randal discovered a small pamphlet that Major Lawrence “Larry” Grand had thoughtfully included. The title was “How to Use High Explosives.” A handwritten note scrawled on the margin said, “Our brief is to set Europe, not Africa, ‘ablaze.’ Thought you might find this material helpful. Bon Voyage—G.”
He handed the booklet to Captain Terry “Zorro” Stone without comment.
“We are never going to live that lighthouse down,” the movie-star-handsome cavalry officer observed ruefully. “He makes a good point, though. We need to be very stealthy. I for one would not want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary on that little slice of tropical island hell.”
“Yes, we do,” Major Randal said. “Have any thoughts on how we’re going to pull this off?”
“I’ve got to admit I’m baffled, old stick. Do you?”
“Not a clue. I brought you along under the pretense of being my operations officer. Come up with a plan, Captain.”
“Boarding is one thing; getting three ships out of the harbor is something else altogether. I shall need to give this some serious thought.”
“Well, I’m going to get some shut-eye. Wake me up when you have one.”
“John, I’m a Life Guardsman. We’re not known for being brainy, remember?”
“How could I forget?”
“One thing is for sure, though.”
“What’s that?”
“This trip is not shaping up boring.”
“Try to come up with a plan.”
Eventually the big Boeing B-314 Clipper splashed down at Accra, Gold Coast Colony. Normally it did not land there. The flight plan had been diverted to deliver Major John Randal and Captain Terry “Zorro” Stone to their destination. If there was such a thing as being in the middle of nowhere, they had just plopped down into it. The Gold Coast was where people were sent when whoever it was that assigned them there could not think of anyplace worse to maroon them in.
A tanned, extremely fit man in his mid-thirties boarded the plane and was immediately escorted to compartment No. 6 by the magnificent Clipper Girl, Red.
“Ahoy, anyone home?” he called as he poked his sun-bronzed bald pate through the curtain. “Don’t shoot, men. I am not hostile.”
“Who might you be?” asked Major Randal.
“A friend.”
“In that case,” Captain Stone ordered, “advance, friend, and be recognized.”
Slipping into the small compartment, the man in the khaki bush jacket carefully shut the curtains and explained in a stage whisper, “Our mutual acquaintance in London, a man who generally wears a red carnation in his lapel, asked me to meet your plane. My orders are to show you this as my first official act of business.” He produced a sealed envelope from his jacket with one hand while conjuring a knife, seemingly out of thin air, with the other. There was a metallic “click” as the blade switched open at the touch of a concealed button.
The bald man watched discreetly to see if the two young officers were suitably impressed as he slit the envelope open with the razor-sharp blade. They were. The sleight of hand with the knife was a genuine attention getter.
Using the tips of his fingers he gingerly extracted a letter written on flimsy paper from the envelope, opened it, and held it up so the two could read it but he could not see its contents. The Raiding Forces officers read: “MISSION APPROVED BY PRIME MINISTER STOP GOOD HUNTING STOP SIGNED G STOP”
“Got it?” Baldie asked. “Make sure you do before you say so.”
“Got it,” said a stone-faced Major Randal.
The switchblade clicked shut, vanished, and a lighter appeared in its place. Baldie flipped it open with one hand, flicked the wheel, then touched the flame to the corner of the flimsy message. “Poof”—it disappeared in a bright white flash without leaving a trace of ash.
“A good thing Red did not see you do that,” Captain Stone opined.
“Yeah,” Major Randal agreed. “You’re probably not supposed to ignite stuff on an airplane.”
“Gentlemen, if you will follow me.”
They did with alacrity.