The American Mission (20 page)

J
ULY
10, 2009

B
USU
-M
OULI

T
he mine and smelter had become Marie's obsession. Copper was money, and money was what Busu-Mouli needed if the village was to have any chance of survival. She was more skeptical than her father that Alex could deliver Consolidated Mining, no matter how sincere he might be. She understood the scale of the challenge better than her father. Consolidated Mining was an enormous operation, and it was so thoroughly intertwined with the government in Kinshasa that it was hard to tell where the one stopped and the other began.

Only money, Marie believed, could change the calculus and potentially save the village. With money, the Tsiolo clan could engage in the same kind of influence-seeking that now threatened to destroy the village. Money would also buy the weapons the villagers could use to defend themselves. The central government exercised little effective control outside the major cities. Kinshasa could cede Busu-Mouli to Consolidated Mining, but the company would still have to muster sufficient force to take control in fact as well as in law.

Marie stood facing the rock wall at the business end of the main shaft. She ran her fingers over the rough stone surface, tracing the outline of the chalcopyrite and malachite veins visible in the rock. The yellowish chalcopyrite glistened like gold as it reflected the light from the mining lamp hanging from a hook on the wood-reinforced ceiling. The malachite deposits were a smooth, deep green that spoke of copper riches reaching far back into the earth.

The men who worked at the face of the shaft did their best to follow the twisting veins of copper as they wound their way through the mountain. There was an art to it, however, and Marie had an almost intuitive feel for which path the veins would follow that her male compatriots could not match. The rock was a living thing that would whisper its secrets to you if you were open to its message.

“Slant the tunnel to the left and angle it down another ten degrees,” she finally said to the shift supervisor, a muscular twenty-two-year-old named Yves who looked like he could have been cut from stone himself.

Marie could not be absolutely confident in the guidance she had given Yves, and her instructors at the Witwatersrand School of Mining in Johannesburg would have been horrified by her methodology, but so far she had been right more often than she had been wrong. Yves and his work crew hefted their picks and prepared to attack the rock face. A pile of wicker baskets stood along the wall, ready to be filled with the raw ore and carried up to the surface. Marie clapped Yves on the shoulder and made her way up the shaft toward sunlight and fresh air. The rank air here at the deepest part of the shaft had left her slightly light-headed.

She had been underground for only about two hours and it was already early evening. Even so, the colors of the outside world seemed shockingly vivid in comparison to the muted hues of the subterranean. Marie stood at the mouth of the tunnel breathing in the sweet, clean air. She took a swallow of water from the canteen on her hip and headed
down the narrow mountain track to the smelter. Katanga was there, overseeing repairs to the furnace.

Her uncle had proven to be indispensable to the operation. He was organized, dedicated, and inspiring to the younger villagers, whose labor, freely given in support of Busu-Mouli's future, made what they were doing possible, even mildly profitable. For now, the proceeds from the sale of copper ingots were sunk back into the mine, with a small percentage diverted to support Jean-Baptiste's village guard. Eventually, the profits from the mine would be used to improve the quality of life for all of the inhabitants of the valley. If Marie had her way, that day was coming soon.

She retrieved several rolls of schematic diagrams from her office in the back room of the smelter and spread them out on a table near the rock crusher. The crusher was silent for now, as a broken furnace had created a bottleneck that was being felt back up the line of production. The crusher itself was in good working order, and Marie was pleased that Alex's design suggestions had resulted in a more reliable and efficient machine. She liked the American's mechanically inclined mind. He made things with his hands that made a difference in the real world. For Marie, that meant something.

She weighted the corners of the oversize diagrams with pieces of copper ore scavenged from the floor. Then she called for Katanga to come offer his opinion.

“I'm worried about B shaft, Uncle,” Marie said, pointing to the place on the diagram that had drawn her attention. As they had advanced into the mountain, the main tunnel had sprouted several branching side shafts that tracked different veins of copper ore. B shaft had been a problem from the beginning. The ore was of lower quality and the surrounding rock was soft and brittle. A cave-in had injured two miners three days earlier, one of them seriously, and Marie was no longer sure if B shaft was worth the cost.

“What about adding more reinforcements?”

“We can try, but there are already so many beams in place that it's difficult to move. Even so, the ceiling is unstable. If we keep digging that vein, eventually we are going to have a major cave-in. Boys will die. I'm thinking that we close down B shaft and shift the focus to C. We can keep things going at the main face as well, and we should have enough raw ore to keep us in business. Assuming, of course, that you and Mputu can get the furnace fixed.” She smiled at Katanga to show that no criticism was intended.

Katanga took no offense.

“Don't worry. A few more hours and we will be back to normal. Even with the problem with the furnace, the smelting operation is still able to stay ahead of the miners. Your American boyfriend did us a real favor in helping us to redesign the crusher.”

“He's not my boyfriend,” Marie said automatically.

“That's not what Jean-Baptiste thinks.”

“Jean-Baptiste is an arrogant—” Marie didn't finish the sentence. She and Katanga froze as the frantic clanging of a bell cut through the conversation. The village bell was reserved for emergencies. The sudden chatter from an AK-47 confirmed her worst fears. Busu-Mouli was under attack.

Since the earlier attempt by the
genocidaires
to burn down the smelter, Marie had installed a gun rack on the wall near her office. She took a Kalashnikov off the rack and slipped the heavy Zastava pistol into her belt. Katanga took an AK-47 for himself that he slung over his shoulder. He held a machine pistol in his beefy right hand. Some of the other men, including Mputu, armed themselves as well.

Marie took charge.

“Uncle, if these are
genocidaires,
they probably put in upstream and took the Lisala road. That means they will have to pass right through the village. I'll take Mputu and his sons and see if we can circle around
them on the goat track to the north. I'd like you to take the rest of the boys and guard the path along the riverfront. If they make it to the smelter and burn it down, we've lost the village whether or not we win the battle.”

Through their work on the mine together, Katanga had gotten used to taking orders from his niece.

“Very well, Marie. But remember that what you just said about the smelter applies to you as well. Without you, we are lost. Don't do anything foolish.”

“I wouldn't dream of it.”

There was another burst of automatic-rifle fire followed by the crack of aimed shots and an explosion that might have been a rocket-propelled grenade.

“Mputu,” Katanga said, turning to the village's chief mechanic. “Keep her alive.”

The mechanic nodded his acceptance of the charge. In the lamplight, beads of sweat gleamed on his bald head.

Katanga led a group of five armed men out the door and down to the river. Other than the river itself, there were only two paths leading to the smelter. Katanga's team would cover one, and Marie and Mputu would take the other. A roundabout route connected the smelter to the mining area and back to the village, but it was a lengthy path that followed the easiest terrain. A steeper, rockier goat path served as a shortcut and this was the track Marie intended to use.

Mputu insisted on leading the way, and Marie did not try to argue. To make doubly certain that he was making good on his promise to Katanga, Mputu instructed his oldest son, Kikaya, to shadow Marie and protect her with his life.

Scanning the jungle on either side, alert for danger, they moved carefully along the narrow trail until they reached the edge of the village. The sun had set and the deep twilight shadows made it hard for
Marie to get a sense of the scale of the fighting. At least two houses were burning. She could see defenders scattered in small groups returning fire that was coming from the direction of the Lisala road.

Busu-Mouli was essentially a crossroads. One road, really no more than a wide path in parts, ran east-west and led down to the river and then up through the hills around the village. The north-south axis led to the Lisala road, Busu-Mouli's primary overland connection with the outside world. To the south, the road came to a dead end on the far side of the farmland that stretched for the better part of half a mile from the last house in the village. The Chief's house was set on a small rise toward the southern end of town, but the real heart of the village was the well at the center of the crossroads.

Marie could see that small teams of villagers were spread in a loose arc at the northern end of town. Occasional bursts of gunfire from attackers hidden in the jungle kept the defenders in place, but this was not yet a determined assault.

Jean-Baptiste, surrounded by a phalanx of armed young men, had taken up a position by the well in the center of town. Marie crouched as she ran across the open ground between the jungle and the minimal cover afforded by the well. She anxiously anticipated the whine of bullets, but no shots were aimed in her direction.

“Jean-Baptiste,” she said breathlessly, when she reached his side. “Where's my father?”

“On his porch with the damn shotgun. I told him to stay inside. And what the hell are you doing here? You should have stayed with the smelter.” Baptiste was dressed in olive drab fatigues with a pistol strapped to one thigh and a machete strapped to the other. His Kalashnikov leaned carelessly against the well.

“Well, I'm here now and I've brought reinforcements. What's going on?”

“Rwandans. There's a fair number of them, but not enough it seems to take us head-on. The boys are fighting well and for now we are
holding. If we can discourage them, maybe they'll go look for an easier target.”

Marie was skeptical. Busu-Mouli had not been chosen at random. The
genocidaires
had been sent here for a purpose.

As if to confirm her suspicions, a rocket-propelled grenade flew swiftly overhead and punched a hole through another house on the far side of the square. The mud-brick-and-wattle construction simply fell over on its side. An elderly man climbed out from the rubble, calling for help. His wife, he shouted, was trapped under the corrugated tin roof. Two of Jean-Baptiste's militia ran to his aid.

“They are not going away,” Marie said insistently. “You may have surprised them, but they're going to come in after us.”

“You might be right,” Jean-Baptiste admitted. “Wait for the bastards,” he shouted to the defenders. “Don't waste your bullets on the trees. You,” he said to Marie, “get someplace safe.”

Marie, trailed by Mputu and Kikaya, ran to her father's home, where she found the Chief of the Luba sitting on a carved ceremonial stool, cradling an ancient shotgun. Three men from the village had been left there to guard their chief. Marie ran to her father and kissed him on the cheek. “Papa, go inside.”

“No, my only child. I am Chief. My people must see me as they fight for their homes. I will not cower in the kitchen like a woman. These Rwandans are womanly. They thought they would have an easy night of it. Now they have to work up the courage for an attack against men.”

Marie recognized that this was not the right moment to try to push her father's thinking on gender roles in a more progressive direction.

“I think they are about ready.”

“I think so too.”

They didn't have long to wait.

A red flare went up over the village, bathing the town in an eerie light. All along the tree line, Marie could see the white flashes from the muzzles of the attackers' Kalashnikovs. A scream of defiance from one
of the defenders served as a counterpoint, and the village guard returned fire. Some were disciplined in their use of ammunition. Others just sprayed a full magazine into the jungle. If they hit anything, it would only be by blind luck.

From the porch, Marie had a good overview of the battle and, for the moment at least, was relatively safe. Teams of Rwandan guerillas appeared from the jungle and moved toward Busu-Mouli in a leapfrog fashion, with the teams up front giving covering fire to those coming up from behind. Although the
genocidaires
were more experienced than the village guard, they were assaulting entrenched positions manned by people defending their homes and families. None of the defenders had any doubt what would happen to them if they were overrun.

Marie saw one
genocidaire
cut almost in half by a burst of fire from a machine pistol. Another collapsed when a bullet slammed through his right eye and out the back of his head. The defenders too were taking casualties. A teenage boy ran past holding a bloody shirt to his arm.

The porch was a good firing position, and when the attackers got close enough to be within range, Marie switched her AK to semiautomatic and started shooting at the guerillas. Mputu, his sons, and the three guardsmen followed suit. Not being under direct fire themselves and standing above the attackers, Marie and her kinsmen were able to keep up a withering assault. She saw at least four
genocidaires
go down almost immediately, although it was impossible for her to tell whether it was her shots that had hit home.