LETTING GO
BY
JACKSON BOULT
This story tells of an adventure set in Africa in 1964-1965. A group of ex-soldiers undertake a delicate unofficial rescue mission for MI6.
We start in the Republic of Congo formerly the Belgian Congo, where a doctor and his family live. The Congolese Government will not allow the doctor and his family to leave the country. Somehow the doctor has contacted our government and asked for help to escape to Britain.
A rescue mission is mounted which should be a relatively straightforward task. Unfortunately things go terribly wrong, the only way out of the country is now by river and to travel to a friendly country, the French Congo.
During the journey in the French Congo certain events take place, betrayal and tragedy. One of the ex-soldiers has to make a horrendous lonely journey across countries of the French Congo and Gabon. Every day is a battle for survival, the only thing that keeps him going is his overwhelming desire for revenge.
John has no way of knowing what fate holds in store for him. As he travels by river, which takes him from one crisis to another. One particular day for some strange reason he has a sudden urge to follow a tributary which leads him in the wrong direction. Just by chance he finds an isolated village on the backwaters off the River Ogooue.
It is a tranquil place to live until the night when terrible acts are committed which devastated the villagers. This compels them to abandon the village, John is racked by a deep sense of regret and guilt which have haunted him ever since.
Then ten years later in 1975, he is involved in another mission. The task is to abduct two IRA terrorists from a house in Southern Ireland, and take them back across the border to Northern Ireland where they must face justice. Little did John realise that this mission would give him the opportunity to exact retribution from the two men that had betrayed him in Africa.
