Vortex

by Larry Bond

  Masters’s voice faded, and Craig suddenly felt hollow and a little dizzy,

  Him? In charge of a combined operation? My God, they were offering him the equivalent to a corps command-no, better-a unified command. He’d be leading a mix of U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force units, plus those of at least one other nation, into almost certain combat on the other side of the ocean.. - .

  He suddenly realized he was woolgathering, and that it wasn’t a good idea to play space cadet in front of the Joint Chiefs. Might adversely affect his chance of promotion, he silently joked, and he realized he was a little euphoric.

  “.. . amphibious operation so a Marine should be in overall command. You have a reputation for aggressiveness and energy, and you’ll need every bit of it. The President is planning to go on television tomorrow night, so we’ll be committed from the start. You can expect a lot of press attention, Jerry, and we need good press. “

  Masters leaned toward him.

  “We know you can fight. Can you handle the rest of the job? We’re the only ones who know you’ve been tapped for overall command. ” The commandant

  nodded to the men seated around the table.

  “If you turn down the top slot, you’ll still take the Second MEF overseas. We’d be disappointed, though, because we think you’re the best man for the job.

  “This isn’t an order, it’s a request. Will you take command?”

  Not an order, Craig thought. The big ones never are. They always give you a chance to back out, with honor. Of course, backing out would mean he could kiss any further promotion good-bye. He wouldn’t stand a chance at taking the top slot after Wcs retired. The theory was sound, though. Some men would find it easier to risk losing a promotion than a whole war.

  Craig sat quietly for no more than a second. He tried to think objectively, to weigh his own strengths and limitations dispassionately.

  But he already knew his answer. It was impossible for him to say no.

  The flight back seemed even shorter than the trip north. Strapped into the Hornet rear seat, he could barely open the briefing book they’d given him. Nevertheless, what he saw as he leafed through summaries of his force structure and the latest intelligence strengthened his original belief that he could do the job. 6 .

  Then he got to the thick annex labeled “Political Considerations.” For the first time since receiving his orders, Lt. Gen. Jerry Craig began to have doubts.

  NOVEMBER 15-HEADQUARTERS, 3 COMMANDO BRIGADE, ROYAL MARINES,

  DEVON PORT

  ENGLAND

  Brig. Neil Pascoe was sound asleep when his bedside command phone rang.

  It trilled loudly six times before his hand fumbled past the nightstand lamp and found the receiver.

  “Yes. What the bloody bell is it?”

  The brigade’s duty officer sounded properly contrite.

  “Major General

  Vaughn on the line, sir. “

  Pascoe came fully awake instantly. The commander of

  Great Britain’s Commando Forces wasn’t known for calling his subordinates without good reason. Most especially not at half past two in the morning.

  The line hummed and clicked.

  “Pascoe?”

  “Yes, sir. “

  Vaughn came right to the point.

  “I’m afraid events in South Africa have taken rather a nasty turn for the worse. I’ve just spoken with the PM, and he’s asked us to come to seventy two hours’ notice to move.”

  CNN MORNING WATCH

  The reporter stood in front of the main gate to the U.S. Marine Base at

  Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Behind him, a small crowd milled outside the base-workers entering or leaving, well-wishers waving small American flags, curiosity seekers, and a thin scattering of fringe-group protestors with signs. A mixed force of Marine MPs and North Carolina state troopers kept the two tiny groups apart-skinheads and KKK supporters to one side, leftists and aging Spartacus Youth League members to the other.

  Green-painted trucks lumbered in and out of the gate, mixing with civilian cars and semitrailers. It made a picturesque background for his narrative.

  “.. . catapulted into furious action by the events of the last forty-eight hours. Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, home of the Second

  Marine Expeditionary Force, has erupted as the Marines prepare to embark on every available Navy hull and on several commercial vessels chartered by the Military Sealift Command. The container ship Gu~f Galaxy and several bulk cargo carriers are only the first of many that will be needed to carry the Marines and their equipment across the Atlantic to

  South Africa.

  “Ships are loading at Navy and commercial ports all along America’s

  Atlantic coast, and overseas in Southampton, England, as the Royal

  Marines embark as well.”

  The image cut away to an aerial view of Wilmington. It was normally busy with merchant traffic and warships bound

  for the shipyard or for the naval base there. Now it was choked with traffic, with dozens of ships literally filling the marked channels leading in and out of the busy waterway.

  The camera zoomed in on the Navy base itself, showing cluttered gray ships pulled up to several piers, all the centers of frantic activity.

  “These Navy ships will carry what official sources describe as ‘the leading elements of the Allied peacekeeping force.”

  “Other Marines we’ve talked to used the term ‘assault echelon. “

  CHAPTER

  _____25

  Thunderhead

  NOVEMBER 18-ADVANCE HEADQUARTERS, CUBAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, LOUIS

  TRICHARDT AIR BASE, SOUTH AFRICA

  The South African air base showed all the signs of fierce resistance and thorough demolition. Mile-long concrete runways were peppered with craters torn and gouged by heavy artillery fire. The control tower, hangars, and storehouses were all pounded into burnt-out masses of scorched aluminum, twisted steel girders, and broken shards of brick, concrete, and rock.

  Hanging over everything was the sickening, pungent tang of death, decay, and thousands of gallons of jet fuel poured out and left to evaporate or go up in flames.

  Louis Trichardt Air Base had died an ugly and lingering death. But now its new owners were hard at work resurrecting the freshly captured corpse.

  Four six-wheeled vehicles were parked at various points along the main runway, each mounting four “Romb” surface to-air missiles. NATO called them SA-8A Geckos. An acquisition radar mounted on each vehicle scanned the skies

  above for any indication of an incoming air raid. The SAM battery had a conventional backup-eight towed 23mm antiaircraft cannon spaced at regular intervals along the rest of the airfield perimeter. Their long, twin gun barrels pointed toward the sky, ready to throw a fiery curtain of high-explosive rounds at any attacking plane.

  Behind this protective screen of SAMs and automatic weapons, teams of

  Cuban combat engineers supervised sweating gangs of black South African laborers filling in craters and clearing away wreckage by hand-volunteers” in the service of their own liberation. Other blacks were busy carting off the last few dead Afrikaners for disposal in a mass grave beside the main runway.

  Gen. Antonio Vega watched the blacks working with a practiced eye, a slight, worried frown on his stern, narrow face. There were fewer genuine volunteers than he’d hoped for. His political officers and ANC liaisons blamed the dearth of willing labor on civilian casualties caused by artillery and air bombardments directed against SADF positions inside the black townships surrounding Louis Trichardt.

  Well, perhaps that was so. The Cuban general shrugged. Did these South

  African blacks expect to win freedom and a proper political structure without loss? If so, they would be bitterly disappointed. Wars and revolutions were always brutal and bloody affairs, he thought. And he should know. He’d fought through enough of both during more than thirty years of service to Fidel Castro and his people.
/>   Some of the ANC officers assigned to him reported that a few of their people believed the Cubans to be nearly as racist as the Afrikaners they displaced. And why? Simply because the army of liberation needed their strong backs and unskilled hands. Vega scowled. Racism! What nonsense.

  Why, he had black Cuban officers on his own staff. Brave and competent men-every one of them.

  As for the charge that he used South African blacks only for manual labor, what of it? Hadn’t Karl Marx himself said it best?

  “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

  He dismissed the problem from his mind. Let the rear-area commissars worry about such matters. He had a war to fight and win.

  Vega turned to the stout, mustachioed colonel of engineers waiting silently beside him.

  “Well, Luis? How soon before our planes can land here?”

  “Twenty-four hours, Comrade General.” The colonel sounded certain-always a safe tone to use around Vega.

  “My heavy equipment should arrive before sundown, and when it does…” He waved away the waist-high piles of debris still littering the runways as though they were nothing more than dust before a broom.

  Vega patted him on the shoulder and glanced at the shorter, thinner Air

  Force officer attached to his personal staff.

  “You hear that, Rico.

  Twenty-four hours. That’s good news, eh?”

  “Yes, sir. ” The Air Force major pointed toward the sweating work crews.

  “Once they’ve got the main runway cleared, we can start flying in ground elements of the brigade. And once they’re here, we’ll have this base back in full operation within half a day.”

  Vega nodded his understanding. Cuban forward air-base operations were organized around special brigades made up of all the skilled troops needed to keep jet aircraft flying and combat ready-air traffic controllers, mechanics, armament and fueling specialists, planning staff, and pilots.

  Even more important, Cuba’s fighters and transport aircraft, like all Soviet-made planes, were able to use captured NATO rearming, refueling, and maintenance equipment. And the South Africans used NATO standard gear.

  How thoughtful of them, Vega mused.

  He stared beyond the airfield toward the multi lane highway running south.

  South toward the vital road junction and minerals complex at Pietersburg, one hundred and twenty kilometers away. And south toward the enemy capital of Pretoria, two hundred and eighty kilometers beyond Pietersburg. A hint of yellowish dust and gray-white smoke on the horizon marked the position of his First Brigade Tactical Grouptanks, armored cars, and APCs driving steadily forward despite slowly stiffening Afrikaner resistance.

  Vega allowed himself a short moment of self-congratulation. Capturing this air base would breathe new life and vigor into this portion of his grand offensive. Urgently needed supplies and spare parts could be flown in with ease instead of being trucked south from Zimbabwe over hundreds of kilometers of dangerous road. Even better, MiG fighters and fighter bombers based here would be only a few short minutes’ flying time from the battlefront-drastically increasing their time on station and the number of missions they could fly as they hunted for Afrikaner targets on the ground and in the air.

  It all added up to one thing: Pretoria was going to have to commit an ever-increasing number of its own troops to this front. Troops that would have to be stripped from other parts of South Africa.

  Vega smiled grimly. Karl Vorster and his generals were about to learn another painful lesson in logistics, careful planning, applied air power, and deft footwork.

  Abruptly the Cuban general turned on his heel and headed back to his command vehicle. Small victories were worth gloating over only if they brought total victory in sight. Time to look at the big picture.

  FIRST BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP, NEAR BANDELIERKOP, SOUTH AFRICA

  More than twenty wheeled and tracked Cuban armored vehicles rumbled across the Transvaal countryside-smashing through barbed-wire fences meant to pen in cattle, flattening fields of tall grass, and grinding new-planted wheat and corn into the damp earth. No revealing plumes of dust rose today to mark their passage. A late-spring storm had come and gone earlier in the morning-tearing out of the east in a drumbeat barrage of wind-tossed rain and thunder.

  Now a barrage of human making hammered the veld.

  Whaamm! Dirt founmined high into the air two hundred meters ahead of the advancing Cuban column, and newly promoted Maj. Victor Mares ducked behind the steel hatch cover of his BTR-60. He clicked the transmit button on his radio mike.

  “Any sign of that OP, Lieutenant?”

  “Not yet, Comrade Major.” The voice of the advance guard’s scout commander crackled through his earphones.

  Mares ducked and swore as another South African shell ploughed into the fields off to the left. Closer this time. Steel splinters whined overhead. The damned Afrikaners had to have somebody with a radio and a map guiding their fire. But where?

  “We may have found it, Major!” Excitement made the scout lieutenant sound even younger than he was.

  “We’re closing on a stone farmhouse about three kilometers ahead of your position. Will investigate.”

  Mares let the mike fall free to dangle on a cord around his neck and raised his binoculars. Low hills. Dark, cloudy sky. Magnified views of vehicles only a few score meters ahead. The sky again. Curse it, the

  BTR’s rocking and rolling motion made it almost impossible to focus on anything for more than a fraction of a second. He braced himself and tried to ride with the vehicle as though it were a bucking bronco like those he’d seen in American cowboy movies aired on the officially forbidden and periodically jammed TV Marti.

  He steadied his binoculars and looked again. Yes, that was better. The tiny image of a whitewashed, gabled farmhouse leapt into view. Mares scanned left and then back right. The high cylindrical shape of a grain silo rose behind the farmhouse. Two separate barns were set off to one side, surrounded by wire enclosures for cattle or other animals. A row of tall trees planted for shade and as a windbreak lined the eastern edge of the Afrikaner farm. A tidy little place, he thought. Much more prosperous looking than the agricultural cooperatives and collectives back home in Cuba.

  He lowered his binoculars a fraction, looking for the squat, four-wheeled shapes of his recon platoon’s BRDM-2 scout cars. They were about five hundred meters from the farmhouse, spread out in a rough wedge formation and moving fast. Maybe too fast.

  After all, that farm might house more than just a South

  African artillery OP. Its stout stone walls and barns would make a good defensive strongpoint for troops assigned to hold this sector. Too good for any sensible South African commander to pass up, Mares thought.

  The first few days of the offensive had been a cakewalk, a lightning drive against scattered opposition by lightly armed Afrikaner commandos.

  But that couldn’t continue forever. Pretoria must be going mad trying to redeploy its forces from Namibia.

  Another shell burst fifty meters ahead of the column. Mares ducked again and made a quick decision. Where the South Africans had heavy artillery they were also likely to have regulars-regulars armed with their own APCs and armored cars. He lifted his radio mike to order the scouts back.

  Too late! A sudden flash from near the farmhouse, followed seconds later by a blinding explosion and a billowing column of oily black smoke. The lead BRDM lay canted at an angle, mangled and on fire. Its two companions were frantically wheeling away at high speed.

  Mares focused his binoculars hastily. Shit. An Eland armored car armed with a 90mm cannon. He’d been shot at by too many of the damned things in Namibia to make any mistake about that. More than just one, of course.

  He could see another ugly, snouted turret poking out from behind one of the barns. Small figures scurried into position in windows and doors and in hurriedly dug foxholes.

  A second sun-bright flash erupted from
the first Eland’s main gun. Mud sprayed high beside one of the fleeing scout cars, and both took wild evasive action, twisting and turning sharply as they raced north.

  Mares stood high in his commander’s hatch, studying the approaches to the

  South African-held farmhouse. It didn’t look good. The farm occupied a commanding position, perched precisely at the crest of a low rise and surrounded by open fields. No orchards. No convenient hillocks offering cover and concealment. No sunken roads. Nothing but the wide open space of a ready-made killing ground.

  He swore softly to himself. If the South Africans held that farmhouse and its outbuildings in force, he and his men were in for a bloody and protracted fight. And his brigade commander would not be pleased. Well, the sooner they started, the sooner they’d finish.

  Mares dropped down through the hatch into the BTR’s crowded interior. He stabbed a finger at the young corporal strapped to a seat in front of the radio.

  “Get me Brigade HQ! “

  The radioman nodded and started changing frequencies on his bulky,

  Soviet-made set.

  Mares whirled to the rest of his staff-a captain, two babyfaced lieutenants, and a tough, competent-looking sergeant.

  “We’re going to have to dig the bastards out. Order the column to reform in line abreast.

  And remind everyone to keep at least fifty meters between vehicles. I don’t want any idiots bunching up like cowardly sheep.”

  Another near-miss rocked the BTR from side to side, pounding his point home.

  They nodded seriously. Dispersing your vehicles under artillery bombardment was only common sense. Every meter of extra open space dramatically complicated an enemy’s attempts to adjust his fire and reduced his odds of scoring a direct hit. Unfortunately, too many soldiers under heavy fire abandoned common sense in favor of the age-old pack instinct that screamed out, “When in danger, join together. 11

  “I have Brigade on the line, Major.”

  He took the offered handset.

  “Tango Golf One, this is Alpha Two Three.”

  “Go ahead, Two Three.” Mares recognized the dry, academic tones of the