by Larry Bond
Brigade’s operations officer. Good. The man wasn’t very personable, but he did his job damned well.
The major outlined his situation in a few terse sentences.
“And your recommendation?”
Mares thumbed the transmit button.
“I can attack in twenty minutes, but we’ll need an air strike to soften the place up first. “
“Impossible.” The operations officer didn’t bother sounding apologetic.
Facts were facts, and courtesy couldn’t change
them.
“The Air Force reports a new storm front moving in. They expect all their attack aircraft to be grounded from now until sunrise tomorrow.
“
Damn it. Mares wished that Cuba had all-weather bombers like those available to the United States. He hunted for an alternative.
“What about artillery?”
The dry, matter-of-fact voice doused that hope as well.
“Our batteries won’t be up for another three hours. Can you try a hasty attack?”
“Negative, Tango One.” Mares shuddered inwardly at the thought. Charging across that killing zone out there without air or artillery cover would only lead to disaster-a sure and certain harvest of wrecked and blazing personnel carriers and dead and maimed men. He took the map offered by his staff sergeant.
“We’ll look for an alternate route, but I don’t think we’ll find one. This country’s too open. We may need that artillery deployed yet. “
“Understood, Two Three. Tango Golf One, out.”
Mares got busy with his map. He couldn’t see any way for his two remaining BRDMs to pick their way around the farmhouse strongpoint without being spotted. The South Africans had too good a view from their commanding hilltop. And he wasn’t sure that he had enough men and vehicles to take that strongpoint-even with artillery support. He might need help from the heavy tank and infantry units lumbering along with the main column.
In fact, he was sure of only one thing. The First Brigade Tactical
Group’s easy romp through the northern Transvaal was over.
They’d pay in blood for every kilometer gained from here all the way to
Pretoria.
NOVEMBER 19-SECOND BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP, NEAR THE MPAGEN1 PASS,
SOUTH
AFRICA
he rattle of heavy rifle and machinegun fire echoed oddly through the night air, bouncing off high rock walls and mingling with the whispering rush of water tumbling downstream. With a screaming hiss and a soft pop, a parachute flare burst into incandescent splendor a thousand meters over the pass and began drifting slowly downwind.
The flare cast strange shadows among the giant ferns and tall yellowwood trees crowding the valley floor, and it lit small, shaggy clumps of aloe and thorn scrub dotting the rugged cliffs above. A troop of wild baboons, already frightened by the gunfire and sickly sweet odor of high explosives, scurried frantically up the cliffs-seeking shelter from this eerie, horribly bright sun rising where there should be only welcome, restful darkness.
Five hundred meters farther down the winding road, men trying desperately to sleep beside camouflaged T-62 tanks, BTR personnel carriers, and towed artillery pieces stumbled out of their bedrolls and stared west toward the slowly falling flare. Did the small-arms fire and illumination round signal an unexpected South African counterattack? Some, less experienced than their comrades, groped for assault rifles or swung themselves into their vehicles. Others, older and wiser in the ways of war, noted the conspicuous lack of franfic activity around the Brigade Group’s lantern-lit command term swore bitterly, and settled back to snatch a few hours of needed rest.
“Acknowledged, Captain. Keep me posted. Out.” Col. Raoul Valladares slipped the headset off and tossed it back to a yawning radioman.
“Well?” Gen. Carlos Herrera glared at his trim, dapper subordinate while he struggled into his jacket and strained to button his tunic collar.
Unfortunately, not even the most creative military tailor could design a uniform that made the general look anything less than grossly overweight. Spiky tufts of black hair sticking straight up offered clear proof that Heffera had been sound asleep when the shooting started.
“Nothing more than an outpost skirmish, Comrade General.” Valladares ran lean fingers through his own tousled hair.
“One of our sentries thought he saw movement and opened fire.”
Herrera grunted sourly and left his collar hanging open. He moved closer to the situation map and stood frowning at the portrait it painted.
Valladares understood his commander’s irritation. In the first four days of Vega’s offensive, the Second Brigade Tactical Group had driven deep into the eastern Transvaalplowing forward more than one hundred kilometers through the low veld’s orange groves and banana plantations.
But the past day’s progress had been painfully slow and costly as the brigade’s tanks and infantry fought their way up steep hills and across rugged river gorges on a front sometimes only one road wide.
The colonel shook his head wearily. They’d planned to punch through the two-thousand-foot-high escarpment separating the low veld from the high veld before the South Africans could mount an effective defense.
Crystal-clear hindsight showed how wildly optimistic they’d been. Even a small number of determined defenders can delay an attacker advancing through rough country. And the South Africans were nothing if not determined.
They’d probed and harassed the oncoming Cuban column at every opportunity. An ambush here. A stoutly defended roadblock there. No major engagements. No set-piece battles that would allow the brigade to use its superior firepower. Just a never-ending series of skirmishes that left one or two men dead, several others wounded, one or more vehicles in flames, and slowed the Cuban advance to an anemic crawl.
Not that General Vega was displeased, Valladares knew. Even though its daily gains were now measured in kilometers instead of tens of kilometers, the Second Brigade Tactical Group was still advancing-still drawing South African troops away other fronts. His eye fell on a red arrow designating the third of Vega’s attacking columns. Transshipped by rail the long way round through neutral Botswana, the Third Brigade had shot its way onto South African territory three days after its two counterparts.
This third Cuban column was driving hard-advancing east rapidly against weak opposition. Confronted by two more immediate threats to its vital northern and eastern Transvaal mining complexes, Pretoria had stripped its border with Botswana of almost every trained man able to bear arms.
Exactly as Vega had planned.
NOVEMBER 20-THIRD BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP, NEAR BODENSTEIN, SOUTH
AFRICA
Dozens of Cuban armored cars, APCs, and self-propelled guns rolled steadily eastward along a two-lane paved highway. The sun stood high overhead, beating down mercilessly on grasslands just starting to turn from yellow-brown to a lush, rich green. Wisps of dark cloud on the far horizon hinted at the possibility of more rain later in the day or evening.
Four BRDM-2 scout cars led the column, their turrets spinning continuously from side to side as gunners sought out potential targets. Scouts who grew sloppy and complacent were scouts who were soon dead.
So when the lieutenant commanding the lead BRDM saw movement in a clump of brush just off the road, he didn’t hesitate before screaming a shrill warning. The heavy machine gun in the scout car’s turret was already firing as it slewed on target. And more than a hundred rounds of 14.5mm machinegun ammunition slammed into the patch of brush.
The scout car and its companions swept on past in a swirl of dust and torn vegetation.
Ten minutes later, the first BTR-60 troop carriers thundered by. Cuban infantrymen riding with their hatches open turned curious eyes on the site of the attempted ambush. Two old men dressed in ill-fitting South African uniforms lay bloody and unmoving, entwined around a dull-gray metal tube-an ancient World War II-era bazooka.
The road to the small
fanning town of Bodenstein lay open and undefended.
And Cuba’s Third Brigade Tactical Group was just one hundred and seventy kilometers from Johannesburg.
NOVEMBER 21STATE SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER, PRETORIA
Fear has its own peculiar smell-the sour stench of sweat triggered by sheer, gut-twisting panic and not by hard manual labor.
It was an odor Marius van der Heijden knew well. As a young policeman and later a senior security official, he’d smelled fear in dozens of small, sterile interrogation rooms. He’d witnessed the terror of men confined in brutal prisons or awaiting death on a gallows.
But now he caught its unmistakable scent in a room full of South Africa’s self-proclaimed leaders. The men seated around Karl Vorster were, quite plainly, frightened almost out of their wits.
The arrows and lines drawn on the large map at one end of the room explained their growing panic.
“in sum, Mr. President, we face an impossible military situation.” Gen.
Adriaan de Wet looked haggard and worn, aged beyond his years by a series of unprecedented disasters.
“We simply do not have the manpower or equipment to hold Namibia, crush local rebellions, and fend off this
Cuban offensive. It cannot be done.” His hand shook as he tried to hold the map pointer steady.
Van der Heijden listened with a sinking heart. The battalions rushed back from Namibia to face the Cuban columns driving on Pietersburg and
Nelspruit were fighting hard, slowing the enemy’s advance. But they were being destroyed in the process. Reinforcements and replacements sent to them were swallowed up within hours.
Even worse, the SAD IF had almost nothing left to throw at the third Cuban invasion force-now within one hundred and fifty kilometers of
Johannesburg. Many of the Afrikaners who’d rebelled against the government were returning to the fold-willing to bury their own grievances to fight a foreign enemy. But it was all too little and too late, Hastily assembled task forces made up of understrength infantry companies, ill equipped commandos, and outdated artillery pieces had either been smashed to pieces or swallowed whole. South Africa’s back door was wide open.
De Wet finished his grim briefing and stepped away from the situation map.
Every head swiveled toward the dour-faced man seated at the head of the table. But as always of late, Karl Vorster sat silent and unapproachable.
An uncomfortable silence dragged. De Wet shifted his pointer nervously from hand to hand.
Finally, Fredrik Pienaar, the minister of information, waved a thin, bony finger at the map.
“What about the troops garrisoning Voortrekker Heights and other bases? Can’t they be used to defeat this third Cuban force?”
De Wet shook his head.
“Most of those battalions are badly understrength themselves. And they’re needed to defend vital installations in and around
Pretoria against possible guerrilla attack. We can’t afford to fight one fire by leaving our enemies free to set others.”
Heads around the table nodded in hurried agreement. De Wet’s definition of “vital installations” included their own homes and offices.
Pienaar reddened.
“Very well, General. Then what about the rest of our army? What about the troops and tanks you’ve managed to leave dangling uselessly in Namibia?”
De Wet turned red himself, his fear almost submerged by anger.
“We’re shifting forces as quickly as we can, Minister. But our air, rail, and road transport capabilities are stretched to the limit. We simply can’t move soldiers, equipment, or supplies fast enough to matter!”
“And whose fault is-“
“Enough!” Karl Vorster slammed the table with one clenched fist.
“Enough of this childish squabbling!”
He turned angrily on his cabinet.
“Start acting like men, not whimpering schoolboys. Or worse, like cowardly kaffirs! “
The deadly insult stiffened backs throughout the room.
Vorster shoved his chair back and rose to his full height, towering over every other man in the room. He strode over to the situation map, pushing past a startled de Wet.
He turned.
“You look at maps, at scraps of paper, and see the end of the world! ” A contemptuous hand thumped the map, almost toppling it off its stand.
“I look at the same drawings, the same lines of ink and pencil, but I do not see defeat and disaster! I see our final victory!”
Marius van der Heijden shivered. Had the man he’d followed blindly for so many years gone mad? Others around the table stirred uneasily, grappling with the same fear.
Vorster shook his finger at them like a sorrowful father chiding unruly children.
“Come now, my friends. Can’t you see God’s design in all of this?”
His voice dropped, becoming softer and more persuasive. It was less the voice of a politician and more the voice of a preacher.
“Like the ancient
Israelites we stand surrounded by our foes-outmatched and seemingly overpowered. But just as God raised up David to smite Goliath, so God has given us the weapons we need to destroy our enemies. Weapons of awesome power and cleansing fire.”
He turned and pointed to a small dot on the map-a dot just outside
Pretoria.
“Weapons that wait there for our orders, my friends.”
His finger rested on the hill called Pelindaba-the “place of meeting.”
ADMINISTRATION CENTER, PELINDABA RESEARCH
COMPLEX
The atomic research site called Pelindaba sat high on a bluff overlooking a tangle of winding valleys and low hills just south of Pretoria. Lush green lawns and immaculately landscaped rock gardens gave its laboratories, living quarters, and gleaming steel-and-glass administration building the look of a quiet college campus. In such surroundings, the squat, square, windowless bulk of Pelindaba’s uranium-enrichment facility and the tall smokestacks of an adjacent coal-fired power plant seemed alien-obtrusive reminders of the intrusion of a hostile industrial machine into what appeared to be a placid academic world.
Inside the Administration Center, Col. Frans Peiper stared out an upper-floor window to hide his irritation from the young woman receptionist. A face marked by cold gray eyes, a straight, pointed nose, and a tight-lipped mouth scowled back at him. He clasped his hands behind his back to avoid the embarrassment of unconsciously looking at his watch again.
As usual, Pelindaba’s civilian director was late. For a man of great learning, Peiper thought savagely, Dr. Jakobus Schumann had such an imperfect concept of time.
He turned as the rotund, whitehaired administrator came bustling in through the door, an apology already tumbling out through a smiling mouth.
“Terribly sorry for the delay, Colonel. Afraid I got myself tangled up in a small liquefaction problem over at the labs.”
Peiper nodded stiffly, unsure whether Schumann’s “small problem” involved uranium enrichment or a drunk technician.
“But here I am at last, eh?” The older man ushered him into his office.
“Now then, Colonel, what can I do for the esteemed commander of our garrison?”
Peiper came to attention. His news required a formal delivery.
“It is more a question of what you will do for me, Director. I have received new orders from Pretoria.” He paused, watching Schumann’s face carefully.
“Headquarters informs me that the State Security Council has issued a
Special Weapons Warning Order.”
Schumann paled.
“Are you sure of that, Colonel? That would mean .. - “
“Quite sure, Director. ” Peiper nodded in grim satisfaction.
“All scientists, engineers, and other personnel at Pelindaba are now under my direct command. Further, effective immediately, this facility is on full war alert. No one goes in or out without my permission.”
He glanced out the window over
Schumann’s shoulder and caught a glimpse of soldiers in full battle dress scattering throughout the compound.
Good. He didn’t expect any trouble. All the South African scientists and engineers working here were handpicked Afrikaners of proven loyalty.
Still,
it never paid to take chances.
“Do you have any questions?”
Schumann moistened suddenly dry lips.
“Just one, Colonel. Have they told you how many weapons will be assembled or where they might be used?”
“No.” Peiper looked down at the nervous old man, secretly rejoicing in a welcome sense of power and control.
“And I haven’t asked. Such questions are beyond our need to know.”
He fingered the AWB button pinned to his uniform jacket.
“One matter remains, Director. These Israeli scientists of yours … “They are not mine, Colonel. They’re invited guests of our government.”
If anything, that was an understatement. The atomic weapons programs of
Israel and South Africa had been closely linked for decades. It was an alliance of convenience—not conviction. Israel had much of the essential scientific and engineering expertise, while South Africa had the vast expanses of unpopulated wasteland needed for weapons tests.
Peiper waved away the distinction as unimportant.
“I want their names, pictures, and dossiers delivered to Captain Witt as soon as possible.”
Schumann’s eyes widened.
“My God, you’re not planning to hold them as prisoners here, are you?”
“Of course.” Peiper grimaced.
“We can’t allow these Jews out to broadcast our plans to the world. They’ll be kept under close guard until Pretoria decides their fate.
“In the meantime, we have work to do. ” He leaned closer.
“A special Air
Force team will be here within the hour, and I expect your best technicians to be ready to offer them any necessary assistance. I trust that is perfectly clear?”
The older man nodded in a daze.
Peiper smiled scornfully at Schumann’s pudgy, quivering face.
“Cheer up,
Director. You and your colleagues have worked diligently for many years to make this moment possible. You should give thanks and be glad that you’ve lived to see such a day.”
