Vortex

by Larry Bond

  More blips appeared-coming from the southeast this time and moving fast. He stared hard, trying frantically to get an accurate count. Five. Ten. More than twenty planes racing in from out of nowhere! He spun round in his chair, his eyes wide in alarm.

  “Lieutenant!”

  PROWLER LEAD, SOUTHEAST OF JOHANNESBURG

  Ten miles behind the A-6 and F/A-18 attack squadrons, the EA-613 Prowler electronic warfare aircraft bounced and shook as it ploughed through choppy air. Rolling ridges and valleys emerged out of the darkness ahead and then blurred past and aft. Flying low at five hundred knots left little time for sightseeing.

  One of the two officers seated side by side behind the pilot and navigator listened to a series of tones sounding in his earphones and watched as a signal intensity indicator climbed higher. He spoke into the intercom.

  “SA

  radar’s got us, Curt. “

  “Right.” The pilot broke radio silence on the strike frequency.

  “Tiger flights, this is Prowler Lead. They know we’re here. We’re lighting off.”

  He clicked back to the intercom.

  “Okay, guys, let’s do it. Radiate and blind those bastards.”

  The two backseaters flipped a series of switches, activating the Prow)er’s

  ALQ-99 jamming system. Current started flowing from windmill turbo generators on the three jamming pods slung beneath the EA-613’s fuselage. In seconds, the Prowler was punching kilowatts of power into the same frequencies used by South Africa’s air-search radars.

  NORTHERN AIR DEFENSE HQ

  “Shit! ” The blips on the flight sergeant’s radarscope vanished in a coruscating swirl of bright green blotches and a solid strobe line. He switched frequencies frantically and ineffectively. The jamming followed him across the wavelengthseffortlessly matching every shift.

  After several failed tries, he stopped frequency-hopping and tried turning down the radar’s gain instead. It worked after a fashion. By trading range for visibility, he was able to break through the jamming . and see nothing.

  The flight sergeant swore again. The bogies were outside his radar’s reduced range. He knew there were enemy aircraft over South Africa, but he couldn’t tell how many, where they were, or most important of all, where they were headed.

  The Air Force lieutenant watching over his shoulder turned pale and grabbed a red phone by the radar console.

  “Put me through to Number Three

  Squadron!”

  ABOARD SIERRA ONE ZERO, OVER PELINDABA

  Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell took a deep breath, held it for a second, and let it out-trying to shake off a case of last minute jitters. Literally last minute, too, he thought. They couldn’t be much more flying time than that from the drop zone.

  The drop zone was one of his concerns. Their need for total surprise had ruled out the use of pathfinders to mark the DZ. As a result, the aircraft carrying the Rangers were relying entirely on navigational data supplied by Navstar GPS Global Positioning System-satellites. The GPS program managers claimed their system was accurate to within a few feet, and O’Connell hoped like hell that they were right.

  He staggered slightly and braced himself as the MC-141 began a steep climb, popping up to five hundred feet for its run over the Pelindaba complex. Any second now.

  Without stopping to think much about it, O’Connell found himself muttering a prayer from his childhood.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”

  As the MC-141 leveled out, its two side doors whined open and twin blast shields deployed to provide pockets of calm air outside the doors. Cold night air and howling engine noise swept through the crowded troop compartment. O’Connell watched as the plane’s jumpmaster leaned out through the open door, checked the shield and jump step, and made sure they were approaching the drop zone.

  The jump light over the open cargo door flickered and went green.

  “Go!

  Go! GO!”

  Conscious thought faded and thousands of hours of training and preparation took over. Rank by rank and row by row, the Rangers shuffled rapidly to the open side doors and threw themselves into empty air.

  Five C-141s swept low over Pelindaba spewing out hundreds of Rangers and their equipment.

  COMMAND BUNKER, 61 ST TRANSVAAL RIFLES, PELINDABA

  Col. Frans Peiper spilled his mug of hot coffee onto the bunker’s concrete floor as his phone buzzed. He grabbed the phone on its second buzz. “

  Pelindaba CO.”

  He didn’t recognize the panic-stricken voice on the other end.

  “Air raid warning! This is an air raid warning!”

  “What?”

  The roar of large aircraft passing directly overhead drowned out any reply.

  Peiper dropped the phone and ran to one of the bunker’s firing slits, trying vainly to catch a glimpse of these attacking planes. Nothing.

  Nothing. There! Something huge and black-more a shadow than a discernible shape-flashed past and disappeared beyond the eastern end of the compound. They were under attack!

  He whirled and slammed a shaking hand down on the alert button.

  Sirens screamed across the complex in a rising and falling wail designed to wake the dead, or in this case, the two thirds of Pelindaba’s garrison who were off duty and fast asleep in their barracks. At the same time, arc lights around the perimeter began winking out to deny incoming enemy bombers easy aiming points.

  1/75TH RANGERS

  More than five hundred men of the 1/75this three companies and its headquarters came drifting down out of the niSjIt sky into the Pelindaba atomic research and weapons storage complex. Some never made it farther than that.

  Three Rangers, the first men out of the lead plane, landed too far to the west-outside the barbed wire and inside a minefield. One hit the ground and rolled right onto the pressure plate of an antipersonnel mine. A white-orange blast tore him in half and spewed fragments that scythed the other two paratroopers to the ground, bleeding and unconscious.

  More Americans came down hard in the middle of Pelindaba’s ornamental rock gardens-breaking legs or arms or fracturing collarbones. Near the power substation, a Charlie Company sergeant slammed face first into a steel pylon at more than twenty miles an hour. The impact broke his neck and left his corpse draped across a steel girder forty feet off the ground.

  Two groups of Rangers had the worst luck of all.

  Six men landed in a tangle of billowing parachutes and loose gear on open ground-less than thirty feet away from mortar pits occupied by South

  African troops who’d been on duty. The Americans were still struggling out of their chutes when a fusillade of automatic weapons fire mowed them down.

  Four others came down right in the middle of a South African infantry squad patrolling inside the compound. Flames stabbed through the darkness as R4 rifles and M16s were fired at point-blank range. Seconds later, all four Americans and three of the South Africans lay dead. One of the

  Rangers wore the silver eagle insignia of a full colonel over his chest pocket. Paul Gener, commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, had made his last combat jump.

  HEADQUARTERS COMPANY, 1/75TH RANGERS

  Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell hit the ground with his legs bent and rolled-his hands already fumbling with the release catch for his parachute harness. A light wind tugged at his chute, threatening to drag him along through the open grassland between the research center and the weapons storage bunkers.

  Done! The catch snapped open and he shrugged out of his harness. He got to his knees to get a better view of what was going on.

  Most of the compound was in darkness, but enough light remained to make out the pitch-black outlines of a slit trench only twenty yards away. Good. The trench was ready-made cover if he could get to it without being shot. It also ran from north to south, separating the nuclear weapons storage area from the rest of Pelindaba.

  More men were coming down all around him-slamming into
the ground with teeth-rattling force. Automatic weapons fire rattled from somewhere close by, kicking up a spray of bullet-torn grass and dirt. Two Rangers who’d just scrambled out of their chutes screamed and folded in on themselves.

  O’Connell threw himself flat. Too many of the damned South Africans were wide awake and ready for a fight. His troops needed protection-any kind of protection-or they were going to be slaughtered while still landing.

  He yanked a smoke grenade off his combat webbing, pulled the pin, and lobbed it toward a half-seen bunker. Others around him were doing the same thing. Wargames played during the planning for Brave Fortune had shown that the immediate use of smoke might save a few lives. That was why every

  Ranger in the assault force had been briefed to throw a smoke grenade as soon as possible after landing. The more smoke in the air, the more confusion. And the more confusion, the better.

  White tendrils of smoke started to swirl and billow, spreading in the wind to form a light haze that grew thicker as more and more grenades were thrown. South African machine guns and assault rifles chattered from bunkers around the perimeter, stabbing through the haphazard smoke screen. More Rangers were hit and thrown back-dead or badly wounded.

  “Goddamnit!” O’Connell unslung his M16 and started belly-crawling toward the South African slit trench. The soldiers who’d landed near him followed, some dragging injured comrades. From all appearances, his battalion was being cut to pieces before it could even get organized.

  COMMAND BUNKER, 61 ST TRANSVAAL RIFLES

  Peiper stared through the narrow firing slits of his headquarters bunker, trying to piece together some idea of just what the devil was going on.

  If this was an air raid, where were the bombs? And if it wasn’t, what were his troops firing at?

  Then he saw the first wisps of white and gray smoke rising from the open ground beyond Pelindaba’s science labs and uranium enrichment plant.

  Peiper expected to be attacked by the Cubans. He expected the Cubans to use chemical weapons as part of that attack. And now he saw what could only be the first nightmarish tendrils of nerve gas drifting toward his bunker.

  He staggered back and grabbed a young lieutenant who still looked half-asleep.

  “Sound the gas alarm!”

  “Colonel?”

  Peiper shoved the officer aside and ran for the alarm control panel himself. He chopped down at the right button and then whirled to find his own chemical gear.

  The wailing rise and fall of Pelindaba’s air raid sirens faded-replaced instantly by the high-pitched warbling of its poison gas alert.

  In wooden barracks buildings all around the compound, several hundred newly wakened South African soldiers who’d been grabbing rifles and helmets dropped them and started fumbling for gas masks, gauntlets, and chemical protection suits instead. Two or three extra minutes would pass before they could hope to join the bloody battle now raging throughout the camp perimeter.

  Col. Frans Peiper had just given the U. S . Rangers the time they so desperately needed.

  HEADQUARTERS COMPANY, 1/75TH RANGERS

  O’Connell crouched just below the lip of the slit trench and stared at the wide-eyed, panting men clustered around him. More of his headquarters troops and officers had survived the landing then he’d first thought possible. Even Professor Levi had come through unwounded, although the

  Israeli scientist now sat huddled on the trench floor, nursing an ankle he’d sprained on impact.

  “Weisman!”

  His radioman pushed through the crowd. O’Connell took the handset he offered.

  “Sierra One Zero, this is Rover One One. Atlas. I say again,

  Atlas.” The MC-141 still orbiting somewhere overhead would relay the news that the Rangers were on the ground and attacking. And men waiting in the

  Pentagon and the White House could push new pins in their maps.

  He passed the handset back and stood listening to the noise of the battle. M 16s, M60 machine guns, and squad automatic weapons were being fired in greater numbers, their distinctive crackle and chatter beginning to blend with the heavier sounds made by South African rifles and machine guns. The Rangers were starting to fight back.

  RADAR CONTROL VEHICLE, CACTUS SAM BATTERY, PELINDABA

  Panicked by the gas alert siren, the lone corporal manning the Cactus battery’s jammed and useless fire-control radar tore his headphones off and scrambled out of his chair. He’d left his chemical suit back in the barracks. He moved toward the vehicle’s rear hatch.

  It clanged open before he got there, and the South African stared in surprise at the figure outlined against the night sky. Odd, that didn’t look like any uniform he’d ever seen before….

  Three M16 rounds threw the radar operator back against his equipment in a spray of blood and torn flesh.

  Outside the hatch, the Ranger sergeant lowered his rifle and pulled the pin on a fragmentation grenade. He tossed the grenade in on top of the dead man and then slammed the hatch shut.

  Whummp! The Cactus battery command vehicle rocked slightly and then sat silent-its delicate electronics smashed by bullets and grenade fragments.

  The radar dish on top stopped spinning.

  Bent low, the sergeant sprinted across a stretch of open lawn near

  Pelindaba’s main science lab. Rifle rounds whip cracked over his head-fired at long range from a bunker on the compound’s northern perimeter. He dove for cover behind a row of young saplings planted as shade trees. Leaves clipped off by stray bullets drifted down on the five men waiting there for him. Two carried a Carl Gustav M3 84mm recoilless rifle.

  “You get ‘em?”

  ” Yep. ” The Carl Gustav gunner patted his weapon affectionately.

  “Hammered ‘em real good.”

  The sergeant lifted his head an inch or two, risking a quick look. The three Cactus SAM launch vehicles were cloaked in flame and smoke. As he watched, one of the burning launchers blew up in a blinding flash of orange light. Must’ve been a missile cook-off, the sergeant thought.

  Time to report in. He squirmed around and found his radioman.

  “Rover One

  One, this is Bravo Two Four. Diablo One, Two, Three, and Diablo Dish are history.”

  Pelindaba’s air defenses were down.

  B COMPANY BARRACKS, 61 ST TRANSVAAL RIFLES

  The red, flickering glow of burning buildings and vehicles dimly lit a scene of mass confusion inside the barracks building Half-dressed South African soldiers scrambled frantically to put on protective gear they’d only been issued the day before. Others, faster or better trained, were already suited up and trying to ready their weapons with clumsy, gloved hands. Lieutenants and sergeants roved through the crowd, trying to sort their squads and platoons into some sort of order before leading them outside and into battle.

  Captain van Daalen, the battalion adjutant, felt more like a spaceman than a soldier in his chemical protection suit. The suit itself was hot and difficult to move in, and the gas mask limited both his vision and his hearing. He scowled. Going into combat while practically deaf and blind didn’t strike him as a particularly sane act, but the thought of nerve gas made him check the seals.

  He crouched by an open window, trying to spot a reasonably safe route to the battalion command bunker. He wasn’t having much luck. The bunker lay more than two hundred and fifty meters away across a flat, open field.

  Perhaps it would be more sensible to carry out his duties from the barracks, van Daalen thought. After all, there wasn’t much point in dying in a quixotic and suicidal dash through machinegun fire.

  Movement outside caught his eye. Soldiers, silhouetted against a burning

  SAM launcher, were fanning out into a long line less than fifty meters away. As each man reached his place, he dropped prone facing the barracks.

  Van Daalen rose. That was damned strange. It was almost as though those troops were planning to attack…

  “Let the bastards have it! Fire! Fire! Fi
re!” The shout from outside echoed above the staccato rattle of gunfire and the crash of explosions all across Pelindaba.

  Van Daalen froze in horror. That shout had been in English, not

  Afrikaans. He started to turn…

  Half a dozen rockets lanced out from the line of enemy troops, tore through thin wood walls, and exploded inside spraying fragments and wood splinters through the tightly packed South African soldiers. Machinegun and M16 fire scythed into the building right behind the rockets, punching through from end to end. Dead or wounded men were thrown

  everywhere-tossed across bloodstained bunks or knocked into writhing heaps on top of one another.

  Capt. Edouard van Daalen clutched at the jagged edges of what had once been a window frame in a vain effort to stay standing. Then his knees buckled and he slid slowly to the floor, pawing feebly at the row of ragged, wet holes torn in his chemical protection suit.

  The Americans outside kept shooting.

  HEADQUARTERS COMPANY, 1/75TH RANGERS

  Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell listened with growing satisfaction to the reports flooding in from units around the compound. The enemy’s Cactus SAM battery permanently out of action. Barracks after barracks reported on fire or collapsed by salvos of light antitank rockets, HE rounds from recoilless rifles, and concentrated small-arms fire. A 120mm mortar position overrun at bayonet point by survivors from Bravo Company’s I st

  Platoon. Brave Fortune was finally starting to go according to plan.

  But the battalion’s casualties were heavy and growing heavier with every passing minute. Colonel Gener hadn’t been seen since the jump. Three of eight platoon leaders were down. He didn’t even want to guess how many noncoms and other Rangers lay dead in Pelindaba’s barbed wire, rock gardens, buildings, and open fields.

  He ducked as a grenade burst close by, showering dirt and fragments across the open lip of the slit trench. A Ranger beside him screamed and fell back in a tangle of thrashing arms and legs. Blood spattered across

  O’Connell’s face. Other soldiers were already up and shooting back-pumping rounds into the flame-lit darkness.