Vortex (33 page)

Von Brandis dropped into the Ratel and slammed the hatch shut. He needed no further encouragement. Time to act. He looked at the map, trying to remember where the wind was blowing from. From the west. Good. He tapped the young Citizen Force corporal acting as his radioman on the shoulder.

“Tell the mortars to drop smoke five hundred meters in front of our position. Then warn the antitank jeeps to be ready to fire when the enemy tanks come out of our smoke screen. ”

Aside from the Eland armored cars already committed to the flank attack, the only antitank weapons the battalion had were ancient French-designed

SS. I I missiles mounted on unarmored jeeps. Von Brandis hadn’t been able to identify the tanks at such range, but they were probably T-54s or T55s. He’d fought them before-big, lumbering behemoths with 100mm guns and heavy armor. Then he remembered the Angolans and Cubans were in the act.

They had T-62s, with 115mm guns and better fire-control gear.

Christ! His SS. I Is were an even match for enemy T-55s, but he didn’t know if their warheads could penetrate the frontal armor of a T-62. He had the unpleasant feeling he was about to find out.

Where the hell was D Squadron? He needed those big gunned armored cars in the battle now-not pissing around down in the bottom of that bloody gully. He fiddled with his radio headset, waiting impatiently as he listened to the radio operator passing his instructions to the antitank section. The corporal stopped talking. A clear circuit! Von Brandis squeezed the transmit switch on his mike.

“Foxtrot Delta One, this is

Foxtrot Hotel One. What is your status, over?”

Cannon and machinegun fire mixed with the voice in his earphones.

“Hotel

One, this is Delta One. Engaging enemy

infantry force. Have located one battery large mortars. Am attacking now.

No casualties. Hotel, we see signs of tank movement. Repeat, we see many tread marks, over.”

Thanks for the warning, Von Brandis thought, but said nothing.

“Delta

One, detach one troop to attack the mortars, but bring the rest of your force back west soonest! We are under attack by a tank company and an unknown number of infantry. ”

The radio easily carried the Eland squadron commander’s shock and surprise.

“Roger. Will engage tanks to the west. Out! ”

Nearly four minutes had passed, enough for the oncoming enemy tanks to advance a few hundred meters. Von Brandis peered through the small, thick-glassed peepholes in the APC’s turret. Nothing. He couldn’t see a damned thing.

Cursing the misnamed “vision blocks” under his breath, he opened the roof hatch again and used his binoculars to study the advancing enemy formation.

Mortar rounds burst in front of the charging tanks-spraying tendrils of gray-white smoke high into the air. Created by a chemical reaction in each mortar shell, the smoke was working-blown by a light northwesterly breeze toward the advancing tank company, reducing the effectiveness of their fire.

Karumph! A mortar explosion nearby reminded him that they were still in trouble, and he mentally urged D Squadron onward. The battalion needed their firepower.

The enemy tanks were still shooting as they drew nearer, starting to vanish in the South African smoke screen. Von Brandis ignored them.

Moving fire from a tank, especially an old one, isn’t that accurate. His own men were holding their fire, waiting until the enemy emerged from the smoke inside effective range. Then the fun would start, he thought.

More shells slammed into the desert landscape. The Namibian mortar barrage was getting close. Damned close. Too late, Von Brandis realized that the enemy gunners were randomly concentrating their fire on different parts of his spread out position. Unable to see their targets, they were simply lobbing rounds at designated map references.

Unfortunately,

they’d apparently chosen the small depression occupied by his command post for their latest firing point. Even blind fire, when concentrated in a small area, could be devastating.

Whammm! He slammed the Ratel’s hatch shut again as an explosion just twenty meters away shook the
APC
and sent fragments, not pebbles, rattling off its armor. Von Brandis dogged the hatch and spun round to follow the situation through the vehicle’s vision blocks.

Twin hammer blows struck the Ratel’s left side. The first mortar round seemed to slide the eighteen-ton vehicle physically sideways, then a second shell lifted it and tipped it over.

Von Brandis and the rest of his staff tumbled and twisted inside the APC’s tangled interior. Loose gear fell through the air, and they fought to keep from impaling themselves on the troop compartment’s myriad sharp points and corners. Worst of all, someone’s assault rifle hadn’t been secured in its clips.

The R4 spun through the air as the Ratel tumbled, slammed into the deck, and went off. A single, steel-jacketed round ricocheted from metal wall to metal wall, showering the interior with sparks, before burying itself deep in the assistant driver’s belly. The man screamed and collapsed in on himself, his hands clutching convulsively at the gaping wound.

Von Brandis fought a personal war with the edge of the map table, a fire extinguisher handle, and his radio cord. Finally freeing himself and standing up on the canted deck, he tossed a first aid kit to his driver and reached up to unlock one of the roof hatches.

He bent down and looked before crawling out, taking his own assault rifle with him.

Everyone was still under cover against random mortar volleys and suppressive fire from the advancing enemy tank company. He scanned the forward edge of the battalion’s gray, roiling smoke screen. Nothing in sight there. Right, the enemy armor should still be about a kilometer away.

The Namibian mortars had shifted targets within his battalion’s position and now seemed to be bombarding an empty piece of desert. Good. That was one advantage of a dispersed deployment. A fine haze of dust and smoke obscured anything

over five hundred meters away and made him cough. It was getting warmer, but the sun wouldn’t burn off this acrid mist.

The disadvantage of dispersion was the difficulty of getting from place to place, especially under fire. His executive officer’s command Ratel was more than a hundred and fifty meters away, behind a low rise near

A

Company’s laager and fighting positions.

He leaned down through the open hatch.

“I’m going to Major Hougaard’s vehicle! Frans, come with me. The rest of you stay put! ”

As soon as the radio operator crawled out and climbed to his feet, the two men sprinted off, ducking more out of instinct than reasoned thought as shells burst to either side. Mortar fragments rip through the air faster than any human can hope to react.

It was only the barest taste of an infantryman’s world, but the colonel longed for the relative safety of his command vehicle. Running desperately across open, hard-pack cd sand under fire seemed a poor way to run a battle.

They reached the side of Hougaard’s Ratel and von Brandis banged on its armored side door with the hilt of his bayonet. It opened after a nerve-racking, five-second pause, and the two men piled inside the

Ratel’s already crowded interior.

Von Brandis squeezed through the crush toward a round faced bearded man with deceptively soft-looking features.

“Colonel, what on earth … !” Major Jamie Hougaard exclaimed, then cut off the rest of his sentence as superfluous. It was obvious that his commander’s vehicle had been hit. And the details would have to wait.

“What’s the situation?” Von Brandis didn’t have time to waste in idle chitchat. He’d lost a precious couple of minutes while transferring to this secondary command post.

Hougaard held his hand over one radio headphone, pressing it to his ear as he listened to a new report just coming in.

“The FJands are engaging that verdomde mortar battery now. And that should put a stop to this blery barrage. They’ve killed a lot of infantry, too.”

Von Brandis nodded. That was good news, but not his main concern. What about the enemy tanks? They’d reach the edge of his smoke soon. Luckily, the forward observer for his own mortar battery was located in Hougaard’s vehicle.

He turned to the young artillery officer and ordered, “Fire only enough smoke to maintain the screen. Mix HE in with the smoke rounds, fuzed for airburst.”

The lieutenant nodded his understanding eagerly. A few mortar rounds bursting in midair, showering the ground below with sharp-edged steel fragments, should strip the attacking infantry away from their tanks.

Hougaard handed him a headset. He shrugged out of his helmet and slid the set over his ears in time to hear Hougaard’s voice over the circuit.

“Delta One, repeat your last, over.”

The armored car squadron commander’s voice was exultant. Though he was momentarily drowned out by the sound of his own big gun firing, von

Brandis still understood his report.

“Roger, Foxtrot Hotel Two. We are in defilade, engaging the tanks from the rear at one thousand meters.

Three, no, five kills! Continuing to engage. Enemy attack breaking up.

”

His voice was masked again by a boom-clang as the Eland’s 90mm gun fired and the breech ejected a spent shell casing.

“Excuse me, Hotel, but we’re a little busy here. Out.”

Von Brandis and Hougaard grinned at each other. They were winning. No enemy force could take that kind of pounding from the rear for long.

Von Brandis turned to the young artillery officer again.

“Change that last order. Cease smoke, and start a walking barrage fifteen hundred meters out with airbursts. Let’s really break these bastards up!”

As the smoke cleared, von Brandis saw burning vehicles and bodies sprawled in a rough band a kilometer from his own line. There were still a few enemy tanks operational, but as they turned to engage the threat to their rear, the battalion’s jeep-mounted antitank missiles had easy shots and quickly finished off the survivors. Dirty-gray puffs of smoke appeared up and down the enemy line as his mortars worked the exposed

Namibian infantry over.

The enemy attack was routed. Soldiers fled in all directions, a few raised their hands in surrender, and many just stood in shock and stared at nothing.

Von Brandis smiled. He had his victory and a clear road to Windhoek “Colonel, message on the HF set. ” Each command vehicle had one high-frequency radio, and several ultrahigh-frequency sets. The
UHF
radios were used for short-range battlefield messages sent in the clear or using simple verbal codes. High-frequency radio was only used for long-range transmission, and messages were always encrypted.

Von Brandis picked up the handset.

“This is Foxtrot Hotel One, over.”

“One, this is Chessboard. Stand by for new orders.”

He pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Chessboard was the call sign for

Gen. Adriaan de Wet, commander of the whole bloody South African Army.

Something big was in the wind.

Von Brandis recognized de Wet’s voice. Not even thirteen hundred kilometers’ worth of static-riddled distance could disguise those silky, urbane tones. It also couldn’t disguise the fact that the SADF’s commander was a very worried man. -Kolonel, our reconnaissance aircraft have spotted an enemy force approaching Swakopmund. They were only about a hundred kilometers northeast of the city at dawn this morning. Accordingly, I’m ordering you to turn your battalion around and intercept the enemy as soon as possible. “

What? Von Brandis didn’t immediately reply. He swayed on his feet, trying to make sense out of what he’d just heard.

Swakopmund was a small city just to the north of Walvis Bay-the 5th

Mechanized Infantry’s supply base. Every ounce of petrol, round of ammunition, and liter of water the battalion needed came through the port.

And now an enemy force threatened that? My God.

Von Brandis’s mouth and throat were suddenly bone-dry.

“What strength do we face, General?”

“Intelligence thinks they are Cubans, in battalion strength. ”

Von Brandis was shocked. There would be no walkover this time.

De Wet continued, wheedling now.

“You have the strongest South African force in the area, Kolonel. More urgent logistic demands from the other columns have made it impossible to significantly reinforce Walvis Bay.

I repeat, you must return and crush this Cuban force or we will lose the port. We’re flying in additional troops now, but we can’t get them there fast enough to hold the city without help. Can you do it?”

There was only one acceptable answer.

“Yes, sir.” Still holding the mike, von Brandis leaned over Hougaard’s map table, silently calculating the amount of ammunition and fuel his men had left after the morning’s fierce tank battle.

“One thing, General, we’ll need a resupply convoy out here.

I’m low on petrol.”

“I’ll see to it at once, Foxtrot. Good luck. Remember that we’re counting on you.” The transmission from Pretoria faded into static.

Von Brandis tore the radio headset off. Those bloody idiots had really done it this time. They’d left him dangling out on a damned thin limb-and almost in sight of the whole campaign’s primary objective.

Now his battalion would have to make a hard, fast, vehicle wrecking journey back west on Route 52. A journey that could only end in a desperate battle with an enemy force of at least equal strength.

He bit back a string of savage curses and started issuing the orders that would put his battalion on the road in full retreat from the Namibian capital.

AUGUST
26-5TH
MECHANIZED
INFANTRY
, 150
KJLOMETERS
EAST
OF
WALVIS
BAY

The blackened trucks and bodies stood out against the Namib Desert’s harsh landscape. Sun-scorched sand and rock did nothing to soften or hide the shattered remains of the battalion’s resupply convoy.