Vortex (35 page)

The Walvis Bay garrison didn’t really need to know that the 5th Mechanized was here anyway. The tactical setup was simple. The Cubans could only advance down one road to attack the town. Von Brandis had deployed his men about eight hundred meters east of that road, ready to shoot only after the garrison opened fire. With luck, the Cubans wouldn’t realize they were being shot at from more than one direction until after his Elands and antitank missiles had slammed in a few unanswered volleys. Another slight edge, von Brandis thought, and I’ll need every advantage I can get.

He planned to open fire only when the Cubans were at close range, under a thousand meters. To make sure surprise was maintained, only one man in each of his companies was allowed to observe the enemy and report. The rest of his infantry stayed hidden below the railroad embankment. All vehicle engines were also off. Normally kept running to provide electrical power to the guns, the engines were shut down both to save fuel and to reduce noise.

They would only be turned over at the last minute.

The Cubans were still closing, now just about three thousand meters away.

They were leading with their tanks, clanking, big-gunned monsters spread out in line abreast. Wave after wave of
BTR
armored personnel carriers followed the tanks.

The tanks were tough customers, but the BTRs were just big wheeled boxes with light armor at most. They were vulnerable to cannon, antitank missiles, even heavy machine guns. Von Brandis sighed. There were a hell of a lot of them, though.

Smaller armored cars prowled round the flanks of the Cuban formation, accompanied by a couple of mobile antiaircraft guns, ZSU-23-4s with their radar antennas deployed and ready.

Suddenly, von Brandis heard a cross between a scream and a roar coming from the north, coming closer fast. Jets! He swiveled his binoculars up and beyond the oncoming Cuban formation.

There they were. Four winged, arrowhead shapes emerged from the dust cloud-flying straight down the road toward Walvis Bay in two pairs. As the

MiGs flashed over the town’s low, flat-roofed houses and warehouses, small cannisters fell from their wings and tumbled end over end toward the ground.

Afterburners roaring, the MiGs accelerated and turned right, thundering out over the ocean. Thousands of frightened birds burst into frenzied motion, blackening the sky over Walvis Bay’s lagoon.

Behind the accelerating jets, the cannisters, cluster bombs, broke apart into falling clouds of tiny black dots. Walvis Bay disappeared-cloaked by smoke and dust as hundreds of bomblets went off almost at once. Tiny flashes of orange and red winked through the smoke, accompanied by a loud, crackling series of explosions that reminded von Brandis of the noise made by the firecrackers tossed at

Chinese New Year’s parades.

Each bomblet carried enough explosive to wreck an aircraft or a vehicle, and each blast sent dozens of highspeed fragments sleeting through the air and any walls or roofs in the way. Von Brandis hoped that Walvis

Bay’s defenders had dug deep trenches.

The sound of the MiGs faded.

He switched his attention back to the advancing Cuban formation, now a few hundred meters closer. The tanks were near enough for him to make out the shape of their turrets, and he could see a large bore evacuator halfway up the gun barrel. T-62s. Bloody great big, thick-armored T-62s.

Wonderful.

He heard the jets again and swiveled to look over the town. The MiGs must have turned again out over the water, because this time they were coming head-on from the west-flying just above the wavetops.

The four aircraft suddenly pulled up, quickly gaining attitude, then dove. Each jet’s nose disappeared in a stuttering, winking blaze of light-cannon hammering the garrison crouching in its foxholes and slit trenches. Flames and oily, black smoke rose from burning cars and buildings. Von Brandis couldn’t see any tracers rising from defending antiaircraft guns. They’d either been knocked out or abandoned by frightened crews.

Again, the MiGs broke off their attack, but this time they didn’t turn over the town. Instead, they flew on, straight toward him! Von Brandis shouted, “Down!” and scrambled down off the small rise he occupied, knowing already it was futile. His battalion was concealed from the road, but not from aerial observation. The Namib’s barren terrain simply offered nowhere to hide.

He looked up as the jets screamed overhead a hundred meters up. The sound deafened him. He was close enough to see the red and blue Cuban insignia, the shoulder-mounted

delta wings, the triangular tail, the square inlets. Cuban MiG23 Floggers.

The MiGs flashed by and he heard a few of the machine guns in his battalion firing as they pulled away. Fine. There wasn’t any point in trying to hide now, and the machine gunners might even hit something.

One of the jets pulled up, turning tighter than the rest. For a moment, von

Brandis thought it had been hit, but instead the MiG-23 gracefully turned and rolled and came back over his battalion. It made no move to attack, but he heard the jet’s howl as it made a single highspeed pass down the length of his defensive line.

Shit. So much for surprise.

Von Brandis scrambled back up the hill, yelling for his radioman to follow.

Both men flopped belly-down at the crest. The Cuban tanks and APCs were roughly two thousand meters away-still well outside effective range.

The South African colonel shook his head in resignation. It was just too damned bad that nothing in war ever went as planned.

“Tell all commanders to open fire. Aim for the APCs. ”

FORWARD
HEADQUARTERS
,
CUBAN
EXPEDITIONARY

FORCE

The air officer spun round in shock, one hand clapped to his earphones.

“Comrade General, one of our aircraft reports men and vehicles east of the road, near the railroad embankment! ”

What? Vega sat bolt upright.

“Find out how many!”

He jumped up from his desk for a closer look at the map. That damned railroad embankment! He should have insisted that Pellervo’s recon units scout the area more thoroughly.

He was still moving when another radioman whirled in his direction.

“Colonel Pellervo reports he is taking fire from the east! ”

Vega took the last few steps to the map at a run. No doubt about it. They’d been ambushed. Some South African was playing it pretty smart. But how smart? He snapped a question toward the air officer.

“How large is the enemy force?”

“The pilot says he can see over a dozen vehicles.”

That’s it, then, Vega thought. At least a company and probably more. He slammed a clenched fist into his cupped palm. He should have known better than to believe the radio intercepts they’d picked up from out in the

Namib.

No time now for recriminations. Quickly he ordered, “Have the fighters strafe the South African bastards! And then see how soon we can get another air strike out here.”

The air officer nodded hurriedly and turned to his radio set.

“Arrow

Lead, this is Forward Control…”

Vega turned his attention to the fast-developing ground battle. The South

African armored units behind the embankment were clearly a bigger threat than the infantry garrison cowering in what was left of Walvis Bay. They were now the primary targets. On the other hand, even antiquated antitank missiles fired from the town could wreak havoc on Pellervo’s units as they turned east. The garrison would have to be neutralized.

He looked for his artillery officer and found him hovering nearby.

“Signal the battery to lay smoke along the northern edge of the town.”

That should blind the Afrikaner bastards. Let them waste missiles firing at empty sand while Pellervo’s tanks annihilated the enemy sheltering behind the railroad embankment.

Vega motioned his operations staff closer.

“All right. Let’s get down to work. Tell Pellervo to deploy his tanks and infantry to the east for a dismounted attack. We’ll worry about the town later.”

Officers scurried toward the radios to obey.

5TH
MECHANIZED
INFANTRY

Von Brandis climbed into his Ratel and used the turret optics to examine the advancing enemy line. Johann, his driver,

now serving as turret gunner, waited nervously. The command Ratel’s small turret held only a heavy machine guna weapon that would irritate but not injure a T-62.

Stepping up to the highest magnification, von Brandis was gratified to see several burning BTRs topped by rising pillars of smoke. The 90mm guns on his Elands; hadn’t a prayer of knocking out a tank at two thousand meters, but their shells tore up the thinly armored Cuban personnel carriers like cheap tin cans. Boers have always been good shots, he thought, and we need that expertise now.

The tanks were wheeling now, the entire formation pivoting on its left flank. In less than a minute, his battalion faced a line of ten T-62s-gun barrels, turrets, and thick frontal armor all facing east. They’d stopped moving, though. Why? Then he saw infantry dismounting from some motionless BTRs, while other APCs, already empty, withdrew at high speed.

He shouted down into the Ratel’s crowded interior.

“Infantry attack forming. Lay mortar fire eighteen hundred meters in front of us and adjust for a walking barrage.”

Staff officers acknowledged and began issuing orders to the battalion’s heavy weapons company.

Von Brandis frowned. The mortar fire would help slow the oncoming infantry, but it wouldn’t even scratch the paint on the T-62s.

Moving slowly, very slowly, the tanks started clanking forward, smoke pouring from the rear of each vehicle. They were making smoke by spraying diesel fuel on their engine exhausts, coveting the infantry coming on behind in a gray white blanket.

Mortar rounds began throwing up sand and smoke in front of the advancing

Cuban line. He jumped down out of the turret and let the young artillery observer climb into his seat. From there, the lieutenant would be able to see well enough to adjust the barrage right on top of the enemy force.

Trying to find a place to stand, von Brandis almost tripped over someone’s feet, then jammed his leg into the map table. Good God. Running a battle from inside this metal zoo was like trying to conduct a symphony on a commuter-packed subway train. Fed up, he grabbed his headset, opened one of the roof hatches, and climbed out onto the Ratel’s armor plated roof where he could see.

The mortars were now landing in the smoky haze behind the Cuban tanks.

He couldn’t tell if they were doing damage, but at least they were bursting in the right spot. His armored cars had ceased fire, out of easy

BTR
targets and not even bothering to test their lighter cannon against the T-62s’ angled frontal armor until they were much closer.

The rattle of antiaircraft guns broke his attention away from the tanks.

The aircraft were back! Von Brandis quickly scrambled off the Ratel’s roof and dropped to a crouch behind its left side. Peering around the front of his vehicle, he saw the Flogger approach and make its attack.

From the Cuban pilot’s point of view, he knew that his battalion was deployed in an ideal formation. Spread out in line along the embankment, with no cover to the top or rear, his Ratels and Eland armored cars were terribly vulnerable.

The plane came over fast, its automatic cannon blazing again-chewing up sand and rock in a straight line along the 5th Mechanized. Something blew up about three hundred meters away, but the MiG-23 didn’t break off.

Instead, its nose came up for a few seconds, looking for all the world like a hunting dog seeking new prey. Then the nose dipped again, firing at a new target. ‘

This time he saw the cannon shells strike around a nearby Ratel personnel carrier. There wasn’t any clear-cut impression of a line of shells walking toward the vehicle-just a flurry of fiery explosions on and around it. At least three shells struck the Ratel, and one hit a man outside, literally blowing him into pieces.

Von Brandis heard screaming, and men poured out of the Ratel’s side and roof hatches in a torrent of boiling black smoke. Several were wounded, bloodied, or burnt. Damn. The vehicle was wrecked and its squad was crippled.

He heard another jet roaring in and hoped that this time the battalion’s antiaircraft battery would bring it down. He glanced at the nearest gun-a twin 20mm mounting. It was manually pointed and lacked radar ranging, but at least the

blasted thing was better than a vehicle-mounted machine gun. Four of them were deployed up and down his line.

Tracers arced upward into the air, passing close to the second MiG, but none hit it. Instead, the MiG destroyed an Eland armored car, fire balling its fuel tank in a spectacular orange and red explosion.

There was a new note to the sounds around him, and von Brandis realized his Elands had opened fire again. He climbed up the embankment and flattened himself along the railroad tracks-binoculars already up and focused. The Cuban tanks were less than a kilometer away. An Eland fifty meters to the right fired, and he felt a momentary exhilaration as he saw the shell strike a T-62 dead center.

But when the smoke cleared, the tank rolled on apparently unharmed. A bright smear on the bow armor showed where the 90mm armor-piercing shell had struck and been deflected.

Movement to the left caught his eye, and he saw a flickering black dot reach a tank. Smoke, fire, and sand fountained into the air. Another hit!

This time, though, the Cuban T-62 shuddered to a squealing halt as all its hatches blew open in a sheet of flame. Nobody appeared in the hatch openings.

At least the antitank missiles were working, von Brandis thought. Another jet roared low overhead and he turned to see one more of his Ratels and an antiaircraft gun burning. Dead or wounded men lay sprawled close by each of them.

Damn it. They were being murdered by these bloody MiGs. Where the hell were their own planes? He felt a twinge of self-doubt. Maybe he should have risked a radio call to Pretoria instead of seeking complete surprise.