Vortex (36 page)

The noise of battle was increasing as the range closed and more weapons on both sides were able to fire. He watched a few more shots by the armored cars as they tried to knock out the T-62s, all ineffective against their heavy front armor. Sand sprayed around him as a stray Cuban shot slammed into the embankment. Time to go.

Von Brandis scrambled down the embankment to the waiting Ratel. Its turret was now firing, and he instinctively sheltered under its sides as another MiG screamed over.

He grabbed the dangling radio headset and put it on. Turning the earphone volume to maximum, he shouted, “Foxtrot Delta One, redeploy to the south!

You need to get flank shots on the tanks! Over!”

The reply was barely audible, but D Squadron’s commander spoke slowly.

“Cannot move. Not enough fuel. Two vehicles empty, laying turret manually. Aiming at tank tracks, will immobilize.” The bang-clank of a cannon’s firing punctuated his words.

More MiGs raced down the length of his line, strafing everything in their path. Each pass left more of his vehicles burning or abandoned.

Crack! Crack! Crack! The Cuban T-62s were now in range. Even though they had larger guns, it was hard to hit a small, dug-in target from a moving tank, so they’d held their fire until now. The crash of big armor-piercing shells filled the air.

HEADQUARTERS
,
CUBAN
EXPEDITIONARY
FORCE

The young staff officer’s high-pitched voice revealed his excitement.

“Comrade General! Colonel Pellervo reports that his tanks are just five hundred meters from the enemy!”

Vega nodded gravely. Now for the kill.

“All right, order our aircraft home, then shift the artillery fire as planned. Adjust, then pour a full rate of fire onto the enemy for three minutes. ”

He allowed himself the faintest flicker of a smile as his orders were repeated over the radio. He’d spent years imagining the best way to crush a South African battalion in combat, drawing up and rejecting plan after plan-each aimed at matching his army’s strengths against the enemy’s weaknesses. Now it was working. The South Africans caught behind the railroad embankment simply couldn’t match his air power or artillery superiority.

5TH
MECHANIZED
INFANTRY

When von Brandis saw the aircraft leave, it was the first ray of hope in what had become an increasingly bleak situation. The MiGs must finally have run low on fuel or ammunition. Then he started wondering if he could get his remaining antiaircraft guns up to the embankment and redeployed before the Cuban infantry reached it. Those 20mm cannon would work well against personnel.

“It was getting hard to see. Each explosion kicked up sand and dust, and the smoke of the burning vehicles only added to the murk. It clung to his skin and filled his lungs. The enemy troops were visible only as dim, moving shapes though luckily still clear enough to aim at.

The Cuban foot soldiers were still advancing, coming on at an energy-conserving walk while their tanks had stopped and were firing their cannons and machine guns over their heads. Von Brandis could only see three T-62s on fire. Two or three more had been stopped by track hits, but that didn’t keep them from shooting.

He lowered his binoculars, considering his next move. He and his men weren’t out of trouble yet, but concentrated small-arms fire should be enough to stop this damned infantry attack. He didn’t have to expose his surviving armored cars and APCs to the T-62s.

Von Brandis started to grin. The Cuban commander had made his first serious mistake. The man should have kept his tanks together with the infantry.

In the roar of battle around him, he didn’t even hear the first few artillery shells whirring in from high overhead.

21 ST
MOTOR
RIFLE
BATTALION
,
CUBAN

EXPEDITIONARY
FORCE

The battery of towed 122mm howitzers attached to Colonel Pellervo’s battalion was eight kilometers back, deployed out of sight amid a sea of sand dunes fronting the Atlantic. But the artillery observer who controlled their fire occupied the tank next to Pellervo’s.

He was good and needed just four sighting rounds to get the battery on target. The first two were long, the third a little short, but the fourth landed squarely on the railroad tracks.

“Fire for effect!”

Each D-30 122mm gun could fire four shells a minute, for a short period of time. There were six howitzers in the battery, so twenty-four shells a minute rained onto the exposed South African battalion-shattering infantrymen caught out in the open, spraying fragments through open vehicle hatches, and fire balling armored cars with direct hits.

The Cuban gunners kept firing for three long, murderous minutes.

5TH
MECHANIZED
INFANTRY

Whammm! Whammm! Whammm!

Von Brandis felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach by a mule as the first full Cuban salvo landed—each impact jarring and rattling the ground. He flattened, face pressed down into the heaving earth, deafened by the noise.

Each explosion threw a geyser of dirt into the air, sometimes mixed with fragments of men or equipment. Vehicles were torn open or simply blown to pieces. Fragments whizzing out more than twenty meters from the point of each explosion cut down anyone not totally prone-making it impossible for his men to keep firing and stay alive.

Von Brandis knew exactly what the Cubans were doing and knew they had won. But he couldn’t stop fighting. Walvis Bay was vital, and he had to keep trying to save it. He started crawling down the line, finding any officer or noncom still alive-screaming the same thing over and over.

“Call the men back four kilometers. Run with whatever you’ve got. We’ll try to regroup and slip into town.”

Holding their bodies tight against the storm of explosions, most nodded their dazed understanding. A few had simply

stared at him, shell-shocked beyond the ability to comprehend.

Von Brandis had been able to find two of his officers and three noncoms when the shell found him. He never felt it.

FORWARD
HEADQUARTERS
,
CUBAN
EXPEDITIONARY
FORCE

Vega watched his operations officer acknowledge the incoming transmission and pull his earphones off. The man’s wide, white-toothed grin signaled good news. So did the way he straightened to attention.

“Comrade General, the

Twentyfirst Motor Rifle reports overrunning the South African line. They did not withdraw.”

Vega nodded. He’d never denied that the Afrikaners were brave.

“What are our losses?”

Another smile. More good news, then.

“Roughly fifteen percent, Comrade

General. But Colonel Pellervo believes many of his tanks can be repaired.”

Vega sighed with relief. His casualties were acceptable. Especially for such a close-fought action. The 21st Motor Rifle was still combat capable.

He turned to his radio operator.

“Send this message to the embassy in

Windhoek: “Defeated enemy counterattack outside Walvis Bay. Expect to take port by dusk. Send information on freighter arrival times.”

”

As his staff crowded round to congratulate him on the victory, Vega allowed himself a brief, wintry smile. Then he shook his head.

“I thank you, comrades. But we are not finished here. Tell Pellervo to get turned around.

We’ve got to be in Walvis Bay by nightfall.”

South Africa’s army had lost a precious battalion, and Cuba would have the harbor it needed.

AUGUST
29-
UNIVERSITY
OF
THE
WTWATERSRAND
,

JOHANNESBURG

The University of the Witwatersrand looked more like a battlefield than a center of learning.

Tom posters, handlettered banners, and flags littered the university’s once-pristine lawns and treelined walkways. Thinning wisps of tear gas drifted past slogan-daubed gray stone buildings, swirling in a fitful westerly breeze. Squads of shotgun-armed riot troops wearing visored gas masks stood guard at every intersection and entrance.

Other policemen accompanied white-coated medical teams picking their way carefully across an open square-sorting through the scattered bodies of unarmed student demonstrators. Those found to be only lightly wounded were yanked to their feet and hauled off toward rows of canvas-sided trucks already filled with hundreds of other detainees. The trucks were manned by brown shirted
AWB
“police volunteers.” Those more seriously injured were piled onto stretchers and loaded onto waiting ambulances.

The rest were dragged off

to one side of the square-joining a steadily lengthening line of blanket-covered corpses.

None of the Security Branch troopers thought to look behind them, toward the second-story windows of a small brick apartment building just across

Jan Smuts Avenue.

“Got it.” Sam Knowles shut his camera off and backed away from the window.

“Great. ” Ian Sheffield stopped jotting rough notes for his voice-over commentary, flipped his pocket notebook shut, and joined Knowles by the back flight of stairs. They’d been tipped to the planned antiwar, anti-Vorster protest in time to find the perfect site for concealed camera work-a vacant one bedroom flat. A flat they’d secured with the hurried “gift” of several crumpled twenty-rand notes pressed into the sweaty palm of the building’s fat landlord.

The two American newsmen had come hoping they could get some good footage of a major student demonstration. Something to show that not all of South

Africa’s white minority supported Vorster’s brutal crackdown or his Pearl

Harbor-style surprise attack on Namibia. What they hadn’t expected was a full-fledged police massacre of Witwatersrand’s white, mostly

Englishdescended students.

Random shots crackled from outside, rising above the screaming sirens of ambulances rushing wounded to area hospitals.

Ian shook his head in amazement. Skin color no longer seemed the determining factor in judging police reaction. Vorster’s bullyboys were going after anyone who openly protested government policy. He wondered how members of South Africa’s economically powerful but politically weak

English minority would react to seeing their sons and daughters gunned down by riot troops.

Not very well, he guessed, feeling the same odd mix of elation and sorrow he always felt when covering a newsworthy tragedy. He could never shake the sense that he ought to have been doing something to help-not simply standing in the background waiting, watching, and recording.

Still, that was exactly what his job entailed. Reporters who involved themselves in the events they were covering were activists-not journalists. And besides, this was the story he’d been looking for so long. If he could smuggle the horrifying footage they’d just shot out of the country… Of course, that was a big if.

Ian watched as Knowles deftly slid the tape cassette from his camera into an unlabeled carrying case and replaced it with another showing random

Jo’burg street scenes they’d shot earlier in the day. Precaution number one, he thought. Any South African policeman who grabbed their camera this time would be hardpressed to stay awake long enough to realize he was watching the wrong tape.

Finished, the little cameraman stood up, shaking his head.

“I still don’t see how we’re gonna work this. I mean, sure, we can get the tape back to the studio. No problem there.” He shrugged into his shoulder harness.

“But how the hell do you plan to get it onto the satellite link past the censor?”

Ian moved past, heading down the stairs.

“Simple. We aren’t even going to try putting this out over the satellite.”

Knowles clattered down the stairs right behind him.

“Oh? You got some kind of steroid-pumped carrier pigeon I don’t know about?”

Ian grinned and held the door to the outside open.

“Nope.

“What then?”

He followed the cameraman out into a narrow, trash can -filled alley.

Their tiny Ford Escort sat blocking the far end of the alley. Matthew

Siberia, their young black driver, was already behind the wheel with the motor running.

“C’mon, boss man. Don’t keep me hanging… what’ve you got up your sleeve?”

Ian’s grin grew wider.

“How about the embassy’s diplomatic bag? I’ve got a friend in the public information section who’s willing to play along.

And he’s got a friend back in D.C. who’ll make sure our tape gets on the right plane to New York.”

Knowles whistled softly.

“Pretty hot shit. I knew there was a good reason you charm-school grads get paid more than a lowly tech like myself.”

Ian nodded, unsuccessfully resisting the temptation to look smug. It was foolproof. Not even the South Africans would

risk a major diplomatic incident by searching boxes or bags shipped under the U.S. embassy seal. Their footage would air all over the world before

Vorster’s censors realized what had happened.

And all hell would break loose right after that. He frowned. He and Knowles would almost certainly be expelled for violating South Africa’s new press law. No great sorrow there, he thought.

Except for Emily. He’d lose her for sure.

Ian sighed. He’d probably already lost her.

She’d been gone for more than a month and he hadn’t heard a single word from her-not one card, not one letter, not one phone call. Either Emily was still locked up out of touch or she’d decided to try to forget him. And if that was the case, he couldn’t really blame her. Their love affair hadn’t brought her anything but trouble.

Nothing but trouble. Afrikaner families revolved almost entirely around the father. The father’s wishes. The father’s orders. The father’s beliefs. So how could he have expected Emily to withstand her own father’s rage for very long?

Knowles nudged him. They’d reached the end of the alley.