Vortex (62 page)

Van der Heijden frowned. More and more these days, as people outside

Vorster’s immediate circle challenged his authority, the President withdrew into himself-as though he could shut out the very events he had triggered. It was a bad sign.

As the aide who’d home the latest news of disaster left, Vorster stirred himself enough to ask, “Well, General? Can we hold the city?”

De Wet swallowed hard.

“I’m afraid not, Mr. President. Not without more troops.”

“Troops we do not have?”

De Wet nodded reluctantly.

“That’s correct, Mr. President. All our available forces are tied down in Namibia, Natal, or other trouble spots.”

“Then perhaps it’s high time we began withdrawing from Namibia, General.”

Fredrik Pienaar still retained enough of Vorster’s confidence to speak bluntly. And the propaganda minister had never liked de Wet or his plans.

“That would be disastrous!” De Wet appealed directly to Vorster.

“Intelligence reports indicate that the Cubans are planning a major offensive sometime in the next few days. Abandoning our defenses there now would be against all military logic!”

“Then what do you suggest, General? Shall we sit idly here in Pretoria while the Republic collapses around our ears? Is that the militarily sensible thing to do?”

De Wet turned red as he listened to Pienaar’s scathing sarcasm.

“No,

Minister.” De Wet breathed out noisily and refocused his attention on the silent, brooding figure of Karl Vorster.

“I suggest a temporary delay, that’s all. Let us absorb this Cuban offensive, bleed them white in fruitless attacks against our trenches and minefields, and send them reeling back toward Windhoek. Then we can safely pull forces out of

Namibia to deal with these traitors!”

Van der Heijden nodded to himself. Surprisingly, de Wet made sense for once.

Vorster made an impatient gesture with one massive hand.

“Very well, de

Wet.” He glowered at the general.

“But do not fail me as so many have of late. I will not forgive treason or ineptitude.”

De Wet paled, murmured his understanding, and turned back to his uniformed aides.

Vorster looked at the rest of his cabinet, his weary gaze moving from face to face until it settled on van der Heijden.

“Marius?”

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“Have you captured that American swine yet?”

The minister for law and order felt his stomach lurch. For personal reasons, he’d been keeping the police search for Sheffield low-key. In the confession his men had ripped out of Erik Muller, the former security chief had babbled about the young, Afrikaans-speaking woman who’d been blackmailing him. And now Emily was missing-not at the farm or at her friend’s home in Cape Town. Van der Heijden could add two and two to get four. Somehow his own beautiful, foolish, and headstrong daughter had been gulled into helping this American reporter. For her sake, he’d kept investigators from following up on several promising leads-hoping that she’d escape

South Africa before he was forced to act. Now it appeared that time had run out.

He shook his head.

“Not yet, Mr. President. But we’re hot on this man’s trail. I expect an arrest at virtually any moment. ”

“Good.” Vorster stroked his chin.

“When we have him in custody, your people can undoubtedly ‘persuade’ him to recant this foolish story of his-true?”

Warily, van der Heijden nodded again. This Ian Sheffield was only a journalist after all. A few hours of rigorous torture should render him malleable to almost any suggestion.

“Excellent, Marius. ” Vorster smiled at the rest of his uncertain inner circle.

“There you are, my friends. Soon, we’ll have this American admitting that his whole story was nothing but a communist plot to sow confusion in our beloved fatherland. And on that day, all these minor difficulties will begin to fade away like the bad dreams that they truly are. Our strayed brethren in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal will return begging for our forgiveness.”

Vorster’s smile turned ugly.

“And the rooineks of the Cape and the kaffirs of Natal will weep for the days before they dared to oppose our power!”

Van der Heijden and the others stared back in open disbelief. How could their leader really believe that matters could still be so simply resolved? Mere words wouldn’t douse the fires of revolt and rebellion now burning in almost every corner of South Africa.

How could any sane man hope to avert Armageddon here?

FORWARD
HEADQUARTERS
,
MILITARY
FORCES
OF
THE
PROVISIONAL
GOVERNMENT

OF

CAPE
TOWN
,
NEAR
THE
HOUSES
OF
PARLIAMENT

Maj. Chris Taylor crouched behind a bullet-scarred Buffel armored personnel carrier, studying the hastily scrawled markings on a map of the city. He ducked as a mortar round exploded a hundred meters away, blasting leaves and bark

off an ancient oak tree and sending white-hot shrapnel sleeting through the shattered front doors and windows of the Houses of Parliament.

Smoke from burning buildings and vehicles swirled across the street and billowed high into the air-joining a dense pall produced by fires raging out of control all across Cape Town. Taylor coughed as he breathed in the acrid stuff. He tilted his helmet back up off his forehead and looked closely at his new secondin-command, Capt. John Hastings.

“You’re sure about this, Johnnie? It’s not just another damned rumor?”

Hastings shook his head.

“I talked to the new base commander myself. It’s official. Simonstown has come over to our side! ”

Both men ducked again as another mortar round landed in the botanical gardens close by, showering them with dirt, grass, and pieces of mangled plants.

Hastings spat dirt out of his mouth and continued, “The Navy boys said they’d had some fighting with a few diehards, but they’ve got everything under control for the moment.”

“Damage?”

“A few fires, but no damage to the docks or ships.”

That was welcome news. Taylor had been hoping for support from the naval officers and ratings stationed at the Simonstown base. The Navy had always been the most “English” of all the South African military services. And even though its total strength didn’t amount to much more than a few aging ships, holding South Africa’s main naval base would give the provisional government’s claims to independence needed national and international credibility.

He refolded the map and rolled out from behind the
APC
, seeking a better view of the house-to-house fighting raging up ahead. Hastings followed suit.

Cape Town, once arguably the most beautiful city on the African continent, now looked more like wartime Berlin.

The ugly debris left by war marred the long, broad expanse of Government

Avenue and its adjoining botanical gardens. Buildings were pockmarked by bullets, mortar and grenade fragments, and cannon shells. Bodies lay here and there some crumpled on the street or pavement, others draped over rose bushes and park benches or sprawled on gravel paths. Some of the dead wore civilian clothes, others were in uniform. Strips of white cloth fluttered in a light sea breeze, tied around the outstretched arms of those who’d fought against Pretoria.

A wrecked
APC
blocked part of the avenue, orange flames licking skyward as its fuel tanks burned. A single charred corpse hung half in and half out of the commander’s hatch.

Taylor swallowed hard against the taste of bile, forcing himself to ignore the butchery before his eyes. Despite all the signs of slaughter, he and his men were winning. The flickering, pinprick flashes of rifle and machinegun fire that marked his battle line were farther away than when he’d last looked. And he could see an Eland armored car moving slowly forward, stopping briefly from time to time to shell buildings farther down the street. Small figures clustered along each side of the armored car, sometimes crouching for cover, but always advancing.

He nodded to himself. Vorster’s loyalists were definitely giving ground, falling back toward Table Mountain.

Taylor lifted his eyes to the flat-topped mountain rising south of the city. The escarpment loomed ominously over Cape Town’s tallest skyscrapers-a massive edifice of jagged rock covered by what looked like a thick layer of fluffy white cloud. A rippling series of red and orange flashes from the summit reminded him that the white haze wasn’t cloud at all. It was smoke from an artillery bombardment-a barrage so intense that it shrouded the entire top of the mountain.

He frowned. His gunners were firing everything they had at the fortified caves and bunkers held by government troops, hoping to knock out the artillery pieces em placed there, but it seemed likely to be a vain effort. Those fortifications were too strong to be suppressed by long-range bombardment. They’d have to be taken in a bloody succession of set-piece infantry assaults.

And that was the problem. Taylor now had enough men under his command to clear the city of Vorster’s troops. But he didn’t have enough infantry, armored vehicles, or artillery to finish the job by seizing Table

Mountain. As a result, the

battle seemed headed for certain stalemate. He and his fellow rebels might control Cape Town, but loyalist artillery batteries and troops trapped on the escarpment would dominate both its harbor and international airport.

Taylor hugged the pavement as more mortar rounds rained down on the gardens ahead, knocking down trees and smashing already shattered greenhouses.

Windblown dust, dirt, and smoke cut visibility to a matter of meters in seconds.

He rolled back into cover, reaching for his command phone. Table Mountain would have to wait. He had more immediate problems.

Behind him, the setting sun dipped lower, dropping steadily toward the western horizon. Night was falling across a South Africa now fully engulfed in bitter civil war.

Flight

NOVEMBER
11HEADQUARTERS, 20TH
CAPE
RIFLES
,
VOORTREKKER
HEIGHTS

MILITARY
CAMP
,
NEAR
PRETORIA

Furnace-white arc lights burned all along the perimeter of the Voortrekker

Heights Military Camp-stripping the night away from barren brown hillsides. No trees, clumps of brush, or even patches of tall grass remained either to soften the outlines of those rugged slopes or to conceal an approaching enemy. Together, the perimeter lights and the empty kill zones they fit made it impossible for anyone to mount a successful surprise attack on South Africa’s major military headquarters. But the dazzling glare also washed out any glimpse of cold, clear stars speckled across a pitch-black sky or the warm, golden glow of Pretoria’s streetlamps and cozy homes.

Commandant Henrik Kruger regretted that. Any reminder of life outside this sterile military encampment would have been welcome.

Since leaving the Namibian front more than a month be4″

fore, his battered battalion had been penned up among Voortrekker Heights’ drab, look-alike barracks, parade grounds, maintenance sheds, and vehicle parks. Some high-ranking nitwit in the Ministry of Defense had ordered all enlisted personnel and noncommissioned officers restricted to base.

He and his officers had stayed with them, determined not to let a piece of bureaucratic idiocy endanger bonds of trust and loyalty forged in combat. Still, he had to admit to himself that he also had other, more personal reasons for avoiding Pretoria or nearby Johannesburg.

He was afraid that even the sight of their bustling streets, shops, and restaurants might awaken painful memories of his brief, happy time with

Emily van der Heijden-memories that were three years old now. True, he’d known that their engagement was mostly her father’s idea, but he’d hoped that he could reconcile her to the thought of their marriage. In retrospect, it had been a foolish hope. The gaps between their ages, their politics, and their interests were simply too wide to be easily bridged.

Kruger smiled crookedly. He’d been alone and aloof for most of his adult life-content in the masculine, monastic world of the professional military. Given that, it was strange that he should have found the one woman of his heart, only to learn that she had no room in hers for him.

He gripped the wood railing of his veranda until his knuckles stood out white against the surrounding blackness. With an effort, he forced his mind away from lasting personal grief to professional concerns.

Such as this absurd decision to keep his battalion confined to

Voortrekker Heights. Vorster and his minions must fear that exposure to the political dissent and economic hardship sweeping the country might tempt their soldiers to commit treason or desert. So they’d denied his troops and the other weary combat veterans returning from Namibia promised home leaves, weekend passes, and any other opportunity to escape the rigid confines of a military life for even a short while.

Kruger relaxed his grip and flexed his aching fingers. Anybody brighter than a brain-dead Defense Ministry bureaucrat could have predicted the result. Weeks of bloody fighting followed by more weeks of mind-numbing routine-drill, calisthenics, drill, spit-and-polish inspections, and still more drill-had produced a battalion practically boiling over with resentment and barely suppressed rage.

More than a dozen of the 20this veterans were in punishment cells right now-locked up on charges ranging from simple insubordination to being drunk while on duty. Kruger shook his head angrily. He’d rather chance the desertion of a few men than watch this slow, steady disintegration of what had been a proud fighting unit.

As matters stood, the 20th Cape Rifles was now effectively a weaker battalion than it had been in Namibia. Citizen Force replacements were filtering in slowly, fleshing out skeletal companies and platoons to something near their authorized strength. Unfortunately, most of the reservists were short on needed training, experience, and esprit de corps.