Vortex

by Larry Bond

  Heads nodded. Limited involvement in guerrilla operations against

  Mozambique’s Marxist government had been a staple of South Africa’s foreign policy for more than a decade. Under growing international pressure, the Haymans government had tried to untangle itself gradually from Renamowith only minor success. Too many lower-echelon officers and bureaucrats, including most of the men now sitting on the Security

  Council, had been unwilling to end a campaign that was so successfully destroying Mozambique’s economy. They’d kept supplies and intelligence reports flowing to the guerrillas despite Pretoria’s orders to the contrary.

  “Well, I’m pleased to report that the President” Muller inclined his head in Vorster’s direction—has authorized an expanded assistance program for Renamo. As part of this program, we’ll be meeting a much higher percentage of their requests for heavier weaponry, more sophisticated mines, and additional explosives.”

  Muller paused, watching interest in his words grow on the faces around the table.

  “Naturally, in return we’ll expect a stepped-up pattern of attacks. Especially on the railroads connecting Zimbabwe with the port at Maputo and the oil terminal at Beira.”

  Pleased smiles sprouted throughout the small, crowded room. By cutting those rail lines, Renamo’s guerrillas would once again destroy the only independent transportation links between the black states of southern

  Africa and the rest of the world. All their other railroads led through

  South Africa. Pretoria’s economic stranglehold on its neighbors would be dramatically strengthened at a relatively small cost in arms and ammunition. Best of all, those doing the fighting and dying would all be black. No white blood need be shed.

  One man, Fredrik Pienaar, the new minister of information, coughed lightly, seeking recognition.

  “What about the American, British, and

  French military advisors in Mozambique? Can they interfere with our plans?”

  Vorster scowled.

  “To hell with them. They’re nothing.”

  “The President is quite right, Minister,” Muller said with a cautious glance at Pienaar. The tiny, wasp-wasted man now controlled the government’s vast propaganda machine. And as a result, he could be either a powerful friend or a dangerous foe. To a considerable degree, the official “truth” in South Africa would be shaped by the press releases and radio and TV broadcasts Pienaar approved.

  Muller tapped the map lightly as he went on.

  “The Western soldiers in

  Mozambique are there strictly as training cadres. Their own governments have forbidden them any combat role. Once Renamo’s expanded operations get going, these cadres will have little effect on our plans. The white-ruled countries may be outwardly sympathetic to these black socialist states, but they are really providing only token aid. They no more want them to prosper than we do.” His finger traced an arc along

  South Africa’s northern border.

  Muller wasn’t so sure of that. The socalled democracies were often unpredictable. He consoled himself with the thought that his first analysis was undoubtedly correct. Surely no sane European or American politician would seriously want to assist a country such as Mozambique.

  He sank back into his chair at Vorster’s signal. His part in this afternoon’s orchestrated chorus of approval for long planned actions was over.

  Vorster stood, towering above the members of his inner circle.

  “One major threat to our fatherland remains unchecked.”

  His hand hovered over the map and then slammed down with enough force to startle the older men around the table.

  “Here! The communists who now rule in SouthWest Africa. In what they call “Namibia. He pronounced the native word contemptuously.

  His subordinates muttered their agreement. South Africa had governed the former German colony of SouthWest Africa for seventy years. During that time, the diamonds, uranium, tungsten, copper, and gold produced by

  Namibia’s rich mines had poured into the hands of South Africa’s largest industrial conglomerates. Just as important, the colony’s vast, and wastelands had proved an invaluable buffer zone against

  guerrilla attacks on South Africa itself. A ragtag, native Na

  mibian guerrilla movement, Swapo, had caused casualties and destroyed property, but it had never seriously threatened Pretoria’s hold on its treasure trove.

  But all Namibia’s benefits had been thrown away when the National Party’s ruling faction agreed to cede the region to a black, Swapo-dominated government. To Vorster and his compatriots, South Africa’s subsequent

  UN-supervised withdrawal had been the clearest signal yet that Haymans’s “moderates” planned a complete surrender of all white privilege and power.

  Every man now sitting on the State Security Council believed that the negotiated surrender of Namibia was a stain on South Africa’s honor. A stain that would have to be erased.

  Vorster saw their frowns and nodded.

  “That’s right, gentlemen. So long as communists have free rein on our western border, so long will our people be threatened.”

  His scowl grew deeper.

  “We know that these Swapo bastards give shelter to our terrorist enemies!

  “We know that the mines dug with our labor, our money, and our expertise now pay for the weapons used to murder men, women, and children across this land!

  “We know that these black animals openly boast of their victory’ over us-a ‘victory’ given them by treachery within our own government. “

  Muller watched with interest as Vorster’s normally florid face grew even redder. He had to admit that the man’s rhetoric was effective. The

  President could whip men into a hate filled frenzy even faster than the old Bible-thumping dominie at Muller’s boyhood church. The security chief quickly shied away from the comparison. It awakened too many long-buried memories of mixed pleasure and shame.

  A tiny fleck of spittle from Vorster’s mouth landed by Muller’s right hand, and he stared at it in sick fascination as his leader’s tirade reached its climax.

  “it shall not be so. We will not allow these enemies of our blood to laugh at us, to mock us, to freely plot our downfall! They will be punished!”

  Clenched fists thumped the table in a wild, drumming rhythm as he finished speaking.

  Vorster, smiling now, let his followers show their approval for a moment, then held up a hand for silence. His rage seemed to have vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating expression.

  “Accordingly, I ask the ministers of defense and foreign affairs, and the director of miliary intelligence, to confer with me on specific means aimed at ridding us of this abomination, this “Namibia. “

  Vorster stared directly into the eyes of each of the three men he’d named.

  “I shall impose only three conditions on our deliberations. The actions we contemplate must be swift, they must be certain, and they must be final.”

  Muller looked back at his leader and felt a cool shiver of delight run down his spine. He and his counterparts were being given a free hand to decide the fate of one and a half million people. It was the closest thing imaginable to being a god.

  Something stirred in his loins and Muller shifted uncomfortably, wondering again at the way he always found thoughts of power and death so sexually arousing. He shook his head irritably. One thing was certain.

  It was a mystery that would cost the Namibian people dearly.

  And that was a pleasant thought.

  CHAPTER

  Crackdown

  JULY 15-PURSUIT FORCE LION, ON THE NAMBIAN

  FRONTIER

  One thousand feet above the arid, rolling Namibian veld, a tiny, single-engined Cessna 185 orbited-circling round and round through a crystalline blue sky. Its shadow, cast by the rising winter sun, rippled over low, barren hills and sheer walled gullies strewn with bare-limbed trees and brown, thorn-crowned brush.

  Strapped into an obs
erver’s seat in the plane’s cramped cockpit, Commandant

  Henrik Kruger squinted through his binoculars into the early-mo ming glare.

  The movement emphasized the wrinkles spreading through the skin around his steel-gray eyes-crow’s-feet worn into his otherwise boyish looking face by years of exposure to the sun and wind. They were the marks left by nearly two decades of dedicated military service to his country.

  With one hand, he reached back and rubbed a neck grown sore from too many minutes of hunching down to see out the Cessna’s windows. At an inch over six feet, Kruger was just tall enough to find riding inside most South African military vehicles and aircraft uncomfortable. He preferred being out in the open air.

  Nothing. Still nothing. He pursed his lips. The rugged terrain below made it difficult to spot the fleeing men and vehicles he sought, but the traces of their passage across the veld couldn’t be so easily concealed. It was only a matter of keeping one’s eyes open.

  There. He spotted a narrow break in the normal pattern of yellowing, sun-dried grass, brown earth, and slate-gray rock. It was precisely the sort of thing he’d been searching for since it became possible to distinguish more than blacker ground against a black sky.

  Kruger felt adrenaline surge through his veins and forced his excitement back. What he saw might easily be nothing more than a trail left by one of southeastern Namibia’s many grazing cattle herds. He needed a closer look to be sure.

  Without lowering his binoculars, he reached over the seat and tapped the

  Cessna pilot’s left shoulder, signaling a turn in that direction. The pilot, a young South African Air Force lieutenant, nodded once and pulled the small plane into a shallow dive to the left-simultaneously throttling back to give his passenger a better view of whatever it was that he’d seen on the ground.

  The marks Kruger had spotted grew larger and clearer as the Cessna raced toward them at one hundred knots. His excitement returned. They were tire tracks all right; deep, furrowed ruts torn out of the ground by two or three heavily laden Land Rovers moving cross-country. Without being told, the pilot relaxed his turn, leveling out at five hundred feet to follow the tracks westward into Namibia.

  Kruger lowered his binoculars and unfolded the map on his lap with one hand while pressing the transmit button on his radio mike with the other.

  “Papa

  Foxtrot One to Papa Foxtrot Two. Over.”

  “Go ahead, Papa Foxtrot One.” His secondin-command, Maj. Richard Forbes, sounded tired. Nothing surprising in that. Forbes and his men had already been up more than half the night searching for a band of ANC guerrillas who’d tried

  to cross the long, open border sector guarded by Kruger’s 20th Cape

  Rifles.

  The kommandant grimaced. Guarded was probably too strong a word. The frontier between South Africa and newly independent Namibia stretched over more than six hundred kilometers of desert and and veld. That meant that each of the eight infantry battalions stationed at various points along the border had to watch over sectors seventy five or more kilometers long. It was almost an impossible task-even with constant patrolling, daylight aerial surveillance, and electronic sensors planted along likely infiltration routes.

  Kruger frowned, remembering the frantic events of the past few hours. A midnight clash between the guerrillas and one of his battalion’s armored car patrols had turned into a brisk, bloody firefight that had left one of his men dead and two more badly wounded. To make matters worse, the guerrillas had broken contact in all the confusion, disappearing into the hills without leaving any of their own dead and wounded behind.

  When a preliminary sweep confirmed that they’d turned back toward

  Namibia, Forbes had taken a mechanized infantry company out in pursuit-trying to stay close to the fleeing ANC infiltrators until daylight made aerial reconnaissance possible. They’d succeeded, and now it was up to Kruger to vector his men in for the kill.

  He thumbed the transmit button again.

  “Two, this is One. Tracks heading west approximately five klicks south of your position. “

  Forbes came back on immediately, sounding much less tired than he had seconds before.

  “Roger that, One. We’re moving. Deployment plan is India

  Three. Crossing November Bravo now. Out.”

  Kruger acknowledged and glanced down at his map again. The code phrase

  “India Three” meant that the fourteen Ratel 20 armored personnel carriers under Forbes’s direct command would move parallel to the trail left by the guenillas-avoiding any booby traps or mines they might have planted to catch foolhardy pursuers charging straight in after them. Then, once

  Kruger had pinpointed the retreating ANC force, Forbes would change course, driving hard to put his infantry, machinegun teams, and mortars out in front. With reasonable luck, the South African column would be able to smash the guerrillas in split-second ambush.

  Kruger shook his head. It should work, and work at a minimal cost in casualties. But there were complications. International complications.

  “November Bravo” was the radio shorthand for the Namibian border. His men were now on what was ostensibly foreign soil. If they were spotted by UN or Swapo patrols before they’d had a chance to deal with the ANC guerrillas, there’d be hell to pay. The international press would surely have a field day reporting another South African “invasion” of a neighboring country.

  He frowned. Although the Republic clearly couldn’t afford to allow its enemies sanctuary so close to its borders, the new government’s strident rhetoric wasn’t making it very easy to justify these “hot pursuit” operations. It was necessary to teach the guerrillas and their supporters some hard lessons, but it seemed senseless to spill so much hot air about it. The old American adage that one should speak softly, but carry a big stick, seemed the wiser path.

  “Dust on the horizon, Kommandant. Over there at three o’clock. “

  The pilot’s words brought Kruger back to the present, He was a soldier with a battle to run. Politics could wait. He craned his head forward, trying to get a better view through the Cessna’s Plexiglas windows.

  The light plane bucked slightly in a sudden updraft and then straightened as the lieutenant regained control. As it leveled off, Kruger saw the hazy, yellowish cloud the other man had reported. Six or seven separate dust plumes streaked the air on the horizon, tossed skyward by vehicles moving cross-country at high speed.

  He shook his head, puzzled. There were too many plumes. Was the ANC force larger than reported? Or had it been reinforced? Another, even worse possibility tugged at his mind. He leaned forward against the straps holding him to the seat.

  “Let’s get closer.”

  The lieutenant nodded and pulled his aircraft into a gentle turn to the right. Kruger raised his binoculars again.

  The specks beneath the spreading dust cloud grew rapidly larger, resolving suddenly into six large, canvas-sided trucks rolling south-led by a dazzling white jeep flying a huge blue and white United Nations flag. The same flag flew from each of the trucks.

  Kruger swore under his breath. Damn and double damn. The UN peacekeepers responsible for this section of the border hadn’t been alert enough to stop the ANC’s attempted infiltration. But by God, they were quick enough off the mark to stop anyone chasing after the guerrillas. The UN truck convoy’s course would place it squarely between Forbes’s company and their quarry.

  His hands tightened around the binoculars.

  The Cessna’s radio crackled into life.

  “This is Captain Roald Pedersen of the United Nations Monitoring Group calling the unidentified aircraft overhead. Are you receiving my transmission? Over. ” The UN officer’s accented English marked him as a Norwegian.

  Kruger let the binoculars fall around his neck and thumbed his own mike.

  “Receiving you loud and clear, Captain.”

  “Identify yourself, please.” Pedersen’s politeness didn’t disguise the tension
in his voice.

  For an instant, Kruger stared at the speeding trucks below, tempted to tell his pilot to just turn and fly away. Then he shrugged. He wouldn’t gain anything by being intransigent. Observers in the truck column must have jotted down the Cessna’s identification numbers by now. No one would believe this was a simple civilian joy flight gone astray. Besides, perhaps he could reason with this Norwegian peacekeeper.

  “this is Kommandant Henrik

  Kruger of the South African Defense Force.”

  Pedersen’s next words dashed that hope.

  “You’re violating Namibian airspace, Kommandant. And I’m ordering you to leave immediately.”

  Order? The bastard. Kruger fought his temper and spoke calmly.

  “I urge you to reconsider your ‘suggestion,” Captain. I’m currently pursuing a terrorist force that crossed into our territory and killed one of my men. Surely we have the right to defend ourselves?” He released the transmit button.

  “I’m sorry, Kommandant.” Better. The Norwegian sounded genuinely apologetic.

  “But you haven’t got jurisdiction on this side of the line any longer. I must insist that you turn back immediately or I will be forced to take stronger measures. “

  Kruger pondered that. What stronger measures? The UN troops weren’t likely to start shooting-at least not without being shot at first. But what could he do if they continued interposing themselves between his oncoming soldiers and the still-fleeing guerrillas? Blast them out of the way? Not likely. Not if he wanted to avoid a major international incident and the resulting damage to his country’s reputation and his own career.

  He glanced at the map still open on his lap. Forbes and his APCs would be visible to the UN convoy in minutes dramatically raising the stakes in any prolonged confrontation. What now seemed a simple border violation by a single aircraft would suddenly become a full-scale raid by South

  African armored vehicles and infantry.

  He swore under his breath. There weren’t any good choices. He thumbed the mike’s transmit button hard enough to hurt.

  “Papa Foxtrot One to Papa

  Foxtrot Two. Over.”