by Larry Bond
Finished, he rose from his early lunch. It was past time to get back to the business at hand.
The forward headquarters itself had been set up in one of the hotel’s larger meeting rooms, and Vega was pleased to see it busy but quiet as he walked in. Following his standing orders, only the two sentries by the door saluted and snapped to attention, but almost everyone else nodded in his direction. Generals always had a magnetic effect on those under their command.
Acknowledging his staff’s various greetings, he walked briskly over to the situation map tacked to one wall. It showed both Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, thirty kilometers to the south. A half hour’s ride in a good car, but a full morning’s travel for a motorized battalion deployed for combat.
The two towns sat like islands surrounded by a desert sea. Two-lane highways spanned out north, south, and east, linking them with other towns hundreds of kilometers away. The real sea, the Atlantic Ocean, lay to the west.
Pellervo’s battalion had started for Walvis Bay at dawn, but was only now nearing the South African port. It wasn’t a large city. In fact, it was just a small, ugly town, more famous for its fish processing plant than anything else. But Walvis Bay possessed the only deepwater harbor on the
Namibian coast.
And that made Walvis Bay worth fighting for.
The port had remained in South Africa’s hands when the rest of Namibia gained its independence on a simple technicality. Occupied by the British before World War I, Walvis Bay had been handed over to South Africa directly instead of being included as part of the old League of Nations mandate over the SouthWest Africa Territory. As a result, the 1989 UN agreement that gave the rest of the ex-German colony its freedom from
Pretoria hadn’t covered Walvis Bay’s vital port facilities.
And that is how the West divides up its spoils, and how South Africa keeps its stranglehold on what is supposed to be a sovereign country,
Vega thought, frowning.
A more cheerful thought wiped away his frown. In attacking Walvis Bay, his troops were invading South African territory, undoing some of the harm done to Namibia by the West. And capturing the port would not only deprive Pretoria of a vital naval base and supply center, it would also give Cuba and its socialist allies the facilities they needed to pour in shiploads of heavy tanks and guns, troops, and equipment. The men and material needed to crush South Africa’s imperial ambitions once and for all.
Vega studied the situation map closely. Markers showed Pellervo’s 2 1 st
Motor Rifle approaching the outskirts of Walvis Bay. Other markers depicted the likely defensive positions of the two companies of enemy infantry holding the port.
Vega mused again, calculating the odds. Two companies, dug in, against a reinforced battalion. The South Africans knew the area better, but his air bases were closer. The general smiled. An even match for a strategic goal.
A discreet cough drew his attention to the expectant face of one of his operations officers.
“Yes?”
“Sir, Colonel Pellervo reports receiving some small-arms fire. Probably from enemy outposts. He requests artillery support. “
Vega shook his head impatiently.
“Tell him to press on. The South African outposts will fall back. The Twentyfirst has to keep moving or the timing of our air strike will be off. “
He glanced at his air officer, who saw his expression and automatically confirmed that.
“The MiGs are on schedule, Comrade General. ETA in ten minutes.”
Vega checked the map one more time. Good. Very good. The battle for Walvis
Bay would open with one hell of an airborne bang.
5TH MECHANIZED INFANTRY Ha OUTSIDE WALVIS BAY
Col. George von Brandis lay prone, hugging the cold, stony ground. Through binoculars, he watched the enemy’s dust cloud approaching.
He hated being outside the cover offered by the port’s houses, aluminum-sided canneries, and entrenchments, but there hadn’t been time to get the battalion inside before first light, and he couldn’t risk being caught unprepared in the open. His vehicles were down to their last few liters of fuel, and the men were exhausted.
The 5th Mechanized had spent the dark, predawn hours finding hides and defilades along the road between Swakopmund and Walvis Bay. The best defensive position lay close to the port itself where a railroad line paralleled the road-its raised embankment offering perfect cover for his infantry, jeep-mounted antitank missiles, and cannon-armed Elands.
Von Brandis adjusted the focus on his binoculars and saw squat shapes emerging from the hazy, yellow dust cloud. The Cubans couldn’t be farther than five kilometers away. Come on, you bastards. Keep coming.
With so little fuel left and only its basic load of ammunition available, his battalion had only one viable option-a devastating short-range attack aimed at the Cuban flank. Hit them hard enough with a surprise attack and those Latin bastards will samba their way back to Luanda, he thought.
And the attack should damn well be a surprise. Two volunteers had stayed behind in Hougaard’s abandoned command Ratel, They were continuing to transmit status reports and requests for aid. His own force had maintained radio silence while speeding westward through the night to minimize the chance of being spotted by enemy air reconnaissance.
Not even the defenders in Walvis Bay knew they were here. He had considered sending in a runner, but two kilometers of open terrain separated his nearest positions from the town. Too far. Whomever he sent would almost certainly be captured or killed.
Von Brandis grinned mirthlessly. The reservists holding Walvis Bay must be feeling a lot like the British soldiers who’d defended Rorke’s Drift against the Zulus a century before-outnumbered and all alone. They will be a happy bunch when we show ourselves, he thought.
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 accelerat
ed 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.