by Larry Bond
When he’d been made responsible for the security of these supply dumps, he’d thought he would be protecting them from Renamo attacks-not from his own countrymen. But the guerrillas had stayed clear, scared off by each depot’s defenses. Instead, starving villagers had flocked to the area -drawn by rumors of vast stockpiles of foodstuffs.
Everyone in Mozambique was starving. If you chased peasants away, twice as many would return. If you arrested them, you’d have to feed them with food you didn’t have, or dip into the supplies you were supposed to protect. And if you used up these supplies, the Cuban column slated to attack South
Africa from Mozambique might not be able to reach its objectives.
It was what an American would call a catch-22, de Sousa thought. Then he shrugged. Americans always thought every problem had to have a solution. As a Mozambican, he knew that wasn’t true.
The men in Maputo had thrown in their lot with Cuba’s grand strategic gamble. And that meant that almost every truck, every railroad car, and every cargo plane coming into their country carried military supplies-not foodstuffs for civilian consumption. Until the Cubans completed their logistical buildup and launched their attack, Mozambique’s peasants would suffer.
De Sousa ordered the bullet-riddled bodies returned to their nearby village for burial, knowing only too well that the Cuban and Libyan guards would probably just dump them out in the brush, somewhere out of sight and smell.
This massacre was the third such incident. De Sousa hoped it would be the last, but doubted it. He could only hope Vega’s planned offensive would start soon, not only so that the South Africans would be defeated, but also so that starving peasants wouldn’t have these sources of fatal temptation dangling in front of their faces.
His eyes wandered over row after row of stockpiled rations, fuel drums, boxes of small-arms ammunition, and stacks of shells. The Cuban Brigade
Tactical Group concealed in the surrounding hills had to be almost ready to move. His friends in Maputo told him that the flow of Soviet ships and cargo planes had slowed to a trickle. And inspection visits by high ranking officers had dramatically increased-all sure signs of impending action.
Good, he thought, returning the guard detachment’s careless salute, the sooner these “socialist brothers” of ours are busy killing Afrikaners, the sooner we will have our country back. Nevertheless, as he climbed into his jeep for the long ride back to headquarters, de Sousa couldn’t help wondering if this Cuban “cure” wouldn’t turn out to be just as bad as the South African “disease.”
CNN HEADLINE NEWS
The satellite feed from Windhoek had all the elements of good television news: a sweeping analysis of the military situation in Namibia by a veteran reporter, the panoramic backdrop of a war-menaced city, and even the grim image of a T-62 tank parked in full view. Millions of viewers around the world were being given a real-time glimpse of what a commentator had already called “one of the century’s most bizarre military conflicts.”
Clad in a belted khaki field jacket with his press credentials prominently displayed, the CNN correspondent looked almost more like a soldier than did the openly curious Cuban tank crewmen perched atop the
T-62’s turret and rear deck.
“After weeks of comparative openness in its dealings with the Western news media, Castro’s army has begun cracking down. Security at Namibia’s busy ports and airfields has been increased.
All front line passes for journalists have been revoked. And the commander of this growing army, Gen. Antonio Vega, has dropped completely out of public view. Sources close to the Namibian government report the general is now at his forward field headquarters-somewhere in the mountains outside this capital city.”
“The reporter pointed toward the Soviet-made tank behind him.
“Other sources report seeing large columns of armored vehicles like this T-62 rolling south on Namibia’s highways or parked in heavily defended staging areas. And everyone in Windhoek has grown used to hearing the constant, day and-night roar of massive Soviet cargo planes ferrying still more men and equipment into this small African nation.”
He faced the camera squarely.
“One thing seems clear: the preparations for Cuba’s long-expected counteroffensive are in their final stages.
Though only Fidel Castro and his generals know the precise day or hour, no one can doubt that their soldiers will soon strike south, trying to drive South Africa out of this battered and bleeding country.”
Vega’s elaborate deception plan was working. The Western news media, like
South Africa’s intelligence services, were seeing exactly what they expected to see.
STAGING AREA ONE, NEAR BRAKWATER, NAMBIA
Staging Area One lay nestled in a broad valley between barren, boulder-strewn hills. Empty cornfields stretched to either side, abandoned by their owners under orders from Cuban security troops. Only a few scrub trees dotted the low hills, each blasted by the heat, and shade was something to think about, not to find. The main highway connecting
Windhoek with Angola ran right past the camp.
A barbed-wire fence two meters high encircled the entire compound, pierced only by one gate where it crossed a side road connecting with the highway. Rows of tents and vehicles were visible beyond the fence.
Col. Josd Suarez, chief of staff of the Cuban Expeditionary Force, strode slowly through the staging area trailed by an array of nervous officers.
He was so tired that he almost had to force himself to take each new step.
He’d been up since five, with only a few hours’ sleep the
night before. Managing the Namibian campaign in Vega’s absence, even while holding along a relatively static front, was more than exhausting.
Battlefield and intelligence reports. Staff conferences. Decision after decision. And inspection tours such as this one. They all drained a man of energy continuously-giving him no chance for any real rest.
Suarez frowned. If this was how he felt after just a week in temporary command, he didn’t see how Vega managed his own, much greater, responsibilities. Where did the older man find such a seemingly inexhaustible source of personal energy? He shook his head, realizing he’d probably never find out. The general, like most good commanders, kept a large part of his inner self unknown and unknowable-even to his closest friends and subordinates.
In the meantime Suarez reminded himself, he had his own work to do. He straightened up, concentrating on his inspection.
The equipment park sprawled over several acres. Row after row of long, angular sand-colored shapes sat motionless, their appearance deceptively real even at this distance. Suarez actually smiled, his mood lightened by seeing such a successful ploy.
He walked closer to inspect what appeared to be a BTR60 armored personnel carrier. It had the right shape and dimensions, but a rap of his knuckles revealed a fiberglass shell instead of an armored hull. Though the decoy lacked brackets and hatches and vision blocks, from a hundred meters away it was arguably a BTR-60.
Its eight wheels were actually painted cement cylinders, designed to keep the rest of the decoy from blowing away in the valley’s ever-present wind.
Suarez continued, striding past rows of fiberglass APCs, T-62 tanks, artillery pieces, and even trucks, all made of fiberglass in local factories. Brought in at night in threes and fours, American intelligence satellites and South African reconnaissance planes recorded what appeared to be a slow and steady buildup of troops and armor just north of Windhoek.
Six other phony staging areas, along with two real ones, cluttered the mountain valleys around Namibia’s capital. Security for all of them was as tight as he could make it with the limited resources at his disposal. The reason for that was obvious. If the South
Africans ever learned that Cuba’s buildup inside Namibia was one part reality to three parts charade, they’d start asking themselves hard questions about where all those tanks, troops, and guns really were.
A
nd that would be disastrous.
Suarez hoped his political masters would make up their minds soon. Every day they delayed gave their enemies more time to realize just how badly they’d been fooled.
NATIONAL SECURITY COMMAND BUNKER, OUTSIDE HAVANA, CUBA
DC1 Intelligence Estimate Southern Africa #846 (Revised)
Most Secret
Summary: The open rebellion in South Africa’s own armed forces, combined with the reactionary government’s ongoing and inevitable political disintegration, offers Cuba and its socialist allies a correlation of forces more favorable than at any other time in recent history. In addition, all available information confirms the complete success of our efforts to deceive the enemy’s military intelligence apparatus…. Fidel Castro flipped from page to page, skimming rapidly through the report prepared by his spy service, squinting in the harsh glare of overhead fluorescent lights. Its conclusions mirrored his own deeply held beliefs.
Pretoria’s white regime was on the verge of total collapse. Now was the time to strike and to strike hard.
At irregular intervals.” he glanced up at the row of clocks set high on one of the bunker’s reinforced-concrete walls.
One showed the local time. Another the hour in Moscow. A third had been reset to show the correct time in southern Africa.
Behind each clock’s clear glass face, hands marked the passage of yet another hour. And still nothing! The Teletype machine linked to the
Soviet Union remained obstinately silent. The staff officers grouped around a tabletop display of Namibia and South Africa stood idle.
Castro scowled darkly and watched with secret amusement as his uniformed generals and sober-suited bureaucrats looked quickly away—frightened that Cuba’s absolute ruler might be tempted to vent his frustration and anger on them. His amusement faded as more minutes dragged slowly past.
The long delay irked him. Castro’s lips thinned. To be kept waiting like an impoverished beggar was bad enough. To be slapped down like one would be even worse.
He bit down hard on the unlit cigar stuffed into one corner of his mouth.
Those gutless fools inside the Kremlin’s redbrick walls had already all but utterly renounced Marxism Leninism as a scientific creed. Would they also throw away a grand opportunity to restore their own economic and military power? It seemed unthinkable. Of course, much that had happened over the past several years had once seemed unthinkable.
The Teletype chattered suddenly, spitting out line after line of a message encoded in Moscow microseconds before and now being decoded with the aid of computer technologies “borrowed” from the Americans. Castro controlled the urge to stand over the machine reading the Soviet reply as it emerged. That would be undignified.
Instead, he sat waiting with studied patience as the flimsy sheet of paper worked its way round the crowded bunker, quickly climbing the ladder of seniority until it landed in front of him. Cuba’s leader raced through the message once, then read it a second time more carefully.
A muffled buzz of avid conversation and eager speculation died away-leaving only the faint hum of the bunker’s ventilation system.
At last Castro looked up, his dark, hooded eyes seeking out the officer responsible for military communications.
“You have General
Vega’s headquarters on standby?”
“Yes, Comrade President.”
“Good.” Castro pulled a pad of paper closer, shifted his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, and began writing. He finished in thirty seconds, ripped the top sheet off his pad, and held it out between a thick thumb and forefinger.
“Then encode that signal and send it immediately.”
After weeks of procrastination and uncertainty, Moscow had finally given
Vega’s planned offensive the green light. South Africa’s white capitalists were going to learn about war the hard way.
HEADQUARTERS, CUBAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE,
RUTENGA, IN SOUTHERN ZIMBABWE
Dozens of officers were gathered in the sweltering heat beneath the central headquarters tent. They represented a dozen different service branches-air and land operations, supply, intelligence, political instruction, combat engineering, and others. Most of the men were Cuban, though a scattering of unfamiliar uniforms signaled the presence of a few token Libyan, Zimbabwean, and ANC commanders. Mesh screens kept most of
Rutenga’s biting flies outside.
” Attention! “
Gen. Antonio Vega strode into the crowded tent and stepped briskly up onto a small dais at one end. A large map of southern Africa dominated the wall behind him. He stared down at his officers for a few moments longer and then broke the silence.
“I will not waste your time with fancy speeches, comrades. The Soviets have given their consent and promise of continued support. We attack at first light tomorrow.”
Excited murmurs rose throughout the tent. Most had never really believed they’d be permitted to carry out their general’s ambitious and audacious plan.
Vega held up a single hand, instantly silencing every voice.
“I do not intend to forget what the delay imposed by the Soviets has cost us in
Cuban blood, but they are with us
now-as are our Libyan and African friends. We go forward together as true comrades-in-arms. “
He nodded toward the map behind him.
“We will attack as planned. There will be no modifications, no further delays, and no excuses. I’ve already cabled
Colonel Suarez. At oh one hundred hours tomorrow morning, our remaining forces in Namibia will engage a South African army three times their size.
They will do this to buy time for us. It is our job to make sure that their sacrifices are not in vain.”
Vega’s voice grow louder.
“You’ve all seen the intelligence reports.
Pretoria’s thugs are reeling, torn and divided against one another. Let there be no doubt in your minds. These arrogant Afrikaners arc ours for the taking. Our comrades in the ANC stand ready to lead their people to freedom. South Africa is ripe for liberation. Together, we stand on the threshold of victory. A victory for Cuba. A victory for the oppressed peoples of the world. A victory for socialism!”
With deep satisfaction, he watched his words send a sudden surge of pride and confidence through the tent. Years of retreat and self-doubt had come close to crippling his country and its allies. But all those doubts and defeats would be forgotten when his tanks rolled into Pretoria in triumph.
FORWARD ASSEMBLY AREA, FIRST BRIGADE TACTICAL
GROUP, NEAR BUBI, ZIMBABWE
Cuba’s First Brigade Tactical Group lay scattered in half a dozen camouflaged encampments around the tiny village of Bubi-sixty kilometers south of the road and rail junction at Rutenga and sixty kilometers north of
Beitbridge, a town on the northern side of the Limpopo River. The “great, gray green greasy” Limpopo formed the border between Zimbabwe to the north and South Africa to the south.
Now, thousands of soldiers and hundreds of vehicles were stirring from their hiding places-from small clumps of trees, shallow trenches covered by dried brush and camouflage, and civilian huts and houses seized for military use. Engines roared to life as drivers revved their vehicles up to full throttle and then let them slide back to idle.
Helmeted infantrymen formed up under shouted orders and waited patiently to board their APCs. In a high-pitched, howling whine of powerful gas turbines, Mi-24 Hind gunships taxied out from under camouflage netting and sat ready for takeoff.
Trucks, their curved sides streaked with diesel fuel, moved from unit to unit topping up mammoth T-72 tanks, and wheeled BTR-60 and tracked BMP-I armored personnel carriers. Ammunition carriers trundled along behind the diesel trucks, piled high with cannon shells, mortar rounds, and boxes of small-arms ammo. Tank crewmen swarmed over their armored monsters, tightening and adjusting tracks and engines. Engineers and medical personnel worked beside them, bringin
g their own vehicles to full war readiness.
Hours slipped by as the men of Cuba’s First Brigade Tactical Group shook off the lethargy imposed by weeks of concealment and forced inactivity. At last, shouted orders brought the Tactical Group’s battalions out onto the highway-hundreds of vehicles forming slowly into a kilometers-long stream of dense traffic flowing south. They would spend the rest of the day in the “hurry up and wait” cycle of armies everywhere, inching forward as the brigade made the long road march to its assault positions-just north of the
Limpopo gorge.
This first of Vega’s striking forces left behind an abandoned tangle of camps, already rusting coils of barbed wire, and fields scarred by tank tracks.
SECOND BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP, NEAR PESSENE,
MOZAMBIQUE
Dust clouds lit red by the lateafternoon sun hung low over southwestern
Mozambique’s hills, all converging on a single main road running west.
Engine noises rumbled over the hills like a rolling, unending peal of manmade thunder.
Maj. Jorge de Sousa stood off to one side of the highway, watching in awe as hundreds of Cuban tanks, trucks, and other vehicles lumbered past on their way toward South Africa. He’d never seen so much combat power assembled in any one place. From time to time, pairs of Soviet-made helicopters flew overhead, adding to the general, ear-numbing din.
He stiffened to attention as the lead T-72 rolled by with its commander, a lieutenant colonel, saluting as though he were on parade in Havana’s
Revolution Square. More tanks followed, clattering down the highway in column. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. De Sousa lost count. Close behind the tanks came combat engineering units with special bridging and mine-clearance equipment, armored personnel carriers packed with infantry, ZSU-23-4 antiaircraft guns, and trucks bulging with ammo, food, fuel, and water.
The Mozambican major shook his head from side to side, caught in a sort of euphoria-induced daze. It all seemed unreal somehow, like a dream.
He’d never imagined that his earnest wish earlier that same morning would come true so quickly. All his misgivings about Cuba’s intentions and capabilities faded away-overwhelmed by this display of power.