Vortex

  Anyone who could see it clearly died instantly. Heat and radiation raced outward from the detonation point at the speed of light, and troops who weren’t under some sort of cover suffered second-degree burns, their skin blistered and reddened wherever they’d faced the fireball.

  Inside five hundred meters from the fireball, though, men suffered third-degree burns as their clothing and hair smoked and then caught fire in the intense, blood-boiling heat. Half a second later, a roaring pressure wave arrived, ending their agony. The shock wave crushed lungs, picked men up bodily, and tossed them through the air. Simply being shielded from the radiant heat and radiation couldn’t save the Cuban tank crews. Most struck a hard object at high speed and died instantly.

  The tanks themselves were “hard” targets, able to resist massive overpressures before their armored bodies were broken, but the intense heat ignited external fuel drums, paint, and in many cases, even the ammunition stored inside. Multiple blasts shattered armored vehicles that were already on fire. Any that were broadside to the blast were scooped up by the wall of dust, gases, and debris and literally rolled and tumbled along the ground.

  Sergeant Jimenez’s SAM carrier sat near the head of the brigade column, only five hundred meters from ground zero. His vehicle was much easier to kill than a tank.

  First, the electromagnetic pulse spreading outward with the bomb’s heat and radiation knocked the launcher’s electronics out-showering Jimenez, the lieutenant, and the rest of his crew with sparks. At the same time, its

  SA-8 missiles started cooking off in their launch tubes-set off by the intense heat. But that took several tenths of a second, and by the time the missiles began exploding the pressure wave arrived.

  The shock wave tore the fragile radars and missile launcher right off the vehicle’s chassis and then crushed the flimsy steel body with the men still inside. Jimenez and the others were already dead.

  The shock wave kept going-expanding outward in an ever-widening, ever-deadly circle.

  The brigade tactical group’s T-62 tanks were low, squat,

  heavily armored targets, but its BTR-60 personnel carriers were actually designed to float and had much more surface area. The nearest infantry battalion, within a thousand meters of the fireball, had its troop carriers pulverized and flung like shattered toys through the air. Anyone who’d gained momentary shelter from the blast inside the vehicles died quickly.

  The next battalion was only five hundred meters farther back, but that was far enough to halve the force of the shock wave. A few heavy engineering vehicles survived intact, but its boxy personnel carriers and unprotected infantrymen still suffered crippling losses.

  Next came the Cuban artillery, three batteries of 122mm self-propelled guns. At this distance, the blast flipped over howitzers, command vehicles, and ammo carriers that were facing the wrong way. Sights and other delicate instruments were stripped off or smashed. It also scattered the ammunition of the one battery deployed and ready to fire.

  Shells stacked near the guns began exploding.

  Only the men of the trailing battalion had any real chance to survive.

  Troops who were asleep in their APCs or who’d dug a little deeper than the rest were screened from the first deadly flash of heat and radiation.

  They woke up to see an angry ball of fire rising skyward more than three kilometers away. Anyone who didn’t duck immediately suffered painful burns.

  And then the shock wave hit them-buffeting and blasting BTR-60s with pressures still strong enough to knock over an ordinary house. Debris rained down on the helpless Libyan soldiers-man-killing pieces of rocks, boulders, trees, and torn, twisted, and smoldering metal.

  The two forward battalions in the Third Brigade Tactical Group were wiped out in one swift, merciless moment. The middle two battalions lasted only five seconds longer. Ten seconds after the South African fission bomb went off, the brigade’s fifth and final motor rifle battalion lay shattered in its debris-choked laager.

  Several thousand men lay dead or dying among the hundreds of wrecked vehicles littering Route 47. Gen. Antonio Vega’s Third

  Tactical Group had been annihilated.

  DECTECTION AND TRACKING CENTER, NORTH AMERICAN AIR DEFENSE COMMAND

  Maj. Bill O’Malley, USAF, sat bolt upright in his chair as one of the red phones buzzed. Throwing down the duty schedule, he grabbed the receiver.

  “Watch officer.”

  “Sir, this is Sergeant Ohira. We have a Nucflash. Detonation appears to be over South Africa. “

  O’Malley leaned over the row of consoles in front of him. Looking down from the watch officer’s elevated position, he saw Sergeant Ohira waving from his station on the operations floor below.

  “I’ll be right down.” He hung up and raced downstairs.

  Ohira’s panel normally showed a map of the world with the positions of

  America’s DSP Early Warning satellites displayed. But it was computer generated so he could modify and expand the image as needed. Right now it showed the southern third of the African continent. A glowing circular symbol flashed repeatedly near the center of the screen.

  “Let’s see the numbers,” O’Malley ordered.

  Ohira replaced the map with a screen showing the data they’d received from one of their satellites. While hovering in geosynchronous orbit over the

  Indian Ocean, it had sensed the infrared signature of a nuclear detonation and instantly relayed the data to NORAD’s computers. Sophisticated processors evaluated the available information and assessed the blast as being that of a relatively small weapon-one in the twenty-kiloton range. Other numbers showed that it had exploded at latitude 26’ 15’ south and longitude 27’ 45’ east.

  From what O’Malley could see, the Nucflash looked reliable. Ohira called up more data, this time from seismic stations around the world. The seismic data matched that provided by their satellite.

  “Give me a map overlay. ” Roads and cities appeared with

  the location of the detonation marked. Three concentric circles surrounded the point, showing projected zones of total, heavy, and light damage. An arrow showed wind direction.

  “Goddamn it, they’ve really done it. They’ve really frigging done it.”

  “Why would the Russians bomb South Africa?” Ohira asked.

  O’Malley shook his head.

  “The South Africans did it, Sergeant. They’ve used a goddamned nuke on their own goddamned territory. ” Aware that he sounded rattled, he tried to bite down on the stream of profanity rolling out over his tongue.

  Ohira looked puzzled.

  “Doesn’t make any sense to me, Major.” The sergeant’s interests included mystery novels and computer games. He wasn’t really up on current events.

  O’Malley sighed. There were more checks he could run, but first there were a few phone calls he had to make. The only reason that he’d delayed this long was that the blast posed no immediate threat to the United

  States, even from the fallout, and he’d been sure his superiors would want to know more than just the time of detonation and the size of the blast.

  Returning to his watch station, the major picked up another handset, this one labeled ics. As soon as he picked it up, he heard ringing at the other end.

  “Colonel Howard, watch officer. “

  “Sir, this is Major O’Malley at Cheyenne Mountain. We have a nuclear detonation .

  CNN SPECIAL REPORT

  CNN’s normal cycle of news, sports, and entertainment gossip was interrupted in mid-sentence. The anchorman, who’d been introducing a piece on a sports figure’s tax problems, suddenly stopped, distracted by something off screen.

  A paper was passed to him, adroitly, so that the camera never caught a glimpse of the passer. The anchorman scanned it quickly, and for a moment his carefully shaped mask dropped-replaced by stunned shock and disbelief.

  He glanced off camera again, looking for reassurance, then made a visible and successful effort to regai
n his composure.

  “This just in. For only the third time in history, a nuclear weapon has been used in anger. About an hour ago, Cuban troops invading South Africa were attacked by South African Air Force warplanes, which dropped one atomic weapon, inside its own borders.

  “Department of Defense sources have confirmed the detection of a nuclear explosion in South Africa, describing it as a ‘low-yield’ burst. Cuba’s foreign ministry, though quick to point out that it has no independent confirmation of this attack, strongly condemned the use of nuclear weapons as I an act of barbarism’ that ‘revealed the true nature of Pretoria’s racist and fascist regime.”

  “The White House, while saying the President is ‘deeply concerned by recent developments,” is reportedly awaiting definitive information before releasing an official statement. “

  Another message slid across the desk. This time the anchorman took it in stride.

  “In a new twist, South Africa has admitted that it has used a nuclear weapon. According to a statement released simultaneously by the South

  African Broadcasting Corporation and by Pretoria’s embassies worldwide, “South Africa will use its special weapons at times and places of its own choosing -without regard for the hypocritical squeamishness of other nations. “

  The screen divided-one-half still showing CNN’s Atlanta studio, the other showing a crowded, noisy room as reporters milled around a small, flag-draped dais.

  “We’re going live to our Pentagon correspondent for a Defense Department briefing…”

  CHAPTER

  __28

  Vengeance

  NOVEMBER 24-HEADQUARTERS, CUBAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, PIETERSBURG,

  SOUTH

  AFRICA

  Military traffic moving south filled Pietersburg’s wide streets-rumbling past burned-out homes, crater-choked public parks, and barren, blasted jacaranda trees. Smoking piles of charred blue and pale-purple blossoms littered the ground beneath each tree. Stray dogs, some unfed for days, roamed side roads and alleys in packs.

  The advancing Cuban troops had appropriated a small, two-story brick office building as Vega’s new forward headquarters. Col. Jose6 Suarez walked into the splinter-scarred building past piles of discarded papers and wrecked furniture heaped outside.

  The building’s outer offices had been taken over by the expeditionary force’s supply, communications, and other support sections.

  Worried-looking staff officers bustled back and forth from room to room as they tried, sometimes in vain, to manage the advance of Cuba’s two remaining columns.

  5”

  Others sat stunned, still horrified by the split-second annihilation of the

  Third Tactical Group.

  Suarez knew the confusion he saw here was only a fraction of the chaos sweeping the dead brigade’s rear areas. A dozen different supply, maintenance, and medical units, working to support what had been a spectacularly rapid advance, now found themselves suddenly fighting for their lives against local Afrikaner commandos. At the same time, they were working hard to save those few dazed survivors found wandering back down the highway. Well, he thought sadly, there won’t be any survivors left by tomorrow. Heat, a lack of potable water, and Boer bullets will see to that.

  He moved deeper into the building and knocked quietly on a closed door. No answer. He turned the knob quietly and peered inside.

  Gen. Antonio Vega, Liberator of Walvis Bay, victor of a dozen battles, the man who held a knife to South Africa’s throat, sat staring at a map. He held a sheaf of papers in his hands, the air reconnaissance photos taken over the site of the Third Brigade Tactical Group’s destruction. Suarez knew what those photos showed. He had given them, and the rest of the data on the column’s death, to Vega over two hours ago.

  Daylight had revealed a crater a hundred meters wide and fifty meters deep near what had once been the brigade’s lead battalion. Mounded debris spread far and wide past the rim of the crater itself, creating a scene that looked as though it belonged on the surface of the moon-not on earth.

  Blackened vehicles and bits of equipment littered the gray landscape, mixed with the scorched remains of men, brush, and trees. For the most part, the vegetation had burned itself out, but some of it was still smoking, and a pall lay over the desert floor, dimming the harsh sun.

  Only about fifty men had been found alive from the first four battalions, mostly extended scouts or pickets. All were hurt-burned or blasted and in shock. The fifth battalion, a Libyan motorized rifle unit, had lost ninety percent of its equipment and three-quarters of

  its men. Only the brigade’s supply battalion, strung out fifty kilometers behind, had survived as a unit. Altogether, more than three thousand men were dead, and another thousand or so were badly wounded-emergency-room cases who weren’t expected to live out the week.

  Winds from the southeast were pushing the fallout across a dozen small towns and villages scattered over the plateau. Lichtenburg, with its art museum, bird sanctuaries, and farms, would be the largest town to suffer.

  It would have to be evacuated. Suarez smiled grimly. How the Afrikaner bastards were going to do that wasn’t his concern, but if they didn’t, many people were going to die slow, nasty deaths from radiation sickness.

  Some of the fallout would fall in Bophuthatswana, as well, eventually fanning out into the unpopulated wilderness. Another nuclear bomb for the scientists to study, he thought.

  The colonel shook his head. His musings were almost as bad as Vega’s.

  He’d stood in the door patiently for several minutes now, waiting to be noticed. This had happened before when the general was working or thinking, and Suarez was sure they could stand like this the rest of the day.

  “Comrade. General ..” He spoke softly, as if he were trying to wake

  Vega, or avoid startling him.

  Vega didn’t even look up.

  “Colonel, I am a fool. You told me that South

  Africa had nuclear weapons. I’d seen their order of battle. So what made me think they would not use them?”

  “You stated that they would be unlikely to use them inside their own borders,” Suarez answered quietly.

  “You also thought that the instability and confusion in their government reduced the odds of their successfully employing such weapons. “

  “Dry words to cover wishful thinking, Jose6. These people seem willing to do anything to stop us, even if they destroy their own lands in the process. I know that now.”

  Vega suddenly stood up. He made a visible effort to master his dismay.

  “We confront two related problems, Colonel. First, how do we continue our attack with only two-thirds of our forces? And second, how can we avoid being annihilated by South

  Africa’s atomic weapons?”

  Suarez looked uncertainly at his commander.

  “Perhaps a reinforced air defense network could’ Insufficient Vega shook his head.

  “All the SAMs in the world can’t guarantee the destruction of every attacking aircraft. No, Colonel, we must take measures that are more aggressive, more active. “

  Suarez knew his face revealed his bewilderment.

  “Read this. ” Vega pulled a message form out of the papers in his hand and gave it to him.

  The chief of staff read: President Castro shares your anger and outrage.

  The South Africans have joined the United States, their bankrupt leader, as the only nations in the world ever to use nuclear weapons against other human beings. Use any means at your disposal, or any means you can obtain, to wipe this regimeftom the face of the earth.

  Suarez looked puzzled. Stripped of the rhetoric, Castro’s message just said to fight harder.

  “What can we do that we haven’t already done?”

  “While you’ve been busy trying to bring order out of this mess, I’ve been talking with our socialist allies.” Vega’s voice turned grim.

  “Two cargo aircraft are already in the air, en route to us. One is from Lib
ya, the other from North Korea. By the end of this day, I expect to have enough nerve gas on hand, in 152mm artillery shells and aircraft bombs, to destroy a significant part of the South African Army. From now on, we’re making chemical weapons a part of our arsenal. “

  Suarez felt a hundred questions welling up inside him. Like their Soviet counterparts, Cuban troops were trained in the use of chemical weapons-up to a point. But, except for limited bombardments in Angola, they’d rarely used chemicals in combat.

  For one thing, chemical weapons sometimes created almost as many problems for an attacker as they did for the defender. There were special protective suits for the assault troops, decontamination procedures, special reconnaissance vehicles

  Vega reassured him.

  “I know what you are thinking, Josd. Do not worry.

  We will be using nonpersistent nerve agents, and every weakness we have in chemical arms is mirrored in the enemy twofold. They have no training and very little equipment. “

  Suarez spoke slowly, still troubled despite his commander’s sudden assurance.

  “But this will simply escalate the war, Comrade General. Even if these weapons are effective, their use will only enrage the

  Afrikaners. They may actually incite further atomic attacks on our forces.”

  “I had thought of that, Comrade Colonel.”

  Suarez shivered inwardly. He’d never heard Vega’s voice quite so cold and forbidding.

  “For that reason, I want every base and higher headquarters moved immediately. We will plant our flags squarely in the middle of South

  Africa’s own towns and cities. ” Vega stressed every word.

  “I also want you to round up several thousand civilians-white civilians, they don’t care about blacks or other races-for use as shields around every unit headquarters above company level.”

  The Cuban general’s face darkened with anger.

  “If need be, we will send photographs to this madman Vorster-daring him to bomb our units under those circumstances. If they want to butcher tens of thousands of their own women and children, we will make it easy for them. This war has changed, Colonel. We will match these Afrikaners threat for threat.