Vortex

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” Stewart focused his attention on the pilots and naval flight officers in the room with him, knowing that video cameras would relay his words and image to the other squadron ready rooms and briefing rooms scattered throughout the

  Vinson’s vast hull and superstructure.

  “I’ll make this short and sweet.

  Your respective squadron commanders and ops officers will go over the details after I’m done.”

  He nodded to his chief of staff. The lights began dimming.

  “I’m here to brief you on our part in a strike against South Africa’s nuclear capability.”

  The room filled with a buzz of conversation, and a waiting aide laid a map overlay on the ready room’s overhead projector. The map showed a series of red lines converging on Pretoria. Most emanated from a tiny dot marking the Vinson’s position, but one line slanted in across all of southern Africa-coming east out of the Atlantic. A tag identified it as the flight path of Air Force transports carrying the two Ranger battalions and elements of the 160th Aviation Regiment.

  Brave Fortune was just thirty-four hours away.

  HEADQUARTERS BUNKER, 61 ST TRANSVAAL RIFLES, PELINDABA RESEARCH

  COMPLEX

  Col. Frans Peiper stood still for a moment, watching the rise and fall of hundreds of picks and shovels as his troops worked frantically to complete their fortifications.

  Since its designation as a nuclear research center and weapons storage site, Pelindaba had been surrounded by a barbed wire fence and military guard posts Now it more closely resembled a fortress. Thirty meters inside the barbed wire, slit trenches now circled the entire compound, connecting an array of twenty-two concrete bunkers. Each bunker was large enough to shelter a reinforced rifle squad and sturdy enough to withstand heavy mortar fire. Minefields were being laid on the slopes outside the wire to channel attacking ANC guerrillas or Cuban commandos and armored vehicles into previously selected kill zones for the battalion’s recoilless rifles, machine guns, and mortars. Deadly looking armored

  fighting vehicles prowled outside the wire-Rookiats of the Pretoria Light

  Horse hunting for enemy infiltrators.

  At the eastern end of the compound, more barbed wire surrounded a group of five camouflaged mounds-the nuclear weapons storage bunkers that were his main responsibility. A separate slit trench ran from north to south just west of the weapons bunkers, further isolating the storage site from the rest of the Pelindaba complex. Beyond the trench, firing pits for 120mm and 60mm mortars dotted a patch of open ground stretching west to the rock gardens, shade trees, and buildings of the research center.

  Shoulder-high earth and sandbag walls provided some protection for the four Cactus SAM vehicles parked in and among the rock gardens.

  “Our chemical protection gear is arriving, Colonel.”

  Peiper turned. His adjutant, Captain van Daalen, pointed to a line of five-ton trucks pulling up to the peacetime battalion-headquarters building.

  “Excellent, Captain. Have each company draw its gear as it comes off work detail. And inform all commanders that I plan to hold our first gas-attack drill early this evening.”

  Van Daalen saluted and hurried away.

  Peiper watched him go, knowing that the order wouldn’t be popular with his men. The gas mask, hood, gauntlets, suit, and boots needed to fully protect a man against attack by poison gas or nerve agents were cumbersome, clumsy, and confining. Even worse, they trapped body heat and quickly became unbearably hot even in cool weather-let alone on a warm spring evening.

  He scowled. His soldiers’ complaints and comfort were completely unimportant. In fact, only one thing mattered: fending off the inevitable

  Cuban attempt to destroy or seize South Africa’s nuclear stockpile.

  Peiper turned on his heel and headed back toward the cool, dimly lit recesses of his command bunker. The Cuban attack could come at almost any time; certainly within days, possibly even within hours. But Castro’s minions were bound to unleash a choking, burning deluge of chemical weapons first weapons against which his troops were now protected.

  The Afrikaner colonel smiled wolfishly. When the communists and their kaffir allies came charging in, expecting to find most of his men dead or disabled, they’d be met instead by a hail of small-arms and artillery fire. It would be an easy victory.

  He trotted down the steps into his bunker with that cold, cruel smile still on his lips.

  NOVEMBER 28-WDEAWAKE AIRFIELD, ASCENSION ISLAND

  Nearly one thousand men crowded around the low raised platform. Green camouflage paint robbed each man’s face of its individuality, but did nothing to cloak the air of grim expectation permeating the entire hangar.

  Each Ranger stood waiting in absolute silence, together with his friends and comrades and yet strangely alone.

  Up on the platform, Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell caught a glimpse of movement near the hangar doors. Gener was coming back from the communications center. O’Connell straightened up, feeling the first trickle of cold sweat under his arms. This was it.

  “Ah-tench-hut!”

  The Rangers snapped to rigid attention as their colonel threaded his way through them and bounded onto the platform.

  Gener nodded once to O’Connell, his eyes alight with excitement. Then he turned to face the waiting battalions.

  “At ease!”

  A tiny, almost invisible, wave of relaxation rippled through the hangar.

  The colonel pulled a single sheet of thin paper out of a pocket and held it up so that every man could see it.

  “This signal came in from

  Washington five minutes ago. It’s official, gentlemen! Brave Fortune has a green light! We go in tonight. Exactly as planned.”

  O’Connell felt some of his nervous tension evaporate as the mission became a reality. No one had really been sure that Washington had the guts to risk trying such a stunt, and in many ways, that uncertainty had been the worst part of

  the wait. From now on each man’s fate was out of the hands of unknown politicians and generals and in the hands of God, impersonal chance, and the team’s fighting skills. Somehow that was easier to take.

  Gener lowered the message form and studied the sea of camouflaged faces in front of him.

  “Before Lieutenant Colonel O’Connell goes over the ops order with you, I just want to say one thing. And that’s that I’m damned proud to be fighting with you boys. Damned proud. Rangers, I salute you.”

  He brought his hand up in a sweeping, almost exuberant, salute and held it as every soldier in the vast hangar returned the gesture.

  The colonel dropped his hand, spun on his heel, and looked at O’Connell.

  “They’re all yours, Colonel.”

  Yeah, right. At least until we hit the ground, O’Connell thought. He moved to the edge of the platform. Two noncoms wrestled a large map into position behind him. Circles, arrows, and dotted lines marked drop zones, objectives, and approach routes. He half-turned toward the map, feeling the pressure of nearly one thousand pairs of eyes watching his every move.

  “At oh one hundred hours tomorrow, the First and Second battalions, plus elements of the regimental HQ, will make airborne assaults on the following targets inside the Republic of South Africa …… O’Connell was sure that all of his men already knew the entire attack plan both forward and backward. Some could probably repeat it back word for word. But it wouldn’t hurt to go over the highlights one last time.

  Airborne landings in darkness and against opposition were full of sound and fury-glowing tracers in the night, blinding explosions, and dead men entangled in still-falling parachutes. In the midst of such brain-numbing confusion, it was vital that every Ranger know exactly what he was supposed to be doing at any given moment. And since there were bound to be casualties, he should know exactly what his comrades were supposed to be doing as well.

  In what seemed like no time at all, he was finished. 0”Con nell let the last map page fall
back and turned to face the waiting battalions.

  “This is it, gentlemen. We’ve worked hard together preparing for this op. But now you’re as ready as we can make you.”

  He lowered his voice, speaking quietly now so that every man had to strain to hear him.

  “This mission won’t be easy. And it sure as hell won’t be a bloodless cakewalk. But remember that this mission is strategic. And when we’re done, these Afrikaner bastards are gonna know exactly who’s jumped down their throats and kicked their guts out.”

  He swept the black beret off his head and lifted it high in one hand. His voice grew louder, more confident.

  “And who’s that gonna be?”

  The answer came flooding back, shouted from a thousand throats.

  “Rangers!

  Rangers! Rangers!”

  O’Connell grinned. He let them yell awhile longer and then held up a hand for silence.

  “First and Second battalions of the Seventy-fifth, board your aircraft.”

  In seconds, companies and platoons were forming up into march columns-each heading for one of the ten C-141 jet transports waiting outside on the tarmac.

  Brave Fortune was under way.

  CHAPTER

  Brave Fortune

  NOVEMBER 28-ABOARD SIERRA ONE ZERO, OVER

  THE SOUTH ATLANTIC OFF THE COAST OF ANGOLA

  The MC-141 Starlifter known as Sierra One Zero flew east toward Africa at thirty thousand feet, surrounded by a manmade constellation of winking navigation lights. Those ahead and slightly higher belonged to four huge

  SAC KC10 tankers. The lights behind and to either side belonged to

  Sierra One Zero’s four companions.

  “All right, disconnect.” Sierra One Zero’s pilot, a full Air Force colonel, glanced across the darkened cockpit at his copilot.

  “Roger, ” the aerial tanker’s boom operator responded over the intercom.

  “Pumping stopped. Good luck and give them hell.” They were operating under conditions of strict radio silence, but the boom connecting them to the KC-10 also allowed them to talk to the tanker directly.

  “Released.”

  The refueling boom snapped up and away from the Starlifter in a white puff of jet-fuel vapor.

  The colonel eased back very gently on the throttles, watching carefully as the huge tanker pulled farther out in front. Satisfied that he now had enough room to avoid a midair collision, the colonel banked the MC-141 gently to the right and slid back into place at the head of his formation.

  Sierra One Zero’s pilot watched the tankers slide past his side window and disappear from sight. Then he pushed his throttles forward again, listening as the roar from Starlifter’s four engines grew louder. An indicator showed the plane picking up airspeed, accelerating from the 330 knots used for in-flight refueling toward its normal cruising speed of 550 knots.

  The five jet transports carrying the 1/75th now flew in a tight arrowhead, with one Special Operations MC-141 out in front and four standard

  Starlifters behind and to either side. The 2/75this C-141s, anotherMC-141, and more tankers were several miles behind the formation.

  “The MC-141s, designed for long-range penetration missions deep in enemy territory, carried just about every piece of special electronic gear known to man-terrain-following radar for low-level flight, infrared TV, and jamming systems to boggle hostile radars if they were detected.

  With luck, they’d be able to lead the less capable C-141s all the way in to

  Pretoria.

  The SAC tankers altered course and began pulling away fast, heading back for their own refueling stop at Ascension Island nearly sixteen hundred miles to the west.

  He toggled his intercom switch.

  “Bob?”

  “Yes, Colonel?” Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell answered immediately from his position in the crowded troop compartment below and behind the cockpit. His regimental commander, Colonel Gener, was in Sierra One Three-flying in a separate aircraft to make sure that no single crash or mishap would leave the 1/75th leaderless.

  “We’re gassed up and heading in. Estimate we’ll cross the coast in twenty minutes. “

  The Air Force colonel could hear the tension in the Ranger battalion commander’s voice.

  “Thanks, I’ll pass the word.”

  The five C-141s continued east, flying high above an unbroken layer of cloud and beneath a sky full of bright, un winking stars.

  ABOARD USS CARL VINSON, IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

  Rear Adm. Andrew Douglas Stewart stood watching from the Vinson’s bridge as her four steam catapults threw plane after plane into the night air.

  F-14 Tomcats, A-6 Intruders, F/A-18 Hornets, and EA-613 Prowlers screamed aloft, tailpipes glowing orange in the darkness. Others, engines idling, waited their turn to taxi onto the catapults. Navigation lights blinked in the sky, aircraft orbiting slowly around the task force while waiting for the whole strike to form up.

  “Admiral?”

  Stewart turned toward a waiting lieutenant.

  “Yes.”

  “Washington’s on the secure phone, sir.”

  Stewart brushed past him into the darkened enclosed bridge. Enlisted men and officers alike bent over their work, with only the nearest ones acknowledging his presence with deferential nods. He moved immediately to the red secure phone and took the handset from his portly communications officer.

  “Stewart here.”

  There was no apparent delay, even though a computer scrambled his words, converted them into a radio signal, beamed them twenty-four thousand miles straight up to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, and then down to the Pentagon. Then the process was repeated in reverse and Gen. Walter

  Hickman’s gentle Oklahoma twang sounded in his ear. The chairman of the

  Joint Chiefs was brief and to the point.

  “Sierra Force has reached Point

  Yankee. Execute Phase Two.”

  Stewart was equally brief.

  “Acknowledged. Out.” He replaced the red phone.

  His imagination reached out toward Sierra Force-the C-141s carrying the

  Rangers and their attached Army Aviation units. Point Yankee was a computer-designated spot over the barren Kalahari Desert where the Air Force transports would begin a planned steep descent out of the now-normal African-airspace traffic pattern of Soviet cargo planes and civilian airliners. At less than five hundred feet, well below the coverage of South Africa’s remaining ground radar stations, the C-141s would turn sharply southeast toward Pretoria and the Pelindaba Nuclear Research Complex.

  The admiral picked up a plain black ship’s phone.

  “CAG? This is Stewart.

  Execute Pindown.” Through the receiver, he heard the Vinson’s air wing commander relaying his order to the strike leader already orbiting overhead.

  They were committed.

  NOVEMBER 29-ABOARD SIERRA ONE ZERO, NORTH OF RUSTENBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

  Sierra One Zxro’s pilot kept his eyes moving in a regular pattern-shifting from his terrain-following radar display to the flight instruments to the low hills and flat grasslands flashing past the MC14 I’s cockpit and then back again. His hands were poised on the controls, ready to take instant evasive action should it prove necessary. Sweat trickled down his forehead despite the cockpit air-conditioning. Flying the large, four-engined transport barely three hundred feet off the ground required intense concentration. A second’s inattention could all too easily prove fatal for the more than one hundred men aboard.

  “Point Zulu.” His copilot looked up from the computer generated map.

  “Roger.” The colonel reduced his throttle settings, hoping the four planes following close behind were paying careful heed to their spacing.

  “Inform out passengers.”

  Sierra One Zero’s copilot pushed a well-worn button.

  A red light came on over the Starlifter’s large rear door.

  Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell was already rising
from his seat

  as the plane’s jumpmaster bellowed, “Six minutes! Outboard personnel hook up!”

  Rangers seated along the C-141’s fuselage clambered to their feet.

  “Inboard personnel stand up!”

  The troops seated in two rows facing outward scrambled upright.

  “Hook up!”

  The Rangers hooked their parachute harnesses on to the static lines running the length of the MC-141’s troop compartment. A very pate Prof.

  Esher Levi imitated them.

  Outside the compartment, the droning roar of the Starlifter’s engines began fading as the big plane slowed to jump speed.

  HEADQUARTERS, NORTHERN AIR DEFENSE SECTOR, DEVON, EAST OF

  JOHANNESBURG

  The South African Air Force flight sergeant yawned once, and then again, wishing he could slip outside for a quick cup of coffee and a smoke. Night radar-watch duty was invariably boring. Lately, neither the Cubans nor his own air force had shown much willingness to risk precious aircraft in combat operations after dark. Both sides had already lost too many planes in raids against strategic and tactical targets.

  He leaned forward to study the glowing screen again, his face green in the light emanating from the radar repeater. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just blips at the far edge of his coverage showing a steady stream of Soviet air transports and cargo planes ferrying men and materiel into Zimbabwe and Mozambique. A smaller number of blips closer in represented South African transports moving units out of Namibia.

  The sergeant shrugged, deciding that he was lucky to be able to see that much. South Africa’s radar net, already inadequate before the war, was in even worse shape now. Mafikeng, the site of one of its three permanent stations, had already been overrun by the Cubans. And Ellisras, the northernmost station, was expected to fall any day now.

  A large blip appeared suddenly on his screen-close to the center, near

  Pretoria-and then vanished as quickly as it had appeared. What the devil?

  Was that a scheduled flight he’d forgotten about, or was his equipment acting up? The sergeant fumbled through his logbook while keeping one eye on the glowing radar screen.