Vortex

  He came to on his knees, tangled in fallen gear and still hot shell casings. The Ratel lay tilted on its left side, no longer moving.

  Foul-smelling smoke eddied in from the outside. Coughing and groaning men lay in heaps all around him.

  Emily! Ian shook his head to clear it and regretted it right away. He must have slammed into something hard and unforgiving when the APC tipped over. He staggered upright and looked around.

  There she was. Emily sat upright in a loose pile of canteens, medical kits, and assault rifle magazines. She seemed dazed but unhurt. His heart started beating again.

  “You are wounded?” Kruger had to scream it into his ear to be heard. The

  Afrikaner officer had a ragged, bleeding cut over one cheekbone, but no other apparent injuries.

  “No!” Ian shouted back.

  “What happened?”

  “We hit a mine.” Kruger coughed as a thicker tendril of smoke curled in through the viewslits in his commander’s cupola. It smelled very much like burning oil. His eyes widened.

  “We must get out! We’re on fire!”

  Oh, shit. Ian whirled and lurched through the debris toward Emily. Sibena scrambled to his feet beside her. Behind him, he could hear Kruger rousing the rest of his crew and staff.

  ” Ian, thank God . She clutched at his arm as he helped her up.

  “Yeah.” He turned to Sibena.

  “Matt! Hit those clips!” He pointed to the metal locking bars holding the rear hatch shut.

  “Right.” Sibena spun them up and away. Ian put his hand on the hatch handle and then felt someone grab his shoulder in a strong grip. He turned to see Kruger.

  The South African had an assault rifle slung over his own

  shoulder. His staff officers and vehicle crew crowded behind him with their own weapons.

  “Let my men go first. We have enemies out there. “

  “You got it.” Ian, Emily, and Matt squeezed to one side of the battered

  Ratel-allowing the six men by.

  The soldiers shoved the hatch open and threw themselves through the narrow opening one after the other. Staying low, they fanned out in a semicircle around the wrecked APC. A lieutenant stayed by the door to help the others out. Smoke and blowing sand cut visibility to meters at best.

  Ian’s hearing was coming back. He wasn’t sure what sounded more dangerous-the staccato rattle of automatic weapons fire outside or the steady crackle of the flames now engulfing the Ratel driver’s compartment.

  The young officer standing outside signaled him frantically.

  “Come on, man.

  Pass her through. I’ll get her to cover.”

  Ian guided Emily through the hatch and turned to motion Sibena forward And an assault rifle opened up from somewhere close by, spraying rounds at full automatic. Several punched into the hatch door and howled off into the surrounding smoke.

  Ian whirled round in horror. His vision darkened and then cleared. Emily and the lieutenant lay tangled together on the ground, bright blood staining the sand around them.

  “No!” Without thinking Ian dived through the hatch.

  She was still alive, though bleeding badly from one shoulder. The staff officer was dead. He’d taken most of the burst.

  Ian scrabbled through the dead man’s gear looking for his medical kit. He needed bandages to stop the bleeding. He never even thought to look up.

  Ten meters away, Staff Sgt. Gerrit Roost rose from his foxhole, cradling his R4 assault rifle. He yanked out the empty thirty-five-round clip and shoved in a full magazine. This one would be an easy kill. He started to raise his weapon, sighting straight at the kneeling civilian’s chest.

  Three separate hammer blows knocked him off his feet. Astonished, Roost strained to raise his head and saw the ugly,

  red-rimmed holes torn in his chest and stomach. Then he saw the man who’d shot him. His mouth dropped open. A kaffir! He’d been killed by a damned black!

  The Afrikaner sergeant died with that look of shocked, unbelieving surprise frozen on his face.

  Matthew Siberia let go of the trigger he’d squeezed and held down, threw the dead lieutenant’s rifle from him as far as it would go, and ran to help Ian.

  EMERGENCY AID STATION, ON THE HILL NEAR SKERPIONENPUNT

  Henrik Kruger stood looking at a scene straight out of his worst nightmares. Wrecked trucks and armored personnel carriers were strewn up and down the road and across the hillside in almost every direction. Most were still on fire, sending greasy plumes of smoke billowing up to stain the sky. Bodies sprawled beside the vehicles, some in heaps, others alone.

  Others littered the hilltop.

  Stretcher parties wandered through the carnage, looking for wounded they could carry up to the aid station behind him. He smiled bitterly. Aid station. That was an impressive sounding name for what was only a patch of bare rock and sand covered by a hastily rigged tarp.

  Dozens of seriously injured men lay in rows behind him. His lone surviving surgeon and handful of corpsmen were completely swamped by sheer numbers. As it was, they were still frantically engaged in triage-the gruesome, though essential, task of sorting those who were sure to die from those who might be saved with the limited gear and supplies on hand.

  Kruger clasped his hands tightly behind his back, trying hard not to hear the low, sobbing moans rising from the rows of wounded. Tears rolled slowly down his face, stinging as they dripped into his torn cheek. This isn’t a battlefield, he thought. This is a butcher’s yard. For both sides.

  “Wommandant!”

  Several of his men waved him over to a foxhole not far from his wrecked

  Ratel. He sighed, wiped his face roughly, and moved in that direction.

  They’d found the paratroop commander. Maj. Rolf Bekker lay crumpled near the bottom of his foxhole-wounded and only semiconscious, but still alive. Kruger stared down at the man. From the look of things, the paratrooper had taken a faceful of grenade fragments, been shot, and then left for dead when Kruger’s infantry overran this part of the hill.

  The South African felt a cold rage building up inside him as he looked at Bekker. This was the bastard who’d murdered his battalion. The man whose soldiers had shot Emily. Kruger’s fingers brushed the 9mm pistol at his side. Revenge would be so simple. So easy. Too easy. He shook his head. There’d been enough killing.

  He straightened up.

  “Take him to the aid station and have him patched up.

  I want this bastard to live.”

  The kommandant turned and walked away, heading for the small cluster of officers awaiting their next orders. Orders? What orders could he give?

  Ian Sheffield intercepted him. The tall American looked gaunt and completely exhausted.

  “Henrik, I need one of your Land Rovers and a driver.”

  Kruger stared at him for a moment, taken aback by the sudden request.

  Then he sighed and nodded.

  “I understand, Ian. With luck, you and Emily can still reach Cape Town.” He motioned to the wreckage strewn around them.

  “I gather it’s pretty clear that the rest of us have come as far as we can. I’ll arrange for extra supplies and cans of petrol. “

  “No, you don’t understand.” Ian shook his head in exasperation and smiled tightly.

  “I just want a ride into the nearest town with a phone. I think it’s time we tried to scare up some help.”

  The American’s thin smile faded as a high-pitched scream rose from the aid station.

  “God only knows, Henrik, but I think we could sure use some right now.”

  OPERATIONS CENTER, D. F. MALAN AIRPORT, CAPE TOWN

  More than a dozen U.S. Air Force technicians and radar consoles crowded the darkened room. Calm, quiet voices rose and fell as they controlled the movements of incoming and outgoing C-5s and C-141s crammed with troops, equipment, and supplies.

  “MajorT I

  Irritated at the interruption, the Operations Center duty officer glanced u
p from the argument he’d been having over the availability of JP-4 and

  JP-5 fuel stocks.

  “Yeah. What is it?”

  The enlisted man manning their phone line held up the receiver.

  “I’ve got kind of a strange call here, sir. Some reporter named Sheffield wants to talk to whoever’s in charge. “

  Another reporter. Swell. The major snorted and said, “Look, turn the bozo over to Public Affairs… ” He stopped in mid-sentence. Sheffield? Why did that name ring a bell?

  Then he remembered. Sheffield was the TV reporter whose reports had helped break this mess wide open. The guy who was missing. The major whistled softly.

  “Well, I’ll be a sorry son of a bitch.” He moved toward the man.

  “Gimme that phone. Now!”

  JANUARY 3-EVACUATION POINT, ON ROUTE 64, NEAR THE ORANJE RIVER

  Emily van der Heijden and Ian Sheffield stood close together, watching as a lumbering C-130 Hercules dropped out of the sky, touched down precisely on the centerline of the road, and rolled past them with its props howling and brakes screaming. Two more turboprop transports were visible orbiting slowly in the distance-waiting for their turn on the improvised runway.

  The C-130 taxied to a stop and several uniformed officers

  emerged, blinking in the bright sun. They moved to meet Henrik Kruger as he stood rigid by the side of the road.

  Despite her obvious pain and a shoulder swathed in bandages, Emily refused to lie down.

  “I can walk perfectly well, and you know it, Ian.

  ” Her stern gaze softened.

  “Besides, there are too many others who must be carried. So many others who have been so terribly hurt.”

  Ian gave up.

  “Okay, but at least let me help you down. As a sop to my manly pride. Deal?”

  She smiled at that.

  “Deal.” She looked up.

  “Henrik wants

  US. I I

  Kruger had insisted on meeting the Americans by himself first. He wants to end his part in this war with honor, she realized sadly. Even though he had rebelled against Pretoria, this was still a form of surrender for him. She hoped he could live with that.

  They moved downhill toward the tiny knot of South African and U.S. Air

  Force officers. With a tightly controlled, emotionless voice, Kruger introduced them to the ranking officer, a Lieutenant Colonel Packard.

  Packard stepped forward with an outstretched hand and a broad, toothy smile.

  “Mr. Sheffield, I’m damned glad to meet you!” He lowered his voice to a level slightly below a booming shout.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but we’ve arranged a small press conference for your arrival at the airfield.

  I guess I don’t have to tell you this is gonna be big news back in the

  States!”

  Emily hid a sudden smile of her own as Ian leaned in close and whispered in her car, “Oh, my God. A press conference. Now I know we’re in trouble.”

  CHAPTER

  Last Stand

  JANUARY 4-U.S. EXPEDITIONARY FORCE HEADQUARTERS, DURBAN, RSA

  It was part of his job, but General Craig found it hard to hide his contempt for the junketing politicians who kept appearing at his headquarters. As soon as the U.S. forces had expanded their toehold into a beachhead, and then broken out from the Drakensberg, a group of congressmen, bureaucrats, and even some state officials had decided to visit South Africa on a ‘fact-finding” mission. It didn’t hurt that while it was winter in Washington, it was summer in South Africa.

  A few were sincere. They were easy to spot. They knew the background, had read up on the forces involved, and had even taken the time to look at a map. The rest were idiots. Their idea of preparation was to watch a tape of Zulu.

  Craig begrudged the time, the stupid questions, and their long trips to the beaches of Durban and to Table Mountain in Cape Town. They walked over the battered mountain’s landscape as if it were an old Civil War battlefield. One had actually asked why there weren’t any park rangers!

  Craig endured. He was savvy enough to know that these men wielded real power in Congress, and they would remember the red-carpet treatment the next time they voted on defense appropriations. It reminded him, though, why he detested politics and politicians.

  Most of the group had taken the afternoon off to attend to personal business,” which Craig knew meant sun and surf along the Golden

  Mile. Two members of the party, though, had asked to see Ladysmith. Craig had long ago marked them as the good ones, and he decided to escort them personally.

  Ladysmith was a lot more recent battle than Table Mountain, and it showed in the gutted vehicles and burned-out buildings. Even with surprise on their side, the 101st had taken over 15 percent casualties in the lead battalion, 10 percent in the brigade overall.

  Their helicopter had followed the same path as the assault force, and the very real door gunners in the aircraft had given the congressmen the feeling of taking part-exactly what Craig had wanted.

  As instructed, the pilot made an assault landing near the original LZ, and they had toured the town, the new Army base nearby, and the field hospital, which treated not only the casualties from Ladysmith, but from the entire Drakensberg campaign.

  Craig had warned the hospital staff in advance, and they had tracked down any patients from the congressmen’s states. A military photographer was standing by and caught the scene as they visited their constituents in the field.

  It was good stuff, and Craig had caught himself smiling in spite of himself. These two cared, and he didn’t mind helping them out. He also wanted to be around when those double-damned pleasure seekers found out they’d missed a “photo opportunity.”

  The two officials had eaten lunch on the ride back, trying MREs for the first time.

  “Meals ready to eat” were vacuum packed meals meant to be carried by soldiers in the field. Some were good, some not so good. Craig told the senators they were a definite improvement on the old tinned C rations, but the troops called them “meals rejected by Ethiopians.”

  The small group was now about to take part in Craig’s daily afternoon intelligence brief. This would put the politicos in the picture as much as he was, Craig thought, plus would let them feel they had the inside scoop. Congressmen automatically had the security clearances necessary to see this stuff, and he was pretty sure these two would not blab it around.

  The briefing was always given in one of the conference rooms at the

  Durban Hilton. The hotel’s convention facilities had easily been converted to serve as Craig’s headquarters, and the staff had simply treated the Allied soldiers as another set of conventioneers.

  A detailed map of South Africa covered one wall. The position of each division, and each brigade within the division, was marked, as well as their progress over the past two days and their objectives for the next twenty-four hours.

  Information on enemy forces was also displayed, but this was much less well defined. Not only was the intelligence fragmentary and possibly wrong, but there was more than one enemy.

  Still, it was gratifying to look at the map. It clearly showed the speed and sweep of the Allied advance, radiating out from Ladysmith in several directions.

  As they settled into their seats, the J-2, or intelligence officer, detailed new data on each of the belligerents. The Cuban forces were still consolidating their hold on Naboomspruit and had successfully repelled a weak counterattack by the Boers. It had probably been launched quickly, to try to knock them out before they dug in.

  The Boers themselves had units scattered all over the map. A line of infantry and armor stretched in front of Pretoria, screening the capital from the Cuban advance, while a second appeared to be forming in front of Johannesburg to the south. Anchored on Vereeniging and the mountain west of it, it would guard the biggest city in South Africa from the advancing Allied army.

  Other Boer units continued to try to suppress the rebe
llion, either garrisoning mines and cities or chasing rebels around the countryside.

  Craig was glad to see so much of South

  Africa’s fighting power distracted, but it cut two ways. After his troops occupied the area, he would be responsible for civil law and order.

  Finally, there were the commandos. A cross between militia and guerrillas, they operated behind American lines and tied up troops and time chasing them down. Data on them was sketchy.

  As much for the senators as for Craig, his J-2 summarized the situation.

  “Although U.S.” British, and rebel South African forces now hold the

  RSA’s major port cities and coastal lands, much of the interior, the ‘deep north,” remains in the hands of Vorster and his AWB cronies. This is his heartland, the source of his political strength, and much of the population would support him against any outsider.

  “Even worse, the Cuban invasion force holds two of South Africa’s most important minerals complexes and is closer than we are to Pretoria and

  Johannesburg.”

  The J-2 pointed to Naboomspruit.

  “The nearest Cuban forces are about a hundred and ten kilometers away from Pretoria. Based on reconnaissance photos and other intelligence, they will not be ready to advance for another two days. “

  The officer moved his pointer to the south.

  “Leading elements of the

  Twenty-fourth, advancing up National Route Three, arrived in Warden this morning. That puts them one hundred and eighty kilometers from

  Johannesburg.”

  Craig chimed in, “And to get there, we will have to swing around the Vaal

  River dam complex and punch through the line at Vereeniging. Then we take the city itself, fight our way over the Witwatersrand”he sighed—and then we can go after Pretoria.”

  The two senators looked questioningly at the general.

  “Then we can’t beat the Cubans to Pretoria?” one asked.

  “Not at the rate we’re going, sir. ” Craig smiled ironically.

  “Vega had one hell of a head start on us.”

  Craig continued, “Given the time, we could build up enough forces to take on the enemy positions with excellent odds of success, and use those odds to hold down casualties. My supply line is long, though, and as you’ve seen, not completely secure. As it is, I’m pressed for time and have taken risks, like Ladysmith, to keep the offensive moving. Remember that when you see the casualty lists back home.”