Vortex

CHAPTER 8 The Diamond War

AUGUST 18-20TH CAPE RIFLES’ FORWARD ASSEMBLY AREA, NEAR THE NAMIBIAN BORDER.

Very little of the light provided by the small, battery-powered lamp leaked out through the edges of the command tent’s tightly closed flap.

But even those thin slivers of light seemed bright against the ink-black night sky outside. With the moon already down and dawn still an hour away, the battalion’s ranked APCs and armored cars were almost invisible-dark rectangles against darker boulders and tangled patches of thorn bushes, tall grass, and thistles. Their squat, camouflaged shapes blended easily with the rough, rocky scrubland marking this southern edge of the Kalahari

Desert.

An eerie silence hung over the rows of parked vehicles. No radios crackled or hissed. Voicess were hushed, and orders normally bellowed were now given in swift, harsh whispers. Only the occasional crunch of boots on loose rock marked the passage of sentries patrolling ceaselessly around the battalion’s perimeter. The men of the 20th Cape Rifles were on a war footing.

Inside the command tent, Commandant Henrik Kruger looked round the circle of grimly determined faces caught in the lamp’s pale, unwavering light. He knew that many of the battalion’s officers shared his unspoken misgivings about this operation’s political wisdom. If anything, those misgivings had grown stronger since General de Wet’s preliminary briefing nearly a month before.

But none of them, himself included, would disobey orders. Once soldiers started picking and choosing which commands they would obey and which they would ignore, you had anarchy or worse. Black Africa’s assortment of fragile, coup ridden and corrupt governments showed that all too clearly.

South Africa was different. A civilized nation. A nation of law. Or so he hoped.

Kruger shook himself and looked down at the heavily annotated map before him. His company commanders followed suit.

He tapped the thick black line showing their planned axis of advance.

“Speed! That’s the whole key to this op, gentlemen. If we move fast from the start, we win fast and easy. The Swapo bastards won’t know what hit them. But if we move slow at first, we’ll get bogged down and move even slower later. And that’s something we can’t afford.”

The other men nodded their understanding. Intelligence reports portrayed the new Namibian Army as inexperienced and under equipped Its officers and men were still trying to cope with the difficult transition from being an often-hunted, often-harried guerrilla army to being a conventional defense force. South Africa’s powerful airborne, armored, and motorized forces should have little trouble crushing them.

Conquering Namibia itself was entirely another matter.

The country stretched more than one thousand kilometers from south to north-most of it an unpopulated, and wasteland. Windhoek, its capital city, the diamond and uranium mines, and everything else of any value Jay far to the west and north, spread across hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of rugged, inhospitable terrain.

Just supplying food, fuel, ammo, and water to the brigades and battalions slated for this invasion would absorb almost

all of South Africa’s military air transport and a good deal of its ground transport. Every extra day they took to achieve their objectives would increase the strain on the Republic’s economy. A quick war meant fewer casualties, lower costs, and less international outrage. A quick war was vital.

Kruger slid the map aside with an abrupt, impatient gesture.

“Our march order reflects this need for a rapid advance.”

He turned to the short, dark-haired major commanding the battalion’s attached reconnaissance squadron.

“Your boys will lead off, Daan. You’ll be moving about six to seven klicks ahead of the main column-probing for strong points and smashing anyone else trying to resist. Clear?”

Maj. Daan Visser nodded vigorously. His fast, powerfully gunned Rookiat and Eland armored fighting vehicles were perfectly suited to the job they were being given. They had the speed and firepower needed to blast open a hole in whatever hasty defenses the Narnibians managed to assemble.

The mission was probably Visser’s idea of heaven, Kruger reflected. The major had always prided himself on being the perfect hell-for-leather, death-or-glory cavalryman. It was an attitude reflected in everything he did, said, and even wore -right down to the bright orange scarf tucked into his camouflaged battle dress, in place of the regulation necktie, and the black beret rakishly perched above his right eye.

Kruger admired the man’s proven bravery. He just hoped Visser had the common sense to go with his guts.

“And the rest of the battalion, Kommandant?” Major Forbes, his executive officer, prompted.

Kruger noted the XO’s careful use of Afrikaans and bit back a frustrated sigh. It was evidence of the one continuing weakness in his battalion and in the South African Army as a whole-the deep and abiding mistrust between those of Afrikaner heritage and those of English descent.

Forbes was a good example of the price paid for that mistrust. He was a first-class soldier and a fine officer, but some of the battalion’s

Afrikaner diehards were still unwilling to accept him as an equal.

Despite the fact that his family had lived in Cape Town for nearly a century, they labeled him as nothing more than an interfering, toffee-nosed rooinek and outsider.

Forbes, aware of their feelings, had tried everything he could think of to blend in with the Cape Rifles’ Afrikaner majority-even to the extent of speaking accentless Afrikaans every chance he got. All to no avail.

Kruger came back to the present. He had more immediate problems to confront. Besides, once the shooting started, the first man who showed disrespect for the XO or who disobeyed one of his orders would swiftly discover that Henrik Kruger valued competence far more than a common ancestry.

“The infantry will follow Major Visser’s squadron. Companies A, B, and then C. ” A scarred finger stabbed the portable, folding table three times, emphasizing each unit’s position in the main column.

“You’ll move in road march formation, but I want flank guards out and alert.”

He smiled thinly.

“Ratel APCs are expensive, gentlemen. Lose one to a lucky shot from some Swapo RPG and I’ll see that it’s docked from your pay.”

Nervous laughter showed that his warning had hit close to home. Ratels offered good protection against bullets and shell fragments, but rocket-propelled grenades could turn them into flaming death traps. The only way to deal with an enemy soldier carrying an RPG was to see him and kill him before he could fire.

Kruger turned to the tall, burly, towheaded officer on his right.

“D

Company will bring up the rear. No offense, Hennie, but I hope we won’t have too much work for your boys on this jaunt.”

Hennie Mulder, the captain commanding his heavy weapons company, nodded soberly. His truck-carried 8 1 mm mortars and Vickers heavy machine guns represented a large part of the battalion’s firepower, but they were also relatively immobile and required time to deploy. The battalion would only need D Company’s weapons teams if it met strong resistance-and that, in turn, would mean Nimrod was going badly.

“Wommandant?”

Kruger looked toward the hesitant voice. Robey Riekert,

his youngest and least experienced company commander, had a hand half-raised.

“Yes, Robey?”

“What about artillery support, sir? Do we have any guns on call?”

Kruger shook his head.

“Not deployed. With luck, we’ll be pushing ahead too fast. But there’ll be two batteries of SP guns attached to the column behind us. So if we run into any real opposition, we’ll be able to give the

Swapos a few one fifty-five millimeter shells for their pains.”

More laughter, this time less forced.

A sudden howling, thrumming roar drowned their laughter, grew louder still, and then faded as fast as it had come. Startled, several officers cast frightened glances up toward the tent’s low canvas ceiling and then looked sheepish as they made sense of the noise. The battalion had just been overflown by several large aircraft. Aircraft flying westward into Namibia.

Kruger checked his watch. Nimrod was on schedule. He stood straighter.

“Very well, gentlemen. That’s our cue. You may put your companies on the road. Good luck to you all. “

The tent flap be flied open briefly and sagged back as his officers ran toward their waiting commands.

A COMPANY, 2ND BATTALION, 44TH PARACHUTE

BRIGADE, OVER NAMIBIA

The ride was much rougher this time, even though they weren’t flying as low as they had been on the Gawamba raid. There was a reason for that. Air Force manuals said that the big C-160 Transall troop carriers exhibited “poor gust response,” which was an aerudynamic way of saying that turbulence at low altitude made the plane bump and shudder like a truck on a rutted road.

Capt. Rolf Bekker found himself yawning uncontrollably -a yawn that nearly made him bite through his tongue as the Transall bucked upward, caught in yet another air current rising off Namibia’s rugged hills. He forced his mouth shut and frowned. They’d already suffered through two hours of this jarring ride since taking off from the staging airfield near Bloemfontein. How much farther did they have to go, for Christ’s sake?

He shook his head wearily. Fatigue must be muzzling his ability to think.

He knew precisely how much longer they had to fly before reaching the target. And he knew exactly how long it had been since he’d had a decent hour’s sleep.

Bekker was enough of a soldier not to complain about the hour set for their drop, but a dawn landing meant a midnight assembly for a four

A.M.

takeoff. The hectic preparations had been structured to allow him six hours sleep, but last-minute crises and changes had robbed him of all but a brief nap. There was certainly no way he could sleep on this plane, not with its washboard ride on a hard metal seat.

So, Bekker thought, I will start the biggest military operation in my career tired and short on sleep. When he was tired, he got irritable-not entirely a bad thing.

He only wished he had a better view of the ground below. Bekker preferred going into combat in helicopters-at least their open doors usually gave the troops a chance to get oriented before touchdown. Now, though, he had just a single window to look out of, a window about as clear as the bottom of a beer bottle. He and his men would have to jump trusting that the Transall’s pilot could see the drop zone, and trusting in his ability to put them in it.

Bekkcr wriggled around, straining against the seat straps to took out the window. Nothing but dark sky, paling faintly to gray behind them. He couldn’t even see the rest of the battalion, spread out in five other aircraft.

There were supposed to be other planes in the air as, well-Impala 11 ground attack aircraft to provide close air support, and Mirage jet fighters supplying top cover. None were visible through the dirt-streaked window. Nothing but the huge spinning blades of the Transall’s portside turboprop.

Bekker pulled his eyes away from the empty window and scanned the rows of fold-down metal seats lining either side of the plane’s crowded troop compartment. Just over eighty men sat silently, slept, talked, or read as they waited to risk

their lives. He and his troops were dressed in heavy coveralls and padded helmets-gear designed to help absorb some of the shock generated by slamming into the ground at up to twenty-five kilometers an hour. Parachutes increased the bulk of their weapons and packs. They only carried one chute each. At this attitude, there wouldn’t be time for a reserve chute if the first one failed.

The eighty men in this plane represented just half his company. The rest, led by his senior lieutenant, were on another cargo plane-nearby, he hoped.

They’d better be. He’d need every available man to accomplish his mission.

He sighed. At least with a low-altitude drop and static lines, all the troops jumping from this Transall should come down close together. And the

Namibians would be totally surprised.

A bell sounded and a red light over the door came on. The jumpmaster waiting near the door straightened. Holding up his right hand with the fingers extended, he shouted, “Five minutes!”

At last. Bekker hit the strap release and rose from his seat.

“Stand and hook up!”

His men hurried to comply, hurriedly slinging the weapons they’d been checking or stuffing books into already bulging pockets. As they stood, the floor of the plane tilted back sharply as it pulled into a steep climb from a “cruising” altitude of one hundred fifty meters up to three hundred the minimum safe altitude for a static line drop. The engine noise changed, too, building from a loud, humming drone to a teeth-rattling bass roar as the loaded plane clawed for altitude.

Bekker was sitting in the front of the cargo compartment, near the nose. As his men hooked up, he walked rearward, looking over the two files of paratroopers, one standing on each side of the plane. He inspected each static line to make sure it was properly routed, then swept his eyes over the rest of their equipment-personal weapons, grenades, radiosatl the material they’d need to survive once on the ground and in contact with the enemy.

From time to time he stopped to clap a shoulder or to exchange a quick joke, but mostly he moved aft in silence. These men were all combat veterans, and they were as ready as he could make them. With little time to spare, he came to the head of the lines of waiting men. He turned and stood facing the closed portside door. On the opposite side of the cabin, Sergeant Roost took his position by the starboard door.

Bekker hooked his own static line onto the rail and watched closely as his radioman, Corporal de Vries, checked it and his other equipment. The shorter man mouthed an “Okay” and gave him the thumbs-up.

The final seconds seemed to take hours.

As the Transall leveled out, its engine noise dropped from a roar, down past the previous drone to a steady low hum. Bekker knew the pilot was throttling down to minimum speed, trying to reduce the rush of air past the aircraft. At the same time, the jumpmaster prepared the two side doors, one after the other.

Swinging inside and back, the opening door let in bone chilling cold air and the roar of laboring engines. Bekker had to steady himself against the buffeting as the air roared in.

The jumpmaster nodded, and the captain swung forward to stand in the opening, hands gripping the door’s edge on either side.

Bekker looked out and down on a brown and hilly landscape. One dry riverbed to the south was marked by a dotted pale-green line of stunted trees and brush. Rocky hills rose farther to the southeast, with a single road paralleling them to one side, leading straight to their target,

Keetmanshoop.

The town of Keetmanshoop had no industry. There weren’t any diamond or uranium mines nearby, and only enough farms to feed the local population of some fifteen thousand souls. But Keetmanshoop was worth its weight in gold to the South African invasion force.

From his perch, Bekker could see the town laid out in a precise, right-angled grid below him. Columns of smoke from burning buildings showed where Air Force Impalas had bombed and strafed identified Namibian army barracks and

command centers just moments before. He could also see what did make

Keetmanshoop so valuable-the meta led two lane roads leading to it like a spiderweb, and the rail lines arcing out to the east, north, and south.

And most important of all, the airport.

Just a single two-thousand-foot strip, it was the logistical anchor on which Operation Nimrod rested. Without that small runway, South Africa wouldn’t be able to move men and supplies into Namibia quickly enough to sustain its offensive. With it, they could just squeak by.

One small burden disappeared as he scanned the runway. The field seemed undamaged, and there weren’t any Namibian military aircraft parked on the tarmac. Even better, he couldn’t see any fire rising from the two or three sandbagged antiaircraft positions clustered around the airport’s small redbrick terminal.

The bell rang again, and the light over the cargo door flashed from red to green. The Jumpmaster slapped his shoulder. Now!

First in line, without thinking or feeling, Bekker simply stepped out the open door and into space. A blast of cold air punched into his lungs. He dropped earthward in a split second of gut-wrenching free-fall before he felt the static line tug.

The parachute streamered out of its pack and snapped open-slamming him painfully against his harness in sudden deceleration. He glanced up and saw the billowing, sand colored canopy that meant he could add another successful jump to his logbook. Now high overhead, the huge Transall lumbered on, still spewing out men and weapons canisters. Other transports followed, each laying its own drifting trail of slowly failing parachutes.

Bekker looked down and felt adrenaline surging through his veins. Fifty meters. Thirty. Twenty. This was what he lived for-being in the front of the assault wave, leading the attack.

The ground rushed up to meet him, and he bent his legs and rolled as he hit.

CUBAN EMBASSY, RUA KARL MAM LUANDA,

ANGOLA

The sun, rising in a cloudless early-mo ming sky, bathed Luanda’s government ministries, shops, and dense-packed shanties in a pitilessly clear light-revealing layers of dirt and spray-painted political slogans coating once-whitewashed walls. The capital city of the People’s Republic of Angola had grown shabbier with each passing year of bloody civil war and Marxist central planning.

Luanda’s government offices were still shut, their outer doors padlocked and windows dark. The bureaucratic workday never began till long after sunup.

Angola’s socialist ally and military protector evidently had a somewhat different attitude toward time. Lights were already winking on all across the fortified Cuban embassy compound on Rua Karl Marx-Karl Marx Street.

Gen. Antonio Vega was still dressing when Corporal Gomez knocked on the door and without waiting burst into the room.

“Comrade General, our embassy in Windhoek is on the phone. They’re saying that someone just attacked the city with aircraft! The Vega a tall, slender man with a stern, narrow face and gray-streaked black hair, stood facing a small mirror propped up on his nightstand. At the moment, he was only half clothed one bare shoulder showing the delicate tracery of scar tissue left by fragments from an exploding mortar round. It was a scar he’d earned more than thirty years before while leading one of Fidel Castro’s guerrilla units against the old

Batista government.

Visibly annoyed at being interrupted, Vega snorted.

“What? Ridiculous.

Those idiots must be seeing things.” He continued pulling on his uniform shirt, though with slightly more speed than usual.

“It would be straining their military expertise to recognize an air raid, even if one did occur.”

Gomez blushed. Vega had a razor-sharp tongue-a tongue that matched his wits. It was said that even Castro felt the edge of the general’s icy sarcasm from time to time. The

corporal doubted that. Senior military men who angered Fidel Castro once never lived long enough to anger him a second time.

Gomez, waiting with noticeable impatience near the door, did not agree or disagree, but instead volunteered, “The ambassador was on the phone to

Windhoek when I was sent to find you, sir.”

Vega finished buttoning his shirt and grabbed his uniform coat. He strode quickly out the door, not bothering to close it or order Gomez to follow.

The corporal did both without being told and raced after him down the carpeted hall toward the embassy’s Command Center.

Cuba’s ambassador to Angola, Carlos Luiz Tejeda, stood surrounded by a small crowd of wildly gesticulating aides and officers. He had one ear pressed hard against a red telephone, trying to listen amid the increasingly frantic din.

Vega slowed to a walk.

The noise level dropped abruptly as all of the officers and most of the political aides in the Command Center stopped talking and moved to the sides of the room. The general’s contempt for unnecessary chatter was well-known.

Tejeda saw Vega and nodded gravely, but continued talking on the phone. A chair materialized near the general and he sat down.

Tejeda ended his phone conversation by asking for hourly updates and hung up. He stood silent for a moment. Then he took off his gold-rimmed glasses before wearily rubbing one hand over his face.

Vega realized with some surprise that Tejeda was unshaven and dressed only in slacks and a half-buttoned dress shirt. In all the years they’d worked together, he’d never seen the man so unkempt. The ambassador was ordinarily something of a dandy. Things must be serious.

Tejeda’s next words confirmed that.

“General, I have grave news. We now have confirmation that South African forces have invaded Namibian territory. “

Vega sat quietly as the ambassador outlined the situation -at least as far as it could be determined from the first sketchy reports. An air raid on

Windhoek. Airborne landings in Keetmanshoop. And unconfirmed sightings of South African armored columns pouring across Namibia’s southern border.

“Widespread attacks,” Vega commented.

“This isn’t just a simple cross-border raid, Comrade Ambassador.”

Tejeda put his glasses back on.

“Agreed. I’ve already put a call through to

Havana. I expect to hear from the foreign minister himself in half an hour or so.”

Surprised, Vega checked his watch. It was past midnight in Cuba, an ungodly hour even in a godless country. The foreign policy apparatus wasn’t usually so quick off the mark.

Tejeda nodded.

“Yes, Havana is greatly concerned. That is why I shall need to give the minister your assessment of the current military situation in

Namibia. And he will also expect our joint recommendations for reaction to this South African aggression.”

“Our what?” Vega was nonplussed.

“On the basis of fragmentary phone reports?” His voice was testy, almost angry I “General, please.” Tejeda tried to soothe him.

“You are the senior Cuban officer in Africa and we need your expertise. I have little experience in military matters. Certainly there must be broad conclusions you can draw, measures you can recommend to safeguard our interest.”

Vega knew he was being soothed. Tejeda had served as an officer in the

Cuban Army, and even if he had never seen combat, he had to understand what this meant. Still, he didn’t mind being soothed, and the foreign minister, and ultimately Castro himself, would not be put off. He stood and walked over to the map of the area on the wall.

As chief of his country’s military mission to the Luanda government, Vega commanded the Cuban infantry, armor, and air defense units left in Angola.

It was an army that had been shrinking steadily for the past several years.

Since the signing of the Brazzaville Accords, which promised South African withdrawal from Namibia in return for Cuban withdrawal from Angola, his command had fallen steadily from a high of fifty thousand troops down to its present level of barely ten thousand men.

It was a reduction in strength he felt sure Havana already regretted.

Vega had held his command for four years, fighting Unita-the guerrilla movement opposing Luanda’s Marxist government-and occasionally Unita’s South

African backers. He knew the area, and he knew his friends and his enemies.

And all sides in the conflict recognized him as a brilliant tactician and a courageous combat soldier.

He pondered the map for a moment, conscious of the eyes fixed on his uniformed back. He tapped a road junction circled in red near the bottom.

“Keetmanshoop may be the first step in South Africa’s invasion, but it cannot be the last. “

His finger traced the road northward and stopped.

“There. That is where they must go to succeed. Windhoek. Namibia’s capital and economic center.”

Vega moved his hand west, to the Namibian coast.

“No competent general would launch a single-pronged attack on such an important objective. There must be a second enemy column moving inland from the enclave at Walvis Bay.

“Two columns. Both converging on Windhoek to trap and crush the Narnibians like this!” He clapped his hands together, startling several of the junior officers in the room.

Others nodded slowly. Vega’s logic was impeccable. With Windhoek in hand and Namibia’s new army smashed or scattered, South Africa would once again control three quarters of its former colony’s mineral wealth and transportation net.

Tejeda looked up from a pad of hastily scribbled notes.

“Did we have any intelligence about South African movements? Was there any warning at all?”

Vega saw every piece of information the DCI, the Cuban intelligence service, collected in Africa. He shook his head.

“Nothing that made a pattern or indicated an operation this massive. But naturally, we’ll go back and reevaluate the data to see if any of it falls into place now.” He nodded to one of the officers, who stiffened to attention and then hurriedly left the room.

Tejeda looked even more worried.

“Can the South Africans win?”

“Certainly, if Pretoria commits enough troops. Troop strength is the key.

Namibia may be weak, but it’s still a huge area-seven times larger than all Cuba.” Vega paused, calculating.

“Vorster and his madmen would have to commit virtually all of their regular forces. That would leave them weak everywhere else.” There was a speculative tone to his last sentence.

“So what can we do to counter this aggression, General?” Tejeda asked.

“Right away?” Vega clasped his hands behind his back, staring at the troop dispositions shown on the map.

“Freeze the withdrawal. No more units should be removed until we know what Unita will do. I’m sure that the South

Africans will use their stooges to try to distract us.”

He spun round from the map, looking for his chief of operations.

“Colonel

Oliva, you will put all our units on immediate alert. Tell them to expect increased Unita attacks. And pass the warning on to the Angolans as well.”

Oliva headed for a phone.

Tejeda stepped closer to Vega.

“I’m sure Havana will agree to stopping the withdrawal. We’ve certainly halted it in the past for less.”

Vega nodded, agreeing, and walked back over to a chair. He sat down heavily.

“Another year and I could have been home. The damned Boers just can’t leave anyone alone. And the Americans. They’re behind this, too.” He grimaced.

“As long as the capitalists have an outpost in Africa, there will be no peace in this region.”

Tejeda looked concerned. Vega rarely showed fatigue or strong emotion.

“Do you have any other recommendations, General?”

“Not at the moment, Comrade Ambassador.” Vega suddenly sounded tired, as if the thought of further service in this cursed country had drained him of energy.

“I may have other ideas when we get more information. “

Tejeda’s secretary entered the Command Center.

“Sir, Minister Fierro is calling.”

Vega left as the ambassador picked up the phone. He had a lot of thinking to do.

CNN HEADLINE NEWS

CNN’s Atlanta-based anchorman managed to convey an impression of dispassionate concern with little deliberate effort.

“Our top story this hour, South Africa’s invasion of Namibia. “

The screen split, showing a stylized map of Namibia in the upper right-hand corner, just over the anchor’s shoulder.

“Roughly eight hours ago, at dawn local time, South African warplanes, paratroops, and tanks struck deep into the newly independent nation of Namibia. Heavy fighting is reported, and there are also unconfirmed reports that UN peacekeeping troops along the

Namibian border have been disarmed and penned in their compounds by units of South Africa’s invasion force. “

The newsman’s dapper image disappeared, replaced by soundless file footage of one of Vorster’s angry, arm-waving speeches. The invasion took most experts by surprise despite Pretoria’s recent claims that black guerrillas have been using the former colony as a staging area for attacks inside

South Africa. “

Vorster’s image disappeared, replaced by that of a grave faced man the anchor identified as a spokesman for the Namibian government.

“This attack is clearly aimed at reestablishing Pretoria’s domination over our country.

Namibia will not surrender. We will not yield. Instead, we call on the

United Nations Security Council for immediate assistance in repelling this aggression.”

The anchorman reappeared, flanked this time by a picture of the White

House.

“In Washington, the State Department has issued a short statement condemning South Africa’s military action. The White House is expected to issue its own statement later in the day.

“In related news, violent incidents inside South Africa have been rising steadily in the wake of President Vorster’s new security measures…. “

CUBAN EMBASSY, LUANDA, ANGOLA

Night had come almost unnoticed to Luanda.

A single hooded lamp cast shadows on the wall as Gen. Antonio Vega sat eating alone in his office, reviewing the latest sketchy intelligence coming out of Windhoek. No clear picture had yet emerged, but one thing was obvious. Namibia’s young army was losing and losing fast. And in a war still less than a day old.

He looked up in intense irritation when Corporal Gomez stuck his head through the door to let him know that the ambassador wanted to see him.

Again.

Vega swore briskly, swept the sheaf of intelligence reports into a neat pile, and strode out the door with Gomez in tow.

Tejeda’s office faced an arc-lit inner courtyard-a safe haven should any of the many Angolans who loathed their country’s nominal protectors decide to turn sniper. The ambassador was now fully and formally dressed, but he looked much worse, plainly a man deprived of needed sleep and having had a very full day.

Tejeda glanced up from the message flimsy he’d been studying carefully.

“We have new orders, General.” His tone was portentous, almost comical, but Vega knew he was serious. The ambassador never joked about orders from Havana. It wasn’t healthy.

Vega took the message from him. It wasn’t long. The important ones never were.

“Cuba has pledged its internationalist support of the Namibian people against South Africa’s imperialist aggression. Under an agreement reached this afternoon with the Swapo government, this will include the deployment of military units in combat operations against Pretoria’s racist invaders.”

Tejeda nodded.

“Radio Havana will broadcast that—he looked at his watch—in about half an hour. I have direct orders for you as well.

Orders from the Defense Ministry.

Another telex message. Longer this time.

“Gen. Antonio Vega’s area of responsibility is expanded to include

Namibia. Use existing forces and reinforcements

(see attached) to assist the Swapo government in defeating South Africa’s invasion force.”

A list of units and estimated arrival times followed. Vega felt lightheaded. Fighters, armor, the best infantry units Fidel was evidently prepared to send the cream of the Cuban armed forces into combat against

South Africa!

But there were problems. He looked up, meeting Tejeda’s watchful gaze.

“Comrade Ambassador, have the Russians agreed to support this?” Vega had to force the question out through clenched teeth. Just asking it seemed to reinforce Cuba’s dependence on an increasingly untrustworthy patron.

The Cuban Army’s presence in Angola was possible only because Soviet cargo planes and ships kept it in supply and up to strength. Cuba itself had only a few ships and a scattering of light transport aircraft. Not enough to support a sizable force outside the island’s own shores. So none of

Castro’s extravagant promises to the Namibian government could be met without extensive Soviet backing. Vega had few illusions left about

Moscow’s continued devotion to its socialist brothers overseas.

Tejeda smiled thinly. He shared the general’s disdain for the USSR’s fair-weather communists.

“Surprising though it may seem, Comrade General,

Moscow’s response to our requests have been very positive. Defense Minister

Petrov himself telephoned Fidel to say that four merchant ships and twenty

Ilyushin cargo aircraft will be transferred to our control. Also, advanced

MiGs are being flown from Russia for use by our pilots. They’re scheduled to arrive within twenty four hours.”

Incredible. It was a generous offer, especially the fighter flights. Cuba’s own MiGs didn’t have the range to fly clear across the Atlantic, and just crating them for seaborne passage would have added a week to the time needed to get them into combat over Namibia.

A generous offer, indeed. And that was strange.

Of late, the Soviet Union’s support for Castro’s African policies had been lukewarm at best. As it foundered in a sea of internal political and economic troubles, the Kremlin had even begun grumbling about the above-market prices it paid for Cuba’s sugar crop. Prices that kept Cuba’s own failing economy afloat.

So what was the catch?

“Just what does Moscow expect in return?”

“Nothing, at least for now.” Tejeda shrugged.

“Apparently they see certain benefits in helping us help the Namibians. As the Americans would say, opposing South Africa is now good PR. “

“They can afford it. But can we?” Vega countered. Angola paid Cuba in hard cash for every Cuban soldier inside its borders. That money, most of it ironically coming from an American-owned oil refinery, would have been missed after the slated withdrawal from Angola. Cuba was a poor country.

For years, the Americans, the IMF, and everyone outside the shrinking communist world had been trying to starve Cuba’s economy into ruin, with marked success. The nation desperately needed foreign exchange. Given that, Vega wasn’t sure his country could bear the cost of a full-fledged war.

Tejeda frowned. Vega’s question wasn’t just defeatist, it could even be interpreted as a criticism of Havana’s decisions. And that wasn’t like the general at all.

“Surely that isn’t your concern, Comrade General, The

Foreign Ministry assures me that they are already negotiating the needed agreements with Windhoek. Finances will not be a problem.”

“Fine,” Vega said, “you broker the deal for Namibian diamonds. Just don’t tell me the money’s run out once I’ve committed my forces.”

Tejeda turned bright red.

“General, please. Fidel has already pledged

Cuba’s support for Namibian independence. A pledge that we will carry out even if we have to impoverish ourselves. “

Vega looked skeptical. Fidel Castro was a committed revolutionary, but not a madman. Cuba already stood on the brink of poverty. Revolutionary fervor wasn’t an adequate substitute for a steady and expensive stream of munitions, food, and fuel.

The ambassador hurried on.

“Besides, there are important geopolitical considerations at stake here. Considerations that cannot be ignored. We have always tried to lead third-world opinion. Fighting, actually risking

Cuban lives to save one of those third-world states, will help our image abroad. The next time a Western nation looks at us, they will have to see us as we really are. The Washington-controlled embargo will weaken, at least. It may even break.”

He smiled.

“Don’t worry, Comrade. We have much to gain by winning in

Namibia. You will have every resource you need.”

Vega nodded, somewhat reassured. Havana wasn’t ignoring the real world.

Good.

The treaty-mandated withdrawal from Angola had seemed likely to end

Castro’s influence on the continent. One more communist retrenchment in an era already filled with surrender. Leaving Luanda would also have meant abandoning a valuable source of hard currency for Cuba’s hardpressed economy.

His own reasons for intervening in Namibia were less complicated. Vega wanted to hurt South Africa, to wreck its plans. He and his troops had fought Pretoria’s expeditionary forces and Angola-based Unita stooges for years. Each encounter had carried its own grisly price tag in dead and wounded comrades, and none had been decisive. The war in Angola had been a series of pointless battles with no final objective.

Worn-out by years of fruitless skirmishing, Vega had been ready to return home-home to bask in Cuba’s warm Caribbean sun. South Africa’s invasion of

Namibia offered him a chance for a decisive, stand-up fight.

He was ready. Cuba had been fighting in Angola since 1975, so he had a pool of experienced officers, combat veterans who knew how to fight and who knew the conditions in southern Africa.

Vega also knew the risks the South Africans were taking in their drive to seize Namibia quickly. Risks Pretoria’s commanders were willing to take because they didn’t expect to meet competent military opposition. Risks he intended to make them regret.

UMKHONTC) WE SIZWE HEADQUARTERS, LUSAKA,

ZAMBIA

Col. Sese Luthuli fielded yet another frantic phone call. A panicked voice in the receiver said, “This is Jonas. ” At least he had enough sense to use his code name, Luthuli thought.

“I’ve gotten reports from all of my cells. The South Africans are moving in numbers, Colonel! The Gajab River camp has been overrun!”

Luthuli fought the urge to lash out at this man. He knew “Jonas,” an

Ovimbundu tribesman in his thirties with a good record in the struggle.

He had no sense, though, and could not be trusted in combat. This had relegated him to administrative duties, which had now probably saved his life.

The man’s information was hours old. Luthuli had to give him the bad news without panicking him entirely, and quickly. Nobody knew how fast the

Boers were moving.

“Jonas, listen. Find everyone you can and get out of Namibia any way you can. South Africa’s armies are on the move, and we have to abandon all our camps.”

“But comrade, without them our organization will fall apart! Our supplies, our communications-“

“Will have to be rebuilt,” Luthuli interrupted.

“We must save what we can and start over. Headquarters does not think the South Africans will go beyond Namibia’s borders. If you can make it to Angola, or Botswana, you should be safe.”

“But we will lose so much! Shouldn’t we strike at the enemy?”

Inwardly, Luthuli smiled. So there was a little fire in him after all.

“We are, comrade, but that is not your task. You must organize the evacuation, and quickly. We must live to fight on. I must go now. Good luck.”

As he hung up, the colonel heard the voice protesting, asking for instructions. He shrugged. How much direction did a man need to run?

He hoped there would be friendly faces for his men in Botswana and

Angola. Ever since Broken Covenant, foreign support for the ANC had dried up. Money from America and Europe, even weapons from socialist supporters, had stopped

completely. The Namibian training camps had become mere holding pens as they searched for resources. You can indoctrinate a man with words, but they needed more than that to fight the South Africans.

Luthuli felt bad about lying to him, as well. There had been no attempt to strike back at the advancing Boer armies. Umkhonto we Sizwe was a political army, a resistance group. The typical guerrilla cell was armed with a few pistols and rifles and usually had no more than five men. Heavy weapons, such as machine guns and rocket launchers, had limited ammunition and were saved for important targets. When his men moved, they used borrowed civilian transport, or they walked.

Scattered in small groups all over South Africa, the guerrilla cells spent more time dodging Vorster’s security forces than they did planning and executing guerrilla attacks. And those attacks were always carefully scouted, with planning and practicing that normally took days. Umkhonto could no more hurt the massive South African war machine than a small child could fight with a heavyweight boxer. All of his guerrillas, scattered across the country, probably had no more combined fighting power than a battalion of South African troops.

Luthuli looked at the map in his office, at the documents on his desk. The only men he had left were the survivors of the crackdown that had followed

Vorster’s takeover, the result of Broken Covenant. The “reforms” under

Haymans had proceeded just far enough for the ANC to move into the light, for its members to expose themselves. He had argued against it, fought tooth and nail to keep Umkhonto secret and powerful. Now it lay in shards, most of their leaders and half of their fighters rotting in prison.

Luthuli had not given up. He was a realist, though. Umkhonto’s violence was always aimed at political targets, designed to influence leaders at home and world opinion abroad. Mortaring a military base, bombing a railway station, even a careful assassination, were all designed to show the willingness of the African people to struggle, to answer the Boer’s violence with their own.

None of this mattered in wartime. Five people killed by a bomb on a bus could not compare to the casualty lists coming from the front. Any attack his people made now would simply cause them to be lumped in with the other military enemies. The ANC had been overtaken by events.

Even before the Namibian invasion, Luthuli had faced rebuilding a shattered organization, lacking the money or weapons to even maintain it.

He also lacked political support, since the ANC was viewed by many states as the cause of all the troubles. And even if he could rebuild his forces, they would have to be trained and equipped to fight a much more conventional war. Now he had lost the base camps.

It was time to ask for help, to appeal for more than just supplies and cash. He knew that there would be a price to pay, but if Umkhonto did not receive massive assistance soon, it would cease to exist, and the struggle would die with it.

There was only one country he could turn to for support. They had stayed true to their Marxist beginnings. Even though they weren’t as rich as the

Russians, the fires of revolution still burned in Havana.

He picked up the phone.

AUGUST 19-20TH CAPE RIFLES, ON MOTOR ROUTE 1, FIFTY KILOMETERS SOUTH

OF

KEETMANSHOOP

Smoke from the burning village eddied over the highway, adding an acrid tang to air already stained by diesel fumes and the sickly sweet smell of high explosives. Bodies and pieces of bodies were scattered haphazardly through a tangle of collapsed houses and fire-blackened huts. Some of the corpses were in Namibian uniforms but most were not. A few dazed survivors squatted beside the village well, their faces set in rigid masks of mingled horror and grief.

A futile show of resistance by Namibian police had given Maj. Daan

Visser’s armored fighting vehicles and scout cars the only excuse they needed. Just five minutes of machinegun fire and several HE rounds from 76mm cannon had turned the little Namibian settlement into a charnel house. Then

Visser’s men had roared off northward into the late-mo ming light, leaving the battalion’s main column to clear up the mess and secure any prisoners.

Commandant Henrik Kruger shook his head wearily and turned away, trying to concentrate on the developing strategic situation shown on his map.

Colored-pencil notations showed the last reported positions of all known

South African and Namibian units.

In a nonstop drive since crossing the frontier, Kruger and his men had steamrollered their way west to Grunau. Up a winding pass climbing through the Great Karas Mountains, then north toward the paratroop-held airhead at

Keetmanshoop. More than 280 kilometers in just thirty-six hours. Resistance had been light-almost nonexistent, in fact. Only a few easily crushed pockets such as the police post in this village. The column advancing from

Walvis Bay reported similar progress.

Good. But not good enough. Kruger folded the map with abrupt, decisive strokes and handed it to a waiting staff officer, a babyfaced lieutenant.

They were already eight hours behind schedule-at least according to the wildly optimistic invasion timetables prepared by Pretoria. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. Moving long columns of men and equipment over vast distances was always a time-consuming business-even without meeting de ten-nined enemy resistance.

Kruger’s own advance was a case in point. The trucks and APCs carrying his battalion had been on the road continuously for more than a day and a half, pushing north with only scattered five-and ten-minute rest breaks. They were starting to pay a price for that. Exhausted drivers were falling asleep at the wheel or growing increasingly irritable. The result: a rising number of minor traffic accidents and breakdowns, each exacting additional delay. Resupply halts were taking longer too. Tired men took more time to refuel and re ann the it vehicles.

Something would have to be done about that.

With the young lieutenant trailing behind, he moved around to the armored side door of his squat, metal-hulled Ratel command APC. Up and down the length of the long column, other vehicle commanders were already gunning their overworked engines to life. Blue-gray exhaust billowed into the hazy air.

His mind was made up. Once the battalion reached the paratroops at

Keetmanshoop, it would have to halt for at least six hours to rest and recover. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t see any other realistic alternative. Not that that would leave him with a combat-ready unit. Still, every hour of added delay gave the Namibian Army more time to pull itself together. Plus there were rumors that the Cubans had promised their assistance.

Kruger frowned. That was a disquieting possibility. He respected the

Cubans. They were communists, it was true, but they made tough soldiers nonetheless.

He swung himself back inside the command vehicle’s cramped interior.

Moments later, the column of camouflaged APCs, trucks, and armored cars trundled north again, driving hard for Keetmanshoop and some promised sleep. The shattered village continued to burn behind them.

AUGUST 20-PANTHER FLIGHT, OVER WINDHOEK

Lt. Andreis Stegman always enjoyed flying, every second he was in the air.

And why shouldn’t he? He was one of the best pilots in the South African Air

Force. He had to be, because he’d been assigned to fly one of the SAAF’s thirty Mirage F. I CZ jet interceptors-the most advanced fighter in South

Africa’s inventory.

The Mirage was a beautiful plane, fast and maneuverable. Its South

African-built air-to-air missiles might not be the most modern in the world, but Stegman knew he could hold his own against any likely opponent.

Stegman and his wingman, Lt. Klaus de Vert, were on fighter patrol over

Windhoek. Their ability to loiter right over Namibia’s capital without any sign of opposition confirmed South Africa’s complete air superiority.

Namibia’s pathetic fleet of antiquated propeller-driven planes had been destroyed

on the first day-strafed on the ground or shot out of the sky with contemptuous ease.

The two swept-wing Mirages circled slowly at eleven thousand meters, orbiting over a light scud of clouds four thousand meters below. At this altitude, there wasn’t a hint of turbulence and the sky overhead was a bright pale blue. Except where drifting white patches of cloud blocked his view, Stegman could see more than three hundred kilometers of southern Africa’s dusty brown surface in every direction.

It wasn’t the most exciting flying, but Stegman loved it all.

He tried to concentrate on the task at hand. They were obviously supposed to attack any enemy aircraft that appeared, but their primary mission involved interdicting Windhoek’s airport. Cargo aircraft trying to take off or land at the field would be sitting ducks for his and de Vert’s high-performance fighters.

Stegman alternated between scanning the sky, checking his radar screen, and running his gaze over the Mirage’s flight instruments in a regular pattern. The pattern had long since become second nature to him. He had over five hundred hours in fighters, and even one kill to his credit.

He smiled cruelly behind his oxygen mask, remembering the frenzied air battle. It had happened over Angola during the SADF’s last major ground operation. They’d been supporting Unita, helping to repel a major Angolan and Cuban offensive against the guerrillas. Stegman, then just a junior lieutenant, had been flying as wingman to Captain de Kloof on a routine fighter sweep over the operational area.

They’d been jumped by two MiG-23 Floggers coming up from low-level with their radars off in a classic bushwhack. By rights de Kloof and he should have been dead. The Russian-built fighters were faster and equipped with radar-guided missiles. But Stegman had learned that day which is more important-a plane or its pilot.

In a vicious, swirling dogfight, de Kloof had closed the range and maneuvered into the MiGs’ rear cone. From there, two quick missile launches gave Stegman and him a kill apiece. It was a good memory and a valuable lesson. There’d been rumors that Cubans were piloting Angolan aircraft, but whoever had been flying, they hadn’t been able to match South African skill.

The victory had given Stegman his current status as a flight leader. And

Major de Kloof was now his squadron commander.

Stegman broke his scanning pattern to check his fuel level. They were about six hundred kilometers from base, and fighters drink fuel quickly, especially in combat. The same gas could keep him aloft for an hour on patrol, but only about three minutes in combat.

Good. They’d only used up about half their patrol time and still had a healthy reserve.

Suddenly, his radar warning receiver sounded, emitting a pulsed buzzing noise. Stegman stabbed a button that silenced the alarm and glanced at the bearing strobe on the dial. It showed a narrow fan of lines off to the northwest. Each line represented the bearing to an aircraft fire-control radar whose pulses were being picked up by sensors on the

Mirage’s fins.

“Klaus, bandits at three two zero!”

Stegman heard de Vert’s mike click twice in acknowledgment as he turned toward the incoming enemy planes. Stegman knew that his wingman was already maneuvering one hundred meters below to form line abreast with a half-mile spacing, all without any verbal order or discussion. In air combat, there wasn’t time for lengthy consideration or long orders.

Anything over one short sentence was long.

Every flight leader and his wingman spent long hours beforehand, working out a mutually agreeable set of air-to-air tactics and maneuvers. The Air

Force recommended certain general procedures and tactics, but any realistic agreement also had to measure the skill levels and personal fighting styles of the two pilots flying together. Their agreement, hammered out over many days and sorties, described exactly what each pilot would do in dozens of situations, automatically and without exception. A pilot would risk death rather than use an undiscussed maneuver, because to do so meant risking his wingman’s life instead.

Stegman’s own radar screen was blank, so the enemy

planes were at least thirty kilometers out. The Mirage’s French-designed

Cyrano IV radar could see larger aircraft at fifty klicks, but cargo aircraft didn’t carry fire-control radars. These bandits were fighters.

He checked his radar warning screen again and noted that the enemy radar pulses were gone. Interesting. Either the bandits had turned off their radars or they’d gone home.

Stegman hoped they hadn’t gone home. He wanted more kills.

The South African thumbed his radio mike, switching frequencies.

“Springbok, this is Panther Lead.”

A fighter controller sitting eight hundred kilometers south at Upington Air

Base answered promptly.

Stegman sketched the situation in a couple of terse phrases and acknowledged Upington’s promise that two more fighters would be launched as backup. The promise was nice, but meaningless. They were more than fifty minutes’ flight time out of Upington. He and de Vert were on their own.

He decided against closing at high speed. Fuel was too precious, and his duty was to cover Windhoek. This could be some sort of diversion, designed to pull them away from the airfield long enough for still-undetected cargo planes to land or take off.

There. Four glowing points of light appeared on his radar screen. Enemy aircraft. He squinted at the screen, trying to extract more information from the tiny blips. The bandits seemed to be flying at lower altitude, and they were moving fast. Damned fast. Even with his relatively low cruising speed, they were closing at over two thousand kilometers per hour! Then he realized the bandits must be coming in on afterburner.

“Closing to engage. Drop tanks!” Stegman shoved his own throttle forward and locked his radar onto the lead aircraft. As the Mirage’s engine noise increased, he thumbed a button on the throttle-jettisoning the empty drop tanks attached to his wings. Normally the empty tanks were saved for reuse at base, but their size and weight slowed down a fighter. Going into combat with the tanks still attached would be like fighting a boxing match wearing a ball and chain.

He checked his armament switches and selected his outer portside Kukri missile-a heat-seeker optimized for dogfighting, not for long range. He’d have to get close to use it. The Mirage carried four of them, plus an internal 30mm cannon.

His radar warning receiver warbled again. The bandits had switched their radars back on. Since they’d probably detected him earlier, the radars were almost certainly on this time for one thing only-a long-range missile launch.

Time to warn de Vert.

“Windmill! Evading!”

Stegman took a quick, deep breath and jammed the throttle forward all the way to afterburner. Windmill was the code for incoming missiles. He felt a mule kick through his seat back and heard a thundering roar behind him as raw fuel poured into the jet’s exhaust and exploded. His own speed quickly increased to over twelve hundred kilometers per hour while his fuel gauge spun down almost as fast.

He swept his eyes back and forth across the sky, looking for the telltale enemy missile trails and trying hard to remember the important pieces of dozens of intelligence briefings. Angolan MiG-23s carried Soviet-made

AA-7 Apex missiles. They were only fair performers, and the intel boys said that they were susceptible to a combination of chaff and a high-9 turn.

Hopefully, Stegman’s own speed, plus that of the missile, would make for such a high closing rate that the missile couldn’t react fast enough to a last-second turn. Add some slivers of metallized plastic that would give false radar returns and the missile should break lock every time.

Or so they said.

There! He could see white smoke trails now, coming in fast from below.

His finger was already resting on the chaff button, and he started pressing it at half-second intervals. At the same time, he threw the

Mirage into a series of weaving turns, always starting and finishing each turn with the smoke trails at a wide angle off his nose.

He glanced over his shoulder to check de Vert and was relieved to see his wingman spewing chaff and corkscrewing all over the sky.

High g forces on each turn pressed him down into his seat,

forcing him to fight to hold the incoming missiles in view. He could see four trails now. Two aimed at him.

Stegman yanked the Mirage into another turn, even tighter than his first series. Come on! Miss, damn you. One missile failed to follow him and flashed past-heading nowhere.

But the second smoke trail visibly bent and curved in around toward his plane. Shit. Only seconds left. He pressed the chaff button again and turned again, pulling six or seven g’s, almost hearing the wings creak with the stress. He lost the missile and in that moment thought he was dead.

A rattling explosion behind him. But no accompanying shock wave, fire, or blinking red warning lights. Thank God! The missile must have been decoyed away at the last moment. Stegman breathed out and leveled off, glancing to either side for de Vert’s plane. Nothing above or to port.

Then he saw it. A ball of orange-red flame tumbling end over end out of control toward the ground. De Vert hadn’t been lucky. And now he was dead.

Stegman didn’t waste time in grief. That could come later. Right now he’d have trouble just saving his own life.

He started looking for the enemy, tracing back along the wispy, dissipating smoke trails left by their missiles. The bandits should be in visual range … he’d covered a lot of distance during those few seconds on afterburner.

There they were. Stegman spotted the small specks-faint gray against a faint blue sky-there were his enemies, ahead and to the left. There were four of them, breaking in pairs to the left and right, crossing over each other.

He smiled thinly. That was a mistake. He wasn’t going to panic just because he was outnumbered four to one. Instead, he’d even the odds by concentrating on a single aircraft. And with four planes swerving all over the sky, he’d have a much easier time finding an enemy vulnerable to attack.

Stegman pushed the nose down a little to unload the wings, then yanked the Mirage over hard, into a high-g port turn. He noticed something strange about the bandits as he turned toward them. MiG-23 Floggers were bullet-shaped, single tailed swing-wing fighters. In combat position, a

Flogger’s wings should have been tucked back against its fuselage like those of a falcon making an attack. These aircraft looked totally different. They had wide, flattish fuselages, twin tails, and clipped swept wings.

The near pair was turning away from him, probably trying to lure him into a squeeze play. Fat chance.

He stayed in his turn for a few seconds more, using his helmet sight to line up a Kukri shot. The bandit slid inside his aiming reticle and into the path of the Kukri’s infrared seeker.

Tone! As soon as he heard the missile’s seeker head warble, Stegman pulled the trigger on his stick and then broke hard right. A jolt signaled that the Kukri had successfully dropped off its rail and was on its way.

The two farthest fighters were swinging in on him fast, and he saw flame sprout from under the lead jet’s starboard wing. Jesus. He turned toward them and barrel-rolled, spiraling across the sky to break the lock of the incoming missile, whatever it was.

A fiery streak flashed past his cockpit and vanished.

Racing toward one another at a combined speed of more than twelve hundred knots, the three adversaries zipped by in an eye blink-giving Stegman his first clear view of his opponents. MiG-29 Fulcrums! But even more interesting were the markings. They had gray air-superiority camouflage and carried a blue-and-red roundel. Angolan aircraft were usually sand and green colored, and their insignia was black and red. What the hell was going on?

He rolled right and dove, hoping to be harder to see against the desert landscape so he could gain a few seconds to select another target. A gray-white ball of smoke and orange flame appeared off to one side, with a spreading line of smoke leading to it. His Kukri shot had hit! Scratch one MiG. One for de Vert.

Stegman kept his eyes moving, roving back and forth across the sky.

In fastmoving fighter combat, a pilot’s most important asset is “situational awareness—the ability to visualize his

own plane, those of his allies, and those of his opponents in three-dimensional space, their paths and their possibilities, while using that knowledge to kill the enemy.

He knew two of the MiG-29s were curving around behind him, and he could see the third just visible to his left and rear. He snarled. Having one opponent behind you in air combat was dangerous enough, but three was big trouble. As if to confirm his evaluation, his radar warning receiver sounded again-signaling another long-range missile inbound.

Stegman yanked the stick right, rolling the aircraft so that it was inverted, then pulled up hard. The nose of the Mirage pointed straight down, toward the ground, air speed increasing dramatically as both its jet engine and gravity worked together. As the Mirage maneuvered, he released still more chaff, as a precaution.

He was trading altitude for speed, applying the old fighter dictum that “speed is life.” At the same time, he rolled the Mirage, trying to locate the enemy.

He found them, first a single dot and then two more, with fuzzy white trails from the pair that seemed to go straight for a while before wandering aimlessly about the sky. The signs of radar-guided missiles that had missed-confused by his sudden dive into ground clutter. All three MiGs were about four thousand meters above him.

Stegman felt pain in his ears and yawned to equalize the pressure. He’d lost a lot of altitude, and he had to decide in a single instant how to spend his remaining energy. Fight or flee?

He wanted to go back and send the three MiGs crashing to the earth one by one. But it just wasn’t on. The enemy pilots weren’t making enough mistakes. They still outnumbered him. No, it was time to be discreet.

Stegman rolled his aircraft a few more degrees, so that its clear plastic canopy pointed southeast, and started to pull out of his turn. G forces pinned him to his seat, but he forced his head up against the extra weight so that he could watch the altimeter. Three thousand meters. Two thousand.

Fifteen “

hundred. The spinning needle’s progress slowed, and he leveled off at a thousand meters-flying southeast at more than a thousand kilometers per hour.

He glanced over his shoulder, watching for signs of pursuit. If the MiGs wanted to catch him now, they’d have to increase their own throttle settings, burning more fuel, and all the time moving farther from their base.

Stegman throttled back to cruise and looked at his own fuel gauges. He scowled. The verdomde MiGs may get another kill after all, he thought.

Upington was still more than seven hundred kilometers away, and he’d burned way too much fuel in combat. He pulled back on the stick, more gently this time. He was out of danger, and it was time to climb to a higher altitude. That would stretch out his remaining fuel.

With luck, his Mirage might fly on fumes long enough to reach the emergency field at Keetmanshoop.

Cursing continuously under his breath, Stegman reached for his map and started plotting a new course due south.

All in all, this hadn’t been one of his better days.

FULCRUM FLIGHT, OVER WNDHOEK

Fifty kilometers back, three MiG-29 Fulcrums orbited at eleven thousand meters, wings rocking in triumph. The surviving South African Mirage had lived up to its name, quickly disappearing from combat after the initial exchange. Capt. Miguel Ferentez tried to restore order on the radio circuit.

“Quiet! Lieutenant Rivas, you are a pilot, not a gladiator! And Jorge, this is a tactical net, not a sports arena loudspeaker! Be silent!”

No one responded, and Ferentez knew that they were all chagrined over the amateurish whooping and cheering that had filled the circuit seconds earlier.

“The loss of one of their flight mates barely tempered their enthusiasm. They had won an important victory.

None of them had seen combat before. Even Ferentez, who had flown a tour in Angola on MiG-21s, had never engaged

enemy fighters before. Still, he was professional enough to curb his elation over a successful combat. There was work to do. He checked his gauges.

Satisfied, he changed frequencies, reporting in to the controllers based at

Ondjiva Air Base, six hundred kilometers north-just inside Angola.

“Windhoek is clear. And we have fuel for another ten minutes’ patrol.”

Another flight of four MiGs were minutes behind him, screening the transports, and would relieve him before he had to return to base.

Ferentez was sorry the second Mirage had escaped. Eliminating South

Africa’s entire air patrol in one fell swoop would have been a smashing first victory. Nevertheless, he and his fellow pilots had accomplished their mission. Lumbering Soviet transports from Luanda, with close fighter escort, were now just thirty minutes away. Transports crammed with troops, weapons, and supplies to help bolster the defense of Windhoek. They would land without interference-thanks to his Fulcrums.

Ferentez smiled slowly. Pretoria couldn’t possibly ignore Cuba’s challenge to its aggression. This afternoon’s successful combat over Namibia’s capital was sure to be only the first of many.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Edward Hurley’s office was lined with books. Most were about Africa, but they included every topic. He tried to keep the room neat, but there were always about five projects under way at the same time. Papers spilled off a side table and lay in heaps on the floor, like bureaucratic land mines for an unwary visitor.

The morning light illuminated his desk, also covered with papers, but of a much more immediate nature. It also shone down on Hurley’s form as he bent over them, trying to build a coherent picture of what was going on in South

Africa.

Hurley rubbed his eyes. Nobody he knew had gotten much sleep since the

Namibian War began. He’d spent the last three nights trying to build up a decent picture of what was going on. In addition to being cranky from lack of sleep, Washington needed answers.

Thankfully, he might be able to provide some. A picture was building, although most of it was inferred from scraps and rumor. Trying to get it right, quickly, was always risky. Based on satellite photos, embassy reports, and news reports, it looked as if Vorster’s government was succeeding in taking back Namibia-violently.

He smiled silently to himself. All their fears had come true. Remembering his unwilling prediction, Hurley wondered if this was the trigger that would tear South Africa apart. Still, at the moment it was just another foreign war. Find out as much as you can, then fit the pieces together. See if it will affect the U.S.” and keep out of it as much as possible. It was a job he’d done many times before, and he was good at it.

Hurley looked at his watch. There was an NSC meeting in about two hours.

That was enough time to have his notes typed, and for him to wash and get something to cat. He started assembling his briefing, making notes for the typist and arranging the papers in proper order.

He had almost finished when a staffer knocked on his open door. Bill Rock, a lanky Virginian, was his assistant. He had been awake almost as long as his boss and showed it. Now he handed Hurley another handful of papers.

“You’d better check this out, Ed. Hot stuff.”

Hurley took them, reluctantly, and looked for a place to set them on his desk. It was too late to add any more details to his brief, and ..

.

Rock noticed his intention and quickly spoke up.

“I mean it, boss. Some of our signals spooks are picking up a lot of Spanish radio transmissions-south of the Angolan-Namibian border. I checked at the Cuban desk, and there’s been activity-a lot of it.”

Sighing, Hurley started leafing through them, at first turning the pages slowly, but speeding up as he progressed, until finally he did little more than scan the heading on each page.

Half-abstractedly, he looked at Rock and said, “Get me more,” as he reached for the phone. Punching a four-digit number, he listened to a ring, then an answer.

“This is Assistant Secretary Hurley. I need to speak to the secretary immediately. “