Vortex

CHAPTER 27 The Fourth Horseman

NOVEMBER 23-THIRD BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP, ALONG ROUTE 47, BETWEEN BODENSTEIN AND MAKOKSKRAAL

The cool desert night would fade into full day soon, much missed by the

Third Brigade Tactical Group’s Cuban and Libyan soldiers. The days were pure hell-long hot stretches of driving through a region short on potable water and long on thick, choking dust that clung to everything. South Africa’s high veld was moving into summer, with daytime temperatures soaring to over ninety degrees Fahrenheitclimbing quickly from midnight lows in the sixties.

The Libyans were more used to it than the Cubans, but enlisted men from the two nations had few chances to mix or share their knowledge. Aside from the basic problems of language and culture, the Cuban and Libyan political officers were feuding over everything from supply allocation to Marxist-Leninist doctrine. As a result, separate units went their separate ways, connected only by liaison officers at the brigade headquarters-a kind of socialist apartheid.

It also reduced efficiency. But then the brigade didn’t really have to be very efficient. It just had to keep moving. The Afrikaners still hadn’t managed to scrape up much more than a thin corporal’s guard to oppose its steady advance on Johannesburg.

The Third Tactical Group contained five battalions, plus a number of attachments” smaller specialist units. Three of the five were motorized rifle units, one of them Libyan. One battalion each of T-62 tanks and self-propelled 122mm howitzers completed the force.

When the brigade halted for the night, each battalion formed its own “strongpoint”-a defensive position with all-round fields of fire. This deep in enemy territory, an attack could come from any direction.

At the moment, the Third’s battalion strong points were strung out along the highway like a succession of huge oval beads several hundred meters across. Gaps of two or three hundred meters between them made it impossible for any would-be attacker to strike one strongpoint without taking fire from its neighbors.

This pattern of separation and mutual support was repeated inside each battalion strongpoint. Individual rifle and tank companies had each “laagered” their vehicles in separate formation. Ironically enough, the very word laager came from Afrikaans. It had slipped into worldwide military usage after South African troops reinvented the old Boer tactic during World War II.

In laager, tanks and APCs were parked nose-out in a rough oval, their turrets turned outward against the hostile landscape while the men slept inside the ring. Once the vehicles were parked, it only took a little digging to create a first-class defensive position.

So went the theory, anyway. Right now, the Third Brigade Tactical Group lay camped on an and plateau, rising in elevation to the north. Covered with low scrub and tufts of grass, the ground was dust dry. The rocky soil complicated digging in, but at least their foxholes weren’t muddy.

Supply and maintenance units also sheltered inside these company laagers, ensuring that the entire brigade was protected by an armed and armored fence.

The brigade’s surface-to-air missile batteries and antiaircraft guns were scattered throughout the battalion encampments. And while the rest of the

Third Brigade Tactical Group caught a few hours of desperately needed sleep, several SAM radar operators rubbed red eyes and stared at their scopes. Nighttime air raids had become a part of life, and they were sure they’d be hit before dawn.

JERICHO FLIGHT, SOUTHWEST OF PRETORIA

Four Mirage aircraft flew west at one thousand meters over the darkened

South African countryside, heading straight for Cuba’s Third Brigade

Tactical Group. Capt. Jon Heersfeld piloted the lead plane. He was nervous, almost to the point of distraction.

Well, he thought, who wouldn’t be on a mission such as this?

Heersfeld was a professional. He’d flown combat missions over Angola during the long, undeclared war there. In recent months, he’d seen more combat in the skies over Namibia. And in just the past week, he’d flown a dozen-plus sorties against the Cuban forces invading the Transvaal. In short, he knew his business as well as any attack pilot in the Air Force.

Which was probably why he had been picked for this mission. But did the

Air Force higher-ups have to make such a production out of it? First he’d been pulled off combat operations without any explanation and ordered to sleep. Then the wing commander himself issued the attack order, leaving his poor squadron commander standing there like a fifth wheel.

And the briefing! My God, every major, commandant, and colonel on the base, along with the de Wet himself, had wormed his way into the auditorium. Didn’t the brass have any work to do?

Heersfeld scowled. It was a good thing they were flying immediately, because any chance of secrecy was shot.

Even his preflight had been bizarre. The tired old Mirage, which he’d sometimes been forced to fly with only basic flight instruments working, had been groomed and tweaked and even cleaned until it gleamed.

Technicians had spent most of the day installing special weapons control equipment in its cockpit,

His squadron commander, the maintenance officer, and one of the government’s brown shirted fanatics had all accompanied him as he circled the aircraft, looking for the smallest fault. There hadn’t been any, thank God.

He’d inspected the weapon itself, of course, not that looking at it told him much. It hung from the Mirage’s centerline hardpoint, under the fuselage. One drop tank hung under each wing, and the plane carried two

Kukri heat-seekers-one on each wingtip. The missiles were there almost out of habit. Considering the heavy fighter escort assigned to this mission, he shouldn’t need them. Still, they didn’t weigh much, and his wingtip rails couldn’t carry anything else. Besides, Heersfeld hated to fly naked. He’d already downed one Cuban MiG-23 during an attack mission.

The weapon was shaped like a standard low-drag bomb, a little bigger than most, but no heavier. Its surface was simply polished aluminum or steel, with a few small black patches near the nose and tail. It was totally unremarkable, and Heersfeld had been forced to depend on the technicians to tell him it was ready to go.

His wingman’s Mirage had received a similar going-over and had also been pronounced mission-ready. Mulder’s plane carried a second bomb as a backup in case he was shot down or forced to abort.

Heersfeld had almost expected a band to serenade him as he climbed in the cockpit, but instead the majors, commandants, colonels, and the general had just watched as he strapped himself in, connected the leads, and started the Mirage’s Atar engine.

Takeoff had been clean, and he’d hoped that once away from the confusion at the airfield, he could treat this as just another mission.

He’d been wrong.

The nature of his payload preyed on his mind. Nobody had asked his opinion on whether or not this kind of weapon should be used, or where.

The fact that it was being dropped inside South African territory had raised more than a few eyebrows at the briefing. Still, the nearest inhabited town was more than ten kilometers away from his aim point-and upwind.

Heersfeld shook his head and checked his instruments. Militarily, South

Africa really didn’t have much choice. His squadron alone had lost a third of its planes and pilots, without doing much more than slowing the enemy advance. Rumor said the ground-pounders were being hammered even worse.

So what was left to his people? How would they explain building such weapons and then losing a war because they were too frightened to use them? No, South Africa must use all its weapons, all its strength, in this conflict. Too much was at stake for anything less.

Heersfeld scanned the air behind and beside him again. There, outlined against the star-studded night sky, he could just make out the shape of a Mirage Fl.CZ fighter, this one armed purely with missiles. Another fighter escorted Mulder’s aircraft, a few hundred meters in trail.

The fighters were ready to protect his valuable plane from any air attack, although none was expected. So far, the Cuban Air Force hadn’t shown much taste for night intercepts. Heavy air attacks and fighter sweeps were being launched farther north-all designed to draw off any enemy aircraft capable of attacking them.

Other South African planes had already played a vital role in this attack.

Two precious reconnaissance aircraft from South Africa’s diminishim, fleet had overflown their target earlier in the evening, so pre strike data was good, for a change. And good data allowed the mission planners to calculate both the weapon’s aim point and its release point with special care.

Heersfeld checked his kneeboard once more. There were few landmarks in this part of the country, and fewer still that were visible at night.

Watching the map, he could only steer as well as his aircraft’s

antiquated avionics allowed. No inertial trackers, no moving map displays in this beauty. The arms embargo by the West hadn’t been entirely without effect.

Ten minutes to target. Heersfeld was flying down Route 47, using the road as his compass. He glanced down and saw a pattern of parallel lights leading west. Although the small town of Ventersdorp was normally blacked out against Cuban air attack, security forces there had turned on the streetlights along the main highway to help him verify his position.

He clicked a switch on his microphone.

“Springbok, this is Jericho Lead.

Over initial point.”

Heersfeld tapped a button on his control stick, jettisoning the two now-empty drop tanks. Two heavy clunks, one right after the other, confirmed that the fuel tanks were gone spinning down toward the ground below. Then, after aligning his Mirage carefully on the correct compass heading, he advanced his throttle to maximum. The aircraft kicked forward, accelerating smoothly through calm air.

Two clicks in his earphones told him that Mulder and his escort were turning away, starting a series of long, lazy circles. They wouldn’t come any closer to the target unless something happened to him. And right now the air raid sirens in Ventersdorp and every other town for fifty kilometers around were supposed to be going off-warning civilians to get down and stay down.

He started a shallow climb, calculating the appropriate variables in his head. Both speed and altitude at release were critical. A few practice runs over the veld yesterday had helped build his confidence for this mission, but they’d also convinced him of the importance of precision.

THIRD BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP

Sgt. Jorge Jimenez stared at the radar scope. He took his job seriously, but he’d been battling sleep all through the second half of this night. He looked forward to dawn, when the column would be moving again. His radar could only be deployed while the vehicle was stationary, so it was then that he slept.

Jimenez kept watch in one of the tactical group’s four “Romb” air defense vehicles. A lightly armored wheeled box, it carried four surface-to-air missiles code-named SA-8 Gecko by NATO, and a search radar NATO called

Land Roll. Each vehicle was a self-contained firing unit, and all four vehicles in the battery were deployed in a flattened diamond that provided complete coverage over the Cuban position.

A blip appeared on the edge of the scope, and despite what it meant, the sergeant was secretly relieved. Finally, something to break up the boredom of a night watch.

He spoke into his intercom.

“Comrade Lieutenant, I have an inbound target at thirty kilometers. No response on IFF. the target appears to be four fighter-sized aircraft.”

The SAM battery’s assistant commander shook off sleep and leaned over his shoulder.

“What’s their speed and altitude?”

“Medium altitude, sir.” There was no direct readout of speed on the scope, but the blip’s movement was clear.

“It’s moving fast!”

“Right. No time to be subtle. Turn on your tracking radar and warm up the missiles.”

While Jimenez acknowledged the order, the lieutenant alerted his battery commander and the other SAM vehicles.

“Watch your sectors. This may be a feint to distract us from the real attack.”

Outside, he heard warnings being shouted throughout the camp.

“Air alert!”

He remembered the flyby earlier. Although they’d done their best, both

South African reconnaissance planes had escaped unharmed. This attack was almost certainly the result. Jimenez nodded to himself, watching his radar screen with hawklike intensity. The going had been far too easy.

He leaned forward as the pattern on his radar scope changed.

“Separation,

Conrade Lieutenant! Two aircraft turning away.” But two blips were still closing.

“Speed is up over one thousand KPH. Altitude now four thousand meters.

“

“Probably going for another reconnaissance pass at maximum speed. This may not be an attack after all,” the lieutenant speculated.

Jimenez shrugged. Reconnaissance run or an actual attack, it didn’t really make much difference. They’d still shoot the bastards out of the sky.

Numbers flashed on a display next to his scope.

“The computer says firing range is eight and a half kilometers.”

“Shoot when they’re in range.”

JERICHO LEAD

Heersfeld was juggling several balls at once. Airspeed and altitude had to be maintained within precise, narrow limits, course had to be held exactly, and meanwhile here he was hanging out at medium altitude where every Cuban all the way back to Havana could see him.

He could almost feel the SAM radar beams sweeping over his Mirage.

Normally, attack runs on a target were made at altitudes of just one or two hundred meters. Pilots used terrain masking and violent maneuvers to evade or confuse enemy antiaircraft defenses. This straight-and-level stuff gave him the willies.

Well, his wingman escort was supposed to watch for incoming threats.

Heersfeld hoped the fighter jock had his eyes open wide. He pulled his eyes back inside the cockpit and activated the special weapons console. The indicators were all green. Great. He kept one eye on the flight instruments and punched in a five-digit security code on the keypad.

He was rewarded with a new set of lights, whose significance was both exciting and frightening. The weapon was armed.

Passing twenty kilometers. He was high and a little fast, so he throttled back slightly. With only a thousand meters to go, he hit the transmit switch on his radio, “Springbok, this is Jericho Uad. At alpha point.”

Glancing right, he saw his escort flash his formation lights and break hard right. As the fighter turned, Heersfeld saw the glow of its afterburner. The other pilot was trying to get as far away as he possibly could. A wise man, he thought.

The Mirage shuddered slightly as it punched through a whirl of disturbed air. He checked his instruments again.

His speed was good and he was still on course. In a useless gesture,

Heersfeld tightened his straps and settled himself in the seat. Reaching over to the weapons panel, he selected CENTERLINE and watched the gauges.

Now!

In a carefully practiced motion, he pulled back on the stick, pulling his plane up into a loop. The Mirage’s nose snapped up toward the zenith.

Needles spun round on the aircraft’s altimeter as it thundered high into the dark night sky.

At seventy-seven hundred meters, eleven hundred kilometers per hour indicated airspeed, on a course of two seven five degrees magnetic and at a forty-five-degree angle, Heersfeld stabbed the release button on his control stick. He felt a solid thump under the aircraft as the bomb separated cleanly he hoped.

The mission was out of his hands now, and it was high time he looked after Jon Heersfeld’s immediate future. He pushed the throttle all the way forward and yanked back on the stick, even harder than before. The

Mirage roared upward and over, finishing the loop-inscribing a vertical semicircle through the air.

At ten thousand meters, the plane’s nose passed the horizon and kept going. He was upside down now, hanging from his straps staring “up” at the earth below.

Heersfeld quickly rolled from inverted to wings-level in a steep dive and watched his airspeed indicator climb higher. He was already moving at over Mach one, and he intended to wring every possible ounce of speed out of his old mount.

Behind him, the bomb traveled through its own arc.

THIRD BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP

Sergeant Jimenez counted down as the lone South African aircraft approached.

“Fourteen kilometers. Twelve kilo meters. Ten kilometers. Ten kilometers!” He sat up straighter, staring at the screen.

“It’s turning away! Range is now twelve kilometers. Comrade

Lieutenant, the other aircraft is turning away, too! “

His eyes followed the blips as they moved blinking toward the top of his radar scope. His outstretched finger slid away from the fire button next to his console. It looked as though the South Africans weren’t going to test the accuracy of his missiles-not tonight at any rate.

Jimenez had never seen a “lob-toss” delivery on his scope before. He’d never get another chance.

Too small to be picked up by radar, the South African bomb arched up to twelve thousand meters before descending in a gentle curve across the ten kilometers between its release point and target.

After fierce debate, Pretoria’s mission planners had picked the Cuban T-62 tank battalion as their primary target. Ordinarily, two battalion strong points could have been included in the bomb’s inner kill zone, but the tanks represented most of the Third Brigade Tactical Group’s combat power. The planners were willing to accept “minimal” damage to the rear of the column in order to guarantee destruction of the Cuban armor.

As the weapon fell earthward, a pressure fuse sensed its passage through the one-thousand-meter mark and closed a switch. Thousandths of a second later, it ceased to be.

Counting both vertical and horizontal distance, the bomb had traveled almost sixteen kilometers in its arc, totally unguided. While Heersfeld’s delivery had been within norms, high-altitude winds and pressures had changed the tiniest bit since the last reading. As a result, South Africa’s twenty kiloton atomic bomb fell slightly off target-three hundred meters long and to the right.

Fused for airburst, it detonated over and just outside the northwest edge of the tank battalion’s laager. A boiling, white-hot fireball, more than two hundred meters in diameter, speared through the night-turning darkness into flickering, manmade day for several deadly seconds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shells stacked near the guns began exploding.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tactical Group had been annihilated.

DECTECTION AND TRACKING CENTER, NORTH AMERICAN AIR DEFENSE COMMAND

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

“Watch officer.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O’Malley shook his head.

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

Ohira looked puzzled.

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

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

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

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

“Colonel Howard, watch officer. “

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

CNN SPECIAL REPORT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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