Vortex

CHAPTER 29 Countdown

NOVEMBER 25-HEADQUARTERS, I ST BATTALION, 75TH RANGER REGIMENT, HUNTER ARMY AIRFIELD, GEORGIA

Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell was on a secure line to Washington, listening grimly as his regimental commander, Col. Paul Gener, threw ten days’ worth of mission planning into the shit can The fact that it was a phone call he’d been half expecting since the news of Pretoria’s nuclear strike was no consolation.

A stray beam of pale, watery sunshine briefly brightened his office without brightening his mood. Just once, he wished that he could get a telephone call from the Pentagon containing good news. It seemed likely to be a wish that would never come true.

“No, sir, I understand. Yes, sir. This is one helluva way to run a railroad. We’ll see you here tomorrow. Goodbye. ” He bit back the urge to say more-a lot more. Instead, he replaced the red secure phone on its cradle and sat staring out the window.

“Trouble?”

O’Connell turned slightly and looked across his desk at the lean, tanned face of Maj. Peter Klocek, the battalion’s operations officer.

“You could say that, Pete. ” He nodded toward the phone.

“We just lost a week. This is now D minus four. Washington wants us to go in on the twenty-ninth not

December sixth. Plus, they’ve upped the target list. The Joint Chiefs want us to take out Pelindaba’s enrichment plant, too. They don’t want to give

South Africa the slightest chance of prepping a weapon before our Marines go ashore at Cape Town. “

“Jesus Christ!” The S-3 couldn’t hide his consternation. Attacking a week ahead of schedule would mean abandoning a series of full-scale rehearsals designed to test a complicated plan so far worked out only on paper and on computer. Even worse, the last-minute addition of a major target such as the uranium enrichment plant would spread the Ist Battalion’s already thinned-out resources even further.

“How the hell are we supposed to do all that?”

O’Connell shrugged.

“Any way we can. We stage to Ascension Island the day after tomorrow.”

“We’re screwed.” Klocek looked sick. Mounting an airborne operation required careful planning and thorough preparation. Skimping on either dramatically increased the odds against success and for bloody disaster.

“Yeah, maybe so. But doing this kind of stuff is what the taxpayers are paying us for.” O’Connell forced himself to sound confident.

Klocek nodded toward the secure phone.

“Is the colonel still planning to jump with us?”

“Uh-huh.” O’Connell said it flatly, not yet sure how he felt about the situation.

The 75th Ranger Regiment’s commander had made the decision to drop with the 1/75th several days before. In theory, he was going along to provide higher command and control for both Ranger units, but O’Connell didn’t have any illusions about how the colonel’s presence would affect his battalion’s chain of command. In practice, Gener would wind up running the whole show, and he’d be relegated to the sidelines.

Despite that, he couldn’t really fault the colonel’s decision.

O’Connell’s 1/75th had the toughest and most critical assignment in Brave

Fortune, and Carrerra, the 2/75this CO, was a veteran Ranger-someone

Gener had worked with for years. So naturally, the colonel wanted to be where he was likely to be needed most.

O’Connell frowned, irritated with himself for having wasted even a second of precious time worrying about something he couldn’t control. He looked up.

“Round up the guys, Pete. I want to see all company commanders here at thirteen hundred hours. And tell Professor Levi I’d like to talk to him-now. “

Prof. Esher Levi eyed the short, dark-haired American officer warily. In the two days since he’d arrived at Hunter, he’d met O’Connell only briefly-at meals and once after a rigorous session with the Rangers he was training to handle South Africa’s nuclear weapons. And each time, he’d sensed two conflicting emotions vying with each other inside the

American officer: gratitude for Levi’s help and deep outrage at the fact that Israel’s cooperation with South Africa made it necessary for his men to risk their lives in the first place. It made for a somewhat complicated working relationship.

“You wanted to see me, Colonel?”

“Yeah. For two reasons.” O’Connell pushed an enhanced satellite photo across his desk and watched as Levi picked it up. The photo showed a squat, square building in the center of Pelindaba’s scientific complex.

“Recognize that?”

Levi nodded. He’d spent two years of his life in and around Pelindaba’s centrifuge uranium-enrichment plant-the key component of South Africa’s top-secret nuclear weapons program.

Only slightly more than seven-tenths of one percent of raw uranium ore is actually U-235-the uranium isotope needed for bomb-making. The other ninety-nine-odd percent is U238, an almost identical isotope. Separating the two to produce enriched, weapons-grade uranium is an extraordinarily difficult, costly, and time-consuming process. And only the fact that

U-235 weighs slightly less than U-238 makes it possible at all.

In centrifuge enrichment, uranium hexafluoride-a gaseous combination of natural uranium and fluorine-is whirled round and round at high speed inside a tall, thin centrifuge. A small fraction of the slightly heavier

U-238 is thrown to the outside of the centrifuge and can be removed, leaving behind gas with a slightly higher concentration of U-235. The process is repeated over and over and over again until more than ninety percent of the remaining uranium is U-235.

Levi smiled to himself. In many ways, he thought, uranium enrichment closely resembled the fabled infinite series of monkeys pounding away on an infinite number of typewriters to produce the complete works of

William Shakespeare. Obtaining usable quantities of bomb-grade material required a great many machines working at high speed for a very long time.

He scanned the photo of Pelindaba’s enrichment plant again, marveling at the technical achievement the picture represented. Despite being taken by an American satellite orbiting several hundred miles above the earth’s atmosphere, it looked as though it had been snapped only a few feet off the ground. Details of the facility’s heavily guarded doorways and rooftop air-conditioning system were plainly visible. Nevertheless, the shot of the plant’s square, windowless exterior revealed nothing of its inner complexity.

Like an iceberg, most of the South African uranium enrichment plant was below the surface-a design feature that made it easier to maintain a constant temperature inside. A central cascade hall housed more than twenty thousand centrifuges-each only thirty centimeters wide and seven meters high-an-anged and mounted in rows and connected to form ninety distinct enrichment stages. Tens of kilometers of small-bore piping ran through the plant-feeding in fresh uranium hexafluoride, carrying off

U-238 waste, and moving batches of ever more enriched uranium from stage to stage.

Levi passed the photo back to O’Connell.

“You have sow question about the facility, Colonel?”

“Not exactly.” The American frowned.

“I need a quick, efficient way to destroy the damned place.”

Levi wasn’t surprised. It was a logical step. Seizing South

Africa’s nuclear stockpile without wrecking its uranium enrichment plant made little long-term sense. Why go to a lot of trouble to take a few bullets away while leaving the whole ammunition factory behind?

Levi steepled long, graceful hands-hands his ex-wife had thought more appropriate for a surgeon than a nuclear physicist. It was an intriguing problem. What was the best way to wreck thoroughly Pelindaba’s enrichment plant? Placing conventional demolitions meant capturing the facility itself and then spending a fair amount of time wiring a large number of charges together. You’d need a lot of explosive power to destroy everything.

Power. That might be it. Levi sat up straighter, a series of half-formed ideas and concepts floating through his brain. He looked across at

O’Connell.

“There could be a relatively simple way to do such a thing,

Colonel.” His fingers beat a quick, distracted beat on the desk.

“However,

I will need a little time to work out all the details.”

O’Connell nodded briskly.

“Good. Because a little time is all we’ve got.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Which brings me to my second reason for wanting to see you. Can you get Lieutenant Vaughn’s special weapons team ready to go by the twenty-ninth?”

“Impossible.” Levi shook his head decisively.

“Your Rangers are good students, Colonel, but even they cannot learn everything they will need to know in anything less than a week.”

“I see.” The American officer sounded disappointed, but not particularly surprised. He glanced down at a manila folder in front of him. Levi saw a small tag that bore his name.

“I understand you’re an Israeli Defense Force reservist, Professor.

“That’s correct. Just like any other adult male in my country.” Levi looked curiously at the folder. Had Jerusalem given the Americans his whole personnel record?

“Paratrooper?”

Levi smiled and shook his head.

“Nothing so glamorous, Colonel. As a senior scientist, I now have an exemption from active duty, but I wasn’t quite so fortunate as a young student.

Consequently, I spent several long months as a lowly infantryman. Why do you ask?”

O’Connell slid a telex across the desk.

“Because your government’s called you back to the colors, Professor. As of six hundred hours tomorrow, you’re to consider yourself attached to my battalion in a military capacity.”

Levi stared at the message form for several seconds.

“But why? I don’t understand.”

Now it was O’Connell’s turn to smile.

“It’s pretty simple, Private Levi.

Washington’s changed the timetable. We’re jumping into Pelindaba on the twenty-ninth-a week ahead of schedule. And I need a special weapons team led by an expert. Unfortunately, you’ve just con finned that my troopers won’t be ready by then. So you’re going to be my expert.”

Levi felt his mouth drop open and stay open.

Visibly amused, the American officer nodded briskly and stuck out his hand.

“Welcome to the Rangers, Professor.” His thin smile turned into a wide grin.

“You’re just lucky that lea ming how to jump out of airplanes isn’t quite as complicated as lea ming how to assemble and disassemble Abombs. “

NOVEMBER 26-STATE SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER, PRETORIA

Karl Vorster glared at the ashen-faced South African Air Force officer standing at attention before him.

“I am not interested in listening to your meaningless technical babble, General! I want to know when you can be ready to attack again! Nothing else, understand?”

The officer drew a quick, shaky breath and tried to explain.

“The planes and weapons themselves can be readied in a matter of hours, Mr.

President. But target selection isn’t so simple a matter.”

Vorster’s eyes seemed to flash fire and he turned slowly red, working himself into a towering rage.

Whitehaired Gen. Adriaan de Wet recognized the danger signs and interceded.

“What General Roefs is trying to say,

Mr. President, is that the Cubans are taking steps to make it impossible to use another nuclear weapon on them.”

“What steps?” Vorster’s voice was dangerously calm.

“The remaining fighting units are staying as close as possible to our own defending forces. And their support units stay just as close to captured towns filled with our own civilians. ” -SoT I

De Wet took great care to control his own temper. Three of the several empty chairs in the council chamber had belonged to men who’d angered

Vorster at the wrong moment.

“As things are, Mr. President, we cannot strike the communists without killing hundreds or thousands of our own folk in the same instant. We can gain no military advantage under these conditions.”

Vorster signaled his understanding with a curt nod and sat brooding at the end of the table. From time to time he glanced up at the situation maps hung at one end of the room, a sour frown fixed on his face.

“Even if it were possible, we cannot use another such weapon!” Tiny, wasp-wasted Fredrik Pienaar, the minister of information, lifted a haunted face. He’d seen pictures showing the results of Cuba’s nerve-gas attack.

“Castro would only retaliate… perhaps against our cities this time.

“

Propaganda and boastful proclamations of imminent victory were proving no match for hard reality.

Vorster snorted.

“What of it? Let the communists spray their poisons on cities full of kaffirs, coolies, and rooinek traitors! Our people are spread across the veld, made safe by distance and dispersion.” He shrugged.

“And if some should die, so be it. We fight for the survival of our whole nation -not for a few individuals.”

He rose from his chair and stood facing de Wet, grim and utterly implacable.

“I give you three days, General, to select suitable targets for our remaining weapons. If you cannot find them in South Africa, then

I suggest you look elsewhere. If we cannot strike our enemies in the face, then we must cut them off at the knees. ” He moved closer to the situation map and pointed to the port at Maputo, Mozambique’s capital,

and the airfields around Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city.

The men seated around the table turned pale. Maputo’s piers were crowded with Soviet merchant shipping, and Soviet cargo aircraft jammed Bulawayo’s runways. Dropping an atomic bomb on either would mean killing hundreds of

Russians along with thousands or tens of thousands of blacks.

Vorster silenced them with a single stern look.

“We strike again on the thirtieth. Two weapons this time. And four more on the day after that.” He scowled.

“We will hammer these communists until they either flee outside our beloved fatherland or until they are reduced to mere grains of radioactive dust, scattered across our soil.”

NOVEMBER 27-WDEAWAKE AIRFIELD, ASCENSION ISLAND

Prof. Esher Levi emerged blinking from the darkened interior of an American

C-141 Starlifter into bright sunshine. He stared for a moment at the barren, alien landscape in front of him before walking stiffly and awkwardly out onto the tarmac. His first impressions from the air had been accurate-Ascension Island was a thirty-four-square-mile piece of hell planted smack in the middle of the vast South Atlantic.

The whole island was a jagged assembly of black and gray, sharp-edged volcanic rock and mounded ash. The only touch of living color came from a small tropical rain forest atop a mountain above the airfield. A murmuring, muted roar echoed everywhere-the constant thunder of long, rolling, gray green South Atlantic waves breaking on a rugged shore.

Then a manmade roar drowned out the sound of the surf.

L.evi turned and watched as another C-141 lumbered in out of the sky, touched down in a puff of black wheel smoke, and rolled on past-all four engines screaming as it braked. The Starlifter turned ponderously off the runway and parked close by its nine companions.

Work crews, a mobile staircase, and fuel trucks were already on their way to meet the transport aircraft. Ascension Island’s sole military asset-Wideawake Airfield’s 11,000foot runway-had again proven its value. The island had served as a vital staging area for the British during their 1982 campaign to retake the Falklands. Now it would play the same role for U.S. Rangers preparing for a raid into South Africa.

“

“Scuse me, Prof. Hot stuff coming through.”

Levi moved aside as a file of heavily laden Rangers started thumping down the stairs onto the tarmac and then across to the hangar apparently selected as temporary quarters for the battalion. Under their distinctive black berets, the soldiers looked more like pack mules than men-each piled high with his personal weapons, extra rifle ammunition, grenades, spare ammo belts for machine guns, mortar and recoilless rifle rounds, canteens, medical supplies, and anything else the battalion quartermasters thought might be needed.

The Rangers, already tired from days and nights of backbreaking practice and drill, were exhausted-worn-out by a grueling ten-hour plane flight in cramped conditions. Looking at their weary faces, Levi began to understand

O’Connell’s and Carrerra’s absolute insistence that their battalions spend at least a full day on Ascension to rest, recuperate, and make final preparations.

The Israeli scientist’s own aching muscles and bruises were a constant reminder of the last two hectic days. The Ranger battalion’s jumpmasters had driven him hard, almost mercilessly, through an accelerated course of classroom instruction and drill-everything except a real parachute drop from a real plane. O’Connell had vetoed this final step because he did not want to risk Levi’s suffering a jump-related injury. Even a sprain would scratch him from the mission.

Levi shuddered. Jumping out of a perfectly sound airplane in broad daylight had sounded bad enough. Jumping out of one into pitch darkness, without any practice, seemed utterly insane.

His teachers hadn’t been the least bit sympathetic.

“You need to know this stuff cold, Mr. Levi,” one hard-bitten sergeant had said, ” ‘cause a nuclear expert who breaks his neck on landing ain’t much of an expert and he ain’t much use. ” Well, that was true enough, he thought wryly. At least the Americans wanted him alive long enough to identify the South African nuclear weapons and to prepare them for the airlift out.

He spotted O’Connell striding purposefully toward the airfield’s small terminal and control tower, keeping pace with the taller, older man beside him. Seemingly agreeing with something the other man said, the

American lieutenant colonel nodded once. His face was strangely blank, as though all his emotions and feelings were being held rigidly in check.

Levi suddenly realized that the taller Ranger officer must be this

Colonel Gener he’d heard so much about-the 75th Ranger’s fire-eating regimental commander.

He shook his head, understanding O’Connell’s apparent constraint.

Although the lieutenant colonel had spent the past week preparing his battalion for this raid, now that they were finally on the way, Gener had shown up with every apparent intention of exercising de facto command.

Levi frowned. The U.S. Army operated under a strange concept of command and control. In Israel, the conduct of an important operation was always left in the hands of the unit commander. It was the best guarantee of victory and efficiency amid the bloody confusion of combat. But it seemed as though some in the American military treated combat command as nothing more than a routine way station on a career path-as a simple itsumd box to be inked in or crossed off and promptly forgotten.

He shrugged halfheartedly. Israel’s armed forces undoubtedly had their own weak spots. Of course, those weren’t quite so likely to get him killed in the next few days. With that cheery thought to keep him company, Levi hoisted his own small bag and walked toward the hangar that would be his home for the next day or so. He had a feeling that steep would be difficult to come by-despite his mind-numbing fafigm.

A deeply tanned man in a lightweight tropical suit came out of the terminal building and moved to intercept him.

“Professor Levi?”

Levi stopped. The other man’s accented English identified him. He answered in Hebrew.

“That’s right.”

“My name’s Eisner. I’m attached to the Washington, D.C.” embassy. I have several routine messages from home to pass on to you. Can we speak privately?”

Routine messages? Levi didn’t buy that for a moment. He’d seen too many other hard-eyed men like this one to be fooled. Diplomats were never in such good shape or so obviously humorless. But what did the Mossad,

Israel’s foreign-intelligence service, want with him? Or perhaps more importantly, what did his country’s spy service expect him to do?

He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like whatever it was.

ABOARD USS C4RL VINSON, IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

The normal buzz of good-natured banter and friendly insult died away completely as Rear Adm. Andrew Douglas Stewart entered the ready room.

Even aviators knew better than to ignore an admiral Stewart waved them back into their chairs and took his place behind a podium. He scanned the rows of suddenly tense young faces before him.

These men might pretend to be carefree and untroubled, but every one of them had to have a pretty good idea of what was in the wind.

The clues were all around. First, there was the fact that the Vinson and her escorts had been loitering a bare two hundred miles off the South

African coast for nearly two weeks. Second, the carrier’s air group had been run through a series of increasingly intense and realistic exercises over that same period. And finally, all communications with the outside world were being closely monitored and controlled. It all added up to a single inescapable conclusion: Washington was on the edge of committing the Vinson’s aircraft to a real shooting war. A war where one side had already dropped an atomic bomb without any show of regret or remorse.

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

Vinson’s vast hull and superstructure.

“I’ll make this short and sweet.

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

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

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

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

Brave Fortune was just thirty-four hours away.

HEADQUARTERS BUNKER, 61 ST TRANSVAAL RIFLES, PELINDABA RESEARCH

COMPLEX

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

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

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

Horse hunting for enemy infiltrators.

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

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

“Our chemical protection gear is arriving, Colonel.”

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

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

Van Daalen saluted and hurried away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOVEMBER 28-WDEAWAKE AIRFIELD, ASCENSION ISLAND

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

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

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

“Ah-tench-hut!”

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

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

“At ease!”

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

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

“This signal came in from

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’re all yours, Colonel.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And who’s that gonna be?”

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

“Rangers!

Rangers! Rangers!”

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

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

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

Brave Fortune was under way.