Vortex

CHAPTER 34 Slowdown

DECEMBER 20-FORWARD HEADQUARTERS, CUBAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, NEAR POTGIETERSRUS, SOUTH AFRICA

Dozens of Soviet-made T-72 tanks, BTR and BMP armored personnel carriers, and 152mm self-propelled guns sat motionless beneath a blue, cloudless sky. Dust stirred up by passing trucks hung suspended in midair, blown east by a fitful breeze. Weary, bedraggled soldiers moved slowly under the summer sun-fixing broken equipment, cleaning weapons-or were simply catching up on much-needed sleep. Worn down by weeks of constant combat and operating at the end of an increasingly vulnerable supply line, Cuba’s

First Tactical Group had ground to a halt along a high ridge just south of the mining town of Potgietersrus.

Gen. Antonio Vega stood off by himself, scanning the lowlands to the south through a pair of field glasses. Vasquez and his other aides waited nervously near a small convoy of BTR-60 command vehicles and GAZ-69 jeeps. He heard their worried mutterings, and smiled. What they saw as their general pigheaded insistence on seeing things for himself never ceased to trouble them. Fears that he might be killed by a South African sniper while touring the front had already caused several ulcers among his staff.

But Vega liked to visit the front lines. His troops needed the lift they got from seeing their general sharing the same difficulties and dangers.

He, in turn, needed firsthand knowledge of how his troops and tanks were standing up to the rigors of the campaign-not abstract reports filed by self serving unit commanders.

What he saw so far was reassuring. Despite heavy losses and growing fatigue, his men were still confident, still sure they were nearing a final victory over an increasingly desperate Afrikaner foe. Few had the time or information needed to worry about the West’s imperialist intervention in the conflict. Fewer still worried about the fading support for Cuba’s “liberation” force among South Africa’s black population. With Pretoria scarcely more than two hundred kilometers away, they were ready to attack again.

Vega adjusted the focus on his binoculars, sweeping his gaze southward across a landscape of sparse, scattered trees, open grazing lands, and green tobacco fields. The savannah looked empty, as though it had been utterly abandoned by its human inhabitants. That was almost literally true, he knew -Cuban reconnaissance units had been probing ahead for the past several days. Except for a few small artillery observation posts,

Vorster’s northern field commanders had pulled their troops back to defend the vital road junction at Naboomspruit -a prosperous farming and mining community fifty kilometers south of Potgietersrus.

He lifted his binoculars, seeking the far horizon. There it was-Naboomspruit. A purplish smudge at the very limits of his vision. By any reasonable military standard, the town was the last easily defended choke point on the road to Pretoria, Johannesburg, and the almost unimaginable mineral wealth of the Witwatersrand.

Vega frowned. Naboomspruit would be a tough nut to crack.

A drowned morass of swamps and bogs ran just east of

the highway all the way south from Potgietersrus to the Afrikaner-held town. The swamps blocked any possible flank attack to the cast by his tanks and armored vehicles.

If anything, the terrain north and west of Naboomspruit offered even fewer alternatives for bold maneuver. The Waterberg Mountains rose sharply there-climbing high in a sweeping panorama of vertical cliffs and rugged pillars of rock. That was bad enough. Worse yet, Boer infantry companies and artillery batteries were reported dug in on Naboomspruit

Mountain, only a few kilometers west of troops entrenched in the town itself. Together, they served as interlocking parts of a much stronger defense.

It all added up to another bloody and bruising head-on assault against prepared Afrikaner defenses. To take Naboomspruit, Vega’s tank and infantry units would have to come down off their own high ground, cross the open savannah, and then charge straight down the highway.

He shook his head. Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa’s political, economic, and industrial centers, were within his grasp. But many more of his soldiers were sure to die before he could close his fist around them.

“Comrade General!”

Vega turned to face Vasquez.

“What is it?”

The colonel held out a notepad.

“Radio intercepts confirm that the

Americans have landed! At Durban, as we expected! “

Vega fought to control two conflicting emotions. While they were busy trying to pacify Cape Town, the capitalists hadn’t represented any immediate threat to his plans. Allied troops on the Natal coast were another matter entirely They would be fighting toward the same objectives-fighting for prizes only one side could win.

On the other hand, the threat of another Allied amphibious invasion had already forced Vorster’s generals to shift battalions to Natal-troops, tanks, and guns that would otherwise have been facing his two surviving

Tactical Groups. Now the Afrikaners would have to redeploy even more forces in an effort to contain the American and British Marines pouring ashore at Durban.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, one corner of Vega’s mouth lifted in a thin smile. He’d spent the past two weeks preparing for just such an opportunity. With South Africa’s intelligence services and remaining reconnaissance aircraft focused almost entirely on the approaching invasion fleet, he’d quietly stripped his Second Tactical

Group-transferring armor, infantry, and artillery units northward to reinforce the First Tactical Group.

From now on, the Second, still bogged down in the mountains west of

Mozambique, would confine its operations to raids and noisy feints designed only to pin down the South African troops facing it-not to gain ground. The real push, Cuba’s final offensive, would come from the north.

He looked up.

“Inform all commanders, Colonel. We attack again at oh four hundred hours on the twenty-second. “

Gen. Antonio Vega would give his enemies another twenty four hours to weaken their formidable defenses.

TRANSVAAL COMMANDO “GOETKE,” THORN DALE

ON NATIONAL ROUTE ONE

Generations of hardworking Afrikaner farmers and cattle ranchers had known

Thomdale as simply “the town—as the closest center of commerce and culture. But the small collection of houses and shops had slowly been withering on the vine for years. Business and people alike were drifting southward to booming Pietersburg, forty kilometers away along the new NI superhighway. By the time of the Cuban invasion, there were only two generations in Thomdale’s tiny white population-the very young and the very old. Almost everyone else had gone, lured away by the opportunities and excitement of South Africa’s big cities.

Like many small towns in similar circumstances, Thomdate had been dying a slow, inexorable, and almost painless death. Then the Cubans had come.

At first, the invasion had been more a matter of inconvenience than of terror. Of day or night curfews imposed while

armored columns roared past on the highway. Of newly paved streets and fertile fields crushed by tank treads. Of growing shortages and increasing humiliation.

All that had changed when Castro’s rear echelon and support troops arrived. They’d rolled through Thomdale like mechanized locusts on the march-stealing food, looting shops, and terrorizing those who’d stayed behind to watch over homes and farms.

Most of the men were already gone, off on commando harassing Cuban supply lines and killing isolated stragglers. Much of the rest of the white population had fled into the countryside with them rather than risk the tender mercies of their enemies.

They’d been right to flee. The local commando was too good at its job, and the Cubans had decided to make their friends and families pay in blood for their success.

One night, in reprisal for what they called “acts of terrorism,” three batteries of Cuban artillery shelled the town with poison gas and white phosphorus. Five minutes of wholesale, indiscriminate slaughter had turned Thomdale’s wood and brick buildings into fire-blackened shells filled with horror.

Now fourteen-year-old Jaime Steers lay silently in the burnt-out ruins of his own home and watched the campfires lit by enemy soldiers. He’d lain there for hours, hidden behind a pile of rubble and covered by a sheet of black plastic. Despite the darkness he could see moving shapes and occasionally, faces illuminated by the fires.

The Cuban supply convoy was camped in what had once been the town’s main square. Ten trucks escorted by almost as many armored cars and personnel carriers had driven into Thomdale just before dark. Ibe ruined town made a good resting place after the wearying, day-long journey from Cuba’s main supply depot at Bulawayo-deep inside Zimbabwe. And this was the fourth convoy in as many days to laager there.

The Boer commando led by Erasmus Goetke planned to make them pay dearly for their lodging.

In more peaceful times, Goetke had been a prosperous farmer, a lean, wiry man who many said could coax wheat out of dry sand.

When the Cubans burned his farm and stole his crops, he had sworn a solemn oath to destroy this newest enemy of his people. He was a religious man, well versed in his Afrikaans Bible, and his rage was of biblical proportions.

So Goetke had gathered not only his commando, but every man and boy old enough to carry a gun. Their women were spies and messengers. Children too young to fight hid in the hills with their grandmothers and listened to stories of other battles. But Jaime Steers was just old enough to play an active role in this act of vengeance.

It was his birthright. A remembrance of deadly struggles against powerful enemies was etched deep in the heart of every Boer. All of Afrikaner history had been a story of bullheaded perseverance-against the elements, the Zulus, the British, world opinion, and now the Cubans. With a tradition of resistance, they bounced back from hardship and tragedy like steel springs.

Jaime kept his eyes glued to the binoculars his father had given him-studying the men Commandant Goetke had promised would die.

The Cubans moved confidently, strutting through the twisted wreckage left by their incendiary shells. Most squatted around the campfires, heating rations or brewing coffee. Several amused themselves by urinating on a mass grave dug for those who’d died in the bombardment.

The sight brought tears of frustrated anger and hate to Jaime’s eyes, clouding his vision. His uncle, his smiling, bright-haired aunt, and three young cousins lay entwined in that grave-butchered without warning or pity. His hands balled into fists. He wanted to kill and kill and kill again.

He took a deep, shuddering breath. Simple thoughts raced through his mind in a dizzying succession. Calm down. Don’t let them bear you. They mustn’t hear you. Not yet.

Jaime choked back a racking cough. The smell of smoke and other burnt things still clung to the ashes.

Slowly, very slowly, his hands unclenched. He kept watching the Cuban camp, wanting desperately to hear or see his

father and the other commandos as they closed in, but knowing that if he could spot them, so could the enemy sentries. No, it was better by far to wait in silence and seeming isolation.

So he lay flat, trying hard to cultivate the stoic patience of the fighting man. He glanced once at the luminous dial of his watch: 2010 hours. The others should be in position by now. It would be his honor to signal their attack with a single, well-placed bullet.

He lowered the binoculars and fumbled for the rifle by his side. It was not a modern assault rifle, but a bolt-action British .303 Enfield, fitted with a telescopic sight. Jaime was rated a good shot by both his friends and his father, which among Boers made him very good indeed.

The rifle’s smooth wooden stock felt good against his cheek and shoulder-a solid, reassuring promise of vengeance. No man with such a weapon in his hands and an enemy in sight was truly impotent.

He scanned the distant shapes outlined against the campfires.

His father had told him what to look for, and he’d picked his own target-a tall, black-haired man whose uniform was neater than the others.

Although Jaime couldn’t speak Spanish and was too far away to hear it even if he could, it was clear that when the tall man spoke, other men listened, and obeyed. He had to be an officer.

Scraps of charred paper fluttered in a sudden gust of cold night wind.

The breeze was across his line of fire. Not the best situation, he thought, but at least it would carry sounds away from the Cuban sentries.

His father’s team, led by Commandant Goetke, was stationed downwind, hopefully close by.

A bird chirped suddenly, barely audible over the noise of the wind rushing over ruined homes. It was time.

Carefully, slowly, silently, Jaime Steers lifted his rifle and swung it onto the brace he’d half-buried in the pile of rubble in front of him.

Then he squinted through the telescopic sight and settled into firing position.

Although the sight was more powerful than his binoculars,

it had a narrower field of view. For a heart-stopping moment he thought he’d lost his target. But then he found the Cuban again, sitting in front of a small fire by himself, sipping cautiously from a steaming cup held in his right hand.

Through the sight, Jaime could actually see the Cuban’s smiling, clean-shaven face clearly. A cold sensation rippled down his spine. He’d hunted game often enough and had even stood guard over their house when his father had been worried about unruly blacks in the town, but he had never had to kill a man before.

Then, remembering what had happened to his uncle’s family, he realized it wouldn’t be too difficult. He checked the wind and adjusted his grip a little. Holding the Cuban officer in his sight, he took a deep breath and let it out. Another quick, shallow breath. His cross hairs settled over the man’s uniformed chest and steadied.

He pulled the trigger.

The Enfield cracked once, sounding very loud in the darkness, and the

Cuban looked up just as Jaime’s shot struck him. He fell forward, folding inward as though the bullet had let all the air out of him. His coffee cup dropped out of his hand and rolled onto the ground.

Through the scope, Jaime saw stunned men looking at their fallen leader.

Most seemed frozen in place.

A sudden chorus of other shots rang out, and Jimmy knew his brother,

Johann, and his other friends were also in action. Sentries and other soldiers all around the laager began failing-cut down by well-aimed rifle fire.

Goetke had placed Jaime and the other snipers all around the encampment.

They were supposed to force the Cubans to go to ground, to hunker down inside their defensive circle.

Jaime squinted through his sight at the fire-lit scene of confusion, remembering Commandant Goetke’s strict orders: “Do not shoot unless you will kill your target. I don’t want a lot of fire. I want deadly fire.”

The commando leader’s tactic was working. With only a few shots coming in from many directions, the Cubans weren’t shooting back, reluctant to expose themselves to an unseen enemy.

Most of the Cubans were behind cover now, and with a

hunter’s instinct, he swung the rifle left-scanning for an armored vehicle he’d noticed parked on his side of the laager. It hadn’t moved for hours.

If its crew were still outside, he knew they’d want to get back inside their nice, safe, armored box.

He didn’t have to wait more than a few seconds. First, a head slowly peeked up over the BTR-60’s hull, and then hands slid along the fender.

Someone was trying to get in through the open driver’s hatch.

Jaime let the Cuban expose most of his body and then shot him through the heart. The man crumpled against the hull, his outstretched arms just short of the hatch. Jaime looked for other soldiers to kill.

A shout from the left rang out. He turned his head in time to see a ball of flame envelop “his” BTR. Bright light and a tremendous roar surged through the night air. More blasts followed in rapid succession, all centered on vehicles or among groups of Cuban soldiers lying prone in the open. Agonized screams echoed above the explosions as men turned into blazing human torches.

He gasped in relief. The commandant, his father, and the other commandos were attacking. The older men had crept stealthily to within fifty meters of the Cuban laager. Then, while Jaime and his friends suppressed the sentries, they’d moved in to lob their “Thunderbolts.”

Thunderbolt was an accurate term for the homemade bombs, he thought, watching in awe as they set the Cuban camp afire. He’d helped make them, though he had been threatened with dire consequences if he ever made one on his own. The recipe was simple: glass and plastic containers filled with a mixture of gasoline and soap flakes-a combination that quickly turned into a smelly, half-liquid concoction. His father had told him the mixture was similar to napalm. That hadn’t meant much to him-not until now.

Each Thunderbolt had one of the commando’s precious grenades securely taped to the outside as an igniter. Goetke had assured his men that their gasoline bombs would incinerate any vehicle, no matter how thick its armor. As always, Jaime thought, the commandant had been right.

He watched the battle rage through his rifle scope-wanting to join in, to rush forward and help the commando, or at least to snipe at the Cubans as they fled. His father had been strict, though, and had ordered him not to fire a shot once the gasoline bombs went off. After that, the men of the commando would be inside their enemy’s camp, doing God’s work.

Shouts, screams, and bursts of automatic weapons fire rose above the sound of roaring flames. From time to time, the ammunition or fuel stored in a burning vehicle would explode-spraying white and yellow streaks of fire high into the dark sky. In less than a minute, smoke rolled across the scene, hiding everything in an oily black mist.

Slowly, the sounds of firing died down and the shouting faded away. Soon, all Jaime could hear were flames crackling as Cuban trucks and armored cars burned. He waited, following his orders, and kept watch through his field glasses.

A hand on his shoulder startled him, and he whipped around, reaching for a rifle he suddenly realized was too far away. His father’s voice stilled his panic, though, and the warmth and praise he heard filled him with pride.

“You did well, Jaime. We were watching as you dropped that officer. You killed a captain.”

“You are all right, Father?” Jaime could see that he looked healthy, but he wanted to hear it with his own ears.

“I’m fine.” His father held out one arm, a little reddened, with the hair singed.

“I got a little too close to one of the commandant’s Thunderbolts, but otherwise I’m in good shape. “

His smile disappeared.

“We lost two men, though, and three others are hurt.” He saw sorrow cross Jaime’s face and quickly added, “It’s the price of our struggle, son. Those who live must remember them and carry on.”

The elder Steers’s face grew grim.

“And the enemy paid, son. We got them all.” He jerked a thumb at the smoke shrouded laager ahead of them.

“Every vehicle there burns. No Cubans have escaped. No Cubans survived, and we took no Cuban prisoners. They are all in Hell.”

Jaime Steers’s eyes followed his father’s pointing finger

toward the burning encampment. Rumor said that the Cubans had sworn to conquer South Africa or turn it into a depopulated wasteland. Well, he thought, with a newly adult grimness that matched his father’s tight-lipped expression, the communists were finding out there was more than one kind of scorched earth.

DECEMBER 22-20TH CAPE RIFLES, NEAR GENYESA,

INSIDE BOPHUTHATSWANA

The sun rose fast over the barren lands of the Kalahari Basin-a fiery red ball that turned night into day in one blinding instant. Shadows fled westward across a desolate, sandy plain stretching north toward the vast

Kalahari Desert itself and south to the rugged, treeless peaks of the

Langberg and the Asbestos mountains. Sunlight glinted off the tin roofs of several dozen one-room shacks clustered around the junction of two roads-one tarred, the other little more than a dirt track. Small herds of scrawny cattle and sheep were already on the move, ambling outward in what would be a long search for sparse grass to graze on. Dogs barked and a lone rooster crowed, signaling the start of what seemed like just another day for the people of Genyesa.

But things were different.

Genyesa’s population had more than doubled overnight. Camouflage netting strung between clumps of twisted scrub covered an array of nearly forty trucks, jeeps, and armored personnel carriers. Armed sentries in khaki

South African battle dress stood guard along each road entering the town.

Others lounged beside the central, flat-roofed stone building that served as Genyesa’s post office, telephone center, and police station.

Henrik Kruger and his 20th Cape Rifles now controlled the tiny black town.

With his back propped against a tire, Ian Sheffield sat cross legged in the shadow cast by a large, five-ton truck. From time to time, he glanced up from the notebook he held open in his lap, gazing skyward without seeing anything at all as he searched for the words or phrases he wanted. Whenever he moved, he moved carefully, determined not to wake Emily van der Heijden as she slept curled up on an old Army blanket by his side.

Matthew Siberia and their driver, a young Afrikaner sergeant, lay back to back beneath the truck itself, snoring peaceably in counterpoint.

Everywhere Ian looked he could see men sleeping or trying to sleep-snatching every moment of rest they could while the battalion laagered for the day. Flies droned through the artificial gloom created by their camouflage netting.

He forced his eyes open and yawned hugely, fighting to stay awake at least long enough to finish scribbling a few quick notes describing last night’s trek. Keeping a daily record of their long flight westward from

Pretoria to the Cape Province had been Emily’s suggestion. A damned good one, he thought wryly.

Assuming they lived long enough to tell somebody about it, the details of Kruger’s rebellion against his government would make an exciting story-a kind of modern-day anabasis with the 20th Cape Rifles standing in for Xenophon and The Ten Thousand, Vorster’s troops playing the vengeful, pursuing Persians, and with assorted independent Boer commandos in the roles originally held by wild Anatolian tribesmen.

At any rate, Ian felt sure the classical analogy would amuse Kruger himself. God knows, they all needed something to laugh about.

The Afrikaner soldier had pushed his men hard over the past several days, evidently determined to put as much distance as possible between Pretoria and his battalion. They’d driven only at night, taking side roads and back-country lanes to avoid towns that might harbor informers or AWB loyalists. Vehicles that broke down were ruthlessly stripped of all useful spare parts and supplies and then abandoned. Where ffic battalion’s quartermasters couldn’t buy or beg enough gasoline or diesel fuel, they’d stolen it. One constant, unchanging set of orders governed every action and every decision: move and keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t give Vorster’s hunters

an immobile target. And don’t blunder into unnecessary combat.

Last night’s march had been by far the worst of all. Warned by scouts of a sizable government force garrisoning the road junction at Vryburg, they’d been forced west and north over a rugged chain of hills and ridges separating the Cape Plateau from the Kalahari Basin. And stretches that could have been covered in minutes on a freeway took hours to traverse on the narrow, unpaved tracks available to them.

So far, though, Kruger’s insistence on speed and discretion had paid off.

They’d come more than four hundred kilometers without stumbling into any government roadblock or time wasting firefight. Not bad, Ian thought. Then he remembered the maps he’d seen. They were still at least seven hundred kilometers from the nearest American or Cape Province outposts. Plenty of time yet for disaster to strike.

Beside him, Emily suddenly muttered something in her sleep and rolled over onto her stomach. He put down his pen for a moment and softly stroked her hair. She sighed once, moving closer.

Suddenly, and with surprising intensity, he found himself praying, please, God, no matter what happens to me, protect her. Surprising, because he’d never been especially religious. His ambitions had already gotten Sam Knowles killed. He didn’t want them to cost Emily her life or her freedom.

A polite cough warned Ian that someone else was near. He looked up from

Emily’s auburn hair and saw Commandant Henrik Kruger standing outlined against the rising sun-his pale gray eyes and weather-beaten face a mask of unreadable shadow.

“I hope I am not interrupting, meneer?” Kruger kept his own voice low, as though he, too, wanted to avoid breaking into Emily’s rest. But Ian could hear the carefully controlled bitterness in his words.

My God, the man’s still hopelessly in love with her, he realized.

Suddenly embarrassed, he took his hand away from Emily’s hair. There wasn’t much point in ramming the loss down Kruger’s throat-especially not after he’d already risked so much to save their lives. Ian shook his head and gestured to the ground.

“Take a pew, Kommandant.”

“My thanks.” Kruger squatted on his haunches, still with his back to the sun. He cleared his throat, sounding strangely tentative.

“Your companions are resting, then?”

“Yeah.” Moved by an unexpected urge to pick a fight with this man from

Emily’s past, Ian nodded toward the still, silent, companionable figures of Matthew Sibena and the Afrikaner sergeant lying asleep back-to-back.

“Too bad that’s as close to real peace as you people ever get.”

Kruger smiled sadly.

“Yes.” Then he shrugged.

“Who knows, meneer. Perhaps this hellish war of ours will do the trick. Perhaps those who still hate each other will finally weary of all this blood and pointless waste.”

The Afrikaner shrugged again.

“And perhaps I am dreaming foolish dreams, eh?” He grew more businesslike.

“In any event, such things are beyond our control for the moment. We must concentrate on staying alive from day to day. True?”

Ian acknowledged the point with a rueful nod.

“Good. That is what I have come to talk to you about. After all, I would not want the chronicler of my deeds left ignorant of what we face.”

Despite himself, Ian grinned. Kruger could take a verbal punch and throw one back without flinching. Plus he didn’t take himself too seriously.

It was hard to dislike a guy like that-no matter how awkward things got around Emily.

Kruger’s news wiped the grin off his face. They were almost out of fuel.

The long, unplanned detour around Vryburg had virtually drained the battalion’s gas tanks and spare jerry cans. And Genyesa’s lone service station didn’t have the thousands of gallons needed to refill them. The 20th Cape Rifles had come to a sudden, screeching halt in the middle of nowhere.

“Christ! So what do we do next?”

Kruger frowned.

“The only thing we can do. I’m sending special teams to each of the surrounding towns and villages. With luck, they’ll be able to obtain enough fuel to get us moving again.”

He spread his hands.

“In the meantime, the rest of us can only dig in here and wait… and pray.”

Ian felt himself grow cold. Until now, the battalion had stayed undiscovered and alive by staying mobile. Now they’d lost their only edge against the forces arrayed against them. His hand strayed back to Emily’s hair.

Henrik Kruger watched them both in silence.

DECEMBER 23-44TH PARACHUTE BRIGADE REACTION FORCE, KIMBERLEY, SOUTH

AFRICA

Two hundred and fifty kilometers south of Genyesa, helicopters circled high over the urban sprawl of open-pit mine museums, factories, and homes known throughout South Africa as “the diamond city.” Other helos practicing assault landings hovered low over the soccer fields now serving as a headquarters for Maj. Rolf Bekker and his paratroops. Most of the Puma and

Super Frelon troop carriers sat motionless on the ground, surrounded by small groups of fully armed soldiers on five-minute alert.

Maps cluttered the walls of Bekker’s command tent. Each showed a fifty-by-fifty-kilometer piece of the Cape Province’s northeastern corner.

Grease pencil notations indicated loyalist garrisons holding important towns and road junctions. They blocked every road going west or south-every road but one. Voices crackled through a high-powered radio set up in one corner.

“Roger, Zebra Four Four. Good work. Out. ” Twentyfive-year-old Capt. Kas der Merwe pulled off his earphones, his eyes shining with excitement.

“We have them, Major! Reconnaissance units report sighting small enemy units.

Here. Here. And here!” He checked off several villages in a wide circle around Genyesa.

“And all of them are apparently gathering as much fuel as they can carry!”

Bekker nodded thoughtfully.

“Petrol. I knew that would be Kruger’s

Achilles’ heel. They’ve run out of petrol.” He leaned closer to der Merwe’s map and tapped Genyesa.

“The Twentieth has to be laagered somewhere close to there.”

The younger officer tapped the radio mike he still held clutched in one hand.

“Shall I ready our strike force?” He measured distances with a quick, practiced eye.

“We can reach the village in less than an hour.”

Bekker laughed.

“No, Captain, you have it backward. This is not a fox hunt. We are too few for such a thing, and besides—he smiled thinly-“I do not entirely trust the abilities of all my hounds.

“No, we must model this operation on a lion hunt. The Citizen Force units and commandos will act as our beaters -driving these traitors south .. toward us. When we face Kruger and his troops, we will face them on ground of our own choosing. Near there.” He circled a spot on the map labeled Skerpionenpunt-Scorpion Point.

Der Merwe looked troubled.

“But how do we know they will come? They may not be able to collect enough petrol even to make it that far. “

Bekker shook his head.

“I’ve heard of this man Kruger. He’s a tough soldier. A real Boer. Don’t you worry, der Merwe, he’ll find a way to get his people south.”

The major’s handsome face twisted into an ugly, sardonic smile.

“And we will be there waiting for them.”

Rolf Bekker contemplated his plans in growing satisfaction. For the time being he would seek victory in his own mission. The rest of Vorster’s shrinking domains would have to look after themselves.

DECEMBER 24-NABOOMSPRUIT

The setting sun fit a battlefield crowded with scenes of death and destruction.

Gen. Antonio Vega looked down out of his Hind gunship at the still-smoldering ruins of Naboomspruit. Burnt-out vehicles blocked almost every intersection, and mangled corpses littered every stretch of open ground. Shell craters pockmarked the highway south.

Naboomspruit and its defenses had fallen to the Cubans.

Better late than never, he thought angrily. Fuel and ammunition shortages caused by Boer commando raids on his supply lines had forced him to postpone his assault against the town. They’d also forced him to send several valuable units back north along the highway in what would probably be a futile effort to crush the elusive commandos. Units he could have used in the battle for Naboomspruit.

It had taken his troops and tanks several hours of hard fighting to clear the Afrikaner-held town, but the outcome had never really been in doubt.

The Boer defenses had been strong but brittle, and once he’d broken through their front line, they hadn’t had any reserves left to launch a counterattack.

Vega had also been forced to fight without a reserve. He hadn’t liked that very much. Combat units held back for use in the right place at the right time were all too often the margin between victory and defeat, but he hadn’t had any choice. His casualties had simply been too high in the six weeks since he’d crossed South Africa’s frontiers.

the Hind gunship landed on the northern edge of Naboomspruit, near a small cluster of officers who stood shielding their eyes from whirling sprays of rotor-blown grit.

Vega debarked to a chorus of greetings and salutes, most of which he ignored. Instead, he walked directly over to Vasquez, who stood off to one side.

“Let’s have a look at these secret weapons of theirs, Comrade.”

With Vasquez at his side and the rest of his officers trailing along behind, he walked about a hundred meters to what appeared to be just a low mound of dirt-at least until one looked closely.

The earthen mound had a regular, shaped appearance, and as they curved around to approach it from the front, Vega saw the long barrel and large muzzle brake of a G-5 155MM artillery piece poking out through a gap in the front.

Vasquez nodded toward the mound.

“Each gun emplacement is completely roofed over, Comrade General, and open only in back and in front. The

Boers knew we could only attack from the northeast, so the opening in front is limited to that arc.”

Vega nodded his understanding. Thus concealed and protected the G-5 was a powerful antitank weapon. Used as an indirect fire weapon, it could fire a high-explosive shell forty kilometers. Used in a direct fire mode, it far outranged the 115mm cannon mounted on his tanks.

Vasquez walked forward far enough to lay a proprietary hand on the G-5’s monstrous barrel.

“As you suspected, Comrade General, the Boers were short on ammunition. They wanted to make every shell count. But these guns aren’t normally rigged for antitank work, so they have separate projectiles and charges.” He inclined his head toward the sandbag-covered magazines visible behind each gun position.

“That makes them fire more slowly than ours. And even a one fifty-five millimeter shell will not stop one of our tanks every time.”

Often enough, though, Vega thought moodily, surveying a field crowded with wrecked T-72s and BTR-60s. Still, the Afrikaner decision to use their G-5s as antitank weapons explained the lack of artillery fire during his approach march. It also indicated a growing sense of desperation. No commander used towed artillery that way unless he had no other option.

Abruptly, he turned toward Suarez.

“What are our casualties?”

The colonel consulted his leather-bound notebook.

“We lost twenty-eight vehicles-ten of which can be repaired.” He cleared his throat.

“Plus about a hundred and fifty men killed, with another two hundred seriously wounded. We believe enemy casualties were very heavy, almost twice ours.

“

Vega sighed. He’d won another victory, and at what Havana would call a reasonable cost. But any price was high when he was this poor in resources. He looked south, wondering if the American Marines fighting their way inland from Durban were faring any better.