Vortex

CHAPTER 40 Checkmate

JANUARY I O-QUANTUM STRIKE FORCE, OVER SWARTKOP MILITARY AIRFIELD, PRETORIA

From the outside the C-130 Hercules looked exactly like one of the three such planes left in South Africa’s inventory. U.S. Air Force maintenance crews had worked round the clock repainting the aircraft with the right camouflage colors and insignia. One of Brig. Deneys Coetzee’s conspirators inside the SAAF had even given them the side number for a real South

African C-130, currently undergoing emergency repairs at Upington Military

Airfield-more than eight hundred kilometers from Pretoria. The impostor was considerably closer than that, now just two minutes’ flying time from

Swartkop’s main runway.

The ninety grim-faced men riding inside the Hercules were also flying under false colors. All of them wore South African uniforms and carried

South African weapons-weapons and clothing provided by Cape Province units. Beneath their uniforms they were a mixed bunch-a reinforced Ranger rifle platoon, a British SAS troop, and several Afrikaans-speaking volunteers from Henrik Kruger’s 20th Cape Rifles. They had much in common, though:

physical and mental toughness, superb combat skills, and a driving determination to carry out their mission at any cost. Their commanders shared those same attributes.

From his seat near the C-130’s rear ramp, Col. Robert O’Connell checked the magazine on his R4 assault rifle and slid it back in place. His hands still shook, but only slightly. Not enough for anybody not looking closely to notice. He kept his hands busy by checking the rest of his gear: a pistol with a separate, concealed silencer, a sheathed knife, and two colored-smoke grenades for signaling purposes. Somehow it didn’t seem like enough. Then he shrugged. Even in battle dress, a South African officer couldn’t go waltzing about Pretoria looking like a walking arsenal.

Satisfied that he was as ready as he’d ever be, O’Connell glanced at the men seated to either side of him. Capt. David Pryce, the tall, mustachioed SAS officer he’d picked as his XO for Quantum, was making the same kind of last-minute personal inspection.

Major Cain, the senior SAS man in South Africa, had kicked and screamed to come along, too. But Craig had vetoed that on the sensible grounds that the Joint Special Warfare units being readied at Durban needed an experienced and battle-tested commander.

If Quantum failed, General Craig would need every Ranger team and SAS patrol he could lay his hands on. Those in country were already prepping for what would almost certainly be a series of desperate and abortive commando raids on South Africa’s radioactive-waste-filled mining facilities. O’Connell’s mind shied away from imagining what a bloody shambles those attacks were likely to be. Then he laughed inwardly, If

Quantum failed, he wouldn’t be around to see it all happening.

Beside him, Commandant Henrik Kruger wore a headset plugged into the

Hercules’s intercom system, listening as a former South African Air

Force lieutenant handled the C 130’s cockpit conversations with air traffic controllers on the ground.

As O’Connell watched, Kruger slipped the headset off with a decisive gesture.

“We’ve been cleared to land. One minute.”

The whining clunk of the aircraft’s gear coming down confirmed Kruger’s statement.

O’Connell sat back in his seat, trying to clear his mind of any thoughts or worries outside this mission. Total concentration on the job helped keep his fears at bay.

Touchdown . Coming in low and fast, the C-130 bounced once on Swartkop’s bomb-damaged runway and braked just enough to stay on the ground-rolling rapidly toward a small group of trucks and other vehicles parked at the far end. Once there, it braked still more, slowing as it swung through a 180-degree turn so that its nose pointed down the runway again.

Still in his seat, O’Connell felt a final shudder as the aircraft came to a complete stop. He unstrapped himself and stood up in a single fluid motion with his assault rifle gripped in his right hand. The men around him were doing the same thing.

A sliver of daylight appeared, growing larger as the C130’s rear ramp whined open. It dropped onto the runway and locked in place. Slinging his rifle, the Ranger officer trotted down the ramp with Kruger by his side.

The assault force followed him in a column of fours-emerging into a whirling chaos of turboprop-blown sand and dust.

Three uniformed Afrikaners stood waiting for them at the foot of the ramp, each holding his peaked cap on his head against the howling, artificial windstorm. Kruger went straight up to the shortest of the three and shook his hand, shouting to be heard over the noise.

“Deneys, man, you’re a sight for blery sore eyes!”

“You expected somebody different, maybe?” Brig. Deneys Coetzee grinned.

At Kruger’s gesture, he turned to 0”Con nell

“You are the American commander?”

O’Connell nodded.

“Good. I have the vehicles you need here.” Coetzee jerked a thumb at the ill-assorted collection of military trucks and jeeps visible behind him.

“I suggest you get your men aboard and we’ll talk later. In some place safer. Right?”

“Definitely.” O’Connell turned and waved his arm toward the waiting convoy. His troops scattered by squads, each jogging toward a different truck.

The group of six officers-the four South Africans, 0”Con nell and

Pryce-trotted after them at a slightly more sedate pace. The American kept his eyes open. The last time he’d seen Swartkop, it had been dark and most of the base had been on fire.

He was glad to see that the airfield still showed signs of the damage inflicted by his Rangers. Swartkop’s control tower stood silent-a burned-out, blackened ruin. Piles of twisted steel girders and warped aluminum siding were all that were left of maintenance hangars and storage sheds. For now, flight operations were being handled out of a small cluster of camouflage-draped tents set up next to a mobile radar van.

O’Connell frowned. Fuel trucks and ground crews were already rolling across the cratered tarmac-heading for the C-130. That was bad. The

Hercules looked fine from a distance. Up close might be a different story. He checked his watch. Three minutes had passed since they’d landed. So where were the F-15Es the Air Force had promised?

They were right on time.

Sirens started wailing, their eerie howling rising and falling all across the air base. In seconds the fuel trucks and ground crews were racing away, heading for cover. A lone South African Air Force officer pounded across the tarmac toward the C-130. “Air raid! Clear the field! Get off the ground! Go! “

The aircraft’s still-spinning props bluffed as it lumbered down the runway, picking up speed fast. With plenty of runway left to spare, the

Hercules roared off the ground and into the air.

Coetzee turned around to see him smiling.

“Your idea, Colonel?”

“Yeah. ” O’Connell trotted ahead and glanced back.

“Keep moving,

Brigadier. Our flyboys won’t be too choosy about what they drop bombs on.”

The South African chuckled and waved him aboard the lead Land Rover. its driver shifted into gear and pulled out onto the airfield’s access road while O’Connell was still struggling into a seat.

As they drove, he felt a mixture of fear and satisfaction. Swartkop was a hive of confusion and activity as its occupants took shelter. He could sense their fear though, and some of it was communicated to him. They had to get off the base quickly.

The sentries at Swartkop’s main gate waved them through without even a cursory glance at their papers. Nobody bothered with formalities under air attack.

As the small column of five-ton trucks, jeeps, and Land Rovers turned north into the capital, explosions rumbled in the distance behind them.

Twin-tailed fighter-bombers flashed across the sky. Smoke and flame boiled up into the air. In all the confusion, Swartkop’s security forces completely forgot the small group of soldiers who’d landed only moments before.

O’Connell and his raiders were past South Africa’s first defenses.

OUTER SECURITY POST, THE UNION BUILDINGS, PRETORIA

They ran into trouble just a few hundred yards short of their objective.

A security checkpoint manned by Brandwag brownshirts blocked the treelined road winding uphill to Pretoria’s massive governmental complex-the Union Buildings.

“Show me your papers … Kaptein.” The cold-eyed Brandwag officer added the honorific only at the last minute and with obvious reluctance.

“Of course.” Henrik Kruger handed over the documents Coetzee had forged for them without any hesitation.

The South African kommandant had taken his apparent demotion in stride.

Now wearing the three stars of a captain,

he sat beside the Land Rover’s driver. O’Connell and a big Ranger sergeant named Nowak occupied the seat behind them, carefully eyeing the five sentries clustered around the guardhouse and barricade. Six canvas-sided trucks and two jeeps packed with Rangers, SAS troopers, and renegade Afrikaners sat idling behind the Land Rover,

One man was missing. They’d dropped Deneys Coetzee off at the Ministry of Defense before driving on to the Union Buildings. The South African brigadier still had work to do to make Quantum pay off.

“These appear to be in order.” The Brandwag lieutenant tapped the papers in his hand and then glanced suspiciously at the line of vehicles stretching down Church Street.

“But why wasn’t I notified of this troop movement? And why would General de Wet add so many men to our guard force here?”

Kruger shrugged.

“How should I know, Lieutenant? Perhaps he’s worried about a possible enemy attack. ” He smiled thinly. Then his smile disappeared.

“In any case, I do not question my orders. “

The other man still looked worried, “I will have to confirm this with my superiors, Captain. “

“Naturally.” Kruger waved him away nonchalantly.

As the Brandwag officer turned around, O’Connell frowned. He didn’t speak

Afrikaans but he could recognize danger when he saw it. He watched the man walk toward the guardhouse and its phone through narrowed eyes.

“Sergeant. “

“Ready.” The big Ranger bent over, reaching for something on the Land

Rover’s floorboards.

“Now.” O’Connell’s silenced 9mm pistol “popped” three times,

The Brandwag officer staggered and then fell facedown on the pavement, hit in midstride. Bright red stains spread quickly across the back of his tunic.

In the same moment, Sergeant Nowak reared upright and opened fire on the rest of the startled guards. His silenced Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun stuttered briefly and then stopped. Thirty rounds tore paint and wood off the barricade and slammed into the five Afrikaners. They toppled over, dead before they hit the street and sidewalk.

Kruger was already out of the Land Rover, sprinting forward to open the barricade. Other men jumped down out of the lead truck and began hauling bodies into the flower gardens surrounding the checkpoint. In seconds, only a few blood stains were left on the road-drying fast in the hot sun.

“Do we post any guards here?” The South African kommandant hopped back into the vehicle.

“No.” O’Connell pulled the partially used clip out of his pistol and snapped another home.

“They’d never make it out with the rest of us. We go in together.”

He leaned forward and tapped their driver on the shoulder.

“Okay, let’s get this done.”

They roared up the road toward the red-roofed Union Buildings.

None of their briefings or maps had done much to convey the sheer size of the complex. With its three-story-high, semicircular colonnade added in, the whole massive pile of rock and marble stretched more than seven hundred and fifty feet on its long side. Clearing the internal maze of offices and corridors would have required a full battalion of commandos-not just ninety men. Fortunately, the Allied raiding party had been given both a more limited objective and very detailed information.

O’Connell hopped out of the Land Rover while it was still slowing and ran up the steps leading to the building’s east wing entrance. Kruger and

Nowak followed, weapons out and ready. The rest of their troops were scrambling down out of their trucks and jeeps as they pulled up. From here on, speed was life.

Breathing heavily, O’Connell reached the top of the steps and kept on going-heading for a pair of wood-and-glass double doors behind a wide portico. He drew his pistol as he ran. Booted feet clattered up the steps behind him.

A Brandwag officer wearing major’s insignia and carrying a clipboard pushed through one of the doors, still talking to someone inside. He looked up in astonishment.

“What in God’sO’Connell shot him twice and jumped over the body. The door slammed shut in his face and he bounced off it with a sore shoulder. Sergeant Nowak reached the entrance in the next second and rammed into it with teeth-rattling force. The big man stepped back, shaking off the impact Three close-spaced shots fired from inside threw the Ranger noncom back in a spray of blood and shattered bone. Pieces of broken glass and splintered wood cascaded across O’Connell.

“Back!

He threw himself to one side as Kruger opened fire systematically emptying his assault rifle’s magazine in a long, tearing burst through both doors.

Agonized screams rose above the gunfire and then faded.

O’Connell, Kruger, and half a dozen Rangers and SAS troopers shoved the broken, bullet-riddled doors open and poured through into a marble-floored entrance hall. Several bodies sprawled in an untidy heap right behind the doorsBrandwag and Army guards who’d been caught by the

South African kommandant’s burst. More men flooded in from outside.

O’Connell caught a glimpse of movement down a side corridor and whirled around. One of the Brandwag sentries was still very much alive. The man was inside an antique telephone cabinet-the kind with wood-paneled walls and a light that came on whenever the soundproofed sliding door was closed. The light was on now, and O’Connell could see the Afrikaner yelling energetically into a phone.

Without time for conscious thought, the Ranger colonel brought his pistol up, aimed, and fired. The glass door shattered and the brown shirt fell against the wall-mounted telephone before sliding down to the floor. The receiver itself fell out of the dead man’s hand and swung back and forth in a slowly diminishing arc.

Damn. So much for surprise.

MAIN GUARDROOM, OUTSIDE THE STATE SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER

The Brandwag captain plucked the phone away from his ear. An expression of disgust warred with one of puzzled concern and won.

“Idiot.”

“Something wrong?” His closest subordinate looked up from the newspaper he was reading.

“I doubt it.” The captain shrugged.

“Well, maybe.” He chewed his lower lip for several seconds.

“One of the morons upstairs said there were intruders in the building. Then he hung up before I could ask him anything! And now they’re not even bothering to answer their blery phone.”

“Should we tell the President?”

The captain snorted.

“Are you crazy, man? Interrupt a war briefing just because some door guard might be spooked by the sight of a kaffir janitor?” He waved a hand at their magazines, water cooler, and upholstered furniture.

“Maybe you want to go fight Cubans, but I know a plush assignment when see one.

“I-et’s find out what is going on before we look like fools. Take Jaap and Dirk. It’ll do them some good to get off their fat behinds for a change. You go, too, and don’t take all day doing it.”

His subordinate chuckled and rose to his feet, buckling on a pistol holster over a slight paunch. He was getting a little bit heavyset. Maybe they’d take the stairs for a change….

QUANTUM STRIKE FORCE

Pryce! I I

O’Connell’s British XO stopped beside him.

“Here, Colonel. “

“They know we’re coming. Put eight men on the door here. The rest with me!”

The SAS captain nodded and whirled away, shouting for two of his sergeants.

“Jenkins! McRae!”

O’Connell paused long enough to holster his silenced pistol and unsling the R4 dangling from his shoulder. Firepower was more important than stealth now. He ran down the hall, heading for the staircase marked on Coetzee’s hand-sketched map. Rangers and SAS men followed on the double.

Behind him, squads and fire teams peeled off as they ran past connecting corridors and other staircases-setting up blocking positions to bottle up the Afrikaner bureaucrats and security guards in this wing. By the time he reached the right set of stairs going down, he had twenty men left.

O’Connell skidded to a stop on the marble floor.

“Grenade. “

Kruger passed him a fragmentation grenade from one of the SAS troopers.

Automatic rifle fire echoed down the hall from behind them. The

Afrikaners were starting to wake up.

He took a quick look down the stairs. Not good. About fifteen stairs down to a landing and a sharp bend to the right. Terrific. A blind corner.

O’Connell took a quick, deep breath, let it out, and started down the stairs slowly, moving one step at a time. He stayed close to the right wall. Two men dropped prone at the top of the staircase, ready to nail anybody coming around the bend.

Sweat trickled into his eyes despite the cooler air inside. Every sense he had seemed fine-tuned beyond normal human perception. He could hear every man behind him breathing heavily. He could see the tiniest strands of color running through the marble stairs ahead. He could even smell the coppery scent of the blood he’d tracked through back at the doors. Some inner core of dry humor and common sense told him that maybe he should have let one of the others go first.

Voices drifted up the stairwell from around the bend. Christ! O’Connell froze where he was and yanked the pin out of the grenade…. The Brandwag lieutenant stopped at the bottom of the stairs. What was that sound echoing down from upstairs. Gunfire? A prolonged rattling burst from somewhere above them transformed uncertainty to certainty. He turned to yell a warning back to the guardroom.

Something clattered and bounced down the stairs, rolling

right under his feet. The overweight Afrikaner looked down just as the grenade exploded.

“Go! Go! Go!” As the echoes faded, O’Connell took the stairs two at a time, charging through a fog of drifting, acrid smoke. Contorted shapes writhed on the floor-men who’d been scythed down by the fragments from his grenade. Rangers and SAS men passed him and burst out into the corridor leading to the State Security Council Chamber.

Assault rifles chattered from somewhere farther down the corridor. Stray rounds flashed and sparked off the walls and floor-whining down the hallway. Several Allied soldiers spun round and fell. Others advanced, firing back from the hip.

“Come on!” O’Connell ran forward toward the door just a few meters away.

He saw a wounded brown shirt fumbling for his weapon and shot him. None of the other Afrikaner guards heaped on the floor were still moving.

STATE SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER

Trapped inside the soundproofed Council Chamber, Gen. Adriaan de Wet stood next to Karl Vorster, listening in appalled silence as the tall, grim-faced man gloated again over his plans to destroy his own nation’s wealth for centuries to come. This is not war, he thought, this is raw madness.

“Seventy percent… can you believe that, General? Seventy percent of our remaining resources are already prepared for demolition.” Vorster laughed harshly as he leaned over the map, tracing out the largest concentrations of mines and mining facilities.

“The rest will be wired before these bastard Uitlanders can come within a day’s march of the Witwatersrand. “

South Africa’s President nodded toward the secure phone in the corner.

“After that, one word from me and phfft’he snapped his fingers-“both the damned West and the communists go watch their precious fruits of conquest glow in the dark.”

De Wet roused himself. He had to make one more effort to make his leader see some kind of sense before it was too late.

“Mr. President, we know that American carrier aircraft have been attacking Cuban forces along the

N 1. Couldn’t we try to make a separate peace…” His voice faded away as Vorster’s face darkened with rage.

“I did not think to hear such treason from you, General de Wet.”

Vorster’s voice was menacing.

“You know, I have other officers who would be more than happy to take your place. “

Suddenly the door rattled nosily-literally vibrating back and forth under dozens of sharp, thumping impacts. De Wet stared in shock at the sound.

Bullets? Here?

Men in torn, bloodstained South African uniforms crashed into the chamber, their assault rifles aimed straight at the small group of men clustered around Vorster.

“Freeze! Freeze! Get your fucking hands up!

Up!”

One of de Wet’s military aides grabbed for a phone and died in a hail of gunfire. Inside the small room, the noise was terrifying, deafening. What was left of the officer’s body thudded onto the floor.

My God. De Wet put his arms up, palms out and open. The other men standing around the map table imitated him. All but one. All but Karl

Vorster.

The general felt Vorster scrabbling with the flap on his pistol holster and spun away sharply, careful to keep his own hands high in the air.

“You fool! Can’t you see we’ve lost?”

Soldiers pushed into the crowd and yanked Vorster out, throwing him roughly against the table. A burly corporal wrenched the President’s arms behind his back and snapped police-issue handcuffs around his wrists.

Others prodded de Wet and the others into a rough line against the bullet-scarred wall.

De Wet felt his knees trembling. Were they all going to be shot out of hand? He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them to find a man wearing captain’s insignia standing in front of him.

“Where is the minister for law and order?”

For a moment, de Wet could only stare in amazement. The

man before him was Henrik Kruger. Then who were the rest of these men?

Kruger took the safety off his assault rifle.

“I asked you a question . General. “

“In his private office upstairs!” De Wet licked his lips that suddenly felt dry and cracked.

“I swear it. He’s upstairs!”

Kruger swung away contemptuously. He spoke in English to a shorter, dark-haired man wearing sergeant’s stripes.

“I need a fire team, Colonel.

Van der Heijden’s in his office.”

The other man nodded.

“You got it. Collins! Take your guys and go with the kommandant.”

De Wet stared from one to the other. A colonel? In sergeant’s clothing?

And an American colonel, too, from his accent. He swallowed hard against a sudden urge to vomit.

Two soldiers hauled Vorster to his feet and held him there, ashen faced and shaking. South Africa’s President had gone from absolute ruler to abject, broken prisoner in seconds.

PRIVATE OFFICE, MINISTER OF LAW AND ORDER

Marius van der Heijden wasn’t surprised when the door to his outer office broke open. He’d heard the sound of automatic weapons fire echoing through the Union Buildings for several minutes. Attempts to get through to either the Ministry of Defense or to his own security forces had proved useless.

Whoever was attacking them had collaborators inside Pretoria-collaborators who’d been able to cut off phone service.

Any attempt to escape seemed likely to prove equally futile. He could see several bodies scattered in the gardens below his window. Van der Heijden looked down at his own short legs and prominent belly and smiled grimly.

No, he wouldn’t get far trying to run away.

Which left one honorable option open to him. Just one. And that was why he waited behind his desk holding a loaded Browning Hi Power pistol.

Waited for someone to appear in the open doorway.

“Marius?”

The voice took him by surprise. Kruger? Henrik Kruger? He shook his head.

It hardly seemed possible. He stayed silent.

“Marius, I’m coming in. I don’t want to hurt you, so I ask you, don’t do anything foolish. Right?”

Van der Heijden found his voice.

“Come ahead, Henrik. But slowly, you understand?”

Kruger eased around the doorjamb, holding an assault rifle in both hands.

There were other men in the doorway behind him.

“I have come to take you prisoner, Marius.”

, , A prisoner? For which side?” Van der Heijden kept his pistol out of sight, below the desk.

Kruger smiled sadly.

“For the Americans and the British, my old friend.

And for those who have rebelled against this unlawful government. “You have fallen far, Henrik. You keep strange company for an Afrikaner of the old blood.”

“Maybe.” Kruger kept his rifle pointed toward the floor.

“I have seen your daughter, Marius.”

Van der Heijden kept his face rigid. He’d heard the American propaganda broadcasts and secretly praised God for his daughter’s safe deliverance.

Of course, he’d cursed her very name publicly to avert Vorster’s suspicions.

“She is well?”

“Yes .. Kruger seemed about to say more and then stopped himself.

“Surrender to me now and you will see that for yourself.”

For a brief moment, van der Heijden relaxed his grip on the pistol. It seemed a priceless gift. To see his daughter again, despite all the hurtful words and deeds that had passed between them … He straightened up in his chair. He could not surrender. As a prisoner, his name would always come before hers. She would never escape the shame of it. No, it was better by far to lie buried and forgotten.

Marius van der Heijden looked up from his desk with a sad, worn expression on his face.

“I am sorry, Henrik, but I cannot. You understand?”

Kruger nodded slowly, his own face somber and suddenly much older than his years would warrant.

“I understand.”

” And you will tell her that I Van der Heijden choked on the words.

” Yes. I I

“Thank you, my friend.” South Africa’s minister for law and order raised the Browning Hi Power and slowly aimed it at Kruger’s chest.

“Then I tell you I refuse to surrender. “

Kruger stood motionless, his own weapon still aimed at the floor.

Van der Heijden sighed. Despite everything, it was clear that his old friend and hoped-for-son-in-law could not bring himself to kill a man he’d once respected. So be it, he thought, then we shall both die together.

Van der Heijden tightened his finger around the trigger… and felt himself knocked backward out of his chair by several sledgehammer blows.

For what seemed a long time he stared up at the ceiling, surprised that being shot wasn’t more painful. And then he died.

Henrik Kruger sighed and turned away from the old man’s corpse.

Beside him, Sgt. Asa Collins slowly lowered his assault rifle.

“I’m sorry,

Mr. Kruger. I really am. I didn’t want to kill him. But that guy would have shot you.”

Kruger nodded sadly.

“Don’t worry about it, Sergeant. This was what he wanted.”

QUANTUM STRIKE FORCE

Col. Robert O’Connell crouched low beside the ground-floor window. A radioman lay beside him, holding his radio’s antenna out the window. -X-ray

Tiger One, this is Quantum One. Touchdown. I say again, touchdown. Over.”

Touchdown was the code word indicating that they had successfully captured

Vorster and were ready for pickup. Whatever else happened, the order to poison the mines would never be given. O’Connell knew that the message would be flashed around the world at the speed of light. In less than a minute, Washington would get it and celebrating would begin.

Of course, O’Connell and his men still had to get out of Pretoria alive.

A voice crackled over the static-clogged channel.

“Roger that, Quantum

One. Pickup ETA is five minutes. Say status of LZ. Over.”

A sudden burst of machinegun fire hammered the window frame above them, spraying O’Connell with tiny bits of wood, granite, and marble. He clicked the mike button. LZ is hot, X-ray Tiger. Fucking hot. Hostiles in platoon strength hold the gardens approximately one five zero meters north. “

“Understood.” The voice faded and then came back on channel.

“Injuns en route. ETA three minutes.”

“Roger, out.” O’Connell tossed the mike to the radioman and belly-crawled away from the window back down the corridor. Kruger and

Pryce squatted near their prisoners.

“Any trouble here?”

“None.” Pryce flashed a quick smile.

“I told the bastards I’d kill the first one who so much as blinked wrong. They seem to know I meant it.”

O’Connell grinned back. He studied the row of dejected men sprawled on the marble floor. Except for Vorster, all had their hands tied with silver duct tape. And all of them had their mouths taped shut.

Lightweight, cheap, and convenient, he thought. South Africa’s whole wartime military and political leadership all wrapped up in one neat package.

More firing echoed down the hall. The Afrikaners outside were definitely getting restless.

He checked his watch. One minute left. He turned to the two men.

“Get ‘em on their feet and ready to go. We’ve got company coming anytime now.”

They nodded and started moving among the prisoners, hauling them roughly to their feet. Most still seemed to be in shock, Good. That would make them easier to handle on the ride back-always assuming any of them lived that long.

O’Connell moved back to the window. He could see several black specks on the horizon now, growing bigger as they drew closer to the Union

Buildings.

“Quantum One, this is Red Chief One. On station. Pop smoke to mark your position.”

No shit, O’Connell thought. Even in the building he could hear the clattering, eggbeater sound of several rotors closing fast. O’Connell readied one of his two colored-smoke grenades. He pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade through the open window out into the courtyard beyond.

Wisps of purple mist began wafting upward almost immediately.

“I have violet smoke, Quantum One.”

“Confirm violet,” replied O’Connell.

“Coming in.”

O’Connell turned to face his men crowding the corridor.

“The gunships are coming in now! Get ready to move and move fast! “

Two AH-64 Apaches popped over the trees at the far end of the Union

Buildings’ botanical gardens. Both vanished in brief clouds of smoke and flame as they ripple-fired salvos of 2.75-inch rockets into the Afrikaner troops holding the gardens. Explosions rocked the whole area-shredding plants, trees, and men alike. A stuttering, buzz saw-like roar signaled that the two gunships were also firing their belly mounted 30mm chain guns-each pouring more than six hundred rounds a minute into the same area.

Before the smoke even started to drift away, more helicopters were visible-a long line of ten UH-60 Blackhawk troop carriers flaring in to land in the courtyard one at a time.

O’Connell scrambled upright.

“Kruger! Pryce! First ten! Move ‘em! “

Five Rangers and SAS troopers dragged and shoved five bound prisoners-Vorster and de Wet among them-out the door and hauled them up into the first waiting helicopter. The Blackhawk lifted off immediately, going nose down to pick up speed as soon as their gear cleared the ground.

Like clockwork, the second troop carrier came in. More prisoners and troops ran out and loaded aboard as it waited, rotors howling through the air.

Load after load. Chopper after chopper. By the fifth or sixth, those

Afrikaner security troops who’d survived inside the Union Buildings were beginning to take potshots at the groups of

American or British troops racing for safety. Men who’d almost made it home were being killed or wounded. Not many, but some.

O’Connell watched in anguish. There wasn’t anything he could do. They couldn’t use the gunships without killing many of the hundreds, maybe even thousands, of civilians who were pinned down in their offices inside the government complex. There were snipers in only a very few of those offices. And rockets and chain guns didn’t offer the kind of pinpoint accuracy needed to deal with the bastards.

“Colonel! This is it! Last bird!” Pryce shouted in his ear and pointed behind them. Except for the last eight Rangers and SAS troops, the corridor was empty.

“Right.” O’Connell rose and moved to the door. He gripped his assault rifle hard. Any second now.

The last Blackhawk came in low and flared out just meters from the doorway.

Now! O’Connell and his men raced outside, bent over low to stay beneath turning rotors. He saw a flash just ahead of him as a bullet slammed into the pavement and ricocheted away. Damn it!

The man running in front of him suddenly grunted and collapsed. O’Connell and Pryce each took an arm, hauled the wounded man to his feet, and then half-dragged, half-carried him over to the waiting helicopter. Crewmen in flak vests and goggled helmets helped them aboard.

The Blackhawk surged off the ground and raced ahead, skimming Pretoria’s rooftops as it flew south.

MINISTRY OF DEFENSE, PRETORIA

Brig. Deneys Coetzee stared out his window, watching the tiny black specks carrying Kruger, the Allied commando force, and Karl Vorster vanish in the distance. My God, it bloody well worked, he thought, seeing the last traces of dirty-gray smoke drifting away from the Union Buildings.

He swiveled round in his chair and picked up the phone.

“Colonel Doome, this is Coetzee. They did it. Execute Plan Valkyrie immediately. Yes, that’s right. Immediately.”

He hung up and went back to the window. Within an hour, soldiers commanded by officers heartily sick and tired of Vorster’s insane regime would begin fanning out through the capital. Within two hours, most of the AWB’s now-leaderless fanatics and Brandwag party troops would either be dead or in custody. By nightfall, Deneys Coetzee would head the only viable government in what little was left of South Africa’s territory.

And by daybreak on the eleventh, he planned to be deep in hurried negotiations with Lt. Gen. Jerry Craig-trying desperately to save something of his people’s self-respect and sovereignty.