Vortex

The South African air base showed all the signs of fierce resistance and thorough demolition. Mile-long concrete runways were peppered with craters torn and gouged by heavy artillery fire. The control tower, hangars, and storehouses were all pounded into burnt-out masses of scorched aluminum, twisted steel girders, and broken shards of brick, concrete, and rock.

Hanging over everything was the sickening, pungent tang of death, decay, and thousands of gallons of jet fuel poured out and left to evaporate or go up in flames.

Louis Trichardt Air Base had died an ugly and lingering death. But now its new owners were hard at work resurrecting the freshly captured corpse.

Four six-wheeled vehicles were parked at various points along the main runway, each mounting four “Romb” surface to-air missiles. NATO called them SA-8A Geckos. An acquisition radar mounted on each vehicle scanned the skies

above for any indication of an incoming air raid. The SAM battery had a conventional backup-eight towed 23mm antiaircraft cannon spaced at regular intervals along the rest of the airfield perimeter. Their long, twin gun barrels pointed toward the sky, ready to throw a fiery curtain of high-explosive rounds at any attacking plane.

Behind this protective screen of SAMs and automatic weapons, teams of

Cuban combat engineers supervised sweating gangs of black South African laborers filling in craters and clearing away wreckage by hand-volunteers” in the service of their own liberation. Other blacks were busy carting off the last few dead Afrikaners for disposal in a mass grave beside the main runway.

Gen. Antonio Vega watched the blacks working with a practiced eye, a slight, worried frown on his stern, narrow face. There were fewer genuine volunteers than he’d hoped for. His political officers and ANC liaisons blamed the dearth of willing labor on civilian casualties caused by artillery and air bombardments directed against SADF positions inside the black townships surrounding Louis Trichardt.

Well, perhaps that was so. The Cuban general shrugged. Did these South

African blacks expect to win freedom and a proper political structure without loss? If so, they would be bitterly disappointed. Wars and revolutions were always brutal and bloody affairs, he thought. And he should know. He’d fought through enough of both during more than thirty years of service to Fidel Castro and his people.

Some of the ANC officers assigned to him reported that a few of their people believed the Cubans to be nearly as racist as the Afrikaners they displaced. And why? Simply because the army of liberation needed their strong backs and unskilled hands. Vega scowled. Racism! What nonsense.

Why, he had black Cuban officers on his own staff. Brave and competent men-every one of them.

As for the charge that he used South African blacks only for manual labor, what of it? Hadn’t Karl Marx himself said it best?

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

He dismissed the problem from his mind. Let the rear-area commissars worry about such matters. He had a war to fight and win.

Vega turned to the stout, mustachioed colonel of engineers waiting silently beside him.

“Well, Luis? How soon before our planes can land here?”

“Twenty-four hours, Comrade General.” The colonel sounded certain-always a safe tone to use around Vega.

“My heavy equipment should arrive before sundown, and when it does…” He waved away the waist-high piles of debris still littering the runways as though they were nothing more than dust before a broom.

Vega patted him on the shoulder and glanced at the shorter, thinner Air

Force officer attached to his personal staff.

“You hear that, Rico.

Twenty-four hours. That’s good news, eh?”

“Yes, sir. ” The Air Force major pointed toward the sweating work crews.

“Once they’ve got the main runway cleared, we can start flying in ground elements of the brigade. And once they’re here, we’ll have this base back in full operation within half a day.”

Vega nodded his understanding. Cuban forward air-base operations were organized around special brigades made up of all the skilled troops needed to keep jet aircraft flying and combat ready-air traffic controllers, mechanics, armament and fueling specialists, planning staff, and pilots.

Even more important, Cuba’s fighters and transport aircraft, like all Soviet-made planes, were able to use captured NATO rearming, refueling, and maintenance equipment. And the South Africans used NATO standard gear.

How thoughtful of them, Vega mused.

He stared beyond the airfield toward the multi lane highway running south.