Vortex

Kruger’s own quarters-moving into the bedroom whenever junior officers or others visited their commanding officer.

Kruger smiled thinly. He wasn’t sure who would go mad first-the American or him. Their natural friction over Emily was bad enough, but wildly varying attitudes, opinions, and habits only made matters worse. Neither of them was really suited to life as anything but a self-sufficient bachelor, he decided-all too aware that Emily had other plans for this Ian Sheffield. He veered away from such thoughts. Jealousy was a corrosive emotion.

Better to focus on more concrete matters, on military matters.

Cuba’s invasion hadn’t just made it impossible for Emily and the others to escape, it had also ended his own tentative plans to rebel-at least for the time being. Despite all of the Vorster government’s crimes, no Afrikaner could contemplate abandoning his fellows to the savagery of a communist attack.

Given that, he couldn’t understand why he and his men hadn’t already been sent into combat against the Cubans. True, the 20this rifle and heavy weapons companies were still understrength and woefully under equipped but they were proven fighting units. And South Africa needed every available man, gun, and armored vehicle up on the firing line.

Vorster’s propaganda broadcasts claimed that the Cubans were being driven back in disarray. Kruger knew the truth. His friend on de Wet’s staff,

Brig. Deneys Coetzee, kept him fully informed. The Cuban columns, though slowed in the north and east, were still pushing hard for Pretoria and the mines. So why not send the 20th Cape Rifles and the other battalions held around the capital into battle before it was too

late? They might not be able to stop Castro’s advancing armies, but they could certainly buy time for more troops to arrive from Namibia.

What was Karl Vorster planning? Had the man abandoned all hope and military common sense?

He stared eastward, away from the setting sun and into the gathering darkness. Something very strange was going on at Swartkop Air Base-just across the broad, multi lane strip of the Ben Schoeman Highway connecting

Pretoria with Johannesburg.

Lights were on all around the outer airfield perimeter, painfully bright against the twilight sky. Wheeled Ratel APCs and cannon-armed Rookiats were stationed at regular intervals along the length of the highway-their guns pointed out to the east and west. Kruger recognized the unit insignia painted on each vehicle-the stalking leopard of Frans Peiper’s 61st Transvaal Rifles.

His mouth tightened. He didn’t like Peiper at all. The 61 st’s colonel was a very nasty customer indeed-an AWB fanatic to the core, and a murderous bastard if even half the stories of his atrocities in Namibia were true.

Kruger stood up straighter as four canvas-sided trucks appeared on the highway, moving slowly south. What? All that firepower as security for four vehicles? Then he remembered where Peiper’s battalion was stationed, and he grew colder by the second.

The trucks rolled past his vantage point and turned left through the main gate into Swartkop Air Base.

Two of South Africa’s ten nuclear weapons were already outside

Pelindaba’s bombproof storage bunkers.

CHAPTER

_____27

The Fourth Horseman

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

BODENSTEIN AND MAKOKSKRAAL

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

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

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

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

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

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