Vortex

“This just in. For only the third time in history, a nuclear weapon has been used in anger. About an hour ago, Cuban troops invading South Africa were attacked by South African Air Force warplanes, which dropped one atomic weapon, inside its own borders.

“Department of Defense sources have confirmed the detection of a nuclear explosion in South Africa, describing it as a ‘low-yield’ burst. Cuba’s foreign ministry, though quick to point out that it has no independent confirmation of this attack, strongly condemned the use of nuclear weapons as I an act of barbarism’ that ‘revealed the true nature of Pretoria’s racist and fascist regime.”

“The White House, while saying the President is ‘deeply concerned by recent developments,” is reportedly awaiting definitive information before releasing an official statement. “

Another message slid across the desk. This time the anchorman took it in stride.

“In a new twist, South Africa has admitted that it has used a nuclear weapon. According to a statement released simultaneously by the South

African Broadcasting Corporation and by Pretoria’s embassies worldwide, “South Africa will use its special weapons at times and places of its own choosing -without regard for the hypocritical squeamishness of other nations. “

The screen divided-one-half still showing CNN’s Atlanta studio, the other showing a crowded, noisy room as reporters milled around a small, flag-draped dais.

“We’re going live to our Pentagon correspondent for a Defense Department briefing…”

CHAPTER

__28

Vengeance

NOVEMBER 24-HEADQUARTERS, CUBAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, PIETERSBURG,

SOUTH

AFRICA

Military traffic moving south filled Pietersburg’s wide streets-rumbling past burned-out homes, crater-choked public parks, and barren, blasted jacaranda trees. Smoking piles of charred blue and pale-purple blossoms littered the ground beneath each tree. Stray dogs, some unfed for days, roamed side roads and alleys in packs.

The advancing Cuban troops had appropriated a small, two-story brick office building as Vega’s new forward headquarters. Col. Jose6 Suarez walked into the splinter-scarred building past piles of discarded papers and wrecked furniture heaped outside.

The building’s outer offices had been taken over by the expeditionary force’s supply, communications, and other support sections.

Worried-looking staff officers bustled back and forth from room to room as they tried, sometimes in vain, to manage the advance of Cuba’s two remaining columns.

5”

Others sat stunned, still horrified by the split-second annihilation of the

Third Tactical Group.

Suarez knew the confusion he saw here was only a fraction of the chaos sweeping the dead brigade’s rear areas. A dozen different supply, maintenance, and medical units, working to support what had been a spectacularly rapid advance, now found themselves suddenly fighting for their lives against local Afrikaner commandos. At the same time, they were working hard to save those few dazed survivors found wandering back down the highway. Well, he thought sadly, there won’t be any survivors left by tomorrow. Heat, a lack of potable water, and Boer bullets will see to that.

He moved deeper into the building and knocked quietly on a closed door. No answer. He turned the knob quietly and peered inside.

Gen. Antonio Vega, Liberator of Walvis Bay, victor of a dozen battles, the man who held a knife to South Africa’s throat, sat staring at a map. He held a sheaf of papers in his hands, the air reconnaissance photos taken over the site of the Third Brigade Tactical Group’s destruction. Suarez knew what those photos showed. He had given them, and the rest of the data on the column’s death, to Vega over two hours ago.

Daylight had revealed a crater a hundred meters wide and fifty meters deep near what had once been the brigade’s lead battalion. Mounded debris spread far and wide past the rim of the crater itself, creating a scene that looked as though it belonged on the surface of the moon-not on earth.

Blackened vehicles and bits of equipment littered the gray landscape, mixed with the scorched remains of men, brush, and trees. For the most part, the vegetation had burned itself out, but some of it was still smoking, and a pall lay over the desert floor, dimming the harsh sun.

Only about fifty men had been found alive from the first four battalions, mostly extended scouts or pickets. All were hurt-burned or blasted and in shock. The fifth battalion, a Libyan motorized rifle unit, had lost ninety percent of its equipment and three-quarters of

its men. Only the brigade’s supply battalion, strung out fifty kilometers behind, had survived as a unit. Altogether, more than three thousand men were dead, and another thousand or so were badly wounded-emergency-room cases who weren’t expected to live out the week.