Vortex

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