Vortex

“We’ll get these goddamned docks open

ASAP, General. You can take that to the bank.”

“I already have, Jim. I already have. Now you get some rest yourself when those Army pukes show up, you hear me?” Craig patted the other man on the shoulder.

“I need a smart, tough engineer in charge of this operation-not a walking zombie. “

“Yes, sir.

Craig turned away, already moving back to his waiting helicopter. He’d come to the waterfront himself to show the colonel and his men just how important their efforts were to the whole expeditionary force-not to try micro managing every last detail of their work. In his book, you found the right man for the job, gave him the tools he needed, and then got the hell out of his way.

As he neared the camouflaged UH-60 Blackhawk serving as his command transport, an aide hurried overbent low to clear the helicopter’s still-turning rotor.

“General! Sixth Brigade HQ reports our guys outside

Pietermaritzburg are taking fire from heavy arty!” ‘

Craig grabbed the captain by the arm and spun him back around. Their free ride was over. Vorster’s generals had a blocking force in place.

With one hand clapped onto his helmet to hold it in place, Craig raced ahead and hauled himself aboard the Blackhawk. The Marine riflemen assigned to protect him followed at a dead run.

Thirty seconds later, the command helo rolled forward on its wheels, lifted off, and raced low over the harbor-moving south at a hundred knots toward the shell-scarred runway at Louis Botha International Airport. Radio reports of the fighting continued to crackle through Craig’s headphones.

His American and British troops were securely ashore on the Natal coast, but Vorster’s Afrikaners were clearly serving notice that any further gains would have to be paid for in blood.

3RD BATTALION, 6TH MARINE EXPEDITIONARY

BRIGADE, SOUTHEAST OF PIETERMARITZBURG, SOUTH

AFRICA

The Victorian homes and quiet suburban streets of Natal’s provincial capital, Pietermaritzburg, lay eerily at rest below steep wooded hiNs rising on all sides. No cars moved down the wide N3 Motor Route or rattled along the narrow roads winding off to the farms and small clusters of houses that doffed the forested hollow. Clouds sent patches of shadow rippling over the ground, drifting almost idly from east to west.

A clock chimed the hour from a tall, redbrick tower over the city hall.

Its ringing, melodic tones echoed from building

to building before dying away among the dense groves of mo pane and acacia trees spread across the slopes above the city. Drawn curtains or blinds in every window made Pietermaritzburg and its suburbs look deserted.

They weren’t.

One thousand meters south of the open green fields of the Scottsville

Race Course, soldiers wearing full packs and carrying M16s were visible-moving steadily north along the highway. The U.S. Marines were entering Pietermaritzburg on foot.

Backed by a platoon of four LAV-25s, Bravo Company’s three rifle platoons trudged grimly in single file along either side of the road. Except for a thin screen of four-man recon teams, they were the advance guard for the whole Allied expeditionary force-one hundred riflemen probing far ahead of massive air, sea, and ground contingents already numbering more than fifty thousand men.

Craig’s field commanders were using Bravo Company’s Marines in much the same way that a man would use a stick to poke carefully through the branches of a tree while looking for a hornets’ nest. The trouble was that, in this case, any hornets found were likely to be very hard on the stick.

Whooosh. The long columns of marching Marines reacted instantly to the high-pitched, screaming whirr of a shell arcing overhead. Men scattered into the empty fields to either side of the road. The LAVs spun round in a semicircle and accelerated, racing for the shelter offered by a nearby overpass.

“Incoming!”

Capt. Jon Ziss dropped flat by the left side of the highway. His radioman and the others in the company command group threw themselves down on the dirt beside him.

Whaammm. Flame, smoke, and shattered pieces of roadway fountained high into the air barely one hundred meters ahead. Fragments spattered down all around, clattering off Kevlar helmets and backpacks.

As the smoke and dust thrown by the shell burst rolled past, Ziss slowly raised his head. Although his ears were still ringing from the blast, he could hear agonized screams rising from men of his First Platoon. Three or four Marines lay huddled on the pavement, scythed down by splinters. He risked a quick glance at the surrounding terrain.

To the west, a row of wood-frame, one-story houses offered the only possible cover. The flat fairways and shallow sand traps of a golf course to the east would be a killing ground for enemy artillery. And the same could be said of the racetrack to the north. He and his troops could only run west.

Whooosh. Another round howled in out of the sky, landing farther back this time.

Whaammm. The 155mm South African shell slammed straight into the rearmost