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Vortex

Two red lights glowed faintly above two metal switches.

A faint clattering sound growing slowly louder reached his ears. Rotors.

Kotane looked west, his eyes flicking back and forth across the horizon.

There! He spotted the camouflaged Puma helicopter weaving back and forth above the railroad tracks-flying steadily east.

Kotane motioned Sebe to the ground and flattened himself as the helicopter came nearer. The Afrikaners were making a routine last-minute aerial sweep down the rail line. No surprise there. They weren’t taking any chances-not when

a train filled with the white government’s top officials was on its way down the tracks.

Whup-whup-whup-whup. The Puma was closer now, much closer-skimming low above the power lines. Kotane shut his eyes tight as it roared directly overhead, trailing a choking, rotor-blown hail of dead grass and dust.

He stayed still, listening intently as the helicopter’s engine noise faded.

Going. Going. Gone. He spat out a mouthful of weeds and dirt and risked opening a single eye. The Puma’s rotor blades flashed silver in the sunlight as it rounded a bend and vanished.

Kotane sat up, elated. They’d done it! They’d evaded the last Afrikaner security patrol. Nothing could stop them now. He tapped Sebe on the shoulder.

“Get ready, Andrew. And remember, make your shots count. Just like we practiced, right?”

The younger man nodded and rose to his knees, cradling the grenade launcher in both arms.

Kotane risked a quick glance at his watch and turned to stare down the track. Any moment now…

“The Blue Train came into view from down the valley, gliding almost noiselessly along the track at thirty miles an hour. Orange-, white-, and blue-striped South African flags fluttered from the front fender of the electric locomotive. The rest of the train-twelve gold-windowed sleeping cars, a saloon car, a dining car and kitchen, generator wagon, and baggage car-stretched in a long, undulating chain behind the engine.

Kotane felt his pulse starting to race as he flicked the first switch on the little white box in his hand. One of the lights flashed green. The box was transmitting.

His world narrowed to a single point on the tracks. Ten seconds. Five.

Four. Three … The front of the Blue Train’s engine flashed into view at the edge of his peripheral vision. Now!

Kotane flicked the second switch.

One hundred kilos of plastic explosive layered along the railroad tracks detonated directly under the engine-tipping it off the tracks in a ragged, billowing cloud of orange-red flame and coal-black smoke. Pieces of torn and twisted rail spun end over end high through the air before crashing back to earth.

Shocked by the power of the explosion he’d unleashed, Kotane sat unmoving as the blast-mangled locomotive slammed into the ground at an angle and cartwheeled downhill, smashing every tree and rock in its path.

The rest of the Blue Train went with it-blown and pulled off the track in a deadly, grinding tangle of torn metal, shattered glass, and flying debris. Car after car went rolling, tumbling, and sliding down toward the valley floor.

A rising curtain of dust cloaked the wreckage as Kotane’s hearing returned.

He scrambled to his feet and ran toward the railroad tracks with Sebe close behind. The younger man still held his unfired RPG-7. Thirteen more ANC guerrillas rose from their own hiding places and followed them, seven armed with AK-47s, two more carrying grenade launchers, and four men lugging a pair of bipod-mounted light machine guns.

Kotane skidded to a stop just short of the tracks and stared down at a scene that might have leaped out of hell itself. The Blue Train’s cars were heaped one on top of the other-some ripped wide open and others crushed almost beyond recognition. Bodies and pieces of bodies were strewn across the hillside, intermingled with smashed suitcases, bloodstained tablecloths and bedding, and fragments of fine china. Greasy black smoke eddied from half a dozen small fires scattered throughout the wreckage.

It seemed impossible that anyone could still be alive down there.

Kotane’s eyes narrowed. Better to make sure of that while they still had the chance. The Afrikaner security forces would soon be on their way here.

He turned to the men bunched around him and yelled, “Don’t just stand there! Fire! Use your damned weapons!”

Sebe was the first to react. His rocket-propelled grenade ripped a new hole in one of the mangled sleeping cars and

exploded in a brief shower of flame. Then the other guerrillas opened up, flaying the ruined train with a hail of bullets and fragmentation grenades.

David Kotane watched in morbid satisfaction as his men systematically walked their fire down the length of what had once been South Africa’s

Blue Train.

There were no survivors.

CHAPTER

Dead Reckoning

JUNE 28-DIRECTORATE OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, PRETORIA

REACTION FORCE BRAVO TWO