Larry Bond - Vortex

Flames stabbed out of the darkness-muzzle flashes from rifles firing at point-blank range. The Astra’s front windshield

starred and then shattered, shot out by the same bursts that shredded its front and rear tires.

Metje felt himself thrown forward against the steering column as his car skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust, torn rubber, and exhaust.

He was still recovering from the abortive ride when the car door slammed open. Rough hands yanked him out of his seat and out onto the road. Two grim-faced soldiers grabbed his arms, while a third quickly pulled his pistol from its holster.

As his hands were cuffed behind him, the lieutenant strode up, finally stopping with his face only centimeters away from Metje’s. The normal deference shown by a junior officer toward his superiors had vanished entirely.

“I checked with my headquarters, Kommandant Metje. They informed me that you are charged with dereliction of duty and desertion!

Those charges have been confirmed by General de Wet himself!”

Metje tried to protest, but the younger officer’s outraged voice rode roughshod over his words.

“Save your lies, man! It’s too late.”

The lieutenant jerked a thumb toward the darkness.

“Take him away.”

With a burly soldier pulling on each arm and his hands secured behind him, Metje was led, stumbling, toward the Hippo. As he walked, he tried vainly to put his shattered mind back in some kind of order. He’d have to get his story straight for the court-martial.

But the two soldiers led him straight past the personnel carrier and out to a small tree twenty meters away. Metje looked around, suddenly unsure of what was happening. The lieutenant and another two men were following along right behind him.

They dragged Metje over to the tree and roughly turned him around to face the parked APC. They took the handcuffs off just long enough to pull his hands around its slender trunk, then snapped them shut again. Oh, my God .

The lieutenant waved his men back and walked over to where Metje writhed, straining futilely against his bonds.

“We don’t have time for the pointless formality of a court martial. In any event, I’ve received direct orders as to the disposition of your case. Sentence will be carried out immediately. “

He turned to leave, stopped, and whirled back to face the shaking, white-faced officer. Wordlessly, he reached out and ripped the AWB pin from

Metje’s uniform. Then he strode over to where the four soldiers stood in a group.

Without even bothering to form them in a straight rank, the lieutenant barked, “Ready!”

Four assault rifles snapped up, aimed directly at Metje.

Metje looked at the leveled barrels in horror. His knees buckled and he sagged forward against the handcuffs holding him to the tree. He started sobbing.

“Nooooo! You can’t! I am an Afrikan-” Fire! “

Four bullets slammed into Metje’s head, chest, and abdomen. He died instantly. His nation’s death wouldn’t come so easily.

NOVEMBER 14-THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The once steaming-hot cup of coffee sitting on the President’s desk had long since grown stone cold. Now it sat off to one side, pushed aside and abandoned after a particularly abrupt hand gesture threatened to spill its contents across an important stack of telexes, reports, and maps.

“Indeed, Prime Minister, you’re absolutely right. The situation is quite intolerable.”

Vice President James Forrester slid his own empty cup onto the low side table by his chair and leaned forward. The President’s sudden formality was a sign that the hour-long, early-mo ming conversation with Britain’s prime minister was drawing to a close. Until now, everything had been on a strictly first-name basis.

“Exactly. My people will be meeting within the hour,” The President arched an eyebrow at Forrester, looking for confirmation.

He nodded back. Most of the NSC’s key players had al506

ready been at their posts for more than twenty-four hour sever since the first unsettling reports of the new Cuban offensive started pouring into official Washington. And a Marine Corps helicopter was already parked out on the White House lawn, on standby to fly him across the Potomac to the

Pentagon.

“Yes, Prime Minister, I’ll call you the moment I have more detailed information from this end. Yes. And thank you, too. ” The President put the phone down, his expression grim.

Forrester couldn’t control his curiosity.

“Well?”

The President looked up.

“It’s a go, Jimmy. The British are in.” He seemed older somehow.

“I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. But I just don’t see that we have any other real choice. “

Forrester felt his pulse accelerating. He rose from his chair.

“In that case, Mr. President, I’ll be on my way. Hurley has his group waiting for me.”

He glanced behind him as he left the Oval Office. The President sat still behind his desk-staring sadly at nothing in particular. Not for the first time, Forrester realized that it was a hell of a lot easier to follow orders than it was to give them.

EMERGENCY CONFERENCE ROOM, THE PENTAGON

At the President’s direction, the NSC’s Southern Africa Crisis Group had shifted its day-to-day operations over to the Pentagon. The basement

Emergency Conference Room there was larger, had better communications facilities, and allowed faster access to the latest intelligence data from the region.

Almost as important, the Pentagon had more parking and entrances and exits than the White House. And that, in turn, made it easier to hold a serious meeting without creating a three-ring media circus. The print and

TV reporters who prowled through the White House looking for fast-breaking news had limousine-counting down to a science.

Besides, the Conference Room looked a lot more like a

hightech command center than did the rather dingy White House Situation

Room. A bank of six-foot-high computer display screens, most of them blank at the moment, lined one whole wall, three across and two rows high. The length of a T-shaped table accommodated Crisis Group staffers and aides, while members of the Crisis Group sat across one end. A microphone stood in front of every seat at the table. Podiums, with as much audiovisual equipment as a small high school, allowed the entire group to be briefed on developments.

Doors led to the basement hallway outside, an adjacent communications center, a pair of small apartments with beds and washrooms, and a carefully guarded cubicle crowded with terminals linked directly to the mainframe computers at every major U.S. intelligence agency.

The Conference Room was supposed to be filled with organized chaos.

Instead, it was just chaos. Cuba’s attack into South Africa had caught the

Crisis Group in mid move turning what was supposed to be a smooth transition into a frantic scramble.

Officers and enlisted personnel from all four military services came and went in a steady stream, mixing with little knots of harried-looking civilian aides. Technicians clustered on one side of the room, trying to get the right images displayed on the room’s wall-mounted computer screens.

Maps for southern Africa were on file, but they hadn’t yet been converted to the Pentagon’s new computer format.

More enlisted men staggered in, carrying scaled boxes of highly sensitive intelligence reports. An extremely tense Air Force captain stood in the doorway to the tiny intel cubicle, checking off each report’s title and serial number. Under normal circumstances, he would have counted every page of every report to make sure that none were missing-but circumstances were clearly not normal.