Larry Bond - Vortex

Power. That might be it. Levi sat up straighter, a series of half-formed ideas and concepts floating through his brain. He looked across at

O’Connell.

“There could be a relatively simple way to do such a thing,

Colonel.” His fingers beat a quick, distracted beat on the desk.

“However,

I will need a little time to work out all the details.”

O’Connell nodded briskly.

“Good. Because a little time is all we’ve got.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Which brings me to my second reason for wanting to see you. Can you get Lieutenant Vaughn’s special weapons team ready to go by the twenty-ninth?”

“Impossible.” Levi shook his head decisively.

“Your Rangers are good students, Colonel, but even they cannot learn everything they will need to know in anything less than a week.”

“I see.” The American officer sounded disappointed, but not particularly surprised. He glanced down at a manila folder in front of him. Levi saw a small tag that bore his name.

“I understand you’re an Israeli Defense Force reservist, Professor.

“That’s correct. Just like any other adult male in my country.” Levi looked curiously at the folder. Had Jerusalem given the Americans his whole personnel record?

“Paratrooper?”

Levi smiled and shook his head.

“Nothing so glamorous, Colonel. As a senior scientist, I now have an exemption from active duty, but I wasn’t quite so fortunate as a young student.

Consequently, I spent several long months as a lowly infantryman. Why do you ask?”

O’Connell slid a telex across the desk.

“Because your government’s called you back to the colors, Professor. As of six hundred hours tomorrow, you’re to consider yourself attached to my battalion in a military capacity.”

Levi stared at the message form for several seconds.

“But why? I don’t understand.”

Now it was O’Connell’s turn to smile.

“It’s pretty simple, Private Levi.

Washington’s changed the timetable. We’re jumping into Pelindaba on the twenty-ninth-a week ahead of schedule. And I need a special weapons team led by an expert. Unfortunately, you’ve just con finned that my troopers won’t be ready by then. So you’re going to be my expert.”

Levi felt his mouth drop open and stay open.

Visibly amused, the American officer nodded briskly and stuck out his hand.

“Welcome to the Rangers, Professor.” His thin smile turned into a wide grin.

“You’re just lucky that lea ming how to jump out of airplanes isn’t quite as complicated as lea ming how to assemble and disassemble Abombs. “

NOVEMBER 26-STATE SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER, PRETORIA

Karl Vorster glared at the ashen-faced South African Air Force officer standing at attention before him.

“I am not interested in listening to your meaningless technical babble, General! I want to know when you can be ready to attack again! Nothing else, understand?”

The officer drew a quick, shaky breath and tried to explain.

“The planes and weapons themselves can be readied in a matter of hours, Mr.

President. But target selection isn’t so simple a matter.”

Vorster’s eyes seemed to flash fire and he turned slowly red, working himself into a towering rage.

Whitehaired Gen. Adriaan de Wet recognized the danger signs and interceded.

“What General Roefs is trying to say,

Mr. President, is that the Cubans are taking steps to make it impossible to use another nuclear weapon on them.”

“What steps?” Vorster’s voice was dangerously calm.

“The remaining fighting units are staying as close as possible to our own defending forces. And their support units stay just as close to captured towns filled with our own civilians. ” -SoT I

De Wet took great care to control his own temper. Three of the several empty chairs in the council chamber had belonged to men who’d angered

Vorster at the wrong moment.

“As things are, Mr. President, we cannot strike the communists without killing hundreds or thousands of our own folk in the same instant. We can gain no military advantage under these conditions.”

Vorster signaled his understanding with a curt nod and sat brooding at the end of the table. From time to time he glanced up at the situation maps hung at one end of the room, a sour frown fixed on his face.

“Even if it were possible, we cannot use another such weapon!” Tiny, wasp-wasted Fredrik Pienaar, the minister of information, lifted a haunted face. He’d seen pictures showing the results of Cuba’s nerve-gas attack.

“Castro would only retaliate… perhaps against our cities this time.

“

Propaganda and boastful proclamations of imminent victory were proving no match for hard reality.

Vorster snorted.

“What of it? Let the communists spray their poisons on cities full of kaffirs, coolies, and rooinek traitors! Our people are spread across the veld, made safe by distance and dispersion.” He shrugged.

“And if some should die, so be it. We fight for the survival of our whole nation -not for a few individuals.”

He rose from his chair and stood facing de Wet, grim and utterly implacable.

“I give you three days, General, to select suitable targets for our remaining weapons. If you cannot find them in South Africa, then

I suggest you look elsewhere. If we cannot strike our enemies in the face, then we must cut them off at the knees. ” He moved closer to the situation map and pointed to the port at Maputo, Mozambique’s capital,

and the airfields around Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city.

The men seated around the table turned pale. Maputo’s piers were crowded with Soviet merchant shipping, and Soviet cargo aircraft jammed Bulawayo’s runways. Dropping an atomic bomb on either would mean killing hundreds of

Russians along with thousands or tens of thousands of blacks.

Vorster silenced them with a single stern look.

“We strike again on the thirtieth. Two weapons this time. And four more on the day after that.” He scowled.

“We will hammer these communists until they either flee outside our beloved fatherland or until they are reduced to mere grains of radioactive dust, scattered across our soil.”

NOVEMBER 27-WDEAWAKE AIRFIELD, ASCENSION ISLAND

Prof. Esher Levi emerged blinking from the darkened interior of an American

C-141 Starlifter into bright sunshine. He stared for a moment at the barren, alien landscape in front of him before walking stiffly and awkwardly out onto the tarmac. His first impressions from the air had been accurate-Ascension Island was a thirty-four-square-mile piece of hell planted smack in the middle of the vast South Atlantic.

The whole island was a jagged assembly of black and gray, sharp-edged volcanic rock and mounded ash. The only touch of living color came from a small tropical rain forest atop a mountain above the airfield. A murmuring, muted roar echoed everywhere-the constant thunder of long, rolling, gray green South Atlantic waves breaking on a rugged shore.

Then a manmade roar drowned out the sound of the surf.

L.evi turned and watched as another C-141 lumbered in out of the sky, touched down in a puff of black wheel smoke, and rolled on past-all four engines screaming as it braked. The Starlifter turned ponderously off the runway and parked close by its nine companions.

Work crews, a mobile staircase, and fuel trucks were already on their way to meet the transport aircraft. Ascension Island’s sole military asset-Wideawake Airfield’s 11,000foot runway-had again proven its value. The island had served as a vital staging area for the British during their 1982 campaign to retake the Falklands. Now it would play the same role for U.S. Rangers preparing for a raid into South Africa.