Larry Bond - Vortex

He lay panting quietly for a moment, studying what little he could see of his target. The Rangers left behind to provide covering fire had long since stopped shooting-afraid that they might hit any of their own men who’d survived that last death-or-glory charge. Several of the Americans were still lobbing smoke grenades, though. A thick pall of gray-white smoke hung over the immediate area, blinding the South African machinegun crew and their lookouts.

The bunker itself was a squat, square slab sticking less than three feet above ground level. Its reinforced concrete walls and roof offered complete protection against small-arms fire. In fact, they were designed to withstand all but a direct hit by heavy mortar or artillery shells.

Narrow slits cut through each of the four walls gave the troops inside close to a 360degree field of observation and fire.

The South African machine gun chattered again, pouring a steady stream of bullets out the firing slit facing west. O’Connell nerved himself to move. It was time.

He eased the pistol out of his holster and thumbed its safety catch off.

Slowly, almost infinitely slowly, he raised his head to get a better view of the northern firing slit. There wasn’t anything there. Just an empty black gap in the gray concrete wall. No R4 assault rifles aimed at his face. The South Africans inside were busy shooting in the wrong direction.

Go! O’Connell jumped to his feet, lunged forward, and scrambled onto the bunker’s flat roof. Nobody took a shot at him. Seconds passed

while he waited for some kind of reaction from inside the enemy gun position. Nothing happened.

By God, he’d actually done it! Now any enemy soldier who wanted to clear him off the bunker would have to come out in the open to try it. And the odds were that the South Africans didn’t even know he was up there.

He laid his 9mm pistol to one side and started making his final preparations. One hand scrabbled inside the pouch hooked to his combat webbing while the other reached inside his shirt pocket for the wires and detonator he’d stowed there. He ignored the two fragmentation grenades he still carried. The bunker was bound to have a grenade sump-a small, sandbagged hole designed to smother a blast and deflect fragments-somewhere inside. If he simply tossed a grenade in through the firing slit, all the South African soldiers had to do was kick the grenade into the sump and duck. Sure, one or two of them might be wounded, but they’d know they had trouble on their roof.

O’Connell smiled grimly. He had something more assuredly fatal in mind for the enemy machinegun crew.

He pulled the small, curved Claymore out of his pouch and unscrewed the shipping plug from the fuse well. Inserting a blasting cap in the recess, he connected it to the leads from an electrical detonator. His hands relaxed. All set.

The machine gun rattled again, firing out of the bunker beneath him.

Defiant yells in Afrikaans echoed above the gunfire. Bastards. One .. two … three … O’Connell leaned out over the edge of the bunker, jammed the Claymore into its northern firing slit, and rolled away back onto the roof. Now!

He pressed his face into the cool concrete and squeezed the detonator.

Whammm! The Claymore exploded with an ear-shattering roar. Driven by a powerful charge of C4 plastic explosive, hundreds of tiny steel ball bearings sleeted through the narrow opening-killing everyone in their path as they ricocheted and rebounded off solid walls. No one inside the bunker even got the chance to scream.

As O’Connell sat upright, still stunned by the force of the blast he’d unleashed, wispy coils of acrid, yellow smoke and the awful smell of burnt flesh eddied out through the bunker’s firing slits. The last outpost guarding Pelindaba’s Nuclear Weapons Storage Site had fallen.

COMMAND BUNKER, 61 ST TRANSVAAL RIFLES

Col. Frans Peiper stared helplessly at the map showing his battalion’s few surviving fighting positions. Bunker after bunker and barracks after barracks had been hurriedly crossed out as they were reported overrun or destroyed. Although events were unfolding too fast for him to keep pace, one thing was increasingly clear: the 61st Transvaal Rifles was being gutted.

Peiper breathed out heavily through his gas mask and swore as his clear plastic eyepieces fogged over for the tenth time. These damned chemical-protection suits made even the simplest actions difficult! He grabbed at a grease pencil near the map and cursed again as it slipped between his thickly gloved fingers. A young lieutenant standing at his side handed the pencil back.

For an instant longer the colonel stood still, his eyes fixed on the map.

Now what? Well, for a start, he had to take charge. He had to find a way to reorganize the broken fragments of his battalion into some semblance of a fighting force. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the faintest idea of how to go about doing that. Enemy units now occupied key positions all across the compound. The situation seemed hopeless.

“Sir, Captain Karel’s asking for instructions. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him to wait, goddammit!” Peiper looked up, angry at what sounded very much like a reproach. The sergeant manning the command bunker’s communications setup stared back at him without flinching.

Damn the man. His insubordination would have to be dealt with later.

Assuming, of course, there was going to be a later.

Peiper wiped the steam off his gas mask eyepieces and

scrawled a rough circle around the single bunker and stretch of trench apparently still held by Capt. Anton Karel and the remnants of A Company.

Karel’s troops covered the northwestern end of the compound, well away from either the main road or the nuclear weapons storage area. Too far away in fact to do any good.

Peiper threw his pencil down and moved to the bank of field telephones.

“Let me talk to him!”

The sergeant gave him the handset.

“Karel? This is Peiper.” The colonel frowned. Blast it, he could scarcely hear or talk inside this wretched suit.

“Listen carefully. I want you to counterattack-“

A yell from one of the soldiers manning the bunker’s southern firing slit interrupted him.

“Movement along the access road, Colonel! Trucks! Ten or twelve of them!”

Peiper threw the phone down and joined a general rush over to the narrow opening. He squinted toward the access road linking Pelindaba’s military and civilian sectors. Dim shapes rumbled slowly along the road, silhouetted against a row of burning buildings. He recognized the distinctive outlines of canvas-sided Samil trucks made only in South

Africa. Were these reinforcements from Voortrekker Heights? They must be.

With trembling fingers, he raised his binoculars and focused them carefully. The trucks and the men riding on them leapt into closer view.

That was odd. Their helmets were strangely shaped-almost exactly like the old-style coal-scut tie helmets worn by the German Wehrmacht during World

War II.

Despite the sauna-bath heat of the chemical protection suit he wore,

Peiper felt a cold shiver run down his spine. The soldiers aboard those trucks were the enemy-not a friendly relief force. Even worse, they were driving straight toward the special weapons bunkers.

The Fates were not kind to Col. Frans Peiper. He had just enough time to savor his utter and absolute failure before an American recoilless rifle round burst against the edge of the firing slit-just twenty centimeters in front of his horrified face.

HEADQUARTERS COMPANY, 1/75TH RANGERS, AT THE WEAPONS STORAGE SITE

Prof. Esher Levi surveyed the frantic activity around the five weapons storage bunkers with increasing satisfaction. After what had seemed a most unpromising and bloody start, the Americans were finally getting Brave