Larry Bond - Vortex

Vega adjusted the focus on his binoculars, sweeping his gaze southward across a landscape of sparse, scattered trees, open grazing lands, and green tobacco fields. The savannah looked empty, as though it had been utterly abandoned by its human inhabitants. That was almost literally true, he knew -Cuban reconnaissance units had been probing ahead for the past several days. Except for a few small artillery observation posts,

Vorster’s northern field commanders had pulled their troops back to defend the vital road junction at Naboomspruit -a prosperous farming and mining community fifty kilometers south of Potgietersrus.

He lifted his binoculars, seeking the far horizon. There it was-Naboomspruit. A purplish smudge at the very limits of his vision. By any reasonable military standard, the town was the last easily defended choke point on the road to Pretoria, Johannesburg, and the almost unimaginable mineral wealth of the Witwatersrand.

Vega frowned. Naboomspruit would be a tough nut to crack.

A drowned morass of swamps and bogs ran just east of

the highway all the way south from Potgietersrus to the Afrikaner-held town. The swamps blocked any possible flank attack to the cast by his tanks and armored vehicles.

If anything, the terrain north and west of Naboomspruit offered even fewer alternatives for bold maneuver. The Waterberg Mountains rose sharply there-climbing high in a sweeping panorama of vertical cliffs and rugged pillars of rock. That was bad enough. Worse yet, Boer infantry companies and artillery batteries were reported dug in on Naboomspruit

Mountain, only a few kilometers west of troops entrenched in the town itself. Together, they served as interlocking parts of a much stronger defense.

It all added up to another bloody and bruising head-on assault against prepared Afrikaner defenses. To take Naboomspruit, Vega’s tank and infantry units would have to come down off their own high ground, cross the open savannah, and then charge straight down the highway.

He shook his head. Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa’s political, economic, and industrial centers, were within his grasp. But many more of his soldiers were sure to die before he could close his fist around them.

“Comrade General!”

Vega turned to face Vasquez.

“What is it?”

The colonel held out a notepad.

“Radio intercepts confirm that the

Americans have landed! At Durban, as we expected! “

Vega fought to control two conflicting emotions. While they were busy trying to pacify Cape Town, the capitalists hadn’t represented any immediate threat to his plans. Allied troops on the Natal coast were another matter entirely They would be fighting toward the same objectives-fighting for prizes only one side could win.

On the other hand, the threat of another Allied amphibious invasion had already forced Vorster’s generals to shift battalions to Natal-troops, tanks, and guns that would otherwise have been facing his two surviving

Tactical Groups. Now the Afrikaners would have to redeploy even more forces in an effort to contain the American and British Marines pouring ashore at Durban.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, one corner of Vega’s mouth lifted in a thin smile. He’d spent the past two weeks preparing for just such an opportunity. With South Africa’s intelligence services and remaining reconnaissance aircraft focused almost entirely on the approaching invasion fleet, he’d quietly stripped his Second Tactical

Group-transferring armor, infantry, and artillery units northward to reinforce the First Tactical Group.

From now on, the Second, still bogged down in the mountains west of

Mozambique, would confine its operations to raids and noisy feints designed only to pin down the South African troops facing it-not to gain ground. The real push, Cuba’s final offensive, would come from the north.

He looked up.

“Inform all commanders, Colonel. We attack again at oh four hundred hours on the twenty-second. “

Gen. Antonio Vega would give his enemies another twenty four hours to weaken their formidable defenses.

TRANSVAAL COMMANDO “GOETKE,” THORN DALE

ON NATIONAL ROUTE ONE

Generations of hardworking Afrikaner farmers and cattle ranchers had known

Thomdale as simply “the town—as the closest center of commerce and culture. But the small collection of houses and shops had slowly been withering on the vine for years. Business and people alike were drifting southward to booming Pietersburg, forty kilometers away along the new NI superhighway. By the time of the Cuban invasion, there were only two generations in Thomdale’s tiny white population-the very young and the very old. Almost everyone else had gone, lured away by the opportunities and excitement of South Africa’s big cities.

Like many small towns in similar circumstances, Thomdate had been dying a slow, inexorable, and almost painless death. Then the Cubans had come.

At first, the invasion had been more a matter of inconvenience than of terror. Of day or night curfews imposed while

armored columns roared past on the highway. Of newly paved streets and fertile fields crushed by tank treads. Of growing shortages and increasing humiliation.

All that had changed when Castro’s rear echelon and support troops arrived. They’d rolled through Thomdale like mechanized locusts on the march-stealing food, looting shops, and terrorizing those who’d stayed behind to watch over homes and farms.

Most of the men were already gone, off on commando harassing Cuban supply lines and killing isolated stragglers. Much of the rest of the white population had fled into the countryside with them rather than risk the tender mercies of their enemies.

They’d been right to flee. The local commando was too good at its job, and the Cubans had decided to make their friends and families pay in blood for their success.

One night, in reprisal for what they called “acts of terrorism,” three batteries of Cuban artillery shelled the town with poison gas and white phosphorus. Five minutes of wholesale, indiscriminate slaughter had turned Thomdale’s wood and brick buildings into fire-blackened shells filled with horror.

Now fourteen-year-old Jaime Steers lay silently in the burnt-out ruins of his own home and watched the campfires lit by enemy soldiers. He’d lain there for hours, hidden behind a pile of rubble and covered by a sheet of black plastic. Despite the darkness he could see moving shapes and occasionally, faces illuminated by the fires.

The Cuban supply convoy was camped in what had once been the town’s main square. Ten trucks escorted by almost as many armored cars and personnel carriers had driven into Thomdale just before dark. Ibe ruined town made a good resting place after the wearying, day-long journey from Cuba’s main supply depot at Bulawayo-deep inside Zimbabwe. And this was the fourth convoy in as many days to laager there.

The Boer commando led by Erasmus Goetke planned to make them pay dearly for their lodging.

In more peaceful times, Goetke had been a prosperous farmer, a lean, wiry man who many said could coax wheat out of dry sand.

When the Cubans burned his farm and stole his crops, he had sworn a solemn oath to destroy this newest enemy of his people. He was a religious man, well versed in his Afrikaans Bible, and his rage was of biblical proportions.

So Goetke had gathered not only his commando, but every man and boy old enough to carry a gun. Their women were spies and messengers. Children too young to fight hid in the hills with their grandmothers and listened to stories of other battles. But Jaime Steers was just old enough to play an active role in this act of vengeance.

It was his birthright. A remembrance of deadly struggles against powerful enemies was etched deep in the heart of every Boer. All of Afrikaner history had been a story of bullheaded perseverance-against the elements, the Zulus, the British, world opinion, and now the Cubans. With a tradition of resistance, they bounced back from hardship and tragedy like steel springs.