Larry Bond - Vortex

A man rose from behind a splintered tree trunk and grabbed at his left arm.

“Are you all right, Major?”

Farwell recognized 2 Platoon’s senior NCO and yelled back, “I’m fine,

Sergeant!” He ducked as another mortar round landed close by. Fragments whined past.

“Where’s Slater?”

“Dead, sir.

Unbidden, an image of the freckled lieutenant rose in Farwell’s mind, momentarily blotting out the present. He remembered meeting an aging and widowed mother who’d been so painfully proud of her handsome young soldier son. He blinked the memory away. There might be time for sorrow later. If he lived.

He leaned close to the platoon sergeant’s ear.

“We must get the men moving. You understand?”

The other man nodded vigorously. The Paras either had to close with their enemies or admit defeat and fall back down the ridge.

“Right. Then take your platoon forward, Sergeant.” Farwell bared his teeth, camouflaging a sudden blaze of pain as a fierce, tigerish grin.

“Flush ‘em out, Bates. I’ll be right behind you with the rest of the lads. “

The new commander of 2 Platoon nodded once more and moved away at a steady lope-briefly silhouetted by another explosion. His bull-voiced roar could be heard even over the noise of the barrage.

“On your feet, you Terrible Twos! Come on! Let’s go kill those Boer bastards!”

By ones and twos, British soldiers rose from cover and followed their sergeant up the slope. To the left and right, other voices rose above the shelling, echoing his call. One and Three platoons were rallying as well.

Farwell knelt beside a dead Para, tugged the man’s assault rifle free, and hobbled after his men.

BLOCKING FORCE, NORTHERN NATAL COMMANDO

BRIGADE

Twenty meters below the ridge’s jagged crest line, Sgt. Gerrit Meer lay flat on his stomach, sighting down the length of his R-I rifle. At any moment now, he thought grimly, the verdomde English will come swarming over the top. For a few seconds they’d be silhouetted against the skyline—easy to spot and easy to shoot. The sergeant’s finger tightened on his trigger. He and his men would. cut the rooineks to pieces.

One of the wounded men they hadn’t had time to evacuate moaned softly behind him.

“Shut up. ” Meer didn’t take his eyes off the top of the ridge.

Another parachute flare burst into life high above the battlefield, turning night into half-lit day.

Something small and round flew through the air and thudded onto the ground beside his foxhole. It rolled on past and

came to rest against a fallen tree. Meer’s heart stopped.

“Grenade!”

He buried his face in the dirt.

Whummmphhh. A muted, dampened blast sent fragments whirring over his head. Other small explosions echoed from either side. Nothing more.

The Afrikaner looked up into the gray and swirling mist created by a volley of British smoke grenades. He moistened lips that were suddenly dry, peering frantically toward a skyline that had all but disappeared in the manmade fog.

Sounds were amplified by his inability to see anything clearly. Time slowed and finally seemed to stop entirely.

Damn it, where were they? Meer could feel his heart pounding again, feeling as though it might break out of his body with every separate beat.

There! Howling, yelling, defiant shapes raced out of the concealing smoke, lunging forward with fixed bayonets. He saw one man coming straight for him-all glittering eyes and a hate-filled, blackened face beneath a steel helmet.

God. He shot and shot and shot again. The Englishman stumbled, folded in on himself, and fell facedown in the dirt.

Meer’s panic vanished in that same instant. He laughed aloud in exultation and rose to his knees, swinging from side to side-looking for more foreigners to kill.

Another small, round shape sailed out of the smoke and landed behind him.

Whummp. The blast threw him forward against the lip of his foxhole and left him lying there for a split second, bleeding and dazed. Some instinct told him to stay down, to accept defeat.

No! It would not be! Meer spat pieces of gravel and sand out of his torn mouth and pushed himself to his knees again. Vague shapes wavered in front of his watering eyes. He fumbled for his rifle.

He never really saw the British paratrooper who came screaming out of the mist and swirling dust. He was conscious only of a sudden, sharp, tearing pain as the man’s bayonet slammed into his chest, reaching for his heart.

Gerrit Meer fell backward into his half-dug foxhole. He didn’t feel the point-blank shot the Para fired to extract his bayonet. The Afrikaner sergeant was already dead, staring up at the smoke-shrouded night sky with sightless eyes. The ridge guarding the Mooi River valley had fallen.

DECEMBER 31IN NATAL

Special Forces duty always surprised him. Capt. Jeff Hawkins knew that “unconventional warfare” was much more common and covered a lot more combat than “conventional warfare,” but the longer he fought, the fewer rules there seemed to be.

Hawkins was dressed in U.S. Army battle dress, festooned with equipment, especially extra cans of water. Tall and slender, he was better suited to the heat than the massive Sergeant Griffith. Still, nobody wanted to risk dehydration. He carried the load easily, with a wiry strength that matched his thinness. His face was thin and angled. Even his fingers were skinny.

Captain Hawkins was the leader of a U.S. Army Special Forces “A” Team.

Along with his eleven other comrades, he had landed in the Durban area with the invading forces and was now operating “behind the lines,” assisting the black resistance.

Jeff’s skin was only a shade lighter than the Africans he

?”

walked with. He had always considered himself an American black, but in this color-conscious country, he would actually be classed as “colored,” since he had both black and white ancestors. Looking at the Sotho and Zulu tribesmen walking with him, he decided the term Afro-American was a good way of describing himself.

Special Forces teams supported the local resistance with specialized skills, gathered intelligence, and coordinated operations with “conventional” U.S. forces. Except for Lieutenant Dworski and himself, all the men on the team were sergeants, noncoms with years of training and experience. It was a touchy matter, working with a different culture, advising and assisting without giving orders. And there were always complications.

They were on their way back from a two-day patrol. Jeff had led Lieutenant

Dworski and Sergeants Griffith and Lamas on an engineering reconnaissance of the Tugela River bridge. It was a potential choke point on the Allied route of advance, and they had received orders to see if it could be seized and held in advance of the attacking Allied forces. This was only one of the missions his team was performing.

The answer was an exhausting and definite no. Jeff had learned enough to know when to walk away from a posthumous medal, and this was the time. Well defended, with a screen of patrols and scouts for twenty kilometers around, it had been an adventure just getting a look at the bridge.

No, headquarters would have to find some other way out of the Drakensberg.

Those rugged mountains were coming to symbolize the South African defenders and the difficulty of the advance.

Hawkins’s feeling of disappointment was mixed with his frustration with the

African soldiers he was supposed to be training and leading. These people were supposed to be allies. He seemed to remember something about allies being people who didn’t shoot at each other, but did shoot at the same enemy. In history, this had resulted in some strange alliances, but as long as the wars had lasted, so had the alliances.