Larry Bond - Vortex

“No!” Without thinking Ian dived through the hatch.

She was still alive, though bleeding badly from one shoulder. The staff officer was dead. He’d taken most of the burst.

Ian scrabbled through the dead man’s gear looking for his medical kit. He needed bandages to stop the bleeding. He never even thought to look up.

Ten meters away, Staff Sgt. Gerrit Roost rose from his foxhole, cradling his R4 assault rifle. He yanked out the empty thirty-five-round clip and shoved in a full magazine. This one would be an easy kill. He started to raise his weapon, sighting straight at the kneeling civilian’s chest.

Three separate hammer blows knocked him off his feet. Astonished, Roost strained to raise his head and saw the ugly,

red-rimmed holes torn in his chest and stomach. Then he saw the man who’d shot him. His mouth dropped open. A kaffir! He’d been killed by a damned black!

The Afrikaner sergeant died with that look of shocked, unbelieving surprise frozen on his face.

Matthew Siberia let go of the trigger he’d squeezed and held down, threw the dead lieutenant’s rifle from him as far as it would go, and ran to help Ian.

EMERGENCY AID STATION, ON THE HILL NEAR SKERPIONENPUNT

Henrik Kruger stood looking at a scene straight out of his worst nightmares. Wrecked trucks and armored personnel carriers were strewn up and down the road and across the hillside in almost every direction. Most were still on fire, sending greasy plumes of smoke billowing up to stain the sky. Bodies sprawled beside the vehicles, some in heaps, others alone.

Others littered the hilltop.

Stretcher parties wandered through the carnage, looking for wounded they could carry up to the aid station behind him. He smiled bitterly. Aid station. That was an impressive sounding name for what was only a patch of bare rock and sand covered by a hastily rigged tarp.

Dozens of seriously injured men lay in rows behind him. His lone surviving surgeon and handful of corpsmen were completely swamped by sheer numbers. As it was, they were still frantically engaged in triage-the gruesome, though essential, task of sorting those who were sure to die from those who might be saved with the limited gear and supplies on hand.

Kruger clasped his hands tightly behind his back, trying hard not to hear the low, sobbing moans rising from the rows of wounded. Tears rolled slowly down his face, stinging as they dripped into his torn cheek. This isn’t a battlefield, he thought. This is a butcher’s yard. For both sides.

“Wommandant!”

Several of his men waved him over to a foxhole not far from his wrecked

Ratel. He sighed, wiped his face roughly, and moved in that direction.

They’d found the paratroop commander. Maj. Rolf Bekker lay crumpled near the bottom of his foxhole-wounded and only semiconscious, but still alive. Kruger stared down at the man. From the look of things, the paratrooper had taken a faceful of grenade fragments, been shot, and then left for dead when Kruger’s infantry overran this part of the hill.

The South African felt a cold rage building up inside him as he looked at Bekker. This was the bastard who’d murdered his battalion. The man whose soldiers had shot Emily. Kruger’s fingers brushed the 9mm pistol at his side. Revenge would be so simple. So easy. Too easy. He shook his head. There’d been enough killing.

He straightened up.

“Take him to the aid station and have him patched up.

I want this bastard to live.”

The kommandant turned and walked away, heading for the small cluster of officers awaiting their next orders. Orders? What orders could he give?

Ian Sheffield intercepted him. The tall American looked gaunt and completely exhausted.

“Henrik, I need one of your Land Rovers and a driver.”

Kruger stared at him for a moment, taken aback by the sudden request.

Then he sighed and nodded.

“I understand, Ian. With luck, you and Emily can still reach Cape Town.” He motioned to the wreckage strewn around them.

“I gather it’s pretty clear that the rest of us have come as far as we can. I’ll arrange for extra supplies and cans of petrol. “

“No, you don’t understand.” Ian shook his head in exasperation and smiled tightly.

“I just want a ride into the nearest town with a phone. I think it’s time we tried to scare up some help.”

The American’s thin smile faded as a high-pitched scream rose from the aid station.

“God only knows, Henrik, but I think we could sure use some right now.”

OPERATIONS CENTER, D. F. MALAN AIRPORT, CAPE TOWN

More than a dozen U.S. Air Force technicians and radar consoles crowded the darkened room. Calm, quiet voices rose and fell as they controlled the movements of incoming and outgoing C-5s and C-141s crammed with troops, equipment, and supplies.

“MajorT I

Irritated at the interruption, the Operations Center duty officer glanced up from the argument he’d been having over the availability of JP-4 and

JP-5 fuel stocks.

“Yeah. What is it?”

The enlisted man manning their phone line held up the receiver.

“I’ve got kind of a strange call here, sir. Some reporter named Sheffield wants to talk to whoever’s in charge. “

Another reporter. Swell. The major snorted and said, “Look, turn the bozo over to Public Affairs… ” He stopped in mid-sentence. Sheffield? Why did that name ring a bell?

Then he remembered. Sheffield was the TV reporter whose reports had helped break this mess wide open. The guy who was missing. The major whistled softly.

“Well, I’ll be a sorry son of a bitch.” He moved toward the man.

“Gimme that phone. Now!”

JANUARY 3-EVACUATION POINT, ON ROUTE 64, NEAR THE ORANJE RIVER

Emily van der Heijden and Ian Sheffield stood close together, watching as a lumbering C-130 Hercules dropped out of the sky, touched down precisely on the centerline of the road, and rolled past them with its props howling and brakes screaming. Two more turboprop transports were visible orbiting slowly in the distance-waiting for their turn on the improvised runway.

The C-130 taxied to a stop and several uniformed officers

emerged, blinking in the bright sun. They moved to meet Henrik Kruger as he stood rigid by the side of the road.

Despite her obvious pain and a shoulder swathed in bandages, Emily refused to lie down.

“I can walk perfectly well, and you know it, Ian.

” Her stern gaze softened.

“Besides, there are too many others who must be carried. So many others who have been so terribly hurt.”

Ian gave up.

“Okay, but at least let me help you down. As a sop to my manly pride. Deal?”

She smiled at that.

“Deal.” She looked up.

“Henrik wants

US. I I

Kruger had insisted on meeting the Americans by himself first. He wants to end his part in this war with honor, she realized sadly. Even though he had rebelled against Pretoria, this was still a form of surrender for him. She hoped he could live with that.

They moved downhill toward the tiny knot of South African and U.S. Air

Force officers. With a tightly controlled, emotionless voice, Kruger introduced them to the ranking officer, a Lieutenant Colonel Packard.

Packard stepped forward with an outstretched hand and a broad, toothy smile.

“Mr. Sheffield, I’m damned glad to meet you!” He lowered his voice to a level slightly below a booming shout.

“I hope you don’t mind, but we’ve arranged a small press conference for your arrival at the airfield.

I guess I don’t have to tell you this is gonna be big news back in the

States!”

Emily hid a sudden smile of her own as Ian leaned in close and whispered in her car, “Oh, my God. A press conference. Now I know we’re in trouble.”