Larry Bond - Vortex

With one hand, he reached back and rubbed a neck grown sore from too many minutes of hunching down to see out the Cessna’s windows. At an inch over six feet, Kruger was just tall enough to find riding inside most South African military vehicles and aircraft uncomfortable. He preferred being out in the open air.

Nothing. Still nothing. He pursed his lips. The rugged terrain below made it difficult to spot the fleeing men and vehicles he sought, but the traces of their passage across the veld couldn’t be so easily concealed. It was only a matter of keeping one’s eyes open.

There. He spotted a narrow break in the normal pattern of yellowing, sun-dried grass, brown earth, and slate-gray rock. It was precisely the sort of thing he’d been searching for since it became possible to distinguish more than blacker ground against a black sky.

Kruger felt adrenaline surge through his veins and forced his excitement back. What he saw might easily be nothing more than a trail left by one of southeastern Namibia’s many grazing cattle herds. He needed a closer look to be sure.

Without lowering his binoculars, he reached over the seat and tapped the

Cessna pilot’s left shoulder, signaling a turn in that direction. The pilot, a young South African Air Force lieutenant, nodded once and pulled the small plane into a shallow dive to the left-simultaneously throttling back to give his passenger a better view of whatever it was that he’d seen on the ground.

The marks Kruger had spotted grew larger and clearer as the Cessna raced toward them at one hundred knots. His excitement returned. They were tire tracks all right; deep, furrowed ruts torn out of the ground by two or three heavily laden Land Rovers moving cross-country. Without being told, the pilot relaxed his turn, leveling out at five hundred feet to follow the tracks westward into Namibia.

Kruger lowered his binoculars and unfolded the map on his lap with one hand while pressing the transmit button on his radio mike with the other.

“Papa

Foxtrot One to Papa Foxtrot Two. Over.”

“Go ahead, Papa Foxtrot One.” His secondin-command, Maj. Richard Forbes, sounded tired. Nothing surprising in that. Forbes and his men had already been up more than half the night searching for a band of ANC guerrillas who’d tried

to cross the long, open border sector guarded by Kruger’s 20th Cape

Rifles.

The kommandant grimaced. Guarded was probably too strong a word. The frontier between South Africa and newly independent Namibia stretched over more than six hundred kilometers of desert and and veld. That meant that each of the eight infantry battalions stationed at various points along the border had to watch over sectors seventy five or more kilometers long. It was almost an impossible task-even with constant patrolling, daylight aerial surveillance, and electronic sensors planted along likely infiltration routes.

Kruger frowned, remembering the frantic events of the past few hours. A midnight clash between the guerrillas and one of his battalion’s armored car patrols had turned into a brisk, bloody firefight that had left one of his men dead and two more badly wounded. To make matters worse, the guerrillas had broken contact in all the confusion, disappearing into the hills without leaving any of their own dead and wounded behind.

When a preliminary sweep confirmed that they’d turned back toward

Namibia, Forbes had taken a mechanized infantry company out in pursuit-trying to stay close to the fleeing ANC infiltrators until daylight made aerial reconnaissance possible. They’d succeeded, and now it was up to Kruger to vector his men in for the kill.

He thumbed the transmit button again.

“Two, this is One. Tracks heading west approximately five klicks south of your position. “

Forbes came back on immediately, sounding much less tired than he had seconds before.

“Roger that, One. We’re moving. Deployment plan is India

Three. Crossing November Bravo now. Out.”

Kruger acknowledged and glanced down at his map again. The code phrase

“India Three” meant that the fourteen Ratel 20 armored personnel carriers under Forbes’s direct command would move parallel to the trail left by the guenillas-avoiding any booby traps or mines they might have planted to catch foolhardy pursuers charging straight in after them. Then, once

Kruger had pinpointed the retreating ANC force, Forbes would change course, driving hard to put his infantry, machinegun teams, and mortars out in front. With reasonable luck, the South African column would be able to smash the guerrillas in split-second ambush.

Kruger shook his head. It should work, and work at a minimal cost in casualties. But there were complications. International complications.

“November Bravo” was the radio shorthand for the Namibian border. His men were now on what was ostensibly foreign soil. If they were spotted by UN or Swapo patrols before they’d had a chance to deal with the ANC guerrillas, there’d be hell to pay. The international press would surely have a field day reporting another South African “invasion” of a neighboring country.

He frowned. Although the Republic clearly couldn’t afford to allow its enemies sanctuary so close to its borders, the new government’s strident rhetoric wasn’t making it very easy to justify these “hot pursuit” operations. It was necessary to teach the guerrillas and their supporters some hard lessons, but it seemed senseless to spill so much hot air about it. The old American adage that one should speak softly, but carry a big stick, seemed the wiser path.

“Dust on the horizon, Kommandant. Over there at three o’clock. “

The pilot’s words brought Kruger back to the present, He was a soldier with a battle to run. Politics could wait. He craned his head forward, trying to get a better view through the Cessna’s Plexiglas windows.

The light plane bucked slightly in a sudden updraft and then straightened as the lieutenant regained control. As it leveled off, Kruger saw the hazy, yellowish cloud the other man had reported. Six or seven separate dust plumes streaked the air on the horizon, tossed skyward by vehicles moving cross-country at high speed.

He shook his head, puzzled. There were too many plumes. Was the ANC force larger than reported? Or had it been reinforced? Another, even worse possibility tugged at his mind. He leaned forward against the straps holding him to the seat.

“Let’s get closer.”

The lieutenant nodded and pulled his aircraft into a gentle turn to the right. Kruger raised his binoculars again.

The specks beneath the spreading dust cloud grew rapidly larger, resolving suddenly into six large, canvas-sided trucks rolling south-led by a dazzling white jeep flying a huge blue and white United Nations flag. The same flag flew from each of the trucks.

Kruger swore under his breath. Damn and double damn. The UN peacekeepers responsible for this section of the border hadn’t been alert enough to stop the ANC’s attempted infiltration. But by God, they were quick enough off the mark to stop anyone chasing after the guerrillas. The UN truck convoy’s course would place it squarely between Forbes’s company and their quarry.

His hands tightened around the binoculars.

The Cessna’s radio crackled into life.

“This is Captain Roald Pedersen of the United Nations Monitoring Group calling the unidentified aircraft overhead. Are you receiving my transmission? Over. ” The UN officer’s accented English marked him as a Norwegian.

Kruger let the binoculars fall around his neck and thumbed his own mike.

“Receiving you loud and clear, Captain.”

“Identify yourself, please.” Pedersen’s politeness didn’t disguise the tension in his voice.