Vortex (104 page)

Vasquez walked forward far enough to lay a proprietary hand on the G-5’s monstrous barrel.

“As you suspected, Comrade General, the Boers were short on ammunition. They wanted to make every shell count. But these guns aren’t normally rigged for antitank work, so they have separate projectiles and charges.” He inclined his head toward the sandbag-covered magazines visible behind each gun position.

“That makes them fire more slowly than ours. And even a one fifty-five millimeter shell will not stop one of our tanks every time.”

Often enough, though, Vega thought moodily, surveying a field crowded with wrecked T-72s and BTR-60s. Still, the Afrikaner decision to use their G-5s as antitank weapons explained the lack of artillery fire during his approach march. It also indicated a growing sense of desperation. No commander used towed artillery that way unless he had no other option.

Abruptly, he turned toward Suarez.

“What are our casualties?”

The colonel consulted his leather-bound notebook.

“We lost twenty-eight vehicles-ten of which can be repaired.” He cleared his throat.

“Plus about a hundred and fifty men killed, with another two hundred seriously wounded. We believe enemy casualties were very heavy, almost twice ours.

”

Vega sighed. He’d won another victory, and at what Havana would call a reasonable cost. But any price was high when he was this poor in resources. He looked south, wondering if the American Marines fighting their way inland from Durban were faring any better.

DECEMBER
25-
MOBILE
HEADQUARTERS
,
ALLIED

EXPEDITIONARY
FORCE
,
NEAR
THE
OCEAN
TERMINAL
,
DURBAN

Trailed by a small security detachment of fully armed U.S. Marines, Lt.

Gen. Jerry Craig made his way through the wreckage littering Durban’s waterfront. What he saw was not making him happy. A freshening sea breeze had blown the stench of cordite and sun-bloated corpses inland, but all the clean salt air in the world couldn’t hide the damage inflicted by days of bitter fighting and deliberate sabotage.

Out in the harbor, oil-coated waves lapped gently against the rusting superstructures of ships sunk to block the main channel. Other burnt-out hulks sagged against the docks themselves, entangled in the torn and twisted skeletons of fallen cargo-handling cranes. Mounds of fire-blackened rubble from bomb-and shell-shattered buildings choked off the spiderweb of streets and rail lines spreading out from the port into

Durban proper.

Bulldozer engines, chain saws, and acetylene torches

?”

roared, howled, and hissed as the nine hundred men of Craig’s Marine combat engineer battalion tried frantically to clear paths through the debris. But the sheer volume of work remaining seemed to make a mockery of all their efforts. Although Diederichs’s garrison troops had failed to hold the city, their stubborn defense had left it a smoking ruin.

Two days after all significant Afrikaner resistance had collapsed, South

Africa’s largest deepwater harbor remained closed to Allied shipping. And until its docks and access roads could be reopened, Craig’s British and

American forces would remain dependent on whatever supplies and equipment could be brought in over the beach or by air. Most of his main battle tanks and self-propelled guns were still parked offshore-crowding the decks and cargo spaces of fast transports waiting impatiently at anchor.

Craig frowned. A few heavy vehicles had been ferried in one at a time by the U.S. Navy’s overworked air-cushion landing craft. Not enough to make an appreciable battlefield contribution, just enough to impose even more strain on a supply system already laboring to provide the fuel, ammunition, and food the expeditionary force needed.

All of which left the advance inland toward Pretoria in the hands of a few infantry battalions backed by light armor, artillery, and carrier-based air power. He quickened his pace, skirting a trio of bomb craters pock marking the quay side road. His men were pushing forward as fast as they could, but every hour’s delay in opening the harbor gave Vorster that much more time to rush additional troops into the Drakensberg Mountains-a rugged band of steep mountains and forested ridges separating Natal’s lowlands from the open grasslands of the high veld

The chubby, straw-haired lieutenant colonel commanding his combat engineers saw Craig coming and hurried over.

“Sir.” He saluted wearily. Sweat stains under his arms and dark rings under his eyes showed that he’d been working side by side with his men for nearly forty-eight hours straight.

“Colonel. ” Craig casually returned his salute and gestured at the mess visible on all sides.

“I need your best guess, Jim. How much longer before we can start off-loading here?”

The younger man stared at the controlled chaos along the waterfront as though seeing it all for the very first time. Three days. Maybe four.”

His shoulders slumped.

“My boys are pretty near the edge, General. Some of ‘em are so tired they’re starting to walk right into booby traps a five year-old could’ve spotted.”

Craig nodded. He’d watched the casualty reports climb steadily. In the two days since Durban had officially been 11 pacified,” the engineer battalion had lost more than ten men killed, with another forty or so seriously wounded. Snipers, explosive booby traps, and fatigue-related accidents were eroding the effectiveness of a unit he was sure to need later.

He raised his voice as a bulldozer rumbled by, shoving a burned-out car away from the road.

“We’re bringing in some help from the Cape. Sort of a Christmas present. The One oh one’s putting its engineers on C-141 s right now. Air Force says they’ll be here by the end of the day. ”

It took several seconds to sink in. Then the lieutenant colonel nodded gratefully. The Army air assault division’s combat engineers wouldn’t have their equipment with them, but they could be used to spell his own men. Even without bringing in extra gear, doubling the number of skilled people working might cut up to twenty-four hours from the time needed to clear the port.

The battalion commander saluted a second time, this time with more vigor and enthusiasm. The news that he’d be getting reinforcements seemed to have stripped years off his age.

“We’ll get these goddamned docks open

ASAP
, General. You can take that to the bank.”

“I already have, Jim. I already have. Now you get some rest yourself when those Army pukes show up, you hear me?” Craig patted the other man on the shoulder.

“I need a smart, tough engineer in charge of this operation-not a walking zombie. ”

“Yes, sir.

Craig turned away, already moving back to his waiting helicopter. He’d come to the waterfront himself to show the colonel and his men just how important their efforts were to the whole expeditionary force-not to try micro managing every last detail of their work. In his book, you found the right man for the job, gave him the tools he needed, and then got the hell out of his way.

As he neared the camouflaged UH-60 Blackhawk serving as his command transport, an aide hurried overbent low to clear the helicopter’s still-turning rotor.

“General! Sixth Brigade HQ reports our guys outside

Pietermaritzburg are taking fire from heavy arty!” ‘

Craig grabbed the captain by the arm and spun him back around. Their free ride was over. Vorster’s generals had a blocking force in place.

With one hand clapped onto his helmet to hold it in place, Craig raced ahead and hauled himself aboard the Blackhawk. The Marine riflemen assigned to protect him followed at a dead run.

Thirty seconds later, the command helo rolled forward on its wheels, lifted off, and raced low over the harbor-moving south at a hundred knots toward the shell-scarred runway at Louis Botha International Airport. Radio reports of the fighting continued to crackle through Craig’s headphones.

His American and British troops were securely ashore on the Natal coast, but Vorster’s Afrikaners were clearly serving notice that any further gains would have to be paid for in blood.

3RD
BATTALION
, 6TH
MARINE
EXPEDITIONARY

BRIGADE
,
SOUTHEAST
OF
PIETERMARITZBURG
,
SOUTH

AFRICA

The Victorian homes and quiet suburban streets of Natal’s provincial capital, Pietermaritzburg, lay eerily at rest below steep wooded hiNs rising on all sides. No cars moved down the wide N3 Motor Route or rattled along the narrow roads winding off to the farms and small clusters of houses that doffed the forested hollow. Clouds sent patches of shadow rippling over the ground, drifting almost idly from east to west.

A clock chimed the hour from a tall, redbrick tower over the city hall.

Its ringing, melodic tones echoed from building

to building before dying away among the dense groves of mo pane and acacia trees spread across the slopes above the city. Drawn curtains or blinds in every window made Pietermaritzburg and its suburbs look deserted.

They weren’t.

One thousand meters south of the open green fields of the Scottsville

Race Course, soldiers wearing full packs and carrying M16s were visible-moving steadily north along the highway. The U.S. Marines were entering Pietermaritzburg on foot.

Backed by a platoon of four LAV-25s, Bravo Company’s three rifle platoons trudged grimly in single file along either side of the road. Except for a thin screen of four-man recon teams, they were the advance guard for the whole Allied expeditionary force-one hundred riflemen probing far ahead of massive air, sea, and ground contingents already numbering more than fifty thousand men.

Craig’s field commanders were using Bravo Company’s Marines in much the same way that a man would use a stick to poke carefully through the branches of a tree while looking for a hornets’ nest. The trouble was that, in this case, any hornets found were likely to be very hard on the stick.

Whooosh. The long columns of marching Marines reacted instantly to the high-pitched, screaming whirr of a shell arcing overhead. Men scattered into the empty fields to either side of the road. The LAVs spun round in a semicircle and accelerated, racing for the shelter offered by a nearby overpass.

“Incoming!”

Capt. Jon Ziss dropped flat by the left side of the highway. His radioman and the others in the company command group threw themselves down on the dirt beside him.

Whaammm. Flame, smoke, and shattered pieces of roadway fountained high into the air barely one hundred meters ahead. Fragments spattered down all around, clattering off Kevlar helmets and backpacks.

As the smoke and dust thrown by the shell burst rolled past, Ziss slowly raised his head. Although his ears were still ringing from the blast, he could hear agonized screams rising from men of his First Platoon. Three or four Marines lay huddled on the pavement, scythed down by splinters. He risked a quick glance at the surrounding terrain.

To the west, a row of wood-frame, one-story houses offered the only possible cover. The flat fairways and shallow sand traps of a golf course to the east would be a killing ground for enemy artillery. And the same could be said of the racetrack to the north. He and his troops could only run west.

Whooosh. Another round howled in out of the sky, landing farther back this time.

Whaammm. The 155mm South African shell slammed straight into the rearmost

LAV
and blew it apart. Pieces of armor and mangled rubber tires spiraled off the road.

Jesus. For several seconds, Ziss stared in horror at the blazing wreck, unable to move. Then reason took over. The Afrikaners had to have an OP, a hidden observation post, directing their fire. So either he and his troops got out of sight or they’d be slaughtered out here in the open.

He scrambled to his feet, shouting, “Let’s move it, people! Into those houses! Over there!” He waved an arm to the west.

All up and down the freeway, individual Marines rose and ran for cover, each bent forward at the waist as though he were pushing forward against high winds. Another shell burst behind them and several more men were bowled over-left lying dead or badly wounded.

Ziss found himself running side by side with his radioman, Lance Corporal

Pitts. He grabbed the handset Pitts offered.

“Mike One Two, this is Bravo

Six Six, over.”

“Go ahead, Six Six.” Ziss recognized the deep Southern drawl of his battalion commander.

“Give me a sitrep.

The two men charged through an open garden gate and slid to a stop beside one of the houses. Panting Marines from Bravo’s First and Second Platoons pushed in after them. The artillery barrage ended-leaving behind a strange silence broken only by moaning from the wounded sprawled across the highway.

Ziss moved across the backyard of the house and crouched low next to a row of rose bushes planted as a hedge. He punched the transmit button on his handset, noticing with

some detachment that both his hands were shaking.

“We took some arty, One

Two. Big stuff. They’ve got the N3 zeroed in and spotters out there somewhere.”

“Do you want fast movers? Over.” The Navy had bomb laden flights of

F/A-18s and A-6s circling overhead on call, just itching for the chance to blow South African guns or troops to kingdom come.

The Marine captain shook his head impatiently, realized what he was doing, and punched the talk button again.

“Negative, One Two. I don’t have any observed targets. We’re gonna have to hunt for their damned OP.

”

“Understood.” His battalion commander paused and then came back on line.

“The Navy says their flyboys didn’t manage to spot any of those guns firing.”

No kidding. The South African artillery battery was probably parked almost forty klicks away-well hidden among the Drakensberg’s woodlands and narrow mountain valleys. A plane would practically have to pass right over an artillery piece while it was firing to see anything. Even then the Afrikaner gunners were undoubtedly moving their weapons from camouflaged firing position to firing position-employing the classic battlefield tactic of “shoot and scoot. ”