Vortex (111 page)

Emily! Ian shook his head to clear it and regretted it right away. He must have slammed into something hard and unforgiving when the
APC
tipped over. He staggered upright and looked around.

There she was. Emily sat upright in a loose pile of canteens, medical kits, and assault rifle magazines. She seemed dazed but unhurt. His heart started beating again.

“You are wounded?” Kruger had to scream it into his ear to be heard. The

Afrikaner officer had a ragged, bleeding cut over one cheekbone, but no other apparent injuries.

“No!” Ian shouted back.

“What happened?”

“We hit a mine.” Kruger coughed as a thicker tendril of smoke curled in through the viewslits in his commander’s cupola. It smelled very much like burning oil. His eyes widened.

“We must get out! We’re on fire!”

Oh, shit. Ian whirled and lurched through the debris toward Emily. Sibena scrambled to his feet beside her. Behind him, he could hear Kruger rousing the rest of his crew and staff.

” Ian, thank God . She clutched at his arm as he helped her up.

“Yeah.” He turned to Sibena.

“Matt! Hit those clips!” He pointed to the metal locking bars holding the rear hatch shut.

“Right.” Sibena spun them up and away. Ian put his hand on the hatch handle and then felt someone grab his shoulder in a strong grip. He turned to see Kruger.

The South African had an assault rifle slung over his own

shoulder. His staff officers and vehicle crew crowded behind him with their own weapons.

“Let my men go first. We have enemies out there. ”

“You got it.” Ian, Emily, and Matt squeezed to one side of the battered

Ratel-allowing the six men by.

The soldiers shoved the hatch open and threw themselves through the narrow opening one after the other. Staying low, they fanned out in a semicircle around the wrecked
APC
. A lieutenant stayed by the door to help the others out. Smoke and blowing sand cut visibility to meters at best.

Ian’s hearing was coming back. He wasn’t sure what sounded more dangerous-the staccato rattle of automatic weapons fire outside or the steady crackle of the flames now engulfing the Ratel driver’s compartment.

The young officer standing outside signaled him frantically.

“Come on, man.

Pass her through. I’ll get her to cover.”

Ian guided Emily through the hatch and turned to motion Sibena forward And an assault rifle opened up from somewhere close by, spraying rounds at full automatic. Several punched into the hatch door and howled off into the surrounding smoke.

Ian whirled round in horror. His vision darkened and then cleared. Emily and the lieutenant lay tangled together on the ground, bright blood staining the sand around them.

“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.”

JANUARY
4-U.S.
EXPEDITIONARY
FORCE
HEADQUARTERS
,
DURBAN
,
RSA

It was part of his job, but General Craig found it hard to hide his contempt for the junketing politicians who kept appearing at his headquarters. As soon as the U.S. forces had expanded their toehold into a beachhead, and then broken out from the Drakensberg, a group of congressmen, bureaucrats, and even some state officials had decided to visit South Africa on a ‘fact-finding” mission. It didn’t hurt that while it was winter in Washington, it was summer in South Africa.

A few were sincere. They were easy to spot. They knew the background, had read up on the forces involved, and had even taken the time to look at a map. The rest were idiots. Their idea of preparation was to watch a tape of Zulu.

Craig begrudged the time, the stupid questions, and their long trips to the beaches of Durban and to Table Mountain in Cape Town. They walked over the battered mountain’s landscape as if it were an old Civil War battlefield. One had actually asked why there weren’t any park rangers!

Craig endured. He was savvy enough to know that these men wielded real power in Congress, and they would remember the red-carpet treatment the next time they voted on defense appropriations. It reminded him, though, why he detested politics and politicians.

Most of the group had taken the afternoon off to attend to personal business,” which Craig knew meant sun and surf along the Golden

Mile. Two members of the party, though, had asked to see Ladysmith. Craig had long ago marked them as the good ones, and he decided to escort them personally.

Ladysmith was a lot more recent battle than Table Mountain, and it showed in the gutted vehicles and burned-out buildings. Even with surprise on their side, the 101st had taken over 15 percent casualties in the lead battalion, 10 percent in the brigade overall.

Their helicopter had followed the same path as the assault force, and the very real door gunners in the aircraft had given the congressmen the feeling of taking part-exactly what Craig had wanted.

As instructed, the pilot made an assault landing near the original LZ, and they had toured the town, the new Army base nearby, and the field hospital, which treated not only the casualties from Ladysmith, but from the entire Drakensberg campaign.

Craig had warned the hospital staff in advance, and they had tracked down any patients from the congressmen’s states. A military photographer was standing by and caught the scene as they visited their constituents in the field.

It was good stuff, and Craig had caught himself smiling in spite of himself. These two cared, and he didn’t mind helping them out. He also wanted to be around when those double-damned pleasure seekers found out they’d missed a “photo opportunity.”

The two officials had eaten lunch on the ride back, trying MREs for the first time.

“Meals ready to eat” were vacuum packed meals meant to be carried by soldiers in the field. Some were good, some not so good. Craig told the senators they were a definite improvement on the old tinned C rations, but the troops called them “meals rejected by Ethiopians.”