Vortex (34 page)

Dismounted scouts were already searching the area for possible survivors as von Brandis’s Ratel reached the scene and stopped. The wrecks were cold and the bodies blackened by a full day’s exposure to the sun.

Lieutenant Griff, the scout platoon leader, ran over as the command vehicle halted and called up to his colonel, “Nothing usable left, sir. And nobody left alive, either. ” Von Brandis sighed as the lieutenant continued his report.

“Definitely an air attack, Kolonel. No shell casings or tracks except those belonging to the convoy.”

Griff motioned toward the mass of charred wreckage and corpses.

“We’ve found eleven bodies and seven burnt

2M

V

out vehicles, including three fuel tankers and what must have been two ammo trucks. There are signs of one vehicle headed back west, but I can’t tell how many men were in it.”

Von Brandis nodded coldly, his expressionless face matching the scout officer’s matter-of fact tone. They’d both seen too many dead men in the past few days to care much about seeing several more. The wrecked convoy’s cargo was a much more serious loss.

He climbed out of the Ratel’s roof hatch and jumped down to the ground.

Stretching, he worked out the kinks that had formed in the last six hours of travel. They’d been moving since well before dawn, rattling and rolling along Route 52’s unpaved gravel surface. He smiled sardonically.

No doubt this road would have been a lot easier to drive in the
BMW
parked outside his home in Bloemfontein.

Von Brandis paced slowly around the remains of the resupply convoy, keeping clear of burial parties now going about their work with grim efficiency. Although the desert’s scavengers had already paid the dead men a first visit, nobody wanted to leave the Namib’s jackals anything more to eat.

Behind him, he heard the rest of his battalion slowing to a halt. Hatches clanged open as the troops got out and talked in low tones.

At first, he wandered almost aimlessly, his body working automatically as his brain tried to plow though the confusion to devise a workable plan. The Sth Mechanized Infantry’s officers and men knew how serious a setback this was, and von Brandis had to provide them with firm, decisive leadership.

They’d depended on this convoy for fuel and ammunition and food. Without it, they had barely enough fuel to reach Walvis Bay. F-ach of the battalion’s armored car and infantry units carried almost a full load of ammunition, but ammo disappeared fast in battle. At least they had rations and water for a couple of days.

All right. The Cuban column was still reported moving toward Walvis Bay. Von Brandis had orders to return and defend the port. The equation seemed simple and straightforward. Scouting, contact, and one hell of a fight.

He glanced at the horizon, silently calculating distances and fuel consumption rates. Right. It could be done. With effort, the 5th Mechanized could get back to the port with just enough fuel and ammo for one last battle-a battle it would simply have to win. As von Brandis turned and walked back to the parked Ratel, he was already starting to feel tentative ideas and plans forming.

His officers had anticipated his calling an orders group and were already gathered in the shade of the vehicle. The group of tired and dirty soldiers looked at him expectantly.

Von Brandis drew a deep breath and strode up confidently. He had to infuse strength and purpose into these men.

“All right, gentlemen. We’re inconvenienced, but we’re not out of options.”

He waved a hand down the length of the stalled column.

“Move the logistics vehicles off the road into laager and drain their petrol tanks. Strip off everything of value as well. Spare antiaircraft machine guns, medical kits, tool kits. Everything. We don’t want to make some wandering black scavenger rich, do we?”

“That drew a quick, guttural laugh. Good. They still had some spirit left in them.

“And Jamie, just before we leave, broadcast a message over the HF set-in the clear. Tell Pretoria that we’re critically short of fuel and will laager here until another supply convoy can reach us.”

More smiles and slow, delighted nods.

Von Brandis showed his teeth.

“That’s right, gentlemen. Let’s let the bastard Cubans think they’ve trapped us.” He clasped both hands behind his back.

“We’ll show them just how wrong they were at Walvis Bay.”

Half an hour later, the much-diminished battalion road column moved on, driving west in a cloud of dust.

AUGUST
27-
FORWARD
HEADQUARTERS
,

CUBAN
EXPEDITIONARY
FORCE
,

SWAKOPMUND
, ON
THE
NAMIBIAN
COAST

The Strand Hotel’s restaurant windows looked out on a deceptively peaceful vista-a wide expanse of sandy beach and endless, rolling, white-capped waves. Tables crowded with late-morning diners reinforced the momentary illusion that life in the tiny seaside town was still moving slowly along its placid, everyday track. Only the fact that all of those eating were men in Cuban Army uniforms shattered the illusion.

One man sat eating alone at a table with the best view. Polished stars clustered on his shoulder boards.

Gen. Antonio Vega had taken a calculated risk in flying to Swakopmund.

Two risks, actually, if one included the antiquated An-2 utility plane that had carried him on a low level engine-sputtering flight from

Windhoek to Swakopmund. The real risk, though, was leaving the central fight, the defense of the capital, to oversee the progress of this secondary attack . ”

But just as a well-balanced machine can rotate on a single pivot, the battle for Windhoek would be won or lost out here, at the coast.

Though Swakopmund was technically Namibian territory, when the war started it had been swiftly occupied and garrisoned by a company of South

African Citizen Force reservists. Since then, they’d been content to hold in place and enjoy the light sea breezes while the rest of the
SADF
fought its way through Namibia’s harsh deserts and rugged mountains.

Their easy life had ended the day before when Colonel Pellervo’s armored personnel carriers and T-62 tanks appeared on the horizon-driving fast for the town and the Atlantic coast.

Vega smiled sardonically. According to the reports he’d seen, the

Afrikaner conscripts had fled Swakopmund without firing a shot. A sensible decision, he thought, eyeing one of the two long-gunned tanks left by Colonel Pellervo to protect the Cuban Army’s hold on the former

German colonial town.

After its bloodless victory, Pellervo’s 21st Motor Rifle

Battalion had spent the night resting and refitting for its push south against the operation’s primary objective-Walvis Bay. It was a pause Vega regretted but knew to be necessary. The two-hundred-icilometer road march from Karibib had left the battalion’s officers and men short of sleep, fresh food, and water. More importantly, it had pushed many of their vehicles to the edge of mechanical breakdown. Longdistance travel was always hard on tank treads and engines.

Fortunately, ten hours of rest and frantic repair in a campsite on the south side of Swakopmund had worked miracles on the motor rifle unit’s combat readiness. It had also given Pellervo a chance to secure the town fully. Under his martial law decrees, the black residents who’d welcomed the Cubans as liberators were free to go about their daily business. The surly, suspicious white descendants of Swakopmund’s German colonists weren’t so lucky. They’d been confined to their homes to prevent them from passing information about the Cuban battalion’s movements and strength to the South Africans still holding Walvis Bay. They’d also been warned that anyone caught outside could look forward to a short trial and a speedy execution amid the sand dunes surrounding the town.

Vega and his forward headquarters staff had arrived at dawn and immediately occupied the Strand Hotel, picked because it offered the best food and accommodations available in this small resort town. He was detached enough to appreciate the irony of a Cuban general eating a meal of bratwurst and sauerkraut while fighting a war in Africa.

Finished, he rose from his early lunch. It was past time to get back to the business at hand.

The forward headquarters itself had been set up in one of the hotel’s larger meeting rooms, and Vega was pleased to see it busy but quiet as he walked in. Following his standing orders, only the two sentries by the door saluted and snapped to attention, but almost everyone else nodded in his direction. Generals always had a magnetic effect on those under their command.

Acknowledging his staff’s various greetings, he walked briskly over to the situation map tacked to one wall. It showed both Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, thirty kilometers to the south. A half hour’s ride in a good car, but a full morning’s travel for a motorized battalion deployed for combat.

The two towns sat like islands surrounded by a desert sea. Two-lane highways spanned out north, south, and east, linking them with other towns hundreds of kilometers away. The real sea, the Atlantic Ocean, lay to the west.

Pellervo’s battalion had started for Walvis Bay at dawn, but was only now nearing the South African port. It wasn’t a large city. In fact, it was just a small, ugly town, more famous for its fish processing plant than anything else. But Walvis Bay possessed the only deepwater harbor on the

Namibian coast.

And that made Walvis Bay worth fighting for.

The port had remained in South Africa’s hands when the rest of Namibia gained its independence on a simple technicality. Occupied by the British before World War I, Walvis Bay had been handed over to South Africa directly instead of being included as part of the old League of Nations mandate over the SouthWest Africa Territory. As a result, the 1989 UN agreement that gave the rest of the ex-German colony its freedom from

Pretoria hadn’t covered Walvis Bay’s vital port facilities.

And that is how the West divides up its spoils, and how South Africa keeps its stranglehold on what is supposed to be a sovereign country,

Vega thought, frowning.

A more cheerful thought wiped away his frown. In attacking Walvis Bay, his troops were invading South African territory, undoing some of the harm done to Namibia by the West. And capturing the port would not only deprive Pretoria of a vital naval base and supply center, it would also give Cuba and its socialist allies the facilities they needed to pour in shiploads of heavy tanks and guns, troops, and equipment. The men and material needed to crush South Africa’s imperial ambitions once and for all.

Vega studied the situation map closely. Markers showed Pellervo’s 2 1 st

Motor Rifle approaching the outskirts of Walvis Bay. Other markers depicted the likely defensive positions of the two companies of enemy infantry holding the port.

Vega mused again, calculating the odds. Two companies, dug in, against a reinforced battalion. The South Africans knew the area better, but his air bases were closer. The general smiled. An even match for a strategic goal.

A discreet cough drew his attention to the expectant face of one of his operations officers.

“Yes?”

“Sir, Colonel Pellervo reports receiving some small-arms fire. Probably from enemy outposts. He requests artillery support. ”

Vega shook his head impatiently.

“Tell him to press on. The South African outposts will fall back. The Twentyfirst has to keep moving or the timing of our air strike will be off. ”

He glanced at his air officer, who saw his expression and automatically confirmed that.

“The MiGs are on schedule, Comrade General.
ETA
in ten minutes.”

Vega checked the map one more time. Good. Very good. The battle for Walvis

Bay would open with one hell of an airborne bang.

5TH
MECHANIZED
INFANTRY
Ha
OUTSIDE
WALVIS
BAY

Col. George von Brandis lay prone, hugging the cold, stony ground. Through binoculars, he watched the enemy’s dust cloud approaching.

He hated being outside the cover offered by the port’s houses, aluminum-sided canneries, and entrenchments, but there hadn’t been time to get the battalion inside before first light, and he couldn’t risk being caught unprepared in the open. His vehicles were down to their last few liters of fuel, and the men were exhausted.

The 5th Mechanized had spent the dark, predawn hours finding hides and defilades along the road between Swakopmund and Walvis Bay. The best defensive position lay close to the port itself where a railroad line paralleled the road-its raised embankment offering perfect cover for his infantry, jeep-mounted antitank missiles, and cannon-armed Elands.

Von Brandis adjusted the focus on his binoculars and saw squat shapes emerging from the hazy, yellow dust cloud. The Cubans couldn’t be farther than five kilometers away. Come on, you bastards. Keep coming.

With so little fuel left and only its basic load of ammunition available, his battalion had only one viable option-a devastating short-range attack aimed at the Cuban flank. Hit them hard enough with a surprise attack and those Latin bastards will samba their way back to Luanda, he thought.

And the attack should damn well be a surprise. Two volunteers had stayed behind in Hougaard’s abandoned command Ratel, They were continuing to transmit status reports and requests for aid. His own force had maintained radio silence while speeding westward through the night to minimize the chance of being spotted by enemy air reconnaissance.

Not even the defenders in Walvis Bay knew they were here. He had considered sending in a runner, but two kilometers of open terrain separated his nearest positions from the town. Too far. Whomever he sent would almost certainly be captured or killed.

Von Brandis grinned mirthlessly. The reservists holding Walvis Bay must be feeling a lot like the British soldiers who’d defended Rorke’s Drift against the Zulus a century before-outnumbered and all alone. They will be a happy bunch when we show ourselves, he thought.