Vortex (81 page)

The South African Defense Force had never worried much about the threat posed by chemical weapons. Faced with limited funds and a severely limited threat, they’d concentrated on other areas. Most of the SADF’s real-world experience with chemicals involved the ubiquitous CS, or tear gas. Line troops were only trained to use gas masks, and commandos and other defenders weren’t issued any protection at all.

The men defending Potgietersrus never had time to complain.

When the first shells burst over their trenches and foxholes, those few regulars who still carried them quickly donned their gas masks. But by the time they turned to face the oncoming enemy, the sarin was already killing them.

A nerve agent works by interfering with the nervous system, causing signals to be blocked, amplified, and generally scrambled. In seconds, hundreds of men were dying-staggering around wildly in their foxholes and tearing, at their masks in a futile effort to breathe.

The brigade died in a five-minute bombardment.

Boerson knew what was happening, but he couldn’t control the panic flooding over him as he saw his death approaching. He ran inside, searching frantically for a room whose windows hadn’t been shattered by the bombardment. The mist finally found him crouched in the cellar, trying to seal a leaky door with tape.

He suddenly felt dizzy, and his skin was instantly covered by a thick sheen of sweat. He felt sick to his stomach. His hands were already growing heavier as he struggled with the roll of tape. Then they took on a life of their own, and he fell, legs and arms twitching, onto the floor. His lungs were bursting. He had to breathe. He needed air. Clean air. The South African brigadier vomited onto the floor.

Random bursts of pain surged through him as his synapses fired uncontrollably, mixing with sensations of heat, cold, and motion. Every sensor his body had was going wild.

Piet Boerson had just enough coordination left to roll over. With one last desperate gesture, he grabbed for the tape he’d dropped, but then the sarin reached his brain cells. He flickered mercifully into unconsciousness. A few seconds later his brain stopped telling his heart to beat. From beginning to end, he had taken less than thirty seconds to die.

PEOPLE’S
GUARD
MOTOR
RIFLE
BATTALION

Col. Hassan Mahmoud stood high in the commander’s hatch of his armored personnel carrier-calculating the distance separating his battalion from the outer South African defenses. One thousand meters, perhaps. It was time to deploy.

He lifted his radio mike.

“All units. Form line. Continue the advance.

”

Jubilant acknowledgements flooded into his earphones. Mahmoud scowled.

Young idiots. They were acting as though this were some kind of peacetime joyride.

Luckily, there wasn’t much left out there to oppose them. The defending fire had been light, very light. These peasants might actually be able to execute the maneuver, he thought.

The gas appeared to be working. In this heat it would only be effective for another ten minutes. After that, it would begin breaking down-decomposing into harmless compounds.

Other nerve gases, such as Soman, or GD, would have lasted for days-true “persistent” agents. Vega had chosen sarin precisely because it was “nonpersistent.” With proper care, Mahmoud’s battalion ought to be able to seize its objectives without suffering any self-inflicted losses.

The Libyan colonel was optimistic. The Afrikaners appeared to have been taken completely by surprise. Even the wind favored them, a light breeze from behind and to his left that should push the poisonous mist completely clear of his men.

POTGIETERSRUS

The wind blew from the northeast, moving at between ten and fifteen kilometers an hour. In the fifteen minutes that the nerve gas remained effective, it drifted a little over three kilometers-mixing and fanning out over Potgietersrus in a deadly cloud.

Most of the city’s remaining white population had taken refuge in improvised bomb shelters when they heard the Cuban barrage echoing down the mountain. A sizable fraction did not bother, however. Three days of living within earshot of constant fighting had made war seem almost routine.

People outside-especially those working or breathing hard-were immediately affected. And the residents of the black township, living in windowless shacks, might just as well have been outside. There were no bomb shelters for them.

The gas was starting to break down, though, so it was

somewhat less lethal. The very young and very old were vulnerable, as was anyone with respiratory trouble-a common ailment among miners. And even when weakened, sarin can still paralyze and blind its victims. Once destroyed, nerve tissue does not heal.

Six-year-old Alice Naxula lived in a one-room hut with her mother, grandmother, and uncle. A typical black child in the townships, she was about to go out, to play and to forage for food. Wartime chaos had emptied store shelves, so she and her mother had to split up and hunt in the city, while her uncle worked in the mine and her grandmother sat quietly in the shack’s one chair, remembering.

Her uncle was already awake, ready to catch the six-o’clock bus to the mine. They all rose early to see him off each day, sharing the leftover porridge from last night’s dinner. In the darkness, none of them saw the gas seeping in through their tattered, rusting walls and a blanket-draped doorway. Even in the daylight, it was spread so thin as to be invisible, but still lethal.

The first sign of trouble came when her grandmother started coughing uncontrollably. She had bronchitis, common among the old, brought on from scores of winters spent living in unheated shacks. Suddenly, the old woman howled once in agony and threw herself out of the chair. She landed on the dirt floor in a writhing, twitching heap.

Alice’s own eyes were stinging. Her mother started to scream something, pointing at her grandmother. With an instinct born from years of police sweeps, the little girl dove under a pile of bedding in one corner and froze, lying motionless. Her mother had taught her this years ago, so that the adults could flee from the township police when they made one of their sporadic sweeps. Alice looked on the pile of patched bedding as a place of refuge.

She waited in terror, hearing screams and thumps all around, but she knew she would be safe. The rags smelled, and the air was stifling, but the police had never found her in here.

The screams stopped, and she wanted to get up and see what had happened, but Alice remembered her mother’s instructions. There was a silly song about a monkey and a rhinoceros that she was supposed to sing three times, and so she sang it to herself, always enjoying the part where the monkey tricked the rhino.

Then she finished and scrambled out from her hiding place, shaking off the rags and blankets.

Her mother lay on the floor, next to her grandmother and uncle. Shaking her only elicited a faint moan. Alice ran for water. The police had whipped her mother once during a raid-leaving her bruised and bloody. And her uncle had told her to fetch water. That had helped.

She was halfway to the pump when she heard her mother screaming, “I cannot see. I cannot see!”

Alice ran back and tried to rouse her uncle or grandmother to help her, but they were both dead. She knew how to check, and she answered her mother’s questions about them. Neither had any wounds, but their staring, horrified expressions showed that they’d died in agony.

“Momma, what should I do?”

There was no answer.

Several thousand South African civilians-blacks and whites alike-lay dead or wandered maimed through Potgietersrus.

NOVEMBER
25-
HEADQUARTERS
,
CUBAN

EXPEDITIONARY
FORCE
,
PIETERSBURG

Jonathan Sasolo served as Gen. Antonio Vega’s liaison with the African

National Congress. Classified by South Africa’s laws as “mixed race,” he was a wide man, with big hands and a loud voice. He held the rank of major in the ANC’s military arm, Umkhonto we Sizwe, and theoretically was accorded that rank here at headquarters. Vega’s staff hadn’t treated him with enough respect, though-an injustice that only served to amplify his anger and outrage.

“Is this how you liberate us? Kill half of our people and let the rest starve?”

Vega was trying to be diplomatic, and both Suarez and Vasquez were present to lend their arguments as well.

“Comrade Sasolo, please understand. We had no control over the wind.

”

“But you knew its direction and strength. And you ignored the very predictable results of a nerve gas barrage!” Sasolo leaned over Vega’s desk, yelling at him in a way that left his staff aghast.

“More than a thousand dead, Vega, and thousands more maimed. There are so many dead that we haven’t yet had time to count them. What kind of a victory is this?”

“An important one,” Vega retorted.

“Our forces, which include your men,

I might add, lost only fourteen dead and thirty-seven wounded while annihilating an entire enemy brigade. ”

Vasquez nodded.

“Think of the shock in Pretoria, Comrade Major. Think of how much closer this brings us to victory.”

Sasolo scowled angrily.

“Victory? I tell you, man, there will be far fewer people to celebrate this victory of yours if you continue like this. Especially if your troops confiscate every scrap of food in the city! What are my people supposed to live on?”

“We only took food from stores in the white areas, Major.” Suarez’s tone was calm.

“All the blery food is in the white districts, you bastard! There is no food anywhere else.”

Vega answered him this time, clearly losing patience.

“The supply echelon will bring up more food soon, comrade. Our own logistics have been snarled by air raids and commando attacks. Fuel and ammunition have first priority anyway. That’s why we had to collect food in the first place.”

“Letting my people starve.”

Vega’s tone began to harden.

“Major, I am concerned only with the rapid, efficient advance of my forces. My men are fighting and dying to liberate your people from this fascist regime. I am sorry about the deaths here. Many others will no doubt die before we are done. But their deaths will not be in vain.”

Sasolo stood his ground.

“Pretty speeches won’t change the masses’ minds,

Vega. They’ve seen the Boers, and now they’ve seen you. They say, “Where is the differenceT ” The
ANC
major stepped back from the desk.

“I have been discussing this matter with our executive committee.”

Vega nodded. Vasquez had told him of several coded communications passing back and forth between
ANC
headquarters in Lusaka and Sasolo-codes that the Cubans hadn’t been able to break.

The major continued, “I now believe that we should withdraw from this alliance. That we must chart our own course for the liberation of South

Africa. You are using us… just as the Soviets once used you.”

Vasquez went to the door.

“That’s enough, Major.”

Sasolo turned to see two Cuban soldiers, rifles pointed at him.

Vega pointed to the
ANC
guerrilla.

“Arrest him.”

Sasolo’s astonished protests quickly faded away as they grabbed him and hustled him out of the room.

Vasquez shook his head.

“He’s not alone, Comrade General. Many of the
ANC
troops are grumbling. We may have trouble with them over this matter.”

“I know, Vasquez, I’ve read the reports, too.” Vega sighed.

“Weaklings.

They can’t see the need for sacrifice.” He shook his head.

“True socialism does not come easily. It must be earned with blood and hard work.”

The general stood up and looked over at Suarez.

“Very well, Comrade

Colonel. Disarm and detain any group of
ANC
guerrillas you think may be disloyal.”

His face darkened.

“I will not tolerate mutinies among my forces. Not when we stand on the threshold of victory. Dismissed. ”

He stood brooding, staring out the window as his officers filed out the door. Sasolo’s cowardice and treason left a bitter taste in his mouth.

ABOARD
USS
MOUNT
WHITNEY
,
BETWEEN

ASCENSION
ISLAND
AND
CAPE
TOWN

Long columns of gray-painted ships steamed through the night at high speed, bow waves and trailing wakes gleaming pale blue in the dark. Aboard the ships, thousands of American and British Marines ate or slept or played cards. And they talked. They talked about sports and women and anything at all except South Africa.

Their officers weren’t so fortunate.

“General Craig?” The orderly softly called him away from a knot of officers in the command center. It was hard to get his attention in the bustle and noise of the crowded compartment, but it was considered rude to shout at a lieutenant general.

Finally, Craig turned and nodded to the corporal, who approached and handed him a single sheet of paper. The enlisted man saluted and left as

Craig absentmindedly returned his salute, reading the message while his staff waited expectantly.

Craig’s posture sagged a little, but he recovered quickly. He turned to face Brig. Gen. Clayton Maller. As his J-3, Maller was in charge of operations for the invasion force.

“Clay, revise the training schedule.

I want at least one full day spent on chemical warfare training. Drills, protective suits, the works.”

Maller whistled softly.

“You mean .

“Yeah. The Cubans gassed a town north of Pretoria that was putting up a stiff fight. The message doesn’t say what they used, but total casualties are several thousand. Hit the civilians pretty hard, according to our intel.”

“Shit.” Maller sat down heavily, letting out his breath in a whoosh.