Vortex

Bulawayo’s rail yards had never been so crowded. Hundreds of flatcars, passenger cars, and boxcars pulled by dozens of diesel and steam locomotives rattled slowly past the city’s idle meat-processing plants, automobile factories, and textile mills. At precisely timed intervals, train after train rolled out of the main station and headed for neutral

Botswana-clanking southwest at a steady thirty kilometers an hour.

Can’ vas tarpaulins covered the squat, ugly shapes of armored vehicles and artillery pieces mounted on each flatcar,

without doing much to disguise them. Cuban troops jammed every available seat and aisle on every passenger car. Machinegun crews and hand-held-SAM teams occupied sandbagged fighting positions atop boxcars crammed with munitions and other supplies.

Commando teams and reconnaissance units were already in place along

Zimbabwe’s border with Botswana. If necessary, they would use force to secure safe passage for the troop trains ferrying Cuba’s Third Brigade

Tactical Group around onto South Africa’s northwestern flank. Still, fighting shouldn’t prove necessary. Botswana’s tiny army was little more than a glorified police force.

Cuba’s powerful an-no red right hook was on its way.

HEADQUARTERS, CUBAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

Gen. Antonio Vega stood near the main map table in his headquarters tent, listening as movement reports from his three tactical groups crackled over the radio. Junior staff officers stayed busy, constantly updating each column’s position and deployment.

On paper, each tactical group was a brigade-sized formation containing three motorized rifle battalions, a tank battalion, and an artillery battalion. But its attached antiaircraft, signals, and supply troops actually made the formation almost as strong as a small division. As a true “combined arms” unit, each of Vega’s brigades had all the tools of its deadly trade massed in a single, highly mobile striking force. He’d used a battalion-sized tactical group to take Walvis Bay. Now he planned to use three forces, each five times as large, to attack the South African giant itself.

He smiled happily down at the map. More than fifty thousand Cuban and allied troops were on the march, closing steadily on South Africa’s virtually undefended frontiers.

Naturally, all of this activity did not go completely unnoticed.

HEADQUARTERS, SOUTH AFRICAN DIRECTORATE OF

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, PRETORIA

DMI Flash Traffic

Eyes Only

Time: 211012 Nov From: DMI North To: HQ, SA DMI 1. Asset N13 reports seeing Gen. Antonio Vega in Rutenga, Zimbabwe, this morning, approximately 0900 local time, while engaged in surveillance of local military garrison. Asset also reported increased activity, including soldiers in uniforms not familiar to the asset. As described, the soldiers could be from any number of communist or socialist Arab countries.

2. A roll of film taken by the asset will be delivered by special courier no later than 1800 hours, 13 November.

3. Asset has been ordered to continue surveillance.

Maj. Willem Metje stood almost physically blocking his immediate superior’s path as he tried to leave his office.

“Kolonel, I can’t let you take this information to General de Wet. It’s too outlandish. Too impossible to believe!”

“You can’t let me, Majoor?” Col. Magnus Heerden asked scornfully, his voice filled with a mix of utter amazement and outright anger.

“I am the head of this section. Do I have to instruct you in the rank structure of the Defense Forces?”

Metje shook his head stubbornly.

“Majoor, you’re entitled to your opinion. And I would be the first to admit that there is always room for professional differences in intelligence work, but you seem to forget that I command here. Even if your assessment of these new reports is right, which I doubt, our superiors have a right to see them. “

Heerden glanced at the handful of flash messages he’d received only ten minutes earlier.

“Listen to this: Renamo spotters report an armored column moving toward our border with Mozambique. A column containing at least fifty vehicles, including main battle tanks and mobile antiaircraft guns! “

“And this!” Heerden flipped to a new page.

“One of our deep-cover people reports seeing General Vega in Zimbabwe. What the hell’s he doing there on the eve of what’s supposed to be a big offensive in Namibia?”

He shook his head.

“I tell you, Willem, these reports can only mean one thing. Castro’s planning a big push all right, but along our borders with

Mozambique and Zimbabwenot in Namibia. And this attack is imminent.”

-Kolonel … sir. ” Metje added the last word for emphasis.

“The

President and General de Wet have already decided that Cuba’s offensive will be launched in the near future-in Namibia. Our staff’s Official

Estimate predicts a divisional attack on one or two axes near Windhoek, with diversionary attacks from Walvis Bay and possibly elsewhere. ” He nodded contemptuously toward the papers in Heerden’s hand.

“Those reports obviously refer to the enemy’s diversionary attacks. “