Vortex

His eyes followed the blips as they moved blinking toward the top of his radar scope. His outstretched finger slid away from the fire button next to his console. It looked as though the South Africans weren’t going to test the accuracy of his missiles-not tonight at any rate.

Jimenez had never seen a “lob-toss” delivery on his scope before. He’d never get another chance.

Too small to be picked up by radar, the South African bomb arched up to twelve thousand meters before descending in a gentle curve across the ten kilometers between its release point and target.

After fierce debate, Pretoria’s mission planners had picked the Cuban T-62 tank battalion as their primary target. Ordinarily, two battalion strong points could have been included in the bomb’s inner kill zone, but the tanks represented most of the Third Brigade Tactical Group’s combat power. The planners were willing to accept “minimal” damage to the rear of the column in order to guarantee destruction of the Cuban armor.

As the weapon fell earthward, a pressure fuse sensed its passage through the one-thousand-meter mark and closed a switch. Thousandths of a second later, it ceased to be.

Counting both vertical and horizontal distance, the bomb had traveled almost sixteen kilometers in its arc, totally unguided. While Heersfeld’s delivery had been within norms, high-altitude winds and pressures had changed the tiniest bit since the last reading. As a result, South Africa’s twenty kiloton atomic bomb fell slightly off target-three hundred meters long and to the right.

Fused for airburst, it detonated over and just outside the northwest edge of the tank battalion’s laager. A boiling, white-hot fireball, more than two hundred meters in diameter, speared through the night-turning darkness into flickering, manmade day for several deadly seconds.

Anyone who could see it clearly died instantly. Heat and radiation raced outward from the detonation point at the speed of light, and troops who weren’t under some sort of cover suffered second-degree burns, their skin blistered and reddened wherever they’d faced the fireball.

Inside five hundred meters from the fireball, though, men suffered third-degree burns as their clothing and hair smoked and then caught fire in the intense, blood-boiling heat. Half a second later, a roaring pressure wave arrived, ending their agony. The shock wave crushed lungs, picked men up bodily, and tossed them through the air. Simply being shielded from the radiant heat and radiation couldn’t save the Cuban tank crews. Most struck a hard object at high speed and died instantly.

The tanks themselves were “hard” targets, able to resist massive overpressures before their armored bodies were broken, but the intense heat ignited external fuel drums, paint, and in many cases, even the ammunition stored inside. Multiple blasts shattered armored vehicles that were already on fire. Any that were broadside to the blast were scooped up by the wall of dust, gases, and debris and literally rolled and tumbled along the ground.

Sergeant Jimenez’s SAM carrier sat near the head of the brigade column, only five hundred meters from ground zero. His vehicle was much easier to kill than a tank.

First, the electromagnetic pulse spreading outward with the bomb’s heat and radiation knocked the launcher’s electronics out-showering Jimenez, the lieutenant, and the rest of his crew with sparks. At the same time, its

SA-8 missiles started cooking off in their launch tubes-set off by the intense heat. But that took several tenths of a second, and by the time the missiles began exploding the pressure wave arrived.

The shock wave tore the fragile radars and missile launcher right off the vehicle’s chassis and then crushed the flimsy steel body with the men still inside. Jimenez and the others were already dead.

The shock wave kept going-expanding outward in an ever-widening, ever-deadly circle.

The brigade tactical group’s T-62 tanks were low, squat,

heavily armored targets, but its BTR-60 personnel carriers were actually designed to float and had much more surface area. The nearest infantry battalion, within a thousand meters of the fireball, had its troop carriers pulverized and flung like shattered toys through the air. Anyone who’d gained momentary shelter from the blast inside the vehicles died quickly.

The next battalion was only five hundred meters farther back, but that was far enough to halve the force of the shock wave. A few heavy engineering vehicles survived intact, but its boxy personnel carriers and unprotected infantrymen still suffered crippling losses.

Next came the Cuban artillery, three batteries of 122mm self-propelled guns. At this distance, the blast flipped over howitzers, command vehicles, and ammo carriers that were facing the wrong way. Sights and other delicate instruments were stripped off or smashed. It also scattered the ammunition of the one battery deployed and ready to fire.

Shells stacked near the guns began exploding.