Vortex

The room filled with a buzz of conversation, and a waiting aide laid a map overlay on the ready room’s overhead projector. The map showed a series of red lines converging on Pretoria. Most emanated from a tiny dot marking the Vinson’s position, but one line slanted in across all of southern Africa-coming east out of the Atlantic. A tag identified it as the flight path of Air Force transports carrying the two Ranger battalions and elements of the 160th Aviation Regiment.

Brave Fortune was just thirty-four hours away.

HEADQUARTERS BUNKER, 61 ST TRANSVAAL RIFLES, PELINDABA RESEARCH

COMPLEX

Col. Frans Peiper stood still for a moment, watching the rise and fall of hundreds of picks and shovels as his troops worked frantically to complete their fortifications.

Since its designation as a nuclear research center and weapons storage site, Pelindaba had been surrounded by a barbed wire fence and military guard posts Now it more closely resembled a fortress. Thirty meters inside the barbed wire, slit trenches now circled the entire compound, connecting an array of twenty-two concrete bunkers. Each bunker was large enough to shelter a reinforced rifle squad and sturdy enough to withstand heavy mortar fire. Minefields were being laid on the slopes outside the wire to channel attacking ANC guerrillas or Cuban commandos and armored vehicles into previously selected kill zones for the battalion’s recoilless rifles, machine guns, and mortars. Deadly looking armored

fighting vehicles prowled outside the wire-Rookiats of the Pretoria Light

Horse hunting for enemy infiltrators.

At the eastern end of the compound, more barbed wire surrounded a group of five camouflaged mounds-the nuclear weapons storage bunkers that were his main responsibility. A separate slit trench ran from north to south just west of the weapons bunkers, further isolating the storage site from the rest of the Pelindaba complex. Beyond the trench, firing pits for 120mm and 60mm mortars dotted a patch of open ground stretching west to the rock gardens, shade trees, and buildings of the research center.

Shoulder-high earth and sandbag walls provided some protection for the four Cactus SAM vehicles parked in and among the rock gardens.

“Our chemical protection gear is arriving, Colonel.”

Peiper turned. His adjutant, Captain van Daalen, pointed to a line of five-ton trucks pulling up to the peacetime battalion-headquarters building.

“Excellent, Captain. Have each company draw its gear as it comes off work detail. And inform all commanders that I plan to hold our first gas-attack drill early this evening.”

Van Daalen saluted and hurried away.

Peiper watched him go, knowing that the order wouldn’t be popular with his men. The gas mask, hood, gauntlets, suit, and boots needed to fully protect a man against attack by poison gas or nerve agents were cumbersome, clumsy, and confining. Even worse, they trapped body heat and quickly became unbearably hot even in cool weather-let alone on a warm spring evening.

He scowled. His soldiers’ complaints and comfort were completely unimportant. In fact, only one thing mattered: fending off the inevitable

Cuban attempt to destroy or seize South Africa’s nuclear stockpile.

Peiper turned on his heel and headed back toward the cool, dimly lit recesses of his command bunker. The Cuban attack could come at almost any time; certainly within days, possibly even within hours. But Castro’s minions were bound to unleash a choking, burning deluge of chemical weapons first weapons against which his troops were now protected.

The Afrikaner colonel smiled wolfishly. When the communists and their kaffir allies came charging in, expecting to find most of his men dead or disabled, they’d be met instead by a hail of small-arms and artillery fire. It would be an easy victory.

He trotted down the steps into his bunker with that cold, cruel smile still on his lips.

NOVEMBER 28-WDEAWAKE AIRFIELD, ASCENSION ISLAND

Nearly one thousand men crowded around the low raised platform. Green camouflage paint robbed each man’s face of its individuality, but did nothing to cloak the air of grim expectation permeating the entire hangar.

Each Ranger stood waiting in absolute silence, together with his friends and comrades and yet strangely alone.

Up on the platform, Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell caught a glimpse of movement near the hangar doors. Gener was coming back from the communications center. O’Connell straightened up, feeling the first trickle of cold sweat under his arms. This was it.

“Ah-tench-hut!”

The Rangers snapped to rigid attention as their colonel threaded his way through them and bounded onto the platform.

Gener nodded once to O’Connell, his eyes alight with excitement. Then he turned to face the waiting battalions.

“At ease!”

A tiny, almost invisible, wave of relaxation rippled through the hangar.

The colonel pulled a single sheet of thin paper out of a pocket and held it up so that every man could see it.

“This signal came in from