Vortex

It clanged open before he got there, and the South African stared in surprise at the figure outlined against the night sky. Odd, that didn’t look like any uniform he’d ever seen before….

Three M16 rounds threw the radar operator back against his equipment in a spray of blood and torn flesh.

Outside the hatch, the Ranger sergeant lowered his rifle and pulled the pin on a fragmentation grenade. He tossed the grenade in on top of the dead man and then slammed the hatch shut.

Whummp! The Cactus battery command vehicle rocked slightly and then sat silent-its delicate electronics smashed by bullets and grenade fragments.

The radar dish on top stopped spinning.

Bent low, the sergeant sprinted across a stretch of open lawn near

Pelindaba’s main science lab. Rifle rounds whip cracked over his head-fired at long range from a bunker on the compound’s northern perimeter. He dove for cover behind a row of young saplings planted as shade trees. Leaves clipped off by stray bullets drifted down on the five men waiting there for him. Two carried a Carl Gustav M3 84mm recoilless rifle.

“You get ‘em?”

” Yep. ” The Carl Gustav gunner patted his weapon affectionately.

“Hammered ‘em real good.”

The sergeant lifted his head an inch or two, risking a quick look. The three Cactus SAM launch vehicles were cloaked in flame and smoke. As he watched, one of the burning launchers blew up in a blinding flash of orange light. Must’ve been a missile cook-off, the sergeant thought.

Time to report in. He squirmed around and found his radioman.

“Rover One

One, this is Bravo Two Four. Diablo One, Two, Three, and Diablo Dish are history.”

Pelindaba’s air defenses were down.

B COMPANY BARRACKS, 61 ST TRANSVAAL RIFLES

The red, flickering glow of burning buildings and vehicles dimly lit a scene of mass confusion inside the barracks building Half-dressed South African soldiers scrambled frantically to put on protective gear they’d only been issued the day before. Others, faster or better trained, were already suited up and trying to ready their weapons with clumsy, gloved hands. Lieutenants and sergeants roved through the crowd, trying to sort their squads and platoons into some sort of order before leading them outside and into battle.

Captain van Daalen, the battalion adjutant, felt more like a spaceman than a soldier in his chemical protection suit. The suit itself was hot and difficult to move in, and the gas mask limited both his vision and his hearing. He scowled. Going into combat while practically deaf and blind didn’t strike him as a particularly sane act, but the thought of nerve gas made him check the seals.

He crouched by an open window, trying to spot a reasonably safe route to the battalion command bunker. He wasn’t having much luck. The bunker lay more than two hundred and fifty meters away across a flat, open field.

Perhaps it would be more sensible to carry out his duties from the barracks, van Daalen thought. After all, there wasn’t much point in dying in a quixotic and suicidal dash through machinegun fire.

Movement outside caught his eye. Soldiers, silhouetted against a burning

SAM launcher, were fanning out into a long line less than fifty meters away. As each man reached his place, he dropped prone facing the barracks.

Van Daalen rose. That was damned strange. It was almost as though those troops were planning to attack…

“Let the bastards have it! Fire! Fire! Fire!” The shout from outside echoed above the staccato rattle of gunfire and the crash of explosions all across Pelindaba.

Van Daalen froze in horror. That shout had been in English, not

Afrikaans. He started to turn…

Half a dozen rockets lanced out from the line of enemy troops, tore through thin wood walls, and exploded inside spraying fragments and wood splinters through the tightly packed South African soldiers. Machinegun and M16 fire scythed into the building right behind the rockets, punching through from end to end. Dead or wounded men were thrown

everywhere-tossed across bloodstained bunks or knocked into writhing heaps on top of one another.

Capt. Edouard van Daalen clutched at the jagged edges of what had once been a window frame in a vain effort to stay standing. Then his knees buckled and he slid slowly to the floor, pawing feebly at the row of ragged, wet holes torn in his chemical protection suit.

The Americans outside kept shooting.

HEADQUARTERS COMPANY, 1/75TH RANGERS

Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell listened with growing satisfaction to the reports flooding in from units around the compound. The enemy’s Cactus SAM battery permanently out of action. Barracks after barracks reported on fire or collapsed by salvos of light antitank rockets, HE rounds from recoilless rifles, and concentrated small-arms fire. A 120mm mortar position overrun at bayonet point by survivors from Bravo Company’s I st

Platoon. Brave Fortune was finally starting to go according to plan.