Vortex

Silhouetted against the rising sun, Lt. Gen. Jerry Craig leaned over the rail, staring through binoculars at the crowded ships steaming slowly to either side. Helicopters and other aircraft were already spooling up, engines howling across the water. A strong offshore breeze tugged at his jacket, whining through the Mount Whitney’s massive arrays of radio antennas and satellite dishes.

By rights he knew he should be down in the ship’s comfortable, computer-display-lit Fleet Command Center. But he couldn’t resist the chance to take one last look at the forces under his command.

“Sir?”

Craig turned to find a Navy lieutenant commander standing behind him.

“Yes, Commander?”

“General Skiles wanted me to tell you we’ve gotten word from the Vinson.

Our initial air strikes are complete.” The Navy officer’s face broke into a sudden smile.

“We pounded the hell out of ‘em, sir.”

Craig nodded.

“Good.” He headed for the ladders leading down to the command center.

“Signal all ships. Land the landing force.

USS SAIPAN

Columns of heavily armed Marines were still climbing aboard their waiting planes when the order came to launch. Barely heard over the howling rotors and jet engines, cursing sergeants and officers of all

ranks hurried the camouflaged soldiers aboard. Men piled into seven Ospreys at the run. And as their hatches slammed shut, the heavily loaded troop carriers skittered forward and off the deck, their rotors straining to pull them skyward.

Even as the first wave of aircraft lifted off, the Saipan’s elevators brought up another set, which taxied into takeoff position. With well-practiced movements, more men emerged from the island and in snaking columns trotted up to their assigned aircraft just as they reached position.

The evolution was being repeated on the USS Wasp and Inchon. Clouds of fighter and attack aircraft covered them as twenty-one Ospreys orbited, assembling, then turned and headed inland.

Skimming the wavetops at almost three hundred knots, the formation hurtled toward the smoke-shrouded beach. Troops in the cargo compartment sat strapped in, facing each other on crash-proof seats, but they still had to hang on as the Ospreys plowed through the bumpy, low-altitude air.

The Osprey pilots, most of them converted over from the old Sea Knights helicopters, looked out to either side, gratified to see loaded attack aircraft and armed fighters pacing them.

When riding shotgun, the “fast movers” normally looped over and around helicopter troop carriers, but the Ospreys were fast enough to keep up with a cruising jet. That made for tighter control, better support, and a warm, fuzzy feeling for the Osprey drivers. Higher airspeed also meant the vulnerable troop carriers were exposed to enemy flak for a much shorter time.

In fifteen minutes, five of them spent assembling, the assault formation was over the Louis Botha International Airport. Over, in this case, was a relative term, since the Ospreys came in low and hot-screaming in no more than a hundred and fifty feet off the ground.

As their wings tilted upward to vertical flight mode, the Ospreys bucked and shuddered-dumping speed. In less than a minute, three-hundred-knot turboprop planes became fifty knot helicopters, gently settling down on the runways and taxiways and any other paved areas. The second their gear touched down, rear ramps dropped and Marines poured out onto the airfield.

They fanned out across the tarmac in an almost eerie silence broken only by whining rotors, shouted commands, and crackling flames. Nobody was shooting at them.

The airport’s antiaircraft batteries and ground defenses had been thoroughly pasted. A-6E Intruders dropping dozens of five-hundred-pound bombs had turned them into crater-rid died smoking piles of torn sandbags and mangled metal. Now orbiting AH-I Sea Cobras and Harriers waited for any sign of serious opposition, but columns of thick black smoke billowing into the air were the only signs of movement.

Despite the terrific aerial pounding it had taken, however, Louis Botha’s runways were still intact. The Allied invasion force had uses for them.

Empty now, the Ospreys lifted off, buzzing low over abandoned factory buildings and warehouses as they headed back to the formation, fifty miles distant, to pick up the second wave.

The freight-train roar of heavy artillery broke the silence. Shells began bursting among the Marines scattering across the open tarmac-exploding in huge fountains of earth and flame. Three batteries of Afrikaner guns pounded the airport mercilessly, killing American Marines with every carefully directed salvo.

USS MOUNT WWITNEY

Craig stared at the computer-generated map, wishing it were a wide-screen

TV. He wanted to see what was going on. Trouble was, if he left the Mount

Whitney, he wouldn’t be able to do his job. The ship carried the sophisticated communications and computer systems he needed to control all his forces-those already onshore and those still waiting to hit the beach.