Vortex

As the Brandwag officer turned around, O’Connell frowned. He didn’t speak

Afrikaans but he could recognize danger when he saw it. He watched the man walk toward the guardhouse and its phone through narrowed eyes.

“Sergeant. “

“Ready.” The big Ranger bent over, reaching for something on the Land

Rover’s floorboards.

“Now.” O’Connell’s silenced 9mm pistol “popped” three times,

The Brandwag officer staggered and then fell facedown on the pavement, hit in midstride. Bright red stains spread quickly across the back of his tunic.

In the same moment, Sergeant Nowak reared upright and opened fire on the rest of the startled guards. His silenced Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun stuttered briefly and then stopped. Thirty rounds tore paint and wood off the barricade and slammed into the five Afrikaners. They toppled over, dead before they hit the street and sidewalk.

Kruger was already out of the Land Rover, sprinting forward to open the barricade. Other men jumped down out of the lead truck and began hauling bodies into the flower gardens surrounding the checkpoint. In seconds, only a few blood stains were left on the road-drying fast in the hot sun.

“Do we post any guards here?” The South African kommandant hopped back into the vehicle.

“No.” O’Connell pulled the partially used clip out of his pistol and snapped another home.

“They’d never make it out with the rest of us. We go in together.”

He leaned forward and tapped their driver on the shoulder.

“Okay, let’s get this done.”

They roared up the road toward the red-roofed Union Buildings.

None of their briefings or maps had done much to convey the sheer size of the complex. With its three-story-high, semicircular colonnade added in, the whole massive pile of rock and marble stretched more than seven hundred and fifty feet on its long side. Clearing the internal maze of offices and corridors would have required a full battalion of commandos-not just ninety men. Fortunately, the Allied raiding party had been given both a more limited objective and very detailed information.

O’Connell hopped out of the Land Rover while it was still slowing and ran up the steps leading to the building’s east wing entrance. Kruger and

Nowak followed, weapons out and ready. The rest of their troops were scrambling down out of their trucks and jeeps as they pulled up. From here on, speed was life.

Breathing heavily, O’Connell reached the top of the steps and kept on going-heading for a pair of wood-and-glass double doors behind a wide portico. He drew his pistol as he ran. Booted feet clattered up the steps behind him.

A Brandwag officer wearing major’s insignia and carrying a clipboard pushed through one of the doors, still talking to someone inside. He looked up in astonishment.

“What in God’sO’Connell shot him twice and jumped over the body. The door slammed shut in his face and he bounced off it with a sore shoulder. Sergeant Nowak reached the entrance in the next second and rammed into it with teeth-rattling force. The big man stepped back, shaking off the impact Three close-spaced shots fired from inside threw the Ranger noncom back in a spray of blood and shattered bone. Pieces of broken glass and splintered wood cascaded across O’Connell.

“Back!

He threw himself to one side as Kruger opened fire systematically emptying his assault rifle’s magazine in a long, tearing burst through both doors.

Agonized screams rose above the gunfire and then faded.

O’Connell, Kruger, and half a dozen Rangers and SAS troopers shoved the broken, bullet-riddled doors open and poured through into a marble-floored entrance hall. Several bodies sprawled in an untidy heap right behind the doorsBrandwag and Army guards who’d been caught by the

South African kommandant’s burst. More men flooded in from outside.

O’Connell caught a glimpse of movement down a side corridor and whirled around. One of the Brandwag sentries was still very much alive. The man was inside an antique telephone cabinet-the kind with wood-paneled walls and a light that came on whenever the soundproofed sliding door was closed. The light was on now, and O’Connell could see the Afrikaner yelling energetically into a phone.

Without time for conscious thought, the Ranger colonel brought his pistol up, aimed, and fired. The glass door shattered and the brown shirt fell against the wall-mounted telephone before sliding down to the floor. The receiver itself fell out of the dead man’s hand and swung back and forth in a slowly diminishing arc.

Damn. So much for surprise.

MAIN GUARDROOM, OUTSIDE THE STATE SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER

The Brandwag captain plucked the phone away from his ear. An expression of disgust warred with one of puzzled concern and won.

“Idiot.”

“Something wrong?” His closest subordinate looked up from the newspaper he was reading.

“I doubt it.” The captain shrugged.

“Well, maybe.” He chewed his lower lip for several seconds.