Vortex

“One of the morons upstairs said there were intruders in the building. Then he hung up before I could ask him anything! And now they’re not even bothering to answer their blery phone.”

“Should we tell the President?”

The captain snorted.

“Are you crazy, man? Interrupt a war briefing just because some door guard might be spooked by the sight of a kaffir janitor?” He waved a hand at their magazines, water cooler, and upholstered furniture.

“Maybe you want to go fight Cubans, but I know a plush assignment when see one.

“I-et’s find out what is going on before we look like fools. Take Jaap and Dirk. It’ll do them some good to get off their fat behinds for a change. You go, too, and don’t take all day doing it.”

His subordinate chuckled and rose to his feet, buckling on a pistol holster over a slight paunch. He was getting a little bit heavyset. Maybe they’d take the stairs for a change….

QUANTUM STRIKE FORCE

Pryce! I I

O’Connell’s British XO stopped beside him.

“Here, Colonel. “

“They know we’re coming. Put eight men on the door here. The rest with me!”

The SAS captain nodded and whirled away, shouting for two of his sergeants.

“Jenkins! McRae!”

O’Connell paused long enough to holster his silenced pistol and unsling the R4 dangling from his shoulder. Firepower was more important than stealth now. He ran down the hall, heading for the staircase marked on Coetzee’s hand-sketched map. Rangers and SAS men followed on the double.

Behind him, squads and fire teams peeled off as they ran past connecting corridors and other staircases-setting up blocking positions to bottle up the Afrikaner bureaucrats and security guards in this wing. By the time he reached the right set of stairs going down, he had twenty men left.

O’Connell skidded to a stop on the marble floor.

“Grenade. “

Kruger passed him a fragmentation grenade from one of the SAS troopers.

Automatic rifle fire echoed down the hall from behind them. The

Afrikaners were starting to wake up.

He took a quick look down the stairs. Not good. About fifteen stairs down to a landing and a sharp bend to the right. Terrific. A blind corner.

O’Connell took a quick, deep breath, let it out, and started down the stairs slowly, moving one step at a time. He stayed close to the right wall. Two men dropped prone at the top of the staircase, ready to nail anybody coming around the bend.

Sweat trickled into his eyes despite the cooler air inside. Every sense he had seemed fine-tuned beyond normal human perception. He could hear every man behind him breathing heavily. He could see the tiniest strands of color running through the marble stairs ahead. He could even smell the coppery scent of the blood he’d tracked through back at the doors. Some inner core of dry humor and common sense told him that maybe he should have let one of the others go first.

Voices drifted up the stairwell from around the bend. Christ! O’Connell froze where he was and yanked the pin out of the grenade…. The Brandwag lieutenant stopped at the bottom of the stairs. What was that sound echoing down from upstairs. Gunfire? A prolonged rattling burst from somewhere above them transformed uncertainty to certainty. He turned to yell a warning back to the guardroom.

Something clattered and bounced down the stairs, rolling

right under his feet. The overweight Afrikaner looked down just as the grenade exploded.

“Go! Go! Go!” As the echoes faded, O’Connell took the stairs two at a time, charging through a fog of drifting, acrid smoke. Contorted shapes writhed on the floor-men who’d been scythed down by the fragments from his grenade. Rangers and SAS men passed him and burst out into the corridor leading to the State Security Council Chamber.

Assault rifles chattered from somewhere farther down the corridor. Stray rounds flashed and sparked off the walls and floor-whining down the hallway. Several Allied soldiers spun round and fell. Others advanced, firing back from the hip.

“Come on!” O’Connell ran forward toward the door just a few meters away.

He saw a wounded brown shirt fumbling for his weapon and shot him. None of the other Afrikaner guards heaped on the floor were still moving.

STATE SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER

Trapped inside the soundproofed Council Chamber, Gen. Adriaan de Wet stood next to Karl Vorster, listening in appalled silence as the tall, grim-faced man gloated again over his plans to destroy his own nation’s wealth for centuries to come. This is not war, he thought, this is raw madness.

“Seventy percent… can you believe that, General? Seventy percent of our remaining resources are already prepared for demolition.” Vorster laughed harshly as he leaned over the map, tracing out the largest concentrations of mines and mining facilities.

“The rest will be wired before these bastard Uitlanders can come within a day’s march of the Witwatersrand. “

South Africa’s President nodded toward the secure phone in the corner.