Vortex

Mortar rounds burst in front of the charging tanks-spraying tendrils of gray-white smoke high into the air. Created by a chemical reaction in each mortar shell, the smoke was working-blown by a light northwesterly breeze toward the advancing tank company, reducing the effectiveness of their fire.

Karumph! A mortar explosion nearby reminded him that they were still in trouble, and he mentally urged D Squadron onward. The battalion needed their firepower.

The enemy tanks were still shooting as they drew nearer, starting to vanish in the South African smoke screen. Von Brandis ignored them.

Moving fire from a tank, especially an old one, isn’t that accurate. His own men were holding their fire, waiting until the enemy emerged from the smoke inside effective range. Then the fun would start, he thought.

More shells slammed into the desert landscape. The Namibian mortar barrage was getting close. Damned close. Too late, Von Brandis realized that the enemy gunners were randomly concentrating their fire on different parts of his spread out position. Unable to see their targets, they were simply lobbing rounds at designated map references.

Unfortunately,

they’d apparently chosen the small depression occupied by his command post for their latest firing point. Even blind fire, when concentrated in a small area, could be devastating.

Whammm! He slammed the Ratel’s hatch shut again as an explosion just twenty meters away shook the APC and sent fragments, not pebbles, rattling off its armor. Von Brandis dogged the hatch and spun round to follow the situation through the vehicle’s vision blocks.

Twin hammer blows struck the Ratel’s left side. The first mortar round seemed to slide the eighteen-ton vehicle physically sideways, then a second shell lifted it and tipped it over.

Von Brandis and the rest of his staff tumbled and twisted inside the APC’s tangled interior. Loose gear fell through the air, and they fought to keep from impaling themselves on the troop compartment’s myriad sharp points and corners. Worst of all, someone’s assault rifle hadn’t been secured in its clips.

The R4 spun through the air as the Ratel tumbled, slammed into the deck, and went off. A single, steel-jacketed round ricocheted from metal wall to metal wall, showering the interior with sparks, before burying itself deep in the assistant driver’s belly. The man screamed and collapsed in on himself, his hands clutching convulsively at the gaping wound.

Von Brandis fought a personal war with the edge of the map table, a fire extinguisher handle, and his radio cord. Finally freeing himself and standing up on the canted deck, he tossed a first aid kit to his driver and reached up to unlock one of the roof hatches.

He bent down and looked before crawling out, taking his own assault rifle with him.

Everyone was still under cover against random mortar volleys and suppressive fire from the advancing enemy tank company. He scanned the forward edge of the battalion’s gray, roiling smoke screen. Nothing in sight there. Right, the enemy armor should still be about a kilometer away.

The Namibian mortars had shifted targets within his battalion’s position and now seemed to be bombarding an empty piece of desert. Good. That was one advantage of a dispersed deployment. A fine haze of dust and smoke obscured anything

over five hundred meters away and made him cough. It was getting warmer, but the sun wouldn’t burn off this acrid mist.

The disadvantage of dispersion was the difficulty of getting from place to place, especially under fire. His executive officer’s command Ratel was more than a hundred and fifty meters away, behind a low rise near

A

Company’s laager and fighting positions.

He leaned down through the open hatch.

“I’m going to Major Hougaard’s vehicle! Frans, come with me. The rest of you stay put! “

As soon as the radio operator crawled out and climbed to his feet, the two men sprinted off, ducking more out of instinct than reasoned thought as shells burst to either side. Mortar fragments rip through the air faster than any human can hope to react.

It was only the barest taste of an infantryman’s world, but the colonel longed for the relative safety of his command vehicle. Running desperately across open, hard-pack cd sand under fire seemed a poor way to run a battle.

They reached the side of Hougaard’s Ratel and von Brandis banged on its armored side door with the hilt of his bayonet. It opened after a nerve-racking, five-second pause, and the two men piled inside the

Ratel’s already crowded interior.

Von Brandis squeezed through the crush toward a round faced bearded man with deceptively soft-looking features.

“Colonel, what on earth … !” Major Jamie Hougaard exclaimed, then cut off the rest of his sentence as superfluous. It was obvious that his commander’s vehicle had been hit. And the details would have to wait.