SECOND BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP, NEAR PESSENE,
MOZAMBIQUE
Dust clouds lit red by the lateafternoon sun hung low over southwestern
Mozambique’s hills, all converging on a single main road running west.
Engine noises rumbled over the hills like a rolling, unending peal of manmade thunder.
Maj. Jorge de Sousa stood off to one side of the highway, watching in awe as hundreds of Cuban tanks, trucks, and other vehicles lumbered past on their way toward South Africa. He’d never seen so much combat power assembled in any one place. From time to time, pairs of Soviet-made helicopters flew overhead, adding to the general, ear-numbing din.
He stiffened to attention as the lead T-72 rolled by with its commander, a lieutenant colonel, saluting as though he were on parade in Havana’s
Revolution Square. More tanks followed, clattering down the highway in column. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. De Sousa lost count. Close behind the tanks came combat engineering units with special bridging and mine-clearance equipment, armored personnel carriers packed with infantry, ZSU-23-4 antiaircraft guns, and trucks bulging with ammo, food, fuel, and water.
The Mozambican major shook his head from side to side, caught in a sort of euphoria-induced daze. It all seemed unreal somehow, like a dream.
He’d never imagined that his earnest wish earlier that same morning would come true so quickly. All his misgivings about Cuba’s intentions and capabilities faded away-overwhelmed by this display of power.
THIRD BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP, OUTSIDE
BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE
Bulawayo’s rail yards had never been so crowded. Hundreds of flatcars, passenger cars, and boxcars pulled by dozens of diesel and steam locomotives rattled slowly past the city’s idle meat-processing plants, automobile factories, and textile mills. At precisely timed intervals, train after train rolled out of the main station and headed for neutral
Botswana-clanking southwest at a steady thirty kilometers an hour.
Can’ vas tarpaulins covered the squat, ugly shapes of armored vehicles and artillery pieces mounted on each flatcar,
without doing much to disguise them. Cuban troops jammed every available seat and aisle on every passenger car. Machinegun crews and hand-held-SAM teams occupied sandbagged fighting positions atop boxcars crammed with munitions and other supplies.
Commando teams and reconnaissance units were already in place along
Zimbabwe’s border with Botswana. If necessary, they would use force to secure safe passage for the troop trains ferrying Cuba’s Third Brigade
Tactical Group around onto South Africa’s northwestern flank. Still, fighting shouldn’t prove necessary. Botswana’s tiny army was little more than a glorified police force.
Cuba’s powerful an-no red right hook was on its way.
HEADQUARTERS, CUBAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
Gen. Antonio Vega stood near the main map table in his headquarters tent, listening as movement reports from his three tactical groups crackled over the radio. Junior staff officers stayed busy, constantly updating each column’s position and deployment.
On paper, each tactical group was a brigade-sized formation containing three motorized rifle battalions, a tank battalion, and an artillery battalion. But its attached antiaircraft, signals, and supply troops actually made the formation almost as strong as a small division. As a true “combined arms” unit, each of Vega’s brigades had all the tools of its deadly trade massed in a single, highly mobile striking force. He’d used a battalion-sized tactical group to take Walvis Bay. Now he planned to use three forces, each five times as large, to attack the South African giant itself.
He smiled happily down at the map. More than fifty thousand Cuban and allied troops were on the march, closing steadily on South Africa’s virtually undefended frontiers.
Naturally, all of this activity did not go completely unnoticed.
HEADQUARTERS, SOUTH AFRICAN DIRECTORATE OF
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, PRETORIA
DMI Flash Traffic
Eyes Only
Time: 211012 Nov From: DMI North To: HQ, SA DMI 1. Asset N13 reports seeing Gen. Antonio Vega in Rutenga, Zimbabwe, this morning, approximately 0900 local time, while engaged in surveillance of local military garrison. Asset also reported increased activity, including soldiers in uniforms not familiar to the asset. As described, the soldiers could be from any number of communist or socialist Arab countries.
2. A roll of film taken by the asset will be delivered by special courier no later than 1800 hours, 13 November.
3. Asset has been ordered to continue surveillance.
Maj. Willem Metje stood almost physically blocking his immediate superior’s path as he tried to leave his office.
“Kolonel, I can’t let you take this information to General de Wet. It’s too outlandish. Too impossible to believe!”
“You can’t let me, Majoor?” Col. Magnus Heerden asked scornfully, his voice filled with a mix of utter amazement and outright anger.
“I am the head of this section. Do I have to instruct you in the rank structure of the Defense Forces?”
Metje shook his head stubbornly.
“Majoor, you’re entitled to your opinion. And I would be the first to admit that there is always room for professional differences in intelligence work, but you seem to forget that I command here. Even if your assessment of these new reports is right, which I doubt, our superiors have a right to see them. “
Heerden glanced at the handful of flash messages he’d received only ten minutes earlier.
“Listen to this: Renamo spotters report an armored column moving toward our border with Mozambique. A column containing at least fifty vehicles, including main battle tanks and mobile antiaircraft guns! “
“And this!” Heerden flipped to a new page.
“One of our deep-cover people reports seeing General Vega in Zimbabwe. What the hell’s he doing there on the eve of what’s supposed to be a big offensive in Namibia?”
He shook his head.
“I tell you, Willem, these reports can only mean one thing. Castro’s planning a big push all right, but along our borders with
Mozambique and Zimbabwenot in Namibia. And this attack is imminent.”
-Kolonel … sir. ” Metje added the last word for emphasis.
“The
President and General de Wet have already decided that Cuba’s offensive will be launched in the near future-in Namibia. Our staff’s Official
Estimate predicts a divisional attack on one or two axes near Windhoek, with diversionary attacks from Walvis Bay and possibly elsewhere. ” He nodded contemptuously toward the papers in Heerden’s hand.
“Those reports obviously refer to the enemy’s diversionary attacks. “
The younger man didn’t bother to hide his patronizing tone, and Heerden felt his blood pressure rise.
“Damn it, man, I know how de Wet’s “Official Estimate’ reads, even if his staff ignored my reports when they wrote it. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore new information. “
Metje shook his head almost pityingly.
“I’m afraid, Kolonet, that the
General Staff ignores your conclusions because you are widely regarded as having been taken in by a Cuban deception plan.”
Heerden felt his jaw drop open.
The major continued, hammering his point home remorselessly.
“As a result, General de Wet and his officers have been using other sources of intelligence lately. They have decided that you are—he paused-“unreliable.”
Heerden felt a dozen questions bubbling up inside. The
first one to take definite shape reflected the basic curiosity of an intelligence officer.
“So where are they getting their intelligence then?”