O’Connell scanned the rows of tough, young faces in front of him. Nobody looked wildly optimistic, but mission success didn’t require optimism-just competence and professionalism. He’d accomplished as much as he could reasonably hope for in a single briefing pep talk.
Now it was time to get back to the grind of actually putting this crazy operation together. Brave Fortune existed as a skeletal outline, but the
I st and 2nd Battalions’ officers and men still had a tremendous amount of work left to do. Board and computer simulations to test variations of the basic attack plan. Dry runs through full-scale mock-ups already being built by the base engineers and service troops. And they’d need to hold a seemingly endless series of conferences with Air Force and Navy liaisons to make sure that units of all three services understood their assigned roles.
He moved forward again to the edge of the dais.
“Very well, gentlemen.
That’s it for now.”
He held up a hand to still a sudden buzz of comment.
“Brave Fortune is slated for December sixth. So we have less than two weeks to get this plan and our Rangers whipped into shape. That’s not much time. Don’t waste it.”
Carrerra, already standing to go, nodded gravely.
HEADQUARTERS, 20TH CAPE RIFLES, VOORTREKKER HEIGHTS MILITARY CAMP,
NEAR
PRETORIA
Commandant Henrik Kruger was a troubled man. At first, he’d thought it would be easy to shelter Emily, the American reporter, and their black driver for a short while before slipping them off the base and away to safety. Cuba’s surprise invasion had wrecked that first plan.
With Voortrekker Heights on continuous full alert, his three fugitives were trapped. Emily was no real problem. She’d simply become his new civilian secretary, a Miss ter Horst. And he’d put the black, Sibena, to work as a camp servant. Nobody in the South African military thought twice about seeing a black engaged in menial labor. But Sheffield, the American, was a problem. He’d been forced to spend the last nine days hiding inside
Kruger’s own quarters-moving into the bedroom whenever junior officers or others visited their commanding officer.
Kruger smiled thinly. He wasn’t sure who would go mad first-the American or him. Their natural friction over Emily was bad enough, but wildly varying attitudes, opinions, and habits only made matters worse. Neither of them was really suited to life as anything but a self-sufficient bachelor, he decided-all too aware that Emily had other plans for this Ian Sheffield. He veered away from such thoughts. Jealousy was a corrosive emotion.
Better to focus on more concrete matters, on military matters.
Cuba’s invasion hadn’t just made it impossible for Emily and the others to escape, it had also ended his own tentative plans to rebel-at least for the time being. Despite all of the Vorster government’s crimes, no Afrikaner could contemplate abandoning his fellows to the savagery of a communist attack.
Given that, he couldn’t understand why he and his men hadn’t already been sent into combat against the Cubans. True, the 20this rifle and heavy weapons companies were still understrength and woefully under equipped but they were proven fighting units. And South Africa needed every available man, gun, and armored vehicle up on the firing line.
Vorster’s propaganda broadcasts claimed that the Cubans were being driven back in disarray. Kruger knew the truth. His friend on de Wet’s staff,
Brig. Deneys Coetzee, kept him fully informed. The Cuban columns, though slowed in the north and east, were still pushing hard for Pretoria and the mines. So why not send the 20th Cape Rifles and the other battalions held around the capital into battle before it was too
late? They might not be able to stop Castro’s advancing armies, but they could certainly buy time for more troops to arrive from Namibia.
What was Karl Vorster planning? Had the man abandoned all hope and military common sense?
He stared eastward, away from the setting sun and into the gathering darkness. Something very strange was going on at Swartkop Air Base-just across the broad, multi lane strip of the Ben Schoeman Highway connecting
Pretoria with Johannesburg.
Lights were on all around the outer airfield perimeter, painfully bright against the twilight sky. Wheeled Ratel APCs and cannon-armed Rookiats were stationed at regular intervals along the length of the highway-their guns pointed out to the east and west. Kruger recognized the unit insignia painted on each vehicle-the stalking leopard of Frans Peiper’s 61st Transvaal Rifles.
His mouth tightened. He didn’t like Peiper at all. The 61 st’s colonel was a very nasty customer indeed-an AWB fanatic to the core, and a murderous bastard if even half the stories of his atrocities in Namibia were true.
Kruger stood up straighter as four canvas-sided trucks appeared on the highway, moving slowly south. What? All that firepower as security for four vehicles? Then he remembered where Peiper’s battalion was stationed, and he grew colder by the second.
The trucks rolled past his vantage point and turned left through the main gate into Swartkop Air Base.
Two of South Africa’s ten nuclear weapons were already outside
Pelindaba’s bombproof storage bunkers.
CHAPTER 27
The Fourth Horseman
NOVEMBER 23-THIRD BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP, ALONG ROUTE 47, BETWEEN BODENSTEIN AND MAKOKSKRAAL
The cool desert night would fade into full day soon, much missed by the
Third Brigade Tactical Group’s Cuban and Libyan soldiers. The days were pure hell-long hot stretches of driving through a region short on potable water and long on thick, choking dust that clung to everything. South Africa’s high veld was moving into summer, with daytime temperatures soaring to over ninety degrees Fahrenheitclimbing quickly from midnight lows in the sixties.
The Libyans were more used to it than the Cubans, but enlisted men from the two nations had few chances to mix or share their knowledge. Aside from the basic problems of language and culture, the Cuban and Libyan political officers were feuding over everything from supply allocation to Marxist-Leninist doctrine. As a result, separate units went their separate ways, connected only by liaison officers at the brigade headquarters-a kind of socialist apartheid.
It also reduced efficiency. But then the brigade didn’t really have to be very efficient. It just had to keep moving. The Afrikaners still hadn’t managed to scrape up much more than a thin corporal’s guard to oppose its steady advance on Johannesburg.
The Third Tactical Group contained five battalions, plus a number of attachments” smaller specialist units. Three of the five were motorized rifle units, one of them Libyan. One battalion each of T-62 tanks and self-propelled 122mm howitzers completed the force.
When the brigade halted for the night, each battalion formed its own “strongpoint”-a defensive position with all-round fields of fire. This deep in enemy territory, an attack could come from any direction.
At the moment, the Third’s battalion strong points were strung out along the highway like a succession of huge oval beads several hundred meters across. Gaps of two or three hundred meters between them made it impossible for any would-be attacker to strike one strongpoint without taking fire from its neighbors.
This pattern of separation and mutual support was repeated inside each battalion strongpoint. Individual rifle and tank companies had each “laagered” their vehicles in separate formation. Ironically enough, the very word laager came from Afrikaans. It had slipped into worldwide military usage after South African troops reinvented the old Boer tactic during World War II.
In laager, tanks and APCs were parked nose-out in a rough oval, their turrets turned outward against the hostile landscape while the men slept inside the ring. Once the vehicles were parked, it only took a little digging to create a first-class defensive position.