“Colonel Howard, watch officer. “
“Sir, this is Major O’Malley at Cheyenne Mountain. We have a nuclear detonation .
CNN SPECIAL REPORT
CNN’s normal cycle of news, sports, and entertainment gossip was interrupted in mid-sentence. The anchorman, who’d been introducing a piece on a sports figure’s tax problems, suddenly stopped, distracted by something off screen.
A paper was passed to him, adroitly, so that the camera never caught a glimpse of the passer. The anchorman scanned it quickly, and for a moment his carefully shaped mask dropped-replaced by stunned shock and disbelief.
He glanced off camera again, looking for reassurance, then made a visible and successful effort to regain his composure.
“This just in. For only the third time in history, a nuclear weapon has been used in anger. About an hour ago, Cuban troops invading South Africa were attacked by South African Air Force warplanes, which dropped one atomic weapon, inside its own borders.
“Department of Defense sources have confirmed the detection of a nuclear explosion in South Africa, describing it as a ‘low-yield’ burst. Cuba’s foreign ministry, though quick to point out that it has no independent confirmation of this attack, strongly condemned the use of nuclear weapons as I an act of barbarism’ that ‘revealed the true nature of Pretoria’s racist and fascist regime.”
“The White House, while saying the President is ‘deeply concerned by recent developments,” is reportedly awaiting definitive information before releasing an official statement. “
Another message slid across the desk. This time the anchorman took it in stride.
“In a new twist, South Africa has admitted that it has used a nuclear weapon. According to a statement released simultaneously by the South
African Broadcasting Corporation and by Pretoria’s embassies worldwide, “South Africa will use its special weapons at times and places of its own choosing -without regard for the hypocritical squeamishness of other nations. “
The screen divided-one-half still showing CNN’s Atlanta studio, the other showing a crowded, noisy room as reporters milled around a small, flag-draped dais.
“We’re going live to our Pentagon correspondent for a Defense Department briefing…”
CHAPTER 28
Vengeance
NOVEMBER 24-HEADQUARTERS, CUBAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, PIETERSBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Military traffic moving south filled Pietersburg’s wide streets-rumbling past burned-out homes, crater-choked public parks, and barren, blasted jacaranda trees. Smoking piles of charred blue and pale-purple blossoms littered the ground beneath each tree. Stray dogs, some unfed for days, roamed side roads and alleys in packs.
The advancing Cuban troops had appropriated a small, two-story brick office building as Vega’s new forward headquarters. Col. Jose6 Suarez walked into the splinter-scarred building past piles of discarded papers and wrecked furniture heaped outside.
The building’s outer offices had been taken over by the expeditionary force’s supply, communications, and other support sections.
Worried-looking staff officers bustled back and forth from room to room as they tried, sometimes in vain, to manage the advance of Cuba’s two remaining columns.
5”
Others sat stunned, still horrified by the split-second annihilation of the
Third Tactical Group.
Suarez knew the confusion he saw here was only a fraction of the chaos sweeping the dead brigade’s rear areas. A dozen different supply, maintenance, and medical units, working to support what had been a spectacularly rapid advance, now found themselves suddenly fighting for their lives against local Afrikaner commandos. At the same time, they were working hard to save those few dazed survivors found wandering back down the highway. Well, he thought sadly, there won’t be any survivors left by tomorrow. Heat, a lack of potable water, and Boer bullets will see to that.
He moved deeper into the building and knocked quietly on a closed door. No answer. He turned the knob quietly and peered inside.
Gen. Antonio Vega, Liberator of Walvis Bay, victor of a dozen battles, the man who held a knife to South Africa’s throat, sat staring at a map. He held a sheaf of papers in his hands, the air reconnaissance photos taken over the site of the Third Brigade Tactical Group’s destruction. Suarez knew what those photos showed. He had given them, and the rest of the data on the column’s death, to Vega over two hours ago.
Daylight had revealed a crater a hundred meters wide and fifty meters deep near what had once been the brigade’s lead battalion. Mounded debris spread far and wide past the rim of the crater itself, creating a scene that looked as though it belonged on the surface of the moon-not on earth.
Blackened vehicles and bits of equipment littered the gray landscape, mixed with the scorched remains of men, brush, and trees. For the most part, the vegetation had burned itself out, but some of it was still smoking, and a pall lay over the desert floor, dimming the harsh sun.
Only about fifty men had been found alive from the first four battalions, mostly extended scouts or pickets. All were hurt-burned or blasted and in shock. The fifth battalion, a Libyan motorized rifle unit, had lost ninety percent of its equipment and three-quarters of
its men. Only the brigade’s supply battalion, strung out fifty kilometers behind, had survived as a unit. Altogether, more than three thousand men were dead, and another thousand or so were badly wounded-emergency-room cases who weren’t expected to live out the week.
Winds from the southeast were pushing the fallout across a dozen small towns and villages scattered over the plateau. Lichtenburg, with its art museum, bird sanctuaries, and farms, would be the largest town to suffer.
It would have to be evacuated. Suarez smiled grimly. How the Afrikaner bastards were going to do that wasn’t his concern, but if they didn’t, many people were going to die slow, nasty deaths from radiation sickness.
Some of the fallout would fall in Bophuthatswana, as well, eventually fanning out into the unpopulated wilderness. Another nuclear bomb for the scientists to study, he thought.
The colonel shook his head. His musings were almost as bad as Vega’s.
He’d stood in the door patiently for several minutes now, waiting to be noticed. This had happened before when the general was working or thinking, and Suarez was sure they could stand like this the rest of the day.
“Comrade. General ..” He spoke softly, as if he were trying to wake
Vega, or avoid startling him.
Vega didn’t even look up.
“Colonel, I am a fool. You told me that South
Africa had nuclear weapons. I’d seen their order of battle. So what made me think they would not use them?”
“You stated that they would be unlikely to use them inside their own borders,” Suarez answered quietly.
“You also thought that the instability and confusion in their government reduced the odds of their successfully employing such weapons. “
“Dry words to cover wishful thinking, Jose6. These people seem willing to do anything to stop us, even if they destroy their own lands in the process. I know that now.”
Vega suddenly stood up. He made a visible effort to master his dismay.
“We confront two related problems, Colonel. First, how do we continue our attack with only two-thirds of our forces? And second, how can we avoid being annihilated by South
Africa’s atomic weapons?”
Suarez looked uncertainly at his commander.
“Perhaps a reinforced air defense network could’ Insufficient Vega shook his head.
“All the SAMs in the world can’t guarantee the destruction of every attacking aircraft. No, Colonel, we must take measures that are more aggressive, more active. “