“Yes, Comrade Captain.” The radio operator nodded his understanding and ducked back inside.
Two minutes later, two Frogfoot attack jets screamed down the length of his column, headed for the reported enemy position, waggling their wings as they passed.
“Damn show-offs, ” Mares muttered. He could put up with a little aviator strutting, though, if they could blast the Afrikaners loose before they took root.
He scanned the horizon with his binoculars-eager to see signs that his advance units were going into action.
A prolonged, rattling boom filled the air, the sound rising above the growling roar made by his BTR’s noisy diesel engine. The Frogfoots were already at work plastering the enemy force. Rippling cracks and explosions echoed over the treeless veld.
“Scouts are attacking, sir. They report heavy resistance.”
Sure, Mares thought. When you’re in a tin can with only a small gun on top, three farmers on donkeys looks like heavy resistance.
Five minutes passed with maddening slowness. Come on. Mares was getting ready to joggle his scout commander’s elbow when the radio operator spoke again.
“Lieutenant Morales says the Boers are running. Our gunships are in pursuit. “
Mares smiled grimly at the thought. An Mi-24 Hind helicopter, armed to the teeth, made a good pursuer.
“Excellent. Tell the scouts I want prisoners if possible.”
Twentyfive minutes later, Mares and his armored personnel carriers rolled past the shattered South African roadblock-a pile of old railroad ties, rusting civilian cars, and farm machinery. Smoking bomb and shell craters dotted the ground and the road.
His vehicles had to stop briefly as soldiers pushed the last of the wreckage off the road. Mares made out the twisted remains of an antiquated antitank gun and a single light machine gun. Bullet-riddled bodies wearing South African uniforms were heaped among unfilled sandbags.
A young lieutenant, Morales, ran up to Mares’s BTR and
saluted.
“We took two prisoners, Captain, and killed more than ten others.” His smile faded.
“But I lost three men myself-one killed and two wounded.”
Mares nodded. Losing men in battle was never easy. But it was inevitable.
He kept his own voice dry, businesslike.
“A small price to keep the brigade moving, Lieutenant. Were the Frogfoots effective?”
Morales grinned, his good humor restored by the memory.
“They blew those bastards clear off the road, Comrade. After that it was all broom and shovel work.”
Mares chuckled inside. Right now the war was going their way. Let the boy have his fun. The tough going would start soon enough. He leaned forward.
“Very well, Miguel. Get this mess cleaned up as soon as you can, then join up. We’ll need you for the victory parade when we reach Pretoria.”
The lieutenant laughed and moved off at a run.
Mares spoke into his microphone.
“Second Platoon, take the point. All units, move out.”
He studied the wrecked South African roadblock with contempt.
It would take more than that to stop Cuba’s advancing armies.
SADF HEADQUARTERS, PRETORIA
Commandant Willem Metje stared back and forth from the reports he held in his hand to the strategic map showing the northeastern Transvaal.
Something was wrong. Horribly wrong.
He’d expected the Cubans to launch a series of carefully planned diversionary attacks. Militarily, that only made common sense. After all, raids and other feints would tie down South African troops needed in
Namibia. Vega’s planners might also have hoped they could conceal the real axis of their attack. A successful raid could even do real damage, forcing South Africa to spend valuable time and resources repairing a vital radar station or supply depot.
But the Cubans seemed to be putting a lot of effort into their diversionary attacks. More effort than seemed either reasonable or even possible.
Metje moved closer to the map, consumed by a growing sense of panic.
Enemy contacts were represented by color coded pins. Yellow meant a simple sighting. Orange indicated skirmish-level combat-small-arms fire, nothing more. And red meant a determined attack, with heavy weapons or rockets.
A small tag attached to each pin showed the time of the contact.
Now, for the first time since the Cuban offensive began shortly after midnight, he was beginning to see a pattern emerging from all these “diversionary” contact reports-a damning and disastrous pattern. Although there were reports of enemy activity along all of South Africa’s borders, major enemy attacks were being reported in just two sectors-those containing the two major highways aimed at Pretoria and Johannesburg. Red pins were sprouting along those roads with frightening regularity.
To Metje’s suddenly very worried eyes, those two lines of red pins were beginning to look as though they were marching straight toward his nation’s administrative capital and industrial heartland. He glanced down at the sheaf of reports clutched in his hands. They all told much the same story:
-061513 Nov-EASTERN TRANSVAAL MILCOMContact lost with Komatipoort border post at 0610. No word from relief patrol dispatched 0625.”
-081513 Nov-NORTHERN TRANSVAAL MIL COM -Fragmentary call from SAP HQ in
Messina reports attack by hostile armored car units and unidentified aircraft. Report unconfirmed. Unable to reestablish contact with
Messina.” Below the text of this message, someone had scribbled, “Phone lines probably cut.”
He flipped from sheet to sheet. Each succeeding report showed enemy units pushing deeper into South African territory.
“Wommandant?”
Startled, Metje looked up into the somber face of one of his officers.
The man handed him two more telexed reports.
“I think you should see these, sir.”
“101513 Nov-NORTHERN TRANSVAAL MIL COM -Helicopter-borne infantry attacking
Wyllie’s Port. Infantry confirmed as Cuban, repeat, Cuban.”
” 10 1613 Nov-NORTHERN TRANSVAAL MIL COM -Louis Trichardt Air Base under heavy enemy air attack. Losses and runway status as yet unknown.”
“My God… ” Metje’s voice trailed away in shock and disbelief. More than eighty kilometers inside South Africa, Wyllie’s Poort was a narrow pass across the Soutpansberge -a chain of wooded mountains, ridges, and lichen- covered cliffs just north of Louis Trichardt and its military airfield. Two highway tunnels, each several hundred meters long, carried
National Route I through the mountains at this point. Whoever held the pass held the key to the whole northern Transvaal.
“I think General de Wet should know about this, don’t you, sir?”
What? Tell de Wet? But de Wet and the others were in another room, busy crowing over reports of rapid progress in Namibia. None of them were paying much attention to anything happening beyond the front lines outside Windhoek.
Metje struggled upward from his contemplation of complete and unmitigated failure.
“I’ll take care of these, Captain. Stick to your own knitting, if you please. Dismissed.”
Without saying another word, the younger officer stalked rigidly away-hurt, angry, and resentful.
Metje ignored him. He had problems of his own.
His body temperature seemed wildly variable. One minute he was shivering, chilled to the bone, and the next he was sweating profusely, convinced he was burning up. No matter how hard he tried to fit the pieces together into another, less threatening pattern, he kept coming face-to-face with a single, horrifying conclusion: Colonel
