He’d fought through enough of both during more than thirty years of service to Fidel Castro and his people.
Some of the ANC officers assigned to him reported that a few of their people believed the Cubans to be nearly as racist as the Afrikaners they displaced. And why? Simply because the army of liberation needed their strong backs and unskilled hands. Vega scowled. Racism! What nonsense.
Why, he had black Cuban officers on his own staff. Brave and competent men-every one of them.
As for the charge that he used South African blacks only for manual labor, what of it? Hadn’t Karl Marx himself said it best?
“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
He dismissed the problem from his mind. Let the rear-area commissars worry about such matters. He had a war to fight and win.
Vega turned to the stout, mustachioed colonel of engineers waiting silently beside him.
“Well, Luis? How soon before our planes can land here?”
“Twenty-four hours, Comrade General.” The colonel sounded certain-always a safe tone to use around Vega.
“My heavy equipment should arrive before sundown, and when it does…” He waved away the waist-high piles of debris still littering the runways as though they were nothing more than dust before a broom.
Vega patted him on the shoulder and glanced at the shorter, thinner Air
Force officer attached to his personal staff.
“You hear that, Rico.
Twenty-four hours. That’s good news, eh?”
“Yes, sir. ” The Air Force major pointed toward the sweating work crews.
“Once they’ve got the main runway cleared, we can start flying in ground elements of the brigade. And once they’re here, we’ll have this base back in full operation within half a day.”
Vega nodded his understanding. Cuban forward air-base operations were organized around special brigades made up of all the skilled troops needed to keep jet aircraft flying and combat ready-air traffic controllers, mechanics, armament and fueling specialists, planning staff, and pilots.
Even more important, Cuba’s fighters and transport aircraft, like all Soviet-made planes, were able to use captured NATO rearming, refueling, and maintenance equipment. And the South Africans used NATO standard gear.
How thoughtful of them, Vega mused.
He stared beyond the airfield toward the multi lane highway running south.
South toward the vital road junction and minerals complex at Pietersburg, one hundred and twenty kilometers away. And south toward the enemy capital of Pretoria, two hundred and eighty kilometers beyond Pietersburg. A hint of yellowish dust and gray-white smoke on the horizon marked the position of his First Brigade Tactical Grouptanks, armored cars, and APCs driving steadily forward despite slowly stiffening Afrikaner resistance.
Vega allowed himself a short moment of self-congratulation. Capturing this air base would breathe new life and vigor into this portion of his grand offensive. Urgently needed supplies and spare parts could be flown in with ease instead of being trucked south from Zimbabwe over hundreds of kilometers of dangerous road. Even better, MiG fighters and fighter bombers based here would be only a few short minutes’ flying time from the battlefront- drastically increasing their time on station and the number of missions they could fly as they hunted for Afrikaner targets on the ground and in the air.
It all added up to one thing: Pretoria was going to have to commit an ever-increasing number of its own troops to this front. Troops that would have to be stripped from other parts of South Africa.
Vega smiled grimly. Karl Vorster and his generals were about to learn another painful lesson in logistics, careful planning, applied air power, and deft footwork.
Abruptly the Cuban general turned on his heel and headed back to his command vehicle. Small victories were worth gloating over only if they brought total victory in sight. Time to look at the big picture.
FIRST BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP, NEAR BANDELIERKOP, SOUTH AFRICA
More than twenty wheeled and tracked Cuban armored vehicles rumbled across the Transvaal countryside- smashing through barbed-wire fences meant to pen in cattle, flattening fields of tall grass, and grinding new-planted wheat and corn into the damp earth. No revealing plumes of dust rose today to mark their passage. A late-spring storm had come and gone earlier in the morning-tearing out of the east in a drumbeat barrage of wind-tossed rain and thunder.
Now a barrage of human making hammered the veld.
Whaamm! Dirt founmined high into the air two hundred meters ahead of the advancing Cuban column, and newly promoted Maj. Victor Mares ducked behind the steel hatch cover of his BTR-60. He clicked the transmit button on his radio mike.
“Any sign of that OP, Lieutenant?”
“Not yet, Comrade Major.” The voice of the advance guard’s scout commander crackled through his earphones.
Mares ducked and swore as another South African shell ploughed into the fields off to the left. Closer this time. Steel splinters whined overhead. The damned Afrikaners had to have somebody with a radio and a map guiding their fire. But where?
“We may have found it, Major!” Excitement made the scout lieutenant sound even younger than he was.
“We’re closing on a stone farmhouse about three kilometers ahead of your position. Will investigate.”
Mares let the mike fall free to dangle on a cord around his neck and raised his binoculars. Low hills. Dark, cloudy sky. Magnified views of vehicles only a few score meters ahead. The sky again. Curse it, the
BTR’s rocking and rolling motion made it almost impossible to focus on anything for more than a fraction of a second. He braced himself and tried to ride with the vehicle as though it were a bucking bronco like those he’d seen in American cowboy movies aired on the officially forbidden and periodically jammed TV Marti.
He steadied his binoculars and looked again. Yes, that was better. The tiny image of a whitewashed, gabled farmhouse leapt into view. Mares scanned left and then back right. The high cylindrical shape of a grain silo rose behind the farmhouse. Two separate barns were set off to one side, surrounded by wire enclosures for cattle or other animals. A row of tall trees planted for shade and as a windbreak lined the eastern edge of the Afrikaner farm. A tidy little place, he thought. Much more prosperous looking than the agricultural cooperatives and collectives back home in Cuba.
He lowered his binoculars a fraction, looking for the squat, four-wheeled shapes of his recon platoon’s BRDM-2 scout cars. They were about five hundred meters from the farmhouse, spread out in a rough wedge formation and moving fast. Maybe too fast.
After all, that farm might house more than just a South
African artillery OP. Its stout stone walls and barns would make a good defensive strongpoint for troops assigned to hold this sector. Too good for any sensible South African commander to pass up, Mares thought.
The first few days of the offensive had been a cakewalk, a lightning drive against scattered opposition by lightly armed Afrikaner commandos.
But that couldn’t continue forever. Pretoria must be going mad trying to redeploy its forces from Namibia.
Another shell burst fifty meters ahead of the column. Mares ducked again and made a quick decision. Where the South Africans had heavy artillery they were also likely to have regulars-regulars armed with their own APCs and armored cars. He lifted his radio mike to order the scouts back.
Too late! A sudden flash from near the farmhouse, followed seconds later by a blinding explosion and a billowing column of oily black smoke. The lead BRDM lay canted at an angle, mangled and on fire. Its two companions were frantically wheeling away at high speed.
Mares focused his binoculars hastily. Shit. An Eland armored car armed with a 90mm cannon. He’d been shot at by too many of the damned things in Namibia to make any mistake about that. More than just one, of course.
He could see another ugly, snouted turret poking out from behind one of the barns. Small figures scurried into position in windows and doors and in hurriedly dug foxholes.
A second sun-bright flash erupted from the first Eland’s main gun. Mud sprayed high beside one of the fleeing
