area had confirmed their worst fears-America’s aircraft carriers and amphibious ships were steaming eastward, preparing for another landing somewhere along South Africa’s coast.
Brig. Franz Diederichs stood in his office, watching with cold, detached contempt as his subordinates tried desperately to find ways to stop the unstoppable. Intelligence estimated that the Americans and British planned to storm ashore with at least a reinforced Marine division-backed by more than two hundred carrier-based planes and the guns of more than a dozen warships.
In contrast, he had scarcely a corporal’s guard to oppose them. Five understrength companies of security police. Three artillery batteries of superb G-5 and G-6 guns. And three weak infantry battalions already worn down by months of guerrilla war with the Zulus and by days of bloody street fighting during the city’s November rising. All were short on men and heavy weapons.
He grimaced. Common sense alone should tell the idiots on his staff that they had no chance of achieving victory at least not victory as it was ordinarily understood.
Logic argued that the Allies were moving on Durban itself. The city’s airfield and harbor were perfect staging points for an all-out Allied drive on Johannesburg and Pretoria. In fact, they were the only possible staging points. Essentially, all main roads on the Natal coast led to
Durban. Only there did they blend together into a single superhighway stretching north to South Africa’s mineral-rich interior.
Logic also argued that the Allies, though long on men and materiel were short on time. Even capturing the city would still leave this General
Craig and his men more than six hundred kilometers from their final objectives. And before the Americans and British could push farther inland, they’d need a secure supply line-the kind one could only build with unimpeded access to a major port.
Diederichs nodded slowly to himself. He and his soldiers couldn’t win the upcoming battle, but they could at least deny their enemies a quick victory. He leaned over his desk, studying a series of charts and diagrams showing Durban’s port facilities.
For more than a week now, his engineers and gangs of conscripted black and Indian laborers had been working night and day to wreck the harbor beyond easy repair. Some had planted demolition charges to destroy cargo-handling equipment along the waterfront itself. Others stood ready to scuttle freighters and tankers already trapped by the American blockade-b locking both the harbor’s narrow entrance and all its docks and anchorages.
Once the first waves of the Allied invasion force touched down,
Diederichs planned to pull the bulk of his small garrison into a perimeter enclosing most of Durban’s central city. Even with their overwhelming numbers and firepower, it would take the Uitlanders days to dig his troops out of their fortified skyscrapers and beachfront hotels.
And until they did, they couldn’t possibly begin repairing the damage to the all-important port facilities. At the same time, his artillery well hidden among the forested foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains-would interdict the Louis Botha Airport. Periodic barrages of high-explosive shells would make it impossible for the Americans to land their huge
C-141 and C-5 cargo planes.
With any luck, the Allied drive on Pretoria would soon sputter and stall-strangled at birth by a lack of food, fuel, and ammunition.
The Afrikaner brigadier smiled crookedly at that thought. Whatever the result, he wouldn’t be alive to see it. He planned to die fighting with his soldiers. Retreat out of the city was unthinkable and unsurvivable.
He didn’t have any illusions about his own government’s attitude toward unsuccessful officers. Pretoria’s firing squads would soon make short shrift of the man who’d lost Durban.
Surrender to the Americans or the British was equally unthinkable. He had no intention of appearing as chief defendant at a socalled war crimes trial. If necessary, he’d kill himself first, His thin lips creased in an ugly snarl. Better by far to
die by one’s own hand than to stand in chains before swaggering, kaffir-loving conquerors.
Diederichs straightened his shoulders and turned back to his work. Durban’s barricades, trenches, and fortified buildings would make the city more than just a graveyard for his own ambitions and dreams. They would end Allied hopes for a quick and bloodless end to the war in South Africa.
DECEMBER 19-SEAL TEAM ONE, ABOARD HMS
UNSEEN
Boatswain’s Mate First Class Joe Gordon, USN, left the Unseen’s hatch in a silvery cloud of bubbles. The three other men in his SEAL detachment were already out. They signaled him with a small light, dimly visible through the water.
After closing the diesel submarine’s hatch behind him, Gordon swam over to them and pointed to the compass on his wrist. If they were in position-and the Unseen’s skipper had assured them they were-their target lay two thousand yards to the north.
Gordon heard a dull, muffled clank behind him and turned to see the hatch opening again. His wasn’t the only raiding party going out tonight. The
Unseen also carried another party of SEALs and one of SBS, Britain’s
Special Boat Service.
His three men all looked at him, legs and arms paddling slowly to keep them in place against the offshore current. Even in their face masks and other scuba gear, Gordon knew them all, and knew what they could do. Motioning, he pointed north. They started swimming.
He was glad to be out of the British submarine. He’d ridden subs often enough, but he decided that he didn’t like the British variant. They talked funny, ate funny food, and the thing always stank of diesel oil. And they were too tight. A U.S. nuclear sub was crowded, but after a full day in a
British boat, Gordon had wanted to ask for a marriage license. All they could do was talk. He chuckled inwardly. At least those SBS guys told some fascinating lies.
The sub’s small size was perfect for this job, though. The Sturgeon-class
U.S. nukes couldn’t get any closer to shore than the sixty-fathom curve, dumping them miles from their objective. Here, it was just a short swim-only a mile underwater.
Swimming felt good, stretching out the muscles, burning off some of that adrenaline flowing through his veins. He kept a sharp lookout for sharks.
The waters off Durban were famous for them, and he didn’t want an encounter to screw up the timetable. They were supposed to be ashore just after midnight.
The water was dark and the shoreline empty. Gordon could only rely on his compass and skills honed by long years of training to get him ashore. He certainly wouldn’t find any friends on the beach. Not that he expected any. SEALs were always the first in, and that was exactly what he wanted.
SECOND MARINE EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, SEA ECHELON AREA, OFF DURBAN
Fifty American and British ships lay shrouded in darkness fifty miles off the Natal coast. Massive, flat-decked amphibious assault vessels mingled with smaller ships carrying landing craft, tanks, and tracked LVTP-7 amphibious vehicles. Destroyers and frigates steamed back and forth, screening the formation against air or submarine attack. Inside each ship,
Marines and Navy crewmen worked through the night stowing gear, readying aircraft, cleaning weapons- making all of the thousands of last-minute preparations necessary for survival on a hostile shore.
SEAL TEAM ONE, NEAR THE LOUIS BOTHA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, SOUTH OF
DURBAN
Boatswain Gordon lifted his head above the surface of the water. The shoreline was a smooth expanse of sloping sand,
perfect for amphibious ships, but lousy for SEALs. He quickly scanned the area. They couldn’t be that far off.
There, off to the right. Reunion Rocks, a jumble of boulders jutting out from the shore, verified his navigation. Signaling silently to the rest of his men, Gordon submerged and without surfacing again, headed straight for the place where a small stream emptied into the Indian Ocean.
The roar of surf as he emerged from the water matched his mood. He was in hostile territory and ready for
