Craig frowned. A few heavy vehicles had been ferried in one at a time by the U.S. Navy’s overworked air- cushion landing craft. Not enough to make an appreciable battlefield contribution, just enough to impose even more strain on a supply system already laboring to provide the fuel, ammunition, and food the expeditionary force needed.
All of which left the advance inland toward Pretoria in the hands of a few infantry battalions backed by light armor, artillery, and carrier-based air power. He quickened his pace, skirting a trio of bomb craters pock marking the quay side road. His men were pushing forward as fast as they could, but every hour’s delay in opening the harbor gave Vorster that much more time to rush additional troops into the Drakensberg Mountains-a rugged band of steep mountains and forested ridges separating Natal’s lowlands from the open grasslands of the high veld
The chubby, straw-haired lieutenant colonel commanding his combat engineers saw Craig coming and hurried over.
“Sir.” He saluted wearily. Sweat stains under his arms and dark rings under his eyes showed that he’d been working side by side with his men for nearly forty-eight hours straight.
“Colonel. ” Craig casually returned his salute and gestured at the mess visible on all sides.
“I need your best guess, Jim. How much longer before we can start off-loading here?”
The younger man stared at the controlled chaos along the waterfront as though seeing it all for the very first time. Three days. Maybe four.”
His shoulders slumped.
“My boys are pretty near the edge, General. Some of ‘em are so tired they’re starting to walk right into booby traps a five year-old could’ve spotted.”
Craig nodded. He’d watched the casualty reports climb steadily. In the two days since Durban had officially been 11 pacified,” the engineer battalion had lost more than ten men killed, with another forty or so seriously wounded. Snipers, explosive booby traps, and fatigue-related accidents were eroding the effectiveness of a unit he was sure to need later.
He raised his voice as a bulldozer rumbled by, shoving a burned-out car away from the road.
“We’re bringing in some help from the Cape. Sort of a Christmas present. The One oh one’s putting its engineers on C-141 s right now. Air Force says they’ll be here by the end of the day. “
It took several seconds to sink in. Then the lieutenant colonel nodded gratefully. The Army air assault division’s combat engineers wouldn’t have their equipment with them, but they could be used to spell his own men. Even without bringing in extra gear, doubling the number of skilled people working might cut up to twenty-four hours from the time needed to clear the port.
The battalion commander saluted a second time, this time with more vigor and enthusiasm. The news that he’d be getting reinforcements seemed to have stripped years off his age.
“We’ll get these goddamned docks open
ASAP, General. You can take that to the bank.”
“I already have, Jim. I already have. Now you get some rest yourself when those Army pukes show up, you hear me?” Craig patted the other man on the shoulder.
“I need a smart, tough engineer in charge of this operation-not a walking zombie. “
“Yes, sir.
Craig turned away, already moving back to his waiting helicopter. He’d come to the waterfront himself to show the colonel and his men just how important their efforts were to the whole expeditionary force-not to try micro managing every last detail of their work. In his book, you found the right man for the job, gave him the tools he needed, and then got the hell out of his way.
As he neared the camouflaged UH-60 Blackhawk serving as his command transport, an aide hurried overbent low to clear the helicopter’s still-turning rotor.
“General! Sixth Brigade HQ reports our guys outside
Pietermaritzburg are taking fire from heavy arty!” ‘
Craig grabbed the captain by the arm and spun him back around. Their free ride was over. Vorster’s generals had a blocking force in place.
With one hand clapped onto his helmet to hold it in place, Craig raced ahead and hauled himself aboard the Blackhawk. The Marine riflemen assigned to protect him followed at a dead run.
Thirty seconds later, the command helo rolled forward on its wheels, lifted off, and raced low over the harbor-moving south at a hundred knots toward the shell-scarred runway at Louis Botha International Airport. Radio reports of the fighting continued to crackle through Craig’s headphones.
His American and British troops were securely ashore on the Natal coast, but Vorster’s Afrikaners were clearly serving notice that any further gains would have to be paid for in blood.
3RD BATTALION, 6TH MARINE EXPEDITIONARY
BRIGADE, SOUTHEAST OF PIETERMARITZBURG, SOUTH
AFRICA
The Victorian homes and quiet suburban streets of Natal’s provincial capital, Pietermaritzburg, lay eerily at rest below steep wooded hiNs rising on all sides. No cars moved down the wide N3 Motor Route or rattled along the narrow roads winding off to the farms and small clusters of houses that doffed the forested hollow. Clouds sent patches of shadow rippling over the ground, drifting almost idly from east to west.
A clock chimed the hour from a tall, redbrick tower over the city hall.
Its ringing, melodic tones echoed from building
to building before dying away among the dense groves of mo pane and acacia trees spread across the slopes above the city. Drawn curtains or blinds in every window made Pietermaritzburg and its suburbs look deserted.
They weren’t.
One thousand meters south of the open green fields of the Scottsville
Race Course, soldiers wearing full packs and carrying M16s were visible-moving steadily north along the highway. The U.S. Marines were entering Pietermaritzburg on foot.
Backed by a platoon of four LAV-25s, Bravo Company’s three rifle platoons trudged grimly in single file along either side of the road. Except for a thin screen of four-man recon teams, they were the advance guard for the whole Allied expeditionary force-one hundred riflemen probing far ahead of massive air, sea, and ground contingents already numbering more than fifty thousand men.
Craig’s field commanders were using Bravo Company’s Marines in much the same way that a man would use a stick to poke carefully through the branches of a tree while looking for a hornets’ nest. The trouble was that, in this case, any hornets found were likely to be very hard on the stick.
Whooosh. The long columns of marching Marines reacted instantly to the high-pitched, screaming whirr of a shell arcing overhead. Men scattered into the empty fields to either side of the road. The LAVs spun round in a semicircle and accelerated, racing for the shelter offered by a nearby overpass.
“Incoming!”
Capt. Jon Ziss dropped flat by the left side of the highway. His radioman and the others in the company command group threw themselves down on the dirt beside him.
Whaammm. Flame, smoke, and shattered pieces of roadway fountained high into the air barely one hundred meters ahead. Fragments spattered down all around, clattering off Kevlar helmets and backpacks.
As the smoke and dust thrown by the shell burst rolled past, Ziss slowly raised his head. Although his ears were still ringing from the blast, he could hear agonized screams rising from men of his First Platoon. Three or four Marines lay huddled on the pavement, scythed down by splinters. He risked a quick glance at the surrounding terrain.
To the west, a row of wood-frame, one-story houses offered the only possible cover. The flat fairways and shallow sand traps of a golf course to the east would be a killing ground for enemy artillery. And the same could be said of the racetrack to the north. He and his troops could only run west.
Whooosh. Another round howled in out of the sky, landing farther back this time.
Whaammm. The 155mm South African shell slammed straight into the rearmost
LAV and blew it apart. Pieces of armor and mangled rubber tires spiraled off the road.
Jesus. For several seconds, Ziss stared in horror at the blazing wreck, unable to move. Then reason took over. The Afrikaners had to have an OP, a hidden observation post, directing their fire. So either he and his troops got out of sight or they’d be slaughtered out here in the open.
