Gener had said much the same thing to him. He shook his head. Gener had been right. Things did look different from the other side of the desk.
A polite cough from one of his guests brought him back to the present.
He looked up at the three men seated across from him. He’d gotten to know
Brig. Chris Taylor pretty well during several meetings in Cape Town. Maj.
Oliver Cain served as both the commander of the British Special Air
Service squadron attached to the Allied force, and as 0”Con nell deputy in the Joint Special Warfare HQ set up to coordinate the Ranger, Green
Beret, SAS, and SBS units operating in South Africa.
The third man, though, was someone he knew only by reputation. Commandant
Henrik Kruger’s trek through hostile territory had made headlines around the world. O’Connell sat up straighter.
“So you’re that sure of this guy
Coetzee? You don’t think he’d get cold feet and back out at the last minute?”
Kruger shook his head.
“I would trust Deneys Coetzee with my life. What he says he will do, he does. ” He suddenly bared his teeth.
“In fact,
Colonel O’Connell, I will trust him with my life, quite literally. Take me with you if this operation I propose is approved. If he betrays us, you can kill me yourself. “
O’Connel I studied the South African officer closely. Christ, he’d thought Brave Fortune was crazy. But what this man Kruger was suggesting was pure, unadulterated insanity. On the other hand, what options did they really have? General Craig was right. They had to get Vorster and get him fast. The Air Force wanted to bomb, but bombing made martyrs. And bombing was never a sure thing.
He shrugged mentally. Kruger’s idea might just be harebrained enough to work. Anyway, it sure as hell couldn’t hurt to explore it further.
He picked up the phone on his desk.
“Bill? Patch me through to the chief of staff’s office. I want to talk to Skiles himself, understand?” He waited for a few minutes, his fingers drumming on the desktop in impatience as he listened to static.
Finally, a familiar voice came on the line, harried but still friendly.
“Good to hear from you, Rob. What can I do for you?”
Time for the plunge. O’Connell sat up straight in his chair.
“I need an appointment with General Craig, sir.”
Skiles sounded doubtful.
“I might be able to get you in sometime this afternoon…”
Hell, in for a penny, in for a pound. O’Connell gripped the receiver tighter.
“No, sir, you don’t understand. I need to see General Craig now.”
HEADQUARTERS, CUBAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, NABOOMSPRUIT
Gen. Antonio Vega cursed the Afrikaners and their fanaticism. They were willing to destroy their entire economy in order to deny it to their enemies. This was scorched earth on a new scale.
He knew what Vorster and the other Boer leaders thought. They would return to basics, to the simple fanning life that they had known in the past. They were fools. Cuba had been trying to climb out of the very trap they wanted to climb into for half a century.
Colonel Suarez knocked on the door.
“Comrade General, your car will be ready in five minutes. “
Vega nodded heavily. It was time for him to visit the remnants of his once-proud First Brigade Tactical Group now encamped fifty kilometers down the road at Warmbad-only one hundred kilometers from Pretoria itself. Their final offensive would begin tomorrow, and as was his custom, he planned to inspect the assault units and say the encouraging things generals were always expected to say on such occasions.
There was a bittersweet feeling to this attack. He’d never doubted that there would be a last battle and a final victory. He had even acknowledged that it might be much harder than originally planned, and it had been. But if the Afrikaners carried out their monstrous threat, it would snatch the prize away moments before it became his.
Under his breath, Vega cursed Vorster again, but he also wondered if he might not have done the same thing under similar circumstances. The temptation to rob a hated enemy of victory must be overpowering.
He buried the thought and rose to follow Suarez. He and his troops had only one option left to them-charge hard for Pretoria and hope for the best.
Both Havana and Moscow had sent messages exhorting him on. They were reassuring, especially the Soviet Union’s promise of expanded logistic support, but also late and unnecessary. He’d scheduled this final Cuban push for tomorrow in any case. Karl Vorster and his cronies would soon learn that their threats could not deter Antonio Vega.
South Africa’s rulers had made one mistake in their calculations. They’d assumed that both the Cuban and U.S. forces would stop rather than risk loss of South Africa’s mineral reserves. Vega didn’t know the American commander Craig’s mind well enough to guess what he would do, but for
Vega there wasn’t any dilemma at all.
If he captured Pretoria and seized the mines intact, he won. The
Afrikaner regime would be destroyed and the West would lose its essential resources. On the other hand, if the mines were contaminated, Cuba and its allies would lose, but so would the Afrikaners and the West. And that, too, was good enough for him.
JANUARY 8-DURBAN
The planning session had been going on since before breakfast. The scattered remains of a hotel meal still littered the table. For security reasons, the kitchen staff weren’t allowed in, and Craig refused to have his enlisted men acting as busboys.
“They can do it, sir. ” Craig’s intelligence officer sounded both sure of his facts and distressed by them. JCS has confirmed the new message from Vorster’s government this morning. It’s all there: materials, methods, everything needed to prove they have the capability.”
That eliminated some of the uncertainty, although there had never really been any doubt. Craig had been hoping for a miracle, some sign that the
Afrikaners were bluffing. Miracles were hard to come by down here.
The colonel continued, JCS has also revised their time estimates.
There’s no question that Pretoria has at least half its mining facilities wired already.” He frowned.
“And they’ll have the rest done by the end of the day.”
In response to Craig’s questioning look, the colonel explained, “Our original estimates included complete coverage of each mine by several explosive devices, all connected to a central control point and one alternate. It appears all the Afrikaners are doing is dropping one waste canister on the end of a wire into each mine and leaving one or two men behind to monitor it.”
Craig nodded. One canister of highlevel radioactive waste would be enough to poison a site for decades, maybe even centuries. They could always beef up the demolitions later, if they wanted to.
The discussion broke off as a sergeant came in hurriedly, clutching a sheaf of papers and photographs. He handed the material to the colonel and whispered briefly with him.
“he Cubans are moving.” The staff stirred in their seats at the halfexpected, half-dreaded news. Craig swore silently to himself.
With one hand, the J-2 cleared away some of the papers and dishes
littering the table. Spreading out a line of photo graphs he examined each one.
“These were taken this morning by reconnaissance aircraft from Vinson.” The photos, taken by advanced cameras and digitally enhanced, were clear. Long lines of vehicles, some tanks, clogged every road south of Warmbad.
One photograph had managed to catch a skirmish between the Boers and the
Cubans. The orderly columns were in disarray, and several smudges of smoke could indicate burning vehicles,
