Cuban lives to save one of those third-world states, will help our image abroad. The next time a Western nation looks at us, they will have to see us as we really are. The Washington-controlled embargo will weaken, at least. It may even break.”
He smiled.
“Don’t worry, Comrade. We have much to gain by winning in
Namibia. You will have every resource you need.”
Vega nodded, somewhat reassured. Havana wasn’t ignoring the real world.
Good.
The treaty-mandated withdrawal from Angola had seemed likely to end
Castro’s influence on the continent. One more communist retrenchment in an era already filled with surrender. Leaving Luanda would also have meant abandoning a valuable source of hard currency for Cuba’s hardpressed economy.
His own reasons for intervening in Namibia were less complicated. Vega wanted to hurt South Africa, to wreck its plans. He and his troops had fought Pretoria’s expeditionary forces and Angola-based Unita stooges for years. Each encounter had carried its own grisly price tag in dead and wounded comrades, and none had been decisive. The war in Angola had been a series of pointless battles with no final objective.
Worn-out by years of fruitless skirmishing, Vega had been ready to return home-home to bask in Cuba’s warm Caribbean sun. South Africa’s invasion of
Namibia offered him a chance for a decisive, stand-up fight.
He was ready. Cuba had been fighting in Angola since 1975, so he had a pool of experienced officers, combat veterans who knew how to fight and who knew the conditions in southern Africa.
Vega also knew the risks the South Africans were taking in their drive to seize Namibia quickly. Risks Pretoria’s commanders were willing to take because they didn’t expect to meet competent military opposition. Risks he intended to make them regret.
UMKHONTC
) WE
SIZWE
HEADQUARTERS
,
LUSAKA
,
ZAMBIA
Col. Sese Luthuli fielded yet another frantic phone call. A panicked voice in the receiver said, “This is Jonas. ” At least he had enough sense to use his code name, Luthuli thought.
“I’ve gotten reports from all of my cells. The South Africans are moving in numbers, Colonel! The Gajab River camp has been overrun!”
Luthuli fought the urge to lash out at this man. He knew “Jonas,” an
Ovimbundu tribesman in his thirties with a good record in the struggle.
He had no sense, though, and could not be trusted in combat. This had relegated him to administrative duties, which had now probably saved his life.
The man’s information was hours old. Luthuli had to give him the bad news without panicking him entirely, and quickly. Nobody knew how fast the
Boers were moving.
“Jonas, listen. Find everyone you can and get out of Namibia any way you can. South Africa’s armies are on the move, and we have to abandon all our camps.”
“But comrade, without them our organization will fall apart! Our supplies, our communications-”
“Will have to be rebuilt,” Luthuli interrupted.
“We must save what we can and start over. Headquarters does not think the South Africans will go beyond Namibia’s borders. If you can make it to Angola, or Botswana, you should be safe.”
“But we will lose so much! Shouldn’t we strike at the enemy?”
Inwardly, Luthuli smiled. So there was a little fire in him after all.
“We are, comrade, but that is not your task. You must organize the evacuation, and quickly. We must live to fight on. I must go now. Good luck.”
As he hung up, the colonel heard the voice protesting, asking for instructions. He shrugged. How much direction did a man need to run?
He hoped there would be friendly faces for his men in Botswana and
Angola. Ever since Broken Covenant, foreign support for the
ANC
had dried up. Money from America and Europe, even weapons from socialist supporters, had stopped
completely. The Namibian training camps had become mere holding pens as they searched for resources. You can indoctrinate a man with words, but they needed more than that to fight the South Africans.
Luthuli felt bad about lying to him, as well. There had been no attempt to strike back at the advancing Boer armies. Umkhonto we Sizwe was a political army, a resistance group. The typical guerrilla cell was armed with a few pistols and rifles and usually had no more than five men. Heavy weapons, such as machine guns and rocket launchers, had limited ammunition and were saved for important targets. When his men moved, they used borrowed civilian transport, or they walked.
Scattered in small groups all over South Africa, the guerrilla cells spent more time dodging Vorster’s security forces than they did planning and executing guerrilla attacks. And those attacks were always carefully scouted, with planning and practicing that normally took days. Umkhonto could no more hurt the massive South African war machine than a small child could fight with a heavyweight boxer. All of his guerrillas, scattered across the country, probably had no more combined fighting power than a battalion of South African troops.
Luthuli looked at the map in his office, at the documents on his desk. The only men he had left were the survivors of the crackdown that had followed
Vorster’s takeover, the result of Broken Covenant. The “reforms” under
Haymans had proceeded just far enough for the
ANC
to move into the light, for its members to expose themselves. He had argued against it, fought tooth and nail to keep Umkhonto secret and powerful. Now it lay in shards, most of their leaders and half of their fighters rotting in prison.
Luthuli had not given up. He was a realist, though. Umkhonto’s violence was always aimed at political targets, designed to influence leaders at home and world opinion abroad. Mortaring a military base, bombing a railway station, even a careful assassination, were all designed to show the willingness of the African people to struggle, to answer the Boer’s violence with their own.
None of this mattered in wartime. Five people killed by a bomb on a bus could not compare to the casualty lists coming from the front. Any attack his people made now would simply cause them to be lumped in with the other military enemies. The
ANC
had been overtaken by events.
Even before the Namibian invasion, Luthuli had faced rebuilding a shattered organization, lacking the money or weapons to even maintain it.
He also lacked political support, since the
ANC
was viewed by many states as the cause of all the troubles. And even if he could rebuild his forces, they would have to be trained and equipped to fight a much more conventional war. Now he had lost the base camps.
It was time to ask for help, to appeal for more than just supplies and cash. He knew that there would be a price to pay, but if Umkhonto did not receive massive assistance soon, it would cease to exist, and the struggle would die with it.
There was only one country he could turn to for support. They had stayed true to their Marxist beginnings. Even though they weren’t as rich as the
Russians, the fires of revolution still burned in Havana.
He picked up the phone.
AUGUST
19-20TH
CAPE
RIFLES
, ON
MOTOR
ROUTE
1,
FIFTY
KILOMETERS
SOUTH
OF
KEETMANSHOOP
Smoke from the burning village eddied over the highway, adding an acrid tang to air already stained by diesel fumes and the sickly sweet smell of high explosives. Bodies and pieces of bodies were scattered haphazardly through a tangle of collapsed houses and fire-blackened huts. Some of the corpses were in Namibian uniforms but most were not. A few dazed survivors squatted beside the village well, their faces set in rigid masks of mingled horror and grief.
A futile show of resistance by Namibian police had given Maj. Daan
Visser’s armored fighting vehicles and scout cars the only excuse they needed. Just five minutes of machinegun fire and several HE rounds from 76mm cannon had turned the little Namibian settlement into a charnel house. Then
Visser’s men had roared off northward into the late-mo ming light, leaving the battalion’s main column to clear up the mess and secure any prisoners.
Commandant Henrik Kruger shook his head wearily and turned away, trying to concentrate on the developing strategic situation shown on his map.
Colored-pencil notations showed the last reported positions of all known
South African and Namibian units.
In a nonstop drive since crossing the frontier, Kruger and his men had steamrollered their way west to Grunau. Up a winding pass climbing through the Great Karas Mountains, then north toward the paratroop-held airhead at
Keetmanshoop. More than 280 kilometers in just thirty-six hours. Resistance had been light-almost nonexistent, in fact. Only a few easily crushed pockets such as the police post in this village. The column advancing from
Walvis Bay reported similar progress.
Good. But not good enough. Kruger folded the map with abrupt, decisive strokes and handed it to a waiting staff officer, a babyfaced lieutenant.
They were already eight hours behind schedule-at least according to the wildly optimistic invasion timetables prepared by Pretoria. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. Moving long columns of men and equipment over vast distances was always a time-consuming business-even without meeting de ten-nined enemy resistance.
Kruger’s own advance was a case in point. The trucks and APCs carrying his battalion had been on the road continuously for more than a day and a half, pushing north with only scattered five-and ten-minute rest breaks. They were starting to pay a price for that. Exhausted drivers were falling asleep at the wheel or growing increasingly irritable. The result: a rising number of minor traffic accidents and breakdowns, each exacting additional delay. Resupply halts were taking longer too. Tired men took more time to refuel and re ann the it vehicles.
Something would have to be done about that.
With the young lieutenant trailing behind, he moved around to the armored side door of his squat, metal-hulled Ratel command
APC
. Up and down the length of the long column, other vehicle commanders were already gunning their overworked engines to life. Blue-gray exhaust billowed into the hazy air.
His mind was made up. Once the battalion reached the paratroops at
Keetmanshoop, it would have to halt for at least six hours to rest and recover. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t see any other realistic alternative. Not that that would leave him with a combat-ready unit. Still, every hour of added delay gave the Namibian Army more time to pull itself together. Plus there were rumors that the Cubans had promised their assistance.
Kruger frowned. That was a disquieting possibility. He respected the
Cubans. They were communists, it was true, but they made tough soldiers nonetheless.
He swung himself back inside the command vehicle’s cramped interior.
Moments later, the column of camouflaged APCs, trucks, and armored cars trundled north again, driving hard for Keetmanshoop and some promised sleep. The shattered village continued to burn behind them.
AUGUST
20-
PANTHER
FLIGHT
,
OVER
WINDHOEK
Lt. Andreis Stegman always enjoyed flying, every second he was in the air.
And why shouldn’t he? He was one of the best pilots in the South African Air
Force. He had to be, because he’d been assigned to fly one of the SAAF’s thirty Mirage F. I CZ jet interceptors-the most advanced fighter in South
Africa’s inventory.
The Mirage was a beautiful plane, fast and maneuverable. Its South
African-built air-to-air missiles might not be the most modern in the world, but Stegman knew he could hold his own against any likely opponent.
Stegman and his wingman, Lt. Klaus de Vert, were on fighter patrol over
Windhoek. Their ability to loiter right over Namibia’s capital without any sign of opposition confirmed South Africa’s complete air superiority.
Namibia’s pathetic fleet of antiquated propeller-driven planes had been destroyed
on the first day-strafed on the ground or shot out of the sky with contemptuous ease.
The two swept-wing Mirages circled slowly at eleven thousand meters, orbiting over a light scud of clouds four thousand meters below. At this altitude, there wasn’t a hint of turbulence and the sky overhead was a bright pale blue. Except where drifting white patches of cloud blocked his view, Stegman could see more than three hundred kilometers of southern Africa’s dusty brown surface in every direction.
It wasn’t the most exciting flying, but Stegman loved it all.
He tried to concentrate on the task at hand. They were obviously supposed to attack any enemy aircraft that appeared, but their primary mission involved interdicting Windhoek’s airport. Cargo aircraft trying to take off or land at the field would be sitting ducks for his and de Vert’s high-performance fighters.
Stegman alternated between scanning the sky, checking his radar screen, and running his gaze over the Mirage’s flight instruments in a regular pattern. The pattern had long since become second nature to him. He had over five hundred hours in fighters, and even one kill to his credit.
He smiled cruelly behind his oxygen mask, remembering the frenzied air battle. It had happened over Angola during the SADF’s last major ground operation. They’d been supporting Unita, helping to repel a major Angolan and Cuban offensive against the guerrillas. Stegman, then just a junior lieutenant, had been flying as wingman to Captain de Kloof on a routine fighter sweep over the operational area.
They’d been jumped by two MiG-23 Floggers coming up from low-level with their radars off in a classic bushwhack. By rights de Kloof and he should have been dead. The Russian-built fighters were faster and equipped with radar-guided missiles. But Stegman had learned that day which is more important-a plane or its pilot.