“Listen to this: Renamo spotters report an armored column moving toward our border with Mozambique. A column containing at least fifty vehicles, including main battle tanks and mobile antiaircraft guns! ”
“And this!” Heerden flipped to a new page.
“One of our deep-cover people reports seeing General Vega in Zimbabwe. What the hell’s he doing there on the eve of what’s supposed to be a big offensive in Namibia?”
He shook his head.
“I tell you, Willem, these reports can only mean one thing. Castro’s planning a big push all right, but along our borders with
Mozambique and Zimbabwenot in Namibia. And this attack is imminent.”
-Kolonel … sir. ” Metje added the last word for emphasis.
“The
President and General de Wet have already decided that Cuba’s offensive will be launched in the near future-in Namibia. Our staff’s Official
Estimate predicts a divisional attack on one or two axes near Windhoek, with diversionary attacks from Walvis Bay and possibly elsewhere. ” He nodded contemptuously toward the papers in Heerden’s hand.
“Those reports obviously refer to the enemy’s diversionary attacks. ”
The younger man didn’t bother to hide his patronizing tone, and Heerden felt his blood pressure rise.
“Damn it, man, I know how de Wet’s “Official Estimate’ reads, even if his staff ignored my reports when they wrote it. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore new information. ”
Metje shook his head almost pityingly.
“I’m afraid, Kolonet, that the
General Staff ignores your conclusions because you are widely regarded as having been taken in by a Cuban deception plan.”
Heerden felt his jaw drop open.
The major continued, hammering his point home remorselessly.
“As a result, General de Wet and his officers have been using other sources of intelligence lately. They have decided that you are—he paused-“unreliable.”
Heerden felt a dozen questions bubbling up inside. The
first one to take definite shape reflected the basic curiosity of an intelligence officer.
“So where are they getting their intelligence then?”
Metje smiled modestly.
“From me.”
The colonel could only stare at him, taken completely by surprise.
Metje continued, “So you see, Kolonel, I’ve already evaluated these reports you claim are so significant.” He waved them away with one dismissive hand.
“They are clearly nothing more than Cuban disinformation.”
Heerden sat down heavily on the edge of his desk.
“When did you see them?”
“About an hour ago.”
“I see.” Heerden’s shoulders slumped.
“Then there is nothing more I can do here.”
“No… there isn’t.” This time Metje pointedly abandoned any reference to his rank.
Heerden made a sudden decision and threw the collection of reports onto his desk. He sighed once and apparently exhausted, reached for his uniform cap.
In a tired voice, he said, “In that case, I think I’ll go home now,
Majoor.”
Metje nodded carefully and moved away.
“A wise decision, I believe.” He turned sharply on his heel and strode in triumph down the hallway.
Heerden watched him go through narrowed eyes. Then he swept his gaze around his office, looking for anything he might need. There was nothing.
He shut the door, tucked his cap under his arm, and walked slowly in the opposite direction from that taken by Metje.
There wasn’t much point in going back to his home. No sense in making it easy for Vorster’s brown shirted Brandwag goons to find him. He’d have to call his wife and children from a pay phone. They could meet him at some inconspicuous public place-Botha’s statue in the park on Church Street should be perfect. By the time his arrest order percolated down through the bureaucracy, he and his family could be well on their way to Cape Town.
Mentally, he started making a list of things Greta would have to bring.
Civilian clothes for him and all the maps they had. She’d also have to take the time to get the car filled up, along with an extra petrol can if possible. He smiled thinly. Fortunately, his status as an officer entitled them to enough ration coupons for all of that.
He stepped out of the building into early evening. The air was a little cooler, and the outside sights and sounds broke his train of thought. As he walked toward the corner phone, he found himself wondering if this was the right thing to do.
His Army career was obviously over, finished by these politicians in uniform. But did that justify an act most would call treason? Joining a civil war on what might be the losing side? And why not leave his family here, out of danger? They would be safe. After all, Vorster’s security police would only be looking for him.
Heerden paused with his hand on the phone, suddenly uncertain.
Then he shook his head angrily. His family wouldn’t be safe. Even if de
Wet and the rest of those fools didn’t believe him, he could tell what was going to happen. He’d seen the evidence piling up until only an idiot or a blind man or Willem Metje could ignore it. At least two brigade-sized Cuban columns were going to come thundering in from the north and east-daggers aimed right at the heart of South Africa’s government and industry.
And South Africa had almost nothing in their path to stop them.
Every soldier worthy of the name was already crouched in the mountains south of Windhoek, out breaking heads in black townships, or, he thought, in rebellion against a government that seemed bent on destroying its own people.
Heerden lifted the phone and punched in his own number. When he heard his wife’s voice, he said, “Greta, listen carefully. I can’t talk for very long…”
With less than ten hours left to go before Vega’s tanks rolled across the frontier, South Africa’s military intelligence service had lost its head.
NOVEMBER
13-
SADF
HEADQUARTERS
,
PRETORIA
,
SOUTH
AFRICA
Achieving surprise is the first goal of every military operation. Given ample warning, a well-prepared defending army can defeat an attacking force many times its own size. An alerted defender may have time to move units, call up reserves, or use other tactics to alter the odds in an upcoming battle.
Surprise prevents that. It guarantees an attacker the initiative, allowing him to set the pace of combat, forcing his victim to react-often in a predictable manner. But if a defender’s response is unpredictable, then the mantle of surprise-the initiative-may be transferred from one side to the other, and the cycle begins again.
Surprise also has one other effect. When a commander confronts an unexpected situation, he naturally takes more time to react because he has to discard all the preconceptions and prejudices that allowed him to be surprised in the first place. And if he delays too long, his enemy is able to attack a disorganized, leaderless force-presenting the luckless
4W
commander with yet another set of problems before he has even begun to solve the first.
The result is command paralysis, a sense of shock and helplessness that has lost many battles and many wars. The best commanders, the “great captains” of history, are those men who “keep their heads when all around are losing theirs. ”
Newly promoted Kommandant Willem Metje hid a yawn as he watched staff officers plotting military movements on a large-scale map of Namibia.
Fluorescent lights and a lack of sleep were giving him a headache that not even a general, bubbling sense of triumph could completely dispel.
De Wet’s headquarters staff had been up since midnight, barraged by incomplete and contradictory reports of
ANC
guerrilla and Cuban commando raids in Namibia and all along South Africa’s northern border.
Several minor incidents near Pretoria-a grenade thrown at a police station and a few mysteriously downed power lines near Voortrekker
Heights-had prompted de Wet’s first positive order: an urgent call for more troops to guard the headquarters building and complex.
All in all, thought Metje crossly, it seemed a lot of effort for so insignificant a result.
But now at least things were finally moving in Namibia. Commanders on the front were reporting heavy air attacks, artillery bombardments, and ground assaults-all concentrated near the tiny town of Dordabis. And though South Africa’s forward battalions were expending massive amounts of ammunition, they were holding their ground with relative ease.
Castro’s vaunted offensive was failing.
Tall, whitehaired Adriaan de Wet moved closer and thumped Metje on the shoulder.
“Congratulations, Willem, the Cubans are doing exactly what you predicted.”
The younger man smiled back weakly and resisted the urge to rub his shoulder. Both his new rank insignia and his upset stomach seemed to settle a little in response to de Wet’s praise. And any qualms he might have had about orchestrating Colonel Heerden’s downfall vanished.
De Wet drew him forward to the edge of the map.
“So now we let our enemies ram their heads into our brick walls a little longer, eh?”
Metje nodded. The general always liked to see complete agreement from his subordinates.
De Wet leaned far out over the table.
“And when they are weak and reeling . then we strike, and strike hard!”
The other staff officers grouped nearby muttered their unreserved enthusiasm.
De Wet’s eyes shone with excitement as he pointed to a single unit counter positioned on the main highway leading to Windhoek.
“The Eighty-first
Armored should be able to punch through their lines in a matter of hours!
After the slaughter at Dordabis, the Cubans can’t have much left to stop our tanks!”
More nods. The 81st was a crack outfit. Its two armored and two mechanized battalions contained practically every Olifant main battle tank left in
South Africa’s inventory. And when it attacked, its tanks and APCs would be backed by the concentrated firepower of more than fifty G-5 and G-6 155mm guns. Cuba’s shattered forces shouldn’t stand a chance. The long, out-of-control war in Namibia might be over within weeks.
De Wet and his staff stood contemplating their upcoming counterattack, basking in the glow of anticipated victory.
KOMATIPOORT
BORDER
POST
, IN
THE
CROCODILE
RIVER
VALLEY
,
WEST
OF
MOZAMBIQUE
Late-spring days were always hot and humid in the wooded lowlands separating
South Africa from Mozambique. And though it had barely begun, this day promised more of the same.
A dense, damp haze already lingered motionless over citrus orchards, sugarcane fields, and the slow, eastward-rolling waters of the Crocodile
River. National Route 4, the main highway between Johannesburg and Maputo, stretched empty as far as the eye could see. High overhead, birds circled lazily through the still, warm air, their wings spread wide to generate every possible ounce of lift.
The only human activity seemed centered around a small wooden building adjacent to the highway and fifty meters back from a signpost marking the border. Shovels and pickaxes rose and fell together in a strange sort of rhythm as men in full combat gear dug foxholes and firing pits.
In a land as torn by violence as South Africa, border guards weren’t sleepy policemen checking for insects in contraband fruit. They were soldiers.
The commander of the Komatipoort Border Post, grayhaired Sgt. Uwe Boshof, laid his shovel aside and breathing heavily, plopped down on the edge of his shallow, hastily dug foxhole. Sweat stains soaked his short-sleeved khaki shirt-black patches of wetness spreading from under his armpits and across his broad back. The sergeant was a tall, big-boned man, and he carried a lot of meat on those bones. Too much, perhaps.
If so, he thought with weary amusement, he’d undoubtedly worked some of that excess weight off during the past several hours.
Boshof mopped his brow with a handkerchief and squinted east into the rising sun-an enormous orange-and-red orb flattened and distorted by the lowlying haze. Despite the clinging, sticky heat it was sure to bring, he was glad to see the day proper begin.
His night had been long on confusion and wild rumor and short on needed steep.
First, that idiot Private Krom had woken him up after hearing what he claimed were radio reports of some big guerrilla attack way up north along the Limpopo. When the story wasn’t repeated in the SABC’s next hourly broadcast, Boshof vaguely remembered going back to bed-but only after chewing Krom out for being a blithering, gutless moron.
He’d scarcely had time to drift off again before the first phone call came in-from the Army’s Eastern Transvaal Command, no less. Some staff flunkie wanting to know if they’d spotted any “unusual activity.” For a second, he’d been tempted to mention the pair of blesbok, or antelope,
he’d seen wander by earlier that evening. But only for a second. Staff officers had a notoriously poor sense of humor.
After that, he’d only been able to grab one fitful, restless hour of shut-eye before the kak, the shit, really started to hit the fan.
At two in the morning, reinforcements arrived-six more men dropped off from a truck making the rounds of every guard post along this stretch of the border. A hurried phone call to Battalion revealed only that both his captain and lieutenant were “unavailable.” They’d probably been comfortably asleep, he thought irritably.
His new men had been full of tales, though: blab bering all over creation about the whole base being put on alert, all leaves being canceled, and frantic quartermasters rushing around issuing field rations and a basic load of ammunition to every combat soldier. They were sure something big was happening.
Right. The Afrikaner noncom snorted at the memory. God save him from raw recruits who couldn’t tell the difference between real war and a blery drill.