Vortex (Mass Market Paperback)

Vortex, Larry Bond and Patrick Larkin's second collaborative effort, is set in early 1990s South Africa before the white minority relinquished its death-grip on power. It paints a dark scenario of a desperate Boer-dominated government using its military and police to destabilize neighboring "black" African nations and fight a Marxist-leaning African National Congress and its armed guerrillas.

Vortex starts out, as many techno-thrillers often do, with a seemingly isolated event. In the prologue, a team of South African Army commandos and a black ANC turncoat execute a raid on an ANC safe house/headquarters in Gawamba, Zimbabwe. Led by Capt. Rolf Bekker, the South African commandos wipe out an ANC guerrilla cell and capture a safe full of documents (which they photograph and leave apparently undiscovered), then return to their base without serious loss.

In Bond's alternate history, years of sanctions and diplomatic isolation have failed to end apartheid and white rule of the Union of South Africa. Instead, the Boers (descendants of South Africa's original Dutch settlers) who dominate the government have become more repressive and paranoid. For their part, the ANC's leaders have grown weary of waiting for the West to press for change by peaceful means, and Marxist hard-liners have come up with a campaign code named Broken Covenant. Its goal: to win by force what years of negotiations and international condemnation have not...the end of white rule and the establishment of a black-dominated government. And by the end of the novel, South Africa's internal strife becomes a conflict pitting Anglo-American forces against various opponents, including Cuban Army units sent by Fidel Castro.

Bond's depiction of a war in South Africa now seems a bit of a stretch, but given that he was a former naval intelligence officer (and designer of the Harpoon war game), perhaps his research into apartheid-era South African affairs gave him insights that most of his readers didn't have. At times the depiction of the South African "bad guys" reminds one of Hitler's Third Reich, especially when Bond and Larkin write about the more die-hard racist government ministers; Karl Vorster, a South African Hitler-like figure and Marius van der Heijden, deputy minister of Law and Order, who seems to have studied under Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, so extreme are his racist views. But as in many World War II novels, there are "good" South Africans who, when push comes to shove, find the courage to rise against the injustices that they have previously defended.

Of course, it helps to have a little mix of romance, youthful rebellion and a healthy dose of American firepower, and as in Red Phoenix, American weaponry and military units play a huge role in Vortex's plot. In some ways, it's formulaic and the reader knows things will have a rosy ending, but in other ways Vortex is fascinating. Readers will be surprised to know how puritanical the Boer society was (a friend of mine who visited South Africa in the late '70s said Playboy-style magazines were not sold there) and how tense relations used to be between the Dutch- and English-descended whites. The officers with English surnames are often distrusted by their Boer counterparts and are often more critical of apartheid than is healthy for their careers. But just as there are "good Germans" in WWII fact and fiction, there are also "good Boers" who join forces with American and British troops to end the bloody conflict that threatens to end their country's very existence.

Where Tom Clancy draws all of the accolades and acclaim, Larry Bond continually produces superb military/political thrillers that are of the same caliber and in the case of Vortex, much larger in scope and overall detail.

If you're a Tom Clancy, Harold Coyle, Dale Brown, Stephen Coonts, or one of the many other fine military/political thriller author's fans, you would do well to pick up on Larry Bond and his superior work.

The premise:

Taking into consideration that this novel was written in the late 80's and early 90's, Larry Bond absorbed the headline news of the time to craft a conceivable real world situation where the boiling point of South Africa could've turned into the very Vortex, of the title, and brought the entire worlds attention to its internal struggles. There could've been no more apropos title for this novel than "Vortex." Vortex as defined in the Webster's dictionary (A situation regarded as drawing into its center all that surrounds it.)

Essentially, Vortex is the story of one man's twisted desires to bring total apartheid to its maximum fruition in Karl Vorster. Through chance and his own machinations, he effectively seizes control of the South African government and begins to bring to realization his perverted dreams of total apartheid and the destruction of his opponents or anyone else who gets in his way. Given South Africa's mineral wealth and that strategic importance to both Western and Eastern powers, this quickly draws their collective attentions.

What follows is a tour de force of flurried action, suspense and outstanding military fiction, which brings many players to the table to include; the United States, Britain, Israel, Russia, Cuba and Libya. Hence the title of "Vortex." Where these many players are all drawn to South Africa and its mineral wealth. {ssintrepid}

"Voragina" es una obra de Larry Bond, al estilo de "Fenix Rojo", "Caldera" y "Tormenta Roja".