In the bestselling novel Red Phoenix, Larry

Bond set a bold new standard in military and

political suspense fiction. Creating a chill-

ingiy plausible war scenario that could have

been drawn from tomorrow s news. thc

author gave us not only a riveting history of

how such a war would be fought on every

conceivable front, but a compelling account

of what it would mean in human terms.

Now, in VORTEX, Larry Bond expands his

storytelling powers ill an epic novel set in

one of the most emotionally charged t lash-

points on earth today: South Africa. Now the

world is no longer dominated by two antag-

onistic superpowers. Instead, the theater of

conflict has shifted to the Third World, with a

deadly precariousness [lever known before.

The drama begins with a lightning raid by

South African troops into Zimbabwe, where

they net all invaluable cache of secret docu-

ments belonging to tile black guerilla army

of the African Natiunal Congress. Using the

intelligence gleaned from the raid, factions

in Pretoria s security apparatus manipulate

the African National Cougress into the

slaughter of virtually the entire South African

government, catapulting an extreme-right,

white-supremacist administration into

power. The country now has a more ruthless

set of masters, setting the stage for apart-

heid s final struggle.

It is a struggle that will [ age across the

whole of southern Africa, across deserts,

across the veldt, in the cities, at sea, and in

tile air. It will realize many of humaukiud s

worst fears, including the full-scale ~se of

both chemical and tactical nuclear weapons.

It will raise the nightmare specter of interna-

lional race war, global economic collapse,

and Armageddon itself. As chaos threatens

to spread across an entire continent, as

Cubau for[ es mount a drive for control of

one of the most strategically vital corners

or the world, the United States mobilizes for