Hunter Killer Read online

  At present, there was of course a vast amount of incoming dollars still owed to Saudi Arabia, and while the King intended to increase the personal state allowances to all citizens to $14,000 a year, he did not feel able to commit billions to the rebuilding of the oil loading platforms at Yanbu al Bahr, Rabigh, and Jiddah. He would begin that work as soon as some oil began to flow.

  But, true to his word, he immediately awarded all the major contracts to French construction corporations, with a gigantic sum of money for advice, consultation, and planning services to the giant French TotalFinaElf oil conglomerate.

  All of this was done in secrecy and it would be many weeks before the full scale of Saudi Arabia’s apparent debt to France was uncovered. Meanwhile, millions and millions of dollars’ worth of hardware, oil pipeline, pumping systems, excavation equipment, trucks, and bulldozers were making their way systematically through the Mediterranean, from French ports to the Suez Canal.

  It was boom time in the heartland of industrial France. Just as the French President knew it would be, almost a year ago when Prince Nasir had first come to call.

  Meanwhile, the sun shone brightly on the Diplomatic Quarter in Riyadh. General Rashood and Colonel Gamoudi had elected to dine at one of the best Italian restaurants in the desert city, Da Pino in the Al Khozama Center, next to the Al Khozama Hotel on Olaya Street. It was a great favorite of Saudi Arabia’s ruling class, who had formerly all belonged to one family, but now Da Pino was hitting very hard times, and it was easier to book a table than it had ever been. Of course, if General Rashood and Colonel Gamoudi had wished, the King would have bought it for them.

  However, they only wanted a good dinner of pasta and chicken or veal, with fruit juice to drink, both being devout Muslims and unable to drink alcohol in this country anyway.

  Their chauffeur drove them into the city from the Diplomatic Quarter. General Rashood caught his first glimpse of a black Citroën driving behind them before they were out of King Khalid Road. He could just see it through the passenger-side mirror, and while he was not particularly curious, he did notice that the vehicle was driving up close and had once refused to allow a white van to drift in between them. There was a loud blowing of horns. Rashood turned to see the van driver waving his fist. They turned left onto Makkah Road, and, routinely, Rashood checked to see if the Citroën was still behind them.

  It was, but these were two of the busiest streets in Riyadh, so there was nothing unusual in that. However, when they made their turn onto Al Amir Soltan Street, Rashood saw the Citroën once again follow them closely. They sped under the big overhead junction with King Fahd Road and took the third left onto the wide boulevard of Olaya Street.

  They pulled up on the right-hand side, where there was ample parking space. The chauffeur said he would be waiting right there when they had finished dinner. Both men climbed out on the right side, and Rashood watched the Citroën drive past and make a slow right onto Al Amir Mohammed Road. He never gave the car another thought.

  Dinner was outstanding and the chef came out and talked to them. At the next table was Colonel Bandar, liberator of the Riyadh television stations, dining with his family. He and Jacques Gamoudi silently toasted each other with fruit juice, and introductions were made.

  They all left, more or less together, just after 10 P.M., and Rashood and Gamoudi walked quickly through the precincts of the Khozama Hotel and out into the fresh night air. The chauffeur waved to them from across the street, and they stood chatting on the sidewalk while the stream of traffic passed.

  Finally it was clear, and they stepped out into the street, with the traffic approaching from the left. Still chatting, they set off across the boulevard, when Rashood heard the squeal of tires on black-top, from the left, no more than 100 yards away. He stopped instinctively, but Jacques Gamoudi kept going.

  Rashood turned to see an approaching vehicle that might have made zero to sixty in four seconds. Through his mind flashed the thought black Citroën. He could see it bearing down on them traveling absolutely foot to the boards.

  He jumped two steps forward and, with an outrageous display of strength, twisted, wrapped his left forearm around the throat of Le Chasseur, and hurled him backward. Jacques Gamoudi’s head hit the ground first, followed by his shoulder blades.

  For a split-second the ex–French Foreign Legion soldier thought he was dead. Another half-second and he would have been. The front wheels of the Citroën literally brushed the soles of his feet as it roared past.

  Rashood leapt back onto his own feet. He heard the brakes of the Citroën shriek as it skidded to a standstill. For a moment he thought the driver was slamming the gears into reverse, and was coming back for them. They were sitting targets, almost in the middle of the road, with Jacques Gamoudi still supine, trying to clear his head from the wallop he had taken when he hit the road.

  But no. The Citroën was stopped dead, but the rear door on the right side was opening. Rashood could see the tip of a rifle, then he saw their assailant’s face: a dark, hard-eyed, unshaven thug. Ravi Rashood, the master unarmed combat soldier from the SAS, did not hesitate.

  He raced toward the car and, with a thunderous right-footed kick that would not have disgraced a French Rugby Union full-back, he almost took the man’s head off, snapped his neck, and broke his jaw in seven places. The rifle, a primed AK-47, clattered to the ground, and Rashood had time to grab it before the driver of the vehicle was out of the left front door and around the car aiming an identical weapon.

  Rashood had no time to aim or fire his own weapon, but he did have time to ram the gun’s butt into the man’s face. It was a vicious, high, stabbing blow delivered like a harpooner within reach of his whale.

  The blow smashed the bone in the center of the assassin’s forehead. But he was still standing, still holding the AK-47. But now it was too late. Rashood was on him. He sidestepped the rifle and came over the top, planting the fingers of his left hand deep into the man’s long curly hair. Simultaneously, he rammed the butt of his right palm with inhuman force into the base of the hooked Gallic nose that had briefly helped its owner look so menacing.

  Rashood’s blow had traveled more than a foot. And it packed unbelievable power as it exploded into the man’s nostrils. It killed him stone-dead, driving the nose bone into the brain, the classic combat blow of the British-trained Special Forces soldier.

  Jacques Gamoudi sat up groggily, just in time to see his colleague kill the second of their attackers. It was, in a sense, the street fight to end all street fights. One kick, one hit, one uppercut. One dead, one dying. All in the middle of the traffic.

  “Not too bad,” said Colonel Gamoudi, shaking his head and grinning at the same time, “for a guy who prefers fighting in royal palaces.”

  Rashood, who was already beckoning for the chauffeur to come and get them out of there, just said, “Christ, Jacques. That was obviously no accident. Someone out there is trying to kill us. And I have a feeling they want you more than they want me. You probably noticed the French car, French license plate, and that second little bastard smelled like a fucking garlic vat.”

  “Try not to impugn my adopted nationality with those English public school prejudices,” replied Gamoudi. “Yes, we use a little ail for the flavor, but that does not make us malodorants.”

  “Silence, Gamoudi,” said Rashood, as he hauled the French officer to his feet. “Otherwise I’ll make you salute me every time I save your life. That’s the second time in a week.”

  “Mon Dieu!” replied Gamoudi, in mock exasperation. “Where would I be without you?”

  “At a guess, I’d say dead behind that serving counter in the royal palace,” chuckled General Rashood. “Now try to shut up and get in the back of that car, will you—and don’t get blood all over the seat rest or the King will be very cross…Ahmed, give me some of those tissues, the Colonel has whacked his head.”

  “I don’t think his head hurts so bad as those two,” said the chauffeur, passing the tis
sues and nodding at the two stricken assassins, one of whom was still breathing just inside the rear door. The other was lying dead below the Citroën’s trunk.

  “Probably not,” agreed General Rashood.

  Ahmed took off, speeding back to the big white house at the edge of the Diplomatic Quarter. And there they sat on the wide rear veranda, sipping fruit juice and deciding that Riyadh was no longer the place for either of them. Tomorrow morning they would both suggest that their tasks for King Nasir were over and that they must return to their own homes.

  The trouble was, Jacques Gamoudi was now certain the French government was trying to kill him, and General Rashood agreed. They had to leave Riyadh, but the question was, where was Colonel Gamoudi to take refuge? And how was he going to get there without the French Secret Service hunting him down? It was not a role to which Le Chasseur was accustomed.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 1800

  NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

  “Right on time,” said Jimmy Ramshawe, as he stared at the new pictures arriving online from the National Surveillance Office. The shots showed the Navy base at France’s old Indian Ocean colony of La Réunion. And there, tucked neatly into the submarine pens, was the newly arrived Rubis-class hull number S605, the Améthyste. Out of sight for three weeks since it dived just south of the Gulf of Suez, but rarely out of mind. At least, not Jimmy Ramshawe’s.

  He had calculated that the submarine had come through the Bab el Mandeb sometime in the midafternoon of Thursday last week. And he’d marked his chart at a spot right off the Horn of Africa, the jutting headland of Somalia, where he’d assessed the Améthyste would be last Friday at midnight.

  It was 390 miles across the Gulf of Aden—and at twelve knots that was a thirty-two-hour journey, he told himself. Which left them a straight 2,400-mile run down the deep and lonely Indian Ocean, probably making around fifteen knots for six and a half days. On his chart Ramshawe had written, looking for the Améthyste in La Réunion sometime in the late evening of Friday April 2.

  “Actually, the bastard’s a few hours early,” he muttered. “Must have been speeding…cheeky fucker.”

  And now, he wondered, how about her mate? Unseen since she was logged through Port Said on March 4, the Perle had a longer journey home, through the Gulf. Ramshawe’s assessment had put hull number S606 well through the Strait of Hormuz last Wednesday. So she should have reached the Horn of Africa by Sunday, March 28.

  “She’s got six and a half days in front of her, so I’m looking at an ETA La Réunion sometime tomorrow evening, or early Sunday morning,” he pondered. “Jesus, if that French bastard shows up on time, for me it’s game, set, and match. Where the hell else has she been? And why did they both go deep in the Red Sea and stay there? None of the other French submarines making that journey ever do that. Arnie, baby, we got ’em, he thought.

  He stared once more at the incontrovertible evidence of the all-seeing eye of the U.S. satellite. There she was right there in the dockyard of La Réunion, the Améthyste, moored alongside her jetty, under the command of Cdr. Louis Dreyfus, according to the records at Port Said.

  It seemed incredible just to try and understand what she had done: obliterated the entire Saudi oil facilities in the Red Sea. But Lt. Commander Ramshawe knew what she had done, and in his candid opinion, the U.S. Navy would be justified in going right out there and sinking her—no bullshit.

  But those decisions would be made by the Big Man now, and Ramshawe greatly looked forward to hearing his reaction after the weekend, when it would become clear that the two prime suspects in this still baffling case were sitting in the French dockyard a couple of thousand miles south of the datum.

  They’ll be there, he told himself. I bloody know they’ll both be there.

  He downloaded the prints and walked slowly along the corridor to see Admiral Morris, still staring at the satellite shots that in his opinion proved the absolute guilt of the French in this worldwide financial horror story.

  Admiral Morris studied the prints and nodded sagely. “It’s all starting to fit together, eh, Jim? When’s the Perle due in?”

  “Tomorrow evening, or early Sunday morning.”

  “Okay, let’s not make a report to Admiral Morgan until she arrives. Seems to me a double on Sunday lunchtime is a whole lot better than a single right now at dinnertime on Friday night.”

  “We’re going to get it, too,” added Ramshawe. “It’s all starting to make sense.”

  SATURDAY, APRIL 3, MIDDAY

  KING NASIR’S PALACE

  RIYADH

  The King listened gravely to the account of the attempt on Colonel Gamoudi’s life on Olaya Street last Thursday night. General Rashood and Gamoudi had planned to keep quiet about the entire matter and make their way carefully out of the country in a few days. But the police had caused the most ridiculous fuss, some passerby had taken the number of their car, and Ahmed must have told about 7,000 people what had happened, because the King called Colonel Gamoudi on Saturday morning and suggested he and the General come in for a chat.

  It quickly became apparent that he had no interest in the rights and wrongs of the killings. Two of his most trusted friends had been attacked in the streets of Riyadh, and he was extremely glad things had worked out as they had.

  What the King wanted to know was who had attempted to kill his friends. But when he heard the story, as recounted by Rashood, he was inclined to agree with the General. The culprits may have been acting on behalf of the French government. And he did not approve of that. Not one bit.

  Like them, he knew it would be pointless for him to check with the French President. No one would admit to an assassination attempt. But the reality of the incident remained. If the French had decided to take out Le Chasseur, they were now up against an extremely powerful enemy.

  For King Nasir harbored all of that inbred Bedouin creed of loyalty, honed over thousands of year in the desert. Arabs do not easily abandon their friends. Indeed the Saudis’ record of loyalty, even to their employees, was absolutely rigid. If they hired anyone into a position of trust, and that trust was not broken, it would not matter if they had hired a total incompetent. They would never abandon him. They would assume that their own judgment might have been awry, but that ought not to reflect upon the character of any person they had appointed. If he was not up to the job, then they would hire someone to help him. But they would never, ever fire him.

  Perhaps the finest example of this friends-are-forever mentality happened in the emirate of Dubai, many years ago, when the legendary Sheik Rashid bin Said al-Maktoum, the ruler, gathered in the desert with his council to discuss the possibility of building the largest desalinization plant in the world. Eventually it came down to a short list of two—an excellent German corporation and the British engineers Weirs, of Glasgow, Scotland. The Germans had three advantages: they were more experienced, cheaper, and likely to be quicker. Sheik Rashid knew there were problems in Scotland. And he knew there were thousands of jobs on the line. But he had many, many friends in Great Britain, and indeed owed the existence of his entire country to Her Majesty’s Government.

  Finally he made his decision: “I have decided to award this contract to the British,” said Sheik Rashid.

  The Council was astonished. It was a full meeting, and they were sitting on a great carpet on the floor of the desert. His advisers immediately reminded Sheik Rashid of the price. This was a grandiose scheme, costing millions and millions of dollars. Why will you not appoint the Germans?

  There was a quizzical smile on the face of Sheik Rashid when he replied gently, “Because I like the British more.” And that was an end to it. The Scottish corporation successfully built Dubai’s massive first desalinization plant.

  And so it was with General Rashood and Colonel Gamoudi. They had put their lives on the line for King Nasir, and now they had become his friends. And to him this made them unique in all the world. He would hear no word against them, and he would protect them for
ever—with his life if necessary.

  The French might have been wise to find this out about the new King of Saudi Arabia.

  And here in his palace, the King pledged his support for the two warriors who had spearheaded his revolution. He told Jacques Gamoudi he must plan an escape and begin, somewhere, a new life. He, King Nasir, would give him every possible assistance, including a private jet to fly out, to take him wherever he wished.

  Colonel Gamoudi was deeply touched. He took the King’s hand and thanked him profoundly.

  And King Nasir responded with the traditional hard eye-to-eye contact of the desert tribes. “Always remember, Jacques,” he said, “I am a Bedouin.”

  SUNDAY, APRIL 4, 1945

  NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

  Capt. Alain Roudy had made good time to La Réunion. And Lt. Commander Ramshawe was now looking at photographs of two Rubis-class hunter-killers moored alongside the submarine jetties in that tiny island.

  “There you are, you little bastard,” breathed Ramshawe, staring at the closeup shot of the newly arrived Perle. “Right where I bloody knew you’d be.”

  He called Admiral Morris, who in turn called Admiral Morgan, and the Supreme Commander Operation Tanker convened a planning meeting at the White House for first thing Monday morning.

  It was now plain to everyone that France was behind the overthrow of the Saudi royal family. And Ramshawe knew this was probably it. Arnold Morgan was about to take action against the French. But this was a rare occasion when young Ramshawe could not work out which way the Admiral would jump.

  “One thing’s for certain,” he decided. “He’s not going to sit back and allow the French to get rich, not while half the world’s struggling to keep the lights switched on.”

  It was with a heightened sense of anticipation that he arrived at the White House at 0900 on Monday morning. He and Admiral Morris arrived separately, and reported to Morgan’s new quarters, where the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Alan Dickson, was already in conference, staring at a huge computerized map of France on a wall screen.