Hunter Killer Page 37

  Arnold Morgan greeted the men from NSA both warmly and grimly. “I’ve briefed Admiral Dickson,” he said. “And I think he agrees with me, that for the President’s sake, we have to take some action. In the modern world it is simply impossible for anyone to act with total disregard for the plight of other nations. Especially on this scale.

  “Now, we are not going to get either an admission or an apology from the French government. I plan to speak to the French President, but I expect him to deny any knowledge of anything.

  “Thus, so far as I can see, we have several missions. One, to ensure they can’t just sit back and laugh at everyone else’s problems. Two, to expose and then humiliate them in front of the United Nations. Three, to teach them a damn hard lesson.”

  Alan Dickson looked as if he were not sure about this. And Morgan instantly caught the doubtful look on his face.

  “Alan,” he said, “we have a very good man in the Oval Office. He loves the Navy, he trusts us, and he never allows anyone to tamper with our budgets. Through no fault of his own he is caught up in a global uproar that could finish him, if he doesn’t move, move, move…

  “I think we owe him our loyalty, our brains, and the muscle of the United States Navy. Because that’s the only way he’ll survive. He must be seen to be furious, he must be seen to identify the culprit, and above all, he must be seen to punish the perpetrator of this evil.”

  Admiral Morris right away mentioned the financial problems afflicting all the big Western stock markets, and, of course, the Japanese Nikkei. There had been a major statement issued from the International Monetary Fund, which was holding an emergency meeting in Switzerland later today.

  And all over the United States, families with strong positions in the blue chip components that made up the Dow Jones Average were taking savage losses, which may not be recovered for two years, until the Saudi oil came back on stream.

  “From this moment, I am going to deem the Saudi oil a global asset,” said Admiral Morgan. “I am going to treat the French as if they have committed a crime against humanity. And, quite frankly, I don’t actually give a rat’s ass what any other country thinks. I am not having the well-being of the United States of America jeopardized by any other nation. AND THAT’S FINAL.”

  It was sure as hell final in that particular White House office. All three of Admiral Morgan’s visitors nodded in agreement—even Admiral Dickson, whose patriotism had just been given a sharp wakeup call.

  They waited for Arnold Morgan’s next jackhammer blow. And each of them stood prepared for some kind of onslaught. But when the Supreme Commander Operation Tanker spoke, he spoke quietly, and thoughtfully.

  “I am proposing to deploy a U.S. Navy blockade outside every French port that imports foreign oil. That’s Le Havre, which is located at the mouth of the Seine River in Normandy. It contains the largest oil refinery in France, at Gonfreville l’Orcher.

  “Marseille, in the south, handles thirty percent of France’s crude-oil refining. There’s a big terminal at Fos-sur-Mer; a Shell refinery at Berre; TotalFinaElf is in a place called La Mède; BP operates in Lavera; and Exxon uses Fos. Marseille imports a vast amount of methane, and close to the port there’s a massive underground storage facility for liquid petroleum gas; a lot of it used to be from Ras al Ju’aymah, but the French have, of course, now made other arrangements.

  “We also have to look closely at the six oil terminals in Bordeaux along the Gironde Estuary, at Pauillac and Ambes—that’s a major plant for liquid chemicals.

  “The final spot is Brest, which, as we all know, is a long harbor containing the main French Navy base. But there’s also a considerable oil terminal in there, which takes both crude and LPG.

  “Gentlemen, I intend to place United States warships at the entrances to all four of these seaways. I realize of course this will work only in the short term, because France will arrange overland supplies through Luxembourg and Germany. The Belgians will also help them out since they are considerable partners in the Total-FinaElf conglomerate.

  “Nonetheless, the short term will be very miserable for them. Starve those ports of oil, and the place will swiftly run dry. In the long term, they’ll overcome it. But right now I care only for the short term.”

  “Arnie,” said Admiral Dickson, “I realize this is purely academic, but France has a very dangerous Navy, with a lot of ships in both Brest and Marseille. Have you considered the possibility they may come out and attack our ships?”

  “No I haven’t,” rasped the Admiral. “They wouldn’t dare.”

  “What if they did?”

  “Sink ’em, of course. Remember, we are acting as the world’s policemen, and the world is going to give its approval for us to do anything we damn well please. By the time the President has made a statement outlining the disgraceful role played by France in the current crisis, there won’t be a nation on earth that disapproves of our actions.”

  “I agree. Attacks on policemen are generally frowned upon by law-abiding citizens. But I wonder whether we might not overplay our hand if we actually opened fire on a French warship?” Admiral Dickson was slipping into an extremely practical mode.

  “I would not be concerned about that. Because we would immediately issue a detailed statement about the goddamned mayhem France perpetrated on the Saudi oil installations. Our drift would be, they asked for all they’re getting.”

  Lt. Commander Ramshawe spoke next. “Sir,” he said, “do you have any plans to act immediately, rather than wait for the slow-burn of the blockade?”

  “Funny you should mention that,” replied the Admiral. “Because as a matter of fact I do. But first I would like to brief you on the situation on the Riviera. For years France has been rolling in Saudi cash all along that coastline. Dozens of those young princes have kept huge motor yachts at places like Cannes, Nice, and Monte Carlo. It’s been nothing short of a gravy train for the French. And in turn they, of course, are swift to point out that only the French seaports can provide the level of civilized living the royal princes require.

  “I thought perhaps we might humiliate France in front of the whole world, by blowing up the entire contents of those harbors.”

  “Christ,” said Ramshawe. “There’d be hell to pay in reparations and God knows what else.”

  “Not if no one had the slightest idea who’d done what to whom,” replied Morgan.

  “Are you talking U.S. Navy SEALs?” asked Admiral Morris.

  “Yes, George, I am. Those blasts on the big pleasure yachts might be the only shots fired in this little war, but they’ll cause more embarrassment to France than any other course of action we could possibly take. I also plan to check out the Gulf of St. Malo, in the north. But it’s only interesting if there are a lot of big foreign boats in there.

  “Either way, there will be huge claims for compensation from the yacht owners. And France will have to pay for a long time before the claims reach Lloyds of London, if indeed there is any coverage to protect people from an act of war.”

  “By that time, the President will naturally have broadcast and blamed France for the events in Saudi Arabia?” asked Admiral Morris.

  “Correct,” replied Morgan. “And the hatred against the French will be so great among so many countries that no one will know which nation committed the atrocities in the French harbors.”

  “I guess some of them will suspect the U.S.A.”

  “So they might,” said Admiral Morgan. “But no one will know, and we’ll admit nothing. And I’ll tell you something else…most people will think it serves ’em right.”

  “Presumably you intend the SEALs to come in from the ocean and set timed bombing devices on several huge foreign-owned yachts, which will mysteriously explode long after our submarines are clear of the datum?”

  “Yeah,” said Morgan. “Pretty much the same techniques the French frogmen must have used when they hit the Saudi oil loading platforms.”

  “Well, there’s a great belief in the de
sert of the old biblical maxim ‘an eye for an eye,’” said Alan Dickson. “I guess France has it coming.”

  “Well, I would like to put this operation and the blockade on the fast track. And while that all begins to unfold, I want to assess the possibilities of finding our friend Major Gamoudi.”

  “Could I just ask what we’re going to do if and when we find him?” asked George Morris.

  “Sure,” said Morgan. “We’re going to kidnap him.”

  “Kidnap him!”

  “Well, he sure as hell won’t want to show up of his own accord and tell us all he knows, will he?”

  “Probably not. But we can’t just snatch him, can we?”

  “Why the hell not? We’re probably looking at the man who murdered our great friend the King of Saudi Arabia. He’d be one of the most wanted men in the world. But we don’t care what he’s done. We want him to stand right up there in front of the United Nations Assembly and admit that France paid him to overthrow the King.”

  “You think he’ll do that?”

  “I don’t think he has much choice. Plainly he’s a man who could be charged with anything, and we know he stormed the royal palace in Riyadh. Charlie Brooks sent us a fucking photograph of him in the leading tank.

  “What I’m hoping is, the French make an attempt on his life, as I’m certain they will. And then we can rush in and get to him first. That way he’ll be damn glad to shop his treacherous employers, and save his own skin by rowing in with us.”

  “Well,” said Admiral Morris, “he won’t be able to return to France, will he?”

  “Not likely,” replied Morgan. “Which means we also have to get his wife and family out of the goddamn Pyrenees where they live, because if we don’t, they’ll be as good as hostages. And Jacques, being the kind of man he is, may prefer to die to save her and the kids from the malevolence of his own government.”

  “I wonder how the hell we’ll ever know if France has attempted to assassinate him,” muttered Jimmy Ramshawe. “Tell the truth, we don’t even know where he is at the moment. He was in Riyadh a week ago, but a week’s a long time in the assassination game.”

  Just then, Morgan’s assistant secretary tapped and looked around the door. “Sir, there’s an urgent call for Lt. Commander Ramshawe from one of our envoys in Saudi Arabia…would he like to take it in the outside office?”

  The Lt. Commander climbed to his feet, nodding in agreement, and stepped out of Admiral Morgan’s new White House headquarters. He sat at a spare desk in the outer room and said, “Ramshawe, who’s speaking?”

  “Jimmy, it’s Charlie Brooks. I’m on the encrypted line, but I’m calling because I think something very interesting happened here last Thursday night. A couple of French hit men got wiped out in the middle of Olaya Street. They were both dead when the police arrived, one of ’em half in the car, which was a big Citroën. Paris registered. The other guy was lying behind it. They both carried Kalashnikovs, and witnesses say they were killed by the man they were after.”

  “Oh yeah? Go on, Charlie.”

  “Well, we have a few contacts in the Saudi police, and for a couple of days they carried out a regular investigation, just like it was a normal double murder. And then, according to our man Said, the investigation was stopped on the direct orders of the King. Apparently the car that drove the killer away from the scene was registered to King Nasir. And the police say that one of the men inside that car was Colonel Jacques Gamoudi. But there were a few reliable eyewitnesses, from whom the police took statements. They all say the same thing: the Citroën tried to run down two men at high speed, but it missed and stopped dead. There was some kind of a fight after that. And both the would-be murderers were killed by some terrible guy, obviously an expert in unarmed combat. One of ’em choked to death because of a broken neck, and the other had his nose somehow rammed into his brain.”

  “Fuck me,” said Jimmy Ramshawe.

  “And there’s more. One of the eyewitnesses was a well-known ex–Saudi officer named Colonel Bandar, a fanatical loyalist to the new King. I’ve seen his statement. He says he served under one of the men, Col. Jacques Gamoudi, during the siege of Riyadh. The other was the Commander of King Nasir’s assault team in the south, the guy who took Khamis Mushayt. They’d all had dinner at Da Pino. But he did not know the name of the second commander.”

  Jimmy Ramshawe said, “This is a very important call, Charlie. And it’s great you made it. Do you have copies of the witness statements to the Saudi police?”

  “Yes. I guess I can fax ’em. And there’s not much room for doubt. Someone just tried to kill Gamoudi, and I would guess he’s now under the direct protection of the King. That’s going to make it very difficult for us to locate him.”

  “As for his mate, I suppose that’s out of the question?”

  “They don’t have a name for him, and I sense the police have become real sensitive. Just an hour ago, they would tell me nothing. They acted kinda scared. I guess Nasir’s men are flexing a little muscle.”

  “I guess so, Charlie. Stay in touch, will you? This is very important.”

  Ramshawe made his way back to the office on a jaunty stride. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we just got a real break. Last Thursday night there was an attempt on the life of Col. Jacques Gamoudi in the middle of the city of Riyadh. Someone drove a Paris-registered Citroën at high speed straight at him on Olaya Street.”

  “Presumably they missed,” said Morgan.

  “They did. And both men in the Citroën were subsequently killed, either by Gamoudi or his companion, who the police say was King Nasir’s forward Commander in the battle for Khamis Mushayt. Identified by a Saudi Colonel loyal to Nasir.”

  “I told you so,” said Morgan. “The French are trying to get him. And that’s good news, so long as they don’t succeed.”

  “Sir,” said Ramshawe, “there’s just one other thing. Both these assassins carried Kalashnikovs, and both of them were cut down before they could fire, by a guy who broke one of their necks and rammed the other guy’s nose into his brain…that got a familiar ring to you?”

  “You mean our old friend Maj. Ray Kerman, who specializes in such methods?”

  “Our old friend Ray Kerman, sir, who flew into Paris last August and was hunted down by the Mossad to a restaurant in Marseille that is now under the protection of the local gendarmes.”

  “That’s the guy, Jimmy. You think we just found who he was dining with that night?”

  “Absolutely, sir. One dollar gets you one hundred Ray Kerman and Jacques Gamoudi shared a bowl of that French fish soup buoybase that night…It’s the specialty dish of Marseille, sir,” he added knowledgeably.

  “Which is all the more reason why you should avoid making it sound like a submarine anchorage,” replied Morgan. “BOUILLABAISSE, BOY! BOUILLABAISSE!”

  He still sounded like Jackie Gleason doing his Chevalier, but both Arnold Morgan and Jimmy Ramshawe knew that right now the noose was tightening around the throat of the French government.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MONDAY, APRIL 5, 0900

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  Adm. Alan Dickson, the fifty-six-year-old former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, was not wildly looking forward to the next ten minutes. As the current Chief of Naval Operations, he was about to inform Arnold Morgan that he considered it too dangerous a mission to try and blockade the five major French seaports at Le Havre, Cherbourg, Brest, Bordeaux, and Marseille.

  First of all, it would take half the U.S. Atlantic Fleet of submarines to be in any way effective. Second, the French Navy might elect to come out and fight a sea battle. Third, it would cost more money than World War II.

  Admiral Dickson felt like Lew Grade, the legendary London movie mogul who made the catastrophic money-losing film Raise the Titanic! and who afterward commented with characteristic self-deprecation, “I could have lowered the Atlantic for less!”

  Nonetheless, Admiral Morgan was not going to love thi
s.

  There was a chill early-spring wind outside, cutting through the nation’s capital, and Admiral Dickson, a heavyset former destroyer CO in the Gulf War, still had his hands in the pockets of his great-coat. One of them clutched the little notebook he carried everywhere, with its minute details of U.S. Navy fleet deployments, written in his tiny, near-calligraphic writing.

  The frown that creased his forehead seemed kind of stark on skin the color of varnished leather. But Alan Dickson was an old sea dog, a man of strict, disciplined method from the New England city of Hartford. And he knew that Arnold Morgan, in this instance, was whistling Dixie. Okay. Right now Admiral Morgan had the power to do anything he damn well pleased…but not in this man’s Navy.

  Alan Dickson could see war on the horizon. And while he most certainly wanted to ram an American hard boot straight up the ass of the pompous, arrogant French, he did not savor the prospect of the U.S. Navy’s being hit back by probably the most efficient Navy in Europe.

  Admiral Dickson knew all about the fighting capacity of the French, their hotshot modern guided-missile frigates and destroyers, their powerful fleet of submarines, and their two fast and well-equipped carriers. And he had no intention of tangling with them.

  He also knew he was one of the few people in this world to whom Admiral Morgan would listen. He further knew that the Admiral was not a dogmatic man, but if you wished him to change course a few degrees, you better be heavily armed with facts, facts, and more facts. Alan Dickson was certain he had ’em.

  “Please go through now,” said Kathy Morgan’s secretary. “I assume you would like coffee with the Admiral?”

  “Thank you,” replied Admiral Dickson as he began the short walk toward Arnold Morgan’s gun deck.

  “Morning, Alan,” said the office’s occupant without looking up from a chart of the approaches to the Port of Le Havre, on the northern shore of the Seine River estuary. “Worries the hell out of me, Alan,” Morgan said. “No goddamn deep water for twenty miles outside the main shipping channel—at least not deep enough to hide a submarine. It’s gonna be hard. But we’ll find a way.”