And now, with the airport, the Ministry, and the broadcasting services under control, Colonel Gamoudi turned his attack toward the main objective — the palace of the forty-six-year-old King of Saudi Arabia.
But first he wanted to deal with the Prince Miohd Bin Abdul Aziz Palace, where Prince Nasir had said that a full morning council would be convened. Whether or not the royal princes in this family gathering were still there, Colonel Gamoudi did not know. But he knew this was the guiding council of the monarch. If there was ever going to be a future uprising, it was likely to emanate from men in that palace this morning.
In the lead tank, now sitting up on the hatch with his machine gun held across his chest, Gamoudi looked every inch the conqueror, a powerful, bearded man, ice cold in his expression, riding at the head of a formation of tanks and armored vehicles, troop carriers, and literally thousands of born-again desert warriors, marching along, not cheering, dead serious, as they moved to dethrone the King.
Their route took them deliberately through the Diplomatic Quarter, since Colonel Gamoudi wished to make it quite clear that all foreign governments understood the thoroughness of the takeover. Occasionally there were small crowds of embassy staff out on the sidewalk watching the passing army gravely, doubtless making a thousand mental notes for soon-to-be-written diplomatic reports on the battle for Riyadh.
There was a crowd outside the British embassy, no one outside the French embassy, and a large crowd outside the American embassy. Jacques Gamoudi did not want any of these people to be injured if his convoy met sudden resistance. And he shouted at them as they passed, “GET BACK INSIDE! DO NOT COME ONTO THE STREETS! YOU WILL BE INFORMED OF GOVERNMENT CHANGES LATER!”
No one, of course, had the slightest ideas who he was. He spoke Arabic with an accent, and all the armored vehicles carried the insignia of the Saudi Arabian armed forces. But this was a sizable convoy and it was plainly headed somewhere. And despite the general savvy of the personnel at the embassies, who knew perfectly well something major was most definitely afoot, it was still extremely baffling.
But as Jacques Gamoudi’s tanks rolled by, it was particularly baffling for one senior U.S. envoy, Charlie Brooks, who had served in many U.S. embassies in North and sub-Saharan Africa throughout a long and distinguished career in the Diplomatic Service. It was rumored that Charlie Brooks might be the next U.S. Ambassador to Iran, at the new Tehran embassy.
Brooks stared hard at the man on the tank who was yelling at him to get back inside. Brooks was not terribly used to being yelled at. He looked at the man hard. There was a flicker of recognition. Gamoudi was wearing a ghutra, and it was quite hard to get a clear picture of him. And yet…to Brooks there was something familiar about him.
His mind ranged back over his many postings, trying to think of anyone he may have met who looked similar. But he could not focus on an individual. At least not until the convoy was out of sight around the next corner.
And then Brooks’s mind slipped back several years, to a blister-ingly hot day in June 1999, in the Congo, the old French colony, when the U.S. embassy in Brazzaville had been under direct threat from revolutionary forces. He remembered the siege conditions behind the embassy walls, and he remembered the rescue. That was what he really remembered.
The helicopter clattering into the grounds, manned by French Special Forces, their leader running into the embassy ordering everyone to grab what they could, documents and possessions, and to get on board either the helicopter or the French army truck at the gates.
He remembered the leader — an amazingly tough-looking bearded character, brandishing a machine gun and barking orders. He remembered him on the embassy driveway, ordering the helicopter into the air. And he remembered him herding the remaining staff down to the truck, manhandling packing cases full of documents and then running and jumping aboard the truck at the last minute.
They had made it the few miles to Kinshasa Airport, where the same French military officer was in charge, leading everyone out to the apron at the edge of the runway where the MC-130 aircraft was waiting.
If he thought hard, he could recall Aubrey Hooks and his staff piling up the steps into the aircraft, carrying what suitcases they could. He could hear in his mind the shouts and commands of the bearded man with the machine gun as he urged them onto the plane.
And he recalled the team from Special Ops Command Europe, mostly survey and assessment personnel, also joining them, until the aircraft could take no more. There was room for everyone except the French troops who had made the evacuation possible. And they remained at Brazzaville. Charlie Brooks remembered sitting with the United States Ambassador as the MC-130 hurtled down the runway and banked out across the Congo River. The last sight he had of the Congo was of the little group of French Special Forces standing outside the airport buildings, waving to the flight as it left them. He did not think he would ever forget their bearded leader.
But now he was not quite so sure. He could almost swear the guy up on the lead tank was the same French combat soldier. He could even remember his name…well, nearly. He seemed to recall the French troops called their boss Major Chasser.
He just wished he could have heard him speak in his normal voice, then he would have been sure. The yell a few moments ago, “GET BACK INSIDE!” addressed to the Americans in English, did not do it. But he was still damn near certain that was Major Chasser up there on the tank.
And as a career diplomat, working closely with the CIA, he did have one overriding thought: what the hell was he doing up there on the tank anyway, reading the riot act to local citizens in the goddamned middle of the capital city of Saudi Arabia? It beat the hell out of Charlie Brooks.
Unless France was somehow attacking the country. But the tanks were Saudi. And no foreign nationals served in the Saudi Arabian armed forces. It didn’t make sense. And after several minutes of serious thought, it still didn’t make sense to Brooks. Maybe he was mistaken after all. The guy did look like an Arab. But then…so had Major Chasser.
The big lead M1A2 Abrams rumbled on through the Diplomatic Quarter, the marching army bringing up the rear looked even larger now than it had been fifteen minutes previously. Their next stop was the Prince Miohd Palace, with its high white walls gleaming in the sunlight, and from 200 yards out Colonel Gamoudi and the two tanks flanking him opened fire.
The shells went screaming into the walls, punching huge holes. Bricks and concrete flew everywhere. Four other shells smashed straight into the second floor of the palace. The guard post high on the outer walls crashed inwards, but this was an important place, and a detachment of twelve guards rushed out to defend their royal masters.
Again Jacques Gamoudi’s tanks opened fire, this time not with their big artillery but with raking machine gun rounds, sweeping a steel curtain across the road and the palace gates as lethal as the German gunners on the Somme.
The twelve guards fell in the road, and Jacques Gamoudi’s tanks rolled forward, straight at the gates, Colonel Gamoudi himself standing up forward, his fist raised high, and shouting, “FOLLOW ME!”
The big M1A2 Abrams rammed the iron gates, which buckled and then ripped off their hinges, flying inward, sparks flying as they grazed the concrete paving of the driveway. The Colonel leaned back and hurled two grenades straight through the windows to the left of the doorway, and the commander of the tank to his right hurled two more, all four of which detonated with diabolical force, instantly killing the staff in the guardroom and the secretary to the right of the foyer.
The doors were flung open, and another detachment of six guards rushed out, perhaps to surrender, perhaps not. They were heavily armed, but their weapons were not raised. Gamoudi cut them down where they stood, round after round spitting from his submachine gun. No questions asked.
And now his commandos were in, pouring out of the two troop carriers behind the lead tanks. The first four men up the steps to the building were crack ex — Saudi Special Forces, battle commanders in their own ri
ght, veterans of anti — al-Qaeda “black operations” in the opening years of the twenty-first century.
They opened fire on the empty foyer, spraying machine gun rounds every which way. And right behind them came six al-Qaeda fighters, heading immediately for the stairs.
Which was where the first serious problem began. The guards upstairs on duty in front of the main conference room had been given possibly two minutes to man their defenses. They had two heavy machine guns at the top of the stairs, and with the al-Qaeda troops fighting to get a foothold on that second floor, they opened fire and blew the invaders away, killing all six of them on the stairs.
By now Jacques Gamoudi was in the door, and he saw to his horror that the machine gun was now aimed at him alone. He hurled himself to the floor, sideways, away from the stairs, and somehow clawed his way through the rubble to the cover of the big reception desk, a hail of bullets riddling the wall behind him.
His other troops were under the stairs in a relatively safe position. And with no visible targets, the machine gun at the top of the stairs was temporarily silenced. Jacques Gamoudi edged his way out almost directly below the upper balcony.
Right now he thanked God he had learned in the Pyrenees to become something of a master at the great French pastime of boules, with its heavy biased metal balls and the requirement for devilish backspin in the long forward arching throw to the “jack.”
Gamoudi had spent many cheerful hours in the late afternoon with the village men back home in Heas, playing in the grandly named Heas Boulodrome, a shady piece of rough, flat, sandy ground near the modest town square. It had often occurred to him that a boule was approximately the weight of a hand grenade. A bit heavier, but not much.
He ripped the pin out of his first grenade and tossed it over the balustrade, where his men lay dead halfway up the stairs. It fell just below them. There was silence now in the foyer, but immediately the machine guns above opened up straight at the stairs again, where the hand grenade was rattling around.
Gamoudi had only a split second, and he took one stride forward and hurled his second grenade, with a wicked top-spin twist, upward toward the balustrade. Because of its weight it did not have much spin, not like a cricket ball or a baseball. But it did have just enough, and it curled over the upper balustrade, detonating four seconds later, right after the one on the stairs.
How Jacques Gamoudi got back underneath that high balcony he never knew; he knew only that he took off from his left foot, twisted, and landed facedown on the floor, eight feet behind his throwing mark. The explosion blew the upper balustrade clean off its foundation, and it crashed down into the lower hall. If Gamoudi had still been standing there it would have killed him stone dead. He felt the ground shake as the balustrade hit the floor.
Upstairs was a scene of carnage. The palace guards were killed to a man, their two machine guns blown into tangled wreckage. Colonel Gamoudi regained his feet, and roared orders to the men waiting outside the door. Three of them came bursting out of the wreckage of the guardroom and followed him up the stairs, the other one called for a medical detail to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades, over whom Gamoudi and his men were clambering.
At the top of the stairs they paused before the big double doors. The Colonel booted the doors open and then stood back for three grenades to be hurled inside. Fifteen Saudi ministers, fourteen of them royal princes, were seated around the table. Only two of them survived the blast, having had the good sense to get under the table before the grenades came in. The two stood up at the far side of the table and made a gesture of surrender, but Colonel Gamoudi shot them dead in their tracks with two savage bursts from his machine gun.
By now his men were fighting their way up the stairs. There was no opposition, but it did look as if the entire second-floor balcony structure might collapse. With thirty men now on the upper floor, Colonel Gamoudi gave his final order to his forward commander in the Prince Miohd Palace…secure the building…arrest anyone left in it…any opposition, shoot to kill…I’ll leave a force of one hundred men outside.
The question now was, where’s the King? He plainly had not arrived for the council meeting. They would have found him, his huge entourage, and about seventeen Mercedes limousines if he had. But there was no sign of him. It was impossible he had not yet heard of the staggering events of the past two or three hours.
Colonel Gamoudi called together the senior staff officers still serving in the front line of the battle with him. He checked the road maps, pointing out the two minor palaces, situated approximately along the route to the Al Salam royal palace, where he expected to find the ruler.
Again his instructions to his commanders were terse. “There will be no one of any great importance in either of them,” he said. “Take them both by force of arms, causing as little damage as possible. We want the buildings and we do not want blood and dead bodies all over the place.
“Tell the staff to remain in place — any royal princes, take prisoner…but I doubt there will be any. You’ll want a force of maybe forty people for each palace. No more. The new King will make his opening broadcast to the people from one of them.”
And with that Col. Jacques Gamoudi headed back to his tank for the one-mile journey to the residence of the King. They had not traveled more than 100 yards before the next serious problem appeared to be hovering overhead, one Saudi military helicopter, that was not on their own aircraft list. It appeared to be taking an unusually close look at the marching revolutionary army.
Jacques Gamoudi raised his binoculars and checked the clattering chopper, which was now flying low, about 300 feet above his tank. The numbers on its fuselage did not correspond to any of three choppers run by Prince Nasir. So far as Gamoudi could tell, it might be arriving to evacuate the King, and he could not tolerate that. But before he could call up two or three Stinger missiles and attempt to shoot it down, it flew off, straight toward the palace.
And then, before Gamoudi could finish cursing, two more Saudi Army helicopters came battering their way over the horizon, flying low above the buildings. Again Jacques Gamoudi raised his glasses, and this time he could see the insignia of the King’s Royal Regiment painted clearly on the rear of both helicopters.
He assessed this as an operation to evacuate the King. And he was correct in that. The two helicopters, giant troop-carrying Chinooks, followed the first much smaller one directly along the road to the palace, and Gamoudi saw them hovering, preparing to land inside the walls that surrounded the royal residence.
This was an emergency. He ducked back inside the tank, seized the communications system, and shoved down the red button. And twenty-one miles away, at King Khalid International Airport, an aging Boeing 737, takeoff priority number one, began to roll down the main runway with two young al-Qaeda braves at the controls, making their last-ever journey, the one before the three trumpets sounded, summoning them across the bridge, into paradise and the arms of Allah.
The Boeing banked hard left, racing east across the northern approaches to the city. Laden with fuel, it came in low over the desert making 300 knots. Colonel Gamoudi halted his convoy 1,000 yards short of the palace, awaiting the arrival of the suicide bombers, whose task it was to slam into the building.
It was a four-minute journey from the airport. Everyone saw the empty silver-colored passenger aircraft flying straight toward them. It came in low, drawing a bead on the great curved dome of the central part of the building. Everyone held their breath as it screamed above them, losing height, its engines howling.
Inside the cockpit, the pilot sensed he was too high. He throttled back, and forced the nose down, increasing the revs on those mighty Pratt and Whitney engines. Too late. They were still too high. With 400 yards to go, the pilot hauled back on the throttle, cut the engines altogether, and the Boeing lurched into an all-engine stall.
The nose came up as the aircraft dropped fifty feet like a stone. And then it made a perfectly hideous belly-flop landing bang on top
of the dome and burst into flames. The dome collapsed, killing anyone on the upper floor. The Boeing lurched left and then tipped right, landing on its wing, which spun it around hard.
It hit the ground with a mighty crash, leveled a grove of twenty-eight palm trees, and flattened five parked Mercedes-Benz staff cars. The eight-man guard detail at the rear of the palace was killed instantly, but the objective of the entire exercise — the King and his most trusted advisers — was unharmed, as they hurried out of the building toward the waiting helicopters.
There were eighteen of them, but no women or children, the King’s family having escaped four hours after the military bases at Khamis Mushayt had fallen. But there was a substantial group, and space on the helicopters was tight. There were packing cases of priceless jewels and artifacts to be loaded before the passengers could board.
Colonel Gamoudi was quite certain of the Chinooks’ mission. He urged his task force forward, heading for the palace gates. He could see the black smoke rising from the grounds in the rear of the palace, but even from this half-mile distance he knew the Boeing had not accomplished its allotted task.
And now his prize might be slipping away. The very last thing a brand-new King needs is a very-much-alive old one. Even the British drummed Edward VIII and his American divorcée girlfriend straight out of the country to France, once they had decided King George VI would become the rightful monarch back in 1936.
It would be the most awful blow to King Nasir if the deposed ruler was somehow living high on the hog in Switzerland, spending some of his multibillion-dollar fortune, while he, Nasir, struggled to put Saudi Arabia back on its feet. One way or another Jacques Gamoudi had to nail the departing monarch. And he had about ten minutes, maximum, to do it.
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