Hunter Killer

by Patrick Robinson

  Jo laughed. “Well, the first man we spoke to was obviously in a defensive mode. But the Chief Inspector seemed relatively forthcoming.”

  “No doubt,” replied Ramshawe. “But he was still telling a flagrant lie.”

  And then he said, “Jo, I’ve got a plan. You go and rustle up a couple of cups of coffee, and we’ll see if we can get one of Langley’s finest around to that restaurant.”

  Four minutes later he was outlining the story to the European desk of the CIA, who had a good man in Marseille. In fact they had two, both in residence. Sure, they’d get right on it, especially if the Big Man was interested. They’d do some snooping, see if anyone knew anything, maybe someone who was working on the refurbishing of L’Union.

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 4:00 P.M. (LOCAL)

  RUE DE LA LOGE

  MARSEILLE

  Tom Kelly, a Philadelphia-born newspaper reporter, was twenty-nine years old and preparing to marry a Bryn Mawr history teacher when he fell in love, helplessly, with one of her French students. She was Marie Le Clerc, aged twenty-one, from Marseille.

  Kelly bagged his job, bagged the history teacher, and followed Marie home to France. There he married her, found himself a job as news editor on a local paper, and moved to head up the political desk of Le Figaro in Paris. From there he drifted into a close relationship with two CIA agents, mostly because he was a fountain of knowledge about politics in the capital city.

  At which point the CIA requested he come to Washington, where he was cleared for security and then stationed back in Marseille with a very useful freelance contract from the Washington Post. Kelly was thirty-six now, and he and Marie had two children and lived close to her parents, in the western suburbs of the city.

  Right now he was making his way along Rue de la Loge toward L’Union. He could see it about fifty yards ahead. There was a white truck outside, and two ladders were jutting out through the wide open front door of the restaurant. Men at work, he thought.

  When he reached the entrance, he turned left, up the steps and into the main foyer. There was a strong smell of paint and a deafening screeching sound from the main dining room, where two men were “sanding” the oak floor. Up above him were two painters, on scaffolding, working on a beam, which he did not know had recently been decorated with a long line of bullets from an AK-47.

  No one took a blind bit of notice as he strolled across the room inspecting the refurbishments. He did not look so far removed from being one of the workers. He wore dark blue trousers, a matching wool sweater, and a light brown leather jacket.

  Eventually someone noticed him and came over, inquiring if he could help. Rene was his name, an electrician by trade.

  Kelly’s French was excellent, and he came straight to the point, identified himself, and told Rene that he was trying to find out how many people had been killed that August night, since his government believed one of them may have been an American citizen.

  There seemed to be no one around in any authority, and Rene was glad of the break and happy to help. “I don’t really know myself.” He shrugged. “But Anton, up the ladder with the paint-brush, he may know. His brother was a friend of the waiter who died in hospital…let me call him down.”

  Anton descended from the ceiling by way of the scaffolding, and shook hands with Kelly. “There were six people died in here that night, including the two guys who came in with the Kalashnikovs. One was shot and one had his throat cut.”

  “Anton, how do you know that?”

  “Because we all went to the funeral of Mario, and another guy who worked here saw the whole thing and he told us at the reception. He said the two guys who came in with the guns were both killed—he thought by the men they had come to assassinate. He said they weren’t just crazies. They were professionals who had come to kill someone specific.”

  “And Mario was still alive when he they carried him out?” asked Kelly.

  “Yes. Unconscious but still alive. But the guy at the funeral said there were six bodies carried out. He remembered because only four of them went in an ambulance. He said the other two were taken away in a police van.”

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1300 (LOCAL)

  NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

  Tom Kelly’s report came in from the CIA’s European desk immediately after lunch. It confirmed what had been obvious to Lt. Commander Ramshawe from the start. There were not four people killed at L’Union. There were six. The French police had gone in and cleared out the bodies of the two Mossad agents and were saying nothing about it to anyone.

  And, if they knew, they were most certainly saying nothing about the man the agents had come to kill. Admiral Morgan’s man had been sure those two assassins had come for Major Kerman.

  And if, thought Ramshawe, it was straightforward, why hadn’t the French authorities simply admitted there had been an attempt on the life of the ex-British SAS Major, which had failed, and somehow Major Kerman had made his escape?

  Only one answer to that, was Ramshawe’s opinion. The bloody French knew darned well the Major was in that restaurant, and probably at their invitation, since they had taken very large steps to hush the whole thing up.

  So why did France arrange a secret meeting with the most wanted terrorist in the world? That was a question to which there would be no answer. The French were not admitting Kerman was in the country, not admitting someone had tried to kill him, and very definitely not admitting he had more than likely killed one of the assassins.

  This was, the Lt. Commander knew, the end of the line. The French were saying nothing. The two Mossad men were dead. And no one knew where Kerman was. Or the men he was having dinner with at L’Union restaurant. To pursue the matter further would be a monumental waste of time, especially since the Mossad would not wish to publicize the death of its agents.

  Nonetheless, Ramshawe logged all of the information onto his private computer files and downloaded a copy of the CIA report to show Admiral Morgan at dinner that night.

  SAME DAY, 7:30 P.M.

  CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND

  Lt. Commander Ramshawe and Jane Peacock were in luck tonight. Admiral Morgan was a friend of both their fathers, and he elected to push the boat out one more time with a couple more bottles of Comtesse Nicholais’s Corton-Bressandes. Ramshawe’s eyes lit up at the sight of the bottles warming gently by the log fire in the study.

  He helped the Admiral barbecue the steaks, mostly by holding an umbrella over him in the chill late-November rain, then moving in to receive the steaks with the wide platter Kathy had kept in the warming oven.

  The four of them knew one another well. Jane, who looked like a surf goddess right off Bondi Beach, loved to go shopping with Kathy in Georgetown because the Admiral’s wife kept her on the straight and narrow fashion-wise, helping her choose items she knew would please Ambassador Peacock, dispenser of the allowance, financer of the ruinous college fees she annually required.

  Don’t be ridiculous, Jane, your father would have a fit if he saw you in that.

  Kathy hated having live-in help and preferred to manage her own kitchen, and after dinner she and Jane tackled the clearing-up while the Admiral and Jimmy retired to the study.

  They sat in front of the fire, and Arnold Morgan came swiftly to the point. “Okay, Jimmy, tell me what you found about the murders at L’Union restaurant.”

  “All calls to the restaurant are routed directly to the Marseille central gendarmerie. When you call, a policeman answers the phone. And when he does you are told nothing. No one knows anything. There’s a Chief Inspector Rochelle who seems helpful, but is lying. He says there were four deaths that night. All French, all staff. Two died in the restaurant, the other two in hospital. There were not four deaths. There were six.”

  “How’d you find out?” asked Morgan.

  “Well, I spoke to the Marseille cop myself. Then I had Langley put one of their guys on it in the city. And he did a damned thorough job. Got into the restaurant and interviewed one of the workmen p
ainting the place. And the workman had met a member of the staff at the funeral of a waiter. This was a guy who was ducked behind the bar during the shooting. He told the CIA agent there were six dead men altogether. He saw four of them carried out to ambulances, and two others loaded into a police wagon. Anton, that’s the workman, saw the whole scene. He says two guys came in with Kalashnikovs, started shooting, and were then both killed by the guys they had come for. I brought you a copy of the CIA report.”

  “Well, that fits in exactly with the story I was told originally,” said Morgan. “And I’m afraid it’s the end of the trail. The French are never going to say anything. And neither the Mossad, nor even the Israeli government, could possibly ask them.”

  “No, I suppose not,” said Ramshawe in his rich Aussie brogue.

  “‘Oh, by the way Monsieurs, we just sent a couple of hit men into a crowded restaurant in the middle of Marseille, and after they’d shot half the staff and half the customers, they ended up dead themselves. Anyone know what happened to ’em?’”

  Admiral Morgan chuckled. Young Ramshawe’s keen, swift brain often gave way to a rough-edged Aussie humor. And it always amused him. But right now he was pondering a far, far bigger question.

  “The thing is, Jimmy,” he said, “we have to believe the Israelis when they say they located Kerman in France, and certainly the savage response to the Mossad hit men bears all the marks of that particular terrorist. But the main thing for us is to find out what he was doing in France. Who was he seeing and why?

  “A guy like Kerman, or General Rashood—whatever the hell he calls himself—must understand the lethal nature of any kind of travel. He could be spotted by anyone. He’s obviously better off skulking around the goddamned casbah or somewhere in the desert. But he made this journey. Apparently in an otherwise empty Air France passenger jet. A damned great Airbus all on his own. Someone at a very high level in France wanted to see him quite badly. And they are never going to admit it. Any inquiry from us would be like talking to the Eiffel Tower. We’ll get nothing. And quite honestly, Jimmy, I think it’s just a waste of time to pursue this further. Let’s just file it, and watch out for the slightest sign of further developments.”

  “Guess we can’t do much else, sir. But Christ, wouldn’t you just love to know where that bastard is right now?”

  “I dearly would, Jimmy. But I’d guess he’s not in France anymore. Not after that uproar in Marseille.”

  At that precise moment, 11 P.M. on the night of November 20, Admiral Morgan was entirely correct. Less than three months later he would be wrong.

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2010, 2300

  10,000 FEET ABOVE THE SHORE

  SOUTHERN FRANCE

  Gen. Ravi Rashood was in company with eight of his most trusted Hamas henchmen, three of them known al-Qaeda combat troops, plus three former Saudi Army officers. They were just crossing the Mediterranean coastline in a AS-532 Cougar Mk I French Army helicopter, a high performance heavily-gunned aircraft that had just made the 380-mile ocean crossing from Algeria.

  The big Cougar had taken off from a remote corner of the small regional airport of Tebessa, which sits at the eastern end of the Atlas Mountains, where the high peaks begin to smooth their way down to the plains of Tunisia.

  General Rashood and his team had made a deeply covert journey that day, from Damascus, in a private air charter flight, unmarked by any livery, straight along the north African coast to Tripoli. And there the Cougar Mk I had met them and flown the 250 miles to their first refueling point, at Tebessa.

  Right now they were coming into Aubagne, the Foreign Legion base where the General had been six months before, on the day of the shootout at L’Union. Tonight, however, no one would disembark. The helicopter was immediately refueled for the flight north to Paris.

  Under cover of darkness they would land at around 0300 at the French military’s Special Ops base in Taverny, north of Paris. This would be their home for the next two weeks.

  At this point, all of the Arabian freedom fighters accompanying the General were in Western civilian clothes, mostly blue jeans, T-shirts, and sweaters. But it was an intensely military journey. All of the men had maps and they were all studying the same thing, the huge King Khalid Air Base, beyond the Saudi Arabian military city of Khamis Mushayt.

  The helicopter made a wide circular sweep around the west of Paris, crossing the Seine, and heading in to land across the foggy fields above the Oise Valley. They grabbed their bags the moment the helicopter touched down, and were shown immediately to a barracks not one hundred yards from where the Cougar had landed.

  It was 0245, and Gen. Michel Jobert, the Commander in Chief of the entire base, was there in person. He smiled as he shook hands with General Rashood, to whom, in a sense, he may already have owed his life. They had not seen each other for six months.

  They boarded an Army staff car and drove to the French commandant’s residence, where the Hamas C-in-C would live during this period of intense training. In the morning they would meet for the first time the forty-eight highly trained combat troops of the First Marine Parachute Infantry Regiment, with whom they would fight in the forthcoming battle for the airfield at Khamis Mushayt.

  Rashood and Michel Jobert sat before a log fire sipping a warming café complet, the thick dark French coffee with a dash of cognac. Each of them was amazed at the way the French government and indeed the police had kept the lid on the murders at the L’Union. And each of them understood only too clearly the dangers of General Rashood’s traveling beyond the Arab world.

  Rashood’s journey from Damascus in August had been careful. But not careful enough. This time the journey was indeed untraceable. “It would be nice if we could avoid running into a couple of assassins trying to blow our heads off,” said Michel Jobert. “Especially since Jacques Gamoudi is not due here until next week.”

  Rashood grinned. “He was very efficient that night, hah?” he said. “I think that character might have hit us, but for the table Jacques threw forward.”

  “Think? He would have hit us,” said the General. “I never even saw them. And, Mon Dieu! Was Jacques ever handy with that damn great knife he carries.”

  “Saved us,” said Rashood. “I’m glad he’s on our side.”

  General Jobert, despite being the Special Forces mastermind behind the plan to topple the Saudi monarchy, could never accompany his men on the mission. Should he be captured or even killed, France’s complicity in the operation would be blown forever.

  As for the French troops who would take part, well, the First Marine Parachute Infantry Regiment would send them in without identification. They would conduct the operation within hours of arriving on Saudi soil and then leave immediately. Unlike Ravi Rashood, who would have to do rather more to earn his millions-of-dollars reward.

  The following morning General Rashood and his eleven-man team from the desert gathered for a briefing before they met their forty-eight French comrades who would join them on the mission. They had breakfast together in a mess hall, and then reported to an underground ops room in which were arranged a number of chairs. At the front of the room were two tables, behind which were two large computer screens.

  One showed the south shores of the Red Sea, with the old French colony of Djibouti to the west, and to the east, the mysterious desert kingdom of Yemen, the earliest known civilization in southern Arabia, a place that was active along the trade routes a thousand years before Christ. The other showed a much smaller-scale map of the Yemen border with Saudi Arabia, stretching along the eastern coastline of the Red Sea.

  When the team was assembled, Generals Rashood and Jobert came in, accompanied by three French Special Forces commanders, all Majors in their early thirties: Etienne Marot, Paul Spanier, and Henri Gilbert. Today everyone, including the new arrivals from Arabia, was in work uniform: boots, combat trousers, khaki shirts, and wool sweaters, with black berets.

  The eight Hamas/al-Qaeda men were seated in one row, three back, an
d while each of them had a smattering of French, directly behind them were two Arabic-speaking ex–Foreign Legion troops, who would act as interpreters.

  The heavy wooden doors were closed behind them and two guards were on duty outside in the well-lit passage. Two more stood guard at the head of the short flight of stairs that led up to the corridor beyond the officers’ mess.

  General Jobert began the briefing, informing those assembled that this was not nearly so dangerous an operation as it may appear. Certainly they would need to be at their absolute best in combat, but by the time they launched their assault, Saudi Arabia would be in chaos—the lifeblood of the oil wells would have ceased to flow, the King would be under enormous pressure to abdicate, and the entire Saudi military would be in a state of mass confusion, unsure who they were working for.

  Nonetheless, this was a room full of tension, as many young men prepared themselves to fight hundreds of miles from home, in a small group, in territory they had not seen before.

  “I am sure,” said General Jobert reassuringly, “the Saudis will be wondering who they are expected to fight for—the old regime, or the incoming one. And according to our principal source, the man who will become the new King of Saudi Arabia, the Army in Khamis Mushayt will be happy to surrender. No Arab soldier much enjoys being on the wrong side. That’s a Middle Eastern characteristic.”

  He told them that in the broadest possible terms they were expected to attack and destroy the Arabian fighter-bombers parked at the King Khalid Air Base, five miles to the east of Khamis Mushayt. “A separate force is then expected to occupy the headquarters of the Army base and demand the surrender,” he said. “This will almost certainly mean taking out the guard room, and possibly the senior commanding officers. General Rashood will personally lead this section of the operation.”

  The General then handed over to the most senior of the ex-Saudi officers—Col. Sa’ad Kabeer, a devout Muslim, descendant of ancient tribal chiefs from the north, and an implacable enemy of the Saudi royal family. Colonel Kabeer had commanded a tank battalion in Saudi Arabia’s Eighth Armored Brigade in Khamis Mushayt. He would lead the opening diversionary assault on the air base.