Hunter Killer

by Patrick Robinson

  A few passersby noticed the commotion, and stopped to stare at the two fallen men. But Annie was still yelling and she managed to distract the entire area.

  Simultaneously, Campese, Roland, and the two “fishermen” grabbed Giselle and the boys and carried all three of them, kicking and trying to scream, along the street to the black Mercedes. Powerful hands covered their mouths, but soothing voices were telling them—take it easy…don’t scream…you’re safe with us…get in the car. We’re here to rescue you.

  Only twenty seconds had passed since the CIA men had launched their attack, and now Guy Roland hit the gas pedal on the big automatic Mercedes. The car rocketed along Rue Marechal Foch and swung right down to Boulevard Barbanegre, hurtling along to the main entrance of Beaumont Park. By now, Andy Campese had slipped handcuffs loosely onto all three of his prisoners. For their own sakes he did not want any of them to do anything reckless. The car slowed, turned right, and Roland drove into Beaumont Park.

  With the doors and windows shut, they could not hear the helicopter heading in to a wide clearing beyond the magnificent building of the Municipal Casino, which dominated the park. Right now Andy Campese was talking to the pilot who was hovering twenty feet above the tree line.

  Roland flashed his headlights, and the helicopter came on in and touched down lightly, to the astonishment of two park grounds-men. The Mercedes ran right up close, and Roland cut the engine. He and Andy Campese whipped open both passenger doors and hauled Giselle and the boys out.

  While Roland hung on to Andre and Jean-Pierre, Andy ushered Giselle toward the open door of the eight-seater helicopter, which looked like a civilian aircraft but contained two United States Navy Lieutenants and one Chief Petty Officer.

  Giselle felt strong arms lift her bodily into the cabin, and then Jean-Pierre came flying through the door as if on wings. He landed in the rear seat, followed by Andre, who landed on top of him, laughing his head off. Last man to board was Andy Campese, who was needed because of his fluent French.

  Then the door slammed, and one of the Lieutenants, Billy Fallon, removed the handcuffs and told them to fasten their seat belts.

  The chopper was in the air and climbing, less than a half minute after it had touched down. Young Andre looked out of the window and waved at Guy Roland, who had time to wave back, and then everyone was gone, the car moving back toward town to pick up two of its passengers, the helicopter beating its way up to a flight path ten thousand feet above the Pyrenees.

  Lt. Fallon sat opposite Giselle and the boys and he spoke calmly. “Mrs. Gamoudi, you were in the most terrible danger. The French Secret Service has already made an unsuccessful attempt on Jacques’s life, but if they should manage to assassinate him, you and the boys would…well, just disappear.

  “We are United States Naval officers and we are taking you to a place of safety. We are also desperately trying to save your husband, but we are uncertain where he is.”

  Andy Campese translated swiftly, and Giselle Gamoudi’s hand flew up to cover her mouth, as if to stop herself from crying out.

  But Billy Fallon was not finished. “You must answer my questions,” he said. “Now tell me, is your money safe? I imagine we’re talking several hundred thousand?”

  “Sir, it is much, much more than that. But it is safe in our account in the Bank of Boston. They have told me no one can touch it.”

  “Okay. But we better get it out of France, fast, because these guys might put a freeze on it.”

  Andy translated. And Billy asked for the account number, the Bank branch, and password. For some reason, Giselle trusted him and gave him the information.

  Billy punched the buttons of his cell phone’s direct line to the ship. He spoke briefly to the comms room and relayed the banking information to the Commanding Officer, who would now call the private emergency number of the President of the Bank of Boston on the Champs-Elysées, Paris.

  By some miracle of detection, Lt. Commander Ramshawe had traced the bank that held the Gamoudi money. And by special orders from the President of the United States, the bank was empowered to wire-transfer the entire account to the branch in State Street, Boston, Massachusetts.

  Six minutes later, Billy Fallon’s cell phone rang to inform him that $15 million had just crossed the Atlantic from Paris to the United States.

  And now they were high above the Pyrenees Atlantique, and the great mountain range was rapidly flattening out to the west, into the Basque country, which ran right to the shores of the Bay of Biscay.

  It took only forty-five minutes to reach the coastline, which they crossed, still making 200 knots and flying at 10,000 feet, five miles north of Biarritz. Twenty minutes later they could see a tiny gray shape in the water way up ahead, and the pilot immediately began his descent.

  They came clattering down through 2,000 feet, then 1,000, and now they could see clearly the outline of the 10,000-ton guided-missile ship U.S.S. Shiloh, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, the world’s most dangerous combat warship.

  The sea was calm, and the ship rode fair on her lines, making seven knots behind a light bow wave. On deck they could see the landing crew signaling them in. The pilot banked right around to the east and came in over her stern, hovering slowly over the Harpoon missile launchers, over the five-inch guns and then the SAM launchers, touching down on the flight deck, directly above the torpedo tubes.

  “Sorry, guys. This is gonna be your home until we get Dad out of Saudi Arabia,” Lt. Fallon told Gamoudi’s sons.

  Generally speaking, Andre Gamoudi, age eleven, considered this as probably the best day of his entire life.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1400

  FRENCH SECRET SERVICE HEADQUARTERS

  CASERNE DES TOURELLES, PARIS

  Gaston Savary could not believe what he was hearing. He leaned forward on his desk, resting on both elbows, the telephone pressed to his right ear. In a working lifetime in the Secret Service, he had never been quite so shocked, not even when he was first told that the CIA was inquiring about Col. Jacques Gamoudi.

  “What do you mean, they’ve gone? Gone where?”

  They’ve just gone, sir. Several people attacked our men, who are both in hospital.

  “But where the hell is Giselle Gamoudi, and the boys?”

  They vanished, sir.

  “What do you mean vanished?”

  They left in a big Mercedes-Benz.

  “Anyone get the number?”

  No, sir.

  “Well,” said Savary helplessly, “which way was it going?”

  Sir, it headed into Parc Beaumont.

  “Did we follow?”

  No, sir. But someone saw the helicopter land.

  “WHAT HELICOPTER?”

  The one in Parc Beaumont, sir.

  “Is it still there?”

  No, sir. It only stayed a few seconds, then it left. The chief groundsman was watching.

  “But what about Giselle Gamoudi and her sons?”

  They left in the helicopter, sir.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” said Savary, and gently replaced the telephone.

  Two minutes later—two minutes of stunned silence in his empty office—and Savary called back his Toulouse agent, the luckless Yves Zilber, who was now somewhat hopelessly drinking coffee in the bar of the Hotel Continental, on the Avenue Marechal Foch in Pau, just along the street from Place Clemenceau.

  “Yves,” said Savary, “may I presume you have told the appropriate authorities to try and track the helicopter?”

  Yes, sir. I have. I told them the park groundsman saw it flying very high, heading due west, toward the Basque region and the coast.

  “I bet it was,” muttered Savary, replacing the receiver without a word for the second time in three minutes.

  This was bad. This was absolutely diabolical. If Colonel Gamoudi already knew that agents of the DGSE were trying to eliminate him, and he somehow now knew that his wife and children were safely out of France…well, he
’d never need to return to his home. Maybe we should freeze his money.

  Gaston Savary had no idea what to do. He stood and walked to his office window, staring out of the bleak ten-story building at the depressing view of la piscine, the indoor municipal swimming pool.

  Was this really as bad he thought it was? Yes. Worse, if anything. And was he, Gaston Savary, the only one of sixty million French citizens who understood the appalling consequences of the events in Place Clemenceau today? Yes again.

  The loss of the Gamoudi family in the Pyrenean city of Pau was a crisis that could see mass sackings, both in the government and the Secret Service. Worse yet, his head would almost certainly be the first to fall.

  Standing there alone on this gray, rainy Parisian day, Gaston Savary had a fair idea how Louis XVI’s Queen, the vilified Marie Antoinette, felt in the hours before the guillotine in October 1793. Wearily he picked up the telephone again and instructed the switch-board to contact the French Foreign Minister, Pierre St. Martin, and get him on the line. “Don’t hurry,” he muttered, softly enough for the operator not to hear.

  Just then his telephone rang angrily. At least it sounded angry to him. Yves Zilber again, still at the Hotel Continental.

  “Sir, I just heard from Biarritz Airport. An unannounced helicopter, flying at more than ten thousand feet, left France and flew straight out to sea over the Bay of Biscay. They alerted the Air Force Atlantic Region HQ, but since the helicopter was transmitting nothing, they decided pursuit would be a total waste of time.

  “Ten minutes from that phone call, the helicopter was beyond French air space anyway, and heading west, out over the Atlantic. The Air Force said it was no business of ours, since the aircraft was not flying into France.”

  Savary thanked Agent Zilber and replaced the phone. “They should have shot it down,” he muttered unreasonably. “Then we’d all be out of trouble—even though we’d be at war with the U.S.A.”

  One minute later his call to the French Foreign Office was through. Pierre St. Martin listened without a word as the Secret Service Chief recounted the disastrous events in the main town square of Pau.

  At the conclusion of the dismal tale of French mismanagement, he just said, “And where does the French Secret Service think the helicopter is headed? Washington?”

  “Since its range is probably around four hundred miles, I doubt it. More likely a U.S. Navy warship, well beyond our reach.”

  “So where, Monsieur Savary, do you think that puts us?” asked St. Martin.

  “In approximately as deep an amount of trouble as we can be,” Savary replied.

  “Which means we have just one option,” stated St. Martin flatly.

  “And I am instructing you to achieve that objective, no matter how much it costs in lives or money. You will find Le Chasseur and you will eliminate him. Because if you do not do so, the United States of America will destroy French credibility in this world for twenty years.”

  “But, sir…what about Madame Gamoudi?”

  “Gaston. Get into the art of realpolitik. Stop chasing shadows. Madame Gamoudi has gone. There’s nothing we can do about that. What she knows, she knows. What she tells, she tells. But anything she says is about a hundred times less important than anything her husband has to say.

  “He alone can sink us. Get after him, Gaston. And silence him permanently. You may assume that is an order from the President of France in person. And, Gaston, if I were in your shoes, I would bear in mind that it was your organization that first leaked to the CIA the whereabouts of the Gamoudi family. It is now your organization that has absolutely failed in its allotted task to keep Madame Gamoudi well out of the way of the CIA…”

  “But, sir,” pleaded Savary, “I had eight armed men guarding her twenty-four-seven…”

  “Perhaps you should have had one hundred and eight,” said St. Martin none too gently. “In matters of this importance, the cost does not matter. Only success or failure. And I say again: You will find Jacques Gamoudi, and you will have him executed. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir. It is,” replied Gaston Savary. “One last thing, do you still want the Gamoudi family to have all that money, or shall I have the bank freeze it?”

  “You may leave that to me,” replied the Foreign Minister calmly.

  But there in the great building on the Quai d’Orsay, St. Martin was trembling, both with anxiety and fright. He knew this was probably the end of the line. He knew this might spell the end of his own finely planned political career and his hopes to attain the presidency of France.

  He had of course listened intently to the speech made by the President of the United States a few days ago. He had helped to draft his own Prime Minister’s reply. But in his heart, Pierre St. Martin knew the Americans were on to them. It was obvious by the way Paul Bedford had spoken with such panache and daring. He said he knew. And he did know.

  Pierre St. Martin had no doubt about that. And he also knew of the recall to the White House of Adm. Arnold Morgan. The newspapers and television stations had been full of it.

  When he had first read it, every hackle he had rose in alarm. And now his worst dreams were coming true: the United States knew precisely what France had done to help the Saudis.

  Pierre St. Martin stared out across the River Seine from one of France’s great offices of state. He realized he may be in his final days in there. The final days of his lifelong dream.

  “Damnation upon Arnold Morgan,” he said to the deserted room. “Damnation and blast the man to hell.”

  110930APR10. 25.05N 58.30E, COURSE 270, SPEED 7, DEPTH 200

  The brand-new Virginia-class hunter-killer North Carolina was running slowly west through the clear warm waters that led up to the Strait of Hormuz. Capt. Bat Stimpson had just ordered the fastest possible satellite check, and the jutting ESM mast had split the surface waters for only seven seconds.

  Now the great dark gray hull was back where she belonged, running silently, as quiet as the U.S. Navy’s peerless Seawolf-class ships, betraying no wash on the blue waters of the Gulf of Oman.

  In his hand, fresh from the comms room, Captain Stimpson held the critical satellite signal that would soon summon his ship to action stations. It read:

  102300 APR 10. WASHINGTON. VLCC Voltaire, ON CHARTER TO TRANSEURO CLEARED ABU DHABI LOADING PLATFORMS 092200 APR 10. ASSESS CURRENT POSITION 25.20 N, 57.00 E., SPEED 12. Voltair 300,000 TONS BOUND FOR MARSEILLE THROUGH SUEZ. COMPLY WITH LAST ORDERS. DORAN.

  Bat Stimpson knew what his last orders were: SINK HER. And he gave an involuntary gulp. The Louisiana native had never sunk anything before, but he’d had a lot of practice in U.S. Navy simulators. He knew, on this early morning, how to put a huge oil tanker on the bottom of the Gulf of Oman. He knew that as well as he knew how to eat his cornflakes.

  He turned to his executive officer, the veteran L.A.-class navigator Lt. Cdr. Dan Reilly, and said quietly, “This is it, Danny. She’ll be about a hundred miles northwest of us right now. And they were not joking. This is from Admiral Doran himself. How long we got?”

  “Probably about five hours, sir. That tanker will speed up soon as she rounds the Musandam Peninsula and starts heading into open waters. She’ll probably be making seventeen knots when we locate her. I’m guessing she’ll be in our preferred range at around fourteen-thirty, maybe a little earlier.”

  “Under five miles, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” replied the XO. “But we’ll need to go inside a half mile to read the name on her hull. We can’t risk hitting the wrong ship, and we won’t see it much over nine hundred yards.”

  “No,” said the CO. “After that we better retreat fifteen miles to our launch area. We don’t want to be any closer. But we don’t want the birds to miss.”

  “You think a couple of those sub-Harpoons will do it, sir?”

  “Oh, sure. Remember what two French Exocets did for the Brits’ Atlantic Conveyor during the Falklands war? She was just a very large freighter, but she burned for
hours, glowed red hot in the water, and she wasn’t full of oil.”

  “She was full of bombs and missiles, wasn’t she, sir?”

  “Yes. But they didn’t explode for a long time. The Conveyor just burned from the sheer heat of two big missiles crashing through her stern.”

  “And these sub-Harpoons can’t miss, can they?”

  “No, they can’t. Everything in this ship is damn nearly perfect.”

  He referred to the flawless conduct of every working part in this sensational new submarine. The North Carolina was on her first operational voyage, after two years of sea trials and workup in the North Atlantic. And if there’d ever been a better underwater ship, Capt. Bat Stimpson had not heard of it.

  They would pick up the Voltaire right after lunch, with a couple of radar sweeps. Only then would they close in and check her out at periscope depth. It was always slightly more awkward identifying a merchant ship, because she transmitted just regular navigational radar. Merchant ships did not have a clear-cut “signature” like a warship, which transmitted active sonar, pinging away, probably with her screw cavitating. And a modern nuclear submarine’s ESM mast would intercept her radar and identify the pulse immediately.

  “We’ll head for her direct line of approach,” said the CO.

  “Helmsman. Captain. Make your course two-seven-six.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The President of France had been circumspect about the Gamoudis’ money. He was plainly furious at the loss of the family to the CIA, but he recognized that nothing could be done about that. His Foreign Minister was now quite rightly wondering about the $15 million paid to a man France was now obliged to eliminate.

  “There is a moral issue here,” said the President. “And I suppose it would be wrong to leave Madame Gamoudi absolutely destitute. After all, she did not ask to be kidnapped by these damn cowboys from Washington.”