They were in good time for the night of March 21, when they would blast the massive Red Sea oil terminal at Yanbu al-Bahr clean out of existence, a few minutes after their commanding officer, Louis Dreyfus, had fired a volley of cruise missiles straight at the Yanbu, Rabigh, and Jiddah refineries.
Generally speaking, the Améthyste was a more cheerful ship than the Perle. But her mission was infinitely less dangerous, since she was operating in deep open waters, in a lonely sea—at least, in terms of warships—against a country that had a weak Navy and was inexpert in the use of submarines.
Améthyste was the biggest fish in the tank, so long as there were no U.S. Navy submarines passing through. Thus she had no enemies as she crept through these international waters. And if Commander Dreyfus and his helmsmen held their nerve, they would never have any enemies, because no one would even see her for the next four or five weeks. And when they did—thousands of miles south in the hot western waters of the Indian Ocean—there would be no reason on earth to suspect that she had anything whatsoever to do with the night of stupendous combustion that destroyed Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. That was surely, just “an Arab thing.”
Commander Dreyfus and his senior officers understood this extremely well. That knife-edge element of real danger, always present in the Perle as she picked her way through the Gulf of Iran, was missing from the Améthyste.
THE TANKER ROUTE
LEADING TO THE GREAT SAUDI ARABIAN OIL TERMINALS
Which was why the Améthyste was a very cheerful ship. And why the dark, lean, and droll commander of the frogmen, Garth Dupont, aged thirty-one, spent many hours playing bridge with his colleagues and the crew, though for stakes about twenty-six thousand times lower than those wagered by the late, great playboy Prince Khalid bin Mohammed al-Saud in the lush environs of Monte Carlo.
In fact the entire sum of the cash wagered by Garth Dupont and his pals on the 3,000-mile voyage from Brest added up to one–one thousandth of the money blown in a half hour in Monte Carlo by the late Prince Khalid, and HRH Princess Adele (deceased), late of south London.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 0030 (LOCAL)
NORTHERN PERIMETER, KING KHALID AIR BASE
General Rashood, Major Marot, and their two senior French explosives experts were lying flat among the dust, bracken, and rocks, beyond the high-wire fence that guarded the air base from attack from the rear. They were watching, for the umpteenth time, the guard change in the base. It took place at this time every night, at which point a Saudi Air Force jeep drove half a dozen men right around the perimeter. They always drove fast, always drove with the jeep’s main beams raised, they were always noisy, and their lights cast a useful illumination on the aircraft parked out here on the north side of the airfield.
General Rashood and his command team had spent many weeks studying the field from satellite photographs, and however many training flights took off and landed at King Khalid, there always seemed to be the same number of fighter-bombers on this station—forty U.S.-built F-15s, and thirty-two British Tornadoes.
The U.S. aircraft were arranged in five rows of eight, the British jets in four rows. Very occasionally wide hangar doors, two hundred yards away, were opened, and it was possible to see three more fighter aircraft in there. It may have been a service rotation, or just running repairs to active aircraft. General Rashood could never quite tell whether the aircraft were the same ones or not, because he saw them only every three days, and his view was head on to the identification numbers.
The attack was to begin four days from now, on Thursday, March 25th. And tonight’s final recce was critical, to make certain none of the airfield routines were broken. The guard changed at the regular time, the aircrew in the brightly lit hangars and workshops stopped work at 1800, and the base was more or less asleep soon after midnight.
On Thursday night, the twelve top demolition men in Maj. Paul Spanier’s Team One, operating in pairs, were going in there. Their task was to work their way down the lines of F-15s. Simultaneously, Maj. Henri Gilbert’s Team Two demolition experts would be in among the Tornadoes, prior to the opening frontal attack on the two hangars, one of which they had never seen opened.
General Rashood had his own idea of sequence, which was for bombs to be set on the engines of the standing aircraft, with timers set for detonation at 0100 Friday. That was seventy-two explosions, which, given the jet fuel onboard, ought to create a blast similar to Hiroshima.
He was allowing a generous fifteen minutes per aircraft, which meant that each team had one hour and thirty minutes to set the explosives on six of them. In addition, Rashood allowed four minutes more on each aircraft for the teams to remove wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers, and bits of cut and spliced det-cord. That was almost two hours per team to take care of the fighter-bombers. Thus the frontal hit on the hangar doors would take place at 0100.
Tonight’s first tasks were principally about time, checking that from the guard change at 0030 it would take exactly fourteen minutes for the jeep to speed out past the only spot among the parked aircraft where intruders could be seen.
Busy demolition men tend to get preoccupied, but on Thursday night each man would have a tiny beeping alarm on his watch that would sound at 0042, the signal for everyone to hit the deck, lying flat in the dark until the Saudi Air Force’s final patrol was past and on its way back to the barracks.
Ten minutes earlier, the first moment that jeep had driven by the hangars, General Rashood’s two det-cord men would be at the great sliding doors and winding the high explosive around the locks. When the aircraft blew, the doors would blow too, and the spare men from Teams One and Two would be in there with bombs set for five minutes.
As the staff of the airfield charged out to witness the total demolition of the seventy-two aircraft on the field, they would see the hangar go up in a fireball. And then the fuel dump, which was situated on the eastern edge of the airfield and would probably provide the biggest explosion of all.
In the meantime, the al-Qaeda fighters who were scheduled to open up a diversionary fight at the gates at 0050, thus occupying many of the guards, would now be assisted by the spare men who had blown the hangars.
Their orders were to move fast through the airport buildings and return to the main gates with hand grenades to blast both guard rooms, thus trapping the Saudi defenders front and rear. At 0055, the al-Qaeda men were to fight their way inside the base, carrying two heavy machine guns, and to open fire on the accommodation block and communications rooms without drawing breath.
That, reasoned General Rashood, would effectively be the end of Saudi resistance: almost every aircraft on the base blown to pieces, the hangars destroyed, most of the guards dead or burned, buildings on fire. What was there left to defend? If it wasn’t the end of Saudi resistance, something had gone drastically wrong.
Right now he was certain they had thought of everything. The charts of the airfield back in Taverny had been completely accurate, the scale model they had studied had been perfect. The surveillance photographs had been remarkably helpful, and the detailed plans of both the F-15s and the Tornado fighter jets, provided by Saudi sympathizers inside the base, were a priceless guide to the demolition men.
Nonetheless, General Rashood was still lying in the dirt outside the wire on the northern perimeter of the airfield. He felt that he knew the place better than his own home back in Damascus.
Through his binoculars he watched the jeep with the new guard detail drive from the guardhouse to the gates. It picked up the men coming off duty and drove them back to the accommodation block. Six more guards then boarded the jeep, and it swung around and headed out onto the airfield. It always drove down the main runway and then picked up the narrow perimeter road and made a circuit of the whole air station.
Tonight the General was making a final decision as to where to station two of his men lying flat, machine guns ready, just in case it was necessary to eliminate the six guards in the jeep.
For a few days he had considered that the best spot might be in the bracken, right inside the fence. But upon reflection, watching the angle of the jeep’s lights night after night, he decided that there was perhaps a one in ten chance the beams might pick up movement in the grass. And then they’d have an uproar on their hands before the aircraft demolition team had completed its work. The Saudis might even have time to communicate and turn on the airport floodlight system, maybe even send for help from the military base, which would have helicopter gunships down there in about ten minutes.
The prostrate General shuddered at the thought. It could all go wrong, right here on his patch. And he could not tolerate that. No, the two Hamas bodyguards protecting the men in among the aircraft would take up position behind the wheels of the aircraft nearest the perimeter path. That way there was no possibility of their being seen, not in the dark, and they would be only fifty feet from the jeep as it passed.
Plainly, it would be slightly hairy for the two bodyguards operating five feet below a ticking time bomb in the aircraft’s engine. But these were professionals, and they would be safe on the guard stations until 0055, when it was time to run like hell, out under the wire with the twenty-four demo guys and into a big Saudi army truck, which had been hidden in the desert for three weeks, and would be on station to get them out and back to the “hide.”
Rashood intended to put his main wire cutter on duty at the fence at all times. Everyone would go in through a small gap in the fence—three feet by four, two at a time—at 2300, and then the fence would be put back lightly to avoid any detection by the occupants of passing jeeps.
The moment the last jeep had sped past, almost certainly traveling too quickly for proper observation, the wire man would complete cutting a huge gap, ten feet wide by twelve feet, so the getaway truck could practically back in.
Now, as General Rashood lay there deep in thought, the lights of the jeep lit up the northern perimeter road. Rashood watched the range of its beam every inch of the way, and as it roared past, all of his instincts were confirmed. The bodyguards would take up station on Thursday night behind the landing wheels of the F-15s.
Between now and then, the surveillance team would switch their attention to the military base, five miles away. In General Rashood’s mind, the airfield plan was complete. Now he had four days to refine his plan for the assault on the Khamis Mushayt army headquarters and the subsequent, vital surrender of that sprawling Saudi military base.
SAME DAY, 1830
DIR’AIYAH
Jacques Gamoudi was more and more impressed by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. In the past few days, Prince Nasir had arranged for a succession of heavy-duty construction hardware to arrive at the outer walls of the ancient ruins. There were a couple of bulldozers, two cement mixers, various trucks with commercial names printed in Arabic, three vans, a pile of scaffolding, and, since yesterday morning, a crane that looked like it could lift the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
There could be no doubt there was serious restoration work afoot out here on the edge of the desert. No doubt whatsoever why the main road out of Riyadh should be closed to any vehicles not driving straight through the area.
Shortly after dark, the white-robed Prince himself arrived for a conference with his forward commander from the French Pyrenees.
“Ah, Jacques!” he greeted the French colonel. “Come and talk to me out beyond the ruins. Walk with me to the temporary home of a true Bedouin.” He placed his arm around the shoulders of Jacques Gamoudi and together they walked out between the shattered buildings of the ancient city, continuing for perhaps a half-mile, where a three-sided tent had been erected, in front of which a gigantic Persian rug was spread upon the sand.
There were probably fifteen close friends in attendance, mostly political and religious advisors, and relatives of the prince. Colonel Gamoudi was at home among them. Above his regular combat gear, he now wore the customary red-and-white ghutra complete with the aghal, the double head cord traditionally worn on top of the Arabian headdress. He looked what he now was: a freedom fighter in the cause of Islamic fundamentalism.
Prince Nasir loved the desert. Those who knew him well talked often of his hatred of the gaudy palaces of the royal family. It was said that when he first saw his own new official residence, on the outskirts of Riyadh, he took one look at his sumptuously decorated bedroom and walked out of the door, marching along the upstairs corridor until he came to a small, almost bare, spare room. “I’m happier in here,” said the great-great-grandson of Ibn Saud.
And even now, many years later, the fifty-six-year-old Prince still preferred the old ways to the new. And still, almost every night, his servants drove him out to the desert, where they pitched the great three-sided tent and sat out under the stars and told their stories and discussed the politics of the day and the coming revolution.
Behind the tent, Jacques could see the cooks at work over modern barbecue grills; he could see the line of Range Rovers parked nearby; he could smell the roasting lamb; and he could see the great bowls of dates and the tall glasses of iced camel’s milk.
He sometimes had to give himself a reality check. And this was one of them, as he stood next to a royal family of Bedouins, robed, speaking quietly, close to the timeless oasis of Dir’aiyah. It was a scene that had scarcely changed for thousands of years. Except for the Range Rovers.
He stared at the tall, bearded Prince of the blood who accompanied him, and he watched the deference bestowed upon him—the gentle bowing of heads, the graceful sweep of the right arm from the forehead, the murmured “as salaam alaykum” from the robed brotherhood.
Four days from now he was to try and capture their country for them, with tanks, high explosive, gunfire, and mayhem. “Jésus,” thought Jacques. “What could I have done to deserve all this?”
But the Prince was bidding him to be seated. And he was placed next to Nasir on the vast rug set upon the hot sands. Above them the sky was clear and the temperature was rising by the day in the central desert, now four weeks on from the cold nights of mid-February. Tonight it was around eighty-one degrees. A pale moon was rising above the endless shifting dunes to the southeast, and the great revolutionaries of the Saudi royal family were relaxed.
Which was a sight more than Jacques Gamoudi was. He had spent his weeks here scheming and planning a simultaneous attack on several targets. His advisers had promised him that he would have an army to help him. But he had never seen that army. He knew there were immense stores of small arms and ammunition in the city, and he of course could see the heavy artillery he had around him, the armored vehicles and tanks.
When the time for the attack came, Le Chasseur would make no mistakes. So long as he was obeyed, he would take Riyadh. But where the hell was his army? That’s what he wanted to know. So far as he could tell, he had about twenty-four known fighting men, all Saudi, all al-Qaeda, most of whom he saw every day. The rest were a mystery.
And since he was probably going to take to the streets four days from now, he ventured to ask Prince Nasir whether he was absolutely sure the army would show up.
The Prince smiled while thoughtfully eating a couple of dates. “Jacques,” he said, “You will have an army of thousands, a great army that will sweep away everything in its path. And you will lead them, and explain to them the critical targets you have chosen. They will follow you and your chosen commanders, and you will be astounded at their bravery and determination.
“And remember, as you look around this very oasis, when Dir’aiyah fell to the army of the Ottoman Empire, in 1818, that was the only time in recorded history that the heartland of Saudi Arabia has been conquered by a foreign invader. And it’s never happened since. My people, in time, conquered this land, they took almost the entire Arab Peninsula. We are warriors and we understand, to a man, that you will lead us in our fight this week.”
Colonel Gamoudi actually thought that was all very well. And he was used to the flowery language of Arab military
wannabes, which he privately thought the Prince was. He looked the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia straight in the eye and said softly, in French, “Où qu’ils soit,” wherever they may be.
“Jacques,” said the Prince, “as you know, we have been stockpiling arms in the city for many weeks. We have vast caches of weapons stored in two houses in the Makkah Road
. We have them on Al Mather Street
and Al Malek Saud Street
. Our main ammunition dumps are in great houses on Olaya Street
. I’m mostly discussing AK-47s and hand grenades. But we have handheld rocket and grenade launchers.”
“Sir,” said Colonel Gamoudi, “you will remember I had asked about the possibility of a suicide bomber aiming a plane straight at the main royal palace. I still think that’s the quickest and most effective way of spreading instant chaos. And striking at the heart of the rulers. Is that likely to happen?”
“So far we have only 230 volunteers for perhaps the greatest act of martyrdom in our history. They are men who understand they will be saving their families, their friends, and their country. They are all Wahaabis, which is the true Islamic teaching of our nation. Any one of them would be proud to answer the call of the three trumpets before crossing the bridge into paradise.”
Hunter Killer (2005) Page 17