Hunter Killer (2005)

by Robinson Patrick

  He realized of course the explanation could have been very simple. Many Middle Eastern defense ministries had, over the years, employed retired Special Forces combat soldiers to help train their own armies. It was not unusual to find SAS men helping the Israelis. Indeed Maj. Ray Kerman had served in just such a role.

  And certainly the Saudis had employed many Army, Air Force, and even Naval special advisers from Great Britain, the United States, and, less often, France. The officer in the leading tank may well have been hired by the Saudis after he had retired from the French Special Forces.

  But, according to Charlie Brooks, this guy was not serving in the capacity of a “special adviser.” This guy, a foreign national, was commanding the entire Saudi assault force, the one that took down the King.

  Lt. Commander Ramshawe understood something of those desert people, and he had read often of the fierce pride of the Bedouin. Ramshawe loved the writing of the great Arabist Wilfred Thesiger. And he knew one thing for sure: even if this was a rebel Arabian army, somehow split from the main Saudi military machine, it was impossible it was being led by a “bloody Frenchman.”

  Thoughts flooded through Ramshawe’s mind. Was this the Frog in the Desert? Was this assault force in the Saudi capital half-French? Who the hell else was in those tanks? Was this a partnership between the new King Nasir and France? Or was Major Chasser just a bloke who’d emigrated to Saudi Arabia and somehow taken over the Saudi Army?

  “Bloody oath!” muttered Ramshawe. “This Charlie Brooks has sure as hell lit up my little investigation…I don’t know where to start…except I have to run this Chasser character to ground in a real hurry.”

  He picked up the report and headed along the corridor to see Admiral Morris, hoping to hell he was free to have a talk, and hoping to hell he had some hot coffee. Jimmy Ramshawe shuddered with anticipation at both prospects.

  The Admiral was available, but his coffee was colder than Ramshawe’s. George Morris read the report from Charlie Brooks and looked up sharply. “Two priorities, Lt. Commander: One, we gotta find out about this Chasser guy. Two, have a quick word with the Big Man before you start.”

  “Three,” added Ramshawe, “will I get us some hot coffee?”

  “Four, thank Christ you asked,” replied the Admiral.

  There was always a knowing repartee between these two that was unexpected—the lugubrious, wise, rigidly disciplined ex–Carrier Battle Group Commander, and the freewheeling U.S.-born Aussie who operated on instinct and intellect, brilliance rather than structure.

  “I’ll call the Big Man while we’re waiting,” added Ramshawe.

  He walked briskly back to his office, ordered coffee for the Director’s office, and dialed Admiral Morgan’s number in Chevy Chase. No reply. On the off chance, he hit the secure line to the White House and inquired whether Admiral Morgan was there.

  “Who would the Admiral be visiting?” asked the operator.

  “Couldn’t tell you that,” replied the Lt. Commander. “But I’d start with the President.”

  A few moments later, the President’s secretary came on the line and said politely, “Lt. Commander, Admiral Morgan is in with the President right now. Would you like me to tell him you are on the line?”

  “Please,” said Ramshawe.

  Within ten seconds the rasping tones of Admiral Morgan came down the White House line to the National Security Agency, as they had done so many hundreds of times before.

  “Hey, Jimmy. This urgent?”

  “Yessir. One of our guys in the Riyadh embassy just filed a report identifying a former French Special Forces officer in command of the leading tank that attacked the Saudi King’s palace this morning.”

  “Jesus Christ! Is that right? Tell you what, stay where you are. I’ll come out to Fort Meade and we’ll go over this whole French bullshit right away.”

  Morgan replaced the telephone. He looked up at President Bedford and said, “I’d better go. We may have the breakthrough that will nail France to the wall. Can you get me a car?”

  A car! At that particular moment, President Bedford would have wrapped up Air Force One in Christmas paper and given it to Arnold Morgan with love and gratitude.

  A half hour later the Admiral was back in his old domain at Fort Meade, sitting in George Morris’s chair—where else?—reading the report from Charlie Brooks and complaining about the quality, and especially the temperature, of the National Security Agency’s coffee.

  Nothing much had changed since Arnold Morgan first sat in that same chair a dozen years ago. He remained the glowering intelligence genius he always was—impatient, mercurial, bombastic, rude, and, according to his wife, Kathy, adorable. Just so long as you always remembered that his bite was one hell of a lot worse than his bark.

  “I’ll send for a fresh pot,” said Jimmy Ramshawe, picking up the phone.

  “Hot, Jimmy. For Christ’s sake tell ’em to make it hot. Lukewarm coffee makes lukewarm people, right?”

  Ramshawe was not absolutely sure he got that. But he still snapped, “Aye, sir.” That was the response Admiral Morgan expected, and in Ramshawe’s opinion it was a small price to pay for the presence of his hero.

  “Jesus, we’re damn lucky this Charlie Brooks was on the case,” said Morgan. “And, of course, we have just one main objective, aside from the goddamned coffee: we must find out the precise identity of Major Chasser. Get Charlie Brooks on the line.”

  “Right away, sir,” answered Ramshawe, lifting up the telephone and asking the operator to connect him to Mr. Charles Brooks at the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

  That took only three minutes. In every U.S. embassy around the world, everyone hops to it when the National Security Agency is on the line.

  “Brooks here. I’ve been expecting you guys for the last hour…”

  “Morning, Charlie,” said Ramshawe. “This is Lt. Commander Ramshawe here, assistant to the Director. I believe we’ve spoken a couple of times before?”

  “Yes, we have, Jimmy. Guess you called about my report.”

  “I did. Very interesting. ’Specially that bit about the commander on the leading tank.”

  “That was him, I’m absolutely sure of that. Sorry I don’t know his correct name, but they kept referring to Major Chasser. I spoke to him several times in Brazzaville, and he was definitely French, but he looked like an Arab.”

  “You’re spelling that C-H-A-S-S-E-R?”

  “Well, I am. But I’m only guessing. That’s what they called him: Chasser, like Nasser.”

  “Charlie, we may want to pursue this further. If we do, can you give us some guidance, from back in Brazzaville, where we might dig up some detail?”

  “Well, I’d have to look that up. You see, I only saw him during that one day, the day we all got out. But I may have some stuff still on my computer, you know, a few names of contacts who might know more.”

  “Okay, Charlie. We’d all be grateful. Maybe if I call in a couple of hours?”

  “Don’t bother, Jimmy. I’ll e-mail the information.”

  “That would be great. Just one more thing…did you have the impression this Chasser was definitely in charge of the assault convoy?”

  “Oh, there was no doubt about that at all. His tank, the big Abrams, was out in front. He was calling the shots, both to passing civilians and to the rest of the force to the rear of his armored vehicles. I walked farther up the street, behind the convoy, and I saw Chasser’s vehicle slam straight into the gates of the royal palace. And he wasn’t asking anyone’s permission. Trust me.”

  “Okay, Charlie. You’ve been a real help. We may talk later.”

  “So long, Jimmy.”

  The Lt. Commander replaced the telephone and looked over to the big desk where Arnold Morgan and George Morris were talking. “He’s very definite,” said Ramshawe. “The guy was called Chasser, like Nasser. Spelled C-h-a-s-s-e-r.”

  “And right there we got a real problem,” said Admiral Morgan, a little grandly. �
�The French do not have the sound e-r…like we say Chasser or Nasser. E-r on the end of a word in French, any word, is pronounced ay. If this guy’s name was Chasser, the French would say, Cha-ssay.”

  “Well, Charlie said he heard Chasser, like Nasser. And he repeated it. He was certain how it sounded.”

  “But he’s uncertain of what he spelled,” said Morgan. “It’s elementary. The sound does not exist in French.”

  Now, Ramshawe thought, for a bloke whose French accent sounds like Jackie Gleason trying to imitate Maurice Chevalier, the Admiral is being pretty dogmatic. So he pressed forward.

  “Okay, sir. What’s the nearest sound the French do have for E-R, and how to they spell it?”

  “Well, they have e-u-r. As in professeur, professor. Sounds much the same. But that’s how they spell it.”

  “How about Chasseur…is that possible? What does it mean?”

  “How the hell should I know?” replied Morgan. “We got a French-English dictionary around here?”

  “Probably not,” replied Admiral Morris. “But I can get one sent down in about one minute.”

  At that moment the fresh coffee arrived with, miraculously, a blue tube of Morgan’s preferred “buckshot,” the little white sweeteners that tasted like the sugar both his doctor and his wife had banned. Word had already hit the kitchens: the Big Man was in residence. It was just like old times.

  Admiral Morris poured, Morgan stirred, and a slightly breathless young secretary from the Western European language department came through the door with the required dictionary.

  “Let me have that, kiddo,” said Morgan, sipping gratefully. He skimmed through the first section, French–English, for the elusive word Chasseur.

  And on page seventy-four he found it—chasser, the French verb “to hunt,” or “to drive away.” Pronounced, obviously chass-ay. Right below it was the word, chasseur, the French noun “hunter” or “fighter.” The dictionary added chasseurs alpins, meaning “mountain infantry.” The feminine was la chasseuse. But Arnold Morgan had it. Le Chasseur. The hunter. That was plainly their man.

  “And a goddamned good nickname that is,” he said. “For a tough sonofabitch French mercenary. Question is, who the hell is Le Chasseur. Better call Charlie back, Jimmy. Ask him if he thinks it’s possible that Chasseur was his nickname rather than his correct name?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “That you, Charlie? Jimmy here again. We just wondered whether you thought Chasser could be a nickname rather than a real name?”

  “Sure it could. I heard it more than once, but it could have been just the name he was usually called. Like Eisenhower was ‘Ike,’ Ronnie Reagan was ‘Dutch,’ John Wayne was ‘Duke.’ Sure, it might easily be a nickname.”

  Ramshawe confirmed the conversation. Morgan stood up to leave. “Keep at it, guys,” he said. “Watch for the submarines, and keep checking the Brits for more on that message from the Frog in the Desert. Sounds to me like Le Chasseur might be the Frog in the Desert. Stay in touch.”

  And with that he was gone, and neither Admiral Morris nor Lt. Commander Ramshawe had the slightest doubt what they needed to accomplish next.

  “Jimmy,” said Admiral Morris, “we have to establish that this Chasseur guy is a French citizen, and/or a French resident, with a French home and possibly a French wife. If we can’t establish those things, we have nothing. Not enough to point the finger at France.”

  “You mean the ol’ J’accuse,” said Ramshawe, in his Aussie accent, utilizing one of the only three French phrases he knew—along with Je ne sais quoi and Arrivederci, Roma, which he readily accepted could turn out to be Italian.

  Admiral Morris shook his head. “Exactly,” he said. “We must have sufficient evidence before we point the finger. And if this Chasseur in the front tank is really French, coupled with all the other stuff, we’ve probably got ’em.”

  “What do we do? Get the CIA on the case?”

  “Right now,” said Morris. “And they start in Brazzaville, where the Chasseur held high command in French Special Forces ten years ago. There must be people who remember him. There’s still a major French embassy in that city. I’d say the guys could identify him with a proper name in less than a couple of days.”

  “I’ll call Langley right away,” replied Ramshawe.

  SAME DAY, 0600 (LOCAL)

  BRAZZAVILLE, CONGO, WEST AFRICA

  Ray Sharpe had been stationed in the former capital of French Equatorial Africa for two years. Here in this swelteringly hot city on the north bank of the Congo River he had held the fort for the U.S.A. in one of the least desirable foreign postings Langley had to offer.

  But Brazzaville was an intensely busy port, a hub between the Central African Republic and Cameroon to the north, the former Zaire to the east (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), and Gabon to the west. The mile-wide Congo was the longest navigable river in the whole of Africa, providing a freeway for enormous quantities of wood, rubber, and agricultural products. And an enormous amount of skulduggery. Ray Sharpe was well tuned in to the buzz of the African underworld. Sometimes he thought there was more underworld than overworld.

  But today he was not stressed. For a start, it was lashing down with rain—warm rain here at the back end of the season but, nonetheless, sheeting, soaking squalls that rendered several highways impassable. Drainage right here was not precisely top of the line. But, for Africa, it was almost adequate.

  He was sitting on the wide, shady veranda of the French Colonial house he rented. For a change, he was not pouring sweat—thanks to the cooling rain clouds—and he was taking a man-sized suck at his first cold beer of the evening.

  Sharpe was a native of New England, south Boston, a devoted fan of the Red Sox and the Patriots. A burly black-haired Irish-American of forty-three, he had volunteered for Brazzaville mainly to escape a particularly messy divorce. All right, he probably drank too much, and his work took him away from his wife for much of the year, but he could not for the life of him understand why Melissa had to run off with some goddamned hairdresser named Marc—with a c, he always added contemptuously.

  And he was always baffled by the fact that Melissa, without mercy, had skinned him alive financially. Christ! They’d been at Boston College together, where she’d been a cheerleader, and he’d been a star tight end. Their families dated back to the same county in Ireland, Limerick. And she’d tried to nail him to the wall.

  All of which conspired to turn Sharpe into a classic expatriate colonial resident—stuck out here at the ass-end of West Africa, still drinking too much, missing home, but too short of serious cash, too disillusioned, and rapidly becoming too idle to return. He had learned to speak French, and he had friends in Brazzaville, but most of them were much like himself, with big expense accounts and nowhere much to spend the money, except at restaurants and bars.

  Still, great fortunes were made in places like Brazzaville—importing, exporting, buying dirt cheap, selling back to the U.S.A. or Europe. He’d seen it, he’d had opportunities, and there’d be more. But somehow he had never gotten around to making a commercial move himself. Not yet, anyway. But he’d get to it soon. Definitely.

  Sharpe was just reaching into the cooler for a fresh beer when the phone rang. Who the hell was that? The beautiful chocolate-colored French waitress, Matilda, from La Brasserie in the Stanley Hotel up the street? Or maybe even Melissa, now without her faggot boyfriend, calling for more money.

  “Jeez,” he muttered, walking inside to pick up the telephone.

  “Sharpe,” he said, inwardly groaning at the all-too-familiar Good evening Mr. Sharpe, Langley here, West African Desk…just a minute for the Chief.

  Five minutes later he was back in his big swinging couch, staring at his notes. French Special Forces Commander, June 1999. Evacuated the U.S. embassy. Envoy Brooks and Ambassador Aubrey Hooks. Believed nicknamed the Chasseur. Please trace—get real name, background, and current residence if possible. Urgent FYEO. Soonest please.


  For your eyes only. Sharpe’s eyes were a tad bloodshot, and it was still raining like hell, but he drained his beer, grabbed his light mackintosh, and headed his Ford Mustang out through the tree-lined boulevards of the biggest city in this old French colony, toward the modern-day French embassy on Rue Alfassa. Of course, he knew the resident secretariat extremely well—like every diplomat, spy, and journalist.

  His route took him straight through the central area of Brazzaville, which was still dominated by the Elf Oil tower jutting above the skyline, a symbol of French industrial power. He never gave it much of a thought, of course, and he would probably never know how significant that building was to his evening mission.

  As luck would have it, most of the French embassy staff had gone home for the evening, leaving only the famously ill-tempered Monsieur Claude Chopin on duty. Aged about ninety-four and claiming direct bloodlines with the great composer—who was, anyway, Polish—Monsieur Chopin was a stern French patriot. The Republic’s tricolor hung above his desk, next to a large portrait of General Charles de Gaulle. Old Chopin had worked here for about thirty-five years, and had spent most of those years sipping wine and griping and moaning.