“So did Jacques, for a while.”
“Hell, those French killers have their work cut out. Can you imagine chasing a professional mountain guide through that range? You’d never find him.”
“You been there, sir?”
“I’ve been to Agadir. That’s how I remember Mount Toubkal. A bunch of our guys had shore leave for a week and they were going to climb it. It’s damned high and extremely steep—something like thirteen thousand feet.”
“You didn’t go yourself, sir?”
“Jimmy,” said George Morris. “I might look kinda stupid, but I’ve never been crazy.”
Ramshawe laughed. “So what do we tell the Big Man?”
“We tell him both the CIA and the NSA consider Le Chasseur is going home to the Atlas Mountains, to hide out from the French assassins. And we tell him it’s going to happen fast, and it looks like our best bet to grab him might be off the dock in Agadir.”
“We’re assuming he wants to be grabbed.”
“Jimmy, we’ve rescued his wife and family, his money’s safe in the U.S.A., and the French are trying to kill him. He’ll come, and he’ll do as we ask. He has no choice. Because if we don’t get him, the French will eventually take him out.”
“But how are we going to find him?” asked Ramshawe.
“Why don’t you call Admiral Morgan and see what he says?”
“Okay, sir. I’ll do that right away.”
He marched back down to his office and went through on the direct line to the White House at a particularly bad time. Admiral Morgan was wrestling with a statement from the United Nations condemning the action of the United States of America in sinking at least two, maybe three, and possibly four French ships. The statement was withering for the UN, which spent a certain amount of time each year expressing “dismay,” a small amount of time being “disappointed,” and considerable time finding things “incomprehensible.”
But, essentially, the UN did not “condemn.” As a word, it was too inflammatory, too likely to make a bad situation worse, and too difficult a word from which to retreat.
Today, however, the United Nations not only condemned, it issued a paralyzing anti-American statement that read, The probable actions of the U.S. Navy in the Strait of Hormuz represented bullying on a scale totally unacceptable to the rest of the world.
It added that the Security Council intended to summon the United States representatives to appear before the General Assembly, the main debating chamber of the UN. And there, every Member State, all 191 of them, would be invited to cast a vote in favor of the severest censure the UN had issued in a quarter of a century.
There was no state of war existing between France and the United States, the statement said. Therefore the action of the U.S. Navy must fall under the heading of, at best, a reckless and careless attack or, at worst, cold-blooded murder of innocent seamen.”
Either way the UN could not condone the actions of the U.S.A. The General Assembly would also be asked to decide whether substantial damages, possibly $1 billion, ought now to be paid in reparations to the French government.
When he read it, President Bedford shuddered at the enormity of the ramifications. Not many U.S. Presidents have been accused of “murder” by the UN. And Paul Bedford was not much enjoying his place in that particular spotlight.
Since Admiral Morgan had masterminded the entire exercise, he asked him to come into the Oval Office. And that’s exactly where they were when the phone rang with Lt. Commander Ramshawe on the line from Fort Meade.
Arnold Morgan just growled, “We got him yet?”
“No, sir. But we’re in better shape than we were yesterday. We know where he is, and we think we know where he’s going.” He outlined to the Admiral the developments of the day and the new significance of Morocco, and then posed the question he had asked Admiral Morris.
“If we want to pick him up in Agadir, sir, how the hell do we find him?”
“Jimmy,” rasped Morgan, “we got to get him a cell phone, one of those little bastards with a GPS system attached. That way we can hook him up with his wife onboard the Shiloh, and he can show us where he is. Do the guys at Langley think the French are in hot pursuit?”
“They don’t know whether Paris understands yet that Gamoudi is on his way to Marrakesh. But I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“Right. Meanwhile you better get Langley to deliver one of those phones to Le Chasseur.”
“How and where, sir?”
“If the CIA can’t get a telephone to a guy who’s trying his damnedest to get into the U.S.A., they might as well close the fucking place down,” snapped Morgan, slamming down the phone.
President Bedford was extremely relieved to see that his main man had not lost his nerve in the face of a frontal assault by the UN. “This is very serious, Arnie, don’t you think?” he said.
“Serious!” growled Morgan. “You think we ought to be nervous about some half-assed, know-nothing Security Council that contains among its fifteen members the Philippines, Romania, Angola, Benin, and Algeria. Jesus! These guys are pressed to feed themselves and plant fucking soybeans, never mind have a hand in running the goddamn world.”
Even President Bedford, in the darkest moment of his presidency, was compelled to laugh.
“And I don’t want you to lose your nerve, Mr. President,” added Admiral Morgan. “Remember what we know has happened: the French, in partnership with some kind of a robed nutcase, have forced the world into its worst economical crisis since World War Two. With reckless disregard for any other nation’s plight, they cold-bloodedly smashed the Saudi oil industry with naval explosive, and then provided two Supreme Commanders to force the surrender of the Saudi armed forces and then assault the royal government in Riyadh.
“Now half the world’s without oil, and not everyone realizes, yet, that the French did it, for some sleazy financial deal with this Nasir character…that’s a guy dressed in a fucking bed sheet.
“And we have to get the industrial world out of this. And if that means sinking a handful of French ships, that’s the way it’s gotta be. They’re goddamn lucky we haven’t sunk ’em all.”
“But, Arnie, what about this United Nations censure?”
“Sir, this is a momentous chain of events. It’s something history will judge in the fullness of time. Ignore the short-term rantings of a few nitwits who only know about a tenth of the facts. Sit tight, don’t crack, and we’ll win this. Probably in the next week.”
“You mean if we can get this Colonel Gamoudi to testify at the General Assembly for us?”
“Absolutely. And he will, because his own land has turned against him, he’s been betrayed, and he only has one set of friends in the world—that’s us. We’ve rescued his family and his money, and we’ll save him. And when we’ve done it, he’ll sing—that curly-haired little French Moroccan will sing like Frank Sinatra.”
“You’ve only seen a picture of him in his Arab kit,” said the President. “How do you know he’s got curly hair?”
“North African, sir. All North Africans have curly hair. Christ, most of them live in the Sahara Desert. If they didn’t have thick, curly hair for protection, their heads would blow up.”
“Which of Darwin’s theories of evolution are you currently studying, Arnie?” asked Paul Bedford wryly.
“Right now I’m concentrating on the bit about the ever-evolving diabolically devious nature of the French,” retorted Morgan. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll just call Alan Dickson, we’ll have a couple of cups of coffee, and we’ll hear more. This is hotting up, and I’m darned sure we’re out in front.”
FRIDAY, APRIL 16, 1730 (LOCAL)
ROYAL NAVY DOCKYARD, GIBRALTAR
The eight-man U.S. Navy SEAL team, which had been airlifted from a joint exercise with twenty-two SAS in Hereford, England, arrived in a red-painted Royal Navy Dauphin 2 helicopter in the great sprawling British base that stands guard over the gateway to the Mediterranean.
Moored alongside, on the North Mole, the great breakwater that protects the strategically important harbor, was the 10,000-ton Ticonderoga-class cruiser U.S.S. Shiloh, fresh from a 900-mile run down the Portuguese coast from the outer reaches of the Bay of Biscay.
Back in Norfolk, Virginia, Adm. Frank Doran had reasoned that if they were going to haul Le Chasseur out of some Middle Eastern banana republic, they were going to need a big U.S. warship on hand to deal with the problems. The middle of the Mediterranean, somewhere east of the Italian peninsula, seemed as good a place as any to set up shop.
However, the way things were now moving, there had been a major change of direction. Shiloh, complete with the Gamoudi family and the SEAL team, would leave the Med within two hours, heading 428 miles south down the Atlantic, along the long sand-swept coast of Morocco. Latest orders, direct from the Pentagon, recommended that the SEAL team go in and grab the French Colonel sometime in the next three or four days.
Capt. Tony Pickard had been ordered to make all speed from Gibraltar to an ops area 100 miles off the Moroccan seaport of Agadir. When SEAL Team Number Four, home base Little Creek, Virginia, was safely aboard, U.S.S. Shiloh would cast her lines and leave immediately.
The SEAL’s team leader was Lt. Cdr. Brad Taylor, the Virginia garrison’s resident iron man, one of those SEALs who pins the Trident on his pajamas before he goes to bed. A veteran of the Iraq war, thirty-one-year-old Brad Taylor was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, and leading classman in the SEALs’ brutal indoctrination course BUD/S, known in the trade as “The Grinder.”
His father was a U.S. naval Captain from Seattle, Washington, and his mother, a former actress who had spent much of her life wondering how she could possibly have given birth to this miniature King Kong.
Brad was six foot two, but every stride he took looked as if he were just out of the gym and on his way to a world heavyweight title fight. To complement that natural-born swagger, he had wide shoulders, massive forearms and wrists, and thighs like mature oaks. He seemed shorter, but he looked like a young John Wayne, with slightly floppy brown hair worn longer than the standard SEAL hard-trimmed buzz cut.
Brad Taylor had won collegiate swimming championships, over 100 yards, a half mile, and one mile. He also won a U.S. Navy cruiserweight boxing championship, flattening all three of his opponents in the quarterfinal, semifinal, and final. Only injury had prevented him from playing free safety for the cadets in the Army-Navy game.
Brad Taylor was one of those people born to service in the U.S. Navy, born to lead a combat SEAL team, born to carry out SPECWARCOM’s orders, no matter how difficult. And today his orders were short and succinct, straight from the White House, via the Pentagon: Get the French Army Colonel Jacques Gamoudi out of Morocco.
The U.S. guided-missile warship cleared Gibraltar at 1930 (local) and made all speed through the Strait and into the Atlantic, turning south on a course that would keep her 100 miles off the Moroccan coast, steaming past Tangier, Rabat, and Casablanca.
At thirty knots, it took the Shiloh five and a half hours to cover the 165 miles to a position off the capital city of Rabat—which was where the first activity of the night took place. At midnight (local) one of the two boarded helicopters, the SH-60B Seahawk LAMPS III, took off into the night, and headed directly into Rabat.
Clasped in the first officer’s hand was a cardboard box containing the cell phone Admiral Morgan had ordered. It was satellite-programmed to connect with the comms room of U.S.S. Shiloh from any point on the globe. It also had a built-in GPS system, operational via satellite, that would pinpoint its user’s position accurate to thirty yards.
Furthermore, that position could be relayed to the Shiloh without the user’s even speaking. With the phone held in the open, one touch on one button would automatically inform the warship’s ops room precisely where the caller was standing.
The LAMPS III took twenty-five minutes to reach the city. It made a long sweep to the north and, following the lights, came clattering up the river before banking right and putting down in the expansive grounds of the U.S. Embassy on Marrakesh Avenue
.
On the strict instructions of Admiral Morgan, the Moroccan authorities had been fully informed that a U.S. military aircraft would make this night delivery to the embassy, the normal courtesy between countries. Right now Admiral Morgan had a golden chance to humiliate and embarrass the French, and he did not wish the United States to put a foot wrong diplomatically.
Which was the principal reason why he had insisted that the rescue of the French Colonel should be a clandestine grab by the SEALs, rather than a winch-out by a U.S. Navy helicopter operating illegally over deep Moroccan sovereign territory. As the Admiral had stated it, “When you want to play the knight in shining armor, you don’t walk around with a goddamn blackjack.”
And now, awaiting the helicopter, next to the flashing landing light on the embassy lawn, was the U.S. Ambassador to Morocco and one of the CIA’s top North African field officers, Jack Mitchell, a native of Omaha, Nebraska, who kept a careful eye on Algiers and Tunisia from his Rabat base.
The helicopter never even opened its door. The cell phone was tossed out into the waiting hands of agent Mitchell and the pilot took off instantly, not even bothering with his northern detour, just ripping fast above the city and out into black skies above the Atlantic.
No one beyond the aircrew, the Ambassador, and the CIA knew of this swift insertion—which was precisely as planned. Because Morocco leaks. And Morocco has deep French connections. It had been, after all, a French protectorate for half of the twentieth century, and at this critical time the Americans understood full well that the French Secret Service were bound and determined to end the life of Le Chasseur.
Jack Mitchell, watching the departing Navy chopper climb away to the west, was now awaiting a flight of his own, due here on the embassy lawn in twenty minutes. This would be a nonstop 145-mile flight to Marrakesh, where Mitchell, a divorced former Nebraska State Trooper, would pick up his Cherokee Jeep and head into the Atlas Mountains, in search of either Jacques’s father, Abdul Gamoudi, or the proprietor of the only hotel in the village.
So far, he knew King Nasir’s Boeing had landed at a crowded Menara airport, four miles southwest of Marrakesh, just before 7 P.M. But the young CIA man there had not been able to see anyone disembark, and it was impossible to find a man who may or may not have been traveling alone, and may or may not have been in Arab dress. Right now the CIA had no idea where Colonel Gamoudi was.
The only lead was Asni, the tiny mountain village of his birth and boyhood, which lay thirty miles south of the airport. There was a chance Gamoudi’s family might still be in residence, and Major Laforge might still be at the hotel.
But the trail was very dead. Jack Mitchell’s man at the airport had conducted an airport search as best he could, questioning and tipping the sales clerks at the rental car desks. But nothing had been signed by any Gamoudi, or indeed any Jacques Hooks.
For all Jack Mitchell knew, the Colonel could have decided to hide out in Marrakesh. Although he doubted that because of the strong French presence in the city. There was no doubt Asni was the key. That’s where Agent Mitchell would have headed if he had been on the run. There was a lot on his mind as his helicopter took off from the embassy grounds. He was clutching the little super cell phone which would be, ultimately, the lifeline of Le Chasseur, if Mitchell could deliver it.
SAME FRIDAY NIGHT
MARRAKESH AIRPORT
From the first moment they disembarked from the Boeing, Rashood, Shakira, and Jacques Gamoudi split up, making for three separate destinations inside the terminal.
They had no luggage except duffel bags. Shakira with her several passports and driver’s licenses made for the Europcar desk in the arrivals hall, Rashood went to the bank to try and change $10,000 into local dirhams (10.5 to the dollar), and Gamoudi went to a coffee shop for supplies for the journey.
They met in
the Europcar parking lot and threw their stuff into the trunk of a small red Ford. It was 10 P.M. before they were ready to go. Gamoudi took the wheel, heading south up the old mountain road to Asni, where the French Colonel knew his father would be, even though they had not been in contact for several months.
Gamoudi had no intention of going into the village, where the French might be waiting. But he intended to contact his father by phone. The old man would arrange for all three of them to get kitted out tomorrow with good mountain gear, for their journey into the still snow-covered peaks of Jacques’s boyhood.
This was certainly the one place on this earth where the odds favored them against a determined military pursuer. All three of the fugitives knew the French Secret Service could not be far behind. As yet they had no knowledge of the intention of the Americans, and Gamoudi had not the slightest clue about his family’s kidnapping in the main square of the Pyrenean town of Pau.
Hunter Killer (2005) Page 49