Hunter Killer (33 page)

Jacques Gamoudi raised his binoculars and checked the clattering chopper, which was now flying low, about 300 feet above his tank. The numbers on its fuselage did not correspond to any of three choppers run by Prince Nasir. So far as Gamoudi could tell, it might be arriving to evacuate the King, and he could not tolerate that. But before he could call up two or three Stinger missiles and attempt to shoot it down, it flew off, straight toward the palace.

And then, before Gamoudi could finish cursing, two more Saudi Army helicopters came battering their way over the horizon, flying low above the buildings. Again Jacques Gamoudi raised his glasses, and this time he could see the insignia of the King’s Royal Regiment painted clearly on the rear of both helicopters.

He assessed this as an operation to evacuate the King. And he was correct in that. The two helicopters, giant troop-carrying Chinooks, followed the first much smaller one directly along the road to the palace, and Gamoudi saw them hovering, preparing to land inside the walls that surrounded the royal residence.

This was an emergency. He ducked back inside the tank, seized the communications system, and shoved down the red button. And twenty-one miles away, at King Khalid International Airport, an aging Boeing 737, takeoff priority number one, began to roll down the main runway with two young al-Qaeda braves at the controls, making their last-ever journey, the one before the three trumpets sounded, summoning them across the bridge, into paradise and the arms of Allah.

The Boeing banked hard left, racing east across the northern approaches to the city. Laden with fuel, it came in low over the desert making 300 knots. Colonel Gamoudi halted his convoy 1,000 yards short of the palace, awaiting the arrival of the suicide bombers, whose task it was to slam into the building.

It was a four-minute journey from the airport. Everyone saw the empty silver-colored passenger aircraft flying straight toward them. It came in low, drawing a bead on the great curved dome of the central part of the building. Everyone held their breath as it screamed above them, losing height, its engines howling.

Inside the cockpit, the pilot sensed he was too high. He throttled back, and forced the nose down, increasing the revs on those mighty Pratt and Whitney engines. Too late. They were still too high. With 400 yards to go, the pilot hauled back on the throttle, cut the engines altogether, and the Boeing lurched into an all-engine stall.

The nose came up as the aircraft dropped fifty feet like a stone. And then it made a perfectly hideous belly-flop landing
bang
on top of the dome and burst into flames. The dome collapsed, killing anyone on the upper floor. The Boeing lurched left and then tipped right, landing on its wing, which spun it around hard.

It hit the ground with a mighty crash, leveled a grove of twenty-eight palm trees, and flattened five parked Mercedes-Benz staff cars. The eight-man guard detail at the rear of the palace was killed instantly, but the objective of the entire exercise—the King and his most trusted advisers—was unharmed, as they hurried out of the building toward the waiting helicopters.

There were eighteen of them, but no women or children, the King’s family having escaped four hours after the military bases at Khamis Mushayt had fallen. But there was a substantial group, and space on the helicopters was tight. There were packing cases of priceless jewels and artifacts to be loaded before the passengers could board.

Colonel Gamoudi was quite certain of the Chinooks’ mission. He urged his task force forward, heading for the palace gates. He could see the black smoke rising from the grounds in the rear of the palace, but even from this half-mile distance he knew the Boeing had not accomplished its allotted task.

And now his prize might be slipping away. The very last thing a brand-new King needs is a very-much-alive old one. Even the British drummed Edward VIII and his American divorcée girlfriend straight out of the country to France, once they had decided King George VI would become the rightful monarch back in 1936.

It would be the most awful blow to King Nasir if the deposed ruler was somehow living high on the hog in Switzerland, spending some of his multibillion-dollar fortune, while he, Nasir, struggled to put Saudi Arabia back on its feet. One way or another Jacques Gamoudi had to nail the departing monarch. And he had about ten minutes, maximum, to do it.

He could see the third helicopter circling, hovering, and then dropping down also to land behind the high walls, in the vast front garden before the palace.
“Merde,”
he muttered, frantically signaling to all drivers to make all speed to the gates of the King’s residence.

Engines howled, but the palace was still three minutes away. And it was still one minute away when the air was split by two enormous explosions. Flames and black smoke rose into the air, but no one could see what had happened behind the walls.

They reached the gates and smashed their way through amid scattered gunfire from the remaining palace guards, who had taken refuge inside the downstairs floor of the palace. Colonel Gamoudi’s men returned fire with heavy machine guns and quickly silenced the defenders, who appeared to have no further desire to stick their heads above the parapet.

But the scene in that front yard was one that Jacques Gamoudi would remember for the rest of his life. The two Chinooks were blasted beyond recognition, six dead robed Arabs lay on the ground, and off to the right, leaning somewhat casually on a palm tree, was the unmistakable figure of the former British SAS Maj. Ray Kerman, in company with one of his Hamas bodyguards. They were both holding antitank rocket launchers, still smoking.

“Afternoon, Jacques,” said General Rashood. “I thought I’d better get rid of those two Chinooks for you. You don’t mind, do you?”

Jacques Gamoudi was almost speechless.
“Jésus Christ
!” he exclaimed. “Did you just get here in that third helicopter?”

“How the hell did you think I got here?” said the General, looking surprised. “On the bus?”

Gamoudi shook his head and laughed. But then the enormity of his problems came cascading back upon him, and he suddenly shouted, in a loud, involuntary voice, “
Jésus Christ
, Rashood!
WHERE’S THE KING! WHERE THE HELL’S THE KING?
”

“He’s in there,” replied the General, nodding toward the palace.

“How do you know?
” said Gamoudi, his voice rising again.

“Mainly because I just saw him go in there,” said Rashood. “With a group of five bodyguards. The King was carrying an AK-47.”

“But what if he escapes? Out the back way or something?”

“He can’t. I just sent three of my commandos to seal off the rear entrance. Anyway, I’d guess it was too bloody hot to get through the gardens. There is, I expect you noticed, a 200-seater Boeing 737 with about 400 tons of fuel on fire under the date palms.”

“So we’ll have to roust him out, right?”

“Yup. Do you guys want me to give you a hand?”

“
Mon Dieu!
Was General de Gaulle French?” Gamoudi replied.

“You need a machine gun?”

“What d’you think I need, a bow and arrow?”

Gamoudi ignored the sardonic humor of the victor of the Battle for Khamis Mushayt and headed back to his waiting chiefs-of-staff. Someone fetched a machine gun and ammunition for General Rashood, and an al-Qaeda soldier turned up with a diagram of the royal palace, courtesy of Osama’s organization, which had provided engineers’ maps of buildings constructed by the bin Laden family business.

Jacques Gamoudi had seen the plan of the palace before, but he never thought he would need it. He had counted on the suicide bomber to inflict fatal damage on the huge hall of royal residence. He had assumed a final intervention by the forces of Prince Nasir would be strictly routine.

But things were now very different. The palace had some serious damage high up on the dome, and there was obviously going to be masonry all over the top floor. But the first two floors, which contained twenty-seven bedrooms, were probably unscathed, and it was likely the King’s personal bodyguard, numbering at least twenty armed members of the Royal Regiment, would put up a desperate fight to protect their forty-six-year-old ruler.

They might even have a pre-planned hiding place, like the old “priest holes” in Catholic monasteries, where clergymen hid from the malevolence of Henry VIII in medieval England.

Colonel Gamoudi did not think much of the prospect of chasing the King up some chimney or into some dungeon. And neither, for that matter, did General Rashood. They studied the floor plans of the sprawling palace. It was a maze of corridors, great yawning state rooms, dining rooms of unimaginable luxury. And below were kitchens and storage rooms. There was a long arched walk-way to one side of an interior courtyard. Jacques Gamoudi shook his head in frustration.

And what was the King doing right now? Was he on the phone, perhaps informing the world of his plight? Maybe he was telling his friend, the President of the United States, that his palace and his regime were under attack by a bunch of lunatics and that the United Nations must somehow save him? Worse yet was the possibility that the King’s extremely shrewd army commanders were planning to hole up inside the vast building and make their escape under cover of darkness. Colonel Gamoudi and General Rashood had inflicted heavy damage and they had a popular uprising going their way, but the King was still staggeringly rich, owning and controlling tremendous military resources.

And those resources might well be capable of getting him out, and that would be appalling news for Prince Nasir. Both Gamoudi and Rashood could well imagine the King sitting in some palatial residence on Lake Geneva, not so far from his multibillion-dollar fortune, giving weekly “exclusive” interviews to the world’s media.

There would be headlines pointing out the sheer tyranny, the wickedness, and the savage lowlife intentions of the armed thugs who drove the rightful King of the Saudis from his peaceful and prosperous kingdom. The fall of the best friend the West ever had. The media would love it, true or not, and it could very easily cause the United Nations to condemn Prince Nasir and all that he stood for.

“Rashood, we have to get him,” said Jacques Gamoudi grimly.

“No need to tell me, old boy,” replied the General, reverting to his natural Englishness while speaking to a Frenchman. “And we have to get him fast.”

“Do we charge the front door with a tank and go in with all guns blazing?”

“Sounds better than ringing the doorbell,” said Rashood. “Let’s get a half-dozen guys with antitank rocket launchers aimed at the front of the palace. They can open fire on the second-and third-floor windows as soon as we’ve stormed the entrance.”

“Right,” said Gamoudi. “We don’t want to drive these guys upward into that mess below the dome. There may be good cover up there, and we don’t want to fight on a bomb site.”

“Correct,” said Rashood. “We better beef up that detail in the rear of the building, if it’s cool enough. But we don’t want a lot of guys in the open. For all we know the troops inside are mounting machine gun nests in the windows.”

“We’re going to have to fight for this on the inside,” said Gamoudi.

“’Fraid so,” said the General. “And we better be very quick. I’m not much looking forward to it either.”

They selected sixteen Special Forces to come in behind the tank. In their rear were twenty al-Qaeda and Hamas fighters, all carrying submachine guns and grenades. Jacques Gamoudi would lead the troops inside, the first moment they breached the entrance. He would concentrate on the downstairs areas, going room by room.

General Rashood would lead his commandos up the main stairs to the second floor. As ever, the principal danger was to the assault force, the troops who had to make it happen. The King’s guard could fight a solid rearguard action, protecting their man, no hurry, until darkness came. And then they had a huge advantage, on terrain they knew backward. There was also, of course, the truly uncomfortable fact that no one knew what extra resources the King could call upon, including overwhelming world opinion.

Gamoudi and Rashood had to nail him. And they had to nail him right now. The Hamas General, for good measure, quoted the only rules that mattered during any military coup: “Let’s do it fast, Jacques, and let’s do it right.”

Colonel Gamoudi boarded the M1A2 Abrams. The opening assault brigades moved into formation, and the engines of the tank screamed as it rolled toward the palace doors, the French veterans moving behind it.

The Colonel ducked low as the iron horse slammed into the doors, smashing them inward. And as they did so, two savage bursts of heavy machine-gun fire riddled the steel casing of the tank. Nothing penetrated, but the guns had them pinned down, half in and half out of the entranceway, facing into the main hall.

Now it was Jacques Gamoudi who could not dare put his head above the parapet. He ordered the tank to reverse and the gun to be raised. At which point he blasted the upper balcony with four successive shells, which crashed into the walls behind the gallery, which in turn caved in and caused the total collapse of the third floor in that part of the building.

There was dust and concrete everywhere, and the guns were, for the moment, silenced. The room on the second floor behind the shattered wall was nonexistent. Anyone in there was no longer alive. But there was no sound, and Colonel Gamoudi assumed the danger up there had receded.

He signaled for General Rashood to lead his men into the devastated reception hall and to take the remainder of the second floor. He watched the Hamas C-in-C bounding up the stairs, his troops following, tightly grouped on the wide marble staircase. There was still no sound from that second-floor gallery where the King’s initial machine gun nest had been located.

Gamoudi split his men into two groups, one left and one right. He took the left-hand corridor and, room by room, booted open the doors and hurled in hand grenades. There was one aspect of this type of warfare that made the task slightly easier: no one cared who was in the rooms or whether they lived or died, and no one cared what damage was inflicted on the palace. There was no need for restraint.