Hunter Killer (43 page)

“Don’t beat up on yourself, Arnie.” Alan Dickson grinned.

“Every plan has to start somewhere. And you made everyone think…get world opinion straight, then slam the Frogs. It’s just that much better to do it fast, do it hard, and do it in secret. That way we answer to no one.”

Admiral Morgan grinned what he described on others as a “shit-eating grin,” and said silkily, “We have no idea who hit the French tankers, or their destroyer, but there sure are a lot of suspects…heh, heh, heh.”

“If it’s okay with you,” said the CNO, “I’d like to get back to the Pentagon. We got two CVBGs in the area, one off Kuwait, another in the northern Arabia Sea. I’ll have the two SSNs come down the Gulf and take up station way down the Strait of Hormuz. The second group can make its way south to Diego Garcia, and the SSNs can peel off into the Gulf of Aden.”

“You okay leaving the carrier without SSN escort?”

“Just for a few days. We’ll send two more back in there from DG. That group’s on station for another three months.”

“Okay. Sounds pretty damn good to me, Alan. So you may as well get outta here, and on the way out tell Kathy to have Lt. Commander Ramshawe come over right away.”

The CNO nodded and turned toward the door. As he opened it, Admiral Morgan looked up and said suddenly, “Hey, Alan.” Admiral Dickson turned around. And Arnold Morgan just said, “Thanks for that. I’m grateful.”

And all the way along the corridor to the West Wing entrance, the Admiral pondered the man in the new office.
In some ways he’s the easiest man in the world to get along with—never misjudges real logic—never minds backing down. I suppose he’s just not threatened. Doesn’t mind being wrong. He’s too damn big to care.

Twenty minutes later, Arnold Morgan roared through the solid-wood door,
“KATHY! WHERE THE HELL’S RAMSHAWE?”

Kathy Morgan entered the office. “I should think he’s just leaving the Beltway,” she said. “But since I am not currently employed as a State Trooper, I have no way of knowing the precise location of his Jaguar. But he is on his way. I spoke to him within two minutes of your last instruction.”

“Too slow,” said Morgan. “Empires have fallen on delays like that.”

“So have marriages,” she replied, stalking out of the room and leaving her husband guffawing into his chart of the Strait of Hormuz.

Ten minutes later, a slightly disheveled Lt. Commander Ramshawe hurried into the office. “Morning, sir,” he said, dumping a pile of papers onto the large table at the end of the room.

“Where the hell have you been?” replied Morgan.

“Mostly making around eighty miles per hour around the Beltway,” said the Lt. Commander.

“Not fast enough.”

“The speed limit is sixty, sir,” said Ramshawe.

“Not for us, kiddo. We have no limits—either speed, finance, bravery, or daring.”

“What if a traffic cop stopped me?”

“Firing squad,” said Morgan. “Soon as we locate his next of kin.”

“Yessir.”

“Right. Now come over here and gimme the items in order of importance that we want the President to stress tonight—the stuff that makes France look bad.”

“Okay, sir. Mind if I start in sequential order first? Then you can decide importance.”

“Eighty miles an hour is a high speed to attend a debate. Facts, James. Facts. Lay ’em right on me.”

“Right, sir. August twenty-seventh. The Mossad tries to take out Major Kerman in Marseille. Question: what’s the world’s most-wanted Arab terrorist doing in France under government protection?

“Mid-November. We notice France apparently getting out of her Saudi oil contracts, driving up the price of oil futures, as if they knew what was going to happen.

“March. The submarines, coming through Suez and disappearing. The only submarines that could have hit the Saudi oil installations.

“March twenty-second. The Brits pick up the signal from northern Riyadh transmitted in French, requesting permission ‘to go to the party early.’

“Late March. We receive photographs of the ex–French Special Forces Commander Colonel Gamoudi leading the attack on the royal palace in Riyadh, in which the King is murdered. We trace Gamoudi to his home in the Pyrenees. He’s a French national, living permanently in France, with a French wife and French children.

“Same time. The French attempt to assassinate him in Riyadh, when he’s with the same Major Kerman, who we now believe led the attack on the Saudi military base in Khamis Mushayt.

“Last week. The new King awards all rebuilding contracts to France.

“Same time. The submarines arrive back in the French base at La Réunion. All mileages, times, and distances tally with the fact that they opened fire on the Saudi coastline. No other suspects.”

Arnold Morgan looked up from his notes. “Perfect, Jimmy. I actually think it’s better for the President to go in sequential order. Makes it easier to follow, and adds a certain amount of tension to the unfolding mystery.”

“I’m with you on that,” said Ramshawe.

“Okay. Now you sit there, and I’ll write the speech in longhand. I’ll want you there at all times as I come upon difficult bits, all right?”

“Okay, sir. I’ll get the documents in order so I’m ready to front up, on demand. No bullshit, right?”

“No bullshit,” Morgan responded. “But go out and tell Kathy to inform the President he will broadcast live at seven
P.M
.”

“Right away, sir. How about the speechwriters, sir? Do we need anything from them?”

“Frustrated poets,” said Morgan, gruffly. “Tell ’em to send in a computer typist in two hours.”

MONDAY, APRIL
5, 7:00
P.M
.
BRIEFING ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE

They were prowling now, the pack of newshounds Marlin Fitzwater always referred to as “The Lions.” The White House press corps was gathered at a time that was irritating for the missed-the-edition afternoon newspaper crowd, but frenzy-making for the network television teams, and pressurized for the daily newspapermen with deadlines to meet, questions to ask, and stories to write.

The Briefing Room was seething. It was three minutes after seven o’clock. And the sixty-odd Lions believed it was long past their feeding time. You could hear their growling out in the West Wing corridors.

To a man, the newspaper Lions believed in their own importance as purveyors of the news that their organizations sold for a few cents a shot. The television reporters settled for the unquestioning general belief in Televisionland that they were indeed the gods of the airwaves.

And right now they all wanted to know why the hell the President was late. Didn’t he understand that their time was precious? When he kept them waiting, he kept the whole goddamned nation waiting, right?

They guessed the subject would be something to do with Saudi Arabia, since for several days the newspapers had been filled with the repercussions of the military coup in Riyadh. And this afternoon there had been yet another precipitous fall in the Dow and the Nasdaq, and news from the international stock markets was, if anything, worse. Gasoline continued at an all-time high at the pumps, especially in the Midwest.

Suddenly, however, the door behind the dais opened and the President himself walked through, accompanied only by the scowling figure of Admiral Morgan, who glared across the room, as if spoiling for a fight if anyone stepped out of line.

His reputation was enormous. He rarely, if ever, deigned to speak to any member of the media, and he was quick to bite off the head of any offending journalist. And he did not give a damn what they wrote or said about him. President Bedford had insisted Morgan accompany him into the Briefing Room, from where he would broadcast tonight live.

He had been briefed by Morgan, and Morgan alone. And his instructions were clear:
You will say only what’s on these sheets of paper. You will answer nothing from the floor. There will be no questions afterward
.

As Admiral Morgan had himself put it, “I just want to avoid someone yelling out,
DO YOU THINK THE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE IS A FAT-ASSED COMMUNIST?
And you reply jokingly, ‘I don’t entirely disagree with that sentiment.’ And the headline screams,
PRESIDENT CALLS FRENCH LEADER A FAT-ASSED COMMUNIST.”

At this point the President conferred briefly with the Admiral, and then he stepped up to the dais, and the cameras whirred. He faced a phalanx of microphones and a sea of eager but cynical faces, belonging to men and women who were ready to pounce, however limited their knowledge of the subject.

Lions are like that. If they’re hungry enough, they’ll go for any kill, even if the odds are stacked against them. Members of their breed call it courage with high moral intent. Arnold Morgan had a more graphic, profane description meaning…well, not terribly smart.

“Good evening,” said the President. “I expect many of you will have guessed I am speaking tonight on a matter of national emergency. I refer of course to the recent events in Saudi Arabia, which have been responsible for such far-reaching economic issues for most of the Free World.

“Now, the Saudi royal family has for many years operated a system of government that was not our idea of democracy. But that burning desert land is situated far away from our own, and has deep tribal traditions and cultures that we cannot hope to understand.

“They are a kingdom, and a Muslim one at that, and they are not so many generations away from their ancient Bedouin roots. Their ways are not our ways, but they deserve our respect, and I can only say that in various times of international strife, the Saudis have been the first to come to our aid.

“Nonetheless, we were aware that all was not well domestically for them, and it was not really a great surprise to students of the region when an armed uprising broke out, the royal family as we knew it was swept from power, and a new King installed.

“For them the issue was a fairer system of government, with a fairer share of the wealth beneath the desert going to the people, rather than just to one family. The revolution that many of us expected has finally happened. In the long run, I for one believe it might very well be for the best.

“But tonight I am here to discuss the short run, and the crisis each and every one of us faces at the gas pumps, the severe inflation that is already happening here, in terms of air fares and all forms of travel, and the spiraling costs in electricity.

“I assure you this government is doing everything possible to get that under control. And in the coming weeks we will have it under control, as I promised you last week. However, tonight my talk to you has another purpose.

“I wish to inform not just citizens of the United States but citizens all over the world that the Saudi rebellion could not possibly have happened without the compliance of a heavily armed, militarily savvy Western country. And right here, right now, I point the finger at the Republic of France, which has acted in a way many of you may find unforgivable.

“The Saudi Arabian uprising was masterminded by France, executed by France, and led by France. The new King was backed by France. The old King was murdered by France. And all to seize an advantage in the international oil markets when Saudi oil came back on stream.

“I look at France, and I say again, I ACCUSE! Or, if they understand it better, J’ACCUSE!

“My fellow Americans, France did this. And you will no doubt have heard the new King Nasir of Saudi Arabia, in his opening speech, announce that France would receive all of the billion-dollar rebuilding contracts for the Saudi oil installations.”

President Bedford hesitated, and took a sip of water. He stared out at the furiously scribbling journalists, knowing that many of them were dying to get through to their offices—but they were forbidden under White House protocol from moving or speaking until his address to the nation was over.

“In order that everyone understand thoroughly how we arrived at our conclusions, I will take you through the sequence of events that led irrevocably to the culprit.

“And the first thing I would like to mention is the level of the Saudi defenses around their oil fields and refining complexes. It’s heavy. Military. Highly trained. Essentially, the Saudis have one principal asset, and that’s oil. And they are far from stupid, and they know how to protect that asset.

“The only weapon that could hit those installations is a cruise missile, and it would need to be fired from a submerged submarine, not from the surface or from an aircraft. They would have spotted those. But they would not have spotted a submerged launch. And that’s what happened. And the Saudis do not own one.

“Whenever anything is hit by a missile apparently fired from nowhere, you always seek an underwater launch. And it always turns out to be the case. No exceptions.

“And the United States Navy has a handle on every single submarine in this world—where it is, what it’s doing, who owns it, and where it’s been.

“My fellow Americans, there were only two submarines anywhere near the Saudi shores at the crucial time. And they were both French. We have their hull numbers. We logged ’em both through the Suez Canal, and we saw them go deep in the Red Sea. But we never saw them again—not till they turned up in the French base right on time, having fired their missiles at the Saudi oilfields. WE KNOW WHAT THEY DID.

“And we watched the French buying oil futures last November. We watched them getting out of their Saudi contracts. WE KNOW WHAT THEY DID.

“And we took photographs of the French Special Forces Commander who led the attack on the royal palace in Riyadh. We’ve been to his home in France. We know his name. WE KNOW WHAT HE DID.

“We know the French Government harbored and then hired the most dangerous military commander in the Arab terrorist world. We know the date and the French city where they hired him to lead the land attack on the big Saudi military bases at Khamis Mushayt. We know his name. WE KNOW WHAT HE DID.

“We heard the last military signal from the Riyadh commander to his French base; our good friends in the British Army intercepted it and passed it to us within a half hour. We know what it said. And we know who said it. WE KNOW WHAT HE DID.”