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:
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
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.
Furthermore, that position could be relayed to the
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.
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.
Gamoudi had decided they should trundle up into the mountains, call his father, and then wait for the dawn. Banging on the door of his father’s house in the small hours of the morning was out of the question. In a place like Asni, that would most certainly attract the attention of someone, somewhere, who might suspect who it was.
As it happened, Jack Mitchell got there first. He slipped into the Moroccan tunic and hat he always kept in the rear of his car and inquired at the local bar where he might find Abdul Gamoudi. His house was only fifty yards away. Mitchell went to it and tapped sharply on the front door.
The man who faced him was lean and tanned, a true Moroccan Berber of the mountains. He was in his mid- sixties and he was wearing jeans and no shirt. He confirmed readily that he was indeed the father of Jacques Gamoudi.
Mitchell explained rapidly that he was expecting the Colonel either to arrive there within the next few hours or, somehow, to make contact. Either way, the CIA man said, Gamoudi was in the most terrible danger.
Gamoudi’s father nodded, almost as if such a scenario were not entirely foreign to him. “Ah, Jacques,” he said slowly, in French.
