than three months later he would be wrong.
Gen. Ravi Rashood was in company with eight of his most trusted Hamas henchmen, three of them known al-Qaeda combat troops, plus three former Saudi Army officers. They were just crossing the Mediterranean coastline in a AS-532 Cougar Mk I French Army helicopter, a high performance heavily-gunned aircraft that had just made the 380-mile ocean crossing from Algeria.
The big Cougar had taken off from a remote corner of the small regional airport of Tebessa, which sits at the eastern end of the Atlas Mountains, where the high peaks begin to smooth their way down to the plains of Tunisia.
General Rashood and his team had made a deeply covert journey that day, from Damascus, in a private air charter flight, unmarked by any livery, straight along the north African coast to Tripoli. And there the Cougar Mk I had met them and flown the 250 miles to their first refueling point, at Tebessa.
Right now they were coming into Aubagne, the Foreign Legion base where the General had been six months before, on the day of the shootout at L’Union. Tonight, however, no one would disembark. The helicopter was immediately refueled for the flight north to Paris.
Under cover of darkness they would land at around 0300 at the French military’s Special Ops base in Taverny, north of Paris. This would be their home for the next two weeks.
At this point, all of the Arabian freedom fighters accompanying the General were in Western civilian clothes, mostly blue jeans, T-shirts, and sweaters. But it was an intensely military journey. All of the men had maps and they were all studying the same thing, the huge King Khalid Air Base, beyond the Saudi Arabian military city of Khamis Mushayt.
The helicopter made a wide circular sweep around the west of Paris, crossing the Seine, and heading in to land across the foggy fields above the Oise Valley. They grabbed their bags the moment the helicopter touched down, and were shown immediately to a barracks not one hundred yards from where the Cougar had landed.
It was 0245, and Gen. Michel Jobert, the Commander in Chief of the entire base, was there in person. He smiled as he shook hands with General Rashood, to whom, in a sense, he may already have owed his life. They had not seen each other for six months.
They boarded an Army staff car and drove to the French commandant’s residence, where the Hamas C-in-C would live during this period of intense training. In the morning they would meet for the first time the forty-eight highly trained combat troops of the First Marine Parachute Infantry Regiment, with whom they would fight in the forthcoming battle for the airfield at Khamis Mushayt.
Rashood and Michel Jobert sat before a log fire sipping a warming
Rashood’s journey from Damascus in August had been careful. But not careful enough. This time the journey was indeed untraceable. “It would be nice if we could avoid running into a couple of assassins trying to blow our heads off,” said Michel Jobert. “Especially since Jacques Gamoudi is not due here until next week.”
Rashood grinned. “He was very efficient that night, hah?” he said. “I think that character might have hit us, but for the table Jacques threw forward.”
“Think? He
“Saved us,” said Rashood. “I’m glad he’s on our side.”
General Jobert, despite being the Special Forces mastermind behind the plan to topple the Saudi monarchy, could never accompany his men on the mission. Should he be captured or even killed, France’s complicity in the operation would be blown forever.
As for the French troops who would take part, well, the First Marine Parachute Infantry Regiment would send them in without identification. They would conduct the operation within hours of arriving on Saudi soil and then leave immediately. Unlike Ravi Rashood, who would have to do rather more to earn his millions-of-dollars reward.
The following morning General Rashood and his eleven-man team from the desert gathered for a briefing before they met their forty-eight French comrades who would join them on the mission. They had breakfast together in a mess hall, and then reported to an underground ops room in which were arranged a number of chairs. At the front of the room were two tables, behind which were two large computer screens.
One showed the south shores of the Red Sea, with the old French colony of Djibouti to the west, and to the east, the mysterious desert kingdom of Yemen, the earliest known civilization in southern Arabia, a place that was active along the trade routes a thousand years before Christ. The other showed a much smaller-scale map of the Yemen border with Saudi Arabia, stretching along the eastern coastline of the Red Sea.
When the team was assembled, Generals Rashood and Jobert came in, accompanied by three French Special Forces commanders, all Majors in their early thirties: Etienne Marot, Paul Spanier, and Henri Gilbert. Today everyone, including the new arrivals from Arabia, was in work uniform: boots, combat trousers, khaki shirts, and wool sweaters, with black berets.
The eight Hamas/al-Qaeda men were seated in one row, three back, and while each of them had a smattering of French, directly behind them were two Arabic-speaking ex — Foreign Legion troops, who would act as interpreters.
The heavy wooden doors were closed behind them and two guards were on duty outside in the well-lit passage. Two more stood guard at the head of the short flight of stairs that led up to the corridor beyond the officers’ mess.
General Jobert began the briefing, informing those assembled that this was not nearly so dangerous an operation as it may appear. Certainly they would need to be at their absolute best in combat, but by the time they launched their assault, Saudi Arabia would be in chaos — the lifeblood of the oil wells would have ceased to flow, the King would be under enormous pressure to abdicate, and the entire Saudi military would be in a state of mass confusion, unsure who they were working for.
Nonetheless, this was a room full of tension, as many young men prepared themselves to fight hundreds of miles from home, in a small group, in territory they had not seen before.
“I am sure,” said General Jobert reassuringly, “the Saudis will be wondering who they are expected to fight for — the old regime, or the incoming one. And according to our principal source, the man who will become the new King of Saudi Arabia, the Army in Khamis Mushayt will be happy to surrender. No Arab soldier much enjoys being on the wrong side. That’s a Middle Eastern characteristic.”
He told them that in the broadest possible terms they were expected to attack and destroy the Arabian fighter-bombers parked at the King Khalid Air Base, five miles to the east of Khamis Mushayt. “A separate force is then expected to occupy the headquarters of the Army base and demand the surrender,” he said. “This will almost certainly mean taking out the guard room, and possibly the senior commanding officers. General Rashood will personally lead this section of the operation.”
The General then handed over to the most senior of the ex-Saudi officers — Col. Sa’ad Kabeer, a devout Muslim, descendant of ancient tribal chiefs from the north, and an implacable enemy of the Saudi royal family. Colonel Kabeer had commanded a tank battalion in Saudi Arabia’s Eighth Armored Brigade in Khamis Mushayt. He would lead the opening diversionary assault on the air base.
Colonel Kabeer rose to his feet and nodded a greeting to the men before him. And then he told them, encouragingly, “The Saudi army has always suffered from a great shortage of man power. Thus there is always weakness. In addition, the head of the armed forces is a Prince of the royal family, as are numerous C-in-Cs and battalion commanders.
“We should remember that at the time of our opening assaults, every one of them will be terrified that their enormous stipends from the King are about to end. It would not greatly surprise me if several of them fled the country before we fired our opening shots. I am in complete agreement with Prince Nasir, the Crown Prince, that the Saudi Army will cave in the moment we attack. So we should conduct our operation with maximum confidence, knowing that right is on our side, and so is the incoming ruling government.
