quite tell whether the aircraft were the same ones or not, because he saw them only every three days, and his view was head on to the identification numbers.
The attack was to begin four days from now, on Thursday, March 25th. And tonight’s final recce was critical, to make certain none of the airfield routines were broken. The guard changed at the regular time, the aircrew in the brightly lit hangars and workshops stopped work at 1800, and the base was more or less asleep soon after midnight.
On Thursday night, the twelve top demolition men in Maj. Paul Spanier’s Team One, operating in pairs, were going in there. Their task was to work their way down the lines of F-15s. Simultaneously, Maj. Henri Gilbert’s Team Two demolition experts would be in among the Tornadoes, prior to the opening frontal attack on the two hangars, one of which they had never seen opened.
General Rashood had his own idea of sequence, which was for bombs to be set on the engines of the standing aircraft, with timers set for detonation at 0100 Friday. That was seventy-two explosions, which, given the jet fuel onboard, ought to create a blast similar to Hiroshima.
He was allowing a generous fifteen minutes per aircraft, which meant that each team had one hour and thirty minutes to set the explosives on six of them. In addition, Rashood allowed four minutes more on each aircraft for the teams to remove wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers, and bits of cut and spliced det-cord. That was almost two hours per team to take care of the fighter-bombers. Thus the frontal hit on the hangar doors would take place at 0100.
Tonight’s first tasks were principally about time, checking that from the guard change at 0030 it would take exactly fourteen minutes for the jeep to speed out past the only spot among the parked aircraft where intruders could be seen.
Busy demolition men tend to get preoccupied, but on Thursday night each man would have a tiny beeping alarm on his watch that would sound at 0042, the signal for everyone to hit the deck, lying flat in the dark until the Saudi Air Force’s final patrol was past and on its way back to the barracks.
Ten minutes earlier, the first moment that jeep had driven by the hangars, General Rashood’s two det-cord men would be at the great sliding doors and winding the high explosive around the locks. When the aircraft blew, the doors would blow too, and the spare men from Teams One and Two would be in there with bombs set for five minutes.
As the staff of the airfield charged out to witness the total demolition of the seventy-two aircraft on the field, they would see the hangar go up in a fireball. And then the fuel dump, which was situated on the eastern edge of the airfield and would probably provide the biggest explosion of all.
In the meantime, the al-Qaeda fighters who were scheduled to open up a diversionary fight at the gates at 0050, thus occupying many of the guards, would now be assisted by the spare men who had blown the hangars.
Their orders were to move fast through the airport buildings and return to the main gates with hand grenades to blast both guard rooms, thus trapping the Saudi defenders front and rear. At 0055, the al-Qaeda men were to fight their way inside the base, carrying two heavy machine guns, and to open fire on the accommodation block and communications rooms without drawing breath.
That, reasoned General Rashood, would effectively be the end of Saudi resistance: almost every aircraft on the base blown to pieces, the hangars destroyed, most of the guards dead or burned, buildings on fire. What was there left to defend? If it wasn’t the end of Saudi resistance, something had gone drastically wrong.
Right now he was certain they had thought of everything. The charts of the airfield back in Taverny had been completely accurate, the scale model they had studied had been perfect. The surveillance photographs had been remarkably helpful, and the detailed plans of both the F-15s and the Tornado fighter jets, provided by Saudi sympathizers inside the base, were a priceless guide to the demolition men.
Nonetheless, General Rashood was still lying in the dirt outside the wire on the northern perimeter of the airfield. He felt that he knew the place better than his own home back in Damascus.
Through his binoculars he watched the jeep with the new guard detail drive from the guardhouse to the gates. It picked up the men coming off duty and drove them back to the accommodation block. Six more guards then boarded the jeep, and it swung around and headed out onto the airfield. It always drove down the main runway and then picked up the narrow perimeter road and made a circuit of the whole air station.
Tonight the General was making a final decision as to where to station two of his men lying flat, machine guns ready, just in case it was necessary to eliminate the six guards in the jeep. For a few days he had considered that the best spot might be in the bracken, right inside the fence. But upon reflection, watching the angle of the jeep’s lights night after night, he decided that there was perhaps a one in ten chance the beams might pick up movement in the grass. And then they’d have an uproar on their hands before the aircraft demolition team had completed its work. The Saudis might even have time to communicate and turn on the airport floodlight system, maybe even send for help from the military base, which would have helicopter gunships down there in about ten minutes.
The prostrate General shuddered at the thought. It could all go wrong, right here on his patch. And he could not tolerate that. No, the two Hamas bodyguards protecting the men in among the aircraft would take up position behind the wheels of the aircraft nearest the perimeter path. That way there was no possibility of their being seen, not in the dark, and they would be only fifty feet from the jeep as it passed.
Plainly, it would be slightly hairy for the two bodyguards operating five feet below a ticking time bomb in the aircraft’s engine. But these were professionals, and they would be safe on the guard stations until 0055, when it was time to run like hell, out under the wire with the twenty-four demo guys and into a big Saudi army truck, which had been hidden in the desert for three weeks, and would be on station to get them out and back to the “hide.”
Rashood intended to put his main wire cutter on duty at the fence at all times. Everyone would go in through a small gap in the fence — three feet by four, two at a time — at 2300, and then the fence would be put back lightly to avoid any detection by the occupants of passing jeeps.
The moment the last jeep had sped past, almost certainly traveling too quickly for proper observation, the wire man would complete cutting a huge gap, ten feet wide by twelve feet, so the getaway truck could practically back in.
Now, as General Rashood lay there deep in thought, the lights of the jeep lit up the northern perimeter road. Rashood watched the range of its beam every inch of the way, and as it roared past, all of his instincts were confirmed. The bodyguards would take up station on Thursday night behind the landing wheels of the F-15s.
Between now and then, the surveillance team would switch their attention to the military base, five miles away. In General Rashood’s mind, the airfield plan was complete. Now he had four days to refine his plan for the assault on the Khamis Mushayt army headquarters and the subsequent, vital surrender of that sprawling Saudi military base.
Jacques Gamoudi was more and more impressed by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. In the past few days, Prince Nasir had arranged for a succession of heavy-duty construction hardware to arrive at the outer walls of the ancient ruins. There were a couple of bulldozers, two cement mixers, various trucks with commercial names printed in Arabic, three vans, a pile of scaffolding, and, since yesterday morning, a crane that looked like it could lift the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
There could be no doubt there was serious restoration work afoot out here on the edge of the desert. No doubt whatsoever why the main road out of Riyadh should be closed to any vehicles not driving straight through the area.
Shortly after dark, the white-robed Prince himself arrived for a conference with his forward commander from the French Pyrenees.
“Ah, Jacques!” he greeted the French colonel. “Come and talk to me out beyond the ruins. Walk with me to the temporary home of a true Bedouin.” He placed his arm around the shoulders of Jacques Gamoudi and together they walked out between the shattered buildings of the ancient city, continuing for perhaps a half-mile, where a three-sided tent had been erected, in front of which a gigantic Persian rug was spread upon the sand.
There were probably fifteen close friends in attendance, mostly political and religious advisors, and relatives of the prince. Colonel Gamoudi was at home among them. Above his regular combat gear, he now wore the
