public communications. Major Majeed, who has become a wonderful friend to me, will take the airport by storm, and it will surrender easily. But I have instructed ten al-Qaeda commandos to go straight to the control tower and capture it with gunfire, if possible with no damage to the equipment.
“Colonel Bandar will take television channels one and two by force of arms, but hopefully without loss of life. If he drives that Abrams tank straight through the front door they’ll put their hands up, believe me. Journalists die only by accident, not from choice.”
“And the remainder of the convoy?” asked the Prince. “Will that advance into the city for three miles, as you suggested, as if in a military parade, right to the edge of the central area?”
“Yes, sir…while it gathers our followers. But then it will swing left, back onto Al Mather Street and return north, to join the four main battle tanks and the six armored vehicles we leave back at the junction of the Jiddah Road.”
“Of course by then we shall have thousands of armed followers behind the tanks,” added the Prince.
“And hopefully a substantial group from the Makkah Road,” replied Colonel Gamoudi. “Men who will march to join us — maybe a thousand of them — under the command of our good friend Major Abdul Salaam.”
“Good, very good. And then?”
“I lead the convoy to the east, straight around the diplomatic quarter, and into the area where the main palaces are located. Major Abdul Salaam’s brigade immediately hits the Prince Miohd bin Abdul Aziz Palace, where the full-morning council meeting will be taking place before the King’s arrival at 1300.”
“And attempt to capture them, round them up?” asked the Prince, perhaps considering the fate of his several cousins and childhood friends, who would be attending that meeting.
“Absolutely not,” replied Colonel Gamoudi. “That’s our first objective. We go in hard, rockets, grenades, and gunfire. We take out every single person in the building and then knock as much of it down as we can. We cannot allow the officials inside to live, for fear of later uprisings, and we do not want the building. That palace and all of its occupants is on our critical hit list. To seize a ship of state, you first smash its rudder.”
The Prince nodded. “And then?”
“We pass two more minor palaces as we go out to the east, and we take them by force of arms. I do not expect many important people to be in them, whoever is, we wipe out — not women, or children, of course, but anyone who may later bear arms against us.”
“Do we knock down the buildings?”
“No. We need those big buildings to set up our new command posts. And once we’ve taken them, we push right on to the King, who will be in the Al Salam royal palace. And as you know, this is a very large building. I will press the red button on my comms system, and the suicide bomber instantly takes off from the airport, which by now we control.”
“Straight at the palace?”
“Straight at the upper levels of the palace. I’ll take care of the lower levels, and the guards.”
“And the King and his family?”
“The King dies. And so do any princes serving him. If the great man is as smart as I think he is, he’ll have many of his family already evacuated. Probably within hours of the oil bombardment on Thursday morning.”
“And the families, Jacques? The King’s wives and many children…if any of them are still there?”
“Sir, if you had asked me to slaughter women and children, there would be a different commander sitting here with you. And I would be with my wife, Giselle, in the Pyrenees.”
“Even for fifteen million?” asked Prince Nasir.
“Even for fifteen billion,” said Colonel Gamoudi quietly. “I’m a soldier, not a murderer.”
Prince Nasir again nodded his head gravely. “And when the palace falls?”
“I recall Maj. Abdul Salaam to organize a total occupation of the building. I have detailed six al-Qaeda staff officers to assist him in this. All prisoners will be marched to the smaller royal palace, a half-mile down the road, where they will be held under guard.
“I will then open a new communication center and Colonel Bandar will transport television crews there, and you, sir, will make your first broadcast to the nation, informing the populace that the King has fallen and the city is in the hands of the armed forces of Prince Nasir Ibn Mohammed al-Saud, the great-great-grandson of Ibn Saud. And you will address them with your message of hope, inspiration, and future prosperity.”
“And you, Jacques, what further degradations do you have in mind for my country?” The Prince smiled.
“I will regroup my army, sir, hopefully with many more trucks and transports, and make my way to the southwest, to downtown Riyadh, where we take and occupy several places, no more firing unless there is serious resistance. And if there should be, I am afraid we must be utterly merciless.”
“Which places?”
“Oh, the big shopping centers, the council building, King Fahd Medical Center, the post office, the bus station and railway station, Central Hospital, because there may be wounded.”
“And the main Army? The ones in the other great military cities of Saudi Arabia?”
“That will all be taken care of by General Rashood. He will compel the Commander in Chief of Khamis Mushayt to speak to his opposite number in Tabuk, informing him that Khamis Mushayt has fallen to the troops of the Crown Prince.
“He will also tell him that the King has been removed and that his great friend Prince Nasir implores him and his men to change their allegiance immediately, particularly as the Prince is the only man in the world who can pay them and take care of the families. The King is dead. Long live the King.”
Crown Prince Nasir remained slightly quizzical. “And you are not concerned that the opening action in this great saga is all concentrated around the east side of the city, while the central area scarcely knows what’s going on?”
“Not with a man like General Rashood taking care of the rest of the Saudi armed forces, sir. To take any country, you must first cut off its head. That’s the King. When he falls, everything starts to cave in. You will be the King of Saudi Arabia by Friday afternoon.”
Prince Nasir rose and beckoned to Le Chasseur.
“Come, Jacques,” he said, “it is almost eight o’clock. And I would like you to pray with us.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied the devout Muslim colonel from Morocco. “I would be greatly honored.”
And the curious thing was, he meant it. And the great bond of Islam seemed to engulf him along, as he stood next to the Arab Prince, out there on the shifting sands around the oasis of Dir’aiyah.
The
Shortly after 1900, with night settling heavily over the ocean, Commander Dreyfus ordered his ship to the surface, and the French nuclear hunter-killer came sliding up out of the depths of the flat, calm Red Sea to take up her ops station. Water cascaded off her hull as she shouldered aside the ocean, moving forward slowly, making as little surface commotion as possible for a 2,500-tonner.
Just ahead they could see the warning light on Sharm’s rocky headland, flashing every few seconds and casting a white light on the glinting waters, mostly to warn tanker captains of the dangers inherent in not making a sharp landward turn.
Shi’ib ash Sharm sat five miles off shore, directly west of the loading platforms that serviced the world’s biggest oil tankers at the far end of the seven-hundred-mile trans-Saudi pipeline. That was the one that ended at the port of Yanbu, having cleaved its way across the vast central desert and over the Aramah Mountains, all the way from Pump Station Number One, near Abqaiq.
To reach the main loading terminal at Yanbu, tankers had to make a hard turn, at either end of Sharm, from the north or south. For the SF insert tonight, Commander Dreyfus had chosen the northerly route, a three-mile-wide seaway between the island and a large shallow area that had to be avoided by the VLCCs and most certainly by the
The water was beautifully flat, and the rising moon to the east, from behind the mountains, was casting a pale light on the narrows. The submarine was just about invisible, its black hull casting no shadow on the surface. But inside there was a frenzy of activity.
Several hands were already hoisting and hauling the deflated twenty-two-foot Zodiacs up through the big
