Navy surveillance had always picked up any French submarine heading south out of the Red Sea on the surface of the water; although they had three times recorded Rubis-Class ships at periscope depth on satellite pictures.
Jimmy Ramshawe hurried back to the Director’s office, turning over in his mind the now unassailable truth that France had put two guided-missile submarines through Suez with ample time to creep quietly into position and lambaste the Saudi oil industry.
This did not of course mean that they had done so.
Four minutes later, Admiral Morris instructed Ramshawe to keep the Big Man informed, but above all, to find out what he thought.
Mishari al Ardh, at the age of twenty-four, was a market trader with his father. Their stall was always busy, selling fresh dates and a mountain of local fruits and vegetables. The old town, which stood more than 6,000 feet above sea level, enjoyed afternoon rain in March and August, which put local producers way, way in front of their brethren in the hot sandy deserts to the north.
Today was especially hard work. It seemed the news from the oil fields was so bad that people had developed a siege mentality and were ordering more of everything, much more than their families required — the way it is all over the world when the normal rhythms of daily life seem threatened. The Khamis Mushayt marketplace was seething with activity, much like gas stations in the United States.
Mishari was trying to bring order to five wooden cases of dates when a friend of his, Ahmed, a local boy his age, came rushing through the narrow street and beckoned him to cross over and speak with him.
Both young men were freedom fighters for al-Qaeda. Mishari crossed the street and accepted the folded piece of paper Ahmed handed him, and the terse instruction “Get this to General Rashood, on the heights, now.”
Mishari walked to his father and spoke to him briefly. Then he walked through an alleyway to a parking lot where the aged family flatbed truck was kept. He jumped aboard and gunned it out onto the main road, deeper into the hills, up toward the village of Osha Mushayt, which was situated a mile from the al-Qaeda “hide” where General Rashood and his men were preparing for the attack on the air base on Thursday night.
He left the road after three miles and headed straight down the old desert trail to Osha. When he arrived he kept going, straight through the town and out into some really rough desert. Five minutes later he pulled up to the guard post and was immediately waved through. He came up here most days, with fresh supplies and, usually, the morning newspaper.
Mishari parked to the north of the camp and walked through to speak to the tall Bedouin who commanded it. He explained that a message had been dictated through the al-Qaeda network in Riyadh, by phone to Ahmed, who had written it down and requested that it be shown to General Rashood as soon as possible.
The Bedouin thanked Mishari gracefully and went directly to the General, who unfolded the notepaper and read to himself:
General Rashood walked to one of the barbecues where the cooks were preparing the midday meal for everyone, and he slipped the note through the iron grill and watched it curl up and then burst into flame, directly below a roasting leg of lamb.
Then he turned to the Bedouin and said softly, “Okay, my friend. Our work is done here. Call a staff meeting right now. We attack tonight. And may Allah go with us.”
Col. Jacques Gamoudi sat in the shaded tent that housed the Crown Prince out on the desert floor. They both knew the message to the General was now delivered. They could only wait to hear that the Khamis Mushayt Military City and Air Base had fallen, and then they would move, hard and fast.
They had possibly thirteen hours to wait, and Prince Nasir would have to retire to one of the city palaces in order to be on the spot when the news came through. It would not be necessary to wait until General Rashood made contact. The military networks would be much quicker.
But when the news did arrive, they had to launch their attack on the royal palace. And at the precise, correct time, Prince Nasir must make his broadcast, announcing the death of the King and the shining future that now awaited the country. They would rebuild their oil fortunes.
With those words the lives of 30,000 Saudi princes would never be the same. And neither would there ever be such unashamed opulence associated with the ruler of the desert kingdom. In his own way, Prince Nasir intended to avenge the disgraceful grandeur of the recent kings of his nation.
Meanwhile, in the busy streets to the south of Dir’aiyah, the city of Riyadh was once more in the throes of self-destruction, vast mobs of citizens again rioting, hurling stones and bottles, overturning cars.
At 3 P.M. (local) the king ordered the Army to take up a position of high alert. Like everyone else, he feared some sort of invasion might be imminent. And still no one had the remotest idea who was responsible for the destruction of the oil industry.
In the military cities of Tabuk in the northwest, King Khalid in the northeast, and Khamis Mushayt in the southwest, troops deployed immediately into pre-planned defensive positions. However, there were so many deficiencies in manpower and equipment that only around 65 to 70 percent of the total force managed to muster.
The King ordered naval forces at sea to form a defensive line around the coast, and his Air Minister ordered surveillance flights. There were not enough ships to defend anything much bigger than Long Island on a calm day, and the surveillance flights reported nothing unusual.
Even the helicopter patrols that the National Guard had ordered to overfly the city reported nothing except civilian unrest, despite one of them making a detour almost as far to the north as the ruins of Dir’aiyah. The pilot presumably considered the remains of the ancient city largely a waste of time.
There was no sign of the Saudi Air Force. Its fleets of fighters and fighter-bombers remained grounded, for one critical reason. For many years the Air Force had been commanded by royal princes, many of whom had been sent to train in England. And now these particular scions of the al-Saud family were quietly on their way out of the country. Vital instructions were simply not being issued to the pilots by these royal chiefs.
There was an element of frustration, of course, because there was nothing visible for the fighter-bombers to attack, but there was also an element of cowardice. These minor royals had been brought up to a life of unimaginable luxury, and their principal concern was for their own safety.
But the Air Force had another Achilles’ heel. The ground staff had no wish to become involved in a war in which they might conceivably be bombed during the course of some kind of internal power struggle. Flight technicians, air traffic controllers, and personnel concerned with fueling and arming the aircraft were just melting away into the vast deserts that surrounded the major Saudi bases.
The only real activity within the Air Force was at the Riyadh base, where Number One Squadron, Royal Flight, was located. This fleet contained several Boeing 737s and 747s, British Aerospace executive jets, and other chartered aircraft. All of them were busy ferrying senior members of the royal family to neighboring Arab countries, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. In some cases they were flying as far afield as Morocco, Switzerland, Spain, and France.
Inside the blasted ramparts of Dir’aiyah, under heavy camouflage, Colonel Gamoudi was bringing his force to a high state of readiness. He had great faith in General Rashood, in the south, and as darkness fell his petroleum tanker teams worked on the tasks of refueling the tanks and armored vehicles and loading the trucks with weapons and ammunition. He had always planned to leave this part of the operation to the last minute. Even if anyone had observed the convoy of gas tankers moving through the dusk and into the ruins, it would be far, far too late to do anything about it.
