driver, the least I can do is come in and have a chat. See you in one hour.”
“Thanks, old buddy,” said Paul Bedford.
“No trouble, Mr. President,” said the Admiral.
It was almost first light when Colonel Gamoudi’s mobile phone, direct from Prince Nasir’s palace, rang out among the ruins of Saudi Arabia’s former capital.
“Jacques?”
“Sir.”
“Everything’s go. Both bases at Khamis Mushayt fell in the early hours of this morning. The airfield and all the aircraft were destroyed. The military city surrendered at around o-three-hundred.”
“How about the other garrisons? Tabuk? King Khalid? Assad? Any word?”
“Yes. They have not surrendered. All three refused when the commanding General at Khamis contacted them and suggested this might be a good time to quit.”
“Okay. And does the Air Force have fighter jets in the air? Any sign of gunships?”
“No. I’m told Air Force morale is very low. Many princes have fled.”
“Any sign of significant troop movements from any of the other bases?”
“I am told absolutely not. They seem to have gone into ostrich mode.”
“Well, sir, you’re an expert on sand, so we’ll take that as definite.”
The Prince laughed. “You are very funny, Colonel, even at a time like this. But now I must ask you, when do we attack?”
“Right now, sir. This is it. I’ll call you later.”
The phone conversation had already been too long for guaranteed privacy. Jacques Gamoudi hit the disconnect button and strode out into the open space beyond the walls of the mosque. He called all five of his senior commanders together and told them to fire up the heavy armored division. “We pull out in twenty minutes,” he said.
Even as he spoke, Prince Nasir was on the line to the loyalists in the city, where thousands of armed Saudi citizens were preparing to march on the principal royal palace, behind the tanks.
And for the first time since 1818, the great crumbling walls of Dir’aiyah trembled to the sound of ensuing battle, as Jacques Gamoudi’s big M1A2 Abrams tanks thundered into life and began moving out toward the road, passing the dozens of armored trucks loaded to the gunwales with ordnance.
The noise was deafening as they started their engines and rumbled forward, in readiness to form the convoy that would take down the modern-day rulers of Saudi Arabia.
With only minutes to go before start-time, Colonel Gamoudi moved back inside the ruins of the mosque and pressed the buttons on his cell phone. This was his final check with a small detachment of French Secret Service operators who had gone into Riyadh three weeks previously to gather the final information Gamoudi needed for his assault plan. The Colonel trusted his Saudi intelligence, but not quite so well as he trusted French intelligence.
Michel Phillipes, leader of the detachment, had little to add, except that the King had ordered the National Guard to deploy from their barracks on the edge of the city, with tanks and armored personnel carriers. According to Phillipes, the Guardsmen had been tasked with protecting at all costs the Al Mather, Umm al Hamman, and Nasriya residential areas. These were the districts that contained the walled mansions and gleaming white palaces of high government officials and many royal princes.
But Phillipes reported that this had been a very halfhearted operation. A few units had deployed somewhat nervously, and immediately retreated behind the walled gardens. But other units had not deployed at all, many of their soldiers having disappeared quietly back to their homes.
He said that the early-morning city news had announced that the major banks would again be closed for the day. But so far as he could tell, the predictable rioting and looting had not materialized. In fact, all his team felt that Riyadh was unusually quiet for this time in the early morning, with the sun already glaring above the desert.
“Seems to us like the calm before the storm,” said Phillipes.
There was, however, nothing even remotely ominous going on at Dir’aiyah. This was an army moving in for the kill. Weapons were checked, shells stored onboard the tanks, the Abrams crews climbing aboard. Engines roared, small arms were primed and loaded, ammunition belts slung over combat fatigues.
Every armored vehicle was prepared to open fire at a moment’s notice. The gloves were off here in Dir’aiyah, and at 0920, Jacques Gamoudi’s army rumbled out onto the highway and swung right for the capital, moving slowly, tank after tank rumbling down the dusty tracks from the ruins, truck after truck laden with trained Saudi fighters and hauling its warriors out onto the road.
And in the lead tank, his head and shoulders jutting out from the forward hatch, submachine gun in his huge hands, stood the grim-faced, bearded figure of the Assault Commander.
Jacques Gamoudi, husband of Giselle, father of Jean-Pierre, thirteen, and Andre, eleven, was going back to war. In his wide-studded leather belt he still carried his sheathed bear-killing combat knife, just in case today’s fight went to close quarters.
He had ordered a rigid convoy line of battle, three tanks moving slowly along the highway, line astern, followed by a formation of six armored vehicles moving two abreast…then three more tanks…then six more armored trucks…then three more tanks, followed by a dozen armored trucks.
The packed troop carriers came next, with a rear guard of one final M1A2 Abrams tank. This was not an easy convoy to attack. If anyone did feel so inclined, it was damned nearly impregnable from the front, rear, and either flank. It was bristling with heavy weapons, and all of them were loaded.
Before they had traveled three miles, Colonel Gamoudi’s cell phone sounded. It was Michel Phillipes again, reporting an early-morning stampede to King Khalid International Airport. It was the same in faraway Jiddah Airport, which also had many flights direct to other countries. Expatriates and their families, executives and managers within the oil industry, even manual workers and women, servants, teachers, secretaries, and nurses were desperately attempting to leave the country.
Scores of personnel from the Eastern Province were streaming along the road that led to the causeway to the island of Bahrain. The much smaller airport in Dhahran was packed with people trying to buy outward flights.
Even the U.S. armed forces were effectively making a break for it. Personnel from training bases across the country were attempting to reach Al Kharj, which lay 60 miles south of Riyadh — that was the old Prince Sultan Air Base in the Gulf War, and the only runway on which the U.S. military could organize contingency plans to evacuate its troops.
Michel Phillipes had men at Kharj airfield, where they encountered dozens of British expatriates who had been working on defense contracts. They met others who worked in Saudi Arabia for British Aerospace, and they were all trying to get out.
Judging by all known intelligence, Jacques Gamoudi could not imagine any stiff military resistance that morning, except from the guards at the main royal palace. And the convoy rolled on toward the northern perimeter of Riyadh.
All along the way, the armed freedom fighters waved at any local people they saw, presenting the face of friendship to everyone who stood by and watched. The troops even threw candy to passing children, following Colonel Gamoudi’s creed always to make a friend if you can, when you’re about to invade.
In fact the people generally assumed that this was the official Army of Saudi Arabia they were seeing. Everyone was in uniform, the vehicles were painted in Saudi Army livery. What else could it be? If there was to be more trouble following the destruction of the oil fields, this was surely the defense force of the King moving into position.
The first group to peel off was that of Gamoudi’s great friend Major Majeed, whose two tanks and four armored vehicles swung left cross-country for King Khalid Airport, an objective they were ordered to take by storm.
Colonel Gamoudi’s convoy pressed on to the head of Makkah Road, where a vast, somewhat unexpected throng awaited them, shouting and cheering, waving in the air the brand-new rifles Prince Nasir’s commanders had stockpiled so carefully for so many weeks.
In mighty formation they marched on down King Khalid Road, to the junction of Al Mather Street, where
