to do has a good chance of being judged so shocking that no one would dream we were the culprits, since we’re in so much trouble already.”
General Scannell and Admiral Doran both tried to suppress chuckles. But failed.
Morgan proceeded. “Gentlemen, we’re not in any trouble. France, whatever that Prime Minister says, did take down the Saudi King and it did plunge the world economy into crisis. And we are going to do something about it.”
He outlined the plan that Admiral Dickson had masterminded. The quick hit on the first tanker carrying French crude oil to come out of the Gulf. Then another hit on the first French tanker to enter the Red Sea through the Bab el Mandeb.
“That should slow them down some,” said Morgan. “But the French are proud and arrogant. Admiral Dickson and I think the next French tanker will enter the Strait of Hormuz under escort. And that’s when we cause a total uproar. We hit the escort first, with a torpedo. Then we hit tanker number three. And that will wrap it right up for France. They will not try to exit the Gulf with fuel oil again until we’re good and ready to allow it.”
“Arnie, is this a public operation…like we hit and we don’t care who knows it?” General Scannell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, looked concerned.
“Not at this stage,” replied Morgan. “We’ll launch from submarines, way under the surface, and we will not admit to anyone what we’ve done. We’ll just let ’em all have a guessing game.”
“Torpedoes?” asked the CJC.
“Yes. Fired from several miles out. But not in the case of the last tanker. We’ll hit that with three or four Harpoons, set the oil on fire, save a lot of pollution.”
“Do you intend to let anyone know it was the U.S. of A. that sank the ships?”
“No.”
“I realize this is a kind of naive question to ask in a room full of sailors,” said General Scannell, “but how do we know if a tanker is full of French oil or not? I thought they were all registered in Liberia or Panama or somewhere. They must all look the same.”
“In a sense, they do, Tim,” replied Admiral Dickson. “But we’ve been checking on both the VLCCs and the ULCCs which service France…”
“What’s a ULCC?”
“Same as a VLCC, that’s a very large crude carrier. A ULCC is an ultra-large crude carrier, maybe up to four- hundred thousand tons.”
“We gonna hit one of those?”
“Maybe,” said Admiral Dickson. “But to answer your question about identifying the correct target, we’ve been researching the TotalFinaElf conglomerate and the methods it uses to move large quantities of oil. And much of it is done by a highly reputable corporation based in Luxembourg. It’s called TRANSEURO, and they’ve run a fleet of maybe fourteen or fifteen tankers for years, under long-term charter to Total, mostly in the two-hundred-fifty— to three-hundred-thousand — ton range.
“In the trade they call it French Flag Tonnage. But these tankers ply their trade back and forth from the Gulf to Marseille, Brest, and the other French oil ports. They can carry either crude oil or liquid natural gas. And we can identify them with no trouble, even if they choose to fly a flag of convenience.”
“We got submarines somewhere close?” asked General Scannell.
“Very close,” said Admiral Dickson. “In fact we got two of the best submarines in the fleet out there right now. They’re in the Arabian Sea with the
“If we need four more, which I think we do, the
“You don’t see surface ships being needed?” said General Scannell.
“Well, we don’t want to announce our presence, and I don’t see a need for us to do so. This is a very simple subsurface operation. But we got a couple of Arleigh Burke guided-missile destroyers within two hundred miles.”
Arnold Morgan knew Dickson was referring to the
“I may be slightly at a loss here,” said Admiral Doran. “But can someone tell me what precisely we hope to gain from this? What good will it do us to sink French tankers?”
“Well, in part it’s a point of principle,” said Arnold Morgan.
“The current financial crisis is going to get worse. There’ll be shocking repercussions for people all over the world. And the basis for our actions is to hang France from the highest tree in front of the international community. That way we’ll save President Bedford. If we do nothing, he’ll end up getting the blame, because that’s the way the world works.
“The U.S. economy goes down the gurgler. The press and indeed the people will round on the President of the day and ask why he did nothing while Wall Street burned. But they can’t hardly do that if we got us a real live culprit out there swinging in the wind.”
Admiral Dickson interjected. “And the humiliation of France may well pave the way for the U.S.A. to move back into Saudi Arabia and take charge of the global distribution of the oil. We’ll still pay the Saudis, same as they’ve always been paid, but we may just have to get into control and make darned sure this does not happen again.” Like all service chiefs, the Admiral saw a major role for the U.S. Navy right here, and he was not about to let the opportunity slip by. “As I see it,” he continued, “we gotta make France seem like too big an embarrassment for the Saudis, or anyone else in the oil game, to deal with.”
“Correct,” said Admiral Morgan. “I also intend to inflict some heavy damage in some of their harbors. I thought we might get Admiral Bergstrom’s boys to take out a few luxury yachts along the Riviera. That will further alienate the Middle Eastern oil states against France. They all keep their damn great private ships in French ports, or Monte Carlo.
“Essentially, we’re working to a master plan, and you’ll find the pieces all fall into place very quickly. There is, however, one missing piece, and we must find it.”
“What is it?” asked General Scannell.
“We have to find the French Colonel who led the attack in Riyadh. He’s Jacques Gamoudi, and we need to kidnap his wife and children, and then grab him and get them all to America. And we gotta do it before the French assassinate him, which they’ve already tried to do once.”
“Jesus,” said the Boston Irishman Frank Doran. “This is like working for the Mafia.”
Everyone chuckled at that. But Arnold Morgan agreed with him. “Sometimes,” he said, “contrary to the policies of a certain Democrat of the nineties, you gotta get down and dirty.”
“The first two options are easy — the sinkings and the blastings,” said Admiral Dickson, “but how do you think we’ll get along in the kidnapping business?”
“Right now we have the CIA and the FBI working in Riyadh,” replied Morgan. “So far as they know, Colonel Gamoudi has not yet left the city, although he might have. However, we think the situation is, for the moment, static. The French are trying to assassinate him, but he is under heavy protection from the King, and is probably holed up in one of the palaces.”
“What about his family?” asked Admiral Doran.
“That may turn out to be key,” said Morgan. “My own view is we should snatch them, using SEALs and helicopters if necessary, and get them the hell out of France. That way we got some chips. Then we somehow let Gamoudi know we got everyone safe in the U.S.A., and all he has to do is locate us, somehow, somewhere, and he’s safe, too.
