Andy Campese hit the buttons on his mobile phone, making three short calls in less than a minute. At the same time he ordered his driver to track Giselle’s Peugeot and her escort car. All three of them moved out into the Saturday-morning shopping traffic.
In the center of town, at the junction of Place Clemenceau and Rue Marechal Foch, the lead Peugeot slowed to a stop, and Giselle and the boys climbed out. Two men climbed out of the escort car, and Andy Campese’s man pulled into a no-parking area of the adjacent Rue Marechal Joffre.
He and Guy Roland disembarked and moved quickly into the Place Clemenceau, from where they could clearly see Giselle and her sons walking slowly past the shops, with their two escorts strolling along around ten feet behind them.
Campese hit the buttons on his mobile again. This time he made two calls, and he finished only one of them. For the next hundred yards he walked with the phone held to his ear.
Giselle reached a large pharmacy and ushered the two boys inside. Her escorts did not follow her, but hung around outside, smoking, in front of the large window next to the main door.
It was a busy street, and neither of the guards seemed to notice three more CIA men disembark from a black Mercedes that was now double-parked twenty yards beyond the pharmacy. Neither did they notice two more tough-looking characters wearing heavy dark blue sweaters and Breton fishermen caps, walking slowly along the street from Rue Marechal Foch.
They did however notice a very pretty blonde woman in the passenger seat of another double-parked car on the other side of the street, who seemed to be giving them a broad smile — but that might have been mere wishful thinking. The French do quite a lot of that where women are concerned.
The minutes ticked by. Then five more. And finally, Giselle Gamoudi emerged from the pharmacy with Andre, but not Jean-Pierre, who showed up fifteen seconds later. As the three of them stepped out into the street, Andy Campese raised his right arm.
The blonde woman stepped out of the car, showing legs up to her panties, and let out a piercing scream. It had taken Campese two hours to persuade Agent Annie Summers to wear a skirt that short and then to scream the place down in the middle of Place Clemenceau.
Both of Giselle’s escorts moved instinctively toward the blonde, one of them literally running to her aid. And as he did so, the first of the men in the Breton caps raced forward and intercepted him, kicking his legs out from under him and slamming a boot into the back of the man’s head, knocking him senseless.
His colleague did not have time to move. The second man in the Breton hat was on him, slamming a fist into the guard’s solar plexus and driving a knee straight into the man’s jaw as he fell forward. The men from the Mercedes rushed forward, dragged the inert figure out of the road, and stood guard over both unconscious bodies.
A few passersby noticed the commotion, and stopped to stare at the two fallen men. But Annie was still yelling and she managed to distract the entire area.
Simultaneously, Campese, Roland, and the two “fishermen” grabbed Giselle and the boys and carried all three of them, kicking and trying to scream, along the street to the black Mercedes. Powerful hands covered their mouths, but soothing voices were telling them—
Only twenty seconds had passed since the CIA men had launched their attack, and now Guy Roland hit the gas pedal on the big automatic Mercedes. The car rocketed along Rue Marechal Foch and swung right down to Boulevard Barbanegre, hurtling along to the main entrance of Beaumont Park. By now, Andy Campese had slipped handcuffs loosely onto all three of his prisoners. For their own sakes he did not want any of them to do anything reckless. The car slowed, turned right, and Roland drove into Beaumont Park.
With the doors and windows shut, they could not hear the helicopter heading in to a wide clearing beyond the magnificent building of the Municipal Casino, which dominated the park. Right now Andy Campese was talking to the pilot who was hovering twenty feet above the tree line.
Roland flashed his headlights, and the helicopter came on in and touched down lightly, to the astonishment of two park grounds-men. The Mercedes ran right up close, and Roland cut the engine. He and Andy Campese whipped open both passenger doors and hauled Giselle and the boys out.
While Roland hung on to Andre and Jean-Pierre, Andy ushered Giselle toward the open door of the eight- seater helicopter, which looked like a civilian aircraft but contained two United States Navy Lieutenants and one Chief Petty Officer.
Giselle felt strong arms lift her bodily into the cabin, and then Jean-Pierre came flying through the door as if on wings. He landed in the rear seat, followed by Andre, who landed on top of him, laughing his head off. Last man to board was Andy Campese, who was needed because of his fluent French.
Then the door slammed, and one of the Lieutenants, Billy Fallon, removed the handcuffs and told them to fasten their seat belts.
The chopper was in the air and climbing, less than a half minute after it had touched down. Young Andre looked out of the window and waved at Guy Roland, who had time to wave back, and then everyone was gone, the car moving back toward town to pick up two of its passengers, the helicopter beating its way up to a flight path ten thousand feet above the Pyrenees.
Lt. Fallon sat opposite Giselle and the boys and he spoke calmly. “Mrs. Gamoudi, you were in the most terrible danger. The French Secret Service has already made an unsuccessful attempt on Jacques’s life, but if they should manage to assassinate him, you and the boys would…well, just disappear.
“We are United States Naval officers and we are taking you to a place of safety. We are also desperately trying to save your husband, but we are uncertain where he is.”
Andy Campese translated swiftly, and Giselle Gamoudi’s hand flew up to cover her mouth, as if to stop herself from crying out.
But Billy Fallon was not finished. “You must answer my questions,” he said. “Now tell me, is your money safe? I imagine we’re talking several hundred thousand?”
“Sir, it is much, much more than that. But it is safe in our account in the Bank of Boston. They have told me no one can touch it.”
“Okay. But we better get it out of France, fast, because these guys might put a freeze on it.”
Andy translated. And Billy asked for the account number, the Bank branch, and password. For some reason, Giselle trusted him and gave him the information.
Billy punched the buttons of his cell phone’s direct line to the ship. He spoke briefly to the comms room and relayed the banking information to the Commanding Officer, who would now call the private emergency number of the President of the Bank of Boston on the Champs-Elysees, Paris.
By some miracle of detection, Lt. Commander Ramshawe had traced the bank that held the Gamoudi money. And by special orders from the President of the United States, the bank was empowered to wire-transfer the entire account to the branch in State Street, Boston, Massachusetts.
Six minutes later, Billy Fallon’s cell phone rang to inform him that $15 million had just crossed the Atlantic from Paris to the United States.
And now they were high above the Pyrenees Atlantique, and the great mountain range was rapidly flattening out to the west, into the Basque country, which ran right to the shores of the Bay of Biscay.
It took only forty-five minutes to reach the coastline, which they crossed, still making 200 knots and flying at 10,000 feet, five miles north of Biarritz. Twenty minutes later they could see a tiny gray shape in the water way up ahead, and the pilot immediately began his descent.
They came clattering down through 2,000 feet, then 1,000, and now they could see clearly the outline of the 10,000-ton guided-missile ship
The sea was calm, and the ship rode fair on her lines, making seven knots behind a light bow wave. On deck they could see the landing crew signaling them in. The pilot banked right around to the east and came in over her stern, hovering slowly over the Harpoon missile launchers, over the five-inch guns and then the SAM launchers, touching down on the flight deck, directly above the torpedo tubes.
“Sorry, guys. This is gonna be your home until we get Dad out of Saudi Arabia,” Lt. Fallon told Gamoudi’s sons.
Generally speaking, Andre Gamoudi, age eleven, considered this as probably the best day of his entire
