Hunter Killer (29 page)

And anyway, for how long would they have their highly paid jobs, with the King reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy? In Saudi Arabia, as in all Western countries, the media was truly expert at frightening the life out of the population, if at all possible.

Just as “journalists” had had half the world terrified that the midnight date change at the new millennium would cause total catastrophe when every computer on the planet crashed, so the Saudi Arabian newspapers and television networks had the middle-line commissioned officers of the desert military convinced that they would never work again.

The Frenchmen set the timers on the hangar doors for 0100, and then headed toward the north fence to hide out while the work of their colleagues was completed. At 0100, they would take out the entire contents of the hangars, and then move toward the main gate on the southern perimeter.

At 0055 the al-Qaeda freedom fighters launched their attack on that gate. Two hand grenades were hurled into the outer sentry station, blowing up and killing all four guards. Four young al-Qaeda braves flew across the road and hauled back the wrought-iron gates, which were not locked while the guards were on duty.

Immediately four rocket-propelled grenades were blasted in from the other side of the road, three of them straight through the windows of the inner guardhouse, which killed all six of the night-duty patrol. One of them already had the handset in his hand, trying to report the first explosion. He died with the handset still in his hand, which made the opening attack a close-run thing. But the young Saudi never had a chance to speak.

Light instantly began to go on in the guards’ accommodation block, and this was two hundred yards away, out of range for the rocket grenades—out of range at least for any form of accuracy. And that was why General Rashood had insisted that the moment those gates were open six young al-Qaeda fighters race through, four of them with handheld grenades, the other two with submachine guns.

Simultaneously, two British-built GPMG machine guns were being hauled into position on the flat ground opposite the remains of the inner guardhouse. Occasionally criticized for its heavy twenty-four-pound weight—that was unloaded, on its tripod—this thing delivered devastatingly accurate firepower out to a quarter of a mile. The SAS never went anywhere without this tough, reliable weapon.

And now the young Saudis were running, straight at the aimed barrels of three guards who had burst from the accommodation block door to find out what was going on. The first of the boys hurled his grenade straight at them, but they saw him in the light from the fires at the gate and cut him down with small-arms fire. The three other boys swerved left and hurled their grenades through the windows of the accommodation block, which disinte-grated in a huge explosion.

The big al-Qaeda machine guns opened up inside the gates and peppered the front of the building, killing all three of the Air Force guards who had initially stepped outside. The final two of the six al-Qaeda runners reached the burning building and sprayed the far-side windows with gunfire, thus discouraging any further interference.

It was one minute before 0100, and the al-Qaeda sprinters were running back to their fallen comrade, confident they had stopped any communication from the guards, but heartbroken at the almost certain death of their friend and, for one of them, brother.

They reached him safely under covering fire from the GPMGs, which was precisely when the opening explosions from the airfield detonated with savage force. The first four Tornado aircraft literally exploded like bombs, and since light travels a lot faster than sound, the silhouettes of the sobbing young Arabs could instantly be seen as they tried to drag their comrade to safety, tried to stop the blood, tried to save him from dying.

The deafening explosion that followed made a sound like another bomb. And then all the aircraft on the field blew to pieces, during a thunderous short period of perhaps twenty-five seconds maximum. The skies above the airfield lit up, with wide luminous flashes reaching out along the skyline. And each one was punctuated with a mighty
BOOOOOM
as the F-15s detonated, some of them loaded with jet fuel.

Flames reached a hundred feet into the air, and the glow in the sky was visible for miles. At the conclusion of the eighteenth massive blast, with the last set of four fighter jets exploding, there was for a few moments a calm, interrupted only by the crackling of the flames. And then the biggest blast of all absolutely shook the base to its foundations.

The hangar door blew outward, and six of the French Special Forces raced forward, firing M60 grenade launchers aimed at each of the three aircraft inside, two of them fueled at the completion of their service. Six rocket grenades thus struck almost simultaneously, and detonated in the midst of several hundred gallons of jet fuel.

The blast was sensational. It blew the hangar to shreds and obliterated the curved roof, which collapsed, allowing the flames to roar skyward. The next hangar contained two E-3A AWACS, radar surveillance aircraft. And when the rocket grenades went in there, it was the final devastation for the base.

With flames raging into the sky, and almost eighty aircraft destroyed, there was scarcely anything left to defend. And the final elements of the Fourth (Southern) Air Defense Group, whose duty it was to protect the base from air attack, quite simply fled. If there was an excuse for their incompetence it was perhaps that their two commanding officers, both members of the royal family, had fled twelve hours before them.

In the end, the coup de grace was delivered by Maj. Paul Spanier himself. He stayed behind as his men charged back through the huge hole now cut in the perimeter fence, and, accompanied by two troopers, jogged for 400 yards and blew up the fuel farm with four rocket grenades. One would have probably done it, because fuel farms are apt to blow themselves up once something is ignited. No Special Forces squadron had ever been able to resist exploding a fuel farm, and the one here at Khamis Mushayt proved no exception to the general rule.

It went up with a gigantic blast, lighting up the desert for several miles. Back in the barracks area of the air base, the running figures could be seen heading back to the main gate. This was the twelve-strong force that had destroyed the hangars and were now detailed to nail down the final surrender.

The trouble was there were no longer any Saudi Air Force guard personnel left alive, and certainly none on duty. So the Frenchmen and their al-Qaeda comrades joined forces and commandeered a couple of jeeps and headed directly to the airport’s control tower, which was apparently undefended.

They ripped an antitank rocket through the downstairs door, and the al-Qaeda commander grabbed a bullhorn from the jeep and demanded, in Arabic, a peaceful surrender, which he quickly achieved. The four duty officers, working high in the tower, came out with their hands up and were swiftly handcuffed and told to walk in front of the jeep directly to the main office block.

This building stood next door to the flight officers’ accommodation. The al-Qaeda troops hurled a couple of grenades through the downstairs window of the offices, and immediately the door opened and six men walked out into the night with their hands high, unarmed and unable to offer resistance.

As agreed, the al-Qaeda commander demanded to see the commanding officer of the air station, who was no longer, of course, in residence. There was scarcely a senior officer left. In fact there was only one, and at gunpoint he was made to return inside the building and communicate to the Khamis Mushayt Military City that the air base had surrendered unconditionally to an armed force of unknown nationality. The air base, he confirmed, was history. There was not an aircraft on the field that could fly.

At this precise time, hundreds of military personnel were gazing to the east, where the entire sky seemed to be burning. An intense red glow reached high into the heavens, with flames raging along the horizon. The families of the remaining senior officers were terrified, especially as their most senior Commanders, the royal princes, had already left.

In the main communications center a phone call confirmed what they already knew—that the air base had been obliterated, attacked and destroyed by an unknown force. And even as they stood, petrified at the wrath that was plainly to come, Gen. Ravi Rashood and his trusty fighters from the desert and France stormed the main gates of the Military City.

They actually rammed the gates with an elderly truck, on the basis that it could quickly be replaced by a new army vehicle. General Rashood personally leapt from the front passenger seat and threw two grenades straight through the glass windows of the guardhouse.

The two sentries on duty were cut down by small-arms fire from the back of the truck, which was now parked dead in the middle of the entranceway, a favored tactic of the Hamas C-in-C because it stopped anyone else coming in, and it stopped anyone either leaving or closing the gates.

And out swarmed Ravi Rashood’s chosen men, firing from the hip and racing toward the barracks, where the residents were right now in the upstairs rooms staring at the inferno on the air base. General Rashood’s men blew the locks with gunfire and kicked open the door. They fired several rounds into the guardhouse, on the lower floor, killing four men, and proceeded up the stairs, firing as they went.

But it was somewhat unnecessary. The residents of the barracks were in no mood to fight any kind of a battle and they stood on the upper landing, with their hands folded on their heads as instructed by General Rashood’s senior officers. The Hamas Chief left four men to guard their captives, then turned his attention to the command headquarters.

And there they met no further resistance. The officers and soldiers on duty surrendered as soon as the doors were kicked open, and the duty officer, with his skeleton staff in the ops room, did the same. General Rashood demanded to know where the commanding General could be located and was told that he had left.

“Who commands this place?” said General Rashood. “There must be someone.”

It turned out to be a veteran Colonel, a career officer from the old school who had served in the first Gulf War. Rashood had him brought in with his four senior staff members by a hastily convened arrest party of al-Qaeda troops. The General always endeavored to keep France and the French troops as far from contact with Arab officers as possible.

This particular Arab Colonel did not need much persuading. General Rashood talked to him for perhaps two minutes, outlining what his men had achieved thus far, and the Colonel was wise enough to accept that resistance was hopeless. He agreed to order his three subordinate brigades to withdraw to their barracks, a mile away, and to wait there until further orders were issued.

There was only one exception to the mass surrender, and that was the Fourth Armored Brigade at Jirzan, over which the Colonel presided. He knew there had been some harebrained scheme dreamed up at headquarters in Riyadh, that a tank brigade should be placed in a high state of readiness in order to proceed to Riyadh in the event of an attempt at a military coup against the King.

This was the nearest heavy armor to Riyadh, and one or two of the more cautious members of the King’s defense committee had decided to instruct the Jirzan Commanders to prepare to advance on the capital by road. This would entail loading the tanks onto transporters and driving them up the coast road and then over the mountains through al Taif. It was a distance of 700 miles and would probably take a week.

It was just a hopeless, last-resort measure—completely impractical, too slow, and militarily absurd. General Rashood smiled and asked who was in command at the Jirzan HQ.

The Colonel named a Prince, who was in fact deputy commander, and Rashood instructed him to get His Highness on the phone and tell him not to waste his time. In fact it was the phone call that turned out to be a waste of time, since the young Prince had already fled to Jiddah, where he had collected his family and flown to safety in Switzerland.

“Bloody waster,” muttered General Rashood. And then he issued his final command. “Colonel, you will call the Ministry of Defense in Riyadh and instruct them that the air base here has been destroyed, and that the Khamis Mushayt Military City has fallen to the same attacking force. You will tell them that further resistance is out of the question.”

The Colonel was happy to comply. He was so shocked at the events of the night, so amazed at the final conclusion of his command, that he forgot even to ask the General who he was. He was so utterly relieved not to be dead, so thankful his family was safe here in the officers’ quarters, he had not the slightest intention of asking anyone else to die.

The Colonel’s plan was simple: to remain here, in position with his men, until they were issued instructions from the new rulers of Saudi Arabia. General Rashood told him to keep watching the television and to expect a force of 200 al-Qaeda fighters to arrive in trucks throughout the course of the night.

“Just to keep order, you understand?” he said. “We would not want a sudden military uprising here, and for that reason I will be destroying all communications, both in and out of the base. Transports will be confiscated by the al-Qaeda network, and of course there are no aircraft left.”

And with that, General Rashood handed over command to the al-Qaeda senior officer, who shook his hand, and wished that Allah should go with him on the second leg of his journey, this time to Riyadh.

By this time, the least crowded of the getaway trucks had driven around the perimeter and was parked at the gates to the military city. General Rashood, in company with his initial team of eight Hamas henchmen, now said good-bye to six of them. The three known al-Qaeda fighters would assume command-level posts right here at Khamis Mushayt, his two Syrian bodyguards would return to Damascus, and the three former Saudi army officers who had defected to al-Qaeda three years ago would accompany him to the capital city.

Thus the two Hamas men climbed aboard the truck for the drive back into the mountains, to the “hide,” where helicopters from Yemen were just arriving for the evacuation. All troops would be ferried to the airfield at San’a in Yemen’s old Russian army troop-carrying helicopters, a remnant from the times when the Soviet Union was the biggest player on the southern tip of the peninsula, when two Yemeni Presidents were exiled in Moscow. The helicopters were big, old, but air-worthy. Just. And they would fly very low and not very fast over the mountains, just in case.