Hunter Killer (5 page)

Gaston Savary could see why Michel Jobert had been made a general, and he could most certainly see how he came to spearhead the French Army’s Special Forces.

“Well, General,” he said. “I think we must agree it is the most interesting plan. Because if it succeeds, the new King of Saudi Arabia will owe us
everything
. Certainly we will have enormous power over him, because he could
never
admit he was the mastermind behind the destruction of his own country’s oil industry.”

“Well, no, he could not,” replied Michel Jobert. “And that would mean French companies would undertake the entire rebuilding program. There would be huge contracts awarded to us, just as the Americans claimed almost all the rebuilding contracts for Iraq.”

“And there’d be a lot of very grateful French industries,” said Savary. “And the riches for the oil industry would be incalculable. Imagine owning the sole marketing agency for all Saudi Arabian oil.
Mon Dieu!
That would be something, eh?”

“And I would not be surprised if that led to a long and comfortable retirement for both of us,” said the General. “But for now, let’s not get too excited. I would like to call Admiral Pires over for a half hour.”

“I don’t believe I know him.”

“He’s COMFUSCO.”

“Who the hell’s COMFUSCO?”

“Commandement des Fusiliers Marines Commandos. It’s the French Navy’s special ops outfit. Admiral Pires is the head of it. But he’s an ex-submariner. And right now he is in overall command of all naval assault commandos, plus the Commando Hubert divers unit and the Close Quarters Combat Group—that’s naval counterterrorist—both assigned to COS.”

“That’s every kind of assault from the sea, correct?”

“
Absolument
. That’s beach reconnaissance, assaults on ships, intelligence gathering, amphibious landings, small boat operations, raids, rescue ops, and of course combat search and rescue—CSAR.”

“Of course,” said Savary, who was always amazed by the military’s detailed, meticulous operational structures.

General Jobert ordered coffee for three, and a young Army Lieutenant pushed open the door to announce that the Admiral would be there in ten minutes.

Gaston Savary privately thought the entire scheme was a boundless exercise in naked ambition that would probably end up being abandoned. As a kind of super-policeman, he was used to bureaucrats conducting relentless searches, desperately trying to find reasons not to do things. And if ever there was an opportunity to say no, this was surely it. Offhand he could think of about ten reasons himself.

THE ARABIAN PENINSULA, WITH THE FOUR SAUDI MILITARY CITIES MARKED

But, like many of his fellow spies and spy masters, Savary was an adventurer at heart. And he knew how to work the system. No one had asked him to blow up the oil fields. He had merely been requested to find out if it was possible to do so without getting caught. And he was most certainly doing that.

Admiral Pires arrived on time, with the flourish of a man who had better things to do than talk to Secret Service agents. Six minutes later, having received a sharply worded briefing from General Jobert, he was reduced to utter silence.

“Mon Dieu!”
he said. “That is the most dangerous plan I have ever heard.”

Savary gave him the benefit of his own wisdom. “Admiral,” he said, “we are not being asked to blow up half of Saudi Arabia. We are merely being asked to decide whether it can be done, in secret…to the inestimable advantage of France.”

“Well, technically we could put one of our new SSNs into the Gulf, making an underwater entry through the Strait of Hormuz. It’s deep enough, and it’s been done before.”

“Is that one of the old Rubis-class boats?” asked Savary.

“No. No. This is one of the new Project Barracuda boats we have been building in Cherbourg for several years. You may have read about them. We have just two that will become operational this year. They’re bigger than the old Rubis, around 4,000 tons, nuclear hunter-killers with torpedo and cruise missile capabilities. They actually carry ten MBDA SCALP naval missiles. That’s a derivative of the old Storm/Shadows. They’re good, quiet ships with very good missiles. We’re conducting sea trials right now, off the Brest navy yards.”

“What would you consider the likelihood of getting in and out of the Gulf undetected?” asked the General.

“Oh, very good. And the missiles are all pre-programmed. Yes. I suppose we could launch them at a given target along the Saudi coast.”

“Would anyone see them in flight?”

“Most unlikely. The Saudis are quite sophisticated. But I’d be very surprised if they picked up low-flying missiles like these on radar. They would not be expecting such an attack.”

“Certainly not from their next king,” said Savary, helpfully.

“Any thoughts on operations on the other coast?”

“The Red Sea?” said the Admiral. “Well, that is more difficult, because you’d come through the Suez Canal on the surface. But I don’t think that would attract undue attention. And you might manage to exit the southern end, off Djibouti, at periscope depth; assuming you wanted to stay out of sight. That’s the Bab el Mandeb, the narrow straits that lead out into the Gulf of Aden—shallow, sometimes under 100 meters deep.

“Anyway, a half-submerged submarine might look a bit suspicious to the American radar,
if
they picked us up—especially with oil fields ablaze four hundred miles astern of the ship. It would probably be better just to go straight through, on the surface, in the normal way, the very picture of innocence.”

Gaston Savary really liked this suave and knowledgeable Admiral, who looked extremely young to hold such a high office and rank. But he was not young in thought, and he had grasped the significance of the problem very swiftly, as indeed had General Jobert.

“I should of course like to speak to Admiral Romanet first,” said Georges Pires, looking at Savary. “He’s our Flag Officer Submarines in Brest. And I don’t want to second-guess him. But I would say we could hit our missile targets on both coasts from submerged SSNs. And, certainly, in my own area of operations, we could send in teams of commandos to take out the loading platforms and offshore rigs…the Saudi Navy has never been up to much. They’d be no trouble whatsoever.”

The Admiral paused, looked thoughtful. Then he said, “Those platforms are big constructions though. We’d probably need a mix of RDX (research-developed explosive), TNT, and aluminum. And the frogmen would have to swim in with twenty-five-kilogram watertight satchels. And we’d use timers, so the swimmers and perhaps an SDV and the submarine, could get clear before the blast. But we could do it. Most certainly we could do it.”

Admiral Pires again paused. And then he added, “But the Navy’s role is only the beginning, correct? And so I will leave you, while I confer with Admiral Romanet.”

“I’d prefer you bring him here,” said General Jobert. “I think at this early stage, while we are just appreciating the situation, all discussions should remain under this roof.”

“Aha,” said Admiral Pires. “Already we are slipping into the black ops mode, already it is occurring to you that we may be ordered actually to carry out this assault on our robed brothers in the desert. Or, at the least, on their oil wells.”

“That’s the trouble with you guys. You always say yes,” said Gaston Savary.

“That’s because we are loyal servants of the republic,” replied the General. “We are here to do the bidding of the politicians. And we try, if asked, to achieve the impossible.”

“But a half hour ago, you thought this would be impossible, without getting caught.”

“I do not think that now,” replied the senior commander of COS. “I believe we could smash the Saudi oil industry with missiles and frogmen from those two SSNs. And never be detected.” Gaston Savary stood up. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have been entrusted to conduct this study on behalf of the Foreign Minister and the President himself. I would be grateful, Admiral, if you would stay for the second part of our discussions. I have enjoyed listening to your views and I think you may have more ideas to give us.”

Savary was not the first high-ranking French official to single out the forty-six-year-old Georges Pires as a top-flight military intellect, a career officer who may yet find himself in the Palais Bourbon as a member of the French Parliament.

“Honored sir, I assure you,” replied the beefy Commando Chief, whose splendid family summer home, for three generations, was situated on the waterfront of St. Malo, less than 100 miles from the great French naval base at Brest. The Navy had always been his life, although he had found time to be married twice and divorced twice before his fortieth birthday. There was a slightly roguish look to Georges Pires, but his rise to high office in the principal assault section of the French Navy had been exceptionally swift.

Savary continued. “Well, General Jobert, perhaps you could outline for us anything you may know about the Saudi military defenses—on land, I mean.”

“Yes, of course,” Jobert said. “Let me switch on this big-screen computer, and I will tell you what I know, which is fairly standard but will show you the size of the task.” General Jobert stood back and used an officer’s shiny wooden baton to point to the map of Saudi Arabia. “They have an overall strength of around a hundred twenty-six thousand,” he began. “That’s the four elements, Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Royal Saudi Air Defense Force. They don’t have regular garrisons. The army is widely dispersed, but its strength is concentrated at four large military cities, built at huge expense in the 1970s and ’80s with the assistance of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The first one to note is right here…Khamis Mushayt, in the mountains of the southwest, about 100 kilometers from the Yemeni border.

“The second is up here at Tabuk, which protects the northwest of the country—in particular these routes that lead in from Jordan, Israel, and Syria. A third site, Assad Military City, is at Al-Kharj, 100 kilometers southeast of Riyadh, right in the middle of the desert. That’s where the Saudis’ national armaments industry is located.

“But the really big one is right here, facing the border area toward Kuwait and Iraq, right outside this city marked here—Hafa al-Batin. This is the King Khalid Military City. You can see it’s sited, deliberately, near the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (TAPLINE), which connects the big southern oil center of Ad Damman with Jordan.

“King Khalid is huge. It houses something like sixty-five thousand people, military and civilians. It’s got everything—cinemas, shopping arcades, power plants, mosques, schools, the lot. It’s built in the shape of a massive concrete octagon, with several smaller octagons inside it. Right outside the main complex they have a hospital, a racecourse, maintenance and supply areas, underground command bunkers, and the anti-aircraft missile sites. Gentlemen, you will not be attacking the King Khalid military base.”

“What’s the surrounding country like?” asked Admiral Pires.

“Absolutely wide open desert, swept by radar, no cover. We’d be facing the Saudi missiles and artillery.”

“Can they shoot straight?”

“Definitely.”

“Are they all like that?” asked Gaston Savary.

“Not quite so bad. But none of them is likely to be easy. Not for a small group of Special Forces. To tell the truth, Gaston, I can see no way for any small group to take, and force the surrender of, these strongholds. The Saudis have excellent communications and air cover. In the end, we would not have a chance.

“And in addition they have a well-armed National Guard, which is specifically tasked with defending the oil installations. The Saudis are not stupid. They know those huge complexes represent their lifeblood, and they’ve protected them very thoroughly.”

“What’s their Air Force like?” Admiral Pires asked.

“Very modern,” said Jobert. “Well-equipped. U.S. and British fighter bombers. F-15s, Tornadoes. Strong offensive capability. They also have airborne surveillance and tactical airlift capability. In brief, the Royal Saudi Air Force can move people around at will, they can see from the sky, and they have a serious strike force.”

“My notes from Prince Nasir say the Air Force bases may be vulnerable,” said Savary.

“Well, maybe. But they have two substantial air wings—that’s the F-15s and the Tornadoes. And they are divided into strike force air bases at each of the four military cities. It’s a bit confusing, but they call the base at Khamis Mushayt the King Khalid Air base. Same name as the place in the north. See? Down here by the Yemeni border.”

“That King Khalid must have been some kind of a leader,” said Savary. “Half the country’s named after him. But this is the air base Prince Nasir mentions. He plainly thinks it’s vulnerable.”

“We need to have a very careful look,” said General Jobert.

“Very careful indeed. Because it must be obvious to each of us that the consequences of any French soldier being caught, captured, or even killed would be absolutely calamitous for France. The Americans would immediately surmise we had blown the oil fields, and there’d be all hell to pay.”