Read Online Hunter Killer by Patrick Robinson - Free Book Online

service in the Legion. But I can’t remember precisely what he did.”
    Jobert walked over to a computer desk at the far end of his office and keyed in the information he had. “This ought to come up with something,” he said. “It’s an amazing piece of software, gives detailed biographies of all French serving officers of the past twenty-five years.”
    They waited while the computer buzzed and whined. Then the screen brightened. “Here he is,” said the General quietly. “Jacques Gamoudi, born 1964 in the village of Asni, in the High Atlas Mountains. Son of a goatherd who doubled as a mountain guide.”
    “Hell, that’s a big step. Moroccan farm boy to a commission in the Foreign Legion before he was twenty-two.” Admiral Pires was baffled. “Those guys can’t usually speak French.”
    “Looks like he had some kind of sponsor. Man called Laforge, former Major in the French Parachute Regiment. He was wounded in Algeria, 1961, medically discharged. Then he and his wife bought some kind of hotel in the village, and young Gamoudi worked there. Looks like Laforge helped him join the Legion.
    “Jesus. There’s a copy of his original application form, Bureau de Recrutement de la Légion Etrangère, Quartier Vienot, 13400 Aubagne. That’s fifteen miles from Marseille. He went down there a few weeks later, in 1981, passed his physical tests, and signed on for five years.”
    “You’re right,” said the Admiral. “That’s a hell of a piece of software.”
    “Any sign of his nickname?” asked Savary. “I’d know it if I’d heard it.”
    “Can’t see it,” said Michel Jobert, scrolling down the computer pages. “Hey, wait a minute, this could be it. Does Le Chasseur sound familiar? There’s a bunch of mercenaries he led in some very fierce fighting in North Africa. According to this, they always called him Le Chasseur.”
    “That’s him,” said Savary, thoughtfully. “Jacques Gamoudi, Le Chasseur.” He flattened his right hand, and drew it across his throat. Which was a fair indication of the reputation of Colonel Gamoudi—Le Chasseur, the Hunter.

CHAPTER TWO
     
    ONE MONTH LATER, EARLY JUNE 2009
    The trouble with Le Chasseur was he had essentially vanished into the crisp, thin air around the high peaks of the Pyrenees, somewhere up near the little town of Cauterets, which sat in the mountains 3,000 feet above sea level, hemmed in by 8,000-foot summits. Snowy Cauterets was normally the first French Pyrenean ski station to open and the last to close.
    It was common knowledge that Col. Jacques Gamoudi had taken early retirement from the Army and headed with his family to the Pyrenees, where he hoped to set himself up as a mountain guide and expedition leader, as his father had done before him, in faraway Morocco.
    Indeed an inspired piece of guesswork by Gaston Savary had brought him, in company with Michel Jobert, to the town of Castelnaudaray, thirty-five miles southeast of Toulouse, where Le Chasseur’s military career had begun. Quartier Lapasset, home of the Foreign Legion’s training regiment, was in Castelnaudaray, and the young Gamoudi had spent four months there as a recruit.
    Savary and the Colonel had made extensive inquiries, and not without some success. But there were no details, only that Jacques Gamoudi, with his wife, Giselle, and two sons, now aged around eleven and thirteen, had headed east into the mountains, maybe four years previously, and had not been seen since—though a veteran Legionnaire Colonel thought he had heard that the family had settled near Cauterets.
    And now their staff car was winding its way through the spectacular range of mountains that divided France from Spain. They took no driver: Savary himself was at the wheel.
    Things had moved forward in the month since first they discussed the operation in Saudi Arabia. But now the pressure was on, directly from the President of France. Their mission was simple: find Col. Jacques Gamoudi. Savary was beginning to