On Wings of Eagles

  "Don't even think about it," Simons said gruffly.

  "Well--"

  "I don't want payment for rescuing Americans in trouble," Simons said. "I never got a bonus for it yet, and I don't want to start now."

  Simons was offended. The force of his displeasure filled the room. Perot backed off quickly: Simons was one of the very few people of whom he was wary.

  The old warrior hasn't changed a bit, Perot thought.

  Good.

  "The team is waiting for you in the boardroom. I see you have the folders, but I know you'll want to make your own assessment of the men. They all know Tehran, and they all have either military experience or some skill that may be useful--but in the end the choice of the team is up to you. If for any reason you don't like these men, we'll get some more. You're in charge here." Perot hoped Simons would not reject anyone, but he had to have the option.

  Simons stood up. "Let's go to work."

  T. J. hung back after Simons and Stauffer left. He said in a low voice: "His wife died."

  "Lucille?" Perot had not heard. "I'm sorry."

  "Cancer."

  "How did he take it, did you get an idea?"

  T. J. nodded. "Bad."

  As T. J. went out, Perot's twenty-year-old son, Ross Junior, walked in. It was common for Perot's children to drop by the office, but this time, when a secret meeting was in session in the boardroom, Perot wished his son had chosen another moment. Ross Junior must have seen Simons in the hall. The boy had met Simons before and knew who he was. By now, Perot thought, he's figured out that the only reason for Simons to be here is to organize a rescue.

  Ross sat down and said: "Hi, Dad. I've been by to see Grandmother."

  "Good," Perot said. He looked fondly at his only son. Ross Junior was tall, broad-shouldered, slim, and a good deal better-looking than his father. Girls clustered around him like flies: the fact that he was heir to a fortune was only one of the attractions. He handled it the way he handled everything: with immaculate good manners and a maturity beyond his years.

  Perot said: "You and I need to have a clear understanding about something. I expect to live to be a hundred, but if anything should happen to me, I want you to leave college and come home and take care of your mother and your sisters."

  "I would," Ross said. "Don't worry."

  "And if anything should happen to your mother, I want you to live at home and raise your sisters. I know it would be hard on you, but I wouldn't want you to hire people to do it. They would need you, a member of the family. I'm counting on you to live at home with them and see they're properly raised--"

  "Dad, that's what I would have done if you'd never brought it up."

  "Good."

  The boy got up to go. Perot walked to the door with him.

  Suddenly Ross put his arm around his father and said: "Love you, Pop."

  Perot hugged him back.

  He was surprised to see tears in his son's eyes.

  Ross went out.

  Perot sat down. He should not have been surprised by those tears: the Perots were a close family, and Ross was a warmhearted boy.

  Perot had no specific plans to go to Tehran, but he knew that if his men were going there to risk their lives, he would not be far behind. Ross Junior had known the same thing.

  The whole family would support him, Perot knew. Margot might be entitled to say, "While you're risking your life for your employees, what about us?" but she would never say it. All through the prisoners-of-war campaign, when he had gone to Vietnam and Laos, when he had tried to fly into Hanoi, when the family had been forced to live with bodyguards, they had never complained, never said, "What about us?" On the contrary, they had encouraged him to do whatever he saw to be his duty.

  While he sat thinking, Nancy, his eldest daughter, walked in.

  "Poops!" she said. It was her pet name for her father.

  "Little Nan! Come in!"

  She came around the desk and sat on his lap.

  Perot adored Nancy. Eighteen years old, blond, tiny but strong, she reminded him of his mother. She was determined and hardheaded, like Perot, and she probably had as much potential to be a business executive as her brother.

  "I came to say goodbye--I'm going back to Vanderbilt."

  "Did you drop by Grandmother's house?"

  "I sure did."

  "Good girl."

  She was in high spirits, excited about going back to school, oblivious of the tension and the talk of death here on the seventh floor.

  "How about some extra funds?" she said.

  Perot smiled indulgently and took out his wallet. As usual, he was helpless to resist her.

  She pocketed the money, hugged him, kissed his cheek, jumped off his lap, and bounced out of the room without a care in the world.

  This time there were tears in Perot's eyes.

  It was like a reunion, Jay Coburn thought: the old Tehran hands in the boardroom waiting for Simons, chatting about Iran and the evacuation. There was Ralph Boulware talking at ninety miles an hour; Joe Poche sitting and thinking, looking about as animated as a robot in a sulk; Glenn Jackson saying something about rifles; Jim Schwebach smiling his lopsided smile, the smile that made you think he knew something you didn't; and Pat Sculley talking about the Son Tay Raid. They all knew, now, that they were about to meet the legendary Bull Simons. Sculley, when he had been a Ranger instructor, had taught Simons's famous raid, and he knew all about the meticulous planning, the endless rehearsals, and the fact that Simons had brought back all his fifty-nine men alive.

  The door opened and a voice said: "All stand."

  They pushed back their chairs and stood up.

  Coburn looked around.

  Ron Davis walked in grinning all over his black face.

  "Goddam you, Davis!" said Coburn, and they all laughed as they realized they had been fooled. Davis walked around the room slapping hands and saying hello.

  That was Davis: always the clown.

  Coburn looked at all of them and wondered how they would change when faced with physical danger. Combat was a funny thing, you could never predict how people would cope with it. The man you thought the bravest would crumble, and the one you expected to run scared would be solid as a rock.

  Coburn would never forget what combat had done to him.

  The crisis had come a couple of months after he arrived in Vietnam. He was flying support aircraft, called "slicks" because they had no weapons systems. Six times that day he had come out of the battle zone with a full load of troops. It had been a good day: not a shot had been fired at his helicopter.

  The seventh time was different.

  A burst of 12.75 fire hit the aircraft and severed the tail-rotor driveshaft.

  When the main rotor of a helicopter turns, the body of the aircraft has a natural tendency to turn in the same direction. The function of the tail rotor is to counteract this tendency. If the tail rotor stops, the helicopter starts spinning.

  Immediately after takeoff, when the aircraft is only a few feet off the ground, the pilot can deal with tail-rotor loss by landing again before the spinning becomes too fast. Later, when the aircraft is at cruising height and normal flying speed, the flow of wind across the fuselage is strong enough to prevent the helicopter turning. But Coburn was at a height of 150 feet, the worst possible position, too high to land quickly but not yet traveling fast enough for the wind flow to stabilize the fuselage.

  The standard procedure was a simulated engine stall. Coburn had learned and rehearsed the routine at flying school, and he went into it instinctively, but it did not work: the aircraft was already spinning too fast.

  Within seconds he was so dizzy he had no idea where he was. He was unable to do anything to cushion the crash landing. The helicopter came down on its right skid (he learned afterward) and one of the rotor blades flexed down under the impact, slicing through the fuselage and into the head of his copilot, who died instantly.

  Coburn smelled fuel and unstrapped himself. That
was when he realized he was upside down, for he fell on his head. But he got out of the aircraft, his only injury a few compressed neck vertebrae. His crew chief also survived.

  The crew had been belted in, but the seven troops in the back had not. The helicopter had no doors, and the centrifugal force of the spin had thrown them out at a height of more than a hundred feet. They were all dead.

  Coburn was twenty years old at the time.

  A few weeks later he took a bullet in the calf, the most vulnerable part of a helicopter pilot, who sits in an armored seat but leaves his lower legs exposed.

  He had been angry before, but now he just had the ass. Pissed off with being shot at, he went in to his commanding officer and demanded to be assigned to gunships so that he could kill some of those bastards down there who were trying to kill him.

  His request was granted.

  That was the point at which smiling Jay Coburn had turned into a coolheaded, coldhearted professional soldier. He made no close friends in the army. If someone in the unit was wounded, Coburn would shrug and say: "Well, that's what he gets combat pay for." He suspected his comrades thought he was a little sick. He did not care. He was happy flying gunships. Every time he strapped himself in, he knew he was going out there to kill or be killed. Clearing out areas in advance of ground troops, knowing that women and children and innocent civilians were getting hurt, Coburn just closed his mind and opened fire.

  Eleven years later, looking back, he could think: I was an animal.

  Schwebach and Poche, the two quietest men in the room, would understand: they had been there, they knew how it had been. The others did not: Sculley, Boulware, Jackson, and Davis. If this rescue turns nasty, Coburn wondered again, how will they make out?

  The door opened, and Simons came in.

  2____

  The room fell silent as Simons walked to the head of the conference table.

  He's a big son of a bitch, Coburn thought.

  T. J. Marquez and Merv Stauffer came in after Simons and sat near the door.

  Simons threw a black plastic suitcase into a corner, dropped into a chair, and lit a small cigar.

  He was casually dressed in a shirt and pants--no tie--and his hair was long for a colonel. He looked more like a farmer than a soldier, Coburn thought.

  He said: "I'm Colonel Simons."

  Coburn expected him to say, I'm in charge, listen to me and do what I say, this is my plan.

  Instead, he started asking questions.

  He wanted to know all about Tehran: the weather, the traffic, what the buildings were made of, the people in the streets, the numbers of policemen and how they were armed.

  He was interested in every detail. They told him that all the police were armed except the traffic cops. How could you distinguish them? By their white hats. They told him there were blue cabs and orange cabs. What was the difference? The blue cabs had fixed routes and fixed fares. Orange cabs would go anywhere, in theory, but usually when they pulled up there was already a passenger inside, and the driver would ask which way you were headed. If you were going his way you could get in, and note the amount already on the meter; then when you got out you paid the increase: the system was an endless source of arguments with cabbies.

  Simons asked where, exactly, the jail was located. Merv Stauffer went to find street maps of Tehran. What did the building look like? Joe Poche and Ron Davis both remembered driving past it. Poche sketched it on an easel pad.

  Coburn sat back and watched Simons work. Picking the men's brains was only half of what he was up to, Coburn realized. Coburn had been an EDS recruiter for years, and he knew a good interviewing technique when he saw it. Simons was sizing up each man, watching reactions, testing for common sense. Like a recruiter, he asked a lot of openended questions, often following with "Why?," giving people an opportunity to reveal themselves, to brag or bullshit or show signs of anxiety.

  Coburn wondered whether Simons would flank any of them.

  At one point he said: "Who is prepared to die doing this?"

  Nobody said a word.

  "Good," said Simons. "I wouldn't take anyone who was planning on dying."

  The discussion went on for hours. Simons broke it up soon after midnight. It was clear by then that they did not know enough about the jail to begin planning the rescue. Coburn was deputized to find out more overnight: he would make some phone calls to Tehran.

  Simons said: "Can you ask people about the jail without letting them know why you want the information?"

  "I'll be discreet," Coburn said.

  Simons turned to Merv Stauffer. "We'll need a secure place for us all to meet. Somewhere that isn't connected with EDS."

  "What about the hotel?"

  "The walls are thin."

  Stauffer considered for a moment. "Ross has a little house at Lake Grapevine, out toward DFW Airport. There won't be anyone out there swimming or fishing in this weather, that's for sure."

  Simons looked dubious.

  Stauffer said: "Why don't I drive you out there in the morning so you can look it over?"

  "Okay." Simons stood up. "We've done all we can at this point in the game."

  They began to drift out.

  As they were leaving, Simons asked Davis for a word in private.

  "You ain't so goddam tough, Davis."

  Ron Davis stared at Simons in surprise.

  "What makes you think you're a tough guy?" Simons said.

  Davis was floored. All evening Simons had been polite, reasonable, quiet-spoken. Now he was making like he wanted to fight. What was happening?

  Davis thought of his martial arts expertise, and of the three muggers he had disposed of in Tehran, but he said: "I don't consider myself a tough guy."

  Simons acted as if he had not heard. "Against a pistol your karate is no bloody good whatsoever."

  "I guess not--"

  "This team does not need any ba-ad black bastards spoiling for a fight."

  Davis began to see what this was all about. Keep cool, he told himself. "I did not volunteer for this because I want to fight people, Colonel, I--"

  "Then why did you volunteer?"

  "Because I know Paul and Bill and their wives and children and I want to help."

  Simons nodded dismissively. "I'll see you tomorrow."

  Davis wondered whether that meant he had passed the test.

  In the afternoon on the next day, January 3, 1979, they all met at Perot's weekend house on the shore of Lake Grapevine.

  The two or three other houses nearby appeared empty, as Merv Stauffer had predicted. Perot's house was screened by several acres of rough woodland, and had lawns running down to the water's edge. It was a compact woodframe building, quite small--the garage for Perot's speedboats was bigger than the house.

  The door was locked and nobody had thought to bring the keys. Schwebach picked a window lock and let them in.

  There was a living room, a couple of bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The place was cheerfully decorated in blue and white, with inexpensive furniture.

  The men sat around the living room with their maps and easel pads and magic markers and cigarettes. Coburn reported. Overnight he had spoken to Majid and two or three other people in Tehran. It had been difficult, trying to get detailed information about the jail while pretending to be only mildly curious, but he thought he had succeeded.

  The jail was part of the Ministry of Justice complex, which occupied a whole city block, he had learned. The jail entrance was at the rear of the block. Next to the entrance was a courtyard, separated from the street only by a twelve-foot-high fence of iron pilings. This courtyard was the prisoners' exercise area. Clearly it was also the prison's weak point.

  Simons agreed.

  All they had to do, then, was wait for an exercise period, get over the fence, grab Paul and Bill, bring them back over the fence, and get out of Iran.

  They got down to details.

  How would they get over the fence? Would they use ladders
, or climb on each other's shoulders?

  They would arrive in a van, they decided, and use its roof as a step. Traveling in a van rather than a car had another advantage: nobody would be able to see inside while they were driving to--and, more importantly, away from--the jail.

  Joe Poche was nominated driver because he knew the streets of Tehran best.

  How would they deal with the prison guards? They did not want to kill anyone. They had no quarrel with the Iranian man in the street, or with the guards: it was not the fault of those people that Paul and Bill were unjustly imprisoned. Furthermore, if there was any killing, the subsequent hue and cry would be worse, making escape from Iran more hazardous.

  But the prison guards would not hesitate to shoot them.

  The best defense, Simons said, was a combination of surprise, shock, and speed.

  They would have the advantage of surprise. For a few seconds the prison guards would not understand what was happening.

  Then the rescuers would have to do something to make the guards take cover. Shotgun fire would be best. A shotgun would make a big flash and a lot of noise, especially in a city street: the shock would cause the guards to react defensively instead of attacking the rescuers. That would give them a few more seconds.

  With speed, those seconds might be enough.

  And then they might not.

  The room filled with tobacco smoke as the plan took shape. Simons sat there, chain-smoking his little cigars, listening, asking questions, guiding the discussion. This was a very democratic army, Coburn thought. As they got involved in the plan, his friends were forgetting about their wives and children, their mortgages, their lawn mowers and station wagons; forgetting, too, how outrageous was the very idea of their snatching prisoners out of a jail. Davis stopped clowning; Sculley no longer seemed boyish but became very cold and calculating; Poche wanted to talk everything to death, as usual; Boulware was skeptical, as usual.

  Afternoon wore into evening. They decided the van would pull onto the sidewalk beside the iron railings. This sort of parking would not be in the least remarkable in Tehran, they told Simons. Simons would be sitting in the front seat, beside Poche, with a shotgun beneath his coat. He would jump out and stand in front of the van. The back door of the van would open and Ralph Boulware would get out, also with a shotgun under his coat.

  So far, nothing out of the ordinary would appear to have happened.