On Wings of Eagles

  The most important gift brought by the visitors was news. The all-too-brief meetings in the low building across the courtyard were spent discussing the various efforts being made to get Paul and Bill out. It seemed to Bill that time was the key factor. Sooner or later, one approach or another had to work. Unfortunately, as time passed, Iran went downhill. The forces of the revolution were gaining momentum. Would EDS get Paul and Bill out before the whole country exploded?

  It was increasingly dangerous for the EDS people to come to the south of the city, where the jail was. Paul and Bill never knew when the next visit would come, or whether there would be a next visit. As four days went by, then five, Bill would wonder whether all the others had gone back to the United States and left him and Paul behind. Considering that the bail was impossibly high, and the streets of Tehran impossibly dangerous, might they all give up Paul and Bill as a lost cause? They might be forced, against their wills, to leave in order to save their own lives. Bill recalled the American withdrawal from Vietnam, with the last Embassy officials being lifted off the roofs by helicopter, and he could imagine the scene repeated at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

  He was occasionally reassured by a visit from an Embassy official. They, too, were taking a risk in coming, but they never brought any hard news about government efforts to help Paul and Bill, and Bill came to the conclusion that the State Department was inept.

  Visits from Dr. Houman, their Iranian attorney, were at first highly encouraging; but then Bill realized that in typically Iranian fashion Houman was promising much and producing little. The fiasco of the meeting with Dadgar was desperately depressing. It was frightening to see how easily Dadgar outmaneuvered Houman, and how determined Dadgar was to keep Paul and Bill jailed. Bill had not slept that night.

  When he thought about the bail he found it staggering. No one had ever paid that much ransom, anywhere in the world. He recalled news stories about American businessmen kidnapped in South America and held for a million or two million dollars. (They were usually killed.) Other kidnappings, of millionaires, politicians, and celebrities, had involved demands for three or four million--never thirteen. No one would pay that much for Paul and Bill.

  Besides, even that much money would not buy them the right to leave the country. They would probably be kept under house arrest in Tehran--white the mobs took over. Bail sometimes seemed more like a trap than a way of escape. It was a catch-22.

  The whole experience was a lesson in values. Bill learned that he could do without his fine house, his cars, fancy food, and clean clothes. It was no big deal to be living in a dirty room with bugs crawling across the walls. Everything he had in life had been stripped away, and he discovered that the only thing he cared about was his family. When you got right down to it, that was all that really counted: Emily, Vicki, Jackie, Jenny, and Chris.

  Coburn's visit had cheered him a little. Seeing Jay in that big down coat and woolen hat, with a growth of red beard on his chin, Bill had guessed that he was not in Tehran to work through legal channels. Coburn had spent most of the visit with Paul, and if Paul had learned more, he had not passed it on to Bill. Bill was content: he would find out as soon as he needed to know.

  But the day after Coburn's visit there was bad news. On January 16 the Shah left Iran.

  The television set in the hall of the jail was switched on, exceptionally, in the afternoon; and Paul and Bill, with all the other prisoners, watched the little ceremony in the Imperial Pavilion at Mehrabad Airport. There was the Shah, with his wife, three of his four children, his mother-in-law, and a crowd of courtiers. There, to see them off, was Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar, and a crowd of generals. Bakhtiar kissed the Shah's hand, and the royal party went out to the airplane.

  The Ministry people in the jail were gloomy: most of them had been friends, of one kind or another, with the royal family or its immediate circle. Now their patrons were leaving. It meant, at the very least, that they had to resign themselves to a long stay in jail. Bill felt that the Shah had taken with him the last chance of a pro-American outcome in Iran. Now there would be more chaos and confusion, more danger to all Americans in Tehran--and less chance of a swift release for Paul and Bill.

  Soon after the television showed the Shah's jet rising into the sky, Bill began to hear a background noise, like a distant crowd, from outside the jail. The noise quickly grew to a pandemonium of shouting and cheering and hooting of horns. The TV showed the source of the noise: a crowd of hundreds of thousands of Iranians was surging through the streets, yelling: "Shah raft!" The Shah has gone! Paul said it reminded him of the New Year's Day parade in Philadelphia. All cars were driving with their headlights on and most were hooting continuously. Many drivers pulled their windshield wipers forward, attached rags to them, and turned them on, so that they swayed from side to side, permanent mechanical flag-wavers. Truckloads of jubilant youths careened around the streets celebrating, and all over the city crowds were pulling down and smashing statues of the Shah. Bill wondered what the mobs would do next. This led him to wonder what the guards and the other prisoners would do next. In the hysterical release of all this pent-up Iranian emotion, would Americans become targets?

  He and Paul stayed in their cell for the rest of the day, trying to be inconspicuous. They lay on their bunks, talking desultorily. Paul smoked. Bill tried not to think about the terrifying scenes he had watched on TV, but the roar of that lawless multitude, the collective shout of revolutionary triumph, penetrated the prison walls and filled his ears, like the deafening crack and roll of nearby thunder a moment before the lightning strikes.

  Two days later, on the morning of January 18, a guard came to Cell Number 5 and said something in Farsi to Reza Neghabat, the former Deputy Minister. Neghabat translated to Paul and Bill: "You must get your things together. They are moving you."

  "Where to?" Paul asked.

  "To another jail."

  Alarm bells rang in Bill's mind. What kind of jail were they going to? The kind where people were tortured and killed? Would EDS be told where they had gone, or would the two of them simply disappear? This place was not wonderful, but it was the devil they knew.

  The guard spoke again, and Neghabat said: "He tells you not to be concerned--this is for your own good."

  It was the work of minutes to put together their toothbrushes, their shared shaver, and their few spare clothes. Then they sat and waited--for three hours.

  It was unnerving. Bill had got used to this jail, and--despite his occasional paranoia--basically he trusted his cellmates. He feared the change would be for the worse.

  Paul asked Neghabat to try to get news of the move to EDS, maybe by bribing the colonel in charge of the jail.

  The cell father, the old man who had been so concerned for their welfare, was upset that they were leaving. He watched sadly as Paul took down the pictures of Karen and Ann Marie. Impulsively Paul gave the photographs to the old man, who was visibly moved and thanked him profusely.

  At last they were taken out into the courtyard and herded onto a minibus, along with half a dozen other prisoners from different parts of the jail. Bill looked around at the others, trying to figure out what they had in common. One was a Frenchman. Were all the foreigners being taken to a jail of their own, for their safety? But another was the burly Iranian who had been boss of the downstairs cell where they had spent their first night--a common criminal, Bill assumed.

  As the bus pulled out of the courtyard, Bill spoke to the Frenchman. "Do you know where we're going?"

  "I am to be released," the Frenchman said.

  Bill's heart leaped. This was good news! Perhaps they were all to be released.

  He turned his attention to the scene in the streets. It was the first time for three weeks he had seen the outside world. The government buildings all around the Ministry of Justice were damaged: the mobs really had run wild. Burned cars and broken windows were everywhere. The streets were full of soldiers and tanks, but they were doing nothing--not maint
aining order, not even controlling the traffic. It seemed to Bill only a matter of time before the weak Bakhtiar government would be overthrown.

  What had happened to the EDS people--Taylor, Howell, Young, Gallagher, and Coburn? They had not appeared at the jail since the Shah left. Had they been forced to flee, to save their own lives? Somehow Bill was sure they were still in town, still trying to get him and Paul out of jail. He began to hope that this transfer had been arranged by them. Perhaps, instead of taking the prisoners to a different jail, the bus would divert and take them to the U.S. air base. The more he thought about it, the more he believed that everything had been arranged for their release. No doubt the American Embassy had realized, since the departure of the Shah, that Paul and Bill were in serious danger, and had at last got on the case with some real diplomatic muscle. The bus ride was a ruse, a cover story to get them out of the Ministry of Justice jail without arousing the suspicion of hostile Iranian officials such as Dadgar.

  The bus was heading north. It passed through districts with which Bill was familiar, and he began to feel safer as the turbulent south of the city receded behind him.

  Also, the air base was to the north.

  The bus entered a wide square dominated by a huge structure like a fortress. Bill looked interestedly at the building. Its walls were about twenty-five feet high and dotted with guard towers and machine-gun emplacements. The square was full of Iranian women in chadors, the traditional black robes, all making a heck of a noise. Was this some kind of palace, or mosque? Or perhaps a military base?

  The bus approached the fortress and slowed down.

  Oh, no.

  A pair of huge steel doors was set centrally in the front. To Bill's horror, the bus drove up and stopped with its nose to the gateway.

  This awesome place was the new prison, the new nightmare.

  The gates opened and the bus entered.

  They were not going to the air base, EDS had not arranged a deal, the Embassy had not got moving, they were not going to be released.

  The bus stopped again. The steel doors closed behind it and a second pair of doors opened in front. The bus passed through and stopped in a massive compound dotted with buildings. A guard said something in Farsi, and all the prisoners stood up to get off the bus.

  Bill felt like a disappointed child. Life is rotten, he thought. What did I do to deserve this?

  What did I do?

  "Don't drive so fast," said Simons.

  Joe Poche said: "Do I drive unsafe?"

  "No, I just don't want you violating the laws."

  "What laws?"

  "Just be careful."

  Coburn interrupted: "We're there."

  Poche stopped the car.

  They all looked across the heads of the weird women in black and saw the vast fortress of the Gasr Prison.

  "Jesus Christ," said Simons. His deep, rough voice was tinged with awe. "Just look at that bastard."

  They all stared at the high walls, the enormous gates, the guard towers and the machine-gun nests.

  Simons said: "That place is worse than the Alamo."

  It dawned on Coburn that their little rescue team could not attack this place, not without the help of the entire U.S. Army. The rescue they had planned so carefully and rehearsed so many times was now completely irrelevant. There would be no modifications or improvements to the plan, no new scenarios; the whole idea was dead.

  They sat in the car for a while, each with his own thoughts.

  "Who are those women?" Coburn wondered aloud.

  "They have relatives in the jail," Poche explained.

  Coburn could hear a peculiar noise. "Listen," he said. "What is that?"

  "The women," said Poche. "Wailing."

  Colonel Simons had looked up at an impregnable fortress once before.

  He had been Captain Simons then, and his friends had called him Art, not Bull.

  It was October 1944. Art Simons, twenty-six years old, was commander of Company B, 6th Ranger Infantry Battalion. The Americans were winning the war in the Pacific, and were about to attack the Philippine Islands. Ahead of the invading U.S. forces, the 6th Rangers were already there, committing sabotage and mayhem behind enemy lines.

  Company B landed on Homonhon Island in the Leyte Gulf and found there were no Japanese on the island. Simons raised the Stars and Stripes on a coconut palm in front of two hundred docile natives.

  That day a report came in that the Japanese garrison on nearby Suluan Island was massacring civilians. Simons requested permission to take Suluan. Permission was refused. A few days later he asked again. He was told that no ships could be spared to transport Company B across the water. Simons asked permission to use native transportation. This time he got the okay.

  Simons commandeered three native sailboats and eleven canoes and appointed himself Admiral of the Fleet. He sailed at two A.M with eighty men. A storm blew up, seven of the canoes capsized, and Simons's fleet returned to shore with most of the navy swimming.

  They set off again the next day. This time they sailed by daylight, and--since Japanese planes still controlled the air--the men stripped off and concealed their uniforms and equipment in the bottoms of the boats, so that they would look like native fishermen. The ruse worked, and Company B made landfall on Suluan Island. Simons immediately reconnoitered the Japanese garrison.

  That was when he looked up at an impregnable fortress.

  The Japanese were garrisoned at the south end of the island, in a lighthouse at the top of a three-hundred-foot coral cliff.

  On the west side a trail led halfway up the cliff to a steep flight of steps cut into the coral. The entire stairway and most of the trail were in full view of the sixty-foot lighthouse tower and three west-facing buildings on the lighthouse platform. It was a perfect defensive position: two men could have held off five hundred on that flight of coral steps.

  But there was always a way.

  Simons decided to attack from the east, by scaling the cliff.

  The assault began at one A.M. on November 2. Simons and fourteen men crouched at the foot of the cliff, directly below the garrison. Their faces and hands were blacked: there was a bright moon and the terrain was as open as an Iowa prairie. For silence, they communicated by hand signals and wore their socks over their boots.

  Simons gave the signal and they began to climb.

  The sharp edges of the coral sliced into the flesh of their fingers and the palms of their hands. In places, there were no footholds, and they had to go up climbing vines handover-hand. They were completely vulnerable: if one curious sentry should look over the platform, down the east side of the cliff, he would see them instantly, and could pick them off one by one--easy shooting.

  They were halfway up when the silence was rent by a deafening clang. Someone's rifle stock had banged against a coral cone. They all stopped and lay still against the face of the cliff. Simons held his breath and waited for the rifle shot from above that would begin the massacre. It never came.

  After ten minutes they went on.

  The climb took a full hour.

  Simons was first over the top. He crouched on the platform, feeling naked in the bright moonlight. No Japanese were visible, but he could hear voices from one of the low buildings. He trained his rifle on the lighthouse.

  The rest of the men began to reach the platform. The attack was to start as soon as they got the machine gun set up.

  Just as the gun came over the edge of the cliff, a sleepy Japanese soldier wandered into view, heading for the latrine. Simons signaled to his point guard, who shot the Japanese; and the firefight began.

  Simons turned immediately to the machine gun. He held one leg and the ammunition box while the gunner held down the other leg and fired. The astonished Japanese ran out of the buildings straight into the deadly hail of bullets.

  Twenty minutes later it was all over. Some fifteen of the enemy had been killed. Simons's squad suffered two casualties, neither fatal. And the "impregnable" f
ortress had been taken.

  There was always a way.

  Seven

  1___

  The American Embassy's Volkswagen minibus threaded its way through the streets of Tehran, heading for Gasr Square. Ross Perot sat inside. It was January 19, the day after Paul and Bill were moved, and Perot was going to visit them in the new jail.

  It was a little crazy.

  Everyone had gone to great lengths to hide Perot in Tehran, for fear that Dadgar--seeing a far more valuable hostage than Paul or Bill--would arrest him and throw him in jail. Yet here he was, heading for the jail of his own free will, with his own passport in his pocket for identification.

  His hopes were pinned on the notorious inability of government everywhere to let its right hand know what its left was doing. The Ministry of Justice might want to arrest him, but it was the military who ran the jails, and the military had no interest in him.

  Nevertheless, he was taking precautions. He would go in with a group of people--Rich Gallagher and Jay Coburn were on the bus, as well as some Embassy people who were going to visit an American woman in the jail--and he was wearing casual clothes and carrying a cardboard box containing groceries, books, and warm clothing for Paul and Bill.

  Nobody at the prison would know his face. He would have to give his name as he went in, but why would a minor clerk or prison guard recognize it? His name might be on a list at the airport, at police stations, or at hotels; but the prison would surely be the last place Dadgar would expect him to turn up.

  Anyway, he was determined to take the risk. He wanted to boost Paul's and Bill's morale, and to show them that he was willing to stick out his neck for them. It would be the only achievement of his trip: his efforts to get the negotiations moving had come to nothing.