Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt
Page 15
"It's never been swept, Colonel."
"From now on I want every room we use to be swept every day. 11
Stauffer said: "I'll see to that."
Perot said: "Whatever you need, Colonel, just tell Merv. Now, let's talk
business for a minute. We sure appreciate you coming here to help us, and
we'd like to offer you some compensation-"
"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. 'Me 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? I ' I ' 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,
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 113
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 Gtandrnother.
"Good," Perot said. He looked fondly at his only son. Ross junior was tall,
broad-shouldered, slim, and a good deal betterlooking than his father.
Girls clustered around him like flies: the fact that he was heir to a form
was only one of the acuutions. 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- I I
"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 faniily, 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,
114 Ken Follett
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 good-bye--I'm going back to Vanderbilt."
"Did you drop by Grandmother's house?"
"I sure (lid. " 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 Pochd 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.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 115
"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 nin 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 drive
shaft.
When the main rotor of a helicopter turns, the body of the aircraft has a
natural tendency to turn in the same directiQn. 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
116 Ken Follett
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
cool-headed, cold-hearted 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 Pochd, 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.
The room fell silent as Simons walked to the head of the conference table.
He's a big son of a bitch, Coburn thought.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 117
T. J. Marquez and Merv Stauffer came in after Simons and sat near the door.
Simons threw a black plastic suitcase into a comer, 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 Poch6 and
Ron Davis both remembered driving past it. Poch6 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 open-ended 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 flunk 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."
118 Ken Follett
Hyatt Crown
Regan- 11--'...
Mehrabad
International
Z~Airport
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 119
120 Ken Follett
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 ard 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. 11
Simons looked dubious.
Stauffer said: "Why don't I drive you out there in the morning so you can
look it ove
r?"
"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--
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 121
"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