Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt
Page 16
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 railings. 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.
122 Ken Follett
Joe PocM 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.
'Me 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; Poch6 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 Poch6, 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.
With Simons and Boulware ready to give covering fire, Ron Davis would get
out of the van, climb on the roof, step from the
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 123
roof to the top of the fence, then jump down into the courtyard. Davis was
chosen for this role because he was the youngest and fittest, and the
jump~-a twelve-foot drop-would be hard to take.
Coburn would follow Davis over the fence. He was not in good shape, but his
face was more familiar than any other to Paul and Bill, so they would know
as soon as they saw him that they were being rescued.
Next, Boulware would lower a ladder into the courtyard.
Surprise might take them this far, if they were quick; but at this point
the guards were sure to react. Simons and Boulware would now fire their
shotguns into the air.
The prison guards would hit the dirt, the Iranian prisoners would run
around in terrified confusion, and the rescuers would have gained a few
more seconds.
What if there were interference from outside the jail, Simons asked-from
police or soldiers in the street, revolutionary rioters or just
public-spirited passers-by?
There would be two flanking guards, they decided; one at either end of the
street. They would arrive in a car a few seconds before the van. They would
be armed with handguns. Their job was simply to stop anyone who came to
interfere with the rescue. Jim Schwebach and Pat Sculley were norriinated.
Coburn was sure Schwebach would not hesitate to shoot people if necessary;
and Sculley, although he had never in his life shot anyone, had become so
surprisingly ice-cool during the discussion that Coburn supposed he would
be equally ruthless.
Glenn Jackson would drive the car: the question of Glenn the Baptist
shooting people would not arise.
Meanwhile, in the confusion in the courtyard, Ron Davis would provide close
cover, dealing with any nearby guards, while Coburn cut Paul and Bill out
of the herd and urged them up the ladder. They would jump from the top of
the fence to the roof of the van, then from there to the ground, and
finally inside the van. Coburn would follow, then Davis.
"Hey, I'm taking the biggest risk of all," said Davis. "Hell, I'm first in
and last out-maximum exposure."
"No shit," said Boulware. "Next question."
Simons would get into the front of the van, Boulware would jump in the back
and close the door, and Pochd would drive them away at top speed.
124 Ken Follett
Jackson, in the car, would pick up the flanking guards, Schwebach and
Sculley, and follow the van.
During the getaway, Boulware would be able to shoot through the back window
of the van, and Simons would cover the road ahead. Any really serious
pursuit would be taken care of by Sculley and Schwebach in the car.
At a prearranged spot they would dump the van and split up in several cars,
then head for the air base at Doshen Toppeh, on the outskirts of the city.
A U.S. Air Force jet would fly them out of Iran: it would be Perot's job to
arrange that somehow.
At the end of the evening they had the skeleton of a workable plan.
Before they left, Simons told them not to talk about the rescue -not to
their wives, not even to each other-outside the lake house. They should
each think up a cover story to explain why they would be going out of the
U.S. in a week or so. And, he added, looking at their full ashtrays and
their ample waisdines, each man should devise his own exercise program for
getting in shape.
'Me rescue was no longer a zany idea in Ross Perot's mind: it was real.
Jay Coburn was the only one who made a serious effort to deceive his wife.
He went back to the Hilton Inn and called Liz. "Hi, honey."
"Hi, Jay! Where are you?"
"I'm in Paris . . .-
Joe Poch6 also called
his wife from the Hilton.
"Where are you?" she asked him.
"I'm in Dallas."
"What are you doing?"
"Working at EDS, of course."
"Joe, EDS in Dallas has been calling me to ask where you are! "
Poch6 realized that someone who was not in on the secret of the rescue team
had been trying to locate him. "I'm not working with those guys, I'm
working directly with Ross. Somebody forgot to tell someone else, that's
all."
"What are you working on?"
"It has to do with some things that have to be done for Paul and Bill."
"Oh . . . "
When Boulware got back to the home of the friends with
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 125
whom his family was staying, his daughters, Stacy Elaine and Kecia Nicole,
were asleep. His wife said: "How was your day?"
I've been planning a jailbreak, Boulware thought. He said: "Oh, okay. 11
She looked at him strangely. "Well, what did you do?"
"Nothing much."
"For someone who was doing nothing much, you've been pretty busy. I called
two or three time"ey said they couldn't find you."
"I was around. Hey, I think I'd like a beer."
Mary Boulware was a warm, open woman to whom deceit was foreign. She was
also intelligent. But she knew that Ralph had some firm ideas about the
roles of husband and wife. The ideas might be old-fashioned, but they
worked in this marriage. If there was an area of his business life that he
didn't want to tell her about, well, she wasn't about to fight him over it.
"One beer, coming up . . ."
Jim Schwebach did not try to fool his wife, Rachel. She had already
outguessed him. When Schwebach had got the original call from Pat Sculley,
Rachel had asked: "Who was that?"
"That was Pat Sculley in Dallas. They want me to go down there and work on
a study in Europe."
Rachel had known Jim for almost twenty years--they had started dating when
he was sixteen, she eighteen--and she could read his mind. She said:
"They're going back over there to get those guys out of jail."
Schwebach said feebly: "Rachel, you don't understand, I'm out of that line
of business, I don't do that anymore."
"That's what you're going to do . . ."
Pat Sculley could not lie successfully even to his colleagues, and with his
wife he did not try. He told Mary everything.
Ross Perot told Margot everything.
And even Simons, who had no wife to pester him, broke security by telling
his brother Stanley in New Jersey ...
It proved equally impossible to keep the rescue plan from other senior
executives at EDS. The first to figure it all out was Keane Taylor, the
tall, irritable, well-dressed ex-marine whom Perot had turned around in
Frankfurt and sent back to Tehran.
Since that New Year's Day, when Perot had said: "I'm sending you back to do
something very important, " Taylor had been sure that a secret operation
was being planned; and it did not take him long to figure out who was doing
it.
126 Ken Follen
One day, on the phone from Tehran to Dallas, be had asked for Ralph
Boulware.
"Boulware's not here," he was told.
"When will he be back?"
"We're not sure."
Taylor, never a man to suffer fools gladly, had raised his voice. "So,
where has he gone?"
"We're not sure. 11
"What do you mean, you're not sure?"
"He's on vacation."
Taylor had known Boulware for years. It had been Taylor who gave Boulware
his first management opportunity. They were drinking partners. Many times
Taylor, drinking himself sober with Ralph in the early hours of the
morning, had looked around and realized his was the only white face in an
all-black bar. Those nights they would stagger back to whichever of their
homes was nearest, and the unlucky wife who welcomed them would call the
other and say: "It's okay, they're here."
Yes, Taylor knew Boulware; and he found it hard to believe that Ralph would
go on vacation while Paul and Bill were still in jail.
The next day he asked for Pat Sculley, and got the same runaround.
Boulware and Sculley on vacation while Paul and Bill were in jail?
Bullshit.
The next day he asked for Coburn.
Same story.
It was beginning to make sense: Coburn had been with Perot when Perot sent
Taylor back to Tehran. Coburn, Director of Personnel, evacuation mastermind
, would be the right choice to organize a secret operation.
Taylor and Rich Gallagher, the other EDS man still in Tehran, started
making a list.
Boulware, Sculley, Coburn, Ron Davis, Jim Schwebach, and Joe Pochd were all
"on vacation."
That group had a few things in common.
When Paul Chiapparone had first come to Tehran he found that EDS's
operation there was not organized to his liking: it had been too loose, too
casual, too Persian. The Ministry contract had not been running to time.
Paul had brought in a number of tough, down-to-earth EDS troubleshooters,
and together they had
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 127
knocked the business back into shape. Taylor himself had been one of Paul's
tough guys. So had Bill Gaylord. And Coburn, and Sculley, and Boulware, and
all the guys who were now "on vacation. "
The other thing they had in common was that they were all members of the
EDS Tehran Roman Catholic Sunday Brunch Poker School. Like Paul and Bill,
like Taylor himself, they were Catholics, with the exception of Joe Pochd
(and of Glenn Jackson, the only rescue-team member Taylor failed to spot).
Each Sunday they had met at the Catholic Mission in Tehran. After the
service they would all go to the house of one of them for brunch. And while
the wives were cooking and the children playing, the men would get into a
poker game.
There was nothing like poker for revealing a man's true character.
If, as Taylor and Gallagher now suspected, Perot had asked Coburn to put
together a team of completely trustworthy men, then Coburn was sure to have
picked them from the poker school.
"Vacation my ass," Taylor said to Gallagher. "Tilis is a rescue team."
The rescue team returned to the lake house on the morning of January 4 and
went over the whole plan again.
Simons had endless patience for detail, and he was determined to prepare
for every possible snag that anyone could dream up. He was much helped by
Joe Poch6, whose tireless questioningwearying though it was, to Coburn at
least-was in fact highly creative, and led to numerous improvements of the
rescue scenario.
First, Simons was dissatisfied with the arrangements for protecting the
rescue team's flanks. The idea of Schwebach and Sculley, short but deadly,
just plain shooting anyone who tried to interfere was crude. It would be
better to have some kind of diversion, to distract any police or military
types who might be nearby. Schwebach suggested setting fire to a car down
the street from the jail. Simons was not sure that would be enough-he
wanted to blow up a whole building. Anyway, Schwebach was given the job of
They thought of a small precaution that would shave a second or two off the
time for which they would be exposed. Simons would get out of the van some
distance from the jail and walk up
128 Ken Follett
to the fence. If all was clear he would give a hand signal for the van to
approach.
Another weak element of the plan was the business of getting out of the van
and climbing on its roof. All that jumping out and scrambling up would use
precious seconds. And would Paul and Bill, after weeks in prison, be fit
enough to climb a ladder and jump off the roof of a van?
All sorts of solutions were canvassed--an extra ladder, a mattress on the
ground, grab handles on the roof-but in the end the team came up with a
simple solution: they would cut a hole in the roof of the van and get in
and out through that. Another little refinement, for those who had to jump
back down through the hole, was a mattress on the floor of the van to
soften their landing.
The getaway journey would give them time to alter their appearances. In
Tehran they planned to wear jeans and casual jackets, and they were all
beginning to grow beards and mustaches to look less conspicuous there; but
in the van they would carry business suits and electric shavers, and before
switching to the cars they would all shave and change their clothes.
Ralph Boulware, independent as ever, did not want to wear jeans and a
casual jacket beforehand. In a business suit with a white shirt and a tie
he felt comfortable and able to assert himself, especially in Tehran, where
good Western clothing labeled a man as a member of the dominant class in
society. Simons calmly gave his assent: the most important thing, he said,
was for everyone to feel comfortable and confident during the operation.
At the Doshen Toppeh Air Base, from which they planned to leave in an air
force jet, there were both American and Iranian planes and personnel. The
Americans would, of course, be expecting them, but what if the Iranian
sentries at the entrance gave them a hard time? They would all carry forged
military identity cards, they decided. Some wives of EDS executives had
worked for the military in Tehran and still had their ID cards: Merv