that innocent passers-by might get hurt. Simons needled them about their Boy
Scout morality, saying they were afraid of losing their merit badges, and
calling them "you Jack Armstrongsafter the too-good-to-be-true radio
character who went around solving crimes and helping old ladies cross the
road.
They also had a tendency to forget the seriousness of what they were doing.
There was a lot of joking and a certain amount of horseplay, particularly
from young Ron Davis. A measure of humor was useful in a team on a
dangerous mission, but sometimes Simons had to put a stop to it and bring
them back to reality with a sharp remark.
He gave them all the opportunity to back out at any time. He got Ron Davis
on his own again and said: "You're going to be the first one over that
fence-don't you have some reservations about that?"
"Yeah. -
"Good thing you do, otherwise I wouldn't take you. Suppose Paul and Bill
don't come right away? Suppose they figure that if they head for the fence
they'll get shot? You'll be stuck there and the guards will see you. You'll
be in bad trouble."
'Yeah. "
"Me, I'm sixty years old, I've lived my life. Hell, I don't have a thing to
lose. But you're a young man--wd Marva's pregnant, isn't she?"
"Yeah. -
"Are you really sure you want to do this?"
'Yeah. "
He worked on them all. There was no point in his telling them that his
military judgment was better than theirs: they had to come to that
conclusion themselves. Similarly, his tough-guy act was intended to let
them know that from now on such things as keeping warm, eating, drinking,
and worrying about innocent bystanders would not occupy much of their time
or attention. The shooting practice and the knife lesson also had a hidden
purpose: die last thing Simons wanted was any killing on this operation,
but learning how to kill reminded the men that the rescue could be a
life-and-death affair.
The biggest element in his psychological campaign was the endless
practicing of the assault on the jail. Simons was quite sure that the jail
would not be exactly as Coburn had described it, and that the plan would
have to be modified. A raid never
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 137
went precisely according to the scenario-as he knew better than most.
The rehearsals for the Son Tay Raid had gone on for weeks. A complete
replica of the prison camp had been built, out of two-by-four timbers and
target cloth, at Eglin Air Base in Florida. The bloody thing had to be
dismantled every morning before dawn and put up again at night, because the
Russian reconnaissance satellite Cosmos 355 passed over Florida twice every
twenty-four hours. But it had been a beautiful thing: every goddarn tree
and ditch in the Son Tay prison camp had been reproduced in the mock-up.
And then, after all those rehearsals, when they did it for real, one of the
helicoptms--the one Simons was in-had landed in the wrong place.
Simons would never forget the moment he realized the mistake. His
helicopter was taking off again, having discharged the Raiders. A startled
Vietnamese guard emerged from a foxhole and Simons shot him in the chest.
ShootinZ broke out, a flare went tip, and Simons saw that the buildings
surrounding him were not the buildings of the Son Tay camp. "Get that
fucking chopper back in here!" he yelled to his radio operator. He told a
sergeant to turn on a strobe light to mark the landing zone.
He knew where they were: four hundred yards from Son Tay, in a compound
marked on intelligence maps as a school. This was no school. There were
enemy troops everywhere. It was a barracks, and Simons realized that his
helicopter pilot's mistake had been a lucky one, for now he was able to
launch a preemptive attack and wipe out a concentration of enemy troops who
might otherwise have jeopardized the whole operation.
That was the night he stood outside a barracks and shot eighty men in their
underwear.
No, an operation never went exactly according to plan. But becoming
proficient at executing the scenario was only half the purpose of
rehearsals anyway. The other half-and, in the case of the EDS men, the
important half-was learning to work together as a team. Oh, they were
already terrific as an inteUectual team-4ve them each an office and a
secretary and a telephone, and together they would computerize the worl"ut
working tDgedier with their hands and their bodies was different. When they
had started, on January 3, they would have had trouble launching a rowboat
as a team. Five days later they were a machine.
138 Ken Folktt
And that was all that could be done here in Texas. Now they had to take a
look at the real-life jail. It was time to go to Tehran. Simons told
Stauffa he wanted to meet with Perot again.
3
While the rescue team was in training, President Carter got his last chance
of preventing a bloody revolution in Iran.
And he blew it.
This is how it happened ...
Ambassador William Sullivan went to bed content on the night of January 4 in
his private apartment within the large, cool residence in the Embassy
compound at the comer of Roosevelt and Takht-e-Jamshid avenues in Tehran.
Sullivan's boss, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, had been busy with the
Camp David negotiations all through November and December, but now he was
back in Washington and concentrating on Iran--and boy, did it show.
Vagueness and vacillation had ended. The cables containing Sullivan's
instructions had become crisp and decisive. Most importantly, the United
States at last had a strategy for dealing with the crisis: they were going
to talk to the Ayatollah Khomeini.
It was Sullivan's own idea. He was now sure that the Shah would soon leave
Iran and Khomeini would return in triumph. His job, be believed, was to
preserve America's relationship with Iran through the change of government,
so that when it was all over, Iran would still be a stronghold of American
influence in the Middle East. The way to do that was to help the Iranian
armed forces to gay intact and to continue American military aid to any new
regime.
Sullivan had called Vance on the secure telephone line and told him just
that. The U.S. should send an emissary to Paris to see the Ayatollah,
Sullivan had urged. Khomeini should be told that the main concern of the
U.S. was to preserve the territorial integrity of Iran and deflect Soviet
influence; that the Americans did not want tc~see a pitched battle in Iran
between the army and the Islamic revolutionaries; and that once the
Ayatollah was in
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 139
power, the U.S. would offer him the same military assistance and arms
sales it had given the Shah.
It was a bold plan. There would be those who would accuse the U.S. of
abandoning a friend. But Sullivan was sure it was time for the
Americans to cut their losses with the Shah and look to the future.
To his intense satisfaction, Vance had agreed.
So had the Shah. W
eary, apathetic, and no longer willing to shed blood
in order to stay in power, the Shah had not even put up a show of
reluctance.
Vance had nominated, as his endssary to the Ayatollah, Theodore H.
Eliot, a senior diplomat who had served as economic counselor in Tehran
and spoke Farsi fluently. Sullivan was delighted with the choice.
Ted Eliot was scheduled to arrive in Paris in two days' time, on
January 6.
In one of the guest bedrooms at the ambassadorial residence, Air Force
General Robert "Dutch" Huyser was also going to bed. Sullivan was not
as enthusiastic about the Huyser Mission as he was about the Eliot
Mission. Dutch Huyser, the deputy commander (under Haig) of U.S. forces
in Europe, had arrived yesterday to persuade Iranian generals to
support the new Bakhtiar government in Tehran. Sullivan knew Huyser.
He was a fine soldier, but no diplomat. He spoke no Farsi and he did
not know Iran. But even if he had been ideally qualified, his task
would have been hopeless. The Bakhtiar government had failed to gain
the support even of the moderates, and Shahpour Bakhtiar himself bad
been expelled from the centrist National Front party inewly for
accepting the Shah's invitation to form a government. Meanwhile, the
army, which Huyser was trying futilely to swing to Bakhtiar, continued
to weaken as thousands of soldiers deserted and joined the
revolutionary mobs in the streets. The best Huyser could hope for was
to hold the army together a little longer, while Eliot in Pans arranged
for the peaceful return of the Ayatollah.
If it worked it would be a great achievement for Sullivan, something
any diplomat could be proud of for the rest of his life: his plan would
have strengthened his country and saved lives.
As he went to sleep, there was just one worry nagging at the back of
his mind. The Eliot Mission, for which he had such high hopes, was a
State Department scheme, identified in Washington with Secretary of
State Vance. The Huyser Mission was the idea
Ir
140 Ken FoIku
of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor. The emmity between
Vance and Brzezinski was notorious. And at this moment Brzezinski, after the
summit meeting in Guadeloupe, was deep-sea fishing in the Caribbean with
President Carter. As they sailed over the clear blue sea, what was
Brzezinski whisper~ ing in the President's ear?
The phone woke Sullivan in the early hours of the morning.
It was the duty officer, calling from the communications vault in the
Embassy Budding just a few yards away. An urgent cable had arrived from
Washington. The Ambassador might want to read it immediately.
Sullivan got out of bed and walked across the lawns to the Embassy, full of
foreboding.
The cable said that the Eliot Mission was canceled.
The decision had been taken by the President. Sullivan's comments on the
change of plan were not invited. He was instructed to tell the Shah that
the United States government no longer intended to hold talks with the
Ayatollah Khomeini.
Sullivan was heartbroken.
This was the end of America's influence in Iran. It also meant that
Sullivan personally had lost his chance of distinguishing himself as
Ambassador by preventing a bloody civil war.
He sent an angry message back to Vance, saying the President had in&& a
gross mistake and should reconsider.
He went back to bed, but he could not sleep.
In the morning another cable informed bun that the President's decision
would Stand.
Wearily, Sullivan made his way up the hill to the palace to tell the Shah.
The Shah appeared drawn and tense that morning. He and Sullivan sat down
and drank the inevitable cup of tea. Then Sullivan told him that President
Carter had canceled the Eliot Mission.
The Shah was upset. "But why have they canceled it?" he said agitatedly.
'I don't know," Sullivan replied.
'But how do they expect to influence those people if they won't even talk
to them?"
"I don't know."
$'Then what does Washington intend to do now?" asked the Shah , throwing up
his hands in despair.
I 'I don't know," said Sullivan.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 141
4
"Ross, this is idiotic," Tom Luce said loudly. "You're going to destroy the
company and you're going to destroy yourse4f "
Perot looked at his lawyer. They were sitting in Perot's office. The door
was closed.
Luce was not the first to say this. During the week, as the news had spread
through the seventh floor, several of Perot's top executives had come in to
tell him that a rescue team was a fbolhardy and dangerous notion, and he
should drop the idea. "Stop worrying," Perot had told them. "Just
concentrate on what you have to do."
Tom Luce was characteristically vociferous. Wearing an aggressive scowl and
a courtroom manner, he argued his case as if a jury were listening.
"I can only advise you on the legal situation, but I'm here to tell you
that this rescue can cause more problems, and worse problems, than you've
got now. Hell, Ross, I can't make a list of the laws you're going to
break!"
"Try,19 said Perot.
"You'll have a mercenary army-which is illegal here, in Iran, and in every
country the team would pass through- Anywhere they go they'd be liable to
criminal penalties and you could have ten men in jail instead of two.
"But it's worse than that. Your men would be in a position much worse than
soldiers in battle-4nternational laws and the Geneva Convention, winch
protect soldiers in utifform, would not protect the rescue Main.
I Iff they get captured in Iran ... Ross, they'll be shot. If they get
captured in any country that has an extradition treaty with Iran, they'll
be sew back and shot. Instead of two innocent employees in jail, you could
have eight guilty employees dead.
"And if that happens, the families of the dead men may turn on
you--understandably, because this whole dung will look stupid. The widows
will have huge claims against EDS in the American courts. They could
bankrupt the company. Think of the ten thousand people who would be out of
a job if that
142 Ken Follett
happened. Think of yourself-Ross, there might even be criminal charges
against you that could put you in jail!"
Perot said calmly: "I appreciate your advice, Tom."
Luce stared at him. "I'm not getting through to you, am IT'
Perot smiled. "Sure you are. But if you go through life worrying about all
the bad things that can happen, you soon convince yourself that it's best
to do nothing at all."
The truth was that Perot knew something Luce did not.
Ross Perot was lucky.
All his life he had been lucky.
As a twelve-year-old boy he had had a paper route in the poor black
district of Texarkana. The Texarkana Gazette cost twentyfive cents a week
in those days, and on Sundays, when he collected the money, he would end up
with forty or fifty dollars in quarters in his pocket. And ever
y Sunday,
somewhere along the route, some poor man who had spent his week's wages in
a bar the previous night would try to take the money from little Ross. This
was why no other boy would deliver papers in that district. But Ross was
never scared. He was on a horse; the attempts were never very determined;
and he was lucky. He never lost his money.
He had been lucky again in getting admitted to the Naval Academy at
Annapolis. Applicants had to be sponsored by a senator or a congressman,
and of course the Perot family did not have the right contacts. Anyway,
young Ross had never even seen the sea-4he farthest he had ever traveled
was to Dallas, 180 miles away. But there was a young man in Texarkana
called Josh Morriss, Jr., who had been to Annapolis and told Ross all about
it, and Ross had fallen in love with the navy without ever seeing a ship.
So he just kept writing to senators begging for sponsorship. He
succeeded-as he would many times during later life-because he was too dumb
to lmow it was impossible.
It was not until many years later that he found out how it had happened.
One day back in 1949 Senator W. Lee O'Daniel was clearing out his desk: it
was the end of his term and he was not going to run again. An aide said:
"Senator, we have an unfilled appointment to the Naval Academy."
"Does anyone want it?" the senator said.
"Well, we've got this boy from Texarkana who's been trying for years ...
"Give it to him," said the senator.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 143
The way Perot heard the story, his name was never actually mentioned during
the conversation.
He had been lucky once again in setting up EDS when he did. As a computer
salesman for IBM, he realized that his customers did not always make the
best use of the machines he sold them. Data processing was a new and
specialized skill. The banks were good at banking, the insurance companies
were good at insurance, the manufacturers were good at manufacturing---and
the computer men were good at data processing. The customer did not want
the machine, he wanted the fast, cheap information it could provide. Yet,
too often, the customer spent go much time creating his new data-processing
department and learning how to use the machine that his computer caused him
Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt Page 18
