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Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt

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by On Wings of Eagles [lit]


  "What the fuck is he doing?" said Gayden.

  "This is asking for trouble," said Coburn.

  They approached the second checkpoint. Without stopping. Rashid yelled at

  the guard through the window. The guard said something in reply. Rashid

  accelerated. Paul followed.

  Coburn breathed a sigh of relief. That was just like Rashid: he did the

  unexpected, on impulse, without thinking through the consequences; and

  somehow he always got away with it. It just made life a little tense for

  the people with him.

  Next time they stopped, Rashid explained that he had simply told the guard

  the two Range Rovers had been cleared at the first checkpoint.

  At the next roadblock Rashid persuaded the guards to write a pass on his

  windshield in magic marker, and they were waved through another three

  roadblocks without being searched.

  Keane Taylor was driving the lead car when, climbing a long, winding hill,

  they saw two heavy trucks, side by side and filling the whole width of the

  road, coniing downhill fast toward them. Taylor swerved off the road and

  bumped to a halt in the ditch, and Paul followed. The trucks went by, still

  side by side, and everyone said what a lousy driver Taylor was.

  At midday they took a break. They parked at the roadside near a ski lift

  and lunched on dry crackers and cupcakes. Although there was snow on the

  mountainsides, the sun was shining and they were not cold. Taylor got out

  his bottle of Cognac, but it had leaked and was empty: Coburn suspected

  that Simons had surreptitiously loosened the cork. They drank water.

  They passed through the small, neat town of Zanjan, where on the

  reconnaissance trip Coburn and Simons had talked to the chief of police.

  Just beyond Zanjan the hunian State Highway ended-rather abruptly. In the

  second car, Coburn saw Rashid's Range Rover

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 315

  suddenly disappear from view. Paul slammed on the brakes and they got out to

  look.

  Where the tarmac ended, Rashid had gone down a steep slope for about eight

  feet and landed nose-down in mud. Off to the right, their route continued

  up an unpaved mountain road.

  Rashid restarted the stalled engine and put the car into fourwheel drive

  and reverse gear. Slowly he inched back up the bank and onto the road.

  The Range Rover was covered with mud. Rashid turned on the wipers and

  washed the windshield. When the mud splashes were gone, so was the pass

  that had been written on with magic marker. Rashid could have rewritten it,

  but nobody had a magic marker.

  They drove west, heading for the southern tip of Lake Rezaiyeh. 'Me Range

  Rovers were built for rough roads, and they could still do forty miles per

  hour. They were climbing all the time: the temperature dropped steadily,

  and the countryside was covered with snow, but the road was clear. Coburn

  wondered whether they might even make the border tonight, instead of

  tomorrow as planned.

  Gayden, in the backseat, leaned forward and said: "Nobody's going to

  believe it was this easy. We better make up some war stories to tell when

  we get home."

  He spoke too soon.

  As daylight faded they approached Mahabad. Its outskirts were marked by a

  few scattered huts, made of wood and mud brick, along the sides of the

  winding road. The two Range Rovers swept around a bend and pulled up

  sharply: the road was blocked by a parked truck and a large but apparently

  disciplined crowd. The men were wearing the traditional baggy trousers,

  black vest, red-and-white checkered headdress and bandolier of Kurdish

  tribesmen.

  Rashid jumped out of the lead car and went into his act.

  Coburn studied the guns of the guards, and saw both Russian and American

  automatic weapons.

  "Everyone out of the cars," said Rashid.

  By now it was routine. One by one they were searched. This time the search

  was a little more thorough, and they found Keane Taylor's little

  switchblade knife, but they let him keep it. They did not find Coburn's

  knife, or the money.

  Coburn waited for Rashid to say: "We can go." It was taking longer than

  usual. Rashid argued with the Kurds for a few

  316 Ken Follett

  minutes, then said: "We have to go and see the head man of the town. "

  They got back into the cars. A Kurd with a rifle joined them in each car

  and directed them into the little town.

  They were ordered to stop outside a small whitewashed building. One of the

  guards went in, came out again a minute later, and got back into the car

  without explanation.

  They stopped again outside what was clearly a hospital. Here they picked up

  a passenger, a young Iranian in a suit.

  Coburn wondered what the hell was going on.

  Finally they drove down an alley and parked outside what looked like a

  small private house.

  They went inside. Rashid told them to take off their shoes.

  Gayden had several thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in his shoes.

  As he took them off he frantically stuffed the money up into the toes of

  the shoes.

  They were ushered into a large room furnished with nothing but a beautiful

  Persian carpet. Simons quietly told everyone where to sit. Leaving a space

  in the circle for the Iranians, he put Rashid on the right of the space.

  Next to Rashid was Taylor, then Coburn, then Simons himself opposite the

  space. On Simons's right Paul and Bill sat, back a little from the line of

  the circle, where they would be least conspicuous. Gayden, completing the

  circle, sat on Bill's right.

  As Taylor sat down he saw that he had a big hole in the toe of his sock,

  and hundred-dollar bills were poking through the hole. He cursed under his

  breath and hastily pushed the money back toward his heel.

  The young man in the suit followed them in. He seemed educated and spoke

  good English. "You are about to meet a man who has just escaped after

  twenty-five years it. jail," he said.

  Bill almost said: Well, how about that, I've just escaped from jail

  myself!--but he stopped himself just in time.

  "You are to be put on trial, and this man will be your judge," the young

  Iranian went on.

  The words on trial hit Paul like a blow, and he thought: we've come all

  this way for nothing.

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 317

  3

  The Clean Team spent Wednesday at Lou Goelz's house in Tehran.

  Early in the morning a call came through from Tom Walter in Dallas. The

  line was poor and the conversation confused, but Joe Poche was able to tell

  Walter that he and the Clean Team were safe, would move into the Embassy as

  soon as possible, and would leave the country whenever the Embassy got the

  evacuation flights finally organized. Poch6 also reported that Cathy

  Gallagher's condition had not improved, and she had been taken to the

  hospital the previous evening.

  John Howell called Abolhasan, who had another message from Dadgar. Dadgar

  was willing to negotiate a lower bail. If EDS located Paul and Bill, the

  company should turn them in and post the lower bail. The Americans should

  real
ize that it would be hopeless for Paul and Bill to try to leave Iran by

  regular means and very dangerous for them to leave otherwise.

  Howell took that to mean that Paid and Bill would not have been allowed to

  get out on an Embassy evacuation flight. He wondered again whether the

  Clean Team might be in more danger than the Dirty Team. Bob Young felt the

  same. While they were discussing it, they heard shooting. It seemed to be

  coming from the direction of the U.S. Embassy.

  The National Voice of Iran, a radio station broadcasting from Baku moss the

  border in the Soviet Union, had for several days been issuing "news"

  bulletins about clandestine American plans for a counterrevolution. On

  Wednesday the National Voice announced that the files of SAVAK, the Shah's

  hated secret police force, had been transferred to the U.S. Embassy. The

  story was almost certainly invented, but it was highly plausible: the CIA

  had created SAVAK and was in close contact with it, and everyone knew that

  U.S. embassies-4ike all embassies-were fall of spies thinly disguised as

  diplomatic attaclids. Anyway, some of the revolutionaries in Tehran believed

  the story, and -without consulting any of the Ayatollah's aides-decided to

  take action.

  318 Ken Follett

  During the morning they entered the high buildings surrounding the Embassy

  compound and took up position with automatic weapons. They opened fire at

  ten-thirty.

  Ambassador William Sullivan was in his outer office, taking a call at his

  secretary's desk. He was speaking to the Ayatollah's Deputy Foreign

  Minister. President Carter had decided to recognize the new, revolutionary

  government in Iran, and Sullivan was making arrangements to deliver an

  official note.

  When he put the phone down, he turned around to see his press attaclid,

  Barry Rosen, standing there with two American journalists. Sullivan was

  furious, for the White House had given specific instructions that the

  decision to recognize the new goveminent was to be announced in Washington,

  not Tehran. Sullivan took Rosen into the inner office and chewed him out.

  Rosen told him that the two journalists were there to make arrangements for

  the body of Joe Alex Morris, the Los Angeles Times correspondent who had

  been shot during the fighting at Doshen Toppeh. Sullivan, feeling foolish,

  told Rosen to ask the journalists not to reveal what they had learned in

  overhearing Sullivan on the phone.

  Rosen went out. Sullivan's phone rang. He picked it up. There was a sudden

  tremendous crash of gunfire, and a hail of bullets shattered his windows.

  Sullivan hit the floor.

  He slithered across the room and into the next office, where he came

  nose-to-nose with his deputy, Charlie Naas, who had been holding a meeting

  about the evacuation flights. Sullivan had two phone numbers that he could

  use, in an emergency, to reach revolutionary leaders. He now told Naas to

  call one, and the army attach6 to call the other. Still lying on the floor,

  the two men pulled telephones off a desk and started dialing.

  Sullivan took out his walkie-talkie and called for reports from the marine

  units in the compound.

  The machine-gun attack had been covering fire for a squad of about

  seventy-five revolutionaries who had come over the front wall of the

  Embassy compound and were now advancing on the ambassadorial residence.

  Fortunately most of the staff were with Sullivan in the chancery building.

  Sullivan ordered the marines to fall back, not to use their rifles, and to

  fire their sidearms only in self-defense.

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 319

  Then he crawled out of the executive suite and into the corridor.

  During the next hour, as the attackers took the residence and the cafeteria

  building, Sullivan got all the civilians in the chancery herded into the

  communications vault upstairs. When he heard the attackers breaking down

  the steel doors of the building, he ordered the marines inside to join the

  civilians in the vault. There he made them pile their weapons in a comer,

  and ordered everyone to surrender as soon as possible.

  Eventually Sullivan himself went into the vault, leaving the army attach6

  and an interpreter outside.

  When the attackers reached the second floor, Sullivan opened the vault door

  and walked out with his hands over his head.

  The othem-about a hundred people-followed him.

  They were all herded into the waiting room of the executive suite and

  frisked. There was a confused dispute between two factions of Iranians, and

  Sullivan realized that the Ayatollah's people had sent a rescue

  force-presumably in response to the phone calls by Charlie Naas and the

  army attach6--wW the rescuers had arrived on the second floor at the same

  time as the attackers.

  Suddenly a shot came through the window.

  All the Americans dropped to the floor. One of the Iranians seemed to think

  the shot had come from within the room, and he swung his AK-47 rifle wildly

  at the tangle of prisoners on the floor-, then Barry Rosen, the press

  attach6, yelled in Farsi: "It came from outside! It came from outside!" At

  that moment Sullivan found himself lying next to the two journalists who

  had been in his outer office. "I hope you're getting all this down in your

  notebooks," he said.

  Eventually they were taken out into the courtyard, where Ibrahim Yazdi, the

  Ayatollah's new Deputy Prime Minister, apologized to Sullivan for the

  attack.

  Yazdi also gave Sullivan a personal escort, a group of students who would

  henceforth be responsible for the safety of the U.S. Ambassador. The leader

  of the group explitined to Sullivan that they were well qualified to guard

  him. They had studied him, and were familiar with his routine, for until

  recently their assignment had been to assassinate him.

  Late that afternoon Cathy Gallagher called from the hospital. She had been

  given some medication that solved her problem, at

  320 Ken Follett

  least temporarily, and she wanted to rejoin her husband and the others at

  Lou Goetz's house.

  Joe Poch6 did not want any more of the Clean Team to leave the house, but

  he also did not want any Iranians to know where they were; so he called

  Gholarn and asked him to pick up Cathy at the hospital and bring her to the

  comer of the street, where her husband would meet her.

  She arrived at around seven-thirty that evening. She was feeling better,

  but Gholam had told her a horrifying story. "They shot up our hotel rooms

  yesterday," she said.

  Gholam had gone to the Hyatt to pay EDS's bill and pick up the suitcases

  they had left behind, Cathy explained. The rooms had been wrecked, there

  were bullet holes everywhere, and the luggage had been slashed to ribbons.

  "Just our rooms?" Howell asked.

  . 'Yes. 11

  "Did he find out how it happened?"

  When Gholarn went to pay the bill, the hotel manager had said to him: "Who

  the heU were those people-the CIAT' Apparently, on Monday morning, shortly

  after all the EDS people left the hotel, the revolutionaries had taken it

  over. They had harassed
all the Americans, demanding their passports, and

  had shown pictures of two men whom they were seeking. The manager had not

  recognized the men in the photographs. Nor had anyone else.

  Howell wondered what had so enraged the revolutionaries that they had

  smashed up the rooms. Perhaps Gayden's well-stocked bar offended their

  Muslim sensibilities. Also left behind in Gayden's suite were a tape

  recorder used for dictation, some suction microphones for taping phone

  conversations, and a child's walkie-talkie set. The revolutionaries might

  have thought this was CIA surveillance gear.

  Throughout the day, vague and alarming reports of what was happening at the

  Embassy reached Howell and the Clean Team through Goe1z's houseman, who was

  calling friends. But Goelz returned as the others were having dinner, and

  after a couple of stiff drinks he was none the worse for his experience. He

  had spent a good deal of time lying on his ample belly in a corridor. The

  next day he went back to his desk, and he came home that evening with good

  news: evacuation flights would start on Saturday, and the Clean Team would

  be on the first.

  Howell thought: Dadgar may have other ideas about that.

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 321

  4

  In Istanbul, Ross Perot had a dreadful feeling that the whole operation was

  slipping out of control.

  He heard, via Dallas, that the U.S. Embassy in Tehran had been overrun by

  revolutionaries. He also knew, because Tom Walter had talked to Joe Pochd

  earlier, that the Clean Team had been planning to move into the Embassy

  compound as soon as possible. But after the attack on the Embassy, almost

  all telephone lines to Tehran had been disconnected, and the White House

  was monopolizing the few lines left. So Perot did not know whether the

  Clean Team had been in the Embassy at the time of the attack, nor did he

  know what kind of danger they might be in even if they were still at

  Goelz's house.

  'Me loss of phone contact also meant that Merv Stauffer could not call

  Gholam to find out whether the Dirty Team had sent "a message for Jim

  Nyfeler" saying either that they were okay or that they were in trouble.

  The whole seventh-floor crew in Dallas was at work pulling strings to get

 

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