Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt

by On Wings of Eagles [lit]

  Merv Stauffer in Dallas.

  "Merv, we have one-Verson here with an Iranian passport and no U.S.

  visa-you know who I'm talking about."

  I 'Yes, sir. "

  "He has saved American lives and I won't have him hassled when we get to

  the States."

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 399

  "Yes, sir."

  "Call Harry McKillop. Have him fix it."

  "Yes, sir."

  Sculley woke them all at Six A.m. He had to drag Coburn out of bed. Coburn

  was still suffering the aftereffects of Simons's stay-awake pills:

  ill-tempered and exhausted, he did not care whether he caught the plane or

  not.

  Sculley had organized a bus to take them to Gatwick Airport, a good

  two-hour journey from Heathrow. As they went out, Keane Taylor, who was

  struggling with a plastic bin containing some of the dozens of bottles of

  liquor and cartons of cigarettes he had bought at Istanbul Airport, said:

  "Hey, do any of you guys want to help me carry this stuff?"

  Nobody said anything. They all got on the bus.

  "Screw you, then," said Taylor, and he gave the whole lot to

  the hotel doorman. I

  on the way to Gatwick they heard over the bus radio that China had invaded

  North Vietriam. Someone said: "That'll be our next assignment. "

  "Sure," said Simons. "We could be dropped between the two armies. No matter

  which way we fired, we'd be right."

  At the airport, walking behind his men, Perot noticed other people backing

  away, giving them room, and he suddenly realized how terrible they all

  looked. Most of them had not had a good wash or a shave for days, and they

  were dressed in a weird assortment of ill-fitting and very dirty clothes.

  They probably smelled bad, too.

  Perot asked for Braniffs passenger-service officer. Braniff was a Dallas

  airline, and Perot had flown with them to London several times, so most of

  the staff knew him.

  He asked the officer: "Can I rent the whole of the lounge upstairs in the

  747 for my party?"

  The officer was staring at the men. Perot knew what he was thinking: Mr.

  Perot's party usually consisted of a few quiet, well-dressed businessmen,

  and now here he was with what looked like a crowd of garage mechanics who

  had been working on a particularly filthy engine.

  The officer said: "Uh, we can't rent you the lounge, because of

  international airline regulations, sir, but I believe if your companions go

  up into the lounge, the rest of our passengers won't disturb you too much."

  400 Ken Follett

  Perot saw what he meant.

  As Perot boarded, he said to a stewardess: "I want these men to have

  anything they want on this plane."

  Perot passed on, and the stewardess turned to her colleague, wide-eyed.

  "Who the hell is he?"

  Her colleague told her.

  The movie was Saturday Night Fever, but the projector would not work.

  Boulware was disappointed: he had seen the movie before and he had been

  looking forward to seeing it again. Instead, he sat and chewed the fat with

  Paul.

  Most of the others went up to the lounge. Once again, Simons and Coburn

  stretched out and went to sleep.

  Halfway across the Atlantic, Keane Taylor, who for the last few weeks had

  been carrying around anything up to a quarter of a million dollars in cash

  and handing it out by the fistful, suddenly took it into his head to have

  an accounting.

  He spread a blanket on the floor of the lounge and started collecting

  money. One by one, the other members of the team came up, fished wads of

  bank notes out of their pockets, their boots, their hats, and their

  shirtsleeves, and threw the money on the floor.

  One or two other first-class passengers had come up to the lounge, despite

  the unsavory appearance of Mr. Perot's party; but now, when this smelly,

  villainous-looking crew, with their beards and knit caps and dirty boots

  and go-to-hell coats, spread out several hundred thousand dollars on the

  floor and started counting it, the other passengers vanished.

  A few minutes later a stewardess came up to the lounge and approached

  Perot. "Some of the passengers are asking whether we should inform the

  police about your party," she said. "Would you come down and reassure

  them?"

  "I'd be rJad to."

  Perot went down to the first-class cabin and introduced himself to the

  passengers in the forward seats. Some of them had heard of him. He began to

  tell them what had happened to Paul and Bill.

  As he talked, other passengers came up to listen. The cabin crew stopped

  work and stood nearby; then some of the crew from the economy cabin came

  along. Soon there was a whole crowd.

  It began to dawn on Perot that this was a story the world would want to

  hear.

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 401

  Upstairs, the team were playing one last trick on Keane Taylor. While

  collecting the money, Taylor had dropped, three bundles of ten thousand

  dollars each, and Bill had slipped them into his own pocket.

  The accounting came out wrong, of course. They all sat around on the floor,

  Indian fashion, suppressing their laughter, while Taylor counted it all

  again.

  "How can I be thirty thousand dollars out?" Taylor said angrily. "Dammit,

  this is all I've got! Maybe I'm not thinking clearly. What the hell is the

  matter with me?"

  At that point Bill came up from downstairs and said: "What's the problem,

  Keane?"

  "God, we're thirty thousand dollars short, and I don't know what I did with

  all the rest of the money."

  Bill took the three stacks out of his pocket and said: "Is this what you're

  looking for?"

  They all laughed uproariously.

  "Give me that," Taylor said angrily. "Dammit, Gaylord, I wish I'd left you

  in jail!"

  They laughed all the more.

  The plane came down toward Dallas.

  Ross Perot sat next to Rashid and told him the names of the places they

  were passing over. Rashid looked out of the window, at the flat brown land

  and the big wide roads that went straight for miles and miles. America.

  Joe Pocht had a good feeling. He had felt this way as captain of a rugby

  club in Minnesota, at the end of a long match when his side had won. The

  same feeling had come to him when he had returned from Vietnam. He had been

  part of a good team, he had survived, he had learned a lot, he had grown.

  Now all he wanted to make him perfectly happy was some clean underwear.

  Ron Davis was sitting next to Jay Coburn. "Hey, Jay, what'll we do for a

  living, now?"

  Coburn smiled. "I don't know.

  402 Ken Follett

  It would be strange, Davis thought, to sit behind a desk again. He was not

  sure he liked the idea.

  He suddenly remembered that Marva was now three months pregnant. It would

  be starting to show. He wondered how she would look, with a bulging tummy.

  I know what I need, he thought. I need a Coke. In the can. From a machine.

  In a gas station. And Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  Pat Sculley was thinking: no more orange cabs.

  Sculley was sitting next to Jim Schwebach: th
ey were together again, the

  short but deadly duo, having fired not a single shot at anyone during the

  whole adventure. They had been talking about what EDS could learn from the

  rescue. The company had projects in other Middle Eastern countries and was

  pushing into the Far East: should there perhaps be a permanent rescue team,

  a group of trouble-shooters trained and fit and armed and willing to do

  covert operations in faraway countries? No, they decided: this had been a

  unique situation. Sculley realized he did not want to spend any more time

  in primitive countries. In Tehran he had hated the morning trial of

  squeezing into an orange cab with two or three grumpy people, Persian music

  blaring from the car radio, and the inevitable quarrel with the driver over

  the fare. Wherever I work next, he thought, whatever I do, I'm going to

  ride to the office by myself, in my own car, a big fat American automobile

  with air-conditioning and soft music. And when I go to the bathroom,

  instead of squatting over a hole in the damn floor, there will be a clean

  white American toilet.

  As the plane touched down Perot said to him: "Pat, you'll be last out. I

  want you to make sure everyone gets through the formalities and deal with

  any problems."

  I 'Sure. 11

  The plane taxied to a halt. The door was opened, and a woman came aboard.

  "Where is the man?" she said.

  "Here," said Perot, pointing to Rashid.

  Rashid was first off the plane.

  Perot thought: Merv Stauffer has all that taken care of.

  The others disembarked and went through customs.

  On the other side, the first person Coburn saw was stocky, bespectacled

  Merv Stauffer, grinning from ear to ear. Coburn put his arms around

  Stauffer and hugged him. Stauffer reached into his pocket and pulled out

  Coburn's wedding ring.

  Coburn was touched. He had left the ring with Stauffer for safekeeping.

  Since then, Stauffer had been the linchpin of the

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 403

  whole operation, sitting in Dallas with a phone to his ear making everything

  happen. Coburn had talked to him almost every day, relaying Simons's orders

  and demands, receiving information and advice: he knew better than anyone

  how important Stauffer had been, how they had all just relied on him to do

  whatever had to be done. Yet with all that happening, Stauffer had remem-

  bered the wedding band.

  Coburn slipped it on. He had done a lot of hard thinking about his

  marriage, during the empty hours in Tehran; but now all that went out of

  his mind, and he looked forward to seeing Liz.

  Merv told him to walk out of the airport and get on a bus that was waiting

  outside. Coburn followed directions. On the bus he saw Margot Perot. He

  smiled and shook hands. Then, suddenly, the air was filled with screams of

  joy, and four wildly excited children threw themselves at him: Kim, Kristi,

  Scott, and Kelly. Coburn laughed out loud and tried to hug them all at the

  same time.

  Liz was standing behind the kids. Gently Coburn disentangled himself. His

  eyes filled with tears. He put his arms around his wife, and he could not

  speak.

  When Keane Taylor got on the bus, his wife did not recognize him. Her

  normally elegant husband was wearing a filthy orange ski jacket and a

  knitted cap. He had not shaved for a week and he had lost fifteen pounds.

  He stood in front of her for several seconds, until Liz Coburn said: "Mary,

  aren't you going to say hello to Keane?" Then his children, Mike and Dawn,

  grabbed him.

  Today was Taylor's birthday. He was forty-one. It was the happiest birthday

  of his life.

  John Howell saw his wife, Angela, sitting at the front of the bus, behind

  the driver, with Michael, eleven months, on her lap. The baby was wearing

  blue jeans and a striped rugby shirt. Howell picked him up and said: "Hi,

  Michael, do you remember your daddy?"

  He sat next to Angie and put his arms around her. It was kind of awkward,

  on the bus seat, and Howell was normally too shy for public displays of

  affection, but he kept right on hugging her because it felt so good.

  Ralph Boulware was met by Mary and the girls, Stacy and Kecia. He picked

  Kecia up and said: "Happy birthday!" Everything was as it should be, he

  thought as he embraced them. He had done what he was supposed to do, and

  the family was here,

  404 Ken Follett

  where they were supposed to be. He felt as though he had proved something,

  if only to himself. All those years in the air force, tinkering with

  instrumentation or sitting in a plane watching bombs drop, he had never felt

  his courage was being tested. His relations had medals for ground fighting,

  but he had always had the uncomfortable feeling that he had an easy role,

  like the guy in the war movies who slops out the food at breakfast time

  before the real soldiers go off to fight. He had always wondered whether he

  had the right stuff. Now he thought about Turkey, and getting stuck in

  Adana, and driving through the blizzard in that dam '64 Chevy, and changing

  the wheel in Blood Alley with the sons of Mr. Fish's cousin; and he thought

  about Perot's toast, to the men who said what they were going to do, then

  went out and did it; and he knew the answer. Oh, yes. He had the right

  stuff.

  Paul's daughters, Karen and Ann Marie, were wearing matching plaid skirts.

  Ann Marie, the littlest, got to him first, and he swept her up in his arms

  and squeezed her tight. Karen was too big to be picked up, but he hugged

  her just as hard. Behind them was Ruthie, his biggest little girl, all

  dressed in shades of honey and crearn. He kissed her long and hard, then

  looked at her, smiling. He could not have stopped smiling if he had wanted

  to. He felt very mellow inside. It was the best feeling he had ever known.

  Emily was looking at Bill as if she did not believe he was really there.

  "Gosh," she said lamely, "it's good to see you again, sweetie."

  The bus went rather quiet as he kissed her. Rachel Schwebach began to cry.

  Bill kissed the girls, Vicki, Jackie, and Jenny, then he looked at his son.

  Chris was very grown up in a blue suit he had been given for Christmas.

  Bill had seen that suit before. He remembered a photograph of Chris,

  standing in front of the Christmas tree in his new suit: that photograph

  had been above Bill's bunk, in a prison cell, long ago and far away ...

  Emily kept touching him to make sure he was really there. "You look

  marvelous," she said.

  Bill knew he looked absolutely terrible. He said: "I love you. "

  Ross Perot got on the bus and said: "Is everybody here?"

  "Not my dad!" said a plaintive small voice. It was Scan Sculley.

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 405

  "Don't worry," said Perot. "He'll be right out. He's our straight man. -

  Pat Sculley had been stopped by a customs agent and asked to open his

  suitcase. He was carrying all the money, and of course the agent had seen

  it. Several more agents were summoned, and Sculley was taken into an office

  to be interrogated.

  The agents got out some forms. Sculley began to explain, but they did n
ot

  want to listen, they only wanted to fill out the form.

  "Is the money yours?"

  "No, it belongs to EDS."

  "Did you have it when you left the States?"

  "Most of it."

  "When and how did you leave the States?"

  "A week ago on a private 707.

  "Where did you go?"

  "To Istanbul, then to the Iranian border."

  Another man came into the office and said: "Are you Mr. Sculley?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm terribly sorry you've been troubled like this. Mr. Perot is waiting

  for you outside." He turned to the agents. "You can tear up those forms."

  Sculley smiled and left. He was not in the Middle East anymore. This was

  Dallas, where Perot was Perot.

  Sculley got on the bus, and saw Mary, Sean, and Jennifer. He hugged and

  kissed them all, then said: "What's happening?"

  "Ibere's a little reception for you," said Mary.

  The bus started to move, but it did not go far. It stopped again a few

  yards away at a different gate, and they were all ushered back into the

  airport and led to a - door marked "Concorde Room. I I

  As they walked in, a thousand people rose to their feet, cheering and

  clapping.

  Someone had put up a huge banner reading:

  JOHN HOWELL

  NO. I

  DADDY

  Jay Coburn was overwhelmed by the size of the crowd and their reaction.

  What a good idea the buses had been, to give the

  406 Ken Folktt

  men a chance to greet their families in private before coming in here. Who

  had arranged that? Stauffer, of course.

  As he walked through the room toward the front, people in the crowd reached

  over to shake his hand, saying: Good to see you! Welcome back! He smiled

  and shook hands---there was David Behne, there was Dick Morrison, the faces

  bluffed and the words melted into one big warm hello.

  When Paul and Bill walked in with their wives and children, the cheering

  rose to a roar.

  Ross Perot, standing at the front, felt tears come to his eyes. He was more

  tired than he had ever been in his life, but immensely satisfied. He

  thought of all the luck and all the coincidences that had made the rescue

  possible: the fact that he knew Simons, that Simons had been willing to go,

  that EDS had hired Vietnam veterans, that they had been willing to go, that