by Tom Clancy
At about daylight, Wednesday, October 9, an Israeli patrol boat spotted the Achille Lauro off the Israeli-Lebanese border heading south—for Egypt.
Even so, the ship was still in international waters and a good distance from Egypt. Earlier we had requested two Navy ships from the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) for platforms from which to launch our helicopters. Meanwhile, three U.S. Navy ships had arrived in the vicinity of the Achille Lauro and were shadowing it from over the horizon. Plans had already been made for positioning the SEAL assault forces onboard the two U.S. Navy platforms. The plan was to conduct a ship takedown just after darkness at 2100 hours, Wednesday night.
Back at Cyprus shortly after daylight, I was finalizing last-minute details for the assault with my commanders when a helicopter landed just outside our hangar. Colonel “Lou” quickly responded, “It’s not one of ours; they were all back before daylight.” Lou’s helicopters had been conducting test flights after reassembly following offloading.
I said, “Sergeant Major, find out who that is. No one else around here has a helo that makes that sound.”
The sergeant major rushed outside and quickly returned. “Sir,” he said, “we have a couple of guests.” Standing there with the sergeant major were two Italian officers, a lieutenant colonel and a major, in flight suits and wearing survival equipment and weapons.
“What are you two up to?” I asked them.
“We are here to recover our ship,” the lieutenant colonel said.
“You gotta be shitting me,” I said. “Where is the rest of your force?”
“Well, we’ve had a few maintenance problems on the way,” he answered, “and some of my force is broken down on islands between here and our home base, and they will be coming in a little later.”
Knowing that whatever he might eventually be able to gather up would be totally inadequate and untrained for ship takedown operations, I said, “We can’t wait, we are up against a time crunch.”
“I do have a diagram of the ship,” he offered, “if that will help any.”
Would it! Boy! this was welcome news. Up to that moment, we had had no clear idea of the layout of the Achille Lauro.
For this operation, we had drawn sketches for planning, using other ships as models, but we’d had to guess where the towers, antennas, masses, and the bridge were located on the Achille Lauro. Although we had the best pilots in the world, it is still risky business flying helicopters at night in an assault into the structures of a ship, placing shooters exactly where they ought to be—all under night-vision goggles—and especially on a ship that is likely to be blacked out.
“I’ll make you an offer,” I said. “You give us that diagram, and we’ll take you along on this operation, but keep you out of harm’s way. We’ll recover your ship, and turn it over to you. No one will ever know that you didn’t do it ... unless you tell them. You can have all the credit.”
He was ecstatic, thinking that he had made the best deal of his life, and he promptly handed me the diagram. What he didn’t know was that should Captain de Rosa and his ship drivers be killed during the assault, he could have ended up driving the ship.... You can’t just let one float by itself. Of course, we would not have let this actually happen before loaning him a trained ship driver. Yes, our SEALs had people trained for driving ships.
The diagram was a godsend. It was about four feet by eight feet and showed in detail where all the structures were that could cause us problems in darkness. Within an hour, with its help, all our assault forces were able to tweak their plans and brief their troops.
CAIRO
In Cairo, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Abdel Meguid was asking the ambassadors of the various countries involved for advice: Would it be best to negotiate or refuse to negotiate? Meanwhile, Yasir Arafat sent Abu Abbas to Cairo to deal with the hijackers.
Yasir Arafat already had a working relationship with the Italian prime minister, as he did with the Egyptian government. In those days, the PLO leader had developed several “under the table agreements—especially with governments that lay within what might be called the PLO area of influence. These governments were afraid that the PLO could bring down their governments if they did not cooperate. These agreements permitted the PLO to operate within those countries.
By Wednesday morning, Arafat claimed to have everything under control. “We have succeeded in bringing the ship back into the waters off Egypt,” he announced. “1 can reveal to you that we have a high degree of confidence regarding a positive conclusion to the affair.”
Meanwhile, neither the Egyptians nor the Italians were eager to pursue the terrorists once they had arrived in Egypt. For various diplomatic and internal political reasons, they hoped the terrorists on Achille Lauro would simply disappear and the whole affair would go away unnoticed.
As far as the United States was concerned, this was not an option. To the United States, like Israel, a terrorist attack was no different from any other military attack. It could not be met by appeasement. The only option was military action.
Neither position was, strictly speaking, unreasonable, given the needs and premises from which each side started. But compromise and appeasement are not a wise long-term approach to terrorism.
By late Wednesday afternoon, actions were well under way for positioning the assault force of Navy SEALs aboard a Navy ship just out of sight of the Achille Lauro. Four hijackers were not enough to guard hostages, control the crew and the bridge, and maintain a watch over the entire ship. There was every likelihood the SEALs would reach the ship without detection by the terrorists. Come night, they would launch their strike. Once they were aboard, they had no doubt of the outcome.
As the rescue force prepared to strike, events were taking place in Cairo that would make the attack unnecessary.
That evening the Egyptian government announced: “At four-twenty P.M., the hijackers, whose number is four, agreed to surrender without preconditions. They surrendered at five P.M.” The statement was soon amplified by the Egyptian Foreign Minister: “The four hijackers have left the ship and are heading out of Egypt.” These statements had a subtext: that no harm had been done to any of the passengers. Up until this point, the murder of Leon Klinghoffer had been concealed, based on statements Captain de Rosa had been forced to make over the radio as the liner neared Egypt. “I am the captain,” he had said. “I am speaking from my office; and everybody [aboard] is in good health.”
As it happened, each of those statements was false. First, the Egyptian government had agreed to preconditions. They had promised the terrorists safe passage out of Egypt. Second, the hijackers were not yet heading out of Egypt, and would not do so until the next day. Finally, the terrorists had blood very much on their hands.
Even before these facts emerged, the Reagan administration was furious. As far as they were concerned, it was a lousy deal. It’s not acceptable for terrorists to take Americans hostage and get away with it. In the words of White House spokesman Larry Speakes: “We believe those responsible should be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible.”
ON Wednesday evening, after the terrorists had left the ship, the truth about the Klinghoffer murder came out when a distraught Captain de Rosa announced to Marilyn Klinghoffer that her husband had been shot and his body dropped overboard. The rickety structure of Egyptian and Italian whitewash and deception was tumbling down.
When Nicholas Veliotes, the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, learned of the murder, he immediately contacted Meguid to insist “that they prosecute those sons of bitches.”
Meguid dodged, claiming—once again—that the terrorists were already out of the country, a claim confirmed by President Hosni Mubarak the next day. “The terrorists have already left Egypt,” he announced. “1 don’t know where they went, but they possibly went to Tunis.
“When we accepted the hijackers’ surrender,” he continued, “we did not have this information. This information emerged five hours after the surrender. In the meantime, the hijacke
rs had left the country.”
This was a lie. The terrorists were then sitting in an Egypt Air 737 at Al Maza air base near Cairo waiting for a place to fly to. Nobody wanted them.
American intelligence was on the ball, however, and had the tail number of the plane—2843.
LATE in the evening of October 9, Vice Admiral Moreau informed me that the terrorists had surrendered and left the Achille Lauro. That meant there was no longer a requirement for an assault on the ship, he concluded, and I could begin my redeployment to home bases.
Shortly after that, I ordered Captain “Bob” to prepare for redeployment. Meanwhile, our airlift, which had remained at their dispersal bases since our arrival, began arriving at the Cyprus base; and starting at around 2200 hours, we began a phased redeployment back to home bases.
Standard operating procedure was to deploy and redeploy as combat-configured entities (task forces) should any requirement for our services develop while en route. The planes all stopped in Sigonella to refuel and then proceeded on back to the States.
By the time daylight Thursday was approaching Cyprus, only three aircraft were left—a C-5 and two C-141s. The C-5, loaded with UH-60 Blackhawks, had developed a bad hydraulic leak from a busted hose. It could not retract its main landing gear and was losing an alarming amount of fluid.
The problem was not the leak itself, but the continued presence of the aircraft at “our friends’ ” base in daylight, where it would be visible to Soviet spy satellites. Two colonels from our host nation were really getting nervous. They could accept a couple C-141s, but the C-5 would attract too much attention and cause political problems. They wanted it gone.
It was a touchy situation.
The only thing I could think to do was to take a look myself to see if I could come up with something that might help. I crawled up into the C-5’s wheel well to look at the broken hose, and as soon as I did, I realized that the “Docs” had some surgical tubing that might work. Sure enough, they had a hose that looked about the right diameter, and the pilot, an experienced older Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel, agreed to fly the plane if we could stop the leak.
He shut the engines down to take the pressure off the hydraulic system. Then he, a mechanic, and I climbed up in the wheel well, and with hydraulic fluid spraying all over us, repaired the hose well enough so the plane could fly with its wheels down.
They took off just at the break of day and flew at low level to Sigonella, where the plane was fixed properly.
WASHINGTON
For all of Thursday, the four hijackers remained at the air base northeast of Cairo, but now they had a destination. They were to be flown to Tunisia (the new location of the PLO headquarters after they’d been forced out of Beirut by the Israelis).
While this drama was playing out in Cairo, a few members of the NSC staff in Washington came up with a brilliant idea. They were aware, from intelligence intercepts, that the Egypt Air aircraft had not yet left the ground. So why not use planes from the aircraft carrier Saratoga, which was nearby in the Mediterranean, to force the plane down at some friendly airport and take the terrorists into U.S. custody?
After some discussion, the NATO base at Sigonella was chosen as the friendly location that would cause the fewest potential problems. Sicily was Italian, and so was the Achille Lauro. After further discussion, it was determined that intercepting a civilian airliner was indeed physically possible. The President was contacted, and Reagan gave his approval.
MEANWHILE I was still on the ground on Cyprus with my two C-141s, awaiting darkness so I could launch for home. I had with me my battle staff, my communications (including my low-level intercept capability), and my medical unit, as well as Captain Bob and two of his SEAL platoons—my reaction team, in case anything unforeseen happened en route.
I was just about to launch Bob’s C-141, when I received a call from Vice Admiral Moreau, who briefed me on a concept plan—approved in principle by President Reagan—for capturing the terrorists should they be flown from Egypt to Tunisia. “F-14s from the Saratoga will be responsible for intercepting the Egypt Air plane and forcing it down at Sigonella. You are to follow the plane into Sigonella, capture the terrorists, and fly them back to the U.S. in chains to stand trial. Stand by for word to launch in order to link up with the F-14s that will make the intercept.” And then by way of conclusion: “The Italian government has given its approval of all this, both for the landing and for our taking the terrorists.”
This last proved to be over-hopeful. At this point the Italian government had no idea that we were going to do anything of the kind, and it’s doubtful that they would have approved it if they had known. The mistake was a screwup—a mixed-up communication somewhere along the line. But as it turned out, it was a welcome failure, since it afforded an opportunity to capture the terrorists who had hijacked the ship and killed Leon Klinghoffer.
After my conversation with Art Moreau, I walked over to brief Bob and his men. The first thing I noticed was the look of disappointment on all their faces—disappointment that they’d missed the opportunity to conduct the ship assault and deal appropriately with the criminals who had brutally killed an American. But as soon as I got to the part of my briefing that said we had another opportunity to capture the terrorists, several of the SEALs began forcing themselves to puke out the sleeping pills they had taken so they could sleep on the way home. they were ready for the new mission.
THE INTERCEPT
A secure—and urgent—call came to Rear Admiral Dave Jeremiah on the USS Saratoga from 6th Fleet headquarters. They were to change course and prepare to launch what was called their “alert CAP” (the Combat Air Patrol consisted of two F-14 Tomcat interceptors and an E-2C Hawkeye radar plane, which would direct the fighters). Though the Saratoga’s captain had no idea what was going on, or why they were changing course, he couldn’t miss the 6th Fleet’s urgency, and he launched the alert CAP.
At 7:10 P.M., local time, an F-14 took off, soon followed by an E-2C radar plane. Moments later, the mission came through: “To intercept and divert to Sigonella, Sicily, a Boeing 737 charter with the Achille Lauro hijackers on board now en route from Cairo to Tunis.” More F-14s were launched. Eventually, six of them (supported by aerial tankers) made a fence over the Mediterranean between Crete and Egypt.
As I was preparing to launch from Cyprus with my two C-141s shortly after the F-14s had launched, shit once again happened: The pilot informed me that one of the engines on my plane would not start. It was probably a “glow plug” problem, he told me.
“How many glow plugs are in an engine?” I asked the mechanic (we always carried a mechanic on special operations missions as part of the crew). “And how many does it take to start it?”
“There are six per engine,” I recall him saying, “but it only takes one good one to start an engine.”
“So why can’t we take one or two from a good engine and put them in the failed engine to get it going?” I asked.
“We can give it a try,” he said.
Four or five of us then deplaned to give the mechanic a hand removing and replacing the engine cowlings, while the mechanic transferred the “glow plugs.” This took about thirty minutes.
Now the engine was ready to go. However, because the earlier attempts to start it had “loaded it up” with fuel, the mechanic was concerned about chances of a fire. “Now let’s get everybody off the plane,” he announced, “and get ready for the fireball if it starts.” Everybody quickly deplaned, and the mechanic gave the pilot the signal. The three good engines were started, and then the failed engine was given a try. Nothing happened for maybe thirty seconds, and then some smoke came, and then all of a sudden a flame jetted out as far as the tail of the airplane—or at least that was how it seemed. The pilot smiled and gave a thumbs-up to all of us outside, then we quickly reboarded the aircraft.
After launch, we remained in radio contact with the E-2C, so as not to interfere with the intercept operation. Flying time fro
m Cyprus to Sigonella was about three or four hours.
BACK in the United States, at 4:37 P.M., Washington time, President Reagan directed Defense Secretary Weinberger to intercept the plane and its hijackers.
“National Command Authority” is two men, the President and the Secretary of Defense, who is second to the President in control of the armed forces. This means command authority passes through the Defense Secretary on the way down to, say, the 6th Fleet
Weinberger called the Pentagon and gave the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Crowe, the okay to proceed.
MEANWHILE, the E-2C watched for the Egypt Air 737. When they picked out likely contacts flying the route from Cairo to Tunis, F-14s then had to check the tail numbers. Around midnight, they began checking out possible radar contacts.
The first two blacked-out aircraft they examined turned out American C- 141 transport planes—our team on the way to Sigonella.
The F-14s intercepted their target two tries later—tail number 2843. A pair of F-14s with lights out now flew, one on each of the commercial aircraft’s wingtips. The crew and passengers of the Egypt Air plane were in total ignorance that they’d been bracketed by U.S. fighters.
The formation proceeded westward. No problem. That was where the Americans wanted them to go—for the time being.
Meanwhile, the State Department had asked the Tunisian government to deny the Egyptians permission to land, and the Tunisians had agreed. When the Egyptians tried Athens, they again got a negative response. Their only recourse was to return to Cairo, and Cairo control had to comply with their request.
At this point, the Egyptian pilots got a surprise: “2843, this is Tigertail 603. Over,” the E-2C Hawkeye radioed. The Egyptians did not reply.
The Hawkeye repeated: “2843. Tigertail 603.” It took four tries before the Egyptians got nerve enough to acknowledge.
