On Wings of Eagles Read online

  It was two in the morning, but T. J. would not be surprised: this was not the first time Perot had woken him up in the middle of the night, and it would not be the last.

  A sleepy voice said: "Hello?"

  "Tom, it doesn't look good."

  "Why?"

  "They haven't been released and the jail says they aren't going to be."

  "Aw, damn."

  "Conditions are getting worse over there--did you see the news?"

  "I sure did."

  "Do you think it's time for Simons?"

  "Yeah, I think it is."

  "Do you have his number?"

  "No, but I can get it."

  "Call him," said Perot.

  3____

  Bull Simons was going crazy.

  He was thinking of burning down his house. It was an old woodframe bungalow, and it would go up like a pile of matchwood, and that would be the end of it. The place was hell to him--but it was a hell he did not want to leave, for what made it hell was the bittersweet memory of the time when it had been heaven.

  Lucille had picked the place. She saw it advertised in a magazine, and together they had flown down from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to look it over. At Red Bay, in a dirt-poor part of the Florida Panhandle, the ramshackle house stood in forty acres of rough timber. But there was a two-acre lake with bass in it.

  Lucille had loved it.

  It was 1971, and time for Simons to retire. He had been a colonel for ten years, and if the Son Tay Raid could not get him promoted to general, nothing would. The truth was, he did not fit in the Generals' Club: he had always been a reserve officer, he had never been to a top military school such as West Point, his methods were unconventional, and he was no good at going to Washington cocktail parties and kissing ass. He knew he was a goddam fine soldier, and if that was not good enough, why, Art Simons was not good enough. So he retired, and did not regret it.

  He had passed the happiest years of his life here at Red Bay. All their married life he and Lucille had endured periods of separation, sometimes as much as a year without seeing one another, during his tours in Vietnam, Laos, and Korea. From the moment he retired they were together all day and all night, every day of the year. Simons raised hogs. He knew nothing about farming, but he got the information he needed out of books, and built his own pens. Once the operation was under way he found there was not much to do but feed the pigs and look at them, so he spent a lot of time fooling around with his collection of 150 guns, and eventually set up a little gunsmithing shop where he would repair his and his neighbors' weapons and load his own ammunition. Most days he and Lucille would wander, hand in hand, through the woods and down to the lake, where they might catch a bass. In the evening, after supper, she would go to the bedroom as if she were preparing for a date, and come out later, wearing a housecoat over her nightgown and a red ribbon tied in her dark, dark hair, and sit on his lap ...

  Memories like these were breaking his heart.

  Even the boys had seemed to grow up, at last, during those golden years. Harry, the younger, had come home one day and said: "Dad, I've got a heroin habit and a cocaine habit and I need your help." Simons knew little about drugs. He had smoked marijuana once, in a doctor's office in Panama, before giving his men a talk on drugs, just so that he could tell them he knew what it was like; but all he knew about heroin was that it killed people. Still, he had been able to help Harry by keeping him busy, out in the open, building hog pens. It had taken a while. Many times Harry left the house and went into town to score dope, but he always came back, and eventually he did not go into town anymore.

  The episode had brought Simons and Harry together again. Simons would never be close to Bruce, his elder son; but at least he had been able to stop worrying about the boy. Boy? He was in his thirties, and just about as bull-headed as ... well, as his father. Bruce had found Jesus and was determined to bring the rest of the world to the Lord--starting with Colonel Simons. Simons had practically thrown him out. However, unlike Bruce's other youthful enthusiasms--drugs, I Ching, back-to-nature communes--Jesus had lasted, and at least Bruce had settled down to a stable way of life, as pastor of a tiny church in the frozen northwest of Canada.

  Anyway, Simons was through agonizing about the boys. He had brought them up as well as he could, for better or worse, and now they were men and had to take care of themselves. He was taking care of Lucille.

  She was a tall, handsome, statuesque woman with a penchant for big hats. She looked pretty damn impressive behind the wheel of their black Cadillac. But in fact she was the reverse of formidable. She was soft, easygoing, and lovable. The daughter of two teachers, she had needed someone to make decisions for her, someone she could follow blindly and trust completely; and she had found what she needed in Art Simons. He, in turn, was devoted to her. By the time he retired they had been married for thirty years, and in all that time he had never been in the least interested in another woman. Only his job, with its overseas postings, had come between them; and now that was over. He had told her: "My retirement plans can be summed up in one word: you."

  They had seven wonderful years.

  Lucille died of cancer on March 16, 1978.

  And Bull Simons went to pieces.

  Every man has a breaking point, they said. Simons had thought the rule did not apply to him. Now he knew it did: Lucille's death broke him. He had killed many people, and seen more die, but he had not understood the meaning of death until now. For thirty-seven years they had been together, and now, suddenly, she just wasn't there.

  Without her, he did not see what life was supposed to be about. There was no point in anything. He was sixty years old and he could not think of a single goddam reason for living another day. He stopped taking care of himself. He ate cold food from cans and let his hair--which had always been so short--grow long. He fed the hogs religiously at three forty-five P.M. every day, although he knew perfectly well that it hardly mattered what time of day you fed a pig. He started taking in stray dogs, and soon had thirteen of them, scratching the furniture and messing on the floor.

  He knew he was close to losing his mind, and only the iron self-discipline that had been part of his character for so long enabled him to retain his sanity. When he first thought of burning the place down, he knew his judgment was unbalanced, and he promised himself he would wait a year, and see how he felt then.

  His brother Stanley was worried about him, he knew. Stan had tried to get him to pull himself together: had suggested he give some lectures, had even tried to get him to join the Israeli Army. Simons was Jewish by ancestry, but thought of himself as American: he did not want to go to Israel. He could not pull himself together. It was as much as he could do to live from day to day.

  He did not need someone to take care of him--he had never needed that. On the contrary, he needed someone to take care of. That was what he had done all his life. He had taken care of Lucille, he had taken care of the men under his command. Nobody could rescue him from his depression, for his role in life was to rescue others. That was why he had been reconciled with Harry but not with Bruce: Harry had come to him asking to be rescued from his heroin habit, but Bruce had come offering to rescue Art Simons by bringing him to the Lord. In military operations Simons's aim had always been to bring all his men back alive. The Son Tay Raid would have been the perfect climax to his career, if only there had been prisoners in the camp to rescue.

  Paradoxically, the only way to rescue Simons was to ask him to rescue someone else.

  It happened at two o'clock in the morning on January 2, 1979.

  The phone woke him.

  "Bull Simons?" The voice was vaguely familiar.

  "Yeah."

  "This is T. J. Marquez from EDS in Dallas."

  Simons remembered: EDS, Ross Perot, the POW campaign, the San Francisco party ... "Hello, Tom."

  "Bull, I'm sorry to wake you."

  "It's okay. What can I do for you?"

  "We have two people in jail in Iran,
and it looks like we may not be able to get them out by any conventional means. Would you be willing to help us?"

  Would he be willing? "Hell, yes," Simons said. "When do we start?"

  Four

  1____

  Ross Perot drove out of EDS and turned left on Forest Lane, then right on Central Expressway. He was heading for the Hilton Inn on Central and Mockingbird. He was about to ask seven men to risk their lives.

  Sculley and Coburn had made their list. Their own names were at the top, followed by five more.

  How many American corporate chiefs in the twentieth century had asked seven employees to perpetrate a jailbreak? Probably none.

  During the night Coburn and Sculley had called the other five, who were scattered all over the United States, staying with friends and relations after their hasty departure from Tehran. Each had been told only that Perot wanted to see him in Dallas today. They were used to midnight phone calls and sudden summonses--that was Perot's style--and they had all agreed to come.

  As they arrived in Dallas they had been steered away from EDS headquarters and sent to check in at the Hilton Inn. Most of them should be there by now, waiting for Perot.

  He wondered what they would say when he told them he wanted them to go back to Tehran and bust Paul and Bill out of jail.

  They were good men, and loyal to him, but loyalty to an employer did not normally extend to risking your life. Some of them might feel that the whole idea of a rescue by violence was foolhardy. Others would think of their wives and children, and for their sakes refuse--quite reasonably.

  I have no right to ask these men to do this, he thought. I must take care not to put any pressure on them. No salesmanship today, Perot: just straight talk. They must understand that they're free to say: no, thanks, boss; count me out.

  How many of them would volunteer?

  One in five, Perot guessed.

  If that were the case it would take several days to get a team together, and he might end up with people who did not know Tehran.

  What if none volunteered?

  He pulled into the parking lot of the Hilton Inn and switched off the engine.

  Jay Coburn looked around. There were four other men in the room: Pat Sculley, Glenn Jackson, Ralph Boulware, and Joe Poche. Two more were on their way: Jim Schwebach was coming from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Ron Davis from Columbus, Ohio.

  The Dirty Dozen they were not.

  In their business suits, white shirts, and sober ties, with their short haircuts and clean-shaven faces and well-fed bodies, they looked like what they were: ordinary American business executives. It was hard to see them as a squad of mercenaries.

  Coburn and Sculley had made separate lists, but these five men had been on both. Each had worked in Tehran--most had been on Coburn's evacuation team. Each had either military experience or some relevant skill. Each was a man Coburn trusted completely.

  While Sculley was calling them in the early hours of this morning, Coburn had gone to the personnel files and put together a folder on each man, detailing his age, height, weight, marital status, and knowledge of Tehran. As they arrived in Dallas, each of them completed another sheet recounting his military experience, military schools attended, weapons training, and other special skills. The folders were for Colonel Simons, who was on his way from Red Bay. But before Simons arrived, Perot had to ask these men whether they were willing to volunteer.

  For Perot's meeting with them, Coburn had taken three adjoining rooms. Only the middle room would be used: the rooms on either side had been rented as a precaution against eavesdroppers.

  It was all rather melodramatic.

  Coburn studied the others, wondering what they were thinking. They still had not been told what this was all about, but they had probably guessed.

  He could not tell what Joe Poche was thinking: nobody ever could. A short, quiet man of thirty-two, Poche kept his emotions locked away. His voice was always low and even, his face generally blank. He had spent six years in the army, and had seen action as commander of a howitzer battery in Vietnam. He had fired just about every weapon the army possessed up to some level of proficiency, and had killed time, in Vietnam, practicing with a .45. He had spent two years with EDS in Tehran, first designing the enrollment system--the computer program that listed the names of people eligible for health-care benefits--and later as the programmer responsible for loading the files that made up the database for the whole system. Coburn knew him to be a deliberate, logical thinker, a man who would not give his assent to any idea or plan until he had questioned it from all angles and thought out all its consequences slowly and carefully. Humor and intuition were not among his strengths: brains and patience were.

  Ralph Boulware was a full five inches taller than Poche. One of the two black men on the list, he had a chubby face and small, darting eyes, and he talked very fast. He had spent nine years in the air force as a technician, working on the complex inboard computer and radar systems of bombers. In Tehran for only nine months, he had started as data-preparation manager and had swiftly been promoted to data-center manager. Coburn knew him well and liked him a lot. In Tehran they had got drunk together. Their children had played together and their wives had become friends. Boulware loved his family, loved his friends, loved his job, loved his life. He enjoyed living more than anyone else Coburn could think of, with the possible exception of Ross Perot. Boulware was also a highly independent-minded son of a gun. He never had any trouble speaking out. Like many successful black men, he was a shade oversensitive, and liked to make it clear he was not to be pushed around. In Tehran over Ashura, when he had been in the high-stakes poker game with Coburn and Paul, everyone else had slept in the house for safety, as previously agreed; but Boulware had not. There had been no discussion, no announcement: Boulware just went home. A few days later he had decided that the work he was doing in Tehran did not justify the risk to his safety, so he returned to the States. He was not a man to run with the pack just because it was a pack: if he thought the pack was running the wrong way, he would leave it. He was the most skeptical of the group assembling at the Hilton Inn: if anyone was going to pour scorn on the idea of a jailbreak, Boulware would.

  Glenn Jackson looked less like a mercenary than any of them. A mild man with spectacles, he had no military experience, but he was an enthusiastic hunter and an expert shot. He knew Tehran well, having worked there for Bell Helicopter as well as for EDS. He was such a straight, forthright, honest guy, Coburn thought, that it was hard to imagine him getting involved in the deception and violence that a jailbreak would entail. Jackson was also a Baptist--the others were Catholic, except for Poche, who did not say what he was--and Baptists were famous for punching Bibles, not faces. Coburn wondered how Jackson would make out.

  He had a similar concern about Pat Sculley. Sculley had a good military record--he had been five years in the army, ending up as a Ranger instructor with the rank of captain--but he had no combat experience. Aggressive and outgoing in business, he was one of EDS's brightest up-and-coming young executives. Like Coburn, Sculley was an irrepressible optimist, but whereas Coburn's attitudes had been tempered by war, Sculley was youthfully naive. If this thing gets violent, Coburn wondered, will Sculley be hard enough to handle it?

  Of the two men who had not yet arrived, one was the most qualified to take part in a jailbreak, and the other perhaps the least.

  Jim Schwebach knew more about combat than he did about computers. Eleven years in the army, he had served with the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam, doing the kind of commando work Bull Simons specialized in, clandestine operations behind enemy lines; and he had even more medals than Coburn. Because he had spent so many years in the military, he was still a low-level executive, despite his age, which was thirty-five. He had been a trainee systems engineer when he went to Tehran, but he was mature and dependable, and Coburn had made him a team leader during the evacuation. Only five feet six inches, Schwebach had the erect, chin-up posture of many short
men, and the indomitable fighting spirit that is the only defense of the smallest boy in the class. No matter what the score--it could be 12--0, ninth inning and two outs--Schwebach would be up on the edge of the dugout, clawing away and trying to figure out how to get an extra hit. Coburn admired him for volunteering--out of high-principled patriotism--for extra tours in Vietnam. In battle, Coburn thought, Schwebach would be the last guy you would want to take prisoner--if you had your druthers, you would make sure you killed the little son of a bitch before you captured him, he would make so much trouble.

  However, Schwebach's feistiness was not immediately apparent. He was a very ordinary-looking fellow. In fact, you hardly noticed him. In Tehran he had lived farther south than anyone else, in a district where there were no other Americans, yet he had often walked around the streets, wearing a beat-up old field jacket, blue jeans, and a knit cap, and had never been bothered. He could lose himself in a crowd of two--a talent that might be useful in a jailbreak.

  The other missing man was Ron Davis. At thirty he was the youngest on the list. The son of a poor black insurance salesman, Davis had risen fast in the white world of corporate America. Few people who started, as he had, in operations ever made it to management on the customer side of the business. Perot was especially proud of Davis: "Ron's career achievement is like a moonshot," he would say. Davis had acquired a good knowledge of Farsi in a year and a half in Tehran, working under Keane Taylor, not on the Ministry contract but on a smaller, separate project to computerize Bank Omran, the Shah's bank. Davis was cheerful, flippant, full of jokes, a juvenile version of Richard Pryor, but without the profanity. Coburn thought he was the most sincere of the men on the list. Davis found it easy to open up and talk about his feelings and his personal life. For that reason Coburn thought of him as vulnerable. On the other hand, perhaps the ability to talk honestly about yourself to others was a sign of great inner confidence and strength.

  Whatever the truth about Davis's emotional toughness, physically he was as hard as a nail. He had no military experience, but he was a karate black belt. One time in Tehran three men had attacked him and attempted to rob him: he had beaten them all up in a few seconds. Like Schwebach's ability to be inconspicuous, Davis's karate was a talent that might become useful.