Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent (15 page)
At the Farm, we had been taping the evening news broadcasts on what the networks quickly dubbed the Iran Hostage Crisis. While the initial group of hostage takers were students, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, or
Pasdaran
, had now begun patrolling outside the embassy. By playing and replaying the news segments, we were able to learn what kinds of weapons the
Pasdaran
carried, whether they handled them professionally (they didn’t), how the embassy gates were secured, and the amount of traffic and commerce still being allowed on the two main streets, Roosevelt Avenue and Takht-E-Jamshid. Months of round-the-clock planning and training finally yielded a plan that was as detailed as it was daring. It was also chock full of tripwires.
We considered several possibilities for getting the RH-53s into Iran. The nearest land option was Turkey, but the Turks wouldn’t allow us to launch from there. We considered flying the helicopters to a remote site inside Iran then using a C-141 to air-drop “blivets”—essentially giant rubber drums filled with aviation fuel—which we would then use to refuel the helos. To test the concept, Delta flew out to Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona just before Thanksgiving. By then, the hostages had been in captivity for just over two weeks. As the American public clamored for action, we were taking it, but carefully and invisibly.
Yuma Proving Grounds was a sprawling desert wasteland, its wide circular horizon broken only by an occasional yucca plant or saguaro cactus, jutting up from the hard pack like a lonesome soldier. The night we tested the blivets, Delta broke into small groups and lined up alongside a barren drop zone. The C-141 aircrew was supposed to fly over while the loadmaster and his team shoved the blivets out the back. Each blivet was strapped to a small wooden pallet and equipped with a parachute that was supposed to open automatically—“supposed to” being the operative words.
The idea was that the blivets, each about the size of two fifty-five gallon drums, would float down under canopy and, one by one, plunk into the drop zone. Delta would then, in small groups, run to the nearest blivet, de-rig it from its pallet, and roll it across the desert floor to the helos for refueling.
Charlie, Bucky, and I stood together looking up into the sky, listening for the C-141’s turbine engines. The night was cool. Untouched by city lights, the stars of the Western sky glittered like jewels. Finally, we heard the jet. As it flew overhead into the drop zone, I saw these huge dark shapes begin spilling from its tail. Against the starry sky, some canopies popped open. But some didn’t. And the blivets without chutes hurtled toward us like five-hundred-pound bombs.
All of us bolted like jackrabbits, sprinting away from the drop zone, trying to outrun death. Close behind me, I heard splintering crashes as the pallets and blivets exploded against the hardpack. Glancing back, I saw aviation fuel spray skyward from the sand in great bursts that then showered down like flammable rain.
Against the odds, no one was hurt. When the sky was clear of falling fuel bombs, we trotted back to the drop zone. The oily tang of aviation fuel hung thick in the air. In groups of five or six, we put our shoulders against the few surviving blivets, and began trying to heave their rubbery bulk across the desert floor. It was so primitive, I felt as if we were in an episode of
The Flintstones
.
Bucky was heave-hoeing on my right. “We gotta talk to the riggers,” he grumbled through gritted teeth. “They’re gonna have to do better than that.”
The riggers got the parachute trouble ironed out, and our next drop went a whole lot better. But in the end, we decided the blivets were too unwieldly and difficult to transport once on the ground. So the blivet idea was out.
Then we looked at the potential of parachuting in, but decided the risk of injury was too high. Finally we settled on a combination of helicopters and fixed-wing planes. Air Force C-141 Starlifters would transport the mission elements from a base in Wadi Kena, Egypt, to Masirah, Oman, where the entire force would transload onto C-130 Talons, a combat configuration of the durable cargo plane. The Talons would then carry Delta, some Rangers for security, along with Navy helicopter refueling teams to Dasht-e-Kavir, our initial insertion point in a wide stretch of desert waste located sixty-five miles southeast of Tehran. We code-named the insertion point Desert One.
While Delta was en route, the plan called for eight RH-53s to launch from the
Nimitz
in the Persian Gulf. Once we linked up at Desert One, Air Force crews would refuel the helos by pumping fuel out of soft “bladders” carried into Iran aboard EC-130 cargo planes. Then Delta would transload to the helos and fly in them to a hide site in the mountains near Tehran, while the Talons exfiltrated back to Masirah. The following night, from the hide site, Delta would load onto trucks driven by Iranians recruited by the CIA. Farsi-speaking U.S. soldiers would ride along in the cabs to disable and detain any checkpoint guards who made the mistake of failing to let us pass. The rest of Delta, organized into Red, White, and Blue elements, would ride in the truck beds, concealed by facades built to look like stacked cargo on its way to market.
Then the violence would begin.
Near midnight, a small team of Delta operators carrying silencer-equipped .45 caliber grease guns would kill the guards manning two permanent posts on Roosevelt Avenue. Once at the embassy, the Red and Blue elements would silently scale the wall and drop down the other side. Those teams would move across the compound, neutralizing any opposition along the way, and position themselves at the chancery and other buildings that might hold hostages. My team, the “LZ Party,” would secure the soccer stadium across the street, making it ready for the 53s—everyone’s ride out of there. Once the Red and Blue elements were in place, Fast Eddie would blow the embassy wall, opening the path to the stadium. The White element would set up road blocks on Takht-e-Jamshid and keep them clear with machine guns and grenade launchers.
If the Iranians were able to quickly mobilize an armored assault, Bucky and Sergeant Major Forrest Foreman would call in covering fire from two AC-130 Spectre gunships that would by then be circling overhead. Meanwhile, my job was to call in the 53s. Because it provided extra protection for the hostages and rescue force, the stadium was to serve as the helo landing zone. Delta operators—two to a hostage—would shield them from hostile fire, hustle them from the embassy across Roosevelt Avenue and aboard the helos, rotors turning. To open the way, an operator nicknamed “Boris” would lay down clearing fire with an MAG-58 machine gun. A sniper by specialty and used to single-shot precision, Boris practiced for months with his new toy and fell in love with the MAG-58’s ability to wreak plain old havoc.
During all this, a Ranger unit would fly into Manzariyah, Iran, where it would take and hold an airfield. Once the helicopters arrived there with their load of rescuers and hostages, Air Force Starlifters would carry everyone—including the helo pilots, drivers, advance DoD agents, and translators—back to Masirah.
Five months of intensive scripting. Preparation down to the most minute detail. Dry run after dry run until Delta could have found its way through the embassy compound blindfolded. And still the plan bristled with contingencies. Murphy’s Law lurked at every turn.
AROUND CHRISTMASTIME 1979, another hostage, a woman, was interviewed on television. Her innocence struck me, the unfairness of her having her life stolen from her when she had done nothing wrong. Her interview brought into focus for me the plight of all fifty-three remaining hostages. To live in fear. To wonder if you’ll ever see your family again. To wonder if each morning is the last you’ll ever see.
None of us in Delta believed the U.S. could successfully negotiate the release of the hostages. Backed by the Ayatollah, the Iranian students were now locked in a macho standoff with America, the big kid on the block. To blink first would’ve been, in the Islamic mind, unthinkable. As long as they held the global limelight, as long as they held American prestige in their hands, the student rebels would hold our citizens prisoner.
Just after the embassy takeover, President Carter declared publicly that America wouldn’t do anything to endanger the lives of the hostages. What he should have said was: “We will go to any length to get our people back. All options are on the table.”
At the Farm, it didn’t build confidence in us that Carter was unwilling to state that publicly. Most of us saw him as a weak president before the hostage crisis. Now, all of us interpreted his public comments as revealing that he didn’t have the stomach for armed conflict, even if it meant the global humiliation of the nation he meant to lead.
It wasn’t just Delta who thought Carter lacked the mettle to order us in. Some intelligence agencies repeatedly told us, “You can rehearse all you want, but this thing is never going to go off.”
As a result, I believe those same agencies didn’t go after intelligence as hard as they might have under a different president. Their resources were already stretched keeping up with the trench-coat intrigue of the Cold War. Then, in December 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, further diluting the intelligence resources that could have been directed at Tehran.
As we continued to refine the mission plan, anticipation burned in my heart. I truly believed Delta would storm the embassy and bring home fifty-three Americans. At the same time, though, I worried about the unknown. The complexity of the problem—and thus of the plan—was unprecedented. With so many contingencies, we pegged the chance that something, and probably several things, would go wrong, at about 100 percent. Still, from end to end, the strategy we hammered out accounted for every known detail. We had practiced for six months. Pete knew every inch of the embassy corridors. Fast Eddie blew up his replica of the embassy wall so many times Charlie was tired of going out to watch him do it. And Boris fell so deeply in love with the violence of the MAG-58 I started to wonder whether any woman would ever be able to compete for his affections. The attitude of the men was,
If we’re going to do this thing, let’s go do it
.
At the Farm, the action officers were very concerned that Carter would draw out the embassy standoff until the Iranians executed a hostage. Then Delta would have to launch without the critical element of surprise. The Iranians would then have plenty of time to move the hostages, separate them into difficult-to-rescue groups, and harden more buildings in the embassy compound. We also worried that the hostages might attempt to escape, resulting in more American deaths.
I was disappointed in Jimmy Carter. I knew he was a man of faith, and I didn’t understand his interpretation of his God-given responsibility to defend the defenseless. We believed that ultimately, it would be events—and not his own courage—that would force him to act.
We were wrong. In the end, it was just the solar system.
IN LATE MARCH, a small CIA aircraft piloted by a legendary one-legged pilot named Jim Ryan flew secretly into Desert One to set up a covert landing strip. On board was another Special Ops veteran, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel John Carney. Landing under cover of darkness, Carney, Ryan, and a Vietnam Special Forces NCO named Bud embedded landing lights in the desert hardpack that could be remotely activated by the Eagle Claw landing force. With just the three of them flying, without cover or backup, deep into the Iranian interior, it was an amazingly brave act that impressed even the most hardened guys in the task force.
The hostages had been seized on November 4, 1979. We went into Iran on April 24, 1980. Carter gave the order only because Charlie Beckwith told him we were running out of time. Delta needed as many hours of darkness as possible to execute the mission and, as spring ticked toward summer, the span between sundown and sunup had contracted to the margins of acceptability. The clock, literally, had run out on Jimmy Carter.
On April 21, Delta rode C-141 Starlifters into the arid wastes of Egypt and bivouacked in the ramshackle remains of an old air base built in Wadi Kena by the Russians.
We still didn’t know exactly where the Iranians were holding the hostages, so we planned for the worst case scenario—that they were scattered in several locations throughout the embassy compound. Pete’s Red Element would hit the highest percentage spot—the chancery—then take down other buildings until they found all the hostages.
At the eleventh hour, we got a break. The night before the op was to launch, the CIA learned that the students were holding
all
the hostages in the chancery. In a scenario straight out of Hollywood, a Pakistani cook flying out of Iran told his seatmate that he knew the hostages were all in the main building. He worked at the American embassy, he explained as his seatmate listened with the wide-eyed interest of a tourist. But since the listener was actually a CIA agent (or so the story went) he also prodded gently at the edges of the cook’s story to test it for authenticity.
I was in the hangar when Charlie made the announcement: “All elements, adjust your plans and let’s make the chancery our primary target. If we get there and they’ve been moved, we’ll adjust again.”
The hangar hummed with the low rumble of men’s voices as the element leaders adapted to the new information. The Red and Blue assault elements would now converge on the chancery. If only part of the hostages were recovered there, the Blue element would move them to meet my element at the soccer stadium while the Red element hit other buildings.
I didn’t believe the Pakistani cook story—it was just too convenient. More likely the CIA was guarding its real sources. It didn’t matter, though; that we had a better fix on the hostages was the important thing. In any case, it didn’t change things for my element. And as I listened to Pete and Logan detail the changes in their plans, I felt a surge of confidence:
It’s coming together. We’re going to get these people and bring them home
.
APRIL 24, THE MORNING OF THE MISSION. We all slept as late as we could, which was only until 5 a.m. Immediately, we began to ready our gear. Sitting on my cot, I double-checked my weapons to make sure the wind-driven Egyptian sands hadn’t scoured them into junk. I didn’t like the idea of a jam in the middle of a shootout with the
Pasdaran
.
