Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent (16 page)
In the run-up to the mission, we all grew beards. We dressed in Levis and jump boots, field jackets dyed black and black watch caps to match. We wore no rank or military insignia of any kind. The only exterior sign that we were Americans was a small American flag sewn on the sleeve of each of our jackets. Those would remain covered with a Velcro patch until we reached the hostages. Then each operator would tear off the patch to show the hostages that their country had finally come to take them home. To comply with the Geneva Convention, we each wore our dog tags inside our t-shirts and carried our U.S. military I.D.s.
Other than those few signs that we were on legitimate U.S. government business, we could’ve been a crew of especially well-conditioned longshoremen or a gang of inner-city thugs.
At about 6 a.m., I was doing final checks on my gear when Charlie walked up to me. “Jerry, I’m going to get all these men together in a few minutes and I want you to say a prayer before we launch.”
I was astonished. Not since he and I talked about our mothers had Charlie expressed any interest at all in religion in general or my faith in particular. In fact, most of the time, I was pretty sure he had no confidence in me at all.
At least once during the planning of Eagle Claw, he had fired me. Of course, he had fired Bucky, too. We were overseeing air-drop operations at the Farm when Charlie got right in our faces: “You’re both incompetent and unprofessional! You’re fired!” He didn’t just mean off the mission. He meant out of Delta. Bucky and I looked at each other:
Fired? Again?
Charlie was always firing somebody then forgetting about it five minutes later. I was used to his bluster. But even after he put me in charge of the LZ Team when there were other, more senior officers available, I still wondered where I stood with him. Now he’d startled me with a side of himself I never dreamed existed: Charlie, who depended on Charlie and whatever parts of his vision he could instill in others, conceded that he and his men would do well this time to enlist the help of a Higher Authority.
“Okay, Colonel,” I told him. “I’ll be ready.”
About an hour later, Charlie gathered Delta in the hangar in a loose formation and climbed up on a makeshift wooden platform. I walked up to the front and stood off to Charlie’s left. Dressed like the rest of us and looking as grimly confident as I’d ever seen him, Charlie addressed the group. “We’re launching this operation to bring home fifty-three Americans and I don’t intend to come back until we’ve got every one of them.” His voice echoed slightly, amplified by the high contours of the hangar. “We’ve done all the preparations. We’re ready for this mission. I have confidence in every one of you that you’ll do your job and do it well.”
Then he said: “I’m going to ask Jerry to come up here and say a prayer before we launch.”
Before I could begin speaking, General Vaught stepped forward. “I want to quote some Scripture,” the general said. “In the book of Isaiah, the Scripture says, ‘And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And Isaiah said, “Here am I! Send me.”’ Men, your country’s counting on you. You’ve stepped forward and said, ‘Here am I, send me.’ God bless you.”
Vaught’s words from one of my favorite passages of the Bible were a special blessing to me. And for the second time in less than an hour, I was surprised to find faith at work. I knew there were other men of faith in Delta, but no one really talked about it. We didn’t have an active Bible study and we didn’t have a chaplain. What we had—and what Special Forces had in general—was a culture of self-reliance.
But now, faced with a mission in which obstacles and danger hovered over every phase, even the senior officers among us swept self-reliance aside and acknowledged God.
Vaught nodded at me to begin. I looked out at Pete and Bucky, Jim and Logan, Ish and Jack, all of them. By that time, they were like family to me. They were my brothers. I fervently wanted God to protect them. “You know, about three thousand years ago right in this very desert where we’re standing,” I began, “God led the Israelites out of bondage. They traveled across this same desert to a new freedom. And I believe God has called us to lead fifty-three Americans out of bondage and back to freedom.”
Then I asked them to bow their heads and pray with me. “Almighty God, we’ve placed ourselves in your hands. And we ask you to lead us and guide us so that we might liberate our fellow Americans. We ask for your hand of mercy to be upon us. We ask for wisdom and strength and courage. We ask you to keep us safe, and to keep safe the people we’re going after. Bring us all home to our families. And I pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”
I raised my head. Then Bucky stepped up on the platform and surprised me for the third time that afternoon. “Okay, men, we’re going to sing God Bless America.”
And we did. With gusto. I looked out at Delta and didn’t see a single man with his mouth shut. After the last notes, a loud shout went up. Each man walked back to his cot, grabbed his gear, crossed the tarmac and marched into the back of the C-141.
IN THE STARLIFTERS, we flew from Wadi Kena to Masirah, Oman, which we immediately renamed Misery since we spent the whole afternoon trying to hide from the scorching Arab sun. The stopover also gave us plenty of time to think.
I knew I might not make it back alive. But I was less worried about dying than, in the crush of a complex mission, being left behind in Iran. The Long Walk in the North Carolina woods was one thing, but I dang sure didn’t want to have to walk to Pakistan.
I didn’t expect much resistance in my part of the operation. The Revolutionary Guard might have anticipated the Americans using the soccer stadium as a staging point, but our best intel showed they might post a couple of guards there at most. If those guards surrendered under our assault, we would flex-tie them and let them watch us evacuate the hostages. If they resisted, we would kill them. I didn’t have a problem with that. We hadn’t gotten all dressed up for nothing.
At dusk, we transloaded our gear onto Air Force C-130 Combat Talons, barrel-chested, reliable birds that needed only a short roll to get airborne and could stop on a dime. These Talons were also equipped with the terrain following radar and special navigation gear. We needed both to fly in low over the coast, undetected by Iran’s defense radar, then hug the jagged walls of the canyons the pilots planned to use as their route into the interior.
Finally, the Talons launched from Misery. Charlie, Bucky, and Logan went out on the first bird. Jim Knight, Wayne Long, and I sat near the front of the second. For four hours, we flew through the night “dark-horse”—no external lights—our faces lit only with the red lights that glowed inside the cabin. All the jump seats were removed from the aircraft to make room for Delta and our gear. But the Air Force had been kind enough to line the floor with mattresses to block out the cold and give us at least some cushion against the hard ride.
There were no pep talks or last-minute tactical reviews. The only sound I heard was the propellers’ drone as we sat quietly against the bulkheads, each man tending his own inner fires.
We skimmed low across the coast of Iran then climbed through known gaps in Iranian radar to navigate the maze of desert gorges leading to Desert One. Packed in shoulder to shoulder, Jim, Wayne, and I rolled and leaned in unison as the pilot flew “nap of the earth,” clinging to the dark canyon contours like a shadow. Soon I heard the engines throttle back and felt landing gear thump into place.
The Talon’s wheels slammed down hard on the desert floor, bottoming out the hydraulics, and rattling my teeth. We bounced once and got briefly airborne before hitting the deck hard again. The pilot reversed thrust. We taxied to a stop and the loadmaster dropped the rear ramp.
I expected to look out and see only a wide expanse of moonlit desert. Instead, I saw that the world was on fire.
FROM INSIDE THE TALON, I could see a giant fireball blazing about a kilometer away. My mind flashed to the worst-case scenario: the Iranians somehow discovered the mission and had been lying in wait. I listened over the prop noise for the rattle of automatic weapons, but it didn’t come. Because we rode up near the cockpit, I was among the last to deplane. Bucky and Logan were waiting for me. Logan had a bloody gash on his nose, which was already muddy with the fine dust that covered his face.
“Welcome to World War III!” Bucky said, grinning.
Behind us, the four tanker birds began landing in sequence, each one multiplying the noise and sandstorm that now swirled around us.
“What’s going on!” I asked Bucky, yelling to be heard.
He grinned. “Ish and the Rangers fired up a fuel tanker!”
The rest of the story came out in bits and pieces. As the first C-130 approached Desert One, the pilots spotted a fuel tanker rolling down the dirt road that bisected the landing area. Trailing it was a small pick-up. The Talon circled once, landed, dropped the ramp. Ish jumped on a Yamaha motorcycle and a Ranger named Rubio, armed with a light anti-tank weapon, jumped on behind him. They raced down the ramp, followed by a Delta/Ranger security team in a Jeep. As soon as Ish pulled within range, Rubio fired the LAW and the tanker burst like a supernova.
“They chased the other truck, but it got away!” Bucky shouted.
We agreed there wasn’t much to worry about. A fuel tanker with an escort rolling through the Iranian wastes at midnight? Smugglers, probably. They wouldn’t be likely to alert authorities. Even if they did, we’d be long gone before the Iranians could mobilize to investigate.
The moon glowed bright, but with the tanker shooting flames three hundred feet into the night, Desert One was lit up like a Midnight Madness sale at a used car lot. Now, as Delta operators began the heavy work of dragging a massive cargo net off the second Talon, their shadows flickered off the white desert floor. The net would be transloaded to the helos, then used to cover them at the hide site. Dust devils twisted up off the desert floor as the C-130s parked and kept their props turning. Eddies of fine sand stung my eyes and I moved away from the Talons’ deafening thrum. Then, strangely, I could have sworn I heard the high faint sound of . . .
Women.
Crying women.
I was surprised to find out that the smugglers weren’t our only visitors. Before Ish’s security team could finish setting up a perimeter, a passenger bus—
a passenger bus!
—also trundled across our landing site. The security team popped off warning shots then had to fire into the engine to stop the bus. Onboard were about forty-five people, mostly women, old folks, and kids. A Delta operator now guarded them closely, but the women, naturally, were terrified, and every now and then one would cut loose in hysterical wails.
We picked Desert One for its remoteness. I mean, the place was the definition of
bleak
. Now, past 9 p.m. on what should have been an unremarkable date in April, we had encountered something in the neighborhood of
fifty people
. It didn’t matter, though, because we planned for this problem. Anyone we encountered at Desert One would be hauled out on the C-130’s then returned to Manzariyah the next night. People have suggested the mission planners were such buffoons that we hadn’t dreamed we might encounter interlopers at the landing site. That’s simply not true. We expected the unexpected, and it materialized.
I was discussing this with Bucky when Charlie walked over. “On our way in here, Vaught called about the helos. Eight off the deck, he said.”
Excitement surged through me. All eight helos had launched successfully off the
Nimitz
. Most of us weren’t as worried about the Iranians as we were about the helos. Vietnam proved that the rotor driven birds were notoriously cranky. For this mission we needed six working RH-53s. So far, we still had eight.
Now Charlie radioed Vaught in Wadi Kena: “What’s the status on the helos?”
“Fifty minutes out and low on fuel,” came the reply.
A little late, but not too bad.
Delta began to break into our element groups in preparation for onloading to the helos. Boris and Fast Eddie were with me. They sat down with the rest of the LZ element to wait for their ride to the hide site. The fire-lit sandstorm swirled around us all. Every man had extra pockets sewn into his jacket lining and we all bristled with extra clips, rope, carabiners, water, and assorted widgets. Prior to leaving Wadi Kena, I weighed every man to make sure we didn’t overload the helos. Fast Eddie packed so many explosive goodies into his jacket he tipped the scales at three hundred twenty-four pounds. Now, sitting in the desert, he looked like the Michelin Man.
Soon the tankers were set, the cargo net was set, the onload groups were set, and there was nothing left to do but wait. And the helos were now officially late.
We didn’t worry much at first—they’d even arrived late during rehearsals. Still, time was critical: we had to get off the deck here soon in order to reach the hide sites before sunrise. Hedging our bets, Bucky searched me out. “Jerry, if we get too far behind schedule, we’re going to need a different hide site,” he said. “Get the map out and start looking.”
I did, poring over the pictured wasteland until I found a little niche in the side of a mountain that looked flat enough to land the helos. I wasn’t comfortable with it. We had no way to recon it, the way Dick Meadows had reconned the approved hide sites. There was really no way to know whether we’d find ourselves landing on top of some kind of goat-herding village. But it was our only option.
I circled the site on the map and showed it to Bucky.
He looked at it then stared off to the south. “I wish to hell they’d get here,” he said.
DELTA SPENT THE NEXT HALF HOUR straining to hear the faintest chop of helo blades over the collective roar of the Talons and refueling birds. Minutes ticked away, compressing the mission timeline. If we waited much longer the helos wouldn’t be able to refuel and reach the hide site before first light. That increased the odds that our armada of CH-53s would be spotted from the ground and reported to Tehran. It wasn’t hopeless by any means. Somebody in the Eagle Claw task force had repainted the helos in the same colors as the Iranian chopper fleet. Still, arriving under cover of darkness was the highly preferred option. Now that was going to be a squeeze play at best.
