On Wings of Eagles (20 page)

    jump out and stand in front of the van. The back door of the van would open

    and Ralph Boulware would get out, also with a shotgun under his coat.

    So far, nothing out of the ordinary would appear to have happened.

    With Simons and Boulware ready to give covering fire, Ron Davis would get

    out of the van, climb on the roof, step from the

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 123

roof to the top of the fence, then jump down into the courtyard. Davis was

chosen for this role because he was the youngest and fittest, and the

jump~-a twelve-foot drop-would be hard to take.

    Coburn would follow Davis over the fence. He was not in good shape, but his

    face was more familiar than any other to Paul and Bill, so they would know

    as soon as they saw him that they were being rescued.

Next, Boulware would lower a ladder into the courtyard.

    Surprise might take them this far, if they were quick; but at this point

    the guards were sure to react. Simons and Boulware would now fire their

    shotguns into the air.

    The prison guards would hit the dirt, the Iranian prisoners would run

    around in terrified confusion, and the rescuers would have gained a few

    more seconds.

    What if there were interference from outside the jail, Simons asked-from

    police or soldiers in the street, revolutionary rioters or just

    public-spirited passers-by?

    There would be two flanking guards, they decided; one at either end of the

    street. They would arrive in a car a few seconds before the van. They would

    be armed with handguns. Their job was simply to stop anyone who came to

    interfere with the rescue. Jim Schwebach and Pat Sculley were norriinated.

    Coburn was sure Schwebach would not hesitate to shoot people if necessary;

    and Sculley, although he had never in his life shot anyone, had become so

    surprisingly ice-cool during the discussion that Coburn supposed he would

    be equally ruthless.

    Glenn Jackson would drive the car: the question of Glenn the Baptist

    shooting people would not arise.

    Meanwhile, in the confusion in the courtyard, Ron Davis would provide close

    cover, dealing with any nearby guards, while Coburn cut Paul and Bill out

    of the herd and urged them up the ladder. They would jump from the top of

    the fence to the roof of the van, then from there to the ground, and

    finally inside the van. Coburn would follow, then Davis.

    "Hey, I'm taking the biggest risk of all," said Davis. "Hell, I'm first in

    and last out-maximum exposure."

"No shit," said Boulware. "Next question."

    Simons would get into the front of the van, Boulware would jump in the back

    and close the door, and Pochd would drive them away at top speed.

124 Ken Follett

    Jackson, in the car, would pick up the flanking guards, Schwebach and

    Sculley, and follow the van.

    During the getaway, Boulware would be able to shoot through the back window

    of the van, and Simons would cover the road ahead. Any really serious

    pursuit would be taken care of by Sculley and Schwebach in the car.

    At a prearranged spot they would dump the van and split up in several cars,

    then head for the air base at Doshen Toppeh, on the outskirts of the city.

    A U.S. Air Force jet would fly them out of Iran: it would be Perot's job to

    arrange that somehow.

    At the end of the evening they had the skeleton of a workable plan.

    Before they left, Simons told them not to talk about the rescue -not to

    their wives, not even to each other-outside the lake house. They should

    each think up a cover story to explain why they would be going out of the

    U.S. in a week or so. And, he added, looking at their full ashtrays and

    their ample waisdines, each man should devise his own exercise program for

    getting in shape.

    'Me rescue was no longer a zany idea in Ross Perot's mind: it was real.

Jay Coburn was the only one who made a serious effort to deceive his wife.

He went back to the Hilton Inn and called Liz. "Hi, honey."

"Hi, Jay! Where are you?"

"I'm in Paris . . .-

Joe Poch6 also called his wife from the Hilton.

"Where are you?" she asked him.

"I'm in Dallas."

"What are you doing?"

"Working at EDS, of course."

    "Joe, EDS in Dallas has been calling me to ask where you are! "

    Poch6 realized that someone who was not in on the secret of the rescue team

    had been trying to locate him. "I'm not working with those guys, I'm

    working directly with Ross. Somebody forgot to tell someone else, that's

    all."

"What are you working on?"

    "It has to do with some things that have to be done for Paul and Bill."

"Oh . . . "

When Boulware got back to the home of the friends with

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 125

whom his family was staying, his daughters, Stacy Elaine and Kecia Nicole,

were asleep. His wife said: "How was your day?"

    I've been planning a jailbreak, Boulware thought. He said: "Oh, okay. 11

She looked at him strangely. "Well, what did you do?"

"Nothing much."

    "For someone who was doing nothing much, you've been pretty busy. I called

    two or three time"ey said they couldn't find you."

"I was around. Hey, I think I'd like a beer."

    Mary Boulware was a warm, open woman to whom deceit was foreign. She was

    also intelligent. But she knew that Ralph had some firm ideas about the

    roles of husband and wife. The ideas might be old-fashioned, but they

    worked in this marriage. If there was an area of his business life that he

    didn't want to tell her about, well, she wasn't about to fight him over it.

"One beer, coming up . . ."

    Jim Schwebach did not try to fool his wife, Rachel. She had already

    outguessed him. When Schwebach had got the original call from Pat Sculley,

    Rachel had asked: "Who was that?"

    "That was Pat Sculley in Dallas. They want me to go down there and work on

    a study in Europe."

    Rachel had known Jim for almost twenty years--they had started dating when

    he was sixteen, she eighteen--and she could read his mind. She said:

    "They're going back over there to get those guys out of jail."

    Schwebach said feebly: "Rachel, you don't understand, I'm out of that line

    of business, I don't do that anymore."

"That's what you're going to do . . ."

    Pat Sculley could not lie successfully even to his colleagues, and with his

    wife he did not try. He told Mary everything.

Ross Perot told Margot everything.

    And even Simons, who had no wife to pester him, broke security by telling

    his brother Stanley in New Jersey ...

    It proved equally impossible to keep the rescue plan from other senior

    executives at EDS. The first to figure it all out was Keane Taylor, the

    tall, irritable, well-dressed ex-marine whom Perot had turned around in

    Frankfurt and sent back to Tehran.

    Since that New Year's Day, when Perot had said: "I'm sending you back to do

    something very important, " Taylor had been sure that a secret operation

    was being planned; and it did not take him long to figure out who was doing

    it.

126 Ken Follen

    One day, on the phone from Tehran to Dallas, be had asked for Ralph

    Boulware.

"Boulware's not here," he was told.

"When will he be back?"

"We're not sure."

    Taylor, never a man to suffer fools gladly, had raised his voice. "So,

    where has he gone?"

"We're not sure. 11

"What do you mean, you're not sure?"

"He's on vacation."

    Taylor had known Boulware for years. It had been Taylor who gave Boulware

    his first management opportunity. They were drinking partners. Many times

    Taylor, drinking himself sober with Ralph in the early hours of the

    morning, had looked around and realized his was the only white face in an

    all-black bar. Those nights they would stagger back to whichever of their

    homes was nearest, and the unlucky wife who welcomed them would call the

    other and say: "It's okay, they're here."

    Yes, Taylor knew Boulware; and he found it hard to believe that Ralph would

    go on vacation while Paul and Bill were still in jail.

    The next day he asked for Pat Sculley, and got the same runaround.

    Boulware and Sculley on vacation while Paul and Bill were in jail?

Bullshit.

The next day he asked for Coburn.

Same story.

    It was beginning to make sense: Coburn had been with Perot when Perot sent

    Taylor back to Tehran. Coburn, Director of Personnel, evacuation mastermind

    , would be the right choice to organize a secret operation.

    Taylor and Rich Gallagher, the other EDS man still in Tehran, started

    making a list.

    Boulware, Sculley, Coburn, Ron Davis, Jim Schwebach, and Joe Pochd were all

    "on vacation."

That group had a few things in common.

    When Paul Chiapparone had first come to Tehran he found that EDS's

    operation there was not organized to his liking: it had been too loose, too

    casual, too Persian. The Ministry contract had not been running to time.

    Paul had brought in a number of tough, down-to-earth EDS troubleshooters,

    and together they had

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 127

knocked the business back into shape. Taylor himself had been one of Paul's

tough guys. So had Bill Gaylord. And Coburn, and Sculley, and Boulware, and

all the guys who were now "on vacation. "

    The other thing they had in common was that they were all members of the

    EDS Tehran Roman Catholic Sunday Brunch Poker School. Like Paul and Bill,

    like Taylor himself, they were Catholics, with the exception of Joe Pochd

    (and of Glenn Jackson, the only rescue-team member Taylor failed to spot).

    Each Sunday they had met at the Catholic Mission in Tehran. After the

    service they would all go to the house of one of them for brunch. And while

    the wives were cooking and the children playing, the men would get into a

    poker game.

    There was nothing like poker for revealing a man's true character.

    If, as Taylor and Gallagher now suspected, Perot had asked Coburn to put

    together a team of completely trustworthy men, then Coburn was sure to have

    picked them from the poker school.

    "Vacation my ass," Taylor said to Gallagher. "Tilis is a rescue team."

The rescue team returned to the lake house on the morning of January 4 and

went over the whole plan again.

    Simons had endless patience for detail, and he was determined to prepare

    for every possible snag that anyone could dream up. He was much helped by

    Joe Poch6, whose tireless questioningwearying though it was, to Coburn at

    least-was in fact highly creative, and led to numerous improvements of the

    rescue scenario.

    First, Simons was dissatisfied with the arrangements for protecting the

    rescue team's flanks. The idea of Schwebach and Sculley, short but deadly,

    just plain shooting anyone who tried to interfere was crude. It would be

    better to have some kind of diversion, to distract any police or military

    types who might be nearby. Schwebach suggested setting fire to a car down

    the street from the jail. Simons was not sure that would be enough-he

    wanted to blow up a whole building. Anyway, Schwebach was given the job of

    designing a time bomb.

    They thought of a small precaution that would shave a second or two off the

    time for which they would be exposed. Simons would get out of the van some

    distance from the jail and walk up

128 Ken Follett

to the fence. If all was clear he would give a hand signal for the van to

approach.

    Another weak element of the plan was the business of getting out of the van

    and climbing on its roof. All that jumping out and scrambling up would use

    precious seconds. And would Paul and Bill, after weeks in prison, be fit

    enough to climb a ladder and jump off the roof of a van?

    All sorts of solutions were canvassed--an extra ladder, a mattress on the

    ground, grab handles on the roof-but in the end the team came up with a

    simple solution: they would cut a hole in the roof of the van and get in

    and out through that. Another little refinement, for those who had to jump

    back down through the hole, was a mattress on the floor of the van to

    soften their landing.

    The getaway journey would give them time to alter their appearances. In

    Tehran they planned to wear jeans and casual jackets, and they were all

    beginning to grow beards and mustaches to look less conspicuous there; but

    in the van they would carry business suits and electric shavers, and before

    switching to the cars they would all shave and change their clothes.

    Ralph Boulware, independent as ever, did not want to wear jeans and a