On Wings of Eagles (32 page)

    raft!" The Shah has gone! Paul said it reminded him of the New Year's Day

    parade in Philadelphia. All cars were driving with their headlights on and

    most were hooting continuously. Many drivers pulled their windshield wipers

    forward, attached rags to them, and turned them on, so that they swayed

    from side to side, permanent mechanical flag-wavers. Truckloads of jubilant

    youths careened around the streets celebrating, and all over the city

    crowds were pulling down and smashing statues of the Shah. Bill wondered

    what the mobs would do next. This led hirn to wonder what the guards and

    the other prisoners would do next. In the hysterical release of all this

    pent-up Iranian emotion, would Americans become targets?

    He and Paul stayed in their cell for the rest of the day, trying to be

    inconspicuous. They lay on their bunks, talking desultorily. Paul smoked.

    Bill tried not to think about the terrifying scenes he had watched on TV,

    but the roar of that lawless multitude, the collective shout of

    revolutionary triumph, penetrated the prison walls and filled his ears,

    like the deafening crack and roll of nearby thunder a moment before the

    lightning strikes.

Two days later, on the moniing of January 18, a guard came to Cell Number 5

and said something in Farsi to Reza Neghabat, the former Deputy Minister.

Neghabat translated to Paul and Bill: "You must get your things together.

They are moving

YOU. -

"Where to?" Paul asked.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 195

"To another jail.-

    Alarm bells rang in Bill's mind. What kind of jail were they going to? The

    kind where people were tortured and killed? Would EDS be told where they

    had gone, or would the two of them simply disappear? This place was not

    wonderful, but it was the devil they knew.

    The guard spoke again, and Neghabat said: "He tells you not to be

    concerned, this is for your own good."

    It was the work of minutes to put together their toothbrushes, their shared

    shaver, and their few spare clothes. Then they sat and waited-for three

    hours.

    It was unnerving. Bill had got used to this jail, and-despite his

    occasional paranoi&--basically he trusted his cellmates. He feared the

    change would be for the worse.

    Paul asked Neghabat to try to get news of the move to EDS, maybe by bribing

    the colonel in charge of the jail.

    1lie cell father, the old man who had been so concerned for their welfare,

    was upset that they were leaving. He watched sadly as Paul took down the

    pictures of Karen and Ann Marie. Irnpulsively Paul gave the photographs to

    the old man, who was visibly moved and thanked him profusely.

    At last they were taken out into the courtyard and herded onto a minibus,

    along with half a dozen other prisoners from different parts of the jail.

    Bill looked around at the others, tying to figure out what they had in

    common. One was a Frenchman. Were all the foreigners being taken to a jail

    of their own, for their safety? But another was the burly Iranian who had

    been boss of the downstairs cell where they had spent their first night--a

    common criminal, Bill assumed.

    As the bus pulled out of the courtyard, Bill spoke to the Frenchman. "Do

    you know where we're going?"

"I am to be released," the Frenchman said.

    Bill's heart leaped. This was good news! Perhaps they were all to be

    released.

    He turned his attention to the scene in the streets. It was the first time

    for three weeks he had seen the outside world. The government buildings all

    around the Ministry of Justice were damaged: the mobs really had run wild.

    Burned cars and broken windows were everywhere. The streets were full of

    soldiers and tanks, but they were doing nodung--not maintairung order, not

    even controlling the traffic. It seemed to Bill only a matter of time

    before the weak Bakhtiar government would be overthrown.

196 Ken Follett

    What had happened to the EDS people-Taylor, Howell, Young, Gallagher, and

    Coburn? They had not appeared at the jail since the Shah left. Had they

    been forced to flee, to save their own lives? Somehow Bill was sure they

    were still in town, still trying to get him and Paul out of jail. He began

    to hope that this transfer had been arranged by them. Perhaps, instead of

    taking the prisoners to a different jail, the bus would divert and take

    them to the U.S. air base. The more he thought about it, the more he

    believed that everything had been arranged for their release. No doubt the

    American Embassy had realized, since the departure of the Shah, that Paul

    and Bill were in serious danger, and had at last got on the case with some

    real diplomatic muscle. The bus ride was a ruse, a cover story to get them

    out of the Ministry of Justice jail without arousing the suspicion of

    hostile Iranian officials such as Dadgar.

    The bus was heading north. It passed through districts with which Bill was

    familiar, and he began to feel safer as the turbulent soudi of the city

    receded behind him.

Also, the air base was to the north.

    The bus entered a wide square dominated by a huge structure like a

    fortress. Bill looked interestedly at the building. Its walls were about

    twenty-five feet high and dotted with guard towers and machine-gun

    emplacements. The square was full of Iranian women in chadors, the

    traditional black robes, all making a heck of a noise. Was this some kind

    of palace, or mosque? Or perhaps a military base?

The bus approached the fortress and slowed down.

Oh, no.

    A pair of huge steel doors was set centrally in the front. To Bill's

    horror, the bus drove up and stopped with its nose to the gateway.

This awesome place was the new prison, the new nightmare.

The gates opened and the bus entered.

    They were not going to the air base, EDS had not arranged a deal, the

    Embassy had not got moving, they were not going to be released.

    The bus stopped again. The steel doors closed behind it and a second pair

    of doors opened in front. The bus passed through and stopped in a massive

    compound dotted with buildings. A guard said something in Farsi, and all

    the prisoners stood up to get off the bus.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 197

    Bill felt like a disappointed child. Life is rotten, he thought. What did

    I do to deserve this?

What did I do?

"Don't drive so fast," said Simons.

Joe Poch6 said: "Do I drive unsafe?"

"No, I just don't want you violating the laws."

"What laws?"

"Just be careful."

Coburn interrupted: "We're there."

Pochd stopped the car.

    They all looked across the heads of the weird women in black and saw the

    vast fortress of the Gasr Prison.

    "Jesus Christ," said Simons. His deep, rough voice was tinged with awe.

    "Just look at that bastard."

    They all stared at the high walls, the enormous gates, the guard towers and

    the machine-gun nests.

Simons said: "That place is worse than the Alamo."

    It dawned on Coburn that their little rescue team could not attack this

    place, not without the help of the entire U.S. Army. The rescue they had

    planned so carefully and rehearsed so many times was now completely

    irrelevant. There would be no modifications or improvements to the plan, no

    new scenarios; the whole idea was dead.

They sat in the car for a while, each with his own thoughts.

"Who are those women?" Coburn wondered aloud.

-71bey have relatives in the jail," Poch6 explained.

    Coburn could hear a peculiar noise. "Listen, he said. "What is that?"

"The women," said PocM. "Wailing."

Colonel Simons had looked up at an impregnable fortress once before.

    He had been Captain Simons then, and his friends had called him Art, not

    Bull.

    It was October 1944. Art Simons, twenty-six years old, was commander of

    Company B, 6th Ranger Infantry Battalion. The Americans were winning the

    war in the Pacific, and were about to attack the Philippine Islands. Ahead

    of the invading U.S. forces, the 6th Rangers were already there, committing

    sabotage and mayhem behind enemy lines.

Company B landed on Homonhon Island in the Leyte Gulf and

198 Ken Folleu

found there were no Japanese on the island. Simons raised the Stars and

Stripes on a coconut palm in front of two hundred docile natives.

    That day a report came in that the Japanese garrison on nearby Suluan

    Island was massacring civilians. Simons requested permission to take

    Suluan. Permission was refused. A few days later he asked again. He was

    told that no ships could be spared to transport Company B across the water.

    Simons asked permission to use native transportation. This time he got the

    okay.

    Simons commandeered three native sailboats and eleven canoes and appointed

    himself Admiral of the Fleet. He sailed at two A.M. with eighty men. A

    storm blew up, seven of the canoes capsized, and Simons's fleet returned to

    shore with most of the navy swimming.

    They set off aq*n the next day. This time they sailed by daylight,

    and---since Japanese planes still controlled the air-.the men stripped off

    and concealed their uniforms and equipment in the bottoms of the boats, so

    that they would look like native fishermen. The ruse worked, and Company B

    made landfall on Suluan Island. Simons immediately reconnoitered the

    Japanese garrison.

That was when he looked up at an impregnable fortress.

    The Japanese were garrisoned at the south end of the island, in a

    lighthouse at the top of a three-hundred-foot coral cliff.

    On the west side a trail led halfway up the cliff to a steep flight of

    steps cut into the coral. The entire stairway and most of the trail were in

    full view of the sixty-foot lighthouse tower and du-ee west-facing

    buildings on the lighthouse platform. It was a perfect defensive position:

    two men could have held off five hundred on that flight of coral steps.

But there was always a way.

Simons decided to attack from the east, by scaling the cliff.

    The assault began at one A.M. on November 2. Simons and fourteen men

    crouched at the foot of the cliff, directly below the garrison. Their faces

    and hands were blacked: there was a bright moon and the terrain was as open

    as an Iowa prairie. For silence, they communicated by hand signals and wore

    their socks over their boots.

Simons gave the signal and they began to climb.

    IMe sharp edges of the coral sliced into the flesh of their fingers and the

    palms of their hands. In places, there were no footholds, and they had to

    go up climbing vines hand-over-hand.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 199

They were completely vulnerable: if one curious sentry should look over the

platform, down the east side of the cliff, he would see them instantly, and

could pick them off one by one--easy shooting.

    They were halfway up when the silence was rent by a deafening clang.

    Someone's rifle stock had banged against a coral cone. They all stopped and

    lay still against the face of the cliff. Simons held his breath and waited

    for the rifle shot from above that would begin the massacre. It never came.

After ten minutes they went on.

The climb took a full hour.

    Simons was first over the top. He crouched on the platform, feeling naked

    in the bright moonlight. No Japanese were visible, but he could hear voices

    from one of the low buildings. He trained his rifle on the lighthouse.

    The rest of the men began to reach the platform. The attack was to start as

    soon as they got the machine gun set up.

    Just as the gun came over the edge of the cliff, a sleepy Japanese soldier

    wandered into view, heading for the latrine. Simons signaled to his point

    guard, who shot the Japanese; and the firefight began.

    Simons turned immediately to the machine gun. He held one leg and the

    ammunition box while the gunner held down the other leg and fired. The

    astonished Japanese ran out of the buildings straight into the deadly hail

    of bullets.

    Twenty minutes later it was all over. Some fifteen of the enemy had been

    killed. Simons's squad suffered two casualties, neither fatal. And the

    -impregnable- fortress had been taken.

There was always a way.

    SEVEN

The American Embassy's Volkswagen minibus threaded its way through the

streets of Tehran, heading for Gasr Square. Ross Perot sat inside. It was

January 19, the day after Paul and Bill were moved, and Perot was going to

visit them in the new jail.

It was a little crazy.