day would come, stood in the rear with Carney and the plane’s loadmaster, who informed them when they entered Iranian airspace. Fitch told one of his men, “Pass the word. We’re in Iran.” It didn’t get much of a response. If there was one character trait these men shared, it was professional calm. After six months of practice runs this method of deployment had become so routine that it took effort to remember that this time it was for real. Their attitude for the most part was,
They had taken off at dusk from the tiny island of Masirah, off the coast of Oman at the southeastern tip of the Arabian peninsula. One hour behind them would come five more C-130s, one carrying most of the remainder of Beckwith’s assault force, which now numbered one hundred and thirty-two men, and four “bladder planes,” each equipped with two gigantic rubber balloons filled with fuel, carrying a total of eighteen thousand gallons. One of the four bladder planes was specially outfitted for eavesdropping and communications and was capable of listening in on Iranian telecommunications.
Days earlier the entire force had flown to an abandoned Soviet airstrip in Wadi Kena, Egypt, on big air force transports. His big mission under way, Beckwith was in full-bore command mode; abrupt, decisive, and aggressively irritable.
They spent a few days at the Egyptian airstrip, which had been amply outfitted for their arrival. There were two refrigerators and pallets full of beer and soda. Much beer was consumed, the first time in any of the soldiers’ memories that they had been supplied free drinks by the U.S. Army. When the refrigerators were finally emptied of beer, they were stocked with blood.
Waiting there, the men were given a new CIA briefing about the location of the hostages in the compound. The agency claimed that, by chance, a cook who had been working there all these months had left the country and happened to sit on a plane next to a CIA officer…none of the men believed it. Many of the men suspected that a Red Cross visit to the embassy ten days earlier had included a CIA agent. No matter how obtained, the information was specific and critically useful. A larger number of the hostages were in the chancery now than had been thought, the bulk of them on the first floor but small numbers on the top floor and basement. Delta learned which hostages were in which rooms, that there were just sixteen guards in the building, and where the guards were usually positioned at night. The other hostages were in the Mushroom Inn and ambassador’s house, but not as many as had been thought. There were fifty guards posted on the surrounding grounds. Most of the information corresponded with what Delta had learned on its own, but it was much more detailed. The team leaders made some adjustments, assigning more men to Fitch’s White Element, which would take down the chancery.
On the afternoon of the mission the shaggy-haired, unshaven force assembled in a warehouse, where Major Jerry Boykin had offered a prayer. Tall, lean, with a long dark beard, he stood at a podium before a plug box where electrical wires intersected to form a big cross on the wall. Behind him, taped to the wall, was a poster- sized sheet containing photographs of their countrymen held hostage. Boykin chose a passage from the First Book of Samuel about the slaying of Goliath—the small American force could see itself as the underdog on this bold thrust into the heart of Iran.
“And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in the forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell on his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone…” Then Bucky Burruss, with a deep, commanding baritone, led the men in singing “God Bless America.” The chorus of that American folk anthem rang stirringly off the distant hangar’s bare walls.
They had then flown to Masirah, where they hunkered in tents through a bright and broiling afternoon, fighting off large stinging flies and waiting impatiently for dusk. They had no replacements, so they were forbidden from playing their favorite game, “combat soccer,” a full-contact no-rules version of the universal sport.
It would be a short hop over the gulf and then a four-hour flight to Desert One, crossing the southern border in darkness and hugging the mountain and desert terrain for seven hundred miles to avoid being detected by radar. The route had been calculated to exploit gaps in Iran’s coastal defenses and to avoid passing over military bases and populated areas. The planes were equipped with the air force’s most sophisticated ground- hugging, “terrain-avoidance” gear and navigation systems. Major Wayne Long, Delta’s intelligence officer, was at a console in the front of the telecommunications bird with a National Security Agency linguist, who was monitoring Iranian telecommunications for any sign that the aircraft had been discovered and the mission compromised. There was none.
Not long after the lead plane departed Masirah, eight RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters left the
The final decision to launch had come only after Dick Meadows, Delta’s advance man, broadcast a signal from Tehran earlier that day that all was ready. He had returned to the city in his disguise as an Irish businessman and met up with “Fred,” his Iranian-American guide and translator—the same young airman volunteer who had helped the CIA agent code-named “Bob,”—and with two American soldiers who had entered Iran posing as businessmen, one Irish and the other German. They had spent that day personally inspecting all of the various hide sites: the embassy, the Foreign Ministry, and the soccer stadium.
As the lead plane pushed on well into Iran, Major Burruss, Beckwith’s deputy, was on the second C-130, sprawled on a mattress near the front of the plane beside Major Pete Schoomaker, leader of the Red Element. Burruss was still somewhat startled to find himself on the actual mission, although there was still no telling if they were going through with it. One of the things President Carter had insisted upon was the option to call off the raid right up to the last minute, right up to the moment they stormed the embassy walls. A satellite radio and relay system at Wadi Kena had been put in place to make sure they could get real-time instructions from Washington. Another presidential directive concerned the use of nonlethal riot control agents. Given that the shah’s occasionally violent methods against crowds during the revolution were now exhibit A in Iran’s human rights case against the former regime and America, Carter was understandably concerned about killing Iranians, so he had insisted that if a hostile mob formed during the raid that Delta first attempt to control it without shooting people. Burruss could appreciate the political logic, but from a practical standpoint he considered it ridiculous. He and his men were going to lay siege to a guarded compound in the middle of a city of more than five million people, most of them presumed to be aggressively hostile. It was unbelievably risky; everyone on the mission knew there was a very good chance they would never get home alive. And Carter had the idea that this desperately tiny, daring, vastly outnumbered force was first going to try holding off the city with methods of nonviolent crowd control? Burruss understood where the president was coming from on this, but with their hides so nakedly on the line, shouldn’t they be free to decide how best to defend themselves? He had complained about the requirement to General Jones, who said he would look into it, but the answer had come back, “No, the president insists.” So Burruss had made his own peace with the requirement. He had with him one tear gas grenade, one, which he intended to throw as soon as necessary and then use its smoke as a marker to call in devastatingly lethal 40mm AC-130 gunship fire.
Burruss was so keenly aware of the risks on this mission that he had a kind of admiration for the navy pilot who had chickened out back in November, the one Beckwith had wanted court-martialed. The man had been kept isolated on an aircraft carrier ever since. He figured it took a special kind of courage to admit you were that afraid, even when the circumstances clearly warranted fear. Burruss was not built that way. Delta was made up of men who would have felt crushed not to be included on this mission, precisely because it was so hazardous. They were ambitious for glory. They had volunteered to serve with Beckwith and had undergone the hardships and trials of the selection process so that they would be included on improbable exploits like this. Men read about wildly heroic feats in history and sometimes wished they had been alive to take part, and here was such a moment, now, without question. If they pulled it off, it would go down as one of the boldest maneuvers in military history. All over
