helicopter rides in darkness. All of them complained about the marine pilots’ skills. The fliers were being asked to do things they had never tried. They were working hard to learn and adapt. When the ever changing plan called for them to land in a soccer stadium in Tehran, they began practicing blacked-out landings at a football stadium at Twenty-nine Palms, the marine base in California. The newfangled night-vision goggles, which enabled them to fly without any lights, were so heavy that after an hour or two it became difficult to hold their heads upright. Everyone in the unit had a stiff neck. Then one of the pilots hit upon the idea of fastening a garter belt to the roof of the cockpit just over his head and latching the goggles to it so that the belt took some of the weight. The garter’s flexibility allowed him to turn and bend his head. It worked so well that the pilots cleaned out the PX at the nearest military base. To practice night flying over a city without land lights, they got permission to practice low-level flights over San Diego.
Beckwith remained skeptical about the CIA’s “Bob” and was unwilling despite CIA assurances to trust his elite, handpicked force to this swarthy, slippery-seeming foreigner. He began making plans to get one of his own men into the city in advance of the mission.
The way things were shaping up, however, it appeared less likely than ever that a rescue mission would be attempted. Iran’s newly elected president had turned up the heat on the students and appeared headed for a showdown with them over the hostages. Bani-Sadr publicly called them “children” who behave “like a government within a government.” When they responded by condemning one of Bani-Sadr’s cabinet as an American spy and had him arrested, the president intervened to have the man released and condemned the students as “lawless dictators.”
The students were feeling the pressure. Near the end of January three of their star hostages were caught trying to escape. Joe Subic had cooked up a half-baked plan to make ropes and climb out of a second-floor window of the ambassador’s house the next time he and his roommates, Kevin Hermening and Steve Lauterbach, were taken for showers. He had a vague notion about stealing a car and driving to Turkey. Hermening was excited about it and helped make the ropes, and Lauterbach, while filled with reservation, went along with the plan. They didn’t get anywhere. On the day of their attempt, all three were caught with their ropes and marched off to stretches of solitary confinement.
Lauterbach was locked in a basement room of the chancery with his hands tightly cuffed. Sitting alone in the darkness for days, his hands aching badly, he grew increasingly despondent. His guards had given him a water glass embossed with the embassy’s emblem, and it began beckoning him. In the deeper sense, he was not suicidal. He loved life and wanted to keep on living it, but not here, not in pain, alone, with no idea of when or if his circumstances would ease. He was angry. Hurting himself was the only way he had with which to lash out at his captors. On the fourth day he stopped arguing with himself, broke the glass, and slashed his wrists.
He didn’t make a sound. When a guard entered his room some time later he found Lauterbach woozy and bloody. He was rushed to a hospital, startled at how alarmed and angry his captors were. There was plenty of blood but the wounds were not deep enough to have severed his arteries. A doctor patched him up, and after that Lauterbach’s treatment dramatically improved. His captors were apparently afraid that word of his suicide attempt would put the lie to their claims of treating the hostages as “guests.” He was given a room of his own on the upper floor of the chancery, one with a couch made up as a bed. His guards became solicitous, even kind.
7. SAVAK! SAVAK!
Inside Iran, the students remained extraordinarily popular. Some were offered positions in the government, others received offers of marriage in the mail. But at least some of the group’s leaders wanted out. Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, the author of the takeover, felt trapped. He believed they had backed themselves into a corner by demanding the shah’s return, a condition they had never seriously expected would be met. Now even if they had wanted to back down they could not, because their continued occupation of the U.S. embassy gave leverage to hard-line clerical elements opposed to the government—no mullahs had been allowed to run for office. With their hostages, the students had become pawns in the battle over the future of Iran.
Their frustration boiled over on the night of February 5, in what would be the most terrifying night yet for the fifty-three American hostages.
John Limbert and the others in the chancery basement were awakened by a sudden clamor. Guards in black ski masks moved through the rooms with weapons, shouting in English, “SAVAK! SAVAK! Everybody up and out! Up and out
Limbert was awake anyway. He was reading
“Okay!” one of them demanded. “Come on, get out! Get up!”
He stood and was blindfolded and then led down the corridor with the rest.
The scene in the Mushroom Inn across the compound was the same. A masked guard entered the room shared by Joe Hall and the ailing Richard Queen. “Get your hands up!” he shouted, waking them. “Do not speak! Stand up!” Out in the larger room, many of the captives, similarly roused from sleep and used to the rituals of their imprisonment, obligingly tied on their own blindfolds.
Chuck Scott asked for his hands to be unbound so that he could pull on a sweatshirt. “It’s cold,” he said.
“You will not need a shirt or sweater again ever!” one of the masked men said, pushing him out of his room.
Hall walked with his hands up as a guard propelled him along, shouting. One of them kicked him in the buttocks and pushed at his back with a gun.
Those in the Mushroom Inn were led to a cold, empty part of the warehouse basement and ordered to strip to their underwear. Because the numbness in his hand had worsened, Queen had to be helped with the buttons of his pants. It was very cold.
Bruce German felt betrayed. The embassy’s budget officer had sought assurances that Tehran would be safe before he had accepted the assignment just five weeks before the takeover, and he felt bitter about those who had encouraged him to come. Now he could hardly move he was so frightened. His legs were shaking.
In the chancery basement, the hostages stood as instructed, leaning forward with their hands extended over their heads, holding themselves off the wall by their fingertips. One by one, the guards moved down the line, forcing them to drop their pants to be searched. Bob Ode’s legs weren’t wide enough apart and one of the guards roughly rattled the butt of his weapon between the old man’s knees. They pulled on the waist of each captive’s underpants front and back to make sure they weren’t hiding anything. Kupke’s legs were shaking from the cold and from fright. Barry Rosen, whose nerves were shattered anyway, felt his heart pounding heavily. He assumed immediately that he and the others were going to be shot. Everyone was confused. Why were they suddenly doing this? It occurred to Roeder, one of the cooler heads, that the gunmen might be clearing everyone out so they could search the area for contraband.
Rosen heard one of the guards growl to another, “Don’t speak Farsi here,” warning him that the hostages spoke their language. This seemed to confirm Rosen’s worst suspicions. He was shaking so badly he was having a hard time keeping his arms raised against the wall, and when he stooped to pull his pants back up he couldn’t. He was both terrified and ashamed of his terror, of how he looked to the others. He put his arms back up against the wall and when one slipped down again the guard screamed at him.
Limbert thought it was unlikely they would be shot in the chancery basement. He assumed that if they were going to do it, they would take them out to the countryside somewhere, out of the city. The executions he had seen on TV in Iran had always taken place outdoors. He considered these young Iranians’ flair for the dramatic and decided this simply wasn’t for real. But the fear was there anyway; he couldn’t reason it away.
Kupke prayed. He thought about turning around to fight, not being led like a sheep to the slaughter, but saw the futility of it. He prayed that the bullets would kill him quickly, and that he not be left alive, wounded, and maybe paralyzed. Belk just felt numb, as though he was in shock. He did what he was told. Part of him refused to believe it was true, that they might shoot him, that this was it. Hohman didn’t stand close enough to the wall so one of the gunmen pushed his head hard into it. Belk was surprised that his roommate didn’t raise hell. Once he had seen
