On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

wives and children, and for their sakes refuse--quite reasonably.

I have no right to ask these men to do this, he thought. I must take care not to put any pressure on them. No salesmanship today, Perot: just straight talk. They must understand that they're free to say: no, thanks, boss; count me out.

How many of them would volunteer?

One in five, Perot guessed.

If that were the case it would take several days to get a team together, and he might end up with people who did not know Tehran.

What if none volunteered?

He pulled into the parking lot of the Hilton Inn and switched off the engine.

Jay Coburn looked around. There were four other men in the room: Pat Sculley, Glenn Jackson, Ralph Boulware, and Joe Poche. Two more were on their way: Jim Schwebach was coming from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Ron Davis from Columbus, Ohio.

The Dirty Dozen they were not.

In their business suits, white shirts, and sober ties, with their short haircuts and clean-shaven faces and well-fed bodies, they looked like what they were: ordinary American business executives. It was hard to see them as a squad of mercenaries.

Coburn and Sculley had made separate lists, but these five men had been on both. Each had worked in Tehran--most had been on Coburn's evacuation team. Each had either military experience or some relevant skill. Each was a man Coburn trusted completely.

While Sculley was calling them in the early hours of this morning, Coburn had gone to the personnel files and put together a folder on each man, detailing his age, height, weight, marital status, and knowledge of Tehran. As they arrived in Dallas, each of them completed another sheet recounting his military experience, military schools attended, weapons training, and other special skills. The folders were for Colonel Simons, who was on his way from Red Bay. But before Simons arrived, Perot had to ask these men whether they were willing to volunteer.

For Perot's meeting with them, Coburn had taken three adjoining rooms. Only the middle room would be used: the rooms on either side had been rented as a precaution against eavesdroppers.

It was all rather melodramatic.

Coburn studied the others, wondering what they were thinking. They still had not been told what this was all about, but they had probably guessed.

He could not tell what Joe Poche was thinking: nobody ever could. A short, quiet man of thirty-two, Poche kept his emotions locked away. His voice was always low and even, his face generally blank. He had spent six years in the army, and had seen action as commander of a howitzer battery in Vietnam. He had fired just about every weapon the army possessed up to some level of proficiency, and had killed time, in Vietnam, practicing with a .45. He had spent two years with EDS in Tehran, first designing the enrollment system--the computer program that listed the names of people eligible for health-care benefits--and later as the programmer responsible for loading the files that made up the database for the whole system. Coburn knew him to be a deliberate, logical thinker, a man who would not give his assent to any idea or plan until he had questioned it from all angles and thought out all its consequences slowly and carefully. Humor and intuition were not among his strengths: brains and patience were.

Ralph Boulware was a full five inches taller than Poche. One of the two black men on the list, he had a chubby face and small, darting eyes, and he talked very fast. He had spent nine years in the air force as a technician, working on the complex inboard computer and radar systems of bombers. In Tehran for only nine months, he had started as data-preparation manager and had swiftly been promoted to data-center manager. Coburn knew him well and liked him a lot. In Tehran they had got drunk together. Their children had played together and their wives had become friends. Boulware loved his family, loved his friends, loved his job, loved his life. He enjoyed living more than anyone else Coburn could think of, with the possible exception of Ross Perot. Boulware was also a highly independent-minded son of a gun. He never had any trouble speaking out. Like many successful black men, he was a shade oversensitive, and liked to make it clear he was not to be pushed around. In Tehran over Ashura, when he had been in the high-stakes poker game with Coburn and Paul, everyone else had slept in the house for safety, as previously agreed; but Boulware had not. There had been no discussion, no announcement: Boulware just went home. A few days later he had decided that the work he was doing in Tehran did not justify the risk to his safety, so he returned to the States. He was not a man to run with the pack just because it was a pack: if he thought the pack was running the wrong way, he would leave it. He was the most skeptical of the group assembling at the Hilton Inn: if anyone was going to pour scorn on the idea of a jailbreak, Boulware would.

Glenn Jackson looked less like a mercenary than any of them. A mild man with spectacles, he had no military experience, but he was an enthusiastic hunter and an expert shot. He knew Tehran well, having worked there for Bell Helicopter as well as for EDS. He was such a straight, forthright, honest guy, Coburn thought, that it was hard to imagine him getting involved in the deception and violence that a jailbreak would entail. Jackson was also a Baptist--the others were Catholic, except for Poche, who did not say what he was--and Baptists were famous for punching Bibles, not faces. Coburn wondered how Jackson would make out.

He had a similar concern about Pat Sculley. Sculley had a good military record--he had been five years in the army, ending up as a Ranger instructor with the rank of captain--but he had no combat experience. Aggressive and outgoing in business, he was one of EDS's brightest up-and-coming young executives. Like Coburn, Sculley was an irrepressible optimist, but whereas Coburn's attitudes had been tempered by war, Sculley was youthfully naive. If this thing gets violent, Coburn wondered, will Sculley be hard enough to handle it?

Of the two men who had not yet arrived, one was the most qualified to take part in a jailbreak, and the other perhaps the least.

Jim Schwebach knew more about combat than he did about computers. Eleven years in the army, he had served with the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam, doing the kind of commando work Bull Simons specialized in, clandestine operations behind enemy lines; and he had even more medals than Coburn. Because he had spent so many years in the military, he was still a low-level executive, despite his age, which was thirty-five. He had been a trainee systems engineer when he went to Tehran, but he was mature and dependable, and Coburn had made him a team leader during the evacuation. Only five feet six inches, Schwebach had the erect, chin-up posture of many short men, and the indomitable fighting spirit that is the only defense of the smallest boy in the class. No matter what the score--it could be 12--0, ninth inning and two outs--Schwebach would be up on the edge of the dugout, clawing away and trying to figure out how to get an extra hit. Coburn admired him for volunteering--out of high- principled patriotism--for extra tours in Vietnam. In battle, Coburn thought, Schwebach would be the last guy you would want to take prisoner--if you had your druthers, you would make sure you killed the little son of a bitch before you captured him, he would make so much trouble.

However, Schwebach's feistiness was not immediately apparent. He was a very ordinary-looking fellow. In fact, you hardly noticed him. In Tehran he had lived farther south than anyone else, in a district where there were no other Americans, yet he had often walked around the streets, wearing a beat-up old field jacket, blue jeans, and a knit cap, and had never been bothered. He could lose himself in a crowd of two--a talent that might be useful in a jailbreak.

The other missing man was Ron Davis. At thirty he was the youngest on the list. The son of a poor black insurance salesman, Davis had risen fast in the white world of corporate America. Few people who started, as he had, in operations ever made it to management on the customer side of the business. Perot was especially proud of Davis: 'Ron's career achievement is like a moonshot,' he would say. Davis had acquired a good knowledge of Farsi in a year and a half in Tehran, working under Keane Taylor, not on the Ministry contract but on a smaller, separate project to computerize Bank Omran, the Shah's bank. Davis was cheerful, flippant, full of jokes, a juvenile version of Richard Pryor, but without the profanity. Coburn thought he was the most sincere of the men on the list. Davis found it easy to open up and talk about his feelings and his personal life. For that reason Coburn thought of him as vulnerable. On the other hand, perhaps the ability to talk honestly about yourself to others was a sign of great inner confidence and strength.

Whatever the truth about Davis's emotional toughness, physically he was as hard as a nail. He had no military experience, but he was a karate black belt. One time in Tehran three men had attacked him and attempted