On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

to rob him: he had beaten them all up in a few seconds. Like Schwebach's ability to be inconspicuous, Davis's karate was a talent that might become useful.

Like Coburn, all six men were in their thirties.

They were all married.

And they all had children.

The door opened and Perot walked in.

He shook hands, saying 'How are you?' and 'Good to see you!' as if he really meant it, remembering the names of their wives and children. He's good with people, Coburn thought.

'Schwebach and Davis didn't get here yet,' Coburn told him.

'All right,' Perot said, sitting down. 'I'll have to see them later. Send them to my office as soon as they arrive.' He paused. 'I'll tell them exactly what I'm going to tell y'all.'

He paused again, as if gathering his thoughts. Then he frowned and looked hard at them. 'I'm asking for volunteers for a project that might involve loss of life. At this stage I can't tell you what it's about, although you can probably guess. I want you to take five or ten minutes, or more, to think about it, then come back and talk to me one at a time. Think hard. If you choose, for any reason, not to get involved, you can just say so, and no one outside this room will ever know about it. If you decide to volunteer, I'll tell you more. Now go away and think.'

They all stood up and, one by one, they left the room.

I could get killed on Central Expressway, thought Joe Poche.

He knew perfectly well what the dangerous project was: they were going to get Paul and Bill out of jail.

He had suspected as much since two-thirty A.M., when he had been woken up, at his mother-in-law's house in San Antonio, by a phone call from Pat Sculley. Sculley, the world's worst liar, had said: 'Ross asked me to call you. He wants you to come to Dallas in the morning to begin work on a study in Europe.'

Poche had said: 'Pat, why in hell are you calling me at two-thirty in the morning to tell me that Ross wants me to work on a study in Europe?'

'It is kind of important. We need to know when you can be here.'

Okay, Poche thought resignedly, it's something he can't talk about on the phone. 'My first flight is probably around six or seven o'clock in the morning.'

'Fine.'

Poche had made a plane reservation, then gone back to bed. As he set his alarm clock for five A.M. he said to his wife: 'I don't know what this is all about, but I wish somebody would be straight, just for once.'

In fact, he had a pretty good idea what it was all about, and his suspicions had been confirmed, later in the day, when Ralph Boulware had met him at the Coit Road bus station and, instead of taking him to EDS, had driven him to this hotel and refused to talk about what was going on.

Poche liked to think everything through, and he had had plenty of time to consider the idea of busting Paul and Bill out of jail. It made him glad, glad as hell. It reminded him of the old days, when there were only three thousand people in the whole of EDS, and they had talked about the Faith. It was their word for a whole bunch of attitudes and beliefs about how a company ought to deal with its employees. What it boiled down to was: EDS took care of its people. As long as you were giving your maximum effort to the company, it would stand by you through thick and thin: when you were sick, when you had personal or family problems, when you got yourself into any kind of trouble ... It was a bit like a family. Poche felt good about that, although he did not talk about the feeling--he did not talk much about any of his feelings.

EDS had changed since those days. With ten thousand people instead of three thousand, the family atmosphere could not be so intense. Nobody talked about the Faith anymore. But it was still there: this meeting proved it. And although his face was as expressionless as ever, Joe Poche was glad. Of course they would go in there and bust their friends out of jail. Poche was just happy to get the chance to be on the team.

Contrary to Coburn's expectation, Ralph Boulware did not pour scorn on the idea of a rescue. The skeptical, independent-minded Boulware was as hot for the idea as anyone.

He, too, had guessed what was going on, helped--like Poche--by Sculley's inability to lie convincingly.

Boulware and his family were staying with friends in Dallas. On New Year's Day Boulware had been doing nothing much, and his wife had asked him why he did not go to the office. He said there was nothing for him to do there. She did not buy that. Mary Boulware was the only person in the world who could bully Ralph, and in the end he went to the office. There he ran into Sculley.

'What's happening?' Boulware had asked.

'Oh, nothing,' Sculley said.

'What are you doing?'

'Making plane reservations, mostly.'

Sculley's mood seemed strange. Boulware knew him well--in Tehran they had ridden to work together in the mornings--and his instinct told him Sculley was not telling the truth.

'Something's wrong,' Boulware said. 'What's going on?'

'There's nothing going on, Ralph!'

'What are they doing about Paul and Bill?'

'They're going through all the channels to try and get them out. The bail is thirteen million dollars, and we have to get the money into the country--'

'Bullshit. The whole government system, the whole judicial system, has broken down over there. There ain't no channels left. What are y'all going to do?'

'Look, don't worry about it.'

'You guys ain't going to try to go in and get them out, are you?'

Sculley said nothing.

'Hey, count me in,' Boulware said.

'What do you mean, count you in?'

'It's obvious you're going to try to do something.'

'What do you mean?'

'Let's don't play games anymore. Count me in.'

'Okay.'

For him it was a simple decision. Paul and Bill were his friends, and it could as easily have been Boulware in jail, in which case he would have wanted his friends to come and get him out.

There was another factor. Boulware was enormously fond of Pat Sculley. Hell, he loved Sculley. He also felt very protective toward him. In Boulware's opinion, Sculley really did not understand that the world was full of corruption and crime and sin: he saw what he wanted to see, a chicken in every pot, a Chevrolet on every driveway, a world of Mom and apple pie. If Sculley was going to be involved in a jailbreak, he would need Boulware to take care of him. It was an odd feeling to have about another man more or less your own age, but there it was.

That was what Boulware had thought on New Year's Day, and he felt the same today. So he went back into the hotel room and said to Perot what he had said to Sculley: 'Count me in.'

Glenn Jackson was not afraid to die.

He knew what was going to happen after death, and he had no fears. When the Lord wanted to call him home, why, he was ready to go.

However, he was concerned about his family. They had just been evacuated from Iran, and were now staying at his mother's house in East Texas. He had not yet had time even to start looking for a place for them all to live. If he got involved in this, he was not going to have time to go off and take care of family matters: it would be left to Carolyn. All on her own, she would have to rebuild the life of the family here in the States. She would have to find a house, get Cheryl, Cindy, and Glenn Junior into schools, buy or rent some furniture ...

Carolyn was kind of a dependent person. She would not find it easy.

Plus, she was already mad at him. She had come to Dallas with him that morning, but Sculley had told him to