the other and say: 'It's okay, they're here.'
Yes, Taylor knew Boulware; and he found it hard to believe that Ralph would go on vacation while Paul and Bill were still in jail.
The next day he asked for Pat Sculley, and got the same runaround.
Boulware
Bullshit.
The next day he asked for Coburn.
Same story.
It was beginning to make sense: Coburn had been with Perot when Perot sent Taylor back to Tehran. Coburn, Director of Personnel, evacuation mastermind, would be the right choice to organize a secret operation.
Taylor and Rich Gallagher, the other EDS man still in Tehran, started making a list.
Boulware, Sculley, Coburn, Ron Davis, Jim Schwebach, and Joe Poche were all 'on vacation.'
That group had a few things in common.
When Paul Chiapparone had first come to Tehran he found that EDS's operation there was not organized to his liking: it had been too loose, too casual, too Persian. The Ministry contract had not been running to time. Paul had brought in a number of tough, down-to-earth EDS troubleshooters, and together they had knocked the business back into shape. Taylor himself had been one of Paul's tough guys. So had Bill Gaylord. And Coburn, and Sculley, and Boulware, and all the guys who were now 'on vacation.'
The other thing they had in common was that they were all members of the EDS Tehran Roman Catholic Sunday Brunch Poker School. Like Paul and Bill, like Taylor himself, they were Catholics, with the exception of Joe Poche (and of Glenn Jackson, the only rescue-team member Taylor failed to spot). Each Sunday they had met at the Catholic Mission in Tehran. After the service they would all go to the house of one of them for brunch. And while the wives were cooking and the children playing, the men would get into a poker game.
There was nothing like poker for revealing a man's true character.
If, as Taylor and Gallagher now suspected, Perot had asked Coburn to put together a team of completely trustworthy men, then Coburn was sure to have picked them from the poker school.
'Vacation my
The rescue team returned to the lake house on the morning of January 4 and went over the whole plan again.
Simons had endless patience for detail, and he was determined to prepare for every possible snag that anyone could dream up. He was much helped by Joe Poche, whose tireless questioning--wearying though it was, to Coburn at least--was in fact highly creative, and led to numerous improvements of the rescue scenario.
First, Simons was dissatisfied with the arrangements for protecting the rescue team's flanks. The idea of Schwebach and Sculley, short but deadly, just plain
They thought of a small precaution that would shave a second or two off the time for which they would be exposed. Simons would get out of the van some distance from the jail and walk up to the fence. If all was clear he would give a hand signal for the van to approach.
Another weak element of the plan was the business of getting out of the van and climbing on its roof. All that jumping out and scrambling up would use precious seconds. And would Paul and Bill, after weeks in prison, be fit enough to climb a ladder and jump off the roof of a van?
All sorts of solutions were canvassed--an extra ladder, a mattress on the ground, grab handles on the roof-- but in the end the team came up with a simple solution: they would cut a hole in the roof of the van and get in and out through that. Another little refinement, for those who had to jump back down through the hole, was a mattress on the floor of the van to soften their landing.
The getaway journey would give them time to alter their appearances. In Tehran they planned to wear jeans and casual jackets, and they were all beginning to grow beards and mustaches to look less conspicuous there; but in the van they would carry business suits and electric shavers, and before switching to the cars they would all shave and change their clothes.
Ralph Boulware, independent as ever, did not want to wear jeans and a casual jacket beforehand. In a business suit with a white shirt and a tie he felt comfortable and able to assert himself, especially in Tehran, where good Western clothing labeled a man as a member of the dominant class in society. Simons calmly gave his assent: the most important thing, he said, was for everyone to feel comfortable and confident during the operation.
At the Doshen Toppeh Air Base, from which they planned to leave in an air force jet, there were both American and Iranian planes and personnel. The Americans would, of course, be expecting them, but what if the Iranian sentries at the entrance gave them a hard time? They would all carry forged military identity cards, they decided. Some wives of EDS executives had worked for the military in Tehran and still had their ID cards: Merv Stauffer would get hold of one and use it as a model for the forgeries.
Throughout all this, Simons was still very low key, Coburn observed. Chain-smoking his cigars (Boulware told him: 'Don't worry about getting shot, you're going to die of cancer!'), he did little more than ask questions. The plans were made in a round-table discussion, with everyone contributing, and decisions were arrived at by mutual agreement. Yet Coburn found himself coming to respect Simons more and more. The man was knowledgeable, intelligent, painstaking, and imaginative. He also had a sense of humor.
Coburn could see that the others were also beginning to get the measure of Simons. If anyone asked a dumb question, Simons would give a sharp answer. In consequence, they would hesitate before asking a question, and wonder what his reaction might be. In this way he was getting them to think like him.
Once on that second day at the lake house they felt the full force of his displeasure. It was, not surprisingly, young Ron Davis who angered him.
They were a humorous bunch, and Davis was the funniest. Coburn approved of that: laughter helped to ease the tension in an operation such as this. He suspected Simons felt the same. But one time Davis went too far.
Simons had a pack of cigars on the floor beside his chair, and five more packs out in the kitchen. Davis, getting to like Simons and characteristically making no secret of it, said with genuine concern: 'Colonel, you smoke too many cigars--it's bad for your health.'
By way of reply he got The Simons Look, but he ignored the warning.
A few minutes later, he went into the kitchen and hid the five packs of cigars in the dishwasher.
When Simons finished the first pack he went looking for the rest and could not find them. He could not operate without tobacco. He was about to get in a car and go to a store when Davis opened the dishwasher and said: 'I have your cigars here.'
'You keep those, goddammit,' Simons growled, and he went out.
When he came back with another five packs he said to Davis: 'These are mine. Keep your goddam hands off them.'
Davis felt like a child who has been put in the corner. It was the first and last prank he played on Colonel Simons.
While the discussion went on, Jim Schwebach sat on the floor, trying to make a bomb.
To smuggle a bomb, or even just its component parts, through Iranian customs would have been dangerous--'That's a risk we don't have to take,' Simons said--so Schwebach had to design a device that could be assembled from ingredients readily available in Tehran.
The idea of blowing up a building was dropped: it was too ambitious and would probably kill innocent people. They would make do with a blazing car as a diversion. Schwebach knew how to make 'instant napalm' from gasoline, soap flakes, and a little oil. The timer and the fuse were his two problems. In the States he would have used an electrical timer connected with a toy rocket motor; but in Tehran he would be restricted to more primitive mechanisms.
Schwebach enjoyed the challenge. He liked fooling around with anything mechanical: his hobby was an ugly- looking stripped-down '73 Oldsmobile Cutlass that went like a bullet out of a gun.
At first he experimented with an old-fashioned clockwork stove-top timer that used a striker to hit a bell. He
