On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

'You're in charge of the rescue, and--'

'There's no need,' Simons said. 'I don't want to reject anyone.' He laughed softly. 'They're easily the most intelligent squad I've ever worked with, and that does create a problem, because they think orders are to be discussed, not obeyed. But they're learning to turn off their thinking switches when necessary. I've made it very clear to them that at some point in the game discussion ends and blind obedience is called for.'

Perot smiled. 'Then you've achieved more in six days than I have in sixteen years.'

'There's no more we can do here in Dallas,' Simons said. 'Our next step is to go to Tehran.'

Perot nodded. This might be his last chance to call off Operation Hotfoot. Once the team left Dallas, they might be out of touch and they would be out of his control. The die would be cast.

Ross, this is idiotic. You're going to destroy the company and you're going to destroy yourself.

Hell, Ross, I can't make a list of the laws you're going to break!

Instead of two innocent employees in jail, you could have eight guilty employees dead.

Well, we've got this boy from Texarkana who's been trying for years ...

'When do you want to leave?' Perot asked Simons.

'Tomorrow.'

'Good luck,' said Perot.

Five

1____

While Simons was talking to Perot in Dallas, Pat Sculley--the world's worst liar--was in Istanbul, trying and failing to pull the wool over the eyes of a wily Turk.

Mr. Fish was a travel agent who had been 'discovered' during the December evacuation by Merv Stauffer and T. J. Marquez. They had hired him to make arrangements for the evacuees' stopover in Istanbul, and he had worked miracles. He had booked them all into the Sheraton and organized buses to take them from the airport to the hotel. When they arrived there had been a meal waiting for them. They left him to collect their baggage and clear it through customs, and it appeared outside their hotel rooms as if by magic. The next day there had been video movies for the children and sight-seeing tours for the adults to keep everyone occupied while they waited for their flights to New York. Mr. Fish achieved all this while most of the hotel staff were on strike--T. J. found out later that Mrs. Fish had made the beds in the hotel rooms. Once onward flights had been reserved, Merv Stauffer had wanted to duplicate a handout sheet with instructions for everyone, but the hotel's photocopier was broken: Mr. Fish got an electrician to mend it at five o'clock on a Sunday morning. Mr. Fish could make it happen.

Simons was still worried about smuggling the Walther PPKs into Tehran, and when he heard how Mr. Fish had cleared the evacuees' baggage through Turkish customs he proposed that the same man be asked to solve the problem of the guns. Sculley had left for Istanbul on January 8.

The following day he met Mr. Fish at the coffee shop in the Sheraton. Mr. Fish was a big, fat man in his late forties, dressed in drab clothes. But he was shrewd: Sculley was no match for him.

Sculley told him that EDS needed help with two problems. 'One, we need an aircraft that can fly into and out of Tehran. Two, we want to get some baggage through customs without its being inspected. Naturally, we'll pay you anything reasonable for help with these problems.'

Mr. Fish looked dubious. 'Why do you want to do these things?'

'Well, we've got some magnetic tapes for computer systems in Tehran,' Sculley said. 'We've got to get them in there and we can't take any chances. We don't want anyone to X-ray those tapes or do anything that could damage them, and we can't risk having them confiscated by some petty customs official.'

'And for this, you need to hire a plane and get your bags through customs unopened?'

'Yes, that's right.' Sculley could see that Mr. Fish did not believe a word of it.

Mr. Fish shook his head. 'No, Mr. Sculley. I have been happy to help your friends before, but I am a travel agent, not a smuggler. I will not do this.'

'What about the plane--can you get us a plane?'

Mr. Fish shook his head again. 'You will have to go to Amman, Jordan. Arab Wings run charter flights from there to Tehran. That is the best suggestion I can make.'

Sculley shrugged. 'Okay.'

A few minutes later he left Mr. Fish and went up to his room to call Dallas.

His first assignment as a member of the rescue team had not gone well.

When Simons got the news he decided to leave the Walther PPKs in Dallas.

He explained his thinking to Coburn. 'Let's not jeopardize the whole mission, right at the start, when we're not even sure we're going to need the handguns: that's a risk we don't have to take, not yet anyway. Let's get in the country and see what we're up against. If and when we need the guns, Schwebach will go back to Dallas and get 'em.'

The guns were put in the EDS vault, together with a tool Simons had ordered for filing off the serial numbers. (Since that was against the law it would not be done until the last possible moment.)

However, they would take the false-bottomed suitcase and do a dry run. They would also take the Number 2 shot--Davis would carry it in his beanbag--and the equipment Simons needed for reloading the shot into birdshot cartridges--Simons would carry that himself.

There was now no point in going via Istanbul, so Simons sent Sculley to Paris to book hotel rooms there and try to get reservations for the team on a flight into Tehran.

The rest of the team took off from the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport at 11:05 A.M. on January 10 aboard Braniff flight 341 to Miami, where they transferred to National 4 to Paris.

They met up with Sculley at Orly Airport, in the picture gallery between the restaurant and the coffee shop, the following morning.

Cobum noticed that Sculley was jumpy. Everyone was becoming infected with Simons's security- consciousness, he realized. Coming over from the States, although they had all been on the same plane, they had traveled separately, sitting apart and not acknowledging one another. In Paris Sculley had got nervous about the staff at the Orly Hilton and suspected that someone was listening to his phone calls, so Simons--who was always uneasy in hotels anyway--had decided they would talk in the picture gallery.

Sculley had failed in his second assignment, to get onward reservations from Paris to Tehran for the team. 'Half the airlines have just stopped flying to Iran, because of the political unrest and the strike at the airport,' he said. 'What flights there are are overbooked with Iranians trying to get home. All I have is a rumor that Swissair is flying in from Zurich.'

They split into two groups. Simons, Coburn, Poche, and Boulware would go to Zurich and try for the Swissair flight. Sculley, Schwebach, Davis, and Jackson would stay in Paris.

Simons's group flew Swissair first class to Zurich. Coburn sat next to Simons. They spent the whole of the flight eating a splendid lunch of shrimp and steak. Simons raved about how good the food was. Coburn was amused, remembering how Simons had said: 'When you're hungry, you open a can.'

At Zurich Airport the reservations desk for the Tehran flight was mobbed by Iranians. The team could get only one seat on the plane. Which of them should go? Coburn, they decided. He would be the logistics man: as Director of Personnel and as evacuation mastermind he had the most complete knowledge of EDS resources in Tehran: 150 empty houses and apartments, 60 abandoned cars and jeeps, 200 Iranian employees--those who could be trusted and those who could not--and the food, drink, and tools left behind by the evacuees. Going in first, Coburn could arrange transport, supplies, and a hideout for the rest of the team.

So Coburn said goodbye to his friends and got on the plane, heading for chaos, violence, and revolution.

That same day, unknown to Simons and the rescue team, Ross Perot took British Airways flight 172 from New York to London. He, too, was on his way to Tehran.