On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Hell, Perot thought, this is just like going into McDonald's! 'That'll do for now,' he said.

The generals started pushing buttons.

T. J. Marquez picked up the phone. It was Perot.

'I got your pilots,' T. J. told him. 'I called Larry Joseph, who used to be head of Continental Air Services in Vientiane, Laos--he's in Washington now. He found the guys--Dick Douglas and Julian Kanauch. They'll be in Washington tomorrow.'

'That's great,' said Perot. 'Now, I've been to the Pentagon and they can't fly the guys out--they're grounded in Tehran. But I have all kinds of maps and stuff so we can fly in ourselves. Now, this is what I need: a jet plane, capable of crossing the Atlantic, complete with a crew and equipped with a single-sideband radio, like we used to have in Laos, so we can make phone calls from the plane.'

'I'll get right on it,' said T. J.

'I'm at the Madison Hotel.'

'Got it.'

T. J. started calling. He contacted two Texas charter companies: neither of them had a transatlantic jet. The second, Jet Fleet, gave him the name of Executive Aircraft out of Columbus, Ohio. They could not help, and they did not know of anyone who could.

T. J. thought of Europe. He called Carl Nilsson, an EDS executive who had been working on a proposal for Martinair. Nilsson called back and said Martinair would not fly into Iran, but had given him the name of a Swiss outfit who would. T. J. called Switzerland: that company had stopped flying into Iran as of today.

T. J. dialed the number of Harry McKillop, a Braniff vice-president who lived in Paris. McKillop was out.

T. J. called Perot and confessed failure.

Perot had an idea. He seemed to remember that Sol Rogers, the president of Texas State Optical Company down in Beaumont, had either a BAC 111 or a Boeing 727, he was not sure which. Nor did he have the phone number.

T. J. called information. The number was unlisted. He called Margot. She had the number. He called Rogers. He had sold his plane.

Rogers knew of an outfit called Omni International, in Washington, which leased planes. He gave T. J. the home phone numbers of the president and vice-president.

T. J. called the president. He was out.

He called the vice-president. He was in.

'Do you have a transatlantic jet?' T. J. asked.

'Sure. We have two.'

T. J. breathed a sigh of relief.

'We have a 707 and a 727,' the man went on.

'Where?'

'The 707 is at Meachem Field in Forth Worth--'

'Why, that's right here!' said T. J. 'Now tell me, does it have a single-sideband radio?'

'Sure does.'

T. J. could hardly believe his luck.

'This plane is rather luxuriously fitted out,' the vice-president said. 'It was done for a Kuwaiti prince who backed out.'

T. J. was not interested in the decor. He asked about the price. The vice-president said the president would have to make the final decision. He was out for the evening, but T. J. could call him first thing in the morning.

T. J. had the plane checked out by Jeff Heller, an EDS vice-president and former Vietnam pilot, and two of Heller's friends, one an American Airlines pilot and the other a flight engineer. Heller reported that the plane seemed to be in good shape, as far as they could tell without flying it. The decor was kind of overripe, he said with a smile.

At seven-thirty the following morning T. J. called the president of Omni and got him out of the shower. The president had talked to his vice-president and he was sure they could do business.

'Good,' said T. J. 'Now what about crew, ground facilities, insurance--'

'We don't charter planes,' said the president. 'We lease them.'

'What's the difference?'

'It's like the difference between taking a cab and renting a car. Our planes are for rent.'

'Look, we're in the computer business, we know nothing about airlines,' said T. J. 'Even though you normally don't do it, will you make a deal with us where you supply all the extras, crew and so on? We'll pay you for it.'

'It'll be complicated. The insurance alone...'

'But you'll do it?'

'Yes, we'll do it.'

It was complicated, T. J. learned during the course of the day. The unusual nature of the deal did not appeal to the insurance companies, who also hated to be hurried. It was hard to figure out which regulations EDS needed to comply with, since they were not an airline. Omni required a deposit of sixty thousand dollars in an offshore branch of a U.S. bank. The problems were solved by EDS executive Gary Fernandes in Washington and EDS house lawyer Claude Chappelear in Dallas: the contract, which was executed at the end of the day, was a sales demonstration lease. Omni found a crew in California and sent them to Dallas to pick up the plane and fly it on to Washington.

By midnight on Monday the plane, the crew, the extra pilots, and the remnants of the rescue team were all in Washington with Ross Perot.

T. J. had worked a miracle.

That was why it took so long.

3____

The negotiating team--Keane Taylor, Bill Gayden, John Howell, Bob Young, and Rich Gallagher, augmented now by Rashid, Cathy Gallagher, and the dog, Buffy--spent the night of Sunday, February 11, at the Hyatt. They got little sleep. Close by, the mob was attacking an armory. It seemed part of the army had now joined the revolution, for tanks were used in the attack. Toward morning they blew a hole in the wall and got in. From dawn on, a stream of orange cabs ferried weapons from the armory downtown to where the fighting was still heavy.

The team kept the line to Dallas open all night: John Howell lay on the couch in Gayden's sitting room with the phone to his ear.

In the morning Rashid left early. He was not told where the others were going--no Iranians were to know the location of the hideout.

The others packed their suitcases and left them in their rooms, just in case they should get a chance to pick them up later. This was not part of Simons's instructions, and he would certainly have disapproved, for the packed bags showed that the EDS people were no longer living here--but by morning they all felt Simons was overdoing his security precautions. They gathered in Gayden's sitting room a few minutes after the seven o'clock deadline. The Gallaghers had several bags, and did not really look as if they were going to the office.

In the foyer they met the hotel manager. 'Where are you going?' he asked incredulously.

'To the office,' Gayden told him.

'Don't you know there's a civil war going on out there? All night long we've been feeding the revolutionaries out of our kitchens. They asked if there were any Americans here--I told them there was nobody here. You must go back upstairs and stay out of sight.'

'Life must go on,' said Gayden, and they all walked out.

Joe Poche was waiting in a Range Rover, silently fuming because they were fifteen minutes late and he had instructions from Simons to be back at seven forty-five, with or without them.

As they walked to the cars, Keane Taylor saw a hotel clerk drive in and park. He went over to speak to the man. 'How are the streets?'

'Roadblocks all over the place,' said the clerk. 'There's one right here, at the end of the hotel driveway. You