Read On Wings of Eagles Online
Authors: Ken Follett
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Military, #Espionage, #General, #History, #Special Forces, #Biography & Autobiography
raft!" The Shah has gone! Paul said it reminded him of the New Year's Day
parade in Philadelphia. All cars were driving with their headlights on and
most were hooting continuously. Many drivers pulled their windshield wipers
forward, attached rags to them, and turned them on, so that they swayed
from side to side, permanent mechanical flag-wavers. Truckloads of jubilant
youths careened around the streets celebrating, and all over the city
crowds were pulling down and smashing statues of the Shah. Bill wondered
what the mobs would do next. This led hirn to wonder what the guards and
the other prisoners would do next. In the hysterical release of all this
pent-up Iranian emotion, would Americans become targets?
He and Paul stayed in their cell for the rest of the day, trying to be
inconspicuous. They lay on their bunks, talking desultorily. Paul smoked.
Bill tried not to think about the terrifying scenes he had watched on TV,
but the roar of that lawless multitude, the collective shout of
revolutionary triumph, penetrated the prison walls and filled his ears,
like the deafening crack and roll of nearby thunder a moment before the
lightning strikes.
Two days later, on the moniing of January 18, a guard came to Cell Number 5
and said something in Farsi to Reza Neghabat, the former Deputy Minister.
Neghabat translated to Paul and Bill: "You must get your things together.
They are moving
YOU. -
"Where to?" Paul asked.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 195
"To another jail.-
Alarm bells rang in Bill's mind. What kind of jail were they going to? The
kind where people were tortured and killed? Would EDS be told where they
had gone, or would the two of them simply disappear? This place was not
wonderful, but it was the devil they knew.
The guard spoke again, and Neghabat said: "He tells you not to be
concerned, this is for your own good."
It was the work of minutes to put together their toothbrushes, their shared
shaver, and their few spare clothes. Then they sat and waited-for three
hours.
It was unnerving. Bill had got used to this jail, and-despite his
occasional paranoi&--basically he trusted his cellmates. He feared the
change would be for the worse.
Paul asked Neghabat to try to get news of the move to EDS, maybe by bribing
the colonel in charge of the jail.
1lie cell father, the old man who had been so concerned for their welfare,
was upset that they were leaving. He watched sadly as Paul took down the
pictures of Karen and Ann Marie. Irnpulsively Paul gave the photographs to
the old man, who was visibly moved and thanked him profusely.
At last they were taken out into the courtyard and herded onto a minibus,
along with half a dozen other prisoners from different parts of the jail.
Bill looked around at the others, tying to figure out what they had in
common. One was a Frenchman. Were all the foreigners being taken to a jail
of their own, for their safety? But another was the burly Iranian who had
been boss of the downstairs cell where they had spent their first night--a
common criminal, Bill assumed.
As the bus pulled out of the courtyard, Bill spoke to the Frenchman. "Do
you know where we're going?"
"I am to be released," the Frenchman said.
Bill's heart leaped. This was good news! Perhaps they were all to be
released.
He turned his attention to the scene in the streets. It was the first time
for three weeks he had seen the outside world. The government buildings all
around the Ministry of Justice were damaged: the mobs really had run wild.
Burned cars and broken windows were everywhere. The streets were full of
soldiers and tanks, but they were doing nodung--not maintairung order, not
even controlling the traffic. It seemed to Bill only a matter of time
before the weak Bakhtiar government would be overthrown.
196 Ken Follett
What had happened to the EDS people-Taylor, Howell, Young, Gallagher, and
Coburn? They had not appeared at the jail since the Shah left. Had they
been forced to flee, to save their own lives? Somehow Bill was sure they
were still in town, still trying to get him and Paul out of jail. He began
to hope that this transfer had been arranged by them. Perhaps, instead of
taking the prisoners to a different jail, the bus would divert and take
them to the U.S. air base. The more he thought about it, the more he
believed that everything had been arranged for their release. No doubt the
American Embassy had realized, since the departure of the Shah, that Paul
and Bill were in serious danger, and had at last got on the case with some
real diplomatic muscle. The bus ride was a ruse, a cover story to get them
out of the Ministry of Justice jail without arousing the suspicion of
hostile Iranian officials such as Dadgar.
The bus was heading north. It passed through districts with which Bill was
familiar, and he began to feel safer as the turbulent soudi of the city
receded behind him.
Also, the air base was to the north.
The bus entered a wide square dominated by a huge structure like a
fortress. Bill looked interestedly at the building. Its walls were about
twenty-five feet high and dotted with guard towers and machine-gun
emplacements. The square was full of Iranian women in chadors, the
traditional black robes, all making a heck of a noise. Was this some kind
of palace, or mosque? Or perhaps a military base?
The bus approached the fortress and slowed down.
Oh, no.
A pair of huge steel doors was set centrally in the front. To Bill's
horror, the bus drove up and stopped with its nose to the gateway.
This awesome place was the new prison, the new nightmare.
The gates opened and the bus entered.
They were not going to the air base, EDS had not arranged a deal, the
Embassy had not got moving, they were not going to be released.
The bus stopped again. The steel doors closed behind it and a second pair
of doors opened in front. The bus passed through and stopped in a massive
compound dotted with buildings. A guard said something in Farsi, and all
the prisoners stood up to get off the bus.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 197
Bill felt like a disappointed child. Life is rotten, he thought. What did
I do to deserve this?
What did I do?
"Don't drive so fast," said Simons.
Joe Poch6 said: "Do I drive unsafe?"
"No, I just don't want you violating the laws."
"What laws?"
"Just be careful."
Coburn interrupted: "We're there."
Pochd stopped the car.
They all looked across the heads of the weird women in black and saw the
vast fortress of the Gasr Prison.
"Jesus Christ," said Simons. His deep, rough voice was tinged with awe.
"Just look at that bastard."
They all stared at the high walls, the enormous gates, the guard towers and
the machine-gun nests.
Simons said: "That place is worse than the Alamo."
It dawned on Coburn that their little rescue team could not attack this
place, not without the help of the entire U.S. Army. The rescue they had
planned so carefully and rehearsed so many times was now completely
irrelevant. There would be no modifications or improvements to the plan, no
new scenarios; the whole idea was dead.
They sat in the car for a while, each with his own thoughts.
"Who are those women?" Coburn wondered aloud.
-71bey have relatives in the jail," Poch6 explained.
Coburn could hear a peculiar noise. "Listen, he said. "What is that?"
"The women," said PocM. "Wailing."
Colonel Simons had looked up at an impregnable fortress once before.
He had been Captain Simons then, and his friends had called him Art, not
Bull.
It was October 1944. Art Simons, twenty-six years old, was commander of
Company B, 6th Ranger Infantry Battalion. The Americans were winning the
war in the Pacific, and were about to attack the Philippine Islands. Ahead
of the invading U.S. forces, the 6th Rangers were already there, committing
sabotage and mayhem behind enemy lines.
Company B landed on Homonhon Island in the Leyte Gulf and
198 Ken Folleu
found there were no Japanese on the island. Simons raised the Stars and
Stripes on a coconut palm in front of two hundred docile natives.
That day a report came in that the Japanese garrison on nearby Suluan
Island was massacring civilians. Simons requested permission to take
Suluan. Permission was refused. A few days later he asked again. He was
told that no ships could be spared to transport Company B across the water.
Simons asked permission to use native transportation. This time he got the
okay.
Simons commandeered three native sailboats and eleven canoes and appointed
himself Admiral of the Fleet. He sailed at two A.M. with eighty men. A
storm blew up, seven of the canoes capsized, and Simons's fleet returned to
shore with most of the navy swimming.
They set off aq*n the next day. This time they sailed by daylight,
and---since Japanese planes still controlled the air-.the men stripped off
and concealed their uniforms and equipment in the bottoms of the boats, so
that they would look like native fishermen. The ruse worked, and Company B
made landfall on Suluan Island. Simons immediately reconnoitered the
Japanese garrison.
That was when he looked up at an impregnable fortress.
The Japanese were garrisoned at the south end of the island, in a
lighthouse at the top of a three-hundred-foot coral cliff.
On the west side a trail led halfway up the cliff to a steep flight of
steps cut into the coral. The entire stairway and most of the trail were in
full view of the sixty-foot lighthouse tower and du-ee west-facing
buildings on the lighthouse platform. It was a perfect defensive position:
two men could have held off five hundred on that flight of coral steps.
But there was always a way.
Simons decided to attack from the east, by scaling the cliff.
The assault began at one A.M. on November 2. Simons and fourteen men
crouched at the foot of the cliff, directly below the garrison. Their faces
and hands were blacked: there was a bright moon and the terrain was as open
as an Iowa prairie. For silence, they communicated by hand signals and wore
their socks over their boots.
Simons gave the signal and they began to climb.
IMe sharp edges of the coral sliced into the flesh of their fingers and the
palms of their hands. In places, there were no footholds, and they had to
go up climbing vines hand-over-hand.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 199
They were completely vulnerable: if one curious sentry should look over the
platform, down the east side of the cliff, he would see them instantly, and
could pick them off one by one--easy shooting.
They were halfway up when the silence was rent by a deafening clang.
Someone's rifle stock had banged against a coral cone. They all stopped and
lay still against the face of the cliff. Simons held his breath and waited
for the rifle shot from above that would begin the massacre. It never came.
After ten minutes they went on.
The climb took a full hour.
Simons was first over the top. He crouched on the platform, feeling naked
in the bright moonlight. No Japanese were visible, but he could hear voices
from one of the low buildings. He trained his rifle on the lighthouse.
The rest of the men began to reach the platform. The attack was to start as
soon as they got the machine gun set up.
Just as the gun came over the edge of the cliff, a sleepy Japanese soldier
wandered into view, heading for the latrine. Simons signaled to his point
guard, who shot the Japanese; and the firefight began.
Simons turned immediately to the machine gun. He held one leg and the
ammunition box while the gunner held down the other leg and fired. The
astonished Japanese ran out of the buildings straight into the deadly hail
of bullets.
Twenty minutes later it was all over. Some fifteen of the enemy had been
killed. Simons's squad suffered two casualties, neither fatal. And the
-impregnable- fortress had been taken.
There was always a way.
SEVEN
The American Embassy's Volkswagen minibus threaded its way through the
streets of Tehran, heading for Gasr Square. Ross Perot sat inside. It was
January 19, the day after Paul and Bill were moved, and Perot was going to
visit them in the new jail.
It was a little crazy.