On Wings of Eagles (16 page)

innocence made no difference. But political pressure had failed so far:

neither the U.S. Embassy in Tehran nor the State Department in Washington

had been able to help; and if Kissinger should fail, that would surely be

the end of all hope in that area. What, then, was left?

Force.

The phone rang. Perot snatched up the receiver. "Ross Perot.

"This is Lloyd Briggs."

"Are they out?"

"No."

Perot's heart sank. "What's happening?"

    "We spoke to the jail. They have no instructions to release Paul and Bill."

    Perot closed his eyes. The worst had happened. Kissinger had failed.

He sighed. "Thank you, Lloyd."

"What do we do next?"

"I don't know," said Perot.

But he did know.

He said good-bye to Briggs and hung up the phone.

    He would not admit defeat. Another of his father's principles had been:

    take care of the people who work for you. Perot could remember the whole

    family driving twelve miles on Sundays to visit an old black man who had

    used to mow their lawn, just to make sure that he was well and had enough

    to eat. Perot's father would employ people he did not need, just because

    they had no job. Every year the Perot family car would go to the county

    fair crammed with black employees, each of whom was given a little money to

    spend and a Perot business card to show if anyone tried to give him a hard

    time. Perot could remember one who had ridden a freight train to California

    and, on being arrested for vagrancy, had shown Perot's father's business

    card. The sheriff had said: "We don't care whose nigger you are, we're

    throwing you in jail. " But he had called Perot Senior, who had wired the

    train fare for the man to come back. "I been to California, and I'se back,"

    the man said when he reached Texarkana; and Perot Senior gave him back his

    job.

Perot's father did not know what civil rights were: this was

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how you treated other human beings. Perot had not known his parents were

unusual until he grew up.

    His father would not leave his employees in jail. Nor would Perot.

He picked up the phone. "Get T. J. Marquez."

    It was two in the morning, but T.J. would not be surprised: this was not

    the first time Perot had woken him up in the middle of the night, and it

    would not be the last.

A sleepy voice said: "Hello?"

:'Tom, it doesn't look good."

    1"Y? I I

    "They haven't been released and the jail says they aren't going to be."

:'Aw, damn."

    'Conditions are getting worse over there--did you see the news?"

"I sure did."

:'Do you think it's time for Simons?"

'Yeah, I think it is."

:'Do you have his number?"

'No, but I can get it. "

"Call him," said Perot.

    3

Bull Simons was going crazy.

    He was thinking of burning down his house. It was an old woodframe

    bungalow, and it would go up like a pile of matchwood, and that would be

    the end of it. The place was hell to him--but it was a hell he did not want

    to leave, for what made it hell was the bittersweet memory of the time when

    it had been heaven.

    Lucille had picked the place. She saw it advertised in a magazine, and

    together they had flown down from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to look it

    over. At Red Bay, in a dirt-poor part of the Florida Panhandle, the

    ramshackle house stood in forty acres of rough timber. But there was a

    two-acre lake with bass in it.

Lucille had loved it.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 95

    It was 1971, and time for Simons to retire. He had been a colonel for ten

    years, and if the Son Tay Raid could not get him promoted to general,

    nothing would. The truth was, he did not fit in the Generals' Club: he had

    always been a reserve officer, he had never been to a top military school

    such as West Point, his methods were unconventional, and he was no good at

    going to Washington cocktail parties and kissing ass. He knew he was a

    goddain fine soldier, and if that was not good enough, why, Art Simons was

    not good enough. So he retired, and did not regret it.

    He had passed the happiest years of his life here at Red Bay. All their

    married life he and Lucille had endured periods of separation, sometimes as

    much as a year without seeing one another, during his tours in Vietnam,

    Laos, and Korea. From the moment he retired they were together all day and

    all night, every day of the year. Simons raised hogs. He knew nothing about

    farming, but he got the information he needed out of books, and built his

    own pens. Once the operation was under way he found there was not much to

    do but feed the pigs and look at them, so he spent a lot of time fooling

    around with his collection of 150 guns, and eventually set up a little

    gunsmithing shop where he would repair his and his neighbors' weapons and

    load his own ammunition. Most days he and Lucille would wander, hand in

    hand, through the woods and down to the lake, where they might catch a

    bass. In the evening, after supper, she would go to the bedroom as if she

    were preparing for a date, and come out later, wearing a housecoat over her

    nightgown and a red ribbon tied in her dark, dark hair, and sit on his lap

    ...

Memories like these were breaking his heart.

    Even the boys had seemed to grow up, at last, during those golden years.

    Harry, the younger, had come home one day and said: "Dad, I've got a heroin

    habit and a cocaine habit and I need your help. " Simons knew little about

    drugs. He had smoked marijuana once, in a doctor's office in Panama, before

    giving his men a talk on drugs, just so that he could tell them he knew

    what it was like; but all he knew about heroin was that it killed people.

    Still, he had been able to help Harry by keeping him busy, out in the open,

    building hog pens. It had taken a while. Many times Harry left the house

    and went into town to score dope, but he always came back, and eventually

    he did not go into town anymore.

The episode had brought Simons and Harry together again.

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Simons would never be close to Bruce, his elder son; but at least he had

been able to stop worrying about the boy. Boy? He was in his thirties, and

just about as bullheaded as . . . well, as his father. Bruce had found Jesus

and was detennined to bring the rest of the world to the Lord-starting with

Colonel Simons. Simons had practically thrown him out. However, unlike

Bruce's other youthful enthusiasms--dnigs, I Ching, back-to-nature

communes--Jesus had lasted, and at least Bruce had settled down to a stable

way of life, as pastor of a tiny church in the frozen northwest of Canada.

    Anyway, Simons was through agonizing about the boys. He had brought them up

    as well as he could, for better or worse, and now they were men and had to

    take care of themselves. He was taking care of Lucille.

    She was a tall, handsome, statuesque woman with a penchant for big hats.

    She looked pretty damn impressive behind the wheel of their black Cadillac.

    But in fact she was the reverse of formidable. She was soft, easygoing, and

    lovable. The daughter of two teachers, she had needed someone to make

    decisions for her, someone she could follow blindly and trust completely;

    and she had found what she needed in Art Simons. He, in turn, was devoted

    to her. By the time he retired they had been married for thirty years, and

    in all that time he had never been in the least interested in another

    woman. Only his job, with its overseas postings, had come between them; and

    now that was over. He had told her: "My retirement plans can be summed up

    in one word: you."

They had seven wonderful years.

Lucille died of cancer on March 16, 1978.

And Bull Simons went to pieces.

    Every man has a breaking point, they said. Simons had thought the rule did

    not apply to him. Now he knew it did: Lucille's death broke him. He had

    killed many people, and seen more die, but he had not understood the

    meaning of death until now. For thirty-seven years they had been together,

    and now, suddenly, she just wasn't there.

    Without her, he did not see what life was supposed to be about. There was

    no point in anything. He was sixty years old and he could not think of a

    single goddam reason for living another day. He stopped taking care of

    himself. He ate cold food from cans and let his hair-which had always been

    so shortgrow long. He fed the hogs religiously at three forty-five P.m.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 97

every day, although he knew perfectly well that it hardly mattered what time

of day you fed a pig. He started taking in stray dogs, and soon had thirteen

of them, scratching the furniture and messing on the floor.

    He knew he was close to losing his mind, and only the iron self-discipline

    that had been part of his character for so long enabled him to retain his

    sanity. When he first thought of burning the place down, he knew his

    judgment was unbalanced, and he promised himself he would wait a year, and

    see how he felt then.

    His brother Stanley was worried about him, he knew. Stan had tried to get

    him to pull himself together: had suggested he give some lectures, had even

    tried to get him to join the Israeli Army. Simons was Jewish by ancestry,

    but thought of himself as American: he did not want to go to Israel. He

    could not pun himself together. It was as much as he could do to live from

    day to day.

    He did not need someone to take care of him-he had never needed that. On

    the contrary, he needed someone to take care of. That was what he had done

    all his life. He had taken care of Lucille, he had taken care of the men

    under his command. Nobody could rescue him from his depression, for his

    role in life was to rescue others. That was why he had been reconciled with

    Harry but not with Bruce: Harry had come to him asking to be rescued from

    his heroin habit, but Bruce had come offering to rescue Art Simons by

    bringing him to the Lord. In military operations Simons's aim had always

    been to bring all his men back alive. The Son Tay Raid would have been the

    perfect climax to his career, if only there had been prisoners in the camp

    to rescue.

    Paradoxically, the only way to rescue Simons was to ask him to rescue

    someone else.

It happened at two o'clock in the morning on January 2, 1979.

The phone woke him.

"Bull Simons?" The voice was vaguely familiar.

"Yeah."

"This is T. J. Marquez from EDS in Dallas."

    Simons remembered: EDS, Ross Perot, the POW campaign, the San Francisco

    party . . . "Hello, Tom."

"Bull, I'm sorry to wake you."

"It's okay. What can I do for you?"

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    "We have two people in jail in Iran, and it looks like we may not be able

    to get them out by any conventional means. Would you be willing to help

    us?"

    Would he be willing? "Hell, yes," Simons said. "When do we start?"

    FoUR

Ross Perot drove out of EDS and turned left on Forest Lane, then right on

Central Expressway. He was heading for the Hilton Inn on Central and

Mockingbird. He was about to ask seven men to risk their lives.

    Sculley and Coburn had made their list. Their own names were at the top,

    followed by five more.

    How many American corporate chiefs in the twentieth century had asked seven

    employees to perpetrate a jailbreak? Probably none.

    During the night Coburn and Sculley had called the other five, who were

    scattered all over the United States, staying with friends and relations

    after their hasty departure from Tehran. Each had been told only that Perot

    wanted to see him in Dallas today. They were used to midnight phone calls

    and sudden summonses-that was Perot's style--and they had all agreed to

    come.

    As they arrived in Dallas they had been steered away from EDS headquarters

    and sent to check in at the Hilton Inn. Most of them should be there by

    now, waiting for Perot.

    He wondered what they would say when he told them he wanted them to go back

    to Tehran and bust Paul and Bill out of jail.

    They were good men, and loyal to him, but loyalty to an employer did not

    norinally extend to risking your life. Some of them might feel that the

    whole idea of a rescue by violence was foolhardy. Others would think of

    their wives and children, and for their sakes refu"uite reasonably.

    I have no right to ask these men to do this, he thought. I must take care

    not to put any pressure on them. No salesmanship

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