Guests of the Ayatollah

1. Bunny Sadr

Forcing grown men to live together in a small space day and night, month after month, is a form of slow torture.

The way one man chews his food, sniffles, coughs, farts, snores, or clears his throat becomes a torment. Bob Ode’s garrulousness drove his roommates crazy. He was guilty of a failing that afflicts many men as they age, the tendency to tell the same stories over and over again. ICA chief John Graves’s patrician disdain for meticulous personal hygiene—he stank—had his roommates contemplating roommate-icide. Economics officer Bob Blucker’s hatred of tobacco smoke finally drove him to isolation; he would stuff toilet-paper wads under the crack of his door to keep smoke out of his space. Opinions become deadly, and anything can provoke argument—the rules of a card game, the coming American elections, the likelihood of snow in Tehran in February, the advantages of French cooking…anything. Rocky Sickmann and Jerry Plotkin grew intensely envious of their roommate Billy Gallegos because for some reason—reasons were hard to come by—he had been given back his shoes after the visit from Norm Forer’s crowd, and his roommates had not. It engendered weeks of ill will.

The three primary beats of each day were meals. Immediately after breakfast, speculation would begin about what would come for lunch and, after lunch, what would be served for dinner. It was pathetic. Many of the hostages coped with boredom by sleeping half the day. Some of the hostages took up arts and crafts. Al Golacinski received a paint-by-number set in the mail from someone and spent hours patiently coloring in the intricate patterns, producing paintings that the guards vied to take home. At the Foreign Ministry, Bruce Laingen took up watercolors, painting scenes outside the tall windows on the third floor. Michael Metrinko drew complex geometric designs on the walls of his cell, using his food bowl and the top of his drinking cup, and then colored them in.

The main pastime was making life difficult for the guards, who obliged, many of them, by being exquisitely sensitive to slight.

Hamid the Liar stepped into Sickmann’s room one night and complained about the marine’s use of the word “guard” in reference to him. The term, he said, was “too cruel.”

“We don’t want you to feel that you are in a prison,” he said. “We want you to feel that you are our guests.”

Sickmann and his roommates were visited one day by an Iranian professor who encouraged them not to despair so much about going home.

“It is good to take four months off work and have a rest,” he said.

Then he went home.

America’s long lack of a military response to Iran’s provocation prompted a popular joke; in which President Carter was visited by the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt, who wondered what was going on in the world.

“The Soviets have invaded Afghanistan,” Carter says.

“Are you retaliating with conventional forces or with nuclear weapons?” Roosevelt asks.

“Uh, neither one,” says Carter. “We’re boycotting the Olympics in Moscow.”

“What else is going on?” the former Rough Rider asks.

“Iranians have taken over an embassy in Tehran and they’re holding fifty-three of our diplomats hostage.”

“How many bombers have you sent over?” Roosevelt asks. “How many divisions have you committed?”

“None,” says Carter. “We’re using diplomatic restraint.”

Roosevelt looks stunned, and then bursts into laughter.

“I get it,” he says, “you’re joking! Next you’re gonna tell me you gave away the Panama Canal!”

Jimmy Carter’s patience was not just principled forbearance, nor was his determination to end the crisis peacefully fed by wishful thinking. It was based on the belief that nations were guided ultimately by self-interest. Even in the swirling currents of Iran, he was convinced that cooler heads would eventually prevail. By any realistic calculation, sustaining the standoff hurt Iran far more than it did America. Khomeini’s new Islamist state was struggling to define itself while battling ethnic separatists and Soviet-backed leftists inside its borders and fending off increasingly bold incursions by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Russian armies had occupied its neighbor Afghanistan. The country was imperiled by both civil war and invasion. Even as it disdained Western allies, Iran needed trading partners and military suppliers. So why jeopardize these things for the sake of holding a few score Americans captive? The move made sense only in the imaginary world of the student hostage takers and their hard-core clerical supporters, who were motivated more by symbols than by reality. In their eyes, the embassy occupation had become the revolution’s defining moment, a dramatic uprooting of all American interests and values and a hopeful beacon to all the world’s oppressed. The various downsides to drawing it out were dismissed by the faithful with a wave of the hand; Allah would defend and provide.

Less well understood by Carter and even the foreign service professionals who advised him were the practical political benefits to religious hardliners inside Iran of sustaining this crisis. Stories of American subterfuge undercut the efforts of popular rivals such as Bani-Sadr and Ghotbzadeh to create a more democratic, secular state. The embattled president and foreign minister made one last effort to wrest control of the hostages from the students in April. With support from the Revolutionary Council, Bani-Sadr once again demanded that the hostages be delivered to the Foreign Ministry, where Laingen, Tomseth, and Howland oversaw new preparations to receive them. For once, the students appeared to have been outmaneuvered. Instead of repeating their defiance, a spokesman for the hostage takers declined public comment, fueling hopes in Washington that at last they were prepared to submit. Carter was so encouraged that he took the unusual step of inviting reporters into the Oval Office on the morning of April 1 to share the good news. It appeared at last that this long, embarrassing, confusing ordeal was at an end.

“This morning the president of Iran has announced that the hostages’ control will be transferred to the government of Iran, which we consider to be a positive step,” the president told the journalists. The shift came at a propitious moment for Carter, who was facing off against Senator Kennedy that day in two primaries, in Wisconsin and Kansas.

Carter was not just preening. He had prearranged with Ghotbzadeh to make such public remarks. Bani-Sadr was to announce that the Revolutionary Council had approved the transfer, and the White House would respond by welcoming the move and promising not to impose additional sanctions. Carter made a point of repeating the promise three times to reporters. He had met the afternoon before with Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post, and several powerful national reporters and columnists to brief them, off the record, about the deal, hoping to forestall a critical response that might undermine the overture.

By the end of the day the president had carried both election primaries, but his hopes for a resolution of the hostage standoff were once again dashed. For reasons the White House did not understand, Bani-Sadr had abruptly announced that the United States had failed to fully live up to its part of the bargain. The accusation was bewildering. “We’re not sure what he’s talking about,” said Jody Powell, the president’s press secretary, when reporters asked what Bani-Sadr meant.

Sensing an advantage, the Iranian president once again had changed the rules at the last minute. He now sought various new assurances, among them official recognition by Washington that the appropriate venue for resolving the hostage question was Iran’s parliament, the as-yet unformed Majlis. Moving the hostages to the Foreign Ministry was understood to be a step toward their rapid release, but what Bani-Sadr now asked for was, in effect, American approval of a plan that would leave the hostages in Tehran for another month or two, until after the Majlis was elected and convened. He also wanted Carter to refrain from making “hostile statements.” In other words Iran, having kidnapped American diplomats, was entitled to imprison them until it decided upon the terms of their release, and the United States should agree not to publicly complain. Carter acquiesced to even these galling demands. A message essentially complying to them was drafted and sent to Iran but to no avail. Before it reached Bani-Sadr, the effort to move the hostages was again vetoed by Khomeini, and the slippery Iranian president gave up. He announced that he was henceforth “washing his hands” of the hostage mess. Disgusted and dismayed, Carter called Bani-Sadr “gutless.”

News stories in America speculated that the president had concocted the “hostage transfer” story to boost his chances in the Wisconsin and Kansas primaries.

Carter vented to Jordan.

“He had a chance to move the hostages and he didn’t do it,” the president said, tossing aside a news account of Bani-Sadr’s latest sidestep. “The council approved the transfer, the militants agreed to do it, and then nothing happens! I don’t know what we do now. I really don’t.” Jordan began to describe what his contacts Bourget and Villalon now suggested, and the president cut him off. “Ham, the only people in the world who think we’re going to get our people back soon are you and your French friends.”

Carter said again that he had been made to feel “foolish” and doubted any hope of a negotiated solution remained. He would take the expected beating for this latest bait and switch. The Iranians, in Reagan’s analogy, had sliced the salami yet again. A pattern had developed: Carter would latch on to a deal proffered by a top Iranian official and grant minor but humiliating concessions, only to have it scotched at the last minute by Khomeini. The White House was feeling pressure from both sides, from those who thought it hadn’t done enough to comply with Iran’s demands and those who felt the president had gone too far.

Helping to lead the charge for more conciliation were some of the hostages’ families. Several had become public figures over the previous four months and, as family members will in hostage situations, they urged the White House to meet the kidnappers’ demands. Bonnie Graves, the wife of hostage John Graves, and the parents of hostage Joe Hall joined former hostage William Quarles, one of the African-Americans released in November, and Congressman George Hansen at a press conference calling for a congressional investigation of America’s role in “the crimes of the shah.”

Such a probe would not be “appeasement,” said Hansen, although he acknowledged that a probe would meet one of the students’ demands.

“I think it would be very important in getting them out,” said Quarles, who since his release had effectively become a spokesman for the hostage takers.

The drumbeat for a more aggressive response was also growing louder, and not just from conservatives and Republicans. So far, Carter’s patience had seemed only to reward Iran for this outrage. Among other things, he had agreed to approve creation of the ill-fated UN commission, urged a judge in New York to postpone hearings on seizing Iran’s assets, postponed the imposition of economic sanctions, acquiesced in Khomeini’s decision to refer the hostage question to the Majlis, and agreed to refrain from making hostile statements about Iran…and what had come of it?

“There comes a time in negotiations with people of this kind that you have to say, ‘No, this is our last offer,’” said presidential candidate Reagan.

The Washington Post editorialized:

The newspaper mirrored Carter’s thoughts. His mood had changed. At another NSC meeting at the end of the first week of April, the president announced that negotiations were over, that he was going to act, and that it had been a mistake not to act sooner.

Bani-Sadr had become a joke, even to Secretary of State Vance, who continued to urge moderation. Henry Precht, the head of the State Department’s Iran desk who had worked closely with Jordan through all the secret negotiations, walked into the secretary’s office on Easter Sunday to find a large stuffed pink and yellow rabbit.

“Henry,” said Vance, “I’d like you to meet Bunny Sadr.”

It was the only time Precht had ever heard the earnest Vance make a joke. One of Carter’s “acts” was to finally expel Iran’s diplomatic mission and to break all formal ties, a step so unsurprising that many Americans were startled to learn it had not been done already. In fact, Carter had deliberately delayed closing Iran’s embassy because American eavesdroppers had broken Iran’s codes and considered the “secure” communications between the Iranians in Washington and their bosses in Tehran to be a useful source of intelligence. The task of formal eviction fell to Precht, who invited to his office Ali Agah, the Iranian chargé d’affaires. Agah arrived with his deputy, not knowing the purpose of the summons. Chatting with them while he waited for the formal note of expulsion to be drafted—Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher was supposed to arrive with it at any moment—Precht expressed irritation over a small group of Iranians who had mounted another pro-Khomeini demonstration outside the State Department building.

“Why do you suppose these guys don’t go back to Tehran and rebuild the country?” he asked. “Why are they wasting their time here when their countrymen are mistreating our people over there?”

The Iranian deputy, whom Precht would later describe as “snake-like,” countered, “We are not mistreating the hostages. They are being very well taken care of in Tehran. They are our guests.”

“Bullshit,” said Precht.

Agah stood up and declared, “I’m not going to stay here and have my country, my government, insulted by you. We are leaving.”

The Iran desk chief bolted into the hallway after them. His job was to keep them occupied until they could be formally expelled.

“Ali, I apologize,” he said. “I retract my statement. Come back and let’s just chat a little more.”

“No,” said Agah.

Precht raced ahead to intercept them at the elevator door. He was now creating a scene in the fifth-floor hallway. The Iranians stepped around him into the elevator, but Precht wouldn’t let the doors shut.

“Ali, let’s sit,” he urged.

“You are holding us hostage in this elevator,” said Agah. “Get out of the way and let us out of here.”

Precht relented. The last thing he wanted was to make it appear the United States had gone into the business of reciprocal hostage taking. Outside the State Department building, Agah complained angrily to Marvin Kalb, the CBS reporter, that he had just been insulted by an American official. Kalb then phoned Precht.

“Henry, what did you say?” he asked. “What did you do to Ali?”

Precht explained, and that night’s lead news item became the flustered Iranian diplomats leaving the State Department in a huff. It could not have played out better in millions of impatient American living rooms. The formal message was delivered by a junior official who chased Agah’s car across the city. Within twenty-four hours, after the State Department rejected several last-minute appeals from some in the Iranian mission who were especially eager to stay (including one who requested political asylum), all but one of them boarded flights in Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. The stress of returning home had provoked chest pains in one, who stayed behind under observation at a D.C. hospital.

The expulsion and the way it had been carried out were warmly applauded. Precht, who felt he had mishandled the assignment, became an overnight hero to millions of Americans who relished the idea of hurling “bullshit!” into the face of an Iranian official before kicking him and his entire mission out the door. He received congratulatory mail from all over the country, including proposals of marriage.

Even Carter applauded Precht, expressing particular satisfaction with his choice of words.

2. A Beginning of the Dawn of Final Victory

Easter in Tehran brought another visit from concerned American clergy. The Reverend Jack Bremer was back under the auspices of the Committee for American-Iranian Crisis Resolution, the group headed by Kansas professor Norm Forer, which had so impressed the Iranian students with its sympathies on the February visit that it was invited back, at the students’ expense. Bremer brought along the activist priest Darrell Rupiper, who had visited earlier in the year. He and the others practiced what they called “moral patriotism,” which condemned America for falling short of universal ethical standards. While they condemned the kidnapping of diplomats, they also acknowledged that Iran had valid grievances against the United States, and though they claimed strict neutrality their sympathies clearly leaned toward Tehran. Rupiper had kicked off the trip with a press conference at which he urged President Carter to comply with Iranian demands, admit complicity in the crimes of the shah, agree not to obstruct efforts to extradite the shah (now from Egypt), and promise not to meddle further in Iranian affairs.

The visiting clergymen presented Kathryn Koob and Ann Swift each with a plastic bag filled with gifts: a shirt, some underwear, and soaps and other toiletries. Bremer told Koob that he had delivered similar gifts to Laingen, Tomseth, and Howland at the Foreign Ministry.

Bremer then led a prayer, which asked for God’s blessings on Americans and Iranians both, and for a renewed understanding and friendship between these nations. Koob was moved. She had been struggling in her prayer sessions for the right way to pray for her captors and heard in Bremer’s words an approach she hadn’t considered. After the service, the American women were positioned before the cameras, handed letters from their families, and told they could send messages home. Koob knew that her much-reduced frame was now so skinny and angular that her face seemed lost behind the wide plastic frames of her glasses. “The only reason I’m losing weight, Mother, is that I decided that was the only thing I could do over here.” Encouraged to keep talking, Koob and Swift described their daily routines and soon fell to giggling.

“Which one of you keeps the other in good spirits?” Bremer asked.

The two women pointed at each other.

When they were finished they added nuts, candy, and brownies to their plastic bags and listened as their guards told the cameras about how their hostages were provided an exercise room with a Ping-Pong table (Koob had been there twice) and showings of American movies (Koob had seen one).

Al Golacinski and Kevin Hermening had been told weeks earlier to expect the Easter visit, so each prepared a note on a foil wrapper from a stick of Wrigley’s spearmint gum. Golacinski’s note said that they were sick, that the sanitary conditions were terrible, that they couldn’t take it anymore, and that they were “losing it.” Hermening wrote that he believed the American people were unaware of how badly he and the others were being treated. He mentioned solitary confinement, beatings, the blindfolding and handcuffs, the lack of showers, and said they all just wanted to “get the hell out.”

Hermening had a tear in the cuff of his blue slacks, so he stuffed the note inside it for safekeeping.

A Mass was to be said by Rupiper. When the hostages arrived for the ceremony, Hermening, who was Catholic, asked if he could perform the ceremony’s lay readings. There were bright lights and cameras everywhere and the room was decorated with posters and festive ornaments made of construction paper. Dick Morefield and Billy Gallegos, two of the other Catholic hostages, looked on. As he waited for his chance to read, Hermening slid the note out of his cuff and cupped it in the palm of his right hand. He slipped the gum wrapper into the Bible during his reading, and when he handed it back to the priest he said, “There’s a note in there.” Rupiper was so startled he took a step back and nearly dropped the book. He said nothing, but Hermening thought the priest looked frightened.

Golacinski took advantage of the session to whisper to one of the other ministers that he wanted to get word to his fiancée that she should not wait for him.

“I’m going to be here for a long time,” he said.

Richard Queen and Joe Hall were in the last group to meet with the delegation. They sat at a table with the Reverend Nelson Thompson, an African-American Methodist preacher from Kansas City, and Rupiper. Queen was particularly grateful for the chance to receive communion. He was moved by Rupiper’s kindness.

“I wish I had the strength to stay here with you,” the priest told Queen. “This is a real test, a test of one’s faith.”

The slender, longhaired priest had been so struck by the condition of Jerry Miele, the CIA communicator who had become increasingly disturbed, that he offered to stay in Tehran and take the man’s place.

“I would want no privileges the others do not have,” he told Hussein Sheikh-ol-eslam and several of the other student captors. Rupiper explained that the night before he had opened the Bible at random and found a passage in Galatians about Christ’s willingness to sacrifice himself to “set us free from the present age of evil.”

This was language that the students understood.

“We need not say that you are good,” Sheikh-ol-eslam told Rupiper. “God knows that. We have a similar way of opening the Koran and finding God’s will.” Nevertheless, they turned his offer down.

“We see you as a member of the American nation,” one of the other student leaders told him. “But we saw them [the hostages] not as members of the American nation but as individuals who were plotting against us.”

Another explained that substituting the priest for Miele would “confuse the identity of the American embassy as a center of evil activity.”

Despite his concern for Miele, the priest’s good impression of the hostage takers was reinforced during this visit, and he once again brought back a glowing report on their kindness and compassion.

“They [the hostages] have exercise bicycles, Ping-Pong, watch TV, see movies, videocassettes,” he said. “The food is fine. They say that the students are treating them correctly.”

Since they were the last to visit the clergymen, Queen, Hall, Lee, and Englemann were allowed to hoard whatever remained of the candy, cake, and fruit that had been placed out for the occasion. Queen piled a paper plate high and stuffed his shirt and pants pockets with candy. He worried as he was doing it that he might be caught on camera—how would that look, him greedily making off with a mountain of treats? Back in their room, he satisfied his urge to organize things by sorting the candies into Krackle bars, peanut butter cups, and almond bars, and stashed them in a drawer out of sight—otherwise the guards would pick at it. He and Hall ate the cake first and then portioned out the candy over days, debating every evening which kind of treat to have with their tea.

As they sorted through the goodies in their room, Koob and Swift began to second-guess their behavior at the televised session. On reflection, they felt they had behaved like schoolgirls at a sleepover. Swift felt worse about it than Koob, who figured any chance she had to communicate with her family was worth whatever downside, but they both agreed that if fate handed them another turn before the cameras they would try to maintain a more sober demeanor.

In their room, Hermening and Golacinski were congratulating themselves for slipping the note to Rupiper when a guard burst in with the note in his hand. They concluded that instead of taking it home Rupiper had handed it over.

Hermening admitted that he had passed it and braced himself for punishment.

The successful, stealthy incursions into Iran of John Carney and Dick Meadows had a big effect in Washington. Both men returned to brief their superiors on the readiness of the desert landing strip and the various hide sites, trucks, and equipment. It all awaited just outside Tehran. The ease of their success made a rescue mission seem less like wishful thinking and more like a real option. December’s preposterous plan suddenly seemed doable.

President Carter’s crackdown in the first week of April had proved nothing more than his futility. The break in diplomatic ties was dramatic but clearly overdue, and a decision to cancel all entry visas for Iranians was perceived as primarily symbolic, because most such travel had come to a halt anyway. His call for allies to break ties and join in a trade embargo succeeded only in exposing a distressing lack of unanimity: England’s response was lukewarm; Canada promised to consult with other nations first; Japan said it would “carefully study” the idea; West Germany declined outright; Denmark announced it was “hesitant” to break ties; Italy called such punitive steps “a mistake.” All of these nations, of course, publicly deplored the taking of hostages but none decided to join the United States in pressuring Iran for their release.

America’s toothlessness was embarrassing. An article on the front page of the Christian Science Monitor suggested that Carter’s new “tough” tactics “were apparently designed more for public relations than to have any real impact. They are not expected to have any immediate or tangible effect.”

Khomeini scoffed. He publicly welcomed the break in diplomatic ties, suggesting that it was what Iran had had in mind all along.

“It is the one thing in all his life Carter has done in the interests of the oppressed,” the imam said, noting that it marked the end of ties between “a risen country and a world-devouring plunderer. This is the beginning of the dawn of final victory of a nation against the bloodthirsty superpower which was forced to cut relations.”

Ronald Reagan, now the clear Republican front-runner for president, dismissed the president’s actions as “more of the same, and it’s been wrong from the first. There will be no impact on Iran at all.”

Richard Hermening, father of the hostage marine, was publicly underwhelmed. Asked to comment on Carter’s moves, he said, “It’s things he had said he was going to do, but kept backing off.” It still seemed to him that the president “just seems like he says one thing but never follows through on anything he says.”

The pressure to use America’s military strength was becoming inexorable. The country braced for war. Carter told reporters, “We have been trying to avoid [military action] and we are still attempting to avoid that kind of action,” but the “availability of peaceful measures, like the patience of the American people, is running out.” An unnamed government official told the New York Times that it seemed as though the country were marching helplessly, “with the best of intentions,” into a “Greek tragedy.” Demands for action came from both sides of the political aisle. Democratic senator George McGovern, a former bomber pilot in World War II whose opposition to the Vietnam War had defined his presidential candidacy in 1972, joined conservative Republicans in calling for military action. The student hostage takers sensed something was coming. They announced that any military action by the Carter administration, or by Saddam Hussein, whose forces continued to harass Iranian forces along their shared border, would be met by execution of the hostages.

Months of careful calculation had reduced the military options to rescue or a naval blockade. Anything more violent than a blockade would invite retaliation against the hostages, and even a blockade made the prospect of public executions more likely. Rescue was enormously appealing. For the beleaguered White House, the prospect of a precise, relatively bloodless liberation from this dilemma was a joy to contemplate. Success would demonstrate remarkable daring, capability, and resolve and would in one deft stroke deprive Iran of its trump card. It was eminently justifiable in the eyes of the world, because it was a response gauged perfectly to the provocation. Americans would rejoice. Carter’s second term would be virtually assured.

Yet as delightful as success was to contemplate, failure was correspondingly calamitous. The jury-rigged mission plan contrived by the Pentagon’s plotters would be, without a doubt, one of the boldest and most complex military missions in American history. Potential disaster lurked at every step. What if the small armada of planes and helicopters was discovered as it moved into Iran, alerting the country’s air force and armies? What if the force failed to rendezvous and refuel successfully at Desert One, a task that required elaborate choreography in darkness over unfamiliar terrain? What if the force was stumbled upon in its mountain hiding place outside Tehran on the mission’s second day, or stopped and attacked on its way into the city on that night? There was a permanent checkpoint on Damavand Road on the way into the city. If the rescuers were stopped, they would try to talk their way past, but if that didn’t work they planned to just grab the guards and take them along. What alarms would that raise? What other hazards awaited on the drive in? What if the guards at the embassy put up a terrific fight and began slaughtering the hostages once the raid began? What if army and police units near the embassy responded more rapidly than anticipated, or if angry crowds massed at the scene while the rescue operation was under way? What if the occupied soccer stadium was attacked by Iran’s American-trained and -equipped air force or by an Iranian armored unit? What if Beckwith’s men managed to chopper themselves and the freed hostages to the seized Mehrabad Airport only to face a determined Iranian assault there? What if Iranian jets attacked the American planes on their way out of Iran? Any one of these entirely plausible setbacks could mean the deaths of all or many of the hostages, and possibly the loss of the entire American force. Most failure scenarios led to a large military clash between America and Iran, with the incumbent loss of life, no doubt mostly Iranian, and not just dozens or hundreds but potentially thousands. What would happen then? It might well provoke an all-out war. What would the Soviets do? And these were just the bad consequences that could be readily foreseen. Anyone familiar with military missions knew there would be unforeseen ones. There always were.

Nevertheless, both Hamilton Jordan and Defense Secretary Harold Brown, talking on the phone on April 10, agreed that it was the right move.

“Neither the naval blockade nor mining the harbors will bring the hostages home, except in boxes,” said Brown. “And if they begin killing our people, then we’ll have to take punitive measures, and God only knows where that would lead. The rescue mission is the best of a lousy set of options.”

Carter surprised Jordan by talking about blockade instead of rescue at the next morning’s policy breakfast, but it was just because the president was hiding his bombshell. The chief of staff was on his way to the airport later that morning when he was summoned back to the White House for an off-the-books lunchtime meeting with the president, Brown, Vice President Mondale, Brzezinski, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher (Secretary Vance was vacationing), CIA director Stansfield Turner, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Jones, and press secretary Jody Powell, whom Carter had invited to attend only if he felt comfortable keeping an important secret.

Powell had given the matter some thought. He concluded that he was comfortable lying to the press in order to protect a state secret and figured that, if the occasion demanded it, knowing the truth would make him a more effective liar.

“If you lie to the press, I may have to fire you before all this is over, you know,” Carter teased his longtime friend.

“It would be doing me a real favor,” said Powell.

The meeting began with the president announcing, “Gentlemen, I want you to know that I am seriously considering an attempt to rescue the hostages.”

Jordan knew immediately that the president had made up his mind. The rescue option had been regarded as a last resort, a drastic step to be avoided, and all the efforts the White House had made since the embassy takeover were toward that end, but as the president launched into a list of detailed questions about how it was to be done, his aides knew he had mentally crossed into new and dangerous territory. He had met the outrage in Iran with tremendous restraint, equating national interest with the well-being of the remaining fifty-three hostages, and his measured response had elicited a great deal of admiration, both at home and abroad. Carter’s approval ratings had doubled in the first month of the crisis. But as the months wore on, restraint had begun to smell like weakness and indecision. Three times in the past six months carefully negotiated secret settlements had been unilaterally ditched by the inscrutable Iranian mullahs, and each time the administration had been made to look more inept. Carter’s formidable patience was badly strained. He had a long list of questions about the proposed mission, but his mind was set. Jones unrolled a big map and walked the meeting’s members through the raid’s elaborate course, pointing out the location of Desert One and the various hide-site locations, the embassy in central Tehran, the soccer stadium, and the airfield from which everyone would escape. Christopher said he had not discussed the rescue option with Vance, so he couldn’t speak for the secretary, but everyone else in the meeting was in agreement.

“It’s time to bring the hostages home,” Carter said. He deferred making a final decision until he had a chance to talk directly to Vance.

“The president is going to go through with this thing,” Powell told Defense Secretary Brown. “I can sense it. If we can bring our people out of there, it will do more good for this country than anything that has happened in twenty years.”

“Yes,” said Brown, “and if we fail, that will be the end of the Carter presidency.”

“We don’t really have much choice, do we?” said Powell.

In order to maintain appearances, Carter sent Jordan back to Paris for a scheduled second secret meeting with Ghotbzadeh at Hector Villalon’s apartment. The Iranian foreign minister was deflated. He complained that the White House decision to break diplomatic ties had been a tragic mistake; it would drive his country into the arms of the Soviets. Ghotbzadeh confirmed the intractable nature of the impasse, predicting now that it would be many months before the hostages would be released. He was apologetic, but explained that to take a “soft” position on the hostage issue in Iran at that point was tantamount to political, if not actual, suicide.

“I just hope your president doesn’t do anything rash,” he said, “like attack Iran or mine our harbors.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jordan. “He won’t. President Carter is not a militaristic man.”

That conversation itself, however, further hardened the decision to send Delta Force. Ghotbzadeh’s prediction of “many months” confirmed the White House’s grim assessment. At that point, the only things that might have averted the rescue was word that release was imminent.

Vance was alarmed when he learned of Carter’s thinking. The president listened coolly to his secretary of state’s impassioned argument against going, which Vance delivered in person when he returned from vacation. He pointed out that in just about any projected scenario some of the hostages would be hurt or killed and reminded the president of his pledge to the families. There were hundreds of American journalists in Tehran—they had been allowed back in after a brief period of exile. Even if the rescue mission was successful, what was to stop angry Iranians from seizing them? They might end up with more hostages and an even more volatile situation. There was some consideration given to taking a number of Iranians hostage and bringing them back as bargaining chips in the event more Americans were kidnapped in Iran, but this tack led to increasingly un-seemly scenarios. What would the United States do with its captive Iranians if the radical students began defiantly executing American reporters? Brzezinski responded with the kind of joke a man makes to poke fun at himself, exaggerating his own perceived worst tendencies: “They could always just fall out of a helicopter over the Red Sea,” he said.

The idea of seizing hostages was quickly dropped, but Carter was inclined to go ahead even without answers for every conceivable contingency. Diplomacy had proved useless, and he felt he was wrong to have pursued it for so long. He was responsible for State Department employees and military staffers in Tehran in a more direct way than for reporters who had traveled there on their own.

Colonel Beckwith was summoned to the White House, and the two Georgia natives swapped stories about their neighboring home counties. The tough, gray-haired colonel gave a brisk, detailed account of the plan, and Carter was impressed. Beckwith had spent a career selling the idea of his elite unit, and now that he had created it he was eager to show what miracles it could perform. Despite his initial misgivings about being assigned such a hard task the first time out, the colonel was more convinced than ever that it could work. He was eager. Briefing the Pentagon brass the day before, he had concluded with an enthusiastic, “Hey, we gotta do this thing!” His enthusiasm was infectious. He and his men were going to make history, not just sever this particular Gordian knot but write their names in the annals of military glory. In a sense, Beckwith’s career-long crusade to create Delta had been a rebellion against the mechanization and bureaucratization of modern warfare. He held to an older, more visceral conviction: War was the business of brave men. He loved soldiers and soldiering, and his vision was of a company of men like himself, impatient with rank, rules, and politics, focused entirely on the mission. Now he had created such a force, choosing the best of the best and training them to perfection. They were not just good, they were magnificent. In his eyes they were beautiful. And now he would lead them into battle. They were going to prove themselves on the most difficult, improbable mission in American history, moving straight into the enemy’s heart, a small force of brave men hopelessly outnumbered, shouldering impossible odds. The fact that it seemed so far-fetched made it all the more appealing. It was perfect. He sold it well, projecting his own brand of brute certainty.

“On behalf of my men, sir, I hope you will let us go,” Beckwith told Carter.

Eight choppers were waiting beneath the decks of the Nimitz. Staging areas in Wadi Kena, the abandoned Soviet airstrip in Egypt, and Masirah, an island off the coast of Oman, were being readied to receive his men and planes. Dick Meadows was packing his bags for a return trip to Tehran. It would take about two weeks to move everything into position.

Technically, Carter had not yet given the go-ahead, but when he left the White House Beckwith was certain the mission was on. He flew to Delta’s stockade at Fort Bragg and immediately assembled his top men. He was elated.

“You can’t tell the people, you can’t tell anybody,” the colonel said. “Don’t talk about this to anyone, but the president has approved the mission and we’re going to go on April 24.”

One morning, for no reason he could discern, Michael Metrinko was allowed to go outside. He was taken from the basement of the chancery to a walled garden outside the ambassador’s residence. It was a sunny morning, and the first time Metrinko had been outdoors since mid-November. The odors, the color, the feel of sunshine on his skin, the slight breeze…it was all intoxicating. It was as though he had been blind and his sight was suddenly restored. He was allowed to walk around the garden slowly, drinking it in.

He noticed that someone was using one of the embassy’s sterling silver candleholders to prop open a window apparently ignorant of how valuable it was. It crossed his mind to take it, but what would he do with it? Metrinko had always been acquisitive. He loved beautiful things, and in his years of travel he had accumulated a small treasure of valuable objects, which had decorated his apartment in Tehran. The candlestick reminded him of such luxuries, which now, walking in his silly plastic flip-flops and oversized pants bunched at the waist with a paper clip, seemed to him frivolous. His instinct to grab the candlestick made him laugh.

Archbishop Hilarion Capucci was sent by the Vatican to visit with the hostages near Easter, and the occasion prompted the guards to bring Metrinko upstairs. He had met the archbishop before when he had stayed at the Greek Catholic patriarchate in Jerusalem for a week in 1969, on his first visit to Israel. They remembered each other right away. He told Capucci that he was being kept in solitary confinement and was badly treated, and the archbishop just nodded and smiled and said he would pray for him. He urged Metrinko to be patient. The hostage wondered what his other options were.

The guards were careful about what he got to read. One of the publications they judged innocuous was the Sporting News, and though Metrinko was not a sports fan he was so desperate for any diversion he began reading about games and athletes and teams that held no interest for him. In one of the stories about a baseball game—the season was just beginning at home—he was stunned to read that the host stadium had welcomed the six former hostages who had escaped Iran with the Canadian ambassador! His heart leapt with the news. The story didn’t name the escapees, but he assumed that among them were Bruce Laingen, Victor Tomseth, and Mike Howland, who had gone to the Foreign Ministry on the morning of the takeover and never returned. His pleasure in the news that his colleagues had escaped was heightened by the way he discovered it. The English-speaking students who censored his reading wouldn’t have had the patience to wade through all these stories about batting averages and sore pitching arms. Any small victory over them was enough to lift his spirits for days.

3. You’ve Got a Mother

The punishment Kevin Hermening expected after the guards discovered his note to Rupiper never came. Instead, in the days after Easter the guards became suspiciously friendly toward him. Those who spoke English stopped to chat and, for some reason, asked a lot of questions about his family. They wanted to know what his father did for a living, and his mother, where he lived, about his brothers and sisters. He was happy to tell them, and although both he and Golacinski suspected that something odd was afoot, they couldn’t figure out what it was. In their most optimistic moments they toyed with the idea that perhaps Hermening, the youngest of the hostages, was going to be released.

On the morning of April 21, two guards came to the room with Hermening’s shoes and a clean shirt.

“You better get cleaned up,” one said.

Excited, and afraid even to think that this might mean the end of this ordeal for him, he dressed. The guards returned and led him down the hall to the Ping-Pong room, where they told him that his mother had come to visit him. Hermening was flabbergasted.

His mom?

In an epic gesture of maternal devotion, Barbara Timm had traveled from the suburbs of Milwaukee to Tehran to see her captive son. Not even the fiercest revolutionary zealot could resist the story’s appeal. A few months earlier, Timm could not even have found Tehran on a map. She had her hands full raising five children and working as a telephone operator. Kevin was her son from her first marriage, which had ended in divorce. She had felt no particular fears about his posting. A tall, slender woman with big eyes whose short-cropped hair gave her a boyish look, she didn’t know enough about Iran to feel anything, except that it was far away and had not been her son’s first choice. She was a little disappointed for him, but figured the country’s embassy there was as good as any other. When she had started getting letters from him they were all upbeat and filled with assurances that he was happy and okay, so she hadn’t worried about him at all. Her own mother was the worrier. From the first day that Kevin left, his grandmother had phoned every few days with an alarming story about something bad that had happened in Iran.

When her mother had called again on Sunday morning, November 4, and told one of Hermening’s stepbrothers that the U.S. embassy in Tehran had been overrun by crazed Islamic radicals, Timm’s first reaction was annoyance. Why wouldn’t her mother just leave it alone? She figured it was something minor that would blow over. She hadn’t even bothered to turn on the radio. Then there was a news break during the Packers game, an autumn Sunday ritual in the Timm household, saying that the embassy had been seized but still, she refused to worry about her son. She wasn’t even sure if the embassy was the same one where he had been sent. She went bowling that night, as she usually did.

Then the media storm descended with the fury of a Wisconsin blizzard. It started the minute she walked in the door after bowling, with a phone call from a local newscaster, and her life had not been the same since. A representative from the marines called the following morning with official word that her son was among those who had been taken captive, which by then was old news. From that day forward the fate of her eldest son played out in public. Over the next three months, Timm got to know the various local TV producers and reporters and print journalists all too well, and she had agreed to be interviewed periodically. It was a curious new position to be in; suddenly the whole world seemed fascinated by every comment or insight from this working Milwaukee mom. In short order she regretted saying yes to that first interview, because it undermined her future ability to say no. Whenever a local news outlet would get a picture or an audio or videotape from the embassy they would use it to blackmail her. Would you like to come in and see it? Of course she would. We just want to film you as you watch (or listen) to it. Even during slow news periods she got four or five media requests a day. She drew the line at talking to the persistent national news figures who stalked her for interviews and appearances. The local storm was bad enough.

As much as she hated being pursued by newsmen, though, she was addicted to their reports. The TV was on every minute in her house and her ears arched at any word from Iran. The sight of those marching, chanting, fist-and placard-waving crowds outside the embassy convinced her that the country was populated by maniacs. She feared she would never see her son again.

Timm had attended the regional and national briefings held by the State Department, even though the transportation costs were steep. Because the government would pay expenses only for Hermening’s mother and father, and Timm did not want to travel without her husband, Ken, she had had to foot his bill for two trips to Washington. At the first Washington session she met President Carter, who initially she blamed for the whole mess. She had disliked him before meeting him but left with her feelings somewhat mollified. She and the others had been assured that the administration was doing all it could to bring the hostages home, and that they would almost certainly be back before the end of the year. Carter had seemed genuinely concerned. But by the second Washington trip, in mid-February, Timm was completely fed up. She believed she’d been misled and manipulated.

She was not the only one. Barbara Rosen, whose husband, Barry, the embassy’s press attaché, had been singled out by the students and publicly denounced as a top spy, felt that the State Department was treating her and the other families like children. They had been genuinely moved by the long standing ovation they were given when, as a group, they entered the auditorium at department headquarters for the February meeting, but in the question and answer sessions later, she and others complained about what little information they were being given. As a group, the hostages’ families felt they were being deliberately kept in the dark.

There was good reason for it. Rosen had seen other family members handing over recordings of the “private” sessions to reporters. Clearly, some of the families were enjoying their long moment in the spotlight. The department had grown increasingly circumspect as a result, which aggravated suspicion.

Timm was appalled by many of the families. She regarded the second family session, when they had all been extravagantly wined and dined, as nothing more than an effort to pacify them. She watched with disgust as these supposedly suffering fathers, mothers, spouses, and siblings milked the open bar at receptions and mobbed the buffet tables at mealtime. They seemed more interested in sampling the goodies than in finding out what was really going on. As the weeks progressed and her bitterness grew, Timm found herself losing interest completely in what happened to the other fifty-two hostages. Her one concern was Kevin. She wanted to see him.

So when State Department officials urged her to have nothing to do with Carl McAfee, a Virginia attorney who wanted to fly her and her husband to Tehran, she ignored their advice. McAfee was one of a breed of attention-seeking Washington attorneys who look for ways to inject themselves into the ongoing drama of national and world affairs. He had made a name for himself almost twenty years earlier negotiating a trade for Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot who served nearly two years in a Soviet prison after his spy plane was shot down. McAfee had attended the second hostage family briefing, introduced himself around, and said that he was interested in arranging personal visits to Tehran. After that session, twenty-four of the families signed up to make the trip. Timm’s husband and her ex-husband, Kevin’s father, were among them. Timm and the other mothers and wives were advised that because women were second-class citizens in Iran, the men would have a better chance of success. Those planning to make the trip were waiting in Washington for visas from the Iranian embassy when the six Americans who had been sheltered by the Canadian embassy escaped. That had killed the plan.

Then Timm got a call from a woman in Canada who had received one of the Christmas cards Hermening had mailed months earlier. The ones he sent to his family had not arrived, but for some reason this letter had gotten through. In the note he had mentioned his plan to escape (the attempt had ended badly months earlier). He had also noted that he expected to be dead by the time the card reached its recipient, if ever, and asked that the recipient contact his mother. So the Canadian woman had called.

Timm was alarmed. She knew right away that the card was authentic. It sounded like her son, and she knew he would be trying to get word to her in particular. She determined then and there that even if no one else was going to Tehran, she was. She had contacted McAfee and joined up with twelve other families who had enlisted for the lawyer’s second attempt at a trip. The government was reportedly cool to the idea, but the Timms had never heard anything from the State Department directly and didn’t ask permission. The marines were completely supportive but warned against letting the Iranians use Timm for propaganda purposes. For weeks McAfee kept setting dates and canceling them.

Then, in mid-April, Carter announced a ban on travel to Iran. Without putting it in so many words, the decision was meant primarily to encourage American news organizations to bring their reporters home, mindful of Vance’s worry about what might happen in the aftermath of a rescue attempt. Carter could not order reporters out of Iran without provoking a showdown over freedom of the press—Powell had speculated that such a direct move might actually prompt the networks and major newspapers to send more reporters there, simply to assert their independence—but the president did specifically ask news organizations to “minimize, as severely as possible” their presence there. Even that prompted an angry response from news editors, who accused the White House of trampling First Amendment freedoms.

“I warned him that you people would get on a high horse,” Powell told CBS News executive producer Sandy Socolow, and then the president’s press secretary tried to hint at the real concern. “I personally don’t give a good goddamn what you people do. If I had my way, I’d ask the fucking ayatollah to keep fifty reporters and give us our diplomats back. Then you people who have all the answers could figure out how to get them out.” Socolow didn’t get the hint.

The travel ban was not directed at the families of the hostages, but it had the effect of dismantling McAfee’s plan. One by one the other families dropped out. News reports in late winter and early spring were hopeful, and nobody wanted to do anything that might derail an agreement. Several of the wives, Penne Laingen, Louise Kennedy, whose husband Mike headed the economics section, and Katherine Keough, whose husband Bill was the school headmaster who had been trapped at the embassy with the others, formed their own organization in March, called FLAG (Family Liaison Action Group), and were given office space at State Department headquarters. They took it upon themselves to improve outreach to the others, to coordinate public statements and actions, and to keep reminding official Washington, America, and the world that their loved ones’ fate hung in the balance of this dispute. FLAG conducted a mission to Europe, led by Louise Kennedy, and including Barbara Rosen, Jeanne Queen, mother of the ailing vice consul, and Pearl Golacinski, mother of the former embassy security chief who, with a gun to his head, had urged his colleagues to open the doors on the day of the takeover. The group met with French president Giscard d’Estaing, and then split up for meetings with other European heads of state. Rosen, who just months ago had been daunted by the prospect of meeting strangers, traveled to Bonn and found herself in serious conversation with German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who told her that he thought the use of force by America would only worsen the crisis. He had more advice.

“Tell my friend Jimmy to get it off the front pages,” he said. “Let him concentrate on Afghanistan or even the old Russian threat, anything to stop giving the militants what they need.”

Rosen asked if he thought she should speak out against her government if it attempted to use force, and Schmidt told her no. “It is most important not to embarrass your own country,” he said. “Do everything you can to influence it, but do not oppose it.”

Opposition was precisely what motivated Timm to go to Iran herself. The government’s travel ban was the final straw. It made her determined to go. She felt her son’s loneliness and isolation viscerally, and believed none of her letters to him were getting through. Reports of the visits by American clergymen had infuriated her, because it was said that the ministers had carried letters from home to the hostages. Evidently at least some of the other families had known about these ministers’ trip and had been provided the opportunity to give them letters. Why hadn’t she? How could the authorities be so careless and incompetent?

After that, the government’s sins kept accumulating. When she saw a news report that thousands of Iranians had been let into the United States since the embassy takeover, she couldn’t believe it. What was happening? For the first time in her life she felt betrayed by her own government. Nothing made sense anymore, and her confusion gave birth to suspicion. The card she had heard about had been mailed to Canada. Why had that one gotten through? Kevin was a faithful correspondent, and she knew that under these circumstances, if he was writing to perfect strangers and asking them to contact his mother, then he was certainly writing regularly to her. Was she not getting his letters because the government was intercepting them? Why would it do that? The only answer she came up with was that something must be going on that the authorities did not want her to know about. She had seen Kevin on TV reading the statement in support of his captors in December. Maybe the United States was up to something in Iran that it did not want the American people to learn. In time, she was ready to believe anything that fed her conspiracy theories. The Iranians holding her son and the others insisted that the fault for everything was America’s. Maybe they were right!

As the other families dropped out, Timm grew more committed. Because Iran’s embassy in Washington had been closed, she and her husband Ken and McAfee left for Paris in mid-April to seek visas at the embassy there.

Milwaukee reporters followed them, demanding an interview at the airport in New York, where Timm asked the United States to apologize to Iran for its support of the shah. She assumed that she would be leaving the journalists behind, but they boarded her plane with their cameras and microphones and moved into the same Parisian hotel. Timm wasn’t bothered by it; she was so accustomed to the reporters and cameras by now that as she ventured into strange lands the familiar entourage actually comforted and emboldened her. Their reports made much of her defiance of President Carter’s travel ban, but Timm said she had never been informed of it personally and, unless word reached her directly from the White House, she was going. After waiting five days in Paris for a visa, the three left the reporters behind (Iran refused them visas) and flew to Germany, where they caught a connecting flight to Damascus, and then a plane to Tehran, all the while expecting the CIA to show up at the last moment to stop them. When she heard her name being called on the public address system at the German airport, she assumed it was the long arm of the law, but it turned out to be another reporter looking for a comment. She hung up on him. This was quite a dramatic stepping out for Barbara Timm. Her son’s graduation from embassy guard training the year before in Quantico, Virginia, had been the first flight she had ever taken. When they landed in Damascus it hit her. They had left behind everything familiar. In Syria all of the people who looked normal to her got off the plane. Only Timm, her husband, and the lawyer stayed. When new passengers boarded, all the women were draped in chadors. Timm had a moment of terror. What in God’s name are we doing? She suddenly wanted to get off the plane and go back home, but it was too late to turn back.

Her fear heightened when they landed in Tehran. Waiting for them was a mob of journalists; it seemed like thousands. There were armed men in green uniforms everywhere. They and their luggage were searched. Once they cleared customs the cameras and microphones closed in on them so fast Timm thought she was going to be trampled to death. She latched on to McAfee and did whatever he suggested, even though she didn’t agree with most of what he said. Right away, for instance, he had urged her to step up before the cameras and answer the reporters’ questions.

“We’ve come this far and we have a responsibility to the world,” he told her.

Trembling with fear, Timm answered question after question before finally they were placed in a car. A pretty young Iranian woman got in with them to act as interpreter. At Timm’s request, they drove by the embassy on their way to their hotel, and when she saw it—the walls draped with hateful anti-American propaganda, more mobs of press waiting outside the front gate—she finally broke down. He’s in there, she thought. I’m this close. Does he sense that I am here? Have they told him I’m coming? When the car slowed down before the front gate, more reporters came running over and the driver stepped on the gas to speed away.

They went back late that night with their interpreter without informing anyone. The media mob was gone. Student guards stood with weapons outside as well as inside the front gate at posts formed by stacked sandbags. Their interpreter talked for a few moments with the guards, and after a short wait Nilufar Ebtekar walked out to see them. The chubby, black-clad young woman launched immediately into a rant: “You are here to see the evidence of the plotting and spying your country was doing in Iran…your CIA has…the Great Satan in 1953…and it was the CIA and SAVAK that tortured and killed…” Timm tuned her out. She had heard it all before a hundred times on TV. Standing before this round-faced, diminutive, arrogant yet familiar young woman who was holding her son prisoner, Timm felt all her fear drop away. She felt rage. She was here to see her son. She had nothing whatsoever to do with the things Ebtekar was going on about. She was a mother from Milwaukee who wanted to visit with her son. Timm started to cry, and then she started to scream at Ebtekar, woman to woman.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother! What would your mother do if you—you can’t be any older than my son is! And you’ve got a mother someplace. Underneath all that shit that you are wearing there’s got to be a human being someplace. You’ve got a mother. How would she feel if you were locked up in a strange country someplace?”

She called Ebtekar cold and heartless.

“You don’t even behave like you’re human,” she said. “Even these guards with their guns talk to us like real people.”

Timm was so furious that she started to turn away. She didn’t even know where she was going, she just had to get away from Ebtekar. She made it partway down the sidewalk before her husband caught up to her.

“She wants to talk to you,” he said.

When she came back, tears still running down her cheeks, Ebtekar had dropped the hectoring tone. She spoke quietly and soothingly.

“If you want to see your boy we’ll have to get a permit,” she said. She said that if they met with Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the foreign minister, and with the president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, and got permission, then they could come back and meet with her son. Despite the hour they drove immediately to the foreign ministry, and while the Timms waited in the car McAfee went inside. He returned a short while later with a piece of paper that he said would be all the permission they needed. They drove back to the embassy, where Ebtekar examined the paper and told them to return the next day.

Timm hardly slept that night. The following morning, Monday, April 21, they received a phone call in their hotel room. Several students from the “den of spies” were going to collect them from the hotel, she was told, and McAfee was not allowed to accompany them. This frightened Timm. Ever since she had arrived in Tehran she felt the lawyer was her shield. But she wasn’t going to turn back now. At the appointed hour three young Iranians knocked on their door: Ebtekar and two men. Timm begged them to let McAfee come along and cried when they said no.

They were driven to Behest-e-Zahra cemetery, where Timm was instructed to walk among the graves before a battery of TV cameras. There were Iranian women in chadors waiting by some of the graves, and as she approached with the cameras behind her they would drop to their knees and begin to wail. It all appeared to be theater, orchestrated and narrated by Ebtekar, who explained that these were some of the many victims of the Great Satan and the shah, martyred in their revolution.

“We are friends of the American people,” Ebtekar told her before the cameras, “but the American people must ask their government to return this criminal to Iran so he can be tried.”

Timm got the impression that she was being sized up. They still had not promised to let her see her son. She sat with them for a long time, mostly listening and promising to take their comments and ideas home with her. They told her that they believed Congress ought to investigate and expose the years of American meddling in Iran, and she said that she would advocate that on her return. Finally, driving away from the cemetery, they told her that they had decided to let her see her son for thirty minutes. Timm was told that she and Kevin were not allowed to discuss “politics,” and she readily agreed. She was driven to a rear gate of the compound at midafternoon.

She and her husband were left in a littered, dusty room somewhere on the compound, into which came a young bearded man who questioned them at length. He wanted to know where they were born, where they had grown up and gone to school, what jobs they had…it went on and on. Whom had they met with in Washington before coming? Did they have any special instructions? Had either ever worked for the United States government? Timm was petrified and answered as best she could. When the man urged her to make statements critical of her country on camera, angry as she was at the government, she refused.

Hermening was blindfolded and led out of the chancery to a car. He was driven in what appeared to be circles around the city for about fifteen minutes before steering back into what he felt certain was the embassy compound. He was taken into a building and up a flight of stairs. When they removed the blindfold he was seated at a dining room table with a flowerpot at the center filled with red flowers around a big microphone.

At the last minute, the man questioning Barbara Timm had refused to let her husband come along. Protesting that decision, she had been escorted down a long, scummy, trash-strewn corridor accompanied by Ebtekar and two young men walking on either side of her so closely that she could feel their breath on her arms. She was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. Then, as they mounted a flight of stairs and went down another long corridor, with Ebtekar reminding her that there was to be no conversation about politics, nothing about the hostage situation, that she could discuss only family matters, Timm suddenly doubted that she was being taken to see her son at all. What if Ebtekar were just humoring her with these instructions, leading her along to a place where they would shoot her? She started to cry.

They stopped before a door. Ebtekar opened it and there was her Kevin, sitting on a couch, tall, thin, mop-haired, and amazed.

He stood and embraced her. She was weeping and still trembling, with happiness now, and the two just held each other for a long time. Kevin started to cry with her. Eventually they noticed that they were not alone. There were several guards in the room with rifles, as well as Ebtekar, standing before big posters of Khomeini and some with anti-American propaganda.

“Be careful,” Hermening whispered to his mother. “There are bugs everywhere.”

They sat on the couch next to each other and sipped tea and talked about their family and about sports. Barbara told her son about his younger brothers and sisters and some of his old high school friends. She said Bud Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, had said that as soon as he got home he could throw out the first ball for a game. Hermening wanted to know more about what was happening in the States regarding their situation, but every time he approached a banned subject Ebtekar would interject to his mother, “You cannot answer that.” She was not allowed to tell him about her trip or where she had been in Tehran that day. Seeing that his questions were making his mother nervous, Hermening asked if he could tell her who his roommate was. Ebtekar said no.

Timm didn’t let on, but she was shocked at how bad her son looked. He had never suffered acne, or any other skin problem, and now his face had completely erupted in what looked like some kind of rash. He looked pale and sickly.

Hermening was thrilled to see his mother but couldn’t get over a feeling of awkwardness about it. Why him? Why was he getting a chance to visit his mom? Did it have to do with his having read that statement on TV at Christmas? What would the Americans who saw this and read about it think? Would he be seen as collaborating with his captors? What would his fellow hostages think? As they talked—Hermening had to keep looking at his mother and holding her hand to assure himself she was really there—he found himself wishing almost in spite of himself that she had not come. He was worried about her safety, too. What if they didn’t let her go?

“Time is up,” said Ebtekar, and without ceremony Hermening was pulled up off the couch by the arm, blindfolded, and led from the room.

Timm broke down sobbing. Ebtekar sat next to her and tried to put an arm around her and Timm shoved her away, swore at her, and then sat crying for a long time. Her husband was led in then, and they were made to watch a movie about the revolution, full of grotesque images of the dead, wounded, tortured, and executed. It was horrible. It went on and on, well over an hour.

“When the hell does this end?” Timm asked.

“It never will end,” said Ebtekar.

“Oh, Jesus,” said Timm.

“Our revolution has not ended and it won’t end until all the oppressed people of the world are free with us,” said the robed young woman.

Unlike the revolution, the film did eventually end. Afterward they were led to a room where a feast had been prepared for them, steaks, vegetables, potatoes, and salad. Timm said she wasn’t hungry, but Ebtekar and the others insisted that they eat.

She sat and picked at the food while her Iranian hosts stood around and watched.

“Is this not a delicious meal?” they kept asking.

The Timms nodded and ate and tried to appear thankful enough to satisfy them.

“This is a fine meal,” Timm said finally. “Now I’d like to just get back to the United States.”

“You can go back and let your people know that this is what the hostages are eating every day,” said Ebtekar.

Ken Timm called her a liar, which did not seem to startle or bother Ebtekar. It was dark when they were finally led from the compound. They were handed blindfolds and instructed to tie them on, but once in the car the driver told them they didn’t have to do so.

“Just put your heads down in your laps,” he said.

They were driven away hunched over in the backseat. After a few minutes of driving they were told they could sit up again. At their hotel a mob of reporters was waiting with cameras, and they were filmed as they left the car and entered the lobby. Back upstairs, McAfee wanted them to return to the lobby to answer questions, but Timm refused. She had had enough. But McAfee waited until she cooled down and then led her downstairs. She was worried about saying anything that might prevent them from going home, but before the cameras she seemed composed and happy. In answer to one question, she said she would go home and work for a peaceful settlement of the standoff. She said that she had found her son to be “in excellent health and very, very happy to see me. He was surprised and overjoyed that I had traveled across the globe to be with him.”

What was the reunion like?

“We never quit holding hands. There was a lot of hugging, a lot of touching. I kept telling him how strong he was, and he kept telling me how strong I was. He says he has not lost faith. He said, ‘I’ve become a better person and a stronger person.’ I told him I had come to give him strength and faith.”

Timm portrayed the six hours inside the embassy as a happy social occasion. She and the militant students had “talked and talked and talked. I still can’t understand or justify an embassy being taken over. But I had to live with one of two choices, either going on hating these people and having that destroy our family or trying to understand these people.”

The captors showed her and her husband “nothing but the best of hospitality. I found human beings…. The government has said these people are brainwashed. I really don’t know what that means, but I can’t agree. What would be the sign?”

Hermening returned to his chancery room in a daze.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he told Golacinski.

“What?”

“I just saw my mother.”

“What do you mean you saw your mother?”

“I just met with my mother.”

They talked for hours, with Hermening reconstructing the dialogue as best he could. Golacinski kept pressing for more details—“Try to remember,” he said. “Try to remember. What did she say?”—until it dawned on him that his young friend was embarrassed. He realized that Hermening felt bad for him and for Miele.

As she waited the next few days in a Tehran hotel for her flight home on Friday, Barbara Timm prayed that her son would be allowed to join her. She had played along with his captors in every way she could, nodding sympathetically to their stories of the abusive shah and the evil designs her country had on theirs.

Inside the chancery, the guards fed the same hope in Hermening. Several days after the meeting the guards brought him a box of photos and long letters from just about everyone in his family. One of his guards even told him it might happen. Hermening had mixed feelings. There was no question that he would go if he got the chance, but he wondered if it might brand him for life as a “mama’s boy.” He was prepared to live with that.

“If you let me go, I’ll make sure that the American public hears about what the shah did,” he promised.

He closed his eyes Thursday night nursing hope that tomorrow might be the day of his release.

Bruce Laingen composed a secret letter for his colleagues in Washington in mid-April and passed it to the Swiss emissary who visited him on occasion. It expressed his growing sense that the crisis was at a hopeless impasse, and while it was not Laingen’s intent, it was received in the White House as a request from the hostage action:

The imprisoned chargé had in mind economic and political sanctions, not a military mission, but Carter would see in those words a call to arms.

Howland became convinced that there would be a rescue attempt. He knew that if commandos came in, they would come through either doors or windows, loud and fast. He knew they would shoot anyone who didn’t comply.

“If some guys come bursting through the windows, don’t get up and start yelling,” he told Laingen and Tomseth. “Just do exactly what they tell you. Because they’re going to pick you up and physically carry you out. They will not let you walk. They will physically carry you.”

If the raiders came in downstairs, they would have to fight their way up the stairs, which would give the guards upstairs time to shoot them, so Howland started sleeping in the nude again, figuring the split-second advantage it gave him would help. He found a heavy stick that he put under his mattress. He put it next to the door every night, figuring he could jump the first guard to come through. He knew their pistols could fire only one round, so all he had to do was make a gunman miss that first shot.

The evening of April 24 was clear, and the view out the windows of the Foreign Ministry was quite beautiful. Laingen watched the mountains at sunset, admiring the blush of bright green spring growth in the gardens below. He continued watching until the Iranian sky faded into darkness.

4. Welcome to World War Three

Through that falling darkness a lone plane was moving fast and low toward Iran over the dark waters of the Gulf of Oman. It was a big, four-propeller U.S. Air Force workhorse, a C-130 Hercules, painted in a mottled black and green camouflage that made it all but invisible against the black water and night sky. It flew with no lights. Inside, in the eerie red glow of the plane’s blackout lamps, seventy-four men struggled to get comfortable in a cramped, unaccommodating space. Only the plane’s usual eleven-man crew had assigned seats; the others sprawled on and around a jeep, five motorcycles, and two long sheets of heavy aluminum—which would be placed under the plane’s tires if it became stuck in desert sand—and a bulky portable guidance system that would help the planes and helicopters to home in on Desert One. It had taken all the ingenuity of the plane’s loadmaster to squeeze it all in. As they had been working on it, one of the air force crewmen had wondered aloud, “With all this added weight, I hope we can get off the ground,” which had set off the already edgy Colonel Beckwith like a firecracker. He had to be reassured by the loadmaster that the excess cargo had been carefully weighed and was within the plane’s limits. The Hercules was designed primarily to carry sixty-four paratroopers, with webbing on the sides and fold-out aluminum seats, but even those spare comforts had been stripped to make more room. The men had spread mattresses on the steel floor of the fuselage, which got frigid once airborne. Some were napping on their gear. There was the vaguely sweet smell of fuel and, other than the drone of four big propellers, mostly silence.

Just after dark they moved in over the coast of Iran at two hundred and fifty feet, well below radar, and then began a gradual ascent to five thousand feet. They were still flying dangerously low at that altitude, because the land rose up abruptly in row after row of jagged ridges—the Zagros Mountains, which looked jet black in the gray-green tints of the pilots’ night-vision goggles. The plane’s terrain-hugging radar was so sensitive that, even though they were safely above the peaks, the highest ridges always triggered the loud, disconcerting horn of its warning system. The plane’s copilot kept one finger poised over the override button to silence it.

Since the decision to fly into Iran on fixed-wing transports instead of the helicopters, Beckwith had added still more men to Eagle Claw, as the rescue mission was now code-named, most notably a half dozen soldiers from the First Battalion (Ranger) 75th Infantry out of Fort Benning. They would block off both ends of the dirt road that angled through Desert One and man Red-eye missile launchers to protect the force on the first night in case it was discovered and attacked from the air. The rangers, who would fly out of Iran when all the planes and choppers departed, would be commanded by Wade Ishimoto, a Delta captain who worked the unit’s intelligence division. Then there was the separate thirteen-man army special forces team that would assault the Foreign Ministry to free Bruce Laingen, Victor Tomseth, and Mike Howland. Also on Beckwith’s lead plane was John Carney, the air force major who was making his second secret flight into Iran; he would command a small air force combat control team that would orchestrate the complex maneuvers at the impromptu airfield. Some of these men sat on and around the jeep. One of Delta’s team leaders, the tall Texan Logan Fitch, who had never believed this day would come, stood in the rear with Carney and the plane’s loadmaster, who informed them when they entered Iranian airspace. Fitch told one of his men, “Pass the word. We’re in Iran.” It didn’t get much of a response. If there was one character trait these men shared, it was professional calm. After six months of practice runs this method of deployment had become so routine that it took effort to remember that this time it was for real. Their attitude for the most part was, It’s about goddamn time.

They had taken off at dusk from the tiny island of Masirah, off the coast of Oman at the southeastern tip of the Arabian peninsula. One hour behind them would come five more C-130s, one carrying most of the remainder of Beckwith’s assault force, which now numbered one hundred and thirty-two men, and four “bladder planes,” each equipped with two gigantic rubber balloons filled with fuel, carrying a total of eighteen thousand gallons. One of the four bladder planes was specially outfitted for eavesdropping and communications and was capable of listening in on Iranian telecommunications.

Days earlier the entire force had flown to an abandoned Soviet airstrip in Wadi Kena, Egypt, on big air force transports. His big mission under way, Beckwith was in full-bore command mode; abrupt, decisive, and aggressively irritable.

They spent a few days at the Egyptian airstrip, which had been amply outfitted for their arrival. There were two refrigerators and pallets full of beer and soda. Much beer was consumed, the first time in any of the soldiers’ memories that they had been supplied free drinks by the U.S. Army. When the refrigerators were finally emptied of beer, they were stocked with blood.

Waiting there, the men were given a new CIA briefing about the location of the hostages in the compound. The agency claimed that, by chance, a cook who had been working there all these months had left the country and happened to sit on a plane next to a CIA officer…none of the men believed it. Many of the men suspected that a Red Cross visit to the embassy ten days earlier had included a CIA agent. No matter how obtained, the information was specific and critically useful. A larger number of the hostages were in the chancery now than had been thought, the bulk of them on the first floor but small numbers on the top floor and basement. Delta learned which hostages were in which rooms, that there were just sixteen guards in the building, and where the guards were usually positioned at night. The other hostages were in the Mushroom Inn and ambassador’s house, but not as many as had been thought. There were fifty guards posted on the surrounding grounds. Most of the information corresponded with what Delta had learned on its own, but it was much more detailed. The team leaders made some adjustments, assigning more men to Fitch’s White Element, which would take down the chancery.

On the afternoon of the mission the shaggy-haired, unshaven force assembled in a warehouse, where Major Jerry Boykin had offered a prayer. Tall, lean, with a long dark beard, he stood at a podium before a plug box where electrical wires intersected to form a big cross on the wall. Behind him, taped to the wall, was a poster-sized sheet containing photographs of their countrymen held hostage. Boykin chose a passage from the First Book of Samuel about the slaying of Goliath—the small American force could see itself as the underdog on this bold thrust into the heart of Iran.

“And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in the forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell on his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone…” Then Bucky Burruss, with a deep, commanding baritone, led the men in singing “God Bless America.” The chorus of that American folk anthem rang stirringly off the distant hangar’s bare walls.

They had then flown to Masirah, where they hunkered in tents through a bright and broiling afternoon, fighting off large stinging flies and waiting impatiently for dusk. They had no replacements, so they were forbidden from playing their favorite game, “combat soccer,” a full-contact no-rules version of the universal sport.

It would be a short hop over the gulf and then a four-hour flight to Desert One, crossing the southern border in darkness and hugging the mountain and desert terrain for seven hundred miles to avoid being detected by radar. The route had been calculated to exploit gaps in Iran’s coastal defenses and to avoid passing over military bases and populated areas. The planes were equipped with the air force’s most sophisticated ground-hugging, “terrain-avoidance” gear and navigation systems. Major Wayne Long, Delta’s intelligence officer, was at a console in the front of the telecommunications bird with a National Security Agency linguist, who was monitoring Iranian telecommunications for any sign that the aircraft had been discovered and the mission compromised. There was none.

Not long after the lead plane departed Masirah, eight RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters left the Nimitz and moved out over the Arabian Sea in order to reach landfall shortly after sunset. The choppers flew a different route, crossing into Iran between the towns of Jask and Konarak and flying even closer to the ground than the planes. Word of the successful launch reached the lead plane—“Eight off the deck”—as especially welcome news because they had expected only seven. Earlier reports had indicated that the eighth was having mechanical problems. Eight widened the margin of error. They expected breakdowns. In their many rehearsals they had determined that six were essential for carrying all the men and equipment from Desert One to the two hide sites. The load was finely calibrated; every assaulter had an assigned limit and was weighed to make sure he met it. They wouldn’t need all six to haul the hostages and assaulters from the stadium the next night—as few as two would do in a pinch—but they expected some of the aircraft that made it all the way to the hide sites to fail the next morning. If seven was enough, eight provided comfort.

The final decision to launch had come only after Dick Meadows, Delta’s advance man, broadcast a signal from Tehran earlier that day that all was ready. He had returned to the city in his disguise as an Irish businessman and met up with “Fred,” his Iranian-American guide and translator—the same young airman volunteer who had helped the CIA agent code-named “Bob,”—and with two American soldiers who had entered Iran posing as businessmen, one Irish and the other German. They had spent that day personally inspecting all of the various hide sites: the embassy, the Foreign Ministry, and the soccer stadium.

As the lead plane pushed on well into Iran, Major Burruss, Beckwith’s deputy, was on the second C-130, sprawled on a mattress near the front of the plane beside Major Pete Schoomaker, leader of the Red Element. Burruss was still somewhat startled to find himself on the actual mission, although there was still no telling if they were going through with it. One of the things President Carter had insisted upon was the option to call off the raid right up to the last minute, right up to the moment they stormed the embassy walls. A satellite radio and relay system at Wadi Kena had been put in place to make sure they could get real-time instructions from Washington. Another presidential directive concerned the use of nonlethal riot control agents. Given that the shah’s occasionally violent methods against crowds during the revolution were now exhibit A in Iran’s human rights case against the former regime and America, Carter was understandably concerned about killing Iranians, so he had insisted that if a hostile mob formed during the raid that Delta first attempt to control it without shooting people. Burruss could appreciate the political logic, but from a practical standpoint he considered it ridiculous. He and his men were going to lay siege to a guarded compound in the middle of a city of more than five million people, most of them presumed to be aggressively hostile. It was unbelievably risky; everyone on the mission knew there was a very good chance they would never get home alive. And Carter had the idea that this desperately tiny, daring, vastly outnumbered force was first going to try holding off the city with methods of nonviolent crowd control? Burruss understood where the president was coming from on this, but with their hides so nakedly on the line, shouldn’t they be free to decide how best to defend themselves? He had complained about the requirement to General Jones, who said he would look into it, but the answer had come back, “No, the president insists.” So Burruss had made his own peace with the requirement. He had with him one tear gas grenade, one, which he intended to throw as soon as necessary and then use its smoke as a marker to call in devastatingly lethal 40mm AC-130 gunship fire.

Burruss was so keenly aware of the risks on this mission that he had a kind of admiration for the navy pilot who had chickened out back in November, the one Beckwith had wanted court-martialed. The man had been kept isolated on an aircraft carrier ever since. He figured it took a special kind of courage to admit you were that afraid, even when the circumstances clearly warranted fear. Burruss was not built that way. Delta was made up of men who would have felt crushed not to be included on this mission, precisely because it was so hazardous. They were ambitious for glory. They had volunteered to serve with Beckwith and had undergone the hardships and trials of the selection process so that they would be included on improbable exploits like this. Men read about wildly heroic feats in history and sometimes wished they had been alive to take part, and here was such a moment, now, without question. If they pulled it off, it would go down as one of the boldest maneuvers in military history. All over America their feat would be cheered in the streets.

The fact that their countrymen would not know who they were made it all the more appealing. It made the heroism pure. They would not be celebrated, only their achievement. None of these men would be in the ticker-tape parades or sitting down for interviews on national TV or have their pictures on the covers of magazines, nor would they be cashing in on fat book contracts. They were quiet professionals. In a world of brag and hype they embodied substance. They would come home and after a few days off go right back to work. Of course, within their own world, they would become legends. For the rest of their lives, behind them knowing soldiers would whisper, “He was on Eagle Claw.” That was honor worth having.

Some men lived for such chances. Burruss was a patriot, first, a man steeped in the rich military history of his native Tidewater, Virginia, and a man blessed with the kind of physical courage and swagger to try anything. As a boy he had talked his cousin into rowing with him in a skiff one and a half miles across the York River to reenact Alexander Hamilton’s successful storming of Redoubt Number Ten at the Yorktown battlefield, then and now a national park. In broad daylight the two boys stormed and retook the fortification, hauled down the vintage British flag, and rowed it back across the river to hang on Burruss’s bedroom wall. He was a rangy, cheerful man with long arms and big hands and an elongated, bony frame, a long straight nose, a mouth that was usually open, and a tendency toward physical belligerence when drunk. Burruss possessed a kind of swagger and playfulness that suggested, despite his size and athleticism, that his most powerful asset was his wit. He had not bothered like some of the men to dye his straight sandy hair, which hung down well over both ears. When they got to Tehran, if they got there, one of his jobs was to coordinate air support from the press box of the soccer stadium. The plan called for him to be one of the last men to leave the stadium, and he had accepted the likelihood that it was where he would die. There wouldn’t be enough helicopters. There were just too many ways for them to fail. He had fought in Vietnam and knew both the beauty and the fragility of those machines. If they managed to get the required six off the ground at Desert One to the hiding places, he felt sure that at least one or two of them wouldn’t restart the next night, and when all hell broke loose in Tehran there was a good chance of losing one or more of those that could fly. Even if the machines had been more reliable, like the other Delta commanders Burruss was wary of the marines piloting them; he was not sure they possessed the calm fatalism that defined this kind of dead-end special ops. A reluctant pilot meant a marginal machine was as good as grounded. At the end of this informed calculation was the probability that they would get only one or two helos into the stadium. If they were fuel-light, that meant they would be able to get all of the hostages aboard, along with a small escort force, but that would leave him and a significant portion of his men behind in the soccer stadium. He and the other men were carrying thousands of dollars worth of cash, most of it in newly minted Iranian rials, and fake passports stamped with fake visas. Burruss had paid strict attention to the E&E (Escape and Evade) classes that taught the men how to hot-wire cars. He had memorized several escape routes out of Tehran. That was the plan. If they were left behind, they would commandeer vehicles and drive like hell toward the border of either Turkey or Afghanistan, a journey of three to four hundred miles, fighting their way out if necessary, possibly calling for air support. The men took this desperate possibility so seriously they had taken the trouble to locate jewelry stores on their way out of the city, where they could grab valuables with which to help bribe their way past roadblocks and border crossings. This could work, but it involved more wishful thinking than a realist like Burruss could summon. In his mind, the more likely scenario was a bloody last stand inside the stadium, where they would take a large number of Iranians with them into the next world. He and his wife had dined with Beckwith and his wife and a few of the other Delta commanders and their wives the night before they departed. Most of them, Beckwith included, had written death letters to be delivered to their spouses in the event they were killed. They were going all the way with this, to victory or to Valhalla.

The level of risk worried the unit commanders, who were concerned that such a generous prospect of not returning might compel men to tell their wives or girlfriends what they were going off to do. Delta Sergeant Major Dave Cheney had broached the sensitive topic with some of his men shortly before they left Fort Bragg.

“What are you guys telling your wives and girlfriends?” he asked.

“Depends,” said Phil Hanson, one of the shooters.

“Depends on what?” Cheney asked.

“Depends on whether she’s giving me any drawers. If she’s giving me drawers, I’ll tell her anything.”

They were by appearance a motley, deliberately nonmilitary-looking bunch of young men; in fact, they looked a lot like the students who had seized the embassy. Most were just a few years older than the hostage takers. They had long hair and had grown mustaches and beards or were just unshaven. The loose-fitting, many-pocketed field jackets they wore, dyed black, were just like the ones favored by young men in Iran. Many with fair hair had dyed it dark brown or black, figuring that might nudge the odds at least minutely in their direction if they were forced to fight their way out of Iran. Under the Geneva Convention, soldiers (as opposed to spies) must enter combat in uniform, so for the occasion the men all wore matching black knit caps and had an American flag on their jacket sleeve that could be covered by a small black Velcro patch. On the streets of Tehran the flag would invite trouble, but inside the embassy compound it would reassure the hostages that they weren’t just being kidnapped by some rival Iranian faction. They wore faded blue jeans and combat boots, and beneath the jacket some wore armored vests. Much of their gear was improvised. They had sewn additional pockets inside the jackets to carry weapons, ammo, and water. Most of the men carried small MP-5 submachine guns with silencers, sidearms, grenades, and various explosive devices. Burruss had a .45, although he wasn’t sure why he’d bothered. He wasn’t on any of the teams taking down buildings, and if a situation arose where he’d have to use it, he doubted a handgun would save him. Beckwith had insisted on a ranger tradition: all the men carried a length of rope wrapped around their waist and clips, in case the need arose to rappel. The men who were to guard the perimeter carried M-60 machine guns and some light antitank weapons. Beckwith himself had the rapelling rope and clips and carried a pistol. With his white stubble, dangling cigarette or cigar, and wild eyes under thick dark eyebrows, he looked like a dangerous vagrant. Before leaving Masirah, the men had been joking about which actors would portray them in the movie version of the raid, and they decided that the hillbilly actor Slim Pickens, who had ridden a nuclear weapon kamikazi-like into doomsday waving his cowboy hat and hallooing in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, would be the perfect choice for the colonel.

With Delta on the planes was an assortment of Farsi-speaking volunteers from various branches of the American military (all of them Iranian-American) and two former Iranian generals. A onetime SAVAK agent who had trained with the group, and who had boasted for months of his eagerness to shoot a few Khomeini fanatics, had gotten cold feet at the last minute. The Farsi-speaking American soldiers would drive the trucks and vans that would carry the assaulters through Tehran to the embassy for the next night’s raid, and the former generals were there to try to talk their way through any contacts with the Iranian military. In such instances, they would attempt to pass themselves off as a secret Iranian force on a training exercise. In fact, the contingency did not arise. Even though the second formation of planes was spotted from the ground as it moved over the coast, and a question about it was broadcast to a military station, the Iranian self-defense forces concluded without inquiring that the planes were Iranian. If the nation was alert to the possibility of an American invasion, they certainly wouldn’t expect it to arrive in a small low-flying formation of propeller-driven planes.

As the lead plane closed in on the desert landing site, its pilots noted curious milky patches in the night sky. They flew through one that appeared to be just haze, not even substantial enough to interfere with the downward-looking radar. They approached a second one as they got closer to the landing site and it was noticed by John Carney, who had come into the cockpit to be ready to activate the landing lights he had buried on his trip weeks earlier. One of the pilots asked him, “What do you make of that stuff out there?”

He looked through the copilot’s window.

“You’re in a haboob,” he said.

The men in the cockpit laughed at the word.

“No, we’re flying through suspended dust,” Carney explained. “The Iranians call it a haboob.”

He had heard about it from the CIA pilots who had flown him in earlier. Shifting air pressure frequently forced the especially fine desert sand straight up thousands of feet, where sometimes it hung like a vertical cloud for hours. It was just a desert curiosity. The dust clouds were too insubstantial to cause a problem for the planes, but Air Force Colonel James H. Kyle, the air commander whose responsibility included all the airborne aspects of the mission, knew that the haboob would create much bigger problems for a helicopter. He noticed that the temperature inside the plane went up significantly when they were passing through them. He advised the copilot to radio “Red Barn,” the command center at Wadi Kena, and have them warn the trailing helicopter formation. The chopper pilots might want to break formation or fly higher to avoid the stuff. This second patch took them about thirty minutes to fly through, which meant that it extended for about one hundred miles.

As the lead C-130 approached the landing area, Carney activated his buried infrared runway lights by pressing the button of his garage-door opener. The lights came on below, but the plane’s newfangled FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared Radar) detected something on the road, which proved to be a truck hurtling along the dirt road that ran through the landing site, so the pilots passed over the spot and then circled back around.

On the second pass the stretch of desert was clear. They circled around for a third time and touched down—Fitch was amazed by how smoothly. The plane coasted to a stop, and when the back ramp was lowered Ishimoto and the rangers roared off in the jeep and motorcycle to give chase to the truck; word that an American plane had landed in the desert, relayed promptly to the right people, could defeat the whole effort. They were followed by Carney and his men, who would help guide in the other Hercules formation and the choppers.

One of the first things Carney noticed, stepping off the ramp, was that the hard-packed surface of three weeks prior was now coated with a layer of feathery sand, the consistency of baby powder, ankle deep in some places. It made it more difficult to taxi the planes, and the backwash from the propellers kicked up a serious dust storm, but it also accounted for the extraordinary softness of their landing.

Fitch followed with his men, walking down the ramp and stepping into a cauldron of noise and dust. His team had nothing to do at Desert One except wait to offload camouflage netting and equipment from the second C-130, which had not yet arrived, and then board helicopters for the short trip to the hiding place. The big plane’s propellers were still roaring and kicked up the powdery desert floor. Fitch raised his arm to cover his eyes and face, and as he turned to his right he was shocked to see, coming toward him, a bus! Out of nowhere. The odds that the plane would intersect with both a truck and a bus past midnight on such a lonely, isolated, little-used dirt road were vanishing, but there it was, a big Mercedes passenger bus lit up like midday inside, its roof piled with luggage and filled with more than forty astonished Iranian passengers, honoring an absolute law of military operations, the certainty of the unexpected.

Then, suddenly, the night desert flashed as bright as daylight and shook with an explosion. In the near distance, a giant ball of flame rose high into the darkness. One of the pursuing rangers had fired an antitank weapon at the fleeing truck, which turned out to have been loaded with fuel. The thing went up like a miniature sun and kept on burning brightly. Their clandestine rendezvous spot, this patch of desert in the middle of nowhere, was spotlit like Friday night football back in Texas. The men with night vision removed their goggles. It appeared as though at least one of the men in the truck’s front cab had bailed out in time, climbed into a trailing pickup truck, and escaped at high speed. A ranger on the motorcycle gave chase but couldn’t catch it. The truck was a ball of fire; no one could get close enough to see if anyone had been caught inside.

In this sudden brightness the bus now rolled to a stop with a leaking radiator and a flat right front tire. Rangers had fired their weapons to disable it. Fitch, still confused, sent machine-gun teams to either side of the stalled, steaming vehicle and led a group of his men to the front. There were already rangers aboard.

“What the hell is going on?” Fitch asked a sergeant as he mounted the steps.

“I’m trying to get these people off the bus, but they won’t move,” he said. The passengers were obviously astonished. “Should I fire a shot over their heads?” the sergeant asked.

“No,” said Fitch. “Why don’t you just get off the bus and I’ll get my people in here.”

One of Delta’s specialties was handling hostages, herding them, searching them, securing them. In the next few minutes, Fitch’s men firmly and efficiently emptied the bus, searched the passengers for weapons, and deposited them on the powdery sand. They then stripped the baggage off the top of the bus, searched it, and found no weapons. The passengers appeared to be poor Iranians, simply traveling through the night from Yazd to Tabas. The bus was decorated with placards and posters of Khomeini. They had rolled into the wrong place at the wrong time. One of them spoke English and recognized the soldiers as Americans.

“It’s about time,” he said. He kept asking questions, which no one answered.

“How’s it going, Joe? Where are you from?” he asked Captain E. K. Smith. “I’m from Pittsburgh.”

They were all instructed in Farsi to remain silent, without effect. Most of the passengers were women, all of them wearing chadors and wailing eerily in their distress. Sergeant Eric Haney had trouble silencing one of the few young men among them, who insisted on loudly whispering to the others despite even their apparent desire for him to shut up. Haney put the muzzle of his automatic rifle under the man’s nose and repeated, in Farsi, for him to be silent. But soon the offender was whispering again, so Haney roughly put the muzzle of his weapon in his ear and dragged him away from the group. Fearing he was being taken off to be shot, the young man began crying and begging, holding both hands up beseechingly. Haney sat him down on the road a good distance from the others and left him there, whimpering and praying.

The question of what to do with the bus passengers was relayed all the way to the White House, where it was late afternoon. The president and his staff were deliberately going through motions of a typical workday, secretly hanging on every update from the desert. The secret had held, but just barely. The tenacious Los Angeles Times bureau chief Jack Nelson had sensed something serious afoot and had called Powell two days earlier to ask about it. He said he had heard that the president was about to do something that might “involve us in a war.”

“You people aren’t really thinking about doing anything drastic like launching a rescue mission are you?” he had asked Powell directly. The press secretary swallowed hard and lied.

“If and when we are forced to move militarily, I suspect it will be something like a blockade,” Powell said. “But that decision is still a step or two down the road.”

Nelson accepted Powell’s word. He wrote a story citing high-level White House sources stating that military action was not pending, and that a rescue attempt was entirely impractical. It had run yesterday.

Brzezinski relayed the unexpected problem of the bus to the president, and Carter agreed that the only thing to do was to fly all the Iranians out that night on one of the C-130s, and then return them to Iran when the mission was complete. The decision was conveyed to Beckwith, who now fretted about which plane to choose. One of the Iranian generals who had flown in with them had evidently discarded his weapon, probably out of fear—if he were captured with a weapon, he would have had a harder time claiming that he had been held hostage by these Americans. Beckwith didn’t want to put a crowd of kidnapped Iranians on a plane that had a loose handgun. Search parties were organized to find the general’s nickel-plated revolver, without success.

The passengers had been set down on the right side of the bus, so Fitch wandered around the left side to take a look and found another Iranian hiding beside the front wheel. Fitch approached him and shouted for him to stand, and when the man didn’t move Fitch fired a shot into the ground. This got him on his feet and he made a move as if to run away, so Fitch swung his weapon and clobbered him in the head with its butt. In the process, the Delta squadron commander accidentally raked the gun sight over his own nose and opened a deep cut, which in the excitement of the moment he neither felt nor noticed. Fitch led the stunned man, who turned out to be the assistant driver, back around to the others.

He had been on the ground for only a few minutes and already the veteran soldier was bleeding, coated with dust, and amazed. Three vehicles? This patch of desert suddenly seemed like a major thoroughfare.

Carney and his men better marked the two parallel runways for the following planes and set up the portable guidance device. Shortly before midnight things grew louder and busier as the second C-130 roared in for a landing, right on schedule. It taxied to a stop. Behind it came the four tankers. As Burruss and his men came down the lowered ramp of the first of these planes, they gaped at the ball of flame, the bus, and the passengers.

“Welcome to World War Three!” greeted Fitch.

Burruss looked at the bleeding face of his friend and said, “What the hell is going on?”

For the first time Fitch noticed that he was cut. He explained, shouting over the noise of all the planes. It was hot and the desert air now smelled of burning gasoline. No one seemed concerned. Their makeshift airport was lit up a lot more than they would have liked, but these were veteran soldiers; they knew operations like this went smoothly only in briefings and on paper. In a way, it felt good to have encountered the unexpected right at the outset, and coped with it.

“I think we’ve got everything under control,” Fitch told Burruss. They would have to take their chances with the men in the fleeing pickup, who they assumed, given the time of night and method of transport, to have been smuggling gasoline. It didn’t seem likely that they would go to the police, and if they did, what sense would be made of their story? A plane landed in the desert and attacked them? Even if it was investigated, the effort would take the better part of a day, at least, and by then it would be too late to interfere with the mission.

Desert One was now looking more like an airport, and Carney’s men were busy directing traffic, preparing for the arrival of the helicopters. Shortly after midnight, all four bladder birds were parked and positioned. The communications plane stayed, but the two lead planes, having delivered their cargo, took off for their rendezvous with the airborne tankers and the return flight to Masirah.

The unloading had gone pretty much as planned. The second C-130 had landed a few thousand feet farther off the landing zone than expected, so the job of hauling the camouflage netting from it was a correspondingly bigger job. The netting would be draped over the helicopters at the hide site at daylight. It was not an especially warm night in the desert, but all the men were overdressed, wearing layers of clothing and body armor, and they were sweating heavily with exertion. Moving through the loose sand made it an even more difficult task. The air force crews struggled to unfurl hundreds of pounds of hoses from the parked tankers, positioning them to receive the choppers. The bus had to be moved, so all the passengers were herded back on and it was repositioned.

“What is the status of the choppers?” Beckwith asked the commanders at Wadi Kena.

The command station at Masirah responded by relaying a request from the lead chopper for conditions at Desert One.

“Visibility five miles with negative surface winds,” reported Colonel Kyle, who was with Beckwith in the desert.

Then they heard from the lead chopper. “Fifty minutes out and low on fuel.”

It was a satisfying moment. The fuel crews had practiced the routine like pit crews at the Indy 500, and had the whole exercise down so well that it took only ten minutes to refill a landed chopper and send it on its way. Everything was behind schedule, however, which meant that even if the refueling and loading operations were done perfectly, the choppers would not arrive at the two hide sites before the crack of dawn. That posed only a small risk. The sites were in mountains outside the city, the choppers had been painted the same colors as Iranian army choppers, and it would still not be full daylight when they arrived. Still, if they didn’t land soon, they would be arriving at the hiding places in daylight. Burruss asked one of his men to check their maps for a gully or natural depression where they might be able to sit the choppers short of the planned hide site.

There was nothing to do then but wait. Most of the force had been on the ground for more than two hours. The sandstorms stirred by the aircraft whipped around the men and stung their faces, making it difficult to see. The choppers were late and getting later. They had been late in every one of the rehearsals, too, so no one was surprised.

5. What the Hell Is This?

Already the eight Sea Stallions had become six.

The original formation of eight had crossed into Iran flying at two hundred feet, and then moved down to one hundred feet. They were just behind the planes, as scheduled. When they had departed the Nimitz, more than five thousand crew members had come on deck to salute them. It had been deeply moving. On the deck of the carrier, with the last light of the dying day splayed behind it in the direction of faraway home, thousands of American sailors stood at attention, saluting the courage and skill of these soldiers off to rescue their countrymen. Major Jim Schaefer, in the third Sea Stallion to launch, had tears in his eyes.

Their approach over water was right on target. As they crossed Iran’s coast, several of the marine crews had spotted the single lead Hercules overhead moving at twice their airspeed. Two of the choppers were having difficulty with their navigation equipment, but flying that close to the ground they could steer by landmarks and by staying with the formation. They were not allowed to communicate by radio, lest they be overheard by Iranian defenses, but they had practiced flashing lights as signals; a quick one, two meant that there was a problem, and then the second sequence of lights indicated the nature of the problem. They flew in a staggered line of four pairs. Not long after crossing into Iran the marine crews spotted part of the trailing formation of C-130s, which confirmed they were heading the right way. Lieutenant Colonel Ed Seiffert, the flight leader and pilot of the lead chopper, felt relaxed enough to take a break and eat his packed lunch.

The formation made it only one hundred and forty miles into Iran, however, before one of the choppers had trouble. A warning light came on in the cockpit of the sixth in formation indicating that one of the blades had been hit by something or had cracked, a potentially fatal problem. The pilot immediately landed, followed by another, the trailing chopper, and after determining that one rotor blade was in fact cracked badly, they abandoned the aircraft, removing all of the classified documents inside and climbing into helo eight, flown by Captain Jimmy Linderman. It lifted off, gave chase, and eventually caught up with the others.

As they burned off fuel, the choppers picked up speed. They were closing in on Desert One faster and faster, 120 knots and accelerating. About two hundred miles into Iran they saw before them what looked like a wall of talcum powder. They flew right into it. Seiffert realized it was suspended dust when he tasted it and felt it in his teeth. If it was penetrating his cockpit, it was penetrating his engines. The temperature inside rose to one hundred degrees. But before it became a problem, the cloud vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. They had flown right through it.

Looming ahead was the second, much larger haboob, but Seiffert didn’t know it. Kyle’s warning had not been relayed; radio blackout conditions and the necessity for transmitting everything in code had defeated the C-130 flight crews’ efforts, that and the assumption that the hazy patches did not pose a severe problem.

This may have been the most serious miscalculation of the night, because the formation passed into the second cloud assuming that it would dissipate as quickly as the first. This one grew thicker and thicker, and soon Seiffert could no longer see the other choppers in the formation or on the ground. The choppers had to turn on their outside red safety lights, and off in the haze there were now indistinct halos of red strung out at varying distances. When the fuzzy beacons themselves vanished, Seiffert and his wingman made a U-turn, flew back out of the cloud, and landed. None of the other five choppers had seen them go down. Seiffert had hoped they would all follow him down to confer and decide on a strategy. Now he had no choice but to take off and wade back into the soup trying to catch up.

Seiffert’s manuever had placed Schaefer in the lead position. One moment Seiffert’s aircraft had been in front of him, and the next moment it was gone. One by one, the indistinct red suns in the milky haze had grown dimmer and dimmer and then they were gone. How could I lose them? Schaefer thought. He could see nothing and he heard nothing but the sounds of his own engines. All around was a smothering cloak of whiteness. He executed a “lost plane” maneuver, turning fifteen degrees off course for a few minutes, and then turning back on course, hoping to pick up the formation again. Even as low as two hundred feet he could not see the ground.

“Is this fog?” he asked his crew.

His crew chief said, “Lick your finger and stick it out the window.”

He did. When he pulled his hand in, it was covered with white dust.

“What the hell is this?” he said.

He climbed to one thousand feet and was still in the cloud. Inside the chopper it was hot and getting hotter. They descended, this time below two hundred feet. Schaefer could see the ground only intermittently. For three hours they flew like this on instruments, a series of small blue panels alongside the dials. In training for instrument flying, the pilots always flew in teams, with one aircraft blacked out and the other not. And there was always the option, when things got hairy, of removing the blackout screens. Now Schaefer had nothing to go on but the glowing blue panels, and his faith was being sorely tested. The cockpit was overheated and the men in it were both hot and increasingly tense.

“Is there anything in front of us?” Schaefer asked his copilot, Les Petty.

“Well, there’s a six-thousand-foot mountain in front of us,” he said.

“How soon?” asked Schaefer.

“I don’t trust the machine,” said Petty, “and I don’t trust my map. I ain’t seen the ground in three hours. I’d say right now.”

So they started to climb. They climbed to eight thousand feet, and abruptly the dust cloud broke. Inside the chopper it was suddenly very cold. Off to one side, Schaefer saw the peak of a mountain.

“Good job, Les,” he said. “I love you.”

Desert One was still about an hour away, so they plunged right back into the haboob. This time, Schaefer leveled off at six hundred feet. He didn’t know it, but the remaining six choppers were doing the same. The lack of visibility made the crews woozy. It was especially hard on the pilots, who wore night-vision goggles, which distorted depth perception and exaggerated feelings of vertigo. The men were becoming dehydrated in the extreme heat. They knew that some more tall peaks were between them and Desert One and could only hope that visibility improved in time for them to steer around or over them. One of the choppers lost its backup hydraulic system, which under ordinary circumstances would have required it to land immediately, but the pilot pressed on.

It was a tense, difficult struggle for all of them, and finally one gave up. Lieutenant Commander Rodney Davis had watched the control lights in his cockpit indicate a number of failures. His electrically powered compass was not working, and his other navigation devices, while working, were being affected by the heat. His copilot was feeling sick. When he lost sight of the nearest chopper, Davis was alone in the cloud. He tried the lost plane manuever, but he didn’t see the other choppers and could not get a clear fix on anything below that would allow him to know his exact position. Davis took it up to nine thousand feet but was still in the milk. He might try flying higher, but that would burn more fuel and there was no telling how high up he would have to go; there was also the fear of being picked up by radar. He was at a critical point in the flight. To press on meant there would not be enough fuel to make it back to the carrier. Because they couldn’t see, ahead or down, it meant they could steer off course or collide with a mountain on their way to Desert One. He conferred with Colonel Chuck Pittman, the ranking officer of the entire helicopter contingent, who was riding in back. With the other seven choppers still presumably en route—they did not know that one had already been lost—they assumed that turning back would not fatally compromise the mission.

So they turned back.

At the desert airfield, Delta waited anxiously as precious minutes of darkness passed. It was an enormous relief, just before one o’clock, when the distinctive whoop-whoop-whoop of the first two was heard in the desert night sky.

In the lead helicopter, Schaefer saw a giant pillar of flame, and his first thought was that one of the C-130s had crashed and exploded. He flew over Desert One and counted four planes on the ground, exactly what he expected. Thank you, Lord, he said to himself.

He turned to land on a second pass, and as he came down he clipped a rut so hard that he knew he had damaged his aircraft. The tires on his landing gear were blown and knocked off the rims. He had been in the air for five hours. He was tired, relieved, and had to piss. Like the planes, the choppers kept their engines running to lower the risk of a mechanical failure; most problems showed up stopping and restarting. Schaefer and his crew got out and walked around behind his aircraft to urinate, which is what he was doing when he was confronted by the eager Beckwith, trailed by Burruss, Kyle, and the other commanders.

“What the hell’s going on?” asked the colonel. “How did you get so goddamned late?”

“First of all, we’re only twenty-five minutes late,” said Schaefer. “Second of all, I don’t know where anyone else is because we went into a big dust cloud.”

“There’s no goddamned dust cloud out here,” said Beckwith, gesturing at the open sky. He had not been told about the haboobs on the way in.

“Well, there is one,” said Schaefer. He said that the flying conditions coming in had been the worst he had ever flown through. His men were badly shaken. His chopper still flew but may have been damaged. He wasn’t sure they could go on.

This is not what Beckwith wanted to hear.

“I’m going to report this thing,” he said angrily. He thought the pilot looked shattered, as though the pressure of this thing had completely broken him down. He slapped Schaefer on the back and told him that he and the others were going to have to suck it up.

The refueling crew went right to work on Schaefer’s chopper. Lyle Walton, one of the airmen helping with the hose, was approached by one of the helicopter crewmen.

“Where are you from, airman?” he asked.

“Little Rock, Arkansas,” said Walton.

“No shit, I’m from Pine Bluff,” said the crewman. They had not met during any of the training runs. He said his name was George Holmes, and it turned out they had grown up just thirty miles apart. They talked a little about that, and Holmes said, “I guess we’re going to have to go show this ayatollah you don’t mess with Arkansas boys.”

Burruss was surprised by how rattled the first two pair of chopper pilots looked. It occurred to him that it might have less to do with haboobs than the dangers of this mission. Maybe these guys never believed they might actually be called upon to fly it. Training was one thing. He had known men before who were superb in practice but shrank from a real fight.

Two more choppers arrived, and there was trouble with one of them. The helicopter flown by Captain B. J. McGuire had been flying with a warning light on in the cockpit, indicating trouble with his backup hydraulic system. Fitch was the first person to him on landing.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” the Delta squadron leader said, shouting to be heard. “Where are the rest of the guys?” Fitch asked.

“I don’t know,” said McGuire. “We don’t have any communication.”

McGuire told the Delta squadron commander about the problem with his helicopter. He said he thought the working hydraulic system was sufficiently trustworthy for him to continue.

When at last the final two choppers landed, it was cause for quiet celebration. It was one-thirty in the morning, which gave them just enough time to get everything done and hidden before full daylight. They had the required six. Some members of the assault force exchanged high fives. Seiffert soon had them maneuvering into position behind the four C-130s to refuel. Their wheels made deep tracks in the fine sand and the turning rotors whipped violent dust storms. It was deafening with all the rotors and propellers running. The truck fire was still burning brightly.

Beckwith, impatient to get going, climbed into the cockpit of the last chopper to land and tried to get the attention of Seiffert, who was coordinating these maneuvers on the radio with his pilots.

“Request permission to load, skipper,” said Beckwith. “We need to get with it.”

“Hey, remember me?” he asked.

Seiffert either didn’t hear him or ignored him. The colonel slapped his helmet.

Seiffert took off his helmet and confronted Beckwith angrily.

“I can’t guarantee we’ll get you to the next site before first light.”

“I don’t care,” said Beckwith.

Seiffert told him to go ahead and load his men.

Because they were transferring from the plane to choppers, Fitch and his men had been carrying all their own gear as they hauled the camouflage netting. In some cases men were carrying well over eighty pounds—Fitch himself was hauling ninety-five extra pounds of gear on his two-hundred-pound frame. They were eager to get settled on the choppers. When he got word, the major told his team to begin loading the camouflage netting and themselves on the choppers and went off to retrieve the men he had left guarding the bus passengers. Supervision of the Iranians was given to Carl Savory, the Delta surgeon. Doc Savory, a less experienced shooter than his Delta comrades, had been guarding the passengers for some time before one of the other men pointed out that he had forgotten to put the magazine in his weapon.

Beckwith was moving from chopper to chopper, urging things forward, when another of the marine pilots stepped out and said, “The skipper told me to tell you we only have five flyable helicopters. That’s what the skipper told me to tell you.”

Looking around, the colonel could see that the rotor on one of the Sea Stallions had stopped turning. They had shut it down.

It was precisely what the Delta commander had feared: These pilots are determined to scuttle this mission. It had not been lost on the other commanders working with him, most of whom outranked Beckwith, that the pugnacious colonel regarded them all as inferiors, as supporting players. The pilots, the navigators, the aircrews, the fuel equipment operators, the rangers, the combat controllers, the spies in Tehran, even the generals back at Wadi Kena…they were all ordinary mortals, squires, spear-carriers, water boys. Their job was to serve Delta, to get his magnificent men in place for their rendezvous with destiny. All along he had been impatient and suspicious of the other services and units involved; they lacked experience, nerve, and skill. They were screwups. He had little appreciation of the heroic difficulties they faced—indeed, most of the mission planners regarded getting Delta in and out of Tehran as the hardest piece of the job—so now, when things began to go sour, Beckwith felt not just disappointment and anger, but contempt. These piddling, gutless amateurs—the colonel was a master of the blunt, insulting adjective—were stepping on his glory. They weren’t getting him there! He oozed scorn.

When he found Kyle, he bellowed, “That goddamn number two helo has been shut down! We only have five good helicopters. You’ve got to talk to Seiffert and see what he says. You talk their language—I don’t.”

Beckwith didn’t see mechanical problems; he saw faltering courage in the pilots. He said as much to Kyle, grumbling that the flyers were looking for excuses not to go.

The comment burned the air force officer, who had been contending for months with Beckwith’s gruff hauteur. He knew better than to argue with him. The helo captains had the same kind of responsibilities as Beckwith, and Kyle better understood their concerns. They were responsible for getting their own crews in and out safely, not to mention themselves. No one knew their machines as well as they did, because they literally bet their lives on them every time they flew. Seiffert had made his decision. One of the hydraulic pumps on McGuire’s chopper was shot and they had no way to fix it. Kyle asked if it would be possible to fly with just the remaining one, and Seiffert had told him emphatically, “No! It’s unsafe! If the controls lock up, it becomes uncontrollable. It’s grounded!”

When Fitch returned from rounding up the rest of his men, he was surprised to find that his second in command, Captain E. K. Smith, was still waiting with his squadron in the dust. He told Smith to get the men on the choppers.

“The mission is an abort,” said Smith.

“What do you mean, it’s an abort?”

“Colonel Beckwith said it’s an abort,” said Smith. He explained that McGuire’s chopper was damaged and couldn’t fly. This contradicted what McGuire had told Fitch, that the chopper was damaged but flyable. Beckwith was such a hothead that it was entirely possible he had said something like that with only half the story.

“E.K., I’m not doubting your word, but I’m going to see Beckwith about this,” he said.

The abort scenario, which they had rehearsed, called for Fitch and his men to board not helicopters but one of the fuel birds. The choppers would fly back to the carrier and the planes would return to Masirah. He told Smith to prepare the men to get on the plane but said to wait until he returned.

It wasn’t easy finding the colonel in the noise and swirling dust. One of the things they had failed to build into the plan was some kind of clearly defined rallying point or command center. It took some wandering, but Fitch eventually found Beckwith, huddled with Burruss, Kyle, and the other mission commanders, outside one of the C-130s with a satellite radio.

“What’s going on?” Fitch shouted over the din.

“Well, Seiffert said that helicopter can’t fly, that it’s not mission capable, and we’re down to five,” Beckwith said, disgusted.

Kyle and the chopper crews said they were ready to proceed with five helicopters, but that would require trimming the assault force down by twenty men. Beckwith refused. “We all go or nobody goes,” he said.

The decision was passed up the chain to Washington, where Secretary of Defense Brown relayed the bad news to Brzezinski in the White House. The national security adviser, who only minutes earlier had been told all six choppers were refueling and the mission was proceeding as planned, was stunned. He quickly assessed what he knew and engaged in a little wishful thinking. He imagined Beckwith, who had been so gung ho in his visit to the White House, fuming in the desert, eager to proceed but stymied by more cautious generals in the rear. He wanted Brown to ask the commanders on the ground if they were prepared to go ahead with fewer than six choppers. Brzezinski urged Carter to have Brown at least raise the question.

In the din of Desert One, Beckwith, Kyle, Burruss, and the other commanders received Brzezinski’s request and reconsidered. It angered the colonel even to be asked; he felt as if his judgment and commitment were being questioned. Nevertheless, he asked Fitch, Burruss, and the others, “Can we make it with fewer aircraft?”

“Sir, we have been through this in rehearsals,” said Fitch. “Who are we going to leave behind?”

Some felt that they could trim the package and proceed. The new, more specific intelligence about the location of the hostages in the compound had eliminated the need for some of the searching they had planned to do, so maybe they could do it with fewer men.

But Beckwith didn’t like the odds. If they left behind the translators, who would talk them past the roadblocks in the city? If they got five choppers to the hide site, how likely was it that all five would restart the next day? If one or two refused to start, and another got hit—all likely scenarios that they had built into the plan—how were they going to airlift out all the hostages and his men? His plan was too finely wrought, too carefully calibrated between risk and opportunity to risk leaving anything out. It meant shifting the odds too greatly against his men, his beautiful creation, which he was not prepared to do. That was the conclusion they had reached in advance after repeated, calm deliberation. They had predetermined these automatic abort scenarios precisely to avoid having to make life-and-death decisions on the spur of the moment. This was clearly an abort situation. On their written mission schedule, just after the line “less than six helos,” was the word ABORT, and it was the only word on the page written in capital letters. Still, so much was at stake it was tempting to disregard their own prior assessment. To quit now might mean giving up on their only chance to carry out the mission. That was what many of them thought.

“If we don’t go now, we’re fucked,” said Major Long. “This is the last chance.”

But that might not be true. If they loaded up and left now, destroying the broken chopper with an incendiary grenade and scattering diversionary material that would make it appear to be a crashed Soviet chopper—they had brought some along—it was possible that their presence in the desert would go unnoticed, or at least be misunderstood, which meant they might be able to come back and try again in a few days. They could take the bus passengers back with them and hold them until the second try. Their disappearance would just be an unsolved mystery for a few days. The prospect of coming back and trying again argued for caution. Both Beckwith and his deputy commander, Burruss, concurred.

“I need every man I’ve got and every piece of gear,” said Beckwith finally. “There’s no fat I can cut out.”

As the dusty soldiers were making this decision in the Iranian desert, Brzezinski was breaking the news of the setback to Carter. Standing in a corridor between the Oval Office and the president’s study, Brzezinski whispered the news. Carter muttered, “Damn. Damn.”

Behind his study desk, Carter called the defense secretary. Brzezinski debated what to say. Having come this far, he didn’t want the mission scratched out of bureaucratic timidity. He sensed a historic chance and was inclined to urge the president to push his generals to proceed with only five helicopters. Convinced that Beckwith, out in the desert, would be feeling the same way, Brzezinski leaned across the desk and looked squarely at the president.

“You should get the opinion of the commander in the field. His attitude should be taken into account.”

Moments later, Brown received Beckwith’s final decision.

“Let’s go with his recommendation,” the president said. Carter then lowered his head and rested it on his arms for a few long seconds. The failure was catastrophic.

He and Brzezinski were then joined by a larger group of advisers, including Mondale, Jordan, Christopher, and Powell. Standing behind his desk in his small study, his sleeves rolled up, hands on his hips, the president told them, “I’ve got some bad news…. I had to abort the rescue mission. Two of our helicopters never reached Desert One—that left us six. The Delta team was boarding the six helicopters when they found out that one of them had a mechanical problem and couldn’t go on.”

“What did Beckwith think?” asked Jordan, thinking along the same lines as Brzezinski.

Carter explained that they had consulted Beckwith and that the decision had been unanimous.

“At least there were no American casualties and no innocent Iranians hurt,” Carter said softly.

6. Two Loud, Dull Thunks

At Desert One there wasn’t time to dwell on the decision, no matter how disappointing. Paul Zeisman, Delta’s radio operator, raised Dick Meadows by satellite radio. Meadows was waiting at the hide site. Zeisman and Meadows had worked out a code. Meadows was “Test Alpha,” Zeisman was “Test Bravo,” the hide site was “antenna,” the helicopters were “trucks,” and Delta Force was “antenna parts.”

“Test Alpha, this is Test Bravo,” said Zeisman, speaking into the radio on the flight deck of one of the C-130s. “We can’t get the antenna parts to you because we had a lot of trucks break down. We’re going to go ahead and cancel the contract. You should come back.”

The decision left Meadows and his crew hanging. If the American intrusion were discovered, it would imperil their trip out of Iran. The authorities were likely to take a strong interest in every caucasian foreigner who had recently entered the country. Meadows was greatly disappointed but he didn’t sound worried.

Fitch went back to his men and directed them to board one of the fuel planes. As he saw it, they weren’t dead yet. This might just mean as little as postponing the mission one day. With Meadows and their trucks and local help poised and ready, they could not delay long. He and his men piled in on top of the nearly deflated fuel bladder, which rippled like a giant black waterbed. Everyone was weary and disappointed. Eric Haney stripped off his gear and his black field jacket, balling it up behind him to form a cushion against the hard metal angles of the plane’s inner wall. He and some of the other men wedged their weapons snugly between the fuel bladder and the wall of the plane so they would be secure and out of the way. Some of the men fell immediately asleep.

Lyle Walton, one of the members of the refueling crew, had no idea that the mission was scrubbed. He and his fellow crew members were in the back of the same plane as Fitch’s men, congratulating themselves for having so efficiently refueled their chopper. It was still dark outside. So far as they knew, everything was going as planned.

Fitch told his sergeant major, Dave Cheney, to make sure everyone was accounted for. The sergeant shouted out the roster and ticked off the team members and came up short. It wasn’t surprising, in their haste, and on a patch of desert roaring with the propellers and rotors of four big planes and five helicopters, it would have been easy for one man to get on the wrong plane or to somehow have gotten hurt and now be lying alone just out of eyeshot. Their plane was supposed to take off first and the pilots were eager to depart.

“Don’t let them take off until I make sure we find this guy,” Fitch told Cheney and then took off to search for his missing man. He checked all the other aircraft, without success, and then saw what appeared to be a figure lying on the desert floor a short distance away. He ran over to look and discovered a heap of camouflage netting. He returned to the C-130 that held his squadron.

“He’s got to be here,” he told Cheney. Their search located him curled up in the front of the plane, right where he was supposed to be, fast asleep. Either he had never heard the sergeant major call out his name or, in the general clamor, no one had heard his response.

“We’re all set, let’s go,” Fitch told the plane’s crew chief.

Just behind their plane, a combat controller in goggles, one of Carney’s crew, appeared outside the cockpit of chopper three and informed the pilot, Major Schaefer, that he had to move his aircraft out of the way. Schaefer had refueled behind that tanker, and he now had enough fuel to fly back to the Nimitz, but first they wanted to get the C-130s off the ground. The tanker needed to turn off to the left to clear the runway, and they needed Schaefer’s helicopter out of the way.

Schaefer lifted the nose of his craft. His crew chief Dewey Johnson jumped out to straighten the nose wheels, which had been bent sideways when they’d landed. Straightened, they could be retracted so they wouldn’t cause drag in flight. Johnson climbed back in and Schaefer lifted the chopper into a hover at about fifteen feet and held it, kicking up a wicked storm of dust that whipped around the combat controller on the ground. He was the only thing Schaefer could see below, a hazy black image in a cloud of brown, so the pilot fixed on him as a point of reference.

To escape the dust storm created by Schaefer’s rotors, the combat controller retreated toward the wing of the parked C-130, but seeing only a blurry image of the man on the ground, and concentrating on his own aircraft, Schaefer didn’t notice that he had moved. He kept the nose of his blinded chopper pointed at him, and as the combat controller moved, the helicopter turned in the same direction.

“How much power do we have, Les?” asked Schaefer, performing his usual checklist.

“Ninety-four percent,” said his copilot Les Petty.

Then Schaefer heard and felt a loud, strong, metallic whack! It sounded as if someone had hit the side of his aircraft with a large aluminum bat. Others in the desert heard a cracking sound as loud as an explosion but sharper-edged somehow, more piercing and particular, like the shearing impact of giant unmoored industrial tools. The marine pilot’s rotors had clipped the top of the plane, metal violently and loudly cracking into metal in a wild spray of sparks, and instantly the helicopter lost all aerodynamics, its cushion of air whipped out from beneath, and it fell with a grinding bang into the C-130’s cockpit, an impact so stunning that Schaefer briefly blacked out. Both aircraft were engorged with fuel and the sparks caused by the collision immediately ignited both with a powerful, lung-emptying thump! that seemed to suck all the air out of the desert. It formed a huge blue ball of fire around the front of the C-130 and then rocketed a pillar of white flame three hundred feet or more into the sky, in a split second turning the scene once more from night into day.

Beckwith pivoted the moment he felt and heard the crash and started running toward it. He pulled up short the length of a football field away, stopped by the intense heat, and thought immediately with despair of his men, Fitch’s entire White Element, trapped.

Inside the C-130, Fitch had felt the plane begin to shudder, as though the pilots were revving the engines for takeoff. There were no windows and he couldn’t tell if they were moving yet. Then he heard two loud, dull thunks. He thought maybe the nose gear or landing gear had hit a rock or a divot, but when he looked toward the front of the aircraft he saw flames and sparks. His first thought was that they were under attack.

He had removed his rucksack, and leaning against it was his weapon, an M203. He grabbed it and stood in one motion. Beside him the plane’s loadmaster, responding wordlessly to the same sight, pulled open the troop door on the port side of the plane. It revealed a solid wall of flame. Fitch helped him slam it down and push the handle in to lock it. He and the men were sitting and standing on a thousand gallons of fuel, and they appeared to be caught in an inferno.

“Open the ramp!” Fitch shouted, but it lowered to reveal more flames. The plane was going to explode. Loaded as it was with fuel, it was an enormous bomb, and it was enveloped in fire. The only other way out was the starboard troop door to the rear of the plane above two-thirds of the distance to the tail, which had been calmly opened by three of the plane’s crewmen. That doorway proved blessedly free of flames. Men were piling out of it before it was completely opened.

One of them was the Hercules crewman Walton, who had been trying to walk to the front of the plane to get a cup of coffee, picking his way through the crowd of men while keeping his balance on the shifting fuel bladder, when he heard the collision and felt the plane tilt forward and then shake from side to side. He fought his way out of the door and dropped six feet to the desert floor. Men were raining on top of him so fast he couldn’t stand up. He rolled until he found himself under the plane, surrounded by fire. Then a marine grabbed him beneath both arms, hauled him into the clear, and shouted, “Haul ass, brother!”

Still inside the plane Cheney, a bull of a man with a big deep voice, kept shouting, “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” as the men crowded toward the only escape. Flames spread rapidly from the ceiling of the plane and were wrapping down on both sides. Fire ignited a primitive flight instinct that none of the men could control. One of the junior air force crewmen was knocked down and was being trampled by the aggressive, fleeing Deltas, when Technical Sergeant Ken Bancroft fought his way to the man, picked him up, and carried him to the doorway and out. Cheney’s natural authority and clarity helped avoid a complete mad scramble and kept a steady flow of men out the door. They were used to filing out this way on parachute jumps, so the line moved fast. Still, it was torture for the men at the rear of the line. “Don’t panic!” Cheney kept screaming. Fitch stood opposite him in the doorway, regulating the flow. In their haste, many of the men stumbled when they hit the ground, which created pileups just outside the door. They scrambled to get to their feet, run, and clear the way.

Ray Doyle, a loadmaster on one of the other tankers standing more than a hundred feet away, was knocked over by the force of the initial explosion. Jesse Rowe, a crewman on another of the tankers, felt his plane shake and the temperature of the air suddenly shoot up. Burruss saw the plane erupt as he stepped off the back of his C-130. He was carrying incendiary explosives to destroy the disabled Sea Stallion, coming down the ramp, and the sight of it buckled him. He sat down, watching the tower of flame engulfing the plane, and thought, Man, Fitch’s whole squadron gone, those poor bastards. But then he saw men running from the fireball, as if they were fleeing hell itself.

Pilots quickly spread the word to their crews that they had not been attacked, which eased some of the initial confusion.

Still inside the burning plane, Haney was near the end of the line of men trying to get out. He and the men around him had been jarred alert by the noise and impact outside the plane and saw blue sparks overhead and toward the front. Then the galley door at the front of the plane blew in and flames blasted out along the ceiling.

“Haul ass!” shouted the man next to him, leaping to his feet. Captain Smith, who had dozed off, woke up to see men trying to gain footing on the shifting surface of the fuel bladder and at first thought it was amusing, until he saw flames. He and the others at the front of the plane began running as well as they could, fearing they would never outrace the flames around them, acutely aware that beneath their feet were thousands of gallons of fuel. Ahead, men were jammed in the doorway. Haney threw himself out when he finally reached the door and dropped down hard on the man who had jumped before him. They both scrambled up and ran until they were about fifty meters away, then turned to watch with horror.

One of the soldiers, Frank McKenna, had fallen asleep before the commotion and awoke to flames and to men lining up to jump from the plane. He ran to join them, assuming they had been attacked in the air and were now evacuating a burning plane. He looked around frantically for a parachute, didn’t see one, and when it was his turn to jump he just flung himself out the door belly-first, in arched skydiving position, and collided hard with the earth a split second later. It had all happened so fast he didn’t have time to consider the folly of free-falling without a parachute. As he later told his buddies, “One problem at a time.”

Fitch felt it was his duty to stay until all the men were off, but it was hard. As the flames rapidly advanced he realized that not everyone was going to make it. Instinct finally won out and both he and Cheney leapt out the door, falling when they hit the ground. Other men crashed on top of them. They helped each other up and out to where the others were now watching, brightly illuminated by the enlarging fire.

Staff Sergeant Joe Byers was one of the last struggling to escape. He was a radio operator on the plane’s crew and his seat was in the front of the aircraft behind the cockpit. As soon as he realized the plane had been hit by something, he started moving toward his evacuation door, which happened to be the starboard troop door in the rear, the only way out. When he dropped down the small flight of stairs from the flight deck, he was shocked to see the inside of the cargo hold ablaze and nearly empty. He started crawling across the fuel bladders toward the door, scarcely able to breathe. He thought he was going to die. The door looked miles away, fire was all around him, and he was crawling across tons of fuel. But he kept going.

Fitch ran to what appeared to be a safe distance, then turned around, lifting his weapon, still assuming they were under attack, looking for the enemy and instead seeing an awesome and ugly sight. Crouched like a huge dragonfly, its rotors still turning, a helicopter was mounted on top of the plane. He realized it wasn’t an attack, it was an accident.

He saw two more men jump out, one of them Byers, whose flight suit was burning. Other men rushed to put out the flames and to drag him clear. Then ammunition started cooking off—all the grenades, missiles, explosives, and rifle rounds—causing loud cracking explosions and throwing flames and light. The Red-eye missiles went off, drawing smoke trails high into the sky. Then the fuel bladder finally ignited. A huge pillar of flame shot skyward in a loud explosion that buckled the fuselage. All four propellers dropped straight down into the sand and stuck there, like somebody had planted them. One last man came flying out of the open troop door, Sergeant James McLain, blown out by the force of the blast. He hit the ground so hard it damaged his back. His flight suit was in flames. Sergeant Paul Lawrence ran back toward the fire to grab him and pull him to safety. McLain was badly burned.

In the cockpit of the chopper, set now on top of the C-130, Schaefer had blacked out on impact. He awkened from his blackout sitting crooked in his seat, the chopper listing to one side, with flames engulfing his cockpit.

“What’s wrong, Les? What’s wrong?” he said, turning to his copilot, but Petty was already gone. He had jumped out the window on his side.

Schaefer heard a scream behind him and turned to grab the arm of Dewey Johnson, his crew chief, who had been with him since Vietnam. He took his helmet off and pulled on Johnson’s arm again, and then heard his friend scream once more in agony and drop away from him.

The pilot shut down the engines and sat for a moment, certain he was about to die. Then for some reason an image came into his mind of his fiancée’s father—a man who had always seemed none too impressed with his future pilot son-in-law—commenting during some future family meal about how the poor sap’s body had been found cooked like a holiday turkey in the front seat of his aircraft, and something about that horrifying image motivated him. His body would not be found like an overcooked Butterball; he had to at least try to escape. He ejected the window on his side and, as fire closed over him, burning his face, he threw himself into the flames.

He dropped a good distance to the ground, landing hard, and he lay stunned for a long time, badly burned and half blind. When he saw pillars of flame shooting up around him—patches of fuel-saturated sand were catching fire—he forced himself to his feet and ran from the erupting wreckage.

He and Petty escaped, badly scorched. One of the backup C-130 pilots got out, but the two main pilots, two navigators, and one crewman were not so fortunate. They and all three of Schaefer’s crewmen, including Arkansas-born George Holmes, perished.

The exploding plane and ammo sent flaming bits of hot metal and debris spraying across the makeshift airport, riddling the other four working helicopters, whose crews promptly began climbing out and moving to a safe distance. Most of the men had no idea what was going on, just that a plane and chopper had exploded. The air over the scene had been heavy with the odor of fuel, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that all the other aircraft were going to burst into flames as well. The three remaining C-130s began taxiing in different directions away from the exploding wreckage. There was chaos on the ground. One of the Delta medics kept shouting over the engine noise and wails of the wounded, “Look in your E and E kit and get me some Percodan!” which was misheard by one group of men who huddled over a map on the ground.

“What are you guys doing?” they were asked.

“Didn’t you hear? We’re going to E and E to Percodan,” one said.

Word of the calamity reached the command center in Wadi Kena with the following hurried report: “We have a crash. A helo crashed into one of the C-130s. We have some dead, some wounded, and some trapped. The crash site is ablaze. Ammunition is cooking off.”

Jerry Uttaro, piloting one of the tankers, started taxiing away from the blaze when he heard debris raining down on top of his plane. Desert One was lit up like a homecoming bonfire rally, complete with fireworks. He got only a few feet when some of the Delta operators, fearing that he was leaving without them, ran out in front of his plane to stop him. Uttaro told his radio operator to go down and explain to the idiots in front of his airplane that he was just trying to avoid being the next log on the fire and that he wasn’t going to strand them.

Fitch saw one of the other C-130s move away and then turn back. He ran to it and began banging on its starboard troop door. It taxied on a bit farther and then came to a stop. The door slid open.

“I’ve got to get some people on here,” he shouted. The crewman objected at first that they were already full but quickly relented.

“Load as many as you can,” said Fitch. Some of his men climbed into that plane, then it taxied on and took off.

He turned to look back and saw two of the helicopters with their rotors turning. He was impressed. He figured they had stayed on the ground to see if anyone else needed to be picked up. The only people he saw remaining on the ground were Carney and his combat controllers, which was reassuring, because clearly they had some way out. He assumed the helicopters had stayed behind to do that.

Then Jessie Johnson, another member of Delta, pulled up in the jeep.

“What are you doing?” he asked Fitch.

“Well, I’m making sure everybody is out of here and then I’m going to get on this helicopter,” Fitch said.

“Look up in the helicopter, dummy,” said Johnson. Fitch did and saw immediately that it was empty. After the collision the pilots had hastily abandoned ship and boarded the C-130s. Fitch thought all the planes had taken off, but with Johnson and Carney and his men still on the ground he realized he must be wrong. Johnson pointed out the last C-130, waiting for them.

“Get in the jeep, we’re pulling out,” he said.

Beckwith was in the cockpit of the last plane, talking to Vaught at Wadi Kena, explaining the new calamity. There was thought given to leaving a small force behind in some low hills to the north to keep an eye on the scene—there was still a small chance all this would go unnoticed and they might be able to return and complete the mission—but that idea was quickly nixed. The only answer now was to clear out, and fast. The plane was low on fuel and they were running out of darkness. Burruss took charge of making sure everyone was accounted for, the able-bodied and the injured. There was some thought given to retrieving the bodies of the dead, but the fire was still raging and there wasn’t time. After consulting with Vaught, Burruss was told to turn loose the Iranian bus passengers. The Delta officer ordered one of his men to rip some wires from the bus engine to make sure it was disabled and, after locating one of the Farsi speakers, he boarded the bus and addressed the passengers.

He told them that they were leaving some snipers behind, and that if anyone tried to leave the scene before morning they would be shot.

“So make sure you stay on the bus until daylight,” Burruss said.

As he left and headed back to the plane, he took one last look at the flaming ruins of the plane and chopper and felt a stab of remorse over leaving behind the dead. But there was nothing to be done about it.

John Carney was the last man to leave Desert One. He climbed into Uttaro’s tanker and said, “Everybody is out of the desert now.”

There were so many men inside the last plane that they had to throw some of their rucksacks, mattresses, and equipment out to make room. The injured pilots and air force crewmen were being attended to by the Delta medics, who administered morphine and dressed their burns. As the plane accelerated across the desert floor it hit the lip of the road at full speed and with a frightening jolt was airborne. Inside it felt like Iran had delivered one last kick to the rear as they reached the sky, but then the plane hit the ground again hard. It didn’t have enough speed to stay airborne. Fitch managed to stay on his feet as the plane kept surging forward and then slowly urged itself off the ground. One of the propellers had clipped the rise by the road and had been bent, so the overloaded C-130 flew off toward Masirah with just three engines. Behind them on the desert floor was a giant flaming wreck surrounded by four intact helicopters, an amazed bus full of Iranian pilgrims, and the still-burning ruins of the fuel truck. It was hard to imagine that such a spectacular series of calamities had not caught the attention of any Iranian authorities, but there was no indication that the intrusion had been noticed.

As they got in the air, Fitch told Boykin. “We need to get some fighters over.” He was assuming that with all the commotion at Desert One the Iranian air force would be on them soon. They would not be out of Iranian airspace by daylight, and the overburdened, wounded, and unarmed C-130 would be a fat and easy target for a jet fighter.

“It’s already done,” said Boykin.

No fighters were necessary. All four C-130s limped out of Iran without being challenged by Iran’s air defenses—fighters on the Nimitz were ready to intervene if necessary. The planes flew back the same way they had flown in, unescorted and unseen by Iran’s air defenses. It was the one part of the mission that had gone right.

America’s elite rescue force had lost eight men, seven helicopters, and a C-130 and had not even made contact with the enemy. It was a debacle. It defined the word “debacle.” Meadows and his crew would be stranded in a very tight spot in Tehran as the country woke up to this ham-handed invasion. Still, the men in the departing planes clung to the hope that the disaster scene in the desert would remain a mystery long enough for them to try again.

What they didn’t yet know was that there would be one more disaster to add to the mortifying list. In their haste to clear out immediately after the collision, the marine crews and pilots had left behind in their Sea Stallions classified documents describing their failed mission in detail. It would all be there for the Iranian authorities to inspect, a veritable play by play. Kyle called for an air strike to destroy the choppers and the papers in them, but concern for the bus passengers, who had been so sternly instructed to stay put, ruled out that option. There would be no mystery, and there would be no second chance.

Word reached the White House at about that time, just before the force left the ground. Still in his study, surrounded by his advisers, absorbing the shock of the abort decision, Carter received a call from General Jones.

“Yes, Dave.”

Jordan watched the president close his eyes, and then Carter’s jaw fell and his face went pale.

“Are there any dead?” Carter asked.

The room was silent. Finally, the president said softly, “I understand,” and hung up the phone.

He calmly explained to the others what had happened. The men took in the awful news quietly. Then Secretary of State Vance, who had submitted his resignation earlier that day because he objected to the mission, said, “Mr. President, I’m very, very sorry.”

Jordan ducked into the president’s bathroom and vomited.

Iran found out about the failed rescue attempt the same way the rest of the world did; the White House issued a statement at one o’clock in the morning (nine-thirty in the morning in Tehran). It began, “The president has ordered the cancellation of an operation in Iran which was under way to prepare for a rescue of our hostages. The mission was terminated because of equipment failure.”

It went on to briefly explain without details that there had been “a collision between our aircraft on the ground at a remote desert location in Iran.”