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.