FORTY-THREE

BY 1800 HOURS on April 24th, the first MC-130 was in the air. It carried Colonel Kyle and his Combat Control Team, the Road Watch Team, Major Fitch and the Blue Element, and me. The other five aircraft would follow an hour later.

Over the Gulf of Oman, the plane flew at a couple of thousand feet. As the MC-130 hit the Iranian coast west of Chah Bahar, it dropped to 400 feet. Sitting near the rear cargo hatch, Wade Ishimoto felt a blast of hot air. He knew he was in Iran.

The ground below rolled toward the darkening horizon. To the north, far away, the hills looked like blue smudges and soon grew in size; behind them, farther still, the black mountains rose steeply.

To fly through the seams and into the gaps of the Iranian ground radar tracking system, which under the Khomeini regime had begun to break down, it was necessary to fly a lurching, stomach-tumbling route—hard to port, hard to starboard, up and down, sharp again to port, a sudden dip. It went this way, irregularly but constantly, for several hours.

Some of the Rangers in the Road Watch Team became airsick and remained so the entire flight.

Delta’s operators sat shoulder to shoulder, their equipment strung overhead in the webbing or else strapped to the inside of the fuselage. No one spoke much. The cabin interior was lit by small red lights—an aid to night vision once Desert One was reached. There was not much movement. The men remained inside themselves like a unit waiting for a combat airborne drop.

I thought about the year I’d spent with 22 SAS. I thought of the names and places: John Woodhouse and John Edwards; the Rat, Peter Walter, and Gloom, Sergeant Major Ross; Troopers Scott and Larsen; Harry Thompson; Crab Stakes and the Brecon Beacons and Sherwood Forest; Corsica and Malaya; the old Gurkha Camp at Gerik and the hospital at Ipoh. Maybe these memories came back because I’d been thinking earlier that day of Johnny Watts. He was the Senior British Army Representative to the Government of Oman. If he’d known we were in Masirah, I felt sure he would have greeted us as we deplaned—dressed in full battle gear, demanding to be taken along. As a former brigadier in the Special Air Service Regiment, he had spent many hours helping me form the ideas that led to Delta. It was appropriate that afternoon to feel close to him.

About thirty minutes out, I looked aft and saw there were only a couple of guys still awake. The rest were snoozing, getting their rest. I moved from the cabin and climbed a short ladder into the dimly lit cockpit. There wasn’t much room. The pilot and copilot were hidden from me behind their huge chairs. Jim Kyle sat with his back to the bulkhead, monitoring the radio signals back to Wadi Kena and Misery.

It was hard not to be concerned about the trucks and, more, what we’d actually find in the streets of Teheran. Had a new roadblock been established? Would all the hostages really be found in the chancellery? Could those Soviet ZSU-23-4s, with their lethal 23mm cannon, reach Delta while it was still in the stadium? How many helicopters would crank tomorrow night? But my main concern was the route from the hide-site to the wall. If we got to the wall I believed we were home free.

The MC-130 was more than halfway to Desert One when Kyle slapped my shoulder. He grinned. “The helicopters have launched. All eight got off.” “Wonderful,” I said. “That’s great.”

How many people have the opportunity to do what I’ve done: find a new command; build it from scratch; and then, after creating a unique, the most beautiful, and the finest unit in the United States Army, take it off to war and fight it! I was all smiles.

At almost 2200 hours, right on schedule, the MC-130 closed on Desert One. Three miles from touchdown, the pilot switched on the remotely controlled lights at the still-distant LZ. The STOL mission had done well. The beacons were faint, but there.

“Here we are!”

The MC-130 flew one circle over the LZ, then landed west to east. A hard-packed, unimproved road had been selected and the landing wasn’t as rough as some we’d done in training.

After we’d taxied off the road and come to a halt, the rear ramp was lowered and the small Road Watch Team, whose job it would be to guard the site’s flanks, unloaded. These were mostly Rangers, but there were some Delta Force support people among them. They deployed once their motorcycles and quarter-ton jeep had been driven down the ramp.

I walked off with them, turned right, and headed north, toward the road. It was a cool, clear night; the stars were easily seen. There was enough light from the moon to recognize people thirty or forty yards away.

Before the Road Watch Team was actually in blocking position, a big Mercedes bus, its headlights showing the way, drove into our perimeter. I hollered, “Stop that vehicle,” and fired once at its tires. A Ranger also fired. It thudded to a stop. Blue Element, under Major Fitch, which had just deplaned, surrounded the bus and ordered its passengers off. There were forty-five people on board, mainly elderly folks and very young kids. Perhaps three or four were adult males. The passengers were at first lined up on both sides of the hard dirt road and then moved off to the south side, where they were carefully searched and closely guarded. A plan had been prepared for this. They would have been back-hauled out on a C-130 later in the evening and returned the same way the following night to Manzariyeh. The mission was later accused of not looking at all the eventualities. This was an unfair assessment. We had planned for such a mishap and when it occurred it was handled routinely.

Speculation had been that most of the Iranian road traffic that could come through Desert One would come from the east. Accordingly, the strongest security contingent was placed down the road in that direction. The second and smaller force was just beginning to position itself to the west of the LZ when from that direction a gasoline tanker truck drove into view. Capt. Wade Ishimoto, one of the security force leaders, was out in front on a Yamaha motorcycle with a Ranger named Rubio. As the truck continued to drive toward the LZ, it was hit by an M72 LAW (Light Antitank Weapon) fired by Rubio. It immediately began to burn furiously. Ishimoto rushed toward the truck on foot, yelling in Farsi a phrase he had memorized, “Biya enja!” which meant, “Come here!” When no one responded, he returned to Rubio and the motorcycle. At that instant, a second and smaller vehicle drove up behind the burning truck. The driver of the tanker leaped out of his cab and ran for the second truck. Once he jumped in, this vehicle made a hard U turn and raced for the darkness. Ishimoto’s motorcycle failed three or four times to kick-start. When the engine finally caught, the small truck was out of range and too far ahead for it to be caught. It escaped down another track.

I did not believe the Iranians who had run away could have seen, or identified, the C-130s. If they had, who knows what they would say they saw? Would anyone believe them? All things considered, the possibility that two truck drivers saw the rescue force was no reason to cash in our chips and go home. Of course it was a risk, but it was one I elected to take.

The fire from the petrol truck blazed brightly the entire time Delta was on the ground, the flames reaching 300 feet in the sky. The night was brighter than ever.

Jim Kyle walked over, “What do you think, Charlie?”

“It’s all based on how many Iranians we can haul out,” I said. “Let’s don’t get excited until we get eight or ten vehicles in here and have to establish a parking lot.”

The C-130 sat facing west near the road, its engines idling. Once Kyle organized the Combat Control Team that was responsible for air traffic operations, once the security force had deployed, and once Blue Element had unloaded, he gave the O.K. to the pilot. Into the brightly lit sky the 130 lifted and was soon out of sight.

For the moment we were alone on the desert floor. I dug my heel into the ground and found the crust to be particularly hard to break through.

The second MC-130, the one carrying Major Coyote’s Red Element, landed shortly afterward. Buckshot trotted down the ramp and saw the flaming tanker. He was laughing, hitting on all cylinders.

“Welcome to World War III,” I said.

This MC-130 was immediately unloaded. It carried, amongst other equipment, the mountains of camouflage netting, which were to be used to cover the helos the next day. This done, the aircraft repositioned itself outside the LZ; the third troop-carrying 130 landed and was followed in short order by the three tanker EC-130s. The last four aircraft taxied down the road and lined up north to south, a full two football fields apart, to await the arrival of the helos. The second C-130, the one which carried the Red Element, then taxied back out onto the rough strip and took off for the return flight to Masirah.

Jim Kyle and the Air Force did a great job. Delta’s arrival had been handled very smoothly, just like in the rehearsals. All that needed to be done now was wait for the Sea Stallions.

Thirty minutes behind the arrival of the fuel-birds, the choppers were scheduled to come in.

Thirty minutes.

Delta began to break into three smaller groups, and with their equipment they pre-positioned themselves for loading onto the helicopters. There was a good deal of movement on the ground as the men went about their business moving and shifting equipment. Based on footprints alone, I can imagine why the Iranians later claimed there had been a force of 800 on the ground.

Since this was the last pit stop before sunrise, everyone took the opportunity to relieve the pressure on his kidneys.

The helicopters were due in fifteen minutes.

While we waited, I happened to see one of the Iranian generals. I did a double take. His holster was empty. “Where is your weapon?” I asked. “It fell out,” he said, “when I got off the aircraft.” Two operators were sent back to the plane to see if they could find his Smith & Wesson revolver. After a thorough search they reported they couldn’t find it. I knew what had happened. Once on the ground, seeing the bus and the burning oil truck, he had panicked and thrown his weapon away. He was scared. I told him we didn’t have generals in the American Army who threw their sidearms away. I let him have it and put him down as hard as I could. It made no difference he was a general if he wasn’t much of a soldier. Right then I made up my mind that he was going back with the Iranians who had been on the bus. He was going to be baggage.

During this time, the satellite radio was also set up and Delta’s primary radio operator, Mr. Victor (pseudonym), a warrant officer, had made contact with the two agents who were at the hide-site. I was told, “All the groceries are on the shelf.” It meant everything outside of Teheran was in order. They were waiting for us. There were no problems.

The tanker truck blazed on.

There was a good deal of noise from the idling engines of the four parked C-130s.

Fifteen minutes passed. No sign of the helos.

I walked among the men as they sat in small groups. The night had gotten a little cooler. Some, with their jacket collars turned up, were munching C rations.

Everyone was checking his watch. The choppers were five minutes late.

Fast Eddie, I noticed, was in a group that contained members of White Element. He is a big man and with the packs of explosives he was carrying he looked in the desert larger than life. He was beaming. Next night, about this same time, at the wall, he’d be even happier.

Boris, also a member of White, was sitting close by. His machine gun was wrapped and lay next to him. Twenty-four hours from now, he and his HK21 would be guarding the southern approaches to Roosevelt Avenue.

I looked into the night. I couldn’t see or hear the choppers. They were ten minutes late.

Walter ambled over to me. “Well, Boss,” he said in pure West Virginia twang, “I guess this’ll be our last one. We’re both getting old. We do this one, do it right, we’ll be finished.”

I knew that if anything went wrong at the embassy, Walt Shumate was the kind of man who would try to fix it, make it right. Plans are only so good; and when unforeseen events occur, people with experience are a great help at those times. In ’Nam I’d seen Walter in some tough spots. I was glad he was with me.

The helicopters were twenty minutes behind schedule. In rehearsals, we’d been working with tolerances of only ten minutes.

The troops did some grumbling. They were becoming tense, edgy. Somebody would look at his watch. The guy next to him would say, “Shit, what’s new? Just like in training. Same old problem.”

I was now very concerned. Just looking at the time, we could see that the operation was going sour. Buckshot was worried with good reason: we would not have enough flight time to get to the hide-site before daylight. He asked Snuffy to do a map recon and pick some alternate sites en route—just in case we had to put down somewhere. Pacing, he said, “I wish to hell they’d get here. Come on. Let’s go!”

I walked off to be by myself and to collect my thoughts. The stars above were very distinct. This load I was carrying was getting heavier. What would General Bob and General Shy do? Follow the plan and do what’s right. I had learned a long time ago from Boppy Edwards a small truism: to make a simple plan, inform everyone involved with it, don’t change it, and kick it in the ass. At this point I made up my mind! No matter when the choppers arrived—and no matter when we arrived at the hide-site—we would go ahead.

It was obvious now that Delta would land at the hideout after first light, not before. But that was only half of it. There was the matter of the four DOD agents who were waiting for us outside of Teheran—two at the hide-site, two in the warehouse. How would they react when we didn’t show up on time? How long would they wait? We had good communication with the hide-site. They were informed that the helos were late. But even so, they could wait only so long. There was nothing anyone could do. First light in Teheran was going to be 5:30 A.M.

“Damn, damn, damn. Where are they?”

Thirty minutes went by. Then five more.

Jim Kyle was in contact with General Vaught during this entire time. Finally, a message relayed via Wadi Kena arrived, “The choppers are ten minutes away!” Buckshot smiled at me.

You could hear it before you could see it, that peculiar whop whop sound the rotors make. I went out to meet it as soon as it touched down. I expected to see Colonel Seiffert, the Marines’ CO. The pilot wore his helmet and goggles. I walked around the chopper with him, because the first thing he wanted to do was relieve himself. Only after he took off his helmet did I realize I was speaking to Maj. James Schaefer. This officer had made an impression on Delta, especially the men who knew helicopters. He was one of the original pilots. Delta felt Jim Schaefer really had his act together. While he took his piss, I said, “Are we glad to see you! How you doing?” He looked at me. He said, “It’s been a hell of a trip.” Then he spoke further, words to the effect that if we had any sense we would move the helos out into the desert and load everyone on the C-130s and go home. I slapped him on the back to assure him. I didn’t understand how tough a time he’d really had; and he didn’t elaborate on his statement. He was all business. Then, he went back up into the RH-53D’s cockpit and moved his helo (designated Number 3) behind the northernmost fuel-bird and began refueling.

Shortly after Schaefer arrived, maybe ten minutes later, the second helo came in. Oddly, it came in from a different direction. The third arrived from still another direction. So, too, did the fourth. The fifth and sixth came in together and also from another direction. No two came through the same hole in the sky. Spread out, an hour to an hour and a half late, and coming from different directions.

The seventh and eighth helos never arrived at all. Obviously, something had happened. There was now no room for any error. Already we’d lost our two backup choppers.

When the second chopper had landed, I walked over to it. The pilot, Captain Paul (pseudonym), stood out in front. He was as well liked as Schaefer, a hell of a good man. The Delta operators liked to fly with both of them. Now, on the ground, he began to walk away from his chopper. He spoke a lot, he was talking fast, and he was saying some pretty strong things. Buckshot, Major Snuffy, and Major Fitch were with me, listening.

“I don’t know who’s really running things at my level, but I’ll tell you this much, that some very careful consideration ought to be given to calling off this operation. You have no idea what I’ve been through. The damnedest sandstorm I’ve ever seen hit us. It was tough! I gotta tell you, I’m not sure we’re going to make it. I’m really not sure we can make it.”

I thought back to Schaefer. He hadn’t said much, but he, too, seemed in bad shape. This shocked me. I comprehended what I heard, but the possible consequences of what I heard were drastic. Here were two very strong officers whom we’d observed and knew, who now were pretty well shattered.

Major Snuffy, the man who had read Samuel in the hangar at Wadi Kena, said, “Holy mackerel, you know, this guy—Gol’ darn, it doesn’t look good.”

But we felt there was nothing to be done about it. Now, with six helos on the ground, Kyle was very busy handling the refueling traffic. Schaefer’s (#3) and Paul’s (#4) helicopters were positioned behind the fuel-bird farthest north of the road. Seiffert (#1) helicopter and another one (#8) were behind the EC-130 nearest the road, and the other two (#2 and #7) were refueling from the 130 south of the road.

Delta began, as the choppers arrived one by one, to line up behind them in helicopter loads. Everyone knew the drill; take your equipment, get in line, wait for orders to board.

Ninety minutes late, Ed Seiffert, the skipper of the helo unit, had been the last to land. I went up to him at once. He was late. I was frustrated. I was thinking, “We’ll land at the hideout no earlier than dawn, maybe later, in full daylight. Delta needs to on-load and we need to get the hell out of Desert One. The longer the refueling takes the more daylight I’m going to be confronted with at the other end. I want to load and go.”

I jumped aboard Seiffert’s helo as soon as he had repositioned it for refueling. Seiffert and his pilot were talking to the other helos when I sat down on the jump seat near them. Seiffert was on my right. The rotor blades overhead made a racket. I hollered, “Glad you’re here. Request permission to load, Skipper. We need to get on with it.” He was too busy checking with his pilots to pay me any mind. Time continued to tick away. I waited as long as I could before shouting in his ear, “Hey, remember me! What do you think? When can I load?” He continued to ignore me. I was getting very anxious, not to say pissed. I’d been sitting now four or five minutes. To get his attention I rapped his helmet with my palm. I got it.

He took off his helmet, leaned over in his seat, and shouted so I could hear him. “I can’t guarantee we’ll get you to the next site before first light.”

“I don’t care.”

“There’s no guarantee, Colonel, we’ll get you there during darkness.”

“I know that.”

“O.K. You’ve got permission to load.”

Finally! I jumped off and grabbed hold of the Delta officers, “Let’s get cracking and load.”

Twelve helo rotors whirred and sixteen C-130 engines roared. The sound was nearly deafening. To communicate it was necessary to put your face right up to the other person’s and yell—or use hand and arm signals.

The helos, as they changed the pitch of their blades while they repositioned behind the fuel-birds, created whirlpools of wind. Through blowing sand and dust, Delta started to move forward.

The first unit, in two files, lugging its equipment, began to climb aboard their assigned helo. It was Seiffert’s. I ran to the second helo, maybe twenty-five yards away. Over half of that unit was already on board. Two other choppers, the ones south of the road, were another 200 yards away.

The noise was numbing.

I walked very fast. As I crossed over the road, through the swirling dust I saw that the Delta units assigned to these choppers were already in the process of boarding.

About the time I arrived, one of the pilots climbed out of his cockpit and walked over to me. He said, “The skipper told me to tell you we only have five flyable helicopters! That’s what the skipper told me to tell you.”

“Jesus Christ Almighty!” Did these pilots want to go, really want to go?

I immediately began looking for Jim Kyle. He wasn’t far away. “Hell, Jim, we only got five flyable helicopters. Go talk to Seiffert. I’ve already got his permission to load. You understand this bloody air lingo. Go talk to him. Let’s get cracking. I’m losing valuable time.”

Jim and I took off. Kyle was all business as he climbed aboard Seiffert’s helicopter. I waited outside in the noise and wind trying to control my impatience. I suspected Ed Seiffert was in no mood to talk to me.

Eight to ten minutes went by. The operation was now over ninety minutes behind schedule, yet I was hoping against hope that Kyle would come off and say, “Climb on board. Good luck, you’re on your way. I’ll see ya, and God bless.” Instead, he said, “Charlie, there’s only five flyable helicopters. Let’s go to the radio. Helicopter Number Two has hydraulic problems and Seiffert feels it’s unsafe to go with it.”

I was totally pissed. “This is a hell of a state of affairs. Those goddamn pilots know we can’t go forward with five helicopters. Jim, I can’t go forward with five. We gotta go back.”

Kyle and I talked for a few minutes and reviewed the plan. “How in the hell am I going to lighten the loads? These helicopters can only carry so much weight. To get to the hide-site I need to lighten their loads. This means I gotta leave behind eighteen to twenty men. Everyone’s doing two jobs as it is, some of them three.”

At the radio, Kyle called General Vaught and explained the situation. General Vaught came back, “Ask Eagle”—my call sign—“to consider going on with five.” This made me even angrier. I flashed back to the meeting, the one of January 4th, when Pittman and I had recommended we not go on with fewer than six. General Vaught had accepted that recommendation. No more questions remained. It was final! I can’t ever remember, now that I have the time to wrestle with this, anyone saying during the JCS brief, that if we went to five helos we’d abort. But General Vaught knew this. So did General Gast and Colonel Kyle and Colonel Pittman. At the Stockade, in early January, it was inserted into the plan. The pilots knew we couldn’t go with fewer than six. Everyone in Delta knew.

“Ask Eagle to consider going with five.” I lost respect right then for General Vaught. Damn, I thought, how in the hell can the boss ask me that! He should know it will be a disaster if we go forward with five. There isn’t any way. I’d have to leave behind twenty men. In a tight mission no one is expendable before you begin! Which twenty would I leave?

With five helicopters, Delta, minus twenty men, lands at the hide-site in daylight and then the helos fly to their location in the mountains, but hell, we all knew the eccentricities of choppers. There was a good chance that two of them would not crank tomorrow. That would leave three helos to pick up fifty-three hostages, Delta, the DOD agents, and the assault team and their three hostages freed from the Foreign Ministry Building. What if one of them got hit with small arms fire as it comes in? That would leave two. Two for 178 people. It was just too close.

But! But! If I go with five, which men do I leave behind? I can pull the drivers. But they’re the only ones who speak Farsi. Beckwith, you’re crazy. This is ludicrous. It doesn’t make sense. Stay with the plan.

Kyle asked me again, “What do you think?” “Ain’t no way, Jim. No way! You tell me which one of those 130s you want me to load up. Delta’s going home.”

“Don’t worry about that, Charlie. Scatter them out and load on any of the aircraft.”

Whether Jim agreed or disagreed with me I never knew. He didn’t say. He’s that kind of an officer. My message was passed on to General Vaught. Kyle then called Ed Seiffert over to us. The other helo pilots stood around us in a circle. “What’s your recommendation,” Kyle asked, “about these helicopters?” I said, “I hope to hell we don’t leave them here.” There was a short discussion. Seiffert said, “We need to turn them around and take them back to the carrier.” This was agreed on.

Before Major Schaefer could return to Nimitz, he needed to top off his tanks. He’d been the first to refuel and had sat on the ground the longest, his engines idling, while he waited for the rest of the squadron to arrive. Receiving permission, Schaefer, who had repositioned his chopper to begin loading Delta, ran off to move back up behind the fuelbird.

“Let’s break it down. Get everyone off the choppers. We’re going home as soon as we can clean this place up.” Delta began loading onto the C-130s. Major Fitch’s element, the forty guys of the Blue Element, began loading on the EC-130 farthest north of the road—the one which was going to refuel Schaefer.

All the aircraft would leave on Colonel Kyle’s orders. Nothing would leave on mine.

I went from one C-130 to another, working out in my mind the number of men who had to be put on board each one. I also wanted to make sure none of the C-130 pilots took off on their own. “Hey, don’t leave here on your own initiative. We gotta get Delta on board.”

I grabbed one pilot by the arm and shouted over the noise of his engines, “For God’s sake, don’t leave.” He leaned toward me, “Ain’t nobody going to leave here, Colonel, until we got everybody.” I wanted to hug him! I hadn’t had time to sit or to cry. There was too much to do just drying up Desert One.

I turned around and began to walk quickly toward the head of the line. It was nearly 2:40 A.M. Some of the C-130 pilots had started to gun their engines. Dust was blowing all around. Between wind gusts, I saw one of the choppers lift off and bank to the left. It slid slightly backward. Then, BALLLOOEE! It wasn’t a bomb, not a CRACK! It was a THUMP! A gasoline explosion. A blue fireball ballooned into the night. Obviously, the chopper I’d just seen lift off—it had been Major Schaefer’s—had struck the northernmost EC-130, the one on which Blue Element had just boarded.

I broke into a run, but got no farther than the road. The heat was too intense to get closer. The helicopter closest to the conflagration was about to cook off itself. Its .50-caliber ammunition would go off any minute. The flames were reaching 300 to 400 feet in the sky. It turned as bright as day. Because of the intense heat, I was afraid the aircraft closest to the inferno might also catch fire and explode.

Kyle! I looked around and saw him busy on the radio. He didn’t need me in his knickers.

I thought of the Blue Element and Major Fitch. In the flames I saw where the chopper had hit the aircraft’s port side. Redeye missiles were going off now, pinwheeling through the night like it was the Fourth of July. It looked like there were people moving through the fireball. The first few men from Blue Element whom I came upon couldn’t tell me for sure that everyone had gotten off.

In the distance, the tanker truck continued to burn. The bus stood where it had been stopped. Nearby, next to the road, the passengers remained hunkered together. Silhouetted against the flames, the five helicopters sat on the desert crust.

Major Fitch ran up to Buckshot and reported everyone from Blue Element had escaped, but that one of his operators, in going back to pull out an aircraft crew member, had badly burned his arms. Buckshot told me Fitch, considering what he’d been through, seemed rather calm.

Kyle was still on the radio when I walked over to him. “How about it?”

He said, “I gotta get security in. Soon as I get them, we’re going to get out. What do you think about these choppers now?”

“It’s a hot sonovabitch out there,” I said. “The second one could go any minute.”

“What about the others?”

“They need to be destroyed.”

One of us said, and to this day I don’t remember who, “Let’s get an air strike in on them.” Jim got General Vaught on the radio and recommended he be given authority to bring in the air strike.

There was a lot of movement on the ground. I wanted everyone out of the desert as soon as possible.

I walked back to the last 130 in line. Buckshot had just jumped off and was going down to help get the Road Watch Team back.

Some of the planes had begun to taxi to their takeoff positions.

Off to the side I watched the Marine pilots running as hard as they could for our aircraft. Once on board, the ramp was drawn up and slammed closed.

I climbed up into the cockpit and our aircraft began to move. It taxied in a half circle. We were then third in line to take off. The two in front lifted off.

The fuel truck had nearly burned itself out, but the chopper and 130 were still burning violently.

It was almost 3:00 A.M.

After being on the ground for four hours and fifty-six minutes, Delta was leaving Desert One.

Down the unimproved road we rolled. The big 130 began to pick up speed. Suddenly, we hit an embankment. I remember having seen it on the ground; it must have been three feet high. We were moving fast by then and the nose of that C-130 jerked almost straight up. Then it dropped hard. “We’ve just bought the farm!” If there’s such a thing as luck… The plane bounced on the ground. The pilot gave it more power and somehow managed to get it back into the air. Next thing I knew, we were gaining altitude.

Had we been able to keep to the plan at Desert One, the six fully loaded helicopters would now be nearing the hide-site.

As it was, we hit the Gulf of Oman sometime after first light. I looked down and saw a small dhow sailing on the slate-blue sea.