Force of Eagles Read online

  And then those final hours assaulted Stansell…images of the civil engineers and the herculean task of keeping the runway open while two C-130s dodged artillery barrages shuttling people out, the last five F-4s escaping, and Waters being killed in an artillery salvo when he tried to surrender the rear guard rather than sacrifice them. Command had fallen to Stansell, and he had been obliged to surrender the 45th. Afterward the Iranians had interrogated Stansell...

  Waters…who could replace him?

  The sign announcing Fredericksburg brought Stansell back. He was sweating. The quiet beauty of the town helped calm him and he understood why Eichler chose to retire here. It was easy finding the two-story white-framed house. He took a deep breath, put his memories back into their carefully guarded box and rang the doorbell. A plump, white-haired old woman answered the bell. “You must be Colonel Stansell, please come in.” She led him down a hallway to a study. “The Brigadier never says much,” she warned him. Her soft Southern accent, the way she was dressed and the house all made Stansell think of a more courtly, softer way of life. She ushered him into a wood paneled room. The French doors were open to the warm October morning, letting the sun shine in on Melvin “Messy” Eichler, Brigadier General USAF (Retired).

  “Brigadier, Colonel Stansell is here,” she announced before leaving them alone.

  “The bastards don’t know how to do it,” Eichler said. The cancer killing him had extracted its price. The early stages of the disease and chemotherapy had wasted him. Now it was bloating him as his systems closed down. But there was nothing wrong with his voice. It still carried command.

  “Pardon, sir.”

  “How to rescue those POWs. I’m not stupid, just dying. Cunningham wants you to figure out how to do it. Right?”

  Leukemia had not defeated the searing intellect and blunt words that had made the maverick intelligence officer such a controversial figure. Eichler’s career extended back to World War II and the OSS. He had been a driving force under General Curtis LeMay in the early days of the Air Force and had later become an expert in special operations. If he had been a pilot and worn wings he would have made four stars. And if he had kept his mouth shut during Vietnam. He had repeatedly told the top brass and the President how they were making a mess of it, earning his nickname “Messy.” He told them how to use special operations to fight the war but no one listened and he had been retired.

  “They didn’t bother to ask when they tried to get the hostages out of the American embassy in Iran. ‘Eagle Claw’ was a fiasco. Should have hung a few of the bastards out to dry on that one. And Grenada…a world-class fuckup that we managed by sheer mass. We should have gone in at night, only the Rangers saved our bacon. Learn from them—” Stansell started to interrupt but Eichler waved him to silence. “Anna’s not going to let me talk long, so listen. You need good intelligence. Without it, you’re dead. You’ve got to know the rules of special operations. A special operations force does not hold ground or try to defend a place. Ignore rules like that and you’ll get your ass blown off.

  “Your team needs to be totally self-contained. Everyone works for you—ground, air, intel, maintenance, everyone. No split command. It’s your show. And no duds, everyone pulls his own weight. Don’t rely on your machines. One hundred percent backup for aircraft. Avoid helicopters if you can. For God’s sake, keep it simple, make it fast.” Eichler leaned back in his chair, his breathing labored, tired from talking. His eyes closed, and Stansell could see the man’s body relax.

  After a few minutes Stansell stood up, walked to the French doors, went into the hall, surprised to see Anna Eichler standing there leaning against a wall.

  She walked him to the door. “He was wrong, you know. I would have let him talk. It’s his last chance.” She stopped at the door and put her hand on his cheek. ‘Thank you. Both our boys are dead, he’s given this one to you. Please do it right.”

  *

  Stansell drove through the town until he found the Waters address. This time a handsome middle-aged woman answered the door. “Mrs. Waters, I’m Colonel Rupe Stansell. I called yesterday.”

  “Oh, yes. Sara is expecting you.” She smiled at his confusion. “I’m Martha Marshall, Sara’s mother.” Stansell followed her into the combination kitchen and family room. A young woman was on the floor changing a baby’s diaper.

  She stood and held the baby up for inspection. “Melissa, meet Colonel Rupert Stansell. He knew your father.”

  The colonel was obviously at a loss for words. Sara Waters was in her late twenties and beautiful. Her dark-gold hair cascaded to her shoulders and her brown eyes held a warmth and friendliness. Giving birth to Melissa had not hurt her figure. She decided to let him off the hook. “We hadn’t been married too long. I met Anthony when I was in the Air Force working at the Watch Center.”

  Within a few minutes, Melissa was cradled on his lap and he felt comfortable with the two women. Mrs. Marshall invited him to dinner and suggested he and Sara take Melissa for a walk while she finished preparing the meal.

  Sara pushed the stroller as they walked down a tree-lined street. “Please tell me about Anthony and that last day,” she said. She turned to him, her eyes calm. “I’ve got to know. They never returned his body.”

  Stansell decided that Sara was asking for blunt honesty. “I don’t think they will,” he said. “The Iranians interrogated me for over twelve hours after I surrendered the base. They were only concerned with finding your husband. They wanted him bad. Two guards took me out to the security police bunker where he was when the last artillery barrage walked across the base. It took two direct hits. Not much left. I couldn’t identify anything.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Artillery was chewing us up. The civil engineers worked all day to get enough runway open to launch our last F-4s. I was hoping we could get the C-130s in again and get some more of our people out. We got the F-4s launched but no luck on the C-130s. About three hundred of us were left. Mostly security police, some maintenance, wounded, and civil engineers…They wouldn’t evac out. Even when they could. Your husband ordered an intelligence officer out, Bill Carroll—”

  “I know Bill,” Sara said. “He wouldn’t leave.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “And you didn’t either.”

  Stansell shook his head. They walked in silence for a few moments. “Near the end he hadn’t slept for two days. He was dog-tired. There was a lull in the fighting. He told me to run the show and wake him up in an hour. I let him sleep for over three hours. When I did wake him he didn’t get on my case for letting him sleep so long, just asked for the current status. When I did he knew what he had to do—surrender, stop the waste. He was killed before he could do it…

  “There was something about the man, I wanted to serve under him. I’m not easily led, certainly not given to hero worship, but I would have followed that man just about anywhere.”

  “I followed him too,” she said.

  After dinner Stansell stayed longer than he intended before heading back to Washington. He drove the Omni north, still preferring the old highway. Mado had outlined the plan after the meeting with Cunningham, and he had spent Saturday night in the Watch Center with an analyst going over intelligence from Iran. Eichler’s advice kept going around in his head. Pieces were fitting together. He could make it work—

  A dark blue car flashed into his rearview mirror. “Looks like the same BMW I saw driving down,” he mumbled. As the BMW accelerated and overtook him Stansell glanced at the two men in the car. Both were dark-complected and wearing sunglasses. The BMW accelerated away, disappearing into the Sunday evening traffic, and Stansell found himself breathing hard. “You can’t get paranoid every time you see someone that looks like an Iranian,” he told himself.

  “And you’ve got to stop talking to yourself.”

  *

  Stansell’s pencil traced the first two letters of the BMW’s license plate—AN—the only two numbers he had been able to
read when it had briefly pulled abreast of his car. He crumpled the paper up and threw it in a corner, then sketched a diagram of the prison where the POWs were being held. His pencil seemed to move of its own accord, creating an oblique view of the compound, much like a pilot would see as he approached it from low level. The drawing skill that he’d always had allowed him to add surrounding vegetation and buildings, and his artist’s eye had no trouble changing the vertical reconnaissance photos the Watch Center had shown him to another angle with different perspective and details.

  Why does this look so familiar? he thought. He was a military history buff from way back, did this come from a book or…? As though doodling, the pencil changed the flat roof on the three-story main building to a sloped roof. Something was moving deep inside his memory, emerging…He threw the pad to the floor beside the easy chair he was stretched out in, then got up and walked around the VOQ room, stopping at the window, staring into the night—

  “My God,” he whispered, “it’s Amiens jail,” where the Gestapo in World War II held hundreds of French Resistance fighters and the RAF raided it to help break them out…Was it a farfetched leap from then to now, or a possible way out for those POWs?

  Chapter 5: D Minus 30

  The Pentagon

  Simon Mado was standing in front of an easel in his office. Rough block letters at the top of the twenty-by-thirty-inch briefing charts on the easel spelled out “Top Secret.”

  “The President wants the POWs out within a month.”

  “A D-day within thirty days—that’s going to be tough,” Stansell said.

  “I’ve worked up a milestone chart showing what’s got to be done if we’re going to be ready,” Mado said. “It’s D minus thirty today.” He pointed to the chart that was numbered from thirty down to one and filled with neatly printed notes showing what had to be accomplished by each day. It was an ambitious plan. “Use this week to get an intelligence and training section together, find a training site and complete the operations plan. While you’re doing that I’ll line up the C-130s and the army unit that will be going in. By D minus twenty-three, next Monday, I want you in place at the training site ready to bed down the C-130s and the army and start training. By Tuesday, D minus twenty-two, have the ops plan completed. After you talk to Allen Camm at the CIA today, touch base with Air Force Special Activities Center at Fort Belvoir. I’ve told them you’re coming.”

  The meeting over, Stansell left, impressed by the general’s work. No wonder he’s a fast-burner and made general so fast, he thought as he headed for the Pentagon’s huge parking lot, hoping he could remember where he had left his car. Eventually he located it and was soon headed toward the exit that led to the George Washington Memorial Parkway and Langley, Virginia, home of the CIA. In spite of himself, he kept looking for a blue BMW in his rearview mirror.

  Heavy traffic on the parkway turned the seven mile drive into a twenty minute ordeal, and a white Chevrolet sedan three cars back kept changing lanes with him. He was so intent on watching the Chevrolet that he almost rear-ended a car in front of him. A prominent sign over the parkway pointed to the CIA’s exit in plenty of time for him to make the turnoff. The Chevy sped by in the inside lane. You’re getting paranoid, he cautioned himself.

  A bright, protypically eager-looking college girl was waiting for him at the security desk inside the main entrance. She looked all of twenty years. After signing him in, she led the way through the building, up to the third floor. Stansell noticed many of the hallways were next to the windows and that the offices were set inside, windowless.

  “Worked for the company long?” he asked.

  “We don’t call it that. Not long. I’m Mr. Camm’s gofer.” She beamed at him, then ushered him into Camm’s office and left.

  “Well, Colonel Stansell, what can we do for the Air Force?”

  The man extending his hand was clearly old school—establishment—tall and slender with a mane of carefully styled, graying hair. He wore a dark gray tailored suit and a regimental tie. His old, well-brushed shoes added to the image of understated refinement. Allen J. Camm was a member in good standing of the old Harvard-Yale-Princeton triumvirate at the CIA.

  “General Cunningham suggested I contact you to open a channel for a special Air Force operation,” Stansell said.

  “We prefer to funnel all our information through the DIA.” Camm’s accent was proper Bostonian.

  “We’re going to need direct access, if possible. I talked to Brigadier Eichler yesterday and he stressed the need for current intelligence.”

  “Ah, the POWs, no doubt. Sorry to hear about The Brigadier, he died yesterday evening.” Camm let the news sink in, gauging Stansell’s reaction.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” he said, but was hardly surprised. “You’re right about the POWs. General Cunningham seemed to think you’re the man to see…”

  “It will take a major policy decision to open a new channel and my office can’t make that decision. I’ll have to take it to the Director, and Mr. Burke has a rather full plate right now. But if you forward your request in writing I’ll put it before him.” Camm pressed a button on his intercom panel. He was dismissing Stansell.

  “Thanks for your time, Mr. Camm. I’ll get the request to you.”

  The self-styled gofer reappeared at the door and chatted about the changing weather as they walked back to the entrance. After saying good-by Susan Fisher walked briskly back to her office, made a phone call, picked up two files and went directly into Carom’s office. In real life she was the case officer he had assigned to the POWs.

  “Well?” Camm said.

  “We got some good ID shots. No right ear makes him easy to pick out.” The cutesy college-coed act was gone. “This is the first I’ve heard of the Air Force planning a rescue mission. Leachmeyer’s got a well-developed plan in rehearsal right now at Fort Bragg. Looks like the services are competing with each other again. You know Cunningham.”

  “He’s a wild card.”

  “We’ve got a team monitoring the action-arm of the Islamic Jihad. They’ve at least five agents operating in the U.S., and the team reported two of the Jihadis followed Stansell yesterday. Apparently, he made them. They were driving a blue BMW. Very damn obvious. We put a surveillance team on Stansell to see if the Jihadis followed up. Stansell made our people this morning.”

  “Is he that good? And is the Islamic Jihad onto the rescue mission?”

  “We don’t think so. Two other Jihadis are at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. They’ve staked out the two sergeants who rescued Stansell, killed the guards and dragged him out of Ras Assanya when they broke out. It tracks with a report out of Beirut. The Jihad is trying to kidnap or assassinate the three men who escaped out of Ras Assanya, which would embarrass the U.S. at the Geneva negotiations.”

  “How did the Jihad get onto Stansell so quick?”

  “One of their agents has taken over a sergeant that works in Pass and ID at the Pentagon.” She handed Camm a sharp color photograph. “She’s turned him every which way but loose. Sex still works. She’s working two others.”

  Camm handed the photo back to Fisher. “Few men would stand a chance against someone like her. Okay, keep on top of the situation. When we get a request from Stansell through channels, send him a copy of everything we’ve given Leachmeyer and the JSOA on the POWs. Make sure he gets a copy of anything new we send to the JSOA. Give the FBI enough information on the Jihad agents so they can roll them up. For God’s sake, make ’em work for it. If the Bureau finds out we’re operating inside the U.S. again . .” Camm paused, then: “See if you can turn the woman. We might be able to use her. Find out who’s financing the Jihad’s operation here and which embassy is providing them support. I don’t like the Islamic Jihad expanding their operations into the U.S. They specialize in hostages.”

  Fisher was scratching a few notes. “Should we sanitize and pass on intelligence from Deep Furrow to the JSOA and Stansell?”

  �
�No way.” Camm was determined to protect Deep Furrow, the net of contacts and operatives he was developing inside Iran. “Deep Furrow would surprise too many people who don’t need that kind of shock right now,” he told the young woman.

  *

  Stansell was back on the Parkway heading for Fort Belvoir. His eyes kept darting to the rearview mirror, looking for a tail. You’re not being paranoid, just prudent, he told himself. The traffic was lighter as he passed the Pentagon and continued south into Virginia. What a complete waste of time that was, he thought, the CIA is caught up in bureaucratic bullshit and old school ties.

  A sharp MP at Fort Belvoir’s main gate directed him to the northern part of the post, where an isolated compound housed the Air Force Special Activities Center. A guard at the Center escorted Stansell through the double chain-link fence.

  The Special Activities Center was responsible for the management of all Air Force human intelligence activities, HUMINT, the Air Force’s version of old-fashioned spying. The Center started life as the 1127th Field Activities Group, a collection of oddball con artists whose job was to get the right people to talk. When the generals couldn’t stand having such a screwball outfit in the Air Force, they changed its name to the 7612th Air Intelligence Group in a try for respectability and conformity. When that didn’t work they changed it to the Special Activities Center and clamped a bureaucratic umbrella over it. The building Stansell walked into looked and smelled like a military organization.