On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

They drove through the night. It's going to be all right, Boulware thought. Paul and Bill are at the border, Sculley and Mr. Fish are on their way here with a bus, Perot is in Istanbul alone. We're going to make it.

He reached the border. Lights were on in the guard huts. He jumped out of the car and ran inside.

A great cheer went up.

There they all were: Paul and Bill, Coburn, Simons, Taylor, Gayden, and Rashid.

Boulware shook hands warmly with Paul and Bill.

They all started picking up their coats and bags. "Hey, hey, wait a minute," Boulware said. "Mr. Fish is on the way with a bus." He took from his pocket a bottle of Chivas Regal he had been saving for this moment. "But we can all have a drink!"

They all had a celebratory drink except Rashid, who did not take alcohol. Simons got Boulware in a corner. "All right, what's happening?"

"I talked to Ross this afternoon," Boulware told him. "Mr. Fish is on his way here, with Sculley, Schwebach, and Davis. They're in a bus. Now, we could all leave right now--the twelve of us could get into the two cars, just about--but I think we should wait for the bus. For one thing, we'll all be together, so nobody can get lost anymore. For another, the road out of here is supposed to be Blood Alley, you know--bandits and like that. I don't know whether that's been exaggerated, but they keep saying it, and I'm beginning to believe it. If it's a dangerous road, we'll be safer all together. And, number three, if we go to Yuksekova and wait for Mr. Fish there, we can't do anything but check into the worst hotel in the world, and attract questions and hassles from a new set of officials."

"Okay," Simons said reluctantly. "We'll wait awhile."

He looked tired, Boulware thought: an old man who just wanted to rest. Coburn looked the same: drained, exhausted, almost broken. Boulware wondered just what they had been through to get here.

Boulware himself felt terrific, even though he had had little sleep for forty-eight hours. He thought of his endless discussions with Mr. Fish about how to get to the border; of the screwup in Adana when the bus failed to come; of the taxi ride through a blizzard in the mountains... And here he was, after all.

The little guardhouse was bitterly cold, and the wood-burning stove did nothing but fill the room with smoke. Everyone was tired, and the scotch made them drowsy. One by one they began to fall asleep on the wooden benches and the floor.

Simons did not sleep. Rashid watched him, pacing up and down like a caged tiger, chain-smoking his plastic-tipped cigars. As dawn broke, he started looking out of the window, across no-man's-land to Iran.

"There are a hundred people with rifles across there," he said to Rashid and Boulware. "What do you think they would do if they should happen to find out exactly who it was who slipped across the border last night?"

Boulware, too, was beginning to wonder whether he had been right to propose waiting for Mr. Fish.

Rashid looked out the window. Seeing the Range Rovers on the other side, he remembered something. "The fuel can," he said. "I left the can with the money. We might need the money."

Simons just looked at him.

On impulse Rashid walked out of the guardhouse and started across the border.

It seemed a long way.

He thought about the psychology of the guards on the Iranian side. They have written us off, he decided. If they have any doubts about whether they did right last night, then they must have spent the last few hours making up excuses, justifying their action. By now they have convinced themselves that they did the right thing. It will take them a while to change their minds.

He reached the other side and stepped over the chain.

He went to the first Range Rover and opened the tailgate.

Two guards came running out of their hut.

Rashid lifted the can out of the car and closed the tailgate. "We forgot the oil," he said as he started walking back toward the chain.

"What do you need it for?" asked one of the guards suspiciously. "You don't have the cars anymore."

"For the bus," said Rashid as he stepped over the chain. "The bus that's taking us to Van."

He walked away, feeling their eyes on his back.

He did not look around until he was back inside the Turkish guardhouse.

A few minutes later they all heard the sound of a motor. They looked out of the windows. A bus was coming down the road.

They cheered all over again.

Pat Sculley, Jim Schwebach, Ron Davis, and Mr. Fish stepped off the bus and came into the guardhouse.

They all shook hands.

The latest arrivals had brought another bottle of scotch, so everyone had another celebratory drink.

Mr. Fish went into a huddle with Ilsman and the border guards.

Gayden put his arm around Pat Sculley and said: "Have you noticed who's with us?" He pointed.