On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

The episode had brought Simons and Harry together again. Simons would never be close to Bruce, his elder son; but at least he had been able to stop worrying about the boy. Boy? He was in his thirties, and just about as bull-headed as ... well, as his father. Bruce had found Jesus and was determined to bring the rest of the world to the Lord--starting with Colonel Simons. Simons had practically thrown him out. However, unlike Bruce's other youthful enthusiasms--drugs, I Ching, back-to-nature communes--Jesus had lasted, and at least Bruce had settled down to a stable way of life, as pastor of a tiny church in the frozen northwest of Canada.

Anyway, Simons was through agonizing about the boys. He had brought them up as well as he could, for better or worse, and now they were men and had to take care of themselves. He was taking care of Lucille.

She was a tall, handsome, statuesque woman with a penchant for big hats. She looked pretty damn impressive behind the wheel of their black Cadillac. But in fact she was the reverse of formidable. She was soft, easygoing, and lovable. The daughter of two teachers, she had needed someone to make decisions for her, someone she could follow blindly and trust completely; and she had found what she needed in Art Simons. He, in turn, was devoted to her. By the time he retired they had been married for thirty years, and in all that time he had never been in the least interested in another woman. Only his job, with its overseas postings, had come between them; and now that was over. He had told her: "My retirement plans can be summed up in one word: you."

They had seven wonderful years.

Lucille died of cancer on March 16, 1978.

And Bull Simons went to pieces.

Every man has a breaking point, they said. Simons had thought the rule did not apply to him. Now he knew it did: Lucille's death broke him. He had killed many people, and seen more die, but he had not understood the meaning of death until now. For thirty-seven years they had been together, and now, suddenly, she just wasn't there.

Without her, he did not see what life was supposed to be about. There was no point in anything. He was sixty years old and he could not think of a single goddam reason for living another day. He stopped taking care of himself. He ate cold food from cans and let his hair--which had always been so short--grow long. He fed the hogs religiously at three forty-five P.M. every day, although he knew perfectly well that it hardly mattered what time of day you fed a pig. He started taking in stray dogs, and soon had thirteen of them, scratching the furniture and messing on the floor.

He knew he was close to losing his mind, and only the iron self-discipline that had been part of his character for so long enabled him to retain his sanity. When he first thought of burning the place down, he knew his judgment was unbalanced, and he promised himself he would wait a year, and see how he felt then.

His brother Stanley was worried about him, he knew. Stan had tried to get him to pull himself together: had suggested he give some lectures, had even tried to get him to join the Israeli Army. Simons was Jewish by ancestry, but thought of himself as American: he did not want to go to Israel. He could not pull himself together. It was as much as he could do to live from day to day.

He did not need someone to take care of him--he had never needed that. On the contrary, he needed someone to take care of. That was what he had done all his life. He had taken care of Lucille, he had taken care of the men under his command. Nobody could rescue him from his depression, for his role in life was to rescue others. That was why he had been reconciled with Harry but not with Bruce: Harry had come to him asking to be rescued from his heroin habit, but Bruce had come offering to rescue Art Simons by bringing him to the Lord. In military operations Simons's aim had always been to bring all his men back alive. The Son Tay Raid would have been the perfect climax to his career, if only there had been prisoners in the camp to rescue.

Paradoxically, the only way to rescue Simons was to ask him to rescue someone else.

It happened at two o'clock in the morning on January 2, 1979.

The phone woke him.

"Bull Simons?" The voice was vaguely familiar.

"Yeah."

"This is T. J. Marquez from EDS in Dallas."

Simons remembered: EDS, Ross Perot, the POW campaign, the San Francisco party ... "Hello, Tom."

"Bull, I'm sorry to wake you."

"It's okay. What can I do for you?"

"We have two people in jail in Iran, and it looks like we may not be able to get them out by any conventional means. Would you be willing to help us?"

Would he be willing? "Hell, yes," Simons said. "When do we start?"

Four

1____

Ross Perot drove out of EDS and turned left on Forest Lane, then right on Central Expressway. He was heading for the Hilton Inn on Central and Mockingbird. He was about to ask seven men to risk their lives.