Full Battle Rattle

by Changiz Lahidji

  I lied and said, “I want to see my father.”

  Once I was in possession of a valid Iranian passport, I was briefed on my mission. I was to go into Tehran on my own to collect intel and prepare things on the ground for Operation Eagle Claw—a top secret mission to rescue the hostages. After the US Embassy takeover, practically all of the CIA’s sources and assets in Iran had been arrested. They needed someone like me who knew the country well and could get around.

  I was instructed not to tell anyone where I was going, not even my brother and mother living in California. I simply told my mother that I was being deployed to Florida for jungle training and would call her when I returned.

  Part scared to death and part excited, I flew from Charlotte to New York City, then Kennedy Airport to Frankfurt, Germany. There, I was met by an intel officer, who gave me money, some of which I used to buy a ticket to Tehran.

  In a matter of hours I was on a British Airways jet flying over Eastern Europe. I sat by the window dressed in civilian clothes—long-sleeved blue oxford shirt, chino pants, a short beard, and short hair. With my heart beating 200 times a minute, I breathed deeply to try to calm down. But the same fears kept popping into my head: What happens if I end up in jail? No one’s going to stop the Iranians from interrogating and torturing me, and putting me before a firing squad.

  Since I had told the consul in DC that I was going to visit my family, I made sure to carry souvenirs—polo shirts for my father and uncle wrapped in nice paper, blue and white, not red, because Muslims think the color red brings bad luck; blue jeans for my cousins; and boxes of See’s chocolates for my female relatives.

  We landed. Trembling from head to toe, I shouldered my black backpack and entered the terminal. The building looked the same as it had last time I’d seen it, seven years ago. But the people seemed different. No one was smiling. Women wore long skirts, and the men had long beards.

  I retrieved my small suitcase from the baggage claim area and got in line for Customs. Five very serious-looking officials started looking me over. My heartbeat rose even higher.

  “Open your suitcase and backpack,” one of the guards barked.

  I complied.

  Guards started to rifle through them. One uniformed official asked, “Suma as kuja amadi?” (Where are you coming from?)

  “The US,” I responded in Farsi.

  “Why?”

  “To visit my father. He’s sick.”

  “How long are you staying?”

  “Two weeks. Maybe more.”

  “What do you do in the United States?”

  “I work in my brother’s gas station.”

  “What’s your job at the gas station?”

  “I pump gas.”

  The senior official studied my passport and said, “Lahidji.… Who is Yusef Lahidji to you?”

  “You mean Colonel Lahidji?” I responded.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  The senior official’s face creased into a smile. He patted me on the back and said, “Kush amadi Changiz Khan.” (Welcome, Changiz.)

  I was so relieved that I gave him a hug. “Merci.”

  “Did you bring us anything from the States?” he asked with a wry smile.

  “Only my love of Iran.”

  He waved me through. Outside the terminal, I saw a well-dressed man in his midthirties holding a sign with my name on it. He introduced himself as Massoud. As we drove in his BMW 5 series, he explained that he used to work for the US Embassy, and asked what I had been doing in the United States.

  I repeated the same answer from before. “I work in my brother’s gas station.”

  He seemed well educated and socially polished. If he knew anything about my mission, he didn’t let on. But he did say, “Don’t worry about anything. I don’t like the present regime either. I want to be free.”

  On the way to the hotel, I asked him to drive past the US Embassy. Outside, I saw sidewalks crowded with people, dressed in black or shades of gray. The women wore hijabs (head coverings). It appeared as though all the color and joy of life had been drained out of them. What remained were serious, dour expressions, dark-colored clothes, and beards. The names of streets had been changed to honor martyrs and mullahs.

  At an early age I had learned to distrust holy men. They struck me as crooks and hypocrites who sold religion as a way to gain control over people. Now I watched them parade proudly down sidewalks in long robes and beards.

  I also saw lots of shabbily dressed soldiers and policemen. As we drove up South Moffatteh Street and approached the Shahid Shiroudi Stadium, the large US Embassy compound with several buildings appeared to our left. A huge banner atop the eight-foot-high fence read DEATH TO AMERICA.

  We’ll see about that, I said to myself.

  I asked Massoud to turn right on Taleqani Street and drive slowly past the main gate. Past it rose the large two-story, brick-and-stone chancellery where some of the hostages were being held. About a dozen civilian and military men dressed in ragtag uniforms stood guard with rifles and automatic weapons. I saw no tanks.

  The security at the other four gates around the seventy-acre compound was equally unimpressive. Pedestrians passed freely on adjacent sidewalks as though unaware that fifty-two Americans were imprisoned inside.

  I filed away these mental notes, then asked Massoud to stop at a café near the main bazaar so I could stretch my legs. I also wanted to talk to people and get a sense of what was going on.

  I asked the stoop-shouldered waiter who served us, “How’s business?”

  “Pretty good,” he answered.

  “You happy?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve been traveling out of the country the last several years and notice lots of changes.”

  He shook his head and said, “Yes, this place is a zoo compared to before. Everything is more expensive, especially food.”

  I checked into a modest five-story hotel close to the downtown telecommunications center. After I showered and changed clothes, I went downstairs to enjoy a delicious dinner of challow kabab, stewed tomatoes, adas polo (lentil rice), baklava, and tea. Some things hadn’t changed.

  In the morning, I took the #111 bus and got off one stop past the embassy. I noted the guards at the front gates were changed every two hours. The guards in back rotated in four-hour shifts.

  After a lunch of barbecued sheep’s liver and nan, I went to the telecommunications center near my hotel and called a number I’d been given of a special operation center in Germany. Speaking in code, I said, “Hey, John. How are you doing? I’ve got the candy. Now I’m going out to buy bread.”

  It meant: I’ve arrived safely and am gathering intel. That night I drew a detailed map of the embassy compound noting the placement of guards and machine guns. The next morning I mailed it to someone at the German Embassy.

  The next several days followed the same pattern—surveillance of the guards at the embassy compound day and night, noting numbers of guards, the times that shifts started and ended, and which direction the guards came from and went. I also listened to local television and scanned newspapers for news on what was going on inside the embassy and little details that revealed how the hostages were treated and where they were being held.

  Because I knew that undercover soldiers patrolled the streets looking for spies and dissidents, I did my best to blend in and check to see that I wasn’t being followed. Every night, radical students gathered outside the gates to listen to speakers denounce the Great Satan. One day, I watched kids pour out of school buses and chant “Death to America” for the TV cameras. Another time, I saw guards beat several young men with clubs. Day five, as I circled the back of the embassy compound, someone struck the back of my head.

  I turned abruptly to face my young assailant and said, “Agha bebakhashan” (excuse me), hoping he had mistaken me for someone else. Without saying a word, he continued throwing punches. I pushed him away, and hurried off. I wasn’t
sure if it had been a random strange event or an attempt by Iranian agents to try to engage me.

  I communicated everything via telephone to my contacts in Germany or mail to the German Embassy. Meanwhile, inside the US Embassy compound, the hostages spent tedious hours isolated from one another. Some were interrogated. Some were placed in solitary confinement. Others were awoken at night, stripped naked, and lined up against a wall to face mock executions. Their biggest fear, some of them said later, was that the mobs that gathered outside the walls and were whipped into near hysteria by speakers would break into the compound and slaughter them.

  I was frightened as well, and by the end of my first week in Tehran starting to feel lonely. I had to resist the impulse to contact my father, uncle, or other relatives. Merely talking to them on the phone would put us all at risk.

  Feeling nostalgic, I wandered past my old high school on Revolution Circle, passing shops and fruit stalls along the way. The gate was locked, but through the fence I saw boys playing basketball and soccer. I had participated in the same activities a decade ago. When I went to school, almost all of us were clean-shaven. Now the older boys wore full beards.

  The second part of my mission involved hiring a bus to ferry US Delta and SF soldiers into Tehran from a staging area seventy-five miles south. The bus would also serve as backup transportation should US Navy helicopters be unable to land at the nearby soccer stadium to take the hostages out.

  The plan for the Operation Eagle Claw was complex and involved multiple moving parts. It was scheduled to launch dawn April 24, when eight helicopters carrying 118 Delta Force soldiers would take off from the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier stationed off the coast of Iran and land at a site in the Iranian desert designated as Desert One, several hundred miles southwest of Tehran. USAF C-130s would rendezvous with the helicopters at Desert One, bringing with them 6,000 gallons of fuel. Eight RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters would then refuel and fly 260 miles closer to Tehran and spend the night at a second staging area known as Desert Two.

  The actual rescue operation would take place the following night. US special operators would travel into Tehran by bus and truck. Some would disable electrical power in the city. Others would deploy to the embassy compound. Once they rescued the hostages, Delta Force soldiers would escort them across the street to the Shahid Shiroudi Stadium. Meanwhile, AC-130 gunships would fly over Tehran to provide air cover. Additionally, Army Rangers would capture the Manzariyeh Air Base near Desert Two so that C-141 transport planes could land and carry off the rescue team and hostages.

  My ninth day in Tehran, I hired a Mercedes coach bus and driver for a week from a local company named TBT. The driver was a simple man of forty-five with three children. I paid him well and had him drive Massoud and me to inspect Desert Two, which was in the middle of nowhere. We spent the night in the nearby holy city of Qom, then returned to Tehran and waited for instructions.

  On the afternoon of the 23rd, Massoud called me at my hotel and said, “The guests are coming tomorrow night at 0100.”

  My anticipation skyrocketed. I telephoned the driver and told him to report with the bus in the evening.

  That afternoon as I was trying to relax, Massoud called again and asked in an agitated voice, “Have you heard the news?”

  “What news?” I asked back.

  “There’s a serious problem. The guests aren’t coming.”

  I turned the TV on in my room. A man on State Television reported that several American airplanes had crashed in the desert and all the Zionists on them had been killed.

  A cold tremor passed through my body. I asked Massoud, “What should I do now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How am I going to get home?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  I found out later that the mission had been canceled because of problems with the helicopters. Soon after they landed at Desert One on the 24th, one of them was forced down due to rotor failure. Another pilot was blinded in a sandstorm and returned to the Nimitz. One of the remaining six had to be scrapped because of partial hydraulic failure due to the blowing sand. Because the operation required at least six helicopters, President Carter aborted the mission.

  Then tragedy struck. During refueling for the flight out, one of the Sea Stallion helicopters collided with an Air Force EC-130 transport plane. Both vehicles burst into flames, killing eight servicemen. Survivors quickly fled the scene leaving behind four helicopters, weapons, maps, and secret documents, and the bodies of the dead men in the burning wreckage.

  I waited at the hotel and prayed, “God, please keep me safe. I’m doing this for a good cause.” On the television news, I saw footage of Iranian radicals celebrating in the streets, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Carter.” I felt sick.

  Officials at the German Embassy knew where I was staying but didn’t contact me. So I called Massoud, who picked me up in his car and drove me to a safe house north of the city. There I waited another very anxiety-filled day with no additional news.

  Clearly, the longer I remained in Tehran, the higher my chances of being arrested. Figuring that Iranian Revolutionary Guards and soldiers were closely watching the German and UK embassies, I abandoned the idea of seeking asylum there and decided to try to escape on my own.

  Massoud drove me to the train station. As we passed through the city, the streets around the US Embassy were clogged by a massive demonstration.

  I faced a choice: Either go west to Tabriz, which was near the border with Turkey, or travel south to Abadan, on the Persian Gulf. Tabriz was closer, but I wasn’t familiar with the city and I’d never been to Turkey. So I chose the thirteen-hour ride to Abadan instead.

  Abadan was very familiar to me because I’d spent my elementary school years there, when my father served as the city’s chief of intelligence for the urban police. I returned to Abadan for the eleventh and twelfth grades and lived with my uncle, who was in charge of military transportation at the time.

  I was a nervous wreck the entire bus trip, imagining I was going to be arrested by every man I saw in uniform. As I tried to sleep, horrible images of what would happen to me coursed through my head.

  My plan was to go from Abadan to Kuwait, but I didn’t have a Kuwaiti visa. Upon arriving in Abadan, I went to the docks to see if I could find someone to smuggle me across the Persian Gulf on a boat. As luck would have it, while I was talking to some fishermen, I spotted my old school buddies Mansour and Mustafa buying fish. They were big, rough guys and excellent boxers. They greeted me warmly and offered to take me home with them to see their family.

  I ended up staying with them for two days. Not wanting to put Mansour, Mustafa, or any of their relatives in any kind of jeopardy, I repeated the same cover story I had told everyone else: I was in Iran visiting my father and worked at my brother’s gas station in California.

  Meanwhile, Mansour and Mustafa found a smuggler to take me to Kuwait on a redwood fishing boat for $150. The night I left, I said, “I love you guys, but I have to get back to work. Hopefully you can come visit me in the US sometime.”

  The crossing of the Gulf lasted a very tense nine hours. When I arrived in Kuwait, I showed the Customs official my US passport and handed him $40. He let me in despite the fact that I didn’t have a visa.

  I was hugely relieved and thanked God. From the dock, I took a taxi to the airport and bought an airline ticket for New York. At Kennedy Airport, I hopped a plane to Charlotte, North Carolina. From there, I hailed a cab that took me to Fort Bragg.

  It was a beautiful spring day. As I emerged from the taxi with my full beard and backpack, guys in my unit looked at me with alarm. Then they slowly realized who it was.

  “Holy shit, it’s Changiz!” one of them shouted.

  “Look! He’s still alive!”

  One of them ran off to tell our commander. Soon he and others were surrounding me, hugging me, and slapping me on the back.

  “Changiz, you lucky bastard,�
�� I heard one of them say. “We’re glad you’re back.”

  My commander embraced me and said, “It’s good to see you again, Corporal. We thought you were dead.”

  Then I heard one of my teammates say, “Changiz, you’ve proved you’re one of us.”

  That comment struck to the center of my soul. I know the guy who said it meant it as a compliment. But after what I’d been through, his words were bittersweet.

  2

  CHILDHOOD, IRAN

  I was born in Shapoor, Iran—a small town south of Tehran—in 1950 and named after Genghis Khan. My mother, a kind woman I’ve loved every day of my life, once told me that she and my father had discussed aborting me when she was pregnant because they already had three young boys and were going through difficult financial times.

  My father—a strong-willed, ambitious man—was the hardworking mayor of the nearby town of Chambran and liked to drink and throw parties. He had little time for us children. Childrearing, preparing meals, and taking care of the home were my mother’s responsibility. She did all those tasks gracefully and never complained.

  Their marriage had been arranged by their respective fathers when my mother was a girl of fifteen and my dad was eighteen, and lasted until my father’s death.

  My oldest brother, Iradj, is seven years older than me, and my sister Mitra was born a year later. Five years separate me from my second brother, Torag; and there is only one year between me and my third brother, Jahanguir or Jon. My sister Lida is the youngest and was born ten years after me.

  When I was a toddler, all seven of us lived in my grandmother’s house south of Tehran close to the train station of Shapoor. It was a simple brick structure with no plumbing or air-conditioning and two bedrooms downstairs and three on the second floor. During the hot summer months all of us would sleep on mattresses on the flat roof, which was accessible by a ladder.

  By all reports I was a restless child, because of persistent eye and stomach problems. My nose dripped constantly, which is why the neighborhood kids dubbed me “booger boy.” I also had a belly button that stuck out like a big red apple. No exaggeration. To my mind, those two anomalies were the equivalent of being born with chips on both shoulders.