Sergeant Kasam worked feverishly on the knots that bound Colonel Jabul. After five minutes, he had the Colonel untied. Jabul yelled, “Get Captain Shakur untied and close that cargo door and ramp. I’m going to the cockpit to take control of the aircraft and transmit our hijacking to Tehran.”
“Yes, Colonel. I wish I could go back to punish the swine!”
“We will find a way, Kasam, you will see.” Colonel Jabul ran to the cockpit ladder and quickly climbed up into the cockpit.
As soon as Shakur was freed, he also rushed to the cockpit as Kasam closed the rear of the aircraft. When Shakur reached the cockpit he saw Colonel Jabul ranting and raving and waiving his arms about. “That scum smashed the radios. We cannot radio our position or what happened to us. Tehran will be furious. We should have been home by now!”
“It is hard to believe that we were attacked in such a secure Russian facility, Colonel. One of the women attackers was in a Russian guard uniform. The man and another woman were in black jump suits and the man spoke perfect Russian. Kasam said the man told him that they wanted our aircraft and did not mean any harm to us and that is why we were tied up and not shot.”
“Yes, Shakur, my brother. What puzzles me is what they were doing in the first place. I can only surmise that the two in the black jump suites were there to remove the guard from the facility for some reason. Perhaps the guard was a spy and they were helping her to escape before being caught.”
“Even so, my Colonel, we will have a hard time trying to explain why three of Iran’s elite fighting force were overcome by one man and two women. Two women! We will be utterly humiliated and maybe even executed for the shame of being brought into submission by two women.”
“You are right, Shakur. We must not let this be known. We must at least tell our superiors that it was three elite commando troops who attacked us while we were intent on getting our aircraft ready for takeoff. We will tell them that the men were defecting to a neutral country and that is why they bailed out and took our chutes so we could not follow them.”
“Yes, that’s perfect, Colonel, but what if the Russians tell our leaders about the two women?”
“We will then say that it is the Russian way of trying to humiliate us. It was at their base that we were attacked. They have made up this story to divert attention to the fact that their most secure facility is so loosely guarded. It is they who will be brought to ridicule, not us. Get Kasam up here, we must all tell the same story.”
7:00 a.m. Thursday morning, September 20, 1984, twenty miles west of Kaliningrad, Russia in the Baltic Sea-
“Major Boshnikoff, we have a confirmation on the contact. It is the C-130 flying due south and very close to Russian air space. We will be on them in two minutes.”
“Good Captain. We will force them into our air space so we can make them land at Klaipeda, north of Kaliningrad. It is the closest airfield. I will radio General Balkon now so he can fly to the airfield and be on hand when we search the aircraft.”
7:00 a.m. Thursday morning, September 20, 1984, on the Swedish island of Gotska Sandon in the Baltic Sea-
Stillwell carried Vicky to the edge of the field and set her down at the tree line in a grassy area. He sat down facing Mary and Vicky and said, “The last transmission we sent to Bob Riddle was to tell him the exact time we departed the aircraft, nothing else. He already knew where we would be parachuting to. We used the word ‘bingo’ in Vietnam to say we were out of fuel. In this case it meant we were out of the aircraft.”
Mary said, “Why did he have to know the exact time?”
“The second message you sent was to tell him we needed to be picked up by the Fulton Recovery System. He would need to know that and then the exact time we would be getting here. This way he won’t have an aircraft roaming around Swedish air space drawing attention to us. He can just send one in quickly. They have one aircraft stationed in England, which they use in recovering weather balloons from ice stations in the Arctic. They can send that one to pick us up.”
“What kind of airplane is it?” Vicky asked.
“It’s another C-130, similar to the one we just left.”
Mary said, “Kurt, how will it be able to land here? There doesn’t seem to be more than 100 yards of field here.”
“It won’t land, Mary. It will pick us up with a harness, one at a time.”
“Oh, no! I thought the jump was wild. You mean to tell me that it will fly by and pick us up off the ground without landing?”
“Sure will, it’s been done many times in the past. They actually have done what they call a dual live snatch, two people at one time.”
Vicky said, “How does this work? Won’t we be injured by being pulled from the ground by an aircraft flying over us at high speed?”
“No, Vicky. The Fulton Recovery System was developed a long time ago to make live emergency pick-ups where there isn’t a place for the aircraft to land, just like we have here. When we hear the aircraft in the area, we shoot off a flare to let them know what part of the island we’re on. They’ll drop a package, which contains the harnesses we need along with the cable and helium balloons to raise the cable up to 500 feet. As the aircraft comes back for the pick-up, it snatches the cable and the ‘snatchee’ is lifted off the ground and reeled into the open rear doors of the C-130. The aircraft is specially fitted for this task. It has two 18-foot long aluminum recovery forks attached to the nose of the aircraft. They stick out like a giant mustache 36 feet wide. The pilot guides the plane toward the cable under the balloon and it is snagged by the aircraft.”
“Mary said, “What if the pilot misses and the cable gets caught in the propellers?” “Good question, but it can?