Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (70 page)

Herndon and Pohl each grabbed Laban under one arm and dragged him out the door. Emmens told York to try to salvage the situation and then followed the others. Laban yelled and swore as the airmen dragged him up the street.

“Laban, for Christ’s sake,” Emmens said when he caught up to them. “Straighten up, will you?”

Laban whirled around and punched Emmens. The pilot felt blood spurt from his left eyebrow and grew enraged. He punched Laban so hard on the side of his nose that his upper plate of false teeth flew out, hit the ground, and broke.

York arrived home half an hour later, telling Emmens that despite Laban’s outburst Kolya agreed to still help. The lamplight illuminated his friend’s black eye.

“What in the hell happened to you?”

Emmens related the story of the fistfight.

“Let’s court-martial him when we get out,” York said.

Kolya soon came up with a new plan, referring the raiders to a local smuggler who might be able to help them get across the Iranian border.

“I can’t be seen with him. I
can’t introduce you, but I know the man by sight,” Kolya told them. “He walks around the town square very often. On Sunday I will sit with York in the town square on a bench. When I spot the man, I will point him out, and then I will leave. The rest is up to you.”

The plan unfolded just as outlined. Kolya pointed out the pacing smuggler, and York fell in behind him.

“You’re Abdul Arram, aren’t you?” York asked.

The man turned and looked at the airman, shook his head, and continued walking. York chased after him. “You’re Abdul Arram,” he repeated. “I know you are!”

“And if I am Abdul Arram?” the man said, turning to face York.

“I want you to do some work for me.”

“What kind of work?”

York told him he needed five Americans smuggled out of Russia into neighboring Iran. The man refused.

“I can pay,” York said. “Five hundred rubles.”

“Impossible,” the smuggler countered. “Do not speak to me any more!”

“—or in dollars!”

The mention of American currency stopped the smuggler. He demanded $800 to transport the Americans to Mashhad, the first major city across the border and home to the British consulate. York had won about $250 playing poker on board the
Hornet
. Emmens had another $60, and the three other airmen combined had about $40.

“One hundred dollars,” York offered.

The smuggler countered at seven hundred, but York continued to beat him down. “Four hundred,” Arram stammered, “or no go!”

“Two hundred fifty is all that we have,” York said.

“Agreed!”

The plan sounded exceedingly simple. A truck would arrive in front of the airmen’s adobe house just before midnight on May 10. When the driver killed the engine, the men would climb into the back and lie flat. By sunrise the raiders would be in Iran. “It seemed like a dream,” Emmens recalled. “There it was—we were leaving!”

The next few days crawled by as the raiders worked at the factory and anxiously awaited the night of escape. The airmen counted out the smuggler’s $250 fee and gave the rest to Kolya
, who prepared a special departure bag of vodka and caviar for the raiders and sketched them a map of Mashhad, pinpointing the British consulate. The airmen stood by anxiously that Monday as the clock approached midnight. “There was only silence in the night outside,” Emmens recalled. “None of us talked. We were all straining to hear the sound of an automobile engine.”

Midnight came—and went. “Suddenly we all heard it at once,” Emmens wrote. “There was the unmistakable racing of the motor of a truck as the driver shifted from high into second gear. It was turning the corner onto our street.”

The raiders slipped outside and opened the gate, watching as the truck came to a stop out front. This was it—the moment the airmen had long awaited. The fliers climbed into the back of the truck. A match illuminated Abdul Arram, who wanted his money. York gave him a down payment of $100, but the smuggler demanded all $250.

“More—Mashhad,” York countered. “In Mashhad—more money!”

The smuggler reluctantly agreed and hissed at the airmen to lie down before he climbed into the truck’s cab with the driver. The raiders heard the driver turn the ignition key, but the truck refused to start. “It ground over and over just trying to get started,” Emmens later recalled. “It wouldn’t catch.”

Arram climbed out of the cab and peered over the side of the truck, telling them that the driver had to run into town to get a part. He suggested that two of the raiders wait in the truck and the other three go back inside the adobe house. The minutes dragged until the driver returned as promised with the part. A few minutes later the truck grumbled to life. The raiders climbed into the back, covering up in the tarp. “The bottom of that truck was certainly hard, but it felt like a bed of roses to us,” Emmens wrote. “It was carrying us out of that godforsaken and godless country—we hoped!”

The truck started and set off down the road, turning onto a paved highway and rattling as it picked up speed and headed toward the mountains. “We could tell we were going south,” Emmens recalled. “We took the tarpaulin down. It was night, and nobody could see us. There was no traffic on the road or anything.”

The raiders felt the driver shift into a lower gear as the truck began to climb into the mountains. Another hour passed. The truck slowed down and pulled off the road
. The airmen heard a screwdriver on metal as the driver swapped out the license plates. The truck then started off, only to pull over again soon thereafter.

“Out,” someone demanded.

The raiders climbed out just as a man emerged from the bushes, his face obscured in the dark.

“Pssst,” the stranger beckoned. “Come on.”

The airmen set out on foot in a single file, following the mysterious guide up the mountain. After the men had traveled barely a few hundred feet, the truck shifted into gear and pulled back onto the highway. The hike proved tough, because the mountainside consisted mostly of shale and was void of any vegetation. “You would take one step up, and you would slide back two,” Emmens recalled. “We were having a hard time frankly in our physical condition keeping up with the guy.”

The hike soon exhausted York, who vomited in darkness. “I don’t think I can go up this thing any farther,” he said. “Why don’t you guys go ahead?”

The others refused, insisting the guide slow down. The airmen heard a rifle shot in the distance that echoed off the canyon walls followed by a barking dog. The raiders began finally to descend the mountain, which made for a far easier trek. At one point the guide demanded the men drop down and worm forward on their bellies, which the fliers later surmised was likely the actual border crossing. Shortly before daybreak the exhausted raiders, their clothes now ragged and torn from the hike, collapsed in an irrigation ditch alongside a highway. The same truck that had first carried the men into the mountains soon appeared, pulling off the highway. The fliers scrambled into the back. “The guy who had been our guide disappeared,” Emmens recalled. “We never did see him. He was just sort of a mythical character who led us over there.”

The driver slipped the truck into gear and pulled back onto the highway. Even though the airmen were now in Iran, Russian forces still occupied certain areas close to the border. The raiders felt the truck again slow. Emmens peeked out from under the tarp and saw a checkpoint. A wooden arch crossed the highway with a red star in the center and a picture of Stalin. The truck stopped, and Emmens could hear an animated conversation between the driver and the Russian troops. He then heard boots on gravel approaching the rear of the truck. Suddenly someone yanked the tarp down
. “I was staring directly into a face a bare twelve inches above mine. There was a growth of stubble on the face, and a fur cap with a red star on it above the face.”

“Oh, my God,” the airman thought. “We have been caught.”

Emmens closed his eyes and froze. The conversation outside the truck continued, and when Emmens opened his eyes the Russian face was gone. He suddenly felt the truck begin to move. “Slowly the guardrail, the arch, Stalin, and the red star passed over our heads and behind us,” he recalled. “I began to breathe again.”

The truck continued down the highway. The sun was now coming up as the airmen surveyed the scene. “It was desolate country; no trees in sight, just shale rock, stretching way ahead,” Emmens recalled. “Way down in the valley ahead of us, there was a glint of a gold dome as the sun was just breaking over that horizon.”

The truck motored on throughout the morning, pulling off onto the shoulder of the highway around noon. Abdul climbed out of the cab and came back.

“Out,” he ordered. ”Money.”

“Mashhad,” the raiders protested.

The smuggler pointed to the town a few miles down the road. “Impossible,” he told the raiders. “Guards—Russians.”

The men climbed out and handed over the remaining $150. The truck turned around and headed back down the highway. The fliers scrambled off the highway and into a nearby bomb crater about a hundred feet away. Tired and hungry, the men tore into the sack of supplies Kolya had given them.

“Well, here we are!” York announced. “A couple of miles out of Mashhad, Persia, sitting in a bomb crater eating black caviar, black bread, and drinking vodka. I wonder how many other Americans have done this.”

“We’re not in Mashhad yet,” Herndon cautioned.

The men decided York and Emmens would sneak into town, find the British consulate, and return with help, while the others remained hidden in the crater. To mark the spot the raiders lined up the vodka bottles on the crater’s rim.

The two pilots set off down the highway. Closer to town other locals appeared on the highway, coming and going. No one seemed to notice the airmen. A bridge led into Mashhad
, guarded by a Russian sentry. Each time a cart passed over the bridge, the Russian would stop and search it, a process that took a few minutes but distracted the guard from the foot traffic that continued to flow into the town.

The airmen waited for the perfect time, committing Kolya’s diagram of the city to memory about the time a truck rolled up toward the bridge.

“Now’s our chance!” York announced.

The guard stopped the truck and started to search it, while the raiders blended in with the other foot traffic over the bridge. “It wasn’t more than fifty feet across the thing. The temptation to break into a run was almost irresistible,” Emmens recalled. “We didn’t look back after we had passed, but we did increase the speed of our steps.”

The fliers entered the town, surprised to see stores that sold cigarettes and other commodities unavailable in Russia. Up ahead the raiders spotted a Russian patrol. The airmen hustled across the street and pressed against a storefront, pretending to window-shop while watching in the reflection as the patrol marched past. The fliers hurried the final few blocks to the consulate, turning on the street to see the whitewashed walls and the arched entrance. Several soldiers stood guard. “We took a deep breath,” Emmens recalled. “We sauntered very casually on that side of the street until we got exactly opposite the arch door. We just turned and rushed inside the gates.”

Iranian soldiers poured out of the guardhouse and pinned the raiders against the wall with bayonets.

“American! American!” the raiders shouted. “British consul!

A turbaned officer approached, looking the airmen over. “British consul not here,” he finally said. “Vice consul here.”

“Fine,” the airmen said. “Vice consul.”

Guards led the airmen inside, who marveled at the consulate’s immaculate lawns, flowers, and swimming pool. A tethered gazelle played at the end of a long leash staked in the yard. The paradisiacal scene reminded Emmens of the Garden of Eden.

“Did you ever see anything as beautiful as this?” York asked.

“Never!”

The airmen jotted their names and ranks on a sheet of paper, identifying themselves as members of the U.S. Army Air Forces. The guard vanished, and less than a minute later
the door burst open and the vice consul appeared.

“My God,” he announced. “Where in the hell did you guys come from?”

The airmen instructed the British on how to find the other three raiders, and forty-five minutes later the crew was reunited. The exhausted raiders would within days begin the long voyage home through India, North Africa, and South America before finally touching down in Washington, but in the meantime the British showered them with hospitality, beginning that afternoon with the vice consul.

“Would you like a scotch and soda?”

CHAPTER 25

In war as it is fought today only a few rules are left—only a few shreds of law and custom which, it was thought, governed the relations of belligerents to each other.

—ERNEST LINDLEY, COLUMNIST, APRIL 23, 1943

THE SAME DAY THE
Japanese executed Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz, guards came for the other five raiders in Kiangwan. Dressed in crisp uniforms and armed with rifles and sabers, the Japanese pulled the aviators out one by one that gray and foggy morning. “Though we were in separate cells and had no chance to talk to each other, we had all come to the same conclusion—if the verdict was execution we were going to try to make a break,” Bobby Hite and Jacob DeShazer would later write. “It was a strange thing, but most of us armed ourselves with toothbrushes. We figured we might jab a guard in the face with a toothbrush to start the break.”