In The Kill Zone: The Life and Times of Willie Merkerson (Part 7)
Exfiltration
The flatbed truck raced toward the Khartoum airport tarmac just as the hulking U.S. Air Force cargo jet touched down and slowed to a stop.
With the aircraft engines still running, the truck backed up to the paratroop jump door on the side of the plane. The CIA officers on the vehicle scrambled to unload four large wooden boxes from the back of the truck into the jet.
Covered in the bright orange packaging used for diplomatic mail, each box was just big enough to fit a grown man inside. That was fortunate, because that’s exactly what the “diplomatic” cargo consisted of: four undercover Israeli spies the Americans were desperately trying to fly to safety before the Sudanese and their new Libyan allies figured out the ruse.
But despite weeks of meticulous planning, the life-and-death mission now hung in the balance.
Moments before, the CIA station had intercepted a transmission from Sudanese security forces indicating that they knew what the agency was up to. A Sudanese military helicopter was inbound, along with other security personnel.
Sitting in an unmarked car in the airport parking lot, Willie Merkerson heard the station’s warning about the intercept come across the radio. Using the covert communications system with which each CIA vehicle was equipped, he alerted his colleagues in the truck.
“They’re on to you,” he said. “They’re closing in on you.”
The intercept made even the usually unflappable CIA station chief Milt Bearden anxious. “Oh, we’ve got a big problem now,” he thought.
From the U.S. Embassy, Bearden radioed his men: “Get them on the plane now!”
With the help of the Air Force crew, it didn’t take long to manhandle the boxes into the aircraft. The jump door slammed shut. The plane began to move.
There was no time to spare. “The security forces were arriving at the gate now and they said, ‘Where’s the aircraft?’” recalled Merkerson, whose vantage point gave him a clear view of the jet.
The C-141 taxied toward the main runway. Maybe the mission was going to succeed after all.
Then the pilots in the cockpit got a chilling call from the tower: “You are not cleared for takeoff.”