Argo2012

[The CIA start talking about extraction options for the six US Embassy employees]

Robert Pender:
What we like for this now are bicycles. We've identified backroads from the Shemiran district - a couple of rat lines through the mountains to the crossing at Tabriz. Cars are off the table because of the roadblocks.

Jon Bates:
We wait until the weather clears up then deliver the six bikes, provide them with maps to the Turkish border.

Adam Engell:
We have intelligence they can ride bicycles or we're prepared to send in somebody to teach them.

Tony Mendez:
Or you could just send in training wheels and meet them at the border with Gatorade. It's 300 miles to the Turkish crossings. They'd need a support crew behind them with a tire pump.

Engell:
We've only been asked to sharpshoot this, State's handling the op.

Pender:
Who is...?

Jack O'Donnell:
Tony's an exfil spesh. He got a lot of the Shah's people out after the fall.

Mendez:
If these people can read or add, pretty soon they're gonna figure out they're six short of a full deck. It's winter. You can't wait around until spring when it's nice enough to take a bike ride. The only way out of that city is the airport. You build them new identities, you send in a Moses, he takes them out on a commercial flight.

Bates:
We've explored those options.

Engell:
They wouldn't clear airport security. Komiteh own the place.

Bates:
They would pose as reporters. The government issued seventy-something visas for American journalists.

Mario Malinov:
Seventy-four. And the Revolutionary Guards keep them on 74 leashes.

Mendez:
If they're caught with fake journalist creds, it's Peter Jennings' head in a noose in an hour.