Robin Zacharias
- "I'll give him something else to taste."
— Colonel Zacharias
Colonel Robin Zacharias is a character that appears in the novel, Without Remorse.
Biography
Robin Zacharias was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. Not much is known about his history except that he became good friends with Al Wallace who was also from Salt Lake City. Zacharias joined the U.S. Air Force in the late 1940s and became a fighter-bomber pilot, eventually rising to the rank of Colonel. During the Vietnam War, Colonel Zacharias helped in the formation of the Strategic Air Command war plans in Vietnam. In 1970, on his eighty-ninth mission which involved a "wild weasel" attack on NVA SAM site, Zacharias and his WSO John Tait were shot down. Tait was killed from the crash, though Zacharias was able to eject beforehand. Unfortunately, he severely injured his back from the injection which struck the ground hard. Zacharias only managed to move a hundred yards over a period of five minutes before he ran into the gun crew that had shot him down. As a form of torture, the NVA placed Tait's body beside Zacharias. An NVA intelligence officer from Hanoi later arrived to confirm Zacharias' identity. After he passed out from his injuries, the intelligence officer swabbed Tait's blood across Zacharias' face and took photos of him.
Zacharias was then paraded through three separate villages and was regularly stoned and spit on. He was then taken to a secret POW camp where he spent the next six months. Zacharias was regularly abused by the camp's guards and he had little human contact. His cell had no windows and when he tried to speak to other prisoners, he'd be clubbed to the ground. One day, Zacharias was visited by a Soviet, Colonel Nikolay Grishanov. During their initial meeting, Zacharias took note of a buffalo hunter drone passing overhead and prayed that it had seen him. He and the other prisoners were then interrogated by Grishanov. Due to his knowledge of highly classified information, Grishanov lobbied his government to transport Zacharias and the other POWs to the Soviet Union. However, his attempts failed due to the increasing friction between the NVA and Soviets. This eventually led Grishanov to decide to kill the POWs.
Luckily for Zacharias, the drone had indeed spotted and identified him. With Zacharias having been declared killed in action by the U.S. Government, Vice Admiral Dutch Maxwell secretly initiated an operation led by John Kelly to rescue Zacharias and the other POWs before they could be killed. Unfortunately, the mission was compromised by a KGB mole who had informed the Soviets. Despite this, Kelly managed to capture Grishanov while escaping the camp. He then used Grishanov as leverage to transfer Zacharias and the other POWs to Hanoi Hill where they were confirmed to be alive. Three years later on February 12, 1973, Zacharias and the other prisoners were released following the end of American involvement in the Vietnam War.