(3 of 7)
Spring has come to Bosnia, and irises, primrose and lilacs pattern the mountainsides, but the temperature still dips below freezing at night, and heavy rains are frequent. The terrain is excellent for hiding, however. O'Grady had crashed in a cave-pocked, densely forested region used during World War II for that purpose by partisans evading the Nazis. The downed flyer had soon consumed the eight 4-oz. packs of water in his emergency kit. But he was able to catch rain in Ziploc plastic bags and at one point tried to squeeze water out of his wet woolen socks, without much luck. He found sustenance by eating leaves, grass and ants-but not too many of the latter. "They're hard to catch," he reported afterward. "He maintained his cool," said Admiral Leighton Smith, nato's southern commander. "He's very smart, he's very determined and very gutsy to have evaded for as long as he did using the equipment that he had."
The 29-lb. survival kit strapped under the seat of O'Grady's F-16 contained a first-aid kit, a few flares, some radio batteries and a 9-mm pistol, among other items. In his vest, O'Grady also had an "evasion chart" -- a waterproof map with pointers on how to survive in northwestern Bosnia, including cues for edible plants such as dandelion, licorice root and nettle. His most important asset was a 28-oz. PRC-112, a survival radio, barely larger than a Walkman, that can operate for as long as seven hours on a single battery and can broadcast a locating beep, Morse code or voice.
O'Grady's efforts to establish contact using the PRC were thwarted at first by bad weather, which kept allied planes away for several days. Undaunted, he kept on the move, searching as best he could in the dark for a locale with three critical attributes: a clear high point to broadcast from, a place suitable for a large helicopter to land, but one not too vulnerable to enemy fire.
During that time, allied military planes conducting ceaseless sorties in the Balkans had been picking up beeper snippets that they thought could be coming from the pilot-an extremely sensitive piece of information that was inadvertently revealed by General Ronald Fogleman, the Air Force Chief of Staff, when the general told reporters at a promotion ceremony last Monday that monitors had detected "intermittent" transmissions. "I was dumbfounded he said that," one enraged nato official later declared. "I mean, why not just announce to the bad guys, 'We think he's alive and kicking, and we hope we find him before you do'?"
Not until Tuesday evening, nearly five days after the shoot-down, did NATO planes flying over the region finally confirm that they were getting more extensive transmissions from what was thought to be O'Grady's radio beacon. It was still not possible to know whether the signal was O'Grady's or was just a Serb trick to lure aircraft in close, but now the Pentagon threw a massive intelligence net over the region. CIA spy satellites initiated a continuous sweep of northern Bosnia, hoping to photograph O'Grady on the ground. Air Force reconnaissance craft and signal intercept planes began swarming over the area. Other planes with special infrared scanners, which could detect the warmth of a body moving on the ground, patrolled the mountains as well.