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After leaving the ship, the helicopters had to circle over the Adriatic for 45 minutes waiting for the rest of the rescue package to arrive from other carriers and Italian bases. "That was probably good," Berndt later said. "It took the edge off us, and it got everybody focused and thinking perhaps a little bit straighter." Then came the "push"-authorization from the awacs to enter Balkan airspace-and the mission was under way. Within minutes the aircraft had reached Bosnian Serb territory. At one point, Admiral William A. Owens, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Lake and said, "Our feet are dry," meaning they were flying over land. The sun was winking through the rugged, fog-draped Balkan terrain as the CH-53s spent the next 50 minutes flitting 200 ft. over pine forests.
At 6:35 a.m., they approached the area where O'Grady's signal beacon had been traced. The pilots saw bright yellow smoke coming from trees near a rocky pasture; O'Grady had set off a flare. The first Super Stallion, commanded by Major William Tarbutton, touched down, trying to avoid crude pine fence posts with barbed wire strung between them. Some 20 Marines scrambled out to set up a security perimeter.
The second helicopter, Berndt's, inadvertently landed on part of the fence, forcing the pilot to pick up again and move a few feet before setting down. In the front seat, sitting between the two pilots, Berndt peered through the cockpit and saw, to his astonishment, a young man running toward him with a pistol. The man was 50 or 60 yards away, coming up a little rise between some pine trees. The fog was fairly dense, and at first Berndt was not sure who it was. "But," he recalls, "I quickly figured it had to be him."
The helicopter's side door had been open for all of three seconds when O'Grady tumbled across its threshold. He relinquished his 9-mm Beretta pistol to the crew and pulled on Berndt's Gore-Tex parka and a crash helmet. "I'll never forget the look on his face as he was running toward our aircraft," said Berndt. "He had this pistol in his right hand -- looking like he had been in the field trying to survive for six days, and knowing we were there to pull him out." Nobody, Berndt added somewhat incredulously, "even got off our helicopter."
The Marines poised to leave by the rear ramp were called back to their seats. Those who had formed the protective perimeter reboarded the other helicopter, and after a quick head count, the Super Stallions took off. They had been on the ground no more than seven minutes.
Their VIP passenger was strapped into a seat by Angel Castro Jr., a 45-year-old sergeant major who has spent more than half his life in the Marines. "I sat him down," Castro recalled in a thick Bronx accent, "and he said 'Thank you, thank you, thank you' -- he just kept on saying that." O'Grady was shivering, dehydrated and soaking wet. After he drank almost an entire canteen of water, Castro asked him if he wanted something to eat. He nodded, and an MRE -- a meal, ready-to-eat-was passed forward. O'Grady took three or four bites of the chicken stew and then said he couldn't eat any more. His uncontrollable shivering started up again, and someone wrapped a thermal blanket around his shoulders. "I was just so relieved," said Castro. "My heart was still pumping so hard -- we finally had him."