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At the same time as O'Grady was being helicoptered off the ground, his father was awakened by a telephone call. It was Colonel Chuck Wald, head of O'Grady's squadron in Aviano, calling to say they had made radio contact with O'Grady. "That was the first we knew he was alive and well." (O'Grady's mother, living in Spokane, his hometown, received a similar call within minutes.) The moment he heard the news, the elder O'Grady ran shouting into the bedrooms of his other two children. "I woke up Paul and Stacey, and we all just started jumping around," he said.
The euphoria was not limited to the O'Grady household. In the White House, Lake decided it was time to allow himself a moment of mild celebration. "Mr. President," he declared, "with or without your permission, I'm going to smoke a cigar." Clinton was one step ahead of his Security Adviser. "Well, come on over," he replied, "I'm having one too." Sidestepping the First Lady's ban on White House smoking, the two men walked out onto the second-floor Truman Balcony, gazed in the direction of the Washington Monument and lit up a pair of stogies.
The savoring of the moment was fitting but, in retrospect, somewhat premature. During the incoming flight the helicopters had traveled at about 120 m.p.h.; they roared back to the Kearsarge at 175 m.p.h., skimming the treetops in hopes of avoiding Serbian gunners and missileers below. The 87-mile flight was smooth for its first third, when the helicopters entered a shallow valley in the shape of a rice bowl. But suddenly three small, shoulder-fired SA-7 missiles ripped past, followed by "small gunfire hitting the bird," as Corporal Michael Pevear, the other Marine sitting beside O'Grady, put it.
Everyone jumped when one round tore in, smashed into some communications gear and bounced harmlessly off the back of Castro's flak jacket. The Marine behind him handed the sergeant major a 7.62-mm slug. Castro handed it back with a smile. It was, he said, "no big deal."
The pilots began violently rocking the choppers from side to side, hugging as close to the ground as they dared and occasionally executing a stomach-churning pop-up to clear low-hanging power lines. Inside the helicopters, life jackets, ammunition boxes and Marines began pitching about. Pevear and Bruce nervously eyed their passenger, who appeared to be clenching his teeth. "I just looked at him and told him he was with the Marines and everything was going to be all right," said Bruce. It was an assurance that neither Bruce nor Pevear quite believed. "We were zigzagging around, banking hard all over the place," Bruce later admitted. "It was a terrifying ride-the roughest helicopter ride I've ever been on."
And then, suddenly, they were in the clear. As the helicopters drew near the Adriatic, the Marines could feel the warm air and smell the cypress and pine trees of the Dalmatian coast. When Berndt turned to see how his passenger was doing, O'Grady looked up at the commander, gave a grin and a thumbs-up. "I knew then," Berndt says, "that he was O.K."
--Reported by Edward Barnes/Pale, Ann Blackman/Alexandria, Greg Burke/Aviano, Dan Cray/Los Angeles and Douglas Waller/Washington