(4 of 7)
As the search continued through the night, the information was passed back to Washington where, six hours behind Central European Time, Clinton was receiving an evening briefing from National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. Clinton told Lake to keep him informed, but by the next morning the searchers still had not locked on to the lost pilot. "You know that matter we discussed last night?" said Lake at 9:30 a.m. "There's nothing more on that, and it looks uncertain." The President sighed and shook his head in frustration.
It would not be until early Thursday morning that Captain Thomas Hanford, an F-16 pilot from O'Grady's fighter wing making one of the repeated search sorties, received the first direct radio signal from the downed pilot. "Basher-52 reads you," said O'Grady, using the "call sign" that signifies a particular plane and its pilot. "I'm alive; help." Hanford subsequently asked him to identify the name of the squadron in which he had served in Korea -- a question designed to ensure that O'Grady's message was not, in fact, a Serb trick. When he replied correctly, Hanford notified his superiors that he had made contact with O'Grady. Then he peeled away over the Adriatic to refuel. And for a few short moments, he let his emotions get the better of him. "It's hard to fly an airplane," he said later, "when you have tears rolling down your face."
The information was relayed to an intelligence-gathering AWACS circling high above, and then to Admiral Smith in London. He contacted Colonel Martin Berndt, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit on the Kearsarge, a helicopter carrier sailing in the Adriatic. "What do you think?" asked the admiral. "I think we can get him," replied Berndt. Smith immediately gave the go-ahead, and Berndt roused 51 Marines-including 10 helicopter crewmembers-sleeping below decks; it was shortly after 3 a.m. At about the same time, Lake approached the President back in Washington, where it was around 9:30 p.m. "It looks real tonight," he said. "It looks like it's a go."
The rescue team would have preferred going in under cover of darkness, but by the time Smith's order came through, streaks of morning light were already appearing above the Dalmatian coast. At sunrise Berndt and his Marines, their faces covered with camouflage paint, had boarded a pair of enormous CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters-16-ton, seven-blade monsters. "We were so focused on the mission, I don't think anybody had any time to be nervous," recalls Berndt. "We were all excited that our young captain was alive and well."
Escorting the Stallions were two Marine AH-1W SuperCobra helicopter gunships, bristling with missiles, cannon and machine guns, and a pair of single-pilot Marine AV-8B Harrier jump jets. These six aircraft were backed up by identical sets of replacement helicopters and jump jets-none was needed-as well as two Navy EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare planes, two Marine F/A-18D Hornets to provide air cover, and a pair of tank-killing Air Force A-10 Warthogs. The entire aerial armada of roughly 40 planes was choreographed from above by a nato awacs radar plane. "We had the whole shooting match up there," said Smith.