Basher Five-Two Read online

  But no matter what the risks, if your plane was like mine, on fire and plummeting to earth in a hurry, you pulled the handle.

  So I did.

  In a microsecond the bubble canopy above me exploded off the cockpit and fell free of the plane. In another microsecond the small rocket under my seat shot me straight up out of the cockpit and into the cold, thin air of space.

  Spinning through the air, I watched what was left of my F-16 fall away in an exploding fireball. I had escaped a certain, terrible death. I had used up another of my nine lives. My plane, slowed by the SAM hit, had been going less than 500 miles an hour. The ejection seat and its rocket had done their job. I hadn’t had time to think about tucking in my arms and legs for a textbook ejection. I’d just reacted. To wait even another fraction of a second could have meant serious injury or death.

  As I tumbled out of control through space, I knew I was still in great danger. I was five miles above Earth and falling like a stone, waiting for my parachute to open automatically. Worse, I was upside down, my body parallel to the ground, belly facing down. I couldn’t move very well because I was still strapped into my ejection seat, which included a back and headrest. A patchwork quilt of farmland lay below me.

  I took stock of my situation. My cheeks stung from the cold air and, I guessed, the fire in the cockpit. Hitting the strong winds outside the plane, I lost my visor, the flashlight clipped to my vest, and even my camouflaged name patch, which left only the Velcro pad behind it. The heel of my left boot had been ripped during the ejection. I felt okay, but I couldn’t be sure of the extent of my injuries, if any, until I landed.

  What concerned me most was my parachute. It wouldn’t open until I dropped to an altitude of 14,000 feet. There, the oxygen level and temperature would be more agreeable. That’s when the sensors in my “smart” seat would activate the parachute and my seat would fall away, letting me float cleanly to Earth. This sounded fine, but I was still worried. What if the parachute, made of paper-thin nylon, had been damaged by the missile blast or the cockpit fire … what if it just didn’t work?

  I was falling at a rate of about one mile every two minutes, or about 2,500 feet every sixty seconds. That may sound fast, but I had a long way to go before I reached 14,000 feet. My nerves were as thin as the oxygen level. Suddenly, I didn’t want to wait to see if my parachute was going to work. My response was partly that of a pilot who wasn’t used to hanging around, who liked to make things happen. But I also thought that if the parachute wasn’t going to open and I was headed for a grisly death, it was better to know sooner than later. I wasn’t sure what I would do, but I’d have more time to figure something out.

  I said another prayer. With a tug on my seat handle—one that could open my chute now—I heard a wonderful pop, and instantly my speed began to slow. I did my best to look up, over my headrest. A drogue chute—a small chute whose job it was to stabilize me—had been released first. Seconds later, with another, louder pop, the main parachute was gloriously billowing above me. I was still strapped into my chair and headrest, but at least I was right side up. The ground was where it should have been, below me, and the sky was above. I moved my arms and legs. Nothing seemed broken. I thanked God again.

  Despite the fear of not being able to breathe at the high altitude, I pulled off my helmet and oxygen mask and let them drop to Earth. My face was really burning, and I craved the relief of cool air. The cold blasts felt wonderful, and I wasn’t getting dizzy in the thin altitude. In fact, my mind was alert enough to realize I had made one slight miscalculation. While I thought I’d been in a free fall for minutes, in fact the time span since ejecting from the plane had been much shorter. I’d only dropped about 3,000 feet before I opened my parachute. I was still 24,000 feet in the air, and now traveling at a rate of less than 1,000 feet a minute. That meant it would be almost half an hour before I hit the ground!

  That was plenty of time for the Serbs to spot me and give chase. As a strong gust began to blow me sideways, I had no idea where I would land. The farmland below looked wide and open, without many places to hide. I could see the good-sized city of Bosanski Petrovac a few miles to the west and a highway that ran out of the city to the east. Farther south, beyond the road, thick black smoke coiled into the air and a ring of flames lit up the field below—the spot where my ill-fated plane had crashed. Soldiers in the area as well as locals might already be at the site, training their eyes on the sky. With my parachute above me, I would be as hard to miss as the Goodyear blimp.

  Part of me couldn’t believe this was happening. Minutes before, I had been safely tucked in my jet, master of the sky. Now my plane burned in a Bosnian forest, and I had been stripped of all my powers. I felt like Superman forced to wear a cape of kryptonite. Suddenly I heard the deep roar of a jet directly above. Wilbur, I thought, and I glanced up eagerly. But there was too much cloud cover for either of us to see the other. I reached for the toggle switch on my seat pan. With a flip of my finger, I could activate a radio beacon on my seat pan and send out a distress signal on the Guard channel. Every radio operator in Bosnia would know I was alive, but so would Wilbur. If I hoped to be rescued, NATO had to be positive that I was alive. They also needed to know my physical location within one nautical mile. Those were the two requirements before any rescue mission could be launched.

  I didn’t hesitate. I activated the beacon for several seconds. The jet noise faded away. I scrambled for my handheld radio in my survival vest pocket, intent on sending a second signal. But the radio was in a plastic bag, in case I had to ditch into the sea. What if I fumbled everything in my eagerness to make contact and the radio fell to the ground? I had a backup radio in my survival kit, but I didn’t feel like taking any chances. I left the radio in my vest. There was nothing more I could do. I had no idea if Wilbur, or anyone else, friend or foe, had picked up my signal.

  Whether Wilbur knew I was alive or not, I was on my own for now. I was about to land in hostile territory. I knew from intel that I couldn’t count on finding any nice guys in Bosnia. At this very moment someone could have a rifle trained on me, waiting for an order to squeeze the trigger. Or soldiers could be hidden in a nearby farmhouse, waiting for the chance to capture me. I remembered the U.S. Military Code of Conduct, which all members of the U.S. armed forces are sworn to uphold: I was never to surrender of my own free will. Instead, I was to evade the enemy at all costs. If I was captured, I would resist and try to escape. Under no circumstances would I help the enemy in any way.

  At 14,000 feet, the sensor in my ejection seat did its job, and my seat and headrest fell to Earth. My seat pan also fell away, leaving only the canvas package clipped to my hips. The canvas package then opened automatically, releasing a twenty-five-foot cord with my main rucksack anchored at the bottom. The self-inflating life raft was in the middle, and my hit-and-run auxiliary rucksack was at the top, closest to me. My parachute, of course, had already opened several minutes before. Unlike some of my fellow pilots who had never jumped from a plane, I was pretty comfortable in a parachute. I’d had plenty of practice, five jumps one summer while at Embry-Riddle and five the next summer when I took a three-week airborne training course at Fort Benning, Georgia. When growing up, I’d learned from my father, and from my own limitations, that if you wanted to come anywhere near perfection, you had better practice a lot. Whether it was kicking footballs or making a karate move or flying a fighter jet, I did something over and over until I was exhausted.

  But strapping on a parachute and leaping from a plane is one of those pursuits where, no matter how many times you practice, no two episodes are the same. Even when you’re prepared for it, little things can and usually do go wrong. A line can get entangled around your parachute or you can float right into a tree. I thought of the obvious: when you jump behind enemy lines, that’s when you can least afford an error.

  As I studied the landscape below, I spotted some hilly, dense woods to the south that I decided would make a good hiding place�
�so long as I didn’t catch my parachute on a tree limb. The woods offered far better cover than open farmland. I reached for the pair of red handles above my head that were attached to the parachute. These would allow me to change the shape of the parachute and the way the wind passed through it, which in turn would let me steer in the direction I wanted. But as I grabbed for the handles, I found that one was stuck in the sleeve of the parachute and couldn’t be reached. I needed both handles to steer effectively. Helpless, I was going where the wind propelled me.

  I gazed down again. A truck with a canvas back—the type used in military convoys—seemed to be following me on the highway below. Without warning it pulled over on the shoulder. A car stopped behind it. I had to assume the worst, that these were hostile forces and, unless the wind kept carrying me out of their reach, I was in deep trouble.

  Dear God, I prayed, let me land in a safe place, without harm.

  I don’t know how many prayers I’d uttered since my plane had been struck. Each prayer seemed more urgent than the previous one, but each one God had answered. It was as if I were using up the rest of my nine lives in record time, and I hadn’t even faced the enemy.

  Only a thousand feet above the ground, with my eyes still aimed on the truck and car stopped on the highway, I made another mental check of my equipment. Although I had lost my flashlight, I knew my radio was still in my vest, as well as my GPS receiver. My main survival rucksack and the hit-and-run secondary kit were attached to the twenty-five-foot cord below me. The life raft dangled below me too, but I’d have no need for that.

  As I sailed closer to the ground, I remembered what I had been taught at Fort Benning. In landing, you kept your eyes pointed at the horizon, your legs and feet together, knees slightly bent; once on the ground, you collapsed into a sideways roll. The goal was to cushion your twelve-miles-per-hour landing by using the balls of your feet, your calf, thigh, hip, and upper back.

  I said another prayer. The wind whistled through my hair. Then the ground rose up and slammed into me like a rock.

  FIVE

  I had dropped about half a football field’s length from the road. Tumbling on my left side, I rolled to a stop, without getting dragged or entangled by my parachute. Better still, I had landed in an empty clearing of grass that was surrounded by fairly dense woods. Later I would realize how fortunate I was to have released my parachute at 24,000 feet. If I had waited until 14,000 feet, the winds wouldn’t have had a chance to carry me this far, and I might have dropped straight into a nearby village.

  For the moment I had lost sight of the mysterious convoy truck and car, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I had to assume they had watched my landing and were on their way. My mind raced as I released the clips of my parachute harness, then those of the canvas padded kit attached to my hips. All I could think about was getting out of there with the speed of a rabbit.

  Set to run, I realized that the plastic bag holding my radio had fallen out of my vest, and the cord attached to it was caught in the parachute lines. Working frantically, I untangled the radio and slipped it back inside my survival vest. My main survival rucksack was at my feet. As the noise of approaching vehicles filled the air, I scooped up the rucksack and began running into the woods, away from the road. In my haste I had left behind my secondary hit-and-run survival kit, which included extra water and other provisions. I also left my parachute, which might have given me protection from the elements, but I wasn’t about to drag something so big and obvious through the woods. I knew from my survival training that it was important to be as light on my feet as possible.

  Except for the burns on my face, I was amazed by the seemingly good shape I was in, considering the catastrophe I’d survived. As I ran, it didn’t seem as though I had any serious injuries. But my legs soon turned stiff and heavy, and I was quickly exhausted. What I failed to grasp was my emotional state. When I had run about a hundred yards from my landing site, I didn’t think I could move another step. I dove into the first grove of trees that I thought could provide decent cover. The fear and stress had caught up with me.

  Lying on soft, dark earth, I coiled into a semifetal position, drenched in sweat. I could hear vehicles approach my landing site. The first arrivals spoke in low, controlled voices, and I knew more would be coming for the hunt that lay ahead. My morale had never been lower. I was sure I would be captured. How could trained soldiers or even local villagers fail to find a dazed, exhausted American pilot half scared out of his mind, and lying only a couple of hundred feet away? I pulled out my radio and made a last-ditch effort on the Guard channel.

  “Hey, Wilbur, this is Zulu,” I whispered as clearly as I could, using a nickname that I’d acquired while stationed in Ramstein, Germany, and that Wilbur would know.

  I tried Wilbur a second time. There was no reply. As I listened to more vehicles arriving at my landing site, I shut off my radio.

  Footsteps began coming my way. My heart sank as I tried to burrow into the dirt, but not before quickly covering my face and ears with my gloves. There was no time to pull out the camouflage paste from my rucksack. The gloves were the same color as my olive drab flight suit, so I hoped I would blend in with the brush.

  Within a minute, two men strolled down a path not five feet from my hiding spot. I peeked up warily. One had silver hair; the other looked like his grandson and was no more than eighteen. They were locals, not soldiers, but I knew from intel that many Serb villagers were part of militias and could be just as violent and unpredictable as any uniformed soldier. Hugging the dirt, I was afraid to breathe. Within another minute, two more locals approached my hiding spot—and stopped cold. They were both carrying rifles. About five yards away from me, they traded conversation while their eyes glanced back and forth.

  I remembered what one of my survival instructors had taught me. Don’t move, no matter what, he had said. Don’t assume that the enemy sees you just because you see them. I kept waiting for a stick or a rifle muzzle to jab me in the ribs. Instead, mysteriously, the two men continued down the path, leaving me behind.

  I wondered what was next. Within minutes I heard the grinding noise of more trucks around my landing site. Soon the woods were alive with search parties, groups of two or three that fanned out in all directions. Staying glued to the ground, for the next hour I twisted up my head to spy through the low-lying branches. I caught glimpses of men, mostly their legs or backs, as they called to each other and poked and prodded the brush. One pair came within ten feet of me. Like my earlier visitors, these men also wore civilian clothes, but one man had a rifle slung over his arm. Was he out hunting rabbits, or was I the prey of the afternoon?

  Seconds later, a shot rang out. I don’t know who fired it, but I assumed it was meant for me. Maybe somebody thought they’d spotted me, or they just wanted to flush me out. I closed my eyes, waiting for the next bullet to come my way. I was sure I was facing death. As a young boy, I had attended Catholic schools, had received Communion, and had been confirmed, and I had always felt a close and personal relationship with God. In this dark hour, I began calling on every saint and apostle I knew for protection. I summoned, too, my grandparents and my godmother in heaven for their help. Mostly, I prayed to God, over and over.

  I didn’t want to die alone, in the middle of nowhere, while everyone I loved and was close to back home had no idea of my fate. That was my worst fear, that no one would know how I had died. I could imagine a U.S. Air Force chaplain appearing at my fathers house in Alexandria, Virginia, and delivering the worst news in the world. I could see my father dissolve into tears. My parents were divorced now, but they remained close, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the effect that my death would have. The future would cease to exist. My mother, who lived in Seattle with her husband, Joseph, was supposed to meet me in Italy in a week. In July I was going to rendezvous with my brother and sister in Spain. My father was coming for a visit in October….

  All that would never happen now.

  I prayed. Ou
r Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name …

  A second shot rang out, followed by the sound of the bullet bouncing off a rock. There were more footsteps, excited voices. I worried about the Ziploc bag that had held my radio and was now stuck under my leg. What if the late afternoon light bounced off it and gave me away?

  I was trembling, much too afraid to look up anymore. I was only twenty-nine years old, but I thought I had lived a very full and satisfying life. I had much to be thankful for—a family that was extremely close, countless friends, a career I loved—yet I wasn’t ready to cash in my chips. I still had other dreams and goals. I wanted to fall in love with someone, get married, and raise a family. I wouldn’t consider my life complete until I’d experienced that happiness. There was so much more I wanted to accomplish.

  Thy kingdom come, I kept praying. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven …

  More scattered rifle fire. I hunkered down, afraid that my heart would explode in my chest. It was pounding so hard. I kept waiting. Then I began to cry inside. I didn’t think I’d ever make it back to my family and friends.

  Back home, on that same afternoon of June 2, representatives of the U.S. Air Force were, in fact, paying visits to both my parents. They talked to my father first, explaining that I had been on a routine but hazardous mission over Bosnia and that my F-16 had been shot down, apparently by a missile. My fellow pilot, Bob ‘“Wilbur” Wright, had not seen a parachute, nor had he made radio or visual contact with me after the incident. Distraught and overwhelmed, my father picked up the phone and called my mother. He had barely given her the news when a separate U.S. Air Force team, consisting of a chaplain and two other officers, approached her front door. My mother saw them through the window as she talked with my father. She put down the phone and let them in.