Even before he had rolled out of his narrow bunk aboard the USS Kearsarge, Col. Marty Berndt knew this was the real thing; four-star admirals don't phone at 2:30 in the morning just to chat. Adm. Leighton "Snuffy" Smith, the commander of all of NATO's southern forces, was on the line from London and he wanted to know if Colonel Berndt's marines, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, were ready.
They were, Colonel Berndt assured the admiral; he would need just one hour's notice to get the first of his hulking CH-53 helicopters off the Kearsarge's flight deck and on its way across the Adriatic Sea. The destination: western Bosnia. The mission: rescue Capt. Scott O'Grady, the downed F-16 pilot missing for six nights, who had been located in the hilly, Serb-held countryside not far from Banja Luka. Smith put the Marines on alert. At 3 o'clock, Berndt replaced the phone's receiver and hurried along the ship's narrow, red-lit passageway to the war room.
In the pine forest where he had hidden, Scott O'Grady waited. It had been less than an hour since he had finally contacted an American F-16 pilot from his own unit, the 555th fighter squadron based at Aviano AB, Italy, who was patrolling overhead. Wary of betraying his location and anxious to conserve battery power, he had used his radio sparingly; but at 2:08 that morning, 52 minutes earlier, O'Grady was heard for the first time radioing Basher 52," his call sign o n the mission that had landed him in this mess.
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