Read Online Basher Five-Two by Scott O'Grady - Free Book Online

Clinton, at the White House.
(Courtesy of AP/World Wide Photos)

SIX
    W ith the first light of dawn, I got a rude surprise. I was lying peacefully in the darkness on my tarp, the green side folded over me, with the camouflage netting spread on top. Even though my feet and head stuck out of the netting, I had thought the trees concealed me well. I had opened a flexipak and had taken my first drink of water in seventeen hours. Just as I was congratulating myself on fooling the enemy, I realized I wasn’t concealed at all.
    The night had tricked me. The thick trees that by touch and through my dim sight had seemed so perfect had, in fact, very few low branches. I would stick out like an elephant to anyone coming up the path. I tried not to panic. Ever so slowly, I gathered my gear and slipped toward the clearing where I’d made my radio transmissions. Not far away, amid a stand of skinny trees, there were low branches I could hide under. And if I had to flee, I wasn’t trapped in a total dead end. I picked a hiding spot and prepared to burrow in.
    Several years before, I had taken a two-week survival course at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane and, later, a one-week water survival course at Holmstead Air ForceBase. I had learned tons of useful things in both courses, but the training at Fairchild was the most relevant now. My instructors had emphasized the importance of finding a good hiding spot, or “hole-up” site, as the military called it. A hole-up site was only good if you followed the BLISS principle. Your hole had to blend into the environment. It had to be low and regular in shape. And it had to be in a secluded area. It was also helpful if you had some protection from the elements, a way to escape when cornered, an ability to see the land around you, and clear radio reception. By itself each part was minor, but if you followed them all, they could add up to the difference between success and failure.
    With my new hole I wasn’t batting a thousand, but as I set up my tarp and netting at a nerve-rackingly slow pace, I felt I was doing well under the circumstances. When I was finally settled in, I pulled my evasion chart from my G-suit pocket and began to plot the longitude and latitude coordinates I’d gotten from my GPS receiver last night.
    My evasion chart, known as EVC—the military has initials for everything—was basically a topographical map of Bosnia. It showed all the hills, valleys, rivers, and land features around me. On its legend was other helpful information about local vegetation and animals, including a poisonous snake called the European viper. I wanted to be sure to avoid that. For all its usefulness, however, theEVC had two major disadvantages. First, it was made of a heavy-duty, waterproof material that you couldn’t fold or unfold without waking the dead. Second, because the EVC was designed to serve in emergencies as a blanket or a splint or even a tarp for hauling supplies, it was huge—almost five feet by three feet. I used my knife to cut out the piece of the EVC that showed my immediate area, and I shoved the rest into my rucksack. Once I’d plotted my coordinates on my new, smaller EVC, I picked out a hill about two miles away that I hoped would make a decent stage for a rescue attempt. As I would be moving only at night, two miles was a lot of territory to cover, but reaching that hill became my new goal.
    Setting goals was a necessity for me. Whether it was to grab a quick nap, find something to eat, or move a few yards closer to that final hill, having a goal focused my thoughts and energies. Growing up, I had always carved out one goal or another for myself. Whether it was making my high-school football team or becoming an air force pilot or getting rescued, I could never live my life any other way.
    Lying there in that hole, I would at times grow sad and feel sorry for myself. That’s when I tried my best to remember that I had been extremely lucky so far. I knew the