On the other hand, they had to wonder if Jones had been captured and an English-speaking Iraqi was leading them into a trap. Better to be sorry than safe, however, in this case. When guys were on the ground, you had to take risks.

As they flew deeper and deeper into bad-guy territory, the radio signal grew louder and louder, telling them they were on the right track. The original searchers had been looking too far to the south.

Now the A-10s were over the downed F-14 pilot, and it was time to hang it all out: they popped down under some clouds on the deck to eyeball Jones’s actual position. The big, ugly Warthogs screaming over his hideout proved to be quite a shock to the Navy pilot, but he still had enough presence of mind to call them on the radio.

The A-10s deliberately did not orbit the site, lest they give away the location to Iraqis in the area. But Johnson did let Jones know that he had seen his location and memorized the surrounding terrain features.

Meanwhile, they had a problem. The Sandys were again nearly out of gas. It would be their third in-flight refueling of the day. As they flew away, they promised Jones they’d be back after they filled up.

No problem, the Navy pilot thought. He’d already been hiding for six hours; occasional Iraqi army trucks had passed by on a nearby road, and so far he hadn’t lost his cool. Now that the A-10s had his position, rescue couldn’t be far away. He knew those A-10s would not let him down.

As it happened, they almost did.

Heading south, Johnson and Goff ran into headwinds. These—and their gritty determination to find Jones—had left them too low on gas to make it back to Saudi Arabia and a tanker aircraft (for obvious reasons, tankers stayed on the Saudi side of the border). When AWACS put them in contact with a tanker, Johnson asked it to fly north to rendezvous with him; the tanker pilot refused. The rules said no tankers in Iraq, and this tanker pilot was going to follow the rules.

Now desperate, Johnson pointed out to the tanker pilot that he just might fly over to him and transfer a full load of 30 mm ammunition into his KC-135. Of course, he wouldn’t do such a thing—and actually he couldn’t. He didn’t have enough gas to fly that far south. For whatever reason—fear, or more likely conscience—the tanker pilot headed across the border and into Iraq for a rendezvous with the nearly empty A-10s. Either way, just then he became a hero to the A-10 drivers.