A microsecond later, a grim but bemused Tom Griffith wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to wait for the EF-111 and F-4G support. A microsecond after that, he moved his right foot to a switch on the cockpit floor that would transmit to the rest of the flight the news that Buick 04 had been hit and would probably abort the attack. But to his sudden amazement, he failed to reach the switch; his feet were lifting off the floor and his ejection seat was traveling up the steel rails that held it in the cockpit. Eberly was ejecting them!

How Eberly accomplished that will probably never be known, for he had suffered a neck wound and lost consciousness. He did not wake up until he was on the ground.

Now Griffith was falling through the night sky, with no sense of up or down, only that he was cold and falling and still in his ejection seat. His mind raced through his emergency training procedures, trying to recall how to free himself from his seat and get his parachute deployed. But then, just as his mind filled with the terrible image of his mangled body in the desert, still attached to the seat, all the magic worked, and at the proper altitude, the tiny explosive charges fired according to schedule and Tom found himself floating beneath his open parachute. Now he knew where the ground was. It was the place where the angry red tracers were coming from, all arcing up toward him. Images of hundreds of bullets striking his parachute flashed across his mind, swiftly followed by the more frightening thoughts of red-hot projectiles ripping into his flesh. Just then, he involuntarily clamped his flight boots together to give some protection to his more precious parts. That lasted until he realized that the explosion of one projectile would remove everything from his navel down, so he might as well be comfortable during the ride to earth.

Always thinking, Tom dug his survival radio out of his vest and, tearing off a glove, set out to flip the switches that would let him broadcast to the others. However, before he could complete the procedure, he was distracted by a large explosion on the ground beneath him. His aircraft, he imagined. Then it hit him that unless he could maneuver his parachute, he was likely to descend into the burning wreckage, not a happy thought. Meanwhile, he discovered that his radio was useless. His cold, numb fingers could not operate the switches. As he was trying to slip it back into its pocket in his survival vest, he hit the ground like a two-hundred-pound bag of fertilizer thrown from the roof of a two-story building.