The two musketeers headed west, following a small compass Griffith dug out of a pocket of his survival vest. Later, as dawn started to gray the desert, they looked for a low spot where they could hide for the day. Once they’d found what seemed to be a suitable hideout, they settled down, and Eberly tried to raise help on his survival radio. Meanwhile, Griffith went through his pockets and culled out anything of value to the enemy. As he buried them in a shallow hole, he mused: Will some desert-dweller, maybe two thousand years from now, dig up my radio frequency card, authenticator code tables, and target drawing, and draw scholarly conclusions about mankind’s follies centuries ago?

By then, the sun was high enough to tell them something about their surroundings, and much to their alarm, they found they’d been trying to hide in a shallow depression on some sort of rock-strewn farmer’s field. “Where will we hide?” they asked themselves. “And now it’s getting light.” But nearby, a hill rose up sharply, maybe three hundred feet, with large rocks on its crest, big enough for two men to hide behind.

Fortunately, fog came with the rising sun, and Eberly and Griffith were able to creep up to the crest and hide among the boulders.

As far as they could tell, the desert was peaceful. No Iraqi Army patrols were beating the bushes trying to capture them. What’s more, the hill provided a good line of sight to look for rescue aircraft and for radio. Here would be a good place to wait for rescue, they decided.

Most of the rest of the day was divided between attempts at sleep and radio calls for help. Two obsessions dominated their minds: Gee, I hope we get out of here. And I wonder when they are going to come and rescue us?

★ Efforts in that direction were under way . . . but there was no rush.

Though other aircraft in the area had reported the shoot-down and (from “initial voice contact”) likely ejection of Eberly and Griffith, the CSAR cell in the TACC was stymied until they had received confirmation that the two airmen were alive and their exact location was known—the launch criteria the SOF commander had established for his rescue assets.

In point of fact, the SOF criteria were not always enforced. A day earlier, a Rafha-based MH-53 had conducted an unsuccessful search for a downed F-16 pilot in southern Iraq. And two days after the Griffith and Eberly shoot-down, Captain Trask and his MH-53 had joined in the search for Lieutenant Devon Jones without certain knowledge of the F-14 pilot’s location or condition.