Bailout Behind Iraqi Lines--a Happy Ending : Rescue: With enemy forces closing in, the Air Force captain is saved by a copter directed to the scene by his wingman.

In the five minutes that it took him to parachute onto Iraqi soil, U.S. Air Force Capt. Scott (Spike) Thomas had plenty of time to think about the enemy troops he had just finished bombing.

“It was a long time,” the F-16 pilot said Friday, recalling his rescue Sunday by a U.S. helicopter just as Iraqis closed in from two directions, firing at the getaway chopper.

As he plunged through the cold clouds from 12,000 feet, Thomas mentally ran through his checklist, ticking off the items in his survival kit: water, food, a two-way radio, a life raft, a 9-millimeter pistol.

Then he focused on how to avoid the “bad guys.”

“I was trying to find a good place to land,” he recalled.

There was still some daylight left, and as he cleared the clouds, Thomas was able to see for about five miles in all directions. That meant the Iraqis on the ground might see him, he realized. Luckily, none apparently did. There was no enemy fire.

As he touched down, about 50 miles north of the Saudi Arabia border, Thomas looked up and saw his wingman and friend, Lt. Eric (Neck) Dodson, circling overhead. Thomas quickly contacted him by radio. Dodson told Thomas to stay put; he would coordinate the search-and-rescue mission from above.

With a thunderstorm heading his way, Thomas--bleeding from the chin after a brush with his deploying parachute harness--set up camp, making a shelter by propping his raft over two bushes.

“The first hour passed pretty quickly,” Thomas, 27, recalled. “The second was the longest of my life.”

He sat under his makeshift tent, listening to his radio--but not daring to talk, lest the Iraqis pick up the signals.

Thomas passed the time by picking up stones for souvenirs, thinking about his narrow escape from the F-16, whose engine had inexplicably caught fire after a successful bombing mission over Iraq.

When Thomas began experiencing engine trouble, he and Dodson, members of the 33rd Squadron of the 363rd Tactical Fighter Wing from the Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, S.C., were about 100 miles from the Saudi border.

“You’re on fire,” radioed Dodson, who was flying about 500 feet away.

“Then everything literally went downhill,” Thomas recalled.

He had three options.

“One is to make it across the border and land at an air base; second, to cross the border and jettison; and, third and worst, is to jump out in Iraqi territory,” he said.

But within minutes, both he and Dodson, a classmate at the Air Force Academy, knew that Thomas had only one choice--the worst one.

“The actual ejection was not too violent. The jet flew (on) for about eight miles and got away from me and did not draw attention to me,” Thomas continued. “It is an amazing sight to jump out there to see a flaming F-16 flying out between your legs.”

He added: “You talk about these things, you train for them and never expect them to happen to you. And when they do, some kind of big hand takes over for you and you start doing things without realizing.”

Somewhat reassured that the Iraqis had not spotted his descent, Thomas tried to while away the time with his search for stones. He estimated that for at least 30% of the two hours that he was on Iraqi soil, he was able to hear Air Force fighters passing overhead, giving him “a great deal of security.”

But the noise also obscured the sounds of an approaching rescue helicopter.

“I had no clue the search-and-rescue teams were coming until I saw the helicopter,” Thomas recalled. Then the helicopter flew over his location, apparently not having seen him. That’s when Thomas tossed caution to the winds.

“I was then screaming on the radio: ‘Hey, guys! You passed me up. I’m on the left’!” Thomas continued.

But he heard nothing for an agonizing three minutes.

Then “the next thing I saw was this helicopter right in front of my face. It puts down and they send out a guy to get me. He was like a self-contained army and his most effective weapon was his arms. He had these huge arms,” Thomas recalled. “He grabbed me and shuffled me into the helicopter. I was the happiest guy on Earth.”

Shortly after the helicopter lifted off, Iraqi soldiers fired on it, but missed.

As the helicopter flew through the night sky back toward Saudi Arabia, Thomas passed out his stone souvenirs to the men who had saved him.

Thomas said he is looking forward to his next mission.

This report was based on pool reports reviewed by military censors.