Ron Spivey was a bit younger than Brad and was going to be a senior in high school, like Brad. “Hey, Ron,” Brad greeted him when they saw each other. “Where were you when the call came in?”
“Just bought Marina a cone at the DQ and were on our way out to do some off-roading,” Ron said. He was the quarterback and captain of the football team with Brad, taller but not as beefy as Brad, with big hands, a thin face that looked even thinner because of a thick football player’s neck, and narrow eyes.
“Was she pissed?” Brad asked.
His initial expression told Brad that she was, but Ron shrugged it off. “Who cares?” he replied. “If she wanted to nag on me, she could do it in my rearview mirror. She knew better. I dropped her off and geared up. What do you know?”
“Plane went down northwest of here,” Brad said. “I’ll bet they’ll put us on a Hasty team.”
“Maybe we’ll get to see victims.”
“You’re a sicko.”
“Beats those stuffed scarecrow things they put out on SAREXs.”
A few moments later, another young boy came up to them, stood in front of Brad, and saluted. “Cadet Sergeant Markham reporting, sir,” he said. He was fifteen years old but looked about ten, with a round face and body, a nose way too small for his freckly face, and big green eyes.
Brad returned the salute. “You don’t have to salute indoors, Ralph,” he said, “and you don’t have to report to me — you report to the IC or whoever’s signing us in.”
“Sorry, sir,” Markham said.
“Don’t apologize either. Did you sign in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you don’t have to ‘sir’ me unless we’re in formation,” Brad said. But he knew that Ralph Markham liked the military formalities and wasn’t going to stop. “They’ll probably put us together on a Hasty team. Got all your Seventy-Two gear?”
“Yes, s — Brad,” Ralph said. “Out by the van ready for inspection.”
“Who’s closer to level one?” Brad asked the others. He turned to Ron. “Did you get your advanced first aid at the last SAREX?”
“No, I came in late, so they put me at the base on the radio.”
“Then make sure you ask Bellville or Fitzgerald to be lead medic so you can get a sign-off and take the practical exam,” Brad said. “That okay with you, Ralph?”
“I’ve already got my advanced done, sir,” he said proudly.
“Excellent,” Brad said. “The practical too?”
“Mr. Fitzgerald gave it to me last week.”
“So what do you need for your level one?”
“Tracking and DF, sir.”
“They said they’re getting an ELT signal,” Brad said, “so they put me on DF, and I’d like to stay on it to help out if they need me. But if we’re on foot, I’ll have you organize a line search and take us through some tracking procedures. Remember, verbalize what you see to the rest of the strike team and take lots of pictures or drawings. If you get a sign-off, we’ll do some tracking practice on our own and get you ready for your practical exam. The DF sign-off will have to wait for another actual or SAREX next month, unless you can go to the California Wing’s summer camp in two weeks.”
“I can’t,” Ralph said. “I have summer school.”
“Bummer,” Brad said. Ralph was an enthusiastic cadet and loved the challenges of the Civil Air Patrol, but his reading was several grade levels lower than his classmates’, and he needed a lot of extra time to do the simplest reading assignments. “No problem. You know your stuff — we just gotta get you some practice and a senior to observe you. You’ll get your first class before you know it, and I think you’ll skate through Urban DF too. You could be up for officer promotion.” Ralph looked as if he was going to explode with pride. Brad turned to Ron. “You gotta get busy on getting some sign-offs, Cap. You’ve been a second class for, what? A year?”
“Hey, BJ, I’m busy, okay?” Ron spat back irritably. Brad’s face turned stony. Ron Spivey was probably the only person who could get away with using that pejorative nickname, and only if he used it very sparingly. “I got two lousy part-time jobs that don’t pay shit—”
“Watch the language around the younger cadets and the seniors, bro.”
“—football practice twice a day,” Ron went on, ignoring Brad’s remark, “and a girlfriend who thinks I’m her personal chauffeur and cash machine. I’ll do the stuff when I can get the time.”
“I’ll help you, Ron, but you gotta make the time,” Brad said. “When this is over we’ll go online, I’ll take a look at your SQTR progress record, and we’ll figure out—”
“I said, I’ll do the stuff when I get the time, McLanahan,” Ron said, and turned on a heel and walked away.
A few minutes later, all of the senior and cadet members who had arrived took places around the conference table. “Thanks for coming so quickly, everyone,” Rob Spara began. He gave a time hack, then began: “This is an actual search-and-rescue mission. Approximately forty minutes ago, the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center was notified by Salt Lake Air Traffic Control Center that a Cessna 182 with three souls aboard was lost on radar and presumed crashed in heavy thunderstorms. A commercial airliner flying in the vicinity picked up an emergency locator transmitter beacon on VHF GUARD frequency about fifty-five miles northwest of here. The Air Force notified the Civil Air Patrol National Operations Center, who called Nevada Wing headquarters, and the colonel made me the incident commander.
“The storm system has blown through and clear skies with gusty winds are expected in the recovery area,” Spara went on. “Several airliners have picked up the ELT, and air traffic control actually put together a pretty good triangulation based on signal fade. The plan is to launch the 182 and begin a search grid at the approximate location given by the airliner. Unfortunately, the ELT is an old-style transmitter and isn’t picked up by satellite or doesn’t transmit its position, so we do a search the old-fashioned way. General McLanahan will be mission pilot, with de Carteret as observer and Slotnik as scanner.
“Because we got an ELT signal and we might have a mostly intact plane with survivors, I’m going to deploy a Hasty team immediately,” Spara went on. “Bellville will be the ground-team leader, with Fitzgerald as deputy team leader, driver, and comm, McLanahan as DF, and Spivey and Markham as medics. Repeater setup will be Romeo-17.” Everyone wrote that designation on their briefing cards. The repeater network — a series of FM radio towers on several mountain peaks throughout remote areas of Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah — would allow the incident commander to communicate with air and ground units simultaneously, even if in a remote area or not in line of sight. “Be sure to carry medical equipment and supplies for three victims.
“Unfortunately the GA-8 ARCHER is undergoing its one-hundred-hour inspection, so it’s not available until Tuesday, but I’m hoping to find this objective before then.” ARCHER, which stood for airborne real-time cueing hyperspectral reconnaissance, was the most sophisticated nonmilitary airborne ground sensor in the world, capable of detecting fifty different wavelengths of electromagnetic energy in a single pass. It could detect tiny pieces of metal, disturbed earth, or even spilled fuel. ARCHER could not be operated at night and had difficulties seeing through dense trees or deep snow, but in the deserts of the western United States, it was an ideal sensor to help locate downed planes. Because of its capabilities, ARCHER, mounted aboard an Australian-made Gippsland GA-8 Airvan single-engine plane, was borrowed quite often by other CAP wings; it flew so often that it underwent a hundred-hour inspection about once every three months.