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
“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.
“Our Cessna 206 is on its way back from Las Vegas,” Spara went on, “and it should be available tomorrow if necessary. Elko and Reno squadrons are issuing alert notifications but I haven’t heard if they have backup planes available yet, so for right now, we’re it. Cell-phone signal forensics hasn’t picked up anything yet.” The Civil Air Patrol had the capability to triangulate a person’s cell-phone signals to help locate that person, even if the phone wasn’t in use — depending on the number of cell towers activated, the position could be determined within a few miles. “Questions?” He waited a few moments, then said, “Conduct your task-force and team briefings, then head on out. Good luck, good hunting.”
The air and ground teams got together for a joint briefing. “Based on approximate positions of aircraft flying overhead and relayed to us from air traffic control, the IC picked grid SFO 448 to search,” Bellville began, pointing to a topographic chart that had been overlaid with hundreds of numbered rectangles. “I suggest we start on the southwest corner of the grid. We’ll plan on driving west on the interstate to Exit 234, north on Grayson Highway, north on Andorsen Road, and go off-road at Andorsen ranch. Hopefully the 182 will have spotted the objective by the time we get there. Fid?”
“The Andorsen family has already given us permission to access their land at any time,” Michael Fitzgerald, the deputy team leader but a much more experienced Nevada high-desert outdoorsman, said. Fitzgerald, a Nevada Department of Wildlife field agent and firefighter, was a tall, imposing guy, with long hair and whiskers, definitely not military-looking — and he delighted in that. “I have my charts marked pretty well with gate locations. We’ve lucked out because the grid is relatively flat, with the east face of Adam Peak in the northwest corner the only high terrain to worry about. I just hope the ground isn’t too soggy.”
Patrick made some notes and checked his sectional chart, which had been marked with the same grid lines as on the topographic briefing chart, then nodded. “Sounds good, Fid,” he said. “We’ll enter the grid on the southwest and try to steer to the ELT — if we’re lucky, it’ll still be emitting. If not, we’ll contour-search Adam Peak, then do a parallel search course in the grid, half-mile tracks, at one thousand feet AGL. Based on sun angles, I’ll do a north-south track and hope we can pick up some good contrasting shadows. I know our target is a Cessna 182— any details about the three passengers?”
“The fixed base operator at Elko said it was two adults and one young boy on board that plane,” Bellville said. Patrick couldn’t help but look over at his own son, and Brad looked back at him with sorrow on his face. They had flown together for many years — Patrick was a flight instructor, but in these tough economic times, Brad was usually his only student — but the thought of losing Brad in a plane crash was almost too awful to think about.
“If the ELT is still on,” Patrick said, swallowing hard and shaking off the thought of Brad being in that situation, “they may have survived the crash, and they may be trying to signal us. I feel good about this one, gang.”
“Same here, sir,” Bellville said. He and Patrick exchanged more information, double-checking radio repeater channels and charts so they could communicate and have common references in case anything was spotted, then shook hands. “Good luck, sir.”
“Same to you, Dave,” Patrick said, and the air and ground teams broke up to do their own team briefings.
“A few more thoughts, and then we’ll mount up,” Fitzgerald said to the ground-team members. “Looking at the objective area, we might be able to stay on the wash, but the thunderstorms that moved through the area might make it impassable. Hopefully the ground will have had a chance to dry out by the time we get there. It’s fairly flat, but we might have a few deep gullies to traverse. In any case, our job is to move fast to help any survivors. We’ll try to drive in as far as we can, but be prepared to do some quick hiking.”
Bellville referenced a data card given to him by Spara. “We’re on the lookout for a Cessna 182, the same type of plane as Three-Double-Echo, which I know you’ve all flown on, white with blue stripes,” he went on. “Three souls on board. The flight originated from Elko en route to Carson City, so it might have lots of fuel still in its tanks, so be careful of spilled fuel and fire.”
Bellville paused, then looked at Spivey and Markham, the two youngest members of the ground team —
