Spivey was seventeen and a bit younger than Brad, and Markham was fifteen. “Guys, let me and Fid approach the scene first, okay? I know you guys have been on actual missions, but you’ve never seen accident victims before, right?” Both cadets shook their heads, their eyes wide. “I know you guys are fully qualified in emergency services, first aid, and field operations, but encountering victims of a plane crash is a whole ’nuther world. You’ve got to ready yourself for some pretty awful sights. I’m not going to push you away from the scene or keep you from doing your assignments, but I’m not going to shove that horror on you either. Let us seniors check out the scene first, okay?” Both of the younger cadets nodded silently; Brad did not. “Good. Get your packs ready for inspection outside the van and let’s move out.”
Brad wished he was old enough to fly as an observer or scanner, but as they prepared for inspection, he was starting to get revved up to go out and find these victims. Yes, the air-search guys got all the glory, but the ground teams were the ones to actually make contact and help the victims.
Each team member had a twenty-pound backpack on a support frame called a Seventy-Two Hour pack with a carefully prepared list of items for a three-night encampment, the longest authorized for CAP cadets, including sleeping bags and pads, another set of BDUs, Meals Ready to Eat kits for five meals, and other standard personal camping items. A two-gallon water bladder was attached to the back of each backpack, with a tube attached to the front of the uniform for drinking. They also carried a fanny pack with a personal first-aid kit and other essential items that they could access without having to dig through a backpack, such as gloves, goggles, a compass, maps, a headlamp, sunscreen, and other items. After checking their gear, they inventoried the other items they would take along in the van, including tents, packs of bottled water, more MREs, and cooking equipment. The medical team inventoried their kits and equipment, including splints, burn-treatment kits, stretchers, and bandages, and the senior members checked their radios, charts, and portable GPS receivers and spare batteries.
Brad was in charge of the DF, or direction-finding equipment, and he had to show Bellville that it was working properly. The DF, called an L-Per, was a VHF and UHF radio receiver with an oblong directional antenna mounted on a six-foot-high mast, which was attached to a vehicle or could be carried on a special harness if they had to go in on foot. The receiver would pick up the electronic beacon from a downed aircraft and, by monitoring the signal strength as the antenna was turned, point the way to the beacon. The device was powered by two nine-volt batteries, and Brad made sure he had plenty of fresh spares — there wasn’t anything worse than to lead a team miles and miles into the desert and run out of juice before reaching the objective.
Once Bellville had inspected everyone’s gear, it was all loaded into the back of the ten-passenger blue-and- white four-wheel-drive van, and the team piled in. The van had a special FM radio operating on the Civil Air Patrol repeater network that would tie in all of the teams on that channel, including, air, ground, and base units, along with a cellular amplifier that could pull in distant cellular signals to allow cell phones to be used farther from civilization.
The ground mission was under way.
At the same time Patrick was at the hangar entrance with the squadron’s blue-and-white Cessna 182R and the other members of his flight crew, Leo Slotnick and John de Carteret. Leo was in his midthirties, a former U.S. Air Force aerial refueling tanker pilot and currently a Nevada Highway Patrol sergeant and pilot from Battle Mountain, who had only been a member of the Battle Mountain squadron for five months. John de Carteret was just the opposite: he was in his early sixties, a retired captain in the U.S. Coast Guard, and was the co-owner of a gas station and convenience store in town just off the interstate with his wife, Janet, also retired Coast Guard and a CAP volunteer. He had been in the Civil Air Patrol since he first came to Battle Mountain eleven years earlier and was qualified in numerous emergency-services specialties, both ground and flying. Even though he was a pilot, he preferred to be a mission observer and act as copilot and mission commander. Slotnick could qualify for mission pilot after flying a few more actual or exercise sorties as a mission scanner and taking another flight check.
Rob Spara came over with several forms. “Flight release and weight and balance,” he said. To the entire crew he asked, “How’s everyone feeling today? No one popping open any brewskis early on a hot Saturday afternoon?”
“A couple hours later and I might have,” Leo admitted.
“No late nights last night, no allergy medications?”
“A late night for me is eight P. M., Rob,” John said.
“I’m right with you, John,” Spara said. The “IMSAFE” check, which stood for illness, medications, stress, alcohol, fatigue, and eating/hydration, was a required briefing element to be sure each crewmember was fit to fly. Since none of them was on alert and they all led normal lives, being suddenly thrust into a flying assignment meant that the aircraft commander and flight-release officer had to be sure everyone was ready to fly. “How about you, General?”
“I feel good, no meds, no alcohol, and things are so slow here on the base I can’t be stressed,” Patrick said.
“Good.” Spara tapped some instructions into a BlackBerry, waited a few moments; then: “You’re released. Good luck.” He wrote their release number on the flight-release form. “I’ll see you on the radio.”
Patrick opened up the airplane maintenance logs. “Okay, last crew reports they filled the plane to the tabs, so we have plenty of gas. Open discrepancies… loose copilot’s armrest… and left rearmost window is crazed. Let me know if you think it’s too bad to look out of, Leo.”
“Will do, sir.”
“No other glitches.” Patrick filled out log sheet from data on the flight-release form, closed it, then referred to a mission briefing card he had filled out after getting a mission briefing from the operations and planning officers. “Okay, guys, we’ll head on out directly to the southwest corner of grid SFO 448, and hopefully we’ll get a few ELT bearings. Altitude will be one thousand feet AGL, which will be around five thousand five hundred feet MSL in that area. Thirty minutes out and thirty back will give us three hours on station with an hour fuel reserve — hopefully we won’t need that long. We might have enough daylight when we get back to return, refuel, and relaunch if necessary. With the front blowing through, we might get some turbulence, so let me know if anyone feels queasy. Flat terrain except for Adam Peak, good visibility, and a half-mile track separation gives us a probability of detection of eighty- five percent, so let’s get this one. Questions?” Leo and John shook their heads. “Okay. I’ll do an airplane preflight. You guys preflight the radios, camera, and DF, copy the airplane hours into the logbook and the mission forms, and get a good radio check with the IC and ground team.”
Patrick put on a pair of Nomex fireproof gloves and began to work on preflighting the four-seat Cessna, working with a plastic-laminated checklist. John met up with him a few minutes later. “Comm is good,” he said, “and the DF self-tests okay.”
“Which means it’ll be almost useless?” Patrick deadpanned.
“If you talk badly about the DF, it will hear you and act badly,” John deadpanned back. “I thought 406 megahertz satellite ELTs were required on all planes.”
“They are,” Patrick said. “But everyone is cutting corners to cut costs these days, and ELTs are one of those things that you never think you’ll ever use. The owner was probably waiting until his ELT battery replacement was due before buying the new one.”
“Well, hopefully it’ll keep on working long enough to get a good steer,” John said. He nodded to Patrick. “I’m always amazed watching you work, Patrick.”
“Why?”
“You’re the guy who’s flown all sorts of heavy iron, from B-52s to spaceplanes,” John said, “and here you are, preflighting a plane that probably weighs less than one of the bomb-bay doors on a B-52, and you’re using a paper checklist. You can probably preflight a Cessna 182 blindfolded.”
“I probably could,” Patrick said, “but when I think I know it all, that’ll be the time to quit flying.”
“True enough,” John said. He paused for a moment, then commented, “I… I’m not sure if I’ve said this to you before, Patrick, and if I have, I apologize, but…”
“What?”
“I just can’t believe
