Search & Rescue squads, chiefly underpaid paramedics, had long been on a few county payrolls and enjoyed enviable reputations. Now, living in ruins and short on dedicated paramedics, many Americans needed S & R teams more than ever. It was Yale Collier's dream to organize a federal cadre who would search out the lost; rescue the imperiled; and would do it on camera with panache, a reminder to Americans that a Godly administration would go anywhere in support.of its people. Smart uniforms, the latest equipment, the sharpest personnel, the best training. Such was the vision of President Yale Collier.
The Vice President questioned, advised, concurred, silently filed away some thoughts for further study. An S & R bureau might achieve great things with sparse funding, he saw, and said as much; but he cautioned that some rescues would inevitably involve victims of the paramilitary bands that defied the central government.
Collier tended to gloss over this facet of the S & R charter; yes, yes, certainly an S & R team should be capable of handling a few armed outlaws on occasion, but it was important that S & R build an image more of rescue team than SWAT team.
Thus was oral agreement reached without a meeting of minds. As he sat beside his old friend and made notes on organization details, Blanton Young again mulled over the sort of recruits he might prefer. It was certain that some of the clear-eyed young S & R men — and women, of course, for show — would be confronted by brutish, bewhiskered ruffians who swaggered up to spit into the eye of Authority. The kind of rebels now termed by the LDS as 'Gadianton robbers'.
And how should God's judgments be meted out to the wicked? Young was in no doubt here; he knew the passage well from the Book of Mormon, iv, 5:
"…the judgments of God will overtake the wicked; and it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished…"
Young was pleased with the neatness of his secret solution. Forty years before, an American administration had recruited the wartime wicked of the OSS into an ostensibly peaceable CIA. Surely, the armed forces still harbored a few young cutthroats who would not look out of place among the clear-eyed exemplars of Streamlined America…
Chapter Eighty
"… and in the coming months we'll be seeing a lot of these special, dedicated people," hummed the voice of Eve Simpson. On the big holo screen of T Section's briefing room near Santa Fe, a powerfully built young man winched himself to the portal of an open elevator shaft carrying a limp and lovely girl to safety. The voice-over continued on the slickly made documentary, but no one was listening anymore.
"Ethridge, you let 'em pluck your eyebrows," crowed Barb Zachary, glancing from the screen to the blushing Kent Ethridge. The gunsel, Ethridge, was one of perhaps two dozen in the room. T Section survivors; a small elite assembly.
"We made a deal; they let me pluck the blonde," Ethridge replied. Actually, Ethridge had played the part only on orders, after a computer search cited his gymnastic grace, and after Eve Simpson saw him on an old holotape.
Max Pelletier, tiny and dark and lethal as a Brown Recluse: "You should've held out for the Simpson hotsy, Kent."
"Fat as a pig," Ethridge protested. "I don't know how they hid that on the holo."
"I can see this isn't holding you spellbound," said the disgusted instructor Seth Howell, flicking on the room lights and freezing the holo frame. Howell wore a uniform identical to the one Ethridge had worn in the holotape: flare-leg black synthosuedes, long-sleeved black blouse with turned-back cuffs and deep vee collar, set off by a brilliant yellow side-tie neckerchief. On his left shoulder was a yellow sunflower patch with centered, stylized S & R in black; soft black moccasins completed the outfit. Howell was a big man, heavy in the trunk with a bony neck and long slender limbs. For all their sarcasms, the gunsels could see that the exquisite cut of the S & R dress uniforms enhanced the image of the wearer.
"Of course they hyped it — even stuck Ethridge in a dress uniform. On assignment you'd wear a mottled two-piece coverall and overlap-closure boots."
"Always assuming you could make the grade," put in Marty Cross, who'd been harping all morning on the difference between the simple requirements of T Section and the broad-spectrum charter of the Search & Rescue people. Cross was in civvies — but boasted a tiny sunflower emblem on a neck chain.
"Hype, hype, hype, hype," chanted Des Quinn, as if counting cadence. "I joined up for the duration. The war's over, gentlemen, and I say fuck it, all I want is out. And they can start by taking this out," he said, tapping himself ominously behind the ear.
Quantrill exchanged a glance with Sanger, several seats away. Her eyebrow lift was cynical reply to Quinn.
"I'll say it once more," sighed the portly Sean Lasser with good humor; "when your implant energy cell runs down, that's the end of it. There's always the chance they could trigger the terminator or cause infection when taking it out, and there's no danger in leaving it in there, so—"
"I don't buy that," said Quinn. "That goddam cell could be energized again by accident or maybe on purpose for all we know. Am I gonna have to find a surgeon myself?"
"Anyone but a T Section surgeon would almost certainly set it off, Quinn, even after the energy cell is kaput. The Army did not intend those things to come out," said Lasser softly. "Ever."
A three-beat silence. You could always gain rapt attention by telling a man more about the time bomb in his head. "I could file suit," said Quinn, looking around for support but finding ambiguity — the ambiguity he might have expected from T Section survivors, who had not survived by forthright honesty.
"Right now you're begging for court-martial," rasped Howell, then caught himself and shrugged. " 'Course I'm just an interested spectator now, recruiting for a strictly civ-il-yun agency. Got my discharge over the Christmas holidays."
"I just bet you did," from Quinn.
"I can vouch for it," said the laconic Cross. "He buggered an ape in a tree." Cross surveyed the pained expressions, gave it up. Cheyenne humor seemed lost on this bunch.
"You two may be civilians," Lasser waved at Cross and Howell, "but I'm still on duty." Turning to his gunsel audience, he went on. "T Section's cutting orders for you, but I'll summarize them and then dismiss you.
"You've all got thirty-day compassionate leave with pay, beginning zero-eight-hundred tomorrow, 13 January. We, don't want to see you around Santa Fe for a month. Bum around solo, look for work, see how rough it's going to be on the outside, — whatever. Use your covers; you know better than to talk about T Section. No buddyingup; solo means just that.
"Don't stray beyond, ah, streamlined America — but that's in your orders, too. You'll probably be seeing more about Search & Rescue. Think about it. For the record, I wish I weren't too old for it; it'll be a snappy elite bunch and the pay will be good." A pause, an old reflective grin: "A lot of young starry-eyed Mormons will be competing against you for S & R; it offers medical training, airborne and mountain survival stuff, urban disaster work, — you name it." He saw Quantrill's hand rise lazily, nodded toward him.
"That's not where we specialize," said Quantrill. "I mean, — I'd stick out like a bullet in a box of bonbons, Lasser." Murmurs from Pelletier and Zachary; a nod from Sanger. "All day you and Howell and Cross have been dropping hints about needing us for what we do."