A company of heroes.

A tough environment makes Alaska prone to disasters. Fortunately, one of the nation's most elite National Guard units - the 210th Rescue Squadron of the Alaska Air National Guard - stands by to help out with rescues. Saving lives makes each of these skilled professionals - and every member of the rescue network behind them - a hero.

On a sleepy July evening, the fifth rescue call of the weekend comes in at the Anchorage headquarters of the Alaska Air National Guard's (AKANG) 210th Rescue Squadron.

Relayed from alert personnel at the AKANG's Alaska Rescue Coordination Center (RCC), the mission sounds simple: Retrieve a hiker who has fallen into a steep canyon behind Flattop, one of the city's most-climbed mountain peaks.

But rescues never come easy, especially in a rugged, disaster-prone environment like Alaska's. That's a fact of life for members of the 210th. Organized in 1990 to support military flying activities, the Guard unit also stands ready 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to assist with civilian emergencies.

Backed by state-of-the-art equipment and staffed with highly trained troops, the 210th has performed thousands of rescues, saved more than 240 lives and flown thousands of accident-free hours in the last five years.

Razor-sharp skills, intensified by rigorous training, carry the 210th through hectic summer weekends like this one. The highest percentage of rescues occurs during the summer season, starting with climbers on Mount McKinley in April and ending with the hunting season in September. In August 1994, the 210th made 13 saves in nine days. In the last three days, the unit has responded to four rescues, including three airplane crashes.

Tonight's mission requires the crew to fly its sophisticated HH-60L Pavehawk helicopter through cloud-covered darkness and around towering peaks to pick up the injured hiker and his dog.

Unfazed by the challenges ahead of them, the 210th crew on duty - two copilots, a flight engineer and a pararescueman (nicknamed PJs) - prepares for this evening's rescue in precision-perfect fashion. For military combat situations, the 210th can respond in 45 minutes. For civilian disasters, it can take up to several hours of intense, cooperative effort to make a rescue, depending on weather and location.

"We go out as a single unit and work together," explains Captain Tim O'Brien, who serves as a pilot and aircraft commander for tonight's rescue. "On company missions, we have to do things efficiently."

Efficient teamwork is especially critical on nights like this. "Everything you do in the air increases when you are tired," says Captain Joel Wilcox, the copilot on this trip. "It's amazing the amount of crew coordination that's required."

A briefing takes place before each mission. Tonight, O'Brien outlines the details of the rescue: a steep canyon, cloudy weather obscured by darkness and a hiker with a broken leg, accompanied by a dog. More than 90 percent of this information is supplied by Alaska's rescue network. Tonight's details, given by the Alaska State Troopers and the RCC, help the crew choose its rescue strategy.

After the briefing, the flight engineer painstakingly goes over the equipment needed for the rescue. Depending on the conditions of the disaster, the equipment checklist includes items like a life raft, stretcher, survival suit, winter clothing, medical supplies, scuba gear, flares and weapons.

Tonight, with an injured man trapped in a canyon, the 210th plans to fly the helicopter out and dangle the PJ down on a device called 'the penetrator' to pick up the hiker.

Fortunately, this whirlybird is one of the world's best for search-and-rescue operations. The Pavehawk flies at 200 m.p.h. and can carry up to 8,000 pounds of equipment and people. Special attachments, like a weather radar unit, an infrared radar device, snow skis, a fuel probe for air-to-air refueling and a forest penetrator, enable this helicopter to perform in all kinds of tough terrain and weather. This intrepid machine holds a world altitude record, having even landed at the 14,400-foot level of Mount McKinley.

For tonight's rescue, as in all others conducted by the 210th, the PJ will be the first rescuer to reach the disaster site. That means he also must check out the gear carried on the helicopter and packed into his survival suit.

Trained to perform rescues in every kind of emergency, these disaster specialists parachute from fixed-wing aircraft, dangle from helicopters, scuba dive, climb mountains and creep over glaciers to reach survivors. Like other members of tonight's crew, this PJ carries in his survival vest a portable radio, life preserver, underwater-breathing gear, strobe light, medical kit, compass, signaling mirror, bug dope, fishing kit and knife.

Only the skilled become PJs; one out of 100 vying for the ranking passes all the training. And only the strong remain PJs; often the first to cut open crashed planes or come across the frozen bodies of mountain climbers, PJs sometimes can't even tell their own crew members about what they first encounter at an accident scene.

Off the Ground

Shortly after 2 a.m. on Monday morning, the 210th makes its move. In the cool, early morning darkness, O'Brien and Wilcox hurry to the chopper and climb into their pilot seats. The PJ and flight engineer strap themselves into seats behind the pilots, next to rear doors on either side of the Pavehawk.

From these portals, the men will help guide the helicopter to its rescue site. While the flight engineer double-checks the rescue equipment, the PJ works with a Global Positioning System. Geographical coordinates from this navigational aid are fed to the personal locator system on the Pavehawk's instrument panel. Mile by mile, these tools lead the 210th to the accident site.

Donning seatbelts, ear plugs and headsets, the crew warms up the Pavehawk. Its two giant Turboshaft engines whine into gear. The main and tail rotors slice the air as the pilots run through rotation tests.

Minutes later, the big bird lifts off. Ground falls away rapidly, but from inside the craft, the chopper seems to move in slow motion. In minutes, the Pavehawk zips from Kulis Air National Guard Base, near Anchorage International Airport, to the Chugach Mountains bordering town. Flattop looms ahead. Thick clouds hang menacingly over the surrounding Chugach peaks.

As the helicopter levels off at 6,000 feet, Wilcox shakes his head. These nighttime missions are more demanding than day rescues. You've got to rely on night-vision goggles to amplify what little light reflects off clouds, glaciers or snowfields. But the goggles also eliminate your horizon, forcing you to constantly monitor the instruments so the helicopter doesn't descend into the ground. The other four accidents this weekend all happened at night, requiring Wilcox and his partners to fly for hours in darkness.

Over his headphones, Wilcox hears O'Brien say, "I don't think we're going to have enough power to get back into that canyon where the hiker is. Maybe we'd better lighten our load." That means dropping fuel - it dissipates before it touches the ground.

"OK," Wilcox replies to O'Brien's unloading request. Eyeing the heavy clouds that crowd the peaks behind Flattop, Wilcox adds, "Even with a lighter load, it's going to be hard finding a place in that canyon to land."

While Wilcox swings the chopper toward Turnagain Arm, the flight engineer and PJ study the terrain beneath the aircraft. When they return here in a few minutes, their observations will prove critical for guiding the helicopter to the accident scene.

To the Rescue

"That vertical wall there - that's it," O'Brien says into his headset. His eyes dart back and forth between the map on his lap and the jagged Chugach peaks looming around the Pavehawk.

"That's the spot," he repeats. "The hiker is at the bottom of that wall."

Aided by the Pavehawk's search lights, Wilcox and O'Brien scan the rock face ahead of them for a landing spot. Cold wind gusts through the right rear door, held open by the flight engineer preparing the penetrator's hoist for a drop. From the open left rear door, the PJ stares at the black canyon, figuring out his rescue moves.

"Down there, at two o'clock, there's a ledge," O'Brien calls out.

Wilcox grins and stabilizes the chopper in mid-air. "I see it. Looks big enough to land on."

The aircraft's, lights sweep through the canyon. His hands tight on the hoist, the flight engineer says, "There's the hiker, a couple hundred feet below the ledge. Preparing the penetrator."

A crackle of conversation bursts out between the other crew members. Following patterns learned by heart in countless training sessions, they coordinate their final rescue plan: The helicopter will land on the ledge. The PJ will climb out and travel down on the hoist to bring the injured hiker - and his dog - back to the helicopter.

Like clockwork, the crew brings the big bird down to its tight hovering spot. Even if it couldn't land, this helicopter could hover over the survivor, drop the PJ down the hoist, load up the survivor and draw both men back into the aircraft - without shifting an inch in its hover pattern.

The moment the Pavehawk touches its skis onto the ledge, the PJ whips out the rear door like a tightly coiled spring. Grabbing onto the penetrator, he slips off the ledge and falls away into darkness. The Pavehawk's propeller blades pound the night air into hurricane force. Foot by foot, the flight engineer lowers the hoist - and PJ - down toward the hiker.

Listening for the PJ's radioed instructions, the crew hears the echoes of their own heartbeats.

In minutes, the PJ sizes up the hiker's condition, splints the man's broken leg, helps him climb aboard one of the three seats built into the penetrator, and comforts the man's frightened dog. Once his survivor is ready to be hauled up, the PJ wraps his arm around the small dog and steps in on another seat.

"Ready to go," the PJ whispers into his headset.

Scanning his instrument panel, Wilcox says, "Power is good."

"Penetrator is off the ground and coming up," says the flight engineer.

Inch by inch, the penetrator life-line climbs back up to the helicopter. Within three minutes, the PJ, hiker and dog are secure inside the Pavehawk, and the chopper is beating its way to Providence Hospital with another successful save on board.

A Matter of Survival

Many rescues are more harrowing than this one. In Alaska, where there's one plane for every three people and 78 percent of those involved in accidents never file trip plans, commonly traveled mountain corridors - such as Merrill Pass in Southcentral and Rainy Pass in the Interior - become graveyards for downed planes. The 210th's crews often find planes halfway up the sides of mountains, hanging in treetops or scattered down impossibly steep slopes.

On such difficult maneuvers, even the 210th finds that fear is a force to reckon with.

"We deal with fear through good training," O'Brien says. "We practice as much as we can. Practice will make us totally sure."

Each crew member of the 210th must complete a high level of training each month and every quarter to stay qualified. "It's very difficult as a traditional Guardsman to keep it up," Wilcox admits.

Besides training, the crew relies on coordination to get through intense rescues. "By talking through it, we get a lot of guys to talk through fear. ... Analyzing a situation by talking about it really avoids unnecessary fear," Wilcox says.

Aside from the fear they face, the 210th crews find that some of the rescues hit them especially hard. On an accident earlier this weekend, a father and son crashed a Piper Super Cub in the Talkeetna Mountains. The 210th arrived on the scene with four PJs. Because of the severity of the accident, Captain Wilcox, Captain O'Brien and the flight engineer had to get out and help retrieve the survivor - the son. The father had gone to high school with O'Brien and had coached O'Brien's kids in elementary school.

PJs invest a lot of time and energy into their rescues. Many times, the PJ will meet with a survivor's family a few days after the rescue, just to provide an extra measure of comfort.

From each crew member's perspective, however, intense work is part of the payback for belonging to the 210th.

Heading home from one of the most harrowing weekends of rescue work he can remember, O'Brien says, "Other Guard rescue units in the country have the same requirements as we do, but this crew has more training. ... I went to high school up here and wanted to come back. A lot of people know this is one of the most active units, if not one of the best units, in the country."

"Working up here is the pinnacle of the search-and-rescue field," adds Wilcox. "In Alaska, the rescue mission is for real. You have a sense that they are going to call you. It is not an idle part-time job. I stay close to the phone and make sure I am available whenever I am needed."

He pauses, then adds, "Saves do make it all worthwhile."

RELATED ARTICLE: THE TOPS IN TRAINING

A typical crew flying for the 210th Rescue Squadron consists of two pilots, a paramedic known as a PJ and a flight engineer. The intensive training behind each of these search-and-rescue professionals includes:

PJ: 18 months of schooling Basic training Scuba-combat diving Jump school for static-line and free-fall Medical training for Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) II certification Combat tactical training, including small-team tactics, advanced weapons and specialized flight training Upgrading to EMT III certification and highest rating of Paramedic. (No other Guard or Reserve unit unit requires PJs to have EMT III medical certifications.) High-altitude and other training specific to Alaska

PILOT: 15 months of schooling 9 months of Army-rotary training school 6 months of specialized search-and-rescue flight training High-altitude and Alaska weather conditions flight training

FLIGHT ENGINEER: 6 months of schooling Basic training Aircraft-qualification course

RELATED ARTICLE: ALASKA'S SURVIVAL NETWORK

"Rescue in Alaska is a group effort," says Master Sargeant Bob Garger, a flight engineer with the 210th Rescue Squadron. "We rely on the Civil Air Patrol, the RCC and a whole rescue community up here that works closely together."

By definition, the U.S. Coast Guard patrols the coastal areas of the state and southeast Alaska below the 58th parallel. The Alaska Rescue Coordination Center (RCC), based at the Alaska Air National Guard's headquarters at Camp Denali, covers the land mass of Alaska north of the 58th parallel.

A further breakdown of search-and-rescue missions on Alaska's land mass gives the National Park Service jurisdiction over national park lands, the RCC responsibility for aviation accidents, and the Alaska State Troopers coordination of rescue efforts for other land-based accidents.

Despite these definitions, says Major Gary Lee, director of operations at the RCC, "There are no territorial issues (for rescues in Alaska). No one agency has enough assets to perform all rescues. It's a team effort."

The RCC acts as an information clearinghouse and coordinator to get rescuers out to disasters. Operating 24 hours a day, every day of the year, the RCC gathers information on disasters from every possible source - emergency-locator transmitters family members, the Alaska State Troopers, etc.

Trained to ask the right questions, the RCC staff can eliminate about 65 percent of the potential accident sites by doing creative investigative work to find out what happened, Lee says.

The RCC develops a search plan and then contacts an agency to conduct the search. "If it's a search mission, we lean toward using the Civil Air Patrol, because that's the best way, at the most affordable price, to go out and search," Lee says.

For rescue operations, the RCC contacts the closest and most available group. Lee adds, "The 210th is the only fully prepared, qualified and trained unit with PJs. ... The aircraft itself (the Pavehawk helicopter) is the only one in the state that is refuelable, with an extended range."