“We’re not journalists,” Locke said. “We’re with Gordian Engineering.” He handed the trooper his ID.
The trooper took a quick look at it, then handed it back. “They’re expecting you, Dr. Locke. You’ll find them about a half mile ahead.”
“Thanks.”
Locke continued on until he reached another set of vehicles. This group was dominated by police cars, fire engines, and coroners’ hearses for evacuating the bodies, but they were also accompanied by three Army Humvees and a hazardous materials tractor-trailer. Next to it, two people in biohazard suits bent over a grim row of black bags that must have contained the remains they had recovered so far. Locke couldn’t guess what the hazmat unit was there for. The plane shouldn’t have been carrying any dangerous chemicals, and any fuel would have burned up long ago.
A van sat apart from the other vehicles. On its side was the Gordian logo, a mechanical gear surrounding four icons that represented the firm’s areas of expertise: a shooting flame, a lightning bolt of electricity, an airplane superimposed over a car, and a stylized human figure.
A trim woman in her 30s stood next to the van and spoke into a walkie-talkie. Judy Hodge looked up when she heard the Jeep approaching. She wore a Gordian baseball cap, tank-top, jeans, and latex gloves. When she saw that it was Locke, she put the walkie-talkie on her belt and came over to the Jeep.
Locke hopped out and shook her hand. She nodded at Grant, and Locke introduced her to Dilara.
“Good to see you, Judy,” he said. “Looks like a real circus back there.”
“The police have already caught two reporters who snuck past the barricade,” Judy said. “Plus, we’ve had to fend off souvenir hunters. I’m glad we have G-Tag. We need to get this stuff off site as soon as we can. I never knew how crazy Hayden’s fans could be.”
G-Tag was a method for processing airplane wreckage that had been developed by Gordian. Each piece of wreckage was photographed with a digital camera, and its exact GPS location was recorded. Then a bar code was printed with a unique ID number and attached to the wreckage. The data was automatically sent to Gordian’s central computers, providing a detailed map of every piece of wreckage as it had been found. The G-Tag system reduced the amount of time needed to document the wreckage by a factor of ten from the previous manual method and meant they could start removing wreckage from the site within hours, preserving the debris from the elements.
“Have you started shipping wreckage to the TEC yet?” Locke asked.
“The first tractor-trailer will arrive in an hour. We’ll have 20 of them running back and forth to the TEC. The main concentration of wreckage is over there.” She pointed at a spot where workers were massed. Locke could only see a few large pieces, including what looked like an engine.
“When I’m done here, I’m heading back to Seattle with Dr. Kenner. We’ve got to rush this investigation. Judy, you’ll stay here on site until it’s cleared. Grant’s going to take care of processing the wreckage back at the TEC. Now tell me about the crash.”
They followed Judy into the desert. Locke saw dozens of pieces of metal, luggage, and assorted unidentifiable detritus already tagged with flags for removal. While they walked, Judy told them about the plane’s ghost flight back to the mainland. She’d received an electronic copy of the fighter pilots’ report and related its contents to them.
Locke stopped at a three-foot-square section of fuselage centered around a blown-out window. He knelt down to look at it as they talked.
“Any signs of explosive decompression?”
“None. The plane was completely intact until it hit the ground.”
Through the empty window frame, Locke saw something white underneath the fuselage catch the sunlight.
“Do you have any more gloves on you?” Locke asked. They might have missed a separate piece of wreckage under the fuselage section, which was tagged and flagged, meaning it had already been photographed.
“Sure,” Judy said and handed him a pair of gloves.
“So we might be looking at a slow oxygen leak?” Locke said as he donned them.
Judy gave him a quizzical look. “No. Wait, I thought you knew…”
“Knew what?” Locke said as he turned over the fuselage piece. He stood up in surprise when he saw what was under it. A gleaming white human femur, probably male.
It wasn’t unusual to find body parts strewn about with the wreckage, but it was strange to find a bone. Especially one that looked like it had been picked clean by scavengers, even though there was no possibility that coyotes had gotten to it under that piece of fuselage.
Judy spoke into her walkie-talkie. “We’ve got another one over here,” she said.
Locke heard someone reply that he was on his way.
“This isn’t the first bone you’ve found?” He bent over for a closer look.
Judy shook her head and started to speak. “We…”
Before she could say more, a voice behind Locke said, “Don’t touch that!”
He turned to see a man fully garbed in a biohazard suit approach. He took a photo of the bone, then gingerly picked it up and placed in a plastic bag. After he marked it, he left without saying another word.
“I’m sorry,” Judy said. “I thought you’d been briefed.”
“We just got the basics from Aiden MacKenna before we headed out here,” Locke said. “What the hell is going on, Judy?”
“That bone is why the hazmat team is here. Because of the condition of the remains, the FBI was worried about biological or chemical residues. The closest team was an Army unit from Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Didn’t find anything. They gave us the all-clear to start our processing yesterday afternoon.”
“How many bodies have you recovered so far?”
“None.”
“What?” Locke said, incredulous. “You must have found some by now. According to the manifest I saw, there were 27 people on board.”
“We’ve found remains from at least twenty people, but no bodies.”
“By remains, you mean hands, torsos, things like that?”
“No. That row of bags you saw before contains nothing but bones.”
Locke was speechless. Grant looked like he felt — completely shocked.
“How is that possible?” Locke finally said.
“We have no idea,” Judy said. “All we know is that before the plane crashed, something reduced every single person on board to skeletons.”
Coleman
EIGHTEEN
It had taken eight hours for Gavin Dean to return to Washington once the yacht had docked in Halifax. Garrett made sure that the leader of the failed mission on Scotia One had been told only that he was to appear immediately at the Orcas Island compound. Surely, he expected a dressing down for his failure, but he didn’t know how harsh it would be.
Barry Pinter, who had been given the task of eliminating Dilara Kenner as she left the airport, had already arrived at the compound and was helping with the last preparations for the upcoming days. Cutter was bringing them both down now that the observers were ready.
A retinue of Garrett’s top scientists and operatives gathered nervously in the observation room. Other than a few murmurs, they were quiet. They knew something important was about to occur, but they didn’t know the nature of it. Garrett, who stood at the window next to Svetlana Petrova, watched them. Good. They were in just the
