There was a silence. Then Harrison blustered, 'There's that NASA paranoia! Your agency likes to blame the military for everything that goes wrong.'
'Why do you refuse to allow my flight surgeon into the autopsy?'
'Are we speaking of Dr. McCallum?' asked Profitt.
'Yes. McCallum has training in aviation trauma and pathology. He is a flight surgeon as well as a former member of the astronaut corps. The fact you refuse to let him or any of our doctors view autopsies makes me wonder what you don't want NASA to see.' Colonel Harrison glanced sideways, as though to look at someone else in the room. When he gazed back at the camera, his face was flushed and angry.
'This is absurd. You people just crashed a shuttle! You screw up the landing, kill your own crew, and then point an accusing finger at the U.S. Army?'
'The entire astronaut corps is up in arms about this,' said Gordon. 'We want to know what really happened to our colleagues. We insist you allow one of our doctors to view the bodies.'
Leroy Cornell again tried to intercede. 'Gordon, you can't make unreasonable demands like this,' he said quietly. 'They know what they're doing.'
'So do I.'
'I'm going to ask you to back down now.' Gordon looked Cornell in the eye. Cornell was NASA's representative to the White House, NASA's voice in Congress.
Provoking him was career suicide.
He did it anyway. 'I speak for the astronauts,' he said. 'My people.' He turned to the video screen, his gaze fixed on the face of Colonel Harrison. 'And we're not above taking our concerns to the press. We don't consider this move lightly -- exposing confidential NASA matters. The astronaut corps has always been discreet. But if we're forced to, we will demand a public inquiry.'
Gretchen Liu's jaw dropped. 'Gordon,' she whispered, 'what the hell are you doing?'
'What I have to do.' The silence at the table stretched to a full minute.
Then, to everyone's astonishment, Ken Blankenship said, 'I side with our astronauts.'
'So do I,' said another voice.
'Me too -- '
' -- and me.'
Gordon looked around the table at his colleagues. Most of these people were engineers and operational managers whose names seldom turned up in the press. More often than not, they were in conflict with the astronauts, whom they considered flyboys with big egos. The astronauts got all the glory, but these men women, who performed the unseen and unglamorous jobs that made spaceflight a reality, were the heart and soul of NASA. And they were now united behind Gordon.
Leroy Cornell looked stricken, the leader abandoned by his own troops.
He was a proud man, and this was a humiliatingly public blow. He cleared his throat and slowly squared his shoulders.
Then he faced the video image of Colonel Harrison. 'I have no choice but to support my astronauts as well,' he said. 'I insist one of our flight surgeons be allowed to view the autopsies.' Colonel Harrison said nothing. It was Jared Profitt who made the final decision -- Jared Profitt who was obviously the real man in charge. He turned to confer with someone standing offscreen.
Then he looked at the camera and nodded.
Both screens went blank. The video conference had ended.
'Well, you certainly thumbed your nose at the U.S. Army,' said Gretchen. 'Did you see how pissed-off Harrison looked?' No, thought Gordon, remembering Colonel Harrison's expression just before the image went blank. That wasn't anger I saw on his face. It was fear.
The bodies had not been taken to USAMRIID headquarters in Fort Detrick, Maryland, as Jack had expected. They'd been transported barely sixty miles away from the White Sands landing strip to a windowless concrete- block building, much like the dozens of other anonymous government buildings that had sprung up in that dry desert valley. But this one had a distinguishing feature, a series of ventilation pipes jutting up from the roofline. Barbed wire atop the perimeter fence. As they drove through the military checkpoint, Jack heard the hum of high- voltage wires.
Flanked by his armed escort, Jack approached the front entrance -- the only entrance, he realized. On the door was a chillingly familiar symbol, the bright red biohazard blossom. What this facility doing in the middle of nowhere? he wondered. Then scanned the featureless horizon, and his question was answered.
The building was here precisely because it was in the middle of nowhere.
He was escorted through the door and into a series of stark corridors heading deeper into the heart of the building. He saw and women in Army uniforms, others in lab coats. All lighting was artificial, and the faces appeared bluish and sickly.
The guards stopped outside a door labeled
'Men's Lockers.'
'Go in,' he was told. 'Follow the written instructions to the letter. Then go through the next door. They're waiting for you.
Jack entered the room. Inside were lockers, a laundry cart containing various sizes of green surgical scrub suits, a shelf paper caps, a sink, and a mirror. A list of instructions was on the wall, starting with 'Remove ALL street clothes, including underwear.' He took off his clothes, left them in an unsecured locker, and dressed in a scrub suit.
Then he pushed through the next door, labeled with the universal biohazard symbol, into an ultraviolet-lit room. There he paused, wondering what to do next.
A voice over the intercom said, 'There's a shelf of socks beside you. Put on a pair and walk through the door.' He did.
A woman in a scrub suit was waiting for him in the next room.
She was brusque, unsmiling, as she told him to don sterile gloves.
Then she angrily ripped off strips of tape and sealed his sleeves pant cuffs. The Army may have resigned themselves to Jack's visit, but they weren't going to make it a friendly one. She slipped an audio headset over his head, then gave him a 'Snoopy' hat, like swimming cap, to hold the equipment in place.
'Now suit up,' she barked.
Time for the space suit. This one was blue, with the gloves already attached. As his hostile assistant lowered the hood over his head, Jack felt a dart of anxiety about the woman. In her anger, could she sabotage the process, see to it that he wasn't completely sealed off from contamination.
She closed the seal on his chest, hooked him up to a wall hose, and he felt the whoosh of air blow into his suit. It was too late to worry about what could go wrong. He was ready to cross into the hot area.
The woman unplugged his hose and pointed to the next door. He stepped through, into the air lock. The door slammed shut behind him.
A man in a space suit was waiting for him. He did not speak, but gestured to Jack to follow him through the far door.
They stepped through and walked down a hallway to the autopsy room.
Inside was a stainless steel table with a body on it, still sealed in its bag. Two men in space suits were already standing on either side of the body.
One of the men was Dr. Roman. He turned and saw Jack.
'Don't touch anything. Don't interfere. You're only here to observe, Dr. McCallum, so stay the hell out of our way.' Nice welcome.
The space-suited escort plugged a wall hose into Jack's suit, and once again air hissed into his helmet. If not for the audio headset, he'd be unable to hear anything the other three men said.
Dr. Roman and his two associates opened the body bag.
Jack felt his breath catch, his throat constrict. The corpse was Jill Hewitt's. Her helmet had been removed, but she was still wearing the orange launch-and-entry suit, embroidered with her name.
Even without that identification, he would have known it was Jill, because of her hair. It was a silky chestnut, cut in a bob and with the first hints of gray. Her face was strangely intact. Her eyes were half open.
Both sclerae were a bright and shocking red.
