by Kathy Reichs
At 2200 hours the base was as busy as during the day. The roads rumbled with Humvees, pickups, jeeps, and bikes. Pedestrians hurried to or from meals, USO centers, or showers. Radio towers and light stanchions flickered against the night sky.
The air was cool, the wind fresh off the mountains. Insects swarmed the streetlamps overhead.
Asking directions, I made my way to a two-story yellow structure with a banner saying LIGHTHOUSE above its front door. A few patrons lingered outside, cigarette tips glowing orange in the dark.
“Mom! Mom, here!”
I looked up.
Katy was waving at me from the second-floor terrace.
“Come on up!”
Yes! Oh, yes!
Ankle forgotten, I beelined through the door and up the stairs.
The place was packed, only one free table. I was worming toward it when Katy swooped in, beaming, arms spread wide.
As we hugged, I was astounded by my daughter’s strength. By the new hardness of her biceps.
“Holy fuck, Mom. You really are here.”
“I really am.”
“I went by your B-hut, but you were out.”
“Yeah,” was all I said.
A Marine lance corporal approached the empty table behind us. A look from Katy and he reversed course. We both sat.
“Something wrong with your foot?”
“Pulled a muscle.”
“Wuss.”
“Right. I got your note. Did Scott Blanton contact you?”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
Katy had cut her hair very short. Not required, but my daughter has never been a fan of half measures.
“I got your e-mails.”
“And didn’t reply?”
“Our unit’s been outside the berm. Just got back.”
“Doing what?” Casual as hell.
“Can’t say. You’re cool to that. Besides, we both know how you get.”
“How I get?”
Katy bugged her eyes, opened her mouth, and slapped her cheeks with her palms. “Crazoid!”
“I do not get crazoid.”
“Fine. But you worry too much.”
“Or you don’t worry enough.” The fatigue. The ankle. I regretted the words as soon as they were out.
Katy’s jaw set.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve had a long day.”
“I’m doing my job, Mom, same as you do yours. You came here. I came here. We both knew we weren’t heading to Club Med.”
“You’re right. Crazoid. I’m sorry.”
Katy’s expression softened.
“Don’t be sorry. I’d be crushed if you didn’t worry. Who else will do it for me?”
We ordered snacks and coffee strong enough to give a pachyderm the shakes. Ongoing conversation was confined to safe subjects. Happenings back in Charlotte. Pete’s upcoming wedding to Summer.
Before long Katy put her hand on mine.
“Early day tomorrow. And you look like you’re flying on fumes.”
“I am. And I also have to be up at dawn.”
I paid the bill. We rose. Katy turned to go. Turned back, mischief in her eyes.
“And thanks.”
“For what?” I had no idea.
“For not dissing my hair.”
When Katy left, a good chunk of my heart went with her. But I would see her again soon.
Walking through the dark, I debated. Shower? Hit the DFAC for more food and ice to pack my ankle?
Screw it.
Back at the B-hut, I set my iPhone alarm, removed my jeans, and slipped into bed.
I drifted off to the sound of engines screaming overhead.
I AWOKE TO THE SOUND of engines screaming overhead.
My ankle was better but my head throbbed, a combination of jet lag, lack of proper dinner, and thin desert air.
I dressed hurriedly and checked e-mail. Nothing from Larabee. Eight days since the girl had been found. I feared my hit-and-run case was rapidly cooling.
At the DFAC, I scored eggs and hash browns, poured coffee, and found an empty table. I’d barely started eating when Blanton slumped into the chair opposite, a dark crescent under each of his eyes.
“Another day in paradise.”
Bits of bacon clung to the stubble above Blanton’s lip. I considered telling him. Didn’t.
“Sleep well?”
Blanton pulled down a lower lid to expose the bloodshot sclera. “Like a baby.”
“That going to be a problem, Mr. Blanton? Lots of detail work today.”
“By you, not me.”
“I’ll need everything documented.”
“This ain’t my first rodeo, my dear.” Blanton smiled, saluted, and headed off.
As I finished my coffee, I considered. Did this jerk actually make Slidell look good? My mug hit the tray. No. But the gap was closing.
Welsted and the village delegates were already at the hospital when I arrived.
“The remains have been X-rayed.” Welsted filled me in as we walked to the room we’d been assigned. “Shall I have them brought here?”
“Please. Where are the films?”
“On one of the gurneys.”
When she’d gone I looked around.
White tiles, two spare gurneys, a floor-stand surgical light, portable illuminator boxes, two deep-basin steel sinks with counter, a small collection of cutting tools, calipers, and a magnifying lens. Not what I had in Charlotte or Montreal, but it would do.
Blanton joined us as an orderly wheeled the remains through the door and, without comment, began setting up his camera equipment. The two villagers observed, bodies tense, eyes never resting. Each looked jumpy enough to need pharmaceuticals.
I crossed to Welsted and spoke in a whisper. “It might be better if they watched from next door.” I tipped my head toward an observation window in the wall above the sinks.
“I’ll go with them,” Welsted offered.
Moments later a light went on and the three appeared on the far side of the glass.
Nodding encouragement to them, I slipped Rasekh’s X-rays from their envelope and popped them onto light boxes.
As I moved from plate to plate, flicking switches, my heart sank.
Rasekh had been aboveground when the mortar hit. We’d spent close to an hour re-excavating the body bag from under fallen soil and rock. All night I’d worried that the avalanche had damaged the bones.
I studied the remains glowing white inside the shroud. The long bones looked reasonably intact, but the torso was a jumble and the skull was crushed. Nothing was articulated. Rasekh was in much worse shape than I’d feared.
I sent a confident smile toward the faces in the window. Confidence I didn’t feel.
“You ready?” To Blanton, as I blew into a latex glove.
“All systems go.”
Blanton started the camcorder. I pulled out my iPhone and dictated the time, date, place, and names of those present. Then I masked.
As I unzipped Rasekh’s bag, a musty, earthy smell wafted out. With cautious fingers, I unwound the shroud.
In a year, Mother Nature had worked her inevitable magic. Some remnants of ligament remained, the odd band that had once connected phalanges, a swatch that had once covered a joint capsule. Otherwise, the flesh was gone.
But what time and the desert had left, the landslide had demolished in seconds.
No part of Abdul Khalik Rasekh’s skull or lower jaw measured more then five square centimeters, six max. I recognized an orbital ridge, a sliver of zygomatic arch, a mastoid process, a mandibular condyle, isolated teeth.
The postcranial skeleton had fared little better. While the femora and tibiae were whole, the rest of the leg bones were badly fractured. The pelvis was shattered.
The chest and upper limbs had taken the worst beating. The arm bones, clavicles, scapulae, sternum, vertebrae, and ribs were virtually pulverized.
Which wasn’t good.
Marines are taught
to aim for the center of mass on a target. Picture a human torso. Draw a line nipple to nipple, then another from each nipple to the throat. Any round striking this area will cause incapacitation due to paralysis, shock, or death.
The Triangle of Death.
Due either to the impact of the bullets or to the barrage of falling debris, Rasekh’s triangle had been turned into hamburger.
Deep breath. Nod at the observers.
I began picking out recognizable elements and arranging them in a macabre sort of skeleton. As I positioned each fragment, I checked for evidence of gunshot trauma.
To keep focused, I ran through some basics in my head.
Gunshot wounds are categorized according to the distance between the shooter and the victim. A contact GSW, in which the gun is pressed to the flesh, can leave soot, a muzzle imprint, or even a laceration due to the effect of the bullet’s propulsive gases. An intermediate GSW, in which the gun is fired at close range, can leave a zone of stippling, called a powder tattoo. A distance GSW is one in which the range of powder tattooing is exceeded.
But all that was irrelevant. There was no flesh. And witness statements already placed Gross approximately ten to fifteen meters from Aqsaee and Rasekh.
And I was seeing zip.
“What kind of weapon did Gross fire?” I asked. I remembered the NCIS file, but was confirming essential facts.
“An M16. Standard Marine artillery.”
“How many shots?” I was also talking to mask my anxiety.
“The M16’s got a thirty-round clip. Gross emptied his.”
That was overkill, even for two targets.
“What kind of rounds?”
“NATO-standard five-point-five-six millimeter.”
“Velocity?”
“Nine hundred and forty MPS. Anything under a thousand, popcorn!”
In his not so graceful way, Blanton was referring to a sequence of events that occurs with certain types of projectiles. If the bullet tumbles, or yaws, it can fragment, sending metal into the surrounding flesh. This type of wound can be much more damaging than a clean through-and-through shot.
“Do witness statements say anything about the sequence of fire?” I asked.
Blanton checked his notes.
“Witnesses reported hearing a burst, a pause, then another burst. But everyone says the same thing. The scene was chaos.”
I glanced up at the delegates. Their faces were still at the glass, grim and resolute. I imagined mine looked the same.
When I’d sorted the entire contents of Rasekh’s body bag, I began a running commentary on what I was seeing. As was my habit, I worked from the head toward the feet.
“Identifiable cranial features indicate a middle-aged male.” I listed them. “Dentition fragmented and incomplete, but consistent in age and gender with the subject, Abdul Khalik Rasekh.”
“That really necessary?” Blanton sounded impatient.
“Things get confused, memories fade. Identification is always a first step in any exhumation.”
I continued through the wreckage, noting features relevant to Rasekh’s biological profile. A fragment of pubic symphysis confirmed my age estimate. Pubic bone shape said the remains were those of a male.
But the slivers, bits, and chunks that represented the torso were too shattered and abraded to yield any information as to cause of death.
Despite my resolve to stay calm, agitation crept into my voice. Blanton noticed.
“You okay, doc?”
“Peachy.”
Backhanding hair from my forehead, I rechecked every fragment from Rasekh’s midsection, this time using the magnifying lens. It was like viewing cookie crumbs smoothed by a tumbler.
As I worked, the morning’s headache crept back. A tight feeling built in my chest. I’d said bullet trajectory was easy to analyze. They’d brought me seven thousand miles to do that. So far I was failing.
I was examining a sixty-centimeter segment of humerus when I noticed an almost invisible spray crosscutting the surface.
“There may be something here.” I angled the bone so Blanton’s camera could pick up the marks.
“Could be powder stippling. But it’s evenly distributed.”
“So no way to tell direction,” Blanton guessed.
“No.” After a few more moments of angling and squinting.
Disappointed, I dictated a description of the defect. Blanton took several more close-ups with a Nikon and scale, then shot backups with a Polaroid.
“These babies have come a long way from the clunkers we used in the old days.” Blanton pulled the image free and laid it on the counter. “Fourteen megapixels, inkless three-by-five prints. The detail is passable in a pinch. I’ve seen way too many disasters with supposedly error-proof top-of-the-line equipment. I always shoot backups.”
Hats off to you, Mr. Blanton.
I continued searching, fragment by fragment.
And came up blank.
Discouraged, I straightened and rolled my shoulders. The clock said 12:10.
“Break?” Blanton asked.
I shook my head. “Now that the bones are arranged, Rasekh goes back to radiology.”
Blanton called for the tech who’d X-rayed the remains while still wrapped in their shroud. He arrived in moments. Harold. After instruction from me, Harold wheeled the gurney out through the doors.
“Unless the films pick up something I’ve missed, which is unlikely, Rasekh is a bust. Let’s move on.”
I dictated the second man’s name. Ahmad Ali Aqsaee. After adding the other relevant information, I viewed the X-rays of Aqsaee in his shroud.
And relaxed a micron.
Aqsaee was in better condition than Rasekh. Made sense. He was still underground when the mortar hit. Nevertheless, normal postmortem damage appeared extensive.
Satisfied there was nothing amiss in the shroud, I crossed to the gurney, unzipped the body bag, and laid back the fabric.
Beside me, Blanton inhaled sharply.
Like Rasekh, Aqsaee had been reduced to bone. But his skeleton differed in one striking way.
The uninitiated think bone is white. They picture Halloween posters, instructional models from biology class, or the bleached cattle rib cages popular in western movies. But bone often takes on the pigment of the substrate in which it is buried.
That had happened with Aqsaee. His skeleton was the color of old saddle leather.
“That’s not something you see every day.”
“It’s not uncommon,” I told Blanton. “Most likely minerals leached from the rocks or soil.”
“Why only this guy?”
“Could be the elemental makeup was different at the back of the cemetery. Maybe runoff from the hillside percolated through Rasekh’s grave, washing the critical component away.”
“The staining won’t cause you problems?”
“No.”
I approached the younger man exactly as I had the older. With only slightly less trepidation.
I confirmed that all skeletal and dental features were consistent with Aqsaee’s bio profile. Male. Seventeen years old.
“Doc.”
“I looked at Blanton.
“The rest of the team needs lunch.”
Reluctantly, I agreed. Thirty minutes later we were back. I began my trauma analysis.
The skull was pristine. No fractures. No bullet holes.
Blanton shot close-ups from multiple angles.
Though the mandible was broken at the midline, I suspected the damage was postmortem and due to pressure from the overlying soil.
More photos.
The arms and legs showed no evidence of trauma. I moved on to the rib cage.
Aqsaee’s midsection was damaged almost as badly as Rasekh’s. Viewing the fragmented ribs, broken clavicles, and crushed and abraded vertebrae, scapulae, and sternum, I felt my chest tighten anew.
Unbidden, my eyes rolled to the observation window. On the far side, I could see Welsted and the
delegates in heated discussion. The tall man was gesturing wildly. As I watched, he turned and stabbed a finger at the glass.
Blanton saw the argument, too.
“I’ll check it out.”
Pouring gasoline on a fire? Maybe, but I didn’t try to stop him. My whole focus was on Aqsaee’s thoracic region.
One by one, I lifted and inspected each fragment. I’d been at it ten minutes when I spotted a defect on a two-centimeter segment of rib. Though incomplete, the circular shape was classic. I set the segment aside.
Seven minutes later I found another partial defect. Then another.
With growing excitement, I identified and oriented four roughly triangular shards that, in life, had made up the sternum.
My heartbeat ratcheted up.
Moving carefully, I flipped and reconnected the shards in order to observe the back of the bone.
And had to restrain myself from raising the roof.
Bang! Bang!
My head swiveled to the window. The tall man had struck it with his fist. Blanton was trying to talk him down. I could no longer see Welsted.
I was too pumped to care what their issue was.
I’d send the bones for X-ray. Wouldn’t matter.
I knew what had happened.
AN HOUR AFTER FINISHING, I was at the blond oak table in the conference room at base ops headquarters. The observers had been dispatched with promise of a full report and permission to transport Aqsaee and Rasekh back to Sheyn Bagh for reburial.
The others were in the exact same chairs they’d occupied on Tuesday. So was I. Weird how people do that.
Large crescents darkened Blanton’s pits, mimicking the bags hanging under his eyes. He’d disappeared after we left the hospital. I wondered where he’d gone. What he’d done to work up such a sweat.
“You okay?” I asked, more to pass time than out of concern for Blanton’s health. As before, we were waiting for Colonel Fisher.
Blanton shrugged one shoulder. “Might be coming down with something.”
After that, we all sat in silence. Minutes passed. Blanton, Welsted, and I knew what we’d found. Noonan did not. He was tense.
Noonan and Welsted half rose when Fisher appeared. Blanton and I remained seated.
Fisher closed the door and took her place at the head of the table. “So.” Quick smile to me. “You’ve finished.”
