Patricia Cornwell - Unnatural Exposure

'I'll get on it.'

'Good,' the captain went on. 'Somebody get me three body bags and the isolator.' Then he said to me, 'I'll bet you need a hand.'

'I certainly do,' I said, and both of us began walking toward the camper.

I pulled open the bent aluminum door, and he followed me inside, and we did not linger as we passed through to the back. I could tell by Clark's eyes that he had never seen anything like this, but with his hood and air pack, at least he did not have to deal with the stench of decomposing human flesh. He knelt at one end and I at the other, the body heavy and the space impossibly cramped.

'Is it hot in here or is it just me?' he said loudly as we struggled with rubbery limbs.

'Someone turned the heat up as high as it would go.' I was already out of breath. 'To hasten viral contamination, decomposition. A popular way to screw up a crime scene. All right. Let's zip him in. This is going to be tight, but I think we can do it.'

We started working him into a second pouch, our hands and suits slippery with blood. It took us almost thirty minutes to get the body inside the isolator, and my muscles were trembling as we carried it out. My heart was pounding and I was dripping sweat. Outside, we were thoroughly doused with a chemical rinse, as was the isolaton which was transported by truck back to Crisfield. Then the team started work on the camper.

All of it, except for the wheels, was to be wrapped in heavy blue tinted vinyl that had a HEPA filter layer. I took off my suit with great relief, and retreated into the warm, well-lit rangers' station, where I scrubbed my hands and face. My nerves were jangled and I would have given anything to crawl into bed, down shots of NyQuil and sleep.

'If this ain't a mess,' Marino said as he came in with a lot of cold air.

'Please shut the door,' I said, shivering.

'What's eating you?' He sat on the other side of the room.

'Life.'

'I can't believe you're out here when you're sick. I think you've lost your friggin'

mind.'

'Thank you for the words of comfort.' I said.

'Well, this ain't exactly a holiday for me, either. Stuck out here with people to interview, and I got no wheels.' He looked frayed.

'What are you going to do?'

'I'll find something. Rumor has it Lucy and Janet are in the area and have a ride.'

'Where?' I started to get up.

'Don't get excited. They're out trying to find people to interview, like I gotta do. God, I gotta smoke. It's been almost all day.'

'Not in here.' I pointed to a sign.

'People are dying of smallpox and you're bitching about cigarettes.' I got out Motrin and popped three without water.

'So what will all these space cadets do now?' he asked.

'Some of them will stay in the area, tracking down any other people who may have been exposed either on Tangier or in the campground. They'll work in shifts with other team members. I guess you'll be in contact with them, too, in case you come across anyone who might have been exposed.'

'What? I'm supposed to walk around in an orange suit all week?' He yawned and cracked his neck. 'Man, aren't they a bitch? Hot as hell except up in the hood.' He was secretly proud that he had worn one.

'No, you won't be wearing a plastic suit,' I said.

'And what happens if I find out someone I'm interviewing was exposed?'

'Just don't kiss him.'

'I don't think this is funny.' He stared at me.

'It's anything but that.'

'What about the dead guy? They going to cremate him when we don't know who he is?'

'He'll be autopsied in the morning,' I said. 'I imagine they'll store his body for as long as they can.'

'The whole thing's just weird.' Marino rubbed his face in his hands. 'And you saw a computer in there.'

'Yes, a laptop. But no printer or scanner. I'm suspicious this is someone's getaway. The printer, the scanner, at home.'

'What about a phone?'

I thought for a minute. 'Don't remember seeing one.'

'Well, the phone line runs from the camper to the utility box. We'll see what we can find out about that, like whose account it is. I'll also tell Wesley what's going on.'

'If the phone line was used only for AOL,' Lucy said as she walked in and shut the door, 'there won't be any telephone account. The only account will be AOL, which will still come back to Perley, the guy whose credit card number got pinched.'

She looked alert but a little tousled in jeans and a leather jacket. Sitting next to me, she examined the whites of my eyes, and felt the glands in my neck.

'Stick out your tongue,' she seriously said.

'Stop it!' I pushed her away, coughing and laughing at the same time.

'How are you feeling?'

'Better. Where's Janet?' I said.

'Talking. Out somewhere. What kind of computer's in there?'

'I didn't take time to study it,' I replied. 'I didn't notice any of the particulars.

'Was it on?'

'Don't know. I didn't check'

'I need to get in it.'

'What do you want to do?' I asked, looking at her.

'I think I need to go with you.'

'Will they let you do that?' Marino asked.

'Who the hell is they?'

'The drones you work for,' he replied.

'They put me on the case. They expect me to break it.'

Her eyes never stopped moving to windows and the door. Lucy had been infected and would succumb from her exposure to law enforcement. Beneath her jacket she wore a Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistol in a leather holster with extra magazines. She probably had brass knuckles in her pocket. She tensed as the door opened and another ranger hurried in, his hair still wet from the shower, eyes nervous and excited.

'Can I help you?' he asked us, taking off his coat.

'Yeah,' Marino said, getting up from his chair. 'What kind of car you got?'

The flatbed truck was waiting when we arrived, the vinyl-shrouded camper on top of it gleaming an eerie translucent blue beneath the stars and moon and still hooked to a pickup truck. We were parking nearby on a dirt road at the edge of a field when a huge plane passed alarmingly low overhead, its roar louder than a commercial jet.

'What the hell?' Marino exclaimed, opening the door of the ranger's Jeep.

'I think that's our ride to Utah,' Lucy said from the back, where she and I were sitting. The ranger was staring up through his windshield, incredulous, as if the rapture had come. 'Holy shit. Oh my God. We're being invaded!'

A HMMWV came down first, wrapped in corrugated cardboard, a heavy wooden platform underneath. It sounded like an explosion when it landed on the hard-packed dead grass of the field and was dragged by parachutes caught in the wind. Then green nylon wilted over the multiwheeled vehicle, and more rucksacks blossomed in the heavens as more cargo drifted down and tumbled to the ground. Paratroopers followed, oscillating two or three times before landing nimbly on their feet and running out of their harnesses. They gathered up billowing nylon as the sound of their C-17 receded beyond the moon.

The Air Force's Combat Control Team out of Charleston, South Carolina, had arrived at precisely thirteen minutes past midnight. We sat in the jeep and watched, fascinated as airmen began double-checking the compactness of the field, for what was about to land on it weighed enough to demolish a normal landing strip or tarmac. Measurements were made, surveys taken, and the team set out sixteen ACR remote control landing lights, while a woman in camouflage unwrapped the HMMWV, started its loud diesel engine and drove it off its platform, out of the way.

'I got to find some joint to stay around here,' Marino said as he stared out at the spectacle. 'How the hell can they land some big military plane on such a little field?'

'Some of it I can tell you,' said Lucy, who was never at a loss for technical explanation.