“Go for it,” he said. “The rest of you guys got a little more in you?” I heard a smattering of sures and why nots from the ERT team; they sounded halfhearted, at best, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let the sun set without finding something—even if that “something” was only clear evidence that, despite Maddox’s confidence, there was nothing in the wreckage to be found.
We worked for another hour without talking, the quiet broken at intervals by sighs and grunts and occasional muttered curses; by the tin-roof clatter of scraps raining onto the platform; by the rumble and whine of the crane as it hoisted another load from the base of the bluff to the top of the ridge.
Despite my resolve not to end the day empty-handed, I realized—as the emptied platform descended for the thousandth time of the day—that I was pooped. Exhausted. Out of gas. “Okay,” I groaned, “stick a fork in me, ’cause I’m done.” All around me, I heard what sounded like sighs of weary relief.
“Just in time,” said Kimball. “By now I wouldn’t know a femur if it hit me upside the head.” He radioed up to McCready. “Hey, boss, Doc’s pleading for clemency. Any chance you can let us off with time served?” I didn’t hear McCready’s response, but a moment later, the platform eased a step closer to the ground, and Kimball offered me a hand climbing aboard.
Just as I stepped up, though, I caught a glimpse of something—or half a glimpse, or a tenth of one—in my peripheral vision. I didn’t know what it was, but it triggered some subliminal sensor, set off some subconscious alarm or detector. I froze and scanned the ground, but I couldn’t see anything of particular interest or importance. I stepped back, reversing course, and then retraced my steps, this time in extreme slow motion, letting my gaze brush lightly across the surface of the rubble: looking, but not too closely, for it was only when I hadn’t been looking that I’d actually seen whatever it was I’d seen.
No luck. I repeated the maneuver twice more without success while the ERT techs watched. I had just given up, and was stepping onto the rack for good, when I saw it again, a faint glimmer of something small and smooth and lustrous. This time I got a better fix on where it was, and I bent down, maintaining the same visual angle and keeping my eye glued to the spot. “I’ll be damned,” I said as much to myself as to the four FBI agents. “It’s a tooth—an honest-to-god tooth!” I knelt—sharp rubble dug into my knees, but I didn’t care—and plucked it from the metal shards that swirled around it, like some dangerous version of a gemstone’s setting. It was a bicuspid—an upper right—the roots broken and burned but the crown intact. I held it between my thumb and forefinger, studying it from all angles, as if it were a miraculous and precious object, unique in all the world. Which it was, of course—there was no other tooth anywhere on earth exactly like this one. Without fillings or other distinctive anomalies, it wasn’t a sufficient basis for a positive identification. But it was a start, by damn. And it was proof that the plane wasn’t some empty, unpiloted ghost ship after all.
“Don’t tell McCready,” I said to my teammates in a low voice. “I want to surprise him with it.” Kimball held out a small paper evidence bag, the top open. I eased the tooth inside, then tucked the bag into my shirt pocket. Next I took an evidence flag from one of my back pockets and wiggled the thin steel shaft into the spot where I’d found the tooth, so Kimball and Boatman could map the spot when we returned in the morning. “Always park on the downhill,” my granddaddy had taught me long ago, back when I was fifteen and learning to drive a stick shift. “Makes it easier to get going the next time.” The advice had served me well ever since, and not just when it came to cars. Ending the day by flagging the spot where I’d found the tooth—the first of many, I hoped—was my way of parking us on the excavation’s downhill slope.
Straddling the empty bucket again—not empty for much longer, I told myself—I caught hold of the cables, and we ascended. This time, the tide of battle seemed to be turning, and I stood taller, actually feeling a bit like George Washington this time, the Stars and Stripes fluttering beside us in the breeze.
“Hold out your hand and close your eyes,” I told McCready when we disembarked topside. He looked wary, but he did it. Reaching into my pocket, I fished out the bag and opened it, then carefully laid the tooth in his palm. “Happy solstice,” I said, and when he opened his eyes and saw it, a smile dawned, spreading across his face like daybreak.
THE SOLSTICE SUN WAS EASING TOWARD THE HORIZON—a broad track of sunlight glinted off the Pacific, though the sun was still too bright to look at—when we adjourned to the command post to celebrate our find, to toast the tooth with ice water and Diet Coke. We tapped plastic bottles and aluminum cans together as exuberantly as if they’d been crystal champagne flutes. “To the upper right bicuspid,” I toasted, holding it aloft. “The first of many teeth awaiting us tomorrow.”
I felt the tired buzz of fatigue—or thought I felt the buzz of fatigue, but as the tingling ended and then resumed, ended and resumed, I realized that my cell phone—tucked in my pocket and set on “vibrate”—was receiving a call. I fished it out and saw Knoxville’s area code, 865, followed by the number that Red, the reference librarian, had given me. I noticed McCready and Maddox both looking my way, and I felt my face flush with the guilty knowledge that I was keeping secrets. “Go ahead and take that if you want to, Doc,” McCready called over the din. “I’ll make these guys quiet down.”
I shook my head with what I hoped was nonchalance. “Naw. I recognize the number. It’s just UT bureaucracy.”
McCready looked up at the wall clock, which read 6:47. “Man, you ivory-tower folks work some mighty long hours.”
It was nearly ten o’clock in Knoxville, I realized. Crap, Brockton, I chided myself, could you have said anything dumber? “Takes a lot of work to keep the place all clean and shiny,” I said lamely. McCready returned to his conversation with Maddox, but his eyes seemed to linger on me for an extra moment.
THE BONE-JARRING RIDE DOWN THE MOUNTAIN seemed to take hours, although my watch suggested that only thirty minutes had elapsed. When we finally pulled into the motel’s parking lot, I practically leapt from the Suburban. “I’m gonna scrub up and call home,” I said on my way out. “If y’all are hungry, go on without me. I can fend for myself again.”
“Hell, we’ll wait,” said McCready. “Fella works as hard as you do shouldn’t have to eat alone.”
“Thanks,” I said, though I would rather have had the time alone. “Want me to call you when I’m ready?”
“Just meet us in the lobby whenever you get done. Maybe thirty minutes? Eight o’clock, plus or minus?”
“You sure y’all don’t want to just go on without me?”
“Sure, Doc. It’s not like we’ve got big plans.”
“Hey, speak for yourself, old man,” cracked Kimball. “Jack in the Box? Mickey D’s? Them joints is some happenin’, dude—I’ll be rockin’ this warehouse district all night!” I could hear the younger agents riffing on this theme and laughing as I stepped into my room. Closing the door behind me, I immersed myself in the cool and the dark, soaking up the soothing, white-noise hum of processed air.
My phone was already in my hand by the time I’d chained the door, and I felt a surge of nervous energy when I saw that I had two voice mails waiting.
The first was a reminder about a finance committee meeting at my church the next day, one I might have skipped even if I weren’t two thousand miles away. The second one, though, was as electrifying as the first one was boring. “Dr.
Brockton? It’s Red. I’ve got some follow-up info I think you’ll find interesting. Call back when you can.”
I checked the clock. It was 7:30 in San Diego, which made it 10:30 in Knoxville. Too late to call, I thought. But then again, she worked until midnight—or did on some nights, although I didn’t know about tonight. She said to call anytime, I reminded myself. I hit the “call” button. “Hello,” said the now-familiar voice. “Is that you, Dr. B?”
“It is. Sorry to call so late. Are you still working?”
“I’m always working. My work ethic knows no bounds. Well, few bounds.” She paused. “Okay, truth is, my work ethic is fairly feeble. But I’m gung ho about this particular task.”
I didn’t have time for witty repartee. “Your voice mail said you found something interesting.”
“Well, I think so, but I’ll let you be the judge.”
“Tell me quick, then,” I said. “I don’t have much time.”
“Richard Janus was a pilot for Air America from 1970 to ’75.”
That wasn’t interesting at all, I judged. “So? The man’s a pilot. Was. I’d be surprised if he didn’t fly for an airline or two.”
“Air America wasn’t an airline. Air America was the CIA’s secret air force in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.”
Suddenly I judged the information to be considerably more interesting. “The CIA? As in Central Intelligence Agency?”
“As in. Air America was the cover name. A shell company, it’s called. Civilian pilots—get this—flying military aircraft, on black-ops missions: commando insertions, weapons drops, downed-pilot rescues. Mostly in Laos and Cambodia, where U.S. troops weren’t supposed to be. There’s some evidence—claims, anyhow—that Air America also trafficked in opium.”
“What?”
“To help fund their operations. More profitable than bake sales, I guess.”