'There's going to be a lot of pressure on this one. We'l have close to fifty on site by tomorrow.'

I knew that only superficial examination of the wreckage would be done in situ. Once photographed and recorded, the plane's parts would be removed and taken to a permanent location for reassembly and analysis.

'Anything else on the bomb?' Larke asked.

'Hel, it's probably a crank, but the media already has this thing wrapped up slicker than snail spit. CNN's caling him the Blue Ridge Bomber, geography be damned. ABC

floated the Soccer Bomber, but it just doesn't have the aliterative ring.'

'The FBI's coming on board?' Larke asked.

'They're here, pawing at the fence, so it may not be long.'

I broke in, unable to wait another moment.

'Do we have a passenger list?'

The ME slid a printout from his pad and handed it to me.

I experienced a kind of fear I'd rarely felt in my life.

Please, God.

The world receded as I raced through the names. Anderson. Beacham. Bertrand. Caccioli. Daignault. Larke spoke, but his words didn't penetrate.

A lifetime later, I unclamped the teeth from my lower lip and resumed breathing.

Neither Katy Brennan Petersons nor Lija Feldman was on the list. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.

I opened them to questioning looks. Offering no explanation, I returned the printout, the profound relief already blunted by a sense of guilt. My daughter was alive, but the children of others lay dead on a mountain. I wanted to work.

'What would you like me to do?' I asked Larke.

'Earl has the morgue under control. Go work recovery. But once transport starts I'l need you here.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

Back at the site, I went directly to a decontamination trailer and donned mask, gloves, and jumpsuit. Looking more like a spaceman than an anthropologist, I nodded to the guard, circled the barricade, and crossed to the temporary morgue for an update.

The exact location of every flagged item was being entered into a CAD-type program using technology caled Total Station. The position of airplane parts, personal effects, and human remains would later be plotted onto virtual grids and printed out as hard copy. Since the technique was far quicker and less labor-intensive than the traditional system of mapping with strings and grids, the removal of remains had already begun. I headed out across the debris field.

The sun was arcing toward the tree line, and delicate shadows spiderwebbed the carnage. Klieg lights had been set up, and the smel of putrefaction had strengthened.

Otherwise, little had changed in the time I'd been gone.

For the next three hours I assisted my coleagues in tagging, photographing, and packaging what was left of the passengers of Air TransSouth 228. Complete corpses, limbs, and torsos went into large body bags, fragments into smal ones. The bags were then hauled uphil and placed on racks in refrigerated trailers.