“Coming here is always like visiting a hospital,” said Brandon Condley as he entered the doorway to the Army’s Central Identification Lab. “Except all the patients are already dead.”

“An illusory distinction, if one is an anthropologist,” assured Hanson Muir, shaking his partner’s hand and ushering him inside. “They get excellent care here. And lots of individual attention.”

Located in a corner of Hickam Air Force Base just outside Honolulu, the Central Identification Lab, Hawaii, also known by the acronym CILHI, was home to a few dozen soldiers, anthropologists, and scientists. Their principal mission was to identify American military personnel whose remains had been found after becoming missing in action during World War Two, Korea, and Viet Nam. They were also frequently brought in to help identify those who died in civilian disasters such as the crashes of commercial airliners.

The nondescript one-story lab did indeed look something like a medical clinic, with administrative offices and a conference room off to the left of its main entrance and a string of examining rooms off to the right. As Hanson Muir led Condley down a long corridor toward the room in which the remains from Ninh Phuoc were kept, they could look through glass windows into other rooms on their left and right and see numerous skeletons, laid out on white sheets atop rigs that resembled surgical gurneys. Many of these remains were actually partial skeletons, and some held only a few pieces of bone. But each gurney was nonetheless laid out carefully, with whatever bones that had been found placed in their proper anatomical locations.

“Look in here,” said Hanson, stopping suddenly and opening a door into one of the examining rooms. “Come on in, Brandon. This will interest you.”

Inside the room were a dozen gurneys, each holding a largely complete skeleton. Along the floor at the rear of the room were numerous other plastic bags, all carefully labeled with dates and a peculiar form of grid coordinates. The dirt-flecked skeletons were the color of copper. Rotting tatters of military uniforms still clung to some of them. On a nearby gurney Condley could see that the skull of one of them rested inside a rusting World War Two–style helmet.

As was his tendency, Professor Muir became immediately emotional when he surveyed the roomful of remains. His bearded chin lifted slightly and his eyes went distant, as if he were surveying an old battlefield.

“You were a Marine,” said Muir. “Do you remember Carlson’s Raiders?”

“Every Marine remembers Carlson’s Raiders,” said Condley, his own skin beginning to tingle as he stared across the room.