Backblast

by Candace Irving

He couldn't be more wrong.

  She welcomed his presence.

  If by some miracle the medical examiner the Pentagon had sent found mitigating evidence during the autopsy, she wanted the spook there—heinous, inaccurate suspicions regarding John's loyalties intact. What better way for any potential mitigating evidence to stand up in court?

  Regan caught the crew chief's wave. The Marine sergeant lowered his forearms and briefly crossed them. The Super Stallion was about to land.

  She allowed Riyad's thumbs up to serve as joint acknowledgment.

  She let the spook take the lead as the helicopter finally touched down on the carrier's deck too. Removing her hearing protection, she even passively followed Riyad out of the bird and allowed him to introduce the two of them to the waiting chief who'd been assigned to escort them. They headed across the flight deck, through a watertight door in the ship's superstructure and down a metal ladder and passageway until they'd reached the ship's medical department and the entrance to the operating room where the postmortem had evidently already begun.

  But that was all the lead she was willing to allow.

  Regan stepped up to retrieve her own paper booties, surgical mask and clear face shield from the black, twenty-something hospital corpsman within. "Thank you, Petty Officer. How far has the ME gotten?"

  The woman handed over a pair of gloves as Regan finished donning her assigned booties and facial gear. "The body's already been weighed, photographed with and without clothes, washed and x-rayed. Also, blood and vitreous fluid have been drawn. Colonel Tarrington's about to make the first cut."

  Tarrington was here?

  Despite the circumstances, Regan smiled.

  "You know the ME?" Riyad stared at her—and given the frown he'd covered with his mask, he wasn't nearly as thrilled by the turn of events as she was.

  "I do." If the spook had spent any time at all adding to his paltry investigative experience, he'd have undoubtedly worked with the colonel too.

  Niall Tarrington was one of the Joint Pathology Center's top coroners. Not only was the British-born, US Army colonel tasked with the government and military's diciest cases, he carried the latest portable versions of his profession's top gear wherever he was sent.

  If there were answers to be had tonight, there was an excellent chance that Tarrington would be able to offer them, quite possibly on the spot.

  Which could be good…or bad. For John.

  Regan donned her mask and nodded her thanks as the corpsman opened the door to the OR for them.

  As for Riyad, "The colonel and I met—"

  "—in Iraq a few years back. Hip-deep in a heinous pit of local, long-dead bodies." The cool glare Tarrington shot over his wire-framed bifocals let them both know he'd been briefed on the spook's rather vocal feelings as to her position as lead investigator on this case. "So, Agent Riyad, does that mean you plan on crying conflict of interest and complaining about my attendance at this equally shitty shindig, too?"

  The spook's dark stare flared, momentarily surpassing the ire in the colonel's. But he backed down. Shook his head. "No, sir."

  "Good. And, for the record, that agent standing next to you is all about the truth, and always has been. So, relax." He tipped his crop of closely clipped gray toward the opposite side of the gurney. "Well, get up here. Let's get this finished. I would've waited to start, but I'm under the gun. I need to get to Bahrain before morning. I was on my way there to confirm a VIP suicide when I got diverted to this giant, bobbing boat. Though, I admit, it's not bobbing as badly as others I've been on."

  Amen to that.

  Her stomach was in full agreement as well. But for the constant thrum of vibrating machinery in her ears and beneath her boots, she might've been able to pretend she was back on dry land.

  Regan headed up the translator's naked legs and torso as ordered. Riyad followed. She came to a halt beside Hachemi's battered face as Tarrington offered up his full name and official title, then the NCIS agent's, into the voice recorder tucked up against the array of postmortem equipment filling the sterile tray table beside him.

  That formality out of the way, he turned to the two of them, but focused on her. "There's a lot going on here. And some of it doesn't quite seem to match up—yet."

  "How so?" Riyad, again.

  Regan suppressed a wince as Tarrington's attention shifted to her right, then narrowed to let her fellow agent know he was less than impressed with the timing of his inquisitiveness.

  "Let's get one thing clear right now, Agent Riyad. This is my postmortem. Unless I ask you a direct question, I talk—you listen. You save your comment and questions 'til the end. No exceptions. Understood?"

  Riyad's nod was stiff.

  "Excellent. Now, as I was saying, we've got lot going on here with Mr. Hachemi. I understand the man was knocked into a bulkhead by one of our very own, pissed-off snake eaters, correct?"

  Another nod. This one was just as stiff…and hers.

  She hadn't worked with Tarrington since she'd met John in Hohenfels, so she had no idea if the colonel had heard the gossip regarding her personal and professional past regarding the "snake eater" in question. Though the slight tinge of compassion in that light green stare suggested yes.

  The tinge cleared as Tarrington shifted once more, this time toward a light box hanging from the bulkhead to his right. "The x-rays over there support that, along with the obvious bruising." He reached out to trace a gloved finger down the right side of the translator's chin. "Mr. Hachemi sustained a fracture here, in the mandible, along with several broken teeth." The gloved finger moved up to trace a shorter arc across discolored flesh at the bridge of the translator's nose. "And another here, at the tip of the nasal bone. However, despite the contusions around the orbital cavities, there's no damage to the bone beneath. Nor does the brain appear to have been impacted by the blow. Of course, I've yet to open the man up and look inside myself."

  Something utterly unexpected infused her gut as that warm green stare found hers once more.

  Hope.

  It was a direct result of the gleaming intensity of that stare.

  Something had hooked the colonel's curiosity—and it had nothing to do with the lack of visible damage to the translator's brain.

  She was dying to prompt the man, but like Riyad, she'd learned to hold her tongue with this particular ME—in nearly identical circumstances. Granted, she'd been six years younger at the time and even more naive.

  Though, really, was there an ME alive who tolerated, much less enjoyed, being grilled by a case investigator during an active autopsy? It so, she hadn't met them.

  Her patience was rewarded as Tarrington drew his gloved index finger—and their attention—back to the translator's jaw. No, not jaw. Hachemi's lips.

  What the—

  "You see it, too. Don't you, Rae?"

  She nodded.

  "See what?" Riyad again.

  She suppressed a wince. Would the man never learn?

  But the colonel let it slide. "Rictus."

  As the spook's brow furrowed, Tarrington tipped his head toward her.

  She reached out to trail a finger above and around the translator's mouth, quickly extending the rest of her fingers along with it to conceal her latest tremor. Fortunately, it worked. "Hachemi's lips are pulled back, contracted into a grimace."

  An eerie, slightly maniacal one at that.

  "And that's significant?"

  She shrugged. While she'd seen it before, the fresh glint she'd noted in Tarrington's eyes had already added the rictus to something else.

  Something she hadn't noticed.

  The colonel's nod confirmed it. "Look at his fingers…and his toes."

  She did—and pulled in her breath.

  Every single digit was curled down toward the surface of the gurney—including the three fingers John had snapped in Charikar. She'd seen that level of contraction before, in another deceased Afghan's remains, no less. During her first year with CID, a local c
ontractor had suffered convulsions while on Bagram Airbase and died. At the time, the ME who'd been assigned the case had openly speculated as to the cause of death during the postmortem while citing that same rictus and convulsive grip. Toxicology tests had upheld the woman's instincts.

  "Tetanus."

  Regan had murmured the word under her breath.

  Tarrington nodded anyway. "Do you know if Mr. Hachemi's inoculations were up to date?"

  "No." But she'd be looking into it, just as soon as this contractor's postmortem was complete.

  While rare in the States, tetanus infections were decidedly more common in several parts of the world—including Afghanistan. Mostly because the bacterial spores that caused the deadly disease could be found around the globe, lurking in everyday dust, soil, feces and saliva. Of course, a simple inoculation along with a timely schedule of boosters could and did prevent the disease from developing. But the recipient had to reside in a country where the government and medical profession were dedicated to distributing tetanus vaccines to the masses.

  Afghanistan still fell short on that end.

  As a local Afghan translator, Hachemi would've been treated for any and all injuries he sustained on the job by military medical personnel in country—and even some injuries that hadn't been sustained on the job. But inoculations wouldn't have been included. For those, Tamir Hachemi would've had to see one of the many non-governmental organizations that provided preventative care to the local population.

  If he'd received them. Since Hachemi hadn't even made it to the States yet to exercise his newly granted, naturalized-citizen status, the odds were slim.

  And even if the translator had managed to get his initial tetanus inoculation and keep his boosters up to date, written records for any NGO-provided vaccines he had received might not exit. But if they did, she'd find them.

  The ME pulled his instrument tray closer. "What about epilepsy? Do you know if Mr. Hachemi suffered from the condition?"

  She shook her head at this new possibility, too.

  As mitigating factors went, she preferred the first, and by far. But she'd take the potential reprieve offered by either one. "I do know that at least two of the witness statements I took this afternoon mention a final, seizure-like episode after the blow and just before the translator's heart stopped, while he was already laid out on the deck. Also, I don't know if it's significant, but both Corporal Vetter and Staff Sergeant Brandt stated that, during the interrogation, Hachemi claimed his head was pounding. He appeared to be sweating more than usual and thirsty, too. They also saw him rubbing at the back of his neck on and off. Major Garrison noted the rubbing as well."

  The colonel's gaze warmed at the mention of John. The tinge returned.

  Tarrington knew about their past, all right.

  It just didn't matter. Not to her. As much as she liked the colonel as a person, she respected his vast store of medical knowledge and deductive skills so much more.

  Tarrington could keep that compassion. She wanted his zeal.

  She needed it.

  If the ME felt the rictus and those contracted digits didn't match up with the presumed cause and manner of the translator's death—namely, the blow to his face— there was an excellent chance he was right. And that was definitely promising.

  For John.

  Tarrington followed up her burgeoning hope with another nod. "There's more. Whether it's significant or not, I don't yet know. Not only are his finger and toes contracted, but according to the intake report by the hospital corpsman who received the body aboard this carrier, Mr. Hachemi was also in full rigor upon his arrival."

  Two hours after death?

  "But—" The spook closed his mouth in the nick of time.

  The professional curiosity burning through Tarrington must've put him in a singular mood, because he let the lapse slide with a dismissive sigh. "Yes, yes; the march of rigor tends to proceed at a slower pace. And, yes, I have also seen an equally accelerated pace following a simple gunshot. A rather creative bludgeoning too. Neither is it entirely unusual that Mr. Hachemi's body had also passed almost completely out of rigor by the time I opened the morgue drawer shortly after I arrived aboard this ship a mere hour and a half ago. As I said, mysteries clearly abound. Shall we open the man up and see what others we find—and, perhaps, solve them?"

  This time, she and Riyad nodded in unison.

  Tarrington failed to notice. The colonel had already retrieved a glistening scalpel from his instrument tray and leaned over the translator's chest to begin the initial leg of the Y incision at the crest of the man's right shoulder. Within moments, that enviably steady hand had carved the second leg and drawn the tail of the Y all the way down to the man's genitals. Skin and muscle layers peeled to the sides, Tarrington started in on the chest plate, carefully cutting through the ribs and pulling them away as one piece so that the inner organs could be examined in place.

  She and Riyad watched in mutual silence as those steady hands poked, prodded, shifted and snipped. Regan caught the colonel's preoccupation with the translator's heart—along with the odd ballooning of blood that appeared to fill the sac surrounding it—but she was lost amid the stream of medical jargon that poured out of Tarrington's mouth and into the recorder.

  The ME briefly paused his stream as he retrieved a syringe and filled it with blood taken directly from the heart, then resumed his steady professional spiel as he removed the organ from the body. Moving over to a separate workspace, the heart was weighed and then carefully dissected. Whatever the colonel saw as he sliced off tiny sections of tissue to send back to the lab appeared to give him pause.

  Fortunately, the spook held onto his curiosity and maintained his silence alongside her.

  Her silence and hope were tested as the ME moved on to the translator's lungs. Not by their removal and weighing, but by the following minute exam that took place out of her sight as the colonel painstakingly dissected the translator's pulmonary tissue, all the while remarking on the smattering of pinpoint hemorrhages within for the voice recorder.

  She didn't know if Riyad understood the significance of those tiny hemorrhages, but she did. Asphyxia.

  Yes, the damage that blow had caused to Hachemi's face could have easily interfered with his breathing and deprived the man of oxygen…but Tarrington hadn't mentioned a corresponding obstruction.

  The liver was up—and out—next.

  Dissection followed.

  Was it her imagination, or was the colonel spending more time than he usually did with that organ? The number of samples he'd taken to ship back to the lab intrigued her too. She'd swear he'd taken twice as many as normal.

  Just then, the ME's preoccupation with the liver folded back in to the memory of those pinpoint pulmonary hemorrhages. There, they joined up with the rictus he'd pointed out—along with the seizure Vetter and Brandt had mentioned.

  The combination teased at something deep inside the recesses of her mind. She couldn't quite grasp the potential significance. But it was there.

  She mentally reviewed the cases she'd worked.

  No, the curious combination of organs and facts didn't dovetail into one of her investigations. Someone else's, then. But whose?

  And what were the particulars?

  The mystery dogged her for the next hour as the translator's remaining organs were removed, weighed and individually dissected as well.

  With each successive removal, Regan was able to detach herself further and further from the reality that what lay in front of her had once been a man. Albeit a man who'd attempted to kill her and had succeeded in killing an unforgivable number of her fellow soldiers and their wives, but a man nonetheless.

  She had no idea how many autopsies Riyad had attended in his career, but he appeared to be holding up well. The spook hadn't so much as batted an eye throughout the entire procedure…until the ME cut into the translator's scalp and began to fold his flesh inside out and down over his face.

  The spook appea
red distinctly queasy now.

  Once the bone saw fired up, she wasn't feeling so hot herself. She hated that sound and the peculiar smell that always followed. The odor was more subtle than the stench of blood, bile, viscera and excrement that permeated the postmortems she'd attended, and not nearly as penetrating as the acrid stench of formaldehyde coming from the container that awaited the brain, but it always managed to get to her.

  It was getting to Riyad too.

  She noted the flagging tic that had taken up residence in the spook's right lower jaw as the power saw began carving a circular path through the top of the skull and murmured, "Not much longer now."

  That earned her a sidelong scowl. A filthy one at that.

  Fine by her.

  She returned her attention to the ME as the colonel used his hammer to pop off the surreal circle of bone. The tension in Riyad's jaw ratcheted tighter as the protective meninges were carefully severed. By the time the brain had made it out of the skull and gently taken up residence in the waiting bath of formaldehyde designed to fix the organ so it, too, could be dissected and studied a week or two hence, she was tempted to nudge the spook back against the bulkhead. He was in danger of popping too—all over the translator. A split second later, Riyad stiffened and spun around to focus on the cabinets hanging behind them.

  Smart move. Nor was there any shame in it. Hell, if this was his first autopsy, he'd held out longer than she had during hers—and better.

  She'd had to leave the room.

  The spook continued to face the cabinet as the colonel finished packaging and labeling his final tissue samples.

  By the time Riyad had regained his composure and turned around to the gurney, the translator's skull, face and inner organs were all back where they belonged.

  Mostly.

  She and the spook continued to maintain their dual silence as the ME began to close the initial Y incision with a neat looping baseball stitch via that enviably steady hand. Still. Despite nearly two hours of constant, fine-motor work.

  As the colonel finished tying off the thick thread, Riyad's jaw loosened and began to open.

  She did the man a favor and pinched the thick, sinewy biceps beneath his polo sleeve hard enough to leave a bruise. Odd. For an intel guy, he was seriously buff.