Phantoms

Harker’s. At least these didn’t last as long.
    When there was only silence, Copperfield slid the manhole cover back into place. Because of the power cable, the metal plate didn’t fit tightly and was tilted up at one end, but it covered most of the hole.
    He stationed two men on the sidewalk, ten feet from the entrance to the drain, and ordered them to shoot anything that came out.
    Because a gun had been of no help to Harker, Copperfield and a few other men collected everything needed to manufacture Molotov cocktails. They got a couple of dozen bottles of wine from Brookhart’s liquor store on Vail Lane, emptied them, put an inch of soap powder in the bottom of each, filled them with gasoline, and twisted rag fuses into the necks of them until they were snugly stoppered.
    Would fire succeed where bullets had failed?
    What had happened to Harker?
    What had happened to Velazquez?
    What will happen to me? Copperfield wondered.
     
    The first of the two mobile field laboratories had cost more than three million dollars, and the Defense Department had gotten its money’s worth.
    The lab was a marvel of technological microminiaturization. For one thing, its computer—based on a trio of Intel 432 micromainframes; 690,000 transistors squeezed onto only nine silicon chips—took up no more room than a couple of suitcases, yet it was a highly sophisticated system that was capable of complex medical analyses. In fact, it was a more elaborate system—with greater logic and memory capacities—than could be found in most major university hospitals’ pathology labs.
    There was a great deal of diagnostic equipment in the motor home, all of it designed and positioned for maximum utilization of the limited space. In addition to a pair of computer access terminals along one wall, there were a number of devices and machines: a centrifuge that would be used to separate the major components of blood, urine, and other fluid samples; a spectrophotometer; a spectrograph; an electron microscope with an image interpretation-enhancement read-out link to one of the computer screens; a compact appliance that would quick-freeze blood and tissue samples for storage and for use in tests in which element extractions were more easily performed on frozen materials; and much, much more.
    Toward the front of the vehicle, behind the drivers’ compartment, was an autopsy table that collapsed into the wall when not in use. At the moment, the table was down, and the body of Gary Wechlas—male, thirty-seven, Caucasian—lay on the stainless-steel surface. The blue pajama bottoms had been scissored away from the corpse and set aside for later examination.
    Dr. Seth Goldstein, one of the three leading forensic medicine specialists on the West Coast, would perform the autopsy. He stood at one side of the table with Dr. Daryl Roberts, and General Copperfield stood at the other side, facing them across the dead body.
    Goldstein pressed a button on a control panel that was set in the wall to his right. A recording would be made of every word spoken during the autopsy; this was common procedure in even ordinary postmortems. A visual record was also being made: two ceiling-mounted videotape cameras were focused on the corpse; they, too, were activated when Dr. Goldstein pressed the button on the wall panel.
    Goldstein began by closely examining and describing the corpse: the unusual facial expression, the universal bruising, the curious swelling. He was especially searching for punctures, abrasions, localized contusions, cuts, lesions, blisters, fractures, and other indications of specific points of injury. He could not find any.
    With his gloved hand poised over the instrument tray, Goldstein hesitated, not quite sure where to start. Usually, at the beginning of an autopsy, he already had a pretty good idea of the cause of death. When the deceased had been wasted by a disease, Goldstein usually had seen the hospital report. If death had resulted from an accident, there were visible trauma. If it was death at the hand of another, there were signs of violence. But in this case, the conditions of the corpse raised more questions than it answered, strange questions unlike any he had ever faced before.
    As if sensing Goldstein’s thoughts, Copperfield said, “You’ve got to find some answers for us, Doctor. Our lives very probably depend on it.”
     
    The second motor home had many of the same diagnostic machines and instruments that were in the lead