“Don’t you have to label it somehow?”
“Ah. Good question. Yeah. I’ve got a bunch of captions preloaded—we worked a plane crash about six months ago—so mostly I’ll just scroll down the list and click on whatever caption I need. But I can add new ones, if I need to, using this.” He tapped a small keyboard. “Then Kimbo moves the reflector to the next point, I hit the button again, and so on. All those coordinates get stored in memory, and when we dump everything onto the computer up there in the command center, we can spit out maps in 3-D, from any angle we want to.”
“Cool,” I said. “And that’s accurate to within, what—a few feet? a few inches?”
“More like a millimeter—less than a tenth of an inch.”
“Amazing.”
From across the way, Kimball called to Boatman. “Yo, pard, you ’bout ready to rock and roll?”
“Ready. Gimme that broken branch right over your head, would you? The one with the big rattlesnake on it?”
“Ha ha,” Kimball said drily, but all the same, I saw him sneak a glance at the branch before raising the prism.
Boatman punched the “save” button, then scrolled down and clicked on a caption. Tree strike, I read over his shoulder. “Got it,” he called. “You want to work that whole side first? Come back up to the base of the bluff, then go across and down the far side?”
“Work the edges first, then go in? Makes sense,” said Kimball. “Gonna be some backing and forthing, though, any way we do it.”
“Not for me,” chuckled Boatman.
“Your job does seem a bit cushier,” I remarked. “All you have to do is swivel that thing around and push some buttons.”
At the moment, I would have killed for a button-pushing job—for any job that would have helped me feel productive. As it was, I felt like a fifth wheel; the young agents treated me with politeness, respect, and possibly a bit of misplaced awe, but clearly this was the FBI’s show, and I was an outsider, waiting for my cue. And I hated waiting.
“Hey, Boat-Man,” came Kimball’s voice from across the way, as if to confirm my glum thoughts. “Less talk, more action. There’s a wingtip here.”
“Got it,” called Boatman, and with that, the pair settled into a smooth routine, Kimball scampering around the edges of the debris field, pausing just long enough to hold the prism and call out a description of the object he was marking. He didn’t mark everything—that would’ve taken forever; instead, he sought out large, recognizable components (“engine cowling”; “turbine blades”; “wheel and strut”) and concentrations of debris (“structural members”; “aluminum skin”; “hydraulic lines”).
After an hour—an hour in which the temperature climbed from eighty degrees to an unseasonably hot ninetysomething—they’d mapped the crash scene’s entire perimeter. Kimball rejoined Boatman and me on the ledge long enough to chug a bottle of water and scarf down a nut bar. “Okay,” he said, looking at the central pile of wreckage. “You ready?”
Boatman nodded. “I’m always ready.”
“Wasn’t asking you, Mr. Button-Pusher,” scoffed Kimball. “I was asking Doc, the one who’s got some real work ahead.” He looked at me. “You ready to get dirty?”
“That’s what I’m here for,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll talk to the man upstairs.” He tapped a shoulder-mounted radio mike. “Hey, Mac, it’s Kimbo. We’ve got the first layer mapped. Doc says he’s ready to dig in. You want to send down the other guys, so we can start moving some metal?” He listened, nodded, and gave me a thumbs-up. I took a deep breath and blew it out, relieved that the standing and waiting was over, glad to be getting into the game.
Kimball and I started back toward the blasted base of the bluff. As we neared it, a shadow flowed across the ground toward us, then enveloped us, eclipsing the sun. I looked up to see a large rectangular silhouette, rotating slowly beneath the outstretched boom of the crane. As I watched, the rectangle grew larger, and larger still, descending toward us: a wooden platform, suspended from the steel cable. It was framed of stout lumber; it was decked with heavy-duty plywood; and it was laden with six FBI evidence-recovery specialists. As it came down, I stepped to one side to avoid being crushed.