The day was officially under way.
Over the next few hours, Groves and his crew got a hot breakfast going in the mess tent and unloaded the remainder of the supplies in the chopper, while Dr. Lantos and the professor checked over their equipment inventories and made sure everything was accounted for and in order. As soon as the sky showed a glimmer of light, and Slater could see that the crewmen, under the guidance of the pilot, Rudy, were erecting the other prefab structures according to the plans he had drawn up, he left them to it and rounded up his own team for the trip to the cemetery. Dr. Lantos wanted to stay behind for now and personally oversee the construction and placement of the autopsy tent, but the others were raring to go. Kozak, both gloves fastened on the handlebars of his ground-penetrating radar unit, looked like he was about to mow a lawn.
“You sure you don’t want to wait until we’ve seen what kind of access we have to the cemetery?” Slater asked, but Kozak patted the bright red handles of the GPR like it was a trusted dog and said, “It has gone everywhere. And until we do the ground study, what else can you do, anyway?”
Slater had to agree. Digging up graves under any circumstances was a harrowing business, rife with potential problems. But digging up graves containing the hundred-year-old remains of victims of the Spanish flu—remains that might have deteriorated, in coffins that might have disintegrated, in graves that might even have shifted their location underground due to geothermal changes—was a task requiring the utmost care and professional expertise.
Not to mention sensitivity. It was no surprise to Slater that he saw Nika lacing up her boots and slipping on her glove liners.
“I don’t suppose I could persuade you to stay out of harm’s way today?” Slater said.
“Thanks, but after last night,” she said, “I think I’ve already had my baptism by fire.”
Sergeant Groves, with a bundle of wire flags under his arm, smiled and shook his head at his boss, as if to say, You were dreaming if you thought she wasn’t coming. And though Slater knew he was right, he had had to give it a try. In addition to all the other considerations, exhumations were often dangerous affairs, and the first thing any team leader tried to do was limit the personnel present.
The second thing was to avoid wasting time on battles with headstrong opponents who were bound and determined to pursue their own agenda no matter what.
The sky was a sullen gray when the team finally passed under the main gates of the colony and started down the cleared slope that led to the grove of trees. Slater spotted a narrow break in the woods that suggested a trail had once begun here, and without a word Sergeant Groves wired a red flag to the nearest bough. As they forced their way through the thick trees and dense underbrush, brambles pulling at the sleeves of their coats and low-hanging branches dropping their load of fresh snow on top of their hoods and hats, Groves continued to place an occasional marker along the way.
“We’ll need all of this cut away on both sides,” Slater said, over his shoulder, and Groves replied, “I can get a team with power saws down here later this afternoon. You want ramping, too?”
“Yes, wherever the ground is particularly uneven.”
“Yes, please, I will need that,” the professor said, as he struggled with Nika’s help to steer the wheels of his GPR around an especially gnarly root formation.
Slater, seeing the difficulty he was having, resisted saying I told you so. He understood the professor’s impatience to get started; it was a failing, or virtue, in his own nature, too. But years of running epidemiological missions had taught him to rein in his impulses by making a careful plan and following it to the letter.
“What do you want to do about lighting?” Groves asked.
“A halogen stanchion every twenty feet or so, maybe three hundred watts each.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Slater knew that it would mean running a lot of cables and power from the generators in the colony all the way through the forest, but they were going to have to do that, anyway, to power up the dressing and decontamination chamber.
When they did emerge from the trees again, Slater stopped at a pair of weathered gateposts, with something—some word or two—whittled into the wood.
Nika immediately removed a glove and reverently ran one finger over the faint writing. “It’s Russian.”
And when Kozak stepped forward and leaned close enough to see, he said, “It’s the same thing, over and over again.”
“What?” Groves asked.
“It says, ‘Forgive me, forgive me.’ ”
“I wonder why,” Nika said, softly.