No Return

34

They rode in lars’s truck to the main entrance of the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, neither of them saying a word. Just before the gate, Lars pulled in to the visitor center parking area.

Wes started to get out with him, but Lars shook his head. “No. You stay here.”

Lars disappeared into the building for a few minutes. When he climbed back into the cab, he handed Wes a piece of plastic.

“I’m sure you know what to do with this.”

It was a visitor’s badge, complete with a clip. Wes attached it to his shirt as Lars pulled back onto the road and drove over to the gate. Once the guard there checked both their badges, he waved the truck through, and just like that, they were on the base.

If driving through Ridgecrest after all this time had been strange, being back on the base was absolutely surreal. There was so much that hadn’t changed since Wes had been a ten-year-old riding in his parents’ VW van, and so much that was completely different.

Whole swaths of base housing had disappeared, leaving empty desert. From what Wes could tell, both of the houses his family had lived in on the base were gone. It was as if a specialized bomb had gone off and had left only roads and sidewalks and desert, but no debris at all.

Wes tried to guess where they were going, but once they’d passed Michelson Lab, his geographical knowledge from his youth ran out. All he could tell was that they were heading north into the open desert portion of the base, which probably meant Armitage Field.

Lars wasn’t saying anything, but it was apparent he was growing more and more tense with each mile. Twice he looked over at Wes, scrutinizing him, but he remained silent. Whatever he was thinking, he wasn’t sharing.

They came to a second checkpoint. One of the guards took Wes’s badge and reentered the guard hut, where she made a phone call.

When she returned, she passed the badge through the window, saluted Lars, and said, “Have a good day, sir.”

As they neared the airfield, two jets rose into the air, one right after the other, and streaked toward the sky above the Sierra Nevadas, the wail of their engines momentarily drowning everything else out.

Lars turned down a road that ran just east of the hangars, then pulled up in front of a building surrounded by an eight-foot-high barbed-wire-topped fence. The gate across the entrance was closed, but as soon as they stopped, an armed guard exited the building and pushed the gate open wide enough to accommodate Lars’s truck. Lars then pulled into a parking spot and turned the engine off.

“So what’s here?” Wes asked, looking at the building.

Lars opened his door and climbed out. “Your proof,” he said without looking back.

Wes hesitated a few seconds, then got out, too.

The door to the building opened just before they reached it. Lars didn’t miss a step as he passed inside. The Big Brother feel of it bothered Wes, but he continued to follow his friend.

Just inside was another armed guard. Like his buddy at the gate, he was unsmiling. Beyond him two other men waited. One wore a khaki naval uniform, and the other a white lab coat over shirt, tie, and slacks.

The uniformed man saluted Lars. “Lieutenant Commander. Good to see you, sir.”

Lars returned the salute.

“Lieutenant Commander Andersen,” the civilian said, shaking hands with Lars.

“Thank you for doing this,” Lars said. He gestured toward Wes. “This is Wes Stewart. Wes, this is Dr. Handler and Lieutenant Truax.”

“Mr. Stewart,” Lieutenant Truax said, shaking Wes’s hand.

“Are either of you carrying cellphones?” Dr. Handler asked. “There is some very sensitive equipment in the building, so please turn them off for the duration of your visit.” Once they’d complied, the doctor said, “If you’d be so kind as to follow me.”

Dr. Handler led them down a central hallway to a door marked RESTRICTED ACCESS, then paused. “We’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about what you will see here. It’s not necessarily classified, but it could be … well, disturbing to certain people. We’re only showing you this at the request of the lieutenant commander.”

“I understand,” Wes said.

There was an access pad on the wall beside the door. As the doctor waved his badge in front of it, the lock clicked. He pushed the door open and a wave of cool air spilled out.

“There are coats just inside,” Lieutenant Truax said.

One by one they stepped through. The room they entered wasn’t much larger than the mudroom of Wes’s aunt’s house in Wisconsin and appeared to serve a similar purpose. Hanging from pegs on the wall were several black jackets. They were separated by size. Lieutenant Truax took one down and handed it to Wes.

“It’s not that cold,” Wes said.

“It will be,” Lieutenant Truax told him as he donned his own jacket.

“We’re only using this facility because of the sensitive nature of this case,” Dr. Handler added. “I hope you can overlook the inconvenience.”

With a shrug, Wes pulled his on.

Once they were all properly attired, the doctor opened the door at the opposite side of the room. The air that came out this time was not cool, but cold.

The new room was about forty feet deep and fifty across. White cabinets lined three of the walls, while a long counter with several sinks lined the other. In the center were three large, evenly spaced tables, the two closest of which were empty. The third, however, was not.

The doctor led them to it. “This isn’t going to be pleasant.”

On top, a white sheet covered the obvious form of a body.

“Are you ready?” Lars asked Wes.

“Yeah, sure.”

The doctor pulled the sheet back just enough to reveal the body’s head and shoulders. The corpse was so severely damaged by fire it was almost impossible to imagine the person it had once been.

Bile began rising from Wes’s stomach.

“Are you okay?” Dr. Handler asked.

“I’m fine,” Wes said, attempting to sound convincing.

“This is Lieutenant Adair,” the doctor explained. “I understand you think there might be a problem with identification? I can assure you this is the lieutenant. Both DNA test and dental records have proved that.”

Wes gave his nausea a few seconds to settle, then took another look at the face, trying to spot any familiar features. But it was impossible. Anything recognizable had been obliterated by flames.

“If you knew who he was already, why did you run a DNA test?” he asked.

“Dr. Handler did the test because you questioned the man’s identity,” Lars said, annoyed.

“Okay. If you say it’s Lieutenant Adair, then I’m sure it is.”

Lars stared at his friend for a moment, then frowned. “Lieutenant Truax, could you please tell Wes why you’re here?”

“Yes, sir,” Truax said. “I was with the search-and-rescue team deployed to the crash site.”

Wes gave Truax a second look, but couldn’t remember him from the accident site. Still, there had been dozens of people running around, so the fact that the lieutenant was unfamiliar didn’t mean much.

“Lieutenant Truax was one of the men who removed the pilot’s body from the plane,” Lars said. “Isn’t that correct, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir. That’s correct.”

Lars nodded at the corpse. “And is this the body of the man you pulled out?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you know Lieutenant Adair?” Lars asked.

The lieutenant paused. “Yes, sir. I’ve met him.”

“Did you realize it was Lieutenant Adair when you recovered the body?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because someone told you who it was?”

“No, sir. I recognized him.”

“But you didn’t get there until after he’d already been burned in the fire,” Wes said. “How the hell could you have recognized him?”

“I didn’t recognize him from his face, sir. It was his scar.”

“Scar?”

Lieutenant Truax nodded. “On his arm.”

“Here,” Dr. Handler said.

He lifted the sheet and pulled an arm out from underneath. He twisted it ninety degrees, and there, in a diagonal slash across the side of the corpse’s arm, was a three-inch scar.

“Told me he got that cutting wood when he was a teenager,” the lieutenant explained. “Said a bow saw slipped.”

Dr. Handler placed the arm back under the sheet.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Lars looked at Wes. “If there’s anything else you want to ask, now is the time.”

Wes shook his head. “No. You’ve been very thorough. Thank you.”

The doctor led everyone back through the building and outside. There he first shook Wes’s hand and then Lars’s.

“I hope this helped,” the doctor said.

Lars and Wes got into the truck. Once they were back on the road, Wes said, “I don’t know. Maybe you were right. Maybe it was him who I saw.”

Lars let out a low, exasperated laugh and shook his head. “Maybe?”

“I’m saying I could have been wrong … I just … Look, if you say that was the guy who was in the cockpit, then I guess I believe you.” He didn’t know what else to say. Seeing the dead man had kind of knocked him sideways.

Lars said nothing for nearly a minute. “I want to make one more stop.”