The Bourne Deception - By Robert Ludlum & Eric van Lustbader Page 0,29
one wing, bent in half like a green twig.
Notice the number of fuselage sections, Chalthoum said, as he watched the American task force deploy. He pointed as they moved around the periphery of the site. See here, and here. Its also clear that the plane broke up in midair, not on impact, which, considering the composition of the ground, caused minimal further damage.
So the plane looks more or less the way it did directly after the explosion.
Chalthoum nodded. Thats correct.
Say what you wanted about him, when it came to his trade he was a first-rate practitioner. The trouble was that too often his trade included methods of interrogation and torture that would make even those running Abu Ghraib sick to their stomachs.
The destruction is terrible, he said.
He wasnt kidding. Soraya watched as the forensics team put on plastic suits, slipped shoe coverings on. Kylie, the explosives-sniffing golden Lab, went in first with her handler. Then the task force split in two, the first group heading into the burned-out interior of the plane while the second began its examination of the ripped-open edges in an attempt to determine whether the explosion had been internal or external. Among this latter group was Delia Trane, a friend of Sorayas and an explosives expert from ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Though Delia was only thirty-four, her abilities were such that she was often on loan to various federal law enforcement agencies desperate for her expertise.
Dogged by Chalthoum, Soraya headed into the circle of death, skirting bits of metal so black and twisted it was impossible to determine what they had once been. Fist-size globs that looked like hail on closer inspection turned out to be plastic parts that had melted down in the fiery conflagration. When she came to a human head, she stopped and crouched down. Almost all the hair and most of the flesh had been scorched to ash, which pocked the partially revealed skull like gooseflesh.
Just beyond, a blackened forearm rose at an angle from the sand, the hand above it like a beckoning flag signifying a land where death ruled absolutely. Soraya was sweating, and not just from the brutal heat. She took a swig of water from a plastic bottle Chalthoum gave her, then proceeded on. Just before the yawning mouth of the fuselage, a team member handed her and Chalthoum plastic suits and shoe coverings that, despite the heat, they put on.
After her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she took off her sunglasses, peered around. The seat rows were canted at a ninety-degree angle; the floor was where the left bulkhead would have been when the jetliner was right-side up and everyone inside had been alive, chatting, laughing, holding hands, or foolishly arguing until the final moment before oblivion. Bodies lay everywhere, some still in their seats, others thrown clear on impact. The explosion had completely disintegrated another section of the aircraft and those in it.
She noticed that wherever a member of the American team went, he or she was shadowed by one of Amuns people. It would have been comical if it werent so sinister. Her companion was clearly determined that the forensics team would not make a move, including relieving themselves in the dizzying heat and fetid stench of the portable latrines, without him knowing about it immediately.
The lack of humidity works in your favor, of course, Chalthoum said, slowing the decomposition of those bodies not incinerated beyond recognition.
That will be a blessing to their families.
Naturally so. But really, lets not mince words, you havent given much thought to either the passengers or their families. Youre here to find out what happened to the aircraft: mechanical malfunction or an act of extremist terrorism.
He still had the utterly un-Egyptian knack of cutting directly to the quick. The country was a bureaucratic nightmare; nothing got done, not a single answer was forthcoming until at least fifteen people in seven different divisions were consulted and agreed on it. Soraya debated only a moment as to how to answer. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise.
Chalthoum nodded. Yes, because the world wants to know, needs to know. But my question to you is this: What then?
A typically astute query, she thought. I dont know. What happens then is not up to me.
She spotted Delia, signaled to her. Her friend nodded, picked her way through the debris and hunched-over workers, with their bright task lamps, to where she and Chalthoum stood just inside the roasting gloom.