Page 51 of Identity Unknown
“Except it appears Sal was the one paying somebody possibly in twenty-dollar bills delivered in a briefcase,” Benton replies.
CHAPTER 19
Completing the orbit with the x-ray machine, I roll it out of the way. I begin describing the extensive skeletal damage Sal suffered due to blunt force trauma when he hit the ground.
“His right radial and ulnar shaft are fractured, as is the right temporal bone of his skull,” I’m saying. “His right shoulder is dislocated, his hips and pelvis shattered. I’m seeing broken ribs and burst vertebrae, all of it consistent with an abrupt vertical deceleration. Or more specifically in this case, the victim being jettisoned out of some type of flying craft.”
“From how far up, do you think?” NASA Langley asks.
“I’ve examined victims of falls and jumps from high-rises, bridges, water towers, when a skydiver’s parachute fails. They look similar to this, the injuries profound and almost never survivable if the landing is on a hard surface, as it was in this case.” I begin cutting open the plastic body pouches along the sealed seams. “But it’s not possible to know for certain the altitude except that it was a significant drop.”
“Based on the vortex of flattened grass and flower petals, and the height of the trees around the clearing.” Lucy’s voice fills my hood. “I’d estimate the UAP was at least fifty feet off the ground,maybe a hundred. Not much more than that or the propulsion system’s downwash wouldn’t have caused what I saw at the scene.”
“How big was this vortex you’re describing?” the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) asks her.
“Approximately eighty feet in diameter. We have photos and exact measurements taken before the storm. From the air it looked like a pink halo around him.”
“Possibly the result of a coronal discharge from a high-voltage energy source that ionized the air,” the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency considers.
“The technology is definitely out there but not mainstream.” Space Force’s General Gunner means it’s secret.
“What I can say for a fact is the vortex was caused by something rotating clockwise extremely fast,” Lucy informs us. “It created enough turbulence to strip the nearby apple trees of their blossoms. And when Tron and I first got there we noticed a sort of vinegary odor.”
“Strange,” Bella says. “I wonder what that could have been.”
“It didn’t make any sense,” Tron replies.
“Was this pink halo radioactive?” AARO inquires. “Did anybody check?”
“We used a Geiger counter on the body and immediate area,” I reply. “Nothing unusual was detected.”
“But it had been raining like a mother by the time we got there,” Marino adds.
“That shouldn’t have made a significant difference,” DARPA answers.
“What I’m seeing fits with him having received his injuries early morning, possibly around the time the UAP showed upon radar,” I explain as Marino and I slide the opened pouches out from under the body. “Once he hit the bricks, he wasn’t moving after that. But he survived for a while.”
“Let me make sure this is clear,” General Gunner says to me. “He landed on the Yellow Brick Road in the middle of an apple orchard.”
“Inside the Haunted Forest. Yes.”
“It sure feels like someone giving him the finger,” he says. “Or maybe giving the finger to all of us.”
“How long isa while?” Bella asks as Marino loudly stuffs bloody plastic into the biohazard trash.
“Several hours, explaining the profound tissue response to his injuries,” I reply. “The longer he had a blood pressure, the worse he was going to look.”
“And there’s no question he was alive when he fell from the sky?” It’s Benton asking.
“He definitely was.”
“That’s important,” he says.
“A totally different scenario,” Gus adds. “Are we absolutely sure of this before you’ve done the autopsy? It’s critical because it speaks to intention.”
“I don’t need an autopsy to know that he was alive for an interval after hitting the ground,” I tell them.
“Stripping someone naked, throwing the person overboard while alive changes the emotionality of the act,” Benton says. “The goal becomes terror. Not only the victim’s but anyone who knows what was done, and we’ve seen this before.”