Rain drummed against the reinforced roof of Coach #404 like buckshot.
Inside the mobile surgical bay rigged in the rear of the Gillig Phantom bus, Dr. Victor Corvo adjusted the twin brass thumbscrews of his Carl Zeiss jeweler’s loupes. The sharp optical lenses magnified the rain-streaked window glass by eight diameters.
On the stainless-steel autopsy tray beside him lay his forensic instruments. He had arrayed his Form ME-19 brass toe-tags, his silver-nitrate scalpel handles, and his 1996 Certified Brass Counterbalance Weight.
Every tool was calibrated to municipal safety standards established thirty years ago.
“The engine block is running at two hundred and ten degrees, Doctor,” Mac Cole said from the driver’s platform. “The salt spray coming off the slipway is eating through the radiator fins.”
“Keep the coolant circulating, Mac,” Corvo said quietly. “If this coach loses hydraulic pressure, we lose the mobile surgical perimeter.”
“Ain’t planning on stalling, Doc,” Mac muttered, checking his air gauges. “We got three hundred gallons of municipal diesel in the saddle tanks. But the harbor tide is rising two inches every twenty minutes.”
Two feet outside the armored door, three human beings stood completely motionless in four inches of harbor water.
