Carrier Context :
Unique Projects

  The Ampato Maiden

Even so, the team modified the existing PTACs by adding a larger cooling coil, a larger Carrier-Daewoo rotary compressor and a unique coil defrosting method to remove built-up ice. The Controls group also programmed a set of computer-based controls originally meant for a much larger commercial air conditioning system — kind of like putting satellite navigation and radar on your canoe.

But if the sophisticated controls and attention of up to 50 people seem like overkill, they are not. For a piece of equipment that looks like a high-class convenience store ice cream freezer, the stakes are much higher.

The "Ampato Maiden" was escorted to the Arequipa airport in an armed military convoy. She was flown to Lima in a Peruvian Air Force plane accompanied only by Dr. Chavez and Dr. Hilda Augusta Vidal Vidal, a representative of Peruvian Institute of National Culture.

When Bullock, Ferguson and Stopyra followed a few hours later, the military was waiting for them. Only they were allowed to open the box and replenish it with dry ice in preparation for the flights to Miami and Washington, D.C. When they were escorted to the small Air Force conference room where the mummy had spent the night, Steve Stopyra let out a barely audible whistle — the Carrier-made box was being guarded by military policemen carrying sub-machine-guns with fixed bayonets.

"This is serious!" Stopyra said under his breath to Ferguson. "These guys mean business."

It is serious because the "Ampato Maiden" is now generally regarded as the best-preserved specimen of a pre-Columbian human in existence. The "Ice Man" discovered in the Tyrolean alps along the Austrian-Italian border two years ago was older, but he also was desiccated — his internal organs, flesh and skin had been dried over the centuries. But the "Ampato Maiden," with the exception of her face and neck, is whole. Her organs and body's fluids are intact. In fact, when she finally reached Washington, D.C. she was taken to Johns Hopkins University Medical Center for a series of C.T. scans that were then translated into moving three-dimensional images. Among other things, the sophisticated x-rays confirmed she had died from a violent blow to the head.

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