David Golemon - Primeval

"Where have you been?" he asked stepping up menacingly.

"I assume I am allowed to use nature's facilities?" she asked, raising her brows, trying to get her emotions under control. She shuffled her feet across the closest foot impression as she stepped forward.

"You will ask for escort next time."

"I think I'll pass on presenting your men with a peep show so early in the morning."

Sagli looked as if he wanted to say something, but turned on his heels instead. Lynn watched as he started shouting orders. With one look back at the path she had just taken, she wondered if something was nearby — a thing that could not possibly exist, but evidently had escaped from the annals of B-Moviedom.

Deonovich soon joined the men as they started looking around the entire camp. It was as if they were searching for something. Lynn decided she would risk a backhanded strike from the large Russian and approached him.

"What happened, you lose something?" she asked.

Deonovich turned and saw Lynn and then grimaced. He started to turn away but stopped and then looked back at her.

"You slept out by the fire last night, am I correct?"

"Yes, I figured the tent was a little restrictive for a prisoner."

"Being a smart-ass American is not as endearing as you would believe. If we did not need you, I would throw your very mutilated body into the river."

Lynn didn't respond to the angry glare and threat as much as she wanted to.

"We are missing a man. Did you see anything out of the ordinary last night?" he asked.

"You mean outside of a bunch of Russian commandos out camping in the Canadian wilderness? No, not at all."

Deonovich raised his large hand to strike Lynn and actually managed to start it forward, when a shout stayed his punishment once again. Sagli was walking up, using a leather string to tie his hair back.

"Join the men in the search." He stared at Deonovich until the large man moved angrily away.

"Ms. Simpson, we have not only lost a man, but also the signal from our metal detectors from across the river. Do you have any idea how this could be?"

"Some of your men don't look to be the brightest, so—" Lynn started but stopped. She could see in the dark eyes of Sagli that he wouldn't brook another of her insults. "No, I don't."

Suddenly, several of the remaining twenty-five men started shouting from the edge of the river. Sagli turned and quickly left. Lynn, for her part, slowly followed as if only casually interested.

When they arrived, the men had calmed down. Sagli, expecting the worse — a drowned soldier — saw what they had been shouting about and the curious look on his face told Lynn that what he was seeing was something he had not expected. Lined along the rippling shoreline of the fast-moving Stikine, were arrayed four of the small round devices she had seen the large soldier shoot across the river the day before. From the look of them, they were still operating as lights flashed on and off. She saw Sagli look around and then down again at the metal detectors. Then he turned to the small technician who quickly leaned down and retrieved one on the small objects.

"Well, do you still have a pinpoint location to start the search? We no longer need these, am I correct?"

The small bespectacled man looked up. "Yes, sir, we triangulated a starting point last night from the devices. The radia—"

Sagli waved the man into sudden silence before he could complete his answer. He looked around him at the other soldiers who had started to wander away, continuing their search for the missing guard. Satisfied they hadn't heard anything, he looked at Lynn, but she had been smart enough to turn her back on the conversation soon after hearing the technician's slipup.

"Good, now how did these get over on this side of the river?" he asked, looking from the technician to once more eye Lynn. "It doesn't matter. You men" — he shouted out—"prepare the camp; we are moving across the river."

The men started splitting up as Lynn watched them move away. Deonovich waited and then waved Sagli over to the where he was standing with one foot in the river. Lynn stood her ground and watched, and they didn't seem to care that she was there. Sagli stood in front of his partner, and then looked down when Deonovich indicated something down upon the riverbank. The ponytailed Sagli bent to one knee and then reached and felt the wet soil. Then he stood and gestured for Lynn to come over.

"Tell me, have you ever seen anything like this before? Being American, you watch far more television than I or my friend here."

Lynn looked at him curiously, and then lowered her eyes to a spot indicated by the wet boot of Deonovich. Her eyes widened in pretend shock at seeing what she was looking at.

"No, I must say I haven't."

It was only half there, as the missing part disappeared into the clear waters of the Stikine, but she could clearly see the large toes and instep of the creature that had made the same prints inside the tree line. Like the one she had examined a few minutes before, this print dwarfed the boot of the giant Deonovich as he stood beside it. Sagli quickly reached out and scraped his own smaller boot across it, destroying the evidence. The other prints farther up the shoreline hadn't been as defined as they were laid into the larger stones that made up the riverbank.

"Look around and make sure that there no more of these about; check the sandier soil, these rocks would hide anything distinctive," he said to Deonovich. He then turned to Lynn. "You will remain quiet about this discovery, or I will be forced to deal with you."

Lynn didn't respond, she only looked at the disturbed sand where the print had once been. As Sagli started to walk away, she caught up with him.

"Maybe you haven't noticed, but I may not be your only problem. It seems like there may be something out there you didn't account for on this little safari. I think they call whatever is stalking us a Sasquatch, or that little funny name most people laugh at, Bigfoot. Maybe you should have listened and accounted for some of the stories about this area."

Sagli stopped and smiled at Lynn.

"We have accounted for everything, Ms. Simpson — everything."

Mendenhall slowly made his way back to the rear of the Zodiac, stepping easily past Captain Everett as he slowed the large boat down and threw the engine into idle to ease to silence their approach around a blind corner as they entered into another bend in the Stikine. Will squeezed in beside the food packs and eyed Jack.

"Colonel, how long have you known the Canadian?" he asked, looking away when Collins looked over at him.

"Punchy and I trained together once upon a time in the UK. He was with MI-5 at the time and I was assisting our DELTA teams. We were their garnering some training from the British SAS. Old Punchy never was much of a field man," Jack said as his eyes went from Will to the large form of Alexander sitting in the bow with Henri, who seemed to have developed a strange attachment to the Canadian, because of late he hadn't been ten feet away from him. "He and Doc Ellenshaw have that in common — they don't like bugs or things that go bump in the night. But he is the best intelligence officer I have ever run across" — he again looked at the black lieutenant—"with the exception of my baby sister. His main thing is computer espionage. He can break into most intelligence agencies and steal whatever he wants."

"Anything else, Colonel? I mean I've seen it before, like with Captain Everett: There's a closeness with people who have lived and almost died together. You and Alexander have that."

Collins eyed his young lieutenant and was proud of the way Will had progressed; he was starting to develop the leadership skills that he knew he had all along. What's more, Mendenhall was becoming an observer of human nature.