David Golemon - Legend

"Director Compton would have loved to have seen this."

Sarah jumped at the sound of Carl's voice. "Jesus, don't do that," she admonished. "You scared the hell out of me." But he was right , she thought, Niles Compton, the director of the Event Group, lived for discovery like this, and he also would have loved to get it into one of the Group's vaults for further study. Sarah shook off the thought of Niles and brought her focus back to where it should have been; after all, they were here to make sure the old legends about this ship weren't true. That was the whole reason for her and Carl's infiltration of this college dig in the first place.

"We may have a dangerous situation here," Andrea said from the lower-most scaffolds.

"Danger?" Fallon asked as he looked at the ship, still giddy at proving his research right and vindicating Seito's elaborate tall tale of an ancient vessel buried in a cave.

"The junk is collapsing in on itself. If that upper deck gives way, it will crush whatever cargo this vessel was once carrying, and if your theory and old Seito's memory are correct, we could contaminate all of Okinawa."

"Before we find out, doctors, I suggest you bring the old man in here and ask him a few more questions," Carl said after he gained the top of the scaffold that looked down onto the main deck of the Chinese junk.

"He isn't authorized, Mr. Everett," Fallon said as he carefully eased his way to where Carl was standing.

"What have you got up there, Carl?" Sarah asked from below.

"The reason why Dr. Kowalski's equipment was picking up trace amounts of dried blood," Carl replied as the professor joined him.

"Good God, what in the hell is this?" Fallon exclaimed when he saw what Carl was looking at.

"Are you going to keep us in suspense up there or are you going to act like professionals?" Andrea said from the lower level.

"I think our old Lieutenant Seito needs to tell us why there are three skeletons in Japanese Army uniforms up here," Carl said flatly.

They were all amazed an hour later when the old man, along with his interpreter, both now dressed in yellow chemical suits, bowed deeply at the waist at the remains of the three skeletons on the upper scaffold.

"Who is it?" Carl asked the old soldier.

The old man straightened with the aid of the interpreter. They could hear him breathing deeply of his oxygen, almost hyperventilating. Then he began to speak in his native Japanese.

"He said," his interpreter translated, "that it is his great shame that this is Colonel Yashita and two of his army soldiers. Murdered, shot in the back by himself and Admiral Tarazawa."

"He wanted to excavate the cargo, didn't he?" Carl asked. "Yashita wanted to use it if it was still viable."

The old man understood the question without need for the interpreter and nodded. Then he said something too low for the others to hear.

"Mr. Seito says it was a traitorous act on his and the admiral's part, but that he would do it again. There had been enough death. They resealed the cave and in their report attributed the unfortunate loss of the colonel and his men in a cave-in."

The group was silent. Carl just nodded his head at the old man and Sarah patted Seito on the back.

"Where is Dr. Kowalski?" Fallon asked suddenly.

Carl looked around; Andrea was nowhere to be seen. Then he heard the sound at the same time the others did. There was noise coming from inside the ancient cargo hold.

"Goddammit!" Carl exclaimed as he quickly stepped down onto the uppermost deck. His foot immediately crashed through the rotted wood as if he had stepped on a glass floor. As he gently tried to pull his booted foot free he saw the others rushing up the old wooden scaffolding. He held up his arm quickly. "Stay back! This damned thing is coming apart, I'll—"

That was as far as Carl got, as his weight was enough to crack the rest of that section of deck. He felt weightlessness at first and then his stomach lurched up into his chest as he started to fall. There was a momentary darkness, then a bright flash of light. He felt something soft break his fall. He heard a loud grunt and then an expletive that sounded like French. Then he felt himself, and whatever it had been that broke his fall, strike the bottom of the hold.

"You clumsy oaf, you could have broken my equipment," Andrea said from beneath him. "Or me! Now get off," she ordered as she pushed at him.

As they both stood up, she silently held her light on something. The sight of it made her freeze instantly. She gestured for him not to move, by holding out her hand. Carl raised his light and in its beam he was amazed to see at least thirty large containers, yellowed with age and standing three feet in height, leaning against one another, still bound with the remains of old rotted restraining ropes used to keep them in place over seven hundred years before. The jars all had a red dragon, dimmed with age, painted on their sides.

"I'll be damned," Carl murmured under his breath.

"If whatever is in there is still viable, we all may be damned," Andrea said as she stared at thirty-two containers of a mystery weapon Chinese legend said was the Breath of the Dragon.

Two hours later, after the dig team had assisted Andrea in setting up her equipment outside of the junk's hull, they waited anxiously for her to confirm their worst fears. The grad students and Professor Fallon knew if the cargo was still an active powdered agent, they wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of examining the ancient junk.

Carl finally put all the puzzle pieces together. The previous year, a seven-hundred-year-old Chinese laboratory had been unearthed during an archeological dig outside Beijing. When it was discovered by an Event Group infiltration unit that students of Beijing University had found trace evidence of a biological facility that was hundreds of years ahead of its time, the news had shaken the virologists at the Event Group badly. Trace amounts of chemical agents had been discovered inside the remains of kilns. Rudimentary microscopes made up of eight or nine different lenses of glass, providing the magnification needed to study the spread of disease, were also unearthed at a nearby, separate excavation that was also tagged by the Group. Those two elements side by side painted a historical picture that would shake modern science to its foundations if word was let out. Then it was discovered in old marching orders uncovered by the Computer Sciences Department at the Event Group that a powdered compound had been intended to be released into the air over seven centuries earlier by Kublai Khan's invading force. The findings were passed up the chain of command until the president gave reluctant permission for the Fallon dig to include Carl and Sarah for reasons of national security, after they found out that Dr. Fallon had discovered the site through an alternate means while researching survivor records in Shanghai that told of a mysterious shipwreck on the island of Okinawa.

Still in her chemical suit, Andrea set up a small worktable inside the cargo hold of the Chinese vessel. Carl strung some makeshift lighting inside and stood by as the doctor made her analysis. Carl was the only member of the dig team she allowed inside, and only then because he was already there. Thus far she had carefully used a special drill to penetrate the beeswax and porcelain. Without extracting the drill she carefully slid a rubber collar down the drill bit and made it secure to the outer wax sealant, then withdrew the drill bit from the container and rubber gasket. As she freed the tool she quickly capped the rubber gasket with a rubber stopper, then she took a deep breath and sat back. From the supplies she had assembled on her small table, she pulled out a small vile of a clear chemical and shook it up until it turned amber in color. She then placed the very tip of the probe into it.