David Golemon - Legend

Jack couldn't shake the image of the young woman they had pulled from the river. When she had put on those clothes, she had never figured she would die in them. Just as he was sure Sarah would never have thought the same when she had put on her own similar clothing this morning.

Jack watched the water and the stillness of the shoreline in front of him. He touched the holstered nine-millimeter at his side. Of all the places in his career he had been assigned, this was the one that unnerved him the most. Was it the absence of direct sunlight? The cries of creatures that remained hidden in the vast canopy of giant trees? Jack knew himself never to be a man of premonition, yet he sensed beyond a doubt that men were never meant to be in this place.

As he turned to leave, motion on the riverbank caught his eye. He stood still and didn't turn to look, but used his peripheral vision to see. Standing back of the thick shrubbery that lined the bank, several small Indians stood and watched Teacher as she maintained her position in the middle of the river. The only sound he noticed was the almost silent hum of the vessel's thrusters as they fought to maintain their hold on the current. The noises of the rain forest had disappeared and silence filled the late afternoon. The faces of the Indians stood out palely in stark contrast to the darkness surrounding them. That was when Jack decided to let them know he was aware. He turned and held up a hand, but the gesture went unseen, as the Indians had vanished into the brush. As he stood there feeling silly, the cries of birds and even the scream of a large cat rushed to fill the air as sound returned around him.

Several people were outside of the medical lab in section six waiting on the word from Dr. Waltrip. Heidi and Virginia had been drafted by the good doctor as her morgue assistants. Jack sat with Sarah, Danielle, Carl, Keating, and Dr. Nathan, who were all anxious to find out the results of the medical examination of the two corpses. Their conversation was muted.

Jack had not said anything about seeing the Indians along the riverbank, as he felt the information wasn't helpful to anyone. The discovery of the Sincaro's deity had already been the topic of conversation for almost a day and a half. One thing Jack did do was order not only sidearms to be issued to the military personnel, but two shotguns per watch. He had nothing against the little tribe of river natives, but until they found out about the reasons behind the disappearance, why take chances? He had a gut feeling that the people he saw weren't behind those two deaths; they seemed only curious. From prior discussions with Group historians, the professionals who had studied the legends, he had learned that the small people had every right to be at least suspicious of any strangers along their river.

The door opened and Virginia came out first. She was pale and seemed rattled as she asked for some coffee. Allison Waltrip came out, next pulling off her gloves and then placing them in a plastic bag. Then she held out the bag for Virginia to put hers in, and she complied with a shake of her head. Then she took her coffee from Danielle, who also offered a cup to Dr. Waltrip. The surgeon accepted it with a nod.

"Jack, we have to get those bodies into the ground," said Dr. Waltrip. "We don't have the facilities to store them here." She turned.

"Lieutenant Commander Everett, navy man, right?" she asked.

"Yes," Carl answered.

"This man," she held out a plastic specimen bag, "he was in the navy also, Kennedy, Kyle, M. A lieutenant."

"Doesn't ring a bell," Carl said as he took the plastic bag from Waltrip and examined the dog tags.

"He has a small seal juggling a beach ball tattooed on his right forearm."

Carl rolled up his sleeve. "Look like this?" he asked, showing his own SEAL tattoo.

"Exactly, except his had a four underneath, not a six," Dr. Waltrip said.

"SEAL team four, San Diego based; they are an excellent and well-trained assault force. But I've never heard of a Kennedy, and I know most of that team."

"Major, Virginia is aware of what your file contains and she said I can ask you, I understand you were in black operations and had trained for all kinds of—" she paused and looked at Virginia.

"Broken Arrow," Virginia answered.

"Yes, Broken Arrow scenarios, trained to deal with them, that sort of thing?"

Jack looked uncomfortable talking about it with so many in earshot, especially Danielle. "That's right, I am qualified to disarm or… why?" Jack only hoped everyone didn't know the term "Broken Arrow" was one used by the military for designating a lost nuclear weapon.

"Can you identify this?" Dr. Waltrip held out a second plastic bag. "It was clenched so tight in the lieutenant's right hand I had to pry it loose."

Jack took the bag and looked it over, glancing Carl's way once because he felt his eyes on him.

"M-2678 tactical warhead key," he said barely loud enough for anyone to hear.

"Jesus, Jack, what did those idiots bring with them?" Carl asked.

"I can't even venture to guess why they thought they needed a tactical nuke out here," Jack answered as the section grew silent.

"Just another mystery to add to our growing list," Dr. Waltrip said. "The girl was no older than nineteen. As I said out there, she died as a result of a possible self-inflicted gunshot to the left temple. There are gunpowder burns around the wound and powder particles embedded in her left hand, indication she was holding the gun that killed her. It was a nine-millimeter round." She handed another specimen bag to Jack.

"Could be military, but who knows."

Dr. Waltrip nodded her head. "Anyway, the bottoms of her feet were quite cut up, as if she had been running on a rough surface, and in her wounds on her feet I found this." She held up a small jar; inside were several cotton swabs. She held it up to the light and they all saw the glimmer. "Gold, I would say, found in her wounds, her hair, her clothes, her nostrils, and lungs. These samples represent a swab from almost every area of her body."

There were no questions, no talking. Carl handed the dog tags back to the surgeon.

"I'll place these in the ship's safe," she said. "Now, as I said, we need to bury these bodies very soon; they're deteriorating fast."

"The wounds, Doctor, the marks on the diver?" Jack asked.

"I was saving the best for last, Major," she said. "Virginia, show them the scale, please."

Virginia reached into her lab coat and pulled out a plastic case. She passed it to Jack.

"Without running a complete DNA sequencing, which Heidi is performing right now, I can't tell you much. It is a scale from a freshwater species, but according to every data bank we have, it belongs to nothing in the waters of the world. We don't even have a prehistoric record of a fossil's ever having scales like that. Look at the deep age ridges that run the length of the scale. I thought they would serve no purpose other than to show age, like the rings on a tree or the squares on a tortoise shell. But when I examined it, I found that scale to be almost impenetrable. I used a scalpel and couldn't cut it. The follicle that had attached the scale to its host is almost human. The minute sample of blood from that follicle is just like ours, I even typed it at O negative." She held up a hand when they all started protesting at once. "I don't have answers, people, none at all. Everything we have come across only raises more questions than we have answers for. It was Virginia who came up with something that makes me want to warn the major to take an armed team ashore when you bury the bodies — show them."

Virginia took the plastic case from Jack and held it up to the light. It, too, sparkled with gold.

"As you can see, it's covered, just like the girl, in gold particles, better known as gold dust. We examined both the gold from the scale and the girl, and found it to have been processed gold. Not gold in its natural state; it had already been heated and smelted. The electron microscope verified it," she said, still holding the scale to the light. "These particles came from bars or ingots, leftovers maybe from the molds that were used. But the scale—" she hesitated.