She left before Rodney had a chance to ask any embarrassing questions. Hurrying down the corridor, Elizabeth allowed herself a few moments of feeling thoroughly guilty. She’d played McKay, played on his fears and vanities, in a way she generally reserved for obstreperous diplomats and emissaries from oppressive regimes. But she’d had no other choice. If she had the gene, she’d fly the Jumper herself… and probably knock a hole in the Jumper bay while she was at it, she admitted with a grin.
Then it occurred to her that Rodney might not do much better. John had refused to give him any further flying lessons.
Chapter 25
The property looked pricey even in a neighborhood packed with upscale real estate. About two hundred yards back from the road, it sat amid ancient cedars on a perfectly manicured lawn. The driveway was lined with flowerbeds, though what was growing in them was anybody’s guess. The sodium orange from the streetlights turned colors into varying shades of brown.
The image was transmitted by a fiber optic camera mounted to the helmet of one of the SWAT team members. Picture quality was grainy, due to the low light, but it was enough to make out two, three, four man-shaped shadows ghosting from tree to tree, swiftly and silently. The tactical van was parked two blocks away, so as not to alert anyone potentially surveilling the house, and the men had approached through the neighboring properties. They were converging on the front door, but there would be others at the back, covering French doors leading out onto a deck. There was no fencing, and the bad guys, if they were there, had plenty of escape routes. The SWAT team was hoping to block them all.
In front, the first two shadows slipped into the entry porch, a graceful open structure of cedar beams and shake. One of them signaled back, and the camera suddenly started moving, bouncing and bobbing the image as the mike picked up gentle footfalls, harsh breathing.
It looked like any cop show on TV, Cassie thought. But of course it wasn’t. Pulling the blanket tighter around her, she kept watching.
“It’ll be a soft entry,” Sam explained to no one in particular.
They all huddled around her laptop, which was linked, via satellite, into the tac van’s video suite. Local time in Vancouver was just after eleven at night, and the SWAT team had moved into position, ready to go.
The house had gone dark around half past nine— a bizarre time, really, especially on the weekend. Cassie would be getting ready to go out. But Mrs. Webber was in her late sixties, and the children were very young, so that probably explained it. Still…
“We need the code for the alarm system,” said a forever calm, disembodied voice from the laptop’s speaker. They’d heard it before. It belonged to the guy who was coordinating the entire operation from the van.
Michael started, as if he’d been miles away— probably had been, too, right in that house, with his wife and grandkids. “Zero-four-eleven,” he said, sounding shaky. “The keypad is at eyelevel, left of the door. You’ve got fifteen seconds.”
“Gotcha,” Mr. Calm came back, repeated the number for the team, and then barked, “Go, go, go!” Suddenly not so calm anymore.
One of the shadows on the porch pulled out a lock pick, started working on the door. It took less than ten seconds, then the lock popped. The shadow pushed the door in, only about four inches, far enough to see and snake his arm through. And swore.
“Panel’s dark. The system’s already been disabled.” It was a whisper, roughened further by static. “I say again, alarm is disabled. We may have intruders in the house.”
Michael gave a strangled, terrible sound; the sob of a man too afraid to even breathe.
On the screen, the shadows slid into a large, lofty entrance hall. Right in front of them, a wide wooden staircase swooped to the second floor. Guns at their cheeks, they sighted up, left, right. Then they were moving again, so smoothly you’d think they ran on casters. Two slipped into a den to the right, another and the guy with the camera into the living room on the left. No noise, no whispers at all now, only hand signals.
Clear.
The ghost choreography of search and cover continued.
Dining room. Kitchen. Sun room.
Clear. Clear. Clear.
“Be advised,” Mr. Calm came back. “There’s a basement access behind the staircase on the right.”
The answer consisted of four electronic double-beeps as each of the men tapped his earpiece twice in acknowledgement. More hand signals, then two split off around the stairs and toward the basement door. It gaped an inch or so. One man plastered himself to the wall beside the door. The other used the barrel of his gun to nudge the gap wider onto solid black.
Solid black, until a white and orange starburst rent the darkness. The gunshot report exploded from the speaker, thunderously loud at first, then the audio controls responded, dousing the volume. The SWAT team’s return fire, aimed at where the muzzle flash had bloomed, came as dull pops, overlaid by sudden excited radio chatter.
“Shots fired. Repeat, shots fired!”
“Chan, Madsen, secure the second floor. Now! Pull out lady and the kids.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Rosetti, Garner, Gomez, go, go, go!”
“French doors are down. We’re in the house. Hang in there!”
Under all the commotion, and much closer, shivered a string of murmurs from Michael, praying or swearing, Cassie couldn’t tell.
Jack placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be alright,” he said, voice soft and utterly confident. “These guys know exactly what they’re doing. They’re good. Believe me, I can tell.”
The reply was a deep, shuddering breath, and Michael seemed to relax a little. The murmurs continued, though. He was praying alright, and perhaps he didn’t even notice it.
The camera image was bobbing again, harder, faster, racing up the stairs. Two steps from the top it yanked to a dead halt. Up on the gallery above the entrance hall stood an elderly woman, tiny, trim, ice gray hair clipped short. She was wearing an outsize T-shirt and, incongruously, a pair of hiking boots, untied, and right this moment she was pointing a double-barrel shotgun at the camera guy.
Michael gave a yelp that was stuck somewhere between tears and laughter. “Jenny!”
“Get the hell out of my house!” she hollered.
“Go, Jenny!” That was Daniel, and he definitely was chuckling.
The voice of the camera guy sounded very loud and impossibly young. “Police, ma’am! Put down the gun!”
She didn’t move.
“Put down the gun, ma’am, please. You have intruders in the house. We’re here to help.”
Squinting in the gloom of the streetlight filtering in through tall windows above the front door, Mrs. Webber seemed to study him. Then she must have recognized the lettering on the man’s bulletproof vest. You couldn’t really miss it; it said SWAT, six inches high. Very slowly, very carefully, she snapped on the safety, lowered the gun.
By some weird coincidence the gunfire popping from the basement stopped that same moment.
“My grandchildren are here, too. In the guest bedroom,” she said, pointing at a door further down the gallery.
“We’re aware of that, ma’am. We’ll get them.”
With that he handed her off to a couple of the reinforcements who’d come in the back way. The third, a woman, pushed past him and headed for the bedroom Mrs. Webber had indicated. Entry was a repeat of the routine down at the basement access. Minus the gunshots. The door swung open onto a dark room, shuttered windows and deep silence. Until that was broken by the tiniest of whimpers and a not quite so tiny “Shh!”
A moment later the beam of a flashlight sliced across carpet and up and across a queen-size bed, empty except for the rumpled covers. The finger of light wandered down the side of the bed, caught on something furry sticking out from underneath.
Bunny, the toy rabbit, was a dead giveaway.
The SWAT members must have felt the same; from the speaker came a couple of chuckles, amusement
shot through with a good dose of relief. Then the woman flopped down on her belly, peered under the bed.
“Hey there,” she said. “My name’s Jenny, like your nana. I’m with the police. You can come out now. It’s safe.”
“I want to see your badge,” demanded a very small voice from under the bed and triggered more chuckling.
“Sure thing.” The policewoman fumbled for her badge, held it so the children could see it, shone the beam of the flashlight on it. “See that?”
“Uhuh. Okay.”
Two tousled heads peered out from under the bed, dark curls framing curious and slightly apprehensive faces. Eyes wide, they took in the police in their SWAT gear and finally crawled all the way out. A boy and a girl, four and five years old or thereabouts, in flannel pajamas.
The girl grabbed her brother’s hand. “I’m Hannah,” she said politely and, with a nod at the boy, “That’s Jacob. He was scared. Did you shoot the bad guys?”
Now there was all-out laughter. Even Michael joined in, face wet with tears.
Tugging at her blanket again, Cassie slipped away, back to her seat. It was over and, mercifully, nobody had gotten hurt. This time.
She slanted a glance at Jack, who just then was wearing one of those truly happy smiles that were so rare for him, and she still couldn’t believe it. She’d felt him die, or slide close enough to death that it almost didn’t matter anymore, and it had left a cold core of terror inside of her. The safest thing to do, she thought, for the rest of her life, was to let it freeze her and, frozen, do precisely nothing.
But doing nothing had caused this. If she’d admitted what was happening to her instead of refusing to accept it, she’d have been safely stashed away at the SGC or Area 51 and Michael wouldn’t have had to put his family at risk. Nobody would have been put at risk…
Jack caught her gaze, and the smile dimmed. Extricating himself from the mini-party going on around the laptop, he strolled aft, dropped into the seat next to her. Said nothing. A flash of Janet’s office at the Air Force hospital, years ago, Cassie having barricaded herself. And he’d come. He’d come, walked into that office, quietly slid down the wall until he sat on the floor next to where she was huddling. That alone had made her feel safe. It didn’t work quite as well now. Guilt would do that.
“Why?” The question just popped from her mouth, though she couldn’t recall having given permission.
“Why what?” Long legs comfortably stretched out, crossed at the ankles.
“Why are you even talking to me?” she said savagely. “I should be the last person you want to be around.”
“Why?” He waited a beat and relented. “I don’t know how many ways to tell you. It was an accident. It was dark. You had no idea what was coming down the pike. No way of guessing it would be me traipsing round the corner like some green recruit. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me, Cass. ’sides, no harm, no foul. I’m in one piece, aren’t I?”
“No thanks to me!” She refused to look at him, studying the blanket instead. Off-white and fraying at the corners. “If Amara hadn’t been there—”
“See, if generally is how people survive. Shit happens. But good stuff does, too. We just can’t control which one’s gonna hit at any given moment.” Fingers picking at the edges of that nasty, blood-encrusted hole in his shirt. “Did you know I damn near shot Teal’c’s ear off once?”
“You’re kidding!”
“Ask Teal’c. Nicked him, actually. With a little less luck I’d have taken his head off. And it would have been my fault, because I freaked.”
She gave a soft snort. “Yeah, right. I can see that. Jack O’Neill, freaking.” But maybe, just maybe, it was true, even if she couldn’t imagine it.
“Oh, you bet I did,” he said. “Carter had to patch up Teal’c. I was useless.” He slid a glance at her. “Unlike you. Neat trick, by the way. Of course I’m not entirely objective, because you helped save my life. Who taught you?”
“Amara.” Who really had been the one to save him. But Cassie had helped, hadn’t she? The thought made her feel better in ways she couldn’t begin to describe. Some of that horrible weight seemed to slip off her shoulders, and she smiled a little. “We had a lot of time on our hands in that cave. She showed me how to direct some of it.”
“Some of it?”
“The stuff I could do back when I was sick. Hey, check this!”
Her shoes and socks were lying on the floor. Cassie stared at one of the socks. Focusing hard, until she could almost feel the roughness of knit worn bobbly, she willed it to lift from the floor. The sock obliged, circled the shoes and its colleague a couple of times and gracefully settled back.
“Sweet.”
“Kinda,” she agreed. “I’m starting to get a handle on it. But it’ll take a lot more work to really be able to use it.”
“You’ll have help now,” he said. “Beats going it alone.”
“Could be.” She felt that smile dilate into a grin.
He draped an arm around her shoulders. “So… we good?”
“Oh yeah,” Cassie said on a small, contented sigh. “We’re good.”
Chapter 26
Richard Woolsey peered down from his annoying height like a constipated giraffe. The man had been a thorn in General Hammond’s and Jack O’Neill’s respective sides, and Hank Landry was rapidly beginning to see why. Though both his predecessors had conceded that, when pushed hard enough, Woolsey would reveal a streak of integrity that was nothing short of miraculous in a bureaucrat. This might be true, but Landry wasn’t about to put it to the test. Not now, at any rate. The quicker he got the giraffe out of his hair, the better.
He caught himself actually wanting to run a hand through his thick brush of hair to dislodge bits of giraffe and curbed the impulse at the last moment. Instead he started moving around Woolsey who was currently blocking his way down the corridor. “Let’s take this to my office, shall we?”
For one thing, the office allowed for privacy; Landry would be damned if he went on engaging in a pissing contest while every passing airman could listen in. In addition, the office sported chairs, and this would bring the giraffe down to human size, thus robbing him of the minor (albeit niggling) psychological advantage he was trying to exploit.
Without waiting for a yeah or nay, Landry headed down the hall, counting cross-corridors to make sure he didn’t take a wrong turn. The layout of this rabbit warren still managed to confound him at times, and this was not a good moment to accidentally end up in the ladies’ washroom again. GPS would be mighty useful, except it didn’t work down here.
Thankfully he’d counted correctly. A right turn brought him into a corridor which looked vaguely familiar in that it was gray and had several doors leading off of it. The sign next to door number three still said Brig. Gen. J. O’Neill, but right now that was the least of Landry’s problems. Acknowledging a childish bout of relief, he sailed into the office and around a desk piled with paperwork, flung himself into his chair, and waited for the larger problem to close the door behind him and take a seat.
The problem obliged.
“Now, let’s continue,” Woolsey said with a scowl at the sign on Landry’s desk, which read the same as the one outside the door and obviously sparked a shiny new line of inquiry. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know where General O’Neill is?”
“No idea,” replied Landry, and technically it wasn’t a lie. According to Jack’s last communiqué, Jack, his former team, Dr. Fraiser’s adoptive daughter, a draft dodger, and a mystery guest were headed in from some Greek island or other in a civilian business jet and had requested permission to land at Petersen AFB. Which Landry had duly obtained. As for their exact location at this moment— well, he had no idea.
“If you say so.”
“I do.” He bit back a smirk and added, “What makes you think I’d know? Jack’s the IOA’s problem now, isn’t he?”
“In every conceivable sense of the word.” Woolsey, bereft of the peerin
g-down option, leveled a sorrowful gaze directly at Landry and changed the subject. “To reiterate my point, I have to insist that you countermand your previous order and request that Daedalus return to Earth at best possible speed.”
It was difficult to tell what irked Woolsey more; Landry’s refusal to be intimidated, or his outrageous display of independent judgment in ordering Daedalus to ignore Dr. Weir’s orders and hold position within the Pegasus Galaxy to render assistance to the Atlantis expedition in case they needed it. Either way, the answer would remain the same. “Out of the question.”
“General, may I remind you that the IOA will be instrumental in confirming your current appointment?”
“Which would be what in your opinion? Glorified janitor?” Landry struggled to control his temper. The son of a bitch had the gall to try and threaten him. “And if I don’t ask ‘How high?’ when you say ‘Jump!’ what are you going to do? Take away my mop and bucket?”
“No need to engage in cheap polemics, General. Suffice it to say, your pay class is considerably higher than that of a janitor. However, I find it deeply worrying to have to point out that this kind of remuneration is coupled with certain responsibilities. Those include not playing fast and loose with Earth’s most valuable strategic asset, not to mention doing it without seeking the approval of the IOA first. Which, obviously, would not have been forthcoming in the first place.”
“Do these responsibilities also include simply writing off a couple hundred people because the going gets tough?”
“That may be an understatement,” Woolsey said coolly. “By your own admission, you haven’t been able to establish contact with Atlantis for the past two days. In other words, you have no idea of what’s going on, if the city has come under attack, if the expedition members are still alive even. But you insist on keeping Daedalus in limbo— and that’s putting an extremely favorable slant on it. Suppose there has been a Wraith attack? Suppose the Wraith have, even now, engaged Daedalus?”
STARGATE SG-1: Transitions Page 19