Carefully, almost like he feared an incautious movement might cause it to explode, General Hammond set the phone handset down into its cradle. All of his sources had come up empty. Nothing, nada, zip. No one had heard anything about Carter. If she'd been kidnapped by any covert agency or foreign power, the operation had been remarkably leak-free.
Hammond supposed it was possible that a lone crazy had done the job, rather than a nice, predictable black ops group. The idea that Samantha Carter might simply be another serial killer statistic shook him, but it was a possibility that had to be considered.
He couldn't get the image of her lying dead in a ditch out of his mind.
Chewing the inside of his cheek, he forced himself up and away from his desk, and headed out of his office. Once in the hallway, he stopped, wondering where he might find SG-1. It would be a simple matter to just have them paged—that was what intercoms were for, after all—but he really felt the need to move around, to walk off some of his fears and frustrations.
After pacing through what seemed like half of Cheyenne Mountain, checking all of SG-1's usual haunts, he finally ran them to ground in the commissary. Nursing cups of coffee and half-eaten sandwiches, the three men were seated at a table in the corner, managing to isolate themselves from the rest of the personnel milling around in their quest for something halfway edible. Hammond went over to the table and sat down next to Teal'c.
The trio stared at him, their initial hopeful expressions changing to disappointment when they got a good look at his face.
O'Neill opened his mouth first. "No news, I take it?"
"Nothing. Yet," Hammond replied.
"No news is better than bad news," Jackson put in. "Right?"
"Maybe." Hammond didn't feel the need to share his lone psycho theory just yet. He'd wait for the police report before going that far.
"Will your police be able to locate Major Carter?" Teal'c asked, a little too pointedly for Hammond's taste.
"I don't know. Maybe. There was no sign of a struggle at her house, nothing to indicate she was taken by force. We've got other people hunting for her, besides the police. It's a big deal when someone like Major Carter just disappears into thin air like this. It raises all kinds of red flags."
"Because of her specialized knowledge?" Teal'c hazarded.
"Because of her *classified* specialized knowledge, Teal'c," O'Neill corrected with more than his usual cynicism.
"Either way, gentlemen," Hammond said, "she will be found." One way or another, dead or alive, were the words left unspoken, but then, they didn't need to be said. The faces around the table already looked glum enough.
"Sir," O'Neill said, "is there anything we can do, any way to help at all? I know how these *special* searches go, but maybe we can—"
"There's nothing any of you can do. You know that, Jack," Hammond told him, a little sadly. "I wish to God there were. All I can suggest is that you put your minds to thinking of anything you can about her personal habits and routines. Anything at all to give the police and our people a starting point—some kind of clue as to what might have happened to her."
"So, other than that, for now we just wait for something to break."
"I'm afraid so, son."
"I'm not real good at waiting, General."
Hammond scrubbed his face with his hands. "Jack," he said slowly, carefully, "if you can think of anything else to do... If you have any contacts of your own left from the bad old days..."
O'Neill tapped his mug thoughtfully. "There are one or two people I might call. Whether they'll want to talk to me or not is kind of an open question, though."
"I can imagine." Hammond chuckled a little, thinking of all the ways O'Neill might've managed to piss off the spooks over the years. Then he sobered. He knew from personal experience that pissed-off spooks could be less than cooperative. "Jack, I won't tell you no." At the way O'Neill's eyes lit, the general felt compelled to add, "Just don't do anything to mess up our own people, all right?"
"Yes, sir!"
Daniel and Teal'c watched longingly as O'Neill strode away. Daniel turned to Hammond and asked, "What about us, General?"
"You got any useful contacts?" he asked, already knowing the answer. When Daniel shrugged dispiritedly, Hammond added with sympathy, "Like I said, jot down anything you can remember about Major Carter's routines. You never know what might help."