The suburban sprawl of Washington (District of Columbia) passed beneath them, accompanied by the noise and drama of the rotors struggling to hold the Apache in the air. What with the combination of clouds, snow, wind and noise, it was not the sort of environment that Sarah Mackenzie would have preferred to spend her day. She always had the feeling that those things shouldn't have been able to fly. I mean just look at them…
Samantha Carter was busy interfacing with the civilian air traffic control and confirming clearance of her flight path, and generally trying to prevent such unnecessarily noisy things such as air disasters and other unfortunate incidents. O'Neill stared into space, lost in his own thoughts. Mackenzie was left to her own devices - and left to her own thoughts. What with her suspicion that helicopters shouldn't be able to fly, her thoughts were a dark and horrible place to visit, so we won't.
Within a mater of seconds after lift-off they hit the canopy of cloud and that was it for a while, total lack of entertainment. The world was white, and dead boring. And of course that leads to the whole question of how helicopters fly and why they shouldn't….
MacKenzie bit back on that thought.
Immediately after lift off, the chopper had turned Westward. The cloud cover broke up the further inland they flew. For a while they followed the roadways to the south-west until the traffic thinned and the houses sprawled. It was not the normal civilian flight path that they took. Domestic air traffic was constrained to avoid overflying suburban landscape, as much as the prevailing winds allowed. Voters had a terrible tendency to vote (often 'no' in resounding ticks) when things like aircraft noise intruded on their daily lives. Getting them to vote for a President couldn't be done with a presidential order, but make a noise over their heads with a sardine can full of travel weary bureaucrats and business people and watch how fast their voting finger twitches. And on that subject how can you run a country when the only people who vote are the ones who care enough to front up. Who represents the disaffected and apathetic? How can their say be heard in the annals of power? If you don't care, how can you get that message across to the representatives?
Mackenzie left the pair of them to their silences for a while, but she had to gather information. The briefing she was given before she set off had been…brief. It was time to correct that problem. She waved for O'Neill's attention. "Just what is the emergency that requires a JAG all the way out… where?" she asked.
He brought his attention back to her with a weary resignation. His indifference to her was something of a welcome change from the weight of every-man's eyes back in her office. She wasn't sure which was worse, their heavy-handed lechery, or his complete disregard. "We're on our way to Wyoming," he said laconically. "It's a secured Multi-departmental facility in the Rocky Mountains."
"Wyoming?" OK, that was a bit of a surprise. In an Apache? "That'll be a, what, a five hour flight?"
"Four, this is not your standard Apache." He began staring out to space again. His posture was dismissive, as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. She had come across that sort of attitude many times in the past. Clandestine operatives always seemed to be closed like that, they never leant how to fold back into the mainstream society. They totally lost the social graces of small talk and interaction by being focussed on silences as a way to prevent kicking in their teeth with their own foot (metaphorically speaking of course. Although O'Neill was perfectly capable of putting his foot literally in his mouth, it was part of the military combat training.) He probably thought small talk meant typing in 6 point font.
"And then?" she prompted.
Her question brought O'Neill back from whatever internal reverie he had lost himself in for the moment. "We have a civilian," he explained slowly, "an FBI agent. He is being held in alien hands. Not hostile exactly, but not friendly either. We need an advocate to – negotiate his return."
She tried to guess who that might be. China were inimical, one would never call them friendly under any circumstances. The Russians? That was a more likely possibility. Her Yugoslavia ancestry might be an advantage. She spoke Russian. The whole exercise made sense under those conditions. She thought she had a handle on what was going on. Shows her capacity for self delusion.
"Here," O'Neill said suddenly. He handed her a dossier that must have been five inches thick. "Everything you need to know is in here. Read your way through that. After you've finished, I'm at liberty to answer any questions you might have." His manner suggested that the questions had better be good ones to justify his attention.
The chopper blasted above the outer suburbs of Washington and made for the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It was a journey that was going to take them two thirds of the way across the country.
Mackenzie opened the file, flicked at a few pages at random. She noted the constant references to ultra-top secret and groaned inwardly. It looked like it was going to be everything she thought it was going to be. With a heavy heart and a loud sigh, she began the laborious task of preparing herself for what she might be required to do.