After checking on Lieutenant Meyers and making sure he was sleeping comfortably, Abby yawned and headed for Daniel's room, planning on spending a few hours with him while Janet got some rest. Abby had been taking over the evening shift a little after midnight, making Janet get a good meal and some sleep while she kept an eye on the infirmary's two patients. After two nights, it was settling into a routine, though tonight she was running an hour or two early. Janet had been up and dealing with Meyers' burns that morning, and Abby knew she had to be exhausted.

At this point there should only be eight people in the infirmary, unless Colonel O'Neill had disobeyed her orders and was still sitting with Daniel and Janet. There was Janet and herself, their two patients, three nurses and the security guard on Daniel's room…

But as she headed down the hallway towards room 4, she realized the guard wasn't outside the door like he was supposed to be...

Silently cursing to herself, she moved quickly and quietly down the hall, easing up beside the door and reached for the knob. The very fact that it was closed wasn't a good sign. They usually left it open, drawing the curtain as needed when certain procedures required privacy for their patient.

Her training kicking in and grateful the hall was dimly lit for the evening, Abby turned the knob to open the door. She eased it back slowly, just enough to see the bed inside and ascertain just what the situation was.

She caught sight of the guard standing at Daniel's bedside, drawing something from a vial with a needle and syringe.

Abby didn't hesitate a moment more, slamming open the door with a crash and slapping the alarm button on the wall as she charged across the room at the guard. Startled, he dropped the half empty vial and needle onto the bed and reached for his gun as he turned to face her…

Abby ducked, keeping her body as small a target as possible as the first bullet went wild, hitting the concrete wall. Before he got the second shot off, Abby came in low and hard, hitting him at waist level, her shoulder slamming into his lower abdomen the way Jack had taught her to take someone down. He went down hard against the wall, both of them stumbling into several pieces of equipment as they fell. Her hands scrambled for the gun, trying to pin his arms up and over his head while keeping him from getting off another shot. The last thing they needed was for a stray bullet to hit either Daniel or Janet.

The guard struggled, doing his damnedest to hold onto the gun. He pushed against her body, trying to throw her off of him, but slamming into the wall had knocked the wind half out of him, giving her the upper hand. Still, he kicked at her, yanking his foot free of an entangling cord as he attempted to knock her off her feet to get control again

Abby wedged her shoulder against his chest to hold him against the wall while her fingers dug into the tendons of his wrist. She ignored the guard's punches, concentrating more on getting him to drop the gun. His arm came up to hit her, over extending past her head, giving her enough time to solidly land her elbow hard into his the bridge of his nose, cracking it nicely

At the sound of bone cracking, the man went limp, slumping to the floor as she got the gun out of his loosening fingers at last. Sinking down to her knees, she reached out to feel the unconscious man's throat. She sighed in relief when she found his pulse was strong and steady, then sighed again as she realized that help had arrived during the fight.

"Have a good workout?" O'Neill asked, taking the gun from her before helping her up and steadying her as she wavered for a moment, then recovered her mental 'footing'. "You did what you had to do to protect Daniel and Janet, don't feel guilty about hurting him, Abby."

Abby shook her head, her voice a bit shaky as she replied. "I'm glad I was just able to knock him out. Is Janet all right?" she asked, heading for the bed where Daniel lay as she realized the room was much to quiet. The monitors had all been turned off, and she set about turning them on again so she could be sure he was all right. She found the needle and bottle and quickly set them aside to analyze later when she had more time.

"She's knocked out, but okay, she'll probably have a nasty headache when she wakes up," Jacob quickly assured them both, carefully easing Janet down so she was lying flat on the floor. "Where are the nurses?"

"No idea, probably either knocked out as well or locked in somewhere off in one of the rooms," O'Neill stated as Abby flipped on the heart monitor again. It immediately began to beep in alarm, and Abby cursed, heading swiftly for the nearby crash cart for medication and equipment. "Abby?"

"Damn it, Jack, go find those nurses, he's having another heart attack," she shouted at him, going to work to keep her patient alive.

O'Neill bolted out of the door, even as the monitor tone changed to an all too familiar squeal…

Flat lined…

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"Carlson, Heasley, Morgan, pull your gear out of the stack and take it back to barracks 4," Colonel Roland ordered, his voice harsh with anger, but he had his orders and he would follow them. So did the General, though the man was arguing those orders even now. "When you're done there, report to General Arrington in his office. Seems someone at the Pentagon likes you boys, and you're being transferred to an in-state base in Colorado instead of going to Iraq with the rest of the men." His sneer of contempt made it clear that he was definitely not in favor of the move, and that he didn't think much of them for somehow getting themselves off the front line.

The three men looked at each other in confusion, not sure what in the world was going on, but they moved to follow his orders, finding their bags and pulling them out of the gathered stacks with the help of some of their equally confused comrades. Others, however, weren't so laid back about this. "Wait a minute," one of them asked with an angry glare. "You mean they're not going out to fight like the rest of us? Why the hell not? What makes them so special?"

"They got skills that are needed elsewhere, skills none of the rest of you have or you might be going too," Ferretti stated calmly, coming through the men with a few taps on ankles with his cane to move the growing crowd out of his way. He knew he needed to get them out of there before things got ugly, Roland obviously wasn't going to do anything to defuse the situation. "You three, get a move on. And just to warn you boys, you're not getting out of going into war, you're just going into a different branch of it. One that's a hell of a lot more dangerous some times than what the rest of these troops are going to be facing. Now, move!"

They obeyed, putting their gear inside the barracks' door before following Ferretti to the General's office, all of them wondering what was going down and in the middle of the night, no less. Glancing at his watch, John Heasley noted that it was just after midnight. Everyone should have been heading in to crash in their bunks until boarding the waiting plane in the morning.

"Sir, what's going on?" Morgan questioned as they headed for the General's office. "Why aren't we going to be shipping out with the rest of the guys?"

Ferretti looked around, then replied so quietly that only the three men with him could hear him. "Like I said, you three have skills that are needed elsewhere, doing things that you've trained for, but that the military just isn't used to utilizing. You'll be going places that you've never even dreamed of going, and I wasn't kidding when I said it was more dangerous. It is, I was in on that war for nearly five years before this leg injury took me out of action. Now I do training, looking for the special guys that will best help the program. Out of all the troops on the base, you three are it."

"Top secret work?" Carlson asked, curious. He was a demolitions expert, skilled in working with different materials for making and disarming bombs and explosives of all types. "I take it the Colonel doesn't know where we're going to be going? He seems rather put out about us not going with the others."

"Oh, he knows you're going to Cheyenne Mountain, but not what you're going to be doing there. And he and the General, just to warn you, are both irked that I know what's going on, but they don't," Ferretti admitted.

"The General doesn't even know?" Heasley exclaimed. "It's that secret?"

"Yep," Ferretti admitted, limping along at an amazingly fast rate. "The guys who work there have the same security level as the President and the Joint Chiefs. General Arrington doesn't have that level of clearance, and probably never will, he's let this situation get his nose to out of joint. Now, be quiet when we get in there, I still got to get you guys out of here. They aren't happy to be losing you in the war abroad, and they're definitely not happy with me for bringing you to General Hammond's attention."

"General Hammond? I haven't heard of him," Morgan stated.

"Not surprising, he's Air Force, not Marines. Major General George Hammond, to be exact, CO of the lower Cheyenne Mountain complex. And yes, there's both an upper and lower complex there. Believe me, the lower area is a lot more interesting than the Air and Space monitoring center in upper Cheyenne."

"NORAD?" Heasley commented. "I thought that's all that was there? Along with an old missile silo most people don't even know exist."

"Yes, and that old missile silo is what's really interesting about that mountain," Ferretti told them as they went up the steps to the General's office and into the reception area. They were waved through to the main office where Brigadier General David Arrington was just slamming down his telephone in frustration.

Looking up as the four men came to attention and saluted him, Arrington's glare immediately came to rest on Ferretti. "Give me one damn, good reason why I shouldn't have you court marshaled for disobeying my orders, Lieutenant Colonel Ferretti," he demanded, his voice angry.

Ferretti leaned on his cane, facing the older man down with the confidence of someone who knew they were firmly in right, and had the backing to prove it. "I was obeying the orders of a superior officer, General. I have standing orders from the Joint Chiefs concerning finding personnel for my prior base of operations. This transfer to Iraq was a last minute announcement and even if I hadn't run into Major General Hammond and told him about these three directly, their files would still have been on General Ryan's desk on Monday, sir," Ferretti informed him. "I sent their names on to my contact in the Pentagon before heading for the airport earlier this evening. Talking to the General simply expedited things and saved the military the necessity of tracking the men down and shipping them back to the states."

The general glared at him even harder. "You disobeyed my orders and interfered with my personnel, Colonel. You and your wife had best start packing, I'm planning on seeing to it you're out of here as soon as humanly possible. I will not put up with your disloyalty to me any longer," he thundered, then calmed himself, speaking in a lower tone. "Unless you would like to explain to me exactly where these men are going and why…"

"Sir, I am under orders from the President himself not to speak of my prior posting," Ferretti told him, not shifting an inch in his stance. Any sign of weakness, he knew, and Arrington would verbally tear him apart.

Arrington's voice got even softer, almost cajoling in nature. "Come, come, Colonel, I won't tell if you don't. And isn't it fair to give these gentlemen some idea of what you're getting them into?"

Ferretti gave him a humorless smile; he was between the proverbial rock and a hard place, and knew it, but he also knew that rock didn't have a chance in hell of hitting him. "Giving out that information, General, would result in my being executed for high treason without benefit of a court martial or trial," he told them all. "Not even my wife knows what I did at that posting, only that it was dangerous, and resulted in my having my ultra high security clearance. My apologies, sir, but you simply don't have a clearance high enough for me to tell you anything about that posting."

Arrington's eyes became even stormier as his anger grew. "Very well, Lieutenant Colonel, you're hereby relieved of your command responsibilities. Take these three with you, gather their things and return to your home until their transport arrives to take them in the morning. When they leave, so do you. If you can't, or won't, follow my orders, I don't want you on my base. Your wife can remain until the Joint Chiefs decide your new posting, I've already informed them that I don't want you here any longer. Until then, keep these three with you, and away from the other personnel. As far as I'm concerned, they're deserters. Dismissed!"

The three young men looked stunned, but Ferretti had been half suspecting something like this was bound to happen. He snapped off a proper salute to the man, then turned and herded the other three out the door.

Once outside, Heasley recovered his voice. "Sir, can he really call us deserters?" he asked, concerned. That was not something he wanted on his records, and it wasn't their fault they'd been singled out.

"No, he can't. You three are simply following orders from higher up in the chain of command, same as I am. He's just not used to having someone else of lower rank tell him he can't know about something. Don't worry about me, I've been expecting something like this to happen for some time now. I'll be fine, and you'll be off to your new posting tomorrow. Now, let's grab your gear before someone has the time to decide to do something creative with it, and you three can crash in my living room for the night. My wife loves to show off her cooking so you'll get a good breakfast in the morning before you leave."

Stopping by the barracks, they picked up their bags, then went on to the Colonel's house, one of a long line of single-family officer's homes on the outskirts of the base. All three of them watched, curiously, as Ferretti climbed the four steps to the front porch, grasping the rail and take each step one at a time. "Colonel, if you don't mind us asking, what exactly happened to your leg?" Morgan questioned.

"I got shot in the back of the calf, burned off about half the muscles and wiped out some of the tendons. I'm lucky I can walk at all, believe me. I'll let you boys have a look see in the morning so you have some idea what can happen to you. And believe me, what happened to me will be the least of your worries out in the field."

"Fate worse than death?" Heasley asked, half joking, half serious.

Ferretti's look was deadly serious as he turned and looked them over, holding the screen door open for them to go in. "Oh, yeah. Believe me, there's definitely things that can happen out there that make dying look good. But you'll find that out later when you go through disclosure. At that point, you'll be given the option of getting out of the transfer if you really want to. I'm hoping you all don't, they need you out there."

Once inside, he turned on the lights so they could see their way in the comfortably furnished home. "Go ahead and relax for the rest of the night, I don't expect anyone to show up for you boys too early in the morning, so you can get some real rest," he told them, heading to get them some blankets and pillows from the hall closet. They all had sleeping bags in their gear, and were used to sleeping on rocky ground, so the flat, carpeted floor would be fairly comfortable for them. Finally he left them to get some sleep and think about what little he'd told them.

All of them had a very, very restless night.

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'Ring…'

Rolling over and three quarters asleep, Carter reached for her cell phone, flipping it open and answering it without thought. "Carter," she murmured, looking at the clock. Who would be calling her at four am?

"Carter, it's O'Neill," came the reply, and his somber tone brought her to immediate wakefulness. "There will be a plane ready to bring you back to the Springs in one hour, and you should probably bring Sarah with you."

"Sir, what's wrong?" Carter asked, alarm growing as she took in the tone of his voice. "What's happened?"

"There was an assassin inside the SGC," he told her, his voice definitely showing signs of stress now. "It was one of the security guards that we had put on Daniel, and he was able to knock out Janet. Abby took him down, but not before he had triggered another heart attack. Your dad was here, and he and the doc tried their best, but…"

Carter felt her throat close up as what he was saying sunk in. "Sir?" she questioned, wanting to be sure she understood.

"You need to come back right away, Sam. Daniel's dead…"

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Well, here's the second half of chapter 5 which has now become chapter 6. Hope you all enjoy, just remember that if you kill me, I can't finish the story...