Chapter 4 – Too Little, Too Late
Trans-Atlantic flights sucked. Jack didn't like spending that much time in an airplane that he wasn't flying. He was glad when the plane finally landed at Weisbaden. He'd expected to be met when he arrived because Hammond had let them know he was coming, but when he saw the rank of the officer who was waiting for him, he raised an eyebrow. A light colonel . . . it seemed a little out of keeping, and the man had a very serious look on his face that worried Jack.
He walked up. "Lt. Colonel Davidek, sir," he said, snapping a salute. "Welcome to Weisbaden Air Force Base. I've been asked to escort you to your quarters and brief you on the current situation."
Jack tilted his head. "Current situation?" he asked.
Davidek glanced around and said, "We need to get you to your quarters, sir."
Jack nodded and followed the other man to a jeep. Tossing his stuff in the back, he climbed in. The visiting officers quarters hadn't changed much since his last visit, but the room he was taken to was a step above the usual. Davidek followed him in and shut the door. Once Jack had dropped his stuff, he gestured for the other man to sit down. "You said something about a briefing?"
"Yes sir," Davidek said. "Colonel Sumner and his team are on their way here now, but there has been a slight difficulty."
"A difficulty?"
"According to what we've been told, Dr. Jackson has somehow escaped. They're looking for him, but they haven't found him yet."
Jack stared for a long moment, then told himself to stop grinding his teeth. It wasn't good for him, and it tended to scare people. "Escaped?" he repeated. "They say he escaped?"
"Yes sir," Davidek said soberly. "I must say, it sounded a little fishy based on the information they gave us regarding his injuries, but you know the man better than I do."
Jack shook his head. "I know him pretty well, and I don't see Daniel escaping alone, particularly not in a situation like this one, where he couldn't gain much by being on his own."
Davidek sighed. "That's what General Gehrig thought, and given that he's a civilian consultant, and not really trained in combat or tactics, I doubt he'd manage it in any case." He grimaced, crossing his arms. "It does leave us in an awkward position, though."
"Awkward?" Jack tilted his head, keeping his expression calm. "How so?"
"Well, I'm not sure what we can realistically do if they Russians say they haven't got him. We can't exactly just walk in and start searching for him ourselves."
"Watch me," Jack muttered. There would be some awkward positions, all right. Most people found broken heads very awkward.
"Sir?"
"I am not about to stand by and let anyone get away with that kind of bullshit," Jack said frankly.
Davidek's eyes widened. "Sir, I know General Gehrig will want to minimize negative incidents. The situation will have to be resolved diplomatically."
Jack gazed levelly at the other officer. "You've got that half right, Davidek," he said, clearly alarming his companion by both his tone and his expression. "The situation will have to be resolved, period. If they really don't know where Daniel is, then they will have some help looking for him. If they do know where he is . . ." He shook his head. "Has General Hammond been informed of the situation?"
"We only found out ourselves in the last twenty minutes," Davidek said. "I believe that General Gehrig was putting a call through to the president when I left. I presume General Hammond will be informed soon, if he hasn't been already."
"Good to hear it." Jack imagined Hammond's reaction and was glad he wasn't the bearer of the news.
"The plane is due to land at 0900 hours. I'll send someone to bring you to the airfield when it arrives."
"Thank you." The phone rang and Jack looked over at it.
"I'll see you in a few hours, sir."
Jack picked up the phone as Davidek closed the door. "O'Neill," he said.
"Jack, this is General Hammond."
"I was expecting you, sir," Jack said.
"Have you been told about Dr. Jackson's 'escape'?"
"Yes, sir, that cock and bull story has reached me."
"I want you to talk to SG-8 the minute they land and find out what really happened. Until we know that, we're not in a good position to put pressure on the Russian government. The president is livid."
"He's not alone in that, sir," Jack said, glaring at the wall.
"No, he's not." Hammond's tone vibrated with understated anger. He fell silent for a moment. "As soon as you have the straight story, I want you to call me."
"Of course, general."
"Because of the sensitive nature of this operation, I'm sending Lt. Colonel Feretti and SG-3. That way they'll be on the ground and ready to help you with the search if necessary. General Gehrig will assign additional men as needed. The president is determined to retrieve Dr. Jackson, so all that remains now is to determine what sort extraction we're planning."
"Yes sir." Jack put down the phone, very glad that, for once, they had the government backing them up. That happened all too rarely.
Not that he'd have acted any differently without that backing. Having it just made things infinitely easier.
A racketing clatter woke Daniel out of a sound sleep. He sat up straight as four masked men in black clothes swarmed into the room. Two of them pointed automatic rifles at him while the others dragged him out of bed.
"What's going on?" he demanded, then started to repeat the question in Russian for good measure, but before he finished, the man on his left cuffed him.
"Silence!" he snapped, and Daniel grit his teeth. They forced him to his knees and wrenched his arms up behind him.
"Stop it!" he growled, trying his level best to get free. "Let go of me! What's going on? Where are you taking me now?" He kept demanding answers until they gagged him again, and he didn't stop struggling as they took him down the spiral stairs and out of that narrow room on the third floor.
It didn't seem like they were taking him out of the building, and he wondered what the goal was. As they marched him through hallway after hallway, he tried to identify possible escape routes. It was a bit difficult as they still appeared to be on the third floor, and there were no open halls, just doorways. He identified a couple of different architectural styles, indicating that the fortress had been through more than one renovation.
The walk was probably no more than five or ten minutes, but it seemed like hours to Daniel. They entered a Victorian hall and went down a grand flight of stairs. Once they were on the second floor, his guards walked him up to a pair of dark wooden doors. One of them removed his gag while another one knocked, and Daniel wondered what was on the other side. He didn't ask, though, figuring he'd probably find out soon enough. He heard a whirring and looked up and to his right to see a camera angling to catch a better view of them. After a few seconds, there was a clicking sound, and the guard who'd knocked pushed the door open. Daniel tried yet again to break free, for all the good it did him. Even if he got loose, there were four guys ready to grab him again, and his hands were bound. The door shut behind him with the audible click of the latch re-engaging.
The men on either side of Daniel ushered him inside. It was a library. The scents of dust and paper and leather bindings mingled together in an unmistakable aroma that Daniel would have recognized if he'd been blindfolded. As it was, he was treated to the sight of a library out of a librarian's dream. Three stories of book shelves wrapped around three walls, with a large open space in the middle. It was incredible. Stacks stretched away to his left on three floors, and there was a complicated pulley system designed to allow large piles of books to be manually cranked from one level to another.
He knew one or two librarians who might view it as a nightmare, though, he reflected. Some of them seemed to prefer the sterile variety of library, more interested in the organization of books in neatly codified rows than in the books themselves. A librarian who liked books for their own sake would be enthralled by –
His thoughts took a sharp turn to the present when his captors stopped him sharply before a woman at a handsomely carved desk of gleaming, inlaid mahogany. Dark blond hair was pulled in simple wings away from her face. Brown eyes graced a face of high-cheekboned perfection. She looked like she belonged in an illustration for a northern European fairy tale, though the comfortable cardigan and button front shirt would be jarring in such an environment.
"Sit down, Dr. Jackson," she said in lightly accented English.
Daniel squared his shoulders. "I'd just as soon stand, thanks," he said.
An eyebrow rose and she tilted her head. "As it happens, that was not a request, it was an order." His guards – or hers really, he supposed – forced him down into a chair facing the desk, wrenching his shoulders as they pressed his bound arms against its back. "You will recognize a request by the presence of the word 'please.'"
Daniel glared at her, but didn't respond.
"If I happen to issue a request, feel free to refuse it if you like, but you might give some consideration to the possible consequences of such a refusal."
"I'm really not sure what you mean by consequences," Daniel said.
She raised an eyebrow at the guard standing to Daniel's right. The man suddenly hauled back and punched Daniel in the gut. His breath whooshed out, and he gasped, trying to pull air into his lungs. Having been on the receiving end of that kind of attention from someone who actually wanted to do damage to him in the past, Daniel recognized this for a warning.
Without waiting for him to regain control of his breathing, she began to speak again. "You have the potential to be a very useful man, Dr. Jackson, but my superiors are somewhat short-sighted. In order to make a small gain the short term, they are willing to trade away what could be a considerably larger gain over time."
Finally able to breathe, if shallowly, Daniel raise an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"In return for a fairly minor concession from your government, my superiors are willing to return you to your homeland."
Daniel blinked. "You're holding me for ransom?"
"In the crudest possible terms, yes."
"What's the long term gain you think they're giving up?" he asked curiously.
"I think we should keep you, and make you work for us."
Since that was a little closer to what he had been expecting, he shrugged. "Maybe your superiors see the futility in attempting that."
She raised her chin. "Perhaps that is their view," she said. "However, given your government's tiresome tendency to move on a geological timeline, I expect you'll be in my care for some time." Daniel found her evident relish of that fact less than reassuring. "And in the meantime, it strikes me that you might as well be achieving something."
Daniel took a deep breath and gazed at her thoughtfully. "So you want me to work for you." She nodded. "Make translations for you." She nodded again, beginning to smile. "Interpret cultural artifacts, analyze historical references, that sort of thing."
"Yes," she replied, looking smug. He'd thought initially that she was roughly his age, but something about her expression, her attitude, suddenly struck him as very young. Either she was very young or she was extremely unrealistic in her expectations. "So, you will?" she asked with a self-satisfied smile.
He tilted his head at her. "Uh . . . no," he said slowly. "Sorry, you're out of luck."
Her eyes widened, snapping with fury, and he stared at her without changing expression. She rose and walked around the desk, stopping in front of him. "You will do as I say."
Daniel smiled tightly. "No, I don't think so."
She reached forward suddenly and seized hold of his thigh where the burn was. He let out an involuntary cry of pain and tried to pull away from her without success. Then he kicked out, caught his foot around her ankles and pulled. Only by lurching forward did she avoid slamming her head against the edge of the desk. She landed in his lap, and he stood up suddenly, sending her to the floor.
Two of the guards slammed him back down in the chair, and a third helped her to her feet. "Take him away," she ordered. "And give him something to think about."
Daniel grimaced as the yanked him back up again and made the return journey. Great, he was being held prisoner by a moron. No one with a brain would have brought that twit into something like this.
Whose girlfriend was she?
Jack stood on the airfield arms crossed. The plane was two hours late. Weather. Bullshit. He stared at the plane as it taxied to a stop in front of them. General Gehrig and Lt. Colonel Davidek were on either side of him. Gehrig seemed to be baffled by the apparent importance of Dr. Daniel Jackson. The president had made it clear to him that retrieving the civilian linguist was of paramount importance, but neither Gehrig nor Davidek had sufficient clearance to be given the details of the stargate program.
How they were supposed to realistically help plan and execute an extraction from a facility that included a stargate without that information was beyond Jack, but then many of the decisions of the upper levels of the government made no sense to him.
"Well, maybe we'll get some truth, now," Gehrig yelled over the plane's engine.
"Sir, I'm going to have to debrief them in private," Jack yelled back.
Gehrig nodded, looking resigned. "Well, at least you'll get the truth, and we can go forward from there."
"The doctor is here!" shouted Davidek, but the engine noise cut out in the middle of his words, and he flushed.
"Good," Gehrig replied and Jack turned to see a medical team approaching. They would be ready to receive Lt. Colfax, which was a relief.
The steps of the plane were let down and the first person down them was a Russian lieutenant, followed closely by two Russian medicos with a stretcher between them. Jack moved forward and Lt. Colfax's eyes widened when she saw him. "Colonel O'Neill?" she exclaimed. "I didn't expect –" She broke off, looking pained, and he shook his head. Before he could tell her not to talk, she gave him a small grin. "Right, Dr. Jackson." Puzzlement entered her eyes. "I don't really understand what happened there."
"Don't worry about it, lieutenant," Jack said, looking up. Sumner was talking quietly to Lt. Jones at the base of the steps.
Nodding, the young black woman walked forward and looked down at Colfax. "I think we've got an appointment with a hospital bed," she said.
Colfax nodded. "It's a good thing it's just a stab wound," she said. "I wouldn't want anyone but Dr. Fraiser to treat a staff blast this serious."
"Hush," Jones said. Colfax blinked and nodded, looking mildly alarmed, and then the two women moved off with the medical team.
Jack turned to Sumner, who was greeting General Gehrig. "Thank you, sir," Sumner said. "Lt. Harvester also needs medical attention. He has a burn on his right arm that needs looked at."
"Davidek, take Lt. Harvester to the infirmary," Gehrig said.
"Sir, I'd rather stay and take part in the debriefing," Harvester said.
Sumner shook his head. "You need medical attention. I'm not altogether certain I trust our former hosts." He gazed dourly at the Russian colonel who was standing nearby. "This is Colonel Stanislav. He and I have . . ." Pausing, the American colonel glanced at General Gehrig. "We have similar jobs, Colonel O'Neill."
Jack looked darkly over at Colonel Stanislav. "I see."
"Well, Colonel Stanislav," Gehrig said. "Welcome to Weisbaden. May I offer you lunch?"
Stanislav nodded. "I would be very grateful."
As they walked away, Jack glanced at Sumner and Myers. "Come with me," he said. "I've got a room set aside for a meeting."
"Sir," Captain Myers said, not looking at his commanding officer, "Colonel Sumner needs medical attention as well."
"I'm fine, captain," Sumner said firmly. Jack raised an eyebrow. "As soon as we're done with the debriefing, I will go to the infirmary, but I think you need as much information as is available about Dr. Jackson as soon as possible."
Jack nodded. "This way," he said. They followed him. It wasn't easy to read Colonel Sumner, but Captain Myers was a good deal more somber than usual. They were obviously not happy with the situation. They reached the room Jack had reserved and he shut the door behind them. "Okay, gentlemen, we've been informed that Daniel escaped. Somehow that seems very unlikely, so why don't you tell me what really happened?"
The story they told him had Jack's blood boiling. Deceit piled on lies heaped around a mass of stinky bullshit. Jack didn't generally define escape as 'four guys came in and dragged him out of the room while he fought back and tried to get away.'
"They claimed repeatedly that this Metzov character didn't exist," Sumner said. "Even after Harvester and Myers saw him. I don't know if Stanislav believes the nonsense he spews. He certainly seems to."
"I don't much care," Myers said. "I really didn't like having those bastards march on in there and fight Dave and me to a standstill and just take Daniel."
"But it sounds like they want Daniel for his brain, so they won't do anything too bad to him," Jack said, hoping it was true.
"They won't do anything that would scramble his brain," Sumner said. "Unfortunately, there's a hell of a lot you can do to a man that won't scramble his brain."
"Don't I know it," Jack said grimly. "Well, we've got SG-2 on the way, and we're not letting this go. The president's backing us all the way."
"I want to be part of the team retrieving Jackson," Sumner said. "He was my responsibility."
"If the doctors clear you and Hammond agrees, I've got no problem with it," Jack said. "I'd like to have as much SGC personnel in on this as possible, since the brass doesn't want to share too many details of our work with the locals."
"I'm eager to help, too, sir," Captain Myers said.
Jack nodded. "Glad to hear it. Is there anything else I need to know?"
The two men exchanged looks and shook their heads. "The only people they singled out at any point were Colonel Sumner and Dr. Jackson."
"Right." Jack shook his head. He'd like to have asked why it was always Daniel, but unfortunately, he already knew. Just like he already knew how Daniel would react to a situation like this. He could only hope that they valued the mind enough to keep the body relatively undamaged.
Daniel had expected the guards to take him back to his room. They certainly headed through the halls in the right direction, but they stopped before they reached the narrow room with the stairs up to the tower and went into another room that had an oddly medical feel to it. The walls were white, there were counters and cabinets like ones found in a doctor's office, a sink, a poster delineating human anatomy. There was also something that strongly resembled an examination table.
Most of the examination tables Daniel had seen in doctors' offices didn't have vinyl cuffs attached to them, though.
He didn't ask what the place was or what he was doing there. That seemed a pointless question under the circumstances. The answer seemed pretty self-evident. They were going to 'give him something to think about.' He'd find out what methods they were going to use sooner than he wanted to anyway, even without asking.
To his surprise they didn't put him on the table. There were a couple of stretches of wall that didn't have cabinets either above or below. Above one of them, a pair of chains hung down with padded leather cuffs at the ends of them. They marched him over to that wall and stood him facing it, then they unbound him and removed the pajama shirt as well as his watch before attaching his wrists to the cuffs that were hanging down.
Behind him he could hear cabinets opening. He really didn't think he liked where this was going, but asking about it still seemed pretty pointless.
Footsteps approached behind him, and he closed his eyes, stiffening slightly. He felt a movement of air and then something hit his back with bruising force. He didn't think it was a whip, it was shorter and heavier, but the effect was the same. It snapped around and stung on the side of his ribcage. He jerked forward, letting out a grunt of pain.
"Odin," said a male voice to his left, not the man who was flogging him. One, Daniel thought. Another blow landed. "Dva." Two. On they went. One blow would fall, sending pain through his body, and then, before he could adjust to it, another one would fall. He tried to pull away from the chains even though he knew it would be useless, and grit his teeth to keep from crying out. As the blows kept coming in a steady rhythm, though, it grew more and more difficult to keep himself silent. Finally, the man on his left called, "Devyat . . . desyat." Nine . . . ten. The blows stopped.
Daniel was shaking, and he knew they hadn't hit him as hard as they could. For one thing, they hadn't broken the skin.
Someone released his hands and, taking advantage of the fact that he was unbound and knowing that they wouldn't expect him to be up to much of anything, he turned and swung at the nearest one. He landed one blow before they grabbed him again and bound his hands behind his back. It was incredibly painful, and they weren't remotely gentle with him.
One of them turned him around and grabbed his chin. "This was but the mildest of warnings. We can do much worse. You would do well to obey and be compliant."
Daniel glared. "You're probably right," he said.
"Good," the man replied, seeming satisfied. Grabbing Daniel's arm, he yanked him forward. "Let us get you back to your room so you can get some sleep before you start work tomorrow."
Daniel shook his head. "I said you're probably right that I should do as I'm told," he said. "I didn't say I was going to."
After a brief pause while the other man assimilated what Daniel had said, he looked at one of the men behind Daniel and nodded sharply. A hard slap on his back sent Daniel stumbling forward with a curse as pain blossomed. The man in front of him moved aside and he lost his footing. Without his hands to help his balance, he wound up flat on his face.
He rolled onto his side and was trying to get himself up again when someone grabbed his upper arm and dragged him back to his feet. "Do you think this is a game?" he demanded, swinging Daniel around to face him. Glaring at him, Daniel didn't reply. "Because I assure you, we are in deadly earnest."
"I believe you," Daniel said, grimacing.
"Then do not think to defy us, or Lizaveta."
Daniel shook his head. "Let me sleep on it," he said, hoping that would get him taken back to his room. He wasn't about to change his mind, but he didn't want this to continue.
The man holding him gazed angrily into his eyes for a moment longer, then shoved him backwards. Two of the others caught him by the arms and dragged him out of the room, not letting him get his footing. The trip was mercifully short. They took the cuffs off his wrists and thrust him into his room with a calculated shove between the shoulder blades that sent him to his knees. He sat there for several minutes, his back one solid mass of aching misery, his sides stinging from the tail ends of the blows whipping around him, and his leg burning.
Much as he didn't like them, he had to admit that these guys were good at what they did. His back would be black and blue tomorrow, and probably green and yellow the day after, but they hadn't broken the skin at all, nor any bones. Furthermore, none of it would show on a cursory inspection. Still, he was in an enormous amount of pain. They had indeed given him something to think about, but he doubted that Lizaveta would like the direction his thoughts were taking. There was no way he was going to help someone like her achieve anything. If they hoped to get something from the American government, they weren't going to kill him, and if they lost that hope, they'd kill him either way, so he wasn't going to give in. The games they were playing just annoyed him.
He pulled himself to his feet and walked over to the bed. The night was chill and they had not returned his shirt. The covers were still pulled back and rumpled from his sudden exit from them, so he crawled back in, lying on his stomach, needless to say.
He hoped the others were okay. He'd gotten the impression that something was moving in the process of returning them to where they belonged. It would certainly explain the seizure of him. If the Russian government had arranged to return SG-8 and their borrowed archeologist, it would narrow the opportunity these folks had to grab him severely.
If they were lucky, his disappearance hadn't delayed anything.
Why him, though? If they genuinely believed that he wouldn't help them, as the twit had suggested, why him? Wouldn't any one of them have done the job? Why would they assume that the only civilian on the team was the best choice for a ransom demand? Most of the soldiers seemed to view the civilian members of the Stargate Command as hangers-on, dead weight, to be ignored until they were needed. Why would another group of soldiers think that grabbing a civilian would benefit them?
Eventually, he fell into a fitful sleep. Every time he moved, though, the pain in his back awakened him. By the time the sun rose, illuminating the room, he was still exhausted, but the light rendered sleep impossible. Since he had nothing better to do, he remained in bed, hoping that his weariness would grant him sleep.