Chapter 2
Colorado Springs
9 September 1995
"Have a good flight, sir."
The attendant nodded at his cobbled ID and handed it back to him. He nodded back briskly and made his way down the aisle of the plane, chucking his carry-on baggage in the overhead storage bin. The flight was merely half-full and he appreciated the lack of passengers near him.
In the end, it wasn't very difficult to pack a duffel bag and catch the next commercial flight to Colorado Springs, not knowing when he'd return – or if he ever would. Jack O'Neill was no fool; such operations fell outside the authority of the military and guaranteed him no security should any such mission fail. The high stakes involved in such activities and the fear of leaving his then-family bereft had been excellent motivating factors for him to succeed where others had fallen; now, he wasn't yet sure what he lived for.
Not since his son had shot himself with his own service weapon, not since his wife had walked out barely a month later, leaving an empty house filled with ghosts of the past whose malevolent whispers haunted him day and night.
He'd taken it as he thought a soldier should, even if had pushed him to breaking point. But somehow he still lived – existed, really. His lungs took in air on their own and his heart still beat out a tattoo against his ribs…and for that he felt wretchedly guilty, thinking that he had no right to outlive his dead son. In those months, swamped with suicidal thoughts, he could only remember spending drunken nights passed out anywhere in the house, torturing himself with imaginary situations in which he had somehow prevented his son from dying.
If only he had stowed it away… if only he had left it at the base… if only he had not been outside… if only he had -
If litany of regret.
Stop! You're fucked, O'Neill, fucked beyond belief.
He still missed the both of them every goddamned second, but he was left without any shadow of a doubt that the marriage was unsalvageable. If the birth of Charlie had strengthened the ties between them, his sudden death had also left a chasm in their relationship too wide to bridge.
Sara had wanted – no, needed – to talk. She had needed the comfort of a husband, had needed to grieve together. All she got however, was an emotionally stunted man who drowned his sorrows in hard liquor all day in Charlie's room.
She had been ready to deal with her grief and had asked for couples' therapy. He had resolutely refused. She had begged and pleaded with him, exonerating him of his growing guilt on numerous occasions. Instead, he had clung to it like a death sentence on his own head.
He didn't do talking, didn't think that he would – could – ever do so when his own heart had a hole in it. All that he felt and wanted to say would rise up his chest and die in his throat. He had made no sound when she had wept furiously and had turned to stone when she had paced the house in misery.
But for every night in the first week since she had walked out, Jack had found himself turning at the slightest sound, expecting her to be there, a chastising, indulgent smile for his efforts in trying to lead Charlie astray. Every time he had driven past a school, he thought he heard the excited cries of his son as the boy chattered a million miles a minute after a particularly good day in his classes.
Somewhere along the two-week mark, after the shock had worn off, he decided that penance would mean taking the gun that killed Charlie O'Neill and pointing it at his own head then pulling the trigger. It would be an apt-enough action – as twisted as it sounded – to pay for his own irresponsibility and alleviate the unrelenting guilt that scored his insides. After all, he knew the many ways to kill with a single gunshot; it was something he did often in his black-ops missions to declared enemies of the United States.
He's sat on Charlie's bed for hours, holding the gun in his hands and forcing himself to relive the happy memories that they had shared as a family.
Sara had never once tried to talk to him.
But somehow, that plan to blow a hole in his head never did materialise. He had put down the gun, left the room, grabbed a bottle of whiskey and crashed on the couch, but not before puking his guts out in the toilet while his wife finally thought to seek refuge with her own father a few hundred miles away in another state.
He hadn't bothered to stop her.
What he thought was once a rock-solid marriage was over sooner than he'd expected. And then he was both thankful and bitter that he was alone once more because it gave him time to brood and consequently drop deeper into that depressed, drunken haze.
Until now Jack hadn't been sure why he had lowered the gun when it was pressed against his own temple, his finger ready on the trigger. Was it only because he had heard Sara's heavy footsteps coming up the stairs past Charlie's room? Was it because he hadn't wanted Sara to deal with the useless mess he would have created had he died from his own gunshot wound? Or was he simply afraid to die in a manner that just didn't seem worthy of himself, or Sara?
Jack couldn't remember the next few months very well, the most momentous events only being the vague notion of getting himself deactivated and moving to Chicago in a half-hearted attempt to flee his own demons.
How many times had he staggered back drunk beyond his wits and woken up with no memory of even going to the bar a few blocks from his rental apartment?
It had taken a visit from Sara sometime in the last month for him to sober up. Sort of. Served with the divorce papers, he had been forced to confront just how much he had lost.
Not as though that had made him feel any better.
"Would you like something to drink, Sir?" The flight attendant's voice startled him embarrassingly out of his reverie.
Jack started to shake his head, but changed his mind immediately and asked for the strongest alcoholic beverage that she had on her cart. He tossed the shot of vodka back in a single gulp, craving the acrid, fiery burn as the liquid blazed down his throat.
He'd brought only the essentials as he usually did on all his missions: all his technical equipment, two small photos of Charlie and Sara, a worn wrist watch that had been a wedding anniversary present, some clothes and all that was necessary for yet another covert operation. There was very little he actually needed to survive, he'd realised that over the years, and now that the better part of his family's gone, he had even less to lug around. Whatever he would need – surveillance equipment and specialty weapons – would as usual, be taken care of at the location itself.
To his mild surprise, the rent of his Chicago apartment had been paid a year in advance thanks to his CO's manoeuvrings, and another motel room booked indefinitely for him in Colorado.
Jack's mind wandered again to his latest target: the young, beautiful and obviously brilliant Captain Samantha Carter who had obtained a string of degrees by the time she reached her mid-twenties. She was an astrophysicist, a regular overachiever with impressive piloting experience honed during Operation Desert Storm, now working in deep-space radar telemetry deep under Cheyenne Mountain.
He thought he knew an Air Force brat when he saw one.
The rest of his mission brief had stated in no uncertain terms that his target was to be neutralised in a manner that "would draw no more attention than it needed to".
Carter's record was spotless, and her accomplishments staggering. She could very well be the poster-girl of the USAF, the model officer and innovative scientist whose almost pedantic by-the-book behaviour made her stand out among her peers – her research alone had left them trailing in the dust.
Her enlistment in the Air Force was entirely voluntary after she had finished her PhD some years later, perhaps spurred on to fulfil the same ambitious career that her father, a two-star General, had after obtaining his wings. While Carter had limited command and field experience even after logging over a hundred hours in the Gulf War, well, certainly a lot less than him – where it seemed like his entire professional life had been spent in the field – but she had singlehandedly developed technology behind the scenes that probably kept the USAF ahead of their allies and enemies.
It didn't take him long to realise that there was no one like her in the USAF. No one as talented, or as capable. If such bright sparks like her had actually signed up, many of them were soon shunted to the fast track to NASA's programme. Instead, she was buried deep in her research underground.
So why wasn't she there, among the stars?
The more he read in her file, the more he was convinced that she was way too important a resource for anyone, or for any organisation for that matter, to cut loose. Only the latest part of her file was scrubbed; even he didn't have access to it…yet. But it was clear that the military needed her for something else they deemed more important that NASA. And yet, she didn't seem important enough to be taken out of the picture.
Apparently.
The reason his mission brief had given for taking her out had been vague; she had been classified as a potential security risk because of her progress in the research and technology development – or what appeared to be NORAD – deep under Cheyenne Mountain.
The mission brief had made it look like simple hit-and-run work. But he was operating as naked as a damned jaybird, without any cover or back-up in some high-stake operation that could easily go sideways.
Jack tried, not for the first time, to shake off the unease.
All of his previous missions had taken place overseas where he could choose to believe that the security of his country was compromised. There were more murky dealings going on under the table, and he was sure of it.
It just wasn't his place to ask more questions than he needed to. Jack O'Neill was a soldier, first and foremost, and his more important tasks lay in successfully carrying out his stipulated duties and getting his men home. Thinking along those lines had made it easier for him to leave questionable orders unquestioned and obey them. For most part.
But now, he was to neutralise one of their very own, possibly their very best, on home soil.
The mission brief hadn't sat too well on his shoulders.
The rental car was waiting for him as he stepped out of the airport and he headed to the motel, suddenly desperate for some shut-eye. He eyed his speedometer critically. The last thing he needed was to be pulled over by some unsuspecting cop for breaking the speed limit. Lifting his foot off the accelerator slightly, he turned onto the road that would lead him slightly out of the city.
His bedroom in Motel 6 was small with an even smaller bathroom. At least it was clean and offered some form of cable TV. It would do – he had, after all, been thrown into less than savoury places that he'd rather scrub from his memory.
Two hours later, he dragged on a black wig, hazel contact lenses and a baseball cap, stopping his car at the side of a disused industrial site not too far off from his motel.
An old, brown Ford was already parked in the corner of the site, a stocky man climbing quickly out of the driver's seat carrying a small wrapped package the moment he caught sight of Jack's rental car.
"Alan Jamieson?"
"Yup."
"I was told to give you this," he handed the package over and winked conspiratorially. "What'd you need that for, man? Wife, girlfriend going astray?"
"Nah, animal experiments," he retorted shortly, hoping that guy wasn't too involved in animal rights as a hobby. He slipped a wad of cash into the other man's hands and turned to walk back to his car. "Thanks."
"Hey, go easy on 'em, man!" The unsuspecting man yelled after him in worry.
It was time to get the hell out of dodge. His floater had been way too inquisitive and had too much potential to be a tree-hugger for his own good.
He threw off the wig in disgust as he steered the car away, swearing never to touch that stupid thing again despite some new regulations recently implemented about disguise and concealment among the upper ranks of the Special Forces soldiers.
The damn wig had made his scalp itch and those contacts were irritating his eyes. And he didn't even want to know how he looked.
Jack stopped the car again in a deserted parking lot when he was nearly fifteen miles away from the industrial site and rummaged through his duffel in the backseat. It didn't take him long to open the package, to assemble his own communication sensors and calibrate the chips so that it could transmit its findings to him at regular intervals.
He looked at his watch. It was time to get to a mall.
Twenty minutes later, he pulling into the parking lot, stopping briefly to pick up a weapons dead drop in a particular corner of the building. Quickly, he looked into the pack, seeing the box of lethal injections and biologically hazardous materials tucked snugly in a corner, then examined the typical and familiar range of weapons that he'd always requested on his team missions.
Soon after, he was circling Carter's neighbourhood slowly before finally stopping the car a few blocks away. Climbing out his rental, he slipped on yet another cap, then tossed the miscellaneous stuff from the dead drop into the trunk. The sunglasses came on and he strolled casually down the sidewalk down the street while whistling a tuneless ditty under his breath.
To any person who looked at him, he merely appeared as a typical but anonymous resident in a suburban home returning from a leisurely lunch.
And there it was.
Samantha Carter's modest rental house was the last house at the end of the road, sheltered by several overgrown trees on the sidewalk that bent so low such that their branches nearly obstructed her front walkway.
No one was about in the quiet afternoon. Her neighbours' blinds were shuttered against the strong sunlight and their fences were high enough to suit his purposes. There was no car parked in her driveway and her windows were shut tight: there was no one home.
Some small sound on the left caught his attention.
A rather large orange tabby had come around from her backyard to sit on her front mat, staring unblinkingly at the intruder.
He glanced at the cat and noticed the small concrete pathway that curved around the side of her house and into her backyard. Taking a quick look around, he followed the pathway, the cat tailing him halfway, and came up to her back door.
Pulling on his gloves and prying her door open without damaging the lock was easy. He stepped in and removed his shoes, pocketed his Swiss army knife and took in the clean, cool spaces of the kitchen and the small living area. Her windows were closed, decorated by heavy, dark curtains that had shielded the interior from prying eyes.
There was a faint, lingering smell of lemon and vanilla that sliced through the slightly musty air. It tingled his nostrils, a subtle reminder of a feminine presence that inhabited the place. Evidently, she hadn't been home in some time.
Other than the potted plants that lay withered on her kitchen counter, everything else was…unnaturally pristine even for a military officer: the cushions on the couch were arranged neatly, the meagre collection of crockery carefully stored in the kitchen cabinets, the carpeted floor vacuumed to near-obsessive spotlessness. A small, solid pinewood bookshelf lined with scientific journals stood propped against the wall where her telephone and answering machine were.
Crouching down, he slipped a miniature device under her couch and attached a smaller one into one of the cracks underneath her kitchen counter, then calibrated those with his hand-held scanner and receiver.
He moved into her bedroom, noting the fastidiously-made bed, its plain white sheets and the surprising lack of hair products and cosmetics that lined her dresser.
Another device affixed under her bed. Another one calibrated.
A lone strand of blond hair lay on her pillow. He removed his tweezers and placed it between two plastic sheets, then pocketed the sachet.
Having established the wire tap and trace devices, he took a last glance around and left the same way he entered, through her backdoor, taking utmost care to lock it the way he found it.