Chapter 5
Motel 6
Colorado Springs
12 September 1995
It was increasingly clear to him that Samantha Carter didn't have a life.
Five days of watching her comings and goings from his car, doing that black-bag job on her house, tapping her conversations and following her from a distance had sardonically led Jack to that conclusion.
She spent most of her time on base and when she was away from it, carted her work laptop around and stayed in her dining room finishing whatever she could. Sometimes she carried a large number of books around with her, paging through them with an intensity that made her forget her meals. Consequently, he'd counted the number of takeaways that she'd done, watching in amusement as her choices ran from pizza to Chinese and back again. She would go to bed for a number of hours that were less healthy than for a woman her age, and get up early to drive straight to the base – a process that was lathered, rinsed and repeated such that he wondered if he had gotten her identity mistaken after all.
Catherine Langford's injury however, had lessened the number of hours that she worked per day, and as far as he knew, she spent all her spare time with the comatose patient. She had cleaved herself to the older woman, and from what he could see, had already fostered a relationship that went beyond work concerns.
More significantly, Langford's involvement in the program and her subsequent accident had thrown a spanner into the works, adding a further complication to what had initially looked like a simple assignment from the higher-ups. That a civilian had been injured simultaneously around the time he was expected to fulfil his mission hadn't sat too well with him.
It had fuelled his determination to discover more surrounding that hazy mystery that existed beneath the mountain.
There was something big inside Cheyenne Mountain, more important than the laughably, unbelievable cover of deep-space radar telemetry. He'd uncovered the presence of a top-secret facility in operation while running a diagnostic on the make-up of its security systems, exploiting a little-known loophole in the military database that he'd found using the anti-electronic beam device that had been thrown in with the dead drop stash. Initially following the disused electronic footprints of several hacker groups then diverging his search paths, he had breached several encrypted systems while trying to cover his own digital trail. It had taken a lot of time but that had finally allowed him to install a miniature probe that would tap into parts of the Captain's computer. As the program did a continuous job of working out the complex calculations needed to uncover what really was going on in the mountain, he had set out to unravel all that Carter was.
Which didn't seem to be much so far. Her days consisted of work, work and more work where she disappeared under the mountain for the whole time, with added hospital visits thrown in. She didn't date, nor did she meet anyone else for drinks. But to be fair, it hadn't been a normal work week for Carter.
Involuntarily, he clenched his fist against his head despite knowing it was hopeless trying to stop what was going to be the beginnings of a pounding headache. He had survived on a lot less sleep before.
He was wading into deeper waters, much deeper in than where he'd like to go. In his previous assignments, it had been a lot clearer where he'd stood. It wasn't in his nature to know his targets personally and what they did or didn't do. Surveillance had normally been restricted to checking out the security borders and personnel; taking them out eventually had simply been a task to complete – a mathematical calculation of sorts that balanced the risks against the gains. Even though it hadn't been this way for a while, neutralising a nameless and faceless target – an effective distancing method – had helped him fall asleep dreamlessly at night.
He sent a quick message in Morse to the command centre, using a tiny program set up in a segmented part of his hard drive.
Target located. Surveillance set-up successful.
Logging-off from the program, he stood up from the edge of the motel bed where he was sitting. From the very beginning, this assignment was dubious at best and the method of delivery too suspicious for his liking. The diminished number of assets or bridge agents who typically appeared at appointed times for updates compounded his doubts.
Jack fingered the small vial that had lain in his pocket from the very beginning, thinking about the amount of time that was needed for the hazardous liquid to turn deadly the moment it was ingested or injected.
Five days into the operation. He could afford to be patient. Now, it was time to see what Carter was up to.
Memorial Hospital Central
Colorado Springs
12 September 1995
Her DNA trace had revealed that she was yet again in the hospital.
Catherine Langford had only just been moved out of ICU into a private ward, comatose with an unknown chance of survival. Carter had apparently wanted to be there for the transition.
He stood at the side of the door for a few minutes, holding the newspaper in his hand and turning the pages while listening to her talk to the unmoving figure on the bed about inane, random subjects until she ran dry of words. A few seconds would pass, and Carter would restart her monologue, mumbling this time about the latest shenanigans that Schrödinger had gotten himself into and the toys that she had bought for him a few weeks ago. Apparently the cat had been a common topic between them. Carter's affection for the older woman was plainly obvious, her insecurities more easily confessed when she had been certain there was no one to overhear her.
Langford's presence in a military base had puzzled him. It had been surprising to learn of an archaeologist's participation in the project, and even more baffling to see how a project needed the combined skills of one who studied rocks and one who studied the physics of the stars. Several days ago, he had tailed Carter to Langford's stately home and stayed on for a while even after Carter had driven off, pausing at the flight of stairs where Langford had presumably fallen.
In the glint of the fading light, several uneven lines had stood out against the dark paint of the railing.
Scratch marks.
Found at the top of the stairs, and again three-quarters of the way down, marring the pristine paint job.
Did Langford lose her balance and slip as she tried to hold onto the safety bars? Or was it possible that –? He had shaken his head slightly; it was useless speculating this early into the operation.
The secrets of Cheyenne Mountain lay not too far away now, and would be accessible once the program did its job.
A click of the doorknob made him look up. Carter had left the room and gone to the counter a few paces away, asking to speak to the doctor.
Jack turned in the opposite direction and headed for the elevator, thinking that the night would be as uneventful as the previous ones, ending with the Captain leaving for her own home.
A shrill emergency alarm rang out from Langford's room, bringing in frantically running nurses, along with a small brunette doctor and Carter who were following them hurriedly.
He took a few paces back and stood in a corner unobtrusively along with other curious visitors who were drawn by the harsh sounds of the alarms, observing the chaos that took shape in front of him in a sea of white, green and pink.
There were urgent yells from the doctor, a faint sound of equipment being forcibly activated and all of a sudden, Carter was ejected from the room, her ashen face and tensed form telling him more things than words could not. She stood as close to the door as she could, anxiously awaiting the doctor's prognosis.
It seemed to take forever for the doctor to emerge.
He gasped softly in surprise when the doctor finally did. For all the times that he had tailed Carter, he hadn't seen Langford's doctor; she had either been unavailable, or only had only appeared when he wasn't around.
Janet Frasier was busy speaking to Carter in hushed tones. He was too far away to hear the quiet words she was saying to Carter, but the slight shake of her head and her sombre face told him that Langford was dead.