Part VIII

Jack had had a bad night, and it wasn’t looking like his morning was going to be any better. He hadn’t gotten much sleep after being awakened by the report that Russell had vanished from the mall. It had felt like he’d just managed to get back to sleep when he’d been awakened again at 0500 by the report that she’d shown up near the Fraiser house, before vanishing again. When the call came in at 0600 that she was back at her hotel, it was nearly time for him to get up to go back on duty anyway.

So he arrived at the base early, thinking that maybe he’d make the General happy by catching up on some of his paper work. (Yeah, sure, you-betcha.) That plan was foiled before he even got his first cup of coffee, when he was summoned to the General’s office. (Jack sometimes wondered how General Hammond ever spent any time with his family. He spent more time inside the SGC than Teal’c and Jonas, and they lived here.)

He knocked on the General’s open door. “You wanted to see me, Sir?”

“Yes, Colonel. There’s someone upstairs asking questions about why we’re interested in Harris and Russell. I want you to go talk to him.”

“Who is it, Sir?”

“Someone from the Army.”

“The Army? What do I tell him?”

“The truth, as much as possible, but he isn’t cleared to be told anything about the SGC. Use the usual cover story. He’s waiting for you on Level 10.”

Jack took the elevator up to Level 10, thinking about just what sort of semi-truthful story he could tell this guy, that would have half a chance of being believed. He found an Army major waiting for him at the last security checkpoint keeping unauthorized personnel out of the most secret sections of Cheyenne Mountain.

He had the appearance of a serious soldier, who had seen combat. There was a look about his eyes that you didn’t see in Pentagon desk jockeys…plus he had a Ranger tab on his sleeve, and the Army didn’t hand those out to just anyone. That, and the scar that ran across his face, said that this guy had probably seen some action in his career. He looked young for a major too, not even 30 yet, which meant that he was probably good at it.

He held out his hand. “I’m Colonel O’Neill, Major. I hear you want to talk to me?”

The major gave him a firm handshake. “Major Finn, Colonel. Is there some place we can speak privately?”

“Right this way, Major.” Jack led him to a small meeting room, and closed the door. He directed Finn to one of the chairs, and sat himself down in another. “So, what’s this about?”

“You’ve been running background checks on Xander Harris, and Faith Russell,” said Major Finn. “I need to know why, Sir.”

“Can you tell me anything about them?”

“Probably not, Colonel.”

“Does that mean you don’t know anything, or you can’t tell me what you know?”

“Why were you running background checks on them?”

Jack couldn’t help noticing that Finn hadn’t answered his question, which was a sort of answer in and of itself. He decided to go ahead, and give the version of the story that he had decided on during the elevator ride up here. “On Monday afternoon, one of our people noticed that she was being followed after she left the base. She called me. I instructed her to go to my home, instead of her own, and we had people there to apprehend the people who were in the car following her: Harris and Russell. They denied that they were following her, or anyone else. They claimed that they had just gotten lost.

“We released them, after we had questioned them for a while, but we’ve kept them under surveillance ever since. They know that we are watching them, and they are taking great pains to make sure that they don’t say anything incriminating, anywhere that we can overhear them, but it is very clear that they are here in Colorado Springs for a reason. Last night Russell managed to ditch the team following her, and vanish for a few hours, until she deliberately let herself be seen, near the home of the person they were originally following.”

“This person they were following, was she one of your junior people, Sir, maybe under twenty years old?” asked Finn.

Jack thought that was a very curious question. “No, actually, Major Fraiser is our Chief Medical Officer, and while I’ve never asked her age, she is over twenty.”

Finn seemed surprised to hear that. He had expected the person Harris and Russell were interested in to be young, which meant that he probably knew why it was Cassie…but he didn’t know that it was her. Jack decided to try to find out why for himself. “Why did you think they’d be interested in someone younger?”

“I thought that they might be recruiting,” said Finn. “I suppose they could be looking for a doctor, but they wouldn’t go looking for one who was already in the Air Force.”

“Recruiting?” asked Jack. “For what?”

“I really can’t say, Colonel.”

“You can’t say much.”

“This is ‘need to know’ and quite frankly, Sir, someone working on Deep Space Radar Telemetry has no need,” said Finn.

‘We really need a better cover story,’ Jack thought to himself. He looked at Finn, who seemed to have a half expectant look on his face, as if hoping for some sort of revelation about what really went on in the lower bowels of Cheyenne Mountain. Why would a bunch of people running radio telescopes be buried so deep underground, and under so much security? Jack decided to let a little bit of information loose, to see if he could draw anything out of Finn in return. “You think that they’re trying to recruit someone young?”

“Who I think they’re looking for would probably be fifteen to twenty years old,” said Finn.

“Major Fraiser had her sixteen year old daughter with her at the time.”

“Ah,” said Finn.

“What do they want with a teenage kid?”

“I can’t say, Sir, but they like to recruit their people at an early age.”

“What are they, some sort of cult? Terrorists?”

“No!” said Finn quickly. “Nothing like that. They do not pose a direct threat to Major Fraiser’s daughter…what’s her name, by the way?”

“Cassandra,” said Jack. There was really no real harm in telling Finn that: he could look it up easily enough for himself. “We’re all rather fond of her. You said that they were no direct threat. That implies an indirect one.”

“What they want her for is dangerous, but worthwhile,” said Finn.

“We don’t like the idea of people from mysterious organizations following her around.”

“I’m sorry Colonel, but I really can’t tell you anything.”

“Are they NID?”

Finn almost laughed at that. “Oh, sorry, the idea of Xander working for the NID…” He shook his head.

“You know him,” said Jack.

“Uh, yeah, I know him,” said Finn. “I did my Masters degree at UC Sunnydale. I met him then. I dated a friend of his.”

“Russell?”

“Ah…no, definitely not. I did sort of meet her once.”

“Sort of meet her?”

“She wasn’t really herself at the time.”

“What does that mean?”

“You don’t need to know, Sir.”

“So, they’re not with the NID. What about WCI? What’s that?”

“A research organization.”

“That’s pretty vague.”

“They’re a pretty vague bunch.”

“What’s the Army’s interest in them?”

“They’re an international NGO, kind of a watchdog organization, keeping an eye on some things that we also have an interest in.”

“Terrorists?”

“Not exactly. There really isn’t any more that I can tell you about them, Sir.” Finn rose from his chair. “Thank you for your time, Colonel.”

They left the meeting room, and Jack accompanied Finn to the elevator that would take him back up to the main section of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex before Jack returned to the SGC. He went directly to General Hammond’s office to report the conversation.

He had just finished when General Hammond’s phone rang. Jack saw the number two light flashing. He knew that number one was the President. Number two meant that the call was coming from someone in the Pentagon. Hammond picked up the phone before it could ring a second time. “General Hammond speaking.” He seemed to sit up straighter in his chair as he listened to the reply. “Yes Sir.…But Sir, they were following—…You are aware that she is one of our refugees from the Goa’uld.…Yes Sir.…Right away Sir.…Thank you Sir.…Goodbye Sir.” He hung up the phone.

“Someone important?” asked Jack.

“That was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” said General Hammond. “We are to suspend all surveillance of Harris and Russell, immediately.”

“But Sir! They were following Cassie! Finn just confirmed that they want her for something!”

“I am aware of that, Colonel. We will keep the watch on Major Fraiser’s house, and Cassandra, until these people leave town, but the direct surveillance of Harris and Russell is to stop now.”

Jack sighed in resignation. “Yes Sir.” He thought about the timing. Whoever Finn reported to, his chain of command had to be pretty short for his report to have reached the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs that quickly. Finn must have placed a call even before he got out of the Mountain.

Xander and Faith returned to their hotel room after spending the day at Seven Falls. Their tails seemed to have abandoned them at some time during the morning, which surprised Xander a lot. After what Faith had done last night he expected them to be stepping up their surveillance, maybe drag them in for questioning again, but it seemed that just the opposite had happened. They had been back in their room for less than five minutes when there was a knock at the door. He figured that the other shoe had just dropped, and that they were here to take them away, when he went to open it.

It was not who he was expecting. “Riley.”

“Hey, Xander. How’ve you been?”

“Everything considered, I’ve been…okay.”

“I heard about Anya, I’m sorry man.”

Xander shrugged. “Thanks, I guess.”

“So, can I come in, or are you going to leave me standing out here in the hall?”

Xander stepped back from the door. “So, the Air Force call you?” he asked as Riley entered the room.

“No, but I am here because of them.” Riley pulled something that looked like a PDA out of a pocket of his uniform. This was the first time that Xander had ever seen him in uniform, and he was surprised by the gold oak leaf rank insignia. He hadn’t known that Riley was a major.

“What’s that?” Xander pointed to Riley’s PDA.

“A bug finder.” Riley looked beyond Xander, at the other person in the room. “Hello Faith.”

“Well, if it isn’t the clean marine.”

“Army,” said Riley. “I’m a grunt, not a jarhead.”

“Whatever.”

“I see that rumours of your death were greatly exaggerated.”

Xander thought that Riley sounded rather disappointed as he said that. He knew why, and could see that Faith knew it too. He decided to head things off before she could say or do anything that she might regret later. “What are you doing here, Riley?”

“I came to talk, but before that…” Riley walked around the room, waving his PDA over the walls and furniture. “They’re supposed to’ve turned them all off, but Colonel O’Neill has a bit of a reputation for going his own way, when it comes to protecting his people.” He stopped at a picture hanging on the wall, lifted it, and removed a small black object, about the size of a penny, that was stuck to the back of it.

He continued around the room, finding more bugs as he went. Another was stuck to the bottom of the coffee maker, and more were behind the headboards of each bed.

“Gee, Xan, we coulda made a movie,” said Faith, when Riley found a cylindrical device with a lens on the end of it, and about the size of a cigarette, that was attached to the curtain rod above the window.

Riley moved on into the bathroom, where he found two more listening devices, but no more cameras, which seemed to disappoint Faith. When he was done he dropped everything he’d found into the toilet, and flushed it.

“Okay, we should be able to talk freely now. What are you guys doing following the daughter of an Air Force major around? Is she a Slayer?”

“There’s only two Slayers, Riley. You know that.”

“You never were a very good liar, Xander. You know damn well that something changed, when Sunnydale was destroyed. We don’t know what happened, but there’s a lot more than two of them out there now. You guys have got a dozen of them in Cleveland alone…and why Cleveland?”

“It’s got its own Hellmouth,” said Xander. “Nowhere near as strong as Sunnydale’s, but that might change, now that Sunnydale’s gone.”

“So, how many Slayers have you got now?”

“More than two,” said Xander. “You don’t need to know how many.”

“I’m trying to help you guys out here,” said Riley. “I’ve already gotten the Air Force off your backs.”

“How’d you do that?”

“Hey, I’m connected. My boss’s boss talked to their boss.”

“So, we don’t have to worry about them anymore?”

“You still have to get past them to talk to the girl,” said Riley. “I’ve read O’Neill’s record—the parts that aren’t blacked out anyway. Asking him to back off completely wouldn’t work, I didn’t even bother trying. We’ve only pulled their surveillance off of you. They’ve still got a watch around the girl.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Faith. “I already talked to her.”

“So, that’s what that stunt last night was about.”

“What are they doing in that mountain, that’s got them so paranoid?” asked Xander. “It’s not round two of the Initiative, is it?”

“I don’t know what they’re up to, but it’s no Initiative.” said Riley. “I’m also pretty damn sure it’s not ‘Deep Space Radar Telemetry.’”

“Huh?”

“That’s what they tell everyone they’re doing. Me, I’m assigned to the ‘International Environmental Cleanup Taskforce.’ We supposedly specialize in toxic waste, especially from third world biological and chemical weapons research labs.”

“Chemical weapons?”

“Explains why we go in armed to the teeth, and a lot of the special gear we take along,” said Riley. “Some of those places really don’t want anyone looking at their WMD labs.”

“Which brings us back to why the Air Force is so paranoid.”

“I think it’s got something to do with the NID,” said Riley.

“They asked us if we were with them,” said Xander. “I don’t even know who they are.”

“Really?” asked Riley.

“Why, should I?”

“The NID is the National Intelligence Division,” said Riley. “They’re supposed to provide civilian oversight for military black projects. Keep the ‘war mongering militarists’ in line.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Faith.

“In theory,” said Riley. “In practice…well, they were ones funding Dr. Walsh, and who turned the Initiative away from being an organization to fight the monsters, and into one that was making monsters. There’s something going on in that mountain that the NID’s been trying to get its claws into for years, but so far the Air Force has managed to keep them at arm’s length. There was a major shakeup inside the NID a few months back, that sent more than one person to prison for a long time. O’Neill was publicly named as being part of the sting operation that exposed them. There is no love lost between him and them.”

“Why would he think that the NID would be interested in a teenaged girl?” asked Faith.

“Some of the less scrupulous people in the NID have been known to try to get to people through threats to their families,” said Riley.

“Or, if the NID already has someone inside their organization, they could be afraid that they found out that she suddenly got a lot stronger, and faster,” said Xander. “If they were behind Walsh, that’s something that they’d be interested in.”