03 - The First Amendment (11 page)

The elevator was still dropping. Kinsey found himself watching the indicator
lights, amazed at the number of floors that seemed to be going by. He’d had no
idea there was such a deep hole in Cheyenne Mountain.

Meanwhile, several stories above them, Samuels was screaming orders to
contact Blue Book, and most of the staff around them, including the airman on guard, were looking at him blankly. Major Weikman, who had been nearby, faded
back to pick up a telephone, muttering rapidly to personnel on the other end.

In the elevator, his captor’s arm jerked again, demanding the attention it
already had. “Aren’t you? You were the only one out there in civvies. Being
escorted. Touring.”

Given the choice between following the order to shut up and answering the
question, Kinsey opted for the latter, but kept it brief. “Yes, I am.” Worried?
Nobody so far had seemed particularly worried about anything, at least not until
now. He was willing to make up for the lack all by himself.

“Did that article in
NewsWorld
last month about secrets and the
public, right?”

“That was mine.” Normally he’d have been very pleased that someone actually
remembered his work, recognized his byline. Somehow that reaction didn’t seem
appropriate now.

“Well, I’ll give you secrets,” the voice said. “People dying. People getting
murdered. We’re all gonna die and they aren’t gonna tell anybody. I was there. I
know.”

Despite being dry-mouthed with fear, Kinsey couldn’t help feeling a flicker
of interest.

“Where?” he said.

His captor unwrapped the arm from around Kinsey’s neck and shoved the
reporter against the far wall of the elevator. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Sure I would,” Kinsey gasped, trying to keep from sliding down the wall. The
man in front of him was wearing rumpled fatigues, the gold leaves that indicated
he was a major, and U.S. insignia. He was also waving around a standard U.S.
issue sidearm, but at least it wasn’t pointed into Kinsey’s ear anymore.

“They said you’d be coming today,” the major muttered. There were flecks of spittle around his lips, and his gaze danced
from the indicator lights to the walls of the elevator and back again. “They
said. Kinsey. Reporter. You’d be interested in the aliens, wouldn’t you? You’d
tell them. Somebody has to tell them. We’re all gonna die.”

Oh, hell. Not aliens. Why’d it have to be aliens?
Frank Kinsey made a
mental note to write a really scathing expose of security at domestic military
bases, just as soon as he got home. “What aliens?”
Keep him talking. Get him
interested. I’ll bet they’ll be waiting to jump him just as soon as those doors
open again.

“The Goa’uld. They send us through the Gate to find the Goa’uld, but it
wasn’t them. They’re gonna kill us all. We need to tell somebody. Tell the
President.” For a moment the blue eyes ceased their darting, and the major was
looking right at him, confusion uppermost. His gun hand had fallen to his side.

“Who are the Goa’uld? And what’s your name?”

“Morley, David, Major, United States Air Force, 993-47-6296.” The words came
out staccato, as if the man didn’t even have to think about them. And of course
he didn’t: Name. Rank. Serial number.

“Dave Morley? Can I call you Dave?”

The major licked his lips, nodded.

The elevator jolted to a stop, and the gun came up again, pointed
unwaveringly at Kinsey.

They were waiting, all right. Six armed personnel, eerily silent, standing in
a semicircle around the elevator door, automatic rifles aimed and ready. Kinsey
hadn’t had this much firepower aimed at him since his last trip to Serbia. He
hadn’t liked it much then, either, and it had been a lot less personal the last
time.

“Get back,” Morley said. “Get back or I blow him away. That’s an order,
dammit.”

“They’re not taking orders from you right now, Dave,” said a calm, unruffled voice from behind the firing squad. “Why don’t
you just put that down and we can talk about this.”

Kinsey desperately wanted to turn his head and find out who was being so damn
cool about this situation, but he was afraid that if he did, he’d miss the
exciting picture of Morley firing at him.

“Get back,” Morley repeated. “Order them back, O’Neill.”

“You know I can’t do that,” the voice went on reasonably. “Come on, Major,
this is a standoff. Put the weapon down.”

“Like hell I will.” Morley’s other hand went to his belt, pulled something
free, and brought it to his mouth. “You get back, or I’ll blow us all to Kingdom
Come.” Kinsey could feel the release, but the sensation of the gun in his ear
kept him from dashing to safety. That, and the fact that his knees were about to
give out on him entirely.

The reasonable voice sighed. “But Dave, that’s such a cliché.”

Morley rotated his hand to display its contents.

Sure enough, it was a grenade, and the pin was out.

“Back off, people.” The voice was reluctant, and just a little less cool than
it had been.

“You snipe me off,” Morley said, “and the senator’s little boy goes with me.”

“Would I do a thing like that, Dave?”

“In a heartbeat, O’Neill.” Morley stepped forward and grabbed Kinsey’s
shoulder, shoving him around to face the squad. Kinsey’s relief at seeing their
weapons lowered was tempered by Morley’s arm once again around his throat. Out
of the corner of his eye he could see the grenade.

At least now he could also see the owner of the quiet voice, a tall, lean
colonel also dressed in fatigues, standing opposite the elevator as if preparing for a
High Noon
confrontation. Behind him, two women, one in a white
lab coat and the other a pretty blonde in fatigues, joined a younger man dressed
in civilian clothes and a massive specimen with some kind of strange symbol on
his forehead.
What kind of tattoo is that? Who’s the doctor?
he wondered,
his mind scrambling desperately for something to think about other than the
armed grenade. Morley must have holstered the gun. That part was good, anyway.

“Come on,” the major muttered in his ear.

“Where’re you going?” the colonel—O’Neill, Morley had called him—asked
pleasantly, as if they were just discussing the weather and plans for the day.
The look in his eyes, though, was anything but pleasant. It was hard and angry,
and a fresh shudder of terror went through Kinsey at the realization that he was
trapped, not just by a crazy man who had gone off the deep end and was waving a
live grenade around, but between the crazy and another man who might not be
crazy himself but was coldly determined to stop the crazy. Kinsey himself was
nothing more than a really annoying obstacle, and O’Neill didn’t look like he
had much sympathy for obstacles.

I’m a hostage, for God’s sake!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re a hostage. You’re
in the way.

Morley forced him down the hall, past the squad and the pleasantly glowering
colonel, toward yet another door, and then through that into a large room.

A very large room. It soared at least a couple of stories, and there were
assorted desks and consoles currently being occupied by staff who slowly
realized they’d been invaded. The ripple of information passed from the back of
the room to the front, lapping against a metal ramp leading up to a huge round
stone circle set on end. He could see the opposite wall through the circle—no,
it was a pair of circles, one inside the other. The opening they surrounded was perhaps twice the
height of a man.

For an instant Kinsey actually forgot about the grenade. He was definitely in
a place where he wasn’t supposed to be, seeing things he wasn’t supposed to see,
and his reporter’s instincts were wild to know more, to
find out and tell.
What was this place? What was that thing? What were all these people doing
down here? This had definitely not been covered in the NORAD briefing.

He was reminded abruptly as Morley yanked him to one of the consoles. The
screen saver showed a series of large squares with cryptic symbols. Kinsey
looked from the screen saver to the monument at the top of the ramp and noted
several similarities in the carved markings.

He was amazed at his own ability to notice such details at a time like this.
But he’d always been that way. Displacement activity, an old girlfriend had
informed him once. Rather than think about the threat of the here and now, he
noticed stupid details, remembered stupid trivia. She’d been going for a Ph.D.
in psychology and had a comma-shaped red mole on her left hip.

O’Neill walked up to stand within arm’s length of the major and his hostage.
Morley yanked Kinsey around in front of himself as a shield, displaying the
grenade as he did so.

“Dave, come on.” O’Neill’s voice was quiet, reasonable. Not coaxing. Morley
would have responded badly to that, Kinsey thought. Coaxing would have sounded
too condescending. “Give me the grenade. Let’s not do something here that
everybody’s gonna be sorry for.

“Especially,” he added, casting a wry glance at the armed weapon, “me.”

“People have to know,” Morley said. Kinsey could feel the major relaxing just
a little as he lowered his voice to speak directly to O’Neill. “They have a right to know. I’m gonna
show them. I’m gonna show
him”
—he jerked his arm around Kinsey’s throat—“and he’ll tell. That’s what he came for, isn’t it? So people would know?”

A flash of anger entered O’Neill’s eyes and then was gone. “I don’t know what
he came for, Dave, but it wasn’t this. Let the guy go.”

Maybe he wasn’t just in the way, then. Was that a relief?

Not yet, Kinsey decided.

Morley angled himself to the computer console and used the hand holding the
grenade to slam one of the keys on the keyboard. A roar from the stone circle
made Kinsey jump, as the inner part of the circle rotated and something clanked
into place.

“I knew we should have locked down those things,” came a voice from nearby. A
woman’s voice. Probably the one who’d been standing behind O’Neill in the
hallway.

Morley ignored it and hit another symbol. His thumb slipped a little off the
grenade plunger and Kinsey could feel the instant tension in the room, and
especially in his captor’s body, until it was back in place, substituting for
the missing pin. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the giant wheel
spinning again, like a combination lock, or maybe a roulette wheel. What
was
that thing?

“You didn’t believe me,” Morley was saying. “You thought I screwed up. But
nobody could have pulled those men out, not even you, the mighty O’Neill. I’ll
show you. I’ll show him. I’ll show everybody.” He hit another symbol.

“Remind me to update our internal security plan,” O’Neill said to no one in
particular, never taking his eyes off Morley.

The wheel spun.

From somewhere else in the room, a hollow voice said, “Chevron three encoded…”

A glimpse of movement above his line of vision made Kinsey look up to see the
broad window of an observation room, one story up, overlooking the drama being
played out below. Several men in uniform, including at least one general, were
watching intently. He wondered if the window would be impervious to the blast of
the grenade, or if all the observers would be caught in a lethal shower of glass
shards. They didn’t seem personally apprehensive—the lucky sods.

He was going to have a
long
talk with his father when he got back.

“Chevron six encoded,” said the hollow voice. He realized that he’d been
hearing Morley hit more symbols, and the wheel spin—the wheel of fortune? What
was behind door number one?—without consciously noting it. O’Neill’s lips were
thinned with frustration.

Behind him, close to the entrance to the room, Kinsey could see Bert Samuels,
looking more than a little panicked. Although why
he
should be panicked
was beyond Frank Kinsey at the moment. Samuels wasn’t the one with a grenade at
his ear.

“I’m going to take him there,” Morley was saying. “I’ll show him. He’s a
hotshot combat reporter, isn’t he? I recognized you, buddy. And God just dropped
you in my lap so we could tell the world. You and me.”

Frank swallowed. “What are we going to tell the world, Major?” he asked.

“Come see,” Morley said, giggling. “Come see.”

“Morley!” O’Neill was making one last effort to play by the rules. “Stop!
That’s an order!”

“Ah, stick it in yer ear,” Morley snickered, and reached for another symbol.

“Wormhole activated!” A cry went up from one of the computer consoles, and a
thunderous roar from the giant ring jerked Kinsey’s attention around, even away from the grenade.
“SG-9 returning!”

He had never seen anything like it, never. His reporter’s mind grasped for
words, for some way to describe what he was seeing.

If you took a giant wave off Maui, and funneled it into a cylinder, and
whooshed it out of a straw… if you took the geyser Old Glory and set it on
its side… you might have an image to work with. It was blue. It wasn’t
water.

It was light, or plasma, or something, and it vomited forth from the ring at
the top of the ramp. Then it swooshed back into itself, but he couldn’t see the
back wall of the underground room anymore; the plasma stuff had settled into the
diameter of the monument like quicksilver covering the surface of a mirror.

“What the
hell?”

Things began to happen very, very quickly.

Morley’s attention too had been yanked to the phenomenon of the Gate, though
Kinsey could have sworn the man was disappointed rather than amazed. At the same
time, O’Neill made an accurate, if suicidal, lunge at the grenade.

Before Kinsey could do more than realize what was happening, O’Neill had
forced Morley backward against the console, and the armed grenade had fallen
from his nerveless hand. Someone else—the blonde?—had leaped in and was applying
pin pressure, disarming it again.