03 - The First Amendment (9 page)

The place wasn’t even official. The
real
Officers’ Club was at
Peterson in Colorado Springs.

Still, there had to be someplace a man could get a beer without driving all
the way down the mountain and back again. Thus, the Club. Paralleled, of course,
by the NCO and EM clubs, which among them divided up the triangular bar. The
Blue Book Recreation Services budget had limits, after all.

Teal’C followed O’Neill into the Officers’ Club like a large silent shadow. A
few men sitting at one of the round tables, noshing down on chicken sandwiches
and chips and the occasional lite beer, waved acknowledgment to the two of them.
O’Neill waved back; Teal’C nodded briefly. The two of them scanned the rest of
the place, and O’Neill’s eyes lit up at the sight of the other occupant of the
place.

Morley was seated at the bar, glumly picking at a bowl of peanuts. He
flinched when Teal’C appeared beside him, only to find O’Neill sliding onto the
stool on the other side. The major looked at the two of them and closed his eyes
in misery.

“So, Dave,” O’Neill began, not bothering with preliminaries. “Tough mission.
But you know, I was thinking, we need a little bit more information. These Jaffa
you ran into, and that force field you say they had—”

Morley spun around on his barstool, nearly knocking the colonel down. “You
weren’t there!”

O’Neill paused, then carefully moved the glass bowl of peanuts to the middle
of the polished surface of the bar, his sharp brown eyes never leaving
Morley’s. The glass made a scraping sound against the wood. “No,” he said
quietly. He dropped all vestiges of casual hail-fellow-well-met, and his voice
became serious, his manner intent. “I wasn’t there. Not this time, at least.

“So tell me about it. You had no reason to expect trouble. You didn’t see
anything? No hints at all?” His tone was conversational. On the other side,
Teal’C somehow managed to give the man more room without perceptibly moving.

“They pulled us in. They flanked us. How was I supposed to know they were
there?”

“The Jaffa have set traps before.” Teal’C’s voice was a rumble.

O’Neill barely flicked a glance at his teammate, and the Jaffa subsided.
“That’s the thing about traps,” he agreed. “You don’t know they’re there.”

“We saw the stuff originally reported,” Morley went on. “The buildings. The
towers. But no sign of Jaffa. Not even in the, the, the compound where they
rounded everybody up.
We thought we could—”

“They’re beginning to expect us,” O’Neill interrupted Morley’s rising,
increasingly agitated rant. “We’re moving to a new level now. They figure when
we come through we’ll come through again. They’re setting traps for us.”

He shifted his gaze to Teal’C. “Do you think this is a general plan? Or do we
have one bright Jaffa on P7X-924? Whaddaya think, Teal’C?”

Teal’C frowned even more deeply than usual. “It is possible that this is an
innovation by a single squad leader,” he said. “We have not seen this response
before. Usually, a compound is emptied quickly and the Jaffa leave.”

“They
trapped
us,” Morley said. “They know how to beat us. Every time
we go through the Gate they’re going to kill us.” He gripped his glass hard, his
fingers white and red against the glass. “We’ve got to stop. We have to shut it
down.”

“No can do, Major,” O’Neill said, still using the calm, uninflected tone with
which he might address a frightened animal or an irrational officer. “We’ve got orders.”

“Fuck orders!”

“Now that wouldn’t be any fun at all,” O’Neill said evenly. “Besides, Morley,
we’ve got people back there. And we don’t leave people behind.”

The officers across the room were watching them openly now, attracted by
Morley’s raised voice.

“You don’t understand,” he said, even louder. “They were
my
people.
The ones we went in there to save, they were all gone already. So it’s my
people—they were my—Not yours! And they’re dead. They’re all dead by now. And
you know we can’t win. We can’t possibly win.”
Rivers of tar. Beating of
wings. The Jaffa screamed too, like human beings.
“People need to know.
They’re going to come and kill us all—”

“That’s defeatism, son,” O’Neill said mildly. “And besides, I don’t believe
it.” The glass bowl rotated against the bar, scraping gently against the wood.
Morley jerked at the sound, and O’Neill’s long fingers paused in response.

“I don’t care what you believe!” the major snapped. “I’m telling you the
truth. We’ve got no choice.” He made as if to get up. The colonel rose more
quickly, forestalling him.

“Major”—there was a razor edge to O’Neill’s voice now—“you’d better care. I’m
putting you under house arrest. Report to your quarters until further notice.”

“You can’t—”

O’Neill smiled without humor and lifted one hand to tap the silver eagle
perched on his right shoulder. “Yes, I can. Colonel, see?” He pointed at the
gold oak leaves that adorned Morley’s. “Major.”

Morley stared at him, licked his lips, and glanced at Teal’C. “You. You’re
one of them. You’re part of it.”

“That will be
enough,
Major!” O’Neill’s voice was a whiplash. The
officers across the room decided that elsewhere was a very good place to be.

“Well, that’s settled,” O’Neill said as the two men walked out of the club.

“What is settled?”

“Where we’re going next. We’re going to finish the job.” O’Neill’s tone was
still quiet and conversational. Teal’C thought he detected a layer of seething
rage beneath it.

“You do not believe, then, that the members of SG-2 left behind are all
dead.” The two men walked shoulder to shoulder down the hall, taking up most of
the space between the walls.

“I believe that Dave Morley isn’t giving us the whole story, and if there’s
more to Jaffa tactics, we’d better know about it.”

“Do you think General Hammond will approve such a mission for SG-1?”

“I think he might, yeah.”

And if he didn’t?
Teal’C wondered. He decided to prepare himself for
travel anyway, just in case.

Dad thought that shock of white hair reminded his constituents of Edward
Everett Dirksen. He didn’t care whether they’d liked Dirksen or not; the name
and the white hair were famous, and had clout, and that was all he cared about.

They were in the study of the Georgetown place, sharing brandy and cigars
after a good meal. Mother had rolled her eyes and gone elsewhere when Dad had
suggested “a little postprandial treat.”

It wasn’t a bad cigar. Not Cuban, but not bad. Frank leaned back in his
leather chair and looked up through the cloud of aromatic smoke to the shelves
of books behind his father. At least they weren’t all the same color and size—Mother probably had something to do with that—but he was willing to
bet that his father the senator hadn’t opened one since his parents had moved in
three terms ago. Strictly for show, strictly to impress the voters. He’d become
resigned to knowing that about his father long ago.

“So, boy, I read your little piece in the Post,” his father grinned,
swirling dark amber liquid around in the globe glass. “Taking your old dad to
task again, are you?”

He smiled to disguise his sigh. It was always like this. He kept coming to
dinner to please Mother, and every time, Dad tried to bait him about something.

“It wasn’t directed specifically at you,” he pointed out. “I just think this
whole isolationist trend is damaging in the long run.”

“Humph.” Senator Kinsey sipped, holding the liquor in his mouth, savoring it.
“Keeps our boys from getting killed.”

“While a lot of other people die.”

“They don’t pay taxes here.”

And they don’t vote, Frank added mentally.

“Well, be that as it may.” A billow of smoke issued from the old man’s mouth,
on either side of the cigar he held between his teeth. “There are some things
you just don’t want following you home, boy. There are limits.”

“Refusing to open our borders to people in need—”

“We’ve got enough problems right here! Those folks will come in and take our
jobs, use our resources—”

“Like Grandpa did when he came over from England?”

A moment later he was sorry he’d snapped at the old man. The senator was
staring at him almost malevolently. He’d have to apologize to Mother before he
left. Again. The leather of his chair squeaked as he shifted his weight to place
the snifter on an end table.

“What would it take to convince you, boy?”

“Convince me of what, sir?” He still called his father sir, even when he was
on the verge of walking out on him. Old habits were hard to break.

“That some doors need to be shut—” The old man’s jaws clamped hard on
the cigar, as if a thought had just occurred to him. “Well,” he resumed after a
moment, “I don’t suppose it’s worth fighting about. You had a pretty rough time
on that last assignment, didn’t you?”

“Tough enough.” Frank sat back warily. This was the first time his father had
voluntarily given up a fight, beaten or not, and they hadn’t even reached the
shouting stage yet.

“Got anything else lined up just now?”

He shook his head. “I’m thinking of just taking it easy for a while.”

Senator Kinsey chortled. “Another one of your unpaid vacations, eh? Well, I
had an idea.”

Alarm bells rang in the back of the journalist’s head. “What kind of idea?”

“Now don’t get your back hair up, boy. I was just talking the other day to
the editor of the Washington Observer, and he mentioned he wanted some
kind of article about NORAD. You know about NORAD, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I’ve heard of it.” He tried hard to keep the suspicion out of his
voice.

“Well, it’s based out there in Colorado, in the mountains. Good air. Relaxing
place. I said I thought I might be able to talk you into doing a little
something for him on your break. I know some of those folks out there, y’know.”
The Senator grinned complacently and set the stub of his cigar aside in an
ashtray. A thin line of smoke continued to rise from it, as if from a tube of
incense. “Seems that Dale Terwilliger, that’s the editor, he was downright
impressed that a ‘writer of your stature’—that’s what he called it,
‘stature’. When did you get yourself stature, boy?—might be willing to do
a few words for him on Space Defense.”

The Observer paid a decent word rate, as he recalled. It also reached
an audience that was more aligned with his own philosophy than his father’s. He
wondered just how his father had come to have this conversation with
Terwilliger.

“How does he want it slanted?” he asked cynically.

“Why, he didn’t say a thing about that. I think he just wants your view of
the place. Your mother thinks it’s a fine idea—I can even get you inside.
Hardly anybody gets inside that mountain anymore, you know.”

His father knew all his buttons. But still—maybe it would be
interesting. He doubted it, but a paid vacation was always better than an unpaid
one. “I’ll call him and see what he wants. I’m not in the business of doing
party propaganda for you, Dad.”

“Wouldn’t dream of asking you to, boy. I just think, well, now, my boy’s a
good investigative reporter. Everybody says so. So why not have him look at NORAD? It’s a nice change of pace.
Besides, you never know what you might find there.”

“Most of that stuff’s classified.”

“I thought you believed in the people’s right to know.”

Or maybe it was the people’s right to be bored. Terwilliger was enthusiastic
about a study of NORAD. Dad had made arrangements. So here he was, still feeling
thoroughly manipulated and not at all sure why. Of course, his mother had been
delighted that he’d finally allowed his father to “help” him. The fact that he’d
probably have been able to swing this article all by himself never occurred to
her. Or if it did, she didn’t let that bother her.

Frank Kinsey sat back in the contoured chair and looked openly around at the
room and its other occupants. The Visitors Center of the Cheyenne Mountain
Complex was a small building outside the barbed wire fence, with a circular
driveway in front of a polished white portico. The front lobby was filled with
models and pictures, and opposite the entrance were two doors leading into the
small amphitheatre that served as the Main Briefing room. The chairs for the
audience were arranged in descending tiers, facing a small stage with a podium.
They were, Kinsey had to admit, remarkably comfortable and well padded, not
obviously brand-new but definitely not shabby either. The walls were
half-paneled in oak, while the photographs, mounted above the paneling on dry
board, were vivid splashes of color, dark and mysterious. The podium was off to
one side, allowing plenty of space and a good line of sight to the screen behind
it.

The amphitheater, done in colors of blue and gray with soft cream-white
walls, could hold perhaps fifty people. Today it was perhaps two-thirds full. It
was nicer, he thought, than similar briefing rooms in the Pentagon, but then
those weren’t generally available to the public. It was miles better than the tents and hotel rooms in the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but not quite as nice as the press room in the
White House. Here, though, there were no scraps of paper on the floor or
burned-out cigarette butts. The place was obsessively clean, as if a master
sergeant had made the place his life’s work.

He amused himself by speculating about the reasons some of his fellows might
have for visiting this rather esoteric tourist spot.

All right, even if he’d been able to swing the article by himself, the
senatorial intercession didn’t hurt. He didn’t like asking his father to use his
clout that way, but then, he rationalized, he hadn’t asked.