Airman Harris 10
Airman Harris
Chapter Ten
Rated: Adult
Pairing: Xander/Daniel (and who the hell knows where this is going)
Summary: This is General Hammond's base... is anyone interested in seeing his reaction to Jack's briefing on a very strange little town called Sunnydale?
Previous chapters: One : Two : Three : Four : Five : Six : Seven : Eight : Nine
Jack was waiting in Hammond’s office when the man came in at ten am. If Jack could have gotten Finn to Cheyenne Mountain faster, he would have asked Hammond to cancel his off-base morning meeting, but so far, all he’d collected was a lot of odd circumstances that together, made his skin crawl. Something was very wrong, and it had nothing to do with Jack being intensely uncomfortable with the thought of Daniel having sex with a man he’d known for a week. Daniel’s whirlwind romances often ended badly. Even Sha’re had ended badly. He couldn’t blame her for getting goa’ulded and killed, but he also couldn’t escape the fact that her loss had wounded Daniel deeply.
And now Daniel had set his cap for Harris. Shit.
Some days Jack wanted to wrap Daniel in cotton and shove him in a cell where he couldn’t go bumping into things that were going to gut him. Like Harris. Like Hathor or Shyla or Sha’re or those damn runes on PB2-908 that enchanted Daniel so much that he wanted to stay and translate them even as the tower collapsed into the sea. It was Jack’s job to keep Daniel out of these situations. Hell. Maybe it was time for Daniel to do something long and boring. SG-11 had been nagging him to let Daniel come on a long term archeological mission that involved digging up goa’uld bones. That should be boring enough to keep Daniel happy and out of trouble for some time. And as a bonus, Harris would never get clearance to go through the gate, especially not after the general got a look at the report Jack had prepared. A little time apart would be a good thing.
“Colonel.” Hammond’s voice startled Jack out of his reverie.
Standing up, Jack offered a respectful, “Sir.”
“How did your scavenger hunt through Airman Harris’ background go?” Hammond asked as he settled behind his desk.
“I should have known you’d keep up with the scuttlebutt.” Jack had worked for a lot of superior officers who focused so much on the paperwork that they forgot the men behind those pages. The whole reason Jack kept going through the gate year after year was because he trusted General Hammond to have his back every time. He was the best commanding officer Jack had worked for, and he seemed to know a little about everything and everyone.
“When the scuttlebutt has my second in command this concerned, I try to stay in the loop.” General Hammond put his leather satchel down next to the desk, dismissing it and focusing on Jack. “What do we know?”
Jack slid the file with his report across the desk, but Hammond opened it without looking at it. They both knew that some things would only be said, not written down. They’d learned early on that certain facts, when written in black and white, sounded crazy. Actually, in this command, that quite a few facts never reached the page for that very reason.
“NID had a base in Sunnydale.” That was the most explosive bit that Jack had dug up, and General Hammond’s eyes stared holes in Jack-like he was waiting for the joke. Jack did not joke about the NID, or as he liked to call them, the soul-sucking human equivalent to the goa’uld.
“A base? Is it still active?”
“Now that’s an interesting point.” Jack rubbed his hand over his face and wished he could have gotten at least an hour’s sleep. Maybe this would make more sense with more sleep. “They ran for a few years, sucked up more and more money, and then suddenly… nothing.”
“They shut down?” Hammond looked down at the report.
“If by shutting down you mean suffering sixty percent mortality, sure,” Jack said. That number horrified him. It was eclipsed only by the death statistics for the civilian population Carter had finally shaken out of the NID database.
“What happened?”
Jack wished he had a good answer for the general’s question, but the fact was that he didn’t. He had no idea what the hell was going on. “That’s where the information gets sketchy,” he confessed. “I have to wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that a lot of the surviving members of the base required medical treatment.” Jack wanted to surprise Hammond with the next bit of intel, but the general was leaning back in his chair with an expectant look on his face. Clearly he’d worked with Jack long enough to know where to expect the punch lines. “They needed treatment months later for systemic damage caused by an unidentified and systematically dangerous drug administered over a two year period and the side effects from the unmonitored cessation of that drug.” For a military doctor, that line had sounded downright snarky. Hell, Janet could have written it.
“Administered?” Hammond asked, jumping on the relevant word.
“That’s what the medical report says. They were administered a drug. A dangerous one. I’ve put in a call for one of the affected soldiers to report here. Captain Riley Finn should be in Colorado tomorrow.”
Hammond looked down, and Jack gave him some time to sort through until he found Finn’s records. They started out rather unremarkable. Bachelor’s degree before joining, exemplary training records that got him into the Rangers, some suggestion he might have done some psyops before focusing on fast-tracking his career and landing in California of all places. He had several citations for meritorious service with the actual service rendered conveniently missing and a strange gap about the same time he needed medical treatment for whatever had gone down in Sunnydale, but then he reappeared months later and joined a unit providing tactical training and assistance in South America. Jack found it amusing how many ways the government had to nicely say covert ops and executive action without actually writing those words into someone’s file. Finn was hard-core covert ops, Jack knew that for a fact.
“What’s been left out?” Hammond asked.
“More than should have been,” Jack said humorlessly. “Most of the people I contacted don’t have anything on him, either.”
Jack watched Hammond react to that. He was shocked, but he should be. Covert ops was a very small world where everyone knew everyone else, but Finn seemed to have found a corner all his own. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
“A few people said that Finn is good people, both him and the other soldiers in his unit. One or two mentioned that Finn had some incredible stories that were all true despite sounding ridiculous.” The irony was not lost on Jack since those same people probably described Jack the exact same way.
“Could they have been running a competing Stargate program?” Hammond asked. Jack sighed, not sure but not sure what else it could have been either. He shrugged helplessly.
“What’s the connection to our new airman?”
“Now here’s where it gets interesting.”
Hammond gave a short laugh. “Colonel, this is already too interesting.”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it. I’m guessing that Finn and Harris know each other pretty well. Harris pointed me at Finn when I kept asking questions he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer, but he didn’t mention that on two different occasions, he and Finn were admitted into the same emergency room on the same night with the same blunt force trauma. Serious trauma. Each time Harris had a concussion. It appears he liked to try to stop buildings with his head.”
Hammond made a sympathetic face. “Fighting each other or fighting a common enemy?”
“Good question.”
Leaning back in his chair, Hammond put on his serious-general face-the one that usually showed up right before Jack got lectured about the importance of paperwork. “How big of a threat is Harris?”
Part of Jack wanted to throw the kid under the bus and watch General Hammond confine him to the brig. The better part of him pointed out that wouldn’t exactly be fair. “He knows more about fighting than he should, sir. Serious fighting. I reviewed the tapes of the training session with Teal’c and Carter, and I can tell you a few things. He’s used to fighting with a group. His technique is all about distraction and evasion.”
“Which means he’s used to someone else stepping in and taking advantage of a distracted enemy,” Hammond finished.
“Yep. And he’s fast-quick to use whatever is in the environment to gain some sort of cover. He even bluffed Carter.” Jack really hated how much admiration he felt for the man over that, but any man who could fake out Carter had earned some respect. “When he sparred with her, he made himself look like a helpless nincompoop, and the second she dropped her guard, he caught her in the nose with a right hook. And he knew that punch wouldn’t take her down.”
“He didn’t drop his guard,” Hammond guessed.
“Not for a second. In fact, he announced to some of the other recruits that unless someone was bleeding out multiple orifices or decapitated, he would keep on hitting them.”
Hammond looked thoughtful at that bit of news. Jack figured he was thinking the same thing Jack had-that was a battle-trained response. “Practical even if the philosophy is somewhat dangerous in the field,” Hammond eventually offered. “He actually sounds a little like someone else I know who tends to distract people with exaggerated stories of his bad knees and general ignorance before completing a complicated tactical maneuver.”
“I know you’re not talking about me, sir.”
“Of course not,” General Hammond said in an amused tone. “What else do we have on Harris, and why didn’t any of this show up on our first background check?”
“To answer your second question first, the NID not only flagged a lot of intel out of Sunnydale as classified, but they also removed it from the system. It simply didn’t show up at all until Carter went poking through their computers. The town has a murder rate four hundred times the rate in Detroit or New Orleans. You’d be safer living in the Gaza Strip, and as much as I wish that was an exaggeration, statistically, it isn’t.”
“What is going on?” Hammond started spreading out the pages of Jack’s report across his desk.
“Good question, sir. I tried asking Harris, but he informed me that he wouldn’t share other people’s secrets with me any more than he would share Stargate secrets with other people.”
“And did you glare at him?” Hammond asked, that dark humor of his showing up again.
“He was immune,” Jack said dryly. It still annoyed him that an airman would refuse an order like that. “And before you ask, I checked to see if he had any other confidentiality agreements or security checks in his records-I even had Carter dig through the NID computers. There is no record of Harris ever agreeing to keep any official secrets.”
“So, he’s doing it out of an ethical obligation.” Hammond’s voice made it clear that he admired the idea, and maybe Jack would have admired it under different circumstances, but a mystery this deep that stunk this bad had no business being within ten miles of Daniel. Harris had no business within ten miles of him, and yet Daniel was spending his free time with the man. It annoyed Jack, and Jack was the first to admit that he was less than charitable when annoyed. “What else do we have on Harris?”
Jack opened his own copy of his report. “Harris’ parents are both rather unremarkable, a few domestic violence calls that seem to suggest a history of screaming more than any physical violence. Harris has taken a remarkable number of trips to the emergency room, though. Including the two times he showed up at the same time as Finn, Carter found no fewer than sixteen visits.”
“Abuse?” Hammond looked bothered by that.
“Maybe, but given the fact that police reports the NID marked classified have him as the victim of a mugging, a school break-in, a home invasion at the home of a friend, a kidnapping, and no fewer than six random gang beatings, I don’t think his parents carry the blame here. And his whole school appears incredibly clumsy and prone to unlikely accidents, none of which the police follow up on. Someone left a door open at the school, and stray dogs supposedly ate his school principal.”
Hammond’s eyebrows went up. Yeah, as cover stories went, that one sucked. Someone wasn’t even trying. When the guys in charge of covering up illegal operations didn’t even care enough about the quality of their work to come up with a plausible bullshit story, it said something sad about the American work ethic. Jack continued. “Several students were murdered, more disappeared, and my personal favorite is the swim team that apparently all ran away from home together, leaving all their personal belongings behind. They were never heard from again.”
“Someone is preying on these young people.”
“Yes, sir.” Jack could see the slow fury building in Hammond, but considering how sick to his stomach Jack had been when read Carter’s statistics, he couldn’t blame the general. Soldiers fought each other. That was part of life since time began. Somewhere back in history, two cavemen had tried to beat each other to death with really big rocks. He could accept that. But targeting kids was a shitty way to do business. And when Jack thought shitty, the NID always came to mind. “The scary thing is that Harris’ graduating class had the lowest mortality rate of any graduating class coming out of Sunnydale High in twenty years.”
Hammond ran a hand over his face. “Good God. Why would a high school have mortality figures? Colonel, I want to know what happened in Sunnydale.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think Harris was fighting whatever was targeting these kids? Is there a current danger? I can make some calls over to Edwards or Vanderberg and see if they could get some people over to the high school to keep an eye on things.” Hammond looked ready to jump on the phone immediately, and Jack could understand why. The idea of US citizens, children really, being left at the mercy of the NID was enough to turn his stomach, and still, Harris wouldn’t tell him what the hell was going on. It wasn’t improving Jack’s mood.
“That would be difficult, sir. It seems the high school just happened to blow up on Harris’ graduation day after an unexplained gas leak.”
Hammond narrowed his eyes. “Unexplained gas leak?”
“Yep. It seems they have a lot of those in Sunnydale.” Jack glanced down at his report to make sure he didn’t get the next part wrong. “Gang beatings, accidental falls onto sharp objects and gas leaks account for more deaths than heart disease, cancer, infections, car accidents, stokes, firearms incidents and suicide combined. It’s a fun little town to visit, Sunnydale. Don’t even get me started on the sheer number of cemeteries in the damn town. Sir,” Jack quickly added when he realized his tone had gotten a little disrespectful.
“It’s a bad situation,” Hammond said in a quiet voice. He didn’t point out that Harris had grown up in the middle of the situation, but Jack was painfully aware of that. At best, Harris was going to have a few screws loose. At worst, he’d been part of whatever the NID had done. Plenty of victims turned to working for their abuses either out of self-preservation or some misguided and twisted loyalty.
“Yes, sir,” Jack agreed. He wasn’t going to let this drop even if the general ordered him to.
“Are teenagers the only victims?”
Jack shook his head. “No, but they seem to have the highest mortality rate followed by the elderly and then teachers.” Jack really didn’t understand what those three groups had in common to make them so prone to accidental falls and exsanguination by puncture wound, but then he didn’t understand most of what happened in Sunnydale.
“Any further information on Harris?”
Jack shook his head. “Unremarkable grades, barely high enough to qualify for the Air Force. He did a number of menial jobs before signing up for the military, and he seems to have a knack for annoying people.”
“I noticed that,” Hammond said, and Jack glared at his commander for a brief second-not long enough to be insubordinate, but long enough to let Hammond know he wasn’t amused. Yeah, yeah, Harris annoyed him. But he had a right to be annoyed. “And now,” Hammond continued, “he’s washing dishes.”
“And the kitchen staff think he’s the second coming because he attacks every shift as if the war with the goa’uld will be won with clean salad forks.”
“Well it sounds like we’re at a standstill until Harris chooses to explain himself or Captain Finn arrives on scene. Major Ferretti is unavailable, so brief Major Warren. I want more eyes on this problem.”
“Yes, sir.” Jack stood up and saluted the general. After returning the salute, Hammond focused on the papers scattered across his desk.
Jack wandered off to find Warren before he collapsed from sheer lack of sleep. He might sometimes exaggerate his physical or mental shortcomings, but the fact was that he couldn’t pull all-night research sessions the way he could as a young lieutenant. If someone was shooting at him, fine. He’d stay awake no problem. But staring at computer screens and printouts did not keep his attention enough to make him forget how much he wanted his bed. He just wouldn’t give himself permission to go to bed until he’d briefed Warren.
Major Warren was a good guy, one of three majors that SG3 rotated on command depending on the mission-exploration, negotiation, or blowing shit up. Jack thought it was pretty significant that Hammond wanted Warren briefed since the major definitely tended to blow shit up. Wade did the exploration and Castleman was a creative son-of-a-bitch who could get information out of a rock, in part because he was twice as stubborn as a rock. However Warren had a talent for knowing which bit of the enemy to blow all to hell. He’d taken out a death glider with a Stinger missile his first time through the gate. Jack enjoyed the thought of turning Warren loose on the soul-sucking, kid-killing NID bastards. Oh yeah, General Hammond was feeling even more unforgiving about this Sunnydale situation than Jack was. If Finn didn’t come up with some good intel, Jack would not want to be in Harris’ shoes. General Hammond would find out what was going on, and if Harris was the person in his way, the rock would meet the hard place.