by ALF
The next morning, they were on the move once again, this time to Utah. It was a long flight back across most of continental America. Daniel had taken a travel sickness pill and managed to sleep for most of the flight, whilst Jack again occupied himself with the latest Clancy novel. He looked down briefly when he realised they were crossing Colorado, wishing, just for a moment, that he and Daniel were heading home. Right now, he would have preferred an off world mission, even if it was for one of Daniel’s endless archaeological surveys, than all this cloak and dagger stuff they were engaged in. He had left Spec Ops when he got tired of all the secret agent type stuff, the danger and the tedium combining to make him long for a more normal life again. He had briefly re-visited that life, when he was undercover mole-hunting Maybourne and his band of thieves and had not enjoyed the renewed experience. He was getting too old for it, he thought ruefully. His fiftieth birthday was looming ever closer and, realistically, Jack knew he’d have to give up fieldwork with SG1 before too much longer. He was dreading that day, not knowing whether to "settle" for a desk job or retire again. It was something he had yet to discuss with Daniel. He wasn’t too sure he liked the idea of someone else leading SG1 in general, and Daniel in particular, in the field. He trusted no one else to do such a good job of looking after his team. He hoped he could hang on long enough for Carter to get promoted again, so that she could then take over SG1, allowing someone of lower rank to join the team to replace her.
Of course, there was always the possibility of retirement, Jack mused, book forgotten. Maybe Daniel would decide to leave SG1, or even the SGC, as well, allowing them to openly live together, even if it was somewhere other than Colorado Springs. Just then, the stewardess announced it was time to start preparing to land at Salt Lake City so Jack abandoned his thoughts of the future and turned to wake Daniel. They were taking a smaller charter plane on to Moab, where they would be staying whilst they planned their next step.
Jack ushered the still half asleep Daniel through the airport to the terminal where they would be catching their flight to Canyonlands Field Airport in Moab. It was a quiet town, near two National Parks and Jack was sure Daniel would appreciate the natural beauty of the area.
It was late afternoon by the time the two men finally arrived in Moab. They were staying in the Best Western Canyonlands Inn, in the centre of the small town. The population was less than 5000, so they would be more likely to be remembered, but Jack had decided it was worth the chance as this was still tourist season. They had been lucky to get a room at the hotel, virtually everything was booked up for the next few weeks.
Daniel was at least properly awake by the time they reached the hotel and spent several minutes studying the range of leaflets on offer to tourists, telling them about the sights to visit and the history of the area, whilst Jack checked them in.
After the bellhop had shown them to the room and left again, Daniel spun Jack around against the door and kissed him hard.
"What was that in aid of?" Jack asked when Daniel finally let him go, both of them breathing hard.
"Oh nothing in particular," Daniel smirked. He strolled away from Jack across the room, deliberating swinging his hips, knowing Jack was watching every move he made. He flung himself down on to one of the beds and rolled on his back, yawning.
"You can’t still be tired, Daniel," Jack said incredulously. "You’ve been asleep nearly all day."
Daniel gave Jack a sultry smile, batted his eyelashes and rolled again, this time landing on his side, facing away from Jack, presenting him with an eyeful of the Jackson ass in all it’s glory. Daniel smirked to himself, and awaited developments. Seconds later, Jack was spooning up behind him, one hand on Daniel’s ass, the other sliding up across his chest to remove Daniel’s glasses. Daniel waited until the glasses were safely on the nightstand, then rolled himself so that he was facing Jack, their noses almost touching they were so close together.
Jack’s eyes were glittering with desire, darkened from brown to black. He still had one hand firmly on Daniel’s backside, massaging the muscle. He pressed his lips against Daniel’s, who immediately opened up to allow Jack’s tongue access. The kiss went on for a long time, then once they stopped to breathe, Jack allowed Daniel to go on the attack. Daniel immediately started nipping, licking and kissing his way down Jack’s throat, across his face, into his eyes. The oral onslaught left Jack breathless and aroused to the point of pain. Daniel rolled on top of Jack and started to grind his hips against Jack hard, building up a delicious friction between them.
"Clothes," Jack gasped out breathlessly. Daniel shook his head, too desperate now to stop. He increased the speed of his movements, pleased that Jack took the hint and started to respond. Jack kneaded Daniel’s buttocks hard, allowing Daniel to reach back down and plunder his mouth in another aggressive kiss. At last the orgasm shook hard through both of them and Daniel collapsed his weight down onto Jack, both of them trembling and panting in the aftermath of release. Jack ran his hands along Daniel’s back, feeling the tremors in the other man even as he struggled to recover from his own high and subsequent downfall.
Finally, Daniel found the strength to roll off of Jack and onto the bed beside him.
"Wow," he said.
"Uh huh," Jack said dryly in response. "Can we go shower now? I’m not sleeping in this mess."
Daniel looked across at Jack and grinned. "Sure," he said. "Let’s shower."
The shower turned out to be a very long one, as the two men couldn’t resist each other wet, naked and slippery. Eventually, though, they emerged from the bathroom, wearing the bathrobes provided by the hotel.
"Food?" Jack asked, going to the room service menu.
"Please," Daniel nodded in agreement.
As they ate dinner, Jack decided they should review what they knew so far in order to plan for the next stage of their mission. So, over a not-particularly good chicken casserole, they discussed Cassie’s kidnapping en route to the Mall after school with some friends. Jack still felt reluctant admiration for the way the kidnappers had taken Cassie from a group of her friends in broad daylight. It had been a high-risk venture, but it had paid off.
The group of teens had been sprayed with some type of gas, Cassie had been grabbed during the ensuing confusion and no one could tell them a thing about the number of attackers or they type of vehicle they had used. All they had seen was a man dressed in a dark business suit approaching them on the sidewalk. They had been too involved with themselves to pay the man any attention, so patient, careful questioning had failed to yield a description. One girl, Cassie’s closest friend and the one nearest to her at the time of the attack had tearfully volunteered to undergo hypnosis in the hopes it would help. The procedure had been carried out at the Academy Hospital, with the girl’s parents present and SG-1, Janet Fraiser and General Hammond watching through a two-way mirror. Both Sam Carter and Janet Fraiser were deeply upset and blaming themselves for Cassie’s disappearance, despite the reassurances that they weren’t to blame. The hypnosis had yielded no useful information and the girl had left with her family, as upset as before the procedure. She had stopped to speak to Janet in the corridor, the two of them exchanging a teary hug before her mother had led her away, still weeping.
The SGC was investigating the incident itself, with SG-1 taking the lead in the search for information. They were on indefinite stand-down until Cassie was located and brought home. The evening of the same day that the hypnosis had taken place, Janet had received a phone call, in her office on Base. She was staying at SGC during the crisis because she was too nervous to stay at home. Daniel had been in the office with her when the call came through and had immediately gone to another phone to summon Jack and the others.
They already had recording equipment in place to tape the call, which had been short and to the point.
"If you ever want to see the girl alive again, you will give up the search for her. She will come to no harm while we have her." The voice had been electronically disguised, so they could glean no information from analysis of the tape and the call had been too short to trace.
"I guess we’re not going to take their advice, sir?" Jack asked General Hammond dryly as they sat in the briefing room shortly afterwards.
"No, we’re not going to stop looking," the General agreed. "But we’ll have to proceed with caution. So far, my own investigations have suggested that this kidnapping was instigated by someone high up in Washington political circles. Details are sketchy, but it’s possibly connected to the NID in some way."
That news was greeted with no great surprise. "My sources are suggesting that someone has decided to start some scientific research on their own account. Human experiments," Hammond continued.
"What sort of experiments?" Daniel asked, a sick feeling in his stomach.
"Nothing pleasant," was all the General said. "The evidence suggests they will be targeting people like Cassie, Teal’c and Major Carter. Possibly Nyan as well and Colonel O’Neill."
"Me?" Jack’s head shot up in surprise from doodling on his pad.
"You had a Goa’uld inside you for a short time, not to mention the Ancients’ library, or the nano-virus on Argosia." General Hammond pointed out. "These people seem determined to find out information about what these sorts of changes have had on you, in addition to examining the so-called aliens such as Cassandra and Teal’c."
"And Daniel?" Sam asked. "He’s had his fair share of incidents too."
"Yeah, like dying a few times," Jack said, earning himself a rude glare from his partner.
"All of SG-1 have in fact experienced many injuries and illnesses in their time, as well as other unusual experiences," Teal’c pointed out calmly. "I am sure these individuals would like to run tests on all of us, but we will assure they do not as well as rescue Cassandra."
"Thank you Teal’c," General Hammond spoke again. "This is what I plan for us to do."
At that point the plan for Jack and Daniel to go on their fact-finding mission whilst Teal’c and Sam went off-world for safety’s sake had been born. Officially, they were going on one of the regular follow-up missions to the Land of Light, which took place every few months, accompanied by SG-7. The missions were designed to check up on their less technologically developed allies and offer any ongoing assistance that was needed. Unofficially, it gave Teal’c a chance to visit his family too. When SG-7 left at the end of the standard two days, he and Sam would remain behind. An excuse would be found for Sam to stay on, although Jack had suggested she should just call it leave time. Sending her off-world seemed to be the only way to get her to have a vacation. Daniel wasn’t much better, even with Jack constantly bitching about the amount of work Daniel brought home with him.
In the meantime, Jack and Daniel were also supposedly on vacation, visiting old friends in Chicago. However, they would actually be trying to find out about the people holding Cassie and trying to discover how to rescue her.
In Chicago, they had met with Richard, a former SGC technical sergeant. He had given them the disc showing a video of one of the test subjects at the facility where they suspected Cassie might be held. It had been unpleasant to put it mildly. Daniel still shuddered at the memory of the tape and throwing up afterwards.
In New York, the previous day, Phillip, another of Jack’s contacts had suggested that if the organisation in question did indeed have Cassie, then they were most probably holding her somewhere in Utah, where one of their facilities was located. The state was not overly populated, despite its size, so there were plenty of places where such a facility could be hidden.
The two men had long since finished their dinner and were now sitting side by side on one of the beds, discussing the plan of attack.
"Do you have any idea where we should look?" Daniel asked Jack.
"The only real clue we have is that NID landing strip and hangar from the Touchstone mission," Jack replied. "But I don’t think the people who are running this would be stupid enough to use the same place again. Plus they really only had an empty hangar there. The sort of place we’re looking for is likely to look more like some sort of medical facility."
"So what do we do then?" Daniel asked.
Jack sighed. "Sleep on it," he said. Daniel looked at him in surprise. "What?" Jack asked.
"Sleep on it?" Daniel repeated.
"We’re tired and jet lagged Daniel, inspiration will strike with the new day, I’m sure," Jack said.
"Why Jack, you’re quite the poet," Daniel said in a gently mocking tone.
Jack just smiled and tugged Daniel down next to him in the bed, settling them in together, arms and legs entwined as usual. "Sleep, Dr Jackson," he said, giving Daniel a kiss.
"Yes sir," Daniel grinned, snuggling into Jack until he was comfortable. They fell asleep tangled together as they always did.
The next day, they ate breakfast in the hotel coffee shop.
"Any bright ideas come to you in your dreams, Jack?" Daniel asked as he chewed on his toast.
"Actually, no," Jack replied. "Just some weird dream about mice."
"Mice?" Daniel asked, a wide grin on his face. Jack shrugged, embarrassed.
"That’s all I remember, mice," he said.
"Ok. Well I did have an idea, actually," Daniel said, a smug tone in his voice.
"Do tell, Dr Genius," Jack said with a mocking grin.
Daniel sniffed. "We could go through the phone book checking out medical centres," he suggested.
"Looking for what, exactly?" Jack asked. "How does a list of addresses and phone numbers help us?"
Daniel shrugged half-heartedly. "I just thought, if we checked addresses against a good enough map, we might be able to see if there was a centre somewhere it couldn’t be. You know, like in the middle of nowhere."
"Actually, that might work," Jack said. "Although I think we need something other than a phone book. An NID lab is hardly likely to be listed in Yellow Pages after all."
"Right, so let’s try the Net then," Daniel said. "I’m pretty sure you can access a list of all licensed facilities online."
So they headed back to their room, stopping to buy a map from the hotel’s shop along the way. Daniel accessed the Internet with their laptop, which was a top of the range model, with a wireless modem. He found the Utah government website quickly, then used that to access the state Department of Health, which then linked him to another site where he was able to download a list of all the health care facilities in the state.
"38 pages," Jack muttered in disbelief looking at the list which Daniel had opened in a PDF file.
"How do you want to tackle this?" Daniel asked.
"You read the addresses, I’ll check them on the map," Jack suggested.
"Ok," Daniel said and read off the first name.
They worked steadily through the list for several hours, until both of them were feeling distinctly cross-eyed from staring at the laptop screen and map. They had swapped the tasks between them every hour or so, but it was still time-consuming work.
"Lunch," Jack finally said, rolling onto his back from where he had been lying on the floor looking at the map. Daniel was stretched out on a bed, chin propped in his hands as he read from the screen in front of him. He grunted agreement with Jack’s suggestion, saving the file and putting the laptop on stand-by.
Jack stretched out with a groan, rubbing the back of his neck. This had to be one of the most boring things he’d ever done, it ranked right up there with reading SGC budget reports. Daniel’s weight was suddenly straddling him, hands removing his from the back of his neck.
"Allow me," Daniel purred huskily, starting up a slow massage of the Colonel’s stiff neck and shoulder muscles. Jack moaned in appreciation and agreement, settling his head on to his crossed arms.
The massage was slow and sensual, Daniel stripping off Jack’s t-shirt to give him access to the Colonel’s back, allowing him to work harder on the muscles.
"You’re so tense," Daniel whispered. "We’ll find Cassie, get her back, stop these guys."
Jack shivered all over, whether from the whisper close to his ear or the ongoing massage, Daniel wasn’t sure. A loud knocking at the door startled them both out of the erotic mood they had slipped into. Jack cursed and grabbed his t-shirt, whilst Daniel went to the door.
"Who is it?" he called.
"Maid service," an accented, female voice called back. Daniel looked round at Jack, who was sitting now on the couch, holding the laptop. He nodded to Daniel, who unchained and opened the door. A woman stood there, wearing a maid’s uniform and holding a pile of linen. Daniel waved her into the room. Jack closed the laptop with a snap.
"We’ll go for lunch," he announced, tucking the device under one arm whilst Daniel picked up the map which Jack had hastily folded and dropped onto the coffee table. They left the maid starting to clean the room and headed out of the hotel.
A few minutes later, they were settled in a diner and looking at the menu. The waitress took their order and they sat back to chat whilst they waited to be served.
"So, we have a couple of possible places to look so far," Jack remarked.
"Yeah," Daniel agreed, "but I’m not convinced that it’s any of those. I think we’re going to find something right out in the middle of nowhere."
"Who’s the military expert here Dr Jackson?" Jack teased.
Daniel frowned. "I’m just saying, Jack..."
"I know what you’re saying, Daniel," Jack interrupted. The waitress approached with their meal just then, so they waited silently for her to lay down the plates and cutlery, then leave again.
"Well, then," Daniel said, once she was out of earshot.
"Well, what, Daniel?" Jack asked.
"Do you agree with me, or not about this place we’re looking for being in the middle of nowhere?" Daniel asked as he prodded thoughtfully at the vegetable lasagne he had chosen. He looked up to see Jack grinning at him and raised his eyebrows in question.
"Yeah, Daniel, I agree," Jack said. "After lunch, back to the map and list," he pointed at the laptop which was on the chair next to him, with the map resting on top. Daniel nodded agreement, then turned back to his lunch.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, then Daniel asked a question. "What were you thinking about on the flight here, Jack?" he didn’t look up as he said the question, concentrating on cutting into his food. When Jack didn’t immediately reply, though, he did look up. "Jack?" he asked in concern, putting down his knife and fork, briefly touching Jack’s left hand where it rested on the table. He was surprised by the look on Jack’s face, the emotion one he couldn’t interpret. "Jack?" he asked again, starting to feel a little worried.
"I thought you were asleep during the flight," Jack said finally, looking down at his plate, appetite gone.
"I was most of the time, but I woke up at one point and you were staring off into the distance. You had the strangest look on your face, like you did just now," Daniel said.
"It was nothing, Daniel," Jack said harshly, trying to control his racing emotions. He really wasn’t ready to have that conversation with Daniel yet, not in the middle of this mess.
"It didn’t look like nothing," Daniel persisted in a gentle voice.
"I don’t want to discuss it," Jack said, a note of finality in his tone, trying to get Daniel to drop the subject.
"All right," Daniel said reluctantly. There were still times when it was impossible to get Jack to talk if he didn’t want to, despite the length of time the two had been together.
Jack nodded and picked up his cup to finish drinking his coffee. "Ready to go?" he asked Daniel, sounding more like himself again. Daniel nodded agreement as he swallowed the last mouthful of his own coffee.
Once Jack had paid the bill, they were soon on their way back to their hotel and another afternoon of research.
During the afternoon, they finally found what they thought they were looking for – a medical centre whose address suggested it was located right in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest settlement about twenty miles away.
"What do you think?" Daniel asked, shifting sideways to allow Jack to move next to him and peer intently at the map. Jack ran a finger across the contour lines, tracing the location Daniel had pointed out to him. Daniel sat back against the bed and watched Jack threat assess the location.
"It looks the most likely of all the possibilities we’ve seen so far," Jack finally concluded, sitting up next to Daniel, eyes unfocussed as he considered strategies and scenarios. Finally, he turned and looked at Daniel. "This isn’t going to be easy, Daniel," he said. "We can’t just turn up and waltz in the door and the location makes any covert approach difficult as well. The first thing will be to move our base of operations to Cedar City, that’s the nearest large town."
"Ok," Daniel said. He pulled the laptop forward and sat clicking and scrolling through the Internet for a while. "Good news, there’s a Best Western there, we can get reception to call ahead and make us a reservation," he announced. "Lund is the closest settlement but it’s a ghost town," he went on. "There’s nothing much there. We’re going to need to take supplies."
"Whoa, hold on Daniel, we need a plan first," Jack put his hand on his lover’s arm.
"Right, I know that," Daniel said impatiently, "but we are going to get Cassie out aren’t we?"
"Of course we are, Daniel," Jack said, annoyed in his turn. "Let’s just see about getting to Cedar City first, then work out the rest of the plan from there ok?"
A phone call to reception later, they had a room booked in the Best Western Town and Country in Cedar City. They also had a hire car. The journey would take nearly 5 hours but Jack opted for them to leave immediately, rather than wait until the next day. Daniel was happy to agree. This would put them a lot closer to Cassie, which was more than fine by Daniel.
End chapter 3 | Return to Fiction Index