Not Waving, Pointing
I watched him cross the room, coming towards me. He was smiling.
I wasn’t.
“Jack.”
Was it only because I knew him that I found the smile insincere? Then I felt Teal’c stiffen next to me, and knew that I hadn’t been mistaken.
I didn’t answer him
“Going to introduce me?” He gestured towards my companions.
“No.” I saw no point in mincing words.
He nodded as if he hadn’t expected anything else.
“So, what are you up to these days, Jack? Live around here?”
I threw some money on the table, far too much I’m sure, and stood up bringing Teal’c to his feet with me. Daniel sat confused for a second before getting up, looking apologetic. I gave him a quick shake of my head and left without a backward glance.
“What was that all about, Jack?” Daniel hurried his steps and caught up just as I reached the exit.
“Drop it, Daniel” I wasn’t in the mood for explanations, even if I could have given him any. “This way.” I turned to the right and walked off down the pavement.
“Jack? The parking lot is that way.” Daniel still hadn’t got it.
“We aren’t going to my truck. We’re getting a cab.” I strode around the corner as quickly as I could, risking a fast glance back.
No sign of him.
Daniel opened his mouth as if to ask another question, before obviously thinking better of it. I waved my hand, and a passing cab pulled up. I wasn’t naive enough to think that we weren’t being watched, so I gave the driver an address on the other side of town, where we split up. I left the others, warning Daniel not to go straight home, and checked that they weren’t being followed. Then I made my very careful, and circuitous route back to my house.
o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o
It shouldn’t have been a shock, but it had been. My nefarious past had come back and bitten me on the backside. Everything I had done had been under the orders of my superiors, but I couldn’t really excuse myself. I had followed those orders; no one else and ultimately the resulting actions were my responsibility. I accepted my past, but I didn’t exactly want to broadcast its details to the world, and certainly not to my teammates. I knew that they suspected that some of the stuff that I had done hadn’t left me exactly lily white, but they’d never asked.
Then Nolan had shown up. Was it just a coincidence, or had he tracked me down? And if he had deliberately come here, what did he want?
I sat, my hands around my coffee cup, and thought long and hard about my options. There weren’t a lot. I had to find out what he was doing here.
So I reached for the phone, and made a few calls.
o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o
I went to Hammond, first thing the next day. He needed to be told. There weren’t many things that he didn’t know about me, but some of my work with Special Ops was so highly classified that I knew even the General didn’t have access to the records.
He must have been able to tell something from my face, because he gestured to me to close the door of his office. I took the seat opposite, and began.
It had all hinged on my ‘special’ skills. Somehow, I had managed to acquire a special talent for something that several government agencies could use. CIA, FBI, ATF, and some other acronyms that the average citizens were unaware even existed, - they all had used my talent over the years. It wasn’t something that I was proud of, and it was certainly something that I had never consciously sought, but I seemed to have a special knack – for killing. You want someone quietly got rid of; Jack O’Neill’s your man. Terrorists were the favourite targets. A quick shot from a far away rooftop, a quiet knife across the throat, I used any number of methods to carry out my orders. I hadn’t enjoyed it, but I had followed orders without argument. It was what I had been trained to do.
I’d done some damned distasteful things in my time, I had hoped those times were far behind me. I had been the person I had to be...then...now I was different, and I wanted it to stay that way.
As I spoke, George sat, silently, his elbows on the top of his desk, his face emotionless. I didn’t go into details – just enough of the facts to give him some idea of what I had done, what I had lived with all these years. Some had been on foreign soil, some here at home, but they had all had official sanction.
Somehow that didn’t make me feel any better about it.
For years I had walked on that thin razor’s edge between right and wrong, between black and white. Just when I had thought that I had built up a sweet little life here at the SGC, along came Nolan to knock it all down.
I wasn’t going to let him.
I kept some things back from George, some things that I didn’t want to remember, let alone talk about, and some things that were still so sensitive that I knew I would be jeopardising his career if I told him.
I told him about Nolan.
Nolan had been my contact. He had handed me the information, answered any questions that I needed to ask. I knew more about him than he ever suspected, making it my business to find out. He had worked for one of those shadowy agencies that I was ordered to help occasionally. I had never trusted him, he asked too many questions. Questions that he hadn’t needed the answers to.
The fact that he was here, sniffing around, was worrying to say the least. Damn it, there were things that I didn’t want to remember, much less let my team know.
It was bad enough I had to tell Hammond.
I finished my sorry tale, and raised my gaze to met George’s eyes. Neither of us said anything for while. His face was closed, unreadable, and that was enough to tell me what I needed to know.
I really shouldn’t have expected anything more.
He cleared his throat, and spoke in a low voice, “I understand that you were under orders, Jack. I’ve been ordered to do some things that I’ve not been comfortable with too. That doesn’t mean that I have to like it, but I can live with it. The important thing now is to find out exactly what this man wants. Do you have any idea?”
I gave him what little information I had been able to find out from my sources. Nolan had dropped out of sight about five years ago, and there had been rumours that he had set himself up in an independent operation. Several high profile political assassinations had been linked to his name, but nothing that could be proven. What he was doing in the Springs was as much a mystery to my sources as it was to me.
The General and I decided on a course of action. I was due to go off world with my team for a few days, a quick little mission to a world that we had visited a few months ago. While I was gone, George would use his own, very different contacts, to try and get more information. My absence would give us some breathing space.
I didn’t like leaving everything in George’s hands. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, it was just that I felt responsible, plus I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was running away from the problem, and I have never liked running away.
o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o
Four days later we stepped back through the gate, laughing, and pleased to be home. I hadn’t forgotten what was waiting for me, but I had managed to put it into a small compartment in my mind, to be dealt with when the time was right.
From the look on General Hammond’s face, the time was right now.
I followed him to his office, ignoring the puzzled looks from my team.
He came straight to the point.
“I received some disturbing news from my contacts, Jack. It seems that Nolan was asking about you in certain circles. He’s been trying to find you for months.”
I sat down in one of his visitor chairs and tried to work this through in my mind. It was easier to speculate out loud. “As far as I’m aware, he didn’t know that I was Air Force. I kept our contacts as brief as possible.” I remembered the distaste I felt every time I received my orders, the sick feeling in my stomach as I brought myself to open the sealed package, and pull out the photo. My one consolation - that I was just following orders - had become harder and harder to justify. I remembered the revulsion that Nolan’s face had brought when I saw it in the restaurant.
I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Ever.
“Well you must have some pretty loyal friends. From what my contacts can tell he only managed to get the information that you were here in Colorado last month. As far as I can work out, he knows that you’re in the Air Force and based here, but that’s as far as it goes.” He ran a hand over his chin, his expression worried. “How do you want to play this? You obviously have more experience with this sort of thing.”
I knew exactly how I wanted to play it. I wanted to take my P90 and blast the bastard to kingdom come, but somehow I didn’t think that would go down too well with George.
I sighed. “I can’t hide from him forever. He’s probably got my address by now; at the very least he’s watching the base. There’s really only one thing that I can do. Confront him and find out what he wants.” I felt my heart beginning to thump in my chest as I thought of the possible consequences of my decision.
If my team found out…
First things first. Get Nolan to contact me. I would have to deal with any fallout if, and when, it happened.
I just wanted Nolan gone.
Permanently.
o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o
There is an old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” I must have really annoyed Fate. The times that I have lived in have always been interesting, and they were becoming more interesting by the minute.
I managed to get out of the mountain without attracting the suspicions of my team. Pleading fatigue, I begged off the invitation to go out for a meal and headed home. Sure enough, he was waiting.
He hadn’t changed much in the years since I had seen him last. A little leaner perhaps, if that were possible. Hair thinning, face lined. He looked as fit as ever, like he could still handle himself.
I didn’t pretend to be surprised to see him. I motioned him into the house, placing my keys on the hall table. We walked together into the kitchen. I opened the fridge and handed him a beer.
I made my move as he opened it.
It was the work of a couple of seconds to have him hard up against the wall, my knife at his throat. The bottle smashed on the hard tiles, a waste of good beer.
“What do you want, Nolan?” I kept myself calm, my voice emotionless. I let my actions speak my fury.
“I need your help, Jack.”
“I don’t want to hear it. I’m not interested in anything that you have to say.” The blade drew a line of bright red blood against his skin. There’s something about knives. Something that I have felt ever since my time with Ba’al. They aren’t just tools any more. Not just weapons.
They were friends.
He gasped out a short breath and tried to push away. I pressed down harder.
I remembered what it felt like to hold someone’s life in my hands, except this time I actually wanted to take it. It would be so easy. I could make him just disappear. I could do that. I still had the contacts.
I eased the pressure, and stepped back a little.
He lifted his hand and wiped it across his throat, his eyes catching the blood staining his fingers. “Is that any way to greet an old friend, Jack?”
It took all my effort not to kill him where he stood. Only the thought of the mess stopped me. “You are leaving. Now.”
"Why? Don’t you want to be associated with me, Jack? Scared I might muddy your clean record, huh?"
This man obviously had a death wish.
“I'm not as clean as you think, you'd do well to remember that." His eyes darted between my knife and my face – he was trying to hide the fear, and he wasn’t succeeding. “What brought you out of your scummy little hole, Nolan? What’s important enough to make you ignore the death threat that I left you with the last time I saw you? I do remember it you know. And if you don't leave by the count of three, I might just exercise it."
He pulled his hand from his throat and straightened up. I’ll say one thing for the man – he was never a coward.
“I have a job that I thought you might be interested in.”
I could feel the knuckles tighten as I clenched the handle of the knife. The only thing restraining me was the thought that I needed to find out who the target was. Maybe if I could save this one life, it would go some way towards atoning for all the others that I had taken over the years.
“Just why do you think that I’d be interested.” I spat out the words. “You’ve obviously been snooping around, so you know I’m Air Force. I don’t do that sort of thing anymore.”
“That’s exactly why I thought that you would be interested. I found out about you, Jack. Found out about you being Special Ops when we worked together. Then you dropped out of sight. And here you are, sitting at a desk, stuck inside a damned mountain for days on end. What happened? They decided that you couldn’t cut it after Iraq?”
I didn’t flinch. I wanted to, but I didn’t. He knew much more about me than I had imagined. Iraq. He didn’t know how true his words were. Iraq had been the reason why they stopped lending me out. After my time as a POW they obviously thought that I wasn’t suitable for that type of work, that I couldn’t cut it anymore. I had become a liability and they tried to bury me, watching my every reaction, my every move. It had taken a while for them to post me to a combat unit again and I was never given another special assignment.
I didn’t bother disillusioning them. I never told them that my experiences in the prison in Iraq had more than qualified me for killing. That I spent night after night dreaming of more and more inventive ways to kill. But I had been glad to get out of their world of dirty missions and acts that bordered on the illegal. I didn’t want anything more to do with them.
Still didn’t.
Nolan had no idea who he was dealing with. He thought that I was some stressed out desk jockey, itching to get some action to relief the boredom.
The doorbell rang loud in the silence.
We stood, Nolan and I, watching each other.
It rang again.
The lights were on. My truck was in the drive. There was no point trying to pretend that I wasn’t home. Shit!
I opened the door to find exactly who I had expected.
“Hi, Jack. We thought that you might change your mind about dinner.”
I kept the door half closed and took a few steps out. “No, Daniel. Like I said, I’m tired. I’m going to have an early night.”
The sound of the fridge opening could be heard clearly in the evening quiet.
“Are you not alone, O’Neill?” Teal’c moved to look around me. I moved to stop him.
“No. I have company.” I saw the reaction. The speculation.
Carter was the first to take to hint. The fact that I hadn’t invited them in clinched it. “Sorry, General. We’ll get going then. If you change your mind call my cell, and we’ll let you know where we are.” I could see that she didn’t think that would happen.
The minute that they were gone, I was back into the kitchen. To say that I was livid was definitely an understatement.
“You bastard. You did that on purpose.”
“Just a reminder, General.” He emphasised the rank, and I knew straight away that it had come as a surprise to him. That must have been one piece of information that he hadn’t managed to ferret out. “A reminder of what you could lose if those friends of yours knew what you were hiding.” He stood, smiling confidently now. Sure that he had me. “I’ll contact you with the details tomorrow, Jack. Make sure that you don’t miss the call.”
It was a threat, and I knew it. Trouble was - he was right. Carter and Daniel would never understand. Hell – I didn’t really understand it myself.
And in that moment, I knew. I would never be free of him unless I did something about it.
o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o
“General.” I stood in front of George’s desk the next morning, waiting while he finished what he was doing.
“Take a seat, Jack.” He paused while I pulled out the chair before continuing. “I take it that Nolan contacted you.”
“Yes, sir. And that’s what I need to speak with you about.”
“Did he tell you what he wanted?”
“No, just that he had a job. He’s going to contact me today with the details.”
George frowned. “But why would he think that you would be willing to do it?”
This was it.
“Remember back a few years, when I said that you might have to buy my soul back some day.”
He smiled, “Yes. That incident with Maybourne.” I could see that he had misunderstood me, taken it as a joke, which was exactly what I had intended at the time.
“I’m calling in that favour, George.”
The smile slipped from his face at my tone. It slipped even further when I told him the sordid details.
They were never routine, the jobs that I was given. No matter how many times I did it, killing was never routine. Even now, with the enemies that we had to deal with, I still felt regret at taking life. Especially innocent life.
It had been in one of those little countries that you see mentioned on TV, and think how lucky you are not to live there. I suppose that if I had thought about it at all, I could have justified what I had been ordered to do by knowing that it would help to bring down a dictatorship that was causing the deaths of thousands. But I didn’t think about it. Maybe if I had I would have realised that I had been given the wrong information.
Nolan.
The man that I shot died quickly and painlessly. That was more than could be said of the people executed because of my actions. The assassination of such a high-powered member of the government was all that the president needed to move against his opposition.
I killed the wrong man. The blood of those poor tortured people stained my hands. I had lived with the knowledge for years.
That had been the last assignment I was given before leaving for the Middle East. I had left Nolan with an arm broken in three places, and the clear understanding that I never wanted to see him again.
General Hammond was the first person that I had ever told about it. Now he knew the hold that Nolan had over me.
This time his eyes didn’t meet mine. This time there wasn’t the reassuring look, the look of understanding.
“This is a lot for me to digest, Jack.” George’s tone made it clear that he wanted to do the digesting without my presence.
I tried not to think of George’s parting words, tried not to think of the look on his face, and went through the motions, acting as if everything was normal for the rest of the day. I was in a meeting when the call came. Pentagon number crunchers in suits, me on my best behaviour, my stomach churning. We were just finishing up. I made my excuses and left them to it, pulling the phone out of my pants pocket as I walked.
“O’Neill.”
“Meet me in half an hour, Jack. At that park near your place.” His voice was cocky, much too sure of himself. “Oh, and General, make sure that you aren’t late. I don’t like being kept waiting.” There was a dull click as the phone was disconnected.
Bastard.
I slung my jacket over my shoulder and hurried towards the elevator, loosening my tie as I walked.
I almost made it.
“General O’Neill.” Teal’c rounded the corner of the corridor and hurried to catch up with me. “Daniel Jackson suggested that you join us in Major Carter’s lab. She has an interesting theory regarding the Goa’uld presence on PH7-Z03 that she wishes to impart.”
“Sorry, Teal’c. Can’t do it right now.” I couldn’t help glancing down at my watch. “Maybe later.”
“She seems to think that it is quite important.”
“It’ll have to wait.” The elevator doors opened, and I jumped in. “Tell her I’ll call later.” I saw the surprise on his face as the doors shut.
Crap!
The trip up to the surface had never seemed so long. When I finally emerged out into the bright afternoon sunshine of a clear fine day, I squinted and reached for my sunglasses, moving rapidly towards my truck.
“Jack!” All three of them were there following me out. ”Wait up.”
It was then that I saw him. Standing at the gate in broad daylight, a smile on his face. Taunting me. Knowing that I could only do one thing.
Scum-sucking bastard.
Flinging the truck door open, I ignored my team and sped off, just in time to see him, in his own vehicle, pull out ahead of me.
We drove together, down the mountain, and through the quiet streets. By the time we reached the park I was beyond incensed. I had reached that cold place in my heart where true anger lies.
He was waiting on a park bench, behind the stand of tall trees the children so liked to play in when the weather was warmer. We were alone, just the two of us in the dusk, the shadows growing longer as the sun began to set.
“I hope that you’ve been thinking about what I said, General O’Neill.” He looked me up and down, a smug grin on his face. “I wonder what the people who gave you all those medals would think if they knew what you had done. How many people you’ve killed. Do you miss the thrill of it, Jack? Do you miss the feeling when you take a life? You must have gotten use to it – how many was it? Ten? More? How many executions that even I don’t know about? How many mistakes? How many other innocent victims of your knife or your gun? Do you lie awake at night and wish that you still lived that life? That you were still a paid killer?”
I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. “This time I don’t need to be paid, Nolan. I’ll happily kill you for nothing.” I drew my Beretta from under my jacket and pressed it against his temple. “This time I will enjoy it.”
There was a soft gasp from behind me, near the trees. I turned and saw the shocked faces of my friends. I saw Daniel’s eyes meet my own; the question in them tore my soul.
Eyes that would never see me the same way again
The End
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