Author Note: I would like to respectfully dedicate First Anniversary and the drabble Enemy Within to all of our brave men and women in the armed forces. Those currently serving or served in the past and have lost a buddy in the line of duty. Only those who have fought understand the price of freedom. Enemy Within can be found in Jack’s Drabbles on the main page. Thank you very much to my betas Susie, Phil, and Kerri.
SG-1 had been on a standard 6-hour mission to meet and greet if possible. Their recon had been uneventful until they were returning to the Stargate, where they came across some Jaffa. Jack safely got his team off of P2C389 and was proud that today of all days, he had been able to kick some Jaffa ass. He hadn't gone looking for it, but when the opportunity presented itself it seemed fitting, and he took it. The encounter with the Jaffa lifted his mood, for a while at least.
The team didn't understand why the Colonel had been acting crappy all day and getting worse by the hour since returning. O'Neill had even excused himself from their traditional post-mission dinner in favor of doing his mission reports. Carter, Daniel, and Teal'c individually came by Jack's office to find out what was wrong. He not so politely asked them to leave. He was not in the mood for company.
Finally, all the post mission requirements were completed. Nothing was keeping him on base for one minute longer, as he left for home without saying goodbye.
His team noticed and tried to contact him, so in an effort to hide himself inside his home, he turned the lights out, unplugged the phone, and turned his cell phone off. His pager's battery had been thrown across the room to get the damn thing to shut-up, and he was most definitely not answering the door. The only company he wanted tonight was the bottle of whiskey in his hand. He'd been in a sorry ass mood all day, and when no one seemed to notice what today was that made him angrier. A partial bottle of whiskey was warming him up when he went to look and see how much more he had. Realizing that he only had another half bottle of Irish whiskey left that was stashed away in the kitchen, he decided he would have to switch to beer afterwards.
A couple of hours later Teal'c showed up at his front door ringing the bell, as Daniel climbed down the ladder to his roof. Jack could hear them discussing the fact that all the house lights were out before leaving. He wasn't sure if they bought his act of pretending not to be home or simply left. It didn't matter; he was once again alone. Jack muttered good-bye when they left; he wasn't in the mood for a 'Danny' talk tonight. Good, he thought, now he could sit and nurse his bottle of whiskey all by himself. His plan was to sit in the dark, drink, and most definitely not think or talk.
He had spent many a nights like this in his past, he remembered, trying to push the memories away. To hell with the on-call regs, they didn't mean a damn thing tonight, especially not tonight of all nights. Jack would tell anyone venturing in on his little pity party that same thing. Tonight was 'his' night, and Jack was going do it right, so they'd better all leave him alone. He owed him that much, he thought, as he sipped the whiskey, trying not to think too much until he got much much drunker. Memories were bombarding him now, so he took another sip pushing each one away, they weren't even allowed. He had gone through most of the first bottle, when someone had the AUDACITY to use a key to enter his house, and turn on the entryway light.
"Carter, what the heck are you doing here? I want to be alone. Go away."
"I don't think so Colonel. I don't think you need to be alone tonight."
"Captain, I don't care what you think, GET OUT that's an ORDER." He bellowed.
"If I leave Sir, it will be to get Doc over here."
He snorted at her. She didn't flinch but waited in his doorway with the light pouring into his solitude.
"Close the door and don't turn anymore damn lights on. You really don't want to be here Captain, I'm not good company." He finally conceded, knowing she would make good on her threat, and to be honest, she was the about only person from the base that could be here tonight. She would understand, at least she had known him, and he had respected her.
Sam moved silently across the room not saying a word, waiting for him to talk, and quite pleased her bluff had worked. Although she was not completely sure it was a bluff, until she had seen his eyes bathe by the light from the hallway. When Daniel and Teal'c had told her he was hiding here, she knew what was going on. If only she had realized earlier, she might have been able to do something else, but she didn't, and now there was only one-way through this and it was his way.
Carter knew she could not leave him alone tonight, especially tonight, and not like this. She had seen this before in her father and with friends during the Gulf War. So, she made a liquor store run and bought bottle of Scotch. If she was going to get drunk tonight, at least it was going to be on something good, and not that crap the Colonel kept at his house.
"What do you want Carter? Why are you here?" He asked not even looking at her.
Sam opened her bottle of scotch and took a drink; she was going to need it to deal with her errant CO.
"He was my friend too," was all she said and took another sip as she sat down on the chair opposite him and waited. The light coming from the entranceway was enough to allow them to see each other but not enough to be intrusive.
O'Neill's eyes registered what she said. So someone else remembered too and she even brought more booze, he thought, even if it was that stuff, Carter drank. Now he felt bad about his behavior.
"I know he was I'm sorry. I didn't think anyone else remembered." He apologized.
"You knew him a lot longer than I did, I'm sure you have a lot more to…celebrate." Her words sounded hollow even to her, and she wondered how he would take them.
Finishing off the first bottle and tossing it towards the trashcan, missing horribly, he asked. "Do you know how many mission we went on together with our first team?"
"No, tell me."
"Uhhh…clearance, Carter." He had meant it as a rhetorical question never expecting her to answer that way.
"Sir, remember where we work?"
She was right. Her security clearance was higher than theirs was, when they had gone on their last mission as a team. The one that was foremost in his thoughts tonight. He took another swig out of the second bottle, and asked. "Do you really want to know?"
"Yes."
"It was our fourteenth mission as a team, three and a half years we'd been together. All four of us went out, but only two made it back alive." He stopped. She waited.
"The only reason I made it back alive was because of him, otherwise…" The thought trailed off as he took another long drink.
She waited for a long while and then asked. "What type of mission?"
"Do you really want to know, the details, all of it? It wasn't pretty."
"Worse than the Goa'uld?" She had a point, so he started talking and drinking, and drinking and talking. The whiskey making it easier to talk about, and tonight was the only night he could talk about it.
"I had just made Captain and about your age, he was still a Lieutenant. As I said, it was our fourteenth mission. We were all sitting around the Colonel's house watching the Super Bowl on his new big screen TV, our wives, and kids, and well, the whole gang was there. We were on call, so it felt weird not drinking beer watching a football game. But there was this hotspot that we'd been briefed on earlier, and we're ready to go on a pager's notice. The half time show had started when our pagers went off. Our wives turned and looked at each other and then to us; they knew better than to ask when we'd be back." Jack paused momentarily before continuing.
In the space of ten minutes, we had kissed our wives and kids goodbye; then were headed to a distant part of the world. Somewhere we'd been before and knew could explode at any given moment. We were headed back to a place where all the constellations were named differently. This particular vermin we were sent after, had stolen some valuable information. A lot of good people could've died with it in the wrong hands, and our job was to take it back. We were the 'protectors of the innocents' that was our unit's motto.
A chill went down his spine as he remembered; the look in his eyes turned hollow and almost dead. He took another drink; she did the same and waited.
Insertion and extraction point were to be the same but thankfully, not everything is written in stone in those types of missions. We had been dropped this side of a hot and cold running border. We never knew who was going to be controlling it going in or out, which was typical for that time frame. With a three-day walk ahead of us, we headed off towards the mountains were the best coverage would be. The high path wasn't fit for a mountain goat to travel and the rocks were slippery in the rain. But the paths above or below us were patrolled by men who hunted those like us, so we felt safer there and didn't complain. We were hunters, going after a prey that jeopardized everything we believed in. They were to be erased.
These creatures spent their every waking moment planning and carrying out ways to destroy the evil empire of the west. We were there to stop them, plan and simple, protect the innocents and dispose of the parasites. We traveled by night, slept by day, always aware that one wrong step, one noise, could give us away and no one would be going home.
This was Papa's last mission. The Colonel was planning to retire and open up a bakery in Philly when we finished this op. Sometimes if I close my eyes and think real hard, I can still smell fresh baked bread coming out of his kitchen as we arrived for the party. Anyone stupid enough to mouth off about his hobby had their ass wiped around the floor of his kitchen. Everyone needed a hobby, he'd say, and he made damn sure everyone on his team did something in their down time to ensure they stayed connected to home. There was no reason to fight for it, as we did, if we couldn't remember what we were fighting for he used to drill into our heads.
A smile found its way to his face as the memory of the aroma of the bread enveloped his senses once more.
This particular vermin we were after hide himself in mansion of sorts, at least for those parts. It was more like a two story hobble, with machine gunners as guards instead of a family dog. Intel had it, he had a list of all the local operatives, and it was for sell to the highest bidder. We were to go in and extract the data, dispose of any parasites found, and head home back to our loved ones. Simple, we'd done it a dozen times before. Then when it was over, we'd all meet up with our General assigned to the CIA war room, Grand Poppa, for one hellava' party.
Sam's eyes grew wide. She had heard of those war rooms, but had never seen one and never cared to either.
The second night in, I was running point when I froze in my tracks, whispering back to the rest of my team: "Danger Will Robinson." The team froze on high alert as Kawalsky, about 20 yards to my right and I, faced a mother bore in protective mode. We didn't know if it was after one of us or something else, only that it was a dangerous as any man we'd come across. We stood frozen with our safety's off, ready for anything for several minutes when Papa asked for an update. Then the mother boar charged, only it wasn't at us, but mountain lion after her babies. We stood barely breathing for nearly thirty minutes while the mountain lion took her down and had her for dinner. Then it finally moved on back to its den for the night, before we could continue our trek across an unforgiving mountainside. Papa and Tweety, the best damn sniper, I ever knew covered our six, while we covered them from this four-legged creature only out to get its dinner, and by happenstance found itself in our path. Any other time, any other place, and one of those little boars might've been dinner for us, but not this night and not in this place.
He took another drink then after a long quiet moment he continued. She drank with him and waited.
Kawalsky took Alpha and I fell back to Delta, as we continued to climb across the edge of the mountain. Along about daybreak we were looking for a place to make camp for the day, when we came across another dangerous animal. Only we were the prey it was looking for. Kawalsky saw them first and informed Papa, so he had us fan out surrounding their encampment. I sent a message up to Comm indicating that we had possibly found the lost sheep they'd been looking for…for another reason. Here we were the four of us looking down at a camp full of them, most likely not more than a dozen. Most were still inside their tent and the two guards were more asleep than awake. A pretty fair fight, we thought, even if everyone inside the tent was awake.
Only the message Comm sent back down sent chills running down our backs, and our mission had an addendum added to it. {Suspect N. Gas}
These idiots were the ones supplying that crap to the armies in the east that was using freaking nerve gas on innocents. And we had managed to stumble in on their newest underground hide out, which was only about a 4x6 hole in the ground.
We laid there on our stomachs on cold wet ground, over looking their camp with the sun about to come up. No time to run, no place to hide and they'd be stirring any time. We only had one choice, which meant exposing that we were in the country, before we got to the vermin we were after. So Papa sent up for confirmation, and Grand Poppa said to do it.
He took a swig from his bottle and his eyes took on that far away look that he had so much of the time. She never spoke giving him the wide berth he needed.
The only guns visible were a hoard of AK-47's with extra clips neatly stacked in a pile near the entrance of the tent. A wood door leading to the underground supply closet half-assed covered with brush laid 10-15 paces away. With no idea how many were inside the tent or down under in the storage area, and Grand Poppa's order we went in. Damn, I hate surprise guests at a party, and these guys weren't there by our invitation.
He took another drink as he continued. Still she never took her eyes off of him.
So, Tweety and I crawled down and let the air out of the two guards before they knew what happened to them. They woke up in that far away place critters like that go, when their time here is over. Kawalsky and Papa scoped under the tent counting heads while we wired the wooden door. We made damn sure first, they hadn't done the same thing. Then a couple of fleas stirred, and we almost had a blood bath on our hands. Fortunately, we had the upper hand and with the bedbugs exterminated, we moved on.
Grand Poppa would send in a cleaning lady to take care of the bunker, we weren't prepared to handle something like it. We keep moving down the trail a couple more hours before we stopped and made camp for the day in a cave.
Papa put us to bed taking first watch as he always did. Kawalsky did his thing, goodnight Tweety, goodnight Papa, goodnight Johnny. Papa shut him down so fast and hard that time Grand Poppa would have blushed. You didn't mess with Papa when he was in a bad mood and he was in a *very* sour mood; his kiddies were now exposed.
He looked at her. She was smiling, yep, that sounded like him all right. She'd experienced a couple of those goodnight calls by Kawalsky too. Only theirs made it all the way around the camp reminding them of a different Mountain.
Kawalsky awoke as I was about to wake up the rest of the team, and being the smart-asses we were, we decided to wake Papa with a song. Thinking we'd put a sparkle in his day. Papa and Tweety weren't too appreciative of being woken up, by what they said sounded like a couple dead cats screeching and worse than fingernails on a blackboard.
He laughed as he emptied his bottle. She smiled stifling the urge to laugh, knowing all to well the Colonel's singing ability, as she shared her bottle with him.
We moved on, it was only a couple of hours walk until we met up with the varmints we were after. Grand Poppa said they were still there, and no movement had been seen in the camp we liberated the night before, so Papa relaxed some.
We got there in the dead of night scoping the place out. Comm said six heat sources were inside the house, and three on grounds patrolling. They were wrong we found out. The vermin had found themselves a good place; it was hard to sneak up on and harder to infiltrate. Papa, Kawalsky, and I took out the three pieces of trash on the grounds, while Tweety found himself a perch to watch our six from, then we went inside.
Kawalsky and I located the missing data and destroyed the computer systems after Grand Poppa said we had everything. Papa scoped out the rest of the house taking out parasites as he located them, and found the big vermin we were after. Only Papa also found a wife and toddler, a little older than Charlie and Tommy, Tweety's son. Grand Poppa had made it clear, no one but the team made it out.
Sam blinked hard and took another drink of her scotch. His face changed to cold resigned pain, as he took one more swig of her bottle and continued.
Papa never stood a chance, the wife was no innocent, and she took him out. Maybe she was protecting the boy, we'll never know. She only got one more breath before Tweety finished her off from his perch.
Next Tweety took the big vermin down and then all hell broke loose. Tweety's last words were, 'Don't come back for me. Take care of my family.' Still, hot, tears, hit my soul, as his raspy voice came across the radio. Kawalsky and I looked at each other, as the reality of what Tweety said sunk in; half our team was dead. We got the heck out of there. Fighting our way out was more difficult than getting in had been. The last thing I remembered was being shot. Then the next thing I knew, I was on a nice safe chopper heading home. If it hadn't been for Kawalsky, I'd been dead too.
"And now, a year ago today, he bought it from a slimy snakehead crawling out of a dead Jaffa, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. Now, I'm the sole survivor of Charlie Company. Isn't that ironic in itself?"
He took a last drink as he finished. The combination of grief, too much whiskey, and talking, overwhelmed him. Jack lay down on the couch he'd been sitting on, and slept for the first time that night. Drunk and feeling better than he had in a long time. Tomorrow would be a much better day.
Sam covered him up and cleaned up the bottles. She knew he was going to be fine now. He had needed someone to talk to tonight, on the first anniversary of Major Charles Kawalsky's death. She felt honored to be that person, and knowing more about Jack O'Neill's past only deepened her respect for her CO. She wondered when the last member of SG-1 would be doing this same thing on another night like tonight. The thought scared her so she pushed it away. Sam left making sure he would not be disturbed and she would check in the morning to see if he was awake.
~Finish~