Page 56 of Yankee in the Wind

Fox nodded.

“Did anybody else escape?” Jack asked.

Ace shook his head. “Only Smith.”

“We’ll worry about him later,” Jack said. “Let’s clean up, so we can get outta here.”

27

After removing all guns from the facility in Manassas and rigging it with explosives, Michelle, Lilly, Jack, and his fellow Stargate agents Ace, Fox, and Tiger, left to return to Ace’s mansion. Michelle captured the explosion via the hijacked satellite, and downloaded it to her tablet, before erasing everything the satellite had captured while redirecting and repositioning it to its original location. Both Fox and Michelle assured them that nobody would find any footage of what had happened at Smith’s secret facility.

It took several hours, until Tiger was well enough to sit up and tell them what had happened to him, and even more importantly, why Smith had captured him and tried to scan his brain.

Phoebe had prepared the large living room in the mansion, setting out food and drinks for the team to recover from their mission, while Lilly checked everybody for injuries and administered first aid.

Luckily, everybody had gotten away with only bruises. The bullet that had grazed Jack’s arm had done no real damage, apart from taking off a layer of skin. Ace’s face was swollen from the punches he’d sustained from his opponent, and Lilly had assured Phoebe that her fiancé showed no signs of a concussion. Finally, Lilly could breathe a sigh of relief. It was a wonder that they’d all survived without being gravely injured. While she was still concerned about Tiger’s health, and wished she could send him to get checked out at a hospital, Lilly knew that it wasn’t an option.

Lilly put the impressive first-aid kit that Phoebe had given her aside. By the looks of it, it was an often-used item. She planned to expand the kit just as soon as she was able to lay her hands on other medical supplies and medications such as antibiotics and antidotes for common drugs. After the experience earlier, she had the feeling that this wouldn’t be the last time that she had to apply the things she’d learned during her rotation in the emergency room.

Lilly took a seat next to Jack on the couch. Everybody was waiting patiently, yet eagerly, to hear what Tiger, whose real name was Jay Garner, had learned during his capture.

He now wore clothes Ace had given him, a pair of khakis and a T-shirt. He looked better. His light grey eyes looked clear now, an indication that the drugs in his system had mostly been eliminated. His head was shorn bald, and on it, electrodes had left impressions. They would soon disappear. By all accounts, physically, Tiger would make a full recovery. When it came to his mental and emotional state, they could only wait and see.

“Thank you,” Tiger said now, “if you all hadn’t come to get me out of there, my brain would be porridge now.” He looked at all of them in turn. “I know what risks you had to take.”

“Comes with the job,” Jack said. “Tell us what happened. How did they get you?”

Tiger gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Like my dad always said: no good deed goes unpunished. I had a vision of a house fire in which an older woman burned to death with her two grandchildren. I got there when the fire had already cut off the exit. I smashed in a window in the back and pulled the woman and children to safety. But I didn’t get away quickly enough, and some eager bystander videoed the fire instead of helping, and then posted it on his social media accounts.”

“Smith must have recognized you,” Jack said.

“That’s what I figured, but how?” Tiger asked. “How did he have a photo of what I look like?”

“I can explain that,” Fox said. “When I went to Langley to hack into Sheppard’s old files to find his master file on all his Stargate agents, I noticed that somebody had erased them. I’m assuming that the person who did that was Smith, but not before he made a copy for himself.”

“So he knows about all of us?”

“I’m afraid so,” Fox said, “but so do we. I’ve got the same list.”

“How? You just said Smith erased it,” Tiger said, confused.

“He did, but there was a backup I was able to access. That’s how we knew you were one of us.” He tipped his chin toward Jack. “So when Yankee had a vision about you in that MRI machine, we knew we had to get you.”

Tiger nodded, understanding. Lilly noticed that Tiger seemed to tremble all of a sudden.

“Are you okay? Do you need to lie down?” Lilly asked.

“I’m fine. Just a little shaken.” He swallowed, then continued, “The machine that they put me in… it… I don’t know how to describe it, but it was the worst thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Worse than getting a wisdom tooth pulled without anesthesia. My head… it was like they were trying to suck my brain out of my skull.”

Now Ace leaned forward. “Do you know what they were trying to do?”

Tiger nodded. “I was conscious most of the time before they put me into the machine. But I couldn’t move a muscle.”

“The Midazolam, it paralyzed you,” Lilly explained.

“Yes, but I could listen. I suppose they didn’t care at that point how much I found out. My guess is that I wouldn’t have survived the brain scan…” He looked at the assembled. Everybody looked glum. “Yeah, thought so. Anyway they said that they were accessing that part of my brain that’s responsible for the premonitions that all of us precognitives experience.”

“To do what?” Jack asked.