As the convoy pulled away from the curb, he spared a moment to consider the future of the Museum now that it had lost its primary advocate. The end of an era-
An explosion rocked the vehicle, lifting the back end and slamming Daniel's head into the seat in front of him.
"Shit-IED!" bellowed the sergeant. "Go, go, go!"
Improvised explosive device, Daniel's scrambled brain provided. The driver jammed on the accelerator, only to brake again when a truck blocked the road ahead. Vision swimming, Daniel tried to turn around to see what had happened. All he could make out through the choking black smoke was a severed leg and a charred, unidentifiable heap on the steps where Tariq had stood.
Daniel had only a split second to wonder who had been the target of the ambush before a second impact threw him out of his seat and awareness was ripped away.
Chapter fifteen
It had been a while since John had spent any time in a traditional military unit, and he'd never before worn a lieutenant colonel's oak leaves around this many young enlisted. His arm was starting to get tired from returning salutes. Ironic, really, since he was little more than hired help when compared to the two people he'd accompanied to Iraq.
Rebecca Larance seemed to be in her element in the coalition's pathology lab and morgue, moving from table to table with a brisk professionalism that implied she knew exactly what she was looking at. Peering through a microscope at a tissue sample, she asked her fellow FBI agent, "This was one of your contacts?"
The agent, a redheaded, freckled guy whose name John had already forgotten but who apparently had worked with Rebecca before, gave her a nod from his place against the back wall. "We were working with her on the ongoing efforts to recover the Museum's looted antiquities. Locals claim her home was hit with Willy Pete, but there was no evidence of that in the building. Then there were those weird symbols I showed you. The rings and triangle thing."
"There's also no chemical residue present in this or the other bodies you've shown me to suggest white phosphorus." Rebecca straightened up from the microscope. "These victims show the advanced decrepitude common to my other cases. It's safe to say they're linked."
"Same M.O. on the other side of the planet?"
John waited to see how Rebecca would deflect her colleague's curiosity. "It's a small world after all," she deadpanned. Her phone chirped, and she unclipped it from her belt to read a message off its screen. "Bingo. We've got what we need, Colonel." She looked up and offered him a cryptic smile. "Shall we head back?"
Back' in this case meant the Air Expeditionary Wing headquarters, where they'd been given space to bunk and talk tactics. John raised his eyebrows at her. "You work fast."
"She's just that good." The other agent grinned and, pushing himself off the wall, walked over to join them. "You'll write up your findings for the local division and for Washington?" he asked Rebecca.
"I'll send you a copy," she promised him, offering him a smile as she packed up her notebook and laptop. She seemed a hell of a lot more relaxed after getting some sleep on the flight. "For the moment, you can at least reassure a few Army colonels that their guys are off the hook for these deaths" Her fingers reached unerringly for the pair of sunglasses that had been propping her hair off her face, and she slipped them on.
Assuming she'd relay the contents of the text message when they'd ditched her Bureau cohort, John didn't push. Instead, once they were outside the autopsy bay, he hailed the motor pool corporal to find them a ride back across to the Air Force side of the base.
Before long he was behind the wheel of a Humvee, rounding the end of the flight line. The bright sun and warm, and landscape made for a hell of a contrast against the frigid grays they'd left in Colorado.
Rebecca spoke first, beating him to the punch. "I suppose this must look a lot like Bagram." She gestured to the activity surrounding the rows of helicopters, many receiving maintenance and being loaded with cargo or weapons.
Uh-uh. We're not going there. "I wouldn't know, these days," he said. If his tone was a little abrupt, well, he'd live with that. "Afghanistan was a long time ago for me. What was the message you got back in the lab?"
She cast a quick glance over at him, otherwise not reacting to the brush-off. "Details," she answered levelly. "Based on that and what we just saw from the bodies here, I think I have a more comprehensive profile of the… cult."
"We still sticking to that term?" They weren't Wraith and they weren't entirely human, but he supposed they couldn't go around calling them incubi and succubi, and somehow "buses' didn't cut it.
"Admittedly it doesn't fit the Bureau's definition. The Lilith worshippers don't actively seek membership or solicit money."
John took the corner at a higher speed than might have been advisable; he didn't get many opportunities to drive a Humvee. "On the other hand, they do literally suck the life out of people, so…"
"So they're distinctly abnormal." Holding onto the doorframe, Rebecca didn't comment on her chauffeur's skills. "Given that their members carry a specific set of genes, it raises an extremely difficult ethical question I suspect we may have to face at some point. What does it mean to be human?"
To his ears, she sounded uncomfortable with that prospect. He found the entire issue pretty disturbing himself, especially since he'd had to deal with it from a very intimate perspective. Sometimes he found himself wishing he could see things with Ronon's single-minded clarity.
Sidestepping the issue, she added, "Outside a purely legal framework, the term `cult' is still applicable. While their genetic makeup may drive them to behave as they do, as a group they're acting on a mythology, a belief structure. One based on fact, to be sure, but still largely ritualized-otherwise we wouldn't be seeing behavior like the removal and souveniring of organs, or the positioning of bodies within those symbols."
As she stared through the windshield, John had the impression she was focused on something other than the squat, nondescript buildings and `severe clear' sky.
"In any case, the term `cult' is applicable in a psychological context," she continued. "They've existed since Babylonian times, so there's nothing unusual about it from that point of view. The group never made it onto our radar until recently because as far as we know-or knew-its members had never engaged in any overtly illegal activities. It's just the alien bent that's eye-catching. But even that's common. Despite Freud's claim that religion is a neurosis, Karl Marx recognized its usefulness as a socializing tool. Bottom line is that people need some form of spiritual guidance, something beyond themselves, and they look for it in all sorts of places. Some find comfort through the worship of one ancient god or another; others see the image of the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich or a fence post."
"I once convinced Rodney that his Jell-O was trying to show him how to optimize Atlantis's power grid." John shrugged. "In both my defense and his, we all were pretty sleep deprived at the time. Anyway, the Lilith cult got the FBI's-or at least your-attention not too long ago. You were saying?"
In his peripheral vision, he caught the ghost of a smile. "The followers saw their Gate of Heaven on television in Wormhole X-treme. They labeled it, as did a few other paranoid and generally delusional personality types, as a government-sponsored attempt at a disinformation campaign."
"Aside from the sponsorship thing, that's more or less true."
Wincing, Rebecca shook her head. "As I've noticed. Still, the facts notwithstanding, there are some pretty wild notions out there. Hell, one group of… `fans' is convinced we waged war on Iraq to acquire Saddam's Stargate. The profile I'm working on, the one I'll be writing up tonight, goes something like this: The Lilith cultists differ from the textbook conspiracy theorists in that they saw the show as a sign, one heralded in their texts. The gate is their version of the Holy Grail, or maybe a better analogy would be the Ark of the Covenant, because to them it's a literal doorway to their origins in the heavens-another galaxy. One of them fed on the network executive and in so doing gained information leading to D.C. Further attacks thereafter provided pointers to Colorado Springs."