It was a sign of her growing familiarity with their situation that the phrase `really dead this time' didn't seem to faze her. "Then we'd better find him alive." She bent to examine a series of scorch marks in the road. "Battlefields make for lousy crime scenes. It's next to impossible to weed out the relevant evidence from all the extraneous chaos. If I knew which vehicle he was in, that might be a start."
"Probably the middle one. That'd be procedure, since he didn't have an assigned role in protecting the convoy."
They walked over to the wrecked Humvee. As the profiler eyed one of its unhinged doors, a shriek of static issued from John's radio, followed by a startling voice. "This is Daniel Jackson calling any coalition forces who can hear me, particularly Colonel Sh-"
John yanked the radio off his belt. "Jackson, it's Sheppard. Switch to channel Delta."
"Copy." There was a pause as both made the change in order to free up the common frequency. "I'm with you on Delta. Glad to know today's frequency protocols haven't expired yet."
The sheer relief of hearing Jackson's voice just about knocked John over. "Are you okay? Where the hell are you?"
"Ramadi, and I'm okay. I had some, ah, help getting out of the combat zone."
Rebecca's grin morphed into a puzzled frown, and she mouthed Ramadi?
John shook his head, already feeling the beginnings of an adrenaline nosedive. "Don't take this wrong, because it's really great to know you're still in one piece, but is there some reason you couldn't have clued us in on that fact a couple of hours ago?"
"There is, actually." Jackson sounded pretty calm for someone who'd practically been blown sky high not too long ago. "My new acquaintances and I had some trust issues to work out. It took us a while to get this radio working as well. The important thing is that I know a lot more about what we came here to investigate. The people who rescued me are worshippers of Lilith-or, more accurately, Ninlil."
A sharp gasp from Rebecca was hurriedly suppressed.
"Say what?" Although John knew better than to press for details on an open frequency, that statement was more than a little worrying.
"I'll explain later. Right now I need a ride back to the base. Think you can come pick me up?"
"We'll make it work. Keep monitoring this channel. Sheppard out." John tried to dredge up a mental map of the country and failed. He went back to the lieutenant, whose group had gotten the personnel carrier's engine running and was preparing to head out. "Lieutenant, what's the best option for getting to Ramadi?"
"Best option is to stay home, sir," the soldier told him without a trace of humor. "Going through Fallujah's a crapshoot even in daylight, and it doesn't get much better from there. If you really have to make the trip, see if you can take a chopper. Might have to wait a while for an aircrew to become available, though. They're stretched pretty thin these days."
If that was the biggest obstacle of the moment, things were looking up. John decided he didn't want to know how Jackson's helpers had sneaked him through the gauntlet by ground. "Assuming there's a Hawk free, finding a pilot won't be a problem."
John hadn't come to Iraq with any intention of returning to old habits, but the well-practiced rhythms of powering up an HH-60 Pave Hawk were distinct and comfortable in his memory. He glanced behind him at Rebecca, securing her seat restraint. "All set?"
"Sure." She hadn't even blinked at the idea of flying through the helicopter equivalent of shark-infested waters. She'd just accepted the proffered helmet and climbed aboard. He had to give her credit for that. "I take it you kept your flight qualifications current while you were on special assignment?"
Under the guise of turning to face front, John checked his assigned copilot for a reaction to the `special assignment' remark. Captain Baker merely continued uploading their mission profile to the navigation computer, her downcast eyes obscured by the night-vision goggles perched on top of her helmet.
"Remember how I told you about that six-week vacation I had a few months ago?" John answered Rebecca. "I re-qualified during my downtime."
"That's encouraging." Over the helmet intercom, a hint of a smile was audible in her voice. He was glad to hear it, if a little wary. Although she hadn't lost her cool for long, her earlier shock upon hearing Jackson's explanation of his situation had been plain to see. John was getting an increasingly strong sense that Rebecca Larance wasn't being completely forthcoming, and he was starting to wonder just how she'd managed to pick up some of the information she had on the Lilith-Ninlil scriptures.
He closed his hands around the collective and throttle and eased the chopper into the air, recalling yet again how very different it was from his usual ride these days. The intuitive controls of a puddle jumper were indescribably cool, but the jumpers' power was understated, the accelerations muted. Here, he felt the helicopter's strength thrumming through every surface.
Although this hop would be relatively short, he couldn't afford to treat it like a stroll down memory lane-not at night over unfamiliar terrain that likely held a few would-be shooters. Once he'd left the floodlights of the Balad flight line behind, he pulled his goggles into place and scanned the barely visible horizon.
Rebecca's voice filtered through his headset again. "Is there an established coalition base in Ramadi?"
"The Army and the Marines have been trading shifts there," replied Baker. "They've got a decent landing zone, which is all I ever- Incoming!"
Even as she called out the warning, John saw the brilliant flash from the ground below, whiting out his goggles for an instant. He banked the chopper sharply to the left and climbed, hoping the projectile had been a mortar and not something that could track his engine's heat signature. "Hang on!"
An explosion rattled the craft, stealing its lift and forcing John to battle the cyclic for a moment. Thrown forward against his harness, he quickly reestablished control. "Damage?"
"Don't think so," Baker reported. "Looks like we were far enough above it when it blew, whatever it was."
"All aircraft, be advised," came a controller's voice over the radio. "Reports of ground fire in sector Kilo."
"You don't say," John muttered. More points of light flickered below-muzzle flashes. The bullets wouldn't reach them at this altitude, though that wouldn't stop the insurgents from trying, because sooner or later the helicopter had to land.
John checked his green-tinted view against the nav computer. Within the cluster of buildings at his ten-o'clock was the courtyard that would serve as his landing zone. "Find me a descent path that won't put us in the middle of that fireworks show," he told Baker.
"Can do. Turn right to zero-two-zero, hold course for ninety seconds, then back left to two-nine-zero."
She talked him down to an altitude of five hundred feet, and he pulled out the evasive-approach tricks he'd honed in Khabour. Only a few bullets sang past the windscreen as he swung down between two buildings, which then blocked the shooters' aim while the chopper descended through the remaining seventy feet to settle on the ground.
"Well, that could've been worse," Baker commented as the rotors slowed to a halt in the high-walled courtyard. "Nice job, Colonel."
"Team effort. Go report our arrival to the area commander, would you? I'll handle the post-flight." John tugged his goggles and helmet off while she left to obey. Without his headset he could hear the clash beyond the wall for the first time. By the time he finished his post-flight checklist, the gunfire had faded out. "Guess we provided the excitement for the evening," he said over his shoulder to Rebecca.
When she didn't reply, he turned around in his seat. "Hey, if that whole thing freaked you out, I'm sorry."