While Jack O’Neill, er, slept, Sam plotted.  She wanted out of here and she wanted her CO out of here. She wanted her team out of this building and their people back home.  This mission was the epitome of FUBAR and, though she wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable after-action inquiries, Sam had made her peace with all that had gone wrong and her part in it.  That said, in her estimation, it was past time for them to make to make a very fashionable exit from this hell hole.

            She didn’t know what the wardens planned to do with them in the long term, but she didn’t intend to be their guest long enough to find out.  All they needed was a chance. 

When her life was on the life, Sam could be pretty formidable and pretty damned dangerous with her bare hands, in Kawalsky’s estimation anyway.  Secretly, Sam thought he was buttering her up so she’d put in a good word for him with Janet.  Sam may have been preoccupied with her internal drama, but she wasn’t that oblivious.

Somebody’s got a crush, she thought with a wicked grin. If those two got it together, Sam wanted to be there.  If they didn’t get it together, she wanted to be there to make them get it together. She was all in favor of fanning that flicker into a flame.

But she couldn’t do that from here, she needed to be there.

Hazarding a pat to the colonel’s shoulder, Sam rose to her feet and made her way to the door.  They’d lost their gear and their weapons, but they hadn’t lost their wits.  Sam just had to wait the bastards out.  They’d have to come eventually, either to feed them or to pump them for information.  It was an inevitability, much like the headache her CO would be waking up with.

Come on, boys, make my day.

And—wouldn’t you know it—they did.

She didn’t know whether they’d been under surveillance throughout the night or if they’d merely had low expectations of two American soldiers on their own, but they only sent two people for them when it came time to feed them.  One carried the food and the other a gun.  If Sam had been a betting woman, she’d have laid odds that the FN P-90 the minion was carrying had belonged to one of the late Special Ops officers Sam had seen hours ago.  She wasn’t sure she was supposed to recognize the weapon, but she certainly did. Months between Nellis and Peterson had left her intimately familiar with every bit of the high-tech artillery that passed through Ops hands.  She built it, she broke it; someday, she’d teach it.  If looks could kill, this op would have been a cake walk.

Food minion placed the food in the doorway while the other trained the barrel of his weapon over her heart.  Her eyes never strayed from the man with the tray.  There was a lot be said for her training.  Not much for theirs though.

The tray was made out of some kind of reflective metal.  She could work with that.

Well-aware of the two men watching her for any sign of duplicity, Sam slowly approached the tray sitting idle before her.  They couldn’t close the door without her picking up the tray. To pick up the tray, she had to basically lean out of the room. The tray was metal. Sam calculated that her chances were better than 58% for making them sorry they’d ever been born.

Once gun minion made the decision to kick the bottom of the tray and, consequently, spill gruel and tepid water all over Sam and her nice cozy BDUs, all bets were off.

She flipped the tray, slammed it against the doorjamb, and brought it around in a single smooth arc to bash food minion in the face.  Thrown by the counter-intuitive tactic, gun minion took a step back.  Took a step back, forgetting that this prison remained impregnable by virtue of their intricate system of stairs. Sam leapt back into cell as he fell backward into the dark, setting off the P-90’s hair trigger and peppering the corridor with mighty holes.

A lot of stairs and a lot of bullets, Sam reasoned, peaking out into the corridor to see if she could expect to see their finely armed friend again.  She didn’t think so.  Food minion, however, had the nerve to start waking up from his sudden bought of unconsciousness, which didn’t exactly conform to Sam’s ‘perfect plan for getting the hell out of here.’  Reintroducing him to his very solid serving tray, Sam put paid to that particular obstacle.

Knowing they were officially running on borrowed time, Sam decided it was time to make that fashionable exit she’d been so gung ho about earlier.

Going with the most reliable military movie cliché she knew, Sam stood straight up and shouted as loudly as she dared, “Up and at ‘em, Airman O’Neill.” He jerked to semi-consciousness. “I repeat, up and at ‘em. Do you think you’re at the Waldorf, O’Neill?”

He murmured confusedly, “Ma’am, no, ma’am.”  He rubbed his jaw unhappily and rolled onto his knees. He was just stumbling onto his shaky legs when he gave their surroundings a cursory glance and frowned.  “The hell?”

Sam stood at attention, waiting to see which of the two O’Neills she’d be dealing with.  Realizing he wasn’t saying anything else, she moved to stand before him.  His frown didn’t disappear but he didn’t try to keep his distance either.  He scrubbed at his eyes and blinked.

“Carter, why does my face hurt?”  Joy and guilt blended together until it seemed perfectly logical to lean up and kiss her commanding officer on the cheek.  His eyebrows flicked high even as his mouth tilted in its customary half-smile.  “Don’t tell me, let me just enjoy the aftermath.”

She punched him in the shoulder, maybe a little too elated.  “Let’s get out of here. I think I left my iron on.”

He shrugged and she was pleased to see him managing to limp a little more easily behind her. Her trusty serving tray in hand, Sam nodded for the colonel to keep behind her and, at last, they made their particularly stylish exit.

The colonel was never going to let her hear the end of the ‘Great Iraqi Tray Mutiny of ’95,’ though she supposed there were worst things to be remembered for.

~!~

            Sam snagged the handgun food minion had stashed under his coat and gave Colonel O’Neill her trusty serving tray-slash-battering ram following a brief demonstration of  knocking the hell out of the enemy with said shiny object.  He was suitably impressed, muttering something about her teaching a class on conflict resolution with cooking utensils.  She wasn’t opposed to the idea.

            Following her mental recollections of their initial trip to their cell, Sam led the way back to the main corridor.  They managed to duck out of sight of the only two guards they hadn’t had a chance to dispatch, but were surprised at not seeing more.  They unspoken question—and prayer—was answered when an overeager fist nearly broke her nose on the trek up the staircase.  She reared back in time to avoid a Class II nasal fracture, only to nearly break her neck plummeting down the incline instead.

            Two pairs of arms saved her from the fall and pulled her into an anonymous cell just in time to avoid a contingent of prison guards.  Once the solemn men had passed, she yanked out of their hold to point her gun at their unexpected visitor.  Maybe it was the smell of blood or the lingering, overwhelming stink that inundated the place, but until she’d seen him with her own two eyes, she hadn’t recognized him at all.

            “Feisty as ever, I see,” Lou joked before lifting her up in a bear hug that would have left Paddington Bear feeling inept.  She didn’t care about the damp blood on his jacket or the faint smell of vomit clinging to his person.  She’d seen him in worse condition, as he’d seen her.  It was just good to see him in the first place.

            As soon as he set her back on the floor, she sucker punched him in the arm.  “I was worried about you.”

            Lou and the colonel shared a look, as if they were jointly conceiving annoying ways to tell her how cute she was. Consequently, they completely deserved it when she used both hands to pinch them—hard—at the same time. As you do.

            They hissed and slid as far out of reach as their penal shoebox allowed.  She stalked after the colonel, who’d drawn the short straw on being closer to her and being too sore to do a whole lot of extra fleeing.  Upon finding himself the sole subject of her wrath, he pled to her nurturing side with a hinting glance at his legs.  She’d make him pay for that later. She was embarrassed to say his ploy had worked.

            Eager to move on from how easily she tended to let things go where her CO was concerned, Sam decided it was time to move out.  They were almost out of the main building.  If they could just leave the grounds and hot-foot it to Baghdad proper, they could arrange for a rendezvous with Bravo and call it an adventure.  Anything that involved less jumping, ass-kicking, and running was right up Sam’s alley.  She was in more of a mood for drinking, showering, and sleeping right about now.  Heavy on the drinking. And also pool, there needed to be some pool playing to round out her foray into luxury. She only sort of meant that ironically.  She had no idea how this had become her life.

            Colonel O’Neill took the time to update Ferretti on their progress, sparing no detail on Sam’s indisputable skill with cookware in combat. Of course, he embellished to hell and back, but he sounded so much like the version of the colonel who haunted Peterson’s shooting range that she couldn’t see correcting him.  Lou’s meaningful nod toward him when his back was turned said much the same.

            “If the two of you are through bonding over my return from crazytown, can we go?” The colonel was leaning gingerly against the door, waiting for the okay to lead them out. Sam was the lowest ranked, but, for the moment, she was calling the plays. It was still taking some getting used to.

            “That depends. We all clear?”

            The colonel double-checked the corridor and gave her the hand signal for affirmative.  They were back to where they thrived. Not another word was said, neither when they surprised a pair  sentries taking a cigarette break outside the back exit nor when they ran across the body of the airman from the night before baking in the sun.  There wasn’t anything to say, so they said nothing at all, letting the symphonic clinking of the four sets of dog tags around Lou’s neck write the story those soldiers never would.  All Alpha could hope to do was come close.

            Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Coming close wasn’t much better and she thought about it while the ball chains sung.

By the time Bravo Team was rolling up to complete Alpha’s mission, Alpha’s three-sixths were ready to head out and head home.  Sam and Lou were supporting the heavily limping colonel on either side and the sunset in the distance was a godsend to three who hadn’t seen it in a while.  The only sight I don’t think I’ll ever tire of.

            O’Neill wasn’t quite normal, but he was on the way, would be closer once he wasn’t in so much pain.  The stairs hadn’t been kind. He groused when they stumbled and held on more tightly to them than either Sam or Lou was willing to put into words. Sam couldn’t speak for Ferretti, but she was holding on tight, too.  She’d nearly lost her colonel in more ways than one and for what?  They were walking away with casualties and they didn’t have a single life saved to show for it.  They were walking away with the skin on their backs and only some of the clothes.  For what?

            That wasn’t an answer Sam had, because, for all she’d just survived, she hadn’t learn anything new.  Jack O’Neill was no turncoat and he couldn’t be bought.  Her superiors had asked her to make him suffer, apparently just because they could and she didn’t know how to feel anything but betrayed.  It was a feeling she was sick of.

            Moving in with weapons aimed to stave off any ‘heroic’ militants, Bravo Team immediately closed ranks around Alpha and began staging a tactical retreat.  Sam could have kissed Maybourne when he offered her his canteen.  She settled on a grateful smile and was humbled by the self-conscious one he returned.  He might have had a slimy personality, but there might have been a worthwhile human being in him somewhere.

            After taking a couple of sips, she went to share it with the colonel and found him being given a thorough once-over by none other than their favorite pocket-sized medical officer.  Janet had to march double-time with one hand constantly on her weapon to keep up with the group movements, but that didn’t preclude her from interrogating each member of the recently captured insertion team on their medical status.  Sam realized that she was up next.

            Colonel O’Neill was growling at Kawalsky, who’d slipped in while she was distracted to take over supporting their CO.  Charlie just grinned and kept up his idle banter to the colonel’s disgust.  “You’re getting too old for this crap, Jack. Cannot keep bailing your ancient ass out of trouble.”

            “Cut the crap, Kawalsky. You’re damn near as old as I am.  I just have the rank to go with my wealth of experience,” he snarked haughtily.  “And I bail your ass out all the time! And I’m better-looking!”  

 Sam ducked her head to hide her smirk.  Yeah, he’s getting better all right.