At long last...
... "Jeep Jockey Jumper" is FINISHED! Here's Chapter 8; the epilogue will follow immediately.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
And We’re Not Toast
“Quarantine?!” roared Maj. Wolfgang Hochstetter from outside the main gate later that night.
Langenscheidt flinched but held his ground inside the gate. “The prisoners have been very sick, Herr Major--meningitis, the doctor said. No one is allowed in, and Col. Pungenhorst was allowed to leave only because he had to go to the hospital.”
“Doctor?! What doctor?!”
Langenscheidt looked around nervously and barely managed not to sigh in relief as Schultz approached with a sleep-rumpled and very unhappy Beckett in tow. “Here he comes, Herr Major.”
“Schultz! Who is this man?” Hochstetter demanded.
“Doctor Beckett, Herr Major,” Schultz replied. “He is with the Red Cross.”
Beckett had some choice Gaelic words about the Gestapo and more choice Gaelic words about the fact that it was nearly midnight, then added in English, “What part o’ quarantine dinna ye understand, Major?”
Hochstetter’s English was relatively fluent, but Beckett’s Paisley brogue, thickened by exhaustion and annoyance, stumped him. Rather than admit defeat, however, he spat, “What is this about the prisoners being ill?”
“We have had seventeen cases of viral meningitis,” Beckett said slowly and with exaggerated clarity, “and it is too soon to be certain that no one else has contracted the virus. I cannot allow you to enter this camp, Major.”
“Doctor, I have urgent Gestapo business in this camp pertaining to the investigation that brought Col. Pungenhorst here.”
“Then I suggest you try to find out which rest camp he’s gone to and speak to him there--if he’s been stabilized yet. When he left, he sounded like he needed an iron lung.”
Hochstetter snarled. “It is not Col. Pungenhorst I need to speak with.”
“Anyone else ye need to see, ye can speak to through the gate. But ye’ll not set foot inside, do you hear?”
Hochstetter exhaled through his teeth before turning his glare from Beckett to Schultz. “Schultz, has anyone left the camp this evening?”
“Nein, Herr Major,” Schultz reported. “Dr. McKay and Dr. Zelenka went out to the tent to work on the Pfützespringer around 9:00, but everyone else has been confined to the camp.”
“Oh?” Hochstetter looked around until he spotted the tent, where the lantern still glowed.
“That is classified, Hochstetter,” Sheppard’s imperious voice stated in German.
Hochstetter turned back to the gate to see Sheppard emerging from the shadow of the guard box. “And I am the Gestapo.”
Sheppard laughed. “I had this conversation with Pungenhorst already. Some secrets, Major, not even the Gestapo may know.”
“Who is this?” Hochstetter demanded of Schultz.
“Oberstleutnant Johann Schäfer, Luftwaffe Intelligence,” Sheppard replied before Schultz could. “And to save you the trouble of asking, the whole camp knows that I spent this evening with my beloved Marya having dinner and bridge with Col. Klink and Col. Hogan.”
“What is going on here?!” Klink demanded as he strode up to the gate.
“KLINK!” Hochstetter yelled. “What are these men doing here?!”
After another five minutes of shouting, interrupted by the arrival of Zelenka to further corroborate alibis, a brief bout of sleep-deprived histrionics from Marya, some highly creative Satedan curses from Ronon, and the exasperated departure of Beckett, Hochstetter finally settled for calling the radio detector crew over to the gate to get their report. They had, of course, intercepted nothing.
“Hochstetter, will you kindly explain the meaning of all this?!” Klink asked.
Hochstetter glared at him. “A vital research project in Hohenstaufen was bombed tonight, and the witnesses are claiming strange lights in the sky over the area. I want to know how the information on the location was passed to London, since none of our radio detectors have intercepted messages there or here.”
Sheppard laughed incredulously. “Major, you place a research project in a hotbed of treason and blame London for its destruction?” He laughed again and went back toward Barracks 4.
“He’s right, Major,” Klink added unnecessarily.
That was too much for Hochstetter. He looked around for an easy target on whom to vent his rage, but none being forthcoming, he cried “BAH!!!” and stomped back to his car.
But Sheppard did not stop at the door to Barracks 4. Neither had Beckett. One of Ronon’s rumblings had actually been a request to both men to check on Kinch. Beckett was genuinely asleep by 10:30 and so had missed the debriefing that had taken place when Sheppard and Hogan returned to their respective barracks at 11:30, but the fact that Kinch had gone straight to his bunk upon their return and fallen asleep within seconds had both Ronon and Teyla worried, as did the fact that he couldn’t be roused for the debrief. It didn’t seem likely that the fast-acting morbus horrens had caught up with him after this many days, but one never knew what other Pegasus bugs might be lurking in the Jumper without the team’s knowledge.
Sheppard slipped into Barracks 2 just as Beckett finished his scan. “Well, Carson?”
Beckett looked over the scan results and shook his head. “Might have a touch o’ the flu--regular flu, that is. His temperature’s slightly elevated. But beyond that? Looks like he’s just worn out from his first brush with Ancient technology.”
Hogan, who was standing at the foot of Kinch’s bunk, and LeBeau, Kinch’s bunkmate, both heaved silent sighs of relief. LeBeau added a quick prayer in French and crossed himself.
“Klink won’t be happy another prisoner’s sick,” Hogan noted. “But at least he knows what to do about a single case of the flu.”
“Yes, and it’s something Wilson can handle,” LeBeau nodded.
“So we’re still good to leave Tuesday?” Sheppard asked as Beckett stood.
“Aye,” Beckett confirmed. “We’ll tell Klink to keep the quarantine in place until Thursday just to be safe, but there’d be no reason for any of the visitors to stay longer.”
“Good. I don’t know how long I can keep Hochstetter off our backs.”
Beckett returned the scanner to its hiding place, and he and Sheppard took their leave.
Now that the mission was over and the other sources of excitement from the weekend had died down, Monday was positively boring. Klink called Burkhalter first thing to complain about Hochstetter; Burkhalter called Hochstetter and blistered his ear before telling him in no uncertain terms not to come back to Stalag 13 until the quarantine was lifted unless he had actionable intelligence that something was going on. McKay and Zelenka got the time drive repaired and reinstalled. The medical team made perfunctory rounds and reported to Klink that conditions seemed to be improving. Carter and Newkirk felt better enough that Beckett gave them permission to move back to their usual bunks, though that small amount of activity wore them out. Kinch slept through roll call but woke around 11 feeling none the worse for wear, and Beckett confirmed that he did not have the flu after all. That afternoon he managed to disconnect Zelenka’s radio from the coffee pot in record time, and Zelenka was pleasantly surprised to find that no damage had been done to either one. And Sheppard finally beat Marya at chess. She didn’t even pout--much.
The radio detector truck left at dawn Tuesday morning, while Beckett was making his final round of the camp. Marya and Sheppard staged a tearful farewell after breakfast, complete with long, passionate kisses, and she left with Pungenhorst’s driver. Sheppard feigned distress as he went back to Barracks 4, then brushed his teeth for a solid minute and rinsed with mouthwash three times. Teyla and Ronon were highly amused.
“What?” Sheppard frowned. “She had smoker’s breath!”
“So why’d you kiss her?” Ronon jibed.
Sheppard pulled a dignified face. “That, my friend, is called acting.”
The conversation was cut short by the arrival of Zelenka. “Rodney is finishing the diagnostics,” he reported, “but everything looks good so far. We should be ready to leave within... two hours.”
Beckett came in while Zelenka was still speaking. “Great,” he nodded when the Czech finished. “That should give us time to leave the camp and come back through the woods. I’ve told Klink that we’re ready to go, and Hogan said to leave the car where we found it.”
“All right,” Sheppard agreed. “You three take off. I’ll send the guards back into camp.”
The five Lanteans trooped outside and made a show of their farewells. Then Sheppard and Zelenka followed the Red Cross car through the gate and headed out to the tent, dismissing the guards before ducking inside.
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” McKay said without looking up as soon as he heard their steps on the Jumper ramp. “We cloak, fly to Cheyenne Mountain, find a safe place to park, and then make our time jumps while we’re stationary. Maybe leave some sort of marker on a tree so we’ll know for sure it worked.”
“We don’t have to be in the air for it to work?” Sheppard frowned.
“No, the Jumper just has to be powered up. It’s not tied to propulsion--or, at least, it’s not tied to propulsion now.”
“It should be a much safer way to get home,” Zelenka agreed.
Sheppard shrugged. “Sure. Whatever, as long as it works. I just want to get home before Carson’s injection wears off.”
McKay looked up at him then. “Yeah. Me, too.”
Two hours, it turned out, was an overestimate. The hour it took for Beckett, Teyla, and Ronon to return and bring the team’s gear up from the tunnel was all the time McKay needed to finish running his tests, so Sheppard, McKay, and Zelenka went back to Klink’s office briefly to take their leave. They then went back to the tunnel to change into their Atlantis uniforms, and all six Lanteans went up to Barracks 2 to say goodbye to Hogan and his men. Carter and Newkirk didn’t shake hands, just to be absolutely safe, but they were both looking considerably healthier, and Beckett said so.
“I have to admit,” Hogan said, “that I’m a little worried now what London will say the next time they send us an impossible assignment and we don’t have you guys here to help out.”
“Ah, you’ll come up with something, sir,” Sheppard grinned. “You got by without us up to now. And the war won’t last... too much longer.”
“Dare we ask?” Kinch deadpanned.
“Don’t tempt me,” Hogan laughed, and the Lanteans joined him.
“Been a pleasure to serve under you, sir,” Sheppard stated, saluting.
Hogan returned the salute and shook Sheppard’s hand. “Call me as soon as you get home, would you, Sheppard? I’ll always wonder if you made it.”
“Yes, sir. That’s a promise.”
After another round of farewells, Team Sheppard went back down into the tunnel and up into the tent, then took a last look at Stalag 13 before climbing into the Jumper. McKay sighed happily as he settled into the co-pilot’s seat. “I am so looking forward to edible food.”
“Will Col. Hogan be alive in 2009?” Teyla wondered.
“Actually, he will,” Sheppard replied. “He’s a general. And I think he lives in Colorado Springs.”
“Huh,” said Ronon. “So they survive the war.”
“Yeah, they do. Dunno what happens to the rest of the team after that, though. Be kind of surprised if any of them are still around, but you never know.”
And with that, Sheppard cloaked the Jumper and took off for Colorado.
Meanwhile, in Barracks 2, LeBeau busied himself with putting together a hearty beef stew as Kinch and Hogan played chess and Carter and Newkirk dozed in the post-mission quiet.
“What was it like, Kinch, flying that thing?” Hogan finally asked.
“Pretty weird,” Kinch confessed. “Nothing like you’d expect an alien ship to be like. And I don’t know how the neural interface thingy works, but it’s kind of unnerving to think a command and have the machine respond without you even saying anything. Think I’ll be glad to get back to B-17s, where I know what everything does.”
Hogan snorted in agreement.
“I wish we could have kept the subspace radios,” LeBeau remarked.
“Wouldn’t have done us much good,” Hogan noted. “If the Gestapo’s in camp, we can’t get out anyway, and London doesn’t have a subspace receiver.”
The conversation paused while Kinch considered his next move. Then he said, “So, Colonel... anything you wish you’d asked?”
Hogan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. What could Sheppard and his team have told them that he wanted to know and couldn’t deduce from the hints that they’d dropped? It was obvious that the Allies had won, and Sheppard implied that he himself would still be alive when the Puddle Jumper returned to its right time, but beyond that... did he even want to know who lived and who died, where McKay and Zelenka’s technology came from, what an international team was doing on another planet and how they got there? Would he have been able to live with the answers if they were bad?
“No,” he replied as he made his next move. “Check.”
“General Landry to the Puddle Jumper storage area!”
Maj. Gen. Hank Landry frowned at his watch as he turned around and retraced his steps as requested. Team Sheppard hadn’t been gone five minutes. Had something gone wrong?
By the time Landry got to the Jumper storage area, he could hear McKay haranguing some of the junior scientists about the terrible time he’d had thanks to their incompetence, despite Zelenka’s occasional reminder that if anyone deserved blame, it was Dr. Lee, and Teyla had apparently dispatched some airmen to bring the team something from the mess. It took a moment for Landry to catch Sheppard’s attention.
“Sheppard? What’s going on?”
“We’re back, sir,” Sheppard replied, saluting.
“I was expecting you to be gone longer. What happened?”
“Oh, not much. Scared a few Indians, spent two weeks at Stalag 13....”
Landry stared. “The Stalag 13?”
“Personal guests of Papa Bear himself,” Sheppard nodded. “And that reminds me.” He scanned the small crowd and found the man he was looking for. “Harriman. See if you can find me a phone number for General Hogan.”
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
And We’re Not Toast
“Quarantine?!” roared Maj. Wolfgang Hochstetter from outside the main gate later that night.
Langenscheidt flinched but held his ground inside the gate. “The prisoners have been very sick, Herr Major--meningitis, the doctor said. No one is allowed in, and Col. Pungenhorst was allowed to leave only because he had to go to the hospital.”
“Doctor?! What doctor?!”
Langenscheidt looked around nervously and barely managed not to sigh in relief as Schultz approached with a sleep-rumpled and very unhappy Beckett in tow. “Here he comes, Herr Major.”
“Schultz! Who is this man?” Hochstetter demanded.
“Doctor Beckett, Herr Major,” Schultz replied. “He is with the Red Cross.”
Beckett had some choice Gaelic words about the Gestapo and more choice Gaelic words about the fact that it was nearly midnight, then added in English, “What part o’ quarantine dinna ye understand, Major?”
Hochstetter’s English was relatively fluent, but Beckett’s Paisley brogue, thickened by exhaustion and annoyance, stumped him. Rather than admit defeat, however, he spat, “What is this about the prisoners being ill?”
“We have had seventeen cases of viral meningitis,” Beckett said slowly and with exaggerated clarity, “and it is too soon to be certain that no one else has contracted the virus. I cannot allow you to enter this camp, Major.”
“Doctor, I have urgent Gestapo business in this camp pertaining to the investigation that brought Col. Pungenhorst here.”
“Then I suggest you try to find out which rest camp he’s gone to and speak to him there--if he’s been stabilized yet. When he left, he sounded like he needed an iron lung.”
Hochstetter snarled. “It is not Col. Pungenhorst I need to speak with.”
“Anyone else ye need to see, ye can speak to through the gate. But ye’ll not set foot inside, do you hear?”
Hochstetter exhaled through his teeth before turning his glare from Beckett to Schultz. “Schultz, has anyone left the camp this evening?”
“Nein, Herr Major,” Schultz reported. “Dr. McKay and Dr. Zelenka went out to the tent to work on the Pfützespringer around 9:00, but everyone else has been confined to the camp.”
“Oh?” Hochstetter looked around until he spotted the tent, where the lantern still glowed.
“That is classified, Hochstetter,” Sheppard’s imperious voice stated in German.
Hochstetter turned back to the gate to see Sheppard emerging from the shadow of the guard box. “And I am the Gestapo.”
Sheppard laughed. “I had this conversation with Pungenhorst already. Some secrets, Major, not even the Gestapo may know.”
“Who is this?” Hochstetter demanded of Schultz.
“Oberstleutnant Johann Schäfer, Luftwaffe Intelligence,” Sheppard replied before Schultz could. “And to save you the trouble of asking, the whole camp knows that I spent this evening with my beloved Marya having dinner and bridge with Col. Klink and Col. Hogan.”
“What is going on here?!” Klink demanded as he strode up to the gate.
“KLINK!” Hochstetter yelled. “What are these men doing here?!”
After another five minutes of shouting, interrupted by the arrival of Zelenka to further corroborate alibis, a brief bout of sleep-deprived histrionics from Marya, some highly creative Satedan curses from Ronon, and the exasperated departure of Beckett, Hochstetter finally settled for calling the radio detector crew over to the gate to get their report. They had, of course, intercepted nothing.
“Hochstetter, will you kindly explain the meaning of all this?!” Klink asked.
Hochstetter glared at him. “A vital research project in Hohenstaufen was bombed tonight, and the witnesses are claiming strange lights in the sky over the area. I want to know how the information on the location was passed to London, since none of our radio detectors have intercepted messages there or here.”
Sheppard laughed incredulously. “Major, you place a research project in a hotbed of treason and blame London for its destruction?” He laughed again and went back toward Barracks 4.
“He’s right, Major,” Klink added unnecessarily.
That was too much for Hochstetter. He looked around for an easy target on whom to vent his rage, but none being forthcoming, he cried “BAH!!!” and stomped back to his car.
But Sheppard did not stop at the door to Barracks 4. Neither had Beckett. One of Ronon’s rumblings had actually been a request to both men to check on Kinch. Beckett was genuinely asleep by 10:30 and so had missed the debriefing that had taken place when Sheppard and Hogan returned to their respective barracks at 11:30, but the fact that Kinch had gone straight to his bunk upon their return and fallen asleep within seconds had both Ronon and Teyla worried, as did the fact that he couldn’t be roused for the debrief. It didn’t seem likely that the fast-acting morbus horrens had caught up with him after this many days, but one never knew what other Pegasus bugs might be lurking in the Jumper without the team’s knowledge.
Sheppard slipped into Barracks 2 just as Beckett finished his scan. “Well, Carson?”
Beckett looked over the scan results and shook his head. “Might have a touch o’ the flu--regular flu, that is. His temperature’s slightly elevated. But beyond that? Looks like he’s just worn out from his first brush with Ancient technology.”
Hogan, who was standing at the foot of Kinch’s bunk, and LeBeau, Kinch’s bunkmate, both heaved silent sighs of relief. LeBeau added a quick prayer in French and crossed himself.
“Klink won’t be happy another prisoner’s sick,” Hogan noted. “But at least he knows what to do about a single case of the flu.”
“Yes, and it’s something Wilson can handle,” LeBeau nodded.
“So we’re still good to leave Tuesday?” Sheppard asked as Beckett stood.
“Aye,” Beckett confirmed. “We’ll tell Klink to keep the quarantine in place until Thursday just to be safe, but there’d be no reason for any of the visitors to stay longer.”
“Good. I don’t know how long I can keep Hochstetter off our backs.”
Beckett returned the scanner to its hiding place, and he and Sheppard took their leave.
Now that the mission was over and the other sources of excitement from the weekend had died down, Monday was positively boring. Klink called Burkhalter first thing to complain about Hochstetter; Burkhalter called Hochstetter and blistered his ear before telling him in no uncertain terms not to come back to Stalag 13 until the quarantine was lifted unless he had actionable intelligence that something was going on. McKay and Zelenka got the time drive repaired and reinstalled. The medical team made perfunctory rounds and reported to Klink that conditions seemed to be improving. Carter and Newkirk felt better enough that Beckett gave them permission to move back to their usual bunks, though that small amount of activity wore them out. Kinch slept through roll call but woke around 11 feeling none the worse for wear, and Beckett confirmed that he did not have the flu after all. That afternoon he managed to disconnect Zelenka’s radio from the coffee pot in record time, and Zelenka was pleasantly surprised to find that no damage had been done to either one. And Sheppard finally beat Marya at chess. She didn’t even pout--much.
The radio detector truck left at dawn Tuesday morning, while Beckett was making his final round of the camp. Marya and Sheppard staged a tearful farewell after breakfast, complete with long, passionate kisses, and she left with Pungenhorst’s driver. Sheppard feigned distress as he went back to Barracks 4, then brushed his teeth for a solid minute and rinsed with mouthwash three times. Teyla and Ronon were highly amused.
“What?” Sheppard frowned. “She had smoker’s breath!”
“So why’d you kiss her?” Ronon jibed.
Sheppard pulled a dignified face. “That, my friend, is called acting.”
The conversation was cut short by the arrival of Zelenka. “Rodney is finishing the diagnostics,” he reported, “but everything looks good so far. We should be ready to leave within... two hours.”
Beckett came in while Zelenka was still speaking. “Great,” he nodded when the Czech finished. “That should give us time to leave the camp and come back through the woods. I’ve told Klink that we’re ready to go, and Hogan said to leave the car where we found it.”
“All right,” Sheppard agreed. “You three take off. I’ll send the guards back into camp.”
The five Lanteans trooped outside and made a show of their farewells. Then Sheppard and Zelenka followed the Red Cross car through the gate and headed out to the tent, dismissing the guards before ducking inside.
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” McKay said without looking up as soon as he heard their steps on the Jumper ramp. “We cloak, fly to Cheyenne Mountain, find a safe place to park, and then make our time jumps while we’re stationary. Maybe leave some sort of marker on a tree so we’ll know for sure it worked.”
“We don’t have to be in the air for it to work?” Sheppard frowned.
“No, the Jumper just has to be powered up. It’s not tied to propulsion--or, at least, it’s not tied to propulsion now.”
“It should be a much safer way to get home,” Zelenka agreed.
Sheppard shrugged. “Sure. Whatever, as long as it works. I just want to get home before Carson’s injection wears off.”
McKay looked up at him then. “Yeah. Me, too.”
Two hours, it turned out, was an overestimate. The hour it took for Beckett, Teyla, and Ronon to return and bring the team’s gear up from the tunnel was all the time McKay needed to finish running his tests, so Sheppard, McKay, and Zelenka went back to Klink’s office briefly to take their leave. They then went back to the tunnel to change into their Atlantis uniforms, and all six Lanteans went up to Barracks 2 to say goodbye to Hogan and his men. Carter and Newkirk didn’t shake hands, just to be absolutely safe, but they were both looking considerably healthier, and Beckett said so.
“I have to admit,” Hogan said, “that I’m a little worried now what London will say the next time they send us an impossible assignment and we don’t have you guys here to help out.”
“Ah, you’ll come up with something, sir,” Sheppard grinned. “You got by without us up to now. And the war won’t last... too much longer.”
“Dare we ask?” Kinch deadpanned.
“Don’t tempt me,” Hogan laughed, and the Lanteans joined him.
“Been a pleasure to serve under you, sir,” Sheppard stated, saluting.
Hogan returned the salute and shook Sheppard’s hand. “Call me as soon as you get home, would you, Sheppard? I’ll always wonder if you made it.”
“Yes, sir. That’s a promise.”
After another round of farewells, Team Sheppard went back down into the tunnel and up into the tent, then took a last look at Stalag 13 before climbing into the Jumper. McKay sighed happily as he settled into the co-pilot’s seat. “I am so looking forward to edible food.”
“Will Col. Hogan be alive in 2009?” Teyla wondered.
“Actually, he will,” Sheppard replied. “He’s a general. And I think he lives in Colorado Springs.”
“Huh,” said Ronon. “So they survive the war.”
“Yeah, they do. Dunno what happens to the rest of the team after that, though. Be kind of surprised if any of them are still around, but you never know.”
And with that, Sheppard cloaked the Jumper and took off for Colorado.
Meanwhile, in Barracks 2, LeBeau busied himself with putting together a hearty beef stew as Kinch and Hogan played chess and Carter and Newkirk dozed in the post-mission quiet.
“What was it like, Kinch, flying that thing?” Hogan finally asked.
“Pretty weird,” Kinch confessed. “Nothing like you’d expect an alien ship to be like. And I don’t know how the neural interface thingy works, but it’s kind of unnerving to think a command and have the machine respond without you even saying anything. Think I’ll be glad to get back to B-17s, where I know what everything does.”
Hogan snorted in agreement.
“I wish we could have kept the subspace radios,” LeBeau remarked.
“Wouldn’t have done us much good,” Hogan noted. “If the Gestapo’s in camp, we can’t get out anyway, and London doesn’t have a subspace receiver.”
The conversation paused while Kinch considered his next move. Then he said, “So, Colonel... anything you wish you’d asked?”
Hogan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. What could Sheppard and his team have told them that he wanted to know and couldn’t deduce from the hints that they’d dropped? It was obvious that the Allies had won, and Sheppard implied that he himself would still be alive when the Puddle Jumper returned to its right time, but beyond that... did he even want to know who lived and who died, where McKay and Zelenka’s technology came from, what an international team was doing on another planet and how they got there? Would he have been able to live with the answers if they were bad?
“No,” he replied as he made his next move. “Check.”
“General Landry to the Puddle Jumper storage area!”
Maj. Gen. Hank Landry frowned at his watch as he turned around and retraced his steps as requested. Team Sheppard hadn’t been gone five minutes. Had something gone wrong?
By the time Landry got to the Jumper storage area, he could hear McKay haranguing some of the junior scientists about the terrible time he’d had thanks to their incompetence, despite Zelenka’s occasional reminder that if anyone deserved blame, it was Dr. Lee, and Teyla had apparently dispatched some airmen to bring the team something from the mess. It took a moment for Landry to catch Sheppard’s attention.
“Sheppard? What’s going on?”
“We’re back, sir,” Sheppard replied, saluting.
“I was expecting you to be gone longer. What happened?”
“Oh, not much. Scared a few Indians, spent two weeks at Stalag 13....”
Landry stared. “The Stalag 13?”
“Personal guests of Papa Bear himself,” Sheppard nodded. “And that reminds me.” He scanned the small crowd and found the man he was looking for. “Harriman. See if you can find me a phone number for General Hogan.”
Epilogue