41. Chapter 41
Chapter forty-one
Day 17 Petropavlovsk, Russia
He was supposed to be dead.
His unfocused gaze locked on his boots, O’Neill sat perfectly still in the chair closest to the cargo hold door. The vibrations from the Thunderbird’s engines skimmed through the aircraft’s walls and floor, aggravating the ache in his shoulder and the band of pain across his torso. If he kept still, the throb in his shoulder and the agony around his chest let him breathe.
But the injuries he was trying to ignore were nothing when compared to death, and he should be dead.
If the ton of bricks called Wolf hadn’t slammed into him and knocked him to the ground, he would be dead.
His gaze tried to stray toward the back of the Thunderbird where the spirit healers were trying to prevent Samuel from crossing into the web of his ancestors. There could be no healing of his or Wolf’s injuries while the Hee-Hee-Thae were struggling to keep Samuel’s spirit and body tied.
But then, O’Neill’s and Wolf’s injuries were not life threatening. Samuel’s were.
He hoped that the wanatesa weapon, within its silver case, had not broken open as they’d hit the ground. He thought not. The case had been crushed between his and Wolf’s bodies—indeed, it had caused a fair share of their injuries. But they hadn’t opened it to check on the weapon. Instead, Wolf had locked the case in the outside box on the Thunderbird’s skids.
No good came from worrying over things he did not control. There was nothing to do but wait and see if the container inside the case had broken open and infected him.
Just as there was nothing to do for his broken ribs, other than wrapping them. Rawlings, the southerner, had splinted Wolf’s arm and wrapped O’Neill’s chest. He’d relocated O’Neill’s shoulder joint as well. Relocation. That’s what the southerner called the process of manipulating his shoulder joint back in place. Even then, beneath the excruciating burn consuming his shoulder, the term had struck him as funny. He hadn’t lost his damn shoulder. It was still there.
His eyes tried to stray back to Samuel again. He forced them front and center. Had the Hee-Hee-Thae healers kept Wolf’s Caetanee in the physical realm? His injuries had been—O’Neill flinched—catastrophic. Samuel would have died instantly when the RPG struck if Kuznetsov hadn’t caught the brunt of the blast, and if the healers hadn’t converged on him en masse as he and Wolf drug what was left of him from the fiery impact zone.
They’d left Kuznetsov behind. Nobody, not even Kait Winchester, could heal those pieces of charred flesh. Even the best healer couldn’t regenerate a missing body.
Now Kuznetsov was gone, and with him all the information Wolf hadn’t yet pried from him. Yes, they’d found one of the nanobot weapons, but the other was still out there, along with the psychopath who’d created it.
Both failures fell on O’Neill’s shoulders.
He flinched again, the guilt sinking like sludge to the very core of his soul. Losing this information should never have happened. It wouldn’t have happened if he’d done as the Taounaha had directed and used his heschrmal gift to pull the information from the Russian’s mind.
Sifting through Kuznetsov’s mind to find out who the nanobot bomb had been sold to and who was behind the creation of the wanatesa weapon was the only reason O’Neill was on this mission. It was the only thing he’d been tasked with doing.
Yet it meant using his curse of a gift. Not just using it, but using it in front of others. In front of Wolf and Samuel, the two warriors least likely to believe he could do what he claimed. Even then, he would have done as the Taounaha directed. Indeed, he’d trudged reluctantly upstairs to do just that. But when he arrived, Wolf had already found the silver case with the wanatesa weapon tucked inside, and the Russian was spilling his guts as they questioned him.
Certain he’d been given a reprieve, O’Neill had backed away.
The heschrmal gift wasn’t needed. Wolf’s truth serum and interrogation were prying everything they needed to know from Kuznetsov. He could afford to wait and use his talent on the Russian once they returned to base, where he could delve into the Russian’s mind in privacy, like he’d done with those two hired guns Winchester had hauled back to base. Although his gift had proved useless there. You could not pull information from minds that knew nothing.
Benioko would just have to exercise patience. They had the Russian. They had time.
Or so he’d thought.
Except Wolf hadn’t gotten everything they needed before he’d ordered everyone to evac. Then Kuznetsov had died and the information he’d carried was lost forever.
The mouthpiece would not be pleased.
O’Neill started to lift his arms to scrub his face, only to freeze as pain ripped through his shoulder. Fuck!
“You should let me sling that thing, so you don’t move it accidentally,” Rawlings said, leaning across the space between their seats.
O’Neill glanced over, ignoring Rawlings’s comment. “Did someone take out the asshole who RPG’d us?”
He’d heard a whole cacophony of rifle fire coming from the Thunderbird as they’d hauled Samuel onboard. Hopefully, someone had dropped the bastard.
“Think so.” Rawls shrugged. “That was the only round we got hit with.”
Yeah…one round too many. O’Neill scowled. “Who the hell was it, anyway? According to Tomas, the guards were all locked down.”
Rawls shrugged again. “Only the ones we knew about. Must have been another guard out there we never saw.”
True. O’Neill sighed. He shifted in his seat, accidentally bumping his wrist against his knee, which moved his arm, which launched the dull ache in his shoulder back into a vicious throb.
Fuck.
“You should let me sling that thing,” Rawlings said again, maybe for the fourth or fifth time.
“It’s fine.” O’Neill didn’t bother to smooth the snap from his voice. It obviously wasn’t fine, but he welcomed the pain. It distracted him from his thoughts, from his guilt. The throb and the burn reminded him he had all his limbs intact. Unlike the warrior fighting for his life in the back of the Thunderbird.
Did Wolf regret slamming him to the ground and letting his best friend take the rocket? How could he not? Muriel would blame him, too. Of that, he was sure. He’d avoid her when she arrived at Samuel’s side.
Why the fuck had he done it? There was no love lost between them. Never had been. Why had the bastard saved him, instead of his Caetanee and hee-javaanee ? The two warriors had been one spirit in two bodies since they’d been younglings, long before they’d reached warrior status.
It was inconceivable that Wolf had let the rocket take Samuel rather than O’Neill.
Jesus.
That should be him lying armless, legless, and eyeless back there. Although, if the rocket had hit him instead of Samuel, he’d be dead, not maimed. Its trajectory would have hit him square in the back. He wouldn’t have had Kuznetsov to block most of the blast.
“Ya know,” Rawlings drawled, his shrewd eyes settling on O’Neill’s face. “Refusin’ to sling that arm and let it rest ain’t gonna assuage your guilt. And it ain't helpin’ Samuel, that’s for damn sure.”
“Fuck you.” O’Neill leaned back and closed his eyes.
A few minutes later, the Thunderbird slowed. The drop in his stomach told him the bird was descending. They hadn’t been in the air long enough to arrive at the base or the refueling station. The only reason to be landing early was to let off Kuznetsov’s mistress. He frowned at the realization. With the Russian gone, they needed to hang onto the woman.
When the Thunderbird set down, and the engines slowed enough that the vibrations were barely noticeable through the walls and floor, Wolf appeared from the back of the craft. O’Neill stood to intercept him.
Ignoring the burn screaming through his shoulder, and the band of agony cinched across his chest, he stepped in front of Wolf, only to hesitate. “How is he?”
A slow exhale lifted Wolf’s chest, but his eyes remained unfocused, his face exhausted. “Alive. For now.”
O’Neill mirrored Wolf’s deep exhale but added a nod. “Good. That’s good.”
When Wolf moved to the side, clearly intending to step around him, O’Neill moved to block him again.
The Shadow Warrior’s favorite stopped, a thick, black eyebrow lifting. Some of the vagueness left his eyes. “What?”
But there was no sharpness to the question. No chill either.
O’Neill hesitated. Questioning the Betanee’s decision would set off an avalanche of antagonism—from all directions—but someone had to remind Wolf that this woman might have the knowledge they needed. Once she stepped off the Thunderbird, she’d disappear, and they’d lose the chance to question her.
Keeping his face calm and his voice level, he did what he had to do. He challenged Shadow Mountain’s commanding officer.
“We cannot let this woman go. With Kuznetsov gone, she is the only one who might know the information we need. She may know more than we think…even more than she thinks.” He braced himself for blowback. “We must hold on to her and question her thoroughly.”
And this time he would not hesitate to use his heschrmal gift on her, no matter how many warriors shared the room with them.
One could hear a pin drop in the cargo hold as everyone awaited Wolf’s eruption. O’Neill kept his eyes locked on Wolf’s dirt-and-ice-scoured face. But he could feel the heat of two dozen gazes locked on them. It was rare for anyone to challenge Wolf. Hell, the elder gods' favorite rarely needed challenging. But the few times he’d stepped off course, Samuel had course-corrected him.
Only, Samuel was not here. And this path needed correcting.
Like a fog had lifted, the vagueness cleared from Wolf’s eyes. He cocked his head, his gaze shifting as he looked over O’Neill’s shoulder toward the woman.
“You are right. I was not thinking clearly. Samuel would have—” He broke off to draw a shuddering breath, shook his head and continued past O’Neill toward the cockpit.
Surprised by Wolf’s calm reaction, O’Neill turned, watching his Betanee shake off the beseeching hand Kuznetsov’s former mistress had wrapped around his skinned forearm. Seconds later, the engines ramped up their whine and the telltale vibrations shimmied through the floor and walls again and the Thunderbird rose back into the air, carrying its maimed cargo and grieving warriors to their base.