"Damn!" muttered Jack. Looking to the airman he more firmly said, "Alright, airman. Out. And lock this door until I send someone to figure out what happened."
"Yes, Sir," the airman replied, as Jack and Teal'c quickly left the room to return to the command centre.
The airman was quick to pull the door close, fish a set of keys out of his pockets and lock the door.
Six thousand feet up from where he was, but approximately two and half thousand feet above the upper slopes of a mountain - of what appeared to be a mountain range - Harry appeared in mid-air He quickly looked down to make sure he would be a while before he hit the ground, as he was now falling, and then scanned his surroundings. It took him only seconds to spot a small city, or large town, only about twenty miles away.
He stared at what he could see of a large grove of trees near the city and apparated a second time.
He appeared within the grove and almost immediately fell over. "Oof!" he quietly muttered, staggering, before putting his off hand out to rest against a tree trunk. 'Now, that's what I call line of sight apparation!' he thought.
Looking about to make sure he hadn't been spotted, Harry quickly transfigured his 'military' clothing into what Daniel had been wearing. He'd actually used Daniel's attire of what he was wearing while Harry was in the infirmary, as his model. Now he needed to carefully make his way back to England.
He quickly hurried from the grove of trees and briskly walked to the city. It might end up being a mile he needed to 'hike', but he got very used to walking while on Hadrian. Besides, with the five percent less gravity, since he'd returned to Earth Harry felt as if he was almost walking on air.
It did not take the SGC long to know Harry was no longer within the mountain triple command complex, let alone the SGC-only complex. They had that figured out as Harry was picking up a 'free' map of the area, by way of a copy charm, from the city's main library.
A search team was immediately sent out to look for him in the surrounding hills, heading to try and cut him off. However, he was already beyond that point. Once he had confirmed he was in Colorado, located that on the magically copied map of the United States he'd picked up from the library, then figured out a place to hide as his magical reserves were now quite depleted, he headed directly there with one last apparation jump.
Here, he was sneaky. As it was on his way to New York, he apparated to Wichita in Kansas. It was not quite five hundred miles east from where he was.
Once there, he found an out of the way motel and used his invisibility cloak to see just how busy they were. Surprisingly, considering it was only a day after Hallowe'en and it was a big festive holiday in the United States, the motel was only three-quarters full.
He 'acquired' a room for himself, temporarily pinched the room key for it and then placed the room under a hiding charm.
Once set, he laid down and went to sleep. He knew that, when you were in the sort of situation he was in at the moment where he might need to run at any time - he had no idea if or how fast the US Air Force could find him then you got sleep and ate when you could.
He needn't have worried himself too much, though. US Air Force Security Forces and members of the SGC restricted their search, at first, to the area outside the base, then moved directly to the outskirts of Colorado Springs and searched back to the mountain complex. That took them over a day.
By that time, Harry had gotten a good fifteen hours sleep - needed to replenish his magical reserves due to apparating through so much solid rock - and was on the move again, starting during the early morning hours that night.
Magically recharged, he apparated directly into the air, five thousand feet above the Statue of Liberty, looked down and saw a spot that was currently free of anyone - it was early morning, after all - and apparated to that point. And donned his invisibility cloak before hiding on the grounds of the island.
He could have immediately apparated to Manhattan Island as he had direct sight of it. However, he also knew New York to be absolutely chock full of people twenty-four hours a day. He feared he'd be immediately spotted by far too many people to obliviate of knowledge they'd seen him pop out of thin air.
Under his invisibility cloak and in his hidey-hole he started to pass the time by lightly meditating. However, the stench of the air, after being used to clean air for so long, almost burned his sinuses and lungs.
It would take him a while to again get used to one of those banes of civilisation, air pollution.
With the US Air Force security personnel still focusing on the area around the Cheyenne mountains, Harry was calmly sitting cross-legged under the shadow of 'Lady Liberty'.
Once the sun came up and people were once more visiting the island, Harry waited only about an hour before calmly casting a Notice-me-Not charm on himself, removing his invisibility cloak and stuffing it in his mokeskin pouch.
Then he rose and went to the jetty to catch the next ferry heading back to Manhattan Island.
From there he found a local travel agency and found details on where he could catch a passenger-carrying ship to the English Isles. He was surprised to discover they still did so and that one, a Norwegian cruise liner, was leaving in two days from the New York Passenger Ship Terminal not far from his current location.
Though much colder than he was used to, it was still a nice day so he decided to walk it. Hell, it was only four and a half miles up the west side of the island up 12th Avenue. He set a brisk pace.
Knowing to stick to the main thoroughfares he was fine with the trip. Foot traffic was, to him, tremendous though. He'd never seen so many people in his life! And he certainly was no longer used to it.
However, none of these people gawked at him. If anything, they flatly refused to make eye contact with anyone, including him. And that was... marvelous!
An annoyed General Hammond was back in the briefing room, listening to reports flow in and around him. The SGC had never been created with the idea of staging a massive 'operations' from within, so there was no suitable venue within the complex to handle one. Other than the 'mess', the briefing room was the largest space they had, so that's where it was set up. And that massive operation had only one target; 'Find Harry Potter.'
The electronic intelligence specialist captain from the previous day walked in and said, "Sir. We've found Hermione Granger."
"And?" he irritably asked.
"Sir, she's in America."
.
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