AN: I wrote a one-shot which serves as a prologue to this. It can be found in my stories under 'Great Escape', and I advise you read that first to get the back story. I got so much support and encouragement, I thought I would give the rest of the episode a go!

Reviews (including constructive criticism) are very welcome; I am still very new to this and learning as I go. Thanks for reading.

Chapter 1

Jack and Mac strolled into the Phoenix office laughing over some shared inside joke; Riley came in behind them shaking her head with a smile. They had returned from the ER quickly thanks to a well-placed phone call from their boss. She was waiting for them now: big screen on, laptop open, ready for the disk that the men had gained from the warehouse. "It's good to see you both in one piece." Matty glanced at Jack's left arm, bandaged and held in a sling and added, "Mostly."

"Ah, I knew you cared really! I think you..." Mac coughed loudly to draw Jack's attention and interrupt him before it was too late. Jack, then, also caught sight of Matty's facial expression and quickly stopped himself from saying whatever was about to leave his mouth. Riley, who had already sat herself in the armchair by the big screen, let out a quiet snicker but stopped short when Matty glanced back at her. It was true that Matty did care. She cared deeply about her agents, and she was even secretly quite fond of Jack. However, it wouldn't do for the whole world to know. She needed to maintain an air of authority and an element of mystery. She held out her hand, palm up, and looked from Jack to Mac and back again.

Mac snapped out of his reverie - he was busy considering what the end of Jack's sentence would've been - and realised she was waiting for him to hand over the disk. Mac put his foot up on the glass coffee table and pulled the small disk out of his shoe where he had put it for safe keeping. He simply shrugged at Matty's raised eyebrows and handed it over. Riley took the disk and put it into the waiting laptop. In a few clicks, she had brought the laptop's desktop up onto the big screen on the wall. The 3 remaining agents watched in quiet awe, as Riley's expert fingers danced quickly across the keyboard. On the screen, they could see that she was busy trying to hack through an encryption; she was reading and writing in code that none of the other agents understood.

"So, this disk really belongs to 'Loucura'?" Mac asked

"That's right, blondie." Matty assured, "Intel suggested that this disk could tell us a lot about their secret operations. They're apparently staging a coup, which would bring down the, currently stable, Brazilian government and replace it with a much more volatile one. One that hates the USA even more than the current regime."

"No wonder the security was tight!" Mac exclaimed.

"Who's 'low-chura'?" Jack asked. His knowledge of Brazilian government and intelligence wasn't as up-to-date as it could've been.

"Loucura, Jack. They're a Brazilian terrorist group," Mac responded, "and they really hate Americans."

"So… a coup would be bad?"

"Yes, Jack, a coup would be bad!" Matty replied impatiently. "Coups are sort of a bad thing in general, but in this case, it could be really bad news for the US." Seeing Jack's blank stare, she rolled her eyes and continued: "As you know, the USA's connection with Brazil has always been unpredictable." Jack nodded at this, which gave Matty some sense of relief. "Right now, the two governments are managing to work together to build some semblance of an international relationship. The association between the two countries is the best it has been in a long time. There are worries on both sides that any changes of leadership would destroy any progress. Loucura would make it their goal to destroy it. They believe the USA shouldn't be involved with Brazil in any way; the group would sever any remaining ties to the US and would make international relations impossible. They have even talked about waging war with us in their propaganda videos."

"Yeah. OK. A coup would be bad," Jack conceded.

While they had been talking, Riley had broken through the encryption, bringing up a folder onto the desktop. There were several large files saved there, but their names appeared to be nonsensical strings of letters. Where should they start looking?

"Sorry to break up the party," Riley interrupted. "I'm not sure what all these file names mean, but the encryption was fairly easy to break. A little too easy, actually." She mused over that curious fact as Matty, Jack and Mac stared intently at the files on the screen. They appeared to be deep in thought until Jack gave up and just looked at her in exasperation.

"I thought you said you broke the encryption, Ri? These file names are a load of baloney!" Jack said accusingly. Riley's response was simply to shrug, which didn't satisfy Jack any. He looked over at Mac instead. Mac could always be relied upon to solve a puzzle. He noticed that Mac's eyes were narrowed slightly and his lips were pursed. It was his 'gimme a minute, I've got this' face; Jack knew all he had to do was wait. And he didn't have to wait very long at all.

"It's a code," Mac began, "and a pretty simple one at that. Look, all they've done is simply replace each letter with the one that follows it in the alphabet. A becomes B, B becomes C, and so on." Mac pointed at the first file, labelled 'espq qpjout' and continued, "This one means 'drop points'. That might be a good place to start?" Matty nodded in agreement and Riley double-clicked.

She instantly regretted it.

The laptop screeched at her and dozens of warning boxes popped up on the desktop. Riley cursed aloud, producing a fatherly tut from Jack and prompting Matty to ask what had happened. "It's a virus," she explained. "It was hidden in the file and now it's spreading." She was frantically trying to disconnect the laptop from the Phoenix servers so that the virus didn't infect any other computers. She managed to isolate the laptop from the network and continued to work frantically, to save any information she could from the disk. As she did, Mac read snippets of information from the file that she had opened on the screen, trying to get anything useful amid the chaos.

"I knew this was all too easy," Riley groaned. "It's going to take me hours to get any information off this disk. I can't put it into another computer because there might be another virus, or a worm, and I can't risk it infecting anything else. I'm just going to have to run diagnostics, set up a firewall and hope for the best. I'll get what I can, I promise. Sorry Mac."

"No, no, don't be sorry, Riley," Mac responded, "I think I might've got a location of a drop point from all of that." When he saw the looks he was getting from Jack, Matty and Riley, he continued: "I'm a fast thinker, I'm also a fast reader. While you were trying to combat the virus, parts of the document could be read. There's a drop point here in Los Angeles, by the statue in Chace Park. Down at the Marina."

"Makes sense," responded Jack, "it's a good place to find transport out of the US. Public place, near the airport. I can see why they picked it."

"OK." Matty said this one word decisively and it made everyone jump and pay attention to their boss. They knew it meant she was about to give instructions and they also knew she would only want to say them once. "Jack, Mac, you're going to stake out the statue in Chace Park. Since you stole the disk, we can assume Loucura will be on alert, making moves to try and retrieve it. See if you can spot any suspicious activity. Riley, you stay here and try to decrypt the data on the disk. There must be something else on there. Bozer is in the lab. He can stay there for now but I'll fill him in and let him know the mission brief in case we need an extra pair of hands."

Jack, Mac and Riley were still staring intently at Matty, obviously assuming she had more to say.

"What? Go!" Matty's command made them all start. Jack and Mac stood quickly to leave and Riley resumed tapping the keyboard.

"Sweet. I love stakeouts!" Jack turned to Mac and held out the fist of his good arm, "I'll get the snacks!"

Mac shook his head and smiled. He bumped Jack's extended fist as the two men walked out of the door.

MAC2016 MAC2016 MAC2016 MAC2016

"So, these 'low-crura' people? They're a pretty big deal in Brazil?" Jack was eating chips and talking with his mouth full. Mac hated when he did that, so Jack now mostly did it just to rile him up.

"Nice, Jack… can you chew without showing me what you're eating? And it's Loucura. It's Portuguese for 'madness', and the group certainly live up to their name." Mac really did care about Jack, but the man really knew how to push his buttons. Mac was mildly impressed that Jack had managed to open the bag with his teeth and his good arm, but the annoyance outweighed any admiration Mac might have felt. "They've tried to blow up government buildings, they kidnapped an official and there was an attempt on the president's life which they claimed responsibility for." Mac turned his nose up at Jack's chewing and focused instead on watching the statue, as Jack grunted in understanding. This terrorist group was no joke.

The agents were sat on a park bench. They'd been there for 3 and a half hours and, so far, had no luck spotting suspicious activity. Jack had been through a bag of chips already and had opened the second one – Mac suspected – just to annoy Mac. They sat in silence for a while, watching various people come and go around the foot of the Helmsman statue. The only nearby noise was Jack's chewing, though at least, Mac observed, he was now doing this with his mouth closed. Mac's busy mind was beginning to drift, thinking about Riley and wondering whether she had made any progress, when he suddenly realized Jack was quiet. He then felt Jack sit up a little straighter beside him. The older agent had noticed something.

"What is it, Jack?"

"There," Jack said quietly, "the dude in the purple cap, navy-blue shirt and jeans. He's been at the base of the statue for 2 minutes and just put his satchel down on the ground. What self-respecting guy carries a satchel anyway? That's suspicious even before he set it down ready to be handed off."

Mac and Jack watched to see if the man would make another move, and they watched closely as he tipped the peak of his cap. They knew it was a signal to someone, so they waited patiently for something to happen. Then, the man in the cap looked right at them. Not towards them. Right at them. They realized it was a set up a moment too late.

As soon as the man looked in their direction, the agents heard an electric buzz behind them. Mac registered that the sound was a taser right before he felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck and blacked out. Jack hadn't had enough time to register what the sound was, but the same sharp pain told him this wasn't good. He just hoped it would end well.