The End of the Beginning
Sequel to What Remains
"Jack! Get down!" Mac whisper-shouted. He crouched down somewhat stiffly, moving carefully between the large dusty crates and old wine racks, in case Jack missed when he'd squeezed off a shot at the guy who'd followed them.
Predictably, Jack ignored him, slinking closer to the almost-overhead double doors by the crumbling basement stairs. Mac rolled his eyes but started to move in the same direction.
A moment before, Mac felt damn near panicked when he'd seen the hulking shadows of what Jack called Corwin Carlisle's Brute Squad, lumber past the filthy basement window. In an unforgivable (to Mac anyway) rookie mistake, he'd gotten made when they were tracking Carlisle and picked up by his bodyguards. He'd spent a couple of very unpleasant hours in their company before Jack found an opening to break him out.
Exfil was on its way, along with a DXS team prepared to snap up the whole crew and shut down their facility. DXS might not have gotten a location if they hadn't grabbed Mac, but Mac wasn't quite ready to give himself credit for them finding the bioweapon manufacturing operation hidden behind Carlisle title on family land in what should have been friendly territory but felt pretty freaking hostile just now.
What they needed to do (per orders from Thornton) was lay low until the larger team arrived, probably in about an hour. What Jack was actually doing was planning to sneak back out of this grubby basement and take out as many of the goons as he had ammo for.
Jack said it was to make things easier for the clean-up crew. Mac suspected it was more to do with the fact that a good number of them had entertained themselves beating the hell out of Jack's partner for a while. Jack was taking that rather personally, although he credited Mac getting nabbed as a brilliant plan to get them the location just as readily as Thornton had when they spoke to her briefly on Jack's phone. Jack was complicated that way, Mac supposed.
Finally Jack stopped on his forward progress toward the doors and waited for Mac to catch up. He held up a hand that told the younger man unquestionably to keep quiet. Mac scowled and hissed, "You can't go out there, Jack. Thornton said to lay low until the team gets here."
Jack gave him a look. He whispered, "She meant you."
Mac rolled his eyes. "She meant both of us!"
"Shhh!" Jack's eyes flicked toward the basement door. "They are right outside right now, kid. Unless you'd like to go back to not answering their less than polite questions while they tenderize your insides, I need you to be quiet and stay put."
Now that Jack had pointed it out, he could hear the men outside, and remembered seeing their shadows pass the window above his head on the other side of this cellar. He puffed out a long breath. He was definitely feeling the effects of the beating he'd been subjected to. But, he reasoned, it wasn't so bad that he was interested in hanging back while Jack went out and kicked the asses of the guys who'd roughed him up. "Okay, but if you're gonna do something stupid, you gotta let me help."
Jack flashed a grin and shook his head. "You're more beat up than you've slowed down enough to realize, kid." Mac started to protest, but Jack talked right over him. "And you haven't been doing this for long enough that you can just go up there and act on instinct. You're the asset. I protect you. That's how this goes. Okay?"
"Jack …" he began.
"Besides, you might not hear it, but there's a bird comin' in." Mac shook his head. He didn't hear it, but he had to admit his ears were ringing on and off, so that didn't mean much. "So that means one of two things. Either DXS is here and things are gonna get colorful for a few minutes. Or Carlisle called in reinforcements and …"
"Things are gonna get really colorful," Mac finished.
"Yup," Jack agreed. "And you are already really colorful. As in one giant bruise."
Mac rolled his eyes again, but he could hear someone fumbling with the lock on the cellar doors. "Fine. I'll stay put, so long as you don't get yourself in the weeds out there."
Jack grinned. "And what're you gonna do about it if I do?"
Mac returned the grin. "Improvise."
That was probably as good as he was going to get out of the young agent, so Jack gave a nod as he unscrewed the suppressor from his pistol, preferring increased penetrating power over stealth at this point in the game. The sound of the helicopter … make that helicopters, plural, was much closer. But so was the sound of voices and the give of the padlock on the doors. "Alright, kid. I'm goin' up."
Jack tipped his chin in the direction of a large crate. Mac rolled his eyes again, but ducked behind it, out of sight. He involuntarily crouched lower as the doors were pulled open and Jack rushed the group with a battle cry that Mac was 90% sure was, "Yipikayay!" in full, colorful, John McClane fashion. He couldn't be positive though because the immediate sounds of gunfire set his ears ringing again.
After a minute or two, the ringing subsided somewhat as the gunfire got further away. Unable to tolerate not knowing exactly what was going on, Mac edged toward the stairs. He hazarded a look out the doors when he was pretty sure he'd heard someone shout his name.
His first thought was one of relief. The helicopters were DXS. So reinforcements had arrived. His second thought was mostly swear words, because while the good guys were sweeping out in all directions after Carlisle's people, at least one group of them was pinned down over by a large but ancient stone water trough, taking fire from a small group of Carlisle's security people who were holed up behind the nearby carriage barn.
All of DXS's people seemed pretty damned busy, and Mac could tell from the infrequency and careful nature of the return fire that the small group was running out of ammo. If Jack (and he had to assume it was Jack) had yelled for him, it meant the time had come to improvise.
Mac jogged back down the basement stairs, ignoring the various aches and pains he was quickly coming to associate with just about any mission. He started to look around in the low light for something that might fit the bill.
He tripped over an old tarp and careened into a full, albeit impossibly dusty wine rack. Several of the bottles fell off into the floor, smashing and releasing the scent of good red wine into the dank air. For a split second he brain danced away to last weekend with Nikki, where dinner and a movie had definitely turned into Netflix and chill. He had a pretty good idea that if they made it home he could probably expect a sequel, too. That was surprisingly motivating.
Not a lot down here. These wine bottles are promising though. He picked one up. It's been a long time since I made a bottle rocket … but maybe …
Mac looked around some more. He'd never made a rocket out of a wine bottle. He wasn't sure enough that it would work.
Maybe a Molotov Cocktail would do the trick. Mac started looking around for things he could use as a wick. See, Molotov Cocktails originated after the start of World War II when the Russians invaded Finland. Vyacheslav Molotov, their Foreign Minister, had explosives dropped on civilian targets. He called them bread baskets. The Finns took that a little personally and started making firebombs to throw at the invaders, calling them "a drink to go with Molotov's bread". Pretty soon everyone was calling improvised fire bombs Molotov Cocktails. Ideally, you'd build them with petroleum distillates of some type, but in a pinch, any alcohol that will burn will do.
Mac had the sudden depressing suspicion that the wine would not be high enough proof to burn properly. "Damn it," he grumbled, his improvised solution evaporating before his eyes.
He crouched and tried to light some of the wine from the broken bottles. When it caught, but then immediately went out, he swore again, with a little more heat this time. He started frantically searching around for something else. He started taking tarps off storage crates, cursing more when all any of them seemed to contain was dusty old antiques.
He grinned suddenly when he pulled another top off an already open crate and found most of a case of Plymouth Navy Gin.
Now that I can use.
Mac got to work uncapping bottles, pouring some liquid out, and stuffing torn bits of his shirt down the necks to act as wicks.
Plymouth Gin is traditionally over 100 proof. The British navy insisted on it, back when they were the world's greatest sea power. Mostly because it was used both for the officers for drinking and the sailors for lighting things on fire. To be fair, they probably drank it, too. And it makes one hell of a martini, but right now I'm definitely more interested in it's properties as an incendiary. Gotta love some of the weird naval knowledge Gramps passed along.
Mac dashed back over to the stairs, carrying an armload of the bottles. He quickly lit them and flung them at the carriage barn. He saw bursts of flame and heard swearing and screaming, so he knew he'd been at least partially successful. The pinned down team of DXS agents, given a little breathing room, were able to move and they quickly subdued that last band of holdouts.
It wasn't very long before Jack jogged over grinning from ear to ear. "Thanks for the save, kid. As far as improvising goes, I think that was some of your best work."
"Thanks, man. Glad it worked. I was ready to try it with old wine but I think all that would have done was gotten the bad guys wet. Good thing Carlisle likes more than one traditional beverage I guess." Now that the action was over he felt just a little shaky, although he wasn't ready to admit, even to himself, that that was the case or why it might be either.
Jack patted him on the shoulder. "Remind me to buy you a traditional beverage when we get home, huh?"
"Hell yeah," Mac agreed. Home sounded really good. His smile slipped for a second, but he caught it, got it firmly back in place before Jack noticed. "Let's get the hell out of here so we can get to that sooner rather than later, pal."
"You bet, kid."
Mac was quiet on the helicopter and, if such a thing were possible, quieter still on the jet. He let the medic give him a cursory once over without saying much of anything. He just sipped a bottled water and stared out the window at the clouds, answering Jack briefly when he asked a question, but preferring to let Jack's gentle chatter crowd out his thoughts rather than engaging much.
A couple hours into the flight, Mac said he was beat and curled up on the couch with the medic's blessing. At least the kid came away without a concussion or any loose teeth. Jack figures he knew why Mac had gotten so introspective once the excitement was over. The kid had gotten nabbed. Jack was pretty sure he'd done it on purpose when it all went down, but seeing how Mac was pulling inside himself, now he wasn't so sure. Mac's distressed mumbling in his sleep confirmed that it had dragged up his captivity with O'Neill.
It never escalated into real nightmare territory, so Jack just let him sleep. Once Mac seemed to be out more deeply, Jack even napped himself. One of the staff woke them both on their approach to the private landing field just outside Los Angeles. Another short helicopter ride landed them on the roof of DXS headquarters.
To their surprise, Director Thornton was waiting for them by the elevator doors. "Nice work, gentleman."
"Thank you, ma'am," Mac said with a modest nod.
"Did you expect anything less, Patty?" Jack asked with a grin and a wink.
"Of course not. You two are the rising stars at DXS. As I said, well done."
The elevator doors opened, but Thornton stayed in front of them, holding them open, but keeping the team from boarding.
"Something you need, Director?" Jack asked, hoping his return to formality would get her to the point. Mac was all kinds of antsy and this wasn't helping.
"Actually yes. Normally, I'd send you both home and have you come back tomorrow for the debrief …"
"Which would be great, cuz I think we could both use a shower and a hot meal." Jack's tone indicated that time off was essential. He wanted Mac to have a chance to kind of process what he was feeling before anything new got thrown at them.
"By all means, go have a shower and get changed. You both have things in your lockers, correct?" They nodded, both frowning a little. This wasn't the way things usually went. "After that, Mac I want you to head over to Medical. The medic thinks it's possible you earned yourself some cracked ribs from Carlisle's men."
Mac shook his head. "I'm fine, Director Thornton. What is it you …"
"I'm sure you are, Mac. But do me a favor and go let Medical rule out any breaks for you. It'll make the after action report more complete and less likely to garner scrutiny from Oversight."
Mac suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Oversight was turning out to be a real pain in the ass. Having a boss was bad enough, but having a boss's boss, that had never even met you, that wouldn't speak to you directly, constantly handing down orders and complicating your already complicated life was almost more than he'd bargained for.
"Yes, ma'am," was what he said instead of any of that though.
"Then I'd like you to both meet me in the War Room. I'll have dinner sent up."
"What's up, Patty?" Jack asked, feeling a tingle of excitement. He liked his life unpredictable, and God knew the last year had just seen it getting better and better in that regard.
"There's something I'd like you to see. If you'd like, you can consider it a reward for your good work in England."
"A reward?" Mac asked.
"We believe we've found O'Neill's latest encampment."
Mac sucked in his breath a little. That was big.
"If we can confirm it, I'd like your ops team to lead the mission to retrieve him. If you'd like, that is."
Nightmares, fatigue, aches and pains, and even hunger were immediately forgotten. Mac's eyes caught fire.
"Director Thornton, you can count on it."