Author's Note: Tag for S1, Ep 21, "Cigar Cutter," but inspired by Murdoc's line in "Murdoc + Handcuffs" (S2, Ep 15) regarding the car totaled by the exploding helicopter: "Your insurance rates are going to absolutely skyrocket." A story about how another member of the Phoenix feels about Mac and Jack. No romance.

.oOo.

I grew up fluent in Spanish as well as English—it's handy to have been raised in a bilingual home. I took French in high school, Italian in college, and German in grad school when I got tired of my roommate teasing me that all I knew was corrupted Latin. The Foreign Service taught me Chinese, and I picked up a working knowledge of Japanese, Korean, and Tagalog while stationed in China, Taiwan, and doing short stints in Tokyo, Seoul, and Manilla. DXS paid for me to learn Russian when I took the job here—and that means I can talk to a lot of people in the former Eastern Bloc. In fact, with my language background, I can talk to almost anyone in the world, although there would certainly be people in the remoter parts of Africa and Asia I'd have trouble with.

But I'm pretty sure that the real reason that I was hired by DXS, now the Phoenix Foundation, was the fact that I spent nine summers in high school, college, and grad school working for an insurance company. Phoenix values me most for my ability to speak fluent bureaucratese, in the dialect of insurance, to almost any country.

I have a specialist designation but I hardly remember what my title is. I think of myself as a "fixer." Phoenix agents are supposed to be silent and leave no track or trail behind them. If they do their job right, no one should know they were ever there—wherever "there" happens to be for any given mission. They don't carry badges, they don't get medals from governments (either from ours or anyone else's), and they don't get into the papers. Not if they do their jobs right. But missions can get messy. So when they go sideways, or the agents don't—or more usually can't—do them quite right due to unexpected circumstances, I help fix the mess and make it disappear. I remove agents' names, photos, and fingerprints from local law enforcement databases. I work with ruffled customs officials to unruffle their feathers. Above all, I spend a lot of time with insurance companies, both American and international.

While we have nearly fifty agents to keep track of, I'm prepared to swear that way more than three-quarters of my job comes from the single team of Dalton and MacGyver.

Apparently those two are incapable of going anywhere in the world without stealing, damaging, or destroying at least one car—often more. I long ago lost count of the number of shot-out car windows that I had to make arrangements with insurance companies to cover. MacGyver won't carry a gun, but Dalton shoots enough bullets for both of them, and the two of them together seem to attract bullets like a pair of magnets.

Of course, MacGyver's dislike of guns is more than balanced by the number of explosions he causes. The building damages I've had to sort out because of that guy! Window damages, fire damages, water damages from sprinkler systems and fire hoses, chemical clean-ups . . . the list goes on and on and on.

Once, while handing in my report on a set of fixes for the MacGyver/Dalton team, I suggested to Director Webber that I just be assigned to them full time—they sure need it. But she gave me an icy glare and said, "Thank you, Amy. Now I suggest that you return to your desk and get back to work because you're wasting time and Phoenix resources won't stretch to include another position like yours."

So I nodded and noted tartly, "That's probably because Phoenix resources have to cover the insurance claim that I just finished filing because Dalton and MacGyver have blown up yet another warehouse." Director Webber's glare didn't abate, so I wished her a good afternoon and came back to my computer station.

Now, everyone at my last college reunion complained about cubicle hell, but I just listened enviously. Phoenix doesn't believe in cubicles: everyone in my department, including myself, works at a large bank of computer consoles on tables in a big room with large screens on the walls. The theory is that this allows faster communication between the techs when things go wrong in the field, when minutes—even seconds—count to keep agents alive. And the theory is right: it does help, I know that.

But I'm also very aware that the set-up also enables Director Webber (and Director Thornton before her) to yell orders to all the techs at once when we're trying to track agents in the field whose communications have gone out, or when we're trying to monitor other information sources through the internet to find what agents need right this minute and right around the corner.

Thing is, everyone in the office wants to keep our agents alive. Everyone who works for the Phoenix believes passionately in its mission, even if we can't talk about it with our families or friends. Every tech and specialist is willing to put in the time and effort to help our agents accomplish their objectives and bring them all home safely, alive and healthy. We're willing to work as fast as possible and as long as needed to find the information and resources they need in the field and to cover their tracks after the fact.

I just wish there'd be less yelling when events go critical. I don't think it helps.

I'm also willing to bet that Dalton and MacGyver's missions account for three-fourths of the yelling.

I don't really know the two of them that much. Field agents don't spend a lot of time with techs like me. I know them to look at, of course: I've seen them in the hallways. But I haven't interacted with them in person very much except in just a few meetings. MacGyver is certainly easy on the eyes, with that Michael Douglas chin of his and that butter blond hair. And he's polite: always "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am." Someone raised that young man right.

Dalton, he's good looking in his own way, but so cocksure and full of himself. He's willing to turn on the charm for the younger ladies but doesn't usually pay much attention to a slightly pudgy, middle-aged married lady like me—for all that I'm younger than he is, and by well more than half a decade! That's fine with me: I don't need or want his charm. What I need are the details of his missions from him.

Dalton and MacGyver submit their reports electronically to me, just like the other agents do; I sometimes send follow-up questions to them to find out the information I need to try to clear up whatever mess they've made. A few times I've had to track them down in person. After a couple of rounds like that, they've gotten better about including in their first drafts any missing details that they know I'll come after them for.

Well, I should say MacGyver has gotten better about it. Dalton's reports tend to be a bit more . . . creative, shall we say? . . . in trying to cover up the damage they've done and the havoc they've wreaked. He doesn't seem to understand that I'm not the person to hide the details from. I'm not the enemy—I just need the details to make the messes go away! For all that Dalton is older than MacGyver (and me!), he still seems stuck in adolescent mentality when it comes to 'fessing up to what he's done. I'll bet he was hell on wheels for his teachers and principals in high school.

Fortunately, MacGyver has gotten better about putting in all the details he's seen about breakages, and that covers a lot of the information I need. It's only when he and Dalton get split up and MacGyver doesn't have eyes on all the destruction they've wreaked that I have the problem of prying the details out of Dalton.

—Today, though, I don't have to hound Dalton for details: I can see the damage myself. The Phoenix Building has been left in tatters after the attack by the Organization from the outside and by Daniel Holt and the false Dr. Zito as their inside men.

As I stride down the corridors making my initial assessment, I see where bullet holes have scarred the walls and carved divots out of the stair railings. I find a huge hole gaping in the ceiling of the storage level: one of the agents securing the scene tells me that MacGyver blew the hole from the level above so that he and Dalton could get down there to take on the mercenaries going after the cold storage unit. As outrageous as that sounds, I see two firehoses dangling down from the upper level through the hole, just like climbing ropes. It certainly looks exactly like the sort of tactic that shows up all too regularly in MacGyver's reports.

The blown-up cold storage area, with its scorch marks from fire damage, not to mention glittering chunks of broken glass scattered all over the corridor, also looks like the kind of damage for which I've worked insurance claims dozens of times after their missions.

I didn't think that door was breakable, with its bullet-proof glass and reinforced structure. Leave it to MacGyver to figure out how to do the impossible.

There's also water all over the building, thanks to Bozer pulling the fire alarm to expose the masked false Dr. Zito. Of course he saved all of us gathered outside the War Room by doing that—a truly amazing feat, given how badly hurt he already was, poor guy. We're going to be drying out wet carpet, drywall, and furniture throughout the Foundation for days as a result, though; probably junking a bunch of computers and other tech too, I'd bet. At least mildew and mold are a lot less likely to be a problem here in desert California than in hot, humid South Carolina where I used to live.

It's still going to take weeks to repair all the damage. Plus, given the sensitive nature of so much of Phoenix's work, it's going to be very complicated getting proper work crews in here to clean up the mess and keep everything classified. And it's going to cost a lot of money to fix it all up.

Fortunately, we have insurance.

And me to do the paperwork.

As I stare at the havoc inside the cold storage unit, I think back to when we regrouped in the War Room, just a short while ago after the building was secured. Director Webber (as soaking wet as the rest of us) began rapping out orders to try to get a handle on the situation. "I need full inventory," she reminded us briskly. "If something was lost, stolen, damaged, or even slightly disrespected, I need to know about it. This building is a crime scene: everything is evidence."

Nodding, we all agreed. As we began talking through how to organize assessment of the damage, I saw MacGyver and Dalton arrive from wherever they had been—we didn't know yet all that they had done, although Dalton was wearing full tactical gear and looked rather scuffed up, and MacGyver had a cut on his left cheek, several visible bruises, and the back of his shirt looked scorched, making me worry that he might be burned underneath it. I really hope that he isn't, but he was walking kind of stiffly so I'm worried about him. MacGyver was also carrying a metal cylinder, holding it tightly and not looking inclined to put it down anywhere. The two of them joined Riley Davis in checking on Bozer: a medical team had been preparing him for transport to the hospital. I'm really hoping he'll be all right too.

Once the medics left, with Davis following Bozer's gurney, Director Webber went over to talk with her two agents who had saved the day. I overheard MacGyver say to her, "Oh, um, sorry I blew up half the building."

I winced a little inwardly: I'd heard and felt what seemed like two pretty big explosions and had wondered at the time if MacGyver was responsible for them. What was new for me today was that I had been hoping he was the one who did it: that seemed a lot better than the idea that maybe the bad guys attacking us had bombed us too. It also meant he was alive and fighting for us, if so.

I had just volunteered to go evaluate the damage on the lower levels, so I knew I would soon see the results for myself.

Director Webber answered MacGyver in a voice that had a lot more smile to it than I've ever heard, "Eh, I've always been more of a building-half-standing kind of gal."

I am definitely going to quote that line back at her at some point when we're working on fixing all this mess. But I'm also in full agreement with the sentiment.

I also overheard her say to them, "I'm really proud of the two of you. You saved a lot of lives today."

Well, I'm one of those lives they saved, and today I don't care what size hole MacGyver made in this building, or how many bullet holes Dalton put in it, either. I'm too busy being grateful to both of them—and to Davis and Bozer too.

Despite knowing all the work ahead of us to clean up this mess, I and the other techs will be doing it in good heart. Phoenix Foundation took some serious casualties, but the number could have been so much worse. This time the Phoenix field agents saved the Phoenix itself, right here on home ground.

I give the cold storage area a final once-over, taking notes on the damage so I can transmit the information to Director Webber. Just this once I don't mind the idea of the time I'll be spending on the phone with the insurance company in the wake of MacGyver and Dalton. I owe them big.

We all do.

Fin