A/N Shout out to gaelicspirit for betaing this, even though she hasn't seen Stargate, major kudos to her! Also I don't own Stargate or MacGyver.

The Recruit

General Samantha Carter, leader of Stargate Command at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, was sitting at her desk wishing all this paperwork to keep the SGC running would just disappear. Or that her personal assistant would be half as good as Sgt. Harriman had been. She sighed, half wishing that a non-threatening emergency would pop up, so she would have a reason to not do paperwork. Now she understood why Jack was always running away from it or shoving it off on somebody else-namely the aforementioned Sgt. Harriman. Maybe she could bribe him to come out of retirement or maybe just come in on certain….

Her train of thought was interrupted by the phone ringing. She happily answered it. "General Carter." She thought about her dad every time she said her rank.

"Hey Sam, it's Tony." Major Tony Toungette had been stationed at the Air Force Academy and often funneled candidates Carter's way for the SGC despite not knowing about the Stargate itself. He was currently stationed in Afghanistan. "I might have a candidate you would be interested in."

Carter was intrigued. "Tell me more."

Toungette chuckled. "I knew you would be interested. This kid is some sort of bomb wunderkind. He has something like a 95% successful diffusion rate." He let that sink in for a moment. "He is also known around camp for being resourceful. I heard he once used his Overwatch's phone battery and gum wrapper to defuse a bomb that was already counting down. Heck, the other day I heard he tweaked the air units to make the air colder! I don't know if you heard about our day of a thousand IEDs, but he and his partner defused 124 of them. A new record"

Now, that was impressive. "What is this wunderkind's name?" She wanted to be able to check him out.

The answer come quickly. "EOD Specialist Angus MacGyver. He's Army."

Carter laughed. "That's one heck of a name."

"Tell me about it. I hear he goes by Mac. To be honest, I would, too."

Carter agreed. "Thanks for this, Tony. I really appreciate it."

"Are you ever going to tell me what you really do under that mountain?" He asked every time they talked.

"I've told you before: Deep Space Telemetry."

"And I'm a monkey's uncle."

"It's nice talking to you, Tony. Take care." Carter was smiling.

She was intrigued and pushed all the paperwork to the edge of her desk. Pulling up the Armed Services database, she typed in the name Tony gave her, and located his personnel file. Almost all the reports were praising how smart this Angus MacGyver was. There were a few insubordination warnings, but nothing that was a red flag. He looked like a solid recruit. When she got to the bottom there was a note attached: Jack Dalton permanently assigned as Overwatch.

Now that was interesting; she minimized Specialist MacGyver's file and pulled up Dalton's. Former Delta Force, and a stint in the CIA before re-upping. Several warnings and a couple of charges brought against him, mostly for insubordination. She was sensing a theme.

She was just about to start digging deeper to see if one or both would be a good fit when her phone rang again. She quickly answered it.

"General Samantha Carter." Yeah, that was better.

"General, you don't know me, but I am Director of a covert agency, and I need you to drop your interest in MacGyver and Dalton."

Carter didn't like being told what she could and could not do. "Excuse me? Who are you to tell me who I can and cannot recruit?"

The voice on the other end of the line continued, "I know they would make a great addition to the SGC, but they are already spoken for."

Carter went still. How did this guy know about the SGC? "Who are you?"

He sighed, "I am the Director of the DXS."

Carter paused. "I thought Patricia Thornton was the current director."

The voice spoke again. "I'm her boss."

"Let me get this right. I'm guessing my pulling up Dalton's and MacGyver's personnel files pinged your account, so you decide to call and warn me off, but you won't tell me who you are besides for Thornton's boss. "

He only paused for a second. "That is entirely correct. We will be recruiting both of them as soon as they finish their tour. My agency is much better suited to their skill set."

Sam didn't know what it was about this guy that set her teeth on edge, but right then she wanted to have Dalton and MacGyver beamed in and signed up for the SGC before this arrogant dude knew what happened. She could do it, too, but she decided to listen to her inner Daniel, rather than her inner Jack.

"Fine. They are yours, but you are going to owe the SGC a favor," she commanded.

This was a serious promise in the intelligence community and the Director gave it the amount of consideration a request like that warranted.

"That sounds fair. You drop all inquiries into Dalton and MacGyver, and the DXS will own you a favor."

"Agreed."

"It's been a pleasure doing business with you General Carter. I hope you have a good rest of the day." He hung up.

She really wanted to know what was so special about those two, but unfortunately, she wouldn't be getting any answers today. Maybe Daniel could…. Carter shook her head; she had been spending too much time with Jack, and he was rubbing off on her. She wasn't quite sure if that was good or bad.

In any case, at least after those two phone calls, she felt like she was ready to wade through all that paperwork.