It was late Spring in Ivvavik National Park, on the edge of the Yukon. Sporadic swamp-edged water holes made up the landscape of the coastal plain as the winter ice crept back. Spring brought the short-lived annual burst of higher order life, including short grasses that gave very little in the way of cover. Among the nesting migratory birds a human-sized figure was bound to stand out.

Where nature had not provided, people, and particularly people with a mindset that put convenience over the landscape staying clean and unscarred, had left behind the odd handy structure.

MacGyver crouched behind the weathered shell of a transport plane that had evidently been left lying where it crashed for at least three decades. The tundra had moved in around it and softened the metal lines, but it still bore testament to a cold war practicality that forbade wasting resources hauling it out. A low sway and dip of hills, a soft undulation in relatively flat expanse of tundra had given him the chance to get out of sight, which seemed to be the smart thing to do.

Through his field glasses, MacGyver watched a lone figure crossing sure-footedly over the rugged landscape. No one was supposed to be out here, no one aside from him.

I've done my share of following and being followed, and this situation had me on edge. Technically, the hiking season in Ivvavik wasn't supposed to open until June. There wasn't a lot up there that would attract anyone with an innocent reason to be wanderin' around. The main attraction to anyone with a not so innocent reason would be the oldest of the anti-Soviet DEW line radar stations. That was up in the corner of the national park, but not really part of it. I had a bad feeling if someone was nosing around it right now, while it was only manned with one radar op. And, yeah, setting aside that I was up there alone, wandering that far North, even in the spring, alone, was just asking for trouble.

So the fact that this man'd been tracking me for the past day made me kinda uneasy. It wasn't that I was trying to cover my tracks, because I had a reason to be up here, even if he didn't. This was supposed to be half way between a vacation I could really use and a favor for a friend. I had a job to do, and a good long walk up the coastal plain almost into Alaska to get it done. I'd been looking forward to it, although I didn't much like the politics that got me picked for the job. I'd been looking forward to some time to myself, not to a game of cat and mouse with a mystery opponent.

To be wary of his mystery tracker was smart. To be annoyed at the incursion on his solitude was personal. This job was something by way of a gift, a chance for MacGyver to reawaken his senses and shake off some of the darker aspects of human nature that he had to deal with. To have the horizon open all around him, bounded only by ocean to the north and mountains to the south, and not another soul in sight had been part of the draw that made him say 'yes' to Pete's 'friends' who needed a hand. Not an official DXS hand.

So here he was, out under the open bowl of sky, endless and free. He felt more concrete and alive standing on the harsh land barely softened by the thaw. He felt that connection deep inside that could never entirely be articulated, but that drew him back out to the desert, the rainforest, back here to the tundra. The job should have given him time for the land to do its work. It shouldn't have come with the old wearying need to watch his back.

The man approaching seemed to be unhesitatingly sure about what he was walking into, moving with a hunter's grace and a particular intent. MacGyver let out a short breath. He hadn't expected trouble of this kind. The job was straightforward, as straightforward as these things came. Apart from the lingering overtones of military secrecy, that was, apart from the frissons of tension between two neighboring countries over who had military presence where, and who was playing at detente with whom.

There was the chance that this pursuit was personal. But of all the noses MacGyver had put out of joint over the years, he couldn't see anyone following him this far into the wild. It was possible that he'd run across a poaching operation, though it seemed unlikely. And his own run-ins aside, MacGyver had never been prone to the level of paranoia that would suspect the Soviets to be invading right here, right now. This DEW line station had been taken out of commission years ago and wasn't anywhere near any of the locations that were being transitioned over to form the North Warning Line. If anything big enough to be a threat was coming in, it'd be picked up there. One guy on foot didn't herald the coming of armageddon, no matter where the nuclear clock stood.

The man was getting close. MacGyver could make out the lines of a holster peeking from under his coat. That wasn't particularly reassuring. The rest of his dress gave nothing away. Clean. Well maintained. Sensible for the climate, but not too heavy. His boots appeared broken in but not broken down, he had a hat that looked like it came from a military surplus store, drill-sergeant model, and he wore a pack over both shoulders. If it weren't for the stalking, oh, and the gun, MacGyver would have made him for a hiker well off the beaten trail.

MacGyver turned to put the metal of the plane at his back, settling in an easy crouch, his pack tucked out of view beside him. The tracker would find him, but with a bit of preparation he'd get the jump on the stranger, not the other way around. The tail of the small transport plane was submerged in a small, cold pool of water, only recently ice. That meant that the stranger was unlikely to flank MacGyver from that direction.

So the man was armed. That was a disadvantage, but not one MacGyver was unused to dealing with. With his own backpack stocked with survival gear, it was an even match. He'd looked at the fishing line, lightweight, tough, and with many handy uses, including moderately dangerous ones. But rigging a trip-wire to take out an unknown entity who may by that time have pulled his gun was risky. Likewise, any warning system he could set up with it would equally warn the stranger that MacGyver was ready and waiting for him. But by staying still he had the advantage of being able to hear the tread of the sturdy boots over the delicate spring grasses.

Mac spread the contents of his pack out before him. He picked up the serrated-edge hunting knife that was a weapon as well as a tool and weighed it in his hand. Between that and the blade of his Swiss Army Knife, he could do some damage. But that assumed a level of aggression that wasn't completely in evidence. Pulling a knife would make the situation hostile when there was still a chance it didn't need to be. He set the knife back in the pack and looked at the other items. Not every weapon had to be obvious, or deadly.

MacGyver ran his fingers over the flat steel of his emergency signaling mirror and glanced at the position of the sun, low in the sky, calculating. Mac judged the stranger to be slightly shorter than him but just over his weight class, and he'd use dirty tricks if he needed to. He put everything back in the pack except the signaling mirror and a can of Gold Bond powder that he thought would ensure he got the upper hand. If he could jump and disarm the stranger, they could have a friendly talk.

Well, maybe friendly. If the man didn't have hostile intent, he'd have good reason to be hostile after MacGyver's assault. But it beat risking a gunshot wound miles away from the nearest hospital. And it definitely beat ending up dead because he'd taken a chance that his stalker was benignly inclined.

There was a hesitation in the sound of footsteps coming toward the plane. MacGyver braced, ready for gunshots. If the stranger had any kind of violent intent, there was no reason that he wouldn't swing around the nose of the plane already firing. Mac weighed the foot-powder in one hand, readying his arm to throw it. He tilted the mirror to catch the low sun. As the stranger came into his view, the only gleam of reflected sunlight was that which bounced off the mirror, flashing into the eyes of the stranger. There was no gun in evidence. The stranger threw his arm up, and Mac burst out of his crouch, tossing the Gold Bond powder in the general direction of the stranger's eyes.

With a brief, startled yelp, the stranger scrubbed his hand across his face and launched forward to meet MacGyver's attack. They rolled on the ground together in the narrow margin between the plane's body and the cold pool of water, trading the sort of punches that could be swung when each man was grappling the other.

With the benefit of sight unimpaired by astringent powder, MacGyver ended up on top of the stranger, breathlessly aware that his assessment of the other man's size and fitness had not been an overestimation. His cheekbone stung where a punch had connected. The man fought fairly clean, but he also seemed comfortable countering a move or two of MacGyver's that wouldn't quite have rated with the Marquis of Queensbury.

With one hand gripping the man's coat, what stopped MacGyver from finishing the fight with a swift right cross to the man's jaw were the entirely unexpected words that the man panted forth.

"You are under arrest under the suspicion of aggravated assault, theft, and resisting arrest, do you understand? You have the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay." The man shifted, twisting his hips in a way that forced MacGyver to adjust his own position, throwing his weight forward to keep the upper hand.

"We will provide you with a lawyer if you do not have your own lawyer." Again, the man shifted, this time reaching underneath his back. The move was so smooth and fast that MacGyver didn't have time to react to the possibility of a gun. The stranger's hand emerged not holding a gun but a pair of cuffs. He snapped one cuff around the wrist of the hand MacGyver held his coat with, as if cuffing people from a position of relative weakness was an every day practice for him.

"Woah, wait just a minute." MacGyver said. He hadn't even considered the possibility of an RCMP manhunt this far from civilization.

"Actually, providing you with a lawyer might be a bit of a problem." And the stranger, for all that he was apparently local law enforcement, was actually blushing a distinctive shade of crimson. He looked impossibly young, just past coltish. "You see, there is a lawyer near by, and I understand that justice delayed is justice denied, but, ah, Mrs Gaskell who lives out by the old whaling station on Herschel Island got her law degree by correspondence, and frankly she's really better at civil law than criminal law, oh, and at baking butter tarts, which can be tricky depending on the humidity, but she did pass the bar, and the next nearest satellite phone is not exactly close by, but really, I would recommend that you wait and contact a lawyer in White Horse."

MacGyver was too stunned by this verbal onslaught to react as the cuff snapped around his other wrist. He'd never been handcuffed by someone he was sitting on before. There was steel in the stranger's eyes that belied the blush and his rambling rendition of the applicable section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Aggravated assault meant that someone was seriously hurt. The set of the stranger's jaw somehow suggested to MacGyver that he was taking it personally.

"Anything you say can be used in court as evidence. Do you understand? Would you like to speak to a lawyer?"

So much for a friendly talk.