"Jack, we don't exactly have a lot of options."

"What if it's Phoenix, man?"

"I could hear them shouting in German, Jack. It's not Phoenix."

"Mac, you thought a pile of rags was a random tunnel dweller not two hours ago."

"And you screamed like a little kid over a rat. What's your point?" Mac snapped, narrowing his eyes at the stabbing pain that lanced through his temples when he raised his voice.

"That you're maybe not thinking, um … up to your usual standard."

Mac rolled his eyes. "I've got a virus or something, not a massive head injury, guy who headbutts everyone and then still wants to call the shots on missions."

The impact of his statement was somewhat diminished by needing to reach up and wipe the sweat off his forehead.

"Are you really sure?"

"Sure as I can be, and we haven't found a good way out or decent weapons. And honestly Jack …" Mac paused, not really want to say it, but figuring it needed saying. "Neither one of us is in any kind of shape to take Vogt's gang with what we have. You can barely walk and I … I've felt better," he finished somewhat lamely. "This'll get us some breathing room … If, ya know, I don't burry us alive."

Jack gave a nervous laugh. Then he gave Mac a familiar look of intense concern. "You gonna be okay going back down there on your own?"

Mac picked up the lantern. "Yeah, I'm fine. You need to stay off that ankle as much as you can. For now, anyway. And we need to work fast."

Jack nodded and just started cleaning out the ancient cans of food they'd found in the lockers, making a face that said he might never eat anything out of a can again after this. He might need to stay off his ankle, but Mac was going to need to just stay off his feet in general before too long. They been down here without water for about eight hours already and the kid had one hell of a fever.

Mac made his way quickly down the hallway, not looking left or right any more than he had to. It had felt a lot less creepy when he'd had Jack's distracting company. Also, he knew right where he was going this time. He'd counted the doorways before as a way to distract himself.

This time he started trying to recall the text from the article he'd read about a similar set of tunnels. It was what sent him back down here into the damp darkness after all. He tried forcing himself to see the words on his tablet, to feel the comfortable cushions of his couch, the cool breeze from his air conditioner across the back of his neck.

It came to him perfectly after a few minutes. 'Probably most harrowing for the pair of students,' the article claimed. 'Was the small armory off the hallway where the periscope tubes were found. Powder, bullets, guns, and even a variety of knives were still just waiting inside their dark discovery, as though at the ready for the ghosts of Nazi's past.'

He snickered to himself. Article was probably a very generous term. Clickbait was more accurate. But the pictures had been creepy and pretty cool. Bozer had been the one to show it to him, saying he wished he could film a horror movie in one of those places. Mac had just laughed and said, "Find someone else to be your movie monster then, Boze. That water looks like raw sewage."

If this place was set up the same way and he found what he needed to build the explosives to discourage Vogt's men from coming in after them, at least for long enough for Phoenix to get there or for them to find another way out, he might have to agree to be the movie monster, just for old time's sake.

He had to stop a couple of times and just lean against the wall for a minute or two, because his cough was bad enough that it made his vision go sort of red when he was caught in a fit of it. As soon has he got his breath, he forced himself to keep moving. This was the flu or something even nastier; and he hated to admit it, but Jack had almost certainly been right when he told Mac … well, it had to be two days ago now … that he should call in sick. Now, they didn't have time for him to be sick. Whether he was or not.

He passed the last door way on his count (or at least he was pretty sure it was; counting was not easy through the headache and general fog he was feeling). Even though he was expecting it, Mac recoiled a little at the sight of the pile of wet rags in that hallway.

Okay, it hadn't just been the light, or his distraction, or how lousy he felt before. Knowing what he was coming up on, that still looked like someone crouched down in the hallway. That actually made him feel a little better about his overreaction earlier. He gave the pile a wide berth again as he made his way down the hall.

He searched several rooms off that dark hallway. Finally, in the last room, right off the area with the periscopes, he found the remains of the bunker's small armory. Someone had cleaned it out of useful items at some point. But there was still a big locked cabinet.

Mac got out his Swiss Army knife and took out the removeable tweezers, bending them into an impromptu lock pick. When he got it open, he grinned hugely. He couldn't tell if this was really that big a find or if he was starting to be a little delirious, but regardless, it was a sight that warmed him.

He stuffed his pockets and slung things around his neck so he could carry everything that he wanted immediately. Then he stepped back into the hall way. He looked at the periscopes. He knew they needed to get the explosives he was hoping to build pulled together quickly, but part of him, wanted to know if Riley had received their message, if the text had gone through.

Normally that part of him would have been very small, something he could ignore, but Jack may have been right about his thinking not being entirely normal for him because he wanted, almost desperately to know, if he would have to keep going and figure a way out of this, or if his team was on it's way, and he could maybe just sit once the Vogt threat was neutralized.

He struggled to loosen the crutch from the pipe. He'd really wedged it in there before, and the muscle aches from whatever doomsday virus he'd caught made him feel a little weak. When it came loose, the phone dropped out of the pipe too fast to catch. He heard an irrevocable crunching sound when it hit the floor by his feet.

He wanted to sit down on the floor and have a complete childish tantrum at the sound of his answer breaking. But when he looked down he could see the screen was lit. He bent to pick it up and nearly went over on his ass from the pain in his head and the dizzy spell that gripped him. But he braced against the damp slimy wall and managed to pick it up.

The screen was spidered all over, making it impossible to read, but he could just make out the different color of the reply text bubble under the grey of the sent text. Riley had gotten the text and sent some sort of reply. It sucked to not know what the reply was, or even if she'd been able to determine their approximate location, but at least she knew they'd survived the crash and needed help.

"It's not much," he said quietly to himself, quoting Jack almost against his will. "But it's not nothin'."

Just in case Phoenix needed the phone signal to find them, he stuffed the phone back up into the pipe and shoved it as far as it would go with the crutch again. Then he wedged it back in again. He was making his slow way back up the hall when he heard Jack's distance shout, "Hurry up Mac, or we're gonna have company!"

Not even thinking, Mac broke into a run only to be sent sprawling by the wet rags near the entrance to the hallway. The lamp broke with a crash. He skidded to a stop just shy of hitting his head on the opposite wall. Great, he groaned to himself, now on top of sick, and probably some stunningly cracked ribs from the crash, I've face planted in whatever the hell is all over this floor. And the hit's just keep on comin'.

Jack called out again, but Mac couldn't for the life of him translate what words he heard into intelligible speech. And for just a minute, he wanted to just go to sleep on the filthy floor. But, he got to his hands and knees. And then slowly to his feet. He could see the faint light from the generator room what looked like a million miles away up the dark hall, but he kept his eyes focused on it. He didn't quite manage a run back to Jack, but he thought he approximated a job pretty well without keeling over.

When he turned into the warmer, brighter room, he saw Jack widen his eyes a little at him. He didn't want to know how bad he looked, especially now filthy from the fall. Jack had the 'helicopter mode imminent' look, so Mac distracted him by unslinging an early Christmas present from behind his back and tossing it to his partner, even as he got to work building the explosive charges he needed to discourage Hans … damnit, now he was doing it, too … and his men.

"What the ..?"

"It's probably not still serviceable and there wasn't any ammo for it, but … It felt appropriate to the occasion," Mac answered with a small grin.

"Yeah man, this is a Maschinengewehr 34. It was adapted from the MG30 and started being issued all over the German military around 1935. Everybody used this thing. Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, SS … But if it's not functional, why'd you lug it back here?"

"Now, you've got a machine gun. Ho ho ho," Mac said and was immediately rewarded with the pleasant crinkling of Jack's features. Then just to shore up his position as still well enough to be himself, he teased, "And you pick on me when I rattle off science stuff … You knew what that thing was before you even caught it, and I bet you could go on about it all day."

Jack chuckled in spite of himself. "You're probably right." Then Mac coughed into the crook of his arm and Jack's expression fell again. Mac gave him the don't-say-it eyeroll and Jack admirably restrained himself. "Can I help at all, bud?"

Mac cleared his throat and tossed Jack a bag of the random bullets he'd brought back. "You could get the blasting caps and powder out of those for me."

They worked in silence for a few minutes, which underscored the fact that Hans and his people were getting closer because now they could distinctly hear the scrapes of rocks sliding against each other. Mac rushed to get the charges places and the fuses run. Because Jack wasn't all that mobile without a fair amount of pain, Mac made him get under cover before he went to light things up.

He was just running back into the room when his explosion happened, and it knocked him off his feet and set dust cascading down over everything from the ceiling. "You alright Jack?" Mac called out as he pushed himself up off the floor.

Jack hobbled out from behind one of the sets of lockers that was still standing. "I'm good, kid. You?"

"Mmm," Mac replied noncommittally as he headed back out and up the hallway a little to see what damage he'd managed to do. When he came back in, he was giving his partner a lopsided grin. "Only way they're getting through that is with a tank, man."

Jack had sat back down on the overturned lockers and put his foot up on the crate Mac had brought him earlier. He raised an eyebrow at Mac and just patted the spot next to him. Mac couldn't even pretend to not want to sit. He moved stiffly as he sat down next to Jack. He didn't even really roll his eyes this time when Jack reached out a hand at felt his forehead.

"Jesus, kid. I was kind of hoping the fact that you're not dripping sweat anymore was a good sign, but now I'm more worried than I was before."

Mac gave a rueful snort. "We've been hours without water, Jack. And yeah, I know … I'm too warm. There's nothing we can do about it though," he said, sounding more defeated than he cared for, but he was just so damned tired and about as miserable as he could be and still keep going.

"Not sweating is not good, bud."

This time Mac did roll his eyes. "Dude, I know, okay?" He sounded annoyed, and frustrated, and just a tiny bit concerned. That last part, he didn't care much for, so he just pressed his lips together instead of saying anything else.

Ignoring the fact that Mac stiffened at first, Jack put an arm around him and pulled him into his side. "Ah, hell, kid, you know how I am. Can't even help it at this point. Old dogs and all that."

Mac relaxed a little. Leaning against Jack was the best he'd felt in a while. Holding himself upright was getting to be a real chore. He sighed and felt his head, sort of without consulting the brain inside it, drop down onto Jack's shoulder. Jack refrained from commenting on either how hot that head was or how out of character it was for Mac to just start basically napping against him. It had happened a handful of times in a lot of years and some fairly terrible situations.

"I wish we knew if Phoenix was on their way," Jack said, more to himself than anything.

Mac's head snapped up. "I forgot. I checked the phone."

"And?" Jack prompted.

Mac looked confused for a second, then shook his head, as if to clear it. "Um … I kind of broke the screen, but the text went through and somebody texted us back. At least they know we're alive."

"Mmm. Wish I knew how close they were to getting us exfil, man."

"Me, too. And I think I finally get that whole Richard the Third thing."

"Huh?"

"You know, the 'my kingdom for a horse'. I'd give up a kidney for a half cup of water. Which is ironic, because, you know, your kidneys are pretty much the first thing to go if you get excessively dehydrated."

Jack chewed his lip. Mac was trying to make light of the situation and failing miserably. "I'd give one of my kidneys to get you a half cup of water, too, kid." Jack didn't add that he was thirsty as hell, too. He wasn't the one spiking a fever and hacking up a lung every five minutes.

Mac's head had dropped back onto Jack's shoulder. "Well, actually, water isn't the problem. We have all kinds of water down here. It's just filthy and would almost definitely be deadly to drink it. Very unpleasantly deadly, I imagine," he said, almost mumbling. "Dysentery, e. coli, campylobacter, salmonella … and then there're parasitic agents to consider …"

"Okay. Yuck. Let's not think about death by … water." Jack checked the inside of his cheek, looking around the room, trying to get his much-slower-and-less-inventive-than-Mac's brain to do Mac's usual job. He frowned at the generator. "What about steam?"

"Hmmm?" Mac asked sleepily.

"Couldn't we boil the water and condense the steam? Wouldn't that clean it enough?"

Mac's head snapped up and he was sitting upright almost instantly, practically beaming at his partner. "Jack! That's brilliant!"

His eyes were already ranging around the room, looking for a way to make that happen. He saw what he needed and got to his feet, swaying for just a second before his overwhelming need to work the problem shoved how he was feeling into a nice neat box that he could ignore for a little while.

Jack got up and limped over to where Mac was already pulling stuff out of a cabinet. "Hey, kid," Mac turned around and looked like he really wanted to tell his partner to sit back down, but Jack went on. "Lemme help, huh?"

"Okay. Yeah."

He paused, thinking that as frustrated as he got with Jack sometimes, mostly with his overprotective streak, he was grateful the man knew him as well as he did. Her knew him so well that he'd practically picked the idea that had been lurking under the surface of his headache, and said it out loud so he could latch onto it.

Mac managed a smile, knowing that his partner wasn't the only frustrating one in their relationship. "Thanks, man."

And they both knew what he meant.