Mac's breath hissed through his teeth with the pinch of the needle and the big ginger haired guy next to him - Punchy, Mac reminded himself - cursed under his breath. "Sorry, kid, that probably hurt. I blew that one. We'll get it this time."

Mac just nodded, only half hearing him, distracted by how twitchy he felt and that the urge his brain had to make his battered body get up and run full tilt boogie down the mountain was almost overwhelming. He noticed the heat from the burning debris of the camp currently felt like it was in danger of crisping his skin. Punchy's second, even less successful stick made Mac swear and pull his arm away, although, admittedly, he didn't really mean to do either.

"MacGyver," the medic said his name just a little sternly. "I really need you to be still. You're not in great shape and I think you'd be a tough stick on your best day. I could stab you less if you just quit movin' on me. If you're afraid of needles, just don't look, okay?"

"Well, I'm not a fan, but it's not on purpose," he grumbled. He wanted to explain the buzzing, too-full-of-caffeine-or-something-worse sensation because he was pretty sure it wasn't normal, but the best he could do was force his eyes, that had been squeezed shut against what was quickly becoming allover agony, open in the hopes that some visual input would make putting things into words a little easier. Instead when he opened them, for the first time he noticed Zahir lying on the floor a few feet away, large dark eyes trained on Mac's face. Or at least that was how it seemed to Mac, who was so jacked up by whatever the pain meds were doing to him that he didn't process the lifeless glaze in those eyes, just that they belonged to the person who had beat him, cut him, starved him, refused to let him sleep. His brain and body were unable to contemplate more fighting so he took a sharp turn into flight mode, digging in with his feet, trying to get himself up off the floor. Jack once again sprung into action, using the voice he perfected gentling skittish horses through most of his childhood and adolescence. "Easy there, bud. He's just as dead as he can get. We got all the bad guys. You're safe, and we're ..."

That's when Mac remembered what he needed his rescuers to know. He hurt so much now that he couldn't move much and could no longer even hold back the twitching of his limbs. He was further distracted by the sweat running off him as he alternated between shivering cold and panting heat, but he forced his eyes to stay open and look at both Delta operators earnestly so they wouldn't assume he was delirious. "Nobody's safe yet. There's another camp." He shook his head to clear it and kind of wanted to throw up but took a deep breath and tried to finish. "Probably twenty klicks from here if I was hearing those guys right. That's where they were taking all the stuff they built here to distribute it to other cells. Our tech trainee, Ricky ... Thompson I mean ... I think that's where he was in those videos. He might still be alive. They shot him though ... Everybody else ... I don't think ..."

He probably would have kept babbling, his mind working at top speed, but with the unusual hiccough of the thoughts doubling back on themselves and repeating on weird skipping loops. It was godawful and he was blaming it solely on the morphine, already vowing he'd never take any pain meds for anything again, when Jack patted his arm. He knew the kid wasn't aware of the tears on his cheeks, that he hadn't really started to process the loss of his squad with his conscious mind yet, but the moment when he would wasn't very far away. And the kid was clearly having a pretty weird reaction to the pain meds Punchy had given him, so Jack wanted to put that off for him for just a little longer. "We don't know anything for sure. We'll get 'em buddy. You did real good."

Mac closed his eyes again, lost in the million memories and ideas that his brain was forcing him to deal with all at once. He wasn't aware that he was still talking, mostly nonsensically, but he was vaguely aware of strong gentle hands holding his arm still, and, in a very disinterested detached way of the sting of the IV line finally being started successfully. He was sort of aware of one of the other guys, Wash, he thought he heard Jack say, telling the medic that they would have to use their ground transport because they couldn't get anything by air due to heavy fire by the airfield and of Jack cursing God and everybody over that fact. He knew he was on a stretcher at some point, that someone had secured him to it, including his wrists, with heavy velcro straps that were hot and uncomfortable. He complained about it in a half interested sort of way between tangents about other things that kept crowding into his attention. Jack (he remembered that Jack hadn't really left his side) said they were sorry but he'd pulled out his IV twice already. He didn't remember doing it, but since he kind of felt like peeling off his own face to get away from the feeling in his head, it sounded perfectly plausible. Besides, he trusted Jack. He didn't know why, but he did, and he wasn't someone who trusted easily.

The torment the kid was obviously fighting through filled Jack with a protective sort of anger he hadn't felt since he found out his little sister was be bullied when he was in middle school. Knowing there was another kid possibly close by, and likely in similar or worse shape, put there by the same pieces of human garbage that hurt the kid mumbling to himself something about his mother right now, made Jack's hands twitch. He wanted to meet a few more of them personally and show them why his handle was a nod to the only lawman who was good enough to get the drop on Billy the Kid. Since all he could do right now with that protective urge was sit in the back of this truck with MacGyver, he just did his best to keep the kid grounded, to keep him calm. He kept bugging Punchy about the kids condition and the last time Punchy checked on him he assured him that the shot would start to wear off in about four hours or so. Mac had been completely unaware that he'd sworn pretty loudly about it and started to cry quietly at the prospect of four more hours of feeling like he did. Jack distracted him by asking him if he wanted to be cleaned up a little and when Mac said yes, Jack used some wet wipes out of his pack and Mac actually gave him a small smile when he said he could see how the kid wound up with a nickname like Hollywood. Since that seemed to make him a little more lucid, a little less miserable, Jack started a string of gentle chatter, asking the kid about his family (apparently a mistake), whether he had a girl back home (and ribbing him a little when he said no, telling him that was a waste of that pretty face). He told Mac about his own family (also a complicated affair since he and his dad were not currently on speaking terms), about a slew of girlfriends, and then about the love of his life, who happened to be a bigger bad ass than him but looked like a Disney princess. He was starting to lose his voice when the big guy with soft green eyes everyone called Banner climbed into the back with a water bottle and a couple of yellow pills. The blond on the stretcher was as wild-eyed and miserable as Punchy said; poor kid.

Jack took the offered pills and water. "What's this?"

Banner glanced away with a self-deprecating slightly embarrassed roll of his eyes. "My airsick pills." He hated to fly, really hated it. The rest of the squad actually found it hilarious since he'd chosen to jump out of planes with the 82nd for a living before finding his way here. "Punchy said the morphine's probably worn off enough and they might help anyway if it's some kind of weird allergy. Besides, if these don't help him slow his brain down, maybe even get some sleep, nothing will. They knock my ass out if I take two and I'm twice his size."

Jack gave a grateful nod and helped Mac lift his head enough to swallow the meds with an almost greedy sip of water. His frenzied chatter slowly tapered off over the next half hour or so, and finally after several obstinate blinks, he fell asleep. Jack sagged against the wall of the truck with an exhausted sigh. He watched the young man sleep fitfully the rest of the way to the impromptu field hospital that had sprung up near Jalalabad in the wake of the recent increase in insurgent activity north of there. Because Mac seemed ready to panic a little the second he got too far away, Jack just followed the kid as he was processed through triage, cleaned and stitched up, and eventually moved to a cubicle on a drip of non-narcotic pain medication and mild sedatives that he seemed to be tolerating. Periodically, Mac would pry his eyes open just to reassure himself that the Delta operator was still there, still with him.

A day later Jack had felt okay about leaving him for a while. His CO was relatively certain that, from the information Mac provided, they'd located the camp where they believed Thompson, as well as a huge cache of IEDs, was hidden. Now that young Mac had been treated aggressively for dehydration and infection and had managed a solid meal he didn't look nearly as badly off. He looked a hell of a lot younger than his not-quite-twenty-one years all cleaned up, but regardless of his baby face, once they'd allowed him to really wake up, there was an air of competence around the kid that even Jack, who was the oldest guy on his team and who definitely had some strong mother-hening tendencies that could drive the other guys crazy, had to admit. Mac was sitting up in bed, clearly chomping at the bit to be out of it already, eating anything anyone would put in front of him, and trying his level best to convince the doc in charge, Punchy, Jack, and anyone who came within five feet of him that he felt fine and should be able to get up and dressed and go to the briefing, too, since obviously he could give them valuable information about this particular group of extremists. He was told no, in no uncertain terms, by all of them, and then threatened with more sedatives if he didn't knock it off and park his ass in bed. He looked so dejected that Punchy, who was still feeling pretty bad about the reaction the kid had to the pain meds he'd given him, talked the doc into the concession of letting the kid take a proper shower, before he left for the briefing, too.

Mac felt like a new man after showering, because even the mountains had their own share of moon dust in this place, and having the world's most necessary and blessed shave. Afterward he cheerfully asked for more food if there was any to be had as the attendant reattached his IV line to the port still in his arm. He was shoveling indeterminate food in his face, and much as he'd bitched about MRE's along with the rest of his unit, he didn't even care now so long as it was food that wasn't moldy-ass dry bread, and wasn't even really aware of it yet, but his brain, now in a well-fed, clean, and not thirsty body, was already plotting and planning.

When Jack came back to visit a few hours later, he told Mac they were rolling back out shortly to go get his buddy and do to the other camp what he had done to the one where he was being held, Mac said he was glad. Then he very calmly added that he wished they would consider letting him go with them, even in an advisory capacity; that he knew how to disarm the sorts of IEDs that cell was using because he'd watched them make them for almost two weeks. Jack had chuckled at the young man's tenacity, and was more than a little impressed at how well he seemed, given just how dinged up he had been when Jack had found him. Then he extended a hand to be shaken. "I'm sorry, Hollywood … Mac, sorry. Doc's pretty sure you got at least a few fractures, a concussion, and God knows you're underfed and still probably dehydrated." Mac had looked away, part of him not wanting to be mad at the guy who'd talked him through feeling the worst he ever had, at least since his mom died, and the other part wanting to yell at him that it was crazy to go into a Taliban camp without the EOD best equipped to disarm their bullshit. "We're the best of the best, Mac. We'll bring your buddy back and put the rest of those dirties in the ground. I promise." Mac opened his mouth to argue, and Jack, in the first of many such conversations to follow said, "I didn't save your ass two days ago to have you run it right back into the ground."

There was such a protective big brother tone in Jack's voice that Mac did his best to look contrite and grateful at the same time. He was finding he had a gift for handling his face and voice he would never have credited before joining up for a tour around the Goat Farm, and he wished Jack and his team luck, shaking his hand with genuine warmth. As soon as the Delta operator and the medic who had stepped in with him were out of earshot, Mac carefully moved out of bed and turned off the motion sensor on his IV monitor, then he carefully removed the line, grimacing and grumbling to himself that Punchy had poked him so many damned times he looked like a junkie. He did his best to ignore how his ass hung out in the breeze in the barely there hospital gown he'd been dressed in and slipped back out into the hallway near the bathroom where the staff lockers were located. He was really missing his Swiss Army knife about now, but had no idea where on the godforsaken mountain he'd been captured and detained it might be. Instead, he unwound a paperclip he'd taken off the chart at the foot of his bed and used it to pick locks until he found a set of diggies and boots that fit reasonably well. He picked his way toward the vehicles that were parked near the main buildings being prepped and fueled up for the Delta CSS rescue team to go after Thompson and take down the camp. He stealthily concealed himself in the back of a humvee. He wasn't going to let the men who had risked their lives to save him go blind into the distribution camp without an EOD tech. Mac had been visited by, and so was able to talk briefly, with their explosives expert who went by the handle Alfred (which Mac couldn't decide whether it was a reference to Alfred Nobel because of his connection to dynamite or Batman's Alfred who was just an all around badass). He'd seemed like he knew his shit, but Mac trusted his own brain and what his mentor and CO had taught him more. Aw, man. Peyna was gonna be so pissed. He wondered exactly how much trouble he could get in for flaking out of the hospital. No one, he reasoned, had given him a direct order. Then he decided that going in himself to get Ricky, and to watch out for Jack and his crew, was too important to count the cost. He wasn't going to make decisions based on personal consequences, he was going to make them based on what was right. He registered that he was feeling way too tired for a guy that had slept most of the last day away and that it was very warm and almost comfortable here in the back with everybody's gear. Shortly thereafter, Mac felt the vehicle start to move.