Bomb + Doctor + Mattress + Doors
Chapter 2
NEBEUR, TUNISIA
…WHERE APPARENTLY THEY ARE NOT BUILDING A BOMB
Riley stood beside Mac with her hands on her head, surrounded by the armed men. Several of them spoke, but she couldn't understand what they were saying.
"I don't suppose you speak Arabic?" she murmured.
"I speak Italian. It's still used by a few people here," Mac replied. For his trouble, one of the soldiers kicked him, driving him to his knees on the hard cement floor.
One of the men motioned at her with his rifle, which she interpreted as an order to join him. She sank to her knees as well, inching slightly closer to Mac.
"I guess they don't," he breathed, eyeing the men cautiously.
One of the soldiers stepped through the crowd, coming around to stand in front of them. He looked them over silently for a moment before baring his teeth in a less than friendly smile. "Welcome."
His accent was thick, but it was better than nothing.
Mac put on his most innocent looking expression. "Sir, we're just tourists. We got lost and came in to ask for—" He stopped talking when one of the men shoved the muzzle of his AK-47 into the back of his head.
"We expected spies," the man said, then followed with something in Arabic that made the crowd laugh. His smile shifted to a sneer. "Strip search."
Two of them men stepped forward, grabbing Riley and ripping her shirt open.
"Hey!" Mac angrily lunged at them from the floor, but before he could intervene, he got a rifle butt to the face. He fell to the ground, out cold.
"Mac…." Riley looked down at him, concerned when he didn't move.
Their day had gone from bad to worse.
MAC MAC MAC
"We lost contact with Mac and Riley almost an hour ago," Bozer said, cycling through satellite images of the warehouse in Tunisia in hopes of seeing some trace of his friends. "We've tried everything, but either they're comms are offline or…."
"What about the Russian?" Matty asked.
"Right. Well, Bazarov IS a Russian ex-pat, and an arms dealer, as we were told," Russ replied. "But he's never dealt with nuclear material or had any contact with the NLF. Until now, he's been a supporter of the more domestic variety of terrorist in Turkey. Apparently, my friends at MI6 were completely off on this one."
"Or they were lied to," Matty retorted. "The arms dealer not being involved and Mac's going dark almost as soon as they infiltrated the warehouse can't be a coincidence."
"You think Mac or Riley was the target all along?" Bozer asked, a feeling of dread working its way up his spine.
"To my knowledge, neither of them have had any dealings with the NLF, so I don't know how this group would even know either of them existed."
"Maybe it's simpler than that," Russ said. "Maybe the NLF knew they had a spy in their ranks and set this entire scenario into motion in order to root out which intelligence agencies were watching them."
"I'm not sure which is worse," Bozer mused. "A trap specifically aimed at Mac or a generic one designed to trap anybody."
"If the NLF is trying to find out who we are, that means we have two agents whose lives are in danger. Russ, Desi, you need to get to Tunisia, now," Matty ordered.
"We're about three hours away," Desi replied.
"The TAC Team is on standby in Malta. I'll have them meet you in Tunis. Get moving!"
MAC MAC MAC
The first thing that Mac became aware of was the stifling heat in the room. He opened his eyes slowly and groaned, immediately regretting it. He felt a pair of hands touch his arms.
"Mac! Thank god. I was worried you weren't going to wake up." Riley said softly, voice shaking.
"H-how long was I out?" Mac asked, pushing himself up on his elbows. He was on a thin, uncomfortable mattress laying directly on the floor. The room they were in was dark, except for a shaft of light from a small window near the ceiling, about ten feet overhead. There were no air vents, and only one door. As he straightened up, he was hit with a wave of vertigo that almost sent him right back down.
"Take it easy," Riley said, keeping her voice low. "You've got a concussion. You've been unconscious for hours."
Mac looked down at himself, noting that his clothes were gone and he was wearing a pair of drab, green, loosely fitting coveralls. "What did I miss?"
Riley smiled sardonically at him. "For starters, you missed your strip search. I don't think you would have enjoyed that. Then you slept through the three or four hour ride in the back of a filthy truck."
He remembered the look on the guards faces as they'd accosted Riley, and his spinning mind couldn't help but flirt with the worst scenarios it could imagine. "Are you all right?"
"My humility took a beating, but yes," she replied. "And by the way, I'm more than capable of taking care of myself, Mac, so don't do anything stupid like that again, okay?"
Embarrassment quickly took hold and he dropped his eyes, chagrined. "Sorry. I just…saw the looks they were giving you and…I'm sorry."
She settled beside him, sliding her shoulder behind his to help him stay upright. "It's okay. Just…I don't want to see you get hurt, either, Mac."
He smiled faintly, giving her a grateful glance. "I don't suppose they left my Swiss Army knife."
Riley shook her head. "No. The ugly one with the mustache took it when he was searching you."
"Figures. Damn, my head's killing me."
"That's what you get for channeling your inner Jack. Shouldn't try to be a hero."
"Can't help it, it's my default setting," Mac joked gamely.
Riley reflexively reached for his hand, but caught herself, shifting to his wrist to check his pulse instead. His eyes tracked her hand the whole time, but he said nothing.
"At least they didn't separate us," Riley muttered.
"Yet," Mac said, grimly. "Do you know what they want—?"
He was cut off when the heavy steel door to the cell swung open and Ugly Mustache Guy and two other soldiers appeared. One of them kept his AK leveled at them, while the other two stepped inside.
Mac rose, Riley helping steady him as he pushed himself to his feet. His head throbbed harder when he reached his full height. The two soldiers shouted at him in Arabic, then seized him by the arms and forced him out of the cell. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Riley's worried gaze as the door slammed shut, separating them.
MAC MAC MAC
Mac's head snapped back as one of the fists popped him in the mouth. He'd lost track of whose turn it was to use his face as a punching bag. Each blow was making his headache worse.
"Who told you we were building bomb?" The leader from the warehouse asked again in his broken English.
Shaking his head slowly, Mac looked directly into his eyes. "I already told you. I don't know anything about a bomb. I'm on a road trip with my girlfriend—"
His explanation was cut off when the leader swung a baton, striking Mac in the ribcage. Once he caught his breath, Mac glared up at him. "Beat me all you want…I don't know what you're talking about."
He was rewarded with a right hook from one of the soldiers.
Okay. Having a concussion is a pretty good excuse for one not thinking clearly. But, any action movie hero would tell you that using the words 'beat me all you want' is just poor judgment.
Between the fists and the batons, Mac took a beating for the next five or six minutes. He sat panting for a few long moments before he even realized that they'd stopped. With difficulty, he looked up, glancing between their angry faces and their balled fists.
"Okay…I think I need to speak to someone at the American Embassy."
It was the wrong thing to say.
In between blows, he heard the leader talking to one of the others. While Mac was telling the truth when he told Riley he didn't speak Arabic, he had picked up a few words over the years. He definitely picked out the words "phone" and "doctor" in the conversation. Unfortunately, he had no idea of the context…and he didn't have much time to wonder about it before the next wave of beatings stopped him from thinking altogether.
MAC MAC MAC
Riley double checked the door again. It was securely locked, so there was little chance of getting it open given that she had no tools available. Moving on, she rechecked the walls for the third time, looking for anything, a loose cinderblock, a hole, an electrical outlet.
She tried to imagine what Mac would do in this kind of situation. Find something to use, identify a weakness, create an opportunity…she liked to think that years of going on missions with the best secret agent on Earth had rubbed off on her, at least a little.
Thinking of Mac made her worry again. He'd been gone quite a while. These NLF goons didn't seem to be the understanding type. Nor did they seem to be buying the road trip cover—
The door swung open. Before Riley had a chance to move toward it, two of the soldiers shoved Mac inside, practically tossing him onto the threadbare mattress. The door was slammed shut before she reached them, so she changed course and rushed over to Mac's prone form.
Rolling him over, she was appalled by what she saw. The left side of his face was a mass of bruises. He had a black eye, his cheek was bleeding. His lower lip was busted.
"Oh, god, Mac…."
He winced as he touched his chin. "I think the road trip is over."
Carefully, she unzipped the front of his coveralls. His upper torso was a minefield of welts and contusions as well. Mac followed her gaze, and forced a smile. "Not the way I imagined you undressing me…."
She glared at him. "Seriously? Jokes? Bad ones."
"Still channeling my inner Jack," he muttered. "Just trying to look brave so you'll tell everyone back home how heroic I was under pressure."
"Mac—"
"I'm okay, Riles. It looks worse than it is."
"Don't see how that's possible," she murmured. Her heart pounded in her chest every time she looked at his injuries.
"We just need to hold out until the cavalry gets here," Mac said quietly, with more confidence that Riley was feeling.
"Wherever here is," she replied.
"They'll find us. They always do." Mac said, gently lowering his head onto the mattress. Riley prayed he was right.
MAC MAC MAC
Desi kicked a box of old car parts across the floor angrily. "Where the hell are they?"
The TAC team had secured the warehouse, but it was completely abandoned. No NLF soldiers, no computers, no evidence that anyone had been there at all. More importantly, no MacGyver or Riley.
Russ appeared as unhappy as she felt. "Bozer, did the satellites see anything?"
"About a dozen trucks left the warehouse in the last few hours, the last one just a few minutes before you got there," Bozer reported. "But they all went in different directions."
"We need to track all of them," Desi said.
"Indeed, one of them must have carried Mac and Riley out of here," Russ said.
"Hopefully they were taken to the same place."
"We're going over the video feed now," Bozer reported back.
Russ frowned. "We need to hurry, Bozer, I don't know exactly what the NLF has in mind for our friends, but I doubt it will be pleasant."
TBC