Mac wants to protest, he wants to scream at Jack to leave the IED alone, but his voice sticks in his dry throat. Jack's not going to listen anyway. The older man has only been his overwatch for a few months, but Jack is stubborn, maybe the most stubborn person he's ever met, and this is not the first time he's taken a risk over Mac's protests.
There's no denying Jack has guts and is deadly serious about his job as overwatch. He just shouldn't be risking himself on something like this. He shouldn't be risking himself for Mac at all.
Mac has already calculated the likely load on the table versus what a table should be able to hold. There are too many variables for any sort of certainty, but all the answers he's come up with are pretty grim, even using the most generous estimates. The table that's keeping him alive won't last; it's really just a matter of whether it happens sooner or later. It's going to take hours to dig him out, even with the extra hands from base. If he's really, really lucky the table will collapse much later than he thinks, but when has he ever been lucky?
The day he got assigned Jack as his overwatch was probably his entire allotment of luck for a lifetime.
Over the comms, Mac can hear pounding footsteps, rustling fabric, and Jack's heavy breathing as he runs somewhere with the bomb in his arms. Mac doesn't remember noticing the drainage ditch that Alvarez mentioned, has no idea how far it is from where Jack found the IED, but he knows there isn't much time left for Jack to get the device into the ditch.
Him not even remembering the ditch doesn't bode well for Jack. It was probably small enough he didn't notice it, and a shallow ditch might not divert enough of the force of the explosion upward to protect anyone nearby. The likelihood that Jack will be hurt trying to move the device farther from Mac makes a sick little twist in his stomach.
There's a thump and he hears Jack cussing under his breath and what he hopes is the sound of Jack putting the bomb down, and the more footsteps. There's more rustling and pounding feet and belatedly, brain jolting into gear, Mac starts to count. One, tw—
The radio squeals in his ear and the ground jolts. It's not a big jump, not what it would have been had the bomb been closer to him when it exploded, but it's enough to make the whole mountain of concrete groan. Mac gasps, ducking, arms wrapped around his head as if the rest of him isn't also completely vulnerable. Lying on his back with only a battered table between him and the remains of a building, he feels like a beetle knocked onto its back under a flock of hungry birds.
Things shift with ominous scraping noises and he can't hold back a cry as the pain in his foot sharpens and shoots through his entire body. His breath stutters in his throat and he realizes after some time that he's not sure that he didn't black out for a minute, because his hearing seems to come back all at once. He hears himself whimper.
Grit loosened by the movement is still rolling through the rubble all around him, dusting the air again. Mac breathes because that's all he can do, breathe against pain. He has no idea if there's just more pressure on his foot, if he's broken some bones, or if the whole thing has been squished into jelly; the pain is so intense he can't even sort it out, and thinking about the possibilities makes panic rise in his chest and nausea claw at his belly.
Seconds or minutes later, the pile is quiet again but the pain doesn't let up. The block on his foot has definitely shifted enough that it takes up all his attention until he realizes he hasn't heard anything from Jack.
The radio is silent. It's not staticy, like he's waiting for someone to come on the line, but flat out silent. Like it's not even on. He can hear his own breath, coming fast and shallow, so it's not just his ears this time. Gritting his teeth, he levers himself up and runs his hands over the blocks of rubble by his feet. It's hard to tell, given that it's all just a jumble of pieces, but he's pretty sure one of the blocks to the left of his foot, where his radio lay in the pocket of his vest, has moved.
"Hello?" His voice seems loud in the close, dark space. "Hello? Jack? Anybody?"
Logically, he knows he won't get an answer. If Jack could hear him, he'd have heard all the noises of pain that Mac couldn't hold in, and he'd be in Mac's ear right now, demanding to know what happened. It's the sort of thing that normally annoys Mac, but now the lack leaves a pit in the bottom of Mac's stomach.
He doesn't even know if Jack is okay. Maybe there's nothing wrong with his radio. Maybe the line is dead because there's no one on the other end. Two seconds doesn't seem like enough time for Jack to have gotten a safe distance from the bomb.
Everything about this situation is bad. He was only barely holding it together when he had Jack in his ear to anchor him. Now he only has his pain and his imagination.
The noises that he's come to associate with people moving parts of the pile resume. It seems like it's only been a few minutes since the explosion, but between the darkness and the sharp flavor of the pain in his foot, he's not sure how well he's tracking time.
Three bombs in this town and they were probably made by the same person from the same materials. The bomb that exploded earlier was enough to bring down a building. Mac twists to reach for the carcass of the first bomb and pulls it into his lap. He prods at the bundle of explosives that tried to kill him, calculating the size and force of the explosion assuming the other bomb used a similar quantity of material, estimating the depth of the ditch and the slope of its sides.
Questions roil around in his mind like a final exam from his nightmares. How many inches of dirt are necessary to buffer the explosion if the soil in the ditch is loose and dry versus compacted or damp? What is Jack's likely running speed after spending four hours baking in the hot summer sun while trying to dig Mac out of a collapsed building? If Jack stands six feet tall in his combat boots, what's the minimum distance he had to move to be entirely out of the line of sight of the bomb?
Jack only needed to be far enough, but if the thud noise Mac heard was Jack dropping the IED into the ditch, then Jack wouldn't have gotten very far before the device exploded.
Maybe neither of them are going to survive today after all. Maybe the bomber who's obsessed with this town will be able to add a couple more notches to his tally before nightfall.
He collapses back on the floor. Every muscle in his body is strung tight. He's sweating, but the cool touch of the air in this shady pocket makes him shiver.
The noises from the pile have become even more alarming. Blocks grind, and the table creaks. The pile isn't silent, but it's noisy in all the wrong ways. Without Jack to distract him, without the chatter of the commons, without any way to contact anyone—they can't even tell if he's alive in here anymore.
He's not sure what's worse, the pain in his foot or the agony of not knowing how badly Jack's been injured trying to move the bomb. His thoughts spiral between Jack and his foot, his foot and Jack, and time bleeds away from him until a particularly disturbing thump makes him reach for the cabinet. His hand bumps against the disabled IED instead, sitting there like it hadn't been the first hint that something was wrong with this place.
Eventually, Mac disassembles the carcass of the bomb just to keep himself from his spiraling thoughts about Jack and the third bomb and his foot. There are too many variables, and he doesn't like any answers he comes up with.
Discarding the explosives and the circuit board, he connects the batteries from the flashlight to the LED clock face. Without the circuit board it's not a clock anymore, just a rectangle with 6 blocks of red LEDs. Still, when it comes on, the light is less of a comfort than he expected. Its light is brighter and more steady than when it was part of the bomb, but it's still that same ominous red.
He shifts and turns the red glow of his improvised lamp toward his feet. The clock face doesn't make a very good light, but he can finally see the tumbled mess that he's trapped in. It's all more or less how he was picturing it—the table above him, the wall and the cabinets behind him, forming two sides of his cave, the tangled mass of broken concrete that blocks his view of anything else.
He pushes himself up to sitting and uses the light to get a closer look at the block that covers his left foot. From what he can see, it's a nice long chunk, over a meter wide. The left edge of it rests on the ruined fabric of his vest, on the floor to the left of his foot. The red light illuminates shattered black plastic that was the antenna of his radio. To the right of his foot, he can see a chunk of cement under the block. That's probably what's holding the block up.
It all looks even more precarious than he imagined, and seeing it does not make him feel any better at all. This is how close he was to being mashed when the first bomb went off. This is how close he is to losing a foot. If the block should slip and crush his foot, he could well bleed out even if the table keeps the remainder of the ceiling from coming down on him entirely.
Maybe it's just as well he can't talk to Jack. If Jack's still out there trying to dig him out next time the blocks near his feet move, it's probably better if he can't hear Mac.
#
The blast hits Jack from behind like a blow, so close and so fast he doesn't even hear it coming. One second he's running, the next he's flying forward, shoved from behind. He barely has time to put his hands out.
He lands face-down like he's been flung there by the hand of a vengeful god—a fiery vengeful god, one who's trying to kill him. It's like doing a belly flop right onto the dirt. The ground punches the air out of his chest and slams against his head, and he lays there, stunned, watching clods of soil blown into the air by the bomb drop around him like rain.
He curls onto his side, trying to catch his breath. His initial assessment is that nothing is obviously broken, which is just damn luck. His hands would be a mess if he wasn't wearing gloves, but the army does know a few things about protective clothing. It's the pouches on his belt digging into his stomach and sides that took the worst of it when he landed, and retaliated by punching him in the stomach.
"Dalton!" Alvarez, who was nearest when the bomb went off, skids to a stop at his side. "Shit, are you okay?"
"Been better," Jack wheezes.
The younger sergeant's eyes flick over him, evaluating. "Just lay there, our medic's coming."
Jack can't do much else yet, so he lets his head fall back to the ground and just breathes.
The medic is a young black man with a level expression. Alvarez leaves Jack with him while the medic does a quick evaluation while Jack lays there, impatient but still catching his breath. "I want to send you back to base," the medic says after a few minutes.
"Why?" Jack asks, pinning the young man with a look he knows is intimidating and levering himself up from the ground, ignoring the way his whole body tries to protest. "You found something wrong with me?"
"You went down pretty hard, sergeant."
"Like a rock," Jack agrees. "But I'm not broken and I'm not going anywhere until we dig out my EOD tech." He frowns, reaching around to feel for the earpiece as he realizes it's been a few minutes and he hasn't heard anything from Mac. His fingers encounter dampness, and when he pulls them away he realizes he's bleeding from a shallow cut on his neck.
"Secondary blast injuries," the medic says, leaning around him to evaluate his back. "Pretty minor. You were lucky."
They get him out of his utility belt, vest, and helmet. The belt is just in the way; the upper section of the vest and the helmet are peppered with debris thrown up by the explosion. There's a slice across the side of his helmet that's deep enough that the thought of whatever hit his head makes Jack shudder. He's well aquainted with what a bullet can do to a person's skull and neck, and whatever the IED blasted out isn't going to be better.
His eyes wander back to the radio attached to his vest. He fiddles with it while the medic cleans a dozen bleeding cuts that litter his shoulders and the back of his neck.
The radio isn't damaged that he can see, but it's definitely not working.
Or else Mac's radio isn't working. He gnaws his lip while the medic bandages a couple of the largest cuts. When the man starts in on the smallest ones, Jack moves away, waving him off. "Nah, that's enough, the rest are fine."
The medic grumbles but he doesn't protest very hard when Jack grabs up his gear and heads back to the humvee to swap it out. It only takes a couple steps before he slows down; he feels bruised all up and down his front, and his knees, which hit the ground pretty hard, hurt. It's nothing big, nothing to stop him doing his job, but it's a distraction from what he wants: to make sure Mac's okay.
"Has anybody been in contact with my bomb tech?" he demands when he reaches the collapsed building. "My radio's busted."
Alvarez steps away from what he's doing, turning toward Jack. "It's not just you, Dalton. We've lost contact with him, too." His face is grim. "There was some movement in the pile from that blast."
Jack curses and then, thinking about what that could mean, he curses some more. Because there's no way to know what exactly happened under all that rubble but signs point to something bad. It was a damn miracle Mac's radio survived the first blast; Mac said it was inaccessible, which meant under or behind some fragment of building, and he's seen how precariously the fragments of what was probably poor-quality cement to begin with are balanced on each other.
But there's no way to know if it's just damage to the radio, or if it's something much worse.
Alvarez puts a hand on his shoulder, and Jack looks up from the pile. "Deep breaths. We're still digging."
"Yeah," Jack agrees. He lets out a slow breath. He's tired and aching, but there's still a broken building between him and the kid. He wipes his arm across his forehead and doesn't acknowledge the pitying looks Alvarez's men are throwing at him. "We're digging until we find him."