Summary: Mac's psychic talents come to the surface again to help her and Harm with a case.
Disclaimer: JAG and its main characters belong to DPB and to CBS. I don't make any profit from writing any of these fics, but simply get to exercise my overactive imagination every now and then. Please don't sue me, as I'm just a student with no money!
Rating: PG. Sorry, no smut in this one!
Category: H/M shipper. Sorry, this one is UST. But I thought it would be good to recreate the kind of relationship that Harm and Mac had, way back when. Hope it brings back some happy memories of our favourite couple!
Spoilers: Little references are made to 'Psychic Warrior' and 'Capital Crime.' This story takes place some time after Mattie comes to live with Harm, before Webb comes back onto the scene, so the events of Paraguay don't happen.
Feedback is always very welcome…
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Sarah MacKenzie felt her heart pounding in her chest, after waking up from the terrifying nightmare, silent tears wetting her face. Almost disbelieving, she touched her fingers to her cheek and pulled them away to confirm that, yes, she had indeed been crying in her sleep again. The wet spot on her pillow was testimony to that. What on earth was going on?
Mac sat up, shaking her head to try and get all of the memories into order. What had she been dreaming about? The memories were fuzzy and didn't seem to make any sense. As far as she could remember, she had seemed to be the only one in the dream; nobody else had been there. That in itself was unusual, because normally if she had a bad dream (and she did, frequently, especially in the aftermath of her confrontation with Sadik Fahd and the death of Clayton Webb) every person she had ever had involvement with featured in her dreams, usually to berate her and taunt her. But, there was one person upon whom she could count to save her in her dreams; Harm. He was the one constant in her life, her saviour in her nightmares, her very own knight in shining armour…Only he wasn't hers, at least not in real life. Why had he not been there in this one? It was strange, because in the dream, Mac had felt the life being choked out of her, the feeling of not being able to draw breath. Mac knew that Harm would always do his uttermost to save her, whether in dreams or real-life. He was the one person she could always count on. Why had he not been there?
Mac was startled out of her thoughts by the sudden shrill noise of the phone on her bedside table. Once she had got over her fright, Mac roused herself and bent over to peer at the screen of the caller ID unit. She didn't recognise the number.
"Who on earth would call me at six in the morning?" she thought to herself.
She was tempted to leave it, because she knew that it wasn't the Admiral, Bud and Harriet or Harm's number, so probably would not be an urgent matter. But something made her reconsider and pick the receiver up. Even afterwards, Mac could not have explained why she did so.
"Hello…"
At first, she was greeted only by silence.
"Hello? This is Colonel Sarah MacKenzie…"
Still nothing.
"Is anybody there? I'm going to hang up if you don't stop messing around…"
She was halted by a soft, indiscernible sound on the other side of the line.
"Hello…is somebody there?"
"Help…" came the soft reply.
"Who is this?"
"Help…please…"
"Where are you? Can you tell me where you are? I can come and find you…"
"Need help…have to help me…"
"Yes, I will," Mac assured the soft voice's owner, "Just tell me where you are…Do you recognise anything around you? Can you see any landmarks? Are you indoors or outside?"
"Oh, God…he's coming…"
"Wait, wait…don't panic. I can come find you. Tell me where you are, I'll bring the police and we won't let anybody hurt you."
Mac knew it was futile as she heard the voice on the other side of the line begin to softly cry in panic. Just as suddenly as it had come through, the call was cut off.
"Hello?" Mac shouted down the line, helplessly, "Please, are you there?"
But it was no good. The line had been cut off.
"No!" Mac shouted into the darkness.
Frantically, she dialled star 69 but was told that the call had come from a cellphone. Then, she tried desperately to remember the number she had seen on the ID screen. Something-6459…something-5469? She couldn't remember. She hadn't paid much attention to the number itself, just whether or not it looked familiar. It had definitely ended in a nine. That she could say for certain. And some of the digits had been 547, because that was the Falls Church area code, she had at first thought that maybe Genral Cresswell had been calling her from headquarters. And if it were a call from a cellphone, it would have a particular number on the beginning of it…what number was it that cellphones used? She tried the first number she had thought of, but was told that the number was not in use. Next, she woke up a very disgruntled man. After uttering a profuse apology, she tried a couple of other combinations, which yielded nothing. When she had finally exhausted her own ideas, she called the one person she trusted beyond a shadow of a doubt to suggest some more.
OOOO
Later that morning, Harm sat on her living room couch, leaning forwards, listening to her intently.
When she had finished describing the events of that morning to him, he asked her, softly,
"Are you sure, Mac? I mean, I'm not doubting you, but there are very malicious people out there, who get a kick out of causing this kind of upset to innocent people…"
"No," Mac cut him off, "This was real…Absolutely real."
Mac had no doubts, even though Harm could have very well been right. There was logic to the argument, there were some very twisted people who got off on this sort of trick, but Mac really knew that this was not one such case. What she had heard on the other side of that line had been completely real. There was no faking that fear and panic that she had heard in the voice, no person was so good an actor as to recreate that.
"Okay," Harm nodded, having complete faith in Mac's assessment, "Your word is good enough for me…"
If Mac said it was real and that somebody did need their help, then he'd have faith in her and they would work together to help whoever needed it. Now, they just needed to find out who it was.
OOOO
Marine Corps Base Camp Joseph H. Pendleton
San Diego, California
0755 Zulu
General Alan Donnachy, for now a stand-in drill sergeant, surveyed the impressive platoon before him. Before he'd come in to command them, they had hardly been able to tie their own shoe laces, but now, they were a force to be reckoned with, an asset to the United States Marine Corps. Their last CO had been far too soft on them and it showed in their performance. It had only been a few months before, when General Attwood had been taken suddenly ill and he had been drafted in to be their temporary replacement, but the arrangement proved to be prodigious, so they'd kept him on the job. Now, few could disagree that General Donnachy was the best thing to happen to this platoon.
When all was set, the General gave the order and all the men took aim at the targets in the distance.
"Fire!"
The first round of shots rang out, then a second and a third, after each one of their CO's orders. General Donnachy was looking through his binoculars, watching the high percentage of hits catching the targets within the marked area in the centre. Scanning from target to target, Donnachy suddenly hesitated and looked back the way, after a hint of something caught his eye.
'Must be light hitting something…' his mind registered, vaguely. The sun was quite strong at this time of day. He scanned the area between the fifth and sixth targets, not seeing anything at first. Then he saw it, fluttering in the wind; a hint of gold. At first, his mind didn't discern what it was but when it finally hit home, Donnachy's heart clenched in his chest.
"Hold your fire! Hold your fire!" he boomed and his men froze, at first thinking that this was a test, to see how well they obeyed his instruction. Everyone halted in their execution of the exercise, straight away.
"Man down, I repeat, man down," he reported into his radio.
The replying voice stated that medics were on their way.
He dropped the radio receiver and made his way down to where his men were still standing, bewildered.
"Benson, Kruger, James, you three come with me, the rest of you, wait here for the medics…"
The men followed his lead as he crossed the firing range, their pace fast and urgent.
As they got closer, Donnachy saw that he had been right; the flash of gold was a person, their blond hair fluttering in the breeze; the blond hair of a young girl, surely not out of her teens. She had been shot through the chest. The way she was just laying there reminded Donnachy of a pitiful young bird, unsuspectingly and suddenly shot out of the air and fallen to the earth. Even as he moved to check for a pulse, he knew that it was hopeless. Her eyes were staring right at him, unseeingly, as if taking in one last sight during her brief life.
"No," he told the other young men as he felt no pulse, only deathly cold, "It's no good…Move back, this will be considered a crime scene. We can't touch anything."
The three men warily moved back, watching their steps as they did so, as if afraid that they might step on some vital clue.
"They're not used to this, bless them," Donnachy thought to himself then wondered about it, as this sort of thing was most unlike him. He supposed that it was due to the fact that the last time he had seen death, he and his troops had been in a war zone and as the oldest, he had felt like he should be the one offering them a fatherly show of support. None of these men had seen action, few had probably seen death this close up and personal, but certainly none of them had seen the death of a child, an innocent, not like this. Seeing combatants, fellow officers die during wartime was bad enough, but this…Even he was having major problems with it…Kruger looked positively green. Once they got back, he took inventory of all of the weapons; who was firing what and how many rounds each of them had dispensed.
After leaving the base coroner with the deceased, he returned to his office.
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