Chapter 16

As Mac waited, treading water, his head between two of the large logs that served as floats for the small dock, he heard a splash in the water just where he had gone in. It wasn't a person; it was Puck. Mac's eyes closed briefly in relief, then he took a big lungful of air and dived under the murky water. He heard and felt the movement of the swimming dog and headed for it, hoping that no stray bullets would find them. When he found Puck, he reached up past the churning feet to his body and then his neck. He pulled the dog's head down under the surface of the water: their only defense at the moment.

Puck, frightened, twisted and thrashed. Once his kicking hind legs hit Mac's thigh where the bullet wound was and Mac felt dizzy from the pain.

The thing that saved them was Mac's feet coming in contact with the silty bottom and thus steadying him. He dodged the pace or two back under the dock and allowed both their heads to come up under it. Puck, once he could breathe, calmed down and put his forepaws on Mac's shoulders. Mac held the dog's body as securely as he could in order to calm the animal and hopefully keep him from splashing much.

The three men had now reached the edge of the lake; they stood not four feet from where MacGyver huddled beneath the dock.

"Should I go in? He can't be far," commented Mr. Driver.

"Nah," responded Frank easily. "There's nowhere for him to go. Pretty sure Marty hit him too. He's not gonna last long out there."

The three turned and walked back up the path to the house.

Once their footsteps had receded, Mac let out a long, slow breath. He stayed still for another ten minutes, just in case the men had cleverly left behind someone who was standing quietly, waiting for him to resurface.

Just as he was about to move, he heard a sigh and a muttered curse. Mac's hands, cradling Puck, clenched on the dog's fur. He'd been right, but had almost lost the cat-and-mouse game. The last man finally turned and made his way back up the path. The water lapping on the logs of the dock and the breeze in the tops of the trees were the only remaining sounds.

Mac knew he had to get out of the lake water as soon as possible. While the cold was good for the bullet wound, the contaminants in the water certainly were not, and he had no way to stop the flow of blood. Even now, he was beginning to feel slightly dizzy.

Choosing his moment to move, he ducked under the logs on the right side of the dock, away from the path, pulling Puck with him. As his head broke the surface of the lake, a shaft of sunlight hit him straight in the face, illuminating his vision with brilliant white light. He was surprised how low the angle was, and wondered if it could really be the evening of the same day in which he'd awoken in a motel in Missoula.

He released Puck, and the two moved through the shallows of the lake along the shore away from the house and tool shed. Puck, sensing Mac's injury, stayed close by his side.

Although Mac wanted to get as far away as possible, he was rapidly losing strength. He was having trouble thinking and his head felt fuzzy. He supposed that behind the scars on his corneas his vision was blurring but there was no way to know for sure.

A log and a tangle of brush extending out into the lake made the decision for him. He simply did not have the strength to continue. He crawled onto the shore where a rocky beach gave way to pebbles and sand, and then a dirt bank rise steeply about three feet. The fallen tree slopes down from this bank, and bushes grew thickly around it. Mac crawled in under the log, laying on the sand with his back to the dirt bank. Puck snuggled in next to him.

Fighting desperately to stay conscious, Mac tore some more of his undershirt off in two wide strips and did his best to bandage his leg where the bullet had penetrated.

Then he surrendered to the overwhelming dizziness and slept.

When he woke, it was dark, and chilly. His clothes, mostly dry now, seemed to stick to him, but provided no warmth and the night air, summer though it was, held little warmth. The only warmth came from Puck, pressed up against his left side, and the fact that his bush-covered log shelter was so small. The bullet wound in his leg had begun to throb. He moaned quietly.

He woke again to full sunlight. The chill of the night had gone, but a new nuisance replaced the cold: mosquitoes. The hum of hundreds of insects filled the air next to the edge of the lake, where little pools of stagnant water housed algae and colonies of noxious insects, who seemed to have discovered his skin as a tasty feast.

"You can't have my blood," he told them weakly. "I don't have enough as it is."

He realized that it wasn't the bugs that had awoken him; it was thirst. He raised his head, and a rush of dizziness and nausea overtook him. He retched, but since the last meal he'd eaten was the granola at the restaurant a day and a half ago, nothing came up.

He laid his head back again with a sigh. With his left hand, he explored the bandage around his leg. It was crusted with dried blood but there did not seem to be any fresh blood, so that was good.

At this moment he realized Puck was not beside him any longer. He thought vaguely that it could be a bad idea for Puck to run off, but even that thought felt like too much work, and he succumbed to sleep once again.

It was dark again the next time he woke and chilly again, although not as bad as the previous night. Puck was back, huddled in a bony ball, tucked up against Mac. This time the thirst felt unbearable. He had to get some water. Rather than raising his head this time, he rolled gingerly toward his left side, the bullet wound in his thigh shrieking a protest in his brain.

At his movement, Puck leapt to his feet and slid out from under their brushy hideout. Mac followed more gingerly, pulling himself along with his elbows, both injured legs mostly dragging along behind him. As he got onto the rocky beach it became harder to move, but the nearly insane thirst drove him on. After a few more agonizing feet, he reached the edge of the lake where the water was cleaner. Putting his face to the water, he sucked it up greedily. Too greedily, as it turned out. A lot of it did not stay down. But he drank some more anyway, and then turned and laboriously crawled back to his spot under the fallen log. Puck nestled in beside him and again he slept.

He woke again as the daylight of another day was fading. The days had begun to blur together and he wasn't sure how long it had been since he had been shot.

Still, today his head was a little clearer, and he began to take stock. The facts were dismal. He was alone with a dog in the middle of the vast Montana forests with a cabin full of criminals maybe 500 yards to the north. His shin and hand ha flesh wounds, and his left thigh held a bullet hole that was almost certainly infected. He had no food and no supplies. Oh, and he was blind.

Those were not encouraging circumstances, but Mac's usual pragmatism and optimism came to his rescue. There were positives about his situation, such as: he was still alive. There was drinking water near. He hadn't been recaptured. Well, not yet, anyway. He checked his pockets. Yes, his knife was there. He also still had the wire cutters in his jacket pocket.

As the darkness deepened, Mac rolled out from under the log on the other side this time, farther away from the dock and the house. Working while laying on his back felt awkward, but his leg had stiffened so that he couldn't move it. The wound had swollen and begun to ooze.

Mac opened his knife and began trimming away sticks from the bushes that had housed him. He also cut a strip of bark from the tree trunk itself and worked on scraping loose its soft, fibrous inner layer. He laid his sticks in a pile and the fluff from the bark in another pile.

While Puck watched with interest, Mac began to sort through the stones on the beach, fingering each one. Most were plain chunks of granite, their corners rounded by the motion of the water. At last, he found one that had a broken side and the edge left by the break felt as sharp as a knife blade. Mac smiled with satisfaction even though the wound in his leg made him catch his breath in pain each time he moved.

With the piece of flint in one hand and his steel knife in the other, he struck a spark over the pile of fluff.

Over and over he struck, the sparks he produced flashing brightly enough even he could see them. He couldn't see when the fluff caught, but he could smell it! Carefully, he took the pile of sticks, choosing the smallest and driest to set onto the tiny, struggling flame.

It was not enough and the minuscule fire died down and went out. Holding his hands above the pile, he felt no warmth.

Patiently, he started over, gritting his teeth against the dizziness and pain. At last he had a small but stable blaze burning. He took the wire cutters and laid their closed tips in the fire he'd built.

He tried not to think about what was coming next as he gingerly peeled the bandage away from the wound. He didn't want to cut away his jeans, but his leg was too stiff to get them off. He sliced away a section revealing the entry and exit wounds, noticing the smell of infection. He grimaced.

With the fire-heated tips of the wire cutters, he cauterized the wounds, then re-bandaged it with the remains of his undershirt. He thanked fate or whatever had prompted him to put on a sweatshirt and his leather jacket even though it was summer. A habit of dressing in layers had most likely saved his life the last few days.

The effort it took for his first aid treatments had depleted his meager energy reserves, and he didn't even go get a drink of water, but after scattering the burning sticks and covering them with sand, he crawled under his log and fell asleep, with Puck snuggled beside him for warmth.

The next morning, he woke, knowing something was wrong. Beside him, Puck's head was up, his antenna ears perked. Mac put a hand on him hoping he would be quiet and still as the voices of Fist's men drew closer, their feet scraping on the rocks of the lakeshore. A low growl started deep in Puck's chest, and Mac held him more tightly.

"I tell you, he is dead by now," came the voice of Mr. Gun.

"Show me the body, Marty, and I'll agree with you," Frank replied.

"Well, he isn't here," argued Marty. "We've looked twice and no footprints, nothing. Besides if the dog was with him, it'd bark."

Frank didn't reply to this but had begun leading the way off the beach into the undergrowth of the woods. The other two followed.

"This is dumb," Mr. Gun, aka Marty, grumbled. "We shoulda left yesterday. We did everything here and I'm ready to get back to civilization."

"Fist doesn't like loose ends," replied Mr. Driver shortly.

"But we're not…" Marty continued, when Frank stopped and rounded on him.

"You want to be the one to tell Fist that we left a Phoenix Foundation guy up here?" He asked in a raised voice.

Marty's voice raised also. "I'll tell Fist I shot him, and that there's nothing around here for like a zillion miles, so he's dead. Now, let's get back to the real work. Fist will be more upset if we're late meeting our dear friend Ben."

"Ronaldez is a chump," put in Mr. Driver unhelpfully.

"But a chump who won't be in the States much longer," replied Marty. The voices of the three men began to fade as they pushed their way through the trees and brush, away from Mac's hiding place.

"Well, we can't bring him here, not without knowing if the Phoenix guy is really dead," Frank replied angrily. "We don't have a good place to take him if this place is messed up."

"What about that cave?" asked Marty.

"Hmm," Frank said, but Mac didn't catch the rest of the conversation, as the speakers were too far away.

Puck still stayed tense and watchful, but Mac lay back on the rocky sand trying to ignore the pain in his leg and the chill from within his own feverish body. He tried to focus on what he'd just heard.

Benjamin Ronaldez was the US ambassador to the Philippines. Just a year and a half ago, he had lived through hell as the country had erupted in a violent series of protests, resulting in the overturn of their dictator. Now, things were quieter, but the economy had tanked, leaving massive amounts of unease.

Mac imagined, if there was someone seeking power, he might be willing to pay a mercenary like Fist for American-owned guns to stir things up again. And if the American ambassador was out of the way, so much the better.

It sounded like that was exactly what Fist had in mind, but what would they do with the Ambassador? Not kill him; he was too valuable an asset alive.

Marty had mentioned a cave. Did he mean the one on Elevator Mountain where the guns had been stashed?

Mac's head began to swim again. He was thirsty but too exhausted to try to get water; besides the three men might return. His stomach ached with hunger.

He fell asleep.