Chapter 17

Sometime later, he half-woke, listening to the sound of car doors slamming and the starting of engines. The cars pulled out down the rutted, gravel driveway, and then all was quiet again. His head lay weakly back on the sand. Puck was gone, off hunting for food or chasing something; Mac didn't know and really didn't care. He needed water; he knew his body desperately needed water, but he couldn't summon enough energy to crawl to the lake. Besides the fact that he didn't know who still remained at the cabin looking for him. He drifted off again.

He woke briefly when Puck came back, then slept again until sometime in the middle of the night. His body ached with the pain of thirst, hunger, infection and fever and he had to bite his lip in order to not moan aloud.

A few moments later, he was glad he had stayed silent, because he heard footsteps above him and to his right. Someone was picking their way cautiously through the forest. No, it was several people. By his side, Puck tensed.

Mac felt a strange sense of relief. If they found him and shot him, at least the pain would be over.

The footsteps moved closer, accompanied by an odd beeping noise that Mac's foggy brain struggled to place. He'd heard it before but at this point the effort it took to remember was too much for his tired mind.

Puck, on the other hand, seemed to care significantly. He rose and pushed his way out from under the bush where Mac lay and disappeared up the hill. Mac wanted to call him back, but his dry mouth refused to make a sound.

There were quiet voices and the footsteps grew closer.

Suddenly, Puck nosed his way under the bush toward Mac, then retreated to the beach where rocks grated under booted feet. Puck danced between the boots and Mac, and Mac gave a sigh. He supposed this was it. He was done.

"MacGyver?" a whispered voice sounded unnaturally close to Mac's ear. It sounded like Pete's voice, but that couldn't be right. He was hallucinating. The fever evidently had climbed so high that he was delirious. He wouldn't answer. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

Puck nosed his way under the bush again, and hands pulled it aside. The beam of a flashlight lit up Mac's vision and he squinted in pain.

"MacGyver!" the voice said in an exultant whisper. "Thanks be, we found you!"

Mac rolled his head to the other side, refusing to believe that the person speaking was Pete, even though it sounded like him. He mentally braced himself for the gunshot that would end his life.

Instead, several pairs of gentle hands grasped his arms and shoulders and began sliding him from his hiding place. Mac put up a feeble gesture to stop them, but they were many more than him and stronger. Soon, they had him out on the beach and the intensely bright beam of the flashlight was alternately on his face and off of it, glowing as it traced his body.

"He's in bad shape," another voice said in a low undertone. "How will we get him out of here?"

"The backboard," said another voice.

"This looks nasty," said the voice that sounded like Pete, and fingers lightly touched the burned flesh on his upper thigh.

One of the voices crashed off through the trees again. Another set bundles on the ground, and Mac heard the high-pitched whine of a zipper opening. There were rustlings and the cracklings of paper, as well as liquid sounds. Then, a feeling of fire ripped through his wounded leg, and he moaned.

"Shh," instructed the Pete voice. "It's alcohol to kill the infection."

More fire blossomed on his right shinbone, and Mac grimaced. Puck, laying beside Mac, whined.

"Can you drink this?" asked the Pete voice, as the metal lip of a canteen was held to Mac's mouth. He tried to swallow, but it came fast and he gagged. Someone lifted his head and gave him another, slower sip that worked better.

"I'd better kill the light," said a voice. "Someone might see us down here. It would be nice to get out of this without a fire fight."

"Agreed," said someone, and inside Mac's head, he also agreed.

In the dark, hands began loosely wrapping bandages around Mac's wound. While they were doing this, another person came down from the trees. Everyone began to move around, picking up bundles and closing zippers.

After circling Mac for several incoherent minutes, the Pete voice said, "ready? On three. One, two three."

Many pairs of hands grasped parts of Mac's body and hoisted him quickly onto what felt like cold concrete. When they began strapping him down, however, he realized it was a wooden rescue board. They quickly had him secured, in what had to be the least comfortable position Mac had ever endured in his life. There was a rustle of hoisted packs, and then his board was also hoisted by the handles along the sides.

As the people carrying him began to move, he felt his weight shifting from side to side against the restraining straps. Going up the hill was agony as his weight sagged toward his feet. Involuntarily he let out a moan, and felt Puck's wet nose against his hand in a gesture of silent sympathy.

The path through the forest was a string of moments, each following the next, each utter agony as bushed clawed at him, the restraints bit into him and the hard board pressed on his spine.

After maybe thirty minutes of this torture, the men who carried him felt freer to talk aloud.

"We should hit the road soon," one said.

"I'd have thought by now we would have gotten there," another answered.

One of the people carrying Mac tripped on something, and there was a jolt and a curse. "I hate the dark," said the voice belonging to someone who sounded like Pete.

"You ok, Boss?" asked one of the other men.

"Yeah, I'm fine," came the terse reply.

It was in that moment that MacGyver's foggy brain finally accepted that yes, this was indeed Pete. How he had come to be in the middle of the Montana wilderness, Mac had no idea. The fact that he would come at all, with his numerous responsibilities and his own faltering eyesight, but somehow, here he was.

"Finally, the road," said one of the others in relief.

Mac's ride became smoother after that, and it wasn't long until they arrived at… somewhere and set him down.

Mac slipped in and out of a hazy unconsciousness as one of the men with Pete gave him a quick but thorough triage.

"No broken bones," the man muttered. "Spine appears to be fine. High fever. Massive infection and burns in left leg. Probably a lot of blood loss. Partially healed flesh wounds in right leg and right hand, also showing signs of infection. Dehydration."

As Mac listened to the laundry list of injuries, he realized he was pretty lucky to still be alive and semi-conscious.

Since his spine was uninjured, the group decided to unstrap him from the board, to his great relief. He was given a few more sips of water, and lifted as gently as they could into the seat of a vehicle. Being placed in a reclining but upright position made the dizziness swallow him and he lost consciousness.

He slid awake again to the sound of tires whining on pavement. There was slightly more light in general, which led Mac to guess that another morning had come at last.

Fighting the dizziness that tickled the corners of his brain, he took a rasping breath, and with dry, cracked lips, he said, "Pete?"

"MacGyver!" Pete enthused from the seat next to him. "You're awake!"

His heartiness made Mac wince slightly.

"Why…how…" Mac was having trouble forming his question into words.

"I'll explain it all later, once we get you safely into a hospital," Pete assured him. Mac thought vaguely that there was something wrong with this plan, but couldn't grasp the thought.

"Where?" He began again, but before he could hear Pete's answer, he slipped away again.

They were moving him the next time he awoke. The hospital gurney felt quite a bit softer than the rescue board, but it was so narrow and he felt so dizzy, he felt every second that he would fall off.

It was with great relief that they transferred him to a bed and he heard rails slide into place. The field medic who had treated him began to give his assessment of Mac's condition to the nurse that started triage.

She listened, and then lifted his lids to shine a light into his eyes, but recoiled at the scars.

"What happened to his eyes?" she asked, and listened again to the medic's explanation. "So he was blind before he got hurt?" she asked incredulously. "What was he doing out in the woods?"

The conversation drifted and swirled around Mac. At one point, the nurse asked him if he knew his name. He did, but the answer stayed in his head and refused to be spoken aloud.

The sting of a needle punctured his left forearm, and he supposed that they were attempting to hydrate him.

He fell asleep again.

When he next woke, he discovered that his head felt much clearer.

Someone shifted in the chair next to the bed.

"Mac? You awake?" Pete asked with concern.

"Pete," Mac croaked, his dry lips splitting as he smiled.

"Wow, you were really out of it for a while there, Buddy," Pete told him. "They had to give you two liters of blood."

"I'm guessing that's a lot?" Mac asked, grinning.

"Well between that and the fever, it was hard to keep you with us for a while there." Pete's tone was light, masking the concern he felt for his friend.

"How did you know where to look for me?" Mac finally asked the question that had been uppermost on his mind since the rescue.

"Well, when your call hung up so abruptly, we suspected you were in trouble," Pete began, and Mac curbed his impatience. Pete would tell the story in his own good time. "I assembled this team of agents and decided to come myself to look for you. We thought we'd start with Missoula since that was your last known location."

Mac nodded slightly. It made sense.

"It was then that we really got lucky. Turns out you still had a couple of those salmon tracker pellets in your pocket. We found the radio signal and traced you to the property. It's owned by some east coast big-wig who only comes out for vacation once a year or so. Well, apparently your 'friends' decided to use it as a temporary headquarters in the meantime."

Mac was smiling again. "Those salmon trackers sure have come in handy," he commented. "I thought I had a couple of leftover Ibuprofen in my pocket. Good thing I hadn't gotten around to washing my jeans."

Pete resumed his story. "We checked with the neighbors who reported unusual activity in the area. We figured we'd have to get you out as quietly as possible, which is why we went in at night. Not my favorite gig."

Mac turned toward his friend. "How are your eyes doing, Pete?"

"I guess I'm thankful for what I still have," Pete replied slowly. "I have a lot of blind spots and it's hard to see at night. But I wanted to come get you personally. These guys you're dealing with aren't messing around."

"Thanks, Pete," Mac said, wishing he could let his friend know how much it meant to him that he came.

"So what have you learned so far?" Pete asked reluctantly. He hated to drill down Mac when he was hurt so badly, but with the situation in the Philippines such a tinder box, time was essential.

"I told you about the shipments of guns, and the boss, Fist," Mac started.

"Yeah, we looked into him. Since you don't have his real name, we couldn't find anything," Pete said.

"While I was at the vacation house, they mentioned the Ambassador," Mac said, trying to remember and feeling the fatigue pulling at him again.

"The Ambassador to the Philippines?" asked Pete.

"Yeah, I'm having trouble remembering," Mac admitted.

"Tell you what," Pete said. "You get some rest and heal up. I'll look into this deeper on our end."

"Okay," Mac agreed with a tired sigh.

"One question though," Pete added. "Where did the burn on your leg come from?"

Mac briefly explained the gunshot, the contaminated lake water and his attempts to cauterize the wound.

"Ouch," was Pete's only comment.

As he went into the hall, Mac could hear low voices as Pete asked the doctor for an update. Mac could only pick out a few words: "infection… sepsis… antibiotics." Those did not sound good but Mac once again felt too tired to care.