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Part 6

"Damn it!" Mac cursed loudly, as she and Harm fought their way through the driving rain, "The Admiral's going to call us in at any minute."

"Let's check back over in that quadrant," Harm suggested, pointing off to his left.

"No," Mac shook her head, looking at the map, "we've already re-checked there…How about this one? The rain had started to come on when we checked here, so maybe we missed something…"

"I don't see how," Harm commented, "but okay. It's the best plan we've got."

They were now getting desperate and they both knew it. They were only a couple of notches away from frantic.

Wiping the rain and her soaking hair out of her eyes, Mac joined Harm, starting to carry out a visual scan. Letting her subconscious take her wherever it wanted, Mac wandered towards a different quadrant in their search area than the one they had agreed upon.

"Mac," Harm shouted, "Wait up, the last thing we need just now is to get split up…I thought we were checking here…where are you going?"

Mac couldn't have told him, she simply shook her head, wordlessly, continuing to scan the ground and the surrounding foliage.

Harm made himself busy by doing a manual search of a massive patch of thicket.

"Damn it!" he cursed loudly, when he caught his hand on a thorny creeper.

"You okay?" Mac asked, turning to look at him.

"Just a thorn," he told her, as she took his cold, numb hand in hers to check it, "Don't worry, I'm fine…Let's just keep looking."

They carried on, shouting Hope's name loudly and few good times.

Harm carried on, but Mac's voice died in her throat as her eyes flickered past, then returned to a vaguely familiar image.

"Harm!" Mac summoned her partner urgently even as she took off and ran to the patch of pink showing through the thick layers of leaves. Harm quickly joined her and they both clawed through the leaf-littler, only to end up with a lone Wellington boot and no child.

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AJ's radio burst to life with the voice of his top JAG lawyer. He quickly grabbed the receiver and replied, acknowledging that he was receiving.

"We've found her Wellington boot, Admiral…We can't see the child, yet, but we're hoping that she might be somewhere nearby…The boot seems to have been here some time, but we're not sure why the child would have continued on without it. There's quite a steep slope nearby, maybe she lost it climbing down. We're going to search the area more thoroughly, just now."

"Very good," AJ told him, "Keep me updated."

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Bud listened as the massage relayed across the radio. This is what they had all been hoping for, but he was unsure if he should go and inform Harriet and the Mattonis, or stay here and keep tabs on the situation. In the end, he decided to give it fifteen minutes and then go and inform them.

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"Do four-year-olds climb trees, Harm?" Mac asked her partner as they feverishly searched the area.

"I doubt it," Harm surmised, "Plus she's down a boot. I don't think we'll find her sitting in a tree…"

He had a point, but at that second her gaze fell upon a wizened old tree, one with a gnarled, twisted thick trunk and in that instant, she just knew. Moving away from their course at a right angle, she hurried towards the tree, ignoring Harm's questions behind her.

"It really throws me when you do that…" he commented, but followed her at a brisk pace.

Mac checked the brush around the base of the tree and found nothing, but began to move around the trunk. Once she got around it, she immediately knew that this was where she was supposed to look, when she saw a small hole in the trunk, where the tree was rotting away. Moving further around, she found a much bigger recess, complete with a tree pixie inside.

"Harm!" she called, urgently, yanking off her pack, "She's here. I've found her!"

Harm was at her side in a second, dropping down beside her as she checked the little girl over.

"Hope…Hope, can you open your eyes for us? Open your eyes, honey, we're here to help you and get you home…"

These words did register with the little girl this time and she opened her eyes and even attempted to move the limbs she had curled into this position so long ago. The movement made her little bones creak audibly and she released a groan, reaching to grab her ankle.

"Oo, that's a sore ankle you've got there," Harm commented as he helped Mac to wrap the insulation blanket around the little girl, after helping her sit up and move out of the tree's recess, "It'll feel better once we get that wrapped up."

Hope now only had half-sensation in either of her feet, complete sensation disappeared somewhere below her heels.

Harm quickly handed over the support bandages to Mac and then went back to the radio in his pack, to call the news into the rest of the search teams and base command. Once he was done, he removed his jacket and he wrapped it around the blankets that were around the child, whom Mac had now lifted into her arms.

"How's she doing?" he asked his partner, quietly.

A shake of her head and a look was all it took to ascertain that they had to get back ASAP, because Hope was in very bad shape. Harm grabbed Mac's pack and his own and they began to hurry their way back to the compound. Soon after, Mac stopped so that Harm could reassess the child, who was now unconscious again, her head slumped into the side of Mac's neck.

"Hope…Hope, honey?" they both roused her, "Can you stay with us? We need you to stay awake, okay?"

The child took some encouraging, but she was more alert when they picked up speed again.

After this, she began shivering violently, so Mac unzipped her jacket and settled Hope against her, stretching her jacket around the child, sharing what warmth she had left in her own body.

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