The first sign that rescue is imminent comes in the form of a pencil-thin beam of sunlight that shoots into Mac's little cave like a laser beam. He jerks up from where he was half-dozing, his dark-adjusted eyes burning. He squeezes them shut, rolling his face down to the ground.

A voice invades his space. "That's him, sir! He's here!" Feet scuff against cement and the voice gets louder and clearer. "Specialist?"

Mac swivels his head toward it, but after all these hours in the darkness, the light is still too bright even though his eyelids. It feels like he's been here so long it ought to be midnight, but it looks more like midafternoon. "Yeah," he croaks out in response. He manages to crack one eye open. The head on the other side of the opening in the rubble is a dark blob the shape of a helmet, but the voice isn't Jack's.

He knows there are other soldiers here, but all along he's been picturing his overwatch in this moment.

"Jack?" His voice cracks, and he gives a dry cough. What if Jack didn't get away from that third bomb after all? He can't keep the worry he's been suppressing since he lost comms from blooming into fear.

There are more noises from outside his cave: bootsteps, shouting, and all the regular noises of a crowd that he would usually barely notice but which bombard him now. He feels out of sync with it all, thrown off by the suddenness of the sharp light and this unfamiliar face.

"Hold tight, Specialist," says the soldier, moving out of sight. He's replaced a moment later by another blob.

Mac's eyes are adjusting and he recognizes the whiskey-brown eyes peering at him through the hole. Mac stares, struck dumb with relief. "Jack," he breathes, a wide grin cracking the dust that coats his skin. "You're okay?"

"Hey, there, kid. Of course I'm okay. That really is quite a nice spot to be waitin' for rescue." Jack's face disappears, replaced by a hand pushing a bottle of water end-first into Mac's space. "I bet you're pretty thirsty by now, huh?"

Mac pulls the bottle through the hole and unscrews the cap.

"Don't you guzzle that. You're going to need to just sip it slowly or you might upset your stomach, y'know?"

Mac does know, they all got the same lecture about dealing with dehydration as soon as they arrived in the desert. And he knew before that, just vaguely remembers his father telling him something just like it, half a lifetime ago, after a camping trip in which he'd failed to find a good source of drinking water and come home tired and thirsty. He takes long, slow sips, rolling the warm water around in his mouth before he swallows it.

Jack angles the beam of his flashlight past Mac's head, shining it toward where his foot disappears under the cement block, then all around the pile above that. "No bueno," he mutters. Mac can't see enough of his face to see his expression, but he can hear the concern. "Now, we still got some work to do to get you out of there, so you're going to have to be patient a bit longer. We're clearing off around the edges and we're gonna have to work slower. Don't want to disturb any of that—" The flashlight beam jerks toward Mac's endangered foot. "How's that foot doing, Mac?"

"It's, uh—" He hesitates, tempted to say it's fine. After all, as far as he can tell, his foot is still under there, and still foot-shaped, and he didn't see any blood in the beam of Jack's light. But Jack's got after him before for lawyering his answers like that, and he's honestly too tired and in too much pain to want to start something with his overwatch. He swallows hard. "It's not too good."

"I'm sorry, kid." Jack's voice softens and he shifts. Mac can only see part of his face, but there's sympathy in those deep brown eyes. "You just gotta hang in here. It's not gonna be too much longer now. We're getting you out. Nothing much to worry about now."

Actually, there's still a lot to worry about. It's going to be impossible to keep every remaining block stable. They don't have any equipment with them, which means people lifting the blocks by hand. They won't be able to catch these large blocks if they fall.

Mac sucks the last of the water out of the bottle, feeling the plastic soften, and frowns.

"Hey," he says, before Jack can move away. "I have an idea. About stabilizing that block on my foot. Do you think you can find—" he pauses, discarding the idea of plastic water bottles. They aren't very sturdy, and the caps will be a problem. They won't remain air-tight when the bottles deform. He needs something else that can hold air and is available in this village. "Bicycle tires."

"What?"

"Just the inner tubes, actually. I need some inner tubes, an air pump and a stick, something at least 2 feet long. The hand pump from the truck would be fine if it has the right gauge needle for the inner tubes."

Jack is silent a minute, and Mac expects a barrage of questions. "How many inner tubes?" Jack asks with a sigh.

Mac smiles at him. "At least a dozen, in the best shape you can find. Check that the valves are good. And I need them mostly empty."

"Sight tight, brother," Jack says. "'l'll see what we can scare up." Jack disappears from sight. When Mac closes his eyes and listens, he can hear Jack faintly at a distance, giving orders. The soldiers from base aren't Jack's to order around, but technicalities like that don't seem to stop his overwatch. If Jack wants a thing done, he's not shy about telling someone to do it. It's a tendency that sometimes makes Mac bristle, but right now, he's glad of it.

"Specialist?" A shadow blocks his beam of sunlight again, another face he doesn't recognize, but the voice is familiar.

"Sergeant?" he guesses.

The shadow moves in the shape of a nod, confirming this is the sergeant who was on their shared comms line before his radio was crushed. "Dalton's finding the materials you requested. While he's doing that, we're going to continue working from behind you to clear out as much of this area as possible."

Mac tenses, thinking of all the ways that could go wrong. "I can't tell if the block on my foot is leaning on any of that."

"We've been examining it and we should be able to clear out more of these blocks without touching anything that's providing support to the blocks on that foot of yours. If it looks to you like anything's moving in that direction, I want you to give a holler. We're going to do this really slow and careful."

Mac takes a shaky breath. "Yes, sir."

Carefully, he moves as far as he can away from the area where they'll be working. The way his leg is pinned, he can only really sit with his back to the blocks Alvarez's men are going to try to move, and that makes him feel vulnerable. He won't even see it coming if one of those blocks slides toward him instead of away.

But as promised, the soldiers work slowly, discussing everything they do before they attempt it. The hole that was barely big enough to pass a water bottle through opens up until it's big enough he could squeeze through it, if only his foot wasn't pinned down. There's a pause while they pass him some spare vests, laying them over him as extra padding until he's blanketed from shoulder to ankle. With his space now opened up to the midafternoon heat, it's finally getting warm and he's sweating under the thick vests, but that's better than getting hit in the back with a block of cement.

By the time the soldiers have cleared out as much as they can, Mac has been uncovered again and is starting a third bottle of water. Jack returns, hauling a floppy pile of black inner tubes draped over one arm, an air pump clutched in his other arm. He's got a rod of some kind tucked into his elbow. He crouches down a foot or so outside the legs of the table, to Mac's right, ducking his head so he can see Mac's face. "This look good? Most of these are brand new. Got 'em off a guy who fixes bikes." He grins as the pile sloughs off his arm onto the ground. "Somebody owes me twenty bucks."

"You're going to have to dig out my vest for that," Mac says, rolling his eyes. Then he stops as he gets his first really good look at Jack since the soldiers removed the blocks on the side of the table. Jack's face is bruised and scratched, and there are several small red scabs on the side of his neck, a few more hiding in rips in his shirt along his shoulders. Mac knows secondary blast injuries when he sees them. He sucks in his breath. "Are you hurt? I mean, that bomb, you were way too close to it—"

Jack gives him a blank look before he sees where Mac's looking. "I'm fine."

"You could've gotten killed."

"And?" Jack raises his brows. "You could've gotten killed if I didn't move that bomb. As it was, we lost your radio and that foot of yours isn't doing so hot, I'd bet."

"It could be worse. It was already pinned under this block before you even found that IED."

Jack just gives him an unimpressed look and then pulls one of the inner tubes loose from the pile. "So what are we doin' with this stuff?"

"Hand me the inner tube and the—what is that?" Mac points to the rod.

"Walking cane," Jack says, handing it over, then passing Mac the inner tube he's holding. "Bought it off an old guy on the next block. Told him I'll bring it back if you don't wreck it."

"We'll see." Mac runs the deflated rubber tube around in his hands until he finds its valve, then folds it flat so the valve is at one end. He pushes the end of the cane against the inside of the fold on the other end, stretching the folded tub along the length of the cane. It takes a couple false starts, but with some maneuvering, he manages to use the cane to shove the inner tube under the slab of cement along the right side of his leg. The second inner tube Jack hands him goes right next to it, then a third, until the small space under the block is filled with deflated inner tubes. Then he repeats the process on the other side of his foot, stuffing the rest of the tubes under the left side of his foot.

He turns to Jack. "So now we just need to inflate these. I'd do it myself if you hand me—"

"You ain't gonna do it yourself." Jack shuffles a bit until he can position the air pump so that Mac can attach it to one of the inner tube valves. "And I'm sure I know exactly what we're up to with your nest o' snakes in there, but maybe you could enlighten the rest of the crowd as to what we're doin'."

Mac blinks, looking beyond Jack for the first time since he started stuffing inner tubes under the slab. A cluster of locals and a couple of the other soldiers are watching from a few feet back. "Once these are all inflated they're going to form a cushion and keep those blocks from squashing my foot if they start to slip. Hopefully."

"I like it." Jack grins. "You sure these things can hold that much weight?"

So many of Mac's calculations were estimates, he isn't sure of anything. Even if the calculations were exact, he can't be sure he didn't mess up some of the math, given the way his head is swimming with pain. "Not really." He shifts and grimaces when another stab of pain shoots up his leg.

Jack's smile falls a little. "Well, I trust you. We're still gonna be really careful but a little extra insurance ain't a bad thing." He gestures to someone behind him. "Hey, since we're about ready to start moving blocks again, the medic needs to get you fixed up. I'll start pumping these things up while he talks to ya."

"Fixed up?" Mac echoes.

Another soldier kneels down next to Jack. "Moving that block off your leg is like removing a tourniquet. Removing the pressure on your leg could cause your blood pressure to bottom out. You could go into shock."

Oh. It's a good bet that the medic's right about the disruption to his blood flow. The sudden removal of the weight isn't just going to free him, it's going to free the blood vessels that have been squeezed by the weight pinning his foot. He clenches his fists at his sides and nods.

The medic returns the nod. "I'm going to run an IV line so we can keep that under control, got it?"

"Got it," Mac says. Near his foot, Jack is attaching the pump to one of the inner tubes. Normally Mac hates the idea of letting anyone stick him with a needle, but he isn't looking forward to experiencing a sudden change in blood pressure. He starts to offer his arm.

"I want you to lay back down for this," the medic says.

It takes the man a couple tries to start the IV. Mac bites his lip, staring up at the hazy blue sky and trying to ignore the sharp pain where the needle is poking into his skin. The medic gets the line started in Mac's right arm while the other soldiers are still pumping air. He checks Mac's blood pressure, making notes in a little notebook. All the while, Mac is laying on the ground, with a crowd growing around him. As much as he's glad he's not under half a building anymore, he's very aware that he's now the focus of attention, and he doesn't like it. He doesn't like feeling helpless under their eyes. He doesn't want to be the topic of conversation in this village, either as the pitied central character in a tragedy or the subject of an unfolding miracle.

But he can't do anything except lay there. Even closing his eyes doesn't reduce the feeling of being watched.

"Think we might be ready here." Jack's voice is close beside him, and Mac cracks an eye open again to see his overwatch crouched down. Jack leans over to rest a hand on Mac's arm. He looks almost excited. "You ready to get outta here?"

Mac glances down toward his feet, where the ends of the black inner tubes now bulge out from under the cement blocks like a pile of hot dogs. He raises his brows, impressed at how tight they're squeezed in. It's possible the inner tubes could really help if blocks start to slip.

It's also possible they won't help at all, and the blocks will shift and come down even more heavily on his foot. If that happens—he shudders, his breath picking up as he imagines several possibilities, each worse than the last.

"What's the matter?" Jack's voice is sharp.

Mac meets Jack's eyes and the amount of concern he finds there makes his breath catch. The way Jack is worried about Mac is entirely different from the way everyone else is evaluating his predicament as either a problem to be solved or an event to be tracked. "Nothing."

Jack's brow furls. "Well, that sounds like hogwash. There's been plenty wrong around here for hours. But I promise you, Mac-–and you better believe I mean it—we're gettin' you out from under that thing, and then we're going back to base, and we're never coming back here again." He pauses, giving Mac a steady look. "This is almost over, brother. Just hang tight a few more minutes. I'm going to be right here with you, you hear me?"

Mac takes a deep breath and nods, letting Jack's words wash away the edge of panic that was starting to set in. "I hear you," he says. He takes another deep breath and gives his overwatch a nod. "I guess I'm ready."

"Hang in there." The way Jack says it, he sounds so certain that Mac can almost push the precarious reality of his situation out of his mind. He gives another nod, firmer this time, and Jack pats his shoulder, still meeting his eyes before he stands up and turns to the soldiers waiting to help. "All right, men. Take your positions. We're lifting on three."