Three for Takeout

by Rosie Calais

When a mission goes sideways, Jack, Mac, and Bozer are drugged and tossed into a basement with no way to escape.


By the time a couple of low-level goons drag Jack down to the basement and dump him half-on, half-off a filthy sheet of cardboard on the cold floor of a tiny cement-walled room, his lip has stopped bleeding but his left eye is swelling up pretty bad. The rest of him probably isn't doing much better, but that's a problem he can save for later because he can't feel any of it. Whatever drug it is they've shot him full of has left him mostly numb from the neck down.

The drugs have also made him a little dizzy and his ears are ringing-or maybe that's the way the goons knocked his head into the chair when they got him up, into at least two door frames on the way down here, and on the floor when they dumped him.

Whatever the cause, the room's spinning pretty good.

So he just lays there on the floor for a few minutes, squinting at the single dusty bulb on the ceiling. These wannabe terrorists are apparently cheap as fuck, because it's an actual oldschool incandecsent bulb with a chain hanging down to turn it off. He can't think of when he last saw one of those outside of some goon's torture hole. "Didn't think they even sold those anymore," he mutters to himself. It's not like they're some forgotten middle-of-nowhere place this time. They're practically in Silicon Valley's armpit here.

A snorting noise alerts Jack to the fact that he's not alone. "Helloooo?" He raises his head, which is a real effort given how he can't even feel his shoulders and he's still a little dizzy. The ringing in his ears is mostly gone, though, so that's probably a good sign. "Mac? Bozer?"

There's a figure lying prone on the floor near his feet. It's Bozer, and while the limpness isn't a good sign, the rising noise level is. After a pair of false starts, Bozer starts snoring loud enough to wake the dead. In the small, one-hundred-percent cement bunker-ish closet they've been tossed into, there isn't anywhere for the noise to go so it doubles down on itself and slams against Jack's ear drums.

It seems safe to assume that Bozer also got pumped full of some drugs, he just seems to be having a very different sort of reaction than Jack. Jack isn't tired at all. If he could move anything south of his collarbone, he'd be upstairs right now, energetically knocking heads into his fist.

Bozer's snoring isn't the only noise; there's also a soft shuffling from off to his right. Jack twists his neck to look: Mac's here too, leaning against the wall.

He's so relieved to see them he has to close his eyes for a minute. He'd been so busy being a distraction that he didn't see when or how Bozer and Mac exited the room. He'd gone through his favorite choice insults plus a few he made up on the spot, and when those got old, he started in on a elaborate tale about the wealthy, well-connected, and very unforgiving bosses they all worked for, complete with detailed descriptions of what had happened to people who'd tried to mess with them in the past. Anything to make sure these guys had second thoughts about hurting his team.

It must have worked because Bozer and Mac were here first, and he can only see the one bruise on Mac's cheek, no cuts or blood, no other signs of injury. They're still in trouble, but at least he can stop worrying whether something unrecoverable has already happened, and worry about keeping it from happening. He clears his throat. "Hey Mac? Kid?"

Jack's sure he's actually making noise with his mouth, not just imagining it, but Mac doesn't respond. The kid's got something in his hands that Jack can't quite see from his position on the floor, and he's really focused on whatever it is. Did they give him a paperclip to calm him down? Because he seems super mellow.

Jack squirms as far toward Mac as he can using just his shoulder blades and neck. "ANGUS MACGYVER."

That gets Mac's attention. The younger man looks up and turns his head toward Jack, forehead wrinkling slightly. But he doesn't move like normal. His head sort of drifts around like he's a recording being played in slow motion. His pupils are huge, his gaze unfocused. "Heeeey. Jack?" He tilts his head, considering Jack. "When did you get here?"

Ooookay. So they've all been drugged, but with entirely different drugs, because Bozer's out cold, Mac's high or something, and Jack still can't move anything but his neck. "Been here for a minute or two, buddy," Jack says. He lowers his head back to the floor and glares up at the single bulb. "Who are these guys, the bargain basement any-drug-will-do gang?"

"Mmmm," says Mac, as if he's considering the issue deeply, which Jack is pretty sure he is not. Jack is the only one of them whose brain cells are in good working order right now, and that's a big problem because he is never the brains of the operation.

"I don't suppose you have any ideas on gettin' us outta here?" Jack asks. They need to get on with escaping before the head baddie decides he's not too squeamish about blood, but none of them are in fit shape to get off the floor. "Any chance they didn't take your phone?"

The only answer is a new round of snorting from Bozer. Jack wasn't really expecting much, though. He had three phones on him when they left the Phoenix-his own phone, a burner for backup, and an even tinier burner to back up the backup-and they're all long gone. If terrorism doesn't work out for these dudes, they can make bank selling the six or seven brand new phones they took off the Phoenix team.

Jack twists his neck all the way to the left so he can glare at the door with his right eye, the one that isn't swelling shut. If he had any muscle control at all he could bust that thing down, no problem. It's not like these guys holding them are geniuses. The door is wood in a wood frame, not steel. The hinges are on the inside of the frame. Hell, they might not even be locked in.

If only he could do anything at all except think about all the ways he wants to bust some faces in, and actually go bust some faces in. But again, that requires being able to control his arms and legs.

"How long do you think til this stuff wears off?" he asks aloud. "Coupla hours maybe?" He looks toward his feet. Getting up off the ground is going to require them to cooperate. Maybe he doesn't need to feel them to move them, though. "Hey, Mac, can you see if I'm moving my toes?"

Mac actually looks toward Jack's feet at that. "Dunno."

Jack lifts his head up as far as he can, just enough to get a decent look at his own feet. "I'm still wearing boots, aren't I? You can't even see my toes."

Bozer kicks off a new round of snoring, and Jack thinks really hard about which muscles he needs to move to prod him in the back. That doesn't work either. The only thing that's changed is that he's now getting a headache.

He tries to think how long they've been out of contact with Phoenix. They lost comms before they were cornered, and then they were all tied up to chairs for a while. That was when Mac got the punch in the face, and Jack started in on taunting and threatening, earning himself additional negative attention.

The best time estimate is in their own injuries. The bruise on Mac's cheek is still pretty red, not a hint of bluing yet, and the swelling on his own black eye is getting worse. It's been a couple hours since they were cornered, no more than three at the outside. If this is a four-to-six-hour sort of drugging they've got at least an hour to go, and that's no good. The guys are probably going to come back before they're in good shape to bust down the door and get themselves out.

"So you think you could maybe build me a gun I could fire with my mouth?" Jack asks Mac, who doesn't respond. Or-" He pauses as an idea strikes him. "Or darts. Yeah, blow darts. That's the thing."

Jack examines the idea and is surprised to realize that it's actually not bad. It's the kind of thing Mac might've come up with if his brain was firing on all cylinders. The only problem is that there's absolutely nothing in the room to make said darts with. No tubes, nothing darty-shaped. No pokey stuff for the ends. No way to drug the non-existent tips with their non-existent knock-out drugs or even electrify them, which also sounds like the sort of thing Mac would probably do. "You ain't even listening, are you, kiddo?" Jack sighs. "I have an actual pretty good idea but you ain't even gonna remember it later, are you?"

While they've been laying here, the building has gone quiet. Too quiet. There was a lot of activity going on upstairs when Jack was tied up to that chair, getting a needle poked into his arm. Jack strains his ears and cranes his neck and tries so hard to wiggle his fingers that he ends up grunting curses at them.

He has made no progress at all when he hears footsteps approaching the room. "No good, no good, no good," he mutters, glancing another time around the room. A solution to their predicament does not appear, and he figures they've got a fifty-fifty chance that the baddies are up for more interrogation rather than disposing of their captives.

A potent mixture of adrenaline and dread washes through him. They've been down here awhile, and it doesn't take very long to think up more questions to ask your captives. Probably the goons are coming back to drag one or more of them to their death, with the only good news being that they don't seem super creative so it'll probably be something straightforward, like getting shot. The bad news is that Jack can't do a damn thing about it except run his mouth in hopes of buying more time. He can't even throw himself in front of the bullets. He can't do anything but yell and watch.

The footsteps stop at the doorway. It's three people, at least. The handle turns-sure enough, they aren't even locked in, they could have just walked out of here, if they could walk-and the door bursts open. Two men in dark vests stand on each side of the doorway, the dark muzzles of their guns sweeping the room.

The men step back, and there's Riley in the doorway, wearing a kevlar vest over a dark purple t-shirt, holding two phones. "Yeah, here they are," she's saying into the phone pressed to her ear. "All three of them. Basement. Yeah."

Jack cranes his neck toward the door and squints at her with one eye. For a moment, he's so relieved that he can't speak, but he finally chokes out a greeting. "Hey, Riles."

"Jack. Mac. Bozer." She surveys Mac and Jack, then pauses as Bozer lets out another snort. "What happened here?" Her gaze snaps back to Jack. After a moment she moves to crouch at Bozer's side. She rolls him over and finds the pulse point on his neck.

He knows he's grinning like a fool but he just can't help it. "Just us three stooges laying here all drugged to the gills," he says.

Riley seems satisfied with Bozer's condition and looks more closely at Jack for the first time. "You okay? You look like someone stomped all over your face." She crouches at his side, holding her hands like she's afraid to touch him. Her brows pull together as she scans him. "Can you… can you not move?"

"If I could get up, we'd have busted out of here an hour ago." Jack realizes he's made a mistake when alarm flashes across her face. "Hey, I'm okay, Riley. It's the drugs, not a spinal injury. I don't know what they gave Mac and Bozer, but they must've shot me up with some kind of nerve block 'cause I'm barely getting feeling back in my toes and it's been a few hours. I think I'm fine other than that."

Riley doesn't look completely convinced, but she relaxes a bit. "I mean, it does look like Mac might be the one who got the good kind of drugs."

"Yeah, but it sure is good you showed up when you did. Bozer's giving me a headache."

Riley looks pointedly at his black eye and split lip. "It has nothing to do with your having been punched in the face a dozen times or so?"

Jack ignores the question even though his left eye is now so swollen he can't open it at all. "Gonna have to carry us all out of here, I expect."

"Yep," Riley agrees in her driest tone. "Three for takeout it is."

"Well, Mac might be up for walking as long as somebody helps him." Jack glances back at his partner, feeling a twinge of guilt. Someone's going to get Mac out of here and it won't be him. He's about as much use as a sack of potatoes right now. For his part, Mac seems to have removed one shoelace and has made some kind of macrame thingy with it. Maybe it's a snare, but it could be a plant hanger.

Bozer interrupts the silence with another mind-splitting snore. "If I could move I'd-" he cuts himself off when Riley's eyes narrow. "I'd throw something at him."

Riley rolls her eyes and crosses the floor to jostle Bozer with the toe of her boot, interrupting his latest noises, then ducks back out into the hall to call for a few more hands.

She returns with a medic and a few empty-handed members of the Phoenix team to assist. The medic gives them all a quick once-over, checking pulses and temperature, asking Jack more questions that he can't answer.

They get Bozer onto a stretch and carry him out. As his snoring disappears down the hallway, Riley directs the next two to help Mac, who is still focused on whatever it is he's constructing. He's almost as wobbly as a string but when they get him on his feet he notices Riley.

"Riley!" Mac says with a prize-winning grin that lights up his face, looking happier than a kid on Christmas morning.

Riley raises her brows at him. "Hey, Mac."

"Where're we goin?"

"We're taking you back to the Phoenix," Riley says. She's fighting a grin. "The doctor's going to give you a nice exam and then keep you there until the happy juice wears off, okay?"

Mac would usually look less excited about the idea of going to medical, but clearly his big ol' brain still isn't really connected right because he just says, "Okay!" and goes along with the medical team.

"Well, that's fun," Riley says, looking down at Jack. "They'll be back for you in a second."

"Saving the best for last, huh?" Now that the rescue team's here and Mac and Bozer are in their good hands, Jack doesn't need to be on alert. All the stress and adrenaline from earlier are seeping away, leaving him feeling wrung out. Jack sighs. "It's kind of been a long day."

Riley nods. "We found this place as fast as we could. It took awhile. Your signal broke up a few blocks away, and there are a dozen warehouses on this lot."

The medic returns with another pair of Phoenix team members and a stretcher.

"Didja have any trouble with those thugs?" Jack asks, as the medic considers his plight on the floor.

"This place is deserted," Riley says. "Looks like they bugged out of here hours ago, in a hurry. What did you three manage to do to them?"

"I told 'em all the ways we were gonna kill 'em," Jack says. He watches the medic attach a monitor to his arm. It's weirdly like watching someone else's arm, because he can only feel how the movement jolts his shoulder, not the medic's gloved hands or the tightness of the cuff. He looks back at Riley. "You know, I told them how some other guys were going to show up and boil their gizzards and dangle them over a pit of snakes, and how our jealous crimelord masters knew all about what they were up to and we'd never stop coming for 'em, all that stuff."

"Apparently they believed you." Riley laughs. "I mean, it looks like they got out of here so fast they didn't even take all the cash. There's like five million stashed up there in a file cabinet, and more scattered around on the floor. The place looks like a medical drama staged in an exploded bank vault."

Jack remembered those out-of-place files cabinets. Any wannabe who couldn't get better security than your average real estate office was better off getting out of the terrorism business quick. Which apparently these guys had. "So we've just been laying here on the floor for hours in an empty building?"

"Yup."

"All that worrying for nothing," Jack says. He closes his eyes briefly. "I should've taken a nap."

There's a click. He looks up. Riley's grinning at her phone. "I'm sure Matty won't mind you sleeping on the job."

If he could shake a finger at her, he would. He can't, so he puts extra outrage into his voice. "Now who's drunk on power?"

He's satisfied when Riley laughs. The medics lift him onto the stretcher, and Jack closes his eyes. It's going to be a bumpy ride going up all those stairs and some other team is going to have to catch the bad guys for them, but it doesn't matter. They're all going out of the building alive, and in this business, sometimes that's what counts the most.