The timer ticked steadily down.

Not that he could see it. Farhad's men had jumped them and tied them to the device. Or at least he thought it was both of them. He'd seen a bloodied Jack drop like a sack of potatoes after his shoulder was wrenched from its socket. He hadn't exactly had time to feel much worry or sympathy, because he was dealing with a bullet graze, a freely bleeding knife wound, and three extremists beating the living hell out of him. He'd tried desperately to shake them, to raise Nikki on comms, but both efforts failed.

Things had sort of greyed out, and when his brain kicked back on, he was tied to the dirty bomb in the middle of what would otherwise have been one of the coolest warehouses on the planet. He decided to try again. "Jack! C'mon pal! You with me?"

When he got no answer this time, worry started gnawing at the edges of his awareness. Bullets, knives, fists had all been flying hard and fast for a few minutes. What if….

Nope. Don't even go there, MacGyver. Get yourself loose, then worry about Jack.

That was easier said than done. He was pretty banged up and the ropes were well woven hemp. Strong, so even if he could reach his knife (which he couldn't because it was in his back pocket), it might not cut through it in time. And if he could reach his lighter (a likelier proposition since it was in the pocket closest to his right hand) it would burn too slowly.

Burn….

Burn…

Burn?!?

The smell of smoke stung his nostrils and he finally processed that his vision wasn't foggy from a knock on the head. He could hear rapid crackling, too. The building was on fire! A random Die Hard II quote ran through his head as the smell conjured images of his rescue in Afghanistan. "How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?"

But he didn't hear it in John McClane's voice. He heard it in Jack's.

"Dalton!" he barked in the closest approximation to their previous CO he could muster.

A muffled snorting snore followed by a stream of curses let Mac know he still had a partner.

"Jack! You okay?"

"Is what I'm trussed up to what I think it is?" Jack asked through clenched teeth.

"If you think it's Farhad's dirty bomb, then yeah."

"Well, then I'm thinkin' I'm a long damn way from okay. Gimme a trash compactor on a Death Star any day."

"Careful what you wish for, pal," Mac said, and he couldn't help but grin a little. He didn't know why all the movie references or Jack's constant infuriating chatter were so damned comforting, but since his heart had already slowed to a lot closer to normal, he had to admit they were.

"Think you can use the Force to get us outta this?" Jack asked, sounding almost genuinely hopeful.

"I can't use the … Force!" Mac nearly shouted in bright realization.

"You just suddenly remember you're secretly a Skywalker?"

Mac only half heard him as he reached for a fallen scepter with his feet. "Uhhuh," he mumbled. He eased the decorative pole into the hand not covered in slippery blood and used a knee to help him guide it between his body and one leg of the cart they were tied to.

"Whatcha doin' for real, Mac?" Jack asked somewhat desperately. "Cuz I swear that bomb beep is getting faster."

"Using force."

"Like a Jedi? How hard they hit you?"

"Like a physicist," Mac puffed and leveraged his body weight against his very very antique lever.

The leg of the cart snapped at the same time as the artifact, and the ropes looped around the two of them loosened enough for Mac to slither out and get unsteadily to his feet to get eyes on the timer. "Aw, man. This is so not fair!"

"What's that, kid?" Jack asked as he joined him, leaning heavily on the cart to keep himself upright, and coughing as thicker smoke reached them.

"Ninety seconds." Shit. "No time to defuse it." Mac got out his knife.

"Well then what're you doin'?" Jack shouted.

"Disconnecting the nuclear waste package from the explosive. The bomb's not that big. It's the waste that's the problem." He got a screw undone and glanced at Jack. "Get out of here, man."

"We've been over this. If you go kaboom—"

"You do too. I get it. But I'm not going to kaboom." He held up a smallish square covered with wires. "I'm gonna run!"

Limping, coughing, smoke-blind, and bleeding, they still made their way out of the building in record time.

Mac stopped long enough to give a quick look around and hobble-ran toward a large reinforced dumpster behind a good sized restaurant.

"Where you goin'?" Jack called, needing to lean on a random car for a second.

"To get rid of the bomb!" Mac yelled and tossed it into the dumpster slamming the lid and running back toward Jack. "Go, go, go, go!" he shouted, waving wildly in the opposite direction.

Mac could still picture the timer ticking down in his head so he tended even before the explosion threw him, Jack, and an awful lot of debris up the long alley. After several minutes of painful ear ringing and picking himself out of the debris, he saw Jack's motionless form lying under what might have once been the lid to the dumpster. Mac rushed over to pull it off him and make sure he was alive, but his brain also gave him a rapid lecture about miscalculating the blast force.

"Jack, you alright?" he asked, though it sounded underwater. "Jack?!?" He could feel a pulse, but his partner was completely unresponsive.

Mac dropped down to slap Jack's cheeks to see if that got him anywhere. Jack coughed, but didn't wake up. Mac looked around, trying to decide what to do. He could hear something … but his ears were still ringing. He finally realized it was his phone. He pulled it out of his pocket with shaky hands. The screen was basically shattered and he couldn't hear a damned thing, but he answered anyway. "Nikki?!? Nikki? I need you to track my phone. Jack's … hurt." His hands shook so badly he almost dropped the phone and he realized the knife wound he'd gotten earlier was bleeding freely. Either it had never stopped or he'd torn it open further in the explosion. "And … um … me, too. I think."

Since he couldn't hear anyway, he put the phone down on the ground, hopeful that of the call wasn't Nikki, it was Thornton, and help was on the way. He sunk the rest of the way onto the dusty ground and pressed his hand hard over the cut he figured must be what had him feeling so shaky.

He didn't think he'd ever been more relieved when Nikki whipped around the corner and skidded their van to a halt in front of them.

She leapt out and ran over to them to help him haul Jack into the back.

"Sorry it took so long," Nikki said as she helped him ease Jack down on the floor. "Something was jamming your signal and then once I got you, I had to find a way around the protests."

Mac just nodded.

"You look like shit," she observed.

"Mmmm," he managed. "'Magine I do."

Jack groaned. His own injuries forgotten, he dropped down onto the floor next to Jack. "Jack!"

"Are we dead?"

Mac laughed. "Not yet, pal! But you had me worried for a minute."

"Bet on ole Jack," he started and coughed again. "Where are we?" he groaned.

"Nikki's getting us to exfil," Mac said at Nikki's nod. She slammed the doors closed and climbed in the front before Jack spoke again.

"That's good cuz you're bleedin' all over, kid."

"Look who's talking, Dalton."

Nikki snapped from the driver's seat, "You're both bleeding. Don't start that stupid thing you do where you try to outdo each other with how okay you are! Neither one of you is okay! Farhad got away! And Thornton is emoting!"

"Emoting how?" Mac asked.

"Does it matter? It's bad!"

"Good point." Mac swallowed.

A police car passed nearby, sirens blaring.

Jack coughed again. "I'm thinking we maybe oughta get outta here."

"Way ahead of you, cowboy," Nikki said, and peeled out of the alley.

Absolved of the responsibility of dealing with a dirty bomb when he'd thought they would be taking down O'Neil, and confident neither of them was dying, Mac leaned against the wall of the van. As the adrenaline wore off, the shaking returned, and his vision tunneled down to darkness.