Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.
Special Note: There is a voting poll in the notes at the end of this chapter! Your feedback is appreciated. (no, I'm not adding a kitten this time. Or a puppy.)
-M-
? HOURS, ? DAY, LOCATION UNKNOWN
The hands on his biceps slipped up to his shoulders and applied straight downward pressure. Two against one.
MacGyver fought anyway.
But he just didn't have it. His whole body was shaking, no longer just from cold but from hypoglycemia and deep fatigue. His legs could barely keep him upright; conversely, he had no idea how he was still capable of clenching his jaw so tightly shut, but somehow he was, because when they shoved him struggling onto a seat all they got out of him was a voiceless grunt of air forced out of his lungs. In fact it took him far longer than it should have to realize that he'd been shoved into a chair, rather than to his knees. And it was only after they pulled the hood off that it occurred to him the zipties around his wrists had been cut at some point.
His shoulders had spent so long folded backwards in the locker it actually hurt to bring his arms forward. And even though the light bulb above him was obnoxiously bright, Mac's eyes didn't water, and he squinted more out of muscle memory than any pain.
Everything was muffled by a kind of waking exhaustion. Mac had no point of reference for the way his body and brain were feeling in this moment. He couldn't have slept if he'd been given a comfy bed and warm blankets –
And then MacGyver noticed that he wasn't quite so cold anymore.
He was still in the underground complex. The walls around him were reinforced dirt. The floor under his bare feet was dirt. He was seated in a faded aluminum chair, without armrests and light enough that he could probably pick it up if needed to. The table in front of him was a folding card table, not the super cheap kind you took to picnics, the kind with formed plastic ridges. It would hold his weight if he stood on it, if someone pinned him to it –
Across from him, a man in a crisp light blue polo was regarding him with amusement.
Duke.
"Angus MacGyver," the instructor greeted him. Mac blinked at the man and said nothing, which seemed to amuse him further. "Hell of a dossier you got, kid."
His tone was friendly, conversational. It triggered a thought in Mac's brain, a memory. Interrogation tactics. First he'd gotten the stick. Gotten tired. Gotten hungry. Stopped thinking clearly.
Now he'd get the carrot.
And right on cue, someone behind MacGyver – he hadn't even known the guys who'd brought him in were still there – paced around the table and deposited a thermos onto the plastic with a loud thump. Duke inclined his head in thanks, and took his time uncapping the lid. Whatever it was didn't steam.
"You're real good at solving problems, huh." A clear liquid was poured into the upended lid. Just a swallow. Duke kept possession of the thermos, but pushed the lid towards Mac, and the liquid inside seemed to slosh loudly as he did so.
Mac's entire torso contracted with want for that liquid.
Duke smiled at him. It looked kind. "Go on," he gestured, then leaned back in his own faded chair. "Find out what I got. See what it's worth to you."
It had been well over twenty-four hours since MacGyver had been given anything to drink. And he'd exerted himself plenty in that time. It was a trick, but that was the point, and regardless his body needed the water. Mac brought trembling hands forward, unable to hide the grimace as pulled muscles complained, and carefully cupped the lid with both hands.
It was large, even uncoordinated and trembling he was able to get it to his mouth without spilling it. The liquid was sweet and cold, and he'd never tasted anything so delicious.
Electrolyte solution. Not just water, but glucose, salts – everything he needed to rehydrate.
Mac savored it before he swallowed. Then he set the lid as carefully as possible back on the table. Duke regarded him, still casual, still friendly.
"I'm going to ask you a few questions. Based on how well I like your answers, you get a swig. You tell me everything I want to know, you keep the thermos." Mac's eyes wandered to the metallic cylinder. Based on the angle Duke had used when he poured, it was full. Volume was a liter.
That would improve things for him significantly.
Mac raised his eyes back up to Duke. "It's nice." His voice was thin and dry, and Mac cleared his throat and tried again. "But you can't keep withholding water. One way or another I'll get a drink, so. Pass."
He expected someone to come up with a second thermos, or maybe a bucket, and he expected the water in it to be fetid and terrible. It wouldn't kill him, but it would be highly unpleasant, warm instead of cool, maybe have questionable lumps floating in it.
Instead, Duke reached under the table and produced a small, kid sized snack bottle of water. Eight ounces. The clear, clean liquid shimmered in the glare of the overhead bulb.
"See, I saw you reading ahead in the course material," Duke revealed, setting the bottle beside the thermos. "And you're right. You're just another body if you're dead. So depending on what happens in this room, you either get the good stuff, or you get just enough to keep you alive."
Empty threat. It had to be day three. No matter what happened in this room, he only had to hold out another twenty-four hours. He could do that. All of them could do that.
"I'll be honest with you, specialist. I got a problem." Duke gestured rather broadly to the room. "I made a deal with our friends here, and you damn near blew the whole thing to hell. You're EOD, so I guess I shoulda expected that, but the thing I gotta know is, how did you know what to expect?" He cocked his head. "How did you know it was a setup?"
MacGyver met his eyes and said nothing. The details of evasion were classified, and could only be revealed to the correct chain of command once he was back in friendly custody.
And it fell very logically into the theme of their training. Duke wanted him to believe they really had been sold to Al Qaeda. If that was actually true, he'd need to know how Mac and Charlie had almost escaped. That's why he was asking for that, rather than the military intelligence he'd made them memorize right at the beginning of their classes. And there was an expiration date on that intelligence; if this were real, Duke would need to know which of his men had betrayed him, or made a mistake, before they did it again and got the group caught. Mac mulled that over lazily, wondering if there was an angle, a technique he was supposed to use in this situation.
Jack would know.
That's why Jack tended to talk endlessly about every possible subject without ever actually telling you anything – particularly when he didn't know you that well. He'd been trained to.
Mac blinked, and hoped that sudden epiphany hadn't shown on his face.
"Oh, I should add, a non-answer gets you nothing." Duke gestured to the two options on the table and shrugged. "You gotta speak like a good pup if you want a treat."
The obvious sarcastic reply was 'woof', so Mac withheld that, too. Duke's grin broadened.
"I'm just gonna let you think that over, specialist, while I go talk to your good friend Elijah Dickens. He already thinks you're helping us, and he came preinstalled with a little jealousy to boot, so I'm gonna give him another nudge in that direction and see just how jealous he really is of you. He gives me what I need before you do, all of this comes off the table."
And there was the time limit, playing them against each other again. Mac had been right; Duke had been observing them since he drove the bus off the base. He knew Eli wasn't Mac's biggest fan, and Daniel Gutiérrez was neutral at best. They'd both thought the worst when Mac had shown up late and fully dressed to the work detail. They both probably felt as crappy as he did right now, too.
They didn't know the details that Charlie did, but they did know that he'd quietly warned them. Prepped the bandanas and the flash bomb. Since it wouldn't be completely selling him out, they might feel that information was absolutely worth some Gatorade.
But it didn't matter. No matter what Duke said, Mac would eventually get some water. So MacGyver remained silent, even as Duke offered him another shrug, and got to his feet with the careless grace of an operator.
"Listen, Hollywood, you can talk, or you can stay mum, but either way clock's ticking. Eli doesn't cough it up, Daniel will. You're supposed to be the smart one. Make the smart decision."
For a brief moment Mac thought Duke might move out of arm's reach of the thermos before anyone came to take his place, and he visualized exactly how to grab the thermos to get the most possible time to guzzle its contents before he was stopped. The opportunity was cruelly ripped away when one of the guys behind him circled around the left side of the table as Duke looped the right.
Behind him, a door was opened and closed. Mac didn't bother to turn around – even though he was free to – to see if Duke had even really left.
There were still two men in the room with him.
Duke in his contractor attire had been replaced with a Middle Eastern man, probably about ten years Mac's senior with dark hair and a clean-shaven face, wearing pretty standard Afghani street clothes. It was very probable he had been playing one of the Al Qaeda soldiers earlier, and when he finally spoke, Mac was a little disappointed it didn't sound like Blue Scarf.
He really wanted to put a face to that guy.
"We can do this the easy way . . . or the hard way."
Mac just stared at the guy, and whoever he was, he flashed MacGyver a brilliant grin – his teeth were movie star white – and picked up the thermos, dumping a generous amount of the electrolyte solution into the lid.
"Relax, I'm kidding. You're obviously onto us." He then pushed the over-half full lid to Mac's side of the table.
Again, it was obviously a trick, a subordinate trying to befriend him, and again, it didn't matter at all. Mac accepted the gift and this time he drank it in a single gulp. Just in case the man behind him intended to give him a shove, make him spill it.
That didn't happen. The interrogator across from him gave him a nod of solidarity, like they were at a bar and Mac had just downed an epic shot, and when Mac set down the lid – again with both hands – it was taken and half-filled again.
"But I gotta admit, I'm curious." And here we go. "Exactly how smart are you?"
Again, Mac accepted the lid, and again, he drained it immediately. He would have been better off sipping and he knew it, but he also knew his liquid-starved body wouldn't reject it. He was dehydrated, but not enough to be sickened.
Jack would talk this guy's ear off. Jack would banter like they were best buddies and end up downing half this thermos before the guy across from him realized he was being had. Mac had listened to it for going on almost three hundred days. He should tell the man he was from Texas, repeat some of those stories from memory.
"Dunno," Mac said instead, setting the lid down again, carefully, respectfully. "What would a smart guy do here?"
He was rewarded with another smile, with the same number of visible teeth, but at least ten degrees cooler. "Appealing to my ego. Checkmark." And then he poured Mac another swig.
But this time, he didn't pass the lid back over. "A smart guy would know by now that surveillance on your unit didn't start when you got on the bus. For example." He picked up the lid, saluted Mac, and downed it himself. "A smart guy would also remember that you only get a drink for answering questions."
Ah. So punishment for using redirection techniques. Or maybe just punishment for being obvious about it. Mac's headache was already lessening, probably due just as much to him relaxing his jaw as finally getting some fluids into his system, and it was getting just a little easier to think.
His interrogator gave him a keen look. "You really do think you're all that, doncha, Hollywood." It was clear the moniker was meant as a taunt, and Mac couldn't help himself.
"If smart men such as yourself were surveilling us on base, they'd know that nickname was born as an insult." One of several he'd reclaimed and transformed, though without question his favorite. "The men and women in my unit don't use it that way anymore, so I guess that's a point in my favor."
"Snark!" A generous dollop of solution was deposited into the cap and pushed to him. "Don't tell me I already got you riled up."
Mac slugged the beverage, careful of his still-shaking hands and arms, and once again, carefully set the lid back on the table. "Not yet, but I'll let you know."
"Yeah," the man murmured agreeably, pouring their next shot. "From what I hear, it's numbers that really get your goat."
Mac couldn't quite make sense of that, and the man across from him made a production of tilting his head. "What, you – you didn't follow that, smart guy?"
"I'm just surprised you know about the goat," Mac replied evenly, and mentally thanked Jack for his influence.
And it worked; his interrogator laughed. A real, honest laugh. "No wonder Stinson hates you," he murmured, almost to himself, and when he drank from the lid, it seemed like an automatic gesture.
Mac wasn't fooled. He was also more than a little surprised. "You can't tell me you like that guy." There was no way in hell Stinson had been through SERE, but it made sense that if Triple Canopy had used flash bangs and other equipment against them, that the contractors would hit up the EOD supply tent for blanks and other custom made explosives.
Not that they'd used any blanks, as far as Mac could tell, but they should be familiar with the base staff. And since Stinson ran the show -
For a split second, his interrogator's eyes cut to something – more likely someone – behind Mac. "Like is a strong word," he confessed. "Honestly, if you'd been just a little more persistent, you'd be the first trainee we ever had that caught on."
That caught on.
Mac knew, in his brain, that he was not at his best. He hadn't slept for probably over forty hours. He'd been injured, stressed, forced to exert himself, forced to endure pain, starved. It was highly probable that what was happening was just simple baiting. He was better off sticking with smart-alec replies and getting more of that Gatorade.
His brain was also, apparently, no longer in command of his mouth. "You seriously expect me to believe that you 'faked' an illegal black market between Air Force personnel and dishonest military contractors to see if any of your students would notice before the classes actually started."
Only after he heard it out loud did he pick out the obvious problem with that. After all, they couldn't possibly know about an illegal black market - down to one of the participating soldiers - unless they were actually part of it, so it would have to be part of the curriculum.
Otherwise Triple Canopy would have to be part of a real black market of illegally sold goods.
His interrogator was quiet, letting him work it out. "Not smart enough," was his conclusion, and then he poured himself and downed a shot.
Mac slowly shook his head. "You sure about that?" Mac even went so far as to cock an eye over his shoulder, but he couldn't make out more than a vague shape parked in front of the door. "The morning we left I assigned a private to complete inventory, a brand new transfer onto base. Highly unlikely they'd be on your payroll. So that supply smuggling you got going on is good and busted."
It was mostly a bluff, in that he had no illusions Jack would have taken initiative on it even if Donnell had finished it on time and turned it over. Jack would wait for him to get back, and let credit be given where it was due. After all, he himself had told Jack it wasn't that big of a deal. But it would be documented and date stamped, and had his overwatch actually taken action, it would have been detected prior to the end of the training. Meaning he had proof he'd found it prior to the start of the course, even if he hadn't actually acquired the evidence until during. Mac wondered idly if this was a 'close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades' kind of grading situation.
Now it was the interrogator's turn to look surprised. "What?"
Mac shot the man a smile of his own. "Isn't that what a smart guy would've done?"
"Are you serious?" His demeanor completely shifted; any hint of a Middle Eastern accent had dropped from his English, and he actually leaned forward in the chair.
It wasn't an interrogation technique Mac recognized from the book. He'd been careful enough to use 'they' instead of 'he' as a pronoun, but he had identified the person as a private-
Shit. He'd given his interrogators a target rather than just sitting on the information and being victorious in the end. It amounted to surrendering intel.
Not a smart thing to do.
And yet the man across from him didn't look triumphant either. "Who?"
Not the question he expected. "Are you serious?" Mac parroted back. Yeah, okay, it had been a stupid mistake, but it wasn't like he didn't recognize that –
The man across from him waved his hands in a dismissive gesture. "You're right, doesn't matter." He seemed to take a deep breath. "You weren't looking because you thought it had to do with this." His tone was confident. "You've already admitted that. So why the curiosity? Looking to get a cut?"
. . . blackmail? That was the angle they wanted to take?
Mac didn't answer, but only because he honestly had no idea what he was supposed to say. I was looking for an accurate inventory? It sounded ridiculously wholesome even when his mental voice said it, and he wasn't about to repeat the mistake of being honest. Maybe it was an offer . . .? Accepting a cut was very much like taking a deal. It would be illegal, even if it didn't amount to treason.
Well, if this was real, and Triple Canopy had really sold them to Al Qaeda and Mac accepted a cut, then he'd be taking money from men with links to a known terrorist organization and that was definitely treason.
"Think it through," the man advised him, and his English was disappointingly Midwestern. "I'm sure as hell not gonna judge you for it. Clever dude like you, you'll be running the place in a month. Much rather deal with you than Stinson." And he poured a generous shot and pushed it across the table to Mac. "What kinda percentage were you eyeballin'?"
Mac accepted the Gatorade and downed it. "Not interested."
His interrogator wasn't put off in the slightest. Instead he nodded towards something over Mac's left shoulder, and then stared at him expectantly. With limited options, Mac finally turned and slowly followed the dirt wall up into a shadowed crevice.
One that was reflecting some of the light from the center lightbulb back.
A lens.
Of course. All of this space would have surveillance on it, just like the barracks had. Triple Canopy had to do training by the Army's book, and that included recordings that could be examined if something went wrong, or a participant lodged a complaint.
The idea that he'd been on camera the entire time he'd been interrogated earlier didn't sit well with him, he was much more comfortable with his command watching this interrogation, even if he ended up looking like he was contemplating betraying the very government he'd sworn to obey –
But there was no LED, nor any sign the camera was on or filming. Not that he expected one. They'd be way too easy to pick out in the cave tunnels that way.
His interrogator was reading his mind. "There's no light, but trust me, it's not on."
Mac would have scoffed out loud if he wasn't afraid it would make him cough. "Sure." He clocked the other man behind him, dressed more like the typical Al Qaeda guard but also not Blue Scarf, and then slowly turned back around in his seat. His interrogator wasn't smiling anymore; now he looked calculating.
"So what's it gonna be?"
Accept a deal, and fail the training. There was a technique that allowed you to go along with the enemy, give them false intel, but the caveat was that you couldn't ever actually provide assistance to the enemy. Even the amount of tunnel they'd dug yesterday was edging into 'not permitted' territory. Accepting a cut wasn't false intel, it was playing along, and Mac had no doubt he would then be asked to play along further, such as giving them the physical location of better goods on the base. He'd rather stay honest than start having to keep track of lies – he knew he wasn't at his best, and they would pounce on any screw-up. "I told you. Not interested."
A flash of disappointment showed – and Mac knew he was supposed to see it. " . . . you've really taken this training seriously, haven't you."
"Kinda the point." Mac was only vaguely alarmed he'd actually said that out loud.
The man inclined his head. "Agreed, to an extent." He glanced again over Mac's right shoulder, clearly having a silent conversation with his coworker. "But you and I both know someone like you is never gonna need it. The reading ahead, the prepping for surprises. The ridiculous dossier, the Day of a Thousand IEDs. Seems like you got something to prove, Hollywood. That you're not just blond hair and a smart mouth."
Mac would have sworn he heard Jack murmur "You're worth it" into his right ear, where his earpiece always sat. The Loreal tagline.
His interrogator apparently didn't. "Tell you what. If you can produce that inventory - the original and any copies - once we get you back to the base, I'll see to it that you receive the highest marks that anyone in any branch of any country's special forces has ever achieved."
Hand over the evidence in return for a certificate.
Mac took his various options down their first dozen or so most predictable outcomes. It didn't take long. A grade on a training course could never be worth a human life. "Tell you what." Mac repeated his words back to him, complete with the conciliatory tone, and raised a slightly trembling hand to point at the thermos. "You give me the rest of that and the best grade anyone's ever gotten, and when I get back to base I'll turn the evidence over to base command."
His interrogator gave him a long look. "Really?"
"Really." Mac was pretty sure his odds of getting any more of that electrolyte solution had dropped to near zero.
The man across from him regretfully made motions to screw the lid back on the thermos, and Mac made it clear that he didn't care. His interrogator tightened it, then let out a slow, steady breath.
Whatever his next tactic, it was cut off by a thin, reedy beep.
The man checked his watch with a frown. "Change his mind," he ordered, and then got to his feet without another glance at MacGyver. Again, Mac considered going for the thermos, but this time he'd have to actually unscrew the lid and it was highly unlikely he'd get anything other than a couple new bruises. Again, he wasn't given the chance.
Hands clamped down on his shoulders, keeping his butt in the chair, and the door behind him was opened. He never got to see what was outside it; the black bag went right back over his head and it was only when he reached up that he remembered his hands weren't bound. He could fight back.
Through the fabric, his hair was grabbed and the man behind him slammed his face into the table.
It wasn't hard enough to knock him out, and it was slow enough that he had the time to turn his head a little, avoid getting his nose flattened. It still dazed him, enough that he barely had the presence of mind to fight as his hands were yanked behind his back and ziptied again. He was dragged to his feet before he'd recovered his equilibrium.
But it was only one man that hauled him down the halls this time, not two. And the next doorway he went through didn't have the high threshold he was used to having to step over. He was propelled forward in a relatively straight line, until the ground became a steep incline, and though he heard no telltale opening of a gate or a door, he suddenly had the impression that the claustrophobic tunnel was simply –
Gone.
The only breeze was his body being forced through the air around him, which was only a little warmer than the tunnels below. There was no radiant heat against his skin. Sun wasn't up yet. But the sand beneath his feet was fine and dry, another almost certain indication he was now on the surface, and Mac stumbled along over small rocks and scraggly vegetation for what was almost four hundred paces.
About a tenth of a mile. Blind and unsure of his destination, it felt a hell of a lot further.
He was yanked to a stop, and there was a shockingly loud shriek of metal, right in front of him, followed by a deep, reverberating thunk.
Probably one of the steel shipping containers.
Mac was shoved unceremoniously forward.
He didn't have time to react at all; he picked up his lead foot in the hopes that he'd get it high enough but he didn't, and he tripped and landed chest-first on a hard, flat surface, causing a deep echo of his own. Mac rolled instinctively onto his back, shoving himself backwards with stinging feet as he heard the hinges whining. He got clear as the metal door was slammed shut, and the sheer volume in the enclosed space has his ears ringing.
"You got sixty seconds to change your mind, and then I walk," a voice called from the other side of the steel door.
And then there was silence.
Mac rolled awkwardly to a sitting position, then ducked his forehead to his raised knees and pinched the hood fabric between them. Once he tugged it off and confirmed that he had indeed just been shoved into a shipping container – roughly the size of a semi trailer – Mac eyed the single, wall-sized door in front of him. There were fairly large gaps around the edges, enough to let in the pre-dawn light. Not enough to illuminate the rest of the interior of his new cell, though, at least not yet.
The threat was obvious. If he didn't agree, he'd be left inside the container until sunrise. The desert warmed quickly, and for a while a space inside would remain cool.
Then it would turn into an oven. At this elevation and assuming direct line of sight to the sun, by ten am it would be over a hundred and thirty degrees inside the container.
Of course, for that very reason they weren't allowed to leave him inside it. Typically these containers were used during the evening, to keep SERE trainees uncomfortably hot throughout the night, then pulled into the cold desert morning before sunrise to shiver in their sweat-soaked clothes. The reverse of that pattern was highly unusual, in that he would very likely succumb to heat stroke within a few hours of the sun being up.
Mac didn't think pointing that out was likely to earn him anything. If this had been real, it was a death sentence, and Mac took a moment to seriously consider whether he was willing to sell out the air base in exchange for his life.
If this had been real, he'd only be delaying the inevitable. Even if he gave them what they wanted here and now, he'd just find himself locked in the same container tomorrow, or the day after, once he was unwilling to bend his ethics any further. Besides, if this had been real, he'd also have several hours unobserved to find a way out. His odds of escape, though not certain, were better than his odds of temporarily capitulating only to be executed later.
"Time's up."
It had barely been thirty seconds, and Mac rolled his eyes. "Yeah, still not interested."
"I believe you." This man was speaking with a local accent, or at least hadn't dropped character yet. "Let's see how helpful those principles turn out to be in a couple hours."
The amount of light bleeding through the door's edges told Mac they couldn't actually keep him in there that long, so Mac held his tongue and listened to his guard trudge off, presumably back to either the tunnel system or the administration building.
-M-
0637 HOURS, FRIDAY, BAGRAM AIR BASE
His earpiece clicked. "Dalton, you got incoming. Heavy artillery."
He didn't respond, continuing to stare down the man in front of him until the entrance to the TOC burst open.
None other than Brandon Gates was in the lead, followed closely by the air base commander himself. Jack barely managed not to make a face. Gates was heavy artillery, but Colonel Patrick Chauncey was a damn WMD.
Unsurprisingly, the Air Force colonel was the first to speak. "What in the hell is going on in here?!"
Something that probably falls under the Espionage Act. "Sir, we apprehended these three men as part of a sting investigating stolen military equipment."
The Air Force colonel – a tall Caucasian man with dark hair just starting to grey at his temples - was apparently unused to being challenged in his own Tactical Operations Center at 6:30 am local time. He was in uniform, but Jack was betting he hadn't had any coffee yet. "What sting operation?" Then he seemed to really take in the room – including the four Army snipers controlling the three men in zip-tie restraints. "And who the hell is 'we'?!"
"Yessir. My name is Sergeant Dalton, these are Sergeants Yapp and Ballinger, and Master Sergeants Peterson and Estes." Jack dipped his chin to indicate he'd started on his left. "We were investigating a series of inventory discrepancies from the EOD tent and caught Private Stinson here leaving contraband for our good friend Trip Canopy contractor John Bowman." It was easy to tell which one was the contractor; he was in desert camo trousers but wearing a grey polo. He also looked downright annoyed.
To his credit, Colonel Chauncey paused to give that some thought. Gates did not. "And why exactly do you have Corporal Taggert in restraints?" His voice was calm.
. . . huh. That wasn't the man Jack expected him to pissed off about.
Interesting. "We were just getting to that," Jack admitted, returning his attention to the Air Force corporal he'd started to count as a friend. "Care to tell the colonel why you stopped Trip Canopy here in a camera dead zone right after he illegally took possession of military property?"
Taggart looked as unruffled as he had two nights ago, when he'd informed Jack that someone was asking for 'MacGyver's overwatch' outside the TOC. "I told you, Dalton. I know the guy. Not like the base is hoppin' at oh six hundred."
Massive understatement. With major activity in the Kabul region winding down, the Air Force base was just barely awake - much like its base commander.
"Didn't seem to bother the private, here," Jack said pointedly, moving on to the resentfully glaring Stinson. "You badged yourself right into the POL, sweet-talked the night shift there, and left our boy Trip here eight pounds of M118 demo charges, a couple yards of det cord – oh, and PVS-14 nightvision optics." Jack finally uncrossed his arms, gesturing broadly at one of the tables towards the back of the TOC where the loot was sitting in plain sight. "Optics alone are worth what, four grand?"
Both the colonel and Gates glanced at the table, and just like Jack had, Gates immediately gravitated towards the PVS-14. It was the binoc model, technically available to Triple Canopy through retail, but still relatively hard to find. Beautiful piece of gear.
Great place to hide something small.
Dalton said nothing as the former CIA agent carefully inspected the equipment. Chauncey, meanwhile, found his voice. "Is this true, private?"
Private Stinson didn't respond, and behind him, Estes blew a hard exhale out his nose. "Got images of him leaving the equipment at the dead drop, and Bowman here stopping by twenty minutes later, sir. We took it off him in view of base cameras."
Chain of custody was still intact, and it was a very necessary part of what Jack had planned next.
Assuming, of course, that the rest of his team managed to find the smoking gun. Which they hadn't yet.
As if Molina could hear him thinking, in Jack's ear, his radio clicked. "Dalton, Martinez incoming."
Almost simultaneously, there in the TOC with him, Gates turned on his heels. "Did you find anything else of note?"
Yahtzee.
Jack gave his once-fellow-agent a piercing look, waiting it out as his own colonel badged into the TOC. He didn't turn, didn't acknowledge that he knew who entered. "Why, the Agency lose something?"
Gates' eyes flicked to the main door of the TOC, then back to Dalton. "Just collecting the facts." He set the binocs back down on the table. "I see how you linked Triple Canopy to Stinson, but I'm still waiting to hear what the corporal has to do with it."
Me too. And maybe also hear why the hell you're so interested in the guy. Jack arched an eyebrow at the unassuming corporal. "Are you friends with everybody on this base?" And what could he possibly have that an ex-CIA spook would want?
The corporal was standing in parade rest, but still managed a slight shrug. "We got enough enemies outside the wire, sir, no need to be making any inside." He glanced at the private. "And for the record, I didn't know anything about this until about ten minutes ago. Nex time I'll sleep in."
Jack's radio clicked. "Jackpot, jackpot. Comin' to you, Dalton."
About damn time!
Chauncey seemed to realize he wasn't the only colonel in the room anymore, and turned to regard his peer. "Martinez, did you sanction this?"
Where Chauncey looked like he'd thrown on his uniform as quickly as possible, Martinez was squared away like he expected a presidential visit – which was to say, the way he looked every morning at 0600. "You're going to have to catch me up, Patrick," the man admitted harshly. "Because it looks like five of my overwatch snipers are holding two airmen and a civilian contractor in custody, and what I authorized was surveillance only on what we believed was a dead drop."
"We confirmed the dead drop via surveillance, sir," Jack reported smartly, earning a glare from Martinez and absolutely nothing from Gates.
"The surveillance was limited to passive monitoring of cameras, sergeant."
Jack adopted a look of innocent confusion. "It was, sir."
Chauncey gestured to the three men in zip ties. "Does this look passive to you?"
"We were in the neighborhood, sir," Estes supplied helpfully from behind Stinson. "When Dalton saw the dead drop being used, he asked if any of us were able to intercept."
"And instead of calling the base MPs, he reached out to you lot, who all just happened to be wandering the base at six in the morning, carrying weapons and restraints, on the same radio channel." The Air Force commander sounded equal parts annoyed and incredulous. "Martinez, I don't know what disrespect you tolerate on your time but this is an Air Force base –"
"And funny that Brandon Gates would wake you up, on your own base, over a couple'a chuckleheads goin' a little overboard on a surveillance operation. Sir," Jack added, as if that might earn him forgiveness for interrupted.
It didn't. Chauncey walked right up into Jack's face. He was about two inches tall, and lacked about forty pounds of muscle. "You are out of line, sergeant-"
"Sir yes sir," Jack agreed shortly, as the door to the TOC beeped and presumably let Javier Molina in. "I have reason to believe US intelligence is passing orders to Triple Canopy through a dead drop on your base, and you're letting them, sir. I'd like to know why."
Gates didn't outwardly react, but Chauncey wasn't a spook, he was good ol' fashioned Air Force from his greying hair to his toe tips, and his eyes widened marginally. He took a quick breath, but managed to curb his initial response. His second came out measured. "If that were the case, sergeant, you should pass that inquiry up your chain of command. Do you have any actual evidence?"
Phrased that way, it was almost an invitation. Without evidence presented, it would get swept under the rug of 'good initiative, bad judgement'. He and the seven other overwatch he'd dragged into this would get a slap on the wrist.
Unfortunately, that wouldn't do a damn thing for the eight EOD techs caught in the middle.
Jack didn't look at Molina, who had come to parade rest just behind Martinez. "Yessir, we do."
"Well, then I'd really like to see it."
"Yessir." Jack cut his eyes to Javier and gave him a sharp nod. The other sniper turned and presented himself – to Martinez, not Chauncey.
"We found this micro SDHC card in the same area we took John Bowman into custody, sir." Pinched between his thumb and middle finger, the tiny little card was painted a drab yellow. "I think you'll find a patch of missing paint on those PVS-14 nightvision optics, sir."
Jack knew he would; he'd found it when he'd inspected those binocs fifteen minutes ago, and he knew Gates had gone looking for – and found – the same. The micro SD card had been contact cemented to the mounting rail on the optics and touched up to blend in.
The smoking gun.
Bowman's poker face never dropped – so he knew exactly what he'd been tasked to smuggle off the base. He'd ditched the chip into the sand on purpose to avoid getting caught with it. Similarly, Gates didn't look surprised or guilty. He did, however, suddenly look a little tired. "Colonel Chauncey, Colonel Martinez, a word please."
The two colonels moved off to the front of the TOC to argue it out, and Jack kept an ear pointed at their hushed conversation while he looked down the line. Stinson did look surprised, surprised and calculating. Which meant he didn't know he'd been moving something much more valuable than the set of optics, and right now he was working on a way to use that to avoid getting court-marshalled. Beside him, Corporal Taggert was still standing placidly at parade rest, staring off into the middle distance and doing his level best not to pay attention to anyone. What he didn't know, he couldn't tell anyone, after all.
Jack had used that technique extensively throughout his career. Look and act like a chump. However, he was also almost always paying attention when he did it, and he wondered if the corporal was as well.
Taggert acted as watch commander for the TOC regularly as part of his duties. He was basically on logistics, not tactical, but he would have overheard all parts of any operation happening during his shifts. That guy probably knew almost as much as Chauncey about what was happening on base.
Was that why Gates got his panties in a twist when they scooped him up this morning? Did Taggert know where their techs were gonna be sent after they got back from training?
"Dalton!" Martinez barked, and Jack marched himself to the front of the TOC. Chauncey and Gates exchanged a look.
"What we're about to discuss is a matter of national security," Gates started, and Martinez surprised Jack, and waved the former intelligence agent off.
"Skip it, son, everyone here has clearance."
Gates didn't contradict him, though Chauncey gave Jack a look of straight-up disbelief. He smothered the urge to give the man a cheeky grin in return. Instead, Jack focused his attention on Gates. "Finally comin' clean?"
"Jack, you've read the situation wrong." Brandon's voice was flat.
"Really?" Jack made a production of rubbing his right eye. "Cause it looks an awful lot like you're the reason our techs got fast-tracked through SERE trainin'."
"This isn't-" Chauncey started, but then stopped himself, and Martinez arched an eyebrow at his fellow colonel.
"This isn't about that? Is that what you were going to say?" Martinez gave a short huff. "Patrick, I asked you if you'd gotten intelligence about a future operation-"
"And I answered you." It wasn't as snappish as Jack was expecting. "I don't know why your men jumped to the front of the line. I got pilots that've been waiting six months for that training. If your guys are about to get deployed, no one's asked me to prep a single bird from this base to send with 'em."
". . . so what's it about?" Jack thumbed over his shoulder, not caring if Stinson and Bowman saw. "What the hell is on that chip if it's not orders, and why get it to Trip Canopy?"
Gates glanced over at the assembled men – Jack knew on purpose – and then tiled his chin low, so that his mouth wasn't in their line of sight. "I don't know."
"You don't know!?" Jack hissed back. "Why the hell'd you get sent here if you don't know?"
"All we know is authorized hardware from this TOC accessed classified materials on a server in DC. We don't know the breadth of what they saw, and we didn't know if any copies were made." Gates looked pointedly at Martinez, who was holding the innocent looking, sand-colored chip in his palm. "At least not until now."
Martinez was unmoved. "Define classified materials."
Gates held out his hand. "Military. Top secret. Could be the details on all ongoing special forces operations in the Middle East, could be dossiers on those operatives, could be weapons R&D, could just be research, seeing what we know about Al Qaeda's network outside of Afghanistan. Let's put it this way, there was nothing on those servers we'd want our enemies to get their hands on."
Martinez didn't immediately surrender the SD card. "That's why you're interested in the corporal."
The intelligence officer gave a short nod. "Whoever it was covered up their tracks too well to get us the credentials they used, and no one person was present in the TOC during every one of the accesses, but his name cropped up more than anyone else's. I was sent here," and Brandon gave Jack an exasperated look, "to watch him, not tip him off."
"Well that cat's outta the bag." What the hell did you get me into, kid?
"Clearly." Brandon turned back to Martinez. "I need to find out what's on that card."
Martinez didn't hesitate to hold up his palm this time, and it was a matter of moments before Brandon was seated at one of the TOC analyst's machines, slipping the micro SD card into a reader before plugging it into the ruggedized laptop. Computer forensics wasn't Jack's strong suit, but he knew a series of error messages when he saw them.
"It corrupted?"
"Encrypted," Brandon corrected with a frown. He reached into his BDUs and withdrew a USB drive, which he also plugged into the laptop. "This could take a couple hours."
"In the meantime," Colonel Chauncey murmured, turning to look at their three suspects, and the rest of Jack's assortment of operators, "I'll see that my two cool their heels in the stockade. Holding the civilian is going to be a little trickier."
"I'd prefer they didn't interact with anyone else on base," Brandon said immediately, and then oddly gave Jack another exasperated look. "I'm assuming you didn't use the local MPs for the same reason."
All eyes fell on him, and Jack admitted it. "Hard to know who to trust on base, and that's when I thought I was dealin' with our own government." Then something occurred to him. "So you didn't know Triple Canopy was involved in this."
"No." Either Gates wanted to ingratiate himself to Jack and keep information flowing, or he had nothing to lose by the admission. "How did you get involved in this?"
Jack ran over the facts again in his head. Mac hadn't done anything even partially illegal. He was in no danger. "My tech, MacGyver. He noticed the inventory was a little off during his shift. Confronted Stinson, got nowhere, and ordered a private to dig into it. He was startin' to realize that shit seems to go missing when Triple Canopy's on base, but he shipped off before he had anything concrete." That lovely female airman out in the guardhouse would corroborate that. "Private finished up the report and got it to me after MacGyver left for training." Then Jack hesitated. "Actually, same night I ran into Taggert here in the TOC."
"So Triple Canopy might know that you and Specialist MacGyver were looking into it." Martinez's voice was sharper now.
Jack nodded, finally putting a name to the steadily growing pit in his stomach. "Yeah, Stinson knew for sure. We know he does his business through burner phones, I got Brinks and Quinn tossin' the guy's bunk now."
Brandon turned in his chair, his decryption program already running. "I checked the base communication logs, there hasn't been any contact between Taggert and Triple Canopy. But I wasn't aware of the black market angle, and it'll take a minute to get info out of the local telecom companies."
"I wasn't aware of it either," Chauncey admitted in a clipped tone. "We have contacts in Kabul, may be able to get you those mobile phone logs with less friction than a request from – the NSA."
Jack pretended he didn't notice the colonel correct himself mid-sentence, and kept his focus on Martinez when he caught Brandon watching him. So if Gates wasn't working for the NSA, and he'd well and truly retired from the CIA, then who the hell was he working for? This was far too cloak and dagger for DHS, and out of the FBI's jurisdiction, so that didn't leave too many other options.
Frankly, he was more worried about the implications. If Stinson – or Taggert - knew, and called Triple Canopy to warn them –
Then Triple Canopy had eight high-value hostages, and Mac was one of them.
"Colonel –"
Martinez held up a hand, effectively silencing him. "Patrick, I'm gonna need two Blackhawks and a Chinook fueled up and ready to go. Regardless of what's on that card," and he plowed right over Gates' attempted interruption, "I think it's prudent we extract our men from their custody ASAP."
"I advise you to hold," Brandon disagreed instantly. "Dalton, unless one of your guys saw them get a text off, there's no indication they know we're onto them. Going at them all shock and awe is going to put them on the defensive for sure, and a shootout between the US military and civilian contractors isn't going to help anyone."
"Pretty sure they're gonna figure it out when their guy doesn't show up with the goods," Jack shot back. "That installation's an hour out by truck. If they don't already know, they will pretty damn soon."
"I'm advising you to hold," and this time it was solely for Colonel Chauncey. "Give me time to figure out what's on this card. If Triple Canopy calls, we tell them their guy's truck got used for target practice and we're doing repairs and making sure Bowman's patched up. The training class ends tonight anyway. They won't risk giving themselves away until they know they're made." He gestured to the screen. "Two hours, that's all I'm asking."
Chauncey gave the agent a hard look, then glared at the men still being held near the back of the room. "I can process him for the M118s and optics, that could reasonably take an hour or two," he finally concluded, slowly. "But unless you find evidence otherwise, the Patriot Act does not apply here. You have two hours, agent."
"As soon as I know what's on this card, so will you." Gates glanced back at the screen, as if it might give him a better estimate. "Both of you."
Jack wasn't egotistical enough to believe he was included in that pair. And honestly, that was fine with him. At this point, it didn't matter what was on the card. All that mattered was whether Triple Canopy thought it was worth killing over.
"Colonel Martinez, I'll handle logistics for secure holdings for the suspects." He said it dismissively, like he already knew the order was coming. "With your permission, afterward I'd like to return to the TOC and see this through."
Handling logistics for secure holdings was something a private could do. It meant they'd lock the three men in one of the more secure brick and mortar buildings and not let anyone else in. It didn't require oversight from a former Delta operator and Martinez would know that.
No, the logistics that would require a Delta were more along the lines of planning and executing an extraction. And lucky for Jack, the majority of overwatch snipers were ex-spec ops like him and Javier. They weren't a SEAL team, but they could handle it, and they'd brought most of the gear they'd need. More importantly, they were outside Chauncey's chain of command.
"I'd like that too," Brandon offered, before Martinez could respond. "I need to know exactly who your specialist involved in his investigation and all the evidence he collected. I need that from you as well."
Martinez made it look like he had to think about it. "Fine. Dalton, since this is your mess, you can keep the privilege of getting these three squared away, and at least go through the motions of getting Bowman's statement. Then report back to the TOC."
"I'll assign Second Lieutenant Mueller to collect Bowman's statement," Chauncey interjected. "He's our senior human intelligence officer, and I've known the man fifteen years. He would never be involved in something like this."
Jack opened his mouth to protest, and one glare from Martinez had him closing it again. Chauncey didn't like that an op had gone down on his base without his knowledge, and he wasn't going to let it happen again. Embedding his guy with them would make it a lot harder to gear up and get ready for their rescue mission without Chauncey's permission. Not impossible. Just harder.
Martinez dipped his head, accepting Chauncey's correction of his orders, and then crossed his arms and turned back to Brandon's screen, effectively dismissing him. Jack was about to salute and disappear himself from the TOC when the middle finger on Martinez's left hand, which was sitting solidly on his bicep, gave two quick taps.
Just the way Jack and Mac would signal each other. Their Sandbox Shorthand.
Let's do it.
-M-
? HOURS, ? DAY, LOCATION UNKNOWN
It wasn't going to be enough.
Mac took a break, leaning heavily against the shipping container door, and tried not to notice how much hotter the metal was against his bare skin.
He estimated it was about two hours after sunrise. In that time no one had come back to ask him if he'd changed his mind. Or to ask him anything else. There was no camera in the container, at least not that he could see, though the far corners were dark and too high for him to reach. If he was on camera, he'd be giving them a hell of a show, but frankly, addressing the temperature situation had surpassed the importance of keeping himself dressed.
Probably one of the things SERE training was actually supposed to teach him.
It sure hadn't taught him this.
Mac braced himself, then wrapped his fingers back around the interior structure of the door, lifted his right foot – wrapped up tightly in what was left of his pants - and aimed his heel straight back. Even with the entirety of the fabric of his pants folded into a cushion over his heel, tied on with his twine belt, he still felt the hit jar every bone in his foot.
Thunk.
Besides making noise, he was trying to increase the amount of light coming through the underside of the door – and with that light also space, and air. Above him, the top of the door had been slammed and bent around something at some point – probably why the container had been rejected and left to rust on Triple Canopy's property - and it had deformed the door's seal, creating a kind of round pucker large enough that Mac could clearly see the sky through it. Hell, if he climbed up the door, he could probably get his hand and wrist through it.
Then he could wave at the people who'd left him in here.
Of far more use to him at the moment was the principle of convection. Warm air rises. The warmest air was escaping out of that opening at the top, and if he created an opening at the bottom of the door just like it, nearer to the ground, cooler air would be sucked into the container to take its place. It was the same principle that had dictated house architecture before the invention of air conditioning. You opened one window in the lowest level of a house, and one at the top, and the principle of convection literally sucked cooler air passively through the house. If you were especially fancy, you put in two window fans, one pointed into the house, the upper one pointing out, to accelerate the process.
But it wasn't enough. His bare feet were no match for steel. The small opening he'd managed to create wouldn't make the container comfortable. It wouldn't even prevent the container from eventually exceeding a survivable temperature. All it would buy him was an extra forty-five minutes to an hour of time before that happened, and the better the condition he was in when they finally came to get him, the more likely the chance that he might be able to escape.
Mac picked up his foot again, feeling it throbbing to his pulse, and after a moment he let it fall gently back to the floor of the container, shakily easing the rest of his body down after it. He was too weak and in too much pain to make any more progress. No point in escape if he wouldn't be able to walk.
Honestly he was beginning to wonder if escape was even possible.
But he was slowly concluding it might be necessary. This was a clear violation of the rules of the training. It had to be some kind of punishment. Maybe they really were somehow tangled up in the black market scheme Stinson was running. Maybe they were just pissed off he wouldn't tell them how he knew the contractors were going to come for his team the first night. He hadn't really made sense of that part yet.
The why didn't matter. He had well surpassed the forty hour mark with no food and almost no water. Despite his dehydration, sweat was trickling steadily down his body, and every drop was water he could not afford to lose. There was no doubt about it; he was in trouble.
Mac closed his eyes and actually groaned at the thought, then forced himself to drag his swollen right foot slightly closer to his body, forced his trembling fingers to start working on the twine knot.
Au naturel was the most efficient state for sweat to evaporate and cool his body, and he knew it, but Mac was simply not comfortable with his nudity in light of the only other thing that was in the container with him.
Bugs.
Between the sun and his efforts denting the door, it was a little brighter, enough to show Mac there was indeed nothing new – almost nothing at all - in the container with him, save all the rusted holes in the floor around him. Not large enough to escape through, of course. But plenty big enough for all that water he was sweating out to attract the desert creatures that undoubtedly called the space beneath the shipping container home.
Permanently shaded and partially protected from heat, it represented a literal oasis to most life in a desert. Smaller beetles had already climbed in with him to investigate. And while it had taken them a couple hours, at least a dozen sand flies had discovered his location as well. Mac shook out the folded trousers, using the motion to shoo the flies, and laboriously pulled the thin fabric back on. It immediately plastered itself to his skin.
He had the trousers, about fifty inches of rough-hewn twine, and bugs to work with.
No footwear. No swiss army knife. No means of communication beyond his voice and what he could physically accomplish by banging on metal. Which was, admittedly, quite a racket. It wouldn't take much effort to make himself heard. Then again, if there was anyone out there to hear it, either the trainers or his teammates, they would have already come.
The bugs were actually more useful than most people gave them credit for. They were a valid food source, if he could be sure what he was crunching down wasn't poisonous. Or, in the case of venomous, he removed the venom sacs first. But there wouldn't be enough moisture in them to help his situation, not fast enough, and after two days with no food he honestly wasn't sure he could keep them down.
Mac eyed the small beetles edging towards the quickly evaporating drops of sweat he'd shed onto the metal floor, and gave a fly that landed on his chest a lazy swat.
Fly was faster, even though he'd counted on the backward takeoff. The bites just weren't painful enough to justify the expenditure in calories.
He could kill a fly, use it as bait for a beetle, use that as bait for a bigger bug – but he was never going to attract a bug large enough to wedge the container door open. He'd need a piece of rebar for that. The interior components of the door mechanism were contained within a steel box that had been welded on. And the twine wouldn't have the tensile strength to lift the exterior handle even if he somehow managed to hook it, which he couldn't because even if he shredded the trousers and braided the strips into a rope, they still lacked the weight necessary to make it work.
One of the beetles was approaching his thigh, more interested in the sweat still on his body than what was evaporating off the floor, and when it came too close Mac reached over and flicked it away. It landed on its back in a ray of sunlight coming through the top of the door, and Mac watched its legs kick, too tired to scoot over there and righten it.
And that was the problem.
Even if he could find a way out of this, he physically lacked the strength to execute. The faintest breeze was crawling up his sweating back from his convection vents, but it was all he could do.
Mac's dry, grainy eyes seemed to fix themselves on the beetle, and he idly wondered how long it would take before the struggling insect exhausted itself.
-M-
0837 HOURS, FRIDAY, BAGRAM AIR BASE
"Mueller get anything else out of them?"
Jack shook his head, clocking the addition of numerous high-ranking officers into the TOC and helping himself to the water cooler and an eight ounce paper cup. "Nothing we didn't already know."
"So they didn't get a message off."
Jack emptied the cup in one long pull and shook his head.
"Only communication was incoming. Bowman to the mystery burner."
The mystery burner was pissing Jack right the hell off, because whoever had received that call had already turned it off and probably removed the battery. It wasn't in any of Stinson's hidey holes that they could find, and they'd never find any of Taggert's – assuming the guy was actually involved.
They knew Bowman had called someone at Bagram at 0500 when he left the Triple Canopy training facility, and the call itself had lasted only twenty-two seconds. Either a voicemail or a very short conversation.
Could have been a warning, could have been a confirmation that he'd receive the goods, could have just been checking in with a friend to say he was on his way. Bowman hadn't said a word that didn't start with 'l' and end in 'awyer.' Taggert was playing innocent, and Stinson was keeping his mouth shut. They weren't civilians and JAG had already been informed that the two of them were in holding, pending further charges. He had no doubt officers from Kabul would be there within the hour.
And with Chauncey's second hand man in there, they couldn't use the enhanced interrogation techniques Jack longed to. They weren't going to get what they needed in time to act on it.
Jack refilled his paper cup and drained it in a similar fashion, then filled it again. Colonel Martinez watched him but didn't say a word. Gates frowned.
He knew what it meant.
"Please tell me you know what's on that card."
"Any minute," Brandon confirmed, in a tone of voice that indicated he'd repeated those words many times.
"Anyone try to call Bowman?"
Colonel Martinez glanced at the phone sitting innocently near Gates' laptop, attached via a cable. "Not yet."
So Triple Canopy either hadn't figured out that their guy was late, or they already knew he wasn't coming back.
Dalton glared at the laptop, which in his experience only occasionally made the technology work faster, and then surveyed the TOC more thoroughly. On the TVs up front, there were a couple operations displayed. A few of the new officers were overseeing those. The others were clustered around Chauncey, and Jack only needed one guess what they were talking about.
He cocked his ear to the analysts up front, passively listening for any callsigns he knew, and as his glare fell once again on Gates' laptop, the damn thing actually changed from a spinning wheel to a window containing some folders.
All three men descended on the laptop, and even with Brandon clicking through at breakneck speed, Jack knew immediately what he was looking at.
"Those are deployment orders." His glare shifted instantly to Gates. "You lying son of a bitch –"
"Jack, they're not for you or your damned tech. They're not even for Kabul." Brandon scrolled through a few more, and Jack saw plans for a base. "This FOB doesn't even exist yet."
"Future operations in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Taiwan . . ." Martinez leaned in closer, and in his peripheral vision Jack saw Chauncey breaking off from his group and started towards them. "Proposed deployments around the globe for the next . . . looks like three years. Not just Air Force, either. Army, Navy, Marines."
Future deployment operations.
" . . . so Trip Canopy would know where to establish new facilities," Jack realized aloud.
"Yeah, I think Dalton's got it," Gates agreed, continuing to sort through the data as Colonel Chauncey joined their group. "If they had infrastructure in place ahead of time, language contacts and local intel, they'd be your go-to in all these spaces. Almost guaranteed to get the US contracts."
It wasn't about terrorism or selling intelligence. It was about money. Plain old greed.
"Mother fuckers," Jack concluded.
Martinez grunted an agreement. "That's why they needed access to the base's TOC hardware," and he glanced at his fellow colonel. "No way they could access Pentagon files as easily from anywhere else in country."
"And then they piggybacked onto the local black market to get it off base without raising eyebrows." It meant Stinson was in the clear for treason, anyway – he probably really didn't know the card had been hidden in the nightvision optics.
But once Taggert knew he and Mac were onto the smuggling ring, he'd had to act to get the evidence off Bowman before he was taken into custody.
"He was surveilling me," Jack growled incredulously. "That son of a bitch staked out the POL to see how much I knew." That was why the corporal was hanging out in the lobby reading comic books. He wanted to see who else knew about the dead drop. "But why didn't Taggert tip off Bowman sooner?"
"I don't think he could." Gates was still combing through the data – and there was quite a lot of it. "We have nothing linking him to Bowman or Triple Canopy. They may not have had a direct line of remote communication – or he knew you were closing in but you hadn't made the leap to him yet." His tone turned a little stilted. "If your guys hadn't caught him in the camera dead zone, we'd have no evidence."
Brandon was shooting Jack a side-eye, and Jack grinned sharply in reply. "Not my first rodeo, slick." And frankly the only reason they'd been so careful was to prevent the CIA from having grounds to deny what they were doing. He'd meant to catch Gates in the act, not Taggert.
Then again, he'd thought this had to do with borderline illegal orders that were going to put his tech in mortal peril, and he wasn't so sure that wasn't still the case. Dalton turned to Colonel Martinez. "Permission to get our boys outta harm's way and arrest these tool bags, sir."
"Slow your roll, sergeant." Chauncey was still looking over Gates' shoulder. "Unless I missed it, there's nothing linking the training class to this intel leak, and we're scheduled to retrieve them at 1800."
"MacGyver's linking them," Jack protested hotly. "We don't know who the hell Bowman called this morning, or what Stinson mighta told 'em when they were on base pickin' our boys up."
The Air Force colonel gave Jack more of his attention. "I thought Specialist MacGyver was just running down the stolen goods from the inventory."
"Which were used to smuggle the intel!" How was he not getting this? Dalton cut his eyes to Martinez. "Bowman's over an hour late gettin' back, and yet not a one of his teammates has called his phone? Or the base? They know something's up, and they got eight of ours in a highly fortified position. We let 'em dig in, this gets a helluva lot messier."
Martinez took his time, and it seemed like the entire TOC held its breath. "I'm inclined to agree with Dalton. He's rough around the edges," the colonel added darkly, "but he's not often wrong."
And he knew he wasn't. A pit had been steadily growing in his gut, since the moment he'd told Javier to get the guys together in the sniper shed last night and set this whole thing up. Something about this was all kinds of wrong, and contractors – and their own damn troops – were willing to commit treason over it. If Stinson had talked, said that Mac was digging into him, a training accident would be a great way to dispose of the investigation – or at least slow it down until after the intel handoff.
He couldn't say how, he just knew. Knew it like he knew when he was at the end of someone else's scope. Carl's Junior was in trouble, whether he was aware of it yet or not.
Chauncy inhaled deeply, clearly considering Martinez's words, then turned to Gates. The intelligence agent studiously ignored the murderous look Jack was throwing at him. Instead, he glanced at the phone tethered to his laptop.
". . . I'll admit, Triple Canopy not reaching out to find their missing man is not a good sign," he acknowledged, almost begrudgingly. "They might be weighing their options. The sooner we have eyes on them the better."
"So we retask a drone." Chauncey glanced to the front of the room. "We've already got one freed up from another active op. We get eyes on the base, re-evaluate."
"And you put us in the air in a holding pattern as a contingency, sir." Dalton finished. "If it turns out you don't need us, all we did is burn a little fuel."
"Sergeant, Martinez has briefed me on the men you involved in a damn near illegal operation on my base," Chauncy shot back. "I know who you are. But you're all functioning as overwatch now. You ever trained together as a cohesive unit? Done any recovery operations together? Because those are civilian contractors out there and I need them arrested, not executed." He turned to Martinez. "I got a Special Warfare team on base, we can guarantee you air superiority, but the closest untasked SEAL team's in Islamabad, three hours out."
Jack bristled, glaring at the front of the TOC. Air Force Special Warfare. Pfft. They didn't need goddamn pararescue. They needed actual rescue.
And then the answer literally blinked onto one of the screens, in the form of a familiar callsign.
"Actually, you got operators freed up at the same time that drone did, and they're an hour out." Both colonels turned to him, and Jack gestured at the screen in question. "Redirect 'em to us. Them plus my boys, that's all we need."
-M-
? HOURS, ? DAY, LOCATION UNKNOWN
Mac flinched from something, a momentary pain maybe, and realized that he was awake.
That was unexpected. He was quite sure he'd not meant to fall asleep. He had to tell them.
Tell them –
Uh . . .
". . . I said okay." His voice was thin and reedy to his ears. Didn't echo. Maybe not loud enough to carry to the camera in the darkest corner. There had to be a camera there. Had to be.
How else could they know?
"Inventory report." That's what they wanted. "Give it to you."
Or maybe that wasn't it.
His stomach cramped, and Mac winced but didn't move a muscle. That hurt more. He remembered.
"Oh . . . oh five hundred. Rolling out. Ah . . . Alaram Kala. Suspected EID." That didn't sound right, but it had to be. He remembered the orders. He remembered he wasn't supposed to tell them.
He wasn't supposed to be here, though. He messed up somehow.
"Company . . . ten men. No antiair - anti-aircraft capability."
That was what they wanted. The intelligence off that piece of paper. They'd give him water, now. Food. He was so thirsty. Never been more thirsty in his life.
Drinking water alone wouldn't do it, though. He needed salt to go with it. Plain water wouldn't quench his thirst. He'd just drink till he vomited.
Mac's stomach cramped again at the thought, and Mac rolled a little with the pain of it, tipping himself off the wall and slowly onto the floor.
It was cooler. A little. Maybe.
Blue.
Mac blinked at the metal in confusion.
". . . beetle . . . attracted beetle . . . attracted big-bigger . . . and bigger." But it wasn't a beetle lying on its back, impossibly close to his face.
That was a scorpion. Androctonus baluchicus.
Mac blinked at it again, until the words had meaning and he jerked himself uncoordinatedly away. His head banged against something immovable and he moaned.
That's right. The scorpion was dead.
He'd killed it.
Flung it against the wall when he'd woken to find it crawling on him. It had come for the beetles, and then it had come for him. Stunned it. Used his heel to crush its head.
God, his foot hurt.
Is that why his foot hurt?
Mac craned his heavy head, trying to find his foot. His pants were all torn, they looked like boxers now. Droplets of blue stain on them. His grainy eyes rolled back to the scorpion, the tatted strips of fabric beside it.
Right.
He was braiding the torn strips of fabric together into a rope that was stronger than the twine. The scorpion would be his weight. Dead weight. Mac blinked as more awareness filtered into his mind. Why did he need a weight?
To try to hook the fabric around the handle outside. To open the door. He has to get out, or he's going to die.
No, he corrected himself. No. It's just training. It only feels like dying.
No one would kill him over a couple of stolen clackers.
"You sure about that, hoss?"
Mac's body sagged bonelessly against the metal, recognizing the voice before his brain did.
Jack.
"No, that's . . . that's not gonna happen. It's just training. There's . . . no reason to kill someone over . . . over . . . slap on the wrist . . ."
There was no reason to kill him. Not over a few hundred dollars of stolen stuff. It just didn't make sense. They were all on the same side. Mac's eyes rolled back to the attempt at braiding he'd been doing. Couldn't have been long ago.
He wasn't slick with sweat anymore. But he was uncoordinated. Muscles were cramping. Losing consciousness. Long past heat exhaustion, and possibly well into heatstroke.
How was Jack in his ear?
Was it already time to go back to base?
"But . . . I'm not done with the training yet . . ."
"Chief, pretty sure you skipped right to the real deal, know what I'm saying?"
Mac's eyes travelled along the sloppy braids, focusing unerringly on the blue stains. Blood, he realized. Not his. The scorpion's. Every species in the family Buthidaea had blue blood.
"I know you're a bona fide genius and all, but I don't think your plan here's gonna work."
Mac closed his eyes; it was the closest he could get to rolling them. "It will. Scorpion . . . weighs enough. Braided rope has . . . tensile strength. Just gotta . . . gotta get it under the handle. Apply force . . . at a diagonal."
Not impossible. It would work. He'd have to climb to the top of the door and dangle the rope blindly until he hooked the handle, but it would work.
It had to work.
"Listen. You only got one more attempt in ya."
No. No, he could keep going. Finish training. Couldn't give up now.
If he gave up now, he was gonna die.
"All I have to do is find . . . path to the underground tunnels." The shaded caves were cool enough to save him. Just had to get there, and then he could sleep.
"Dude, bad guys are just gonna put you right back in here." It sounded like Jack was sorry to point it out. "They're tryin'a kill you, and you breakin' outta one little door ain't gonna change their minds."
Mac let his head roll to the left a little. "Doesn't make sense, Jack." Why would they leave him here to die? He was EOD. He saved lives. He might save their lives. They were all allies.
"Lotta people don't. Most of the time I barely understand you."
Same.
His overwatch scoffed in his ear. "Whaddaya mean? I'm an open book."
No you're not. You talk literally nonstop without saying anything. You only pretend you're stupid. So that people underestimate you. Like me . . . they think I'm too young . . . and so do you . . .
". . . that poor little bomb nerd with the silly hamburger name ain't gonna make it two days in the Sandbox without me watchin' his back," his overwatch murmured, a perfect echo of that morning in the humvee.
Two days.
Forty-eight hours.
Forty-eight hours without Jack, and here he was.
"I did . . . everything right, Jack."
His overwatch's tone was positively gentle. "I know you did, bud."
This shouldn't . . shouldn't be happening.
"No, chief. It shouldn't."
I just gotta get the door . . . you'll see which one's open.
"You're thinkin' too much, kid. You don't need to open it. Just give me some way to find it."
Some way to mark the door.
Mac's half-lidded eyes dropped to the floor. Just some way to mark it. Like blue stains on his pants.
". . . what're you thinkin? Out with it. I can hear those hamsters scamperin' from a mile away."
Blue fabric. Like a . . . like a flag.
"Y'mean like a wind indicator?"
Wind indicator. Strip of fabric snipers hung to show them wind conditions by a target.
But there is no wind, Jack. Hasn't been for the whole week.
"Really, genius? Then what's that movin' your hair?"
Mac paused, legitimately trying to pay attention to anything outside his own misery, and he felt it. Just. There was a tickle on the back of his aching scalp. Annoying. He was still lying in front of the convection vents, and physics was still moving air. Just a breath of it. Just enough to move one little lock of hair.
One little strip of fabric, it might be light enough. Light enough to move. Blue enough to see.
Jack would see it. No way he'd miss it.
He just had to get it up to the top of the vent. Make sure it didn't blow away.
Mac's eyes rolled in their sockets up, up, until they blinded themselves on the light above him. Sun was moving towards the pocket. Not overhead yet. Not even noon.
He wouldn't make it to noon.
He wouldn't make it at all if he didn't find a way up there.
Mac took a deep breath of the hot, stale air. It didn't clear his head. Without sitting up, he fumbled around first for the remains of the scorpion, then an unbraided strip of fabric. Mac rolled onto his shoulder, wiping the body of the scorpion across the fabric and the floor like it was some kind of macabre marker. When most of the fabric was stained, Mac dropped the thing and took another deep breath, telling himself he was letting the blood coagulate.
When he snapped his eyes open, he realized he'd lost time, and he absently rubbed the still-damp fabric between his sticky fingers.
So not too much time, then.
In the great scheme of things, probably a larger percentage than he should be that comfortable with.
Mac slowly gathered his arms beneath him, dragging the bloodied strip of fabric with him, and leaned heavily against the container door again before flinching away with a groan.
Too hot.
It was too hot. It was too hot just sitting up. If he climbed up that door, it was going to get hotter, seven to ten degrees hotter, it was already too hot –
Mac took another unhelpful breath and his eyes fell naturally on the sloppy braids. They were the perfect length to wind around his hands. Like tiny, insufficient oven mitts.
And they worked. He barely even made a face before he pinched the bloodied strip between dry, cracked lips and used his wrapped hands to pull himself up the door.
Standing sucked. It sucked all the blood out of his head, like a convection vent in reverse. Like putting his head inside an oven. Mac blinked darkness out of his eyes and clung to the interior structure of the door for dear life, barely even able to draw the searing air into his lungs.
Jack was right. He only had one try left in him.
He had to get the door ope-
Mac forced his eyes open wide, forced the dark spots back.
He just had to get that strip of fabric in the vent. That was all.
Mac wedged his right foot against the structural bar of the door, then shouted in surprised pain. His lips were so dry the fabric stuck fast, even as he gasped open-mouthed around the pain.
It was more than a burn. God, his foot hurt.
Leaning heavily on the door, Mac set it gently back on the metal floor, and tentatively tried his left foot. Less sharpness to the pain that followed.
More burn.
Mac forced the leg to straighten, his arms to bend, forced himself to reach up for the lip of the door. It was hot through his wrapping. Bright against his failing eyes. He plucked the fabric from his lips, feeling a stinging as he ripped a scab free. The fabric fluttered half-heartedly in his hand, and Mac realized that he'd climbed up there only to have forgotten to bring some way to attach the fabric to the door.
He fumbled with it, shoving it clumsily over the edge of the deformed door to the outside, and held tight to both his end of the fabric and the edge as his sight darkened again.
Not yet. He had to - to –
Mac blinked repeatedly, forcing himself to see –
Oh.
The fabric was pressed flush to the edge of the door like it was glued there.
And it was. With a mix of scorpion blood, and his own.
Bond wouldn't last forever.
Then again, neither would he.
Mac squinted hard, but even after he moved his wrapped fingers, the little portion of that bloodied strip stayed right where it was. And then he saw the other part, the part hanging outside the container, give a half-hearted little flutter in the air.
Wind indicator successfully hung.
He could let go now.
Mac gasped out a cry of pain, somehow lying on his stinging back, trying to curl away from the agony that was tearing through his body. His stomach was cramping again, but his foot, jesus, his foot hurt so bad.
Mac blinked open tired, grainy eyes, and saw only darkness, with a single strip of light so far above him.
The . . . door. He marked the door. Marked it so Jack would find it.
. . . hadn't he?
He dragged his aching body back towards the door, the blurry lightness at the foot of it. Where it was just slightly cooler. He rested his head there, feeling the tiniest breeze on his forehead.
Then he curled himself onto his side. Recovery position. No weight on his screaming foot.
It would suck if he aspirated on his own vomit before Jack found him.
-M-
NOTES: Hey look! I was totally wrong about the chapter count! NO WAY! But this one is crazy long, yo, and there's still a bunch of story to tell.
But I can guarantee you that it really really will be finished next chapter. I've also got a question for you all. In the previous Turkey Day stories, I both established my own team of Rangers that have interacted with Mac – callsign Lancer – and I also borrowed Gib's Delta team. In fact, I put both of them into the Turkey Day Trimmings titled Decaf Coffee.
I can bring back one of these groups for the final chapter of this story. Would your rather see me borrow Gib's solider toys – who went unnamed but recognized in Ground Rules and straight up named in Decaf Coffee – or would you rather get the backstory and see Mac make peace with Lancer, as seen in Elephant Ears and Decaf Coffee? Vote in the comments or in PM to me!