one more chapter until legit one of my favorite portions of this entire thing, perhaps my absolute favorite of all. i'm so jazzed.
it's been a while since i plugged my tumblr too so - come hang out with me at altschmerzes, i liveblog my writing sometimes, post chapter edits, and generally mess about. it's great fun.
chap title is from fall out boy's 'miss missing you'.
Exfil is late. Or, it seems like exfil is late, until Jack makes contact with DXS HQ, and it becomes clear that the problem is less that they're late and more that they're just… not here. They've arrived at the designated location with an exhausted Dr. Parker and a unanimous desire to get home as quickly as possible, only for there to be no one in sight. Jack frowns around at the empty clearing, perfect for a helicopter landing, and tries to figure out if he's the one who got the location wrong, or if their exfil team did, because he definitely texted the randomly generated encrypted number assigned to exfil for this mission. In theory, contacting this number within their window should've immediately sent exfil to the determined location, and they'd likely be waiting there when the team arrived, or would be there within minutes.
It's been twenty minutes, and neither the sound of an approaching chopper nor the encrypted line going off with some kind of communication has given Jack any indication anyone is coming for them at all. He's been pacing outside for the last ten, trying to keep warm while watching out for their backup to arrive. Mac and Riley are sitting in the car with Dr. Parker, trying to convince her to close her eyes to get some rest. It isn't working.
At minute thirty, Jack texts the encrypted number, and gets no answer.
At minute thirty-five, Jack calls it, and gets no answer.
At minute forty-five, Jack calls Matty.
"Where," he says into the phone when she picks up, keeping his voice low and even so as to avoid alarming his young teammates or the highly stressed out engineer in the car, "the hell is exfil, Matty? Did something happen?"
There's a beat of extremely unnerving silence, after which Matty says, "I'm going to call you right back, hold on," and the line goes completely dead.
"Thank you for that, thank you so much, it was so helpful," Jack says into the empty air. He glances over his shoulder to see Mac staring out the window away from him, on the other side of the car, Riley speaking to Dr. Parker. Frustration and anxiety thrum in his chest, and doesn't settle down until the phone rings in his hand. He answers it immediately, with the feeling that the headache he's developing is only about to grow.
Almost an hour to the minute after they'd arrived to the exfil pick-up site, Matty informs him of the problem, which is, as he'd grown to suspect, that exfil isn't late so much as they're not coming. At least not the extraction team initially assigned to the mission, which is why there has been radio silence from the assigned encrypted line - since they were called off the job, or whatever happened that they weren't showing up, the number was immediately deactivated, rendering it useless. Rather than try and figure out exactly what happened with the assigned team, Matty has instead decided to find and dispatch the nearest on-call team. It would be anywhere from a couple hours, depending on if there was a free team in the area, to more than half a day, if one needed to be dispatched direct from Los Angeles.
The exfil team pulled arrives to pick them up in six hours.
"So, why is it," the very petite woman with the sharp bob haircut sitting across from Jack asks, "that whenever we get a last second emergency call because something went tits up with a planned exfil extraction, it is literally always you guys?"
"Believe me, Meredith," Jack tells maybe his favorite member of exfil team Sierra November, the woman whose Russian got them out of hot water early in his career with DXS, "I want the answer to that as much as you do."
Dr. Parker still doesn't sleep on the flight home. The last Jack sees of her, she's being escorted down a hallway in DXS, to a debriefing room. He hopes, at the very least, they'll let her take a nap somewhere before they really get into it.
"So, one catnap at home later, and here I am," Jack says as he finishes recounting the whole story to Matty. "Your turn. What the hell happened with the exfil team?"
The two of them are sitting in her office, mutually filling each other in on their end of exactly what had gone wrong in the last hours of the mission to Budapest. Jack's looking forward to hearing whatever she'd managed to find out, even if it's unlikely to be anything good. He'll take a bad answer over no answer at this point, and it's not as if he doesn't already know full well something very hinky is going on around here.
"The team that was initially assigned to you was Yankee Juliet," Matty says, and her face is drawn into a pinched, displeased frown. "Apparently, from what I've been able to glean talking to the exfil Department Chief, they were given an extremely tight window and promised you would be there within that window. The window was about ten to twelve hours, and you took almost twenty to get Dr. Parker and start heading for the extraction site. Yankee Juliet had to leave before you were finished as they were dispatched to another agent needing retrieval. They were double booked, I guess, supposed to get you and then Agent Li on the way home."
"Ten to twelve hours," Jack repeats, and Matty's frown sours even further.
"I don't like it either," she tells him. "And I think I know who we have to thank for it. I'm told the person who delivered the instructions to the exfil department regarding the pickup times was the Director's assistant."
"Warren? They got their orders from Warren? Since when does Warren tell anybody what to do?" Director MacGyver's executive assistant Anthony Warren is one of the most bland and irritating people Jack has ever had the displeasure of meeting. He's only interacted with the pale, sullen young man a few times, each of those times because the Director had some message or instruction for them but not enough time to deliver it himself. As he ponders this, Jack comes to an understanding of what happened at approximately the same time as Matty explains it.
"He often sends Warren to liaise with exfil for him. Warren didn't make any of the decisions, he was just repeating what the Director told him, but I'm concerned he sometimes loses things in translation. Just one more thing I'll need to look into on my end, I suppose."
Matty sounds exhausted, and for what is maybe, Jack realizes with some amount of guilt, the first time, he takes a moment to account for how tiring this must be for her. Not only is she attempting to function normally in her capacity as the Deputy Director of an agency that was barely above water when she'd arrived to it, which is already a serious undertaking, she's managing a secret investigation into her own boss, in an attempt to figure out if she needs to stage a coup on top of everything else she's dealing with. However frustrating and stressful the investigation into the Director has been for Jack, it's been infinitely more complicated, even just from a logistical standpoint, for Matty.
"Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you," he says, meaning it earnestly. He gets the impression she understands it's more than just a platitude when she flashes him a quick, strained, but nevertheless genuine smile.
"Thank you, Jack, I'll keep you in the loop." The use of his first name is another clue towards exactly how crucial it is that he's in this with her, a hundred percent. "Was there anything else you wanted to talk to me about regarding your mission in Hungary?"
"Yeah, actually." It's been gnawing at him since he'd seen it happen, and Jack jumps at the opportunity to run the odd interaction by someone else. "Something happened with Mac and Dr. Parker that felt off."
Matty waves a hand in a wordless gesture for him to go on, elaborate.
"After we confirmed that exfil was on the way and Sierra was gonna be there to get us in a couple of hours, Riley got out of the car. They were waiting inside cause it was pretty cold while I stood outside and watched for the helo, but I guess Mac asked for a minute to talk to Dr. Parker by himself. Riley didn't tell me that, but I don't know why else she would've gotten out of the car - it was really cold - and she kept looking back at them."
"Could you make out any of what they were talking about?" Matty asks, frowning.
"Not really." Even the thought of it after the fact is making the back of Jack's neck prickle uncomfortably, deeply unnerved by being out of the loop on something regarding his partner. "He was showing her his phone and swiping, I caught the reflection of some photos, I think he was showing her pictures to see if she recognized any of the people in them. And before you ask, I barely caught half a glimpse of one of them, and I couldn't make out who it was."
"What did he say when you asked him about it?"
There's no question posed of whether or not Jack did ask him about it - of course he did. Jack, being employed by DXS explicitly to keep Mac safe and having grown extremely fond of the kid in the near-year they'd worked together, is thus in possession of a pretty strong professional-turned-very-personal motivation to figure out whatever is going on with him that was so important it was preoccupying him on a mission. Besides which, Jack is also an incurably nosy person, a fact he likes to blame on Sunday after Sunday at brunch with his mother and a gaggle of Southern aunties, only a solid third of which were actually related to him.
"He said it was a 'side project' and wouldn't say any more about it." Jack snorts and shakes his head, adding, "He told me not to worry about it."
"Somehow," Matty says dryly, eyebrows raised at him, "I can't imagine that's what's going to be happening."
"You're damn skippy it won't be happening," Jack shoots back, fully copping to it. "At this point? You got a greater chance of me quitting this line of work to join the circus before you'd convince me to stop worrying about him."
It's surprisingly easy to say out loud, to admit to someone else that Mac's safety has become chief in his life, and that 'safety' means far more than whether he's physically in one piece. Matty doesn't seem surprised by this either, rather seeming to be gratified to hear it. Jack finds himself wondering once again how much masterminding on her part had gone into his hiring here and why, and then immediately coming to the brand-new conclusion that he doesn't care. Whatever Matty's motivations, he's here now, and he's not going anywhere. Hell or high water, he's in this, whatever 'this' is, until the bitter end if necessary. He just hopes it won't be necessary.
"Well, just keep an eye on him about it, find out what you can when you can. What's next on the docket in the meantime?"
"We're starting Riley's training," Jack says, and can't help the grin that breaks out over his face at saying it. "We're gonna start her in the car, tailing, then do some evasion runs. Also," and this is the part where his grin fades somewhat, unsure how it's going to go over, "I think I'm going to read her into the Director problem when we have a minute away from Mac."
"You think that's a good idea?" There's nothing in the question to indicate what, if anything, Matty's existing answer is. It's a little unnerving, and Jack steels himself in his resolve.
"Yeah, I do. She's got a good head on her shoulders, she already doesn't like him, I can tell, and we need someone good with computers if we want to take this investigation next level." Jack cringes, thinking of something else. "The only hard part, I think, is going to be convincing her she can't tell Mac yet. She's not going to like that, the two of them… They hit it off immediately, didn't take but five minutes for them to get awful protective of each other. Which, don't get me wrong, is a good thing, but it's gonna make that a difficult conversation."
"Well, good luck, and call me if you need anything. I'll start putting together a folder for her when you get her read in."
Jack nods, thanks her, and takes his leave of Matty's office.
Riley is, luckily, a quick study at just about anything she's interested enough in to put her mind to. This makes explaining things to her fairly easy, and maybe ten minutes into their first under the table field training session that they have her behind the wheel, tailing Mac through suburban Los Angeles.
"So, what is it we're doing, again?" she asks, eyes fixed on Mac's car maybe three hundred feet ahead of them. He pulls a left onto a random Southbound street, and Riley speeds up a little before remembering her coaching and reducing her speed to a regular pact and taking the turn as normally as possible.
"We're tailing Mac so we can teach you how to think like someone trying to follow someone else. Means when we actually get you doing evasion, you already have a rough idea of what the guy tailing you is doing and why. If you can think like them, you're halfway there, and it's not an intuitive thing. Just gotta do it until it's part of you."
Riley nods, determined, and slides to a stop two cars behind Mac at stoplight. She's doing well, keeping her distance and trying to avoid speeding up and making herself obvious amongst the regular ebb and flow of traffic. Of course, the fact that it's LA helps, because when you're driving like a bat out of hell in Southern California, people are far more likely to assume that you're just an idiot, an asshole, or both than they are likely to assume you're tailing someone or trying to lose a tail. It's a little more obvious in more subdued places, traffic wise, but Jack can't think of a better spot to learn evasive driving.
They spend a while driving around following Mac, who isn't actively attempting to avoid the tail at all, merely acting as a random citizen with no idea someone was following him would. About two hours into the exercise, when everyone was beginning to get too bored to tolerate it any longer, they switch roles, and begin to practice some light evasion tactics. Jack explains the concept of an evasion route, or heat run as it was sometimes referred to, how to lose a tail or avoid picking one up without also endangering yourself and the rest of the people around you to the greatest degree possible.
Riley proves to be a fast and calm thinker, and she seems to enjoy the challenge, having fun with the exercise as much as she's learning from it. It's pretty clear that Mac is going fairly easy on her, but she doesn't seem to take it personally. There's no way to learn jumping straight to ten. Much better to start at a two or a three and build you way up. She actually manages to lose him completely in the early afternoon, and Jack directs her to pull into a nearby parking garage. She's sitting behind the wheel, cheeks flushed with the pride and satisfaction of a competitive victory, and Jack is not looking forward to putting a damper on her mood. Unfortunately, that's exactly what's about to happen.
"So, what next?" she asks, eyes bright and excited, and Jack hates himself for what he's about to do, just a little bit.
"We're gonna do a little hand to hand training next, just some basics, but first, there's something we need to talk about."
Incrementally, Riley's smile fades, beginning when Jack says this and continuing faster as he talks, explaining the situation with what's wrong at DXS, how they believe the Director is to blame for most of it, though they're not sure quite how deliberate or premediated any of it is. He outlines in broad strokes what they've seen so far, what led Matty to the conclusion that the problem wasn't some kind of mole in the organization, but James himself. She seems to be sobered by the revelation, but it doesn't seem to surprise her at all. In fact, she seems totally game and on board from the first moment, right up until Jack says the one thing he knows might topple it for them - the fact that Mac can't know about any of it.
"No," Riley says immediately, shaking her head to punctuate it. "No, I'm not doing that. I'm not lying to him like that. I can't believe you're lying to him like that, Jack, what the hell?"
"Believe me," Jack says, though the accusation hurts, throbs in his chest like he's been struck. "Believe me, Ri, if I had another choice, I would take it."
"What's coming next had better be a really good explanation why you don't have another choice. It's his dad, he deserves to know."
"And it's exactly because it's his dad that we can't tell him. Think about it. We're investigating his father because he might be making the extremely dangerous and stressful job we have working under his direction a lot more dangerous and stressful in a way that's coming down on Mac harder than it's hitting anybody else. We're pretty sure there's something there, but we don't have any proof."
Jack lets it sit for a second before he continues on, and when he does, he gentles his voice, says it as kindly as possible. Because he's been thinking about this for a while.
"The instant he finds out about this, his life as he knows it goes up in smoke. Whenever we tell him - and we will tell him, before it goes to the Oversight board - it's going to detonate his world and it's going to hurt like hell. How would you take it, if you were him and someone told you something like this? And if they had no proof? It's going to be devastating. I can't do that to him without proof." Jack swallows hard, throat dry, and his voice goes even softer. "I would not do this if I didn't have to. I would not hurt him like this if I had another option. You know me better than that."
Riley doesn't say anything in response to that. She's looked away from Jack out the window at the dimly lit parking ramp around them. Her expression is troubled and her arms are defensively folded. It's clear as day even without words that she's not happy about this.
"You don't have to be part of this," Jack says quietly after moments have passed in long, thick silence. She deserves to have an out, and he won't hold it against her if she takes it - it's asking a lot, even without having to lie to someone he can see she's fast becoming close friends with. "Matty and I can manage, you don't need to put yourself on the line for this. If you can't stand even knowing about it, we can arrange for you to transfer to a different agency, or just discharge you from your role here, Matty will make sure you don't go back to prison."
"I'm not going anywhere." The answer is as firm as it is immediate, and Jack can't deny the relief he feels at hearing it. "I'm in. If you're taking Director MacGyver down, I'm in." She sounds mad, and he's kind of glad to hear it.
Mad means, like Jack had suspected, she already knew something was really, really wrong, even before he'd explained what he and Matty had found so far. Mad means invested. Mad means ready to fight. And they need ready to fight.
"Can you live with not telling him?" It's an important question, and Jack holds his breath to hear her answer.
"Not for a minute longer than I have to," she says, looking over at him. Her eyes bore into him and while he'd already been on the same page with regards to Mac, that they can't keep this from him any longer than is absolutely necessary to not destroy him completely, if he had thought of arguing, any hint of it would be gone from his mind at the look on her face. Her expression is a fierce challenge, daring him to tell her different.
Jack nods. "Not for a second longer than is absolutely necessary," he promises, and she nods back.
"Okay then. Where do I start?"
