Turkey Day: All the Trimmings

by Haven126

A collection of prequels/missing scenes for the Turkey Day series. Ch 1: Jack calls his annoying EOD tech 'Mac' for the first time. Ch 2: On his worst days, Mac's almost died alone. Chs 3 & 4: Cairo. Ch 5: Mac learns to trust Jack's brain, not just his aim. Ch 6: Mac learns about adapting. Ch 7: Saito meets Mac. Ch 8: Mac tells Jack about his parents. Ch 9: Jack has a dream. Ch. 10

4. And Pita

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

Content Warnings: Some coarse language, the reanimated dead, and somewhat graphic violence.

-M-

DAY TWO

It took them about seven and a half hours to make the six hour drive, and given that they made the majority of it overnight, that was saying something.

The Egyptian youth were taking the Arab Spring anniversary very seriously, blocking main thoroughfares and key intersections to ensure their message was heard, even in the dead of night. A few of the kids had approached the van at one point, shouting, but all Jack had had to do was roll down the window and give them a thumb's up and a grin, and they were allowed to pass unmolested.

He was on the final stretch to Cairo now, about eight kilometers east of the 50-65 split, and a heavy police presence had eased up traffic somewhat. The pavement was in relatively good condition, and the desert sky was ablaze with stars.

Nikki was their night owl, but she'd given up the ghost about two hours ago, changed into something warmer, and curled up in the back of the van. To the best of her estimation, they were about five hours ahead of Farhad, who had not immediately set off for Cairo. She couldn't track him the usual way, and could only access his phone when it was connected to wifi, but luckily this particular dirtbag was rather fond of tech.

Mac had been working on getting them more intelligence on Farhad, but after his last call to DXS he'd drifted off, and Jack glanced over at him from time to time, his head bouncing gently against the van window as he slept.

It was like the last two years never happened. The only things missing were his rifle and Mac's helmet.

Their day wasn't going to be all that much different, either. He'd spend it tired, trying to cover Mac's scrawny ass while he scampered all over a sandy foreign city oblivious to everything but finding and disarming a bomb.

Jack was forced to slow as they approached a tollbooth, merging in with the other traffic as they were crammed into a single lane. A lot of trucking happened overnight, taking advantage of the cooler temperatures, and soon red brakelights blotted out the stars.

On his right, Mac sucked in a deep, sleepy breath. It took him a few seconds, but then he straightened in his seat with a constrained little stretch, glancing around. "Where are we?" His voice was soft.

"About a hundred and twenty klicks east of Cairo."

His partner digested that, then started rummaging around – again, quietly – in the coin tray, picking out the toll. "We hit any other trouble?"

"Nope." It would be dawn in a couple hours, and they could count on the students to continue to disrupt traffic across Egypt. The last message Nikki had intercepted made it sound like Farhad was coming by truck, and bringing some of his men with him. He was toeing the line between the minor and major leagues when it came to smuggling weapons from Egypt into Chad and Sudan, and while his adoption of tech was in line with the times, he was definitely old-fashioned when it came to ideology. He could be planning on deploying that bomb pretty much anywhere in the Middle East.

Luckily, the daytime traffic would probably slow Farhad and increase their lead. Which was a good thing, since Zoheir had three brick and mortar properties and two barges in or near the city proper they needed to search. Their orders were still the same; disable the bomb and arrest the buyer – and seller, if they could get their hands back on Zoheir. Despite the setbacks, Jack was finally feeling a little more positive about their odds.

"Anything from DXS?"

A little glow reflected off the windshield. "No," Mac responded after a moment. "Though it looks like I missed a call from Bozer." He scrolled through his other messages. "Nikki's mapped the most efficient route to hit the three buildings. I still think they're more likely to house the bomb than the barges."

They crept closer to the toll booth, which was low tech and operated by a human, and Jack reached into a compartment in the dash, pulling a couple passports free. "Just in case." He exchanged them for the coins in Mac's hand, and his partner flipped open the first one.

"Always liked Luka," he murmured. They'd arrived in country as the Thompsons and bodyguard, but if that cover fell through, they'd packed a much more benign one. Now that they were going into Cairo itself, being a gun runner's son was probably not the best option.

Instead, they were with the media. Luka Morrow was a journalist with Reuters, and he had his trusty photographer Ethan Darby and sound and video editor Alicia Gentry with him. It gave them an excuse to have a van and the surveillance equipment and tech, and hopefully they'd blend in with the rest of the foreign journalists.

Mac spent another moment studying the passport. "Hey, want to switch out, so you can get some sleep?"

Jack shook his head, easing the van forward. "Nah. I'll get me some Turkish coffee once we get to civilization."

Beside him, Mac became very still. ". . . tell me you're joking."

Just the memory of that day was enough to bring a smile to Jack's lips. "Relax. I'll drink it out of those dumbass tiny cups this time, 'stead of my camelbak."

-M-

He took a deep breath, committing the scent to memory. Wood smoke. Explosives. Charring. Chemicals. Salt. Seared metal. Gasoline. Diesel fumes.

His aide trotted up, a tablet in his hand, and Zoheir exhaled and accepted it, glancing at the manifest. Not a total loss. Some of the exotics had pulled through, and the entire northwest corner of storage was almost untouched. Looking at the building, lit by emergency vehicles and floodlights, he was amazed any of the structure was standing at all.

The young man beside him held up a small clear baggie. A sandy black smartphone was inside.

"Akmal found this in the viper pit," his aide murmured. "No bodies."

Zoheir took another deep breath, now detecting a faint, sickly sweet odor he couldn't quite place. Not the scent of dead CIA operatives, clearly.

His aide hesitated. "We're not sure if it belonged to the American agents. The battery is dead, but we may be able to –"

Zoheir gave a sharp nod. "Whatever it takes. Track them down."

In his pocket, his own phone vibrated, and Zoheir ignored it, eyes raking over the building. "Search the area hospitals. I want to know if anyone received antivenin last night."

Another deep breath.

This was the fragrance of setback. A mistake.

Disappointment.

And he made a promise to himself, to never experience it again.

In his pocket, his phone gave a short, sharp buzz – a voicemail being left. Zoheir took one last look at the skeleton before him, and then he turned and folded himself into the car. It was still a few hours before dawn, but there was much to do.

-M-

"Done."

She held out both phones, which Mac accepted and distributed, and eyed the monitor a moment. Sure enough, the token test passed, and she was about to declare it good when one of them started ringing.

Mac glanced at his phone, then back at her. "Boze," he said, by way of explanation, and silenced the call.

"Yes," she agreed, confirming the re-route on the screen. "You both know that the Egyptian government requires all mobile handsets to be registered with the NTRA, to prevent them from being used to remotely detonate bombs. The phones in your hand are Chinese knock-offs with duplicate serial numbers, so they'll eventually get detected and disconnected. You've probably got about fourteen good hours with them. We should be gone before then."

"Good, 'cause the old ball an' chain has called you like three times already."

Mac chose to familiarize himself with the phone's features, rather than roll his eyes where Jack could see. "And communications are encrypted?"

"Yes they are." She indicated her laptop. "Every incoming and outgoing call and SMS is getting routed through here, over wifi, and encrypted on this hardware. As far as any foreign intelligence agency is concerned, those phones are never going to leave this van, and never get a call. Just don't enable GPS on the device itself."

"Yes ma'am," Mac murmured agreeably, and then he slipped the device into the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. "And you'll have eyes on us?"

She glanced at the map, showing two green dots on top of the yellow dot. "If you two ever bother to actually get to work, sure . . ."

"Ooh," Jack murmured, tucking his phone into the rear pocket of his black jeans. "Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the van this morning?"

Nikki took a deep breath and rolled her neck, trying to ignore the sticky feeling. "It was the side without the air conditioning, so you tell me."

Mac winced in sympathy. "Look, I know it's a little warm, but you'll have more shade than any other van out there once the sun gets a little higher, and trust me, they're all gonna be jealous of your parking spot."

She glanced out the back door, where a real, honest to god Reuters van was only a few yards away. Beyond that was ZNN. They'd been attracted to this spot for the same reason she was – consistently good wifi. It was the only way she could encrypt their cellphone communications without tipping off the Mukhabarat, and without coms, the mobiles would have to do. The custom one-way GPS app she'd installed allowed the phone to report its location directly and only to her. Her signal repeater then put the wireless communications back on the GSM network, giving them the best coverage in the city.

"Well, at least I'll have someone to talk to."

Jack moved back towards the front of the van, and retrieved a white cardboard box. "Well, you might not have ol' Jack's soothing voice in your ear, but this oughta sweeten the deal a little."

She accepted it, assuming it was some kind of breakfast – she'd already downed the coffee, and was definitely going to need more before the day was over – and opened the cute little box to find two triangles of baklava nestled in pastry paper.

Nikki found herself smiling. "Yeah, this should help," she agreed. Then she fixed them both with a stern look. "Remember, exfil is the maintenance airstrip off Egypt Air's factory at six pm local time. The director hinted that we probably didn't want to miss it this time around."

Mac's eyebrows twitched. "You picked up on that too, huh?"

"She was fairly straightforward." And as close to using expletives as she'd ever heard her boss.

"Don't suppose she said anything about gettin' me another weapon?"

Nikki glanced at Jack, noticing for the first time that the pistol that had been taken from him last night had been his only firearm. Their mission should have been over and done in twenty-four hours, and unless the arrests had gone poorly, there wouldn't have been a need for serious firepower. Besides, Zoheir was a weapons dealer. Jack had probably figured if he'd needed additional hardware, he could get his hands on it relatively easily.

And he probably still could, if it came down to it.

Which it shouldn't, since apparently Zoheir only had the one man in Cairo waiting for Farhad, who was hours behind them.

Nikki shook her head mutely.

Jack shrugged it off, sliding open the van's side door. "Didn't think so," he mumbled, almost to himself. "Not like I'd need a gun to keep you chuckleheads safe from a weapons dealer and a bus full of terrorists-"

"Yeah, and I'd like to see you explain why you're carrying when we get stopped by the local leos," Mac shot back good-naturedly, following the older agent out the door. "Think you forgot your camera, there, Ethan."

Jack ducked his head back in the van, and Nikki stood up and handed him the DSLR by its strap.

"Thanks. And just for the record, this does not count as shooting."

"You boys behave yourselves," she replied, and Mac gave her a quick grin. The van door rumbled closed behind them, and she blew out her cheeks and helped herself to the baklava, watching the green dots as they made their way into the alley on the opposite side of the vehicle and towards the next block.

She didn't need coms to figure out the exact moment they'd located and appropriated a vehicle, and she had actually launched a couple apps before she remembered that she was not allowed to suppress any police reports regarding the stolen vehicle. She wasn't even allowed to listen in, though her eyes roamed to the shelf in the van that should have held radio equipment. This was truly a skeleton rig, not meant for any major surveillance, and outside of the large black shipping crate and the narrow table, she really didn't have much in there with her. A few screens, a couple systems, the power supply, and of course the cell repeater and a few routers.

Which left her with not a whole lot to do.

Being bored in the van was usually not an issue. There was always something going on. Facial rec, recording the op, tweaking the coms for optimal distance or clarity. Her only meaningful task now was to record their locations, which was happening quite automatically, and she mentally planned how she was going to jigsaw all the equipment back into the shipping crate about four times before she couldn't take it anymore.

Just like Mac had predicted, the real news techs soon emerged from their own toasty vans, waiting, like she was, for something to happen. Nikki killed about forty-five minutes talking shop with a guy from Reuters, and learned that Connie in Eastern Europe was actually still seeing Troy from Central Europe, even though the ops director had intentionally split them up - out of more than professional jealousy, if she knew what he meant - and the whole thing had put a crapper on what should have been Adam's whopper of a front pager. She explained that she usually covered South America, and they had plenty of drama of their own. The ZNN guy eventually wandered over to their patch of shade, which Nikki was grateful to see really did seem to center on her van, and they eventually started a pros and cons list of the latest parabolic mics from Klover and Jony.

When her watch timer finally vibrated, Nikki excused herself and climbed back into the van, which was still uncomfortably stuffy, but not dangerously warm. The equipment was operating within parameters, and the green dots she'd been watching on her mobile were en route to their second of three locations. The morning's coffee had finally filtered through, and Nikki glanced out the windshield, wondering which direction was most likely to have publicly accessible restrooms.

A notification chimed, and Nikki glanced back. It was her laptop, showing a new device connection.

Frowning, Nikki toggled over and pulled it up. It was the list of devices she'd amassed at the auction. All Farhad's SMS and calls were getting cloned to her mobile device, but only when he was connected to wifi, and he'd been quiet for hours – she assumed he was on the road, headed to Cairo. It wasn't his phone that was flashing.

It was a new device. It had connected via her old mobile.

The one that Mac had tossed into the snake pit. That had later been lit on fire and then blown up.

Nikki clicked on the new device, checking the OS. It was a Solaris.

She'd finally gotten a connection to Zoheir's phone.

Nikki checked the timestamp on the log, and found that she'd actually completed the hack hours ago – the two devices had only now re-connected to wifi. A slew of SMS messages started uploading, and she sent them through a translation program, skimming them. A lot of instructions related to the lost warehouse. Communications she'd already seen from Farhad's phone, related to meeting Zoheir's man in Cairo for the exchange, and confirming receipt of the cash. She'd gotten the account info from Farhad's phone, but Nikki double-checked the messages, to see if Zoheir had already moved it to another account.

If he had, he hadn't done it via his mobile.

The Solaris said he was on the Red Sea, having just boarded a ferry bound for a port in Saudi Arabia, and it had auto connected to the ferry's wifi. Zoheir was fleeing the country.

Nikki pulled up a window and summarized all that in a text, sending it to both Jack and Mac. More SMS messages were coming in, but Nikki toggled over to her old mobile, checking on the battery. It had lasted way longer than she expected, even after the warehouse wifi went out –

The battery was at 100%. And the phone was unlocked.

Nikki disconnected it with a single keystroke, and then she stared at her systems for a moment. Nothing seemed to happen, and she immediately checked the firewall logs. The only reason someone would have charged and unlocked the phone was to find them. They would have found the list of hacked devices, they would have seen the connection out to her laptop –

They would have seen it hours ago. When the phone was brought back online and finished hacking Zoheir's. And if they were capable enough to unlock her phone, they should have damn well seen what she was trying to do.

Which meant the SMS messages she'd just read had been faked. Maybe the GPS coordinates too. Zoheir wasn't on his way to Saudi Arabia. Nikki toggled back over to the ones she hadn't read yet. Confirmation that Zoheir's men hadn't been able to track the Americans. A reservation at a posh resort in Duba.

Which meant he'd either never left Egypt, or he'd headed in the opposite direction.

Raised voices outside the van drew her attention, and Nikki glanced out the windshield. The news van in front of hers – Al Bawaba – had its back doors open, and a red-faced tech was arguing with two police officers. A glance out the back window showed her that her pal from Reuters was getting similar treatment.

Someone banged on the side door, then tried the handle. It didn't open; Mac had obviously thought to lock it before he'd left. Nikki put the laptop into protected mode, which locked all the connected systems, and then very carefully leaned over and softly depressed the manual lock on the back doors. There was another authoritative knock on the side door, and then the van actually shook with the attempt to pull the sliding door open. She used the movement to disguise her own, heading over to the black packing crate. Without hesitation she pulled the lid off and curled up inside, letting the lid settle back into place above her.

They'd let her phone reconnect to the laptop to trace out where she was. And then Zoheir had dispatched his dirty cops to collect her. They knew she was connected to this wifi hotspot. They just didn't know which van she was in.

There was a brief silence, then a strange metallic scraping. It didn't last long; only a moment later she heard the lock pop up, and the sliding door was thrown open. Nikki didn't move a muscle, breathing silently through her mouth as two people piled into the van.

There was some muttering in Egyptian Arabic, and she heard them shuffle towards the equipment. There was some hammering on the keyboard, but these were clearly not the guys who had hacked her phone, and soon enough they broke off to contact someone on radio. The next sound she recognized definitively was the thunk of the power supply being shut off.

That was bad. The laptop had its own battery and would remain operational, but all the equipment connecting it to Mac and Jack had just been shut down. That meant no encryption and no masking. Every call and text they received from here on out would go directly to their phones over the normal Egyptian GSM network.

Worse, her old mobile had their numbers. Everything Zoheir needed to get a location on them.

Someone on the radio said something else, and the two cops moved back towards the sliding door. Nikki waited impatiently for the sound of their boots, hitting the pavement.

Instead, the lid of the crate was ripped off, and Nikki looked up slowly into the barrel of a gun.

And it struck her that Jack had really nailed this one on the head. She'd taken a page out of Indiana Jones, hiding in the crate like Marion had hidden in the hamper. And like Marion, she'd gotten caught.

And if memory served, the next thing that happened was the truck exploding.

-M-

"Now when he was a young man, he never thought he'd see, people stand in line to see the boy king -King Tut," and Jack snapped his fingers and spun to the beat, not missing the dirty look he received from his partner. It didn't deter him in the slightest. "How'd you get so funky? Funky Tut." He added the percussion, just in case Mac didn't know the tune, and threw up his hands, directing the sung question directly at the blond. "Did you do the monkey?"

Mac ignored him, rifling through another crate, and Jack moved into the bridge, striking his best 'walk like an Egyptian' pose. "Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia – King Tut." Jack raised his hands and clapped twice, throwing a little tango in with his hips.

Mac leaned up from the crate, glancing from his dance moves to his face. "Are you done?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah, I don't know the rest of the words. I do know he had a condo made of stona-" A line of figurines and statues caught his eye, and Jack headed towards them even as his partner sighed.

"Focus, Jack. We need to find this thing, alright?"

He was plenty focused. The last cup of Turkish coffee he'd tossed back had made sure of that. And they might as well have been in Hangar 51, considering all the Egyptian relics just lying around. Jack moved down the line of artifacts, noticing a distinct theme. "So I don't get it, what's the deal with all the cats?"

"Cats were known as mau." Mac came around the corner, looking over the same collection, and some of his irritation seemed to melt away. "They were sacred in ancient Egyptian civilizations. Some were known as gods and goddesses, actually."

Letting Mac nerd out was one of Jack's favorite ways to defuse him. Still, that was a crapload of cats. "One good dog would've taken care of all of that," he observed.

Mac pointed down the line of life-sized figures. "Anubis there, he was part dog."

Jack glanced over at a particularly ostentatious statue, his eyebrows shooting up. "Really." He stared at the gilded black man-doberman a moment, not really caring that Mac had already walked away. "That's one ugly mutt."

Anubis didn't respond, one way or the other, and Jack turned and followed his partner, finding Mac tossing packing straw carelessly over his head as he ripped through yet another box. They'd been doing that for literally hours, and outside of getting sweaty and filthy, they'd found nada.

This property wasn't even on the list; they'd searched all three of Zoheir's known buildings with no joy. Mac had happened to spot a shipping manifest on a couple of the larger crates at the last address, and that had led them here. It was more of a staging warehouse than anything else. They'd texted Nikki the address, but she was apparently still digging up information on the owner; she hadn't responded yet. Radio silence also meant Farhad hadn't been texted the actual meet address, which was a good thing in Jack's book. Farhad was probably still stuck in traffic, hours away. Still, it meant yet more real estate to toss, and the only real action Jack had seen all morning was taking out the single, obviously dirty police officer guarding this joint and tying him to a support column.

The guy hadn't even had the common decency to be armed.

Since Mac seemed to have the next couple crates handled, Jack continued down the aisle, lighting up when he saw a huge, colorfully painted sarcophagus. He pulled it open, surprised to find it actually had an occupant.

"Whoa . . . oh hohoho," he chuckled, and then he grabbed the mummy by its neck and tipped it out of the sarcophagus to look at his partner. ". . . Mac?"

The blond glanced up, then visibly flinched, and Jack couldn't help himself.

"My mummy thinks you're hot."

Mac was not amused. "Stop it," he snapped in a half whisper, stalking towards them. "It's three thousand years old!"

Jack made a face. "Oh, so what." Just because something was old didn't make it valuable, in Jack's book. He glanced back at the mummy, whose mouth was permanently affixed open, and shook it a little, animating it like a puppet. He made his voice a painful croak.

"Mummy, can my friend come over for dinner?" He pinched the mummy's mouth, trying to get it to smile, and Mac gave him a flat look.

"Put it back"

Jack frowned at him, but dutifully stuffed it back into the sarcophagus. "Okay, fine."

Party pooper.

He didn't say it out loud – he was pretty sure – but Mac seemed to hear it.

"Glad you can find the humor in this." He gestured at the warehouse in general, then gave up and turned around in disgust. "Like being on a mission with an eight year old," he continued, muttering to himself as he walked away.

"Well of course I'm gonna find the humor in it, bro." He gestured at their surroundings. "What, would you rather me be curled up in the corner in the fetal position soilin' my adult diapers?"

His partner didn't respond, and Jack turned in time to see that Mac had fixated on what looked like a much older crate, covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs and in a very familiar shape. Kinda reminded him of-

Oh hell no.

Any feelings of good humor evaporated into the noon heat, and Jack hurried to catch up. "Now, wait a second, Mac . . . Mac!" Annoyed blue eyes turned his way, and Jack held up an apologetic hand. "Don't . . . don't touch this one, okay?" He dropped his hand to his partner's dusty shoulder. "It looks like the Ark of the Covenant."

The moment it came out of his mouth, he knew what it sounded like, and it was pretty clear Mac wasn't taking him seriously, because he huffed out a sigh and continued towards it like a five year old who had just been told not to stick his hand in the fireplace.

Jack tightened his grip on Mac's shoulder. "No. Seriously. I don't want my face to melt off."

Mac was unimpressed, inspecting the lid of the crate. He found an opening and got a few fingers under it. "Look away," he suggested simply, and then yanked.

Jack barely had time to get his eyes closed before he heard nails creaking and wood splintering. "Well, it's your funeral-"

He turned his face away and backed up, just in case the closed eyes alone wouldn't cut it, and he couldn't help a flinch as the wooden lid hit the concrete floor with a loud crash. There was a brief and terrible silence.

Just like in Raiders of the Lost Ark, before the pretty ladies popped out and then turned into face-eating demons.

When Mac finally spoke, it was barely above a whisper. "Nope . . . it's all our funerals."

Jack dared to crack an eye open, and when he was sure there was no wind or ghosts visible, he joined Mac beside the crate, peering in. And saw something that was nearly as bad as face-melting lightning.

"Ooh, yahtzee."

His partner silently agreed, inspecting what was, in Jack's opinion, a very intimidating looking bomb. The board and timer were prominently displayed in the center of the device atop what looked like a square foot sheet of C4 and a hundred pound bag of fertilizer. Jack had no doubt there were several more, under the packing straw. There were four tanks nestled in the corners of the crate, chained closed, connected by red and yellow wires. Radiation and toxic chemical warning stickers covered them.

"Dirty bomb. Just like Thornton said."

Jack stared at the timer, relieved to see that it appeared unlit, and then almost jumped out of his skin as a series of beeps shattered the silence. Beside him, Mac flinched as well, but by then they'd both realized it was just the default ring tone of the phone Nikki had given Mac.

Jack put a hand to his chest, physically restraining his pounding heart, and looked back into the crate, just to be absolutely sure they hadn't activated the bomb. Beside him, Mac fished the phone out of his back pocket and glared at the caller ID.

"It's . . . Bozer."

Jack glanced at him. "That's like the fifth time he's called."

"Yeah, I know." Mac frowned, continuing to stare at the ringing phone.

Jack blinked at him, and it rang again. "Well, answer it! It might be important."

Mac's eyebrows bunched. "And . . . this isn't?" He gestured at the bomb – which appeared to be totally unaffected by the noise – and Jack was about to withdraw the suggestion when his partner relented.

"You might be right. It's a video call." Mac spun, surveying the aisle, and then headed briskly towards the front of the building. "I need to go find a background that doesn't look like I'm inside of a . . . well, wherever we are-"

Jack watched him go, then realized that left him standing next to a giant radioactive bomb. He took off after Mac, who was still muttering to himself, and watched as the younger man put his back to a very tall and mostly unlabeled crate. Since there was no reason for Jack to be anywhere near Mac right now, given that Jack hadn't gone to the energy conference Bozer thought Mac was attending, he continued to the front wall of the building, peeking through the dusty windows to make sure there wasn't a patrolling cop they'd missed.

Bits and pieces of the conversation floated over to him.

"Hey man." Jack almost chuckled at Mac's attempt at casual.

"Mac." Boze did not sound happy. "'Bout time you picked up. You have any idea how late I am for work?"

"Any chance that, uh, this can wait, and I can call you back?"

"You forgettin' something?" Apparently the answer was no. Jack moved on to the next set of windows, checking the main road.

"Boze, I'm, uh, I'm busy right now-"

"And so am I, man. And it was your turn to buy the Honey Nut Cheerios."

The chuckle had turned into a fond grin – Jack really did love that kid – and he was about to move to the adjoining wall when motion in the near distance caught his eye. Two vehicles – no, three, coming around the guardpost. Moving fast. A quick headcount showed all three were full, and what looked like the barrels of AKs were silhouetted against the back glass.

The guy in the front passenger seat was the spitting image of the photo DXS had sent them last night.

Mac didn't seem to hear them, and Jack wasted no time in heading back towards him.

"Ooh, yep. I, uhm, I forgot to do that. I'm . . . I'm sorry. I'll do that as soon as I get back from . . . Cleveland-"

Bozer was still talking, and Jack came around the corner, frantically making cut-off gestures. Mac glanced between him and the phone a few seconds, then gave up and put it against his stomach as tires crunched through gravel.

Jack kept his voice low. "Cut it off, man. Farhad's men found us."

"What? How?!"

Car doors opening – and automatic weapons being racked – drew their attention to the front of the building. Jack gave them ten seconds, tops, before men were going to be pouring through the main door. His hand almost went to the small of his back before he remembered that he was unarmed.

Repelling these guys was not an option.

"I dunno." His eyes fell on the phone, still pressed to Mac's stomach. "They musta tracked your cellphone-"

Mac glanced at it, keeping his thumb over the camera and mic. "I . . . thought Nikki was blocking our signal!"

So had he. Still, it was the only thing that made sense. Mac had torn the manifest off the crates when they'd left Zoheir's warehouse, so there hadn't been a copy for Farhad to find, and Nikki hadn't texted, which meant Zoheir hadn't tipped Farhad off. "Well . . . you thought wrong. I'm hidin', I suggest you do the same."

He took off immediately, hearing Mac stutter through a promise to call Bozer back, and as soon as the kid passed him, Jack ducked into the sarcophagus and closed his eyes. If he could get one of these guys alone, he could get himself a weapon, and start evening their odds -

Jack didn't see where Mac ended up, but it was only seconds before the door crashed open, and he lost count of the pairs of footsteps after the sixth or seventh entered. The men were shouting in Arabic, Jack picked up a word here and there but it was nothing he couldn't have guessed from context.

Spread out and find them.

Jack opened his eyes to find the mummy seeming to stare at him, her mouth in a comically round 'oh,' and he put a finger to her lips, silently hushing her. At least three guys passed, he could see them in the narrow space between the front and back parts of the sarcophagus, and despite the fact that neither he nor the mummy made a sound, soon enough a man edged around the other side of the sarcophagus, rifle at the ready.

He shouted something in Arabic – twice – and Jack got the message, and gave the mummy an apologetic look as he was hauled out. Farhad wasn't actually far at all, sauntering up the aisle, and Jack was shoved to his knees about four feet from the man. The terrorist stared at him contemptuously, wiping the sweat from his face before casually drawing a nine mil from the holster on his right thigh.

There were two other guys one aisle away, rifles pointed right at him, and that wasn't counting the one behind him, who was just far enough away that Jack couldn't easily get a hand on the rifle's barrel. There was nowhere to go, and no way to get a weapon. The pistol was leveled at his face, and Jack winced and closed his eyes.

Farhad said something, it was clearly a question. Probably something like "Where's your partner?' or "How do I get to the airport?" Jack didn't have the answer to either – until it called out from behind him.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

-M-

Mac trundled the unwieldy crate towards them, pulling back hard against the trolley bar to stop it just a few feet from where Farhad had Jack kneeling, a gun to his head. Behind Farhad, a few more men appeared, rifles at the ready, and Mac didn't waste any time.

"You've got two options, Farhad." He held up a finger. "One – leave," and he made eye contact with a few of Farhad's men, trying to judge exactly how loyal they were going to end up being. "Or two-" and he raised a second finger, then gestured to the audibly active bomb, "- we all die."

He'd set the timer for sixty seconds, and they'd already burned through twenty of them.

Farhad stared at him, stunned, for so long that Mac really thought it was going to work. Then Farhad shifted his stance, and started to laugh. He didn't lower the pistol.

"Thank you, MacGyver. You just did our job for us." His English was accented, but very good, and his tone was sincere.

That . . . was not what he'd expected.

Mac hesitated, glancing again at the men around Farhad, looking for a sign, a tell, anything that would indicate they weren't all about to agree to commit suicide -

But Farhad sounded quite calm. "Our plan was always to detonate the bomb here in Cairo."

Jack, still on his knees with his hands raised, turned slowly and looked over his shoulder at Mac. His expression said it all. He knew it was a bluff. And he knew that it hadn't worked.

"All you've done is accelerated our clock."

It was almost noon. The streets were packed with protestors and citizens. If Farhad set off the bomb here, today, it would be catastrophic. Egypt was one of the most stable of the Middle Eastern countries, contaminating the capitol with radioactive fallout would compromise security across the entire region -

He knew the shock had shown on his face when Farhad smiled. "Unfortunately, you won't be alive to see the thousands of people you've killed with that bluff." A metallic click, way too close behind him, made him flinch, and Mac put up his hands automatically, doing the math. They were in the northern section of Cairo, prevailing winds were heading south from the Mediterranean Sea, the preliminary contamination area was going to be huge-

"With all the people in the streets, it'll have an even bigger impact than we could have imagined." Farhad gestured to the bomb with the pistol. "So perhaps this little uprising is good for something after all."

Mac saw his partner glance around himself, confirming that he had no play, and when Farhad brought the pistol back down to his head Mac saw him brace himself. But Farhad never looked at him, and he never fired. Instead, he locked eyes with him, and Mac let the timer count down from twelve.

When it hit zero, the bomb let out a loud, sustained beep, about three seconds, and then fell silent.

Nothing else happened.

Mac glanced down at it, eyebrows quirked. "Huh . . . I guess it was a dud."

The Bedouin behind him shuffled a few steps closer, and Mac glanced back up, into Farhad's startled brown eyes. "Or maybe Zoheir didn't feel like you paid him enough for a whole bomb."

The terrorist's face twisted, and he dealt Jack a vicious backhand, sending his partner to the floor, and out of Mac's field of vision. The pistol leveled at something near Farhad's feet, giving him a pretty good idea of where Jack had ended up.

"Then I suggest you fix it," Farhad spat. "Or you won't have a whole partner."

Mac left his hands raised and his expression mild. "Why would I do that? You're just going to kill us both anyway."

Farhad glared at him a moment more, then moved sharply, and Mac heard the strike, as well as his partner's grunt of pain. A small diameter tube of metal was shoved pointedly into his spine, and Mac stumbled forward half a step towards the crate, but didn't lower his hands.

The terrorist in front of him delivered another brutal kick, and Mac was secretly glad he couldn't actually see Jack. He was well aware the ex Delta operator knew how to take a hit, and was likely hamming it up to make them think he was hurting worse than he was, but he also knew Farhad wasn't pulling his punches. And he didn't really have a plan outside of refusing to fix the bomb.

Which was most likely going to result in a few very uncomfortable hours, followed by a bullet.

It didn't take Farhad long to decide his tactic wasn't going to work. He muttered something to one of his men, who moved in even closer to cover Jack, and then he holstered his pistol and exchanged it for his phone. He made a show of scrolling through his contacts before he selected one, and he gave Mac a quick smile and held up a finger, as if asking permission to be excused, before he turned his back on them and took a few steps away. The conversation was quiet and short, and he took the phone from his ear and hit the disconnect button very deliberately, as if it was the trigger for a bomb itself.

Nothing happened. Farhad's men didn't move. Nor did they so much as glance at one another, and Mac's stomach sank.

Not a one of them looked hesitant to die for their cause. There were at least a dozen men that he could see, and even if Farhad believed Jack was injured, Mac wasn't sure Jack could take down that many. And he sure as hell couldn't, not in a warehouse full of ceramics and gold. All he had was the bomb in front of him, which he couldn't very well set off –

Well, he couldn't allow the tanks containing the isotopes to explode, at any rate –

Mac flinched when his phone rang.

Farhad hadn't moved, still holding his mobile up in the air, back to them. "You should answer that," he advised quietly, and the phone rang again.

Haltingly, Mac pulled the phone from his pocket, well aware that the barrel of the rifle behind him was still actually touching his back. He held up the phone a little away from his body, just to make sure his guard could see it, and he glanced at the caller ID.

It wasn't Bozer, like he'd expected.

It was Nikki.

Mac swallowed down a little surge of panic, and made no move to answer it.

It rang twice more before Farhad turned, his expression triumphant. "So you do not care for her life either?" He shrugged, and made to redial his own phone.

MacGyver glared at the other man, then swiped to accept the call.

It was also a video call, and the background looked an awful lot like their van. Nikki was stuffed into the black crate they'd shipped their surveillance equipment in, gagged and handcuffed, and she glared up into the camera. Somewhere offscreen, a male voice started to chuckle, and said something in Arabic. Someone else laughed.

Mac disconnected.

It didn't change anything. He couldn't let them set off the bomb.

Farhad gave him a wide smile, and gestured broadly at the crate. "I think, for her sake, you should get started right away, MacGyver. After all, there are fates much worse than death."

He left the threat vague, but his meaning was quite clear, and Mac slowly lowered the phone back to his pocket, his mind racing. This complicated things significantly. Even if he could get himself and Jack out of this, the van was miles away. They had no hope of getting to her before the men who had her could simply drive away. If Farhad kept her, or worse, traded her back to Zoheir –

Farhad exhaled sharply, his patience clearly exhausted, and he once again drew his pistol. Mac had no illusions that he wouldn't actually use it this time.

"All right!" Mac snapped, then modulated his tone at the fury that flashed across Farhad's expression. "All right." He dug into his left pocket this time, coming up with his swiss army knife, which he held gingerly between two fingers as the rifle barrel pressed harder into his back.

Farhad gave his man a sharp nod, and the pressure vanished.

Mac glared at him another moment, then looked back down at the bomb.

Okay. He had a logic board, some ability to make sound, C4 and detonator, nitrogen-based fertilizer, and four tanks of strontium-90. Strontium-90 was a byproduct of fission reactions, and it produced a high penetration radiation and a lot of heat. Mac used the edge of the crate to pull up one of the sleeves of his linen shirt, and he placed his bared forearm almost directly over one of the tanks as he lowered his multi-tool towards the logic board.

No discernable heat. So the tanks held some kind of coolant and then an insulative gas, and the strontium-90 was likely submerged in a tube in the center. The stickers were mostly facing down, so he would be guessing what the coolant was, but the first thing that was going to come out of that tank valve would be whatever gas they were using to keep the coolant from affecting the metal exterior of the tanks.

The Egyptians – both the current society and their ancestors – were huge fans of theater. Egyptian Arabic was the most spoken form of Arabic in the world because of the popularity and power of Egyptian cinema. Like their descendants, ancient Egyptians had loved special effects. They had even created crude batteries – sometimes called Baghdad Batteries – to power smoke and steam effects on stage.

So it was only fitting, in a warehouse full of idols and apparently even an ancient Egyptian herself, to revert back to one of the literally oldest tricks in the book.

Mac carefully pried the processor off the logic board, ensuring that he broke every last pin as he did so. It was a simple component that any elementary school child could pick up for a few dollars at a Radio Shack – only Egyptians didn't have Radio Shacks, because it was a one stop shop for bomb components. He'd essentially rendered the logic board useless.

That done, Mac turned to the timer, which had its own built in processor, and set it back to its default of sixty minutes. When it beeped, Farhad approached, glancing into the crate after a cursory glare at the still-prone Jack.

"Set it for twenty minutes," he instructed, and Mac hesitated a long moment before he complied. The terrorist didn't seem to notice the missing component, and Mac then moved his hands down the red and yellow wires he'd disconnected from the tanks, miming re-attaching them.

He could hear the satisfaction in Farhad's voice. "This will give us just enough time to escape the blast radius. We will head north, to Alexandria, and let the winds carry this death throughout the whole of Egypt."

Good to know, Mac thought darkly, moving towards the valves on top of the closest tank. He frowned a little, as if struggling with something, and gave the valve a half-turn. White gas shot out of the top of the tank, with a piercing hiss and whistle, and Mac leaped back from the crate, eyes wide.

He locked eyes with Farhad, then dropped his swiss army knife and brought his hands to this throat. "S-strontium!" he gasped, then started choking, still backpeddling.

The Bedouin behind him let him, and Mac tripped over his own feet, exaggerating his wheezes even more as he fell. It took the men another few seconds to react.

Someone gave a shrill yell, in Arabic, and footsteps started thundering towards the exits. Mac collapsed fully onto his side, letting his body go limp and keeping his eyes fixed on a single point, and his guard stared at him in horror before turning tail. Farhad was screaming orders, but something cut him off, and there were two gunshots in rapid succession.

As soon as he was absolutely sure there were no eyes on him, Mac scrambled into a crouch and hurried around the side of the crate. Jack was up and had Farhad in a wrist lock, trying to force him to drop the gun. Most of his men had already shoved their way through the main door, and Mac leaned back into the crate, cranking down the valve to stop the argon gas leak.

The gun went off again before Jack managed to get the upper hand, and Mac heard a few punches land as he reclaimed his multitool and started on the chains. He pried out the joiners of the chains to the wooden sides of the crates, moving as quickly as he could, and he got two done before Jack was at his side, racking a rifle.

"Come on, dude, sooner or later they're gonna come back for their boss-"

"I know," Mac shot back, putting his weight into trying to pry the metal bracket off. "We can't take the whole bomb, but we've got to get these tanks off –"

He heard someone call out, in Arabic, but he didn't stop what he was doing until Jack tapped him forcefully on the back, twice.

"Mac, I said get your ass in there!"

The crate started moving away from him, and Mac grabbed the edge of it, then hopped up on the lip of the trolley bed as Jack started shoving it down the aisle. Jack drove the unwieldy thing about as well as anyone sprinting with a six hundred pound load could, and Mac clung to the side of the crate as Jack tried to corner it around a large black obelisk.

He heard more shouts, but he didn't pay any attention, and he finally got the fourth tank loose.

"Where am I takin' this?!"

Mac glanced up – they were nearing in the back of the warehouse, and a large set of garage doors were visible along the far wall. "There!" He wasted no time in lashing two of the tanks' chains together, and then started on the other two.

A bullet pinged by, fairly close, and Jack swore and returned fire, letting the trolley go. It bounced down the aisle, gradually losing speed, but it didn't matter. Mac shouldered one pair of tanks by its chain strap, and then hefted the second and hopped off, ducking between two stacks of crates.

He lost his footing and almost fell, bouncing off the crates, and his back reminded him that it still wasn't happy about the snake pit from the night before. Still, he managed to keep his feet, and he put his head down and ran for it. The tanks clanged against each other as they swung, he couldn't have made more noise if he'd tried, and Mac slipped to a stop at the personnel door beside the garage doors and tried the handle.

Unlocked.

He chanced a glance back into the warehouse, trying to get a bead on Jack, and two men appeared at the end of the aisle across from him. They were still forty yards away, but Mac knew he wasn't going to outrun them long with his unwieldy burden.

He heard a rifle crack that seemed to come from above, and the two men at the end of the aisle scattered.

Mac glanced back at the crate, which had come to a stop not far away, and the five hundred pounds of explosives he was leaving for them. All they really needed was a new logic board, and that was still a big enough payload to take down a large building.

Which was bad. Nothing compared to getting caught and giving them back the strontium.

But still bad.

Mac glanced at the door again, hesitating, and then he dropped the tanks as gently as he could, and headed back towards the trolley, one last time.

-M-

He had to actually start dragging the trolley away before Mac seemed to register the words, and the kid hopped on, still buried up to his armpits in the bomb. Jack shoved the thing for all the was worth, taking them as far from the front of the warehouse as possible.

Alarmed shouts had started back up – they'd finally realized it was just another bluff – and Jack squashed his annoyance with the blond who hadn't bothered to tell him it was all an act and his partner hadn't actually been dying of radiation poisoning right before his eyes. Instead, he tried to catch Mac's attention as he apparently finished his current task.

"Where am I takin' this?!" Damn thing had to weigh over a quarter ton, he was really hoping Mac was permanently disarming it, or rigging it to dispose of itself and they could just leave the stupid thing. Taking it would require a truck and about six more guys to get it loaded, and he was pretty sure Farhad's men weren't gonna volunteer.

Mac pointed with his swiss army knife at the loading dock. "There!" Then he was back in the crate.

Jack opened his mouth, to point out they had literally no hope of loading that crate in the amount of time they had left, and a bullet zipped by with a crack that told him it was just a little too close. Jack gave the trolley a hard shove, sending it and Mac further down the aisle, and he turned, firing off a quick burst to get himself to some cover.

All he had was what was left in the current mag, and the one spare he'd grabbed from Farhad. Normally protecting Mac was all about laying down cover fire, meaning blowing through ammo like it was M&Ms. Right now he had at least fourteen guys to manage, which mean basically a bullet apiece.

He needed height.

Jack glanced around, and a nearly perfect stairway of crates caught his attention. He climbed it carefully, making sure it was good and steady before he put himself twenty feet above concrete, but the crates were rock solid. It wasn't quite a bird's eye view, but it was good enough.

Good enough to see that what sounded like a whole damn orchestra of cowbells was Mac, sprinting for cover with four radioactive tanks hanging off his shoulders. The kid could not have drawn more attention if he'd tried.

Jack let Mac act as his distraction and he dropped four of Farhad's goons pretty quickly, starting with the nearest and working his way back. There was no flash suppressor on the AK, nor scope, and it was a powerful old girl. The rounds could chew through a layer of wooden crate without issue, and the iron sights seemed relatively accurate, but he knew he wasn't going to manage sniping targets any further than about thirty, maybe forty yards out.

Of course, it also meant they couldn't hit him.

Jack glanced around the environment, looking for anything that could help him out. Unfortunately, not much was hanging out near the ceiling. Crates that were stacked as high as his tower were pretty damn stable, it would take way more ammo than he had to chew through and destabilize the bottom boxes. He got another pair, who were too stupid to keep out of range, and then Jack quietly slipped back down, exchanging the nearly spent mag for a fresh one and helping himself to another spare from one of the bodies he passed.

The gunfire should be keeping the majority of the guys concentrated on him, and that was just how Jack wanted it. Whatever Mac was up to, hopefully he was able to pull it off on his own. Preferably without ringing the damn dinner bells.

Things quieted down a little as the game moved back to hide and seek. Jack blew through a couple rounds for the noise, then pulled back to the neighboring aisle, and he was able to draw out two more before he had to abandon the position. He was almost back to the aisle of cats before someone finally got the drop on him.

The guy came at him with a knife, silently, and only the tough as nails nylon strap on the AK saved him from getting his chest opened up. The slash still hurt, and Jack fell back, losing the rifle when the strap gave. He brought up his forearms to block a downward strike, and the guy drove them both back into the side of the sarcophagus, which nearly tipped over. Jack didn't have the angle, and his chest screamed as he tried to use sliced muscles. The best he could do was deflect the knife to his right, where it buried itself to the hilt in the mummy, and oddly, his opponent released it and stumbled back, his eyes wide.

Jack took full advantage and popped him in the nose, then followed it with right hook. He slipped a foot behind the guy and palmed his face, body slamming him headfirst into the floor.

He relieved the unconscious grunt of his pistol and turned to recover the rifle, and when he came back up, he was face to face with the mummy.

The knife was still there, sunk into her chest, and it had cut through enough of the ancient bandages that one of her curled arms had broken free. The dried up sinews had drawn the bony thing up towards her still-bandaged face, and one impossibly long finger had settled over her mouth, in a perfect mimicry of the hushing gesture he'd used not ten minutes ago. Dangling from the wizened hand was what looked like a necklace, bearing some kind of charm. It swung back and forth like a metronome, oddly hypnotic.

As he stared, the hand continued to shift, and the bony finger was gradually drawn from her open mouth to fall further away from her, as if the weight of the medallion was pulling it down. More of the ancient linen cracked, and the hand came to a sudden stop, pointing directly at Jack.

Behind him, there was the faintest hiss of dust grinding under a boot.

Jack dropped to a knee and whirled, firing blind, and the slug caught the guy high in the chest. It wasn't until he was falling that Jack realized there was another gunman behind him, and he brought the gun over but he knew he didn't have the time, the other guy was already squeezing the trigger –

The terrorist screamed, his shot going wide, and Jack put one in his shoulder before the man fell. He didn't stop screaming, dropping his gun to grab his left leg like it was on fire, and something the size of a small tomato shook off. For a second it seemed to roll around, but then it managed to get back to its feet, and the small amber scorpion scuttled back under a crate.

Jack gaped, too shocked to move until he heard another gunshot. It came from the far side of the warehouse.

Completely unnerved, he glanced back over his shoulder, and the mummy was still pointing in the same direction.

The direction of the loading dock.

He found himself nodding. "Yes ma'am," he croaked, and then he backpedaled, tripping over a body. He kept his feet, not terribly gracefully, and then he turned and high-tailed it for the back wall.

-M-

Mac flinched as the bullet struck the crate, sending splinters flying, but he didn't stop what he was doing. Without solder, he was relying on simple surface friction to keep the wires in place; if the crate took a good jostle, the whole thing was going to come apart, but –

He mashed the last wire as hard into the board as he could, then he dropped down, just in time for a bullet to rip through the wood he'd been leaning over not a second before. He was careful not to push off from the trolley at all, scrabbling for the relatively safety of the stacked crates to his right, and frankly he had no idea how the next bullet hadn't hit him.

MacGyver grabbed the two chain straps, shouldering the tanks as he moved, and he sprinted for the back door as fast as his legs could carry him. He burst through, into the hot afternoon sun, and squinted around himself for half a second before locating a forklift. It was the closest cover, and he'd taken about three steps towards it before the sand in front of him popped and danced, in time to the rapid gunfire from his right.

Mac staggered to a stop, the tanks clanging deafeningly together, and he squinted harder, making out the Bedouin approaching on his right. The same one that had been behind him in the warehouse, with the red and white kufiya, and the same AK-47. He shouted something that Mac didn't understand, and behind him, the warehouse door was thrown open. Mac took a couple deep breaths, then he turned around to face two more of Farhad's men.

They also shouted at him, making sharp gestures with their guns. Mac considered and discarded about six ideas before he let the tanks of strontium slide off his shoulders with muffled clangs. The only thing he needed now was a phone. The strontium was far enough away from the blast center that it wouldn't be successfully vaporized. This industrial area would be contaminated, but the majority of the city would be safe.

All he needed was one of them to approach him. Get close enough to get hold of a phone.

Or just wait for Bozer to call him back.

Mac slowly put up his hands, and the two gunmen stalked towards him.

He heard tires grinding through the sand and rocks but he didn't bother to look. Reinforcements didn't mean anything at this point. They were all way too close to the building, they'd be killed by secondary blast injuries and shrapnel.

Jack, if you're still in there, you gotta tell me, buddy.

Preferably without calling his cell.

The two men approached him more confidently, with the lion's share of their attention on the tanks rather than on him, and they were almost close enough when the Bedouin let out a startled yell. All three of them turned in time to see him bounce off the bumper of a news van, and Mac recovered himself first, lunging at the closest man and grabbing his AK. They fought over it briefly before Mac heard two shots, in rapid succession, and the man he was struggling with stiffened.

Mac let go of the rifle, and the gunman went down like a house of cards. He stared at him a second, then dragged his eyes back up to the warehouse. There were two bloody slashes across the front of Jack's black tee, but the fabric made it difficult to tell how bad. He was still upright, gun now trained back on the warehouse door, and the van ground to a stop not two feet away.

The driver was a very familiar figure, and Mac felt almost debilitating relief. He grabbed the two chain straps and hefted the tanks to the side door. He hadn't even gotten it open before another vehicle skidded into view, looping the same corner Nikki had.

"Jack!" Mac bellowed, tossing the tanks into the van before hopping in after them. The van didn't look much different than it had earlier that morning – the gear was still in place and everything, though it didn't appear to have power. He caught Nikki's eye in the rear view mirror. "You okay?"

She gave him a curt nod, letting Jack get around the front of the vehicle before applying the gas. Jack half sat, half fell into the van as it started to pick up speed, and Mac leaned over him and yanked the sliding door closed.

"Jack! Jack, you alright?"

His partner didn't respond.

Mac grabbed what the older agent often referred to as the 'oh shit' handle as Nikki fishtailed them around the far corner of the warehouse, back towards the street, and Jack slid gracelessly into the door. It didn't really seem to register to him, and Mac didn't like the stunned quality in his eyes one bit.

"Jack –"

Two fingers on his carotid found a fast but strong pulse, and Jack finally responded, pulling away a little and making some effort to brace himself against the door. He hadn't lost the shellshocked look, but he did finally blink and focus on him.

"I'm . . . fine," he said, but it sounded unsure, and Mac patted him down for the bullet wound he'd obviously missed. He didn't find one. The slash to his chest was going to need stitches, but where it should have been deepest there was no wound at all, his shirt was still intact. Belatedly Mac remembered that Jack had gotten hold of a rifle, it must have been the strap that saved him -

Confident that Jack wasn't going to bleed out in the back of the van, Mac fought his way to the front, where Nikki had just guided them back onto the main road. She'd passed several vehicles, and a quick glance at the side mirrors showed them coming back around quickly.

If they weren't Farhad's men, they were Zoheir's.

"Nikki, gimme your phone." If he thought about it, he'd lose his nerve. It was now or never.

She gave him a startled look, then glanced at the console, and he saw it poking up from the cupholders. "It's not encrypted, I lost the power supply-"

He grabbed it, entering the op's passcode to unlock it, and dialed his own phone number.

"Hang onto the wheel," he instructed grimly, eyes on the side mirrors.

It took longer than he would have thought for the call to connect. Without her hardware there in the middle, he figured it would be three seconds, to-

Mac saw the explosion a split second before he heard it, and the van skewed wildly to the side as the concussion caught them. Nikki yelped and let off the accelerator, trying desperately to keep them from tipping, and Mac grabbed the wheel as she nearly overcorrected. The van rocked onto two wheels, then swung to the opposite two before settling back onto all four with a terrific squeal, and the two of them got it leveled off and stable.

There was no sign of the two vehicles that had been pursuing them in the newly-cracked mirror.

His knees went funny, and Mac slithered to the floor of the van as Nikki gunned it.

"Mac, what-"

He dropped the phone – the call had auto disconnected – and rested his head against the side of the driver's seat, swallowing hard.

"I'm think I'm gonna be sick."

-M-

Twenty minutes of textbook defensive driving found them at a truck stop, nestled between two semis and invisible from the road. Despite his stomach's best efforts, Mac had in fact managed to keep his breakfast down, and he was putting the finishing touches on some improvised bandaging while Nikki was rifling through Jack's duffel for a clean shirt.

Or at least a cleaner one.

Jack grimaced a little when Mac pulled the wrap tight, and Mac winced in sympathy as he tied it off. "Sorry, big guy. How you doing?"

His partner took an experimental breath. "It's good," was all he said, and then reached out woodenly to accept the maroon shirt Nikki held out. He slipped it over his head, slowly, and Mac gave him another worried look before he turned his attention to Nikki. It had been invisible from his position before, but now that she was facing him, an angry red cut on the left corner of her mouth was starting to swell up, and he reached out and ran his thumb across it, very gently.

Her teeth and jaw felt fine, perfectly intact, and Nikki gave him a half smile and caught his hand with her own, leaning into his palm. "I'll live," she assured him.

Half an hour ago, he wouldn't have put money on it. "You're okay?"

She nodded gently into his hand. "All that practice with floor work really paid off."

Mac cast his mind back to her combat training. She was still working through the basics. Floor work had been about a month ago, all he'd really shown her was –

Was about five ways to kick a standing opponent in the balls.

Mac couldn't help a little smirk. "Told you that's all it'd take."

Her grin was still lopsided, but more genuine. "I actually already knew that." She finally pulled her face away from his hand, still holding it in her own, and glanced at the gap under the table where the power supply used to be. "Took me too long to get out of the handcuffs, so they got the power supply. Without it, I can't power the rigs."

Which meant no more encrypted communication. Her and Jack's mobiles were sitting on the table in pieces with their batteries removed, which meant Zoheir's techs could no longer use them to track them, but given how quickly he was able to deploy dirty cops to get to Nikki, they had to assume the majority of the Cairo police force was under his influence. And would be looking for the van.

They'd need a new set of wheels to get to exfil. And they had another six hours before the plane would be there, leaving them dangerously exposed.

"Hey." She squeezed his hand, gently. "I'm sorry."

Mac blinked, bringing himself back to the present, and gave her an inquiring look. "For what?"

"I . . . know how hard that must have been."

Just the thought of it made his gut roil, and Mac closed his eyes and took a deep breath. One hundred thousand square feet of Egyptian history – and a country that had had much of that history ransacked by the Europeans, and later, the Americans – and he had blown it all sky high. Not to mention the people that could have still been inside that warehouse, if any of them had still been alive –

"Hey." She patted his hand. "You couldn't leave that bomb for Farhad or Zoheir. You saved a lot of living Egyptians. That's worth way more, right?"

Mac opened his eyes, letting his gaze wander to the four tanks of strontium-90, sitting innocently in the black packing crate, to keep them from rolling around the van.

"We haven't saved them yet," he murmured. The mission had three parts, and so far they'd only completed one.

Farhad and Zoheir were still loose, and if he wasn't very much mistaken, still in Cairo. For both of them, losing the bomb and the isotope was nothing more than a setback. Zoheir would continue selling weapons, and if Farhad had survived the warehouse explosion, he would eventually find a way to buy or build his bomb. Unless they got all three, this would just repeat on some other day, in some other country.

They had no backup, no coms, no phones, very little tech, and whatever ammunition Jack still had on him. They were up against a metro police department and whatever was left of Farhad's army.

Whatever was troubling his partner, apparently his tone managed to cut through it, because Jack followed his gaze to the crate.

"What're you thinkin', Mac?" It was cautious.

He pushed himself to his feet, heading to the front of the van to pull out a map. "I'm thinking we have six hours to find and arrest Zoheir and Farhad. We need to get moving."

-M-

In hindsight, they should have bought a burner phone.

Behind him, he heard a quite sigh. "Well, good news, I've got enough wifi to tell you we're on the least congested route."

Mac craned his head around to see that Nikki had broken out her laptop, and was watching a traffic map. "Jack, you can take a right in three blocks, and that'll get us around the detour and into a less populated area."

He was pretty sure downtown Beijing was technically a less populated area than the one they were in now.

The silver Hyundai Verna that they had appropriated from the truck stop was one of at least three that Mac could see, so their plan of blending into the traffic to keep the Egyptian police off their trail would be working beautifully, if they were actually driving it instead of just sitting in it, and they weren't completely surrounded by crowds. Not only had most traffic in Cairo been detoured to the few main thoroughfares the Egyptian police and apparently military could secure, but it seemed a great deal of the foot traffic had been as well.

Every attempt to find a less direct route around the city had failed. They were exactly where he didn't want to be.

A cop was directing traffic, eyeing the cars, and Jack intentionally put a tan Audi between their license plate and the man as they passed through the intersection. His eyes were constantly on the mirrors, but you really had to know him to see it; otherwise, he looked like any other mildly annoyed American stuck in traffic, with his arm in the window, idly toying with his sunglasses.

And partially hiding his face from CCTV cameras.

Mac had opted for a ball cap, figuring his hair would be a dead giveaway, and Nikki had sacrificed her silk blouse to make a headscarf. Blond hair wasn't common in Egypt, and their pale skin already made them stand out enough. They were getting curious looks from pedestrians, but no more than any other American or European tourists they'd seen, and they had finally made it to the northwestern side of the city.

In less than two miles, they'd be out of the urban areas proper, and ten miles after that, it would be smooth sailing towards Alexandria.

Which meant it would be time to turn Jack's cellphone back on, send an SOS via text, and let Zoheir get a location on them.

Their odds of capturing Zoheir or Farhad in Cairo and actually hanging onto them were quite low. Both men would have a substantial advantage in men and resources. Mac wanted to put off the actual arrest until just a short while before exfil arrived, where the copilot at least would be able to give them a little support, and they'd have resources – pharmaceutical and otherwise – to keep them quiet long enough to get them back to DXS.

Once Zoheir got their fake SMS, he'd be suspicious, but he seemed like the kind of weapons dealer who held a grudge. And Farhad needed his strontium in the next few days if he wanted to take advantage of the protests. Mac was pretty sure they were attractive enough bait.

They just needed to get the hell out of Cairo.

Jack managed to creep forward another half block before traffic stopped him once again, and Mac watched him in his peripheral vision. Even in the late afternoon sun, he looked pale, and his skin was dry. Some of that was from the knife wounds, he was sure, and that was another reason Mac couldn't wait to get them to exfil. He knew his partner was in pain.

But there was something else. Something he wasn't willing to talk about, at least not in front of Nikki. Something had happened in that warehouse, and it had really shaken him.

Mac glanced over at him, trying to figure out a way to broach the subject without Nikki deciphering what they were talking about, and across the concrete barrier, a man in the back of a car heading in the opposite direction glanced over at the same moment.

And damned if it wasn't Chelem Farhad.

They stared at one another for a second, totally surprised, and Mac managed to open his mouth.

"Jack . . ."

Farhad, meanwhile, was silently screaming at his driver, and had picked up a gun.

"Jack!"

His partner followed his gaze, and seemed to snap back to the present. He threw the car in reverse, ramming it back into the car behind him as Farhad opened fire. Mac ducked, checking the back seat to make sure Nikki had followed suit, and Jack spun the wheel expertly, pointing the car towards the gap between the bumpers on their right as the windshield and side windows shattered. He managed to get the 1.6 liter engine to force its way between the two other cars, shoving them aside just enough, and Jack hopped the curb to the sidewalk at about fifteen miles an hour.

Fortunately the gunshots had attracted the attention of the pedestrians, and Jack got through them as quickly as he could, keeping as close to the street as possible to put their car between the civilians and Farhad's bullets. He took the side mirror off on a lamp post, and swerved to the right, taking them past a concrete barricade onto a street that had been cleared from vehicular use.

It was still full of pedestrians, and Jack laid on the horn, cutting through as quickly as he could. Mac's side view mirror was still intact, and he watched the street behind them for any sign of pursuit. They made it a block before the car stalled, and Jack let go of the wheel for a second, staring at the instrument panel in confusion.

"Crap, they must've hit something-"

Mac rolled down his window, sticking his head as far out as he could, and sure enough, there was a trail of liquid along the pavement behind them. It wasn't colored, and it had the consistency of water, which meant –

"They hit the fuel line," he announced grimly, and his eyes followed it back down the street to the concrete barrier. On the other side of it a figure appeared, holding what looked a whole lot like a rocket launcher.

It wouldn't do the job of a six hundred pound fertilizer bomb, but it sure as hell would disperse enough of the strontium to kill everyone in a five block radius.

"RPG!" he shouted, throwing open his door before he reached into the back and yanked the blanket off the strontium tanks, grabbing the first chain he could get ahold of. Nikki snagged the other, and they both dove out of the car. Jack had stepped out as well, trying to lay down cover fire, but there were simply too many people in the way.

And Farhad's man didn't care how many of them he killed.

Mac saw the rocket launch, but he was pulled up short by the second strontium tank, which was wedged between the driver and passenger seats. Mac yanked as hard as he could and the tank squeezed through, but it had slowed him enough that he didn't even make it to the edge of the sidewalk before the grenade impacted the Hyundai.

He felt the heat and the disorientation of being thrown, and Mac did his best to curl up and relax at the same time. He never let go of the chain, even when his right shoulder and his head found cement. He felt himself tumble a couple times before he threw out his arms to bring himself to a stop, and Mac blinked repeatedly, willing himself to remain conscious.

There was nothing but silence and a high-pitched buzz that was all too familiar, and Mac struggled to sit up. He'd been thrown into the doorway of a shop, and he still had the two tanks. One of them was spinning slightly as it jettisoned white gas.

Mac watched it a moment, unsure why that bothered him so much, and he brought a hand to his head. There was something stuck to it, he managed to peel it off and couldn't figure out why half a bloody ball cap was in his hand. Someone jumped into the doorway with him, shouting, and then raised and fired a gun. He barely heard it, but the muffled sound brought old memories to the surface, and more adrenaline dumped into his blood.

Mac took a deep breath, then tugged the leaking tank closer, off the sidewalk, so it wouldn't get hit again. Jack reached out for the chain and Mac let him take it, trying to pull himself up the brick wall to his feet. He heard the gun again, then someone grabbed him by his left arm and dragged him bodily into the shop.

The darker interior was soothing to his pounding skull, but there was no time to enjoy it. He could barely keep his feet under him as that hand inexorably hauled him forward, and it was only when they'd exploded back out into bright sunlight that Mac finally felt steady enough to shrug off Jack's hand.

They were in a narrow alley behind the line of shops, and he glanced down it just in time to see Nikki appear around the corner. She hesitated, then ran towards them, with the other two tanks of strontium. She'd chosen to tuck them under her arms, football style, but he could have sworn he could hear them clanging together.

It was an alarm, then, or a siren. It didn't matter.

All he had eyes for was the tank on Jack's back, that was no longer emitting gas.

Mac reached out and took it, sliding the chain off Jack's shoulder as he did so, and he dropped the tanks to the ground, tilting up the hole towards sunlight. It was a complete puncture, likely shrapnel from the grenade, and he had no idea whether or not the core of the tank had been breached. Liquid nitrogen wasn't pouring out, which was good, but he could already feel the chill coming through the walls of the tank, and that was definitely bad.

If it was just a crack, the liquid nitrogen might have already frozen water vapor and stopped a liquid leak. But it didn't mean radiation wasn't bleeding through. And the presence of hot, humid air would make that crack a whole lot worse, a whole lot faster.

Mac cast around, finally starting to pick out voices. Jack was shouting at him, asking a question. It was going to have to wait. He needed –

He needed something malleable and sticky, capable of making an airtight seal, to stuff in or cover the hole and slow down the exchange of outside air with the core of the tank.

Mac immediately rotated the tank so the puncture was pointing away from all of them, knowing if the core was cracked the radiation would be directional. That done, he cast around the alley. Almost unbelievably, there wasn't a dumpster or trash can in sight. It was clearly a place people would come to smoke, there were a few cigarette butts here and there –

And a piece of green chewing gum, stuck to the outside of the doorframe.

Without hesitation he pried it free and popped it into his mouth. Whatever Jack was saying, the disgust on his face was clear enough, and Mac chewed it quickly, pulling a piece of the wooden doorframe free as well. As soon as the gum was soft enough, Mac spat it into his hand and pressed it onto the flat end of the stick of wood. Then he used the wood to carefully roll the wad of gum onto the tank and the hole, mashing down the edges as well as he could.

"-thing leakin' radiation?!"

"I don't know," Mac answered the question he thought had been asked, leaning back up and fighting a sudden wave of lightheadedness. "Point it – not at people."

"We gotta go," Nikki called, in a tone that made him think she had said it repeatedly, and Mac reached out to take the tank. Jack beat him to it, wrapping the chain around the back of his neck so the tanks hung in front of him. He put the damaged one under his left arm, pointing the gum a little to the left rather than directly in front of him, and let the other one dangle where it wouldn't interfere with his shooting hand.

The front of his maroon shirt was stained, though whether from blood or sweat, Mac couldn't tell.

Jack said something to Nikki that Mac couldn't quite catch, and she nodded and took off, back the way she'd come. Jack glanced at him and Mac answered by breaking into a jog and following Nikki. His hearing was getting better by the second, it was good enough to make out the gunfire that greeted Nikki as she sprinted across the street, and Jack's return fire covering them as he followed.

She'd been the last one of them looking at a map, and she ran like she had a destination in mind.

She kept them to the narrow shop alleys as much as she could, out of the main roads to avoid people and force Farhad's men to go it on foot. Once the shops ended, however, it became the back alleys behind residences, and they dodged around clothing lines and plastic chairs. When they came out on the next street, Mac saw that she'd taken them to an area that was under development. Fewer people, fewer cameras.

He looked up and down the street. Condos were being built, which would give them ample places to hide, and –

And a hotel, in the final stages of construction, not two hundred yards away.

A concrete pool and seven feet of water would do a lot to keep any leaks from the strontium-90 contained.

"Over here."

Unfortunately for them, this street was open to vehicular traffic, and Mac wasn't sure if the tire screeching he heard meant they had been pursued, or that Jack had almost gotten hit. There were actual construction workers in the hotel lobby as he bolted through, but not as many as he'd initially feared, and Mac and Nikki popped out of the back into the landscaped garden area, where teams were pouring the concrete for the large, lagoon-shaped pool.

That wasn't finished, and didn't contain any water.

. . . though it could contain something a lot better . . .

Jack finally joined them, a little out of breath and taking special care to keep his left side pointed anywhere but at them. Mac gestured for Jack to hand off the tanks to Nikki.

"Deepest end, get 'em in there, keep the hole pointed away from you," he instructed her, and then he patted Jack's shoulder and started for the concrete mixer at a run.

The mixer was industrial size, and the angle of the tank said it was nearly full. It was also being manned by a six guy crew, all of whom began shouting in alarm as he approached. Mac didn't even try to reassure them. He just fished his swiss army knife out of his pocket and selected the cigar cutter, then threw open the maintenance cover on the back of the truck, trying to locate the hydraulic hose that controlled the tilt of the cement tank.

Someone put a hand on his right shoulder and a surprising amount of pain shot down his arm, almost making him drop the tool. The pressure was gone instantly – Jack – and Mac yanked a series of thick black hoses into better view. Truck suspension, tank rotation –

Tank cant.

He put the cigar cutters as far around the hose as they could get, angled the hose away, and squeezed. The tool cut through the rubber easily. Hot hydraulic fluid shot out in a high-pressure spray into the bowels of the tank engine, but he knew it didn't matter. He ran to the end of the mixer and grabbed the chute, noticing the crew had all backed off – Jack – and slurry began pouring down the chute as the mixer slowly began to tip.

Mac shoved the chute as far towards the deep end of the pool as he could get it before he backed off. The slurry began spilling faster than the chute could move it, but all the cement was still making it into the pool, and he watched with satisfaction as the liquid cement rolled over like an ocean wave in slow motion, engulfing the four tanks of strontium-90.

As soon as they were completely submerged, and he could tell that they'd be buried at least four feet in cement, Mac looked up to find Jack putting his hands in the air. Across the pool from him, Nikki was doing the same. Four or five men with assault rifles and very familiar uniforms were pouring into the garden, and Mac followed suit as a member of the Egyptian police circled the slowly filling pool, rifle trained on him.

-M-

MacGyver didn't remember much of the ride to the precinct. The interior of the military-style transport was dark, like the transports he used to take in Afghanistan, and two of the officers rode in the back with them, on opposite ends, so there was no point in picking or breaking the handcuffs. He used the time to rest, eyes closed against a throbbing headache, and he knew he was probably worrying Jack and Nikki both but he didn't have the energy to reassure them. They were just as likely to be taken to one of Zoheir's properties as an actual police station, and either way they were in deep shit.

Zoheir would have to wait until the concrete set to excavate the strontium, but hopefully he'd take a Geiger counter with him when he did it, and realize how bad of an idea that was going to be.

The transport trundled over something large with a deep metallic clang – probably traffic spikes – and slowed, making a series of turns before shuddering to a stop, then backing up. They bounced off something that had a little give, then the motor turned off, and the officers pulled open the doors to reveal what looked like a loading dock. Everything was in Arabic, but it was all labeled, and when his handcuffs were released from the bar beneath his seat MacGyver got to his feet obediently and was guided out into a much cooler space.

A fleet of police cars were parked in neat rows behind them, but Mac couldn't quite locate the exit of the underground parking structure before he was hauled through a set of secure double doors. They were led around a few corners, past a room full of shouting people he assumed was central processing, and Mac's stomach sank when the next turn led to a heavy, locked door. It was opened by a swarthy gentleman who looked at him as if Mac had been personally responsible for getting his birthday cancelled, and then he was led beyond that, into a room full of very small, barred cells.

They were each given their own, which contained nothing more than bars for walls and a hole in the floor. A fourth man entered, handing off a clipboard to the swarthy guard, and spoke in English.

"Do you have any weapons?"

They'd been patted down before they'd been loaded into the transport, and his swiss army knife and passport had already been confiscated, so Mac just shook his head. The officer came in and patted him down anyway, very thoroughly. He wasn't gentle, finding injuries from the blast that Mac hadn't actually noticed earlier, and he couldn't help a grunt of pain when the man encountered the road rash on his right shoulder.

"Hey asshole-"

Mac shook his head sharply at Jack, who was in the neighboring cell, as the officer stopped and gave his partner a deadly look. Jack returned it three fold, though he said nothing else, and the guard gave him another glare before he continued his brusque examination. The cop grabbed his jaw and wrenched his head to the left, apparently getting a look at the back of his skull, and then muttered something in Arabic and shoved him back, away from the door.

He withdrew from the cell, leaving him in the handcuffs, and the door slid shut with a bang.

Directly across from him, Nikki flashed him a lopsided little smile, and then her eyes shifted to the officer, who looked her up and down.

"You lay a hand on her, you'll never get it back."

Even if not every man there spoke English, the tone of Jack's voice alone was enough to attract the attention of everyone in the room. The swarthy guard at the door actually put a hand to his holstered pistol.

The officer snorted, unhurriedly giving her another head to toe visual examination, and then he turned back to them, this time facing Jack.

"We have sent for a female officer." It was dismissive. "Step back."

Jack was standing right up against the bars, using his three extra inches of height and sheer fury to block the door. When he didn't move back, Mac shuffled his feet, trying to draw their attention.

"Ethan," he warned. If these cops weren't completely under Zoheir's thumb, they could use a friend, and frankly cooperation couldn't really hurt them at this point. "They're just doing their jobs."

The officer wasn't willing to wait. He pulled his sidearm. "Step back," he repeated, in the same even tone, and two other officers in the room followed his lead.

Mac glared daggers at Jack, and he grudgingly capitulated, allowing the officer into the cell. The Egyptian put his pistol back in its holster, though his two colleagues advanced towards the cell as backup, and then he started patting Jack down, without any trace of trepidation.

He was just as thorough with Jack, and no more gentle, and Mac was a little surprised when he paused, then reached into Jack's back pocket. Surely they'd already found his passport –

He withdrew something on a string, but Mac couldn't see what it was. The officer held it in his hand a moment, studying it, and then came back around to Jack's front, and held it up. It looked like some kind of medallion on a leather cord.

"Where did you acquire this?"

If he hadn't been standing right next to him, Mac would have sworn that someone had just shot Jack in the gut. The protective fury he'd been projecting evaporated. He actually took a step back, almost shrinking from it, and his wide eyes slid away from the medallion like he couldn't bear to even look at it.

"I said, where did you get this?" The officer seemed to be enjoying Jack's obvious discomfort, studying the medallion in his hand. "This is a burial charm. It's worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Sale of these types of artifacts is strictly controlled, and you would have been issued a receipt for Customs." He looked back up at Jack.

"Where is it?"

Mac did his level best to keep his expression neutral. It was much harder than it should have been.

Surely Jack hadn't –

Is that why he was acting so strange? Guilt? He was looking at that medallion the same way he'd looked at the cobra last night.

Jack didn't say a word, and Mac watched the muscles shift along his jaw.

"We'll just have to add smuggling to your charges," the officer concluded, palming the medallion. He withdrew from the cell, his colleagues still with weapons trained on Jack, and the cell door banged closed.

The female officer arrived, and while her headscarf was confiscated, Nikki was handled with a bit more care, and declared clean of any contraband. The officers withdrew, murmuring in Arabic, and after a few moments in conference, filed out of the door. It closed with a heavy thud, and then the lock clunked.

At least they'd have a little warning before anyone came back in.

Mac glanced at the corners of the room, not spotting any cameras – which was both good and bad - and then stepped over to the bars, as close to Jack as he could get. "What the hell was that?" he whispered.

Jack shook his head emphatically, his lips pressed together.

"Jack . . ."

When his partner finally turned to look at him, Mac couldn't decipher his expression. It was a cross between guilt – and there was plenty of it – and apprehension. Almost fear.

Mac closed his eyes and took a deep, slow breath. "Tell me you didn't take that from the warehouse." All the times Jack had joked about 'hazard pay,' Mac had never taken him seriously. Jack was one of the most upstanding guys he knew -

"I didn't!" Jack's voice was no louder. "I swear to you, I didn't touch the damn thing! I-"

But then Jack broke off with a shake of his head, and paced restlessly to the other end of the cell.

And that wasn't good enough. "Then how exactly did it get into your back pocket?"

"I don't know!" It was hissed. "Last time I saw it, it was hangin' in her hand-"

Mac sharpened his look. "Whose hand?"

But Jack shook his head again. "Uh-uh. Nope."

"Jack!"

"Look, dude, you wouldn't believe me even if I told you!" Jack came back to the bars, and there was open apology in his eyes. "If I say it out loud, then . . . " He broke off with a little whimper, then squeezed his eyes shut and continued shaking his head.

Mac stared at him incredulously. He'd seen his partner scared before. Sitting on top of a bomb hadn't been Jack's favorite moment. He wasn't all that eager to get shot in the face, either, mostly because he believed he'd somehow survive it and it would hurt a lot. In fact, the only things that really scared Jack Dalton were the threat of a painful death – which was still a very real possibility – and -

And things that didn't actually exist.

Mac closed his eyes and groaned.

Nikki apparently couldn't hear the entire conversation, and was tired of being left out. "What?" she whispered urgently.

Mac opened his eyes, meeting her blue ones between the bars. "Curse of the Pharaoh," he said simply.

Beside him, Jack made a loud shushing noise, and Nikki's disbelieving look moved from Mac to Jack.

"Are you kidding me?!"

Jack shook his handcuffed hands at her. "Don't talk about it! If it doesn't think we believe-"

"We don't," Mac broke in, almost forgetting to whisper.

"-and then you had to go and blow her up!" Jack turned the raised hands on him. "Like I hadn't pissed her off enough!"

Mac felt his eyebrows raise. "Wait . . . so you're saying this is my fault?! That I stuffed a priceless relic down your pants?!"

Jack let out a frustrated cry, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. "I don't know what I'm sayin', man, I just don't want my face to melt off-"

There was noise outside the main door, a key slipping into the lock. "Pretty sure they're just gonna shoot us," Mac muttered, stepping back towards the middle of his cell as the door was pushed open.

The officer that had frisked them walked in, accompanied by a man who was Jack's equal in height and presence. He was out of uniform; he'd ditched the navy canvas shirt for a black tee, and tattoos covered his upper arms in sophisticated rings. He was wearing a black canvas holster on his thigh, rather than leather, which told Mac he was part of a tactical team.

So not bullets. Broken necks instead.

Jack had dropped his hands and attempted to put his game face back on, and the tac officer spared him a second look before he relieved the other officer of the clipboard. He said something in Arabic. It sounded offhand, not at all angry, and the officer looked at him quizzically, and asked him something.

The tac officer didn't repeat it, and after a moment his colleague gave him a formal nod, then left the room, pulling the door closed behind him. The lock clunked again, and for a long moment, the room of cells was perfectly silent.

Eventually the tac officer flipped over the first page of the clipboard, apparently actually reading it, and Mac relaxed enough to take a step closer to the bars. When the Egyptian finally spoke, his English was impeccable.

"We have no record of you entering Egypt."

Mac glanced at Jack, trying to catch his attention, but his partner hadn't taken his eyes off the Egyptian, so he cleared his throat.

"I don't know what to tell you. Reuters handled that. There were a lot of us, and gear –"

"Yes, your van was found abandoned at a truck stop about fifteen kilometers from the site of an explosion, earlier today." The second piece of paper was flipped. "Did Reuters also arrange for you to steal alternate transportation?"

Cameras at the truck stop.

Mac fell silent.

"You passed through a toll booth on Route 50 around four o'clock this morning. Where were you coming from?"

When no one answered him, he looked up. His eyes were dark and smoky, rimmed with what looked like eyeliner. His gaze was oddly intent.

"I ask because there was a warehouse fire in Sharm El-Sheikh last night, and a van with a description matching yours was spotted fleeing the scene."

Mac met his eyes, saying nothing.

"Once your new, stolen vehicle was spotted by the local police at a detour, you burned it to destroy evidence, and then you were seen carrying tanks bearing hazard and radiation labels through the streets of Cairo, where you set off a radiation detector on Ard Al Lewa."

That answered the question of whether the tank of strontium had been cracked. Both he and Jack might have been exposed, potentially dangerously so-

The Egyptian dropped his eyes back to the clipboard. "With the police closing in on you, you then trespassed onto private property and assaulted laborers in an attempt to hide the remaining evidence." He then flipped the pieces of paper back, sharply, and tucked the clipboard under his arm. His expression hadn't really changed.

"You should know, we treat foreign terrorists as harshly as we do our own people. Do you have anything you would like to say?"

That was the story they were going to hand the US State Department, to justify detaining them under their covers as journalists. Mac had no doubt that the next step in this process would be them 'attempting to break out,' and the tac officer having no choice but to respond with deadly force. Without the strontium, they had nothing Zoheir wanted.

He held the man's gaze, still saying nothing, and the Egyptian gave him the slightest smile. Then he reached into his pocket, and withdrew something that crinkled slightly.

It was a plastic evidence bag, and there in the bottom was the medallion.

The tac officer strode forward, unhurriedly, until he was standing in front of Jack's cell. The same dark eyes came up to Jack's, but this time, his partner didn't flinch away from the charm. He didn't really pay it much attention at all. His posture was wary but not aggressive, and Mac couldn't pin down his expression.

"Who gave this to you?"

Jack stared him down.

The Egyptian let him, turning the evidence bag over in his hands. "It is a museum quality piece. I have never seen one in such pristine condition. Was it a gift?"

"I wouldn't call it that," Jack replied evenly.

The man glanced back up at his partner, and Mac didn't let his expression change. He trusted Jack, he did, but hoping he could outspook this guy with superstition was probably not a great plan –

"So you took it."

Jack gave him a long look. "Wouldn't say that either."

The Egyptian cocked his head to the side. "You are soon to die, American. Why not simply tell me how it came to be in your possession?"

Strangely, Jack gave him a broad grin. "Yeah, okay. You're right. That was us in Sharm. Your buddy Zoheir was holding an auction for a dirty bomb."

Across from him, in her cell, Nikki widened her eyes slightly, and Mac gave her a very subtle shake of his head.

"Oh?" The man's voice was oddly soft. "And you have proof of this?"

The crow's feet around his eyes deepened as Jack thought, and then he actually leaned to the side, making eye contact with Nikki.

She stared at him like he'd grown a third head, and the Egyptian turned, following Jack's gaze. Nikki glanced between the two of them uncertainly. "On my laptop," she managed.

Neither confirming nor denying that she still actually had the intelligence. Letting Jack decide how he wanted to play it. And of course, he'd say they still had it, and offer Zoheir the same trade they'd offered in the snake pit.

Then again, it hadn't been that successful the first time around -

"That the buyer, Chelem Farhad, just blew up with an RPG," Jack added darkly.

It took every bit of Mac's self-restraint not to react when he heard Jack say it, so cavalierly. Sure, it wasn't a great card, but it was literally the only one they had –

"That's unfortunate," the Egyptian observed, in his smooth voice.

"Nah." Jack didn't sound concerned. "Not like you'd be allowed to actually use it, even if we still had it. He's got his claws in deep, or you'd'a pried him loose a while back."

And Mac finally realized what the look on Jack's face was. Recognition. He recognized the man – or something about him, maybe his military affiliation, maybe something else. And he respected him. But Jack also wasn't truly sure this guy was actually on their side.

Jack didn't usually take on this role in their little team, and Mac decided to let it play out.

"Rest of the evidence is sittin' in five feet of cement in that pool. Best we could do on short notice."

The tac officer glanced back down at the medallion. "And this?"

Jack didn't even hesitate. "A mummy gave it to me."

Mac coughed. Hard. "He, uh, he got a little knocked around by the RPG, I think what he means is –"

"A mummy," the Egyptian repeated flatly, his eyes sliding back to Jack without blinking.

Jack nodded. "Yep."

The tac officer studied Jack for another long moment. "So you admit to being American agents. You accuse a powerful Egyptian citizen of domestic terrorism, yet you have no proof. You destroyed valuable properties in two different cities in under two days, including one that housed priceless Egyptian artifacts and history. You brought components to make a dirty bomb into Cairo, started a gunfight that caused mass panic, and exposed yourselves and others to potentially lethal doses of radiation."

And then he held up the baggie. "You admit to all of this, and yet you tell me that a mummy gave this to you."

Mac almost held his breath.

"Well, I mean, she held it out, but I didn't take it," Jack corrected. "Dunno how it ended up in my pocket. And we didn't start that gunfight," he added, almost as an afterthought.

The officer gave Jack another long look. It was difficult to tell what he was thinking, but he tucked the evidence bag back into his pocket, and then turned without another word and walked to the door. He rapped, twice, and the lock clunked. Without looking at any of them, or saying anything else, he pulled open the door. In another second it had closed behind him, and then they were alone.

Mac rounded on his partner. "Jack, are you kidding me?! A mummy gave it to me?!"

Jack shrugged, looking almost surprised that Mac was angry. "Yeah, it's cool, dude. He gets it."

Mac wanted to pull his hair out. If his head didn't hurt so badly, he might have given it a shot. "Jack!"

"Nah, man, remember how I told you me and the boys, we found those tombs out in the desert?" He wasn't whispering, and he nodded to Nikki, drawing her into the conversation. "We were there tryin' to infiltrate an enemy supply line. We came up out of those catacombs ass backwards, right up in the middle of a patrol. These two guys popped outta the sand like Terrians and helped us out. Once we established who we were, they gave us rock solid intel and we took the supply line that night. Those two disappeared back into the tombs, never even saw 'em leave. They had the same ink."

Jack tapped his right arm.

"We figured they were some kinda freedom fighters. Not fans of the Iraqi government, anyway. That's why I laugh every time we're watching The Mummy, and the magi pops up-"

"Medjai," Mac corrected reflexively.

"Trust me, Mac. That guy's on our side."

"Yeah, until you went off into Crazytown on him," Mac growled, heaving a sigh and putting his back against the bars. He flinched away when one of them pressed against his right shoulder a little too hard, then he eased himself over an inch to the right, which was a little more tolerable. "Ally or not, we just told him we've got nothing to offer."

Something tickled his hair, and Mac pulled his head away from the bars sharply. Behind him, Jack tsked.

"Looks like you're still bleedin' a little back here, bud-"

He shook his head in irritation, then leaned it back against the bars. "It's just an abrasion. It'll stop."

Less than ten minutes passed before the lock rattled again, and Mac leaned off the cool bars warily as the clipboard officer re-entered, along with his two colleagues.

Their demeanor had taken a one hundred and eighty degree turn. They were bearing evidence bags containing their passports and confiscated items – his swiss army knife, Nikki's headscarf, even Jack's pistol. They said very little, merely opening the cells and handing the bags over, and then one of them held out the smaller evidence bag, with the medallion, offering it to Jack.

Almost reverently.

Jack drew up his hands, still handcuffed, to his chest. "Uh-uh. That should . . . uh, stay here-"

The officer stared at him, either because he didn't understand English, or he didn't understand Jack's reaction.

Mac plastered on a smile. "Jack, take the bag," he growled through his teeth.

"Really don't think I should-"

When Jack took a step back, Mac widened his smile and stepped out of his cell. "Thank you," he said slowly, accepting the bag from the officer. He glanced between the two of them, clearly still not understanding, and Mac could empathize.

"I'll just carry this for him."

The officer gave a hesitant nod, still puzzled, and then started unlocking their handcuffs.

Once uncuffed, they were guided back out the way they had come. The central processing office was still a zoo, and Mac wondered how many of those Egyptians were the ones who had been shot at, or had a car careen past them on a sidewalk, or had their shop windows destroyed by a car exploding.

He also looked for any sign that they were simply being transferred from the precinct directly to Zoheir's custody.

The secured double doors opened into the parking garage, and there was no Audi, no men with rifles. No smirking arms dealer. Instead, there was a Hyundai Verna, white this time, sitting by the receiving dock. The tac officer was leaning casually against it.

Still wary, Mac followed Jack down the stairs, keeping himself between the tactical officer and Nikki. The man's smoky eyes flicked to him, and the small, amused smile reappeared.

Very much like the looks he used to get from Jack's old unit.

"Your agency, they will continue their interest in certain activities here?"

This time, Mac decided to take the lead. "Yes." While Nikki's laptop might have been a total loss, the actual intelligence still in their brains would be more than enough to justify raids on Zoheir's properties in Cairo and Sharm. As for Farhad, Mac had no doubt he was still legitimately on the CIA's radar.

"I hold you to that." The Egyptian leaned off the car. "You may take it where you will, but leave it inside the border. Do not return."

Nikki came up to his side, eyeing the vehicle. "To . . . Cairo?"

For Nikki, he had a wide, friendly smile that transformed his face from an intimidating ex-military operator into someone's husband, someone's father. "To Egypt," he corrected her. Then he turned to Jack, and his pleasant expression fell.

"You are cursed," he said simply. "To leave means you will not be welcomed back."

Jack stared at him a long second. "So, like, I can't take the Grail past the seal?"

If their Egyptian friend caught the reference, he didn't give it away. "The medallion was given to you. It is yours. It will protect you within these borders. And trust me, you need all the protection you can get."

And with those cryptic words, the officer strode past them, taking the stairs two at a time back into the precinct.

Mac glanced at Nikki and Jack, and without another word they silently piled into the car and fled.

-M-

"Dude, no. Uh-uh. We are not taking that thing with us!"

Mac let the medallion dangle from his hand by its leather cord, the stylized bird catching the light. "What, this?" he asked innocently, and offered it to Jack.

His partner looked like he was going to crawl over the back of his seat to get away from it. "C'mon, man, you're holding actual proof of what I been sayin' all these years-"

"Really." Nikki had chosen the bench that stretched along one wall of the DXS jet, which put her closest to a USB plug to charge a backup mobile. "Weren't you telling us just last night that the 'Curse of the Pharaoh' was made up to sell papers?"

"Well, yeah, that was!" His voice was plaintive. "But this ain't! You heard what he said! I'm cursed!"

Mac laughed and took the seat opposite Jack as the copilot closed and secured the side door. "The literal translation of curse, in Arabic, means oath. Not just the swearing kind," he added, in case Jack decided to suggest a few. "If you are cursed, then you've made an oath, or someone has made an oath to you."

"Yeah! An oath to curse my ass!"

Mac gave up with a chuckle, glancing at Nikki, who was looking at the two of them with a fond exasperation. "And speaking of your ass, I wanna know how you didn't notice some three thousand year old Egyptian chick goosing you."

Jack fixed her with a very stern look. "I was gettin' sliced and diced, thank you very much! If this is protection, fat lotta good . . ." But then he trailed off, with a troubled look, and Mac glanced at Jack's chest.

The stain on his maroon shirt was definitely blood.

"Take off your shirt," Mac instructed, getting back to his feet and heading for the first aid kit.

Nikki raised an eyebrow. "Wow. He's a lot nicer when he says that to me."

Mac pretended he hadn't heard, and knelt by the seats in the back, pulling the kit loose as the jet taxied.

"Yeah, well, just give it a couple years. Once he starts takin' you for granted, it's all downhill."

There was frankly no safe retort he could make, so Mac just set the canvas kit beside Jack's seat, fishing out alcohol pads and butterfly bandages.

Jack had not, in fact, removed his shirt, and Mac gave him a long look, slipping on a pair of nitrile treatment gloves. His partner stared at him a moment, then dredged up the beginnings of a dirty grin.

Mac could see where he was headed from a mile away. "How much do you want this to hurt?"

The grin subsided a little, and Jack quirked a brow in Nikki's direction. "See what I mean?"

MacGyver shook his head, and helped Jack untack the shirt from the improvised bandaging he'd done –

It seemed like a hell of a lot longer than six hours ago.

It wasn't the first time he'd cleaned Jack up from one injury or another, and Jack didn't seem to care that Nikki was there, but as soon as the tee shirt bandaging was off, she got up silently and padded to the back of the plane. He heard the bathroom door click quietly a few moments later.

"Hope she stays put back there," Jack muttered, hissing when Mac started cleaning the wounds. "We'll be takin' off any second."

"Not her first jet ride," he reminded his partner.

"Yeah, I know." His partner grit his teeth at a particularly strong stinging sensation, and Mac backed off with the alcohol pads to give him a second. Once Jack resumed breathing, Mac returned to it.

"Her first foreign jail cell, though."

That was true. Also her first getting captured and stuffed in a crate. And her first fleeing a gallery full of terrorists and murderers. Probably her first RPG.

"Our buddy there, he said somethin' that worries me a little."

Mac sat back on his heels, tossing the alcohol pads in the tiny trash can and opening a pack of butterfly closures. "For the last time, you're not cursed, Jack-"

"Nah, not that – but c'mon, even you gotta admit you're a little surprised you can't explain this away-"

Mac suppressed a grin. "Nothing surprises me; I'm a scientist."

Jack snorted. Loudly. "Yeah, well, science me this, Professor Jones – are we gonna start glowin'?"

Mac had no doubt the Egyptian tactical officer had been telling the truth. That they'd set off radiation detectors. He could almost remember hearing the alarm, thinking it was some kind of weird clanking. The shrapnel had cracked the core of the tank, if it hadn't ruptured it altogether.

"We'll be fine," he said softly.

Probably.

"Seriously though – are we . . . is it safe for her to be around us?"

That, at least, he was a little more sure about. "Yeah, for the same reason you don't become radioactive when you get an x-ray. Think of radiation like – light." Which was very much a form of radiation, but he knew Jack didn't care. "The core of the tank got cracked - probably a very small one. The light trapped inside can only shine out through the crack. So as long as you're not standing in front of it, you're fine."

Jack seemed to accept that explanation, and he only fidgeted the normal amount as Mac applied the butterfly closures. "Some of these are deep, man, you're gonna need real stitches-"

"Back atcha, brother," and Jack nodded his chin at Mac's head.

Honestly, he hadn't even really touched it. Nikki had used her headscarf as a handkerchief during the car ride to Alexandria, and pressure had eventually made it stop bleeding, which was good enough for him. He still hadn't actually checked himself for any other blast damage, but he figured if he'd picked up any serious injuries, they'd have made themselves known. Still, by tomorrow he was going to be too stiff and sore to even move.

"And that's not countin' the ass chewin' we're gonna get when we land."

Mac applied a strip of gauze over the butterfly bandages, standing so he could loop it around Jack's chest. "Yeah."

Yeah. That was gonna be awesome.

A soft chime rang through the cabin, letting them know take-off was imminent, and Mac braced himself and re-packed the first aid kit as they accelerated down the runway. Once they were truly airborne, and he felt stable enough, Mac moved to the back of the cabin, replacing the first aid kit and pulling Jack's go-bag from storage. He fished out a clean shirt and a couple aspirin and headed back, dropping into the seat beside his partner.

Silently, he offered the shirt, and Jack took it and slowly pulled it on.

"I don't take you for granted," Mac said, when Jack had struggled fully into the shirt. "I know that I'd be dead and that bomb would have gone off just like Farhad planned if you hadn't been there."

Jack gave him an odd look, accepting the pills and dry-swallowing them while he pulled at his close-fitting tee to get it to settle over the bandaging. "Aww, dude, don't go gettin' sappy on me now just 'cause we about headed up to that big ranch in the sky."

Mac shook his head. "Jack . . . we've cut it close before, but-"

His partner blew out a sigh. ". . . yeah."

But never like this.

He could have lost them both. Both Jack and Nikki. So many close calls. He'd made so many mistakes –

Too many.

He swallowed away the lump threatening to rise in his throat. Jack was right; he was getting sappy. " . . . thanks, man."

Jack looked at him, really looked, his brown eyes soft and serious. "Always." For a moment, neither said anything, then Jack started reclining his seat. Once he had it where he wanted it, he settled in. "'Sides, you're gonna smooth all this over with Patty, right?"

It was Mac's turn to snort. "Right. What do you think I should start with? That we don't have the strontium, Farhad, or Zoheir . . ?"

"Nah, I like the part where we framed the CIA – probably legitimately just blew a couple ops there. But taking an RPG with a car, right in the streets of Cairo, that's good too . . ."

"Oh, yeah," Mac agreed. "Yeah, but you know, the arson in Sharm, technically we could call that a win, I mean, we destroyed weapons that were certainly going to be used against civilians or foreign governments, so-"

"Yeah, but then we dumped radioactive waste in a pool –"

"A concrete pool," Mac defended. "That's really how we treat nuclear waste even when it's being disposed of properly."

There was a brief silence. "Really?"

Mac shrugged. "Well, it stays radioactive for ten thousand years, so yeah. We have to put it somewhere."

They chewed on that a moment. "So," Jack said finally, "We miss anything?"

"Well, we lost the van," Nikki murmured behind them, retaking her seat on the bench. Mac glanced over at her, but she looked about the same as she had before. The cut on the corner of her mouth looked a little better, and he wondered if she'd iced it. He nodded.

"Yeah, we did lose the van."

"Aaand . . ." and she winced sympathetically, "we kinda turned a museum's staging warehouse into a crater."

Mac closed his eyes with a groan. "Ugh. I still feel sick about that."

"Listen, bro, you did what you had to do."

Mac's eyes suddenly snapped open. "Shit. I forgot to call Bozer back."

Something moved in his peripheral vision, and Nikki was still smiling at him, waving the smartphone she had charging. "You might want to give it another couple hours. It's three in the morning back home."

"Yeah, Geekachu," Jack teased. "Sister, do me a favor and drag his ass back to the first aid kit, make sure his brains aren't leakin' out?"

Mac's initial thought was to protest, because if his scalp had finally stopped bleeding, poking around was going to make it start again, but then he remembered that concrete is not a terribly clean surface, and his right shoulder could probably use a little cleanup as well.

"We really do need to figure out our game plan with Director Thornton," he tried, one last time. "I'm not going to tell her that you got an ancient phoenix medallion slash get out of jail free card because a mummy handed it to you –"

Jack's eyes cracked back open. "How many times do I have to tell you? She offered it, but I declined, and then turned around and shot some guys, and she musta snuck it in there." And then the look turned suspicious. "And I don't want that damn thing, I never wanted that damn thing, you brought it on this plane, so it's yours now, you're welcome."

Mac gave his partner an amused look. ". . . that belongs in a museum."

Jack broke out into a broad grin. "If you say the next line, I'll slap that smirk right off your face."

"What happened to not poking the bear?" Nikki inquired politely, heading towards the back – and the first aid kit – and he knew there was no more putting it off. He was still smiling to himself as he followed her, and obediently took the seat Nikki indicated as she pulled the kit free.

Then it was her turn to smirk. "Take off your shirt."

He raised his eyebrows with a grin. "Yes ma'am."

The actual taking off of the shirt was a little more painful than he was expecting, and she made a face as she examined the back of his shoulder. "Ouch. Your skin looks like lasagna."

"Concrete's a lot more abrasive than it looks." She also donned treatment gloves – a little less suggestively than he expected, meaning his shoulder probably didn't look very good at all – and he spent the next few minutes being very uncomfortably reminded that he'd done the same to Jack moments ago.

"Well, good news, I don't think you need any stitches here . . ." She handed him a wide, square bandage, and he opened it for her, angling the paper so she could easily grab the contents. She pressed the bandage on carefully, and he had to admit, once there was no more air against it, it felt a little better.

"What about you? Anything else I should know about?"

"Mmm," she said, guiding his head down to look at his lap. Her fingers were very gentle as she smoothed back his hair. "Just the cut. Maybe a couple bruises. Looks like I got off easy again."

He leaned back, pulling his head free of her hands, and then he reached up and caught them, as well as her eyes. "Nikki . . . no you didn't."

She tilted her head. "Well, I'm not the one getting all bandaged up, now am I."

"Hey." He tugged at her hands, drawing her into the seat on the other side of him. "You were alone, without backup, against at least two armed men who were under orders to kill you. If that's your idea of 'getting off easy' I'd hate to see what you feel a real problem is."

Nikki's lips turned up, but he had no illusions it was a smile, and she looked away, at the floor. "You make it sound more impressive than it was-"

"I know how impressive it was. I've been there. I was terrified."

Her lips twisted. "I cannot imagine you terrified of anything."

He tilted his head, trying to catch her eyes. "What, you couldn't see my face when that video call connected?"

The twisted lips thinned. "Actually, you just looked pissed."

He almost laughed. "So did you."

Nikki did laugh, then, and finally look at him. "I was," she admitted. "Mostly at myself."

"You should be proud. I am." When she shook her head, he pulled her hands a little closer. "Look, I know you see us – really, Jack – getting into fights all the time, cracking jokes, but the only reason we do that is because anything else is . . ." He searched for the words. "You're either laughing or you're crying."

"Yeah, well, already did the latter half of that, so I guess I'm doing good."

"Yeah." He nudged her with a knee to get her eyes back. "You're doing great."

Nikki smiled at him, a real one this time, and then winced a little, and pulled a hand away to touch the cut on her lip. "This thing is pretty irritating though."

"Yeah, I think so too." He leaned in, and gently kissed the right corner of her mouth. "Tell you what, I'll work around it if you go easy on my shoulder."

Nikki drew herself up a little straighter. "Oh, not already a member of the Mile High Club?"

He pretended to think about it, and she pretended to wait for a response.

"Well you know," and he stood, drawing her up with him, "most people think that it's an effect of the lower air pressure in a typical jetliner cabins, but anyone who lives up in the mountains can tell you that's not it."

"No?"

He made a noise to the negative. "It's more likely the vibrations of the plane-"

But she didn't really seem to care, and suddenly the science didn't seem so important.

-M-

So I think that wraps us up. All canon clues covered. [Please see Day One/Baba Ganoush for the complete listing.] I know I'm a little late to the party when it comes to Cairo, but this is the version that will be referenced in the Turkey Day sequel.

(And I'm more than a little irritated that I couldn't find a good place to throw in "Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory." but Jack would NOT cooperate.)

Next up should be Jack and Matty's falling out. Somewhere in this mess will also be the first time Mac trusted Jack's brain, not just his aim, as well as the first time Mac's parents took him to the beach. And that should wrap us up!