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

7. Root Beer

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

Content Warnings: Some coarse language and descriptions of torture.

-M-

AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

There was something about it, some flavor to the pain that cut through everything else, and he knew it instantly, that it wasn't the bite of a bullet or a blade. He kicked out blindly with his left foot, sending sand flying as he squeezed off another two rounds, and only then did he dare to glance down, and caught just a glimpse of something brown and olive green taking off into the scraggily blackberry scrub behind him.

That was about the time Saito became unquestionably certain they were all going to die.

MacGyver was pinned down behind a sad little copse of trees, fiddling with his walkie talkie, and Akatsutsumi Saito whipped off his canvas belt, lashed it tightly around his left leg, just below the knee, and wasted another couple rounds keeping the shooters occupied before he got it tied off as tight as he dared.

Weaponless – and now com-less, since the walkie was in pieces – Dalton's partner was a sitting duck, and Saito weighed distances and odds before he cursed, then popped up out of cover. "MacGyver, go!"

The blond looked over at him in alarm, and Saito ducked back as the last two guys holding them off opened fire. He knew the analyst could see that he hadn't been hit, but Saito let out a cry anyway, letting the cartel boys fire a few more shots before they'd convinced themselves that they'd hit him, and would start advancing.

The analyst's eyes were wide, and his fingers started moving even faster. "I just need a few more seconds!" he hissed back, as loudly as he dared.

Saito gave him a furious shake of the head, then took his left hand off his pistol grip and pointed emphatically towards the Land Rover, about a hundred yards away, hidden by the hills and bramble.

Move out! he mouthed silently, and MacGyver frowned at him, and promptly went back to the walkie-talkie.

Saito swore again but the young man completely ignored him. Still muttering curses, this time in his mother tongue, Saito took a deep, cleansing breath, leaned out from around the thick post, and picked off the two figures, right there in the open on the dusty road. Neither managed to get off another shot.

MacGyver didn't even look up as Saito crossed the drive towards him, he just mashed the battery back into the half-trashed walkie and pressed the transmit button. The walkie emitted a high-frequency tone, and MacGyver winced and cranked down the volume on the device. Then he warily leaned out of his cover, his eyes on the convoy now almost half a klick away.

Saito followed his gaze, if only to determine how much of a head start the scumbags had, and unbelievably, two of the three cars veered wildly off the dirt road. The first one recovered, but the middle truck went right into the rainwater gully, slamming to a stop. MacGyver took off like a shot, right for it.

The Asian agent briefly considered winging the moron, but instead turned and loped for the Land Rover. By the time he made the door – and he didn't have the damn keys, Dalton had driven – his left calf was starting to cramp like it meant it. Venom was gonna turn it into soup, but he wasn't going to be around long enough to really experience that and he knew it. It took him less than ten seconds to hotwire the rover, and he whipped it around the hill until he had eyes on the convoy.

Losing one of the vehicles was predictably not enough. Dalton had taken advantage but the third vehicle had been unaffected, and he could see them muscling Jack back under control. His younger partner was a decent sprinter, but there'd been no chance. The convoy was back in motion before MacGyver could get within a hundred yards of it. They didn't even bother shooting at him.

Saito took the terrain as fast as the vehicle could, crunching to a halt behind the analyst, who had his hands on his knees as he gulped down air. Running in this heat was, remarkably, one of the least stupid things he'd done in the last hour, and Saito resisted the urge to cuff him on the back of the head as a gasping MacGyver clambered into the Land Rover.

"If you can get me – close enough to them – I can get a tracker on their vehicle-" He held something in his fist that was circuit board green, that Saito was fairly sure had once been inside the trashed walkie. Saito glared at him for a second, then got a rudimentary course on the convoy, threw the rover back into gear, and took off due east.

Not in the direction the convoy was retreating. With Jack Dalton still in their care.

MacGyver was only quiet a moment. "What are you doing-"

"They own the police and the territory parliament, or enough of it anyway." And of course Dalton had their only sat phone, and there were no cell towers anywhere nearby. This was going down in the middle of the Australian Outback for a reason. "Every shire, roadhouse, and hostel in this territory is compromised. I gotta get you to the Northern Territory, from there you can get a secure phone and get him some goddamn backup."

If Dalton lived that long. He was kind of a smartass. Saito wasn't sure how long it would take, and how patient these guys were.

They'd want to know what he knew. This was the birthing of a drug empire, not the grade school years. They'd only just stumbled upon the combination of high grade Afghan heroin and an herbal arthritis pain remedy, with the plant only found in Australia. The combination extended the high of the heroin significantly, and also handled some deleterious effects of the heroin itself, meaning the addicts could live longer to buy more. It was a gold mine to the Asian cartels, that had been fighting with heroin purity since the 90s.

They'd want to know every detail of Dalton's information, agency, contacts, and reach. They'd keep him alive however long it took to find out who had sold them out. They might even give him a sample of the goods if they thought it'd make him talk.

Not that Jack Dalton needed an excuse to talk. Saito almost smiled at the thought. He had a good two-three days in him, but after that, he'd be in trouble. That was enough time.

Enough time to get his idiot of a partner the backup he'd need to successfully save Dalton and salvage the op.

He could do this.

The only problem was, the closest uncompromised phone was a full gas tank from their current position, and they only had two-thirds.

And he'd be dead in a little over half an hour, so, there was that.

MacGyver wasn't having it. "We can still catch up-"

"And do what?" he inquired coldly, effectively shutting the young man down. "If you'd taken the gun and backed me up they wouldn't have Jack in the first place." The other agent's expression shifted, then, from confusion to something a little harder to decipher, and Saito put his eyes back on the road. Things were already getting a little blurry as the headache set in.

Dammit.

"That's my fault. I thought you were an agent, not an analyst. So listen up. You are going to continue up this highway until you make the Northern Territory. You are only to stop if there's an opportunity for fuel. When you get there, you're going to –"

"And what about you?" the analyst challenged, parroting his tone.

Saito glanced down at his leg, surprised that he didn't see any blood spotting through the fabric. The venom would prevent the wound from coagulating, but apparently his impromptu tourniquet was helping at least a little.

"I'm not going to be able to help you," he said shortly. "Now shut the fuck up and take notes -"

". . . you were hit." It didn't seem like the dude realized he'd interrupted, or else he didn't care. His eyes were now on Saito's left knee, where the canvas was knotted, and he was already undoing his seatbelt. "How bad-"

"Inland taipan. Nothing you can do." He said it dismissively, but the guy was already reclining his seat and squirming into the back. "Dammit, MacGyver, listen to me. Those guys didn't tag you because we have nothing on them. Wherever they're manufacturing this stuff, it's at least fifty miles from the meet point, and they're going to pull up stakes and move as soon as they get back with Dalton. Terrain like this, they'll have radar and see an air assault or a drone coming the second you take off. Make sure Thornton understands that."

Land assault wasn't a much better option. Keeping things remote kept them in the outback, far into 'the bush' as the locals called it, and allowed them to round up as much aboriginal labor as they had guns to control. There would be hostages, and ones the local Australians wouldn't be heartbroken to lose. And the herb they were harvesting grew wild all over the largely uninhabited Western territory. There were no neat, carefully cultivated green squares to spot from satellite. They were going to cover the ground like nomads, setting up temporary camps, cleaning out an area, and moving on. A few burlap tents and they could hide the entire operation in this brown nothingness.

If Dalton didn't find a way to signal them, it was going to take every minute of those three days to find him.

"Play the tourist card, be polite but unmemorable. You get stopped, stick to your cover."

"Pull over," MacGyver ordered, as if he actually expected to be obeyed, and Saito glared at him in the rearview mirror. All he could see was a khaki-colored ass waving around as the guy rifled through the supplies in the back of the rover.

"Is English your second language?" Saito inquired frostily. "There is nothing you can do-"

"Inland taipans are considered the most venomous snakes on earth because the venom is extremely potent, and extremely specialized to take mammals down – fast," the younger man snapped back over his shoulder. "That tourniquet is useless, we need to replace it with a pressure bandage –"

Saito ground his teeth. Of course the guy was feeling guilty, he was the damn reason they were in this mess. "One bite has enough venom to kill a hundred men. It's over. If we stop at a hospital, they will find us, and they will take us. Even if they didn't, there's no place within an hour's drive of here that can do anything about it. Leave it."

With any luck, he'd pass out before the paralysis got to his lungs. It was going to be unpleasant, but at least it'd be short. All he could do now was put some much-needed distance between them and the cartel. Give the kid a head start.

"That may be true," the young man replied, finally squirming his way back into the front seat, "but the thing that's going to kill you first is respiratory failure, and we can do something about that. Hold still." Without another word, the little shit stabbed him in the chest with a needle.

Saito very nearly hit him; once he realized what was happening – and that it was a syringe, meaning they'd had something in the first aid kit the analyst thought would help - Saito gave the other man a scathing glare. He got a crooked half-grin in response.

Like it was all a damn game.

"Anti-venom. It's generic, but it'll buy us a little time." He withdrew the syringe once the contents had been administered, capped it, and placed it in the center console. "Now pull over."

They were still potentially close enough to turn around and follow the convoy, which was exactly what Dalton's partner wanted to do. And it would get him killed.

"That was a waste of meds," Saito growled, not letting up on the accelerator for a moment, "and if you touch me again, I'll kill you myself."

The younger man was utterly unfazed, and he promptly went for the glove box, rooting around inside. "You were bitten at least ten minutes ago, right? You're going to develop a headache, if you haven't already, and photophobia, so unless you want to die in a car crash, pull over."

MacGyver wasn't wrong, and a little nausea was making itself known as well, but he knew he had at least ten more minutes of alert driving in him. "If you go back for Jack now, you will die. Do you not get that?"

The young analyst glanced over at him. "Right now I'm a little more worried about you."

Without a sound, without a hitch in the engine, the Land Rover completely died.

Saito guided it to the side of the road, hand going for the wires he'd pulled free to see if they'd disconnected - before he caught a glimpse of the very same yellow and green wires dangling as MacGyver closed the glove box, and realization came as it clicked closed.

They were definitely going to die.

"You goddamn idiot."

The half-grin spread to the other corner of his face. "Let's wrap that leg."

But it didn't stop there. Once MacGyver applied the pressure bandage, they had to release the tourniquet by degrees. No amount of arguing with the analyst did him any good, and by the time he was ready to pull a gun to get them back in the car, Saito realized he was no longer competent to drive.

And MacGyver didn't seem that antsy to get back in, either. The convoy was well and truly gone, but the analyst was still digging around in the trunk. Saito was sitting up against the rear tire in what little shade there was, he couldn't see what Jack's partner was up to, and he kept his breathing and pulse slow and steady.

"How you doing?" came the muffled question, still inside the rover. Saito heard the distinctive sound of duct tape ripping.

From what he could tell, the anti-venom wasn't doing a damn thing. "Dude, get in the car and go. You've done what you can, and we're wasting time." Not to mention it was soon going to be high noon, and if they thought it was hot now, it was going to be unbearable in a few hours. "You don't have the fuel to run the A/C. It's time to move out."

"-almost." It sounded distracted, and a piece of hard plastic was snapped in two.

Saito closed his eyes, half in irritation, half in discomfort. "Weren't you in the Army?"

There was a delayed half-laugh. "I was," the young man admitted, and an empty plastic bottle crinkled for an extended amount of time. "EOD."

It seemed like Jack had told him that. "You get yourself a dishonorable discharge for failure to follow orders?"

Another half-laugh, then he apparently stopped crumpling the bottle. Guess he'd squeezed all the water out of it. "Let's just say I did a lot of push-ups."

"Never would have guessed." Talking was winding him slightly, and Saito took an intentionally deep breath. Then he reached behind himself, braced both his elbows on the running board, and levered himself onto his feet. He was definitely weak; his legs were not happy about supporting his weight, and his left was now cramping all the way up to his hip.

Anti-venom wasn't going to cut it. Just like he'd said. What he needed was an intensive care unit, a ventilator, and a steady drip of adrenaline, and there was no way in hell Jack's partner had packed all of that, even if he'd had the foresight to stock the first aid kit with snakebite antivenom.

A sweating blond head peered around the side of the rover. "Wait, almost done-"

"I wait any longer and I'm not getting up," Saito muttered. "I don't give a shit what you're doing, we're leaving."

Even looking through the side window, he couldn't figure out what the dude was doing. It looked like he had the tire inflator kit out, but he'd attached clear tubing to it – and where he'd gotten that, Saito had no idea – that passed through a black plastic housing with a rubber membrane on one end, too duct-taped together to really tell what it did, and terminated in another length of clear tubing. It was this he was wiping down with an alcohol pad, but he had eyes only for the man glaring at him.

"You need to keep that leg immobilized –"

Like it was going to make a damn bit of difference. "Then I'll do that in the rover. We spend any more time here, we'll both die of lead poisoning before anything else."

The younger man frowned at him, but made wrapping up motions, and Saito limped to the passenger side and settled in. He popped open the glove box and twisted the appropriate wires back together, noting that they had been cut, rather than ripped, and cast his mind back to the red Swiss army knife he'd seen sitting next to the frankensteined compressor.

And that triggered a memory, as well.

MacGyver pulled open the driver side door, and Saito debated hiding his shaking hands before he decided it was just too much effort. The guy knew he was dying, no point. He'd figured the analyst would be a little more freaked out, his partner in enemy hands, his only backup soon to bail on him, but he couldn't help but notice the dude's fingers were dead steady as he twisted the appropriate wires together under the dash.

Right. EOD. Clearly he could handle stress.

As if he sensed the visual inspection, MacGyver turned and looked at him, his expression once again hard to decipher.

"One more thing – I'm gonna need your watch."

He was gonna need a lot more than that. "Hell, take whatever you want." Then he thought better of that, and painfully freed his primary firearm from his back holster. He offered it to the analyst, who made no move to accept it.

This, he had no more tolerance for. If MacGyver had taken it the first time it was offered to him, they would have at the very least gotten Jack out of that heroin sale gone wrong. The time to be squeamish about taking a life was long past. "Take the goddamn gun."

MacGyver gave him a long look, then reached out. But instead of taking the gun, the analyst turned his wrist and relieved him of his watch. "Hang onto that," he murmured as he nimbly undid the buckle. "I'm gonna get you through this, Saito, and you'll need it when we go get Jack and that intel."

Saito let him take the watch, then slammed the gun onto the rigged tire inflator that MacGyver had put on the center console. "I owe your partner my life," he forced through clenched teeth, hating that he was getting winded again. "If I can't save him, I'm sure as hell not leaving you helpless. Now what is the fucking problem here?"

MacGyver shook his head, his voice remarkably calm as he popped the back off the tac watch. "I don't like guns very much," he said simply.

No kidding. "You like dying? Let me tell you . . from personal experience, it's not great."

The other man winced a little, then teased the rubber gasket off the watch insides, reaching into the thigh pocket of his cargo pants and pulling free the multitool. Ignoring the gun, he fished two thin wires out of his jerry-rigged inflator, then pressed them firmly against the watch circuitry. Apparently finally happy, he then tucked it all into the console between them – leaving the gun infuriatingly where it was - and put the rover in gear.

"I told you, I'll get you through this." He leaned forward, squinting up through the windshield at the sun. "Hospitals may be out, but they're not the only places that stock antivenom, or medical supplies. There's a veterinary clinic and wildlife sanctuary in the Toolonga Nature Reserve. If we can make that we can get you stabilized."

They were hours from Toolonga. It was also west of their current location.

Back towards the coast. It was already uncertain whether they had enough fuel to make the Northern Territory, if he backtracked it was a certainty.

"You do that, all three of us die out here in this desert." As far as he could remember, there was no settlement between the nature reserve and their current position, which meant no place to purchase gas or water, no way to call for help.

On the plus side, the cartel was as unlikely to find them as anyone else.

MacGyver shook his head, then took off – going easy on the accelerator. "Northern Territory's off the table, I've already done the math. Given the heat we're going to experience later this afternoon, on top of the prevailing winds, we have no chance. And I can't carry you through that much desert without making you a lot worse. This is our only shot."

Well, Jack had told him his partner was a stubborn SOB, and that, at least, was turning out to be completely true. "I'm done. Accept it and move on."

The crooked grin was back. "Yeah, I'm not very good at doing that. One of my many character flaws."

After that, Saito saved his breath for living as long as he possibly could.

That didn't turn out to be a whole lot longer.

At first the paralysis crept up on him, because the pain in his head and body, and his sudden sensitivity to light was extremely distracting. They hadn't eaten since breakfast, so his nausea never really went anywhere. By the time he realized his blood pressure was tanking, it was far too late to warn the kid, but he blearily decided that was probably for the best. He wasn't gasping, he couldn't. Unless he woke up again, he was going to die relatively quietly, and that would probably be easier on the young man than the alternative.

But pain woke him. He was gagging weakly, he couldn't even shake his head a little, couldn't get away. Suffocating. Dying for air. He couldn't take a breath any more than he could escape the pain in his throat. There was a roaring noise, indistinct, and his lungs suddenly inflated, as if he'd gasped. Just when it was getting a little too deep a breath, the sensation stopped, and the weight of his chest forced the air back out.

He didn't have the strength to breathe again.

But that one breath had brought a little clarity to his stunned mind, and he cracked open his eyes to see that MacGyver was leaning over him, face tight with concern. His eyes were surprisingly blue, nearly the same color as the sky through the strip of tint on the top of the windshield, and Saito felt himself drifting off again when that jackhammering noise came back, and he gasped.

Only he didn't. His lungs simply inflated.

Saito got his eyes open a little wider, and MacGyver seemed to deflate with relief in unison with him. "I know it hurts. I can change the air volume, is it too much?"

The kid hadn't been doing rescue breathing, and whatever was making his throat hurt was still there.

The fucking tire inflator.

Saito felt his eyes get even wider, and MacGyver watched him closely. "It's attached to your watch, it'll go off every twenty seconds. If that's not enough, I can bump it to fifteen. Blink once for yes, twice for no. Is it too much?"

Saito waited, uncomfortably aware of the seconds ticking by, and his paralyzed body's complete inability to follow any of his commands. Stomping on a panic response took almost all his concentration.

Apparently twenty seconds were up, and the compressor kicked on, inflating his lungs. Again, it was close to too deep, but he kinda liked that, since it meant it took longer for his lungs to decompress. He blinked twice.

The analyst blew out his cheeks. "Okay. I'll check in with you every two minutes." Meaning every six breaths. Then the young man disappeared from his view, and Saito let his eyes drift close.

Once he became used to the rhythm, it was bearable. Bearable but not great. All he could think about was that it was impossible. The compressor was pushing out air at least at 80 psi, and his lungs were used to air being inhaled or exhaled at about 2 psi above ambient. He was an accomplished scuba diver, and he knew damn well that first inflation should have killed him.

Much like the pressure in a scuba tank would kill you if there wasn't a regulator between the gas in the tank and your lungs. That was what MacGyver had built. A jury-rigged regulator onto the tire compressor. It was a 12 volt compressor, attached to the cigarette lighter, so as long as the rover had power, it would keep working.

He might actually make it to Toolonga.

The nausea moved on to abdominal cramping, so bad that every seam in the road felt like he was being horsewhipped across the gut. He had no way to express the pain, he could barely open his eyes at all by then, but he could still hear, and MacGyver kept up a steady stream of information and encouragement in an effort to distract him.

It wasn't enough.

The next time he managed to open his eyes, it was only a slit. He found the entire world was sideways. The light was far too bright, but he didn't dare close them again, and his lungs inflated painfully. It took him far longer than it should have to figure out he was lying on his side, in recovery position, under the rover, with no memory of how he'd gotten there. In the light, a figure too blurred to make out was tearing through piles of dark, irregular shapes. Fabric?

Bags?

The figure came towards him, no clearer to his immovable eyes but his voice was still recognizable. "I'm sorry, Saito. Road's blocked. Just – hang on. Okay? Hang on."

He tried to blink no. The effort cost him the ability to open them again.

He had strange dreams. Day turned to night. There was a fire, too far away to make him warm, terribly bright, and a figure danced around and around it. It was ringed in containers, of all shapes and sizes, some burning, some steaming. The figure brought one to him, setting the hot thing in front of his face, tantalizingly close. He was so cold and thirsty, but the figure would give him nothing to drink. Instead, the golden man crouched by his side and penned a tattoo into his chest. It stung like crazy.

The taipan came back, beckoned by the fire. The figure didn't see it; it slithered down Saito's throat, curling up in his stomach to warm him. To warn him, about the night, but it was too late. Bits of the dark took shape, surrounded the golden figure. He stopped dancing. Then they all sat, and began to sing a song. The melody was quite strange, it reverberated uncomfortably in his chest. Trying to lure the snake out, he thought, but the taipan would not be moved.

Then the daylight came. Chased away the golden figure. Left only the shards of night around the fire. Time and time again, the shadows came for the snake, he felt it writhing in his body but they could not coax it out. The more it struggled, the more he felt pain.

It was hurting him. The shadows were hurting him.

They tried everything to get it out. They blew smoke into his nose and mouth, like he was a log. They drew symbols on his face. Eventually they tucked him into darkness, hoping to force the taipan out with cold, but he was on fire, he was far too warm for their paltry shade to make any difference.

Gradually he was able to make out other things. There was a black box near his head, and in time he realized the repeating clicking of the snake's scales was actually the jackhammering from before. Breathing for him. He dragged sluggish eyes towards it, noting a box of similar color and size right behind it.

It took him a very long time – and a nap – before he put together that it was the rover's battery. He counted seconds, but he always seemed to make it past twenty before he inhaled. Somehow it was always on the cusp of not quite being fast enough, and a stirring of panic rippled across his chest. With it came a weak burst of adrenaline.

This was bad. Everything was bad. He was in danger.

His body wouldn't move, just his eyes, and the snake, which seemed to be inside his hand. It nosed the sand in front of him using his own fingers, and the shadows saw it. They came closer, into the darkness they'd saved for him, and took it up. Tried to find a way to get the taipan out.

There was nothing he could do.

Daylight trickled once again into darkness, and they sang it a welcome.

But the golden figure did not return.

The next thing that Saito was actually certain of was an unsettling hiss. His immediate thought was the taipan, though he wasn't quite sure why, and he pried open grainy eyes to take in the early dawn light. It was bright, but this time it didn't sear straight into his brain, and he found he was completely unsurprised to find that he wasn't alone.

At least ten aborigines were gathered around him, mumbling to themselves in a deep, melodic language. All male, all dressed in faded, mis-matched clothes. Half of them wore no shirts at all, the other half no shoes.

Their expressions were surprised.

Saito blinked, wondering if he was still dreaming, and the hiss repeated, this time ending with a fierce spitting sound. Something warm and definitely not imagined curled tighter against his stomach.

Shit. The goddamn snake was literally pressing itself up against him.

Warm thing in a cold desert, he thought clinically. The snake had found itself a great little spot to spend the night. As long as he didn't move, maybe he could save himself another bite.

The men around him continued their mumbling, but every time one of them took a step in his direction, there was a fierce hiss, and then a low growl.

. . . growl?

Those were the only sounds he could hear. The seconds ticked by, but the tire inflator didn't start. He took a surprised breath when he realized it, and somehow, he actually took the breath. He heard it whistle through his numbed throat.

Saito swallowed, or he tried to. Agony erupted out of the numbness, the worst strep throat he'd ever felt. He was unable to keep himself still, he reached clumsily for his aching teeth and jaw, found the hose. More than one. He started pulling instinctively, hearing the same hiss as before, and it seemed to go on forever. Once he broke the suction the hoses had created, they slipped along a little more easily, but it still felt like he was dragging strips of Velcro over his tonsils.

But he got them out, both of them. One longer than the other. It didn't matter. As soon as it was done he collapsed, gagging weakly, and found that he could cough.

He could breathe.

Mostly.

Whatever was up against his body stayed determinedly right where it was, and when he dared, Saito dropped his chin. It angled his head off some kind of cloth onto sand, but that didn't matter. A large brown tabby cat, looking way sturdier than your normal house cat, was sitting on the blanket that was draped over him. Its ears were laced back, yellow eyes glaring at the aborigines. And whatever was touching him, it was underneath the blanket, up against the skin of his stomach.

Saito tried to swallow, convulsively, and an ear flicked towards him. But the cat didn't show any aggression towards him at all. It continued growling, low in its chest, and never took its eyes off the figures surrounding him.

And he was surrounded. He was lying alongside the Land Rover, no longer under it but just beside. A small fire had been built nearby but it was out now, and two half-full bottles of water sat just outside the embers. Beyond that were the men.

There was no sign of MacGyver.

Saito tried swallowing again, but it was incredibly difficult. His whole body was stiff and sore, numb and tingling all at the same time. He felt like he hadn't moved in a week. Maybe it had been. How in the hell was he still alive?

One of the men, shirtless but wearing what looked like store-bought khaki shorts, made a halfhearted gesture at one of the water bottles. Saito managed to drag his eyes up to the guy, and he tried to nod. It dug his ear further into the sand, but he didn't have the strength to pick up his head, he'd used it all up getting the tubes out.

The man gave a unhurried nod back, and bent to retrieve the bottle. The cat hissed in warning.

His mouth was far too dry to speak, even if his throat had been behaving, and Saito hoped like hell the guy would just approach. It was a cat, for Christ's sake. Feral, certainly, but it wasn't like it thought he was prey. It was a big cat, sure, but not a damn leopard.

And the man seemed to agree, because he kept speaking to it in his language as he approached. The cat spat at him, but then grudgingly gave a little ground, and the aborigine eventually squatted down at his head, and tipped the bottle to his lips.

Whatever was in it, it wasn't water, but it was wet, and Saito did his level best to drink it. He coughed and sputtered out as much as he got down, but the pain was far more manageable when the old man took it away. Saito nodded his thanks, and closed his eyes.

MacGyver must have enlisted the local's help. And since the rover was behind him, he either ran out of fuel or intentionally left the vehicle. Left him here to be tended while he hopefully found civilization, and a phone.

The guy was on his own.

Dalton, baka gaijin, I did the best I could.

He drifted in and out the rest of the morning. The men didn't leave him, and continued to talk amongst themselves, but they never lost that odd sense of . . . almost respect. Seeing as he was Japanese, it was a little disconcerting. The ball of squirming warmth settled down against his stomach, apparently glad that he'd stilled, and when he felt like he could, he brought up his arm and tried to brush the blanket away. The cat hissed – at him, this time – and he stopped, but by then his fingers had fallen into a pile of squirming softness, and he realized exactly what had happened.

She'd tucked her kittens under the blanket with him.

It was very late in the morning when the men looked up from their unhurried chat, and several of them simply stood up and walked away. The cat watched them, tail flicking rapidly, but once they were out of earshot she seemed to settle. Then she turned and looked at him.

Saito looked back. He blinked, slowly.

She blinked back, equally slowly, and the rapid twitching of her tail settled. It was still near the ground, but it was an improvement.

Then she nuzzled the edge of the blanket aside and slipped under as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

The men who had remained smiled broadly. Saito just concentrated on staying still.

Another hour ticked by in a vaguely uncomfortable haze before Saito became aware of a growing need to relieve himself. Getting up – even sitting up – was not going to be possible, and pissing all over a litter of kittens didn't seem terribly polite. Saito licked his lips, barely wetting them, and tried to speak.

Nothing came out but a croak.

The men noticed, though they didn't stop their lazy conversation. Several wavy white beards jutted out towards him as they called suggestions for what he might have meant, and Saito managed a sigh. He hadn't learned the language, by the time he'd gotten a lead on the link to the Japanese drug trade, he hadn't known which territory of Australia it would lead to, and different groups of aborigines spoke different tongues.

Eventually one of the men leaned down, picking up a simple, small container that looked like it might have once been a gourd. He held it out, head cocked in a question, and Saito just stared at him, not quite sure he understood. The man brought the container down to his crotch, and made a motion that was much easier to decipher.

Saito managed a nod.

As it turned out, there was a litter of kittens curled up along the bare skin of his stomach because there was nothing between his skin and the blanket. He was completely naked, save a chalky white powder that covered him basically from head to toe. Probably some sort of sunscreen, and something to keep the bugs off. When the old man threw back the blanket the tabby spat in anger and shot off towards the rear tire of the rover, hissing furiously. The kittens simply drew back against him, but luckily high enough that the old man didn't have to handle them to free up space. Saito found the old gourd was actually the perfect shape to handle the issue, and the old man tucked the blanket back over him when he was finished.

All the while, the feral cat screamed at them, and the men gathered around the dead fire guffawed, their teeth startlingly white against their dark, wizened faces. The old man carried the gourd back to his colleagues, and they each took a turn sniffing the contents and shaking their heads before emptying the container behind a large rock.

Saito could well imagine why. He might still be breathing, but the neurotoxic paralysis that should have killed him wasn't the only poison at work in his body right now. The venom was breaking down muscle, and his body was trying to flush the damage and toxins away. His kidneys were definitely not in great shape.

The she-cat immediately took back the ground she'd conceded, continuing growling warnings at the men for a good five minutes before the growling turned more towards bad-tempered griping than anything else. Saito had almost fallen asleep again by the time she'd calmed enough to dart back under the blanket and carefully inspect her mewling litter for damage. Saito didn't move.

Very tender flesh was currently well within her reach.

He eventually drifted off and was woken by a soft touch on his face, and a lumpy, frowning woman stared down at him, holding a bowl of what turned out to be some kind of very thin gruel. Despite her expression, she was patient with him as he struggled to get it down, and he had to admit, after he'd eaten it – and she insisted that he drink every drop – he felt a little better. Under the blanket, the she-cat seemed to know that someone was around, because she'd occasionally growl, and everyone would smile.

Eventually the sun moved high enough in the sky that he was no longer in shade, and two of the men impassively grabbed the blanket and pulled him, cats and all, under the rover. They didn't make him move – though they did offer him the gourd again, and he accepted, knowing damn well he needed to help his kidneys any way he could – and he had another uncomfortable nap, and another bowl of the watery stew, as well as the other water bottle of whatever liquid it was.

Again, after he drank it, the overall ache in his body lessened noticeably. Probably why it tasted so bad.

Eventually some younger men came, to relieve their older relatives, Saito guessed, and these men were far more active than their elders. They played a game with dice, one that was loud and involved a lot of cheering and shoving, and Saito dreamt of the streets of Tokyo. An earthquake hit, the youths were hooting, and by the time Saito realized he was awake again, he'd been dragged by the blanket out from beneath the vehicle, closer to the fire, which had been lit.

Oddly, he didn't hear the she-cat hiss, and he managed to lift an arm to find the litter of sand-colored kittens in their pile, but no mother cat. Probably off looking for dinner.

The youths sang songs, ate their own dinner by the fire, teased one another as young men often did. He tried to watch them, figure out the rules of the game as something to take his mind off the pain, and when they jumped up with a cheer, Saito opened eyes he didn't remember closing, wondering if the pot of bills had finally been won by one of the players.

Instead, he found three men approaching their fire. One of them was blond.

MacGyver had a pole slung across his back, with a large clear container of water on one end, and a backpack that apparently weighed the same on the other. He was sweat-stained and out of breath, but didn't appear injured, and his face lit up in a relieved grin as he wearily set down his load and came over to him.

"You're awake," he greeted. "Tubes are out, I see." Hot, dry fingers found their way to his throat. "We, uh, hit a little snag on the way to Toolonga, but Binyan and his tribe saw our fire, and once I explained what we were doing, they agreed to help." He said it in a tone that was almost asking someone else to confirm his version of the events, and Saito watched the other men closely. One of the youths quickly translated, and the other men then nodded their agreement. There was no indication of aggression in their body language or movement.

Saito swallowed, but his throat was still too swollen to let him speak. MacGyver correctly interpreted this, and promptly began adding something powdered to an empty plastic water bottle.

"You probably can't swallow pills yet, and I know this doesn't taste great, but it's going to help a lot." Water was added to the bottle, and the same terrible taste that he'd noticed before was present when the analyst brought it to his lips.

"I made it to the nature reserve, but you were right. As soon as I tried to place a secure call, service was disconnected." This was said much more quietly, and as soon as Saito managed to choke down the dose of medicine, MacGyver eased himself down against the front tire with a sigh. "This whole area's on a party line system, I don't know if it even connected or not but they shouldn't know where the call actually originated from. We, ah, we borrowed some meds from the clinic, which apparently happens quite frequently. I think we're safe for now."

So someone knew that they tried to call for help, but they had no idea where from. And a clinic getting hit for drugs – particularly painkillers, which Saito was quite sure was in the solution he'd just swallowed – probably happened all the time. It wouldn't necessarily send up a red flag. Clearly they were many miles from the reserve.

MacGyver was probably right. As long as no one else ventured along the road to see the vehicle, they were probably safe for the night.

Not that he had any idea what night it was. How long it had been. And not like he could ask.

The painkillers knocked him out until morning.

Again, a low growl and a soft, sing-song voice woke him, and it took him a little while to figure out that he could actually understand the words this time.

"- get it, trust me. I'm not going to hurt your babies. I'm just gonna come over here, nice and easy . . ."

The growling instantly increased in its intensity, and Saito smirked a little as he heard shuffling in the sand come to a sudden halt.

There was a brief pause, then a quiet huff. "You're just gonna leave me hanging over here?"

Saito cracked an eye open, then painfully swallowed. " . . . tried . . ." His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, but it was something.

A second huff, this one clearly amused, and the analyst's face came into view. ". . . I told you I'd get you through this." He said it with the same calming lilt he was using on the cat, and Saito again marveled that a voice that deep could come out of a man that slight. Angus MacGyver was plenty tall, but not built anything like his partner. Lithe was the word that came to mind. A lot like most of the guys on Saito's old Special Assault team.

Probably the only thing about him that was like most of the guys on Saito's old Special Assault team.

Slight or not, he braved the feral she-cat, who in fairness to her was doing the bitching grumbly warning thing rather than a true pre-attack signal, and settled himself on his haunches near Saito's head. He then carefully shook up a half-full water bottle, and Saito felt more than saw the she-cat retreat across the blanket to his feet, still making ill-tempered sounds.

He wondered if she just liked lighter-skinned people better, or the young man's natural charisma extended to animals.

"How you feeling?" MacGyver asked, uncapping the bottle.

Saito managed to pull his left hand out from beneath the blanket, and held it open in reply. The analyst caught on quickly, and handed over the bottle, but it was still a minute before Saito felt steady enough to actually try sipping out of it.

"I'll give you the last of the antivenom before we head out," MacGyver told him, keeping his voice low and easy. "It's been long enough by now that we can check you into a clinic and it shouldn't raise any flags. I'd have brought a saline drip but honestly we didn't have the time," he added with no small trace of apology.

Saito just shook his head and worked on the bitter-tasting water. Apologies were a waste of breath. " . . . heading where?" he rasped instead.

The analyst's eyebrows shot up, then he gestured – slowly – at the firepit, where three aborigines were regarding them silently. Saito hadn't even noticed them. "I kinda used up most of the brake fluid, and some of the transmission fluid too. Binyan's got a friend in a nearby village who's going to help us resupply."

Saito blinked, then shoved himself clumsily up onto his right elbow, earning a yowl of disapproval from the she-cat, and reminding him that he had a fuzzy pile still curled up against his stomach. The analyst reached out to steady him, but he shook his head, and slowly levered himself into a sitting position. It was uncomfortable; the running board was digging into his sore back and his left calf felt like a swollen brick, but it was worth it to see the world right-side up for a change, and he chugged the rest of the medicine.

The she-cat was extremely unhappy at this change, and retreated behind the rear tire, hissing. MacGyver eyed her warily. "You, uh, have a way with the local wildlife," he observed carefully.

Saito wasn't worried about the cats. He was a little more worried about the mad scientist-like collection of random car parts scattered around the firepit, which had been largely invisible to him until he'd sat up. Some were connected to each other with hoses that had doubtlessly come from the Land Rover, others had random litter duct-taped to them. One such contraption was balanced on a rock near the fire, with what looked a little like a water wheel spinning rapidly as the rising heat from the coals caused it to move.

Two cables ran from underneath it, and Saito saw they connected via more tape to less than half of the pair of jumper cables, clamped to the rover's battery terminals.

The same battery that had been used to power the tire inflator that had kept him alive until the paralysis that should have killed him eventually wore off.

Saito looked over the site again, then slowly rotated his head to look at the rover he was leaning against. The hood was open, and he didn't even want to think about what might be missing.

There was no way in hell MacGyver was taking that Land Rover anywhere. He'd completely cannibalized it.

The analyst followed his thinking, if not his gaze. "Don't worry, once I get the battery recharged I can get it back into working condition. Then one of Binyan's friends will get you to a clinic, and with any luck to a cellphone you can use to call in backup."

That was a terrible plan. Saito considered how to say that in the shortest number of English words. ". . . then what?"

MacGyver pressed his lips together, and glanced out towards the horizon, where the rising sun had cast everything in reds and deep pinks. "I'll commandeer a local vehicle, find the camp, and complete the mission."

Saito couldn't help but smirk. MacGyver definitely had guts stuffed somewhere in that thin frame, but guts were not enough. ". . . no you won't."

Oddly, the young analyst took no offense, and gave him a lopsided grin. "You're definitely feeling better."

He really wasn't. He knew the pain in his back was not just from lying on hard ground for days, just like he knew the only reason he was able to sit up was because he was being stuffed full of meds and painkillers. They had his primary and backup weapons, a dismantled Land Rover, and a small tribe of aborigines. The enemy had at least a dozen still-living, ex-military mercs and enough weaponry to take out a tank. They were also highly incentivized to keep their fledgling drug operation alive and more importantly, under the radar. And they'd had Dalton all this time. The window to get him out alive would close before DXS could get them backup, even if it was just the local SWAT.

They were right where they'd been when he'd checked out. Screwed.

Saito used the empty bottle to indicate the mess around the fire pit. " . . . why?" Creating some kind of heat-powered generator to charge the rover's battery, that made sense. It was pretty damn clever, actually. But the fire was made up of wood and bramble and other naturally flammable materials, so why blow through the brake and transmission fluid? Why the high school science lab?

Oddly, the analyst hesitated, and when he finally spoke, his tone was very off-handed and casual. "I had to make an antivenom stand-in that first night, I knew I didn't have time to get to the park and back before . . . before it would be too late. I needed the glycol and mineral oil from the brake fluid and the antioxidants and lipids from the transmission fluid. When you combine those with certain organic enzymes - like the type found in RNA - you can bypass some of the steps needed to break down the toxins in taipan venom."

Saito just stared at him. The analyst didn't seem to notice.

"Unfortunately, in order to save your life, a Rattus villosissimus had to die. Long-haired rats are the taipan's main prey, and evolved to have an excess of the enzymes we needed. Actually, the carcass is probably what attracted your nurse there," the analyst added, nodding to indicate the she-cat, who let out a low growl, like she knew they were talking about her.

Saito completely ignored the cat. " . . . how –"

How in the hell did this guy know how to make antivenom out of brake fluid?

MacGyver gave him a shrug. "One of my friends at MIT specialized in DNA and RNA. I must have read her thesis six times, so between that and the crash course on venomous reptiles the Army gave us when I was stationed in Afghanistan –" He broke off. "It wasn't ideal, but it saved your life. All we need is the fluid, and then I'll get the rover back up and running."

Saito let his head fall back against the vehicle in question. ". . . do you do this . . . for Dalton?"

"Cook up antivenom?" His eyebrows twitched upwards as he thought. "No. I made him a poultice once when he took a poisoned dart in Helsinki –" Then the young man trailed off. "Jack and I met back in Afghanistan. He was my overwatch. I'm not leaving without him."

He understood the sentiment, but there was no way a guy smart enough to do all this was dumb enough to think he could actually pull it off.

"You get any intel?" Saito managed, fairly passably, and MacGyver pushed himself to his feet and dusted off his hands before he accepted the empty water bottle and headed back towards the fire.

"Yeah, actually, I did." He watched MacGyver exchange the empty plastic for a small bowl that was sitting near the fire. "The local tribes – the ones that haven't been pressed into service – are all aware. They're afraid to involve the authorities, since they think that will lead the Yakuza right back to their villages. And they're probably not wrong." MacGyver brought the bowl over, and Saito recognized the watery gruel before it was handed to him. The bowl was almost too hot to hold, and the liquid felt awesome on his sore throat.

"Binyan thinks they're active right now between Ex Yuin and Ex Barnong, about eighty klicks east of Geraldton." Which was a good hundred miles south of their current position. There were very few roads, and no direct route. In this terrain, that drive would take five to six hours. The nearest hospital – assuming they were still southeast of Toolonga – was seventy miles in a different direction.

Once MacGyver took off, there'd be a sweet spot of around an hour and a half where he could possibly catch up. After that, he'd be too late.

"What's the plan?"

MacGyver helped himself to his own breakfast, which looked to be a less watered down version of the same gruel. "Well, I can't exactly blend in with the locals – and they probably got a pretty good look at me anyway. As soon as I figure out where they've stashed Jack, I'll . . ." He shrugged, and stuffed the spoon in his mouth. "Think of something," he finished around the mouthful of meat and vegetables.

Saito gave him a long look. "Not a plan."

The analyst flashed him one of those disarming grins of his. "It works out better than you'd think."

Saito picked the shadow out of the growing sunrise quickly, but it took the young aborigine another several minutes of a loping jog to actually reach the fire. MacGyver met him a little ways out, and the two had a short conversation before the runner clapped MacGyver on the back, then headed back the way he'd come at the relaxed run of a person who did the equivalent of a marathon every day. MacGyver wolfed down whatever had been left on his plate, then crouched beside the battery.

"Aaaand it looks like we're charged enough to crank," he declared. "Now for the fun part."

The fun part didn't really look all that fun, and the sun had fully risen by the time Saito determined that antibiotics were definitely a component of the medicine he was being given. Standing was about as awesome as he'd figured it would be, his legs wobbled like an old man's and he very nearly stepped on the suddenly squalling kittens, but he managed to pull himself upright using the back passenger windowsill, and he sucked down a few deep breaths, willing himself not to cough.

The she-cat was not amused, and an alarmed-looking blond head poked out from around the hood. "Whoa, hey-"

Saito waved him off. "Clothes." But then he answered his own question, finding them folded neatly just inside the window. MacGyver had already come around the rover to steady him, but his hands were slicked with oil and filth and Saito again shook his head.

"Nothing you can help me with," he managed, and dawning comprehension crossed the other man's face. Instead of touching him, MacGyver gestured at the front passenger seat, where a small pack of wet-wipes sat atop one of their duffels.

That ended up being a good call. The other men by the fire had also figured it out, and left him to it. Getting back into his boxers was nearly impossible, and Saito gave up completely on the shirt. It was the first time he got a good look at the bite, and his calf looked as if someone had sliced it open and sewn a softball into the muscle. The skin was a glossy brownish-purple from the tops of his toes almost to his knee.

It felt a lot worse than it looked.

He managed to wobble himself back to the fire side of the rover and slid down the passenger door, leaning against it heavily before plopping back down on the upper corner of the blanket. Someone – maybe MacGyver – had cleared away the large rocks, so it wasn't really all that uncomfortable. It was almost like sitting in a hot box in an onsen.

The kittens he'd so suddenly abandoned had been hastily migrated behind a tire, and the she-cat was too busy corralling her litter to hiss at him. However, the three men by the fire seemed utterly transfixed by her, leaning together and talking among themselves, and MacGyver eventually extricated himself from under the hood and crossed back to the fire to pick up something that looked to Saito like part of the carburetor.

He caught Saito's gaze, then glanced curiously back at the aborigines before ducking his head and locating the cat. "Apparently that doesn't happen all that often," MacGyver told him, wiping sand off the part as he approached. "The elders, they, uh, they think you're a shaman."

Shaman was better than a lot of other options readily available. "Didn't think I was . . . one of them?"

After all, the cartel guys were largely Japanese and hakujin. He and MacGyver should have looked like two more thugs to Binyan and his tribe. How the guy'd managed not only to get their help, but also their trust . . .

He was beginning to see what Dalton had been going on about.

"No." MacGyver's tone held just a tiny bit of wonder, and his gaze was back on them. "They never even asked. I don't know how long they were watching before they decided to help us, but . . ." Then he smiled, a little self-deprecatingly. "But the fact that you were attached to a tire inflator being powered by a car battery was probably their first clue."

That was a fair point.

"And my third rate antivenom aside . . ." He hesitated, then shook his head. "I don't know how to thank them."

Saito widened his eyes a little. "Wait . . . there's something you don't know?"

The lopsided smirk came back, full force. "There's a whole universe of it out there, Akatsutsumi-san."

Right. Admit to lack of knowledge while showing off language skills. The older agent snorted. "Shittakaburi."

Smartass.

The other side of the analyst's lips quirked up. "You know, Jack calls me the same thing. In Texan, which he thinks is its own language."

That was almost certainly true. "He's not much better."

The blond made a noise of agreement, then busied himself back under the hood.

About twenty minutes after Saito had settled back down, an angry tail appeared from behind the rear tire of the rover, and lashed annoyed swipes through the sand. The old men were fascinated, but Saito basically ignored her, and after the better part of two or three minutes, the sulking she-cat migrated her litter of kittens, one by one, back to Saito's left hip. Each one was carried dutifully the short distance, held up as she looked at him appraisingly, and then deposited deliberately against his thigh. They barely had their eyes open but they were still quite capable of crawling, and Saito eventually dropped his left hand from his lap to the blanket. There were four kittens in all, and they immediately started exploring.

He'd never had cats, growing up, and now he knew why. The damn things were tiny, but jesus were they sharp. The she-cat watched him like a hawk, curled up like a fluffy loaf of bread by the tire, but she only hissed when he closed his hand around one of the mewling things, so he settled for generally keeping them from getting away, and making sure at least one of them was trying to maul him at all times.

The painkillers were having the same sedative effect they'd had before, and he knew if he let himself fall asleep, MacGyver would use the opportunity to bolt. He might not be worth shit in a physical fight at the moment, but there was nothing stopping him from sitting on his ass on a ridge providing overwatch. Even knowing the kid was EOD trained, and very clearly good at building random gizmos on the fly, there was no guarantee that Dalton was in any condition to move under his own power at this point – assuming he was still alive – and MacGyver couldn't carry Dalton and cover his own ass at the same time.

But Saito was quite sure MacGyver was going to try.

And it seemed that the analyst was also thinking along the same lines, because every once in a while, the tinkering seemed to slow, and a head would poke around the hood, or MacGyver would fetch something minor from the fire, always giving him a casual once-over as he did it.

He did seem genuinely curious about the kittens, though, even coming so far as to crouch near Saito's feet, scrubbing at his hands with a wet wipe. "Hard to believe something that cute is such a massive ecological disaster," he murmured. The she-cat flicked her tail in warning.

Saito teased one of the kittens so that it was facing MacGyver, and it sort of bellycrawled a few inches in his direction with a little squeak. The young man smiled.

Saito didn't. "I know you were hoping I'd pass out. Guess you're SOL."

The smile didn't go anywhere, it just settled into something more wry. "It would have saved us an awkward conversation," the analyst responded drily. "But unless you're up for a three mile run, pretty sure you're staying right here."

So Mac was going to have to travel to his alternate transportation. Saito tucked that tidbit away for his time and distance calculations.

Mac made a gesture towards Saito's calf – and the she-cat hissed a warning. "The bite's infected. I've been giving you a broad spectrum antibiotic – which you noticed earlier," he added apologetically. "But there's definitely an abscess, and it'll probably need to be lanced and irrigated. Once Binyan's friends are back here with the fluids, they'll top off the rover and get you on your way."

Saito gave the other man as level a stare as he could. "I want Dalton back as much as you do, but if you do this, they will catch you."

The smile broadened. "I have a contingency for that." One of his still-dirty hands dug around in his khakis and came up with that same circuit-board green tracker he'd tried to plant on the guys taking Dalton, however many days ago it had been. "The range on this is limited, but in the flatlands it'll be at least fifty miles. It's keyed to the DSX distress band."

The older agent shook his head in disgust. "Listen to me, MacGyver –"

"Mac," he corrected.

"Orokana hossori shita shōnen," he growled, momentarily forgetting MacGyver – Mac – probably didn't know that much Japanese. Not that it mattered. The stupid, skinny young man got the gist of it. "You surveille only, stay out of sight, locate Jack, and then you wait for backup. If they catch you, it's over. Dalton's had training resisting interrogation. You have not. This isn't Hollywood."

The smile hardened a little. "Actually, I've had SERE training as well as interrogation training through DXS, like every other agent –"

Saito scoffed. "You're not an agent. Agents follow orders, and they do what they have to do to get the job done. Sound like you?" He knew his primary and secondary weapons were still inside the rover – they'd been placed carefully under his folded clothes. MacGyver didn't intend to take them with him.

MacGyver didn't even attempt to hold the smile this time. "I don't kill unless I have to," he said, his voice low and quiet. "I won't get caught. And if I do, I'll bluff. When backup doesn't show, they'll throw me in with Jack. Once their guard is down, DXS can move in, and I'll get Jack out."

"You are a goddamn covert operative," Saito countered, keeping his hoarse voice low as well. "You might not think you know much, but trust me, the damage they can do with what's in your head-"

"They're not going to have time," MacGyver interrupted. "You'll be in a hospital in six hours, find a phone, and give DXS everything they need to shut these guys down."

"And what if that's tomorrow night?" he snapped. "They're done playing by now, bakayarou. You want Dalton to have to watch while they slit your belly open and let your intestines dry in the sun? That's Yakuza you're dealing with. Dalton can hold on because they have nothing over him, and they'll keep him alive as long as it takes. You go in there, you hand them everything they need to break him."

Finally, finally a little doubt flickered across his face, and MacGyver's eyes cut to the she-cat as he considered his options. "Then make sure backup gets here before tomorrow night," he finally said. "Because if they're done playing, Jack can't wait."

And damned if the kid didn't straighten and head back to the fire. Saito knew there was no purpose in shouting at him – nothing was going to change his mind – so he watched silently while Dalton's partner gathered his things. The tracker ended up inserted into the stitching of a messenger bag, near the reinforced section where the leather strap was sewn onto the bag. Some water, a few energy bars, and the swiss army knife were squirreled away, and then MacGyver slung the bag over his shoulder, casting a glance back as he did so. He even managed a small, sincere-looking smile.

"Counting on you, Saito-san."

In answer, he gave a derisive snort. "This is going in my report."

Not that his report was going to mean anything. Hard to discipline someone who's already dead. MacGyver wasn't wearing a ring, and he was too young to have much more than just started a family. He probably thought he had nothing to lose.

Oh, to be young and stupid again.

MacGyver broke into the same kind of effortless jog of all twenty-somethings who run for recreation, and in mere moments he was out of earshot. Saito glanced down at his wrist for his watch, only to find a pale band where it once was.

Right. It had been used as the timing device for the makeshift ventilator. Apparently when MacGyver said he was going to put everything back together, the watch hadn't made the list. Saito made do with the sun. He calculated it was about an hour before a pair of young men approached, at a walk rather than a jog, carrying two pairs of bags between them.

The transmission and brake fluid, among other things.

They spoke their sing-song language to one another and seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Had they not been screwing around like young men who had nowhere to be, it would have taken them only a few minutes to top off the fluids and put the rover back together.

Unlike their elders, they were not terribly impressed with his four-legged spirit animal nurse, and Saito pulled himself stiffly to his feet, once again abandoning the mewling litter. He did, however, stroke each one beforehand as a way of saying thank you, and a chorus of high-pitched squeaks told him they were going to be just fine without him.

This time he did struggle into his shirt, with a little help from his young friends. His arms were just –

Heavy. His body was too damn heavy. And also still coated in that white powder. He awkwardly swiped it off in little puffs of what looked like smoke.

There was no way he could cram his swollen calf into his tac pants, and in the end he simply slit the fabric along the inside seam almost all the way up to the knee. It still hurt like hell when he finally managed to jam his calf through. One of the old men produced a few rusty safety pins from his pocket, and they kept his pant leg from just flapping around. Though fat lot of good the fabric had done to protect him from the first snakebite.

His boots turned out to be less of a problem. There was just enough extra bootlace to make it work, and his flappy pant leg did a decent job of hiding that the ankle guard wasn't laced at all.

The two young men – who he gathered were called Tak and Jim-ba – were clearly enjoying the fact they had been assigned such an interesting and important task, and seemed to be in constant competition with one another. Saito barely got a hand on his weapons before they did, and while Tak disappointedly watched him secure the firearms, Jim-ba fetched the exhausted first aid kit. Saito located and self-administered the last of the antivenom - already neatly pre-measured in a syringe, like MacGyver had fucking packed his lunch for him - and he also found and helped himself to a generous portion of ibuprofen.

There in the bottom of the bag were two old Epi pens, and Saito tucked those in the upper right thigh pocket of his tac pants. Epinephrine – otherwise known as adrenaline – could come in handy.

It seemed that the she-cat was aware that the vehicle that had been her family's home for the last few days was no longer safe. She'd taken her litter not to the back tire, but to a rock about twenty yards away, and was sitting halfway between it and the car. She flicked her tail, but then gave him a slow blink, and he returned the gesture. Then he tried to take a step away from the safety of the rover, and very nearly face-planted.

His young helpers swooped in and guided him around the vehicle, and he sank gratefully into the passenger seat. There was a brief scuffle for driving privileges, and Tak gave him a blindingly white smile as he practically jumped behind the wheel and started her up. Saito wasn't the least bit surprised when the young aborigine – who wasn't even wearing his shirt, and hadn't spoken a word of English - whipped the rover around like a stock car driver and started hauling ass in an easterly direction.

Dalton's idiot partner had gotten at least one thing right - Saito had to find a phone, and he had to get backup to them. Going quiet wouldn't have been enough to engage the cavalry. Much as he might hate the idea of leaving MacGyver on his own, he had to get a signal out, and he had to do it fast.

What he'd said to MacGyver was true. In ideal circumstances, the quickest DXS could get boots here on the ground was sixteen hours, and nothing about this op had been ideal up to this point. And the cartel was definitely in bed with Yakuza. Once they reported it up the chain that feds were on to them, if they hadn't gotten anything out of Dalton within the first twenty-four hours, a proxy would be sent in to assess. If the proxy felt the situation needed to be escalated, they'd either take Dalton back to Japan – risky, considering they didn't know what the feds had – or they'd send in an interrogation team.

There was no way to know when that team might arrive, so ambushing them was out of the question – but it also meant the camp was getting used to random Japanese men driving up in expensive rentals. Saito was pretty sure the only two guys who got a good look at him were both dead, so –

So there was a chance they hadn't seen his face, and he could bluff his way in. Once in, he could assess and potentially try to get Dalton out, and MacGyver too if the moron had gotten himself caught. They didn't have to get away clean, they just needed to stay clear long enough for DSX to swoop in and mop up.

Outside of the fact he looked like death warmed over and couldn't walk, it seemed like a fairly reasonable plan.

Which left the small problem of how the hell to get that signal to DSX and get a damn tac team that the cartel wouldn't see coming. There was no guarantee that calling out to Sydney would get men here before the drug runners were tipped off. New Zealand – and Japan – were both way closer than the US, and less likely to be compromised. Hell, if he could just get a message to his old team he was pretty sure they could make something happen -

Actually, a party line call to Japan should go through without a hitch, since the cartel owned the damn utilities. He should have thought of that days ago.

Saito turned and gave the driver a look. "Do you speak English?"

The young man nodded, and from the back seat came a long string of words apparently contradicting that.

"I need a phone. The nearest phone," he stressed, when the boy started nodding before he'd even finished.

"Hospital," Tak confirmed, and Saito shook his head.

"Phone."

But he received a firm headshake. "Hospital," Tak repeated self-importantly. "The Mac said."

"Oh, did he?" Saito inquired politely. "Is that what the Mac said."

Tak nodded, clearly not fluent enough to catch onto the sarcasm. Saito glanced out the windshield, as if the conversation was over, and when they topped the next hill an actual paved road appeared as if by magic. There were no street signs – apparently MacGyver had had the sense to take them off-road a bit before he'd parked – but Tak quite confidently selected a direction, and Jim-ba made a snarky comment as they got underway.

No sign of any other cars, but after about five minutes of driving, they came to an intersection with power and phone lines. Again, Tak confidently picked a direction, and this time the back-seat driver didn't have any criticism to offer.

Saito let him drive. It was likely the hospital was also in the direction of the most densely packed civilization, and he would politely ask them to stop at the first house they came to.

After all, he knew exactly how to stop the car, thanks to MacGyver. Those wires were probably still exposed inside the glovebox.

They must have gone twenty miles before another car appeared on the horizon, and Saito clocked it – an old jeep - and paid no more attention to it. Until the SOB riding the guy's ass decided to pass him like he was standing still. The local he couldn't have cared less about, but the tailgater was in a silver Mercedes, and that had potential.

"Tak, pull over," he instructed, shifting in his seat as the car approached them at a hundred and twenty kph easy. The young man looked over, his eyes widening comically when he saw that Saito had unholstered his sidearm.

" . . . hospital?" he asked in confusion.

"Stop," Saito growled, and yanked the wheel hard right.

Whether he recognized the word or not, Tak wasn't willing to wreck the rover, and Saito angled them across the line as the vehicle skidded to a noisy halt. Then he calmly exited the passenger door – standing directly in the path of the oncoming Mercedes – and let the pistol hang by his side in plain sight.

The driver could have gotten around them. It would have been dangerous at that speed in the sand, but a skilled driver could have pulled it off. This was not a skilled driver. The Mercedes did come to a stop, if not as gracefully as the Land Rover, and the driver, a wide-eyed Caucasian male in his mid-forties, stared at him with a mixture of surprise and anger. Beside him, an equally Caucasian woman seemed to be screaming at him, but Saito could barely hear her.

He limped carefully around to the driver side window, unwilling to admit his gun weighed about five times what it should, and tapped the barrel smartly on the glass. The man gulped and nodded, then shook off the emphatic hand on his arm and scrambled to find the window control.

Definitely a tourist, definitely a rental. Definitely more money than sense.

The woman continued screaming, and now Saito was close enough to hear her, even with the excellent sound isolation of the luxury rental. Saito's Italian was rusty, but he definitely got the gist. Run him over and drive away.

He re-evaluated her; she was definitely the brains of the couple.

The driver eventually found the control, and cracked the window, just barely. "W-what do you want? We don't have any money." His English was good, hardly accented.

Saito gave the couple a polite smile. "Your phone. It's an emergency."

"It is now," the woman growled, and the Italian was much more pronounced. "We have already called the police!"

Which was a bold faced lie. "Great," Saito told them, then gestured with the pistol. "Exactly what I was going to do. Phone, please. Now."

The driver sighed, his dark eyes flickering between Saito's face and the gun, before he reached into the cupholder and grabbed exactly what Saito had hoped to see. A cellphone out here was useless, there was no coverage. Any tourist braving the western provinces would know that, and they'd have brought something a little better.

The man rolled down the window a little further, attempting to hand the phone out, but he hadn't quite gotten it down far enough, and he fumbled with the door controls as his wife continued to berate him under her breath. Eventually the satellite phone was thrust out, and Saito accepted it with a nod.

"Thank you. Sorry for the inconvenience. You two should be on your way."

"With the police!" the woman yelled through the half-open window, despite her husband trying desperately to shush her. "That phone has GPS, they will find you instantly!"

Excellent. "When you do finally reach them, make sure you tell them I'm Japanese." Dirty cops might let it go, but if they happened to reach cops the cartel hadn't bought, all the better. He limped back to the car, where Tak and Jim-ba were both staring wide-eyed at him, and all but fell back into the rover.

"Drive," he instructed, gesturing in the direction they were generally heading, and Tak did his best bobble head impression and floored it, leaving the silver Mercedes in the dust, and the local in the jeep just behind them, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Saito ignored them, put his gun away, and examined his prize. It was almost a toy, consumer quality and carried by yuppy tourists everywhere, but it would get the job done. And it made his next decision a lot easier.

A head poked up from the backseat as he started dialing, and Saito gave Jim-ba a look via the rear view mirror as he lifted the phone to his ear. After some time, it did actually connect.

"Kato525," he said into the silence, and then heard the telltale click of the line going secure. Fucking Jack Dalton and his stupid callsigns. He assigned them all, and of course his own was a Texas reference.

Saito had no idea what MacGyver's might be. Probably something less culturally insensitive.

Or, knowing Dalton, perhaps more so.

"Agent report."

"Patch me through to the director." The time to go up through the chain was long past. Saito glanced in the rear view mirror, confirming that their Italian friends were not following. He'd give them another couple miles before he had Tak take them off-road.

"The director is unavailable."

Right. It was close to noon, which meant nine pm in LA. "Then make her available," he snapped. "Our targets took Dalton and they're about to get MacGyver. I'm compromised. Local assistance is a no-go."

". . . understood."

He didn't have high hopes of that. However, he also didn't have to wait long before there was another series of clicks, and then a cool feminine voice in his ear.

"Saito. Report."

He repeated what he'd told the analyst, with slightly more detail – it was important that she know how long they'd had Dalton, and the implications – and the location information that MacGyver had given him.

"You said he had a tracker?" Her voice was slightly breathless, as if she was walking.

"Yes, DSX distress band. Not sure when he's going to activate it, but whatever it is, it's running on batteries. Won't be good for more than a few hours, range is fifty miles."

"And where are you?"

"A paved road in the middle of the outback. If you need better, track me."

There was a quiet murmur, as if she'd just passed through a cocktail party, and then the sound of a car door slamming. "Ops is pinpointing your location. I'll be there in twenty."

So the director was still in LA, then.

"What's your status?"

He debated. The truth would get him sidelined – which in all honesty was probably the right call. Except that it would take her the rest of the damn day to get him tac, and longer still to get them in position. "Mobility's impaired, but I'm still good for surveillance."

"That's not what I asked." Her tone had sharpened a little, and he sighed silently.

"Snake bite. Left calf. I've already been treated." All of which was completely true.

The crappy sat phone did little to disguise her skepticism. "I wasn't aware there were any non-venomous snakes in Australia." He didn't see any reason to respond to that – it was a statement, not a question – and she let it hang in the air between them a long moment. "Can you get to a hospital?"

"Heading to one now." Which was also true. "If Dalton's given up our covers, I won't be able to stay long."

"We'll work on that on this end. I'll have exfil for you within two hours."

"Negative." It was out of his mouth before he even thought. "I am the only other DXS resource you have on the ground, and you brought me in for a reason – to infiltrate the Japanese arm of this operation. I'll circle back and try to make contact with MacGyver. Barring that, I'll keep tac informed on enemy movements."

"You will obey my order. MacGyver is a capable and resourceful agent who can take care of himself." She paused. "Despite appearances."

He didn't miss the title. Agent. Not analyst. And he was begrudgingly starting to accept it. "Maybe so, but unless he can build a helicopter out of heroin, I don't see him extracting Dalton," Saito disagreed. "At least let me reach out to my contacts in Tokyo, find out who the Yakuza may have sent."

"You can do that from the plane." Her tone brooked no argument.

"Yes ma'am." Yes, that was completely true. He could do that from a plane.

She correctly interpreted his response. "I understand that Dalton brought you in, and you have a certain loyalty towards him. Going in there compromised just puts another asset at risk."

It was hard to argue with her logic – it was the same as his own to MacGyver. He hadn't argued it so much as just flatly ignored it, though, and Saito didn't have that option.

"I have an old alias, someone who would blend in. Director, these people can move their operations on a moment's notice. If MacGyver's tracker fails or we don't locate it in time, they're in the wind. Leaving me in play is our best shot at completing this mission and getting your agent back." He was careful not to say 'agents'.

MacGyver probably hadn't made it all the way out to the site yet. He needed to give the kid a good hour after he arrived to do something stupid.

"You're assuming Jack's still alive."

"Yes ma'am." He would believe it until he saw the body with his own eyes.

There was a long pause, and Saito reluctantly allowed Tak to continue heading towards the nearest hospital – and further from MacGyver and his partner. He very nearly spoke again, to try to make his case, but she beat him to it.

"Head to the hospital. I'll let exfil make the call – but I'll send them with a care package if they clear you for duty."

Smart woman. Making sure he'd hang around for exfil by dangling a carrot.

"Yes ma'am." Saito ended the call, then stared blankly at the dash while he tried to remember the number. It was a little harder than it should have been, and Saito took a deep, cleansing breath and tried to shove his nii-sama's voice out of his head.

Do not believe everything you think.

He was under the influence of narcotics and his body was full of poison. If he went back into the field and allowed himself to be captured, he would be giving their enemy a means to break them both, just as MacGyver would if he was caught.

He was likely weaker than he thought he was. And slower.

Fortunately a hospital could fix both those problems, at least temporarily.

Saito dialed the next string of numbers on his list. That checkin was much easier, if not completely secure – or without expletives. However, when the man on the other end told him he understood the situation, Saito believed him implicitly.

The 'closest hospital' was another hour's drive, and Saito legitimately had concerns about the rover overheating – or self-destructing – before they pulled up to something that could be called a clinic. If one was being generous. He took his primary and backup weapons and threw them in the empty glovebox, then motioned Tak and Jim-ba out of the vehicle, and confiscated the keys. He managed to limp under his own power into the one-story, sand-colored building, and the young woman behind the counter looked every bit as weary as he felt.

The moment her eyes fell on Tak and Jim-ba, any budding smile died on her lips. "Can I help you?"

The two young men were either extremely used to this behavior – that Saito could only label overt racism – or utterly oblivious, and they both started to noisily explain the problem. She basically ignored them, keeping her brown eyes on him, and Saito felt a rush of irritation.

Yes, they were young men. Yes, they were loud, they were rough, they were dressed for a trip to the beach instead of an office.

And they had saved his life. And probably saved MacGyver's.

So Saito gave her a polite smile and said nothing at all.

After about thirty seconds she seemed to realize that simply looking at him wasn't going to get her what she wanted – and that was apparently about the time that either Tak or Jim-Ba managed to convey what exactly had bitten him, because her demeanor shifted. In the blink of an eye she was out of the chair and shouting for a nurse, and Saito started for the only door that led from the lobby towards the rest of the facility. By the time he had limped to the door, it was being yanked open, and a very large, khaki-covered man who reminded him quite a bit of Steve Irwin nearly ran right into him.

"Oi, mate, when were you bit? Let's get you over here, get that leg up, and get some fluids into ya!"

He came out all the way to offer help, and Saito glanced over his shoulder at Tak and Jim-ba, who were both suddenly loitering in the lobby like they weren't quite sure what to do.

Saito jerked his head. They didn't have to be asked twice.

Steve Irwin didn't seem to have the same problem with them that his receptionist did. And much like everything else on this godforsaken mission, the facility was much more than it initially appeared. The equipment was aged but immaculately cared for, and he was in a reclining bed with his left calf on a pillow and a catheter in his arm in less than two minutes.

"Alright, mate, let's get ya settled and let me get a look at this thing, eh?"

It didn't look any better than it had that morning. In fact it looked significantly worse. The car ride certainly hadn't done him any favors.

Irwin squinted at him. "Didja get a look at what bit'chya?"

Saito mentally walked through the conversation a couple times before he responded. "Not really. Someone said it was an inland taipan, but . . . I'd be dead, right?"

The doctor nodded. "Yeah you would be. They have enough venom to take down more'n a hundred blokes with one bite. When did this happen?"

Saito shrugged. "Couple days ago? I kinda slept through some of it."

He got a surprised laugh. "That sounds about right, mate. Any difficulty breathing? Chills, fevers, anything like that?"

Saito let him run down all the symptoms, admitting to his current pain and weakness, which was vanishing as whatever was in the IV fluids did its job. The doctor came to the same conclusion MacGyver had – that it would have to be drained – and then went about engaging Tak and Jim-ba in spirited conversation about the weather and sports while he subtly gathered the equipment he'd need.

The sat phone beeped, and Saito checked the text. He should have asked that Italian couple for the charger. Nothing to be done about it now, and despite the GPS being on the battery was still at seventy-eight percent.

The text confirmed that his old cover had been revived. A second text rolled in, longer than the first, and Saito raised an eyebrow.

Not just revived, but revised. Awesome.

His old captain was having a good time with this.

"Alright, mate, we're just gonna numb you up a little, then deflate this watermelon of a leg you got, drain some of the fluid off. Should make you feel a good bit better soon."

Despite the lidocaine, Saito could still feel the scalpel plenty, and Tak and Jim-ba watched in stunned, silent fascination as pus suddenly shot out of the softball and a half-sized lump in his calf. He flexed the screaming muscles when the stream slowed to a trickle, and just when he thought the crap coming out of his body couldn't smell any worse, the more pudding-like pus started getting squeezed out.

His calf really was soup.

"Whoo-ee," Steve Irwin commented, massaging the rest of it out of the neat, one inch long incision in his still-puffy skin. "That's gonna be leakin' on you a few more days, mate. I'll be sure to give you a waiver for the airport, and we'll get you set up with a bit o' stuff to make that smell a little better for the poor sods sittin' beside you."

"Oh, I'm not due to fly out for a week," Saito told him, affecting surprise. "Just as well, I guess."

Irwin squinted at him again, then turned and looked back at Jim-ba and Tak. "Your mates told me you're flyin' out this afternoon."

So they knew more English than they were letting on. Saito maintained his innocent look. "No, not unless . . . you're saying I need to be airlifted somewhere?"

The Australian doctor blew out his cheeks. "You're certainly not going walkabout on that leg. If you're gonna be stayin' a fair bit, let's get you to Alice Springs. This bite's already infected, and you could definitely do with a stay in a right proper hospital."

"Whatever you say, doc."

An additional thirty minutes got him some 'temporary' stitches – "Just in case they decide to open you up again and do another irrigation," which were exactly like regular stitches and made Saito question whether or not all stitches were temporary – and a significant quantity of liquid pharmaceuticals. The calf was wrapped and the rusty safety pins replaced with shiny new ones that were unlikely to give him tetanus. Now that it had been lanced, the leg mostly actually fit into the pant leg, and getting the boot on was a little easier.

"I've called ahead to Alice Springs, they'll be waiting for ya. It'll be a bit of a jaunt, though, so I've topped you off with something to help you through. These blokes here have already agreed to take you. Seems like they found you in the nick of time."

"They sure did," Saito agreed readily, and Tak elbowed Jim-ba, who beamed.

"Don't be surprised if they ask you to spend the night," Steve Irwin continued, a little more soberly. "You should feel pretty all right here and now, but come tonight, you'll be glad you're there."

"I appreciate it, doc," Saito assured him. "We'll head straight there."

"Good on ya, mate." He beamed the happy, carefree smile of Australians everywhere, and clapped him on the shoulder. "Your office already called, and we've got the bill squared away. You just get to Alice Springs, then try to relax. They'll have you up and about in no time."

He already was up and about, thanks to the new set of drugs, and Saito was unsurprised DXS had already paid the bill. One more indication to Director Thornton that he was following the plan. Right up until Tak helped him limp out of the semi-air-conditioned space and they found two gleaming Audi SUVs waiting for them in the blistering parking lot.

Tak and Jim-ba both froze, and a non-descript Caucasian male exited the nearest vehicle, met Saito's eyes with a nod, and slipped into the passenger seat of the second. Tak and Jim-ba simply stared at them as they proceeded to drive away. Saito ignored them, and instead unlocked the rover, deposited the keys on the driver's seat, and rescued his two firearms. Tak didn't put it together until Saito was actually seated in the second, still-running vehicle.

". . . hospital?" he asked, his brow furrowed. Saito shot him a grin, then opened the sat phone and powered it down. A brand new one – prosumer grade – and a paper map were on the passenger seat of the Audi, helpfully translated into Japanese, as well as a very nice pair of binoculars. Two radios were lying in the footwell with two gallon jugs of water, a military grade first aid kit, and a small canvas bag. It was the canvas bag Saito went for first.

"I'm going to get the Mac," he answered, unzipping the bag and withdrawing a pair of tan driving gloves. There was also a tan eyepatch that looked like it had been purchased at a Halloween store, but beggars couldn't be choosers. In the sunglasses tray in front of the rear view mirror Saito found a pair of very expensive Matsudas, and when the whole outfit came together, Saito pulled down the visor and examined himself.

Nakamura Otohiko glared back.

The last time he'd looked the Yakuza enforcer in the eye, Otohiko had had two. The loss of the eye in an apparent skirmish with none other than Saito's own Special Assault team was a new detail, and Saito didn't overly care for it. He was right-handed, so naturally they'd left him that eye, but the point was that sharpshooters actually kept both open even when sniping, and he was already physically compromised.

Then again, an injury to his left side neatly explained the limp, as well as the missing eye. And if it came down to shooting, he was already fucked. So the shitty eyepatch probably wasn't going to make or break anything. It just made him even more of a ridiculous manga character than he already was. Which was undoubtedly the captain's point. The text hadn't included any details of Otohiko's injuries, just that he'd gone underground afterwards, so Saito could essentially make up anything he wanted.

Assuming he got caught. Which wasn't going to happen.

Jim-ba said something, and Tak snerked. Saito gave the boys a one-eyed glare. "Go home," he ordered them. "Keep the rover out of sight. Don't go joy-riding, it's too dangerous. Do you understand?"

Both of the young men nodded, and Saito seriously considered disabling the rover to make sure they actually stayed put. But given their reception in Reception, stranding them in this town didn't seem like a nice thing to do, in light of what the boys – and their tribe – had done for them.

MacGyver was right. They were going to have to find some way to thank them.

"Do not follow me," Saito added, then pulled the door closed, left the air conditioning setting where it was, and headed back the way they'd come. The new sat phone had the coordinates he'd given them pre-programmed, including a few dirt road options that cut out a significant number of kilometers, if the SUV could handle the terrain, and he was alert enough to pick out a decent path.

He patted the pocket of his tac pants, reassuring himself that the adrenaline was still there, and took the path with the quickest ETA.

It took him longer than he would have liked. The Audi was light-colored with a light interior, which made it a little more tolerable from a soaking up heat perspective, and he was thankful whoever had programmed the route had taken fueling up into consideration. There was one and only one fuel station on the path, and Saito went ahead and used some of the pocket money in the canvas bag to purchase a couple outrageously priced five gallon containers. The trunk was technically still part of the cabin, but he figured some gasoline fumes were a small price to pay for guaranteed range. There were no cameras to dodge, and Saito briefly powered on the Italian's sat phone while he was refueling, to give DXS a point in time location. Not enough time for them to call him – enough for a ping, and nothing more.

Seeing as his own fluids had been topped off intravenously, he didn't touch the two gallons of water. There was no telling what condition Dalton was going to be in. He used the sad little convenience store attached to the fuel station to pick up protein and sugar, in the form of boiled peanuts and biscuits. For himself, he grabbed some caffeine pills.

They didn't really help. By the time he was within fifty kilometers of the general coordinate area, he knew he had to pull over or the risk of damaging the vehicle was almost certain. The Audi wasn't equipped with any kind of alarm clock or timer, so he picked up the Japanese sat phone and shot off a quick text.

The reply was almost immediate. Do I look like a hotel concierge to you?

Saito smirked as he replied. Call until someone answers. If it's not me, tip off the Americans.

He set the phone down, then reclined his seat – it adjusted on twelve different planes, yet somehow he couldn't make it comfortable – and the phone chimed.

Captain's already received an inquiry.

Shit. Director Thornton worked fast.

Hold her off as long as you can.

Then he let the phone drop into the cupholder, and closed his eyes.

That was all. All he did was close his eyes, and the goddamn phone was chirping again. Saito groaned, then pried open his eyes again – one of which was still covered in an eyepatch, the other weirdly dry - and blinked until things started coming into focus. Still light.

More than half an hour past the time he'd wanted to wake up.

He swore and grabbed the phone, confirming the time with another curse before he answered. The voice on the other end was painfully familiar. "You alive?"

Saito groaned again and relaxed against the seat a moment, then flipped up his eyepatch so he could see with both eyes. ". . . stand by."

There was a humorless chuckle. "Your gaijin boss is surprisingly persistent."

Great.

"Team's inbound. Captain's coming out himself."

Not great. "What idiot let him do that?"

There was a gusting sigh. "You're picking up bad habits from the Americans. We follow orders."

Truth. "ETA?"

"About six hours. Consider the phone compromised."

Which meant his old captain had given up the sat phone number and location to DXS. "Noted."

There was a slight pause. "You sound like shit, Saito-san." It didn't warrant a reply, and Saito used the buttons to raise the seat back, letting the motor sit him up as well. It was supposed to be a one hour nap, but it was closer to two, which meant that MacGyver –

MacGyver had been on site for hours. Plenty of time to get himself into trouble.

"Anything change in the last hour and a half?"

"Besides being reminded why we were so happy when you left? No."

Saito started the Audi, and let the fans circulate the hot air a minute before rolling up the windows. The breeze wasn't worth the dust. "I'm fifty klicks out. I'll call back when I have eyes on."

"I have your position," his old teammate confirmed sourly. "And let it be known that I'm the one who took your eye, Otohiko-chan."

Saito growled and hung up. Then he put the Audi into gear.

Fifty kilometers was about thirty miles, so his impromptu nap had been taken outside of reasonable drone distance. Still, for all he knew these guys had satellite access, so he took it a little slower than he would have liked, just to keep the dust cloud down. It finally occurred to him that he had another way to determine his range, and Saito groped around the passenger wheel well until his searching hand closed on one of the walkie talkies. He tuned it to the DSX distress band, and then cranked the volume.

And damned if he didn't hear a ping. MacGyver's tracker was up and working.

Unfortunately, as he approached the original coordinates, the ping didn't get any louder. The map indicated an area of slightly higher ground just off the road, and Saito made it in a little over forty-seven minutes. It wasn't enough altitude to significantly improve the signal strength, but it did give him a couple miles of decent viz.

He parked the Audi just far enough back on the bluff that it wasn't silhouetted, then grabbed the binoculars off the passenger seat and limped out. A grid search got him nothing. No visible aborigines, no structures. No snakes, either, and this time he was watching for them. He eventually picked up some vehicle tracks about a mile out, and selected a new vantage point. As he guided the Audi carefully over the bluff, it seemed like the tracker signal was finally gaining a little volume.

He was maybe four miles off the coordinates he'd given DXS when he finally spotted a vehicle, supervising about seven dusty, half-clothed aborigines. They were fanning out from a primitive trail, gathering what they could with knives that looked too dull to cut the roots, much less make a decent weapon against the two men with automatics. Saito observed for a few minutes, but there was no sense of alarm or urgency in the movements of the pickers or the men shouting orders, and he proceeded along the bluff, quite slowly to keep the dust down.

About a klick beyond that harvesting group, he found the main camp. Saito sent off a quick text, then turned back on the Italians' sat phone for good measure, then he set both to silent and found a nice flat snake-free rock to lay down beside.

MacGyver's tracking beacon was nice and strong. It took Saito about twenty minutes to finally find him. He was wearing someone else's clothes, including a bush hat, but the flap that was rolled up and pinned gave away a glint of the blond hair. Saito made a mental note to tell the man that one side of the brim was pinned that way to allow one to sling a rifle over their shoulder without knocking off their own hat.

Probably not what MacGyver was going to do.

Though even after a few minutes of observing him, Saito still had no idea what the hell he was doing.

He seemed to be bouncing between tan supply tents, and every time he left one for the next, he had different objects in his hands. The only constant seemed to be a roll of duct tape he'd put around his wrist like a bracelet, but otherwise he swapped out twine, empty jugs, pieces of metal, and what looked like a five pound bag of flour.

Turned out Saito was right. It was flour.

That became very obvious when a nearly silent altercation began in what Saito had clocked to be the cooking tent. An aborigine working over several Army cookers said the wrong thing – or couldn't come up with the flour – and his minder didn't take too kindly to what surely sounded like the excuse of a lazy and unmotivated prisoner. When some light physical motivation failed to get the correct result, a handgun was produced, and that was right about the time Jack's partner just couldn't help himself.

Saito thinned his lips and watched the young agent slip around from the back of the cooking tent, help himself to a skillet, and pull a Samwise Gamgee on the cartel member. Somewhat remarkably, the aborigine didn't immediately flee, and after some type of conversation, MacGyver grabbed the unconscious bad guy and started dragging him to a supply tent.

Utterly unaware of the two men headed in his direction, probably also thinking about supper.

If there was a way to make the tracker MacGyver had built produce noise, Saito would have used it to warn him. Unfortunately he could only watch as the inevitable discovery occurred, followed by the inevitable scuffle. MacGyver managed to knock them down, but a few bullets placed near his ankles by a third man put a stop to the skirmish, and then he reluctantly raised his hands, and the three drug runners scooped him up and marched him to one of the two luxury 7-horse trailers that made up the only permanent structures. Considering Australia had the market cornered on extravagant multi-horse trailers, these two wouldn't raise any eyebrows on the highways, and allowed for a truly impressive amount of space to haul their loot.

As well as plenty of space to torture an American agent – or two - for the source of their intel.

Saito sighed, remaining exactly where he was, and after about half an hour he started to get a feel for how many of them there were, and where they were. They'd keep their workforce in the field until they lost the light, which was going to be hours from now. ETA for the cavalry was still a little over three hours, which meant there was going to be some overlap between twilight – which was an excellent time to attack, from their perspective – and the highest number of civilians in the line of fire. Also, and he was telling himself it was a simple threat assessment, and not worry, Saito honestly wasn't sure how well MacGyver was going to hold out, SERE training or no. Once they seriously started hurting his younger partner, Dalton was going to lose his cool.

And there was a fairly nice BWM SUV down there, among the much more native-looking pick-up trucks. If the Yakuza had decided to send interrogators, that was exactly what they'd be driving.

Saito weighed his options, then bellycrawled away from the edge, and rolled painfully onto his back. From there he fished the prosumer sat phone out of his pocket and texted the intel out to both his old team and DXS. It was still on silent, and he'd missed three calls. He figured that was excusable; he might very well have been somewhere he couldn't make noise or take calls.

He certainly was going to be soon.

Getting back to the SUV was a little harder than it had been earlier, and as soon as he made the driver's seat he fished one of the two Epi pens out of his pocket and jammed the autoinjector into his thigh. Then he consulted the map, started up the SUV, and crept his careful way north until he could be sure the dust wouldn't give him away.

He also cranked the A/C. Being hot and sweaty wouldn't necessarily help his cover. Belatedly he remembered to flip the stupid eyepatch back down.

His hand was shaking slightly from the adrenaline.

It took him around twenty or so minutes to find the dirt road that led to the temporary camp, and another ten after that before the horse trailers came back into view. They did indeed have a lookout, a Middle Eastern guy, mid-thirties, Kalashnikov. The rifle was a fairly recent model, modded. Saito made a mental note to come back and get it later if he needed it.

The guy had the rifle pointed towards the sky, cradled against his arm, and merely held up a palm. The very picture of calm indifference.

The ghost of Saito's older brother whispered in his ear again. They just caught an intruder, and no one told the lookout?

Didn't matter. Even if it was a trap, it was a trap for whoever they thought was backing MacGyver up. And Nakamura Otohiko wasn't that dude. He gave the guy a cold look but brought the Audi to a halt.

The man blinked at him. He didn't blink back.

At some point he realized simply staring wasn't going to make Saito roll the window down, and he finally reached out and rapped on the glass. "Who're you?"

Saito didn't roll down the window, and he didn't reply, other than to look about three percent less amused. Then he took his foot off the brake and rolled right past him.

He chose a parking spot near the other trucks and BMW, but far enough out that he could make a quick retreat in at least three directions, put the Audi in park, and turned off the engine. He left the water jugs where they were – no one would question why a man like Nakamura would have basic survival supplies – and took a deep sniff of the interior of the Audi. MacGyver had stripped him pretty early into the multiple days of on and off dying, because he actually didn't smell too bad. Probably whatever that white stuff had been had helped. Nakamura was known to go on a bender or two in his lifetime, so the idea that he had been called out of mothballs following his injury to deal with these Americans had some chance of flying.

He didn't plan on being here long enough to find out.

The lookout had abandoned his post to approach a few steps, and Saito eased out of the car, favoring his left leg. He made the pain look higher, like it was more in his hip, and headed directly for the closer trailer – the same one MacGyver had been dragged into almost forty minutes ago.

The lookout didn't call out to him again.

Nor did anyone prevent him from opening the door to the cabin portion of the luxury trailer, revealing a sumptuous mobile home that was nicer than most hotel rooms. The aisle was plenty wide enough to accommodate him, and three Japanese men gathered around a tablet looked up as he let the door slam behind him.

They all eyed one another up and down. Two were the men he'd seen earlier, who had collected MacGyver. The third was dressed a little more crisply, and was being given plenty of space.

He was also someone Saito thought he should probably recognize.

That guy seemed to have the same instinct. He sneered. "Who the fuck are you?" he asked, in the aggressive drawl of all Yakuza. He spoke in Japanese, and didn't use any honorifics.

Nakamura Otohiko had dealt with people like him before.

Saito didn't show a single emotion. He ignored the man, now focused on the tablet that he could partially see. It looked like a Google map.

"Don't ignore me when I'm talking to you!" the other man spat, and Saito gave the spares the coldest look he could manage with only one eye. Apparently the eyepatch helped, because they both eased back from the table.

". . . why not?" Saito finally replied, in neutral Japanese, and after he'd studied the map another moment, and was quite sure it was the southern end of Australia, he fixed the Yakuza foot soldier with that same cold eye. "The American does."

The gang member's face screwed up in rage, and he took a single step forward. "Who the fuck do you think you are-"

That was all Saito let him say. Most of the yelling was bluster, social rules dictated that he be allowed to bellow to his heart's content, so the guy's hands weren't in a good position to block an attack. His angle by the table further impeded his ability to move freely, so Saito punched him in the Adam's apple.

The man dropped like a sack of rice, both hands clamped around his throat, and then Saito limped past him, towards the livestock portion of the trailer. No one else spoke.

A sharp, earthy odor hit him as soon as he opened the door, the air in the back of the trailer a good twenty degrees hotter than the cabin. Someone was muttering in English, but otherwise it was quiet, and Saito let the door close behind him, adjusting to the light. The windows to the trailer were open, trying to tempt a breeze, and the stainless steel stall walls hid much of the compartment from him. The closest stall was more than three-quarters full of dirty, strong-smelling roots.

It masked the scent of blood quite well.

Saito limped around the high stall wall to the aisle, where he found a man standing about midway down the trailer. The guy was inspecting the stained tape around his knuckles and shaking his head. The muttering wasn't coming from him.

Further down the aisle, two more men were gathered near the furthest stall, heads bowed in quiet conference. Both had handguns tucked into their belts. Also not the source of the muttering.

So he still had two guys behind him, and at least three in here, two of them armed. The odds were definitely not in his favor.

Without hesitation Saito headed for the man wearing the bloody boxing tape. The guy didn't bat an eye at his approach, still trying to find the edge of the tape so he could unwind it. Apparently the punching was done, at least temporarily. The boxer was Middle Eastern, a rather short, wiry guy who moved very fluidly. Saito immediately marked him as the biggest threat.

He also found the source of the muttering.

Jack Dalton was half dangling, half lying in the middle of the stall, his wrists handcuffed to the top, opposite rails of the steel partitions. He was a ball of blood, sweat, and bruises, and his almost sing-song muttering was no clearer now than it had been from the other side of the trailer. He rolled his head to the right, trying to get a look at the newcomer through his swollen eyes, and the muttering broke off into a thin, dry laugh.

A fairly happy sounding one.

Saito didn't let his expression shift in the slightest. He also tilted his head, in the same direction Jack had, and tried to tell him silently to shut the fuck up. Jack started laughing harder.

Definitely drugged. Definitely not walking out without help. Possibly about to blow his cover wide open.

"How many of you are there?" The boxer sounded more annoyed than alarmed, and Saito gave Jack one more warning look, that made him actually close his eyes with the intensity of his giggling, then gave a short, sharp sigh. Without answering, he straightened his neck, then turned for the two Japanese men at the end of the trailer, both now looking right at him.

He didn't recognize either one of them.

"Where is the other?" he inquired, keeping his voice soft and neutral, and the taller of the two men at the end of the trailer stiffened.

"Who the hell are you?" It was only slightly more polite than the previous gang member had been.

Saito took a deep, cleansing breath, as if irritated that he was going to have to repeat his query, and a thin Texas drawl came out of his mouth instead of his own voice.

". . . ooo, you stepped in it now, hoss."

Nakamura wouldn't be moved, so Saito didn't do anything. He simply stood there.

". . . he's'a . . . a . . . leg . . ." Saito heard Jack shift slightly, the handcuffs clinking on metal, but he didn't look back at him, keeping a steady, cold eye on the two men that had doubtlessly been sent to deal with Jack.

The interrogators.

" . . . som'thin' happen?" It was Jack's version of worried, but his voice was so weak and hoarse that someone who didn't know him probably couldn't tell. Saito decided to head him off.

"This one is known to us. Jack Dalton. CIA." He never took his eyes off the other two interrogators. "Where is the other?"

Even if Jack didn't remember much Japanese, he was clearly able to pick out his name, or at the very least three letters from the English alphabet. " . . . heeeyyy . . ."

The other Japanese men failed to hide their surprise, and the shorter man found his voice first. "What? How –" But then he cut himself off as something seemed to dawn on him. Saito didn't know what it was and he didn't care. He headed toward the stall they were standing in front of, hoping that getting out of Jack's line of sight would cause him to stop talking.

Not that anything would really cause Jack Dalton to stop talking. Nothing but sleep and death.

". . . whaddaya . . . wait . . ."

One of the interrogators touched the other on the arm, signaling him to back up, and Saito limped over to the stall and glanced in.

MacGyver was also awake, kneeling in the otherwise empty stall with his hands bound behind him. The hat was gone and there was a bruise forming on his left cheekbone, but otherwise he seemed generally to be in one piece. He glowered up at his captors, not a shred of surprise or recognition on his face.

Saito regarded him. MacGyver glared back.

"We were not told you that you had been sent for," the shorter of the two interrogators said, his tone a touch more respectful. "Do you recognize him?"

"No," Saito replied immediately. "Have any others from the nursery been found?" The more doubt he could instill in them the better. MacGyver looked like he was quite capable of moving under his own power, which unfortunately meant that he would be the one to take on the others while Saito got Jack out. The more people Saito could get out of the trailer, the higher the odds that the three of them lived.

The stainless steel would stop handgun bullets, but that Kalashnikov would rip through the trailer walls like they weren't there. If they took these guys, it would have to be quiet. No gunshots.

". . . hey . . . where'd'ya'go?"

One of the interrogators looked past Saito, towards the stall where Jack was still quietly calling. The other frowned. "No. He's the only one we've seen so far."

Saito entered the stall, trying to keep their attention wholly focused on himself, and MacGyver refused to cower. In truth, Saito didn't want him to. Not yet. He drew his knife from its sheath and placed it under the younger agent's chin.

"Stand," he instructed coldly, in English. When MacGyver didn't do it fast enough, in typical disrespectful young person fashion, Saito simply lifted the knife. The cut wasn't deep by any means, but MacGyver's eyes widened in surprise, and he yelped when his legs, which were half asleep, caused him to stumble and appear to cut himself more deeply.

"Oi, mate –"

It was close enough to Saito's ear to a genuine Australian accent, which meant it was probably good enough to fool the two interrogators, as well. Saito dragged the knife around MacGyver's throat without any sort of showmanship, smearing what little blood he'd drawn to give the appearance of more, shifting the young man any way he wanted, inspecting him critically until he was behind MacGyver, and he focused on his hands.

The wet wipes he'd used earlier hadn't done the job. There was still oil and grease under his nails and embedded in his knuckles. Not enough to let him work himself out of the cotton ropes he was bound with, of course. But enough.

Saito brought the knife down, using it to force MacGyver's wrists up, and he elicited another little yelp out of the agent at the sharp angle, taking his dear sweet time examining them. Once he identified the knot, he twisted his lips and cleanly sliced one of the pieces of rope. MacGyver flinched hard, even made his exhale tremble, as though he'd been cut again.

From the other stall, Jack growled something unintelligible.

"He's a thief," Saito concluded in Japanese, shoving MacGyver roughly into the stall wall, as if to get him out of the way, and then he used the material covering MacGyver's right shoulder to wipe the blood off the blade. MacGyver played the part well, no longer making eye contact, even shaking a little. "I saw a pickup off trail, three kilometers back. Carburetors in the bed. And the little schoolboy here has oil under his fingernails." He bared his teeth at MacGyver, causing him to blanch a little, and press himself further against the stall wall. "Check your vehicles."

The shorter of the two Japanese interrogators gestured, and the man still watching Dalton reluctantly backed off, and headed back towards the cab of the trailer.

One down, two to go.

But the taller one still had eyes on Dalton, and they cut back to Saito suspiciously. "How do you know that one?"

Jack was still mumbling threats – probably in response to MacGyver's voice. Whatever drug they'd given him, it must have been given by these guys. It was damn effective, they were probably just waiting for it to take hold like they meant it before they moved the interrogation right back to him.

On the positive side, it meant the two interrogators in front of him had recently arrived, and some noise from the trailer was to be expected.

On the negative side, it meant they were fresh and ready to work.

Saito didn't move from MacGyver's space, giving him an excuse to remain standing and a little cover to work the ropes loose. "The American agent has done work with an . . . overly persistent special assault team in Tokyo. They owe me an eye." He let his gaze slip back towards the middle of the trailer, to ensure that the Middle Eastern fighter was well and truly gone. "Perhaps he will pay their debt."

Unluckily for them, the Arab boxer had not left the trailer. He was standing in the doorway, apparently passing the instructions to check the vehicles on to the men in the cab, but he hadn't stepped through, and Saito had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn't going to. If he'd been working on Jack all this time, he'd want to see the interrogation through.

And Saito was fairly sure that he couldn't take him. Not in his current condition. Neither could MacGyver.

So much for not using guns.

Saito limped towards Jack, as if he intended to take the man's eye right that very second, and the shorter of the two men behind him fell in step behind him. "I heard Nakamura-san disappeared."

It was true that Nakamura Otohiko hadn't been seen since Jack Dalton had recruited Akatsutsumi Saito to DXS, roughly seven months ago. Since his cover had only gotten revised about that many hours ago, these guys certainly wouldn't have heard anything. A Yakuza enforcer disappearing off the map typically meant only one thing – that he had disappointed one of the syndicates and been quietly disposed of. Depending on the level of disappointment, he may have done the disposing himself, to save them the inconvenience. As far as Saito knew, none of the enforcers had ever retired. Some had become personal bodyguards, but they tended to die in service.

In this case, the truth couldn't hurt. "He did," Saito said shortly, and was unable to buy any further time before he came to a stop in front of Jack's stall. Jack rolled his head up his shoulder again, trying to get a look, but this time his skull was just a little too heavy, and he let it drop, his chin hanging low against his chest.

He was done. And even in defeat, he couldn't shut his goddamn mouth.

" . . . Nakamura . . . Oto . . . Hiko-chan," he managed, and then laughed, like it was a joke. The laugh pulled the attention of their Arab boxer back to them, and Saito heard the door between the trailer and the cab close.

Now or never.

"How did you know we had captured another?" the taller interrogator, the one near MacGyver, asked suddenly. Saito paused, as if irritated that he was being questioned, then turned, so that his back was to Jack, and his right foot was bearing all his weight.

"Your shit-for-brains driver," he snapped, quite impolitely, and then he threw out his right arm as if gesturing in the direction of the cab.

Only his knife had still been in his right hand, and now it was sailing through the air to find a new home in the Arab's chest.

At the same time, he struck out with his left, but without being able to put any weight on his left foot, he wasn't quite able to stretch far enough to land more than a glancing blow on the shorter of the two Yakuza interrogators. MacGyver took the opportunity to hurl himself out of his stall, shoulder-checking the taller interrogator into the trailer wall, and Saito pivoted on his right foot, trying to get enough space to draw his pistol.

He got it free, but a deft foot knocked it right out of his hand, and Saito was suddenly occupied with trying to defend himself from someone who knew he had a bad leg. He blocked a knife but wasn't able to get it away from the other man, and then the shelving unit that ran the length of the trailer, holding various supplies and utensils, suddenly gave way, dumping its contents onto his opponent with a deafening crash of metal on metal.

It was more than enough. Saito caught a metal bucket as it was falling, spun once again on his right foot, and brought it around like a blade. He nailed the distracted interrogator in the side of the head and let his momentum carry him back around, looking for the Middle Eastern boxer. The bucket connected with a Smith and Wesson, which remarkably didn't go off, but it was flung out of reach, and the man who had been holding it was on him in an instant. He sent them both crashing in the stall wall beside one of Jack's handcuffed wrists, and Saito blocked what was meant to be a fatal blow to his throat.

He could see that his knife had hit the Arab, his chest was bloodied but the wound didn't seem to be slowing him down at all. Saito blocked another head-strike and took a direct kick to his left leg for his troubles. It buckled, sending him down on one knee. He blocked his opponent's left knee reflexively as it came for his face, and then there was the sound of something heavy striking flesh, and the boxer rag dolled and toppled bonelessly to the ground.

Behind him, MacGyver caught himself, breathing hard, a monster wrench in his right hand. He froze when he got a good look at his partner.

Saito stayed on the ground, rifling through the boxer's pockets for the handcuff keys. MacGyver also took a knee, in front of Jack, and cupped Dalton's chin in his hands, trying to get a better look at the lacerations on his face.

"Hey big guy," he said softly, in his curiously deep voice. "Sorry about the wait."

Jack made a noise that might have been happy. "Y'shouldn . . . shouldn' be here . . ."

Saito found and wordlessly passed MacGyver the keys, and the young man gently released Jack's face to get to work on the handcuffs. "Yeah, there's a lot of that going around."

Saito presumed that comment was directed at him, and struggled to his feet with a hiss. "Could you have made a little more noise there, bakayaro? Maybe shot a few holes in the ceiling? We got thirty seconds max before someone comes to check out the racket." The soft clank of metal attracted his attention, and Saito glared at a small can of oil as it rolled across the aisle to bonk into the wall beside its brother. The fallen metal shelf itself was mostly blocking the aisle – probably the only reason the Arab hadn't managed to kill him – and Saito transferred his glare to MacGyver, who was easing Jack against one wall of the stall. "How the fuck did you do that, by the way?" Last he'd seen MacGyver was grappling with the interrogator, and suddenly half the trailer was falling over.

"Physics," MacGyver grunted, propping Dalton up as best he could. Jack reached up and clumsily patted him on the cheek. From what Saito had seen, the drug cocktail was narcotics based, and he fished the other Epi pen out of his cargo pants and pressed it into MacGyver's hands.

"We gotta get him up. I can't carry him."

MacGyver accepted the old Epi pen, squinting at the label a second before pressing it into Jack's thigh. "Is this how you're managing to walk around right now?"

If only it were that easy. The kick to his left shin had set his calf on fire, and the painkillers Steve Irwin had given him were more than halfway burned. "Your minions got me to a clinic. DXS and Japanese Special Assault are on their way to these coordinates, ETA about three hours. We're on our own til then."

"Nothing to worry about, then," MacGyver said lightly – possibly for Jack's benefit – and straightened, using his long legs to clamber over the detritus and the downed shelving unit. "There's a door behind us – get Jack on his feet if you can, I'll be right back."

Saito didn't bother to argue, taking MacGyver's place beside Dalton, and he watched the adrenaline hit the rest of the soup in his blood. Jack managed a little deeper of a breath that set him immediately to coughing, and Saito grimaced in sympathy but still put the other man's right arm over his shoulder, and used his right leg to pull them both upright.

"Shit, you weigh a ton," he huffed, trying to juggle their weight without faceplanting on the opposite stall wall. "You eat rocks for breakfast?"

Jack groaned, not helping much if at all, and Saito swore quietly and wondered if they'd broken his ankles to keep him immobilized. He had his feet flat on the floor but his legs were jelly. Normally you'd want to keep your hostage at least semi-mobile, but since his interrogation chamber was fully mobile, maybe they hadn't bothered.

There was literally nothing they could do about it in the time they had. Broken or not, he was going to walk on them.

"Dalton!" he snapped, and the agent maybe gave him five more percent. Not enough. "Listen to me, you gaijin piece of shit, either lay down and die or get your ass in gear!" He lurched forward a step, bracing his right shoulder on the stall wall to balance as he limped forward on his left. Jack coughed again, and shuffled half a step.

Metal screamed against metal, and Saito whipped towards the front of the trailer to see MacGyver shifting one of the stall walls from the right side of the trailer to the left. The shelf had fallen just shy of it, and he was able to yank the partition in place and lock it. As Saito dragged himself and Jack into the aisle, MacGyver wound up a kick and snapped the locking clamp off shear with the metal partition.

Creating even more obstacles for whoever was in the cab to have to cross to follow them.

MacGyver immediately turned and grabbed the second partition, dragging it into the way as far as the downed shelf would let him, and by the time he'd made it back to their position Jack was moving under about a quarter of his own power, and Saito had reached the door.

"Grab my gun," he huffed at the young agent, maneuvering himself and Jack out of the way. The door opened out, which would give them a bit of cover for handguns, but again, if that Kalashnikov was nearby, it was going to be no more useful than tin foil.

And damned if MacGyver didn't recover his pistol from the trailer floor and hand it back to him.

"I'll draw their fire. You get Jack to the nearest tent."

Saito swore at the man, then immediately regretted wasting the breath. "You realize all our vehicles are the other direction, right?"

He got a cock-eyed grin in reply. "You mean the direction you intentionally sent all the bad guys in? And I did, actually. Disable their vehicles. Where do you think I got this?" He lightly tugged the front of his borrowed shirt for emphasis, setting his feet to bolt as soon as he threw open the door.

Saito just stared at him. Well, that could explain what he'd been doing for the first few hours before he'd gotten eyes on the idiot. "You want a merit badge for that, boy scout?" And even if he had taken out the pickups – "My vehicle's with theirs."

"Worry about that later. On three."

Jack picked up his head a little, still having difficulty catching his breath, and did make an effort to lurch forward when MacGyver sprinted out of the trailer. Saito let them stumble out a second after, spinning again on his right leg to prop Jack against the trailer wall so he could take down any shooters, but there wasn't anyone in sight. MacGyver made it to the cooking tent, and Saito gave it a five count before he put his arm around Dalton again and more than half-carried him the distance. His own left leg was holding, if only because it had been wrapped like Steve Irwin had meant it, and he got them both under the burlap as fast as he could.

MacGyver was near the back of the tent, his eyes and hands darting over the temporary shelves, and Saito realized belatedly they were not alone.

Folded up just behind the line of three barbecues was the cook. He was staring at them with wide white eyes.

Saito held up his right hand – holding his gun – palm out, with the barrel pointed at the ceiling. "Easy," he tried.

The aborigine's white eyes shot towards MacGyver, who had looked up and frozen in place, and then Mac threw himself behind a short stack of burlap sacks. Saito immediately dropped, taking Dalton down with him, and he did his best to roll the other agent up against some cardboard boxes, trying to get them out of sight.

Jack barked out a cry of pain and Saito slapped his left hand over his mouth, readying his pistol. Not two seconds later he heard a couple pairs of feet sprinting towards them.

Someone threw themselves against the makeshift counter, craning their neck to look around the barbeques, and he just so happened to look the aborigine's way first. The man shrank further against the cooking stove as the barrel of a Kalashnikov rifle slapped down on the counter beside the drug runner.

"Which way?!" he shouted, and the aborigine flinched. Jack struggled a little under Saito's hand, seeking air, and Saito held him tighter, unable to get a clear line on the gunman. The aborigine's wild eyes dropped and he looked right at them.

Then he pointed, in that long-armed, lazy way of aborigines the world over, towards the tents down the row.

The drug runner took off at a dead run, his partner on his heels, and Saito gave it a three count before he released Dalton. The injured agent immediately started coughing again.

Saito shushed him, looking towards the back of the tent, and sandy blond hair finally poked up from behind the stack of fabric sacks. He and MacGyver exchanged a quick glance, then MacGyver hopped back up and crossed to the front of the tent, putting a hand on the aborigine's shoulder and speaking in a low voice. The man listened to him, then nodded and gestured, and MacGyver darted to another shelf, grabbing a few small metal camp stoves.

Saito turned back to Dalton, who had finished coughing, and was watching them through half-lidded black eyes. He sucked down a slightly deeper breath, then gave Saito a feeble nod.

He got it. Stay still, stay quiet.

Saito nodded back, then crept to where MacGyver was tearing into a box of steel wool. "That was the lookout who just came by, cars are probably open. I'll get us some wheels and pick you up on the back side."

"Too risky," the other agent whispered, quickly pulling the steel wool into a thin rectangle. "I have an idea. Stay put, keep him quiet." Then he hurried to the back edge of the tent, listened for a moment, and rolled under the burlap before his shadow disappeared.

This time Saito didn't even bother to curse. He motioned to the aborigine to stay down and quiet. The man gave him a hesitant nod, then looked towards Jack. Saito checked the shelves for a first aid kit as he moved back to the front of the tent, but didn't see one.

Of course there were kerosene camp stoves and steel wool, and why the fuck couldn't he just use those to patch Dalton up. Since apparently they were absolutely critical for whatever the hell MacGyver was doing.

Jack hadn't moved even a little from where Saito had shoved him up against the boxes, and he quickly patted him down. Ankles and legs seemed intact, just weak. Several of the fingers on his left hand were dislocated, and the hand itself was grossly swollen. His right pinky was also definitely broken, but they'd left the rest of them intact so he could write. His half-shredded shirt was too soggy with sweat and blood to tell where the injuries were, but his back felt like one giant mass of long eggs, so they'd either cut strips out of him or horsewhipped him. Or both. Saito didn't have anything on hand to wrap him with, and he wasn't bleeding badly. There was some blood smeared on the boxes behind him, but he wasn't dripping too much, wasn't leaving a super-obvious trail.

The way he'd been handcuffed to the stall partitions was essentially a modified crucifixion; besides causing immense pain it made it very difficult for the victim to breathe, but getting his arms down and the pressure off his chest should have helped. It didn't seem like it had. Dalton was still out of breath, and deep breathing seemed beyond him. Busted ribs, maybe, or something worse. His pulse was rapid, but that could have been the adrenaline, his own or the stuff they'd added.

Best they could do was get him the hell out of here, get some water into him, and wait for medical to get him during exfil.

Jack moaned when Saito found a particularly painful place on his chest, and Saito quietly clucked his tongue.

"Quit whining. On the plus side I think they straightened your nose."

It took Dalton a few seconds, but then Saito managed to coax a half-hearted glare out of him, and he patted his friend on the shoulder, gently. "So this partner of yours . . . was he always a pain in the ass, or is that your doing?"

The glare turned into a weak, but goofy, smile. "Uncle Sam . . . issued 'im that way," Dalton slurred. "Wouldn' 'shange 'im . . . prolly couldn' if I tried."

"Jack Dalton admitting he can't do something?" Saito whispered in mock surprise, keeping an ear cocked for any footsteps. "In that case, bet you can't run half a mile."

The fond little smile didn't go anywhere. "Mac jus' ran off, didn' he."

A quick glance at the back of the tent showed he hadn't returned. "Looks that way," Saito murmured. "He coming back?"

The smile bloomed into a full – if painful looking – grin, that caused Dalton's split lip to glisten with fresh blood. "You'll know," is all he said, then grimaced and swallowed a cough. "Si . . . I ain' . . . feelin' so good . . ."

"No shit?"

There was a tremendous explosion, that Saito felt reverberate in his chest as he flinched in surprise, and he instinctively covered the injured man in front of him as a second explosion, relatively minor compared to the first, seemed to rip through the very tent they were in. He heard debris raining down on the fabric ceiling of the tent, and he kept his head down as he peered over his shoulder, finding the aborigine right where he left him, stuffed almost under the barbecue. He barely heard the scuffle of feet through dirt, and MacGyver was just suddenly there, right beside them. He slammed a sweaty hand into Saito's back to catch himself as he slid to a stop.

"Let's go, let's go," he called urgently, and then sprinted across the tent to the aborigine. Saito gave Jack a bracing smile, then threw his right arm over his shoulder again, and hauled the agent upright.

Mac and his new friend held the back of the tent up enough to allow Saito and Jack to stagger under it, and then they were off, playing the world's slowest and shittiest game of three-legged hopscotch back behind the smoking ruins of supply tents. The black smoke did an admirable job of hiding their movements, and the explosions seemed to have occurred near the front of the tents, because the backs were intact enough to partially protect them from the heat.

"Wrong way, genius!" Saito hissed as they moved their way further and further from the Audi. Without wheels, distraction or no they'd be caught –

"Truck," Mac hissed back, gesturing forward, and Saito grit his teeth and followed him.

Jack was down to about ten percent power by the time the old beater came into view around the billowing smoke – outfitted with a metal cage in the back to transfer lumber, or slaves, whichever you needed – and Saito growled threats at the dead weight hanging off his left shoulder as a few bullets starting pinging off the truck bed. They were wide, handguns and a good thirty yards back, and the cook leaped easily into the bed, turning to wave them on. MacGyver had dashed for the cab of the truck, and red flashed in his hands as he broke out his swiss army knife to start hotwiring it.

Saito found himself wondering idly how the interrogators had been so sloppy as to leave it with him. Then he figured MacGyver must have grabbed it as they were fleeing the trailer. He had no more time to ponder when Jack gave up the ghost a few yards short of the truck bed, and if not for the aborigine's strong hands, they both would have lost a couple teeth on the tailgate.

Saito and the cook muscled Jack into the pickup, rolling him onto his back with his legs still hanging off when the engine turned over. Saito wasted no time in limping over to the driver's side door and yanking Mac out.

"I'll drive, you make sure he doesn't fall out the back," he instructed, and for once the young man did exactly what he was ordered to do without comment. Saito didn't even wait to make sure the kid was in the truck before he threw her into gear and floored it, ripping off the stupid eyepatch as he did so.

Driving a brand new Audi SUV over rough terrain sucked. In an old Nissan pickup, it was kind of like riding a mechanical bull. At least two wheels were out of contact with the ground at any given moment, and it didn't get much better when Saito managed to pick up a trail. It might take them right back out to the men in the field, which was another place they didn't want to be, but it was better than going back.

"You all good back there?" he shouted through the back window, never taking his eyes off the nonexistent road.

". . . so I think maybe you were right," MacGyver shouted back, and Saito finally glanced at the rear view mirror, giving him an excellent shot of the back of the agent's head.

"Which part?" he called back, though he had a sneaking suspicion he already knew when something that sounded just like a bullet zipped by the open driver's side window.

"We maybe should have taken the Audi," Jack's partner called back, a little sheepishly, and then he ducked down, and not forty yards behind them was a shiny, brand new SUV. It didn't matter that the keys were in Saito's pocket. The Yakuza did a tidy business stealing cars, and any driver worth his salt would know how to hotwire one.

And if Saito wasn't mistaken, that stick hanging out the passenger window was a Kalashnikov.

He gritted his teeth and pushed the accelerator harder. It acted like the volume button on a radio. Engine noise increased, but that was it.

"What, you ran out of kerosene and steel wool?!" he snapped back out the window, then reached for the small of his back to pull out his pistol. "Because I swear to whatever god you believe in, if you don't take this gun and return fire I will end you!"

"I got an idea!" the agent shouted back, then disappeared from view.

"Damn it, son of a bitch!" Saito shouted back – belatedly he realized in Japanese, not that it mattered since he had no idea how much of the language MacGyver actually knew – and he tried every trick in the book to get more distance between them and the Audi.

Unfortunately, all his defensive driving training had been in the streets of Tokyo. Put him on a crotch rocket or a squad car, even a limo, and he'd get you out of a jam. In the outback, in a beater, trying not to throw three passengers from the bed, he was fucked. It was all he could do to keep them on the rough, narrow trail and not take out the transmission with an unfortunately placed rock.

A glance at the rear view mirror confirmed that they were losing ground. It also looked like MacGyver was disassembling part of the lumber cage, and he'd set the cook to the same task.

Maybe he'd been a javelin thrower in high school. At this point Saito wouldn't be surprised by anything.

Two minutes and four bulletholes in the truck later, he discovered he was incorrect.

"Tell me when we get near a choke point!" MacGyver shouted through the window, and it took Saito a second to figure out what the other man meant. He was holding a long bar from the lumber cage like a staff, and had the cook on the other side of the truck, doing much the same. He figured they wanted a place where the other vehicle couldn't easily dodge right or left, and sure enough, the combination of cracked earth and wind-worn rocks up ahead gave them exactly that.

Half a mile ahead.

The Audi was still closing in, and the closer it got, the more accurate that Kalashnikov was going to get.

"Thirty seconds," Saito shouted over his shoulder. "Take cover, you're gonna get shot!" As if their pursuers could hear him, the passenger side mirror shattered. "And you're never gonna get those in the ground, it's too hard!"

"They're not going in the ground!" MacGyver called back, but he did actually duck, at least a little.

The Audi chewed up another five yards in that half-mile, and Saito found himself ducking when the window to the bed shattered, and littered the bench seat with glass.

"Five seconds!"

MacGyver popped up on one side of the bed, the cook on the other, and both hurled their metal lances at the rocks that lined the narrow dirt trail. Just like Saito had said, they didn't penetrate far into the ground. However, there was something strung between them, and the metal rods found purchase as they settled between the rocks. The Audi was too close to brake, and whatever was between the metal rods – a chain of something? – glinted in the light as the Audi drove right over it.

Caltrops. The kid had built caltrops – what the Americans called a spike strip.

Saito saw both the front tires pop, with little poofs of compressed air, but after weaving wildly for a few seconds, the Audi recovered, and started making back up the lost distance.

MacGyver was still clinging to the side of the truck bed, staring out behind them like a statue, and then his head tilted slightly to the side, like he couldn't quite figure out what he was looking at.

Goddammit. "Run flats!" Saito bellowed through the back window. His team had gotten him the best equipment they could, and that would have included run flats. They probably had another twenty miles in them in this terrain.

More than enough to get that AK in range.

Worse, after their choke point the outback opened up, back into flatter desert, and a few bullets whizzed through the cab and out the front windshield.

They were not going to win this race.

"MacGyver!" he shouted, and as soon as the man was within reach he grabbed him by the collar of his stolen shirt and bodily hauled him halfway into the truck cab. He flinched in Saito's grasp, clearly surprised, and Saito jerked his chin at the steering column. "Take the wheel and try not to flip the truck!"

He let go of it, bracing his right foot on the accelerator and mashing it to the floor as he twisted himself out the driver's side window, facing the rear of the truck. He'd been right; the Audi was close enough now that he could see the driver was indeed the Yakuza he'd throat punched, the interrogator's driver. And that damned lookout.

He leveled his pistol – as best he could while half dead, riding a mechanical bull hurtling down the road at sixty miles per hour – and put a couple holes in the Audi's windshield.

The driver didn't flinch. This part, they were both very familiar with.

Saito felt a hand clamp onto the back of his pants before the truck lurched to the left and bucked, and he would have fallen out if not for MacGyver. He barely managed to keep his right foot wedged on the accelerator, and then the truck veered hard right, and the Audi came back into view.

They were dodging rocks, and the Audi had no choice but to make the same hard left turn, and expose its side.

Saito fired a single round, and the Audi went up in a ball of flames.

He slid back into the cab, right onto a pile of gritty safety glass, and took the wheel away from MacGyver and his foot off the accelerator. He brought the truck around, just to make sure, but the Audi was toast. It was remarkably still on all four wheels, and Saito quietly mourned the loss of the two gallons of water he'd just set on fire.

MacGyver was still dangling half-inside the cab, and had reacquired his head tilt, like a confused Malinois. After a second, he shifted a little so he was sitting.

"Jack's going to be upset he missed that," he finally concluded.

The reminder had Saito twisting in his seat, looking into the bed of the truck, but Jack was still in it, being held securely by the cook, who had a huge, blinding white grin on his face. Saito returned it, and every bit of strength left in his body seemed to float away like the stupid white souls in kids' animes.

"You take out the tractors hauling those two trailers?"

MacGyver huffed, turning so his back was against the wall of the cab, and settled into the truck bed like even he was tired, eyes on his partner. "You mean while I was disabling all the other vehicles and setting up explosives in the tents?"

"Is that what you were doing?" Saito inquired mildly. "It's so obvious now, what else would one do with duct tape and flour."

MacGyver had the stones to snort. "And a couple pineapples."

Saito thought about that way too hard before it finally occurred to him. Right. Army EOD. A pineapple was a hand grenade. "Well, that explains at least one of those explosions."

The cook eased Dalton flat onto his back, now that the stock car racing was at least temporarily finished, and MacGyver peeled off his long-sleeved shirt – still bearing a little of his own blood – and folded it into both a pillow and a sun visor for Jack. "Actually, the grenade was more for dispersing the flour and then igniting it than it was just for the bang." Then he shook his head, and his voice took on a more serious lilt. "I have no idea what was in that second tent. Not more grenades, I can tell you that."

Saito thought about that a second. "Because we'd all be full of shrapnel?"

MacGyver snapped his fingers and gestured towards Saito, though his attention never really left Dalton. "Bingo."

". . . so you're telling me you almost accidentally blew us all up."

The younger agent continued fussing over his partner. "It's not like I had time to inventory every crate-"

"That giant military stamp on the outside of those anti-tank rockets is easy to overlook."

MacGyver huffed again. "Trust me, if it had been a crate of anti-tank rockets, we wouldn't be sitting here hypothesizing about it."

That was probably true, and brought them back to the matter at hand. That they had essentially trapped a group of really bad men in the middle of the outback – as well as themselves – and backup was still three hours out.

Saito winced, and dug his prosumer satphone out of his pocket. It was still on silent, but there was currently a call coming in. He decided to answer it.

"Kato525."

As he'd expected, a robot informed him that the line was being secured, and after a click, he could hear a faint murmur of voices in the background. "Saito?"

"Director," he confirmed. "Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I've recovered agents Dalton and MacGyver. We're –" He did some quick math. "-about six miles from our previous coordinates-"

"Five point seven," she corrected. "We received your smoke signal."

Saito felt his eyebrow quirk, and at MacGyver's inquiring look, he put the phone on speaker. So they definitely had satellite. Good. They could give them a warning before any other vehicles showed up to investigate. "Roughly half the enemy force is down. Most of their vehicles have been disabled, but the men still out in the field are all armed, all still with hostages."

"Understood," she replied, sounding unfazed. "They've already started to rally at their base of operations. What's your condition?"

Depending how good the satellite was, she could probably see Dalton. "One mobile, one semi-mobile, one non-mobile. Dalton needs medical ASAP."

"So does Agent Saito," MacGyver chimed in, without being invited. "And there are likely injuries among the civilians."

"We're isolating communications for that region of Australia, As soon as we're certain we've cut off outgoing signals, we'll have additional medevac dispatched from Alice Springs," Thornton assured him. "And speaking of communications . . . do we know what, if anything, Agent Dalton may have given them?"

"No ma'am," Saito answered, before MacGyver could. "It appears the Yakuza dispatched interrogators and they arrived today. Protocol is to report in nightly. If you can keep communications jammed, anything they know is still local only."

Odds were, if MacGyver hadn't gotten himself caught when he did, it would be a very different story. Even now that they were still, and Dalton was clearly unconscious, his breathing was still rapid, and though MacGyver was being subtle about it, he was monitoring Jack's pulse.

"The trailers are high tech. With any luck they're more worried about getting their vehicles up and running than destroying evidence."

"I'm not interested in luck, Agent Saito." Thornton's voice was cool. "However, in this case it's not crucial. We know how the ring operates now, and we can shut it down. The heads of this organization are back to square one whether we get their names and locations or not."

Saito suppressed a grimace at her tone. "Yes ma'am," he acknowledged.

MacGyver, however, shot Saito a quick grin. "Actually, director, I think we can get those locations for you. They have too much inventory to fully destroy in the next three hours. Both the heroin and the roots will have picked up impurities from the regions in which they were grown. If we can get some samples back to the labs, we can tell you down to ten square miles where those plants were harvested."

Not to mention the aborigines could tell them the areas they'd been forced to work. They could use that to reverse engineer travel, faces on cameras at the local regional airstrips, visa requests –

Even if they didn't get the boss, they'd put a major dent in the business.

"Don't make promises you can't keep, MacGyver," Thornton cautioned.

Oddly, that made his smile broaden. "I wouldn't dream of it, ma'am."

There was a pause, where a sigh might have been, if the microphone had been close enough to pick it up. "How's Jack?"

"Stable for now," MacGyver replied, the smile gone in an instant. "But the sooner we get him to a hospital the better."

"Okay. Sit tight. You're isolated from the other drug runners and it's a good spot for exfil. I'll have them to you in a little over two hours."

The call disconnected, and Saito bumped up the ringer volume – in case she called back – and then tucked the phone into his pocket. Then he blew out a sigh of his own.

"Trust me, that wasn't her angry voice," MacGyver told him, and settled back against the side of the truck again, keeping one of Jack's wrists firm in his grip. "She's usually okay with agents bending the rules a little if it gets the job done."

Whether the job was going to get done or not was no longer up to them – it was up to the backup DXS had sent, in the form of his old Special Assault team. "It wasn't so much bending as outright disobeying." Saito wasn't quite sure why he told the other agent that, but it made him smile a little. "Clearly you have a lot of experience in this arena."

"Disobeying orders?" His eyebrows bobbed. "Hate to rain on your parade, Saito-san, but out of the two of us, I'm the senior agent."

Saito snorted. Loudly. "By what – a month?" It was probably a lot longer than that – Saito was pretty sure Dalton had been paired with MacGyver before the brash Texan had ever set foot on Japanese soil. He certainly had been by the time Jack had managed to convince Saito to join up.

MacGyver shrugged. "I didn't write the protocol. And speaking of protocol," and those topaz blue eyes were suddenly fixed on him, "I'm fairly sure you're supposed to be in a hospital bed right now."

He was definitely starting to feel like the young man might be right. "You didn't give me much choice."

MacGyver was silent a moment. "They didn't give me any choice," he said quietly, and looked back at his partner.

No one said anything for a while, the only noise was coming from the flaming Audi until the cook shifted a little, having apparently guessed that they were going to wait until it was safe to move out. Saito glanced at the gas gauge, just out of curiosity, but he was pretty sure the beater couldn't get them to civilization in less than two hours. He also wasn't completely sure he could drive it, even if the truck could.

"Thanks," MacGyver said suddenly. "For coming for us." And in that moment, in that light, covered in dust and sweat and a little blood, he didn't look like a twenty-odd year old analyst. He looked like every one of Saito's old Special Assault team looked after a rough mission.

Saito stared at him a long second, then closed his eyes and inclined his head. "I owed you my life," he said simply.

It was clear the young man understood exactly what that gesture and those words meant – and just as clear that he was speechless. But MacGyver didn't seem like a man who was often speechless, and he proved it by opening his mouth. "Owed? Wait, so you think beating up a few guys is the same as what I did for you?"

Obviously he'd made MacGyver uncomfortable, and – very much like most of the guys on his old Special Assault team – MacGyver deflected with humor. Which, in this case, Saito was willing to permit. "No, but then again I didn't try to blow you up while you were trying to save my skin. I'm taking that into account."

The blond scoffed. "One, I didn't try to blow anyone up – just tents. Two," and he held up a second finger, and then gestured at the still-burning Audi twenty yards away, "while we're on the topic of explosions, that one was much more impressive."

Saito accepted the praise without comment, and MacGyver's eyebrows twitched, then he looked towards the Audi again. "I don't think you realize the – the astronomical odds of a single round penetrating a vehicle and producing that result. Television and movies aside, that just . . . just doesn't happen. It's . . ."

The two fingers stayed in the air, and the young man stilled, then seemed to be doing some kind of calculations in his head, and suddenly it clicked.

Saito smirked. ". . . you don't know how I did that, do you."

MacGyver didn't know that there had been two five gallon jugs of gasoline in the trunk, and that he had aimed not for the gas tank of the SUV – just the rear side panel.

"No," the other agent admitted, eyes still on the vehicle. "Did they make significant changes to the base chassis and the fuel harness in the last model? Because a non-tracer round would only be moving at about fifteen hundred feet per second . . . and you made that shot from twenty point two yards, which is basically sixty point six feet, so friction would have only . . ." He trailed off, and his fingers twitched a little in the air, as if he was writing.

That was about the time Saito started laughing.

The other agent looked back at him, clearly not understanding, and Saito reached through the window and roughly ruffled his hair. "I see, now, what Jack sees in you, otouto," he chuckled, and if anything, MacGyver looked even more confused.

"Little brother?" he translated questioningly.

"Trust me," Saito told him, still laughing.

-M-

" . . . an' I missed all that?"

The voice was low and gravelly, and speaking English, which didn't make much sense. Had he left the television on?

"Head's up, don't touch him."

"I wasn't going to-"

"Good, because he's a cranky SOB when he's jetlagged."

Saito left his eyes closed, but he couldn't suppress the groan. ". . . I should have known you were a demon the second I met you." This was it. He was dead, and his fate was to be forever tormented by Jack Dalton.

There was a brief silence. "Uh . . . I think 'akuma' is 'demon', I didn't catch the rest of it-"

Saito made the mental adjustment, which unfortunately brought him even closer to true wakefulness. "The director is punishing me, isn't she."

This time the low, gravelly voice chuckled deep in its chest. "Easier to secure one room than two."

Point. Saito cracked his eyes open, glaring balefully at the bright sunlight. It wasn't even trying to pretend it was evening, even though it felt like it ought to be, and Saito felt like he should just roll over and sleep another eight hours. He seriously considered it before it occurred to him what bright sunlight meant.

It meant he'd already been sleeping for eight hours. At least.

He blinked, then rolled his head away from the window. He was indeed in a hospital, which wasn't a surprise. On the other side of a drawn-back curtain was a second bed, just like his, and Jack Dalton was reclining in it with a light blue bag of ice balanced over his face. Only from the tip of his nose down was visible.

What was visible was purple.

Saito blinked again, then fumbled for the bed remote so he could lean himself up. He noticed the IV, he remembered getting it, and a tray of cafeteria food, and –

As the head of the bed smoothly raised itself, Saito saw that his left leg was exposed, not under the blanket but up on a stack of pillows, wrapped from the base of his toes all the way to his knee. It wasn't fiberglass, but it was pretty stiff.

He studied it a moment, then glanced back over at Jack. On his other side, a depressingly fresh-faced MacGyver was camped out in a hospital chair, smirking at him. Outside of a bruise under his eye, a little sunburn, and a small tan-colored bandage on his neck, he looked perfectly fine.

"Can I get you anything?" The voice didn't exactly go with the smirk; it sounded like a legitimately sincere offer.

"A private room?" Saito suggested, and the smirk grew.

"Yeah, that's probably not going to happen," MacGyver said, in a tone that indicated he was not really all that sorry about it. "Alice Springs is one of the larger cities in Australia, but the hospital only has a hundred and eighty-six beds, and our op is taking up about a third of them." He did, however, get to his feet and cross the room to the built in sink and cabinet, where he started to fill a paper cup with water. "But, it's not all bad news. You're both going to be transferred back to the States tomorrow. With any luck, you'll be in your own beds tomorrow night." MacGyver carried the cup over to the little table over Saito's bed, and plunked a bendy straw into it.

"Which will be . . ." He paused, doing the calculation, and Saito accepted the cup and sucked down about half of it, "twenty-five hours of travel that will occur in sixteen and a half hours of clock time." He gave Saito a bright grin. "It's the closest thing we've got to actual time travel."

Saito swallowed an air bubble out of his throat and grimaced. "It's fucking ridiculous is what it is," he groused. "Why can't the world just decide on one goddamn time zone and be done with it." Damn, he hated flying back to the States from Japan. It was fucking lunchtime for an entire damn day.

The young agent's eyebrows shot up, and Jack chuckled knowingly from his bed. "Told ya. Hates being jetlagged."

Saito took a deep, calm breath, and finished off the cup. "Thank you," he added, slightly more politely, when he was done.

"No problem," MacGyver told him graciously, and went back to the sink to refill the cup. "You slept through breakfast and lunch, but I can go grab you something if you're up for it."

He considered that for a little while, and from the other side of the room, Jack snorted. "Yeah, better get him somethin' before he gets hangry to go with his jetlag."

Saito closed his eyes. "Remind me again why I thought it would be a good idea to save your life?"

"Sake," Jack volunteered immediately.

Right. The afterparty. Saito opened his eyes again, and gave the other agent a dirty look that Jack couldn't see. "This party sucks."

Jack hmmed. " . . . it kinda does," he agreed after a minute. "Mac, do you think you can rustle up some-"

"Nope," MacGyver replied, without a trace of hesitation. "Alcohol and the four different painkillers you are currently on do not play well with each other – actually, they play a little too well with each other, they cause your central nervous system to release an excess of neurotransmitters related to depressing your-"

"You're depressing me," Jack cut him off. "Fine, no sake or bourbon. Beer?"

The smirk came back full force. "I'd have to go to 'a bottle-o,'" he pointed out, in a nearly flawless Australian accent. Weirdly, it made Jack wince, and he – very slowly – reached up a bandaged right hand to adjust his ice bag.

"Dude, just stop, you know how I feel about that-"

"Right, dude, totally." He slipped into an impeccable Californian surfer accent, and Jack groaned again. It made Saito smile.

"A sandwich, really anything's fine." Saito made a halfhearted gesture toward Dalton's bed. "I'll make sure he stays put."

"It's harder than it sounds," MacGyver warned him, but he did cross back over to his chair, pulling a jacket off the back and hunting around in an interior pocket for his wallet. "I can't bring you back an actual beer, Jack, but do you want a root beer? They've got the good stuff here. Bundaberg."

Jack made a noncommittal noise. MacGyver smirked again, then pocketed his wallet and gave Saito another nod before he let himself out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him.

For a long moment, there was blissful quiet, and Saito stretched his aching body and seriously considered taking a catnap.

"Si." Gone was the teasing tone – this was low and gravel and serious. "Give it to me straight."

Saito raised his arms over his head, stretching them before folding them over the top of the pillow. "Give you what?"

Jack shifted a little. "Mac won't tell me squat. How bad was it?"

Saito tried to parse that out. "The op? We called in my old captain. Far as I know they cleaned it up. Don't know about civilian losses. I crapped out on the flight, woke up here, same as you."

"I don't mean the op. But that's good," Jack hastened to add. "Did I . . . did I talk?"

He shrugged, more to stretch his back than because he thought Jack would know. "No idea. If you did, it wasn't much. Didn't warn them about us, at any rate. You don't remember?"

Jack growled. "More than I'd like, less than I should," he finally admitted shortly.

Probably all he remembered was the pain. Saito had come back around when they'd unloaded him from the bird, and stayed that way until about ten pm. Long enough for Dalton to get in and out of minor surgery. Most of what they'd done for him was wound treatment. He'd been right about the horsewhipping – it being a horse trailer and all – and the knife play. Also true to form, the men on the ground hadn't done anything too permanent. Four broken fingers, all on his left hand, two more dislocated on his right. Several bones in his left hand broken as well, along with a few fractures in his left wrist. He'd been working diligently on a collapsed lung in the back of the beater pickup truck, but it was something the paramedics had managed to fix on the ground. His face was one giant bruise, as was most of his exposed skin, but it was just a beating.

No missing digits, no missing organs. Not even any missing toenails. All in all Dalton had dodged a bullet. Saito wasn't quite sure Jack really understood what had been about to happen to him when MacGyver had foolishly gotten himself caught and caused those interrogators just enough of a distraction.

"Did I scare him?"

"MacGyver?" Saito's eyebrows drew together as he thought. "Not really. Dude just kinda rolls with things."

At that, Jack gave a slow chuckle. "Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it."

Now it was Saito's turn to smirk. "He's an acquired taste, your partner."

"He's a damn puppy, Si."

"Not the word I'd use."

"Oh?" There was a tiny little note of warning in his tone, and Saito reconsidered.

Nope. Not a puppy. "Arrogant. Reckless. Disobedient. Curious," he added, after a moment. "Generous. Intelligent. Stubborn. Resourceful. But not a puppy. He's older than he should be."

A guy as young as Angus MacGyver had no business wearing the face he'd been wearing in the back of that pickup truck. No one his age should look that battleworn. Should have any context for that kind of pain.

"And what the fuck is his problem with guns? Did you shoot him or something?"

Jack sighed, then reached up – again, very stiffly – and adjusted the ice pack a little further up his face. Saito listened to the water slosh. "Doesn't like 'em," Jack said simply. "I really ain't sure, to tell you the truth. He's been that way all the years I've known him."

Saito tucked that away. "But you don't deny shooting him."

"Don't think I haven't thought about it. More than once," Jack muttered. "That guy's given me just about every grey hair I got. You're not wrong, that reckless part?" He chuckled humorlessly. "You only spent a couple days with him, so you just trust me when I tell ya, Si, you ain't got the first clue."

Saito wondered idly exactly what MacGyver had told his partner. He'd been depressingly forthcoming about Saito's bite – at least three doctors had 'consulted' on his left calf and were thoroughly impressed he was alive – but despite his arrogance, he didn't seem boastful or brash. He just thought he knew better than everyone around him.

And, in at least three instances, he'd been right about that.

"When he sprinted after your follow car I figured he was just feeling guilty. The really stupid shit happened a couple days after, when he decided to ditch me and go on a one man rescue mission."

This information didn't seem to surprise Dalton at all. "And he gave you a bunch of baloney about it being logical and reasonable, with odds and probability bullshit?"

"Oh yeah."

"Heh." The men were quiet a moment. "I tell you what, he scares the shit outta me sometimes, Si. Dude is so freakin' smart. Smartest damn guy I've ever met. And then he'll turn around and pull the dumbest shit imaginable. Sometimes I honestly wonder if he's got, like, nine lives or somethin'."

"That's a cat, Dalton, not a dog."

"Whatever, doesn't matter. I've seen him get himself in and outta situations that no one else coulda. He's a damn magician."

Dalton wasn't wrong about that. "I'll drink to that."

Jack grunted. ". . . he's kinda a stickler about mixing meds and alcohol, though. He's a weird dude. Weird," Jack repeated, in obvious honest confusion, and Saito hid a grin. Whatever pain meds they had Dalton on, he definitely did not need to add any alcohol. Maybe the interrogators' drugs were still having an effect.

"So, you dug him up in the sandbox?"

"I did," Jack confirmed. "Was assigned to him sixty-four days before end of tour. Re-upped just to make sure he didn't get his fool head blown off."

Considering Saito had gone from barely able to tolerate MacGyver to actively worried about his well-being in the span of a couple days, he could relate. Almost like Jack was reading his thoughts, he continued.

"Mac didn't say much, just that you got bit by a pretty nasty li'l viper and shoulda been laid up . . . but he said you called him 'brother'."

MacGyver probably didn't understand the significance, but Jack did, and Saito found himself smiling.

"Yes," he confirmed. "That's what I call the men who save my life. Little brother, in his case," he stressed. "Only reason that bakayarou is still alive."

"Oh, yeah, I hear ya."

"I mean it, Dalton. I wanted to rip his head off. If he'd just picked up the damn gun, we could have avoided all of this –"

"-but his cover was already blown," a voice pointed out, fairly reasonably, from the barely cracked-open door, and Saito glared at it until it fully opened, revealing MacGyver, carrying a plastic shopping bag. "They would have scattered, we wouldn't have found the base of operations without another op, and this time they'd be ready for it-"

"-and then he tries to defend himself, like the baseball isn't his, and the window just broke itself," Saito continued, as if MacGyver hadn't spoken.

"Yeah, that's true," Jack drawled, and MacGyver's slightly exasperated look transferred to him. "He doesn't listen worth a damn –"

"Heads straight for the deep end of the pool . . ."

"Gets away with shit I could never get away with . . ."

"Small enough to wear hand-me-downs . . ."

MacGyver's eyebrows, which had been climbing, relaxed into a long-suffering look, and he just pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, dropped it on Jack's bedside table, and sat, setting the bag down beside him. "You two just let me know when you're done."

"Oh, we're just gettin' started, dawg," Jack assured him. "You constantly borrow and then break my shit . . ."

"Total little bro move," Saito agreed immediately. "He actually took my car apart."

"Sounds like him," Jack replied. "No respect for other people's stuff."

"And strangers seem to think it's charming when he misbehaves. Like a toddler."

MacGyver cleared his throat, then reached into the bag and withdrew a root beer. He didn't say a word, he just cracked it open and took a swig.

"And now I think he's drinking your root beer," Saito added. "Another classic."

"Maybe it's yours," MacGyver pointed out, after he'd taken a long draught. "Doesn't look like you're about to come over here and get it."

Jack started laughing. "Yeah, you gotta watch 'im, he'll hit back."

Saito looked at his left leg consideringly. His odds of running down MacGyver weren't great even without the bum leg – the guy could really haul ass. With crutches, it wasn't going to happen. Then he did a quick sweep of the room, noticing that there were no crutches in sight. He narrowed his eyes as they fell on MacGyver, who innocently took another sip of root beer.

"You already turned my crutches into a trebuchet, didn't you."

The blond agent swallowed and shook his head. "No, they're in the closet, but that's not a bad idea –"

"Don't, Si, nuh-uh," Jack interrupted flatly. "Don't feed the Mac. Next thing you know he'll have jet rockets mounted on the back of your wheelchair."

MacGyver raised an eyebrow at his partner. "Open flame's not a great idea in a hospital, Jack. Too much canned O2." He reached over and flicked the nasal cannula on Jack's face for emphasis, causing the other man to wince a little, then wince more at the pain the first wince had caused. Saito couldn't help but chuckle.

Yeah. Little brother worked just fine. You wanted to fucking kill the annoying little shit, but you just couldn't, because there wasn't a mean bone in his body, and you knew he'd do anything for you.

Even go up against an entire drug cartel armed with nothing but a swiss army knife.

And you knew that he could actually do it.

"But compressed gas propulsion would work pretty well," MacGyver continued, and set down the root beer, warming to his lecture. "You could mount the cannisters and the valves on the sides, then all you'd need to do is –"

"He doesn't have an off switch," Jack interrupted apologetically. "I been looking for years."

Saito was about to reply when a plastic-wrapped sandwich came sailing towards him, and he caught it easily. MacGyver gave him a moment to recover before he underhanded a bottle of root beer over, much more gently. Saito still gave it a little time to settle, unwrapping the sandwich, and Jack finally dragged the blue ice bag off his face, which looked significantly worse than it had yesterday. Saito knew what he was looking for, now, and he caught MacGyver's subtle flinch.

The way that MacGyver had held onto Jack's wrist, very casually monitoring his vitals the entire time they waited for exfil. The sunburn he'd gotten by giving Jack his shirt, making a visor so Jack wouldn't get that same burn on his already lacerated face.

Jack was right after all. He had scared his partner.

Dalton didn't seem to notice it, or if he did, he didn't acknowledge it. "You didn't get me one?"

MacGyver maintained his innocent look. "You can have the rest of this one, if you want it . . . "

The two men stared at each other a moment, then MacGyver relented, and fished a third root beer out of the bag.

Saito hid a smile when Mac opened it without asking, then actually half-stood so he could press it securely into his partner's bandaged right hand. It didn't seem to slow the man down as he raised the bottle to his lips. Saito glanced again at MacGyver as Dalton swallowed painfully, and discovered that his study of the young man had been detected, and MacGyver was looking right at him.

Saito gave him a droll look. "Pretty sure he can be three quarters dead and still drink a beer." Root or otherwise.

MacGyver's expression was a little more inscrutable. "Did you guys meet at a kegger or something . . . ? Clearly copious amounts of alcohol were involved."

Saito transferred to look to Jack, who was watching him out of the corner of his swollen right eye. "Asking for dirt on you. Classic kid brother."

"Aww, you can tell 'im, Si. I tell him everything."

MacGyver fixed his partner with an incredulous look. "Since when –"

"Everything but the stuff that's classified –"

MacGyver scoffed. "We have the same clearance, Jack."

Jack turned and gave Saito a conspiratory look. "Sure, in the States . . ."

Saito couldn't help it. He laughed. "I think I'll keep that one close to the vest a while. Future blackmail opportunity." While the joking around was fun, there were more serious questions at hand. "And speaking of, either of you got dirt on the director? I got a feeling I just blew my probationary period."

Both men responded to the change in atmosphere by leaning back, almost in tandem. Jack was the first to speak. "Don't worry about that, Si. Patty's been in the field before. She knows what it's like in the shit."

Saito felt his eyebrows rise. "Patty?"

Jack gave him a lopsided grin. "Oh yeah, her and me are totally on a first name basis." Behind him, MacGyver was making very clear 'abort' gestures by waving his fingers across his throat. Apparently oblivious, Dalton continued. "Y'see, the trick with Patty is just to set that more casual, personable atmosphere, y'know, show her the water's jus' fine –"

"Before she forces your head under it and holds it there," MacGyver finished. "But he's not wrong, the director is one of the best field agents there is. I wouldn't worry about your place with DXS. Just . . ." He took a sip of his root beer. "Don't make a habit of it. Unless you really like paperwork."

Saito gave a half-laugh. "Speaking from experience?"

"You could say that," Mac admitted around the mouth of the bottle. "Or it could be because my partner insists on being intentionally disrespectful . . ."

Dalton scoffed. "As if I would ever disrespect a beautiful woman."

MacGyver gave Saito a look that clearly said 'Exhibit A,' and he couldn't help laughing a little himself. "So the rest of the op went well? Why so many in hospital?"

The younger agent set his root beer down again, all business. "We were right about the mistreatment of the aborigines. Dozens were brought here for observation. Dehydration and heat exhaustion mostly. Your Special Assault team was extremely thorough, by the way. It looks like we scooped up the entire operation here, and most of the tech in the trailers was still intact. DXS has sent in some technicians to comb through the evidence, and we expect to identify at least the first line of the operations in both Afghanistan and Japan."

"Good," Saito replied, and he meant it. "What about our friends Tak and Jim-ba? I trust the joyriding didn't land them in hot water with the local authorities?" That wasn't really what he was asking, and MacGyver picked up on that, because a tiny smile seemed to settle on his lips before he cleared his throat.

"No, they managed to evade the local authorities. I've already put a request in with the director to formally recognize all the indigenous peoples who were integral in the isolation and eradication of the drug operations. She's assured me the request has been passed to the highest levels of the Australian government."

Saito hadn't been with DXS for long, but he got the feeling that meant a direct phone call to the Australian Prime Minister. Based on the way Mac had said it, so seriously, he was also quite sure it was going to happen. There was little doubt the drug ring was able to press local tribes into slavery due to their recalcitrance to report their woes to the local police, who often were less than sympathetic, and in this case owned by the cartel. Saito figured a shake-up of law enforcement for the entire territory was Step Two.

And it should have been. The way Tak and Jim-ba had been treated just in the clinic's reception area . . . for all the Australians seemed so laid back, the overt racism was as disappointing as it was perplexing.

"You should probably leave them that Land Rover, too," Saito suggested mildly. "Pretty sure the warranty's voided."

The small smile grew into a medium-sized, if self-deprecating, one. "What makes you think I don't have a Jaguar mechanic's license?"

"The way you disemboweled it without a moment's hesitation."

Jack had been watching him, but now his gaze turned to his partner. "You trashed another car? Dude, we've talked about this –"

Mac had recovered his root beer, and gestured to his partner with it. "I put it back together! I mean, okay, a few of the coolant hoses are probably stretched beyond spec but they held –" And the younger agent then looked at him for support. "- right?"

And the answer was yes. The hoses had been stretched beyond specifications. They had been used to help a human being breathe. Used to funnel drugs into a person who would have died without them. No matter how bad he felt, lying in that bed, he was alive because a young American wouldn't accept anything less. And because of what MacGyver had done, his partner was alive. More than alive. A potentially lethal drug ring had been snuffed out in infancy. Dozens of lives had been saved, lives that weren't important to the government, weren't important even to their own country. But were important to one lowly young agent who wasn't about to let them be lost in vain.

Saito inclined his head. "They did. I had my doubts . . . but they got the job done."

MacGyver grinned as if he understood the compliment he'd just received, and nudged his partner. "See? It's fine. I really can fix that sluggish acceleration issue with your Shelby-"

"You are not touching my baby-"

He listened to the two bicker, and opened his own root beer – cautiously. It had settled from the toss, and MacGyver had been right. It was delicious. A little ginger in there gave it a surprise kick, and Saito relaxed back into the mattress and took another sip.

It was an acquired taste. But it grew on you.

Fast.

-M-

FIN

-M-

This story – Saito meeting Mac for the first time - was a one-liner I threw into the original Turkey Day, a point Samantha was making to Riley regarding why all the agents in the villa in Greece were risking their lives to find and extract Jack and MacGyver from their situation. The line was "Saito is alive and breathing because Mac was able to make taipan antivenin out of a Land Rover in the middle of the Australian outback." I figured that sounded like something Mac could do. Totally.

Then Alyssa Blackbourn asked me to write it for her as a Christmas present. And I had to actually figure out how to do that. (I'll give you a hint – I totally made it up. Please do not drain transmission and brake fluid from a Land Rover, boil them, titrate them, add rat enzymes, and inject them into your friend. Pretty sure that friend will die.) She also wanted the three of them being cute, and there had to be a kitten involved.

You may have noticed a lot of similarities between Saito's situation in this, and Mac's in Just Desserts. Unfortunately, there wasn't much I could do about that. It turns out you stop breathing when an inland taipan bites you, so they both ended up intubated, which is why Saito made the comment that he knows how Mac feels in the hospital in Amsterdam. It should be noted, these feral kittens inspired a therapy kitten to be added to Just Desserts, and then you all know how Professor Minerva 'Mina' McGonagall came to be in the MacGyver residence. This should also give context to Jack's 'snake surprise' conversation in Just Desserts.