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

8. Decaf Coffee

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue. For those of you who recognize a few certain someones, they were originally referenced in Ground Rules, and are being used with permission.

Apology: I've attempted to keep my little stories as close as possible to (my admittedly limited knowledge of) real military tactics, language, and situations. This one is in the same spirit as the others – it's not accurate, and I'm still waiting to get schooled by all you veterans out there.

LZ – Landing Zone. SWAG – Scientific Wild-Ass Guess. CASEVAC – Casualty Evacuation. TOC- Tactical Operations Center. FOB – Forward Operating Base. DFAC – Dining Facilities. AO – Area of Operation. Crunchies – basic infantry. Turtle Fucking – banging someone's helmet with your own to make a loud noise. Triple Threat – Anyone with a Special Forces, Ranger School, and Airborne Tab on their uniform. Un-Ass – to move one's butt out of an area. TROBA – abort spelled backwards; a wish that an unlikely abort will be issued for a current operation.

-M-

AFGHANISTAN – SHARAN, PAKTIKA PROVINCE

"We good?"

There was a tense silence, broken only by sporadic gunfire outside, and Specialist MacGyver finally looked up from his pad to find the other seven men were staring right at him.

But it was Charlie Robinson who spoke next. "I said, are we good?"

The EOD technician wasn't the highest ranking soldier in the room. That was their combat engineer, McCartney. His silence bothered Mac the most; if they hadn't gotten him on board, this Hail Mary was going to end before it began.

And McCartney clearly knew it, because after another pregnant pause, he pressed his lips together, then spoke.

"Your overwatch, Molina - he confirmed the quick reaction force is inbound?"

Robinson gave a firm nod. "Yessir. Squad of Army Rangers, Javier knows them personally. ETA ten minutes."

Another pause, before McCartney turned to his right. "And you're sure you've got enough ammo to keep the LZ clear?"

The three infantrymen there glanced at each other, and each gave a tentative nod. "We'll make it work, sir."

"That's not what I asked, private."

"Yessir." It was Timmons who answered, much more strongly this time. "We'll get 'em safe on the ground, sir."

The engineer gave the three men another hard look, then his eyes flicked without blinking straight to Mac's. "And you, you're one hundred percent that you can somehow get that pile of shit hummer up and running in less than three minutes?"

Mac didn't even have to think about it. "Yessir. She only needs half her horses to run the winch." He had the math, the angles, even the tensile strength of the cable, and he knew McCartney well enough to know the engineer could follow along with the formulas. The numbers were good.

The state of the blast-damaged humvee, now, that was a SWAG, and the best he could do from the two minutes he'd been hunkered down behind her avoiding bullets.

If the humvee was too damaged to run the winch, or the winch mechanism itself was damaged, there was no way they could move that concrete. He'd already considered and then scrapped the idea of using the helo to lift it off – they didn't have enough cable, they didn't have a quick way to secure said non-existent cable, and they didn't have the firepower necessary to protect the helo, even with a handful of Army Rangers coming in to bolster their numbers. Any smokescreen they laid down would get dissipated in the helo's wash.

If the winch didn't work, there was no getting Jack out of that rubble. Not with the time and the resources they had.

Therefore the winch was going to work.

"And you two dumb shits-" and his dark eyes shifted temporarily to Charlie Robinson, "-are fully aware that you're gonna be literally silhouetted sniper bait on the top of that pile?" He gestured at the blown-out window. "Because that debris cloud is good and gone, gentlemen, and the helo's gonna blow off what hasn't settled yet."

Mac didn't even need to glance out the window to know that he was right, the debris cloud from the collapsed building was more than half dispersed by now. The dust would give them zero cover. Robinson's overwatch and the ready reaction force would be the only protection they had.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Charlie glance his way, but Mac didn't take his eyes off McCartney. "Yessir."

"And if any one piece of this plan goes to hell, every last one of us is to immediately fall back to the rally point. Including you, specialist." It wasn't a question.

It was an order.

Mac gave an immediate nod, and lied to a commanding officer for the second time that day. "Yessir." As soon as he had Jack free and clear of the debris, he would absolutely fall back to the rally point.

McCartney seemed to sense there was more to his answer, because his eyes never left Mac's. "Milo, you hang back in good cover and be ready to receive. CASEVAC still half an hour out?"

Their medic and radio operator took his time replying – there was apparently plenty of chatter on the main frequency for him to keep tabs on. "Yessir. The rest of our element is pinned down good and tight north of our position, so evac'll be to the west. We got enough grunts to carry 'im."

McCartney finally released Mac to glare at his comms officer. "We get orders to go bail 'em out?"

Milo gave a quick head shake. "No sir. Got two more callsigns on the main frequency, don't recognize either but they're coming in from another op to provide backup. We're to hold at the main rally point until those Rangers sound the all clear."

Mac quietly filed that information away. If they truly couldn't get Jack out of the rubble on the first try, it could be hours until the Army Rangers had beaten back the insurgents. And hours after that before the earthmoving equipment they would need could get here. If the winch failed –

He'd need another vehicle, and he'd need Charlie and Javier to convince those Army Rangers to let him back into the AO.

McCartney also considered the information, then focused back on Charlie. "You said ten minutes. You stand by that estimate?"

"Yessir," Robinson replied without hesitation, and Mac felt a rush of gratitude to his fellow EOD. He hadn't even had to say anything – Charlie had been on board from the second the building collapsed, and he knew damn well what he was risking.

"And your overwatch is still secure?"

"Yessir. Javier's ready and waiting."

McCartney lapsed back into silence for a moment. "And Dalton, he's still with us?"

In answer, Mac reached up and keyed his radio. "Hey, buddy, we're almost finished with the prep work. You ready to get outta there?"

For a long second, there was only quiet static in Mac's ear. "-as'a'lever'be."

Mac gave a solemn nod to the room. No need to mention the slurring was getting worse. Hypoxia, concussion, blood loss – maybe all three. He wasn't sure what they were going to find under that building, which was why they needed to go now.

The staff sergeant then exchanged a look with the only other combat engineer in the small room. "We're absolutely sure we got no one else in that rubble, no other men or civilians?"

The other engineer nodded as well. "Evacuated with the rest of the civilians. We've got no reason to believe anyone else was in there when it went down."

It was the only saving grace in an otherwise dire situation. This part of Sharan had been evacuated, and Jack would have cleared the building before he took his position. Of all of the variables, that was one Mac was one hundred percent sure about.

"Corporal, you're the one running the winch. It'll be your call."

Unaware that negotiations for his life were underway, Jack continued talking in Mac's ear, his voice growing more gravelly with every word. ". . . hey . . . if'it . . . don'work . . . tha'dain'on'yuh . . . still'shooten . . . I c'n'ear'em . . . y' . . . y'jus'get'clear . . ."

Corporal Perugu glanced their way again, and Mac simply handed him his scratchpad. The math was good. The plan was good. As long as the winch held, they were good. In and out before the enemy even realized they were there.

Jack eventually stopped transmitting, and Mac wasn't willing to let his cover hang. He put his back to the room, facing the sand and mud wall, and dropped his voice, hoping the throat mic would compensate. "Nope," Mac replied quietly, putting as much cavalier steel in his voice as he could. "Today's not that day, pal. Not today."

Not today.

-M-

FOUR HOURS EARLIER

Something was wrong.

MacGyver waited until the FOB was no longer in line of sight and the convoy had made it to the road proper. Waited for them to gain some speed and settle into a steady formation. Usually that was when Dalton relaxed a little behind the wheel and shifted into what he called his 'cruising mode'.

This time it didn't happen. His eyes were still all over the place, scanning for threats, and the set of his shoulders remained tense.

Mac casually loosened his collar and cleared his throat, pitching his voice low.

"Son," he drawled, in his best Texas accent, "you're off your feed. Somethin' eatin' ya?"

His overwatch finally reacted to his presence – by throwing him a distracted frown. "Really? That's really how you think Texans sound?"

Mac let his careful jaw placement melt into a smirk. "Pretty much. Seriously, though, what's up?"

The frown didn't go anywhere – and neither did Jack's left hand, which was toying with his dog tags. He'd pulled them to the outside of his jacket, which was weird enough, and he couldn't quite seem to leave them alone. "Nothin'."

He said it so dismissively, so passively, that under other circumstances, Mac would have left him alone. Normal Jack – if any aspect of Jack Dalton could be considered normal – would be to growl something like that. Dare you to keep picking until you got what was coming to you. Which was usually some form of physical altercation that, if you were lucky, ended with chuckling and half-hearted expletives.

And not that Mac typically picked. Throwing stones in glass houses and all that. His cover had gotten good at reading him, especially after their helo had been shot down over a supposedly uninhabited mountain range north-east of Kabul. Dalton knew when to push, and when to back the hell off.

MacGyver had no such frame of reference. This was brand new territory. In two hundred and forty-seven days, he'd never once heard Dalton use that tone of voice. In fact, he'd never once had to put in more than two syllables of effort to get Jack Dalton to speak, about virtually any topic. Talking was not a thing the sniper eschewed, not unless there was a need for noise or radio discipline. And even then it wasn't that hard to get him to ignore even those requirements.

This was a first. And he had no idea what had precipitated it.

So Mac did what he always did when he had a puzzle in front of him.

"Well, it's definitely not nothing," he started, in what he hoped was a reasonable tone despite the double negative. "You didn't sleep last night. You skipped breakfast – pancakes, by the way, with real butter – and you haven't taken your hand off your tags since we got in the 'vee. After you polished them instead of hitting the DFAC with me."

Dalton's left hand dropped from the dog tags like they'd flash-burned him, and the distracted frown deepened. His sunglasses made it hard to decipher any deeper expression. "Now how in the hell would you know if I slept? Our damn barracks sound like a lumber mill."

"True," Mac agreed, re-securing his collar against the chill. "But when you swing your legs over the side, you shift the sleeping plane of my bunk about seven degrees. Which is really annoying, by the way." He didn't see a need to further add that it had remained tilted seven degrees, meaning Jack hadn't just gotten up – he'd sat up and stayed that way. And he hadn't taken advantage of his bunk-mounted light, as some of the guys did when they couldn't sleep and resorted to reading or writing reports.

Jack had just sat there, on the edge of his bunk, staring at the cold, darkened barracks. For hours.

Then again, he was a sniper, and sitting still watching hard to see things for hours on end was sort of his job description. Mac had a few pretty unlikely relaxation techniques himself. Alone, it was hardly a compelling case.

Dalton seemed to agree, because he snorted. "Think you were dreamin' again, hoss."

"Well, I didn't dream you skipping breakfast, or polishing up your tags. What, you don't think you're gonna suddenly need them, do you?" The last he said in a teasing voice. "Were you dreaming last night?"

The only indication he'd hit a sore spot – that Dalton frequently dreamt about missions going wrong and dying in increasingly gruesome and improbable ways - was a grunt. "Think y'got that ginormous brain of yours twisted, there. Weren't you just insisting I didn't sleep?"

Fair point. But something definitely had him – what was that verb he loved so much – right. Spooked. Jack Dalton looked spooked. And maybe that was exactly what was bothering him.

"You're not about to head out for one of those covert missions, are you?" Mac kept his voice light, a simple inquiry and nothing more, and for the first time that morning, he got Jack's full and undivided attention.

"What - no," he said it so fast that the words blended together. "I told you, I signed on for another tour on the condition I was paired with you. I ain't goin' nowhere, and before you get started on me, I don't regret signing back up for one second. Not one," he insisted, knife hand back in Mac's face. "And I ain't regrettin' it now. Not exactly, anyway," he added, a little uncertainly, and Mac felt his eyebrows furrow at the odd turn of the conversation.

"Not . . . exactly," he echoed, and Dalton presumably put his eyes back on the road – and his hand back on the wheel.

"It's just . . . this mission, today . . ." Dalton shook his head.

Mac visualized the sheet of paper with their orders from earlier that morning, focusing his mental eyes on the upper left-hand corner.

January 8th.

Barely a week after the Christmas and New Year holidays, and with an ambient temperature of about thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit, even if it didn't look like January in Afghanistan, it definitely felt like it. Mac racked his brain for a reason that January 8th might have meaning, some historically important event. "The first day of the Watergate trial?"

Behind the wheel, Jack fell still. "Dude. Is there, like, an encyclopedia written on the inside of your sunglasses or somethin'?"

Mac relaxed a little. This was more like their normal banter, and perhaps an indication that his technique was working. "No, but the military's been looking into using optical HUD technology on one way glass f-"

"Watergate was before your time, Carl's Junior," Jack interrupted him flatly. "You weren't even a-" He broke off suddenly, and Mac waited for him to fish the correct colloquialism out of the sea of completely inappropriate one-liners and puns that was a Dalton brain.

". . . a sparkle in my father's eye?" Mac finally offered, when it was clear it wasn't going to be forthcoming.

Jack gave the road a tight smile. "Say, you never mention him. Your father," he clarified. "Not to be nosy, but your folks didn't send you so much as a Christmas card that I saw."

Mac smirked and made a show of getting comfortable in his seat harness. "Oh no, slick. We're talkin' about you right now," he drawled, repeating verbatim something Jack had said to him many times before.

That got a half-hearted chuckle out of his cover, and Jack uncharacteristically cleared his throat. "It's just . . . this time of year. Well, today, really," he admitted, and then he smiled, almost like he was embarrassed. "Today's the anniversary of when – when my pop passed on."

Mac was utterly unprepared for that piece of ordinance to be dropped in his lap, and for several seconds he didn't know what to say. "Jack, I'm so sorry. Why didn't you say something earlier?"

But the older man was already waving him off, his voice ever so slightly husky. "It's been a little while - five years to the day. Date kinda sneaks up on me, I don't go lookin' for it, just find myself thinkin' 'bout him around this time."

Sitting on the edge of his bunk, in the dark. Polishing up his dog tags.

A fragment of a conversation they'd had, long before they were truly on friendly terms, bubbled up to the front of MacGyver's mind. "Your dad was military, wasn't he?"

The slightly tremulous smile grew just a little more natural-looking. "He flew pararescue, savin' downed pilots. Carried out over a hundred missions, all over the world. God, he had the best stories." Jack laughed softly. "You know, he told me – he said that one of his proudest days was the day I made Delta."

Mac nodded. "He teach you to fly?"

"Planes, yeah. Plenty'a work for crop dusters an' mail delivery in Texas. And sky divers, if you can believe that." He chuckled at the memory. "I actually got a chance to take him up in a whirly-bird, a few years after I got my license. The look on his face . . . never did trust 'em. He'd say, gimme two fixed wings an' I'll get ya where you're goin', but there ain't no sense flyin' around in a ceilin' fan."

Dalton Senior certainly had a point, but Mac wisely refrained from vocalizing it. "Sounds like you two had something special."

"We did. We really did." Jack's voice sounded both wistful and wondering, and then he laughed again, and swallowed. Mac was eighty-seven percent sure his cover was winning the fight with his emotions. "Pops was a great man. If I end up half the man he was, I'll die happy. Truly happy, you know?"

"Yeah," Mac agreed readily, and then the cabin of the humvee settled back into quiet. "Those are your dad's tags, aren't they."

Dalton gave another slow nod, and picked them back up in his left hand. "Pop left 'em to me, said they'd done him right, got him home safe, an' he hoped they'd do the same for me."

MacGyver had figured out his cover was a superstitious man within the first hundred days they'd served together. Since that time, they had discussed – at length – the topics of werewolves, vampires, chupacabra, zombies, ghosts, angels, and only a few weeks ago, the Krampus. Which Jack was more willing to believe in than Santa Claus, which made absolutely no logical sense.

But this, the physical metal tags hanging on the outside of Dalton's jacket, those made far more sense to Mac than a lucky rabbit's foot or a crucifix. The dog tags of a man who served represented taking action, not luck or favor. A real, tangible human being to look up to, to respect, to learn from.

"Yeah, man," Mac agreed readily. "I'm sure they will. And hey, look, whatever the situation in Sharan, we'll get through it."

Jack nodded, but it was the automatic variety that meant he wasn't actually listening. "Yeah, dude, I ain't takin' my eyes offa you today. Not even for a second. An' if this is the same deal as that Day of a Thousand IEDs, you do me a solid, and you don't do anything stupid without me, you hear me?"

"Five by five," Mac confirmed, putting his focus back on the road and the convoy in front of them. "Saving the stupid for you."

The cab fell back into quiet for a moment – about as quiet as a fully armored humvee cab could get – before his cover caught on, and even in his peripheral vision Mac could see the glare he was getting. He wasn't quite able to keep the smirk off his face.

-M-

PRESENT TIME

Mac threw his back against the short garden wall, keeping his head bowed low enough that the curve of his helmet wouldn't be visible. He waited two breaths, but no one fired – at least not closely enough that he thought they were firing at him – and then he waved Robinson and Perugu forward.

"-yu'godda . . . godda geddow . . ." Jack's voice was weak, even with the volume cranked up, and Mac winced, only partly out of physical discomfort.

"Relax, buddy, we're already here," he replied as soon as he heard the click that told him Jack was off the channel. "You just sit tight. Slow, deep breaths, okay?"

Robinson landed against the wall, hard, on Mac's right, and Corporal Perugu on the left. Both had their rifles up and ready, but if it all went according to plan, they'd never have to fire a shot. Charlie watched Mac take his hand off his radio, and he indicated it with a sharp jerk of his head.

"Dalton still talkin'?"

Mac nodded wordlessly, daring to crane his neck and peer over the wall. They were at the last residence before the street turned commercial, and the humvee closest to the collapsed building was only thirty yards out. Two storefronts, and they were there.

"Okay, looks like we got a clear path to the humvee. I'm gonna . . . I like the look of that one on the left, maybe an old hardware store." He couldn't read the sign, but he was pretty sure he'd seen some cookware in there, and there might be a few odds and ends that could come in handy if the humvee became problematic.

"MacGyver, wait." It was the engineer, eyeing the mountain of debris that was overshadowing the end of the street. "I thought you said this thing collapsed from the bottom up."

Mac stomped on his impatience as Jack continued mumbling in his ear. "It did."

Perugu frowned, then gestured. "And the blast was centered on the north-west fail point, first floor?"

"Yeah," Charlie confirmed, before Mac could.

"Then it didn't come straight down. The second floor came down at an angle, north end first, and then cracked and slipped." He used his hands to demonstrate. "Then the third came down on that partially cracked second and slipped further. Then the fourth after that. That shaft they built straight up the middle? That would have exacerbated the slide." He angled his right hand on top of his left, showing the degree, and Mac swore, loudly, and popped up again.

The debris cloud was still present in the hazy air, but it had cleared significantly in the past twenty minutes. The street no longer resembled Sharan at dusk. Sunlight was filtering through, and even though the collapsed building was almost fifty yards out, Mac could finally actually see what had become of it, and his stomach dropped when it became empirically clear to him that the engineer was right.

The building had buckled exactly where Mac said it had, but the brittle concrete had slipped to the north side, one slab after another. The second and third floors had cracked to pieces, but the fourth floor – the floor Jack had been positioned on – and the roof, they had been partially buffered by the way the floors below had shattered.

That cushioning had probably saved Jack's life. But it had also spared the fourth floor – and more importantly, the roof – from the hard impacts necessary to crack the solid concrete structure into reasonably sized pieces.

The roof was still mostly intact. Meaning he was potentially having to pull off a much larger slab of concrete than he'd calculated. It also changed where Jack would have ended up in the debris pile.

"Okay." It was Charlie, and his smooth, calm voice seemed to resonate in Mac's half-inflated lungs. "That doesn't change the fact that we know Jack's still near the top. We know the void he's in is at least . . . sixteen cubic feet, or it's cracked enough to allow gas exchange, otherwise he'd be – he'd be unconscious by now." Robinson's voice barely caught. "All we have to do is break up the concrete ourselves. The plan was to use a plug of C4 and a little det cord to make a hole for the cable anyway. We'll just make a couple more holes, another couple plugs of C4, blow 'em together, and we're back in business. The void will protect Dalton from the worst of the concussion."

Their combat engineer hesitated, and Mac did some quick geometry and mathematical physics. "Charlie's right. That building started out as a single story, solid concrete structure. As future generations amassed wealth, they added floors one at a time. Each one of those floors, roof included, was poured as a separate slab, wet to dry."

And the order in which the building had been assembled was crucial. Wet concrete didn't bond well to dry, so each floor literally acted as its own, fully isolated structure simply stacked on top of the one below – essentially held there only by its own weight, and the weight of the floor above it. The owners had built that central shaft through it as a nod to the lack of windows, to get more natural light and a small interior courtyard, and that helped them further. It meant the shatter pattern of the concrete was even more predictable.

That shaft had done them another favor, in that to accommodate it, the weight of the entire structure had been balanced on four critical points, and the concrete had been shaped accordingly. Mac knew where it would be the thickest – thus the most brittle – and the most likely stress points to leverage.

Mac knew that because he'd checked it not two hours ago, checked all four points on all four floors for explosives before he'd let Jack take a position there. Knowing that just a few pounds of dynamite in any one of those sixteen places would result in the cloying, suffocating cloud of grey dust that was even now still settling around them.

And there hadn't been any IEDs in the building. There hadn't.

Perugu frowned, and cautiously stuck his head above cover again, quickly assessing what he could see. "That shit's thick, you're gonna need more than a couple nuggets of C4."

"Good thing we got a combat engineer with us, then," Charlie concluded, with a tight smile. "Between me and Mac, we got enough boom goo in these packs and then some. While Mac's getting that hummer up and running, you and I will scope out the break points, and then we're right back on schedule."

Charlie Robinson's rank was still technically a specialist, which was also an E-4, making their rank and the corporal's basically equivalent. However, the Army would recognize Perugu as the ranking officer in this scenario, because Specialists were, as the rank implied, specialists in a particular field, and that field was not leadership or tactical response.

Mac liked that Robinson didn't seem to give a shit about that. He'd just issued an order, however politely, and rather than give the combat engineer the option to protest, Mac simply nodded and hopped up over the garden fence, sprinting for the storefront he'd chosen earlier.

He made it without issue, and once again, waited two breaths before he waved the other men on. These breaths were a little more rapid, since it had been a twenty yard dash, and his timing almost got Charlie killed.

MacGyver couldn't even get a bead on where the shooters were, not until the exhaust trail of an RPG indicated the attic of what looked like a textile store further up the street. Mac shot towards the back of the hardware store as soon as he realized what he was looking at, but he was way too late, and when he heard the explosion, it just didn't seem loud enough.

Or hot enough. Or bright enough.

Or hurt enough.

He made it to the other side of the counter he'd been aiming for, listening as small bits of debris rained down, but most of it seemed to be coming from outside, and after a second, the automatic fire petered out. He heard a return volley – so at least one of his companions was up and shooting – and then he heard a single rifle shot that stood out from the others, slightly deeper in timbre.

Sniper fire from Javier Molina, Charlie Robinson's overwatch.

Jack, still buried in the rubble, apparently heard it too. "-ac . . . Mac!"

Mac mashed down the transmit button on his radio, even as he crept back towards the front of the store. "Yeah, buddy, still breathing. We're good up here. You okay in there?"

A shadow wearing nearly grey BDUs burst through the missing front door of the hardware store, and Mac tensed, but he immediately recognized Charlie's silhouette. The whites of his eyes were showing, reminding Mac of all the times Bozer, his best friend growing up, had gotten spooked.

Charlie took a knee behind a solid chunk of wall, trying to catch his breath. He didn't seem to be favoring anything, didn't seem to be bleeding. "Shit, Mac –"

MacGyver waited, but the combat engineer didn't magically appear in the doorway. "Perugu . . .?"

In answer, the taller EOD technician gestured back the way they came. "He made it back to the wall. But we got another problem." He was still a little breathless, but his expression was grave, and Mac started to wonder, if neither the garden wall or the hardware store had been the target of that RPG –

Charlie took a deeper breath, and said the words Mac hoped he wouldn't. "They thought we were trying to bug out. The humvee's toast, Mac."

The Taliban had obviously caught sight of the vehicle, and when three American soldiers seemed to be heading right for it, they'd chosen to give away their position in exchange for preventing them from escaping.

"Javier got one, said he's got no angle on the other." More automatic fire, too far out to be Perugu, rattled through the blast-damaged store, and both men instinctively ducked.

"That's the Rangers," Charlie confirmed unnecessarily. "Mac, they're headed our way to cover us, but without the winch –"

Without the winch, even if they could break the concrete Jack was buried beneath, they had no way to pull or shift it off him. Even 'reasonably sized pieces' would be hundreds of pounds. And as soon as either Perugu or the Rangers themselves realized that and called it in, they'd be ordered to retreat to the main rally point.

He had no way to get Jack out of that building. Not in time.

Mac clenched his teeth, scanning his environment for inspiration, and Dalton chose that moment to respond. "'s'uh . . . s'too'hot . . ." There was a dry sound that might have been laughter. "S'south ov'th'border . . ."

"Jack, don't talk, save your air," Mac tried, but Jack was still transmitting, and didn't hear him.

"S'nod . . . nod'yer'faul . . ."

Mac tried again, but Jack was still on the channel. "Dammit, Jack, get off the freq," he growled aloud, and Charlie glanced back at him.

"'Nod'yer'faul . . . s'jus'muh'time . . ."

"He's not going to make it, is he." Charlie couldn't hear Jack, he was tuned in to his and his cover's semi-private channel, just like Mac was tuned to Jack's. It was SOP for small man teams, to keep their chatter off the main operations frequencies. Right now both Mac and Charlie were intentionally using them as an excuse to stay off the main op channels, and while anyone with US Army hardware could have tuned into their broadcasting frequency and been listening in on his conversation with Jack, Mac was pretty sure it was just the two of them.

He opened his mouth to answer Charlie when he heard the telltale click that indicated Jack was no longer transmitting.

Mac didn't miss the opportunity to take over. He needed Jack conscious and responsive, but he also needed Jack to stop talking and conserve what little oxygen he had. "Not yet, big guy. Hey, I ever tell you about the time I set my dad's tool shed on fire?"

Mac released the radio and started inspecting the picked over, half-empty shelves around them, looking for something, anything that might give them the same kind of mechanical advantage as that winch.

As he'd hoped, Jack managed to focus. ". . . y'did . . ?"

Mac tried to put a smirk in his voice, even as he darted around the dim space, cataloguing everything in sight. "Yeah. I was seven, it was a pretty day – I grew up in Mission City, a little town in NorCal, so the summers were really nice. School was out, and I wanted to . . . nerd out, you'd say." He imagined Jack chuckling, but didn't give him a chance to interrupt. "I was mixing some liquids I found to try to get different colors for my sand castle moat – I had a sandbox, for a while, a real one, and I was going through this sand castle phase. That was the day I learned that you could make flames pretty colors too. Not just the boring yellow and blue kinds, but reds, and greens . . ." He was babbling, not paying attention as he hurried to the other side of the store. "And as it turned out, different color flames also burn at different temperatures, so before I knew it my little experiment had kind of gotten out of hand."

He had to release his radio to pull himself up to the top of the shelving unit, elated to find a small motor – only to rotate it and discover it was far too light. A quick inspection found it was missing both pistons.

". . . y'r'pop tan y'r'ide?"

It took him a second to translate. "Eh, my dad wasn't much for spanking. I explained that it was an accident. Sort of." He dropped back down to the ground and turned, giving Charlie, who was still guarding the door, a quick headshake. "Nothing," he admitted, once he'd taken his finger off his radio. "There's nothing in here, not a generator, not a . . ."

It wasn't that he saw it as much as he smelled it, and Mac shut his mouth and sniffed a couple times. He followed his nose to the back corner, where some innocent burlap bags were stacked and half covered with cardboard.

"What do you got, Mac?" Charlie's voice floated from the front of the store.

"Fertilizer," he called back distractedly. He had fertilizer. And diesel. And C4.

When combined, they became literal sacks of explosives.

Perugu's voice echoed in his head, even as Jack muttered in his ear. Mac tuned his cover out on autopilot and focused on the conversation he'd just had with their combat engineer.

Perugu had said the concrete was thick . . . and Jack was in a void of at least sixteen cubic feet . . . and that air would act as a buffer for sound and impact waves . . .

He got back on the radio. "Hey, Jack, are you lying on your back, or your belly?"

Jack wasn't able to follow the sudden topic change. "Naw . . . I's'said . . . whudabout'y'r'mom?"

"Mom wasn't there," Mac said it dismissively. "Jack, focus. Are you lying on your back, or your stomach?"

" . . . uh . . . m'back . . ?" He didn't sound overly sure about it.

He must have rolled and tumbled when the floor buckled. Without light and without much room to squirm around, and as disoriented as he was –

With as disoriented as he was, it didn't matter. There was only one way to get him out before he either ran out of air or bled to death.

Without another second's hesitation, Mac ripped the cardboard aside and grabbed two of the bags of fertilizer. He hurried back to the front of the store. "Charlie, where are those Rangers?"

He knew Javier was in Charlie's ear, and Javier was the comm officer of their pair, just like Jack was his. Javier was keeping tabs on the main chatter and periodically tuning back in to update Charlie.

And true to that assumption, Charlie answered immediately. "Working their way up main street. Perugu reported the RPG – as soon as the Rangers get to us, we're supposed to pull back to the rally point." He cast a quick glance at the two bags slapped down beside him, even as Mac jogged to the back of the store to get the others. "Tell me you're not doing what I think you're doing!"

"We are," he called back, even as he hefted two more bags of the stuff. "Charlie, we can't mechanically move that much concrete, not in time."

It was apparent from the look on his face that Charlie Robinson was on the same page as Mac dropped the last two bags beside him – on the same page and not liking it one bit. "So instead of mechanically moving it – dragging it off him – you want to –"

Mac nodded immediately, dropping to the wall beside Robinson and sliding off his pack. "Move it kinetically. Mostly." He yanked a roll of det cord from his pack, and then a block of C4, cut into neat little self-adhesive sheets. "It's brittle. You saw for yourself. We need to shatter it into much smaller pieces, then we can dig him out using those." He jerked his head towards a wall where a few gardening tools had survived the looting, including a pick and a small shovel.

"Mac . . ." The other tech seemed at a loss for words. "The concussion alone could kill him . . . and we have to recalculate where we think Dalton ended up –"

Mac nodded quickly, ripping a couple sheets of C4 from the stack before pulling his swiss army knife out of his vest. "Yeah. Do you mind getting started on that?" He made a small incision in the burlap, enough to pass the C4 through, and then started rifling through his pack for remote detonators.

". . . Mac . . . dammit!" But it sounded oddly resigned, and then Robinson quickly shouldered his rifle and starting rooting through his own vest for pencil and paper. "If we're off even a little –"

"I know." He could probably make a stethoscope, but his odds of not getting shot while he crawled all over that pile listening for Jack to maybe tap, or maybe not –

And fast math was better than no math at all.

He heard Charlie key his own radio, explaining their plan to his overwatch, and Mac was reminded that he'd been silent too long, and Dalton could start on another of his long-winded attempts to reassure him that it wasn't his fault. He pre-empted it, wishing there was some way to rig his transmit button so that it was depressed without tying up one of his hands.

"Hey, don't feel too bad for my dad. He and my grandfather got the shed rebuilt that summer. It was a good excuse to upgrade his tools. Which came in handy when I was building my first engine. I was in sixth grade, and I really wanted to win the science fair before I moved on to junior high school . . ."

He told Jack about the science fairs that came after, which of course meant he had to tell him a little more about Bozer, and that led to a few of the more creative ways they used to occupy their summers, and soon enough he had four fertilizer bombs rigged to remote detonate, picks attached to the back of both his and Charlie's packs, and it sounded like the ready reaction force was handily taking care of the last Taliban fighter who'd been holed up in that attic across the street.

Charlie offered Mac his notepad, but Mac shook his head. "I trust you."

And he realized that it was absolutely true. He and Charlie Robinson hadn't worked closely in a while. Not since that awful, thirty-three hour period in Gardez that had been unofficially dubbed the 'Day of a Thousand IEDs.' Charlie had sought him out again just three weeks later, when they had the memorial for Pena on base, to express his condolences. They hadn't worked together a day since. Not until now.

Not until intel suggested Sharan was the next target for the man they called the Ghost.

If he'd been the one behind Gardez, behind the bomb that killed his CO, then it was possible that he could have hidden a device in the building. One that Mac had overlooked. Whoever had brought that building down knew about engineering, knew a US platoon was being deployed, knew leveling the building would cut the element in half and guaranteed an effective ambush –

He should have seen it. He should have looked harder. He'd made a mistake, and Mac would be damned if he was about to make another.

Charlie Robinson's math – it was good. He'd stake his life on it, and he was staking his cover's. Just like he was staking all their lives on his own math, his estimates for nitrogen content in the fertilizer, the hope that the bags were actually the weight printed on them, that the void Jack was in was really at least sixteen cubic feet –

Robinson gave him a nod. "Yeah. I trust you too. Now let's get your overwatch the hell outta there before the Rangers force us to fall back - at gunpoint." He smiled as he said it, but Mac didn't question for a second whether or not the other man was serious. He was. "Javier says they sent 'the good mofos', so I'm going to bet they're not as easy to steamroll as McCartney."

"Safe wager," Mac agreed readily, shouldering the first bag and scooping up a second under his left arm. "Javier gonna tell us when?"

Charlie huffed a laugh as he hefted up his second fertilizer bomb. "When," he grunted, and without hesitation Mac bolted out of the store.

The timing had been spot on; two Army Rangers had advanced up the street, on the same side as the now silent Taliban position, and the first man waved at him – silently – then held up his right hand, finger towards the sky, and made a casual swirl.

Return to the rally point.

Mac gave the man a firm nod, then sprinted instead towards the flaming remains of the humvee. The debris cloud might have dissipated too much to be useful cover, but the smoke from the 'vee was nice and thick. He heard someone shout – with the quality of a stage whisper, as if that was gonna help – and Mac ignored it, running flat out for the humvee. As soon as he reached it he took a knee, more to re-secure his burdens and give Charlie a second to catch up than because he thought someone was going to shoot at them. And sure enough, Robinson was right behind him.

And one of the Army Rangers was right behind him.

Jack's advice regarding combat orders was succinct and practical. Best way to avoid havin' to disobey a direct order is to never receive it in the first place. Mac picked up his sacks of dung and he ran.

He made the remaining twenty yards to the beginning of the collapse, dodging around smaller chunks of concrete as he analyzed the wreckage for a ready climbing point. On the plus side, it was almost solid cement, so it wasn't likely to shift as much as cement with a large component of steel rebar and other building materials. On the flip side, it was almost solid cement, and if it did slip, it was going to do it like it meant it, and a great big pile of concrete could come rolling down on him like a dull grey avalanche.

He had a free hand for climbing, but he used it instead to key his radio. "I'm here, buddy, I'm right here. Lemme know when you can hear anything."

Then he headed up.

No one stopped him. He heard a few voices calling – some with plenty of authority – but none were Charlie Robinson, and besides, once he was up top, there was a decent argument to let them finish the attempt. He couldn't do it without all four fertilizer bombs, though, and when Mac was about twenty-five feet up the pile, and in danger of being spotted from the opposite side, he finally hunkered down in a small ledge, and looked back.

And down.

And then he remembered, far too late, that he wasn't all that crazy about heights.

He was standing on an unstable pile of rocks, potentially in view of snipers, about to set off improvised fertilizer bombs in an attempt to basically depth-charge his overwatch to safety. Shattering the top slab and moving all that weight could trigger any number of catastrophic failures of the structure he was so precariously balanced on, the concrete was who knew how old and baked brittle by the desert sun, he could have been wrong about the detonation point or there could have been more than one explosive –

"Jesus Christ, are you part mountain goat!?" The voice was absolutely not Charlie's, and Mac flinched, then turned – just his head – and found another soldier, in basic, unmarked Army BDUs, perched on a ledge half as wide as his, about three feet above him. He had his rifle at the ready – not pointed at Mac – and his camo-greased face looked almost friendly.

"What the hell's so hard about 'return to the rally point,' specialist?" It was quite conversational, as if the Ranger regularly found himself clinging by inches to ragged concrete twenty-five feet above the ground, and Mac swallowed hard to ensure his vocal chords were going to cooperate.

"One of ours is trapped in the rubble. I just need five minutes –"

"So I heard." The Ranger turned his attention downrange, and panting from below alerted Mac to Charlie's approach. "You got four. There are twenty T-men inbound. I tell you to cover, you take fuckin' cover. This ain't the hill I'm dyin' on."

It sounded just like something Jack would say, and Mac gave the Ranger another nod – this time a grateful one - and turned to find Charlie was only a few feet below. The Ranger that had been on his tail was scaling the southern end of the debris pile, obviously moving into position to cover them, and Charlie gave Mac a tight smile.

"Javier?" Mac asked, already knowing the answer, and the smile got slightly broader.

"Yeah." Charlie hefted one of the fertilizer bombs higher on his shoulder. "They won't be able to hold this position long, we gotta hustle. We're in the ballpark, head north another six to ten meters."

Mac turned to do so when a faint pop in his ear stilled him instantly. "-'c'n . . . hear'ya-"

"Jack!" he bellowed, not bothering to key his radio. He needed Jack to hear his actual voice, not his transmitted one. "Jack, I'm right here! You hear me?!"

His cover had never stopped broadcasting. " . . . th' . . . three'b'five . . ."

Three by five. In radio parlance, not great but readable. "Good! I'm gonna come higher. You tell me hot or cold!"

Completely ignoring the scowling Ranger, Mac slapped the fertilizer bags onto the nearest decent surface and scrambled up towards the top of the pile, until he was balanced precariously on a sloped slab of roofing concrete, six meters north and dangerously close to the peak. "How about now, Jack?!"

His radio hissed in his ear, but Jack didn't come back.

"Jack!" he shouted again. "Jack! You copy?!"

More static. Maybe a sigh.

"You wanna wave a flag there, Crazy Horse, maybe pop smoke?" the Ranger suggested acidly, and his much flatter profile prompted Mac to also crouch lower, snatching his swiss army knife out of his vest pocket. Now that he was 'in the ballpark,' as Charlie put it, there was actually a quieter way to get a location on his overwatch.

He struck the concrete with the closed multi-tool, making sure the metal had good contact, and tapped a pattern he knew Jack would recognize. "Come on, dude," he urged, then tapped it out again. "Come on . . ."

A crackle in his ear, that sounded like an impact on a throat mike. No words.

Behind him, Mac heard the Ranger start muttering, and Charlie scurried up and deposited his two bags on the gravel and concrete. They made pretty decent thunks, but if Jack heard them, he didn't say.

The two EOD technicians locked eyes, and Mac could tell from the strained look in Charlie's that he was thinking the same thing. They were out of time. "Jack!" Mac shouted again, this time directly at the concrete below him. "Dammit, Jack, answer me!"

And, finally, he got back a mumble that was actually words. ". . . y'mad . . . ?"

"No!" he called back, unable to keep the relief out of his voice. "Sorry about the wait! It's about to get loud, okay? Just hang on!"

More confident that they had the right location, Mac took quick stock of what he could see. The roof was basically in one piece; it had shattered on the north side from the shaft in the center out to where he was, broken into about four pieces that easily weighed eight hundred pounds apiece. But he had a feeling Jack was under the part that was still mostly intact, and the fact that the east edge had partially crumbled gave him an idea.

"Okay – we focus the blasts to run right here." He placed his splayed hand right above where he'd been tapping. "The concrete around that shaft's thicker, so our first bag goes right there, as deep into that crack as you can wedge it."

Mac reached for the second bag, and as soon as he got a hand on it it gave a little pop, and a small bit of fertilizer flew festively into the air.

The Ranger up there with them returned fire immediately; both Mac and Charlie made themselves as small of targets as possible as gunfire seemed to pop up all around them. When it didn't immediately let up, Charlie started bellycrawling towards the gap that indicated where the shaft had once been, and Mac snagged the second bag of fertilizer and waited for a break.

"Did I tell you to take cover?!" the Ranger bellowed at him, stopping fire only to swap in a fresh mag. "No! I fuckin' didn't! Move your goddamn ass, soldier!"

Mac didn't need to be told twice.

He scrabbled over the mostly intact cement, flinching only when a bullet kicked up dust not two feet in front of him. It actually made a decent little gouge, basically where he needed to put a plug of C4 anyway, so he fished one of the ones he'd prepped out of his pocket and mashed it into place before scurrying to the next largest crack. Counting on it to be one of the thicker points, he dropped the bag about four feet from the edge, then quickly lowered himself down to the ledge beneath it, sprinting back for another bag. Charlie had similarly placed his first fertilizer bomb, and he waited by the other two until Mac made it back.

"See that vent?!"

It was a toilet vent, hardly more than a few inches of PVC pipe sticking up through the ruined cement, basically in the center of the most intact slab of roof. With zero cover anywhere near it, absurdly close to the peak of the collapsed rubble. And Mac knew immediately what Charlie was getting at, and that the other man was right. He simply nodded once to show he understood, took a deep breath, tucked the bag of fertilizer under his left arm, and sprinted straight for it.

After a few steps, he zigged hard left, and then right, like a quarterback dodging imaginary linebackers on his way towards the end zone.

If a sniper's takin' fire, he's gonna start layin' rounds in front of you and hope you run into 'em, Jack had told him once in that blunt, earnest way of his. You gotta keep him guessin' where that's gonna be.

It was the first piece of anti-sniper tactical advice the Delta operator had ever given him, and Mac put it to good use.

From his vantage point Mac could finally see the street on the opposite side of the collapse, but he didn't even glance at it. His entire focus on was on that vent. He heard someone yell at him to take cover, but there was none to be had, then three bullets zipped by in quick succession and Mac made another sharp course correction, slipping on the gravel-covered concrete and almost losing his footing. Rather than trying to recover – and potentially staying in one position too long – Mac used it and hugged the fertilizer bomb to his chest, falling straight onto the vent.

Had the bag not been there, he would have been impaled, and the only recently healed wound in his chest throbbed with the impact. But it was worth the pain. Some of the fertilizer was going to be lost down the vent, but that humble PVC pipe would provide a much deeper impact for the otherwise surface explosion, fully bisecting the slab.

Somewhere nearby, Mac heard a single shot, with a slightly deeper quality to it that was unmistakably a Barrett, the same rifle Jack preferred. Mac waited a breath, then craned his head around to look back the way he'd come. Sure enough, the Ranger up there with him waved him on.

Mac wasn't sure if it had been Javier or not, but a US Army sniper had just saved his life.

He made good time back to cover, dropping down to that second ledge and hurrying back to rendezvous with Charlie, who was prepping the demo. He'd clearly placed his other C4 plugs because he had those remotes in hand, and Mac added the remote for the four fertilizer bombs to Charlie's three. Belatedly he remembered his own plug of C4, and fished that one out as well.

The Ranger up there with them did a double-take at the impressive collection. "What the fucking shit . . .?" It sounded rhetorical, but Mac answered the unasked question anyway.

"We've gotta blow them in sequence. And . . . we should probably move."

The Ranger gave him a sour look and grabbed his radio. "TOC, Lancer Zero Eight, be advised, EOD on site, AO's about to get lit up. Break. Sabre Sabre, requesting an assist at ground zero. Need two flying to cover the north, north-east. Lancer will take ground cover from the south, south-east, and west. One EOD sniper is covering east, callsign Snakebite Two Two. Break. Lancer Lancer, hustle it up here, and bring the crunchies. We're diggin' for coal. Over."

The Ranger had never stopped looking at him, and once he got off his radio, he frowned. "What?" he asked, a little defensively. "Dalton sure as hell ain't gold. And this cluster's one hundred percent on EOD. You're gonna need all the help you can get."

Mac realized his expression must have been one of puzzlement, but it wasn't because of the information. He knew he, and by extension Charlie, were going to face consequences for not falling back to the rally point. The attempt, no matter the result, was worth it. It was the collection of callsigns that confused him.

And the fact that the Ranger had called Jack by name. Dalton.

"How many men are out there?" he asked carefully, and the Ranger smirked.

"This position secure?"

"No," Charlie jumped in, already on the move. "We wanna be on the south end."

The Ranger didn't have to be told twice either, and the three of them quickly climbed down and clambered over to a safer position. Safer should have been on the ground, but Mac wasn't willing to give up the time; as soon as they blew that concrete, they had to get right back up there and get Jack out of it.

He keyed his radio. "Jack, you still with me?"

The silence stretched on long enough that he nearly tried again.

". . . 's'not y'r fault, Ang'gus."

The audible effort that had gone into forming those words, making certain that they would be intelligible, chilled him far more completely than the winter air, and Mac licked his bottom lip. "We've gotta break up the concrete above you, it's going to get noisy and – some of the debris might slip. I promise you, we'll dig you right out. Here we go, big guy."

Charlie had arranged the remotes in order, and passed Mac two – one of which being the fertilizer bombs, which would blow last, taking advantage of the smaller cracks the C4 plugs would make. It was far too late to triple- check anything, the explosives were in place and they'd burned through their four minutes, and Mac didn't hesitate for another second. He counted it down, and Charlie counted it with him.

The first three pops were highly unimpressive, not even as loud as M6 fire. When Mac got to 'four' he depressed the button on his plug, and when he got to five, the slight delay of the C4 detonation catalyzing the diesel and fertilizer felt like a lifetime.

They were relatively sheltered from both the blast wave and the larger pieces of debris, so when Mac felt the ground literally moving underneath his feet, he knew it was actually the debris pile shifting. If it settled too much, there was a risk Jack would slip deeper into the debris, and they'd never be able to dig him out in time. Mac immediately started up the slope, slipping on crumbling chunks of concrete as they rushed around him in a miniature avalanche. Someone shouted, but it was pretty quiet in comparison to the shifting and crackling concrete, and when Mac finally reached the top, he saw exactly what he hoped to see.

The concrete roof had been shattered, into human-moveable pieces, and it had buckled in several places that could indicate voids underneath, but it hadn't caved in. It was a textbook demo.

Unfortunately, his toilet vent had been vaporized, and all the landmarks he'd used to identify the exact area Jack had been in were gone.

Mac mashed the radio button on his chest. "Jack! You copy?!"

If anything came back, he didn't hear it.

Without wasting another second, Mac crept carefully onto the shattered surface, placing each boot very deliberately and making certain his footing was secure before moving on. "Jack! Gimme a shout, big guy. You read me?!"

Static.

When he got to the place that seemed 'the right ballpark' Mac ripped off his pack and freed up the small hand pick he'd commandeered from the hardware store. It was meant to dig through hard dirt and rocks; it was actually the right tool for the job, and it did it well. When he reached the scraps of a dusty, faded red rug, he knew he'd hit the fourth floor, and immediately moved on.

No void. Therefore no Jack.

"Jack!" He shouted it into the radio, hoping either the speaker in his overwatch's ear or his actual voice would somehow get through, even as he moved another five feet north and started digging. Someone grabbed his right shoulder - Charlie – and he saw the man head another eight feet to the north and break out his handheld spade. Spacing themselves out where the support beams of concrete should be running. Mac's internal clock hit forty seconds.

Small arms fire was starting to kick up, and a quick glance found their Ranger up there with them, laying down suppressive fire.

"Jack, I know it was loud buddy, you might not be able to hear me." The air in the void with him should have partially buffered him, but his ears could be ringing. Or the void could have partially collapsed, and he could be pinned down in small pieces of concrete and couldn't get his hand on his radio.

Or the concussion could have knocked him out.

Or the concussion could have killed him.

Or debris could have filled the void, and he could be suffocating.

Pain registered, in one of his fingers, and Mac plucked a small sliver of concrete out of his right hand and realized it was exactly the right size to jam into his transmit button. So he did.

They were going to find Jack, one way or another, but Mac wasn't willing to leave him waiting alone in the dark, and he needed both his hands to dig.

"Hey, so remember you asked me earlier why I didn't get a Christmas card from my parents?" This time he kept his voice to a speaking volume, knowing the throat mic was picking it up and the automatic fire around him was preventing anyone else from overhearing. He tried to keep his voice easy as he dug.

"I've never gotten one from my mom. She died when I was five. I can remember her face, and the sound of her voice, but not much else. She, uh, used to let me help fold the towels, and try to help make the beds. I imagine it would've taken less time if I hadn't."

It was probably equivalent to trying to make a bed with your Labrador helping. Mac paused his monologue as he started to pry up a larger chunk, legitimately startled when another pair of hands appeared out of nowhere to help. On his left, Milo, their medic, grimaced, and then they had it up and over, and found a little pocket of air underneath.

They'd found one of the channels, which were by far the most likely voids to have Jack Daltons in them.

"Charlie, here!" Mac shouted, knowing it was going over the radio too. "I think we're right on top of ya, big guy." He started digging out the smaller chunks in the same way his imaginary bed-making Labrador would – it probably looked silly, but was the most efficient method he had with the tool in his hand. Another man appeared, on the other side of Milo, and their Ranger took up a defensive position nearby, laying down near continuous fire.

"As for dad, well – he left when I was ten." Some of the smallest bits of concrete started disappearing into an invisible hole underneath some of the larger chunks, and Mac redoubled his efforts. "He was an inventor, he'd leave for - weeks at a time on business but – I really thought he'd make it back for - my birthday. Never did. Harry - my grandfather – stepped in and raised me after that."

More soldiers had arrived, McCartney among them, and they spread themselves out along the suspected length of the channel, digging with their bare hands.

Mac's internal clock hit two minutes.

"Uh, told you about Bozer's parents – they're pretty cool. Spent a lot of time over there. But I never – had what you had with your father. I'd like to hear – more about him, so – you wanna start talking, I'm - listening –"

More of the mid-sized chunks fell away, and Mac finally saw something that wasn't just grey concrete and gravel, wasn't just the wreckage of an abandoned home.

It was a dusty boot. Army issue.

"Here!" he bellowed to the other men up there, pawing through the gravel-sized rocks surrounding that boot. Milo was up near where he figured Jack's head was, and Robinson joined him immediately. Within twenty seconds, every available man had gathered around them, and enough of the concrete had been pulled away that they could make out a body in the rubble.

What wasn't grey was bloody.

There was no room to get up to his head, a litter appeared like magic and Mac quickly dug out Jack's other ankle. On three they all managed to lift him up out of the three foot depression and onto the stretcher, and then they were moving, there were two more Rangers up on the pile with them, laying down suppressive fire, and Mac realized with a start how much he'd been blocking out.

There were almost a dozen men scrambling over the rubble. Their entire unit and then some. He was too worried about losing his footing and dropping his side of the stretcher to identify them, before he knew it they were on the ground and someone – maybe the Ranger's medic – shouldered him out of the way.

And Jack never moved. Never grimaced, never spoke. His face was coated in blood and dust, there was no way to tell if it was fresh or old, if it had happened during the initial collapse, or the explosions necessary to get him free. His hands were loosely curled and relaxed in a way they never were, not even when the sniper was asleep. Mac honestly wasn't even sure the man was breathing.

If he replaced the concrete dust with burns and blackened skin, the torn BDU's with a shredded bomb suit –

"You still don't know a goddamn order when you hear one, do you, son."

It was the words, more than the voice, that got Mac's attention, made him realize that someone was actually speaking to him. Mac searched the faces of the men hurrying around him, looking for the speaker, and found an older man, clearly a Ranger given the lack of identifying badges on his BDUs, giving him a long, penetrating look.

And one of the callsigns finally clicked.

Lancer.

He'd heard it before. These were the very same elite Rangers that had been sent to rescue Mac from Shahjoy, where four Taliban had attempted to abduct him right out from under Jack's nose way back at the beginning of the tour. Not that Jack had let them, and not that they'd needed Army Ranger backup –

But the man had clearly known Jack. Had called him by his rank. And Jack had done the same.

"Major," Mac acknowledged warily.

The cold look didn't go anywhere. "Get that radio fixed and get your ass back to the rally point to await further orders."

Any hope of being allowed to accompany his overwatch evaporated in that moment. Not that he'd had any reason to expect it in the first place, he wasn't injured and the fight was clearly still waging, there were more buildings to clear –

"Yessir," he said automatically, his mind still a thousand miles away, churning through options and variables.

While the combat engineer let that sort of thing go, the Ranger did not, and one hundred percent of Mac's attention suddenly focused on the man who had just grabbed him by his vest and thrown him against the wall of a house.

"Listen up," the major continued, his voice deadly calm. "The asshole that just dropped a building on Dalton? He or she might still be out here somewhere. You and your bullshit team of EOD are the only men on site that can do anything about that, so do your goddamn job and get my men outta here without blowing them up first. You read me?"

There was only one correct answer. "Yessir."

After a few seconds of judging his sincerity – and Mac was plenty sincere this time – he was roughly released. Mac thought the man might actually physically insist his orders were followed, but instead the major completely ignored him, jogging back to his men with a hand on his radio. Mac shrugged the tense muscles in his back, which were still smarting from their unexpected contact with dried mud, and belatedly realized it had hurt because he wasn't wearing his pack.

He'd left it up top when they'd evacuated Jack.

Mac eyed the rubble again before concluding disobeying orders a third time was definitely not an acceptable strategy, and he also started towards a few of the infantrymen from his squad. His eyes fell on a soldier about twenty feet down the dusty road, watching him. He was wearing unmarked BDUs and specialized gear, and had a sniper's rifle on his back, but didn't seem to be paying any attention to the rest of the Rangers. Just him. Mac caught his stare and held it for a few seconds until someone clapped him on the arm.

Mac flinched, but it was just Charlie, holding out a dusty pack.

"Thought you might need this," the tech prompted, and Mac nodded quickly and took it, slipping it over his shoulder. When he turned back, the African American soldier who had been staring at him was nowhere to be seen.

Neither was Jack. He'd been carried off in the interim, double timed to wherever a casualty evac pilot could safely land a helo. On one hand, that was a good sign – it meant he was still alive. And it occurred to Mac, belatedly, that he didn't even know where Dalton would end up. Depending how critical he was, it might be the nearest base, or he might be airlifted straight to Kabul –

"Mac."

He absently shoved his left arm into the strap and turned back to find Charlie giving him a once over.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," he said automatically, remembering to fish out the concrete that was wedged into his radio transmit button. No use broadcasting to an empty frequency. "Yeah, I'm good." He frowned at a smear of blood, near the radio button, and turned to inspect his hand only to find that his fingers - on both hands - were bleeding in several places.

Of course. He hadn't been wearing gloves. Mac flexed them a few times, but they were basically numb. The concrete dust had done an admirable job of soaking up any blood and sweat, acting almost like climbing chalk. Good thing no biologicals were suspected of being used, or he'd be on that CASEVAC flight with his cover.

"You look it," Charlie told him, and Mac dusted off his hands and started jogging after their retreating squad without responding.

The rally point was less than a mile away, in that borderline residential/commercial side of Sharan, and Mac wasn't surprised to find that Lancer was nowhere to be seen. They'd doubtlessly been deployed back towards the insurgents, to cut them off and get the rest of Snakebite safely out of the northern section of the city. A small command area had been set up in an abandoned bakery, and Mac loitered about twenty yards away from it, in no hurry to begin one of the several ass-reamings that he knew were coming his way. Still too wired to stand still, he crouched down to put his pack back in order.

The asshole that just dropped a building on Dalton? He or she might still be out here somewhere.

That was true. And now that he knew he was looking for invisible explosives, it was going to be nearly impossible to clear any of the buildings. The combat engineers were there to identify critical infrastructure, the buildings most likely to be targeted, so at least they had a place to start. But –

Something thunked loudly into the side of his helmet, like two turtle shells clapping together, and Mac glared up, weirdly expecting to find Jack, only to see the offender was once again Charlie. The other technician gave him a smug grin and plopped his helmet back on his head.

"Hey, I'm not above turtle fucking if that's what it takes," he announced airily, buckling his chin strap, and Mac went back to his half-destroyed pack.

The other technician – like Jack would have been - was not so easily deterred. "Mac, anything could have brought that building down. Could've been an RPG, clearly they've got 'em-"

Mac shook his head, confirming that he'd tucked his multitool in his vest pocket, where it belonged. "Only if the person who fired it did it from inside the room." There was no exterior window that was in line of sight of any of those sixteen critical points. If someone had detonated a grenade or a rocket, they would have been inside the building when it collapsed.

It wasn't impossible. Just improbable.

"MacGyver, until we do the post-blast, we don't know what happened."

That was true enough. Last time he'd been permitted to do an immediate post-blast, mainly because he'd been hit with the blast wave from the explosion that killed his CO. Any EOD at risk of a concussion wasn't permitted to play with live bombs until cleared, and he hadn't been cleared until the following night. He'd talked the site commander into letting him pick through the rubble instead. This time –

This time he was fine. Worst case scenario, he'd leave a bloody fingerprint on a bomb. No one could do a post-blast on that building until the area around it was cleared of threats. It might be days before they knew what actually happened.

Which meant Charlie was right, and Pena would have said the same thing; it was out of his control, and he could worry about it later. Right now there was something more urgent to address. "Charlie . . . listen, man, I know it's not much, but thank you." He zipped the last pocket on his pack and climbed to his feet, extending a hand. "You took a big risk, and you didn't have to. I couldn't have gotten him out of there without you."

Robinson gave him a long look, then clasped his hand. "You woulda done the same for me, for Javier, hell, for anyone in this outfit. Standing by and waiting wasn't an option. However this turns out . . . don't second guess yourself, Mac. There's no one I'd rather have working a disposal with me."

It was at least a little affirming to hear – if he'd truly gone off the rails, if the plan had no hope of working, he knew Robinson would have spoken up and told him so. They shook hands, and then Mac re-shouldered his pack and eyed the temporary command center. "Not sure either one of us are going to be working on disposals after this."

"Nah," Charlie denied, as they headed towards what might be the beginning of a court marshal. "We're too valuable. Skill set's too important. Besides, I'll take a little heat for Dalton. Javier vouches for him, and he's a tough SOB to impress."

Which brought up another uncomfortable topic. "You said those Rangers are personal friends of Javier's?"

Charlie gave him a solemn nod. "Lancer, yeah. Spec Ops are a tightknit group."

Not unlike EOD. Which was kind of Mac's point. "What does Javier know about the other guys? Their callsign's Saber."

Instead of answering, Charlie glanced causally to their left, where two men were leaning against the storefront opposite command, apparently having a friendly conversation and completely ignoring everyone else on the street. Mac hadn't given them a second look earlier, too absorbed in his own thoughts and his pack, and he realized with a start that one of them was the black soldier that had been staring him down earlier.

"He's worked ops with them but they've never been stationed at the same base. They're Delta, so there's a little . . . friendly competition."

Delta. And odds were, spec ops being close-knit –

These men might know Jack. For all Mac knew, they might have been Jack's old team. And they had been laying down cover fire while Jack's new team literally blasted him out of a concrete tomb.

The two soldiers – operators, Mac corrected himself – didn't seem to notice the attention at all, apparently simply waiting for orders, and the implication there didn't sit too well with him. "I, uh, I don't think I'm their favorite person right now."

"They don't have the whole story, Mac. And neither do you." Charlie stopped them about ten feet from command. "There's time for blame tomorrow. Right now we got a city to clear. Javier'll watch your back like it was mine. Okay?"

It didn't work out that way.

Mac didn't recognize the officer in command – his insignia indicated he was a sergeant – and the moment he looked up and saw them, he gave them a couple slow claps.

"Well look here, boys. Looks like we're in the presence of a pair of bona-fide god-damned American heroes."

The other five men and women in the room largely ignored the sergeant, and Mac disliked him instantly.

"Finally decided to maybe clock back in, see what work piled up while you were single-handedly diverting critical resources from the actual rescue operation?"

Technically and figuratively wrong, Mac silently corrected him, it was four pairs of hands and two people –

"Reporting as ordered, sir." Charlie's voice was calm and cool, and Mac kept his mouth closed and his face expressionless.

Clearly neither were the correct response. "You wanna tell me what you two cowboys thought you were doing?"

Mac knew from the set of Charlie's jaw that he wasn't a fan, either, but his voice was perfectly level when he replied, again, for the both of them. "Protecting our brothers and sisters, sir. And we're eager to get back to it."

The sergeant snorted in disgust, turning his attention back to a topographical map of the area. "Tell that to the pancake they just airlifted outta here."

It was getting harder to stay quiet, and though Mac knew logically that anything he said or did in retaliation would be held against Charlie, too, it seemed like it would be worth it. Fortunately salvation arrived in the form of superseding orders. The comms guy – another soldier Mac didn't recognize – took his hand off his headphones and set down his pen.

"Sergeant, TOC wants EOD dispatched to the west and south, coordinates . . . uh,163 284 and 175 122. Four man teams. They're assigning Saber Zero Four to Snakebite One One."

So much for Javier watching his back.

The sergeant blew out a breath and checked the coordinates his comm guy had rattled off. "Well . . . looks like it's a second chance for you gents. How about you go find the bombs before they go off this time, huh?" Without waiting for a response, he turned back to the comm officer. "Let's pull straws on the assignments, no one's dumb enough to volunteer."

To work with these idiots went unspoken. Luckily, there was neither a question nor an order in the words, and both he and Charlie remained silent. They remained that way until the teams had been assigned – one technician, one combat engineer, one infantry, and one overwatch – and a piece of paper was thrust into each of their hands.

"You have your orders. Follow them."

"Yessir," they both responded, and once dismissed, there was nothing left to do but walk out of the bakery-turned-operations-center and to their assembling teams. Mac had ended up being paired with Perugu and Timmons, so at least part of his own squad, and Charlie gave him a nod as he broke off to find his own team.

That was the last time they crossed paths. Perugu barely made eye contact with Mac, and outside of giving him the radio frequency for their team, he didn't say another word. Timmons, their infantryman, kept shooting glances at him as they headed to a vehicle, but Mac didn't particularly want to catch his eyes, and read either the pity or the anger he was sure to find in them.

When it became clear to Mac that no one else was hurrying to catch up with them, and none of his companions seemed to be surprised by that fact, he finally gave up, and grabbed his radio. "Saber Zero Four, this is Snakebite One One, what's your position, over."

He released the radio and obediently climbed into the front passenger seat – EOD always took the front seat, to spot IEDs buried in the roads - and was legitimately taken by surprise when the call was answered promptly.

"Snakebite One One, this is Saber Zero Four. Waiting on you to un-ass the rally point. Over."

The drawl, the inflection, even the word choice was reminiscent of Dalton. The speaker had that same easy Texan accent, and given how proud Jack was of being from Texas, the odds that these two men - both Texans, both Delta, both operating in the Afghanistan theater - wouldn't have run into each other at some point was nearly zero.

It was going to be a long day.

By the time the three of them made it to the coordinate grid that they had been assigned, Timmons could no longer tolerate the quiet. "These guys won't know what hit 'em. You see how many triple threats we got with us?"

The unwelcome reminder that the city was crawling with highly trained, deadly Special Forces operators that might not be very happy with him prickled the skin on the back of Mac's neck. Instead of answering, he turned to their engineer, who was trying to line up his map to the buildings he could see with his own eyes.

They were on the western edge of what Mac would call downtown Sharan, so there were several multi-story buildings interspersed with small businesses and older homes. There wasn't much battle damage on this side of the city, and a faint stream of smoke was curling up from one of the nearby hovels.

Meaning this side of the city might not have been fully evacuated.

Perugu finally responded by snorting. "Fat lot of good they'll do us, they're all on the north side. We'll be lucky if those fleeing insurgents don't run right into the broadside of our goddamn 'vee."

"You got anything?" Mac asked, trying to get them back on topic, and the engineer sucked down a deep breath.

"I'm sorry, Hollywood," he said, slowly, then looked up from the map. His expression was hard to read. "I'm the guy who called in the RPG. I didn't think you could get him out."

The tense silence that followed was a hundred times more uncomfortable than the pretending nothing had happened, and Mac broke it with a grin he didn't really feel. "Look, I'm glad you did. It got us those Rangers double-time."

Perugu scoffed. "You know what I-"

"I know that you were on top of that building with me, digging him out," Mac cut him off. Then he held out his fist. "Thanks. Both of you."

They both hesitated, but then brought their fists down on his, and after that, things settled down into somewhat frightening normalcy. The engineer picked out the buildings and other infrastructure that were most crucial to road traffic – or most likely to cause secondary collateral damage, like explosions or collapsing onto other buildings – and Mac inspected them while Timmons provided ground cover. The afternoon wore on, and with every building and pipe that Mac cleared, his unease ticked up another notch.

What in the hell was he missing? There was something off and he could feel it, just like he'd felt it in Ghanzi, forty-seven days before his loud-mouth knuckle-dragging overwatch was set to fly home forever. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but in reality –

In reality it was a little less than a year.

He'd known Jack Dalton basically one year. Just one.

Mac took a deep breath around a tickle in his lungs - that was no doubt caused by dust inhalation - and then heaved himself out from under the ancient Corolla. Timmons was nearby, watching closely, and Mac shook his head and leaned back against the car in disgust.

Nothing. There was nothing. No device near the fuel tank, nothing on the ignition, nothing on the axles that would be triggered if the car was pushed. It was perfectly positioned near a small clinic, that thankfully appeared to have been evacuated, but then why would they leave a perfectly good car instead of using it for said evacuation . . .?

His helmet rolled into a dent in the side of the door, and Mac's eyes naturally fell on a water tower perched on top of a three story apartment building, attempting to provide at least meager water pressure for the residents inside. It was exactly the place Jack would have picked for his nest – three hundred and sixty degree visibility, durable structure, multiple exits off the roof.

And not a building he'd cleared.

The feeling that something wasn't right ticked up another notch, at the same time his radio popped. "Snakebite One One, you got about zero seconds for sittin' around. Get up off your ass. Over."

Mac squinted up at the tower, wondering if the tiny bump at the top was real or just his imagination, and then he finally put his finger on what was bothering him. He leaned up off the car and rotated on one knee, looking at the passenger side door.

It was distended, not dented; the angle was very shallow and gentle, but the door was definitely bulging outward. There was no point of impact, he wouldn't have really noticed it unless the light hit it right or his helmet hadn't rolled off of it, and Mac ever so carefully edged away from the car.

He'd checked the ignition first from under the car, then under the hood, then under the steering column, but the only door he'd opened was the driver's side door. Mac studied the passenger door for another moment, noting the position of the window, and the lack of any scratches on the glass. Then he peered into the seal around the glass, gently using his swiss army knife to pry the dry-rotted rubber aside in several places.

Once he was satisfied, he grabbed his radio. "Guys, I got a possible IED outside the clinic, back off two blocks until I confirm, over."

Then he carefully circled the vehicle and gently opened the driver's side door once more. As before, nothing happened, and he used the longest blade of his swiss army knife to tease the driver's side seal away from the glass.

It was similarly weirdly missing the solenoid necessary to roll the window up and down.

More certain now, Mac carefully pried the interior surface of the door off the metal, cutting the rubber where he needed to, and discovered densely packed explosives where insulation and certain features of the door had once been. The wire for the solenoid was still present, meaning power was present, and Mac wedged his upper body between the front and back seats over the console. It wasn't comfortable, and it put his ass in the air and his head on the floorboards, but that was exactly where he wanted to be.

There were no unusual wires under the passenger seat. No indication that putting weight on it was going to trigger any sort of device.

Once unwedged, it was simply a matter of prying the inside of the passenger side door off – while it was closed, which made it a little more interesting – and disconnecting the other solenoid wire from the extra piece that had been run to the door's handle. He then crawled into the back seat and repeated the process.

Three of the four doors had been rigged because the driver had to be able to drive the car to the site, and then safely exit. If anyone had attempted to use the vehicle to evacuate, or he'd opened any other door but the driver side door –

And the mechanism was totally invisible from outside the vehicle. If they hadn't overstuffed the doors with explosives and nails, he never would have seen it.

Mac wasted no time in getting back on the radio. "Saber – uh –" The number eluded him, but the sniper was the only one of their team with that callsign, so Mac figured forgetting the designation wasn't the end of the world, "- I need you back on the main channel. Inform the TOC we've got cars wired to detonate when the doors are opened. Driver's side door is safe, and the other three can be disarmed from inside the vehicle." Belatedly he realized he hadn't actually checked the trunk, and he crawled into the back seat to see if he could fold one forward and at least get a visual.

Once again, Saber responded quickly. "Snakebite One One, good copy, vehicles with doors rigged to detonate, driver's side door is safe, and once disarmed, EOD will take a fucking nap in it. Over."

It wasn't worth the retort, and Mac carefully checked the back seat for any trigger mechanism before he folded it forward. There was visibility into the trunk, and Mac was relieved to see it was empty.

To further give the impression that the car was safe to get inside. This was meant to terrify and demoralize as well as reduce the citizens' access to medical care.

Two hours later he found another, this one built into a curb of a relatively narrow street beside a pharmacy, hoping for a larger vehicle – like, say, a delivery truck, a bus, or an Army humvee – to drive over it. An hour after that Saber informed him that another EOD unit had discovered an IED on a septic tank cover that was designed to blow when liquid inside a timer froze solid in the lowering temperatures and broke the glass, which would complete a circuit. Luckily ambient was still thirty-four degrees. The gas in the septic tank would have brought down the tenant building.

Mac's unit stayed out until they'd cleared the grid, which was well after dark, and their temporary cover did not deign to return with them, radioing that he 'already had a ride.' Mac assumed that was back with his own team, and it was kind of a relief; outside of a few generic sarcastic remarks, Saber hadn't been overly aggressive, and Mac was glad to have gotten out of the assignment without an argument. He even closed his eyes for a couple minutes, figuring he'd earned the rest, and the next time he opened them it was because of rumble strips on approach to a base he didn't recognize.

Mac straightened in the seat, trying to get his bearings; he didn't even remember them leaving Sharan. "Where are we?"

"FOB Janabad. About five hours out from Delaram," Timmons supplied from the driver's seat. "We're rolling out at 0900 tomorrow. Got temporary barracks assigned."

'Temporary barracks' could mean a thin sleeping bag in a shitty tent, but it would be better than the 'vee and might come with a hot meal, so Mac just grunted as they followed a convoy of about a dozen vehicles through security and onto the base. They were directed to fleet parking, and from there to an administration tent where they reported in, were counted, and were then instructed to hit the DFAC, where a couple cooks were keeping a hot chow line open. Both the men behind the counter were friendly, and Mac got treated to some chocolate flavored decaf coffee, and a generous helping of beef stew that actually tasted like the real thing instead of Dinty Moore.

More importantly, he got a super high level layout of the FOB. And a confirmation that yes, they had a medical and surgical unit, and yes, they'd received casualties from the operation in Sharan.

There were only twenty or so men in the DFAC, most from Sharan, and none of them were familiar. Either the rest of Snakebite had returned to their normal FOB at a more reasonable hour, or part of his unit was still out there working. Timmons and Perugu seemed to sense that Mac wasn't going to quit until he got some information on his cover, and they bid him goodnight as soon as all three had been given a pillow, blanket, and a bunk assignment.

The admins were zero help; as soon as Mac returned to Administration, he was informed that no, they had no record of a Sgt Dalton, Jack Wyatt being transferred but that medical ran their own ship and visiting hours started at 0800 and he could check with them then. When he asked to speak with the nurse on call he was asked if he was injured. When he revealed that he was not, he was rather pointedly asked if he wanted an escort to his barracks, which drove home the message that admin wasn't interested in dealing with his ass tonight and he could willingly hit the rack, or he could meet the FOB MPs.

Blanket and pillow in hand, MacGyver politely declined armed escort and headed in the general direction of the barracks, which were a large collection of modular beige buildings that seemed to stretch out into the darkness as far as the eye could see. By design forward operating bases had well-lit perimeters, to prevent the enemy from sneaking up, but the interior of the base was not as brightly lit, and Mac had probably made it halfway down the long row before that feeling of unease, that had been quiet since Sharan, started ticking back up.

It was well past midnight and there were very few people milling around in the sub-freezing temperatures. The only other men, whom he'd been generally following, both took a sudden right into a tent Mac figured was the latrine, and then he was completely alone.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and MacGyver very carefully continued trudging down the road, just another exhausted soldier on his way for some well-deserved R&R.

He never heard them; a shadow materialized around the corner of one of the barracks in front of him and leaned casually against the wall, apparently unaffected by the cold, and as Mac passed under one of the few exterior spotlights along the path, a little dust puffed into view, as if someone had stopped walking just outside the circle of light.

Mac noted it, along with the exact position of the buildings and the number of strides it would take him to reach his four available exits. The guy leaning on the barrack wall didn't so much as twitch as Mac approached, it wasn't until he came even that the man casually spat something onto the ground.

His face wasn't familiar. His voice was. "You lost, son?"

Same Texas accent. Same drawl. Same sarcasm.

Mac glanced at the man but didn't break stride, not until a voice came out of the darkness just ahead. "Headed the wrong way, there, specialist."

Two exits down. Mac did stop, then, turning his head to the right to indicate he knew there was a third man, and sure enough, the puff of dust that he'd passed three meters ago piped up. "Hey, isn't that the genius that blew up his own overwatch to get him out of that building?"

He still had two clear exits, assuming there were only three men out there in the darkness. And he had a pillow and blanket. The pillow wasn't going to do him a damn bit of good, but the blanket was strong, quality cotton, and could easily deflect a knife. Mac tightened his grip slightly on the blanket, and addressed the only one of the three that he could clearly see.

"I'm not looking for trouble, guys. Can we do this in the morning?"

The man lounging against the barracks smirked.

"Not lookin' seems to be exactly his problem," the darkness in front of him observed to his colleagues, as if Mac couldn't hear him. "Kid probably overlooked the fuckin' bomb in the first place."

So that was a no. They couldn't do this in the morning.

Mac sighed, watching his breath steam in the artificial light, and then he dredged up a smirk of his own. "Three on one? And here Jack told me Delta fight fair."

The lounger gave a derisive snort. "The hell he did."

Mac gave him a little more of his attention. "Sounds like you know him pretty well."

"Better than you," the Texan snapped. "I've known Wyatt damn near all my life."

For a split second, he had a wild hope that this was all a terrible misunderstanding, and that they were talking about two different people, but Jack's middle name was Wyatt, and between that and the obvious Texas connection, it was just too coincidental.

"Kid clearly doesn't know him at all." That came from the shadows in front of him, and Mac finally realized that it truly was a shadow when the outline of tan BDUs gradually became clear, but no face or hands accompanied them.

It was the African-American soldier who'd been staring him down. He wasn't a Ranger. He was another Delta.

Behind him, the puff of dust tutted disappointedly, and Mac decided enough was enough, and he took two steps towards the lounger. "I know him well enough," he said calmly. "I know that he would have suffocated in that rubble long before the AO was cleared and equipment could be brought in. I know I'm facing a reprimand for disobeying an order to leave him in there. And I know that after I put you in the infirmary, base commander will finally give me a sitrep on his condition. I've had a long day, so if it's all the same to you, let's get started."

The Texan's eyebrows raised in amusement, and the shadow in front of Mac straight up laughed, in a very infectious, Bozer-like way. "I don't think he knows who you are."

"I don't think he cares," Mac replied evenly. If the fight was inevitable, he'd rather get it over with. Maybe Admin had dispatched the MPs anyway, and he'd get an eleventh hour save, but he wasn't counting on it. They might take a pound of flesh, but they weren't going to kill him. Probably. A single beating he could take. Backing down, not so much.

In the end, Charlie was right. Sitting and waiting was not an option. Especially not today, not on an anniversary like that. He did the best he could with what he had, and if he was hearing these men right, they were referring to Jack in the present tense.

Meaning he was still alive. And not only that, they had information that he didn't.

And he had managed to pin Jack when they met. Probably because Jack had underestimated him, like most jocks did, and he could and would use it. He didn't plan to fight any more fairly than they did.

"Well, he should," the Texan grunted, reaching into the pocket of his BDUs. "Seein' as this ain't the first time we've met."

Mac barely processed the words before he heard footsteps, and another shape materialized out of the dark, just behind the Texan. "Guys, what's the holdup, the corporal said he checked onto base over an hour ago-" The voice cut itself off, but something about it was familiar was well, and the Texan rolled his eyes and pulled his hand out of his pocket.

Something metallic and cylindrical came out with it, and sure enough, it was tossed right at him. But it wasn't thrown hard; it was underhanded almost gently. They were too close for it to be an explosive or tear gas, and Mac hesitated too long to dodge. In the end, he caught it, intending to throw it right back.

The shape and weight of it, however, were way too familiar, and Mac opened his hand to find himself holding a can of beer.

He blinked at it, not understanding, and then looked back up at the Texan. ". . . you want me to drink you under the table?"

This time the puff of dust joined in with the shadow in his laughing, and the fourth man finally reached the circle of light. He was reasonably sized - in comparison with both of his more muscular friends - and he glanced at all the men with open confusion. After a few seconds, his expression closed up like a disappointed librarian.

"You were fucking with him." It wasn't a question.

The African-American Delta actually had to grab his knees, he was laughing so hard, and the Texan wore a gracious smirk. "Son," he said, in the exact same drawl he'd been using the entire time, "if the two of us sat down to drink, it'd be real alcohol, and you'd wake up three days later in the infirmary."

The fourth man finally broke into a smile, and weirdly, it was his teeth that jogged the memory. A memory of being in the dark, being surrounded by strangers that he feared, being confused and in pain and unsure what was happening.

It all clicked into place. The smile, the New York accent, the Texan drawl. "You were the medic," Mac said aloud, and then he turned and glanced behind him, hoping to get a glimpse of whoever had kicked up that puff of dust.

Sure enough, he'd approached. All seven feet of him.

The giant Afghan who wasn't an Afghan.

This was Jack's old Delta unit. The same ready reaction force that had come to get him out of that cave when their helo was downed north of Kabul, and he'd almost bled to death trying to fix the stupid radio.

"Ding ding ding," the Texan confirmed. "He really does have a brain."

The medic heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Sorry," he said, and then approached, offering a hand. "Boxer's got a bit of a protective streak when it comes to Jack. The name's Pete."

Still not entirely sure what was going on, Mac transferred the unopened beer to his left hand, and cautiously shook the medic's hand. His grip was strong but not overly so; it was truly a friendly gesture. 'Pete' seemed to catch on to his wariness, because his grin broadened. "Best drink that before you hit Jack's room," he murmured conspiratorially, nodding to the beer. "Otherwise he'll be pissed you didn't bring him one."

"And if you're old enough to die for your country –"

"Then you're old enough to have a beer," the shadow finished, pulling a can out of his own tac pants. "Name's Duncan. Folks call me Dunc. The redwood back there is Coop."

A little bemused, Mac gave him a stilted nod, and turned to take in the giant behind him. The blond gave him an easy smile.

"So Jack's . . . here," Mac guessed, and the medic raised his beer – that had appeared from apparently thin air – and took a swig.

"The ornery old SOB? Yeah. Well, he's in medical. But he's fine." It was the Texan – Boxer, apparently - who finally pushed himself off the barracks wall to join their little circle. He'd freed a second beer from his other pocket. "Just pissed off you haven't been by to see him yet. Sent us out to find ya, said you'd be cringing around like a kicked puppy." The man paused. "And then he said something about . . . abusin' paper clips . . ."

"The old timers get the good stuff," Pete murmured knowledgeably. When Mac didn't immediately smile or joke, the medic took pity on him. "He's got a pretty wicked concussion, a bruised kidney, and a four inch laceration above his left eye, but otherwise he's his usual self. Little hypoxia there at the beginning, but no lasting damage."

"Not that you'd really be able to tell," Dunc quipped, and Boxer shot him a dark look before grudgingly agreeing with him.

Pete ignored the banter in the longsuffering way of a man very used to it. "He'll be fine, MacGyver. Honestly, when we heard the sitrep, today of all days . . . and then once we got on site . . . I really thought it'd be a hell of a lot worse."

So they knew. Knew that it was the anniversary of Jack's father's death, knew how superstitious he was. And of course they would have, Mac had heard plenty of stories about Jack's Delta team, he knew how long they'd all served together. And now he could see, had seen, how they responded. They'd already been out on an op and instead of coming home, they'd redirected to Sharan and jumped into the shit without a second thought.

And it made all the difference. Jack was alive. Better than alive, he was going to be fine. Mac found himself pulling the beer tab on autopilot and letting it foam out. He'd spent all day thinking the worst, and somehow knowing that Jack was going to be all right –

"So did I," he admitted.

"So you didn't. Know what you were doing," Dunc expounded, and Mac grimaced and took a sip of the beer, more to buy himself time than because he really wanted it. Although, alcohol was a depressant, and he was still far too adrenaline-fueled to even think about sleeping. Maybe a little self-medication wouldn't hurt.

"I knew the concussion from the blast was a factor, but we'd already calculated that he had at least sixteen cubic feet of space, because he was still conscious and at this elevation he'd need about three liters of air a minute . . ." Mac trailed off as he realized none of them cared. "I knew we'd get him out. I just didn't know how injured he'd been by the initial collapse."

Or whether said injuries had been exacerbated getting him out. Or how in the hell he'd missed the bomb that had caused it in the first place.

The men around him sobered a little. "Yeah. At least Lancer got that sonnuvabitch," Dunc growled. On Mac's other side, Coop snorted.

"If the major hadn't, I would've. He was headed my way."

Mac looked between them. "The bomber?" The way Duncan had said it, Mac doubted the man had been taken alive. And until they did the post blast, he couldn't be sure, but he didn't think this guy had been the Ghost. The bombs were too straight-forward. The design was smart, but they were just too simple.

And maybe it was wrong, but knowing that the man had been stopped, even if they couldn't question him, was a relief. And a tiny, vengeful part of him felt like it was exactly what the asshole deserved. The bombs might not have been on the Ghost's level, but the cruelty in their design and placement sure as hell was. The world could sleep more peacefully knowing a man like that was no longer in it.

"Yeah. Confirmed by satellite a couple hours ago." The other men turned in unison to look accusingly at Pete, who shrugged. "What? One of my buddies is working the TOC tonight. He went in wearing a blue coat, came out without it, and they had enough footage to trace his route through the city. Lancer got the right guy."

Mac parsed through that in his head. "He went in . . . to the building that was bombed?"

"Yeah. After you cleared it and Dalton took up position," Pete confirmed, like he hadn't just dropped a bomb of his own. "Apparently he sweet-talked his way in past ground security, said he was a resident that came back to get his cat."

On Mac's left, Boxer snorted. "See, that's why dogs are better."

Dunc gave the older Texan a look that said he clearly did not agree, at least with the logic of that statement – but the medic wasn't as easily distracted, and didn't miss the expression that must have crossed Mac's face. "Relax, specialist. You didn't miss anything, and neither did Jack. EOD clears a building, a local goes in, comes out without his coat, not ten minutes later that building comes down . . . even Box there can do that math."

"Har har."

Pete shot him a shit-eating grin. "Rumint's that he mighta been the SOB that's been taking out a lot of ours lately."

Mac frowned and took another swig of beer. "If your rumint's that he was the Ghost, they're wrong."

Duncan gave him a long look. "And you'd know?"

"Yeah," Mac told him. "I would."

The men were quiet for a moment. Then the tallest of them shrugged. He was so large, and his uniform was so big, that it was actually an audible event. "Well I don't doubt it, you were doin' freakin' calculus while taking sniper fire –"

"Mathematical physics," Mac corrected him purely on reflex, and this time the exasperated look came from the Texan.

"Wyatt told us you're an argumentative little shit. And you have zero radio discipline, by the way. Like none."

Knowing Boxer had been the sniper assigned to his team, something occurred to Mac. "Were you the one that took out that shooter?"

Pete glanced at Boxer in alarm, but it was Duncan who smirked. "Nah, that was me. Never trust a Ranger to cover you."

And there was that friendly competition again. Mac raised his beer can to the man. "Noted. And thanks."

Duncan inclined his head with an exaggerated bow.

"Well, whatever fucking math it was, if you hadn't'a gone out there and done it, we'd be havin' a real different toast right now," Boxer observed, in a more solemn voice. "To Jack Dalton."

Everyone – Mac included – raised their can. "To Jack!"

Despite the cold and his nerves, the beer was starting to taste good, and Mac decided to push his luck a little. "Guess that's two I owe you now."

"Oh, right, that wasn't all that long ago, was it. You seem okay." Without warning, Coop gave him a friendly swat to the chest, right over the freshly healed scar. He was a big dude and Mac hadn't been expecting it; he stumbled back a step, but managed to keep the yelp to himself. The medic gave him a knowing look.

"It's probably gonna be tender a while longer. We were actually a little worried about you there for a minute, when you weren't too keen on waking up."

"You had ol' Jack pacing like a mother hen," Dunc agreed. "Actually had the nurse wound up too."

Try as he might, Mac couldn't summon a single memory of any of them after he'd been loaded into the belo. "You were at the hospital?"

"Oh yeah," Coop told him. "That was a messy op, we had a couple friends end up in there with you. We came down to find Jack about to crawl outta his skin, said you wouldn't come around and the docs didn't know why –"

"Until you opened your eyes and glared at us, and told us to – how'd he put it?"

"I think it was, shut the hell up?"

"Sounds right," Pete agreed placidly. "So you told us to shut the hell up, and then you turned over and went back to sleep. After that, we knew you'd be just fine."

Mac cleared his throat, then decided another swig of beer was in order. "Well, I don't remember that, but I'm sorry. And since I didn't get the chance to say it before - thank you."

Pete chuckled. "Don't worry about it. And don't worry about that marker either. I think you made good on it by keepin' Jack on the right side of the ground today."

"Yeah, no shit," Boxer agreed. "And forget dodgin' sniper fire. Would you believe I watched this lunatic crawl inside a bomb? And after he disassembled the whole damn car from the inside, up he goes into the back seat to have him some me time."

Mac had already opened his mouth to protest when he realized it was a joke, and he nimbly redirected. "Hey, I've made some good memories in the back of a Corolla."

That got a few appreciative whoops from the men, and a barely audible grumble from one of the barracks.

"Alright, fellas, finish up those beers and let America's finest get some shuteye. Otherwise Wyatt's liable to get up and try to find the kid himself."

Mac obediently tipped the can empty, and took his cue from the other can-crushing grunts, collapsing the aluminum cylinder and sticking it in one of the pockets of his BDUs to be quietly disposed of later. He shifted the pillow and blanket under his arm and nodded farewell, and Dunc gave him a confused look.

"Seriously, dude, wrong way." He thumbed over his shoulder in the direction Pete and Boxer had come from. "Infirmary's on the east side."

The information was not new, he'd gotten that from the cooks on the line, but it still didn't click. "Visiting hours start at 0800 –"

A guffaw sounded behind him. "Visiting hours? That's cute." Then a massive hand pushed him forward a few steps. "Jack asked to see you, and he's gonna see you."

Mac caught himself a little more gracefully this time, and fell in line with the men as they circled around the barracks Boxer had been leaning against. Clearly their medic had an in not only with the TOC, but also with the infirmary. Still, he was lucky enough not to have gotten an ass chewing when he checked in; breaking base protocol on top of disobeying an order -

Pete seemed to sense his hesitation. "Jack's got himself a one track mind when it comes to family," he explained, in that easy manner of his. "Pretty sure the last thing he heard was all the automatic fire. He's got it in his head we let you get shot, and just won't admit it."

"Oh yeah. And I even put Dunc on the ground, just in case," Boxer called over his shoulder. "Wyatt'd have my hide if you wound up dead. We sure as hell didn't carry your ass all over that mountain to let you get picked off on a little ol' hill."

"No matter how much you were beggin' for it," Coop added, from behind him. "Didn't anyone teach you how to take cover?"

"Or that you should never count on a Ranger to cover you?"

"I think we already . . . covered it," Dunc added mischievously, waggling his eyebrows.

Coop groaned. Loudly. "Ah, jesus, we're doin' puns now?"

"Son, we're always doing puns. And that was word play, not puns. Repetition makes it funnier."

The good-natured ribbing kept up all the way to what Mac concluded was the infirmary. It was a pair of portable buildings screwed together, connected to a like pair via a fully enclosed walkway, and it was this covered walkway that the Delta operators led him to. Though it wasn't readily visible in the dark, there was in fact a zippered entrance in the thick plastic, and Pete wasted no time in unzipping it.

Despite the size of the men, they moved eerily silently; there wasn't so much as a floor creak as they smoothly penetrated the portable, and Mac found himself quickly led to one of the larger rooms, where three men were lined up in narrow hospital beds, separated only by hanging sheets. It was there that their luck ran out; a nurse was in there charting, and Duncan, who was now in the lead, froze in his tracks and held up his right fist in the universal symbol for 'stop.'

But it was too late. She turned to check the saline drip and no matter how quiet they were, they were not invisible. The woman was a dwarf in comparison to the operators, but Mac didn't miss how they all seemed to shrink a little as she glared at them.

"Out." She punctuated the order with a single finger, pointing right at the door.

"TROBA," Dunc stage whispered, and the glare shifted directly to him.

Pete stepped forward and cleared his throat. "Binkie," he said, and gestured to Mac.

The full weight of the nurse's ire then fell on him, and Mac added it to his own and deflected it towards the medic, who flashed him an apologetic smile. Which Pete then turned full beam back on the nurse. "Look, you want Dalton to settle down . . . binkie."

Mac looked between the two of them, but it was a gravelly voice from one of the beds that ended the stalemate. "I'll settle down . . . when one of you asses . . . gives it to me straight."

He didn't sound much better than he had over the radio, and Mac hesitated, then sidestepped Coop and peered around the third curtain.

Jack didn't look much better than he had earlier, either. His face had been cleaned up, but the stitches over his eye were readily apparent, as it was swollen half-shut. There were plenty of bruises visible as well, on his face and exposed arms. But then that face split into a goofy grin, and somehow it didn't seem so bad.

"Hey, bud! I was worried 'bout ya," he declared, almost giddily, and then moved to throw back his sheets and get up.

The nurse and the medic pounced, preventing any unauthorized walkabout, and then Boxer intervened and shoved Mac directly into line of sight. There was nowhere to sit, so Mac took up a position beside one of the monitoring stands, near the head of the bed, and Jack reached out and snagged his sleeve.

"Y'okay?" he asked, the words slightly slurred. Without waiting for an answer, he tried to tug him closer for a more thorough inspection. "No new holes in ya?"

"I'm good," he assured his cover, holding up his hands. "Your team took good care of me."

It seemed to reassure the sniper; he stopped flailing as much, and on the opposite side of the bed, the nurse was able to tuck Jack back in. She'd also noticed the change in her patient, and as Jack eased himself back down on the mattress, as if suddenly becoming aware of how sore he was, she thinned her lips.

"Five minutes," she finally relented. "Five."

"Ma'am yes ma'am," Coop agreed, without the slightest sarcasm, and the nurse gave them all another warning look before she reclaimed her clipboard.

"Y' . . . y'r hands . . ."

Mac turned them, realizing that after he'd washed them at the DFAC, he hadn't bothered with bandaids. They were a little cut up, but nothing major. "Scratched them up a little getting you out," he admitted. "You know how much I hate gloves."

Jack barked out a laugh. "Boy do I ever." His head rolled a little dizzily on his pillow, inviting the other men into the conversation. "This idiot'll be in full battle rattle and bare fuckin' hands."

"Dude. Head, eye, and hand protection. Don't they teach EOD anything?" There was a playful twinkle in Dunc's eyes, and Coop nudged the man hard in the ribs.

"Not helping," he muttered in an undertone.

"'Zactly," Jack agreed heartily, as if Coop hadn't spoken, and then relaxed even deeper into the mattress, wrinkling his nose as the nasal cannula tickled it. "Been sayin' that all damn tour."

"Yeah, he pretty much has," Mac agreed readily. "How you feeling, big guy? They taking good care of you?"

"Oh yeah. 'Cept they'll let damn near any riffraff in here . . . haven't gotten a wink a'sleep . . ." He punctuated that statement with a wide yawn, and Mac gave him an easy grin.

"Yeah, I'm sure that wasn't self-inflicted at all." He made a show of checking his watch. "It's pretty late. Why don't you get some shuteye, and we'll all come back during visiting hours." It was a promise he could actually make. His orders weren't to leave the FOB until 0900, and he'd spend that last hour with Jack if the man wanted him to.

On Jack's opposite side, Boxer snorted. "This one's a real stickler for the rules. Figured you'd have broken him of that by now, Wyatt. You're gettin' slow in your old age."

"Well, the kid did disobey a direct order," Pete pointed out reasonably, and when Jack raised an eyebrow, Mac smirked.

"Three, actually. But one came from Lancer, so it doesn't really count."

That got a round of chuckles from the entire room, his overwatch included, and Mac reached down and patted him gently on the shoulder. "Get some rest, man. See you in the morning."

His sleeve was caught again, with more speed than Mac would have thought Jack capable of. "Jus' – jus' a sec." Then he looked around the room, and frowned. "Okay, fine, you didn' let him get dead," he admitted reluctantly. As if it had been a hot topic of conversation earlier in the day. "I jus' need a word with 'im."

"That's all we get?" Pete deadpanned. "Six hours of swearing on a Bible, and it's we 'didn't let him get dead'?"

Jack released Mac's sleeve and made a shooing gesture. "Whatever. Beat it."

There was a little more grumbling, but then the operators disappeared as silently as they'd arrived, and Mac raised an eyebrow when Jack simply lay there and stared at him. "What?"

Jack's eyebrows knit together. "What?" he echoed, with significantly less slurring. "Don't you what me. You know what." When Mac continued giving him a blank look, his cover sighed, and suddenly looked very, very tired.

"You let me go on and on about my parents, growin' up back in Texas, family reunions . . . why didn't you tell me?"

It wasn't the kind of conversation he could have in the thirty seconds before the nurse came back to chase him out, and Mac let his smile turn a little self-deprecating. "You heard."

"Damn right I heard," Jack shot back. "Every word. Along with every damn bullet goin' by. That was stupid, Angus. That was downright reckless."

"That was the deal," Mac reminded him. "We walk into a situation together, we walk out together." The sniper glared at him, and Mac gave him an eloquent shrug. "And I meant what I said. If you want to talk about your father, I'm all ears."

"Pops is not what I wanna talk about," Jack snapped, but he cut himself off with a grimace, and Mac winced with him and stood by helplessly while his cover fought with his pain.

"Jack, settle down. We don't have to talk about any of it tonight. Well, I mean, I might be court-marshalled in the morning, but -"

"Pfft." Jack looked like he was rolling his eyes, but Mac suspected it was the dizziness from his concussion kicking back up. "They won't do nothin' to ya. Skill set's too valuable."

It gave Mac a reason to genuinely smile – and not just because his redirection had worked. "Funny, someone else told me the same thing."

"Yeah, well, whoever it was is smarter than you," Jack countered, still sounding cross. "Mac . . . you can't wait to share the important shit until you think somebody's dyin'. I mean it," he overrode Mac's half-hearted attempt to interrupt. "You only told me about your parents because you thought I was gonna bite it."

"No. I told you about my parents because you thought you were going to bite it," Mac corrected him. "I needed you focused on something besides the dark, the pain, and today's date. I needed you to have a reason to take one more breath. And if that something's a – a sob story, well at least it did someone some good."

It wasn't exactly what he meant to say, and the phrasing was terrible, but it seemed to sink in, because Jack blinked up at him like a man who'd suddenly been struck by an epiphany.

Mac hoped it was the pharmaceutical kind. "Now, my five minutes are up, and I don't want to get into the kind of trouble that my skill set can't get me out of, so I will see you tomorrow morning, during visitor hours. You really should get some rest, Jack. You look like shit."

"It wasn't your fault," Jack said suddenly.

Mac swallowed a sigh. "Yeah, big guy, I know. The bomber snuck into the building after I cleared it –"

Jack raised his hand to silence him. "Whatever you're blamin' yourself for, right now? Wasn't your fault."

It was scary how well his cover could read him sometimes. Mac got ready to head for the door. "Go to sleep, Jack."

"Hey!" The sharpness of his tone brought Mac up short, as did the suddenly stone cold sober expression on Dalton's face. "I will never check out on you, Mac. Never. Not if I have any say in the matter, and maybe even if I don't." Only after he leaned back against the pillows did Mac realize that Jack had sat straight up in the bed. Even after he settled back, his voice lost none of its fierceness. "I'm sorry if I scared ya, bud, but I don't plan on buggin' out anytime soon. That's a Jack Dalton promise, and you can count on it."

Mac nodded. "Yeah, big guy. I know."

"Not yet you don't," he growled. "Angus, you don't gotta give me a reason to stick around, not ever. You are the reason. That's all the reason any decent human being needs." He paused to let that sink it. "And I will spend the rest of my damn life showin' you what that looks like if that's what it takes."

Mac wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to say to that. Just like he hadn't known how to take it when Pete, the medic, had said that Jack considered him 'family.' They'd only been paired together a year, and he couldn't even say he liked Jack for all of it. It couldn't compare to the bond those Delta had with him, all that time, the ops and close calls. It just couldn't, from both a neurological and psychological perspective, and –

And if he thought about that too long, he might eventually concede that, at least to him, Jack felt like family. Felt like someone he didn't want to lose.

And it was the end of a really long day, and the dropping off point of copious amounts of adrenaline and stress hormones, and it was something that needed to be dealt with tomorrow. And if he said all that out loud, he'd sound like a dismissive asshole, so he was right back to square one – unsure what to say.

And as usual, his overwatch filled in the silence. "And before you go rack out, I got one last thing I gotta say. The only reason I got some more life left is because of you, and what you did today." Jack sobered a little. "Thanks, man."

That, at least, he knew how to respond to. "Any time."

"But it was stupid. And reckless," Jack repeated.

Mac shook his head with a smile, and there was finally a little glimmer of humor in Jack's eyes as he held out his fist. Mac obediently gave it a solid bump.

"Goodnight, Jack."

"Yeah. Goodnight."

-M-

FIN

-M-

For those of you wondering why there's an entire fictional Delta team in this story when there's a perfectly good one in canon, the Turkey Day stories were written before that episode aired, and well before that ep, I came across these characters, who were being written by the very talented Gib and MarenMary93, and they were nice enough to let me play with them, so they became canon to the Turkey Day universe.

This came about for two reasons: one, it's a present for author Gib, who made a couple requests that boiled down into "The first time Mac fucks up a bomb disposal" and "The first time Mac learns how to handle an injured Jack." I also wanted a situation that mirrored what happened to Mac in Just Desserts, where Mac was the one who had to carry on when it looked like Jack was a goner. I felt like Jack would need that little push to keep his eye on the ball with both Mac and Riley in ambulances.

As I was thinking through Gib's prompts, I realized that A. it's very hard to write Mac fucking up a bomb disposal, and B. it's very easy to handle an injured Jack. He's a soldier. But he's also got a much healthier relationship with his emotions, and so I thought the challenge for Mac would be navigating that, and trying to help Jack when he was hurting emotionally, not just physically. I also figure there had to be a few key conversations – or 'moments of truth' – that furthered Mac and Jack's friendship to the absolute trust they have in the show.

We had a few firsts to get out of the way in this one:

- The first time Mac tells Jack about his parental situation

- The first time Mac thinks he's lost Jack

- The first time Mac realizes that Jack considers him family

- The first time Mac realizes that Mac considers Jack family

Gib, I hope this is what you had in mind, and of course I couldn't help but throw your boys in there a bit. Most of their dialogue was approved by MarenMary93 about a million years ago. Hope I did them justice!