Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.
-x-
Even before he dismounted the snowmobile, Carter knew it wasn't good.
There was a short line of Korean men on their knees, hands restrained behind them, being held at gunpoint. Their parkas all gaped open, showing they'd been searched and disarmed. Their breath was steaming in front of them; some were still panting. Clearly the fight had only just ended.
Flanking them were the four men Joshua Carter had tried his best to beat to the site. As for Dalton and MacGyver, the two men he'd been sent to retrieve?
Nowhere to be seen.
Carter patted his tandem buddy on the back in warning as McMurtrie brought their vehicle to a smooth halt, then slipped off the seat into significantly deeper snow than he'd been expecting. Only his partner's quick reflexes kept him from faceplanting.
Just what you wanted to do in front of a four man Spetsnaz team.
"Thanks," he grunted quietly, and McMurtrie hummed an acknowledgement, also dismounting the vehicle.
The team lead of the Spetsnaz unit watched them silently, as icy as the Siberian landscape around them. His camouflage, like that of his team, was military issue and blended perfectly with the rocks, scraggly pine, and snow. It bore no badge or rank indicators. If what was visible of his face hadn't matched the image Thornton had sent them half an hour ago, Carter would have shot the man where he stood. After a moment of cold study, the Russian commander gestured at a natural-looking hollow in a nearby snowbank.
"Vashi ofitsery tam."
Your officers are over there.
Joshua Carter took in the spot, and the disturbed snow around the entrance. There was no hint of movement, no call of greeting.
"My nashli eto u terroristov." The Spetsnaz commander extended a gloved hand, and McMurtrie trudged forward in the snow to accept a small, hot pink USB drive, tied to a torn nylon cord.
We found this on the terrorists.
The intelligence their agents had been sent to collect. The Russians had taken it off the North Koreans they'd just apprehended. Which meant those men – all of whom had been heavily armed, if the pile of discarded weapons nearby was to be believed – had already encountered the DXS agents, and taken it from them by force.
Carter glared at the line of five men, held at gunpoint by two of the Russian unit, then started without a word for the hollow their commander had indicated.
His partner could handle the logistics.
McMurtrie didn't disappoint, explaining in fluent Russian that the rest of their team was five minutes out, and Carter hunkered down in front of the hollow. Now that he was kneeling, he could see it was actually a tunnel, with a sort of natural ramp leading up into the bank.
Behind him, one of the Russians called out. "Delayte chto khotite, no delayte eto bystro. Pogoda bystro portitsya."
Do as you please, but do it quickly. The weather is deteriorating rapidly.
So not much time to gather evidence.
Not that they needed it, Carter chastised himself mentally as he pushed further into the snow, angling his chest up the ramp. It wasn't like there was any mystery as to what had happened to their agents; the only question would be whether they'd been cut down with North Korean rounds or Russian. Josh's head popped up in a dim but surprisingly roomy interior chamber, almost like an igloo dome, and less than twelve inches from his face was another face, decidedly younger. What was visible of it was an impossible blue.
Agent MacGyver was very clearly dead.
Behind his body was another, just as blue, tucked tight against his back to conserve heat. Not that it had done either of them any good. MacGyver and Dalton had frozen to death.
Carter stared at the fallen agents a moment, then gusted out a sigh. His balaclava did an excellent job of hiding the steam from his exhale, and even though he knew just by their color that it was pointless, he reached into the little snow cave and put his gloved hand on MacGyver's chest. Under the soft parka the body was hard and unyielding, clearly frozen solid.
Great. Bad weather incoming, and their bodies were stiff as boards.
Carter wiggled his way mostly out of the snow cave. They were definitely going to need excavation equipment, and it took him a moment to remember the correct phrasing. "Nam . . . ponadobitsya zemleroynaya tekhnika."
The nearest Spetsnaz officer glanced at him, then scoffed. "Prinosite vesnoy vse, chto khotite.
Bring all you want in the spring.
As if they were going to leave theirs behind. Carter shook his head and ducked back up into the snow cave. "And here I thought the Russians had no sense of humor," he muttered to himself, glancing around the dim space to see how much wiggle room they had.
It wasn't much.
When he looked back down at the body in front of him, it looked back.
"Jesus-!" He flinched back, banging his head into the side of the snow dome, and a large chunk of it broke free and tumbled down his back. For a split second he thought he'd brought the whole thing down on top of them, but after a few seconds the avalanche of snow abated, and Carter shook it from his eyes sharply, trying to see –
"-whoa-"
A firm hand grasped the sleeve of his parka, trying to keep him from moving, and Josh stared at it in total disbelief. MacGyver had sat up a little, his other hand on the concave ceiling, looking a little apprehensive himself.
If a dead man could look apprehensive.
"Mac-"
"We're fine, just – everybody go slow, okay?"
Behind MacGyver, Jack Dalton sat up stiffly, also eyeing the ceiling uncertainly. "How about everybody go out? That work?"
MacGyver gave a weak chuckle. "That, uh, that works for me. That work for you?"
It took Carter a second to realize the last had been directed at him, and that the young agent had already released him. Dalton shot him a 'move your ass' look, and Carter managed to find his voice again.
"Uh . . . sure. Sure," he repeated, and then slithered back out the somewhat-collapsed tunnel. By the time he'd fully backed out he felt another hand on his shoulder – McMurtrie – and then his partner was hauling him to his feet.
"Shit, you okay?"
Which was a very good question. He hesitated for a second, staring at the tunnel he'd just crawled out of. Could that have been a - a hallucination brough on by . . . claustrophobia . . .? "Uh – fine," he said dismissively, quickly brushing down his ice-covered coat. "What's the ETA on the snowcat?"
McMurtrie gave him a suspicious look, but then flipped back the cuff of his glove to glance at his watch. "Another few minutes tops. Did the whole thing collapse?"
"Nope." Carter finished brushing off his parka and reached back to shake the snow out of the hood, trying his best to look nonchalant. "How do you say, we don't need that digging equipment after all?"
"Nam ne nuzhna eta zemleroynaya tekhnika," McMurtrie translated slowly. ". . . why . . .?" Some kind of scuffling behind him caught his partner's attention, and Carter forced himself to stand their casually when his partner's eyes widened. "What - ?!"
He was not the only one who was not expecting to see someone else emerge from the snow cave. The nearest Spetsnaz soldier actually swore - in Russian – and snapped up his rifle, and Carter calmly stepped into his line of fire, raising a hand to wave him down.
"Relax, comrade. It's fine."
Behind him, a few muffled voices silenced any further discussion. "-easy, watch the ankle-"
"-chief, it's my ankle, pretty sure I know to watch it –"
The other Russians were edging forward, weapons raised and clearly as shocked as their teammate – and their prisoners. Carter turned in time to see Dalton basically tip over in slow motion from the tunnel onto the packed snow, clearly favoring his left leg and looking uncannily like a clumsy zombie. Not two seconds later, another pair of boots appeared, and MacGyver shimmied out of the tunnel, much more gracefully than his partner.
Both alive. Clearly alive, their breath was steaming in the frigid air, yet both their faces were still a dull, lifeless blue.
The two agents blinked owlishly in the light – it was overcast but definitely brighter out here than in there – and took in the rifles pointed their way. Carter smirked at the Russian commander, knowing it was hidden behind his balaclava but audible in his voice. "Chto? Razve vashi lyudi ne mogut etogo sdelat?
What? Can't your people do that?
The North Koreans, who hadn't made a peep since they'd arrived, started muttering among themselves. Carter wasn't as fluent in Korean, but he picked out the words for 'spirit' and 'immortal.' The rumbling of the approaching snowcat drowned out anything else, until the Russian still flanking them kicked one, earning a yelp.
McMurtrie hurried over to the two DXS agents, beginning a hushed conversation Carter couldn't really catch. That was fine; Carter was already digging in his parka for his satphone.
This was going to require some explanation.
The snowcat had fully arrived and the other three agents assigned to the DXS exfil team had piled out, all visibly wary, before the satellite call connected. Carter waved his teammates on towards Dalton and his partner.
"Carter. What's the situation on the ground."
If the director didn't already know, that meant the approaching inclement weather their Russian friends had mentioned had apparently taken out satellite overwatch. Not ideal, and Carter was glad his balaclava hid his frown. "We've recovered Agents Dalton and MacGyver, as well as a flash drive. However, your friends from the Kremlin beat us here. I don't know if they're going to part with the five heavily armed North Koreans they happened to find stumbling around in the middle of the Siberian tundra."
Honestly, he was stunned they'd given up the USB drive. They probably wouldn't have if they'd realized the two DXS agents were actually alive. The Russian government didn't typically take kindly to foreign nationals exchanging classified nuclear intelligence on their turf, and since the Spetsnaz clearly only offered up the drive because they thought the Americans were otherwise going to walk away empty-handed, they sure as hell weren't going to surrender the people who had brought that USB drive onto Russian soil.
The director, too, seemed cautious when she replied. "They didn't find the flash drive?"
"They did," Carter replied, equally carefully. "At least they offered us one, right make and model." One thing he could say about North Korean tech – it didn't exist. For years South Korea and other countries, including the US and Israel, had been using leftover, civilian-donated USB drives to smuggle content into the news-starved dictatorship. Everything from K-pop and dubstep to how-to manuals on democracy. No Spetsnaz soldier would have had a hot pink leopard-print USB drive on them just on the off chance they ran into a few North Korean agents posing as defectors.
The drive was probably the real thing.
"Did you recover our agents alive?"
Trust Thornton to come to the same conclusion he had. "Sort of," Carter hedged, even as he turned to watch Dalton swatting McMurtrie away from his ankle. "They're . . . walking and talking, at any rate."
Mostly.
There was a brief pause as the director apparently decided not to continue that line of questioning. "All right. The mission was for the drive, not the human assets. Don't give them the Koreans unless they insist, but don't stay to haggle. If you're not back to Baykit in under an hour, you're not going to be able to fly out at all."
"Understood, ma'am."
"We'll debrief in the air."
"Yes ma'am." Carter took the brick-like phone from his ear and disconnected the call, then turned to find the Spetsnaz commander had already herded the Koreans onto their feet.
Josh immediately headed for the man. "Kak ty dumayesh', ty idesh'?"
Where do you think you're going?
In answer, the Russian gave him a cold look – and then his eyes flicked back to MacGyver and Dalton, without blinking. What he said, as best Carter could paraphrase, was "You do not have room for them in your vehicle. My government would not leave them to die in the cold."
No, that's just our agents you'd leave to die in the cold, he growled mentally, but the commander was right. There were seven DXS agents, and the 'cat could only carry eight. The more weight they put on it, the slower the trek back to the regional airstrip would be. The mission had never been about bringing any of the North Koreans back stateside.
And the Spetsnaz didn't wait for his agreement. They shouted commands to their prisoners and headed off into the swirling, dusty snow flurry that was starting to kick up all around them.
The Russians' logistics were not his problem, and Joshua Carter hustled back to the snowcat. McMurtrie was handing the snowmobile to another one of the exfil team, clearly just as curious as he was, and Carter climbed into the large vehicle even as it roared back to life.
"We don't get to Baykit in twenty, we're spending the week," he told the driver of the 'cat, and Gabe Pinion, their exfil pilot, wasted no time in getting the vehicle turned. McMurtrie hauled himself into the cabin, and then they were off.
On the middle bench of the snowcat, Dalton and MacGyver were getting checked out by their exfil medic, a young man Carter only knew by name – Kevin Todd - and reputation. He didn't look to be a day older than his current patient, and MacGyver frowned a little at him as he obediently pulled off one of his gloves. His hand was the same color as his face.
"Been sucking on ten ruble coins lately?" the medic asked him acerbically, clamping a pulse and blood ox meter onto said blue-grey finger, and MacGyver blinked at him.
"Uh – no, it's not argyria." He said it like it was supposed to be some kind of assurance. "Just a little Isatis tinctoria."
It was the medic's turn to blink at MacGyver, even as he absently clamped another one of the devices onto Dalton's equally bloodless finger. ". . . woad?"
Of all the words they'd used, that was about the only one Carter recognized. ". . . woad? Like Mel Gibson Braveheart woad?"
Beside MacGyver, Dalton groaned and slumped in his seat. "Dude, don't get him started on Braveheart, just don't-"
His young partner shot him a sideways look. "Well there was no reason to mix pre-roman Celt warpaint traditions with tartan kilts, which weren't adopted until hundreds of years later-"
"Second verse, same as the first, man. Just stow the rant, please-"
"So it's . . . warpaint?" Carter gestured at his own face for context, and MacGyver looked up at him.
"Dye, but yes. Isatis tinctorial grows wild in Siberia, and it's a perennial. The roots don't have as much pigment as the leaves, obviously, but –"
"You realize that organic dyes soak readily into dry skin?" the medic interrupted. "You might as well have tattooed yourselves with henna."
It appeared that Dalton did not in fact know this, because he suddenly froze, then turned with dangerous slowness to glare at his partner, who had suddenly found his pulse ox meter fascinating. ". . . no, doc, someone must have forgotten to mention it-"
"I diluted it, Jack." This was said with that same reassuring confidence, that it did not appear Dalton was buying. "We'll be a little blue for a few days, a week max."
"A week?!" the former Delta exploded. "Are you kidding me?!"
"Would you rather be dead?" his very blue-grey partner asked him with a touch of heat.
"Well, if I gotta be dead, I'd rather not be a Smurf, thank you very much-"
The medic glanced between the two of them. "Besides the dye job, any injuries I need to know about?"
Dalton completely ignored him and instead reached urgently for his hair. "You put this on my scalp, dude, did you seriously just dye my hair blue?"
"Only the grey ones." There was a smirk on MacGyver's face as he said it, and then the two agents devolved into what looked a lot like –
Rough-housing?
But that made no sense. "I – I checked you, you were frozen solid," Carter tried, and the two wrestling agents silently came to some sort of truce, settling back in their seats with apologetic looks at the disapproving medic in front of them.
"Jack's ankle's sliced up," MacGyver finally reported to the medic, earning his second murderous look of the day from Dalton, and then the young man unzipped his parka. "As for being frozen solid . . ." From underneath his polar fleece shirt, he produced a concave, white ceramic rectangle about six inches by eight inches.
Carter recognized it instantly, even as the agent fished out a second. "That's a ballistic armor insert."
MacGyver nodded, tucking the two ceramic plates into a pocket in the 'cat's door. "The Russians designed them this shape intentionally, not just to align more comfortably to a human torso, but to double as snow shovels."
Which explained how they'd dug that snow cave. Carter just stared at the young agent, completely dumbstruck. " . . . so the plan was to – to hold your breath and play dead?"
"Didn't have to." MacGyver was briefly distracted when Dalton hissed, and the medic shot the man half a glare.
"I've got to get the boot off to see the injury-"
"You mind not taking my foot off with it?" Dalton grumbled. "Just gimme a second-"
"Any particular reason why it doesn't match your other boot?" McMurtrie inquired lightly from the back bench, offering both agents a bottle of water, and Dalton accepted one, continuing to make pained noises as the medic worked the boot off what looked like shreds of bloodied undershirt.
"Yeah, there is," Jack groaned as his foot finally popped free. "You know what happens when you bury razor-wire under three feet of snow?" Outside of a slight wince from his partner, none of them volunteered an answer, and it didn't look like Dalton expected one. "Nothing," he continued curtly. "Absolutely fucking nothing besides you can't see the shit until you've stepped in it."
"When did this happen?" the medic asked, grabbing a pair of EMT shears from his kit.
"About thirty-two hours ago," MacGyver replied promptly, his voice a little stiff in comparison to just a moment ago, and he shook his head as McMurtrie offered him the water bottle again. All his focus seemed to be on Dalton. "Best we could do was a field dressing. I didn't want to ice it, given the circumstances-"
"Thirty-two hours?" Carter couldn't help himself. "We didn't pick up your distress beacon until about six hours ago." Then a terrible thought occurred to him. "You were recaptured."
Dalton's partner glanced at him, but his focus was again drawn almost immediately to Jack's injury as the medic hacked away at the blood-crusted dressing. "We weren't. Recaptured," he elaborated. "The beacon was damaged, the higher priority was getting out of the elements."
"The beacon was damaged," Carter echoed. "So you . . . you spent the night in that snow bank?"
"Trust me, diggin' it out warmed us up plenty," Jack groused, wrinkling his nose as the bloodied dressing was peeled away to reveal red, angry skin. At least this skin wasn't blue-grey; it looked swollen, but definitely alive, and the medic manipulated it gently, then shoved Jack's pant leg up his ankle and shin to inspect the flesh there.
"I was worried about the boot cutting off circulation, but we didn't have anything else waterproof to protect it." This was clearly for the medic's benefit, and after frowning at Jack's injuries, he gently set the mangled foot heel-first on the used dressing and starting pawing through his kit again.
"No sign of frostbite," the medic informed them, ripping into a package of gauze. "There's a little infection starting up, but all things considered, it's not too bad."
"See, dude, I told you." Now Jack was trying to sound like the reasonable one. "Boot took the worst of it, and it wasn't your fault anyway. Besides, it was toasty warm in that little snow cave, just like you said."
Carter felt himself frown. The concept of igloos was not foreign to him; Dalton was head of DXS security and he made sure at least one man on every tac team had had SERE training – Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. He knew snow was a decent insulator, and it was about seventeen degrees out there, as opposed to the negative twenty it would be in a few short hours. Their body heat from doing the digging would have warmed up the air –
"So when you say you didn't have to hold your breath . . ."
It was because the air had been warm enough that MacGyver's breath wouldn't have steamed. Neither had Carter's, come to think of it. He hadn't even noticed it, getting out of the wind was such a relief that the skin of his face had already felt warmed.
MacGyver nodded again, not even looking at him. "Ambient temp was probably around fifty near the ceiling. There wasn't exactly enough room in there for someone else to crawl in and really check."
Behind them, on the back bench, McMurtrie sucked his teeth. "Hell of a risk," he disagreed. "Those North Koreans didn't notice when they snagged the USB off you? They must've searched you-"
"Yeah, that's what I said," Jack groused, his lips thinning with discomfort as some kind of cream was briskly slathered into the deep lacerations on his ankle and the bridge of his foot.
But MacGyver was shaking his head. "North Koreans are fairly superstitious. It was a fair guess that they'd do what you did, try to figure out if they could easily drag us out of the cave to search us. Add to that the intel wasn't exactly camouflaged-"
"Unless you're a cheetah in a flamingo patch-"
MacGyver stopped, then, his brow creasing. "I think you mean flamboyance."
Dalton glanced at his partner. "What?"
"A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance."
"He's right," McMurtrie confirmed, and when Jack craned his head around to stare at the other agent, McMurtrie offered him a shrug. "What? I do a lot of crosswords."
"Flamingos notwithstanding," MacGyver interrupted, in a slightly pained way as if this happened frequently, "I knew they'd figure out we were alive if they looked too closely, so I didn't make the drive hard to find."
Of course. Bright pink USB drive around his neck or in the front pocket of the parka, no need to drag him out or handle him. "So you basically just gave it to them."
MacGyver blinked, as if he'd only just remembered that he didn't actually have the drive anymore, and started patting down the interior pockets of the parka. Carter beat him to it and dangled the USB drive in front of him, and MacGyver grinned in triumph and withdrew a blue fist from his parka, holding –
Something slim and matte black with a USB connector on the end.
"Don't put that in your pocket unless you want damp pants," he advised Carter, and Josh blinked at him, then popped the cap off the USB stick he was holding.
It also had a USB connector, but when Carter pulled on it, it came loose easily, revealing that the rest of the drive casing was packed with snow. For weight. The actual data had never left DXS possession.
"Once I got the emergency beacon working, I knew you'd locate us, I just couldn't be sure when. There was a chance they'd plug it in then and there and realize what we'd done, but with a storm coming in . . ."
"And if they did figure it out?"
Dalton smirked. "Then the first two woulda gotten a bullet. After that, I'd've had to play it by ear."
"I was gonna ask why you were using your partner as a human shield," Carter told him drily, and Dalton's smirk turned a bit darker before he flinched in his seat.
"Damn, dude!"
"Hold still," the medic admonished him, applying butterfly bandages. "This will have to be debrided before we can stitch you up. We'll do it on the plane."
Carter turned from the pair of still very strange-looking agents and up to the driver. "How we doin', Gabe?"
"We'll make it, but it'll be close," he called back, looking at them via the mirror. "Can't guarantee you a smooth ride."
"It's his ankle, not his face," the medic replied acerbically. "Doesn't have to be pretty."
"Hey," Dalton protested. "I have great lookin' ankles, and you better keep 'em that way!"
-x-
They barely got to the helo in Baykit before the temperature had dropped too low to fly the hop to a decent airfield, and Carter was half-frozen himself by the time they all piled tiredly into a wonderfully heated fixed wing and taxied down the runway.
"Coffee?"
"God yes. Please," Dalton added, and McMurtrie smirked at him knowingly before crossing the aisle for the galley. Jack was still admiring his air cast, probably because the longer it stayed on the longer it would be before Todd had to do unpleasant things to the lacerated ankle inside of it. None of them had even bothered to take off their parkas yet, but MacGyver was in the process of peeling off his gloves, and Carter still hadn't gotten used to the fact that his hands were the same deathly blue-grey as his face.
"Dude," Carter murmured, unzipping his own parka, "I really feel like we should call in an exorcist or something."
"Doesn't work on zombies," Dalton replied immediately, letting his head tip back onto the headrest. It snapped back up two seconds later. "But that gives me an idea for infiltratin' that silo-"
"They'd still shoot you," his partner interrupted, laying his soggy gloves to air-dry on the armrest beside him. "And no matter how much you look like the undead, you are not impervious to bullets."
Dalton's face fell. "Yeah, guess you're right," he grumbled. "Y'don't think the awe factor'd buy us anything?"
The young blond agent paused, as if truly thinking about it, and a chime rang through the cabin. In front of them, the TV blinked to life, and the face of Director Patricia Thornton glared out at them.
"Patty," Jack greeted her cheerfully, and Carter suppressed a wince only with the help of fifteen years' experience in covert operations. "Thanks for sendin' the cavalry."
"I shouldn't have had to," she half-growled, apparently deciding to address one travesty at a time. "What happened?" Her frown deepened as she took them in, and Dalton gave her a dazzling grin and opened his mouth.
"Sorry about the theatrics," MacGyver apologized smoothly, cutting off his partner. "And the timetable. We were able to infiltrate the meet with the North Koreans –"
"-but the intel was way off," Jack continued, with a dark look at the camera. "You told us a small envoy, eight max. They had half a damn platoon."
"I gave you what the State Department had at the time." It was neither an apology or an excuse, somehow. "Did they have it?"
MacGyver dipped his head. "They did," he confirmed solemnly, and glanced at Carter. In answer, Josh patted the laptop beside him.
"Checked and vetted. They were the real deal."
The director's eyes narrowed slightly; that was all the emotion she showed. "And did they volunteer where they acquired said codes?"
"Not forthcomin' on that topic, and we really didn't get much time to chat about it," Dalton told her, his tone indicating exactly how happy he was about it. "Russians took 'em all alive, though, might get it out of 'em. Any chance that'd filter back to us?"
Maybe a fat chance, Carter thought to himself. Those Spetsnaz were probably still kicking themselves for not checking the bodies more carefully. His eyes again flicked to the two agents. Dalton, he knew well. Hell, the guy had recruited him. His partner was a little more of a mystery. MacGyver was the youngest agent they had, and honestly, who in their right mind would play dead using ballistic armor plates and blue dye?
At the very least, MacGyver would have been protected if the Koreans had realized it and opened fire, the inserts would have saved him. Having Dalton behind him with a pistol tucked out of sight was the right play. But the entire situation, on the run in Siberia, digging a freakin' snow cave, making a dummy USB drive so the data would still be recovered by DXS if it all went south . . .
It was smart. But weird.
The guy was weird.
The agents gave Thornton the same rundown they'd given in the snowcat, and not once did the director appear surprised or impressed with MacGyver's ingenuity. It was like she had actually expected to find her agents sitting there looking for all the world like frozen corpses. Like this was normal behavior.
And hell, maybe it was.
"Sleep on the flight. I'll need you on a briefing with the Joint Chiefs when you touch down." She paused. "Preferably more presentable."
Undoubtedly to share anything else they knew about how the North Koreans had valid US nuclear launch codes. Neither Dalton nor MacGyver looked surprised, and then the flatpanel blinked off.
"Always a pleasure," Dalton called to the empty screen, then grimaced a little and settled back in his seat, the coffee McMurtrie had gotten him wrapped tightly in his hands.
Carter's partner nodded at the darkened monitor. "And here I thought she just did that to us."
"Nope, she's pretty much always like that," Carter confirmed, as Todd entered the main cabin with his medical kit. The second Dalton saw him, he withdrew his injured ankle protectively towards the bottom of his seat.
"No, Gabe said there'd be turbulence-"
"We're already at fourteen thousand," the medic cut him off, taking a knee in front of Dalton's seat. "Give."
Jack scowled at the medic and did no such thing, and his young partner elbowed him. "He's going to give you some lidocaine before he stitches it up. It'll feel a lot better."
"No it won't," Jack contradicted, his face crumpling a little into childish protest. "It'll feel like nothin', right up until it feels like somethin' again, and that somethin' ain't gonna feel good."
"I can always let it go septic and fall off," Kevin offered without looking up, arranging his tools on a sterile towel.
Dalton whined a few more times, but between the two younger men he lost, and when the needle came out with the promised lidocaine he averted his eyes to the plane window. Oddly, this made MacGyver more talkative, and soon he had Jack trying to get the blue dye off his face with a wet wipe, laughing in spite of himself. And even though Dalton couldn't bring himself to look, Carter watched MacGyver observing for him, his bright, intelligent eyes taking in every move Kevin Todd was making with his partner's ankle.
He feels responsible, Carter realized slowly. He thinks the injury was his fault.
MacGyver was definitely the asset in their partnership; it was Dalton's job to keep him alive and safe while he did what he did. But clearly no one had told that young man. He was behaving just as protectively as Dalton would have been if their roles were reversed.
Beside him, McMurtrie finally settled into a seat, holding his own coffee. "Remind you of anyone?" he murmured in his ear, and Carter scoffed and struggled out of his parka.
He definitely wasn't a normal agent, but - weird or not - Carter was kinda starting to like him.
"Jury's still out," he replied, and then went to get the still very blue agents another few packets of wet wipes.
FIN
-x-
Many folks have written a 'first time people meet Mac' and I thought I would take a whack at it, plus I just loved the idea of zombie Mac and Jack. The way that Mac is respected at Phoenix is of course earned and well deserved, and the show starts long after that earning occurred, so much as I enjoyed introducing Saito to Mac, I thought there probably should be a stand-alone where other experienced agents and tactical officers started getting used to Mac's odd ideas, and started having a little faith that as improbable as they seem, they get the job done.
Also, zombies! And we could all use a little fluff today. Hang in there, everyone. 2020 is almost in the rear view mirror.