Two

- x -

The corridor was long and dim, with only a few small slits of windows high up under the arched roof, letting in scraps of fading daylight. MacGyver guessed that the windows were right at ground level. He looked around at the darkening hallway, feeling the weight of the ancient town press down on him. "Dang. I have no idea which way they brought me in."

"No surprise there. You were long past watching the scenery, except for the lovely images inside your own eyelids." Moshe gestured to the right. "That's the way out. Or at least it was the way in."

"Where are we, anyway?"

"I should know? I didn't even know I was in Baalbek. If that's where we are."

MacGyver squinted at the door of the cell they had just left. "That door's newer than the rest of this place . . . I wonder . . . "

"You could wonder later, maybe? Somewhere else? Somewhere safer?" Moshe set out for the end of the corridor, MacGyver following. Each man noted, without comment, that the other stepped with the light tread of practiced stealth.

The hallway ended at another doorway, with another locked door. MacGyver peered in the deepening gloom at the arch of the doorway, ran long fingers over the abstract carving above it. "I bet we're in the old Ottoman section of the town . . . this place looks old. Maybe it was a madrasa, or someone's house." He glanced over his shoulder. "The corridor should run the length of the building. Any chance the other end might be open?"

Moshe shook his head. "It's more likely to have fallen in. I don't think this place was any too solidly built."

"It was solidly built to start with – several hundred years and half a dozen earthquakes ago," Mac murmured. He'd pulled out his makeshift tools again and was working on the lock, half by instinct in the dark. "Upstairs it'll probably be mostly one big room, with other little rooms around it. That musta been a storage room they had us in, or a strongroom."

"It certainly wasn't the wine cellar. You a drinking man, MacGyver?"

"Not really."

"Pity. If we get out of this, I'd like to buy you a drink."

"Sure thing. Just make it orange juice or something." The lock rasped, coughed, and clicked open.

Moshe grabbed his arm as MacGyver started to push the door open, and drew him back, away from the exit. "Not so fast, my friend – they left us without a guard at the cell, but what will they have done at this door? I didn't see a lot when they brought me in – I was barely conscious – but I remember a flight of steps just beyond this door, leading up. And there was a guard with an Uzi at the top of the steps. An intact Uzi, with all working parts, I should point out."

"Yeah, well, that's his problem."

"It's going to be our problem if we want to get past him."

MacGyver frowned. "Any chance of going around?"

"You any good at walking through walls?"

Mac shook his head. "Can't say I like the idea of climbing up a flight of stairs into an armed guard . . . be nice if he'd come down here and join the party."

Moshe grinned. "Any chance you'd let me borrow that receiver cover?"

- x -

There was a guard at the top of the steps; he might not have noticed the scrape and click of the lock opening, but he did notice the metallic clatter at the foot of the steps, and hurried down to find out what the disturbance was. Moshe was waiting just inside the doorway to the underground corridor, and he seized the guard silently as the man passed and broke his neck with casual expertise.

At Moshe's insistence, MacGyver had been waiting several yards farther down the hallway. He flinched at the unmistakable sound of the guard's neck snapping.

Mac knew it was a futile gesture, but he couldn't keep from kneeling beside the body, touching fingertips to the neck, feeling for the pulse that he knew wasn't there. His eyes met Moshe's.

"You didn't have to kill him."

Moshe looked genuinely annoyed. "You think he'd have hesitated himself? What's one terrorist more or less?"

Mac's face set into a stony blankness as he picked up the guard's Uzi and began to dismantle it with swift, expert movements. Light was spilling down the steps, aiding him: the gun melted in his hands into a heap of metal components.

Moshe had started, belatedly, to reach for the Uzi, but it was too late.

"What the hell are you doing?" The words were no less fierce for being delivered in a hoarse whisper.

Mac's head snapped up, his dark eyes smoldering, uncompromising. The bruises and scrapes stood out in sharp contrast on a face gone pale with emotion. "Gettin' a fresh supply of spare parts – and gettin' rid of temptation." He tossed the trigger away towards the far end of the corridor.

"We could have used that gun!"

MacGyver picked through the collection, choose several items, kicked the rest into a scatter across the stone floor of the corridor. "Yeah? It wouldn't make us any less outnumbered. Aren't there enough ghosts in Baalbek already?"

Moshe ran a distraught hand through his hair. "By all that's holy, Yank . . . you must be insane!"

Mac's grin had an impish tilt to it. He picked up the bolt stop and bent over the manacles on his wrists. "Isn't there something in the Torah about crazy people being under divine protection?"

"I don't think so. But I'm not one you should ask about the Torah. I was never my teachers' pride and joy at shul."

First one cuff and then the other sprang open. Mac didn't stop to examine the raw patches on his wrists where the iron had chafed; he beckoned impatiently to Moshe and bent over the second set of locks.

"Guess we'll just assume that there is." Moshe's shackles opened up more easily, iron flowers blooming in the deepening gloom. Mac stood up again.

"Let's go."

- x -

At the top of the stairs, a dim side room opened out onto a great empty shell of a dilapidated building. MacGyver peered cautiously out. Some distance away in the open central area, perhaps a dozen men were gathered near a charcoal brazier; smells of cooking thickened the warm air, mingling with the odours of dust and rank sweat, livestock and primitive plumbing. Mac's Arabic wasn't up to making out any of the half-overheard comments, but the rough camaraderie needed no translation.

MacGyver's heart sank. He could see an opening in the outer wall not too far away, where a side entrance let out into an alleyway; but in spite of the casual air of the gathering, the men were too close and too alert for there to be any hope of slipping past them unseen. He chewed his lip, then stole back down the stairs to where the dead guard lay next to his eviscerated gun. Mac hated the gruesome callousness of the need, but when he returned, he was shrugging into the man's khaki jacket, covering his own too-bright shirt. He was also carrying the long, thin tube of the Uzi barrel and several of the screws and pins that had held the gun together.

Moshe frowned in puzzlement, then nodded with a wry smirk as MacGyver slipped a metal pin into the barrel, put it to his lips and blew. They couldn't hear the soft rattle as it landed somewhere off in the darkness of the outer courtyard on the far side of the building; but after Mac had repeated the exercise four more times, the men at the brazier were beginning to nudge each other and peer out into the shadows. Exclamations in Arabic were followed by irritated orders, and several of the men fanned out towards the courtyard and the dimly seen buildings beyond. One turned towards the steps leading to the cellar and barked out a question.

Without missing a beat, Moshe acknowledged the demand with a colloquially fluent Arabic grumble and curse that had MacGyver raising impressed eyebrows. The militant turned back to the brazier.

Mac and Moshe slipped away into the shadows.

Outside the half-ruined madrasa, the houses and streets of Baalbek formed a tangled maze. The eastern horizon was beginning to blush with the imminent moonrise, but for the present, the shadows of the buildings were thick pools of ink. The two men hurried off blindly at first, seeking only to put distance between themselves and their captors, and to avoid any other contact for as long as possible.

Both men had sharp ears, and the knack of stepping into shadows with the stillness that evades notice by the casual observer. They were able to dodge the occasional passer-by, and most of the residents of Baalbek seemed to be indoors. The smells of food cooking grew steadily more maddening, although their parched mouths were no longer able to water.

Mac kept an eye on the glowing horizon, careful not to let the anarchy of the winding streets lure them into doubling back on their trail, breathing the night air deeply through his nose. When he caught a scent, or a sense, of dampness, he touched Moshe on the shoulder. They approached the well cautiously, aware of the vulnerability of the open square, but no-one was about.

Moshe had to hold himself under tight control, to take small, careful sips and hold the water in his mouth before he swallowed it, giving his system time to adjust. He was surprised to see the American doing the same – he'd expected him to gulp thirstily. In between sips, MacGyver shed the dead guard's jacket and slipped out of his own tattered shirt. He hunted for a comparatively clean patch of fabric to soak with water and apply carefully to some of the contusions on his face, but the first attempts ended in wincing failure, and he gave up.

"That was some beating you took," Moshe murmured. "You holding up okay?"

Mac leaned his arms on the edge of the well and rested his head on them briefly as a wave of dizziness washed over him. "I'm tryin' not to think about it."

After a few minutes, he carefully eased the shirt back on. Even in the dim light, Moshe had seen the galaxy of welts and bruises that mottled his torso. His mind shied away from the thought that, but for the American, he would have been the centre of the same attentions.

MacGyver jerked his head and led Moshe into the labyrinth again, this time with purpose. The moon had begun to show over the rooftops, and Mac glanced at it often.

"Are we going anywhere in particular, or are we just going?" Moshe whispered.

"We're headin' west. That's where the ruins are – or ought to be."

"You're sure of this? How can you tell?"

"Trust me. I was a Boy Scout."

"And this helps? This is Lebanon, not Yellowstone!"

"Same moon. It rises about the same way anywhere. You just gotta allow for latitude."

"If you say so." Moshe peered up at the moon, round and full and bright gold.

"You spend too much time in the city. You oughta get out more."

"I like cities! They're nice and crowded."

Mac glanced at him, but didn't reply. They had come to the edge of the town, and the ruins were spread before them.

MacGyver breathed deeply now, his throat no longer tormented with thirst. He could smell the dry, spicy scents of the night, the particular fragrance the open earth gives up to the night sky when the harsh demands of the sun are withdrawn. The moonlight was growing clearer, although its brilliance was always deceptive, concealing more than it revealed.

Before them, the surviving pillars of the colonnade of the great Temple of Zeus showed stark against the night sky. The Temple of Bacchus crouched on its own rise, off to their left, so well preserved it almost seemed newly built. The ancient sanctuary lay empty under the moonlight, abandoned and ignored by the latter-day inhabitants of a town too caught up in the strife of the current century to think about the remnants of a bygone age.

Moshe was looking around as well, but he wasn't paying attention to the ruins; he studied the nearby buildings. "Yes! – Finally. Pity we had to come all this way, but I know where we are now. I can find my contact from here. We can get out of this rat trap." He turned back towards the maze of Baalbek.

MacGyver made no move to follow him. Moshe turned and glared at him. "Come on, Yank. I thought you wanted safe passage out of here. Aren't you coming?"

"Nope. I got something to take care of first."

Moshe's eyes narrowed. "You got something you haven't told me about, don't you? I knew it!" He stepped up to Mac, peering up at the tall American. MacGyver didn't move. "You never did really explain why they damn near took you apart . . . or what the hell you're doing in Baalbek with a pocketful of spare Uzi parts."

Mac glanced up at the rising moon again, then turned to Moshe. When he spoke, he sounded almost angry. "Look, Moshe. You can come with me and help me, if you're willing to – and I mean really willing. I could use the help. I don't know Baalbek, except for the ruins, and I could really use some help getting out safely. But you don't have to. You don't owe me anything."

"By God, Yank – that's not for you to decide, who owes what!"

"You'll be safer if you go now."

"Who wants to be safe? If I wanted safety, I should never have joined Mossad."

The admission shimmered in the air between them.

"Okay." Mac grinned, then grew serious again. "But if you come with me, it's gotta be on my terms. No more killing. You got that?"

Moshe looked up to heaven, raised open hands to the night sky, rolled his eyes, set his teeth, and lowered his head to meet MacGyver's gaze. "Have at it, then. Your game, your rules. Where are we going?"

- x -