Round Three

Phoenix Foundation

Nikki put down the phone and stared at it, drumming her fingers on her desk. MacGyver hadn't been home. None of his crazy neighbours knew where he was, and his landlord had been no more help than, 'Mac went bush a while back'. He'd answered the door shirtless and wearing a hat with teeth on, and Nikki had smelled the beer on his breath. She'd declined his invitation to a 'rockin' Dundee party' and left, no closer to finding MacGyver. She'd called everyone she could think of, and made a list of all MacGyver's usual haunts. What else did he do? Where did he go? She frowned at the list, suddenly realising what was missing. She flipped through the yellow pages and dialled. Six rings later, the phone was picked up.

"Hello, Challenger's Club, Cynthia speaking. How may I help you?"

"So, you see why it would be catastrophic for Phoenix to ally itself with this company." Pete stared around the table, picturing each board member as he looked at their blurred outlines.

"They have offered to make an incredibly generous contribution. The good we could do with that money far outweighs any questions we might have about their business practices." Davidson, a board member of long standing, folded his papers on the table.

"Their 'business practices' are everything Phoenix stands against." Pete stared at Davidson's outline. "If Phoenix is seen to be working with them, it loses all credibility. It is a force for good in environmental, social and humanitarian causes. Surely that's worth more than any donation of dirty money, no matter how generous."

"Oh, right!" Davidson held up a hand. "So, the Redwoods project doesn't matter? The school computer systems we're upgrading, that can just wait, can it? The research we're funding into glaucoma and macular degeneration, that can be shelved, right?" Davidson watched Pete flinch and nodded, satisfied. "Because without this donation, all those valuable projects will just stall. Is that what you want, Thornton?"

"We'll find the money another way." Pete's voice was firm. "We've never relied on funding from bad sources before and I see no reason to start now." A murmur of agreement ran around the table, and Davidson scowled.

"Shall we vote on it?" The chairman, Collins, took the cap off her pen and looked at each board member in turn. "Those in favour of accepting the funding, please raise your hands." Pete heard a rustle of cloth as Davidson raised his hand, but didn't think that many others had moved.

"And those in favour of rejecting it?" Collins counted hands and, over the sound of a roomful of people moving, Pete heard her pen scratch on the paper. Then he heard a sharp exhalation and the scrape of a chair being shoved back.

"You're a bunch of idiots and you'll drive Phoenix into the ground with your holier-than-thou attitude!" Davidson's voice was harsh and sour. "I guess it's not only Thornton here who's blind to the facts!" the door slammed behind him and his footsteps faded away down the corridor. Pete heard Collins' earrings rattle and she shook her head and, further down the table, one of the other board members gave a low whistle. Collins turned to Pete.

"Mr Thornton, I trust I can leave you to make the necessary arrangements?"

"Well?" Willis set down his box of doughnuts on Nikki's desk as she finished her phone call.

"Found him!" Nikki took a doughnut and smiled as she bit into it. "I called the Challengers Club –" She swallowed and licked sugar off her fingers. "- And the woman there told me she'd spoken to the organiser of another branch in San Francisco, who told her that Mac had turned up to help out just over a week ago, and he's still there!"

San Francisco

After the last class had gone home, MacGyver stayed at the Challengers Club. He'd told Hines he had some jobs to finish, but really he'd just wanted some time alone to think. After finding out that Mike McKay was a champion fighter as well as a referee, MacGyver had done some more digging. The library's newspaper archive had been helpful – San Francisco had been proud of its local champion and McKay had featured regularly in the sports pages.

Hines had walked him through McKay's repertoire of off-limits moves and shown him how to defend against them, but MacGyver was sure from the news articles that McKay had been a formidable fighter even without cheating. He sighed, moving a tray of 'bird-balls' aside to wipe the kitchen counter.

While he'd had plenty of fights over the years, there was something different about walking into an organised one. Previously, fights had happened quickly and he hadn't had time to think about them before the fact. Even knowing that this fight was refereed and unlikely to end in death or permanent injury (although McKay had caused permanent harm to a couple of fighters in the past), didn't stop it from going around and around in his head. He pulled the tennis ball machine out of the way and swept the floor underneath. He looked up, hearing footsteps outside, then shook his head, dismissing his concern as paranoia.

What would he do next? He couldn't stay with Hines forever and he couldn't return to Phoenix and work for an organisation with links to such wrongdoing. Perhaps he could go back to Minnesota and get involved with some of the environmental work up there. His particular set of skills would land him a job with ease. He frowned, hearing the Challengers Club gate creak open. Crossing to the window, MacGyver saw a group of shadowy shapes duck around the corner of the building. The streetlight gleamed on green hair as the last figure moved out of sight. He crossed the hall again, guessing that the group were heading for the kitchen and the door to the club's back yard.

Just as he reached the kitchen door, the window exploded inwards. A rock landed on the kitchen floor amongst the glass and the group outside cheered. MacGyver ducked away as more rocks and the contents of the garbage can were dumped through the window. The door shook as someone kicked it. MacGyver saw the wood splinter around the lock and realised that a few more kicks would probably break it. There was another crash as a second window broke, and the hiss of an aerosol can. Vivid blue paint arced across the main entrance door glass.

MacGyver spun around, looking for something he could use as a weapon. He darted back into the kitchen, avoiding a second shower of garbage, and grabbed two trays of bird-balls. The balls had set hard and knobbly, about the size of a baseball. He looked around the main hall and ran across to the tennis ball machine in the corner. Wheeling it back to the kitchen, he lined it up with the kitchen door and loaded the bird-balls into it.

The door shuddered under another powerful kick. MacGyver unrolled the machine's cable and plugged it into the socket.

The next kick broke the doorframe and the door slammed back, revealing a teenager in a Karate stance outlined against the streetlight. MacGyver pressed the trigger and the first bird-ball flew out of the machine, hitting the kid in the forehead and shattering into pieces. He yelped and dropped back, clawing at his face.

MacGyver adjusted his aim and fired again, the next bird-ball catching the kid behind in the shoulder. He swung the machine around and fired through the broken kitchen window, hearing yells of surprise and pain from the Hunter's Point kids there. Three youths charged the kitchen door and MacGyver fired again and again, driving them back. The last of the bird-balls slammed into the green-haired kid's retreating back and MacGyver turned, pushing the machine ahead of him into the main hall.

He scooped up a bowl of satsumas and reloaded the machine, flinching as a brick flew through another window, showering him with broken glass. He turned the machine and let fly, high-speed fruit leaving bruises as it hit the youths outside at short range.

A particularly large satsuma jammed the machine, and MacGyver picked up a box of beanbags, throwing them at the fleeing vandals. He stood in the Challengers Club doorway, watching them running away and grinning.