"Mac, what's going on?" Jack asked, his eyes wide.
"We've gotta get out of here, now." The younger agent informed quietly and rushed back to his partner's side. "There are merc's out there looking for us and I don't think they wanna play nice."
Mac looked over to the frightened recovery nurse, who hovered near Jack's gurney. "Where does this door lead? The blonde questioned and pointed to the only other door in the room. Her facial expressions of confusion were enough to indicate that she did not speak English.
"We can get to the elevators through that door." The assistant offered hopefully.
A woman, who Mac assumed must be Jack's surgeon, spoke next. "The medflight helicopter and the pilot that brought us here should still be here. The pilot was instructed to stay in case we needed to move him to another facility." The surgeon said indicating Jack with a wave of her hand.
"Let's go." Mac urged. He unlocked the wheels on Jack's bed, while the assistant unhooked Jack's IV and the wires from the monitoring equipment, then they began pushing it and its occupant toward the door he had indicated a moment ago. The surgeon, assistant, and recovery nurse didn't hesitate in following.
Mac cracked the door open and cautiously peered through. "Wait here." He tossed over his shoulder before quietly squeezing through the door and closing it behind him. "No! Mac, son of a "Jack finished the whispered curse with a growl and began to pull at the padded restraints holding his wrists.
Jack had heard somewhere that when you have a child it's like having your heart walking around outside your body. Right now his heart was walking around out there with armed gunmen looking for it while he lay strapped to a hospital bed.
"Mr. Harper… Sir please…" The former Delta took his eyes off the door, that his friend had gone through a moment ago, when he felt a touch on his shoulder. "You need to stop pulling. You are hurting yourself." Jack ignored her and turned his attention back to the door. The exasperated assistant rolled her eyes and went to help Dr. Costas put a kit together.
'Something's wrong, the kid has been gone too long.' Jack pulled on the straps again, harder this time, using them to assist him in sitting up. Fire lanced through his middle and a groan escaped through his clenched teeth. "Take these off me." The older agent growled.
The very frazzled recovery nurse quickly moved from her lookout post, next to the cracked door, to push the injured agent back to a horizontal position. Jack tried to remain sitting, but it was embarrassingly easy for the nurse to force him back down. An involuntary yelp came out for all his effort.
Undaunted and, given his stubbornness, unable to quit, he pulled himself back up to his elbows.
"Bu adamların seni öldürmeye çalışmasına şaşmamalı inatçı amerikan." The nurse murmured, shaking her head. Mac chose that moment to come through the door.
"Jack, what the hell are you doing? You're bleeding again…" Mac uttered, with a bit more heat than he intended. The crisp white bandages contrasted sharply with the crimson blood starting to show through the gauze.
"What took you so long? I thought, I thought they had you, brother." Jack deflected.
Mac observed the lines of worry still apparent on his partner's abused face and in that moment all his frustration dissipated, his concern, on the other hand, was still very much intact.
I stranded one of the elevators on the third floor in hopes of slowing these guys down. I have the remaining elevator waiting for us. We should hurry." The young Phoenix agent motioned for the group to follow him.
Mac took one last peek through the crack in the door before pushing his friend out of the room and across the hall. The three women followed him, anxiously looking around for a threat.
Just as the surgeon stepped into the elevator gunfire erupted and slammed into the metal of the elevator wall. Mac frantically punched the door close button repeatedly, even though he knew it wouldn't make it close any sooner. The bullets peppered the closing doors then the gunfire ceased once they were closed.
Jack raised his hands as far as the straps would allow. "Mac, you gotta get these off me." Jack pled. "As long as you don't do anything stupid. Mac replied. "Who, me? Never." Jack shot back in mock innocence. "I'm serious, Jack!" The blonde scolded. "I know, kid. I don't think I could get off this bed if my life depended on it. I'm just a little sick of restraints is all." Jack confessed.
The young Phoenix agent sighed and let his shoulders drop. "Oh man, Jack I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking." He felt like such an ass as he loosened the first wrist strap and saw blood starting to show through the white gauze. Sinclairs zip ties had cut deep into his wrists and the pulling Jack had done during his flashback had opened them back up again. Jack winced as Mac pulled the leather strap out of the buckle. "Sorry." he mouthed to his friend.
"Thank you." Jack said horsley as the other one fell away.
The doors on the elevator opened announcing their arrival on the fifth floor.
"Hurry tell the pilot to fire up the engines." Mac ordered no one in particular.
The blonde slid the red button, on the instrument panel of the elevator, over to stop. "That should slow them down a little." Mac looked around for something to jam the double doors that led outside to the helipad. Across the hall he spotted a fire ax locked up in a glass case. 'That just might work.'
Mac crossed to the glass case. He grasped his left fist with his right and forced the back of his elbow into the front of the case. The thin glass broke easily and the shattered pieces clinked onto the smooth tile floor. Mac reached in and grabbed the ax and laid it on the gurney next to Jack, freeing his hands to push the bed outside.
Once outside he heard the whirring sound of the helicopter starting up. He pushed both the doors closed, then slid the ax through the handles.
The blades on the chopper started to pick up speed. Mac wheeled his friend around to the back of the medflight helicopter, where the doors were already open for Jack and his gurney.
The young Phoenix agent heard gunfire even over the increasingly loud helicopter blades. Mac looked toward the heavy doors that he had just barred with the ax handle, he saw splinters flying from both the handle and the doors.
Just as the wheels on Jack's bed found their tracts on the chopper, the hospital doors exploded outwards and the mercenaries flooded out. Mac was pushing the gurney in, at the side of Jack's bed near his legs and facing the gunmen, who were about fifty yards away. Medicine and saline sprayed all over the two agents when two of Jack's iv bags were hit by a stray bullet. Half a second later The blonde heard his best friend shout in pain and at the same moment fire lanced through his left hand causing him to yelp and stumble.
Mac didn't have time for pain or to access the damage. The agents didn't have any cover. They were sitting ducks until they were away from that rooftop. Bullets pinged off the metal frame of Jack's bed and the back door. Mac nearly stumbled forward again when the gurney became much easier to push. He looked up to see the nurse and the surgeon's assistant pulling his partner the rest of the way into the chopper.
With Jack inside, Mac yelled to the pilot to take off and pulled the back doors shut.
The pilot quickly raised the helicopter off the cement helipad and shot forward as fast as the rotors allowed. The gunfire that peppered the side of the chopper became less frequent until it stopped completely.
Mac sat on the bench seat, that ran alongside the wall of the chopper, next to the nurse. He was in a daze and looked absently at the blood dripping onto the floor of the aircraft.
"Mac, you okay? Pain and worry laced into the words Jack spoke.
"Huh? Ah yeah, I'm fine." Mac stated, finally snapping out of it.
Mac looked through the hole between his thumb and forefinger in his hand.
"Uh, I know our lives are pretty messed up buddy, but that doesn't look fine to me." Jack tried for lighthearted but the concern in his eyes betrayed him.
The nurse who sat next to him dug through the med kit. She pulled out gauze and began wrapping the cloth snuggly around the oozing wound.
Jack felt the warm liquid leaking out from the gunshot wound in his right thigh. He didn't know how bad it was, he just knew Mac would be pissed at him if he kept quite much longer.
"Hey Mac…" the younger agent instantly stiffened and gave Jack all his attention, when he heard the tone in his partner's voice. In his experience that tone meant Jack was injured and was afraid to tell him. "I think the bullet that got you, went through my leg first." Jack admitted shakily.
Mac saw it then, the dark red that stained the blanket, covering Jack's lower half, was more noticeable when he leaned forward for a closer look. The blanket wasn't touching the exit wound so it hadn't soaked up any of the blood that had pooled under Jack's leg.
Mac lifted the blanket to the side to expose Jack's leg wounds. The bullet appeared to have traveled right through the meat in his friends thigh. Blood flowed steadily out of the two holes.
The surgeon's assistant squeezed past the nurse and Mac to help Jack. She put a thick pad of gauze over each of the wounds, then cinched a pressure bandage snugly over the gauze, eliciting a groan from Jack.
"It's bleeding heavily, but it's not arterial. This bandage should hold until we get where we are going."
"Where are we going?" Dr. Costas asked, looking expectantly at Mac.
"I've been thinking about that, I just need to make a call first. Anybody have a phone?" Something in the back of his mind was screaming at him to pay attention, that he was missing something.
The surgeon reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell. He dialed Phoenix and listened to it ring. It was something Sinclair had said…
"Son of a bitch! That's how those merc's knew where we were."
Nurse's translation : It's no wonder that these guys are trying to kill you, stubborn american.
"Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. "
― Elizabeth Stone