Nothing had gone right for the last month.
It was like the Mission Gods had been against them since they'd been cleared to return to duty after getting back from the ranch.
Jack kept saying that maybe they'd picked up some kind of curse in Cairo.
At first Mac had laughed it off. But today he was starting to wonder if maybe Jack was right. Although at the moment, Mac's partner didn't seem to be all that concerned about another mission going off the rails.
He was so much in his element that even though he was the man on the spot to try to fix the current problem, he was still engaged in his usual non-mission related chatter.
"C'Mon, Mac. You gotta pick somethin'."
"You've got to be kidding," Mac said flatly.
Jack glanced at him from his position under the instrument panel where he was currently working, not nearly as urgently as Mac felt the situation called for.
"Course I'm not kidding," he said mildly. "It's not even two months away. And it's a big one. We definitely gotta start planning now."
Mac couldn't take his eyes off the view out the cockpit window. He swallowed. "I meant I can't believe you're bringing it up again now," he replied stiffly, hands tightening on the pack he held in his lap.
Something sparked between Jack's fingers and he swore as more smoke started pouring out from under the yoke of the aircraft. Then he moved and pulled out some more wires off to the other side of it. "A quarter century is a big deal, Mac."
An almost involuntary glare flickered over Mac's face and his jaw clenched. "I've already told you, I don't celebrate birthdays, Jack." He closed his eyes briefly, more than half convinced that the ground was closer. "And even if I did, I'm more worried about actually making it across the finish line to another year than I am whether or not you and Bozer want to try to annoy me into going to Disney or on some weird bar crawl on a specific arbitrary day on the calendar, which I've already made clear to both of you, is not something I have any interest in doing," he bit out.
Jack swore softly as another spark burnt his fingers. He used the instrument panel to push himself to his feet. "You're gonna make it to twenty-five."
Mac looked up at him, his eyes almost pleading. "So, you fixed it?"
Jack grinned and shook his head, "Oh, hell no. Those assholes fried it good before they took themselves out. We gotta jump."
Mac actually felt the blood drain from his face and had the strange hot/cold sensation that it all pooled in the pit of his stomach, as icy sweat broke out on his forehead and upper lip. "But..."
Jack slapped Mac on the shoulder good naturedly. "Good thing I already checked the chutes before they realized we weren't friendlies. And we're coming up on a halfway decent drop zone not too far from the exfil point."
Mac swallowed and looked frantically around the cockpit like he could possibly find something they hadn't already tried to change the outcome of the situation. "I don't think..." he began, but his mouth had gotten so dry he couldn't make any words come out for a minute.
Jack gave him a sympathetic look, but tugged at his arm to get him moving out of his seat and back toward the cabin. "C'mon, kid. You got this. It's all just training now, alright?"
He pulled his wide-eyed partner out of the co-pilot's seat to lead him around the bodies of the bad guys.
"Besides," Jack said, lightly teasing. "You been complaining that we didn't get to see any of the sights on this mission. Now you're gonna get a bird's eye view of half the country."
Mac looked at the pack in his hands like it was made of a tangle of the world's most venomous snakes. "Jack, there's got to be something else we can try. I don't think I can..."
"Sure you can." Jack gave him a reassuring grin. "We've done this before."
Mac shook his head stubbornly. "No. We haven't. We've drilled for this before."
He was breathing so fast now, he couldn't tell if that's what was making him lightheaded or if the sense of vertigo was just that his brain knew exactly how far from the ground he was.
Jack held up his own gear and locked eyes with his partner who he could see struggling valiantly not to panic, but not doing all that well in his efforts.
"That's right," he said, his voice taking on a similar tone to the one he used saddling skittish horses. "And you know drills work, because that's how you learned how to be the best goddamned EOD tech the Army ever saw before you ever clipped a wire on a real bomb, kid."
He started slowly putting on his own gear.
"Just let that training take over."
"I ... I'm ... Right now I don't remember a damn thing," Jack."
Jack glanced up at him. "Then, you just follow my lead."
"I ... Okay."
Mac swallowed hard again, but started working on the harness for the parachute he'd been clutching for the last ten minutes. His fingers felt sort of blunted but somehow they managed the motions he'd practiced.
Turbulence rocked the small aircraft and Mac dropped the chute at his feet. "Shit."
Jack, already strapped into the harness and ready, picked it up. He met Mac's eye and squeezed his shoulder after he put the gear back in Mac's hands. "If you can figure out what to do with a dirty bomb in the middle of a warehouse that's burnin' down around us like it's just a puzzle to solve while you're beat to hell and bleeding all over, you gotta know you can do this too. It's just pullin' a string, hoss."
Mac nodded slowly, even though his thoughts were trying to disagree with Jack's objectively reasonable statement.
No feelings about the bomb is much easier than no feelings about flinging yourself out of a plane at fourteen thousand feet.
But, his brain supplied in his grandfather's voice, totally unhelpfully, it's a damn sight better than waiting for this busted bucket of bolts to auger in like a homesick rock, bud.
Yeah, sure it is Gramps.
But he was able to make himself go through the motions of pulling on and securing the harness like he'd done at least a hundred times in the tactical training that all field agents did on a continuous basis for various field skills at DXS. But he'd never gotten as far as a training jump. He'd managed to be "busy" with something too important to walk away from every time one was scheduled.
The last time he'd ghosted on a training jump (because everyone was supposed to do at least one), Thornton had told him if he didn't make the next one, Oversight was going to pull his field authorization.
Mac hadn't decided if that made him want to go back to working on cars yet or not.
Maybe she'd count this debacle as his required jump. Jack was one of the instructors, after all.
He made himself check every part of the gear he could see or reach and darted a wide eyed glance at Jack. "Is this right?"
As if it could possibly make him feel better about their situation, Jack stepped toward him and double checked his gear. "You're good." He held Mac's eye. "I'm gonna release the door. You're gonna count to three, then jump."
Mac's eyes went just a little wider. He opened his mouth to say something, but his brain just went completely blank.
More blank.
Which was fine because his mouth had gotten too dry to say anything else anyway. So he just swallowed again.
"You wait about forty-five seconds, then pull the cord," Jack reminded him, sensing that no matter how many times Mac had performed this drill, none of it was in the kid's head at the moment. "These chutes have an Automatic Activation Device on 'em, so even if you don't pull it, this chute's gonna deploy before you get too close to the ground, alright? But that makes for a little harder landing, so it's better if you keep your count and do this by the book."
Mac nodded again. The door was still closed, but he thought he might throw up anyway.
"I'll jump right after you. If anything goes wrong, I'll just catch up and bail your ass out."
"I..." He couldn't spit out more than that.
"We'll be home watchin' the Super Bowl by this time tomorrow, kid."
Mac found that he couldn't even nod all of a sudden. He felt frozen, like someone had doused him with a barrel full of liquid nitrogen.
Jack, who had done things like this hundreds of, maybe over a thousand, times as a Ranger, in Delta, not to mention with CIA and DXS and to train others, moved with an easy surety that everything was going to work out just fine.
"I'm gonna release the door," he warned.
He looked at Mac who didn't even nod, who was just staring at the door like it was a hungry lion.
He knew Mac was afraid of heights. Hell, everyone knew. It's not like the kid kept it a secret. Not like he could, really.
But Jack had never seen Mac look like he did right now.
He was pale, and sweating, not to mention shaking visibly, though he didn't seem to know it.
They'd done a couple of pretty intense climbs before, and Mac had been a little freaked out, but hadn't even really hesitated much. And he certainly hadn't frozen.
But just like they hadn't in those situations, they didn't have a choice now. This jump was happening.
So, Jack stepped forward and released that door with the expected loud pop and a thunderous rush of air that sounded, for a moment, like a tornado.
"Alright, Mac. Let's do this. On three, kid."
Mac didn't move.
Jack took his elbow and guided Mac over to the door. He was pleased that Mac wasn't so frozen as to not move, or worse freaked out enough to resist, because he took the necessary steps, but when they got there, he stiffened and clutched the frame with both hands.
Mac looked out, his hair whipping around his face. It had gotten kind of long again over the last couple of months. And right now Mac kind of wished it was as long as it had been at Harry's cabin. Because then maybe he wouldn't be able to see how far away the ground was. The tiny Lego-looking buildings, the thin magic marker roads, the blur of grass and fields.
Finally he found his voice. "Jack, I can't."
Jack put a hand on his shoulder from behind. "Mac, buddy ... You gotta." He paused. "Like now. We don't want to wind up in those woods, man."
He knew Jack was right. But, he really didn't think he could move.
He stepped back. "You go. And then I'll..."
Jack gave him a knowing little half smile. "Then you'll what? Go down with the ship?" He steered Mac back to the door. "If the ground is gonna rush up to meet you anyway, kid, don't you think it's better if you're the one in charge of how that happens?"
Mac looked down at the ground again. Then he tried to make his feet move closer to the door. But they wouldn't.
His heart was beating so fast it felt like it might tear apart.
"You ... um ... You know how they say it's not the fall that kills you?"
"It's the sudden stop? Yeah."
"I think the fall is plenty. I feel like I'm gonna have a freaking heart attack. Just standing here." He tried to move again. "You're gonna have to just go, Jack. I seriously can't."
"If you fell right now, do you think you could pull your chute?"
Mac turned to look at him, letting go of the door frame. "I ... um ... Probably?"
"Good," Jack said. "Sorry about this, kid."
Before Mac could even process what was happening, Jack gave him a shove and suddenly he was in the air, plummeting toward the ground.
For what felt like roughly a hundred years, everything was just confusion and howling wind. But Mac's brain informed him that it was actually more like ten to fifteen seconds. He found that training had sort of taken over and he was in the textbook position he'd been taught for the freefall portion of a jump, arms and legs out and bent, back arched, facing the ground, as he fell toward it at roughly a hundred-twenty miles per hour.
After catching sight of the Earth racing up to meet him, no matter how far away and almost imaginary it still seemed, he closed his eyes, fighting the urge to curl into a ball.
He made himself start counting.
After a second he realized he was doing it out loud, but couldn't hear himself over the wind whipping around him.
Then he made himself open his eyes, thinking that it wouldn't be good to have no sense of where he was, even if where he was happened to be somewhere he'd sell his soul to get away from.
A speeding dark object zoomed past on his right and he realized it was Jack, in a tight, head down position Mac though vaguely was called the delta position, aimed at increasing the fall rate of a diver. Jack was getting ahead of him on purpose. He wasn't sure why, but trying to figure it out was an almost pleasant distraction from his current circumstances. Even looking down didn't bother him quite so much now that he had something else to think about.
Jack shifted into what Mac remembered was called a dead spider that visibly slowed his descent and before too many more seconds passed, Jack was nearly level with Mac. He was shouting something, but Mac couldn't make it out over the wind, but the man was grinning from ear to ear, so Mac figured it wasn't any kind of warning or emergency.
Of course Jack was enjoying himself. He didn't just do this professionally.
He did it for fun all the time.
Mac had just gotten to the count of forty-five when he saw Jack mime pulling his shoot, so Mac reached up to do just that. He lost track of Jack for a minute when the force and noise of the chute deploying were the only things he could process.
Then he caught sight of the ground again.
His eyes closed without consulting him. Tightly.
Then, it was like everything grew quiet and almost still.
Only moments before, he hadn't been able to hear Jack shouting. But now he heard his perfectly conversational call of, "You alright, kid?"
Mac made himself nod. "Mmmhmm."
Another few seconds ticked past.
"How pissed are you?"
Mac sighed. He so did not want to be having a conversation right now. "M'not."
"Are you afraid that if you open your mouth and actually talk to me, you're gonna throw up?"
Mac sniffed a little laugh at that. "Maybe."
He sure as hell looks like he might, Jack thought. He also still found himself somewhat surprised that any damn thing on Earth scared that kid.
Unfortunately, they still had to land and get to exfil, so it didn't precisely matter if the kid was scared shitless or not. Mac couldn't get there with his eyes scrunched closed like a kid at his first horror movie.
Jack needed him back out of his head. And Mac was well past the point of being distracted by the usual movie quotes or superhero arguments.
So, Jack decided to do what he often did if he really needed Mac's brain laser focused on something he didn't want to focus on. He decided to try to piss him off.
"I'd say I'm sorry for shovin' you out here, but the look on your face was priceless. I kinda wish I had a picture. Or maybe video."
Instead of the reaction he was expecting, Mac just gripped the straps of his harness tighter. "If you hadn't, I'd probably still be in there headed toward the ground a lot faster."
Jack frowned. "You're too smart for that, kid. You'd have gotten there eventually."
"I don't know, man." Mac shook his head, eyes still squeezed shut. "Boze dragged me bungee jumping one time when we were teenagers..."
"You? Bungee jumping?" Jack asked incredulously.
"Yeah, I lost a bet."
Jack grinned. It seemed like a lot of Mac's stories that he was willing to part with involved losing a bet to Wilt Bozer.
"I'm surprised you'd bet on that. And even more surprised Boze would do something that mean," he said with a chuckle.
"I thought I was gonna win." Mac smirked. "And I think Gramps put him up to it anyways. He was always saying if I just faced the fear I'd get over it."
"Did it help?"
Mac shook his head. "I think it made it worse ... And once we got there, I was too freaked out to even climb off the platform to back out. Everyone was getting mad about me holding up the line. So Boze had to push me, too."
Jack decided to try teasing a little more. "I figured you'd talk yourself out of that plane eventually. I just didn't want it takin' you so long that I'd have to spend half the damn night hunting through those Hansel and Gretel woods, hoping you remembered to leave me some breadcrumbs."
His eyes still didn't open, but a half a smile twitched one corner of Mac's lips. "You remembered something I told you about the Black Forest. I think I'm impressed."
Okay, maybe going all tour guide'll loosen him up more than pickin' on him.
"Next thing you're gonna tell me is that Black Forest cake came outta that creepy gingerbread house, too, arentcha?"
Mac still didn't open his eyes, but his features relaxed slightly, and his knuckles looked slightly less white. "The Brothers Grimm didn't have anything to do with the invention of schwarzwÃlder kirchtorte. But it does originate from around here. Some people claim that it dates back to around the 1500's when chocolate first came to Germany."
Jack grinned a little at how easily Mac came up with that. "Does it?"
Mac shook his head, more indicating that he didn't know than that he disagreed with the story. "It's possible. There's a tradition for newly married couples to plant cherry trees here and their sour cherries are kind of famous. Preserving them is likely how Kirschwasser was invented. But the first published recipe is from a pastry chef named Joseph Keller in 1915. That's when it started to get famous and spread outside the region."
"Maybe we should celebrate getting our asses back on the ground by picking one of those up on the way to the airport."
"Ugh, no ... I don't think I'm ever gonna eat again," Mac groaned. "I feel like my stomach is trying to crowd my feet out of my boots."
"You're gonna be fine, hoss," Jack chuckled. "Cuz the good news is we're almost on the ground."
"And the bad news?"
"The bad news is that you're gonna need to open your eyes to land without breakin' any bones."
"Yeah," he sighed.
With what felt like a truly Herculean effort, Mac cracked one eye open. He really wanted to shut it again, because they were still way higher than any sane person would be comfortable with. But Jack was right. At the appropriately fifteen miles per hour they were currently descending at (falling, Mac, this is falling, and it doesn't matter that there's something slowing you down), he'd need to get in position to land. Anyone who's ever crashed a bike (which Mac had done probably too many times to count), knows that fifteen miles an hour can either be a pretty soft landing if you do it right, or it can be a trip to the hospital.
He made himself pry his other eye open and tuck himself into what Jack found to be an almost amusingly precise touchdown posture.
For Jack, this was down to muscle memory at this point. So he had rolled safely out of the drop, released his chute, and was back on his feet, taking off the harness in under a minute.
He looked around.
Mac's chute was free, blowing slowly away toward the edge of the woods in the gentle late afternoon breeze. But Mac was laying on the ground, flat on his back, eyes closed like he was out cold. Jack tossed his harness and ran over, dropping down next to his partner. "Mac! Mac, buddy, you alright?"
Mac opened his eyes, one eyebrow going up. "I'm fine."
"Well, then what're you doin' here on the ground?!?" he demanded. "You scared the shit outta me, kid!"
Mac pushed himself up on his elbows. Then he smirked. "Good. Payback for pushing me out of the damn plane."
"I thought you weren't pissed?"
Mac started laughing, partly just happy to be alive and partly nervous energy starting to bleed off now that he was on the ground.
Jack's face broke into a big grin, then he started laughing, too.
They tapered off quickly, but it felt good anyway.
Jack hadn't taken his hand of Mac's shoulder yet. "You sure you're okay?"
Mac didn't dignify that with an answer, just picked himself up off the ground to stand on legs that still felt vaguely unsteady and started extracting himself from the harness.
At the distant sound of the small aircraft finally crashing into the hills to their west, Mac leaned over with his hands on his thighs for a minute, pretty sure he was finally just going to be sick.
After a couple deep breaths, he stood and flashed Jack a slightly embarrassed grin.
"Let's get the hell outta here, yeah?"
They started walking toward the road where Nikki was ostensibly tracking their phones to pick them up.
"Sounds good to me, kid. We got a game to get home to."
"Too bad we don't like either of the teams playing."
"Ah, it'll still be a decent game I bet."
"Yeah, football's football."
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Mac glanced at Jack.
"How much is it gonna cost me to get you to sign off on that being the training jump Oversight's been in such a yank about?"
"Cost you?" Jack clapped him on the back with a big grin. "If we can slip it by Patty, I think I can spot you a freebie this time. You gave good entertainment value on that one."
Mac gave him a light, good-natured shove. "And I'm never gonna hear the end of it, am I?"
Jack laughed and shoved lightly in return, finding that Mac was now entirely steady on his feet again. "Well, you got plenty on me to gimme shit about. I gotta file things away when they come up, kid."
Mac laughed and shook his head.
They'd just stepped onto the pavement when his phone rang.
He pulled it out of his pocket, glancing at Jack. "It's Thornton."
He hit the Answer button for the video call. "Director Thornton," he greeted levelly.
"Gentlemen," she said with a nod. "While I imagine you're ready for today to be over, you in particular, Mac."
"Whatdaya got for us, Patty?" Jack interrupted.
"O'Neill and his men are on the move on American soil again."
"In Los Angeles?" Mac asked.
"Not this time. But close by and perhaps more concerning given the timing. In Phoenix."
Jack frowned. "What's more concerning about Phoenix."
Mac's eyes widened slightly. "That's where the Super Bowl is happening tomorrow."
"Oh. Oh, shit."
"That's Oversight's concern, yes."
"So, what's the plan, Patty? Review security at the venue ... Move the teams somewhere safer ... Go undercover as coaching staff...?"
"You wish it was about you going to that game, Jack," Thornton said archly. "There are several biotech companies in the area that have all had data breaches in the last twenty-four hours. You're going in directly to see if you can catch the Mazari in the act of picking up whatever they're hoping to disrupt that game with."
"Yes, ma'am," Mac said with a nod.
"Nikki should be picking you up momentarily. Straight to the jet. Get a meal and some sleep. The next day could be even more colorful than the one you're finishing."
I seriously hope not, he thought, but all he said out loud was, "Yes, ma'am."
He moved to end the call.
"Oh, and Mac?"
"Ma'am?"
"Oversight doesn't consider today's incident your required training jump."
Mac concealed a sigh. "Yes, ma'am."
"However," she went on like he hadn't spoken. "I'm inclined to." She paused. "Take care of things in Phoenix and I'll consider that matter closed."
Mac grinned. "You can count on it, Director."
He grinned at Jack as he slid his phone back into his pocket. "Like I needed any extra motivation to get that son of a bitch."