Uncharacteristically, Mac was out of the harness and halfway out of the helicopter before it even fully touched down.
"Mac!" Jack called. "Yo, Mac!"
Jack swore under his breath and moved to follow his partner as quickly as he could. It was not as quickly as he would have liked since he was the one landing the damn bird. Mac was halfway across the parking lot before Jack caught up with him.
"Slow the hell down Carl's Junior!"
He had to take off at a jog bordering on a run to catch up with an extremely single-minded MacGyver. He put a hand on Mac's shoulder, finally halting his partner's purposeful stride.
"What?" Mac asked, not quite snapping, but with the raise of one eyebrow that told Jack it was an effort.
"Davies said to check in before we moved on these guys. You know … In case that stuff hit you funny."
Mac rolled his eyes. "Davies is just being …" He frowned. "How medics are. I'm fine."
Both Jack's eyebrows raised and drew together. "Maybe, but Patty wasn't happy with that list of possible side effects either. Which you'd know if you could stand to have your comm on. But in case you were wondering, I can tell it's still bothering you."
Mac gave him what Jack had started to think of as the look. "I said I'm fine, Jack."
Jack regarded his partner for a long moment. "Your face is flushed, which Davies said—"
"Whatever!" Mac was determined to break Jack of the habit of talking like he hadn't spoken just because they weren't in agreement or because Jack had gone into overprotective Overwatch mode. He rolled his eyes and tapped his earpiece, opening up comms. "Hey Davies. Checking in to tell you I'm still fine. We good to move, or what?"
There was a pause. "How do you feel?"
"Fine," he repeated.
"Be more specific."
His eyes rolled again, mostly without consulting him. "Ready to kick this guy's ass."
Thornton chimed in, "I think you know what she meant, Mac."
"I already told you, I'm fine," he repeated, his tone more clipped. He shot Jack a glare that said if he contradicted him over comms they would definitely have a repeat of their first meeting. Then he couldn't help himself. "If Oversight isn't worried about it, and I'm not worried about it, I don't see why everyone else is in a twist."
Another pause ensued, but he absolutely refused to fill that silence.
Finally Thornton spoke. "Your call, Mac." He could hear her enigmatic smile when she followed up with, "But if you drop dead from some unreported side effect, I'll have you resuscitated to do the paperwork."
"Yes, ma'am." Mac half grinned. "We're going in."
"And back-up is ready to move, right?" Jack prompted.
"On your word," Thornton confirmed.
"Good," Mac said with a nod and took off at the same brisk pace he'd set when he first got off the helicopter.
Jack rolled his eyes at Mac's single-minded focus. He didn't fail to note that Mac had already tapped his comm to turn it off again either. But he set after his young partner, reminding himself that Mac had given him a little more insight into exactly why he was the way he was, and it made sense, even if it made Jack even more wary of the situation on Mac's behalf.
When they got to the end of the block, Jack called out, "Hold up, where you goin' kid? The stadium is that way."
Mac glanced over his shoulder. He could have sworn he'd already said this out loud, but he supposed it was possible that his perception was off from all the stuff circulating through his bloodstream at the moment. So, he stopped and let Jack catch up the rest of the way. "I got thinking on the way over here … O'Neill said something about getting ready for the show. And I can't help but think that if he was talking about the game he'd have said game."
"Mac, buddy, you sure those drugs aren't foggin' up your brain? Cuz I'm not real sure that made any sense."
Mac shook his head. "I meant that what he said made me think maybe he's talking about the halftime show."
Jack cocked an eyebrow. "Which is at the game."
Mac smirked and started up the street. "It will be. But they have it all staged somewhere else and loaded into trucks. They have to start days in advance and they move it to the stadium when it's close to the game if they don't have room to assemble things on site. They don't have that kind of room here. Nikki got me the location."
"That's good thinkin', Mac. But what if you're wrong?"
Mac shrugged. "We still have time to get to the stadium if we come up empty at the warehouse. Besides, Homeland is crawling all over the stadium. They can't imagine that the halftime show stuff is the target. But it makes the most sense, and if we can stop them here, even if things go south, it'll keep everyone in the stadium safe."
"Is it just what O'Neill said, or…"
Mac shook his head. "It's been bugging me since the flight home from Germany. We know they've used explosives a lot in the past. And the stuff we found in Libya said they were still working on small scale explosives. There was a lot of stuff that could have been for disbursement at that camp."
Jack squinted. "Still not sure where you're goin' with this, Mac."
"The pyrotechnics, Jack."
"Oh, shit."
"Yeah. And there's gonna be fireworks at this show, I guarantee it."
"There usually are, so that's a good bet."
"Not a bet, a sure thing."
"How do you know? Did Nikki get a line on that for you, too?"
Mac shook his head. "No, but the headliner is Katy Perry, so there's gotta be. Firework is gonna be the finale. It's gotta be."
Jack chuckled. "Please tell me you know that because of Bozer and not that he's fully corrupted your musical tastes, brother."
Mac laughed. "I mean, yeah, Boze loves her. But everyone knows Firework, Jack."
They spent the next half block in a little good-natured teasing about who listened to what, but as the warehouse came into view Mac froze.
Then he swore.
Trucks were moving out of the large doors in an orderly line.
"What're we gonna do now?" Jack asked, watching Mac's plan to head O'Neill off before he could get to a stadium full of people disappear up the street.
Mac tapped his come. "Thornton? They're already leaving the warehouse. Any chance we can stop them entering the stadium until I can get a look in those trucks?"
"Not without tipping our hand," she answered. "But, if you–"
Mac tapped his earpiece again to silence it. He looked at Jack. Then he grinned. "You wanted to go to the big game anyway. So, let's go." He gestured at the warehouse where the last of the trucks were pulling out onto the street.
"We hitching a ride?"
"If we're fast enough," Mac said with another grin as he broke into a run to hopefully get close enough to hop onto the back of one of the trucks.
Thornton, Nikki, the closest tac team, and their liaisons from DHS, the CDC, and FEMA, were all chiming in with their opinions and questions over Jack's earpiece and suddenly he was a lot more sympathetic to Mac just killing his comm. "I hear ya, I hear ya," Jack groused. "But I got a job to do. Watchin' that kid's back. You all do yours and we'll all be fine." With that, he took off after his partner, hoping he was right.