Here's part five--things get more interesting!
A Crack in the Foundation Part Five
Rated: PG
MacGyver made his way through the warehouse, met with surprisingly few of Gorman’s men. They probably figured he was still locked securely in the room, weakened by their blows and suffering from great pain. They were partly right. It still hurt MacGyver to move, every part of his body sore from the beatings he endured, but he was determined to continue ahead. He reached the main area of the warehouse where Gorman had set up his computers. He saw Sam sitting with him at one of them, and he hid behind some crates, watching them. Gorman suddenly pounded his fist on the desk, causing MacGyver to jump slightly, hiding further behind the crates, waiting. When nothing happened, he crept quietly to the edge of the crates again and peered around them. Gorman looked flushed with anger.
“Why is it taking so slow to load?” He asked.
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Damn computers,” Gorman said.
“Just be patient,” Sam said. “I’m sure it will only take just another minute.”
“You’d better be right.”
They waited, and MacGyver waited. Soon, the computer screen was filled—not with intelligence information, but scrambled gibberish. MacGyver couldn’t believe what he was looking at. Grinning, he knew Sam had just decided to do something unexpected and extraordinary. He hadn’t disappointed him completely, after all.
“What is this?” Gorman asked. “I can’t understand it. I thought you deciphered their codes!”
“I did,” Sam said, smiling. “This is a virus.”
Livid, Gorman’s eyes bulged and he nearly choked on his words. “A…virus? What are you talking about? What have you done?”
“I’m wiping out your computer system,” Sam said calmly. “I designed it myself.”
Gorman stood, whipping out his gun. His men followed suit, also pointing their weapons at Sam.
“Why have you done this to me?” Gorman asked. “I have always treated you well. You’ve earned decent money.”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess it just isn’t worth it anymore.”
Gorman pulled back the safety on his gun, and so did his men, creating an almost synchronized click that echoed through the warehouse.
“You will fix this,” he said, “and give me the intelligence you gathered, or I will have you killed.”
Sam stared at the end of the weapon, knowing that what he had done left him with few options. Still, all he could think of was MacGyver screaming in agony in the room, all because of his actions. He couldn’t do it anymore. He looked up at Gorman, trying to appear as brave as possible.
“No,” he said.
Gorman kicked over his chair, sending him crashing to the floor. He stepped on Sam’s chest with his booted foot and pointed the gun closer to his head. His whole body trembled with uncontrollable rage, his face contorted hideously.
“You will fix it now!” He screamed.
MacGyver pushed the crates he was hiding behind, sending them toppling to the floor. It distracted Gorman enough that Sam was able to kick the gun out of his hands and punch him, knocking him to the floor. Gorman’s men began running toward MacGyver, some of them tripping over the falling crates trying to reach him. He fought with several of them, disarming them. One of them managed to shoot him in the left shoulder region, barely missing his heart. He fell to the floor, bleeding profusely.
“No!” Sam shouted.
The man who had shot MacGyver turned his weapon on Sam.
“Shoot him! Shoot him now!” Gorman shouted.
Just as he prepared to fire, several cars smashed through the closed entrance, and men jumped out, racing through the warehouse with weapons drawn, grabbing Gorman’s men and arresting them.
“Federal agents! Freeze! Drop your weapons!” Pete Thornton shouted.
As they began to contain the situation, Pete saw MacGyver sprawled across the crates, bleeding. Horrified, he ran over to him to check on him. He saw the extent of the damage—a deep bullet wound in his shoulder, along with numerous bruises and cuts. MacGyver’s breathing was shallow, and his eyes were open to slits, so he was alive, but barely. Pete gently touched the side of his face that wasn’t bruised, trying to comfort him and keep him conscious.
“We have a wounded man over here! Send in Medical now!” Pete shouted, glancing wildly at his men. He turned back to MacGyver. “Just hold on, Mac,” he said, his eyes misting with tears.
MacGyver became more aware of the sound of Pete’s voice, and he opened his eyes more, a hazy feeling overcoming him, his pain blending with a feeling of complete weightlessness and numbness. Shock began to set in, causing him to shiver violently, feeling extremely cold. Pete removed his jacket and threw it over him, hoping to keep him warm until the medical team arrived. The pain suddenly increased, and MacGyver moaned, squirming.
“Mac, you have to stay still,” Pete said.
“Pete,” MacGyver said weakly, staring up at his friend with pleading dark eyes.
“Try not to talk,” Pete said. “You have a serious bullet wound and you’re bleeding badly.”
“Tell me about it,” MacGyver said, smiling faintly.
“You’re going to be all right,” Pete said. “The medical team should be here any minute.”
“Sam,” MacGyver whispered. “Sam…”
“He’s not your son, Mac,” Pete said sadly. “I ran the results again, and they didn’t change.”
“Sam…”
“Don’t worry, Mac, he’s in custody, along with Gorman,” Pete said, his voice filled with anger. “He won’t be able to hurt you—or our country—again.”
MacGyver lightly gripped Pete’s shirt and stared up at him, his eyes filled with pain. “Pete,” he said, his breathing labored, “please, go easy on him…he…” his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed into unconsciousness.
“No,” Pete said, feeling his friend’s pulse. It was weak. “Get that medical team over here, now!” He shouted.
“They’re here, sir!” One of his men shouted back.
Relieved, Pete watched as the medical team rushed in with a stretcher and began checking MacGyver’s vital signs, prepping him to be moved and taken to the hospital. He stood back and listened to their diagnosis, unwilling to completely leave his friend’s side until he was safely taken to the hospital. Their words came at him at a dizzying pace, sounding more frantic as they continued.
“BP is low…”
“He’s lost a lot of blood…”
“Gone into shock…”
“Stop the bleeding and get him into surgery immediately…”
Once they had secured MacGyver to the stretcher, they began to move him, running toward the ambulance. Pete ran along with them.
“How is he? Is he going to be all right?” He asked between heavy breaths from running.
“His condition is serious, Mr. Thornton, but if we get him to the emergency room immediately, there is a good chance he will recover,” one of the paramedics said.
“I want to go with you. I can’t leave him.”
Before the paramedics could respond, Gorman interrupted them, struggling against the agents that held him, shouting.
“I recognize some of you!” He screamed. “You were here, spying on me!”
Pete looked at him in disgust. “Well, as the old cliché goes, two can play at that game,” he said, glaring at Sam as the young man was led over to him by a couple of agents holding him firmly. He was handcuffed like the criminal that he was.
“Please…Mr. Thornton…” Sam looked at MacGyver on the stretcher. “Is he…”
“He’ll be fine,” Pete said gruffly.
Sam nodded and licked his lips. “I…I have a lot to tell you,” he said. “I just hope you’ll listen to me.”
“Mr. Thornton, we have to move MacGyver right away,” the paramedic said behind him.
Pete stared at Sam for a minute longer. “I’ll listen when I’m ready,” he said. “Right now, I have to take care of MacGyver.” He turned and got inside the ambulance with the paramedics.
Sam watched as the ambulance sped away, its sirens blaring. He couldn’t believe MacGyver had been shot. He never wanted anyone to get hurt, except perhaps himself. He knew he deserved it, and he was willing to put his life at risk when he destroyed Gorman’s computers. Now MacGyver was seriously injured, and he felt it was his fault. If he hadn’t agreed to spy on him and The Phoenix Foundation, MacGyver would never have been there in the first place. He continued to watch until the lights on the ambulance disappeared into the street. The men holding him pushed him along.
“Let’s go, son,” one of them said.
***
It never got any easier for Pete to wait on a prognosis for MacGyver’s condition. He had repeated the process so many times that it should have been routine by now, but every time he had to sit in the dismal hospital anxiously, it nearly became too much for him to bear.
“Mr. Thornton?” A nurse said, startling him. She noticed his dejected, worn, and worried expression and smiled sympathetically. “Mr. Thornton, you have a telephone call.”
“Thank you,” Pete said, barely audible.
“Right this way, Mr. Thornton,” the nurse said, directing him the nurse’s station and holding out the phone for him.
Pete nodded at her and took it. “Thornton here,” he said.
“I think you should get to the interrogation room as soon as you can,” the voice said on the other line. It was Tony Simms, the head of the investigative team that had uncovered the plot to steal the intelligence.
“Why?” Pete asked.
“It’s this Sam kid…he’s saying some incredible things that I think you need to hear.”
Pete rubbed his face with his free hand in irritation. “Tony, I can’t leave the hospital,” he said. “I’m waiting for MacGyver.”
“What’s the latest on him?”
“Well, they said he was in surgery.”
“I just talked to the nurse. He’s still in surgery, Pete. It’s going to be awhile before they let you see him, anyway. Just…come here, please. It won’t take too long.”
Pete sighed. He didn’t feel too comfortable about leaving Mac to talk to the traitor who was the cause of all this, but if Tony said it was important, he was usually right. Besides that, he remembered the words MacGyver said before he lost consciousness.
“Pete, go easy on him…”
Perhaps MacGyver knew something about the young man that he didn’t yet.
“All right, Mac,” he said aloud.
“Mr. Thornton?” Simms asked on the other line, hearing him.
“I’ll be right there,” Pete said, returning to the phone.
***
“This had better be good,” Pete said, entering the stark interrogation room where Sam sat, handcuffed to his chair.
“How’s MacGyver?” Sam asked.
“He’s still in surgery,” Pete said. Even though the young man’s concern appeared genuine, he didn’t have time to commiserate with him. “What do you want?” He asked sharply.
Sam looked down at the two computer disks in front of him, recovered from the warehouse. “One of those disks contains the information I stole from The Phoenix Foundation’s computers,” he said. “The other one is a virus I designed myself to cripple and then completely wipe out any network.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” Pete asked, sitting across from him.
“I didn’t give Gorman the classified information,” Sam said, “I gave him the virus instead.”
Pete narrowed his eyes at him, and not because he had difficulty seeing. He just didn’t believe this young man.
“Do you expect me to believe that?” He asked.
“Yes Mr. Thornton, I do,” he said.
“MacGyver’s in the hospital because of you,” Pete said angrily. “Everything you have said and done has been complete deception from day one, so why should I start believing you now?”
Sam looked down at the floor, remembering the moment MacGyver was shot, his blood spraying as he fell to the floor. He remembered hearing MacGyver’s shouts of pain when Gorman’s men were torturing him in the room.
“You’re right, Mr. Thornton,” he said, returning his gaze to Pete. “It was my fault, but MacGyver was shot because Gorman discovered that I had given him the virus. He didn’t get what he wanted. MacGyver was trying to help me when he was shot. Don’t you understand? I didn’t want him to get hurt. I was willing to sacrifice myself to do what was right for a change. MacGyver just happened to get in the line of fire.”
“He wouldn’t have been there at all,” Pete said, “had you not given him away to Gorman with your games.”
Sam flinched and looked away again. “I know,” he said, “and I’m sorry. I can’t change what I did in the past, but I am trying to correct things now.” He looked back at Pete. “Please, Mr. Thornton,” he said. “Let me try to fix things. I’m sure once MacGyver regains consciousness, he can corroborate my story. He was there. He saw. You’ve got to believe me. I know this doesn’t excuse what I did, but I’m asking you just to listen. Please.”
“Go easy on him,” MacGyver’s words echoed in Pete’s mind. He stared at the young man, thinking hard about what he said. Tony Simms had been right. This young man had an incredible story. He sighed.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll give you a chance. In the meantime, I’ll have my own computer experts examine those disks and the computers recovered from Gorman’s warehouse to see if what you’re saying is the truth.”
“I appreciate it, Mr. Thornton.”
“I have to get back to MacGyver,” Pete said. “He needs me.”
To be continued…
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
--Henry David Thoreau
brains+brawn+beauty+personality=MacGyver
