MacGyver sped towards the Phoenix Foundation. Please, please let me get there in time, he prayed. Generally, Mac wasn’t the praying type, but he did believe in a higher power, and if that higher power cared at all about what went on down here, it didn’t hurt to try to get its attention.
These people had been sneaky, he thought, though he should have seen it coming several days ago. The phone calls… the people sneaking around his houseboat… he just hadn’t put it together. And he had to admit, he’d been caught off guard. They all had. The militia must have decided to move their attack up considerably. Had they gotten so excited they couldn’t wait for March? Had they figured out that someone was on to them, and decided to move now, to regain the element of surprise?
Another thought hit Mac like a ton of bricks. Today is Martin Luther King Day. God, these people really are sick. It figures, though. If they did decide to move their attack up, for whatever reason, today would be perfect, for the symbolism. But if their objective is to kill folks at the Foundation, they won’t get too many. This puzzled him, and he thought for awhile. Maybe the Foundation is only a symbolic target. Makes sense, I guess. The Foundation represents everything they hate about the way America is, so they take it out to make a statement. Sort of like why the World Trade Center was targeted three years ago. Killing all those people was kind of an afterthought. He hoped Pete was OK. As for Stacey, he had no idea where she could be. For all he knew, she was already dead. Tears filled his eyes, as he thought of the intelligent, funny, beautiful young woman he had started to know and care about. Not yet, Mac, he admonished himself. She might still be alive. Don’t get ahead of what you know.
He pulled up to a stoplight. The Foundation’s building took up an entire block, just a few streets ahead. He could already see it from where he was. Hang in there, you two.

Pete landed in a heap on the floor, in a storage room in the basement of the Phoenix Foundation. Before he could get his bearings, Stacey was thrown in after him. She landed with a cry, and he could see that she had landed on her bad arm.
Phil followed them in.
“I won’t bother binding you two, since there’s no way you can get out, anyway.” Another militia member, who Stacey couldn’t see in the darkness, stood guard in the doorway, an AK-47 cradled in his arms. Phil walked over to the southeast corner of the room, and shone a flashlight on something. Pete and Stacey could both see it was a bomb, and it was already counting down.
“This bomb is set to detonate at thirteen-fifteen,” he told them. One-fifteen. That was in two hours.
“You’ll be good company for each other, since you seem to be so fond of each other already. Stacey, you were stupid to run, but you were really dumb to run to these two. If you hadn’t met up with them, they would have never seen this coming. They would have died ignorant, like they should have.” Phil slammed the door, and they heard the lock click.
“Pete, are you OK?” asked Stacey anxiously.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Whacked my head pretty good, but I’ll live. How about you?”
“Landed on my bad arm, and my ankle is hurting again. But I’ll make it, too.” Pete could hear the pain and fear in her voice, and knew she was fighting to keep her head straight. She sighed. “What now?”
“Good question. I haven’t the foggiest idea, Stacey. Mac is the escape artist, not me.”
“How long do you think it’ll take him to get here?”
“Let’s see. Ten miles… shouldn’t be much more than twenty minutes or so, unless he runs into traffic. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was here now.”
“Do you think he’ll know where to look for us?”
“I doubt it. Unless we can think of a way to get a message of some kind to him, he won’t. And we have no way of knowing if the militia has guards inside.”
“Yes, we do. I heard Phil and another guy, talking on the way in. They have a two-way radio in the car, and the unit’s in the trunk,” she explained. “I was able to hear everything they said. Phil was saying that there are guards posted around the perimeter, but only maybe three or four inside. Don’t know why they’re dumb enough to leave a building this size that unsecured, but maybe they’re shorthanded.”
“Or maybe they’re not dumb enough to be suicidal. It would be complicated to evacuate more than maybe a half-dozen people from the building before the bomb goes off,” Pete mused. “Stacey.” She turned her gaze in his direction, and though she couldn’t see him, she could feel his eyes on her. “Thank God you’re levelheaded enough that you were able to pay attention to these goons, when you must have been scared out of your mind. I know I would have panicked.”
He could hear the smile in her voice. “You know, Pete, Mac told me something when I talked to him last night. He said, ‘In any situation, your most valuable weapon isn’t your Swiss Army knife or your duct tape. It’s your wits. Always keep them about you.’ Speaking of which, I have to do a little boasting. I hope you don’t mind.”
“What?”
Stacey couldn’t keep the giggles out of her voice. “There was a bag of rock salt in the trunk of the car they put me in. I grabbed a big handful of it, and started dropping it, a little at a time, as soon as we got out of the car. There’s now a trail of salt leading from the parking lot right to this door. I just hope Mac carries a flashlight on him.”
Pete had to laugh, astounded. “Stacey, are you sure you and Mac aren’t related? That sounds like something he would do.”
She was laughing hard by now. “As far I know, we’re not related at all. Guess we just think alike.” Then she became serious. “But we don’t know if he’ll spot it when he gets here. Or, for that matter, if Phil or someone else will find the salt trail before he does.” She was quiet a moment. “I don’t think they will. For all their supposed military training, these guys can be pretty oblivious to stuff like that. Like I told you earlier, they’re determined, but not terribly bright.”
Pete became serious again, too. “There’s also the matter of this bomb. I don’t suppose you know anything about defusing these things, do you?”
“Sorry, Pete, that’s outside my area of expertise.” She shivered. “Is it cold down here or is it just me?”
“It is chilly. Come here.”
She moved over to Pete, and he slipped his arm around her. “Hang in there, kiddo,” he told her. “If I know Mac, he’ll be here very, very soon.”

Outside, MacGyver was just pulling up in his jeep. Problem is, I don’t know which door they went in. He parked on the south side of the building, and started looking around. Grabbing a flashlight just in case, he climbed out and locked the door. Suddenly, a glint caught his eye. Walking over, his sharp eyes picked out a small pile of something white. He crouched down for a better look. It was rock salt, and there was a faint trail leading towards the building, just a few crystals here and there, but it was a trail.
Grinning, he started along the trail at a jog. Stacey, you little genius. You’re even better than I am.
The trail led up to a side door, and Mac hoped it was open. He turned the knob, and the door opened easily.
Closing the door silently behind him, Mac turned on his flashlight and swept it around. The light picked up more glints from the stairway. Apparently Stacey and Pete had been taken down to the basement.
Within minutes, he found himself standing outside a locked, little used spare room. The salt trail ended right in front of the door. If he remembered right, the locks on these rooms were nothing fancy, and could be easily sprung. Pulling out his Swiss Army knife, he made quick work of the lock, and then slowly pushed the door open.

Stacey and Pete froze together inside the room. Someone was coming in. They both held their breath.
“Stacey? Pete? You two in here anywhere?”
“Mac! Oh, thank God!” Pete’s voice carried tremendous relief. As Mac played his flashlight around the room, he saw the two of them, huddled together in a corner. Rushing over, he hugged both of them.
“You two OK?” he asked anxiously.
“We’re both hurt, but not too bad,” answered Stacey. “Boy, are we both glad to see you. This bomb has less than fifteen minutes left.”
“All right. I want the two of you to get out of here, as fast as you can. Pete, do you remember those escape tunnels that are in here somewhere?”
“Yeah, if we’re where I think we are there’s one about fifty yards further east down the hallway.”
“Right. I want you two to get down to that tunnel, and take it out of here. Both the door from the basement and the one that leads outside lock from this side, and it’s just a simple bar that you lift up. It resets itself as soon as it’s closed again. That tunnel comes out on the northeast corner of the building, on the corner of Tenth Street and Palm Avenue. The door is hidden from the street, so I doubt very much whether WAPLA’s goons have it covered, or even know of it. It’s one of our best kept secrets. Kate Murphy’s precinct is close by, just three blocks south of here, on Palm. Get there as fast as you can, and ask for Kate. I talked to her shortly after this whole thing started, so she knows what’s going on. She should be working today. Otherwise, you may have a hell of a time convincing them.”
“What about you, Mac?” Pete asked his friend.
“I’m going to have to try to defuse this thing, and the longer we stand here talking, the less time I’ll have. Get moving, you two.”
Stacey approached him. “Please be careful, Mac. I’ve lost a lot of people recently, and now I don’t want to lose you, too.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll be OK, honey. I did a lot of this when I was in Vietnam. But I need to know you and Pete are out of harm’s way.” They smiled at each other, and then Stacey turned to Pete. “Let’s get moving, Pete.” She let him take her arm, and walked slightly ahead of him out the door.
Mac watched them go, then turned to look at what he had in front of him. Six minutes on the timer. He looked over the bomb, and almost laughed. It was surprisingly simple. Two wires were moving toward each other as the timer counted down. When the timer clicked to zero, the wires would cross, creating a short circuit and detonating the bomb. All Mac had to do was keep those wires from crossing until after time was up. Better yet, he could see where the circuit started in the first place, at a car battery. If he could somehow disconnect the wires from the battery, he would be sure to be safe. But the whole damn thing was encased in a plastic cover, with the wires protruding from the top. If he wasted time trying to get the cover off to get to the battery, the bomb would blow on him.
Think, Mac, he told himself. Digging in his pockets, he discovered a couple of paper clips. No good. I need an insulator, not a conductor. His eyes fell on the floor, where he spotted a few twigs tracked in by people’s feet over time. Better, but… Then he spotted an old broom over in the corner of the hallway, across from the door. Perfect!
Moving fast, he grabbed the broom, then used his Swiss Army knife to cut off a section about an inch long. He then wound the ends of the wires around the ends of the piece of broom handle, as far apart as possible. Just to be safe, he dug his ever-present roll of duct tape out of his pocket, and taped the wires in place.
Halfway there.