Phoenix RisingOpening Gambit: EndgameMac’s voice-over:Rudyard Kipling called it the “Great Game”. Nowadays, we call it “intelligence” . . . and a lotta days, I think Kipling had the better notion. It can be fun, in a funny way . . . but it’s amazing how often I end up doing things that look pretty dumb.
Like that old standby: jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.
Or my current exercise: dangling in mid-air above a steep ravine in the Krusné Hory mountains in northwestern Czechoslovakia, with a river in spate a long way down and a perfectly good bridge on top of me.It had taken over five months for the DXS to work through the negotiations for the prisoner exchange that would bring three of their operatives home from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
It took about fifteen seconds for the whole operation to go wrong.
And they’d been expecting it . . . which was why MacGyver was there, slung into climbing harness, trying not to think about the misty drop below his dangling feet as he waited under the footbridge that the two sides had agreed would serve as a safe location for the swap. Mac had been out there since two o’clock in the morning, rigging transit lines that ran from one end to the other, so he could manoeuver along the bridge at need – after all, if the expected betrayal did occur, who could say where on the entire length of the bridge any of the players would be at just that moment? The plan was simple enough, on the face of it: the prisoners to be exchanged would start at opposite ends at the same time and cross from one side to the other. Both sides would get what they wanted – what they had agreed they wanted.
It could have been that simple, if there had been only two sides.
So we’ve got an extra side too . . . the underside. Once Mac had finished rigging his lines, it had been safer for him to stay in place rather than risk being spotted leaving or returning; but it hadn’t made for an easy night, trying to nap in his climbing rig while he waited for dawn and the scheduled exchange.
I mostly find the sound of running water pretty soothing . . . but not fifty feet straight down. Three days of heavy rains in the mountains had flooded the river and threatened to delay the operation, but the clouds had finally slunk away the previous evening, and the early May morning promised to be as bright and warm as a day could be.
MacGyver had watched through one of the DXS’ mini-periscopes as the prisoners started their crossing, the three DXS operatives being liberated from the eastern side and the two exchanged detainees from the west side. One of the westbound prisoners, a woman, was plainly limping, assisted by another, a stoutly built man with several days’ growth of beard; the third seemed dazed by the fresh air and the bright morning light that flashed off his thick glasses, as if he’d been held in darkness for a long time.
With an unusually valuable prize in hand to offer for a trade, the DXS negotiator had been in a position of unusual strength when the talks began. A tough and seasoned diplomat with a long history in intelligence, he’d chosen to apply the extra leverage and demand the release of an additional US citizen, giving up in turn the control over the exchange location. A long and complicated series of negotiations had led to this asymmetrical situation, with Mac trying to keep an eye on all five at once as they approached the centre of the bridge and passed each other. The woman glared furiously at the eastbound prisoners, and the man assisting her seemed all but ready to spit in their faces; but the two groups passed each other without exchanging any remarks, and for a moment MacGyver had been able to breathe deeply and wonder if the extra layers of elaborate safeguards were going to turn out to have been a waste of time.
And then the shooting began.
Dang it! I hate being right!The DXS strategic analyst had predicted a sniper, and had sniffed at MacGyver’s expectation of automatic weapons fire – but it was Mac who’d had the final say in the preparations, and it was Mac who was there on the site, feeling his adrenaline flare at the all-too-familiar unmistakable rattle of an AK-47. He’d just leapfrogged his station to keep up with the westbound DXS agents and run the mini-periscope up again to look back along the bridge, and he could see only too clearly as the two eastbound detainees went down, huddling protectively in on themselves. The wooden boards of the bridge deck offered no hope of cover, but they’d both been supplied with bulletproof vests under their clothing, and Mac could only hope it would be enough.
He could also see the westbound group, who hadn’t had anyone to demand body armour for them. They’d hit the deck also when the gunfire had started – Mac wasn’t at all surprised to see Bill Foy covering Emily Breckenridge with his own body as he hauled her down, and then turning to bark instructions over his shoulder to the third member of their group, who had been slower to respond, looking around frantically in his confusion.
MacGyver was already moving by then, hitting the release catch that would pay out enough slack on his own line as he grabbed for the edge of the bridge and vaulted over the rail, landing in a crouch beside Bill and Emily. He tossed them two of the lines he had prepared, gasping, “Swing over – climbing harness ready for you under the bridge! Go go
go!!”
That was enough for the two seasoned agents: Bill Foy had had solid enough training, and Emily was an expert mountaineer who freeclimbed the Alps for fun and was probably going to tease MacGyver mercilessly about his own nerves once they were all safe at home again. Mac ran back in a crouch towards the eastern side and grabbed hold of the third man, who had turned to look back frantically at the far end of the bridge where the two released Soviet detainees lay. He cried out in alarm and struggled in Mac’s grip.
Mac gave him just enough of a shake to get the man’s attention focused on him. “Jason Blake?”
Behind the thick glasses, grey eyes widened in surprise. “Who – where’d you come from – ?”
“Name’s MacGyver. Your sister Karen sent me.
Hold on!” Mac wrapped his arms around Jason Blake’s emaciated frame and dived over the bridge rails as the lethal firing path of the AK-47 on the far bank passed by and above them. He heard Jason let out a high-pitched scream as they went over the edge, and some part of Mac’s own brain that wasn’t allowed to drive just now echoed the scream inwardly. The shriek turned into a squashed splutter as the climbing rig caught them in mid-drop and their fall turned into a swinging arc.
Mac shifted his grip. “Jason, listen to me. You’re all right but
you gotta listen. Wrap your arms and legs around me and
hold on – I’ve gotta get us back up underneath the bridge before they figure out where we’ve gone and start shooting again.”
With Jason clinging like a panicked limpet, MacGyver pulled them both up on the lines until they were back under the slender protection of the bridge. The young man resembled his older sister: fair-haired, fine-boned, young and nervous, with eyes that would have seemed too large for his face even if eight months of imprisonment hadn’t left him so gaunt that he seemed to weigh nothing. Getting him into his climbing harness felt like stuffing a child into a playsuit, except that Jason was doing his awkward best to help.
Bill and Emily were long gone; in addition to the harnesses rigged and waiting on the main anchor line, Mac had set up a parallel looped line that ran clothesline-fashion through a pulley fixed to the support pylon on the western bank. All the agents had to do was belay onto one line and pull on the other, and they could make the transit to the end of the bridge as fast as they could haul on the rope. Mac had been using the same system to shift himself quickly back and forth along the underside of the bridge.
He saw now that the two seasoned operatives were already at the western bank, casting off from their harnesses to make the dangerously vulnerable leap across the exposed gap between the pylons and the safety of the steep slope beyond. MacGyver watched Bill haul Emily under the cover of the thick underbrush and begin the scramble up to where they would be met and welcomed by the main force of waiting DXS agents. Two chickens safely in the basket, and the third at least temporarily out of the frying pan: that still left two lives in the balance.
The gunfire had stopped; an eerie silence had fallen over the ravine, and the rushing river below them could be heard clearly again. The morning seemed to be holding its breath, waiting to see who had survived the sudden plunge into violence. Once Mac was sure Jason wouldn’t fall if left alone briefly, he pulled out his mini-periscope and extended it again, trying to get a clear look at the eastern end of the bridge where the other two prisoners had fallen.
MacGyver often felt a strange reluctance whenever the DXS insisted on issuing him specialised equipment; it never seemed to work out any better than his own improvised solutions, and the fancy gear always seemed more likely to get shot up, banged up, or broken. The moment he raised the periscope head clear of the surface of the bridge, the machine gun clattered again and the line of bullets found the protruding end and shattered it. Mac only just managed not to drop the thing from the force of the smash.
“Aw, dang it!” he said, out loud this time.
The radio bud in his ear buzzed and crackled. “You still with us, Mac?”
“Givin’ up on radio silence, Pac-Man?”
“Well, they know we’re here. They know you’re there. Seems pretty pointless.”
Mac grinned. Ed Packwood was the DXS coordinator for the operation, and just having him around meant better odds of getting home intact. “I’d say it’s an idea whose time has come . . . and gone.” He stuffed the broken periscope into a pocket. “I’ve got our third man safe, but I didn’t see what happened to the other two.”
He didn’t like the long hesitation that followed before Packwood answered. “I think Alexi Chernov made it. We saw him crawl to the far side and make it into the trees.”
MacGyver glanced up to see Jason following Mac’s half of the conversation. “Jason, did you see what happened to the two guys we were exchanging? Did they both go down?”
Jason swallowed with visible difficulty. “Uh . . . one of them got all the way across – the dark-haired guy with the scowl. The other one, the man with the catfish moustache . . . he . . . the gunfire kept coming back to him. I didn’t see any blood at first – ”
“We gave ‘em both bulletproof vests.”
Jason swallowed again. “The guy with the gun must have figured that out . . . the last pass they – they must have targeted his head. It wasn’t . . . no-one could have survived that.” Jason looked very sick.
Mac found himself swallowing hard as well. “Didja hear that, Pac-Man?”
“Yeah. I heard.”
“Quayle’s dead.”
Packwood didn’t reply. There wasn’t anything to say.
“
And they’re probably listening in on us. So no telling them the combination to my locker.”
“Aw, Mac, there’s nothing in there anyway except dirty socks and a pile of old National Geographics.”
“Hey, those are
vintage magazines.” MacGyver looked along the length of the bridge and back towards the eastern bank, narrowing his eyes against the slanting morning sunlight. He slid his pack off his back and hung it from the main anchor line where he could reach it easily, then dug into a pocket for an extra carabiner and clipped it to the same line towards the western bank of the river.
When I was a kid, Halloween could get pretty competitive – my buddies and me were always trying to come up with some scary gimmick that would top anything anyone else tried. And, of course, whatever we did one year, we had to top it ourselves the next.“Pac-Man.”
“Yo.”
“Was it my imagination, or did that last burst of gunfire come from a different angle?”
“Were you the teacher’s pet in geometry class as well as physics?”
Mac pulled out the broken periscope again, extended it to its maximum length, and rigged it with triangled lines to hang horizontally under the carabiner, looking a bit like a coat hanger. “C’mon, Pac-Man. The first shots came from the slope way above the level of the bridge, and almost straight up from it – just a bit on the downstream side. Those didn’t.”
“‘Fraid you’re right, Mac . . . I think he’s working his way upstream and down the ravine wall.”
MacGyver wriggled out of his jacket, rolled it into a compact bundle and stuffed it into the pack, then shrugged out of his own Kevlar vest. He should have felt uncomfortably exposed, but instead he felt only relief at being finally free of the restricting weight and rigid bulk. He breathed deeply, tasting the sweet misty air that rose from the rushing river far below. The adrenaline racing through him brought the entire world into sharp, beautiful, exquisite focus.
“You’re being flanked. He wants you.”
“Hey, it’s always nice to be wanted.” Mac hung the Kevlar vest on the crosspiece of the periscope, studied the effect for a moment, and then shrugged out of his shirt and draped it over the vest. Much better . . . although the bare skin between his shoulderblades prickled with a suddenly heightened sense of vulnerability.
There was the year we had the scarecrow that suddenly came to life in the front yard . . .“He’s good. Our own sniper hasn’t been able to get a single clear shot at him.”
“You mean every minute I’m out here, I’m putting one of our Eastern friends in danger of getting shot?”
“Friends? He’s trying to
kill you, Mac.”
“Well, yeah, but I’m sure it’s nothin’ personal.”
. . . and the next year, I had the best idea of all: I made the scarecrow fly.“I thought you said getting shot was always personal.”
“Did I? I guess it is.” Mac pulled the tight knit cap off his head and secured it to the top of his ‘scarecrow’. His hair promptly fell into his eyes – he’d had no chance for a haircut since he’d left LA weeks before, hell-bent on somehow catching up with Pete Thornton in the vast reaches of Soviet Russia in time to be of some help. They’d been on their way home at last and had only made it as far as Athens when the word reached them that the long-delayed prisoner exchange was finally going to happen.
All it took was a well-oiled pulley, the right application of gravity and physics, and a whole lotta clothesline.He pushed his hair back again. “Any word from the other side? Are they still holding radio silence?”
It was a moment before Packwood answered. “No . . . but they might as well, for all the good it’s doing us.”
“Thought you had a translator on your team.” Mac caught hold of one side of the looped line and pulled it to within Jason’s reach. “Hold on to this, will ya? Don’t let go.” He grasped the other side of the parallel line, pulled out his Swiss Army knife and cut through it. “Good. Now pay me out some of the slack . . . easy. Keep hold of the line, we’re gonna need it.” He made his end of the rope fast to the scarecrow.
“Of
course I have a translator!” Packwood snapped. “And whatever they’re speaking, it isn’t Russian, German, or Czech. It also isn’t French, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Greek, or Turkish, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t Choctaw either. Got any other ideas, genius?”
“Yeah. I might. Can you patch their transmissions through to us?” Mac looked at Jason. “Karen told me you’re a linguist.” Jason’s file had said a good deal more: his station chief had been furious when his best translator had been risked, and lost, in a poorly handled field operation. Jason hadn’t even been fully certified for field work; but the ops coordinator had not survived to face a reprimand.
Jason only shrugged and nodded.
“Careful now – I need you to keep hold of that rope for me a bit longer.” MacGyver passed his radio over to Jason, noting how the young man’s attention became focused the moment he was able to hear the voices from the eastern side. Mac glanced upstream – no further sign yet of the enemy gunman – and fished in his jeans pocket for another carabiner. “Can you follow what they’re saying?”
Jason nodded. “Sure, no problem. They’re speaking Hungarian.”
“Hungarian operatives? What the heck are they doing here?”
Jason made an impatient gesture. “They aren’t Hungarian, they’re just speaking it – they probably think no-one on our side can understand them – no, wait, one of them is Hungarian. Budapest native. Professional class. Maybe it was his idea. The others are Czech and Russian, and their CO is Russian, probably from Leningrad originally. He’s totally p*ssed off and he’s got the most awful accent you wouldn’t believe.”
“I might. What’re they saying?”
“They’re looking after the survivor – Chernov? He’s injured, but not badly.” Jason winced. “He’s Ukrainian. With a bad temper and a really expressive vocabulary.”
“Anything about the gunman?”
Jason frowned. “This doesn’t make any sense. It sounds like they don’t know who he is. They’re arguing over whether to go after him.” He looked at MacGyver in confusion. “I thought he was on their side.”
Mac had found a good spot on the underside of the bridge and was securing the second carabiner – Packwood had ragged him unmercifully about his insistence on adding duct tape to his regular field kit, and now he was going to have to rag him back. “More than two sides to this operation – and please don’t ask me how many there really are. It makes my head ache.”
“Listen, um . . . what did you say your name was again?”
“MacGyver. Just call me Mac. Lemme have that line now – thanks.” Mac threaded the line through the carabiner, coiled up enough of the remaining length for what he needed, cut the excess off and stuffed it into the pack.
“Okay, Mac . . . um, don’t think I’m not grateful and all that, but what the hell are you doing?”
“Keepin’ a promise.” Mac gave his scarecrow a final examination and added a few extra strips of duct tape to make sure it would hold together. “I promised your sister I’d get you out.”
“But why are we still out here? Why didn’t we just follow Bill and Emily?”
MacGyver pointed towards the western end of the bridge, where the slanting morning sun was dappling the bushes and trees around the pylons. It all looked deceptively peaceful. “I figure that even when the shooting first started, there was an exposed gap between where the cover of the bridge ends and where the bushes and trees get thick enough to hide under. Bill and Emily got across while the gunman was finishing off Quayle and tryin’ for us. Since then, he’s been workin’ his way around . . . by now, a good part of the final stretch of the transit is probably open to fire, and the longer we wait, the more he can see.”
Jason turned even whiter under his prison pallor. “You mean – you mean we’re cut off. There’s nowhere to go but back there . . . ” he glanced over his shoulder at the eastern bank. “No way. I
can’t go back. Please . . . ”
“Relax. We’re not gettin’ out that way.”
“Then where can we go?”
MacGyver looked pointedly downwards, towards the river foaming far below them. “How well can you swim?”
Jason followed his gaze and gulped. “Are you
crazy?”
Mac grinned and shrugged. “Hey, I asked you my question first.”
“Um . . . okay, I guess . . . but I’m not all that strong any more . . . and really, it’s not like I ever was . . .”
“Good enough. I’m giving you the pack; it’s got some bouyancy, and this pocket here has a self-inflating survival cushion built into it. Let’s get your glasses stowed in there, too – you don’t wanna risk losing or breaking them. Good. Just remember to keep your head up, and pull this tab once you’re in the river.”
Getting Jason ready to shed his climbing harness proved to be even more reminiscent of dealing with a small child – and not a well-coordinated one. “Okay. Now take your shoes off, stuff your socks into them, loop the laces through your belt and tie them together.” As he spoke, Mac was doing the same with his own sneakers.
And Packwood just didn’t understand why I wouldn’t wear combat boots on this jaunt. I bet he doesn’t know how heavy those things are when they’re soggy.He retrieved the radio from Jason. “Any fresh news, Pac-Man?”
“Well, the Red Sox still can’t play worth a damn, and we still haven’t spotted your sniper. Bill is sitting on Emily’s good leg so she won’t try to go after the guy herself, and she’s taught me eight new swear words in three different languages, but she won’t tell me what they mean.”
“So nothing’s changed.”
“Nope.”
“Then I guess we’re done here. See ya on the flip side.”
“Good luck, Mac. And you better make it. I don’t want to have to explain to Pete that I lost you.”
MacGyver sealed the radio into a waterproof pouch, shoved it into his backpack and sealed the pack in turn. He strapped it to Jason’s chest, hoping that position would work better as a makeshift PFD, and attached a fifteen-foot length of the excess line to the pack, leaving the end trailing loose. “You ready?”
“Hell, no!” Jason gulped. “But I guess it beats getting shot.”
“That’s the spirit. Let’s go!”
My Mom was awful mad about her clothesline, but even she thought the flying scarecrow was pretty slick.As the two men dropped towards the river, Mac held onto the line he’d threaded through the carabiner, running out to the pulley at the western pylon and back again to his scarecrow. As the slack was taken up, it yanked the vaguely man-shaped bundle along the transit line towards the western end of the bridge. When the machine-gun fire opened up again, Mac’s skin cringed of its own accord; the next second and a half of falling seemed frozen in amber, time crawling slowly as he watched to see if the gunman would target the real fugitives or the decoy.
When the scarecrow began to jerk and sway under the impact of the bullets, Mac let go of his end of the line and time speeded up again with an almost audible whoosh. The decoy had appeared in the sniper’s field of fire, just where he’d expected to see someone making a break for the homeward bank; who would be crazy enough to drop into a flooded river instead? Especially when the river flowed south and east, back towards the heart of Czechoslovakia and Soviet territory.
Mac’s feet hit the water cleanly and he went deep into the cold, clear river, feeling the current pushing at him, its eager force carrying him away from the bridge and out of gunshot range even as he headed upwards again. His head broke the surface and he shook his hair out of his eyes, almost laughing with exhilaration. Barefoot and shirtless, free of the menace of the sniper and the no-win game of lethal five-handed chess at the bridge, he felt light as a feather. Waves of adrenaline were still racing through him and the icy water had no power to drag him down.
He could see Jason bobbing along up ahead, the rope trailing visibly behind him in the water like a fishing line behind a solidly hooked trout, giving Mac an easy means to catch up with him. Like a simple sea anchor, the trailing line also provided some stability in the foaming current. It was eight miles downriver to the nearest town – Soviet controlled – but only two miles to the fallback point he’d scoped out on the western side, where they would be able to double back and meet up with Packwood waiting with dry clothes and a vehicle.
MacGyver let out an exultant whoop and started to swim after his fish.
φThe dizzy feeling of giddy exhilaration had ebbed by the time they reached their landing spot, but the sense of freedom and delight remained. Jason was shivering with the cold, but he’d found MacGyver’s enthusiasm contagious, and couldn’t keep from grinning even though his teeth were chattering.
“Oh my god. We made it. We really made it.”
Mac relieved him of the pack and fished out his jacket, glad to see the waterproofing had held. “Here, I think you need this more than I do. Get that wet shirt off and put your shoes back on. We’ve got about half an hour’s hiking to get across the watershed to our pick-up point. Think you can make it?”
“I feel like I ought to be able to fly.” Jason took a few staggering steps; Mac caught him as he tripped.
“Easy. There’s survival rations in the pack – that oughta help. It doesn’t look like the prison food agreed with you.”
“There wasn’t a whole lot of it to agree with. Oh my god, chocolate. I don’t even remember what it tastes like.”
“C’mon, then – we’ll take it easy. Walking should warm you up.”
“What about you? Aren’t you cold?”
“Not yet, but we better go – the hike will help.”
The May sun was bright and the air felt balmy now that they were out of the river; and even at the gentle pace MacGyver set, muscles that had stiffened in the cold water began to loosen up. The real chill was deep inside, where the sunlight couldn’t reach.
Quayle should have resisted being traded back – he knew he’d be a target the moment he set foot across the Iron Curtain – but he’d been too arrogantly confident of his own value and importance. Mac’s mission hadn’t even included keeping Quayle alive; the man had been a sacrificial pawn from the start.
And when all the shooting was done, as far as the DXS were concerned the exchange had been a complete triumph by official standards – or would be, once Mac and Jason reached their goal. All three DXS detainees had been retrieved without further injury, and the sacrifice play with Quayle had bought success for the real goal of the prisoner swap: Alexi Chernov was back on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, his credentials intact, ready to resume the activities as a Western double agent that had been interrupted when an overly zealous Belgian customs agent had collared him six months before. The successful operation might even help offset the official annoyance at Mac and Pete’s recent unsanctioned activities in the USSR.
Mac looked up at the lovely clear mountain sky, wishing the bright sunlight could burn away the returning headache of trying to keep track of the moves in the complex game. The Great Game . . . the plunge into the river had felt profoundly cleansing, but his skin began to crawl again when he thought of Quayle lying dead back on the bridge, shot by his own associates after one too many double-crosses. The man had been scum, but his death had been a bloodlessly calculated strategy play. Was that really any better?
Jason had been silent for some time, but he was keeping up well enough. They crested the ridge they’d been climbing and he stopped to catch his breath. “I haven’t thanked you yet. You saved my life.”
MacGyver started, glad to be distracted from his thoughts. “Hey, no problem. Like I told you, I promised Karen I’d get you out.”
“Karen. I can’t believe I’m really going to see her again. How is she? She must have had a horrible time after I was captured – she’s always looked after me.”
“Don’t worry. She’s fine.”
She’s not fine. But it can wait till you’re safe home before you have to face any of that.
She’d’ve faced criminal charges if Pete hadn’t’a stuck his neck out for her – my request – my “bonus” for taking Quayle down. Instead, she was canned. Pete couldn’t stand in the way of that. I couldn’t ask him to, and I didn’t.
Now she’s eating her heart out because all she ever wanted was to be an intelligence operative . . . to fight the bad guys, free the oppressed, all of that . . . and she ended up compromised and disgraced. She about climbed the walls waiting while they negotiated your return, but she’ll be kicking the walls anyway from now on.
Some big brass sent you behind the Iron Curtain without a good enough exit mapped out, and before it was over Pete got toasted and Mrs. Chung got knocked flat and I spent a sunny afternoon playing lethal Sardines with a nutcase who thought he could play every side against the middle. And now he’s been shot by one of his own sides to keep him away from another.
Your sister had the courage to help us all get out alive, and they booted her anyway. Now she’s working as a secretary for some downtown office.The Great Game didn’t seem as much fun as it used to be.
)
Yay! The posting has begun! 
