AftershocksNine: Deconstructionist‘We have been given a mighty weapon with which to confound our enemies . . . I shall place in your hand a sword of righteousness, that ye may do My will. We will bring terror to the terrorists . . . God has chosen the tools of His bloody vengeance, the weapons in His mighty hands.’
I told Laura that hatred shouldn’t be taken personally.
I lied.
Nothing’s more personal.
“It’s
got to be Hunter, Pete! It’s his style!”
“But why leave a note at all?”
“He’s gloatin’, Pete! He wants to scare us. He wants to make us squirm. It makes him feel big.”
“How the hell did he even know about her? How did he know where she was?” Pete held up a hand. “Don’t answer that, Mac. You’ve already given me an earful on that subject.”
“Fine. I won’t.”
“But why did they go after Ruth? If it’s revenge, revenge for
what?”
“I don’t know, Pete. I don’t even know if we’re looking at a whole bunch of different puzzles, or different pieces of the same puzzle.” MacGyver ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head as if he though he might dislodge an answer that way. “Any progress on the possible leak here at Phoenix?”
“Willis is working on it. He said he had an idea – I didn’t ask him the details, I just told him to go ahead. I don’t know if anyone’s tried to check the fake file on Dexter since we amended it.”
“And no calls on the pager, either.”
“Not yet.”
“Hunter’s got her, Pete, I’m sure of it – and I’m betting he’ll take her up to the cabin, where they took me.” Mac had been pacing the office like a caged tiger; now he turned to Pete. “That envelope I brought back – did you have any luck tracing him?”
“Well, yes . . . we hit the jackpot, in fact.” Somewhat reluctantly, Pete picked up a folder that lay on his desk and flipped through it. “The address checked out for a Winston Lamont Hunter, aged 62. Divorced; his ex-wife’s back in Mississippi, and had nothing to say to anyone, except that she hasn’t seen her husband in years, not since he moved out to LA to be near his son.”
“Where does he live?” MacGyver halted his pacing and stared out the window.
“San Fernando. His son lives nearby, also divorced – and there’s a grandson: Jake Hunter.”
Mac’s eyes gleamed. “Jake!”
“Has to be. He’s got a good long rap sheet, in spite of only being 20 – mostly mild stuff: vandalism, petty theft, truancy, trespassing.” Pete turned a page. “He had a record as a bully in school, and since graduation he’s been implicated in some ugly incidents of harassment and intimidation.”
“What about Cody? Did we get any prints off that pager?”
“Nice clean set, but we haven’t made any progress in identifying him – he doesn’t seem to have any priors. He may have a knack for letting Jake take the rap.” Pete cleared his throat. “As for Hunter: a further check of property records revealed that he also owns a few acres of land up in the San Gabriel Mountains.
And there’s a small cabin out there. Access is by Forest Service roads; it sounds like the right place.”
“That’s it. Have you got the location mapped yet?”
“Well, yes, but – Mac, wait just a moment before you go off half-cocked. What if you head off into the mountains, and we get a ransom demand while you’re out there?”
“I’m bettin’ you won’t. They aren’t interested in ransom.” MacGyver took the folder from Pete and flipped through it. “What could they ask for? Hitler’s brain in a jar? California on a silver platter? Come
on, Pete.”
“Okay, you’ve got a point. But hang on, all right? We’ve got more – ” Pete went to his computer with the air of a magician about to produce a particularly fine rabbit from an unexpected hat. “Hunter was in Frau Brandenburg’s files.”
Mac looked up from the folder, his eyes gleaming. Pete grinned, pecked on the keyboard, and pointed to the screen as it filled with data. “Associated with the Identity Church, Posse Comitatus and the White Aryan Resistance – his son isn’t listed, but the grandson is, along with several other
Anhänger – ”
“Followers,” Mac translated. “What are those codes next to the names – ‘AFW’ and ‘NKG’?”
“Frau Brandenburg’s personal evaluation system. She had two numerical scales for ranking everyone:
‘Aufopferungswille’ – which seems to be a rating of how well she could count on their loyalty and dedication to the cause – and
‘Nützlichkeitsgröße’, which seems to be a ranking of how potentially important each individual was.
Nützlichkeitsgröße apparently included social status, access to power or influence, etc.”
“Huh,” Mac peered at the screen. “The scale’s from 0 to 100, right? I wonder if Hunter knew just how low she ranked him. Did she have anything else on him?”
“Take a look.” Pete opened another screen of data.
MacGyver snorted. “Pity Hunter can’t see this – I’d give a lot to see his face.
‘Typischer Amerikaner: ungebildeter, undisziplinierter, selbstgerechter, leicht zu kontrollierender Blödmann’ – Pete, am I translatin’ this right . . . ?”
“ ‘A typical American: uneducated, undisciplined, self-righteous fool, easily controlled’. It sounds like she’d actually met him, doesn’t it?” Pete pulled a face. “Most of her assessments aren’t what you’d call flattering.”
“No kidding. It looks like you’ve got some more associates cross-referenced.”
“Yeah. Here’s ‘Travis’ – Travis Henderson, also Identity Church, with ties to Butler and the Aryan Nations. No sign of ‘Buck’, if that’s his real name. But here’s an interesting item – ”
Mac studied the new entry. “ ‘Rolf Schmidt’ – ‘
völkisch,
Flüchtling’ – ‘fugitive’ – another ex-Nazi?”
“Could be. She ranked him pretty high for ‘loyalty’. Here’s the interesting part: he originally had a very low ranking for ‘usefulness’, but it was amended at some time to a much higher score.”
“Have you started to trace him yet?”
“I’ll have to ask Willis to work on that also. You can see that this entry didn’t include an address . . . but I think we should start by looking in and around San Gabriel. We could be on the track of your ‘Professor’.”
“Wait just a darned minute, Pete – ” MacGyver leaned over the desk, but he wasn’t looking at the computer screen any more; his dark eyes bored into Pete’s. “I
know just how many boxes of these files we recovered – and here you’ve got it all nicely entered in the computer,
and translated,
and cross-referenced and indexed and everything, with the comments and coding methods analysed – ” Mac aimed an accusing finger at Pete. “That kinda work takes
weeks. This isn’t Ruth’s doing; she was working off hard copies, and she’s never pretended to be computer-savvy.”
Pete attempted to look innocent, although he knew it was pointless. “MacGyver, you know how efficient our data entry team is – they’re the best.”
“Well, yeah, Willis won’t stand for anything less! Neither will you. But don’t try to wiggle outta this. You musta had the computer team working on transcription and analysis from Day One – even
before the Legal guys started chewing on it, and long before they spat it out.”
Pete shrugged. “Simple data entry, Mac . . . cataloguing evidence. Standard procedure. No legal issues in that.”
“And the analysis?”
“Ruth isn’t the only one with contacts. I called in a favour.” Pete raised an eyebrow. “Next time, will you have a little more faith in me?”
Mac was shaking his head, a look of chagrin on his face. He waved a hand. “You bet, Pete . . . tell ya what. Next time, I’ll just hang out with Frances the File Cabinet till you need me, okay?”
Pete smiled and started to answer. He was interrupted when the office door was flung open; Willis burst in at a half-run, his hands full of computer printouts.
“Pete, can you get hold of Mac – ? Oh, you’re here! Thank god. I just turned up something.”
“What’s up? Somebody got at Dexter’s file?”
“What? Oh, that – no, there hasn’t been any sniffing around that piece of cheese since I put it out. But I went back to the couple of weeks before the interns started getting hassled, and started digging.” Willis turned to Pete. “You know how we kept the access to the Brandenburg files under really tight restrictions? You didn’t want anyone poking around in there, except for the legal team when they did their assessment.”
“Somebody read them?”
Willis’ voice was harsh. “Someone tried to
alter them.”
“What?” Pete looked like a thundercloud. “
Who? Who was it?”
“I don’t know!” Willis had dropped his pile of printouts onto Pete’s desk, and started rooting through them. “I haven’t been able to find that out yet. I think it’s the same person who accessed Dexter’s file – there’s the same feel to what he’s doing. Him or her. Them. They’re good enough to hide their tracks, but not good enough to eliminate them.”
Mac broke in. “Lemme guess, Willis – they were tryin’ to
delete names, right?”
Willis looked up, startled. “How’d you know?”
“Was one of the names Winston Hunter?”
“Yeah, it was.”
Mac felt icy prickles run up the back of his neck. “Anyone else?”
“Just one other name – someone named Rolf Schmidt.”
Mac exchanged a glance with Pete. “Aw,
man.”
Pete rubbed his eyes. “Willis, I need you to keep on top of the hunt for Ruth. But I want you to pick the best person you’ve got, tell ‘em to drop everything else and start looking for this Schmidt. I want him. Yesterday. They can start with German-speaking immigrants old enough to have been involved in World War II, and go on from there. Mac – Mac, where are you going?”
Mac had picked up his leather jacket from where he’d dumped it on a chair, and was shrugging into it. “I already told you, Pete. Hunter’s cabin.”
“What about Schmidt?”
“How long is it gonna take to track him down? Too long, I’m betting.”
“
Mac – ”
“If you do get anything, you can call me on the car phone.”
“Mobile phone coverage gets pretty hit-and-miss out there.” Pete knew he was grasping at straws.
“Leave a message.”
Pete sighed and threw up his hands. “All right,
fine. Just don’t – ”
“ – do anything stupid?”
“Just be careful.”
“Fine. Don’t worry. Where’s the map and directions?”
“Helen’s got it all at her desk – it’s waiting for you.” Pete’s voice was brusque.
Mac wasn’t fooled. He paused on his way out the door to meet Pete’s eyes. “Thanks. I mean it.”
Helen handed him a manila folder with a computer printout of detailed directions, several pages from the relevant Thomas Guides, and the USGS quad maps for the area. The cabin was marked in ink, and several of the Forest Service roads were highlighted. Mac raised his eyebrows in appreciation.
“Wow. Good job.”
“I’ll let them know in Mapping,” Helen replied. Her voice was clipped and her face was a mask of impassivity.
Mac leaned over the desk to squeeze her shoulder. “Thank them for me, awright?”
“MacGyver – ”
Mac held up a hand. “Helen, do me a favour? Don’t tell me to be careful, okay?”
Helen sniffed. “MacGyver, I’ve known you for years. I wasn’t going to do anything of the sort.”
“Okay. Then don’t tell me not to do anything stupid. How’s that?”
Helen’s mask went ragged. “I wasn’t going to do that, either. Mac, please – ”
“What?”
“Just –
get her back. Please?”
It had been a damp winter, and patches of snow still lay under the trees on the eastern faces of the slopes. The secondary road had given way to Forest Service roads, which had turned into washboard twice already where spring runoff had shredded the road surface. Mac had reached the altitude where the ponderosa and lodgepole pine and Douglas fir took over from the lowland scrub, and you could chart the rain shadows from each peak by looking at the patchwork shades of brown and green on the hills.
The trees had begun to loom like brooding sentinels, scattered ranks set apart from each other by the fierce competition for water. At this height, the highland forest seemed to have triumphed over the desert conditions farther down – but every drop of water was a prize, and the victory of each towering tree was revealed in the lack of undergrowth around it. Only in the gullies and ravines did the brush grow dense and tangled, and the thickets greeted careless passers-by with barbed thorns. On the sunnier western slopes, you could find cactus growing amongst the juniper and scrub oak.
As MacGyver threaded his way through the maze of winding gravel and dirt roads, he felt himself slipping into the mentality of the patient, intractable trees and enduring stones and rock. This forest was very different from the deep woods of northern Minnesota or the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest – dry and sparse, with less cover and a tougher hide – but it was still his turf. He understood the country in his bones, and anyone who thought they could hide from him up here had underestimated him – badly.
And whoever had decided to follow him up here was also in over his head . . . he just didn’t know it yet.
The pursuer came around yet another bend in the endlessly twisting mountain road and hit his brakes with a screech. The yellow truck that he had been following had come to a sudden and violent stop, and now sat skewed at an awkward angle to the road, its cab halfway up the low embankment on the right-hand side. Deep skid marks left in the gravel by the tires showed where the sudden braking had occurred, although there was no sign of whatever had instigated the emergency response.
Probably some damned animal or other – whatever it was must have run off in terror.The driver’s door had swung open, and the still form of the driver lay sprawled beside the truck, face down.
Oh, God. Can’t see any blood . . . but . . . The pursuer bailed out from the front seat almost before his car had come to a full stop. He ran to where MacGyver lay, bending down to check for a pulse.
He found the heartbeat quickly enough, and the reassuring drumbeat of life was strong under his fingertips. The sudden iron grip of fingers locking onto his wrist was even stronger. MacGyver flipped himself over and caught the other man’s arm in a hold that would have had plenty of leverage even without the furious roar of adrenaline behind it. Caught off guard, the man went tumbling down the embankment like a limp dishrag.
Mac was on him like a leopard even as he fell. The speed was necessary: by the time his opponent had reached the edge of the muddy ditch that bordered the road, he had pulled himself from an awkward tumble into a graceful, practiced roll. He was beginning to rise to his feet at the end of the fall when MacGyver tackled him full-on, bowling him over onto his back with enough force to knock the wind out of him. Mac pinned him to the ground and cocked his fist back, ready to follow through, but the man lay passively still underneath him.
“
Zak!”
Zak Abramson met Mac’s look with a sardonic expression, in spite of the fist aimed at his eyes. “Well, at least you’re not damaged after all, God be praised.”
“What the – ” Mac spluttered.
“What the hell am I doing out here? At the moment, getting a lot of mud on a perfectly good coat, and reminding myself not to underestimate American operatives.”
Mac finally placed the faint accent. “You’re a
katsa.”
The Mossad operative inclined his head in accordance. “Isaac ben Abraham. But ‘Zak’ does as well as anything.”
“Okay, so – ”
“ – so what the hell am I doing following you?”
Mac had lowered his fist, but now he raised it again. There was a ghost of a smile on his face, but his eyes were earnest. “If you’re gonna ask all the questions for me, the least you can do is answer a few.”
Zak grinned nonchalantly. “Personally, I would rather have been working together long since. But my superiors would not authorise my breaking cover. So, you have broken it for me.”
“You mean you
let me know you were followin’ me . . . ?”
“You didn’t notice me the last time, did you? Or the time before that?”
Mac threw up his hands. “How many were there?”
“Only three so far. I haven’t been in Los Angeles long. I only came down from the Bay Area a few days ago, when Mr. Collins brought Ruth here.”
Mac’s eyes narrowed. “So she was passing information to you guys, not to the Anti-Defamation League?”
“Oh, the ADL people think I’m one of them. They’ve been getting all Ruth’s reports. They’re more likely to do anything with them than we are, I fear.”
“Mossad doesn’t care about neo-Nazis?”
Zak shrugged. “Your problem, really. Not ours. They’re not any current threat to the state of Israel, you see. My superiors are very single-minded.”
“How about real Nazis? World War II escapees?”
“We let Mengele die of old age.” Zak’s voice was dry. “We should lose much sleep over art thieves?”
Mac’s lips narrowed. “So just when
did you tail me?”
“Don’t feel too bad. You nearly had me twice. And trust me, my friend, I am
very good at this.”
“Well, you guys do have a reputation.”
“We’ve worked hard enough for it.” Zak shifted slightly. “I don’t suppose you’d consider letting me get up, so we can get on with this?”
“Get on with what?”
“Rescuing Mrs. Collins, of course. What else should we be doing?”
Mac eyed him as he stood up. “You know where she is?”
“Hell, no.” Zak made a half-hearted attempt to brush the mud off his coat. “All I know is that you do.”
“But I don’t,” Mac said. “Not for certain. I’m followin’ a hunch.”
“Good enough for me.” Zak grinned again. “You have a reputation as well.”
The third time Zak stepped on a dry twig, Mac didn’t try to hide his annoyance. “I thought you said you were good at this.”
“I am! But I don’t have much call to skulk around in the woods.”
“You mostly skulk around in cities?”
“Exactly so.”
They could just glimpse the cabin now through the trees, and MacGyver waved Zak to hunker down. He himself pulled out a set of field glasses and surveyed the small building and the clearing around it. He could smell the tang of wood smoke; there was a sharp breeze blowing, and the haze in the sky threatened brisker weather and more wind later on.
Beside him, Zak produced a set of miniaturised binoculars and peered through them. “Three vehicles – hard to guess how many men inside. What have they got against windows?”
“I’m pretty sure Hunter’s a survivalist,” Mac answered absently. “This far up in the mountains, windows are a luxury if you plan on wintering in. And he plans on making it through the fall of civilisation.” Mac lowered the glasses. Zak followed him, more successfully, as they slipped through the trees to where they could examine the cabin from another angle.
“You’re kidding, right? Surely he doesn’t think he’s self-sufficient up here?”
“He probably does. He’s off the grid – got a nice big woodpile. He’s got a generator for light, and I bet he’s got propane for heating water, but he’d be able to go without.”
Zak snorted. “That’s ridiculous. Look at that place. Never mind the conveniences he doesn’t really have to have – what about everything else that he
does need? There’s nowhere to put in a crop, and not even enough pasture for a single mangy goat.”
Mac looked at him with some surprise.
“I may be a city boy, but I’m not stupid. I can never figure out why your survivalists overlook the simplest things. Or why they’re all such damned loners. Don’t they realise they’d be better off in groups?”
Mac grinned and shrugged. “Well, he’s only waitin’ for Armageddon to be over – he probably figures he’ll be lifted bodily to Heaven before malnutrition has a chance to set in.” He settled in to the new vantage and studied the cabin again.
“I don’t imagine the Rapture’s going to tidy them all away right now just for our convenience. So what’s our plan?” Zak murmured.
“Well, that depends.”
“On what?”
“A whole lotta things.” MacGyver studied what he could see of the building, trying to guess at the arrangement of rooms inside. “How many people are there, what kinda shape she’s in, where they’ve got her, the layout of the cabin . . . that one little window there must be in the kitchen – see the stovepipe on that side? Can’t see any movement there, though . . .”
“I thought you said you’d been up here before.”
“I was, but I was blindfolded most of the time and I only saw the inside of one room. I figured I’d get up here and see what I had to work with.” MacGyver turned his attention to the trees and undergrowth on the far side of the cabin. The ground began to fall away there, becoming rougher and more broken; a line of darker foliage marked where a watercourse might be – although, in this part of the mountains, it would be dry most of the year.
“You don’t
have a plan, do you?” Zak demanded accusingly. “You came up here with no plan at all!”
Mac shrugged. “If I’d made a plan without scoping out the situation first, I’d’ve just had to change it once I got here.”
Zak stared at him. “You mean that part of your reputation’s true?”
“Which part? The part about improvising a lot?”
“The part about you being crazy.”
Zak was still shaking his head in bemusement as they returned to where they’d hidden Mac’s truck and his own car. He watched as MacGyver produced a glasses case from the glove compartment. “Doesn’t anyone ever notice that those aren’t real corrective lenses?”
“Most folks aren’t that observant. But they
are prescription. There’s a minor correction for hyperpheria – just enough to distort the eyes a bit – and the lenses have an anti-glare coating, so when people look at them they can see it’s not plain glass.” He couldn’t find a hair elastic in the glove compartment, but he spotted a twist-tie on the floor of the cab and fastened his hair back with that. The stadium jacket was still in a heap on the floor back at home – all he had was his brown bomber jacket: old and scruffy, well-worn and much-loved. He left it unzipped and rumpled the shirt underneath, leaving it half-untucked. It would have to do.
Zak studied him quizzically. Mac gave him a long look.
“About that reputation of mine – anything there about my personal quirks?”
“My colleague Moshe ben Aaron has a particularly wild story from a certain encounter in Baalbek – he dined out on it for months.” Zak smiled enigmatically. “Admittedly, Moshe has a very fine style as a raconteur. He calls the tale ‘101 Uses For a Dead Uzi’.” He met MacGyver’s eyes unflinchingly. “Relax, my friend. Yes, Moshe says you’re most adamant: no guns, no killing. It’s a bad idea in friendly territory, anyway. Not part of my plan.”
Mac grinned. “You got a plan?”
Zak returned the grin. “You’re known for using whatever’s at hand, right? Well, I figure your plan’s the nearest thing to hand. So I’ll use that. Why not?”
I’ve been accused of running away from stuff – problems, conflicts, commitments . . . especially commitment . . . although I’ve spent my whole life, pretty much, doing the same kind of work, working for the same kind of ideals. If that isn’t commitment, what is?
And when there’s a real need, or a real problem – or a real danger – well, I don’t run away from that. I don’t run after it, either.
I run at it.
Like Harry said, a lot depends on where the tough guy stops and the wannabe starts. The cabin had a single door, opening on to a hallway dividing the two sides; MacGyver was stepping softly, but he still remembered the feel of the floor beneath his feet from his previous visit, and the smells of the cabin. Hunter’s housekeeping was never going to win any prizes.
Mac hadn’t been taken far down the hall that night before being pushed through the doorway into Hunter’s inner sanctum – on the left; there was the door, the first in the hallway. Another door, farther down on the right, must be the entrance to the kitchen – the stovepipe had been on that side, balancing the fireplace chimney that marked Hunter’s study.
A murmur of voices seeped through the door on the left. MacGyver pulled out his Swiss Army knife and bent his head to listen as he worked, careful to make no noise.
“Geez, Don, what the hell did you give her? She’s still out.” Mac recognised the voice: it was Travis, the man who had pinned him down with the flashlight to his eyes and then set Rocco to watch him, shrugging off the possibility of attack, amused at the sight of a grown man terrified of a dog.
“Bull.” Don’s answering voice was a slow Carolina drawl. “She been awake fer a while now.”
The next voice, high-pitched and hard-edged, was Jake’s. “You mean she’s fakin’ it? How come you didn’t say nothin’? C’mon, Grandma, we’re onto you.”
Here goes. Let’s see now . . . Dexter’s pretty clumsy . . . There was a paper grocery bag half-full of empty cans sitting on the floor, next to another bag of empty beer bottles. Mac bumped it with his foot, and the bag toppled and scattered its contents with a loud jangling crash. He could hear startled yells and obscenities on the other side of the door.
He set his hand on the doorknob, and when he felt movement on the other side, he turned the knob and pulled the door open. The man on the other side of the door, a heavyset, balding man in a hunting vest, staggered and swore, thrown off balance.
Dexter also staggered, obviously caught off guard, and stumbled into the room. There had been no barking at the sudden racket, and there was no sign of Rocco now, to Mac’s relief. He gaped at the group of men – Hunter looking thunderstruck, Jake bewildered, three other men in rough backwoods clothing and varying states of befuddlement – and brayed with nervous laughter. “Hey, you guys. What’s going on? I’ve been waiting for you to call me for, like, ages.”
The room was as he remembered it, except for an Army cot next to the fireplace, where Ruth was now sitting up. She looked ghastly in the harsh light of the single electric bulb, the bruises on her face showing as dark mottled patches, but Mac didn’t see any signs of additional damage. He had wondered whether Ruth would blow his cover as Dexter – although for once, it didn’t matter much if the cover was blown or not.
As the men stared in confusion, Ruth drew herself to her feet and marched unsteadily but imperiously over to where MacGyver stood. Mac often forgot just how small she was; even with Dexter’s slouch, he still towered over her. She glared up at him fiercely, stood on tiptoes and delivered a ringing slap to his face.
“Dexter Fillmore, you miserable little
worm . . . ” she stormed. “You’re involved with these cretins? After everything we’ve done for you?”
The slap hadn’t actually been very hard; Ruth had cupped her hand as she struck him, and Mac had rolled his head in time. But the sound had been convincingly loud in the small room. Dexter cringed from the blow and began to whine.
“More gambling, right? Horses again? How deep a hole did you dig yourself this time?” Ruth demanded.
Dexter sniveled. “Deep enough to get buried in.”
“I swear, I am never giving
anyone a second chance
ever again!”
The men in the room had been temporarily immobilised with sheer astonishment. Now Travis roused himself and seized Ruth by the shoulders before she could go after Dexter again. “You got that right, lady.”
Hunter recovered from his own bewilderment. “
Dexter!” he roared. “What the
hell are you doin’ heah?”
“Well, geez, I’ve been waitin’ for you guys to let me know what you wanted me to do! You said a whole buncha stuff, the Professor says something else – and then it’s a whole day and I don’t hear from you! And they caught me messing around on the computers at Phoenix and now I’m in trouble again and it’s
all your fault!” Dexter’s voice rose to a pathetic wail.
“How the
hell did you find this place?”
Dexter gawked at Hunter. “Aw, c’mon. You
knew they had a file on you, didn’cha? All I had to do was hack into it. Geez.”
“God
damn it – ”
“Mr. Hunter.” Ruth’s voice was crisp enough to cut glass. “I was under the impression that Southern gentlemen still had enough breeding to mind their language in the presence of a lady.” She sniffed. “Not that I was under any illusions, given your behaviour thus far.”
Now it was Hunter’s turn to gawk. Mac was mentally counting down.
Okay, Zak . . . A fresh set of footsteps could be heard in the entryway. MacGyver frowned. Zak wasn’t supposed to march in; that was Mac’s role. In a moment, the door was flung open – but the newcomer wasn’t Zak.
Ryan Smith, from the Phoenix Legal department, stared at the crowd in the room, his eyes wide. “
MacGyver? Hunter, what the hell is MacGyver doing here?”
OMG!! Busted!
I studied the technique at the knee of Barbara Hambly, who said she learned it in Famous Author School. This was after she'd given a reading of the first chapter of her newest book, which ended on a particularly appalling cliffhanger -- and the book hadn't been published yet! We couldn't even run out and buy it for another two months!
In cases such as MacGyver, expectations will always be exceeded, if only because the stories just don't sound fully credible.
