AftershocksTen: PrimitivismPete’s voice rang in MacGyver’s memory.
Mac, I ran it past Legal . . .That second name – Rolf Schmidt – Frau B. had upped his ‘usefulness’ score a while back . . . ‘How long have you been at Phoenix anyway?’ ‘About ten months.’Hunter was staring from Ryan to MacGyver and back again. “What the hell you talkin’ about, boy?” he roared. “That’s Dexter, from the Phoenix labs.”
“Hunter, you dumbass, you’ve been had. This is
MacGyver! He’s Phoenix’ top operative!” Ryan’s eyes shifted uneasily from Hunter back to Mac. He looked suddenly frightened.
He’s green. He’s only just realised that recognition goes both ways . . . The lights in the cabin flickered twice and went out.
Zak found the generator! Yesss!!At the first flicker, Mac had squeezed his eyes shut; when he opened them again a moment later, the windowless room was plunged into darkness and his own eyes had already started to adjust. Ryan was a distinct silhouette in the doorway, outlined by the dim light filtering in from the entryway, where threads of daylight leaked in from the chinks around the poorly sealed main door.
It was just as well that Mac couldn’t see the younger man’s face. It made it easier to resist the inclination to break it. Instead, he aimed his fist at Ryan’s stomach, grappled him when he doubled up with an agonised whuff, spun him around and slung him hard towards the remembered location of Don and Travis. The thumps and bellows told him that he’d remembered close enough.
Seizing Ruth was easy; she’d remained stock-still in place when the lights went out, and when she felt Mac’s hold on her she clutched back as best as she could. Her grip felt frail and light, and the added adrenaline of rage made everything else seem to be moving slowly. Mac leapt for the doorway into the hall, set Ruth down and slammed his shoulder against the open door, feeling the solid crunch as it smacked hard against whoever had been closest behind him. He yanked at the knob, and the screws that he had loosened beforehand ripped out of the wood, leaving the doorknob in his hand. He rapped it sharply against the remnants of the locking mechanism and heard the clunk as the other half of the doorknob fell away inside the room. It gave him the extra moment he needed to throw the bolt; the rasp echoed in his memory from hearing the same door locked on him.
He handed the doorknob to Ruth. “Here. Hold that.”
Two hard stomps flattened two of the cans from the bag he’d scattered earlier, and with two well-aimed kicks the flattened cans were wedged firmly under the door. From the thumps and thuds from inside the room, Hunter and his men were still stumbling around in the dark and hadn’t yet found the lantern, or gathered their wits to start a concentrated assault on the door.
MacGyver grabbed Ruth again and ran out of the cabin, towards the parked vehicles. She felt frighteningly light in his arms, too much like one of the younger kids at the Challengers Club.
“That will give them some grief, but it won’t hold them for long,” she gasped.
“It’ll be enough,” Mac grunted. “It’ll have to be.” He dodged between a battered Ford sedan – probably the same car that had given him such a rough ride in the trunk – and a nearly new SUV. The SUV bore a heavy coat of dust and showed fresh gravel dings on a formerly pristine finish; Mac guessed it was Ryan’s. He himself had driven the last stretch to the cabin in Zak’s car, a white Chevy as nondescript as mashed potatoes; but he had left it parked well away from the others, on the far side of the clearing.
Mac stopped next to a dusty, battered pickup with a gun rack – probably Hunter’s – and set Ruth down again. He peered around the rear of the car, back towards the cabin. There was no sign yet of anyone coming out.
Behind him, Ruth was leaning heavily against the truck. “MacGyver – I truly hate having to admit this, but I don’t think I can run very far. I’m not even sure I can manage walking for any distance.” Her face was chalk-white under its bruises.
“You won’t have to.” Mac reached into the bed of Hunter’s truck and pulled aside a blue tarp that covered part of the truck bed. “All you gotta do is stay put. Zak Abrams will come get you as soon as it’s clear, and get you outta here. Can you hang onto these for me?” Mac handed her Dexter’s glasses. Ruth was still clutching the doorknob; he retrieved it from her and boosted her up into the back of the truck, keeping one eye on the cabin. “Get under the tarp and lie still.”
Ruth’s face had lit up. “Zak is
here? How the hell did you – never mind, tell me later.” She half-tumbled into the truck, wincing as she landed.
“Can you get me that length of rope there, and the wrench? And hang on a moment – ” Mac pulled out his knife, caught at the hem of her tweed slacks, and cut away a ragged strip. He took a moment to pull the edge into shreds with his fingers – the last thing he wanted was for the scrap to look as if it had been cut off.
As soon as he was finished, Ruth handed him the gear from the back of the truck with a wry look. “And would monsieur like anything else?”
“You got a handkerchief?”
Ruth dug in her pockets and handed him a dainty scrap of monogrammed linen. Mac looked at it ruefully. “You might not get this back.”
“I’ll buy a new one. Or switch to Kleenex.”
“Don’t do that,” Mac said earnestly. “Kleenex wouldn’t work.”
Ruth glowered at him and began to crawl under the tarp. “What are you planning to do?”
He slung the coil of rope around his shoulder and chest. “I’m gonna try to draw them off.”
She checked in the middle of pulling the tarp over herself, and stared at him. “You intend to play rabbit to that entire pack? MacGyver, they’re rabid dogs!”
Mac’s eyes glowed like black coal. “Yeah? Have you ever wondered what happens to dogs when they tangle with a wolf?”
I didn’t lie when I told Laura that I don’t look back much. If I’ve got any personal demons following me, well, they’re just gonna have to move fast enough to catch me. Then we’ll see who’s tougher.
It’s probably not the best way to handle things . . . but it’s what I’ve got to work with right now, and it’ll have to do.
And sometimes, I don’t have to wait for the personal demons to pop up out of nightmares or anxiety . . . sometimes, I get real live solid ones taking their place.It had been a wet winter, and there had been a good deep snowpack up in the mountains; MacGyver had gotten in some good skiing before the season broke. They were well below the snowline here, and the hillsides to the east of Hunter’s cabin showed broad brown patches between the trees, but the western slopes were still mottled with scraps of white, and there was a sharp edge to the wind that crossed the heights.
A wide patch of snow stretched out along the edge of the parking area, ahead of the first line of trees, where the shadow from the ridge would block the afternoon sun and delay the spring melt. Mac loped across it, landing hard so that his footprints would give the impression that he was weighted down, still carrying Ruth. He wanted the men to follow, and he wanted them to underestimate him – if he could get them to assume he was easy prey, they’d be a lot more careless.
Ryan might try to tell them he was better than that – or he might tell them that MacGyver never carried a gun.
Mac aimed for where the darker green of thicker brush marked the opening of a small ravine. He left the strip of cloth from Ruth’s slacks tangled on a low-lying clump of chaparral, then dived into the brush, breaking as many branches as he could, leaving a clumsy trail behind himself as he hurried downslope. Behind him, he could hear men’s voices, shouts and curses – they’d gotten the door open, or broken it down, and were outside the cabin. He only hoped they were sharp enough to find the trail and angry enough to follow it en masse.
As he’d expected, the watercourse was dry, with no more than an occasional muddy patch where some remnant of snowmelt had lingered after the main spring runoff. More patches of dirt-streaked snow remained in the shade-protected depths, and Mac was able to leave occasional footprints without it seeming too obvious. The ravine bent and jinked, and debouched into a larger canyon in an ankle-twisting slope of broken scree. He let his trail fade to nothing in the jumble of rocks.
He could hear the echoes of pursuit, harsh men’s voices bouncing off the rocks of the ravine upslope, as he clambered up out of the canyon. The wall on the left-hand side was lower than its opposite but more sheer; he found a cleft that he could scramble up without leaving any clear sign of his passage, grappling at the occasional tenacious pine that had rooted itself in the cracks between solid masses of rock. He doubled back towards the direction of the cabin, following the ravine from above.
Mac didn’t know whether any of Hunter’s men had any woodcraft. He was going to have to find out fast, or risk getting a nasty surprise.
When he caught the first glimpse of movement below him, he dropped to the ground, wormed his way to the edge of the ravine and peered down from the cover of a clump of rabbitbrush. Somewhere a long way back in his mind, an old shadow shied away from the sheer edge of the rock wall, bitterly protesting the height; but MacGyver was too focused to pay any attention to it.
He pulled out his field glasses, careful that the shade of the scrub would block the intermittent sun from flashing on the lenses, and studied the pursuing men as they passed beneath him. Travis was in the lead, Jake beside him, scrambling over the rough ground; Travis was storming ahead like a high-school bully swaggering past a row of lockers. Don was next, walking lightly in spite of his bulk, glancing around anxiously at the looming rock walls. Mac frowned. The man moved like a hunter, but he seemed ill at ease.
Buck was next in the group; to Mac’s surprise, Ryan was stumbling along behind.
Hunter musta sent him off with the pack – he doesn’t look happy to be out here. The other men were dressed for the terrain, in jeans and hiking boots, flannel shirts and heavy jackets, but Ryan was in poorly suited city clothes, his feet in their expensive leather oxfords slipping on the tumbled rocks of the ravine.
Mac turned his attention to Buck, and sucked in his breath.
Trouble. Buck moved like a born woodsman, his step light and easy, the Remington hunting rifle in his hands seeming a natural extension of himself.
Not good, MacGyver – he’s gonna be the toughest one to beat.Except for Ryan and Jake, they were all carrying rifles. Mac guessed that Jake was probably armed as well. He could hear them clearly as they approached, but none of them showed any sign of looking up.
Buck stopped and peered at the dry ground. “God damn it, why’d Hunter have to leave Rocco at home this time?”
Don grunted. “Don’t make much difference. That dog ain’t no good as a tracker.”
“That ain’t the point,” Travis scoffed. “The dweeb’s scared sh*tless of dogs. All we’d need is for him to hear the barking. He’d probably keel over in a faint.”
Ryan grabbed at Travis’ arm. “I keep trying to
tell you, you don’t understand what you’re up against. This isn’t
Dexter, it’s
MacGyver. He’s practically a legend! You keep bulling around after him like this, you’re going to walk around a corner right into some kind of fancy trap!”
Travis snorted, and Don eyed Ryan with unconcealed contempt. “And just what’s he gonna use for this here trap?”
Ryan gestured helplessly around. “Sh*t, I don’t know. Rocks! Sticks! Whatever he can find! You don’t understand this guy!”
Jake brayed with mocking laughter, and Buck spat. “What’s to understand, city boy? You said he don’t carry no gun.”
“Enough jawin’,” Don snapped. “Let’s find his ass so’s we can git outta these goddamn hills.”
Mac suddenly placed Don’s accent.
Tidewater. That’s it – he may be a hunter, but he’s used to lowlands. He doesn’t know the mountains. No wonder he’s jumpy.MacGyver worked his way back from the edge until he could stand up out of sight of the men below. He hurried forward until he was almost to the point where the ravine opened out into the canyon, and found a good thick stand of juniper to use as a screen. He watched until he caught the first glimpse of Travis rounding the last sharp bend in the ravine. The rattling clump of the men’s boots told him how well sounds would carry – especially sounds that didn’t belong to the natural landscape.
Mac took the doorknob from his jacket pocket, wound up as if for a pitch and hurled it with all his strength towards the broken ground of the plateau on the opposite side of the ravine. The metallic clatter as it landed well beyond the edge, rolled and bounced out of sight amongst the jumbled rocks and brush, was all he could have wished. He dropped to the ground and wriggled forward to the edge of the drop, careful to make no more noise than the passing gusts of wind, to see the reaction.
His hackles rose immediately. Buck and Travis were both on guard, peering eagerly up at the rock walls on the other side, but Don was looking up at the sky with a pensive frown.
Dang. He must be used to keepin’ an eye on the sky – probably goes bird hunting a lot. I bet he caught a glimpse of the doorknob bein’ thrown.MacGyver was frantically wondering what else he could do to divert attention away from his location when a shadow passed by overhead; the sunlight winked momentarily as a red-tailed hawk crossed above them, circling on a thermal. Mac saw Don’s gaze following the hawk in flight, and saw him shrug unconsciously and turn his attention back to Buck.
Whew.Buck was gesturing emphatically. “He musta climbed out somehow – prob’ly tryin’ to git to the road. Dumbass. Don, you take Travis and cut around where that canyon opens up – git yerselves back up to the top and head him off from that side. I’ll take the boys and cut around his other side. Looks like we can climb out right along here.”
Travis shifted his gun. “Does Hunter care if he don’t come back in one piece?”
“Mebbe Hunter cares. I don’t.”
Ryan caught at Buck’s arm this time. “I’m telling you, you’re making a big mistake. This whole thing’s probably some kind of trap. Or a diversion. Stop assuming he’s an idiot!”
Buck eyed the hand on his arm. “You tryin’ to tell me how to go huntin’, city boy?”
Ryan snatched his hand back. “Okay, so I’m not much good out here! I admit it! Tell you what, I’ll go back to the cabin – someone really ought to warn Hunter to keep an eye out. What if MacGyver just turns back?”
“You stayin’ right here with me, city boy.” Buck’s voice was soft, but the menace in it carried even to where Mac lay in hiding. “Jake, git back to the cabin. Tell Hunter this feller might could be fixin’ to double back. Tell him to keep his eyes skinned.” Ryan started to protest, but his objections froze on his lips at another arctic glance from Buck.
“What about the old lady?” Jake asked. “I didn’t think she coulda run this far.”
“Reckon she didn’t,” Don said. Buck nodded in agreement.
“You think he’s carrying her?”
“Nope.” Buck gestured to Don and Travis, and they turned away downslope. “I reckon she’s still somewheres up near the cabin, hiding. You tell Hunter that too.” He gave a curt jerk of his head to order Ryan to follow, and started to scramble up the broken ledges of the ravine wall.
You won’t tell him anything. Not if I can help it.The ground along the top of the ravine was far less broken than the rugged passage of the dry watercourse; MacGyver easily beat Jake back to the point near the cabin where they’d first entered the cleft. Jake never saw what hit him as he emerged, gasping for breath with the altitude and the scramble up the slope.
Another city boy . . . never even thought to look up.Mac left Jake lying unconscious under a thicket of scrub oak, his hands taped behind him and his mouth sealed, and turned back to follow the hunting party.
That’s one.He melted into the sparse cover of the highland forest.
MacGyver stood for a few minutes at the head of the ravine, debating which side to follow back down.
Buck musta found the doorknob by now. And he won’t find any tracks or other sign around it . . . is he gonna figure out what I was doing? He might try crossing back over and looking on the other side – or will he cast out from where he finds the knob and try to cut my trail? Mac looked up to see the hawk circling again, dipping down close to the tops of the lodgepole pines scattered around on the left-hand side.
Good enough. We’ll assume he’s smart. Will he try to get the others back from goin’ off in the wrong direction? That’d slow him down pretty bad – no, we’ll assume he’s impatient. And arrogant. He’s gonna want to win, and that means beatin’ the other hunters to the prey.Mac’s eyes glinted as he began to work his way down the mesa top, flanking his own upwards trail, his senses alert to the presence of the hunters.
Funny how I don’t feel much like prey.Other than the hawk, nothing seemed to stir in that direction; the wind that gathered in the trees was pushing patches of clouds across the sky, occasionally dimming the sunlight. Each time the sun was cut off, the wind seemed to have a sharper edge to it.
It was Ryan’s voice that tipped Mac off first, although his instincts were already keyed up by the absence of any other activity – no birds or small animals, not even jays scolding. Ryan’s voice had the grating quality of a fractious squirrel.
“Buck, for god’s sake, I keep trying to tell you. He’s
good. The story is he’s part native American, that’s why he’s so good in the field . . .”
“An’ I keep tellin’ you to shut up. You think bein’ a f*ckin’ half-breed makes him better’n me?”
“He fooled you with that doorknob, didn’t he?”
A moment’s sullen silence followed this, before Mac heard a dour mutter, “ . . . ain’t gonna help him none in the end.”
The voices were approaching, drawing closer; following the trail Mac had left when he’d tailed Jake back towards the cabin. He hadn’t tried to conceal his passage then, and for someone like Buck, he might as well have painted arrows on the trees.
No point kickin’ myself about that now . . . and it means he’ll stick to the trail, at least for the moment.Mac hastened back up along his track again, needing to get a jump ahead of the pursuers without outdistancing them by too much. He stopped when he figured he’d built up enough of a lead, and looked around for a good location – close to his own trail, but not quite in a direct line of sight to it.
He didn’t have much time, and he had to get the timing right. But he had a clear mental image of what he wanted, and he’d collected and prepared his materials as he went. He’d cut off a length from his coil of rope and unraveled it to form cordage, and picked up a long branch from under a fir tree and broken off the straightest length he could manage.
MacGyver hung the fir branch as a balancing lever from the bough of a convenient pine. For a counterweight, he had Ruth’s handkerchief, tied into a pouch filled with the light, dry, sandy soil of the mesa top. Once he had the balance right, he poked a hole with his awl blade in the bottom of the pouch, and a trickle of fine soil began to run out like sand in an hourglass. In a few minutes, it would lose enough weight so that the lever would tilt the other way and release its load.
A fire-based time delay trigger would have been easier to set up, but it would have been insanity. Even in the relative dampness of early spring, these hills were too parched and thirsty to risk exposing them to fire. Mac glanced from the running vein of sand back down the trail in the direction of the approaching hunters, estimating the relative progress, and widened the hole slightly. Then he slipped into the cover of a nearby thicket of scrub oak.
In the end, he nearly got the timing wrong; Buck and Ryan were already past his hiding place before the lever tilted and the makeshift bark cup at the other end spilled its load of pebbles onto the bare rock beneath. But the ruse worked even better than MacGyver had hoped; the rattle of stones sounded almost exactly like an incautious foot slipping on broken ground. Better still – Buck, hearing the sound come from behind him, whipped round on sudden alert, bringing his rifle up and peering ahead. He began to move, softly and carefully, towards the source of the unexpected noise.
Mac had placed himself so that Buck passed his hiding place on his way to where the rigged decoy hung from the tree. Mac wasn’t able to see Buck’s expression as he studied the contraption, although he could imagine it well enough from the man’s body language: approaching cautiously, drawing himself upright and then leaning closer to study it. There would be a suspicious crease in the forehead, and an added squint to the eyes as he glanced around, trying to see if there was any other sign. Mac noticed that Buck looked up into the trees as well as peering farther into the thicket; and he saw the shift in tension when the man spotted the bright flash of red cloth on the ground underneath a nearby clump of coyote brush.
“What the hell . . . that’s
Jake’s bandana.” he muttered. He squatted down and reached under the bushes for the crumpled cloth. He let out a ferocious screech as his fingers were impaled by the small sections of pincushion cactus MacGyver had swaddled in the cloth. The howl broke the uneasy silence of the forest, but there was more anger than pain to it.
Ryan had been trailing behind him, looking nervous; he literally jumped at the explosion of rage and blasphemy. He was staring at Buck as the man cursed and waved his hand, and didn’t see Mac step out from behind the thicket until he was right in front of him, swinging the heavy long-handled wrench he’d taken from the back of Hunter’s pickup.
In spite of everything, MacGyver hadn’t been able to bring himself to clobber Ryan from behind – no matter how much the man deserved it. Instead, he felt a sense of déjà vu as he buried the wrench in Ryan’s stomach, seized him as he doubled over and slung him in the direction of Buck, who had turned around with alarming speed at the noise and was trying to bring his gun to bear. Mac had hoped that a handful of cactus needles might loosen his grip on the gun, but apparently rage was burning hotter than the discomfort.
Buck fell back, knocking Ryan sideways with the gun barrel to give himself a clear space in which to move. This time, as he brought up the rifle and grasped the stock, he clearly felt the jabbing of the cactus thorns, and flinched in spite of the anger and adrenaline. Mac had closed in while Buck was dealing with Ryan, and now he seized the fractional moment of opportunity when Buck’s grip on the gunstock was loosened, and lashed out with a flying kick at the man’s other hand where it held the forend grip.
His foot connected and he heard Buck yell, but the move had put Mac off-balance on the rough ground. Buck staggered, but somehow managed to keep his tenacious hold of the rifle, and swung it around as MacGyver tried to catch himself. A blaze of fire creased Mac’s scalp as the notched sight of the gun barrel raked his head.
Mac put up his left hand and grabbed the barrel, and turned his own lurching movement into a tumble, using the impetus of the roll to twist on the rifle until it finally corkscrewed out of Buck’s grasp. He had no time to do anything with it; Buck was on him, roaring with fury, tackling him with a force that knocked the wind out of him.
“Goddamn nigger-lovin’ Commie Jew-boy . . . !!!”Blood was running into Mac’s eyes from the cut on his scalp, and there was nothing left but instinct and the refusal to be reduced to prey. He was certain Buck would simply start hammering on him while he was lying on his back on the stony earth, winded; but instead, the man went for his rifle again, clawing at it where it lay beside MacGyver.
Mac brought his right hand up, still holding the wrench, and felled Buck with a single blow, as if he had taken a hatchet to a sapling.
The man’s bulk fell heavily on top of him where he lay, and it took Mac some moments to squirm out from underneath and check for a pulse. It was still strong, although he’d left a bleeding scrape on Buck’s head to match the one on his own. He put a hand up to his own forehead and probed gingerly, grimacing, bringing his hand away dappled with scarlet. His head ached, but his vision wasn’t blurred; that was something.
That’s two.
