Here's part two! A little slower, just so we can catch our breath and look at our setting.
For anyone who wants to know some geography, the island of Evoia is a really big one (nearly like Crete) right next to Attica, where Athens is located, in Greece. There's road access to it and it is really pretty. That's where MacGyver and Farrah are at the moment, trekking through the forest of Steni, in mount Dirphis.
Yeah, and you don't need to be in downtown Athens to have hatched evil plots.
I hope you like this. Feedback as to what you like will help me provide you with it
This is still what I like only.
Ok I'll stop now, and post the damn thing!
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Part Two Farrah again did not ask why MacGyver was so alerted, and what alerted him. She merely nodded, shoved whatever was left out of the backpack in faster, and slung the bag over her shoulder. She looked at the Phoenix Special Agent. He was pale and sweating- fever was already setting in- but his bright eyes were surveying their surroundings quickly, calmly and efficiently. He hadn’t made an effort to get up yet.
The doctor approached to help him stand. MacGyver winced softly, but held any screaming in. As he waited for the lancinating pain to withdraw back to being a dull throb again, MacGyver acknowledged in the back of his mind how beautiful the forest they were in was- it was resplendent in chestnut, pine and fir, with an increasing density as one climbed further up on Dirphe mountain in Evoia, Greece. MacGyver had been several times in Greece on assignment, but it looked like a different country to him, of a different habitat or setting each time- the environment was so diversified across the land that it took his breath away.
I will force Pete to get me an adventure-free ticket to this place once I’m done. Rather, one ticket for each bullet. Yeah, that’s it! “Are ye okay?” Farrah’s question drew his attention to the here and now. He pressed his lips in a thin line and took another sip of the water bottle with his free hand.
“As much as I’m gonna be. Listen, Farrah- we aren’t too far away from our meeting point with our pick up guys; further up Dirphe, there’s this hiker center called Nikolaou Refuge.”
“It’ll be closed this time of year,” Farrah frowned. MacGyver smiled.
“That’s okay. We won’t need service. Come on, we need to get out of here. It won’t take much to track us, and I nearly woke the dead awhile ago.”
Farrah nodded, but looked uncertain as to how they were to get out of there. The cave they were in was small and snug, overhung with shrubbery and various types of bright green moss. Though there was no water nearby, the quiet forest echoed with the optimistic gurgle of several streams, either out of their sight or hidden under leaves and dead, age-old hollow trunks. The hum of the road was just an occasional, faint whisper in the serenity of nature surrounding them. MacGyver pointed at the knapsack.
“You should find a compass there; I think we ought to take the scenic route for a while, before we attempt to hit the road.”
Farrah just nodded and fumbled in the knapsack for the compass. Gone was the calm confidence with which she’d treated Mac; instead she was now uncertain and slightly frightened. Mac wasn’t sure if he should address it at all, or chalk it up to fear for her rescuer being already so banged up.
In any case, he didn’t want to linger; with each moment of inertia, his body settled more into the state of being wounded and pain-wracked, and less into the state of being useful. With an optimistic grin at Farrah, he took the compass and peered ahead, ignoring the way his heart was thumping, adding to the dull pounding his whole body seemed to engage in.
“Okay; that way seems the one to follow. Come on, doc.”
Farrah just followed.
They trekked through the forest in silence for a good full hour. It was an objectively easy trek; the forest of Steni was pleasant and hospitable to anyone who had experience in hiking and trailing. MacGyver made a show of asking for compass readings more for Farrah’s benefit than his own; he didn’t need a compass for such an easy forest apart for that one initial time. However, very quickly into that hour he fell silent himself. The trek was easy for a
healthy hiker. He was anything but; the sweat was making his sweater stick to his back, and his temples were packing a wallop. His legs were heavy and he had to make extra effort to keep silent on top of being mobile. Half of his torso was numb, but the lack of feeling did not alleviate the pain or the heaviness.
Maybe I was a little too optimistic about the hike to the hiker center. Farrah drew in her breath in that alarming way, and Mac jolted to a stop- painfully. Wincing, he followed Farrah’s glance. His eyebrows went up as he flexed the fingers of his bad arm to keep the numbness at bay as much as possible- it wasn’t working too well.
“A vegetable garden… in the middle of the forest.” Peering ahead he could see the hint of a small whitish house hiding behind a cluster of trees. “That’s very Snow White.”
“There are few scattered farm houses within Steni forest. This is proobably one of them. Let’s avooid it, MacGyver,” Farrah whispered feverishly.
“We may not have a choice,” MacGyver eyed the carefully tended tomato plants in neat rows. He didn’t know whether to feel impressed or outraged as obviously the owner of the garden had taken care not to be abusive of the forest… but was within the forest, infringing on it regardless. “See, I don’t think I can make it through without painkillers, and I’m pretty sure that those hitmen will be tracking us, waiting to pick us off by nightfall. We stand better chances if we can get some help from whoever is overseeing these tomatoes, and maybe call for help.”
Farrah bit her lips, looking around her as if the hitmen were about to jump out from behind the large tree trunks of the chestnuts or from behind the briar and moss and rock that completed the painting.
“Ye don’t know who’s werking for who,” she muttered. MacGyver frowned.
“Farrah, we are well away from Chalkida General Hospital where you worked and from where you were being held in the city; heck, we were so near the meeting point with our pick up, I thought we’d well and truly lost any pursuers before those snipers jumped us in the forest. I honestly don’t think the woodsman is in cahoots with them. And even if he is, better risk it now than after nightfall.”
Farrah looked at the troubleshooter. He was quite pale and his skin was shining with sweat despite the coolness of the Spring day. She could see that though he was making nearly superhuman efforts, his strength would soon leave him if he could not get some bed rest. She looked around nervously again. MacGyver sighed and just walked ahead past the tomato plant rows and towards the house. Farrah lingered some more, but then she followed. The sandy haired man didn’t look too steady on his feet.
“Just- just be cautious, please, MacGyver,” she hissed again.
Something in the doctor’s voice hit red alerts in MacGyver’s mind. Throughout the journey and the initial trek through Dorphis’ forest, even when he’d talked or solicited the help of the occasional Greek, she hadn’t been nearly this agitated. Of course, the hitmen making their appearance and the whole process of patching him up in a cave could account for it, but somehow MacGyver felt in his gut that there was more to it than that.
And MacGyver never ever ignored his gut feeling.
He stopped, still a little hidden from direct view from the farm and turned to Farrah.
“What are you not telling me, doc? Have you any specific reason to be afraid of the farmhouses here?”
“N…no,” Farrah swallowed. “I’m just… worried, ye know. Ye never know what the villager may think te see you so hurt and all.”
MacGyver smiled.
“Eh, usually Greeks offer hospitality first, and ask questions later,” he winked at the fidgety little woman and turned around to go to the farm house again. Farrah walked with him, her hands clutching the backpack strap so tightly the knuckles went white.
A man in a large checkered shirt came out, holding a hoe tentatively in his hand, as if contemplating whether he would need to use the tool as a weapon or not. He was tall and well built, and he was grinning. It was the grin that really made MacGyver cautious, and the way the man approached rather than wait for them to go to him.
“Hey there,” the farmer said, speaking in non-accented English rather than Greek. “Need some help?”
MacGyver wished the man would stop approaching. He knew something was wrong, and that somehow he had made a great mistake going past that garden patch. He was in no position to run. In fact, he was in no position to run nor fight nor protect his charge at all. Cussing in his mind, he stepped in front of Farrah without thinking.
“If you have a phone we can use,” he called out.
The man had approached by now. Mac’s eyes traveled down his grinning face to his hand holding the hoe.
The hoe’s business end was bloody.
The man glanced at the doctor, his eyes narrowing.
His grip on the hoe tightened.
MacGyver summoned all the balance his injury had left in him, and kicked out at the man’s arm, as hard as he could.
“Farrah, RUN!” he yelled, before the man literally jumped on him with a savage growl.
Intelligence is the one variable everyone believes to be constant.
I've seen more comments during the weekend (perhaps 'cause we can spend more time in front of our computers? NIce thought to ponder about...
