I've been busy this week (as we all have), celebrating Christmas with my family. I hope everyone has had an enjoyable, pleasant holiday season. If you need a break from all the festivities (as I did), why not pause and read the next part of my story?
Catastrophic Failure Part Four
Rated: R
The man was closer to MacGyver than he had ever been up until that point, watching him sleep. Pulling out his knife, he pressed the long, thick, and sharp blade against MacGyver’s throat, his face contorted in rage and hatred. It would have been so easy for him to kill him at that moment, tempted to slice open his throat. All it would take was one swift, calculated movement, and his life would be severed. He had to rethink this idea when MacGyver moaned and stirred, trying to awaken. Putting away the knife, the man began to quietly leave the cabin, considering his next move. The floorboards creaked unexpectedly beneath the weight of his footsteps, and he stopped.
“Pete?” MacGyver asked, rolling around in bed. “Pete, is that you?”
Pausing, the man watched his target closely for awhile. His eyes were half open, and he could tell by the confusion and grogginess in his voice that he was not fully conscious. Glancing over at the nearly empty prescription bottle on the nightstand, he picked it up and read it, grinning maliciously when he realized their purpose.
“Yes MacGyver, it’s me,” he said, mimicking Pete’s voice. “Are you all right? You look and sound awful. Maybe we should take a walk.”
“A…walk?”
“It will make you feel better. Come on. I’ll help you get up.”
The sedatives made MacGyver pliable, and he complied with the man’s request, believing in his half conscious, drugged state that it really was Pete. He stumbled out of bed, but the man steadied him, holding and bracing him as they shuffled out the back door towards the lake. It was difficult for the man to keep MacGyver upright, his listless state making him heavier so that he practically had to drag him, using all his strength and his effort, but he managed to get him outside at last.
“There, now doesn’t that feel better?” The man asked, still imitating Pete’s voice. “Fresh air is always good for you.”
MacGyver mumbled something unintelligible. He began slipping out of the man’s grasp, slumping to the pier in a limp heap. The man looked around. They were close enough to the end of the pier where he knew the water in the lake was the deepest. Deciding he didn’t need to drag MacGyver any farther, he pushed him into the water, smiling with delight as he watched his adversary’s body sink. It was perfect. MacGyver, distraught over the bridge collapse, overdosed on his prescription sedatives, sleepwalked to the end of the pier, fell into the lake, and drowned. It would all look accidental. If he did somehow manage to revive in time to survive, it would work to further confuse and worry him, making him an even weaker opponent. Either way, the man knew he would win this time.
***
Pete tried numerous times to call MacGyver, always greeted by his recorded voice on the answering machine. He was growing concerned. He knew his friend was suffering greatly, but not to hear him once, even if it was merely to tell him to stop calling, was rather disconcerting.
“Mr. Thornton!” Ted Stewart shouted, running towards the tent where Pete was, urgency expressed in his wide eyes. “Mr. Thornton!”
Hanging up the phone, Pete turned to face him. “What is it, Ted?” He asked.
Ted swallowed hard, gulping and trying to regain his breath. “There’s something you have to see immediately,” he said. “Come on, hurry!”
Forgetting the phone, Pete ran with Ted back to the tent where the investigative team was probing the mysterious bridge collapse, struggling to keep up with him. Once they reached it, Pete noticed that they had pieces of the bridge under a high-powered microscope. Ted leaned over it almost protectively, gasping and sweating profusely from his exertions, his face red.
“What is it? What’s going on?” Pete asked, watching him as he appeared to be completely absorbed in his task, examining the piece and quickly jotting down notes.
Ted looked up at him, his stormy blue-grey eyes intense. “I think you should see for yourself,” he said, moving out of the way to allow Pete a glimpse.
Peering into the microscope, Pete saw a network of jagged lines on the surface of the piece.
“They appear to be hairline fractures, something we hadn’t noticed before until more of our equipment arrived,” Ted said.
“I don’t understand,” Pete said. “What is it I’m looking at, here? Is this the result of substandard materials?”
“We thought so at first, but as we began to reconstruct the bridge from the blueprints and determined where these pieces originated from…” he sighed. “Pete, they all came from the same section—the part that collapsed. Other pieces we have examined from the bridge that did not collapse did not have these fine fractures.”
“That could still point to a structural weakness.”
“I agree, but it has nothing to do with MacGyver’s design, or the materials used.” Ted pointed at the lines on the bridge sample, his finger appearing briefly beneath the lens, the swirling ridges of his fingerprint magnified. “We discovered a pattern to these lines,” he said.
“A pattern? How can you tell?”
Ted removed the section they were looking at and replaced it with another one. “Take a look,” he said, “See how the lines are all in the same direction as the other piece? It’s almost as if someone carved into the bridge, creating enough unnoticeable, tiny flaws that when brought together formed a manufactured weakness, one that had nothing to do with the actual design or construction of the bridge itself. Whoever did this was precise and methodical, crafting it to look like there was something wrong with the bridge when everything was sound. You checked out your men, right? Their backgrounds were solid? The inspector checked all materials used for construction before the project even began, right?”
“Of course,” Pete said.
“Then these tiny cracks shouldn’t be here.”
“Couldn’t these have formed as a result of the stress of weight added to the bridge? I mean, how can you know this for sure?”
Ted shrugged. “We don’t, yet,” he said. “It’s a matter of more investigation.”
“Sabotage,” Pete said. “Why didn’t we think of that as a possibility?”
“The international press has,” Ted said. “They’ve already accused the neighboring tribes. They have, after all, been at war for quite some time. It’s only logical. Maybe some of them still hold a grudge against Nagra’s people and are seeking vengeance by destroying the symbol of peace—MacGyver’s bridge.”
“If that’s so, how would they have managed to do this without being noticed? The building site was secure. Only authorized Phoenix personnel were allowed near it.”
“I don’t know,” Ted said. “Maybe one of them slipped in with the crew and disguised themselves, blending in somehow. You should run a check on all your people again. I have an expert on affairs here that can do some research into the local people and see if any of them had a strong motive for doing this.”
“Good, you do that,” Pete said. “I’ll check my own people again.” He stared at the cracked piece of bridge again, gnawing on his lower lip. It seemed the harder they looked, the fewer clear answers they had.
Ted placed his hand on Pete’s shoulder. “We have to consider all angles, Mr. Thornton,” he said. “This is just like any other investigation. We cannot leave any theory unexplored, because it might lead us to the cause.”
“I know that, Ted,” Pete said, sighing deeply. “I just hope we find a cause soon, and one this is favorable to MacGyver. This uncertainty is frustrating for us, but imagine how he feels. He still believes this is his fault, that he killed those people. If we can prove that it wasn’t, that he’s blameless…I just hope we can vindicate him, and all the good work he tried to do by building that bridge.”
“I know, Pete,” Ted said, gently squeezing his shoulder supportively. “We all feel that way. We’re doing all that we can. I promise you we won’t quit until we have an answer.”
Pete nodded, his thoughts churning. He still worried about MacGyver’s silence on the other side of the world, not hearing from him for days. He then began assembling possible suspects in his mind who could have caused just enough damage to the bridge to cause it to fail, but he couldn’t think of any. Who would want to sabotage MacGyver’s bridge?
***
MacGyver felt the sensation of being pulled underwater, and unlike his recurring nightmare, it felt real this time. He could feel his body slowly sinking, pressure building up around him. A muffled sound surrounded him, and soon he found it difficult to breathe, his lungs becoming congested. Gradually, as he became more aware, awakening from his drug-induced stupor, panic seized him as he realized the gravity of his situation. He began thrashing around frantically, terrified and disoriented, unsure how he ended up that way or how he got there, unable to remember anything. The water clouded and distorted his vision, and he couldn’t tell which direction would lead him to the surface. Clawing desperately at handfuls of water, he swam rapidly towards where he hoped the surface would be, everything shrouded in almost complete darkness. He could feel the weight of the water pressing on him as he swam against it, trying to drag him back down, resisting him. His lungs burst painfully from a lack of oxygen, and he began to feel dizzy, still dazed and weak from the sedatives, wanting nothing more than to sleep, but he forced himself to remain conscious and alert, swimming as quickly as he could.
When he felt a rush of cold air as his hand broke through, he pushed the rest of his body upward, almost leaping out of the water. He gasped and coughed, greedily sucking in all the available oxygen he could, his starved, deprived lungs grateful. Searching wildly, trying to reorient himself as he thrashed around in the water, he could see nothing for awhile but darkness, the sky clear and moonless. As his vision adjusted, he recognized the silhouettes of the mountains and Pete’s cabin. Their familiar, welcoming sight relieved him, and he swam as quickly as he could towards the pier, clutching it tightly. He clambered up its side onto dry land, shivering not only from cold but from spent adrenaline, lying there for some time trying to recover, wondering how he could have possibly ended up in the lake. He continued to gasp and cough, spitting up water that had filled his lungs. Burying his face against the wood, almost embracing the pier as if to thank it for saving his life, he remained there for awhile longer, trembling, almost sobbing, his body collapsing, almost wanting to sleep right there, exhausted from his efforts and amazed that he was alive, realizing how close he had come to drowning. There was perhaps no sensation as horrifying as being unable to breathe, life slowly draining from the body, the situation inevitable and hopeless. As MacGyver continued to relive his experience with disturbing clarity, he knew the terror those villagers must have felt when the bridge collapsed and the water claimed them. They knew their lives were over, and there was nothing they could do to prevent it. Somehow miraculously he had managed to survive. He had been given another chance, the lake calm, and any current nonexistent. The villagers, on the other hand, had to contend with an unstoppable force that they could not defeat, even if they were the strongest. Guilt once again rose within him as he wondered why he should be allowed to survive almost drowning when they hadn’t.
Eventually, regaining his bearings, the shock and terror of the experience fading, MacGyver staggered to his feet, still trembling. He walked in a weaving, unsteady pattern towards the cabin as if intoxicated, his legs feeling numb and paralyzed just as they had the day the bridge collapsed, not cooperating with his brain’s command that they move properly. He smashed into the back door to open it, tumbling to the floor once inside. Using the walls to steady himself and pull himself up, he felt around for the light switch with a shaky hand, flipping it up to turn it on once he located it. His eyes scanned the cabin, searching for anything suspicious, anything that could explain how he ended up in the lake. There was no sign of any intruders of a break in of any kind, everything appearing to be in order except the bed with its pile of twisted and rumpled sheets, reflecting the inner chaos and turmoil of MacGyver’s traumatized mind as he slept. Stumbling over towards it, he fell onto the mattress, not caring if he was still soaked from the lake, feeling drowsy again, wanting nothing more than to sleep, yet his wandering mind wouldn’t let him, disturbed and preoccupied by what had happened, wanting to solve the puzzle. His sleepy eyes drifted around the room, his face half smashed against the pillow. When they settled on the nearly empty bottle of sedatives, they stopped, staring at them for a long time.
Sitting up, he almost instantly regretted it, the room spinning in a dizzying blur, nausea briefly overtaking him, causing him to stifle the urge to vomit. Taking a few deep breaths, once again glad that he could breathe at all, everything began to settle again and he picked up the bottle of pills, still staring intently at them. A stray drop of water from his damp hair fell on the prescription label, blurring the lettering on it. He wiped it away with his thumb, reading the instructions. He had never been one to take medication if he could avoid it, even if he was ill, preferring instead to allow the illness to run its natural course and leave his body. He didn’t like the idea of any foreign substance polluting his body, and yet now he realized what he had done, becoming dependent on them to sleep and calm himself, allowing his emotions to override common sense and rational judgment, nearly overdosing on them simply because he refused to feel the pain, almost as if it were an unconscious attempt at suicide, even though he never considered himself suicidal. Taking more than the recommended dose had led to his near fatal encounter with the lake, and he imagined how he wound up out there, under the drug’s influence, in a half conscious state, somnambulating, something he had never done before, not even under great duress. The alternative to not taking the pills was insomnia, his memories of that tragic day his bridge collapsed haunting him and denying him the relief of sleep, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want something worse happening to him the next time. Maybe it was time for him to feel the pain he had been so desperately avoiding through the escape to oblivion assisted by drugs. Clutching the bottle tightly in his hands, he stood and went to dispose of them. As tormented as he was, he did not wish to die. From then on, he reasoned, he would have to try to deal with his grief, confront it the best he could, even if that meant more suffering. When he was finished, he returned to bed, still wet and bedraggled, and closed his eyes.
***
The man watched the activity in Pete’s cabin, angry and disappointed that his plan failed. Still, from what he could see, MacGyver appeared shaken from the experience, uncertain and doubtful. His mind was in a fragile state, and this incident would only make it more so, which could only work to his advantage, strengthening his strategy.
“You’re always more resilient than I expect, but it’s not over,” he said. “The hunt has only begun.”
To be continued…
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
--Henry David Thoreau
brains+brawn+beauty+personality=MacGyver
