Casting Mountains in the Sea

By: Ridley C. James

A/N: This is the prequel to How Wolves Change Rivers. It is a special request by fellow writer Helloyesimhere, and actually does have some relation to the next chapter of Guard Your Heart. It is complete and will be posted in chapters throughout next week, but I wanted to kick off 'Finale Friday' with a bang!

Please excuse my lack of knowledge of all things Afghanistan. Honestly, I tried to do my homework, I even looked at maps, but it made my brain hurt. To make a long story short, creative license runs amok in this one! I have the greatest respect for our military and would never want to paint the tremendous job they do in the wrong light. I know what they face daily is often times horrific and stressful, so I have focused more on those 'details', as emotional trauma and post stress disorders are more in my area of expertise instead of the technical aspects that so many other writers are much better at. Check out Gib's amazing story Lands, and Grooves Hills and Valleys if you want awesome military action and G.I. Jack at his finest. She was kind enough to lend a little of her expertise to this story, which I am forever grateful, but all blunders are mine. A huge gratitude as well to Mary, who patiently combed through this with her eagle eye and warm heart and made it a much better piece.

Again, keep in mind this is in my little world of how Jack and Mac met, which occurred when Jack's Delta unit 'borrowed' Mac's EOD skills. Despite the show telling us they fought together in Afghanistan and/or Iraq, we do not know the specifics, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt. Enjoy! Reviews are always welcomed.

RcJ

"Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark."-Rabindranath Tagore

Jack Dalton was not a particularly religious man, not like his newest teammate David Wright, aptly nicknamed The Deacon. He did not go to church regularly. He swore more than he should. He gambled. He drank. He knew women 'biblically' on a steady basis without offering as much as a follow up phone call let alone considering a sacred commitment such as marriage vows. And he robbed. Jack Wyatt Dalton stole lives for a living.

He didn't carry a copy of The New Testament with him as Deacon did, but, Jack, like most soldiers, would have been lying if he said he didn't bring God into battle with him. It was a hope as necessary as his weapons and rations, a protection as real as his flak jacket. Jack had seen too many horrific atrocities not to be a bit cynical of the good and gracious Father Jack's grandparents served faithfully at home in Texas, but he had also witnessed too many miracles to completely write off the idea that something bigger, someone better, might lay just beyond the reaches of human sight and comprehension. Of course, Jack also secretly believed in aliens. That didn't stop him from praying to a God he wasn't quite sure existed, although sometimes the Big Guy seemed almost as elusive and fantastical as ET and the creature Sigourney Weaver found floating in space.

Jack prayed for absolution after every kill, he asked that the fallen might be someplace better. He prayed for protection for his team before each mission. On occasion he'd begged and bargained with God for the pain to just stop while being tortured or for perseverance when he didn't think he could complete one more leg of a mission let alone accomplish the directive. But Jack had never prayed quite as hard as he did the day he and his men infiltrated a strong hold of Taliban forces in Helmand Province. It was a strike to save one of their own, a last ditch effort to rescue Jack's best friend, his little brother, Angus MacGyver.

"Tell me he's not freaking cheating!" Deacon tossed his cards on the table, gesturing to the two men at the table who weren't raking in the chips the three of them had just lost in the last round.

"Gosh, darn it, Deac," Landry mocked their new teammate's reluctance to use the four-lettered language that usually accompanied their poker games. "I think you're right. Old Jack here is definitely trying to swindle us."

"A guy doesn't have to cheat when he's as good as I am." Jack waved a hand over the pot he'd just pulled to his side of the table. He winked at Landry before sending an accusing frown Deacon's way. "Besides, I didn't think you do-gooders were supposed to go about slandering a guy's good name."

"It's not slander if it is true, pal. Even Jesus had righteous anger for the crooks in His temple." Deacon ran a hand over his close-cropped strawberry blond hair, wrinkling his freckled nose. He'd been with them for only a few months, freshly recruited from the Air Force. He was as squeaky clean as they came, but a damn good chopper pilot. "I don't know how you're doing it, but there's no way you've drawn those last three hands fair and square."

"I'll tell you my secret, Deacon, all you have to do is ask."

"Don't ask," Landry advised.

"Maybe he's just blessed?" Pauley chimed in before Deacon could speak. "It could be that Jack has an inside track to some miracles that you don't know about Deacon. Maybe there's a Guardian angel or a saint especially for Texas card sharks."

"And here I thought that was a St. Michael pendant I caught sight of on your chain." Deacon played along good naturedly. He'd taken his fair share of ribbing over the last few weeks, a customary and harmless hazing by Jack's team.

"Actually it's St. Jude," Jack grinned, thinking of the day his nana had given it to him. St. Michael would have made more sense seeing as how Jack had just signed on for his first tour and Michael was the patron saint of soldiers, but Jack's grandmother, Beth, had a wicked sense of humor. "He's the one who looks after lost causes."

Landry snorted. "Knowing Dalton there's nothing holy involved. A salty deal with the Devil is more likely. In fact, considering his score card, I've always wondered if he wasn't a protégé of the old Grim Reaper himself."

"You boys are a sorry bunch of bastards as well as sore losers." Jack collected his money, tossing a twenty back towards Deacon. "There's my ten percent, Pastor. Send it to the missionaries."

"Bless you, brother." Deacon took the money, tucking it in his pocket. "I still think you're a stinking cheat."

Jack grinned, stacking his winnings. "Scared money never wins."

"What?" Deacon frowned.

"That's my secret," Jack tucked the roll of winnings in his pocket. "I'm always confident when I'm playing the odds."

"Told you not to ask." Landry rolled his eyes. "The more you're around Jack the more you'll learn to embrace the mystery. You don't want to hear 'the world according to Tombstone' spiel. Trust me."

Jack was kept from defending his good name to the new guy by the dulcet bellowing of their commanding officer.

"Dalton!"

Jack winced, scanning his memory for anything he might have done on the latest mission to warrant the grim tone he recognized in Hammond's hollering. "In here, Sir?"

All the men gathered around the make-shift table stood, although none but Deacon bothered with the preamble of saluting. The subtle differences between being a soldier in the Air Force and a Delta 'operator' was taking a little time to make an impression on the newbie. You could take a guy out of a regulation uniform but it took a while for the regulations to wear off.

"Put your hand down, Opie Taylor," Hammond growled, using the handle he'd liked for their ginger-haired teammate, not realizing that the Andy Griffith reference was probably wasted on the kid who was a generation or three behind Hammond. "R&R is cancelled. We've got a new assignment. We'll be heading out ASAP."

"What?" Jack propped his hands on his hips, glaring at his commander. He'd served with Perseus Hammond long enough to offer up argument despite their difference in rank.

"We just got in from a mission, one in which Landry took a round to the vest," Jack gestured to the man next to him. "And Pauley caught blow back from a building and suffered a concussion. You told us to stand down for the next few turns."

When Hammond's face reddened Jack added an offhanded. "Sir."

"This is a special situation that requires a certain skill set."

Jack, having heard this spin so many times, tried to hold his temper. "Meaning no one else wants to take the damn mission because it's probably gone sideways and the higher ups want it scrubbed and whoever was behind it erased."

"Suicide mission," Pauley clarified for Deacon, who was looking a little befuddled at the heated exchange. "We get those a lot."

"It's FUBAR, that's for damn sure." Instead of shouting, which Jack fully intended, Hammond ran a hand over his barely their silver hair and sighed. "Army has a garrison pinned down in Helmand Province, near Barikju. Unexpected Taliban activity in the area had an envoy sent in to pull them out, but insurgents have cut off the routes into the town. The 3rd combat engineers ordered to aid in the recovery has been providing long range fire to keep the Taliban from completely taking the compound but the team needs to be out of there ASAP."

"Helmand?" Landry groaned. "Didn't we just agree to turn that hell-hole over to the farce of a local police and be done with it? Every time we gain ground in that area, the Taliban come back ten-fold."

"I freaking hate Helmand," Jack said. He heard Pauley let loose with a string of four-lettered words he was sure had Deacon's face lighting up like a Christmas tree. Helmand was one of the most southern provinces of Afghanistan, a district of strategic towns and villages, not to mention a gateway for Opium production. Not only did the Taliban forces have a constant stronghold there, the locals hated and resented the military presence. Jack couldn't blame them considering the Taliban were damn smart in using their fellow citizens as human shields which meant a high number of civilian casualties. "Why don't the Devil Dogs from Camp Leatherneck handle it or those British bastards fond of blowing their own trumpets from Bastion?"

"You're going to want to be in on this one, Tombstone." Hammond took an empty chair and spun it around, straddling the seat as he faced Jack and motioned for everyone to reclaim their respective spots. His face was grim and Jack felt an old familiar knot of fear start to coil in the bottom of his gut. "The Army sent a team into Kajaki to help British soldiers secure and sweep the area around the hydroelectric installation there."

Jack nodded, understanding the wisdom in that strategy. "The damn has to be held because it provides irrigation for the entire Helmand valley."

"And electricity for the whole damn province," Landry added. He glanced at Deacon. "British and Canadian troops have been mostly successful in holding that area. They use a series of outposts the Soviets built during their occupation in Afghanistan."

"But the Taliban have never given up on taking it under their control." Pauley had to throw in his two cents. "Every now and then they get squirrely and make one hell of a push for it. It would be a propaganda dream come true if they could claim some kind of stronghold there, better even than claiming they shot down one of our birds."

"Boys, drop the damn history lesson." Jack waved a hand at his teammates, keeping his eyes on Hammond. "Let The Hammer get back to why we're going to want to jump on this mission."

"The deployed garrison was a unit of EOD's." Hammond took a breath and let it out in a sigh. "The Shepherd was with them."

More cursing went around the table as Pauley and Landry reacted to the news. Jack only shook his head, his ears ringing as if Hammond had just boxed him a good one. He tried to recall exactly the last time he talked with Angus MacGyver.

"That's not possible, Ham. Shepherd's further north." Hope lit on him like a bird. Hammond had been fed bad intel. "Kunduz or Kabul. It couldn't have been more than a couple of weeks since I spoke with him."

"I'm not wrong about this, Jack. I confirmed it myself with MacGyver's C.O." Hammond clasped his hands, letting them dangle over the back of the chair. "Mac volunteered to go to teach some techniques to a British squad that was going to be stationed there on a more permanent basis."

"Well of course he did," Jack growled, pinching the bridge of his nose. It sounded just like MacGyver's M.O. Mac lived to fix things. "Leave it to the kid to volunteer for a mission that takes him into a town that suffers a surprise attack by the enemy."

"Who's The Shepherd?" Deacon interrupted.

"The Shepherd is our favorite EOD specialist," Landry replied, gathering their cards in a signal their fun was over. "He's enlisted Army but we commandeer him when we're close by. Kid is crazy smart, one of the best bomb boys in the business despite being even more 'fresh off the farm' than you, Deacon. We're talking not even legal to drink, but he's who you want clearing the way for any stroll you're going to take out here in the sand, especially in an area like Helmand where the Taliban hide IED's like a giant bunny does eggs on Easter Sunday."

"He's also Little Joe to Jack's Hoss," Pauley added, his mouth twitching slighlty. "Gilligan to his Captain, Robin to his…"

"Shut up, Pauley," Jack growled, cutting off his friend's antiquated references to the relationship he'd formed with MacGyver in the year since he'd been partially responsible for the kid working with their team.

"Basically, Mac's the kid brother Jack always wanted and Papa Hammond delivered up last year like some kind of make-shift stork," Pauley finished in a fake whisper that earned him a glower from both Jack and their commanding officer.

"Shepherd is one of us, Wingnut," Hammond said, using the not so flattering term for a member of the Air Force. "That's all you need to know."

"And we'll undertake any mission necessary to get him back. Even if it takes us straight into the bowels of Helmand." Jack glanced at his team, receiving confirming nods all around.

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them. They follow me," Deacon said, gravely when Jack's gaze met his. "It's a Bible verse about The Shepherd…"

"I know what it is," Jack continued to hold Deacon's gaze, realizing the younger man was trying to demonstrate his commitment to a task that may get him killed, one he had no true allegiance to considering he'd yet to meet Mac. Landry was right. Deacon couldn't be much older than Mac, who was in Jack's opinion far too young to be involved in a mess like Helmand. "No one would blame you if you want to step off this ride before it gets cranking."

"I have no problem being a sheep to slaughter if the shepherd's worthy." He gave Jack a grin that spoke more to a wolf than any docile, grazing creature ready for reaping. "Besides, who do you think's going to drop you all in there and work exfil when you need pulled out?"

"While I appreciate your enthusiasm boys, this isn't exactly our typical run."

Jack grunted, sending a knowing look to Hammond. "When are any of our runs typical?"

"Jack and I need to have a little talk." Hammond waved a hand. "Get your gear ready. We needed to head out ten minutes ago."

Jack's team vacated the table like they were bugging a camp that was about to be overtaken by enemy mortar. Jack sensed the danger just as his teammates had but this was Mac, and Jack had no choice but to stand his ground.

"Don't tell me this is a recovery, Hammond," he growled once the others were out of earshot. The fear that had begun to wind tight now let loose like a scatter shot, lodging into all of Jack's defenses with piercing accuracy. He could not lose the kid, not now. Mac was too important, and not just to Jack. Angus MacGyver had yet to do all the amazing things Jack was convinced he was capable. "I won't accept that."

"If I thought that was all this was I wouldn't have tagged you for the job, Jack." Hammond's dark eyes and stony countenance softened just a fraction. "Not to bring Shepherd's body back. Other men could have done that, but I happen to believe if anyone can pull him out of this alive it's our team."

"I promised him I'd watch his back." It was a vow Jack had made on Mac's first mission with The Unit. It was supposed to be a onetime deal, but as time unfurled and one mission became another and then ten Jack found himself holding to the words like some kind of covenant.

"You don't think I know that. I was the one who set that stage." Hammond looked almost remorseful. Jack started to open his mouth, to negate any reason Hammond had for feeling bad about putting that particular ball in motion despite the ruckus Jack had caused about being handed such a duty at the time, but the Major continued on." I also know you're going to want to run in guns blazing and cut down anyone that may be in your path to getting Shepherd back but this is what my momma, bless her dear departed soul, used to call a sticky wicket."

Despite the seriousness of the situation Jack's mouth twitched. "You had a momma?"

"What do you think, Dalton?"

"I thought you either sprang from the Roman god of war's head or the military cooked you up in some lab in Area 51."

"Listen to me, Jack. That dam can't fall into enemy hands. Our priority is to save MacGyver and his guys but I'm going to have to piggy back another team with yours for scouting." Hammond shifted in his seat, a sign he wasn't happy about the situation. "As soon as they know the lay of the land we have to report back for air support. When that intel is relayed, the British and the marines are going to want to hit them hard and fast and drive the Taliban out, if not completely obliterate them, even if there are friendlies in the area. They're going into that town to take it back, and their push may just drive the Taliban to overrun Mac's position. Do you get what I'm saying?"

"You're telling me that Mac and his team were never the first objective." Jack narrowed his gaze, used to the double speak that sometimes was fluent in the military. "The marines want intel as to where exactly the Taliban are and what their holding."

"Mac is my priority objective." Hammond's dark countenance confirmed what Jack knew to be true. Hammond was a good soldier, but what made him a great leader was that he knew how to walk the very fine line of insubordination and the code of honor he'd sworn to his brothers in arms.

"So if we're not in and out with Mac before the marines start bringing the heavy then we might as well be with the Taliban."

"There is no might, Jack. Mac's team is supposedly pinned down in the Baghran District with a small garrison of Afghan National Police at what used to be their old police station. At last report they and the ANP's were taking RPG's and 107's, trying to hold their own until someone gets them out of there."

"Then what the hell are we waiting for?" Jack looked at Hammond, already forming the first of many desperate prayers he would send silently out to the universe in their short flight to Helmand. Please don't let us be too late. Please watch over him until I get there. Please. Please. Please. "Let's go get our boy back."

To be continued…