Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

Also, I freakin' give up. I guess this little writing habit is sticking.

-x-

AFGHANISTAN – KAPISA PROVINCE

"Dude, I'm telling you, that was lentil stew."

The driver of the humvee pulled off his eye cover to pinch the bridge of his nose. He wasn't surprised the kid's eyes were shot – it had been a hell of a day, and he was looking forward to sunset himself.

Preferably on base, with some hot chow that hadn't been sitting in a brown pouch for a couple years. MREs hit the spot when you were good and hungry, and they were a hell of a lot better than they'd been when he'd joined the army back in '93, but one encounter with a bad one could really put a damper on your day.

Case in point.

" . . . lentil stew is red, Dalton."

Jack shook his head with a tired chuckle. "Not after it's been sittin' in a hundred degree tent for a few months it ain't. 'Lentil Stew with Ham' gives half the guys in my unit bubble guts, same as you."

MacGyver released his eyes and stretched them wide, blinking rapidly a couple times and focusing on the road. "Bubble guts?"

"You know." He gestured in the general direction of the EOD tech. "Stomach crampin', face a little green, sweat on your upper lip there, and that funny gassy boilin' feelin''? Bubble guts."

The kid grimaced a little, and the humvee sputtered as he shifted in his seat, momentarily letting off the accelerator. "I, uh, I figured that out from the context, Jack. What I meant was . . . you know what, nevermind."

"Yeah, you California boys have a different word for it, I'm sure." He kept his eyes on the road, though Dalton would be the first to admit that he wasn't always able to pick out the pattern to the clumps of dirt and sand that indicated they had anything to worry about. "Or maybe not, all you Hollywood types eat is nuts an' berries, am I right?"

He was about two weeks into his unexpected next tour, and so far had no regrets. At least not major ones. Spending the day baking on a ridge watching over EOD nerds clearing one sad little strip of road hadn't been all that entertaining; hell, he thought MacGyver was the slowest EOD tech the Army'd ever produced, but the more of 'em you put together, the slower they all seemed to move. At least he'd had the other overwatch snipers to chat with.

But it meant he wasn't chatting with his own EOD nerd, and they'd been paired now for seventy-eight days. Back when he'd been shipping out, there hadn't been much need to get to know the kid beyond the job and the how do you do's. After Paktia Province, well . . .

Way more to Carl's Junior that met the eye. It was about time he got under the kid's skin, and learned what made him tick.

". . . you sure are, Jack. Our diet is strictly nuts and berries. I'm a vegetarian, did you know?" His voice was laced with sarcasm.

Jack smirked to himself, his eyes automatically scanning the next ridge as they ground through a hairpin turn on their way northeast on the one and only highway that passed through the province. Some haze to the southeast attracted his attention, and Jack reached up and pulled down his own eye cover, glancing over the edge of the glasses. Without the polarized lenses, it was a lot harder to make out, but it wasn't sand.

"You're a pacifist, son, I'll give you that, but you are also a carnivore, same as the rest of us. I get between you and salisbury steak, I'm liable to lose a hand." Jack didn't take his eyes off the haze.

"Well, who doesn't love a good dehydrated beef patty."

"Vegetarians," Jack responded, pushing his sunglasses back up and shifting his rifle from his right side to his left. He rooted around the inside of his vest a second, pulling out his map.

MacGyver glanced over. "There's only one road, so I'm pretty sure I know the way back –"

Jack checked his watch, estimating their travel time, and scanned the topography. He glanced back up, trying to marry it to the horizon, and the haze became a veritable mushroom of thick black smoke.

MacGyver was still looking his way and saw it too; he brought them to a quick stop, ducking to try to get a better view through the window. "Jack-"

"Yeah, man, I see it." He keyed his radio. "Snakebite Zero Three, this is Snakebite One One, over." He thought the ridges might give them a problem, but the response came back quickly.

"This is Snakebite Zero Three, go ahead, over."

"We've got some kind of activity goin' on off the main drag, about three klicks from Betty. Got smoke, and lots of it. Requesting permission to contact the COP, over."

MacGyver gestured towards the black cloud. "That was a pair of explosions, see the way the smoke column's-"

"Yeah, man, I know what a detonation looks like-"

The radio hissed, and they both fell silent. "Stand by, Snakebite One One."

Jack scanned the ridge again, looking for any sign of hostiles. "Smoke's too close to be Belda proper, but there ain't nothing else out here worth blowin' up." He traced a quick circle on the map, drawing MacGyver's attention to their position. "Back two hundred yards there was an old riverbed. It'll take us in generally the right direction –"

The blond's eyebrows rose. "Yeah, but if we head through that, we'll have ridges on both sides. It'd be a perfect kill zone -"

Jack held up a hand. "How about you leave the strategy to the meat eater, alright? I know it's a perfect kill zone, I taught you that."

The kid eyed him. "Actually, you didn't teach me that, Jack, I-"

"I damn well did. Know how I know that? Because that's what you walk yourself into every damn time I turn my back on you for more than three seconds-"

The radio crackled. "Snakebite One One, be advised Betty's got a range going about a klick from your position, over."

Betty was the callsign for the Belda Combat Outpost. It hadn't seen any direct action since 2013, mainly because there wasn't a damn thing worth having between Tagab and Nejrab besides a few farms spread here or there. The purpose of the outpost was to provide logistics support to traveling units and keep the main road open and secure.

Having a range – blowing off ammo – made sense given it was nearing September, and if you didn't use your ammo allotment in a given year, Uncle Sam would decide you obviously didn't need all of it and cut your allowance the following year. It was SOP to go through all your spare rounds before the final inventory was turned in so you didn't get shorted ammo, just in case. That being said, Jack couldn't think of a single thing you could do with M60 machine gun rounds that would produce that result.

He looked over at Carl's Junior for a gut check, and the kid's face showed just as much doubt. "Maybe they needed to detonate some claymores, but that's . . . that's a lot of explosive to set off at once."

And it was awfully late to still be running a range. It would be dusk in less than half an hour.

Jack tapped his radio again. "Snakebite Zero Three, we're seeing evidence of a pretty big explosion. Repeat request to contact the COP, over."

MacGyver didn't wait for a reply. He threw the humvee into gear and executed a three point turn around.

Jack suppressed a sigh with effort. "Dude, I know you know better than to drive up to an active range. That's live ammo, and they don't know we're here. Anybody ever teach you EODs about friendly fire?"

"No, Jack. We EODs don't go through any basic training." The sarcasm was back full force, and now that he'd turned them around, he could watch the smoke columns out his own window. "If that was caused by claymores, it was about thirty of them, densely clustered. Even if it was a disposal, no one would blow that many at once."

Jack started to pick up what the kid was laying down. "You think the second explosion-"

"Was an accidental detonation," he confirmed, laying on the accelerator.

They'd almost made it back to the riverbed when dispatch in the TOC got back to them. "Snakebite One One, proceed to site. Range is under a cease fire, repeat range is under a cease fire. Betty would appreciate EOD assist with disposal of UXO, how copy, over."

In the driver's seat, Mac groaned softly, and the humvee started to slow as they made their careful way up the riverbed. There was still sweat beading on the kid's upper lip, but Jack realized quickly the moan had nothing to do with bubble guts.

"Sorry, Jack. Looks like it's gonna be MREs for dinner too."

The Delta huffed out a sigh. "I take it this is gonna take a while, even by your standards, huh?" UXO stood for unexploded ordinance, which was in Jack's opinion just as dangerous as a mine or a damned IED. You never knew when they'd decide to explode. Sometimes never, sometimes next week, sometimes about ten seconds after you'd given up on them and approached.

He got a sideways look. "That'll depend on what didn't get blown up in that second explosion."

Jack keyed the radio. "Snakebite Zero Three, good copy, advise safest approach vector, over."

Driving that one klick took them almost twenty minutes. However, they did have a fairly gentle natural ramp to the range, and there was enough greenery around that they had sufficient traction to climb to the plateau. The TOC had advised they approach from the south, which miraculously was actually the direction they were coming from, and MacGyver eased the humvee over the last hump.

The black smoke was still rising, indicating something was still burning, and as they cleared the hill, Jack could make out about a dozen men standing a good eighty yards from what looked a hell of a lot like a dumpster fire. Charred or actively burning ammunition crates lay in haphazard lumps around the main blaze, clearly having been tossed by an explosion.

Jack whistled through his bottom teeth, and MacGyver brought the vehicle to a halt, just staring.

One of the crates close to the main blaze exploded, making all the soldiers in front of them duck, and Jack couldn't help a startled curse. "Holy shit! Are those mortar rounds flipping through the air?!"

MacGyver's mouth had fallen open. ". . . yes, I believe they are."

"Jesus H." Jack waited for the noise to die down before he kicked open the door, slinging his rifle to his back as he dismounted the vehicle. None of the soldiers had noticed their approach; it looked like they were most of a squad of combat support and combat services support soldiers.

Awesome. Operational and logistical support, as opposed to troops that actually used weapons. Not the sort of soldiers you really wanted overseeing a weapons range.

Jack glanced up the line of oblivious men, eventually locating a lieutenant bar on one of their collars. Several other mortar rounds had cooked off in the fire in the meantime, keeping the men occupied and allowing Jack to take a position at the lieutenant's shoulder, hanging his hands casually off a couple pouches on his vest.

Carl's Junior had finally gotten over his shock and pulled his gear together – literally all of it, everything he'd had in the humvee was hanging off his pack – and came up in full battle rattle behind Jack, taking a preparatory breath. Jack held up a couple fingers, waving him silent with a smile.

In the deepening dusk, the fire started to burn down a little, and after about thirty seconds of silence, a soldier to Jack's right addressed his lieutenant without turning. "So. . . shall we call EOD?"

The lieutenant didn't even have time to respond before another man scoffed. "Nah, I think we got this."

There was a powerful explosion, somewhere behind the main blaze, and MacGyver started forward with the gait that said he meant business. Jack gave in and coughed.

The butterbar lieutenant glanced at him, not really paying attention, and Jack gave him a cockeyed grin as another crate of mortars went flying into the air, more of them unexploded than not.

"Well, that'll put the damn damn on your day."

The lieutenant blinked at him, taking in his uniform, sans any type of patch or identification. Then he turned and gave MacGyver a once-over, his eyes lingering on the EOD patch.

"Waller!"

A sergeant first class on Jack's right turned, also seeming surprised to see them, and the lieutenant gave him a dirty look. "Looks like someone already called EOD."

MacGyver's bubble guts were clearly putting him on edge; he didn't bother with a greeting. "Someone want to tell me what's going on here?"

The lieutenant – Ross, his nameplate indicated – had the good grace not to visibly bristle. "It's a weapons range, son. What's it look like?"

It looked like a goddamned catastrophe, but disposal wasn't Jack's skill set, so he stayed quiet and waited to see exactly what Carl's Junior was going to make of it. If the kid gave this butterbar lieutenant half the lip he gave him, it was gonna be good.

"It looks like you stacked a few dozen crates of M899 mortar rounds in the middle of a field and set them on fire, sir," MacGyver responded, in what Jack considered a fairly civil tone.

"Got a better idea?" This came from Sergeant First Class . . . Waller, apparently, who turned on the kid a little defensively. "We had two thousand rounds to blow through and only two tubes." He thumbed over his shoulder, and Jack turned and studied the line. Even in the dim he could make out two mortar tubes, set up alongside half a dozen M60s. Empty crates had been used as makeshift tables, upon which sat at least a dozen pistols and M-16s.

Typically you had a range for every weapon class. Pistol range would be shorter, M60s range longer, and the mortar range would be nowhere near either of them. Rocking all that firepower on one line . . .

Jack couldn't help himself. "How much ammo did you need to shoot off?" And when the hell had they started?

The lieutenant seemed to deflate, rubbing his hand vigorously over his scalp. "About twelve thousand rounds for the M-16s, ten for the nine mils, six for the M60s, ten hand grenades, twenty claymores, about eighty pounds of M118 demo charges, and twelve AT4s."

Whoa mamma.

On the other side of the lieutenant, MacGyver's face set like stone. "What else is out there besides the mortars?"

"Whatever we hadn't had time to fire," the lieutenant replied, then shook his head. "I am so fucked."

Carl's Junior ignored the second part altogether. "Can you be a little more specific?"

"Major's orders were not to come home with a single round of ammo. There's ten of us. We fired off what we could, I got two M60s with scorched barrels, and the mortar tubes were so hot I was afraid the rounds were going to start cookin' off in 'em." Lieutenant Ross indicated his sergeant first class. "The fun really started when Waller realized we had twenty claymores but only four clackers."

Not too far off the kid's original estimate. But clearly they'd set off more than the claymore mines.

Waller tried to rescue his lieutenant. "I figured we could daisy-chain 'em, set 'em off over that little ridge there."

"Really." Jack almost choked on a laugh at MacGyver's tone.

"And if that weren't enough, we only had fifteen feet of det cord to set off eighty pounds of demo charges."

The kid turned slightly more green, if that was possible, and it took him several seconds to find the words. "So you daisy chained the claymores, facing downrange-" and he checked with the sergeant, getting an irritated nod, "and then you ringed the mortars with as much of the M118s as you had det cord for. What did you do with the rest of it?"

"We stuffed 'em into the mortar crates. Mortar should be enough to set it off."

An M118 demo charge was basically just four sheets of C4 strapped together. Jack had used the stuff extensively. You tore or cut off however much you needed, peeled off the adhesive strip, stuck it to whatever you wanted to blow up, stuffed a blasting cap in it, and boom.

But it required a detonator. Unlike some of Uncle Sam's other toys, C4 was pretty damn stable. Shooting it with a normal round wouldn't set it off, and neither would setting it on fire. It would burn, he was sure, but not explode. A guy in his unit said he'd set off a brick using a tracer round once. Jack honestly didn't know if a mortar would set it off or just splatter it.

MacGyver took a controlled breath. "Did you set any of the mortar fuzes?"

Waller rolled his eyes. "Of course we did. A couple rounds in each case were set to burst on impact."

The kid absorbed that. "And what about the AT4s?"

AT4s were anti-tank rockets – basically the biggest boom stick in the Army. He wasn't surprised they had so many, considering their primary mission was securing a heavily traveled and hardtop road, but he didn't see twelve used launchers on the line. Which probably meant –

"We put 'em in the ring of claymores. Facin' downrange, just in case a firing pin got hit." Waller seemed to think this particular detail justified trying to set off twelve anti-tank rockets using mines.

"Were you missing parts for the AT4s, as well?"

While the lieutenant had been fairly easygoing, considering the fiery cluster in front of them, apparently the kid sniping at one of his men was crossing a line. "We wouldn't have been short the tubes, the clackers, or the det cord if not for unprepared units like yours cleaning us out instead of packing your own damn supplies."

Considering MacGyver was standing there fully geared up, Jack felt that comment was undeserved, but he didn't see any reason to escalate the situation. The louie was right – he was phooked. And damn lucky none of his men appeared to be injured. The only thing worse than biffing a range and calling in EOD would be calling in medevac with them.

Instead of responding, Jack turned and tapped MacGyver on the shoulder, jerking his chin back towards the humvee. The kid took the hint and stepped back with him, until they at least somewhat out of earshot.

"Jack, that's-"

"A cluster. I got it, kid." They both flinched at another large explosion, again behind the main fire. "Well, at least that's one less rocket to worry about."

Even in the dark he could see the look he was getting. Carl's Junior dragged a hand down his face, frowning when he seemed to realize how much he was sweating. He grabbed the beige scarf he wore around his neck for just that purpose, and used it to mop his eyes and forehead. "You might as well get back in the 'vee. This won't take me more than twenty minutes."

Jack blinked, then made a show of sticking a finger in his left ear and rubbing it around. "Excuse me? I ain't sure you can tie your own boots in twenty minutes. What the hell do you plan to do with that hot mess?"

White teeth flashed across a dirty face. "Absolutely nothing."

The kid left him standing there, a little speechless, and marched back to the lieutenant. "I need to borrow four of your guys."

Ross balked. "You're not sending any of my guys anywhere near that thing-"

"You're right." MacGyver shrugged off his pack, catching it by the left arm strap and opening the main compartment. "No one's going near that thing."

Jack caught on about the same time the louie did. Ross sounded relieved. "So we just let it burn out then."

The kid pulled a red rectangular case of emergency markers out of his pack, then let the pack slide to the ground and tore into the case, dividing the stack into four unequal parts. "Actually, you're going to staff it overnight and watch it burn. If anything lands outside the field perimeter, call it in." He paused and glanced at the fire again, estimating distances. "It's going to take a couple EOD units a week to clean up this mess. Now, from which direction are civilians most likely to approach?"

The lieutenant gave that some thought. "North, south, and west are all equal opportunity. But no one comes out here unless they've lost a goat."

Mac frowned, and re-allocated his stacks. "Alright. I need two man teams. Maintain one hundred and twenty meters from the original site of the explosives. Put up one of these every forty meters. Use rocks to build a stand, and it needs to be able to stand up to a stiff breeze." He unfolded one of the signs, which bore the standard red triangle and had the word 'MINES' and a skull and crossbones. "The entire triangle needs to be visible. If you see any projectiles outside the one twenty meter perimeter, back off another forty meters and mark it. One of you measures distance, the other keeps his eyes on the ground. Does everyone understand?"

Waller and the sergeant beside him nodded, and two unnamed grunts Jack christened Tom and Jerry glanced at each other, then fist bumped.

"Okay. One of you take the east perimeter, the other the north. Dalton and I will mark west. Lieutenant, you have the honors here." And he passed out the handfuls of signs to go along with his orders.

Jack carefully hid a grin as the groups complied almost immediately, coming forward to take the markers. Kid was a Specialist, one of the lowest ranks around, but when you were standing on a minefield – and that was what this range had become – anyone with a brain knew EOD was in charge, and his voice held nothing but authority and confidence.

So when the lieutenant opened his mouth, Jack almost cut him off. Almost.

"Hook up with Gabel on the north side. Find out what's keeping him." The order was for his men, not MacGyver, and Tom and Jerry nodded.

The kid was still counting signs, so Jack took a causal step towards the lieutenant. "You got guys downrange?"

"Just one. He went down to confirm detonation of the mines and rockets after the cease fire."

That was about the time Jack realized that not all of them were wearing radios.

"What frequency you usin'?"

Ross glanced at him, then frowned and keyed his own radio. "Ranger Seven, this is Ranger One. You back on coms, over?"

Both men listened to the silence for a few seconds, and MacGyver came back with the last set of signs in his hands. "I'll be our eyes-"

Jack held up a finger, silencing his partner, and after another few seconds, Ross repeated the call.

No response.

The lieutenant continued to frown. "I figured he left the vehicle to get a better look, but he should've gotten a count by now –"

MaGyver looked between them, finally dialed in. "Wait. You're missing a man?"

Jack backed up a few steps, giving himself a clear view of the field, and he swung his rifle to his front and up, using the optics to scan the horizon. It was getting damn dark, and he switched to the night setting. The IR in this particular scope was decent but he had better; he hadn't planned to be hunting targets in the dark with a giant fucking fire in the way. One thing he could say for EOD overwatch - as boring as it was, it was very unusual not to be back on base by sunset, or pretty close to it.

He picked out the vehicle after about seven seconds, Army issue, but the image was too streaked to see much detail, and after trying a few more seconds he gave up.

"Got the vehicle, can't see anyone from here. I need to get on the other side of this bonfire." He let his rifle dangle from its strap, and grabbed his radio. "What frequency you on?"

Ross gave it to him and he adjusted accordingly, noting MacGyver doing the same. "Okay. We'll head down the west side, your guys continue down the east, and we'll swing around on the north and see if we can't find your man."

The lieutenant gave him a look, once again taking in the lack of any indication of rank or specialty, and Jack started off without another word.

Of course he hadn't gone four steps before his EOD tech was abreast, his tac light on its broadest setting. "Dammit, Jack, what did I just say?"

Jack grabbed his own light, clicking it on and letting it dangle from the webbing so it illuminated the ground at their feet. Carl's Junior aimed his a little further forward, expanding their pool of light.

"Dunno. You weren't listening either?"

The kid muttered something, too low to hear, and Jack kept one eye on the ground and one eye on the fire. Truth was, he had been listening to the kid, and he was keeping their one twenty meter perimeter. He was also more than just a little irritated at the situation. Mostly at whatever major gave a shiny new lieutenant such a stupid set of orders. Don't come home with a single round of ammo. You didn't give an order like that to a butterbar lieutenant. They didn't know how to interpret orders yet, all they knew was how to follow them.

And he was doing exactly what he'd been told to do. Get rid of every single round, no matter how creative he had to be to get it done. Good initiative, bad judgement.

"I take it this isn't your first fubar range."

The kid made a soft chuffing sound. "No. I don't know the actual numbers on how many hand grenades are thrown in a given time period, but from purely empirical observations, I think the true failure rate is higher than the published one."

Jack was pretty sure that meant 'hand grenades are garbage,' and he chuckled. Technically, any dud fired or thrown onto a range required an immediate cease-fire and a call to EOD. "Yeah, well, don't think you EOD nerds get called out for all of those neither. You throw a dud on the range, you have everyone shoot at it til someone hits it."

The kid shook his head, pulling a sign out of the stack and unfolding it. "I was actually accounting for that, but I appreciate the confirmation." Another mortar cooked off, but it was far enough away that neither of them even flinched.

Jack stopped at around forty meters from the front of the range line, and the kid made short work of putting up his emergency marker. They were within about fifty meters of a smaller fire, obviously flung from the main event, and Jack watched a large glob of something sizzling melt down the front of one of the flaming crates. ". . . is that-"

"Melted C4 running down a mortar case like butter on pancakes?" The kid's voice was curiously flat. "Yeah."

"It'll burn off though, right?"

"Fairly soon, based on its viscosity." The sign was up and they were moving again in less than thirty seconds. "Which is bad news for the mortars in that case."

He didn't need an EOD specialist to tell him that. "You suppose that fobbit knew mortar rounds don't arm until they've been fired a certain distance?" Otherwise setting a fuze and then dropping the damn thing would set it off, and there'd be way fewer mortar gunners running around in the world.

"Maybe, maybe not, but some of them have already been launched that distance." The kid eyed the field, taking in the fire and the still smoldering crates that had been thrown relatively clear. "Also, the displaced air pushing out during an explosion, if it hits the air inlet or drive turbine, will mimic firing conditions, and arm them even if the fuze wasn't set. Those boxes there will have to be blown in place. And the structural integrity of the interior components can be damaged at much cooler temperatures than the flash point of C4."

Which was a really long-winded way of saying any of 'em could go off at any time.

"So what got you into EOD, anyway?" Jack kept his eye on the horizon, but there was still too much light pollution to bother with the scope.

"You mean besides the money, the cars, and the girls?"

One out of three wasn't too bad. "Yeah. Besides all that."

They were nearly to their next signage stop before the kid replied. "Joined up, took the ASVAB, recruiter said I could have my pick. EOD was right up my alley."

That was more history than he'd ever gotten out of the guy, and Jack kept his tone conversational. "Big fan of the Fourth?"

Carl's Junior unfolded his next sign. "Prohibiting unlawful and unreasonable government searches and seizures?"

Jack stopped, momentarily taken aback, and watched MacGyver scavenge for rocks. "Uh . . . fourth of July, not the Fourth Amendment."

When the kid crouched into the halo of his tac light, Jack could see he was smiling. "Yeah, I know, fireworks, I was just . . . why do you do that?"

But Dalton was onto him. "I dunno, why do you do that?"

MacGyver turned a little, though he didn't look directly at him, clearly not wanting to be blinded by the tac light. "Why do I do . . . ?"

"Redirect." Jack picked up his rifle again, checking the optics now that the fire was more to the side than in front of him, and he found rocks. A whole lotta rocks. No wonder no one had tried to farm this field. Habit was too ingrained to let him speak while he had the weapon to his face, but the kid didn't offer anything up.

Jeep was sitting in the same position, all the doors were closed. No damage he could make out. He traced the most likely path someone might take to try to get a visual on shit blowing up, which he hoped to god was along the sidelines and not direct considering the Powerpoint Ranger had said he'd pointed the AT4s in that direction.

That the jeep hadn't gotten hit was a sign that the rockets were just blowing up, as opposed to launching. Then again they had a bit of recoil, letting one go off without a hand on could result in a pretty significant change of direction.

"See anyone?"

There were little bits of flaming debris here and there, bright on the scope, but nothing moving except smoke and the occasional weed.

"Not yet. Jeep's still in place."

He dropped the rifle and obediently followed his EOD tech, who was moving as if he truly expected to find someone pinned down in all that shit.

Course, there was no point in worrying about it. The lieutenant's man was out there somewhere, but just because he was away from his radio didn't necessarily mean he was dying.

"Like that." He caught back up to the kid in a couple strides, adding his light to the ground, and started a mental count of the next forty meters.

MacGyver turned his head a little, acknowledging that he heard. "Keeping you focused on the mission is a redirect?"

Jack sent a look at the back of the kid's head. "Come on, MacGyver. You know just about all that's worth knowing about the Lone Star state. My family, what my pop did in the service, best time to see the forts and avoid the tourists . . . only thing I know about you is you popped out of a hole in the ground in Califor-nah-yay."

"What can I say, Dalton, you've got the gift of gab."

"And the dulcet tones of Willie Nelson, thank you." Now that they were behind the blaze, Jack could make out a second cluster of boxes, in significantly worse shape than some of the mortar crates. Clearly the claymores had hit their mark. The AT4 boxes were nearly burned at this point, though, so he figured any of the rockets that were going to pop probably already had.

A mortar exploded, about thirty meters away, and in the brief flash Jack saw that the ground around it was literally strewn with them. MacGyver had seen it too; he tightened the beam on his tac light, getting more distance with a narrower shaft and letting it play across the field. The closest unexploded mortar was no more than ten meters from their position, and the kid's light stayed on it a long moment.

" . . . think you need to expand that perimeter there, hoss."

"Dammit," MacGyver growled. "The M118s. Did the lieutenant tell you how many rounds they fired before they gave up?"

Jack untangled that in his head. "Just that they started with two thousand mortar rounds, and fired until the tubes were too hot."

"Okay, so that's . . . ambient temperature would have been a few degrees warmer . . . uh, a couple hundred an hour. Range started up in the morning, been running about fourteen hours –"

"No, not with twelve thousand rounds to go through on the M-16s," Jack disagreed. "I doubt they even thought about the mortars until they'd chewed through the majority of the pistol and machine gun rounds. You have any idea how long it'd take ten guys to go through ten k rounds of nine mil?" The amount of ammo they'd had to blow through was staggering. It probably hadn't occurred to the lieutenant to set off any of the booms until lunch.

"So that's . . . almost a thousand mortars . . ." The kid trailed off, murmuring under his breath. Jack wasn't sure he actually knew he did that out loud. "If the detonation rates we've already seen hold true, we're looking at . . . almost eight hundred potentially live, damaged mortars on the ground here."

So it was a minefield roughly fourteen thousand square meters, and it contained at least eight hundred mines. And apparently most of them were back here. Probably got blown back by the placement of the M118 charges, which those POGs back on the line would have ensured sent the majority of their explosive force downrange.

Jack keyed his radio. "Ranger One, this is Snakebite One One, over."

Thankfully the lieutenant had finally remembered his three plus previous years of service. "This is Ranger One, go ahead."

"Any sign of your little lost sheep? Ranger Ranger, sound off."

While the men that had radios complied, Jack glanced at MacGyver, who was still studying what he could see of the field. "How far do you want to extend the perimeter?"

"Another fifty meters," he said automatically. Then he turned around and let his light play on the ground to their left. After all, if he was extending the perimeter that far . . .

After six men reported back – and all negative – Jack turned his own tac light towards the west. All he was picking out were rocks and weeds, and it seemed that's all the kid found too, because MacGyver turned around and his voice was a little more certain. "Fifty meters."

"Ranger Ranger, be advised, EOD recommends setting the perimeter at one seven zero meters, repeat, EOD advises moving the perimeter back one seven zero meters from original site, how copy, over."

It took them a few seconds to decide who was going to respond first, but once again, that butterbar lieutenant didn't let him down. "This is Ranger One, good copy, perimeter at one seven zero meters, over."

Jack released his radio, already guessing that MacGyver would rather continue forward than backtrack and move out the previous signage, and he was not disappointed as the specialist carefully took them a further fifty meters straight west, and then forward.

They traveled the next forty meters in silence, the kid didn't really need him to measure the distance, and Jack glanced around, finding and taking the highest convenient ground before scanning the range through his optics.

Jeep was right where he'd left it. Doors still closed.

"Maybe the guy's taking a nap," he muttered, lowering the rifle briefly to make sure he was on target. His high ground gave him maybe an extra six feet of elevation, it was almost useless around the rocks.

If it were him, and he'd just found himself surrounded by randomly exploding mines, he'd hunker down against the nearest rock in the lowest point he could find, and put his back to the firing line.

"So what got you into Delta?"

He mentally marked a couple positions to check at their next stopping point, then hopped down his pile of rocks and followed MacGyver. "Uh-uh, bud, we're talking about you. Why was EOD right up your alley?"

Apparently the adrenaline of the situation and the walking around had cured the kid of his bubble guts, he seemed to be moving a little more comfortably, even through the wariness that was always part of him, whenever he was off base.

"I'm good at science and math," MacGyver said dismissively. "It just fit." Then he seemed to think better of it. "And, there was a need."

Well he wasn't going to argue there. Kid was damn near a genius. And there was a reason they were assigning spec ops to keep an eye on these bomb nerds. Uncle Sam was all too aware that they were losing way too many men and goods to IEDs. Not to mention morale. EOD was on T-man's list, those patches made them just as much a sniper target as an officer's bars.

"So what do I call you, MacGyver?"

The kid snorted, peeling off the next folded sign from his stack. "Think you just answered your own question there, Jack."

"Nah, man. MacGyver is like, three syllables. I ain't gonna yell that in a firefight, it's way too long. And I sure as hell ain't gonna yell Angus."

"Yeah, I'd appreciate that," MacGyver told him, stopping at the next forty meter mark. "Don't tell me you're getting tired of Carl's Junior."

"Also too long. And kid, I'll tell you what, I'd call you baby brother before I'd call you junior. I'm old, but I ain't that old. So what, guys back home call you Gus?"

The kid seemed to choke, gathering up a few fist-sized rocks. "No, I, uh, tried to keep it to my last name. Bozer too, so it worked out for us."

"Bozer?" Jack glanced around, finally finding a decent ridge about twenty yards away. "What the hell is a bozer? Like a bulldozer?"

The blond shook his head, setting up his marker, and Jack picked his way up the ridge, confirming it was free of anything that looked even remotely like a mortar before taking a knee and zeroing in on the spots he'd previously found.

Each offered at least some cover. He checked the nearest positions first, gradually straying further and further towards the center of the range.

"Got anything?"

Jack didn't answer. Let the kid get a taste of his own medicine. He'd been up there forty seconds, tops. When he spent an hour trying to find a target, then Carl's Junior could start complaining-

He didn't have his thermal gear, he was going on shape alone, but that mound at the base of a large outcropping looked awfully smooth. Wasn't a jagged edge to be seen. He shifted laterally, trying to get the optics to show him more detail, but the shadows being cast by the bonfire made the image too hazy to see anything telling like a camo pattern.

If that was Ross's lost sheep, the idiot was danger close to the center of the range. He also wasn't moving.

Jack kept both his eyes open, grabbing three fixed points on the horizon for reference before continuing his sweep. When he finally spotted movement, a fully upright figure, he stilled, and sure enough, someone else was walking right behind him.

Tom and Jerry. They weren't making as good forward progress as he and MacGyver, but they did seem to be keeping close to the perimeter they'd been given. It helped that Jack had trained EOD leading the way.

He lowered the rifle, slowly releasing a breath. The only way he was going to get a better look at that rock outcropping was to either get closer to it, or completely behind it, so it was totally blocking the light of the fire.

MacGyver was standing below him, looking up expectantly, and he sighed and stowed the rifle, working his way down the ridge. By the time he hit the ground, Carl's Junior had already read his expression.

"You found him."

"Can't confirm. I need to be on the north side." No way were either of them walking into that mess in the dark until he was damn sure that was the guy, and he was still alive.

"Then let's get you there."

A mortar blew, setting off another nearby, and they both ducked their heads reflexively.

"M899s are factory shipped with their fuzes set to proximity." MacGyver took off, picking up the pace. "If the increase in airspeed from the main explosion or the distance was great enough, they should have armed and gone off as soon as they dropped within thirteen feet of ground. If they didn't get triggered until they were near ground, the fuze will automatically move on to the next setting until it eventually hits the delay setting and goes off."

Jack followed in his footsteps, not really sure if the lecture was for his or the kid's benefit.

"Serious damage to the electrical components due to heat or impact could cause the mortar to arm, in which case it'll go off when it moves through all the fuze settings and reaches delay, or when it reaches the impact setting and gets jostled."

"Yeah, dude, I get it. They can go off whenever, and they can set each other off."

"Not whenever," the EOD tech corrected him. "If they didn't arm, the only thing that'll set them off is a sympathetic reaction triggering the explosive in lieu of an electrical fuze, and they'd have to be within about five meters of an exploding mortar. Any less will just throw it."

"You tellin' me all this for any particular reason?"

The kid turned his head a little, and the corner of his mouth was curled up. "If you see an undamaged mortar with the fuze in the PRX setting, it's probably safe. Anything else is not."

Jack gave a sharp laugh. "And if wasn't dark as five feet up a bull's ass, that'd be useful info." He didn't need to ask why MacGyver had just offered up that little insight – the kid was already planning on scarfing down this shit sandwich, and if he wasn't careful he was going to have to take a bite too.

They reached the last stop before they could swing for the north perimeter, and they passed the jeep on the way. Nothing about the vehicle's configuration had changed. Jack still couldn't get a clear view of the mound at the foot of the rocks, but he did get a better view of one of the other sites, and confirmed it was empty.

He also confirmed there were mortars on the north side of the jeep. No one was driving that thing out anytime soon.

Which reminded him. "So what was that about a dozer?"

"Bozer," the kid corrected him, glancing at his compass before turning them due east. "Wilt Bozer. He was my best friend growing up."

Jack's first instinct was to tease the kid about having friends, but he didn't want the blond to clam up. They started the first forty meters of the north perimeter. "Wilt's not a lot a better than Angus."

"Trust me, it sounds pretty respectable when it's his mom yelling it."

"Oh, I hear that." Jack still twitched every time he heard his first and middle name strung together. Then again, his own bestie growing up had always called him by his middle name, Wyatt. "So what, you and this Bozer kid went by your last names the whole time? Or just initials? Cause B an' M means somethin' different in Texas -" Though WB and A&M would be decent variants . . .

He sensed rather than saw that he got another smile out of the kid, but there was something a little strained under his casual, "Not that abbreviated. My friends call me Mac."

"Yeah, I was headed there next, but I figured Big Mac was too much like Carl's Junior."

"Just Mac is fine."

"That and you're what, a buck sixty drippin' wet?"

They'd hit the next forty meters, and MacGyver started casting around for rocks. Jack only needed another twenty meters to put the rock outcropping between him and the fire, so he continued past.

"Hey, this'll just take me a second-"

"Relax, Just Mac, I know what I'm lookin' for."

When he found a position he liked, he took a knee and hunkered down, killing his tac light and keeping his eyes on the ground to let them adjust. When he brought up the rifle again, he did the same with the scope, letting the optics adjust to their most sensitive setting before he brought it up slowly, trying to keep the halo over the rocks out of the scope.

He finally found the outcropping, or at least the bottom edge of it, and once the optics evened out, he made a slight adjustment, knowing his target was around a hundred and twenty five meters. The first recognizable thing he picked out was the tread pattern on the bottom of a boot.

Damn.

He took a breath, let out about half and held it, and left the rifle steady on his kneepad, watching the rhythm of his pulse on the optics. Once he knew what motion was being caused by his body, he watched for anything else that would give away whether that guy was alive or dead.

MacGyver came up beside him. "What do you see?"

He saw a whole lot of not movement is what he saw.

Jack frowned, picking up his head a little. "Yell for him. Guy's name is Gabel."

For being a fairly scrawny guy by Army standards, the kid had a deep, resonant voice that carried. He politely waited until Jack was back in position before he hollered.

The boot inched a little inward.

Even with the rocks keeping the light pollution down, Jack couldn't make out much more than the boot and a hip. The soldier was on his right side, pressed up against the rocks, and he couldn't even see the guy's head or trunk, let alone if he was bleeding.

MacGyver yelled again, but there was no answer, and the boot didn't move further.

Dalton picked up his head, using his Mark Ones to study the terrain between them. "He's either injured or scared shitless." Or both. "We're gonna need to call this in."

Something bigger than a single mortar exploded, Jack didn't see it go but listened to dirt and small rocks rain down. From the direction of the main fire, he heard something that sounded a lot like a stack of wood collapsing, and Jack risked standing up and ruining his night vision.

A good chunk of the main body of the fire had fallen in.

". . . so that's probably not a good thing." More mortars exposed to more heat.

MacGyver's silence spoke volumes, and Jack ducked back down to shield his eyes and key his radio.

"Ranger One, this is Snakebite One One, over."

The lieutenant must have been sitting on the radio, because he came back almost instantly. "Snakebite One One, go ahead."

"Got eyes on your man. He's on the range, repeat he is on the range, roughly six zero meters north of the main event. EOD is evaluating. Get Betty medical prepped and on site. Also, if you've got portable floodlights, they'd be a real help, over."

"If he's injured, we may not have time for that." MacGyver dropped into a crouch beside him. "Rule number one aside, can I borrow your scope?"

Rule number one – we don't ever, ever, touch Jack Dalton's stuff again.

Course, the kid had broken that rule half a dozen times in the past seventy-eight days. Usually saving either their lives or someone else's. And it wasn't like the rifle was going to do much good protecting them from exploding mortars.

"Well, I guess so, now that we're friends," he drawled, flicking on the safety before sliding the rifle's sling over his head. MacGyver stared at him, making no move to take the rifle, and Jack cocked an eyebrow. "Ain't that right, Just Mac?"

They'd been working together for seventy-eight days, and in all that time, the kid had never told him he preferred to be called Mac. Jack wasn't about to shut him down now that he'd finally gotten him talking.

The specialist balked. "I only need the optics-"

"And I'm not rezeroing this baby just so you can get eyes on for ten seconds. This ain't the first time you've held her. She ain't gonna bite ya."

Haltingly, MacGyver – Mac, he reminded himself - accepted the rifle. Jack knew for a fact he wasn't qualified on the weapon, but he knew which end was which, and after another moment's hesitation, he shifted his crouch to something more stable, brought the rifle up - finger outside the trigger cage - and settled in behind the scope.

Jack watched him critically. "Adjust down five degrees, you're gonna white out if you catch that bonfire."

He brought the rifle down – way more than five degrees. Jack was about to correct him when he realized what the tech was looking at.

"Kid, you're not goin' in there-"

"You and I both know it'll take my unit almost an hour to get here, and Belda's EOD is on loan to us for the cleanup op, they went back with my unit." He didn't take his eye off the scope. "If I can find a decent path . . ." He trailed off, and the radio cut off Jack's retort.

"Snakebite One One, medical will bring lights and a genny. ETA twenty minutes, over."

Jack lightly swatted MacGyver's bent leg. "See, twenty minutes and we can at least get some light up in here."

"Jack, they can't bring a helo in too close, by the time they get it set up we're talking forty minutes. I don't think we have that long." The angle of the rifle indicated Mac was working his potential paths closer to their position.

Jack squinted back at the rock outcropping. "What, you see somethin' I didn't?"

The kid leaned up away from the optics and pointed – at the bonfire. "I see a big pile of explosives covered in burning C4. The mortars already out here are safer than the ones that are gonna come out of that heap, and he's in the kill radius." The rifle was shoved back into his hands – not ungently – and MacGyver was off like a shot.

"God dammit, kid-!" Jack got to his feet, intent on following, but Mac hadn't taken a straight line approach, and he was already almost fifteen yards out. Dude was a freakin' rabbit.

Someone was approaching, from his left, and Jack spared a quick glance to see Tom and Jerry had finally caught up. He didn't acknowledge them, mashing the transmit button his radio instead.

"Ranger Ranger, be advised, EOD is on the range, repeat, EOD is on the range, headed to six zero meters north of the main event, over."

Then he brought the rifle back up to track his stupid, stubborn jackass of a tech.

MacGyver had his tac light out, but he was dodging around smaller rocks and brush like he'd already memorized the way. He slowed as he approached a cluster of four mortars, one of them ass up, and the light flashed from one to another, inspecting them. One of them looked a little charred to Jack, but Mac gingerly stepped over the line of them, giving the damaged one as wide a berth as possible, and very gently walked the next few feet before breaking into a run again.

"Hot shit, are you kidding me?!" He couldn't if it was Tom or Jerry that had spoken, but Jack silently agreed.

Mac took a wide curve to the west, almost passing the outcropping before circling back, then bounced from one shoebox sized rock to another in a game of suicidal hopscotch before making a quick leap onto the outcropping itself, scrambling across the top to slide down beside the soldier.

Jack dropped back down, trying to get a better image through the scope as he watched MacGyver carefully examine the downed soldier.

Dude looked to be dead weight, and he saw the kid hesitate, then look up, right at him.

Jack keyed his radio – easier than shouting. "Snakebite, gimme a sitrep, over."

He saw Mac's hand reach up to his chest. "He took a hit. Front of his vest is shredded, I got some blood." Despite his lack of radio discipline, MacGyver's voice sounded cool as a cucumber.

Jack knew that was for the benefit of the listening Belda squad. "Snakebite, good copy. Break. Ranger One, advise medical you have a possible critical, EOD will try to extract to my position. Break. Snakebite, switch to our operating frequency, over."

He did the same. The move was partly to cut chatter on one of Belda's operating frequencies, and partly so they could speak a little more openly. Tom and Jerry were right at his shoulder, they weren't going to miss a thing, but at least they could relay anything the lieutenant or medical needed them to hear.

"Just Mac, how copy, over." While the specialist sounded calm, and Jack'd been in enough tight spots with him that he knew the kid would keep his head, a little humor never hurt the situation.

By the tone of his reply, he could tell MacGyver appreciated it. "Good copy."

"You're not gonna get him out the way you just went in."

He could see through the scope that the blond was way ahead of him, checking the ground in all available directions. "Agreed. Think you can walk me out of here?"

Jack's first thought was probably inappropriate to broadcast. "How much does that guy weigh?"

"I'm about to find out."

MacGyver had just pulled the solider into a sitting position when a couple mortars in the bonfire cooked off. Jack used his bare eyes to track the debris thrown. None of it landed north of the outcropping, but something flaming had come their general direction.

"Cover!" He didn't bother to use the radio.

For once, the tech actually obeyed an order, dropping back down and shielding the other solider, and Jack waited tensely, counting the seconds.

Once he got past twenty, he thought they were home free, but a glance told him Mac hadn't moved. Apparently the kid knew something he-

There was a muffled explosion, very close to the back of the outcropping, and Jack dialed back in, watching hot dirt and rocks rain on the two men. As soon as it cleared up, MacGyver lifted his head a little, and Jack heard his radio click.

"We're good. I'm clear the first twenty meters in a straight line to you."

Jack took him at his word, because some footlocker-sized rocks were blocking his view. The other side of the rocks was not clear, he could make out something, though whether it was a mortar or just shrapnel he couldn't tell. He didn't want to put the kid anywhere near the stack of AT4s, just in case any of those rockets were still thinking about going off.

"After the first twenty meters, do not go over those rocks, instead head northwest. I've got a three foot wide path for you but I can't see the end of it, the damn jeep's in the way."

"Northwest, three foot path, jeep," Mac repeated, a little breathlessly. He'd gotten the injured man leaning mostly upright against the rock outcropping, and he threw the guy's right up and around behind his neck, ducking down and winding his other arm between the soldier's legs. He came back up successfully and turned, and Jack could see the other soldier was probably as tall as Mac was, and built a lot studier. Kid was carrying about two hundred pounds.

Well, that'd put an end to the hopscotch, at any rate. The kid tried to gently shift the soldier's weight, then grabbed the man's dangling right wrist with his own right hand, securing his package and freeing up his left to use the radio and tac light he'd clipped to his vest. He headed doubletime for the footlocker rocks.

"Jesus, look at that guy go," Jerry said wonderingly. It occurred to Jack that this may have been the most action Tom and Jerry had seen since being assigned to the old combat outpost.

"Yeah, he's a good piece of gear," Jack replied, watching MacGyver's progress with his naked eye as the kid approached the rocks. He keyed his radio.

"Your left is comin' up, there, hoss."

Mac didn't reply, pausing to aim his tac light at the ground, and he picked out the same path Jack had found. Dalton picked up his rifle again, scanning either side of the jeep on the off chance the kid could actually make it all the way there, and even with the jeep between him and the bonfire, the rapid explosions whited out the scope.

The first one was minor, another mortar cooking off. The second one happened almost immediately after, and it was anything but. At least a dozen mortars went flying high into the air.

"COVER!" he bellowed, and without thinking he brought his rifle up. In one smooth exhale he was standing in old man Dover's back field, picking red clay discs out of the starry Texas sky.

Only these were olive drab mortars. Longer, narrower, and packed a little more bang when they hit the ground. They were also flipping head over tail. But they hadn't been fired – they'd been mechanically lobbed, moving much slower and in a fairly decent arc to boot. Just like a clay skeet disc.

Four were headed his way. One would land unacceptably close to the jeep.

The optics cleared, and Jack's thumb had already disengaged the safety. He knew the rifle was still in single shot mode, and he gave the trigger two gentle squeezes, rapid succession. The first round got the job done.

He pinged the mortar's fin, sending it spinning wildly off course towards the west, and he tried to sight the next closest. It took him too long to pick out of the night sky, it was too far away from the fire and not reflecting enough light.

Well damn.

Jack gave up immediately and lunged towards Tom and Jerry – who had ducked, god love 'em, but were still crouched and neither wearing a helmet – and he dropped the rifle to take them all to the ground. MacGyver's perimeter was good; none of the mortars made it closer than fifty meters of their position, but clearly they'd had enough distance to arm, because one of them popped midair, and the other one made such a hellacious boom when it hit that Jack briefly wondered if it had landed on one of the AT4 rockets.

The concussion swept over a second later, mostly just hot air, and Jack shoved down hard when one of the idiots under him tried to sit up. The dirt hit a beat later, but not much of it, and once the rain stopped Jack dared to poke his head up.

A secondary explosion went off about two seconds later, a good sixty meters or so away, and Jack shoved Tom and Jerry down again with a growled "Stay!" before bellycrawling back for his rifle. He got his right hand on the weapon, and his left on his radio.

"Mac, sitrep!"

He scanned the ground between his position and the outcropping, and outside of a couple very minor fires, he didn't see a damn thing.

"Dammit, kid, talk to me!" He clicked a few times, making sure the radio was actually still intact and transmitting, and it was.

The silence dragged on a few more seconds, and Jack was about to try again when he picked up a little static. ". . . so that was fun."

Jack released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Jesus, dude, are you okay?!"

MacGyver keyed his radio but there was a pause before he spoke. It sounded like he was doing a pull-up. ". . . uh, yeah. We're under the jeep."

Jack swung on the vehicle, flicking the safety back on and confirming there were squirming silhouettes visible below the undercarriage. "Gabel still with us?"

The squirming stalled for a moment, and from the other side of the range, another mortar cooked off. "Affirm."

The jeep was about ninety meters from his position, and Jack tried to pick out a path. "Lemme know when you're ready."

There was such a long pause that Jack assumed the next thing he was going to hear was confirmation. When MacGyver finally got back on the horn, his voice was curiously reluctant. ". . . yeah, about that . . ."

Jack dialed back in on the jeep, adjusting for the best possible detail. He could make out the blond; the kid was on his back, head tilted back to look up at him. Even as he watched, the tech closed his eyes and brought a hand up to his helmet.

"You hit?"

It took the kid a second to respond. "Concussion caught us. Gimme a minute."

There was another rapid string of secondary explosions, from the main bonfire – just munitions cooking off - but Jack was about done with this range from hell. "All right, bud. I'm comin' to you."

The response was quite rapid. "Jack, do not come out here! Stand down! You're not EOD!"

Jack laid his rifle on some brush, rather than in the sand, and he gave Tom and Jerry, who were sitting up, a glare that made them both blanch. "Don't. Touch," was all he said, and then he unclipped his tac light from his vest, and keyed the radio, following the path he'd picked out for Mac.

"Didn't you just get done tellin' me these mortars were safer than those ones?"

He came across the first one, laying innocently on its side, and he could clearly see the fuze was set to PXT. Proximity. Not damaged.

Safe to walk by.

It wasn't until he'd covered about twenty meters that it finally sunk in that he was taking a moonlit stroll, without cover, in a fucking field full of mines. Jack had walked into a lot – a lot – of stupid dangerous situations, but this one struck him as possibly the most stupidly dangerous. The paralyzing dread he'd felt in Paktia came back full force, and Jack stopped in his tracks, scanning the ground around him repeatedly, sure that he'd missed something.

His radio popped, and Jack jumped.

"How's it coming, Mr. Careful?"

Jack took a slow breath. ". . . you are the damned craziest son of a bitch I have ever met, you know that? Who the hell volunteers to do this for a livin'?"

An easy chuckle came over the radio. "Listen, you look like you're both doin' great out there."

Jack laughed in spite of himself. He was standing in a minefield, probably about to be shelled, trying to extract a fobbit and an EOD tech who was seeing double. Yep. Overwatch was super boring.

Another mortar cooked off, this time on his side of the bonfire, and Jack was uneasily reminded that he'd left his rifle behind and there wasn't going to be any defending his skeet shooting trophy this go-round. Somehow he picked up his feet and kept walking.

The frequency of UXO increased the closer he got the jeep, but it was still way less than MacGyver had had to skirt on his way to that outcropping, and after not too many reroutes he found himself at the jeep's back bumper. There was a mortar about five yards away, a little banged up, but the fuze was still set stubbornly to PXT and Jack gave it a long look before he circled around and dropped down where he'd last seen the kid's head.

MacGyver was still there, and gave him a crooked grin. "You made it."

"I got your back, dude. That's how it works."

Mac just nodded, very gingerly, and Jack ducked down and located the still unmoving form of Gabel. He grabbed the soldier by his vest straps, sliding him out from under the jeep, and froze as another mortar went off, somewhere uprange.

MacGyver's assessment seemed spot on. The front of Gabel's vest showed obvious shrapnel damage, and there was some blood on the guy's exposed right flank. His pulse was rapid but not too thready, and he moaned and jerked weakly when Jack dug his thumb into the nerve cluster just under the guy's eyebrow. He was actually wearing his helmet, and it didn't look like the head gear or the guy's neck had taken any direct hits.

He wasn't in good shape, but it was still safer to move him than to leave him where he was.

"Come on, amigo, we gots to go," Jack prodded, and the blond grabbed the outer frame of the jeep and pulled himself halfway out. Jack rolled his eyes and tugged him out the rest of the way, sitting him up and spinning him like a piece of equipment so MacGyver could lean back against the jeep. He was covered in dirt, there might have been a little blood on the side of his face as well, but he batted Jack away before he could get a good look.

"I'm good. Just not sure I can carry that guy and run in a straight line."

That was fair. "Looks like you got your bell rung pretty good there. Still seein' two of me?"

Mac took a deep breath, exhaling through his mouth, and then he grabbed at the door above him, hauling himself to his feet. Once he was up, he looked reasonably steady, and Jack made short work of shouldering the mostly unconscious soldier in the same modified fireman's carry Mac had used.

"This way," Jack indicated with his chin, and against his better judgement he let Mac lead.

Seeing double or not, the tech led him rapidly away from the crackling pile of burning munitions, and the thought that they might actually have the worst behind them scampered innocently across his mind.

Then the snap and crackle moved on to pop.

He saw the light of it reflect back from the landscape, but he didn't dare turn to look, not with two hundred pounds on his shoulders and uneven footing. MacGyver, however, glanced over his shoulder and up – and up – and then back down at him with wide eyes.

There was a saying in the military; 'An ordinance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.'

Mac didn't have to say a thing. Jack put his head down and he sprinted for his life.

Even running flat out, the kid made two very nimble and unexpected course corrections, which Jack was barely able to follow without falling, or worse dropping the package, and something went off relatively nearby behind them. The body over his shoulders, between it and his ears, probably saved him from a hell of a bang, and then they exited the marked range about twenty yards west of where he'd left Tom and Jerry.

The shock wave blew Jack too far off balance to recover, and he landed hard on his knees, using his free arm to brace himself and prevent the injured soldier from going flying. Once he stopped their forward momentum Jack ducked his head, letting the soldier roll gently onto his back, and he sheltered the guy's face and upper body until the dirt stopped falling.

To his left, MacGyver had curled up into a surprisingly compact ball, one hand covering the back of his neck.

When it seemed safe, Jack leaned up, sitting on his heels, and he watched the EOD tech slowly untangle himself.

And then Jack started to laugh.

MacGyver sat up, glancing back uprange with the strangest expression on his face, and then he started to chuckle as well. Once they actually locked eyes they lost it completely, until they were both sitting there laughing their asses off, while Tom and Jerry stared at them, completely mystified.

Jack reached up and wiped his eyes, still laughing with relief and adrenaline. " . . . holy shit, brother."

Mac had recovered and crawled over to Gabel, taking his pulse, and when he found it, he sighed with relief, then balled up his hand into a fist and held it out.

Jack bumped it. "Nice footwork."

Mac laughed again. "And here you thought working EOD was boring." He looked up, past Jack, and Dalton turned in time to see a pair of medics scrambling along the east perimeter with a stretcher. Tom and Jerry were hovering, and Jack got to his feet, giving Tom his position by Gabel.

"Don't you touch that vest, son, until medical gets here," he warned the logistics officer, before moving off to reclaim his rifle, which he was happy to see looked unmolested.

Another set of mortars went off, this time mostly straight up in the air, and Jack watched them closely for a moment before he turned back for the trio and his tech.

Only MacGyver wasn't there.

Jack found him about twenty yards west, right about to loop the corner marker towards the west perimeter. Momentarily forgetting his radio, he cupped his free hand around his mouth. "Hey! Mac!"

The tech looked up but didn't stop. He just waved a red emergency marker over his head, then gestured dead ahead with it. "Gotta move out the perimeter!" he shouted back, and then set off at a slow jog into the darkness.

-x-

"You know, I could have driven."

Jack slowly shook his head, keeping his eyes on the road. "See, when you say shit like that, it makes me think EOD doesn't go through basic training. You do not let people with concussions operate heavy machinery, man. It don't get more basic than that."

Beside him, the blond shifted a little in the seat. "Okay, first, that would be covered in first aid training, not basic combat operations. Second, according to the medic it's a mild concussion, but since it's not my first one, I can tell you that medic was just covering his ass and it's nothing more than a little inner ear inflammation caused by the sudden increase in air pressure. The cut on my temple I got from the jeep, not the explosion. Third-"

"Dude, you would argue with a fence post," Jack murmured, glancing across the darkened cabin at him. "You really would."

"Look, I just don't want you to sound stupid saying the wrong thing, so I'm providing you with the correct information-"

"So you're saying I sound stupid?"

"- so that you don't repeat misinformation to others, compounding the problem-"

"Oh, so now I'm a problem?"

"- like trying to claim improperly storing MREs at a higher than recommended temperature only affects the carotenoids in lentils, as opposed to breaking down pretty much every other chemical bond-"

"Oh my god," Jack finally said, taking his right hand off the wheel to wave it helplessly in the air, "Why the hell did I ever try to get you to talk? Is there an off switch?"

MacGyver fell quiet. For about four and a half seconds.

"You started it-"

"And I tell you what, homie, I'm gonna finish it-"

"- because you're what, an eight year old? Should I even be letting you behind the wheel?"

Jack couldn't help himself. He laughed. "Isn't that my line? Dude, you can't even grow a beard."

The kid turned to the window with a quiet laugh and a shake of his head, and a silence that wasn't as awkward as usual filled the cabin of the humvee.

But then MacGyver huffed out a breath. "Listen. This is . . . my way of saying thanks."

"Oh?" Jack pretended to give that serious consideration. "So is that like, thanks for taking out those four guys with two bullets while you were playing in the trash cans, or thanks like –"

"It's thanks for ignoring every safety protocol the Army has ever published and running into a mine field to rescue an injured soldier."

Jack let his grin fade a little, and the tech misinterpreted.

"Look, I know you don't like bombs. That can't have been easy-"

"Oh no, you're right there, champ, I seen up close and personal what an explosive will do to a body." He glanced at the kid – Mac, he reminded himself again – and gave him a nod. "Listen. Where you go, I go. That's the deal."

He could tell the tech was looking at him, but it was too damn dark to make out his expression. " . . . that's why."

Jack glanced over at him. "That's why what?"

Mac hesitated. "You asked me why I went into EOD. That's why."

He cast his mind back to the conversation. It seemed like months ago.

"My grandfather took me to the funeral of one of his WWII buddies. Guy'd saved his life. Even after all those years . . ." Mac trailed off. "Everything my grandad was able to do after that day, was because someone went into a dangerous situation, found a solution, and got him out."

"Yeah, man." He could finally see the faint glow of their base, just over the next ridge. "Yeah, I think that's why a lotta guys get into the military. But you, bud," and he shook a finger in Mac's general direction, "you're not some grunt. I think you're gonna save a lotta lives. If you don't get your skinny ass blown up before then."

MacGyver scoffed. "Hey, I'm not the one that shot a live mortar out of the sky. I thought the only thing that could do that was a Phalanx system."

"Who told you about that?" But Jack was happy let him redirect. In the span of one day, he'd found out his EOD tech had a childhood friend named Bozer, he let his friends call him Mac, and his reason for being in this shithole was pretty much the best one you could have.

"The pair of privates you left Gabel with. You made quite an impression."

It was Jack's turn to scoff. "Those fobbits didn't even know how to run a damn weapon range. I coulda shot at the moon and they'da thought I hit somethin'."

The kid – Mac – relaxed into the seat as the barbed wire of the forward operating base came into view. "So I guess I need to add skeet shooting to my mandatory tour of Texas."

"Oh yeah." He glanced at the dash for their identification. "Though I've never seen you shoot. I know a pistol's not part of your MOD, but you do know how to use one, right?"

As they reached the outer edge of the floodlights, Mac looked over at him, the picture of innocent confusion. "No, Jack. We EODs don't go through basic, remember?'

He shot Mac a dirty look, receiving a smirk in response, and he shook his head and eased the humvee up to the gate.

" . . . smartass."

FIN

-x-

As I was starting to plot the Turkey Day sequel, I realized I wanted to reference the first time Jack called MacGyver 'Mac.' So naturally, I re-watched Mac + Jack. Do you know what never happens, in any of the flashbacks to Afghanistan?

You guessed it. He calls him a lot of other things, including bud. But not Mac. I decided that might have been because Mac knew Jack was going to leave – and didn't really like the guy for the first month and a half they were working together – so they kept it to work and that was that. When Jack re-upped, and was actually friendly, I think Mac might have come around to the idea that saving Dalton's life in Paktia had changed the cynical Delta's mind about him.

Now, Pena called MacGyver 'Mac,' and so I thought maybe Mac also didn't want a repeat of that: getting close to someone only to lose them. Also, Jack made a comment in the first episode with the Ghost that when Mac was pensive, and silently playing with paperclips in the car, "I haven't seen you like this since we first met up back in the desert."

Thus this little prequel snippet was born.

There will be a couple more, including Cairo and Jack and Matty's falling out. Technically, Golden Compass could be considered happening in the same little universe, but I have no plans to directly reference it.