Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue. Also, I really have no idea what I'm doing here. All I can tell you is hang on for Chapter 2 – you may be surprised.

-M-

The important thing to remember about zip ties is that you don't have to snap them to escape. A zip tie is nothing more than a ribbon of plastic with a small square on one end, which contains a very thin, narrow plastic strip that functions as the locking mechanism. You could spend hours trying to get enough leverage to physically snap the ribbon, and end up with sliced up wrists for your troubles.

Or, you could focus on defeating that tiny little locking strip. It's still a brute force situation, but it's one that doesn't require 200 or more pounds of pressure.

In fact, it requires nothing more than a splinter of appropriate strength. Or a very narrow piece of metal. Or a properly groomed fingernail.

None of which he had.

MacGyver didn't even remember them going on. The locking mechanism was down center line between his wrists, which was good from a leverage perspective, but it wasn't like Aydin's men had hit the local Home Depot. These were military grade restraints, and that little plastic tab could have been a metal one for all the edge of the rusty bolt on the back of the chair was doing.

At this rate he'd incubate Clostridium tetani before he got out of the damn chair.

Of course, getting out of the chair was only half the equation. There was still getting out of the tent, then the camp at large. Military camp, military hardware, so he was fairly likely to find a distraction as well as transportation.

But the first thing he was going to have to find was Jack. Because he sure as hell wasn't in the tent.

Which was not to say the tent was unoccupied.

"Siktir," his companion muttered, grabbing the front of his uniform and fanning it out, trying to get a little ventilation.

Mac silently agreed.

The weather in Turkey in August was about as pleasant as one could expect for the region – it was high eighties in the day, and dropped down to a comfortable mid-sixties in the evening. Sitting in a thick, dark-toned canvas tent with its ventilation sashes closed brought that temperature up another seven to ten. Humidity was the same as most of the Mediterranean, and sweat was sluggishly trickling down his back.

MacGyver shifted, ostensibly to scratch, and kept at the ties while his guard glared at him, then went back to quietly peering out the main flap.

They spent the next twenty or so minutes in a companionable silence, in which Mac didn't intentionally try to bait his captor, and the guard didn't pound on his face. It was kind of a nice change, but he still hadn't defeated the locking tab when some of the many feet moving around outside finally crunched closer, and his guard almost guiltily snapped himself back into a pretty decent semblance of parade rest.

This wasn't a run of the mill coup operation. These men were still behaving as if they were part of a larger, organized military force. His guard's professionalism, the uniform still in good condition, his weapon squared away -

These men still had pride, believed themselves still to be part of a fighting unit.

More than money was keeping them loyal to the recently disgraced Colonel Batuhan Aydin.

The tent flap crackled as it was pushed aside, and a similar green uniform, sporting actual bars, ducked into the tent. He handed off his cover to the guard, not even looking at the man, and as he straightened, Mac found himself looking up. And up. And up.

"I have money," Mac informed the giant calmly.

The colonel's deeply tanned, deeply serious face was split with a wide grin. "I am sure you do, my American friend!" he boomed, throwing his arms wide. Mac didn't miss the way the guard beside him tried to suppress a flinch.

"You are sure that is why we took you?"

The colonel was still smiling as he eyed his prisoner up and down, and Mac tried to look innocent. "The embassy warned us the equipment would make us targets –"

But Aydin was already nodding. "Yes, yes. Another documentary trying to preserve our history, yes? Filming all our great mosques and temples before we take a page from the Syrians and destroy them all?"

Of all their covers, Mac liked their photojournalist one best. He and Jack had been treated to behind the scenes looks at some truly incredible Coptic architecture and art. His true love of history lent his angry tone more sincerity. "Is that why you were there?"

"Oh yes," the salt and pepper colonel replied, without a trace of hesitation. "We were there to destroy our own heritage, like the mindless hayvan you depict in your television shows." Still pleasant, still smiling. His teeth were shockingly white against his skin. "Is that what they told you I would say?"

The colonel clasped his thick wrists behind his back, cocking his head slightly, and he waited a beat for MacGyver to answer. Mac didn't really have anything to say to that, so he didn't, and the colonel's smile settled into something a little more serious. "We were there to secure Ambassador Chevalier and his lovely family. Oh, don't look surprised, my young American friend," he added. "You never had a chance to save them."

Mac left the wide-eyed look on his face. "Wait, there's . . . been some kind of mistake. I -"

"-was sent by your government to secure them. Yes, we are aware. But you see, you didn't have all the information." The colonel's tone became more brusque. "Erdogan remained in power because your government distributed illegal intelligence about the Peace at Home Council via your diplomatic pouches."

He paused, seeming to gather himself, and any last indicator of friendliness evaporated into tight control. "And your Ambassador Chevalier was the man who organized it all. Yes, my friend, it's true. He sent his wife, Elsa, into homes to speak with the women of our armed forces. He sent his daughter, Olivia, to games and concerts so that he could pass his illegally gained intelligence to Erdogan's men. And he used you, American, to try to escape this place without consequence."

Mac tried to keep the disappointment off his face. According to their intel, everything the colonel said was true. The State Department had already concluded that Chevalier had consulted with Erdogan and tasked US assets in Turkey to illegally surveil suspected leaders of the Gulen Movement. The coup failed, leaving Erdogan in power, and he had quickly turned on those who had backed the coup, including the disgraced colonel standing in front of him.

Whether the State Department had actually tried to assist in the coup, or sought to oppose it, was something Matty Webber had asked them explicitly not to investigate. It was a simple exfil, to bring the ambassador home where he would face trial for his part in the illegal use of US assets and for sharing classified data without authorization to US allies. Just a quick trip to Istanbul, in and out in eight hours.

A lot of bad days had started with a 'simple exfil,' come to think of it. Colonel Aydin was right. They'd been prepared for a few rogue ex-military mercenaries, not a coordinated attack from a strike team.

He and Jack had never had a chance. Mac honestly couldn't even remember how he was taken down.

"But you will keep insisting you are a journalist, yes?"

MacGyver blinked up at him, trying to look contrite. "There's no right answer to that, is there."

The colonel barked a laugh, suddenly all smiles again. "I like you, little American," he admitted. "Your friend was not so glass-jawed, is what you call it? He has been a handful. Good training exercise. You should be proud of him."

That didn't sound good. It also made him wonder exactly how long he'd been out. The headache and heat notwithstanding, he was pretty sure he'd been conscious in the tent at least two hours, and there was plenty of sunlight so it was probably afternoon on the same day –

That was still plenty of time for Jack Dalton to get himself into trouble.

And if they truly had captured the ambassador and his family, that was going to make getting out a whole lot harder.

"I will make sure your superiors know that this was not a failure on your part," the colonel added, turning to his man with a short nod.

Mac tried not to tense as the soldier approached him, but the man continued to show impressive restraint, merely picking him up by his collar and shoving him forward. Standing made the heat worse – if that was possible – and Mac still didn't feel like his legs were quite steady as he was propelled out into the bright sunlight of late afternoon.

The camp was modest and well organized, what one would expect for a small team. Maybe twenty men, all of whom were in motion. The pop-up tent they'd just left was probably intended to be the colonel's office, and a longer barracks tent was being struck very efficiently by four men who looked to be only slightly smaller than their colonel. A large generator was being hooked onto the back of a military jeep, and a covered truck was being loaded with neatly packed crates.

They were pulling out.

"You see, I know how this works," Aydin was saying, gesturing as he followed Mac's gaze. "Two agents would not be sent alone. It is only a matter of time before this camp is found. There are only so many places like this – too many tourists, you know?" The colonel gusted out a sigh, surveying his men. "I had been looking forward to this day for a long time, American."

That was all the warning he had. MacGyver saw the fist coming way too late, and took it almost straight on to the torso. The colonel knew how to hit; Mac was briefly taken off his feet, and he landed hard on his knees, struggling to get a breath in.

"I am sure you can understand my disappointment," the colonel's voice continued from somewhere above, and the soldier behind him once more picked him up by his collar. MacGyver had just managed to get his mouth closed before the colonel grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head straight back. Aydin's clean-shaven face no longer looked pleasant.

"I intended to let the ambassador sweat. Let him anticipate the consequences. I intended to take a page from your book, American. To do all the things to him that your western propaganda says that we do to those who stand against us."

The colonel then followed Mac's gaze, which was currently straight up into the sky. After a moment, he waved.

"Hello, Americans!" he called into the sky, still waving, and then he roughly released Mac's head, and MacGyver understood.

"I hear the drones can focus so well they can see your eye color. Is that true?" Behind him, the guard grabbed his shoulder and pushed him forward, following the colonel towards a copse of Pinus brutia.

"Ours are not so advanced as that. But technology is quick to improve." The colonel reached into his tac vest and pulled out a sleek black smartphone. "The camera on this phone is almost as good as the ones you and your American friend brought with you. And it costs much less."

He passed the phone over MacGyver's shoulder, to the guard behind him, but their prisoner handoff was solid. His guard didn't release his grip until the colonel had a firm hold, giving him no opportunity.

To do what, exactly, he wasn't sure. He was literally in the middle of the camp, surrounded on all sides by at least one soldier. All of them were wearing automatic rifles and sidearms. There was nowhere to go, no decent cover but the surrounding ring of pine trees, thirty yards in any direction.

There were also not very many other places to put prisoners, and the cramp in his gut had nothing to do with the hit he'd just taken.

But the phone gave Mac a little bit of hope. If the Phoenix techs had satellite surveillance up – and it was hours after exfil had been missed, so he wasn't sure exactly where the satellites were at the moment – Riley would see the phone. They had to be somewhere in Cilingoz Tabiat Park, it was too heavily forested to be anywhere else within a few hours of Istabul. There couldn't be that many phones in the area. She might be able to pin down the signal –

He glanced towards the phone again, still with his original guard, and his gaze sharpened as he watched the man head not towards the covered truck, but to a row of crates yet to be loaded.

In fact, it would be difficult to load them, as they'd been sunk halfway into the ground and angled to take the full force of the afternoon sun. They were new looking wood, long and shallow, slightly wider than a casket but a little shorter, and his jaw clenched as he realized what they were.

There were five of them. All five bore padlocks.

He'd said that he'd make the ambassador sweat -

"You didn't." Treating a foreign soldier like that, he could understand. A man's family, his wife and more importantly his twelve year old daughter –

"You do not listen well, little American."

Mac yanked his arm away from the colonel with some vague intention of doing something, and a shocking pain in his right knee put him back on the ground with a shout. Lateral kick, he was lucky if it wasn't dislocated, and there was a hard shove on the back of his head, almost knocking him fully forward to the ground.

"All I wanted was a little time. A few days would have been enough. Who does not want a few days to lay in the sun?" The colonel's voice was cold. "Is that not why one comes to Turkey, American? All those tourists?"

Mac straightened as much as he was able, furiously glaring over his shoulder at the massive shadow beside him. "His family had nothing to do with it! They're innocent-"

"Do not speak to me of innocence!" It was a roar. "What does innocence mean to Erdogan?! Do not tell me that the soldiers and judges that were taken and tortured were not innocent! Do not tell me that the thousands of teachers jailed and beaten for trying to protect our youth were not innocent! You played your part, sican American, and so did they!"

His guard had slipped the phone into his pocket, and Mac watched in disbelief as the soldier then reached for his rifle.

"They're worth more to you alive," he started carefully, as calmly as he could, and an enormous paw of a hand landed on his shoulder.

"Yes," the colonel agreed thoughtfully, after a pause. As if the lapse in control had never happened. "That is what your western television show would do, isn't it. Have us take our hostages with us."

The solider approached the first crate, and Mac willed him to walk right up to it, to bend down to the padlock with a key.

He didn't.

Instead, he strafed a line straight up the middle, from bottom to top. Mac was dimly aware the other soldiers had stopped their preparations, and were watching. The hand on his shoulder kept him on the ground, and Mac fought to keep his cool.

"What do you want!?" There were five crates, but only four people. That crate could have been empty, it might have been the one meant for him. He hadn't heard anything –

He might not have, if the person inside was gagged or already unconscious from the heat.

"Do you have a concussion, that you cannot hear? I want more time. Which is not something you can offer me."

The soldier lined himself up with the second box. Mac thought he could make out muffled thuds.

"Wait! Just wait, we -"

Another four bullets, right up the middle.

Mac wasn't aware that he was trying to move until his right knee wouldn't support him, and the hand on his shoulder forced him back down. He did try to break the zipties, then, he angled his wrists and used his left ulna as leverage but the restraints held, even as his wrists creaked.

"Stop! Please, you don't have to do this-"

There was a faint sound, higher pitched and child-like, and the soldier moved on to the third box. Mac's stomach lurched.

"STOP!"

The soldier ignored him.

"They are war criminals," the colonel hissed, crushing his shoulder and shaking him like a misbehaving dog. "They are not hostages, to be traded for political favors or money. They are prisoners to be executed."

Mac could no longer hear the crying sound, he couldn't hear anything but a muffled pounding that he thought was his own blood in his ears until he saw dust puffing up from the fourth crate.

And then the soldier blocked his view, and put four rounds into it.

MacGyver knew he was shouting, but he might as well have been a mute for all the good it did. The soldier turned, slinging his rifle to his back as he nodded at one of the other men standing nearby. His fellow solider tossed him something small and shiny, which he caught one-handed as he knelt by the fourth box.

Padlock keys.

They all completely ignored the fifth crate.

Pressure on his scalp had MacGyver struggling back to his feet automatically. He felt like he couldn't breathe. The colonel didn't pull him away, and didn't release his head.

"This is the part where you change the channel, yes?" The voice seemed far away. "So you sensitive Americans do not have to see the results of your actions?"

The padlock was manipulated open with a dull metallic clink, and the soldier used his foot to kick open the front panel. The hinges creaked painfully, telling the abuse they'd suffered, and all Mac could see were the soles of boots as the soldier used the smartphone to snap a picture. Then he moved away, towards the middle crate, and there in the afternoon sun, Mac saw his partner.

There was a lot of red. Jack was wearing a red shirt, it was soaked with sweat and a stain of something much darker was spreading across his belly. His back was unnaturally arched, his hands still bound behind him. Blood was making a trail down his throat, it tinged the gag in his mouth, and glistened in the bruising around his left eye. His body was shifted slightly to the right, as if he'd been trying to scrunch himself as far to one side as possible, but he was such a big guy and the box was too short for him-

Mac blinked, unable to breathe, but the image didn't change. Jack didn't move.

The solider moved on from the middle crate, and the body there was much smaller. There was sky blue mixed in with the red. Mac closed his eyes and swallowed hard against his roiling stomach. The colonel shook him sharply.

"Look, my friend. Witness that we are exactly what you think we are."

Mac refused, turning his face as far away as the grip on his head would let him, and he was rewarded with a kick to his right knee. He hissed through gritted teeth, refusing to give the Turk anything else, and the colonel pulled him to the right, half dragging him in a slow, painful procession before the crates.

"So you see there is no deception." The colonel's voice was matter-of-fact. "Photographs can be faked, but you have seen with your own eyes."

Chevalier had been placed in the second box, between his wife and daughter. All gagged, but the crates were close enough that he must have heard their struggles. Close enough to know that they were there beside him, suffering what he was suffering.

None of them had survived.

Mac swallowed again, trying to force his throat back into some semblance of usable. His voice still shook. "You son of a bitch."

"Do you not have the death penalty in your country, American?"

Death penalty.

Those people were dead. The ambassador, his family. His daughter.

Jack.

They were dead. There was nothing anyone could do that would make them not dead anymore.

Mac's brain stalled on the concept, then flinched away from that reality, latching onto anything else it could find. His knee twinged painfully, and that was good. Physical pain was good. It meant he was still alive. They were dead, and he was going to be following them if he didn't do something about it, right now.

"So now what." Showing him off to the satellite, making him witness the executions, it all reeked of taking hostages. If he wasn't going to take hostages, why was he doing this? And if he was, why not take a diplomatic family? People who were no threat, no trouble to men like this?

Why keep him alive?

"Ah, you wish for your own bullet?" The colonel's voice was keen, and Mac refused to look at him. One of his men called over something in Turkish, and Aydin grunted an assent and continued to half-drag MacGyver towards the line of pines. "Perhaps I will not give it to you. What do you think of that?"

Mac had started to shake. Rage was narrowing his peripheral vision. "You don't really think you're getting away with this."

"Yes. In fact, it is the only way we are 'getting away,' as you say. There is not room on the helicopter for so many."

It was starting to get harder to focus, but Mac could make out a clearing beyond the line of pines. Probably the LZ for the helo. He glanced back, trying to get a bead on the soldier that had -

Had -

His brain shied away again, but his eyes picked the guy out of the group. He was still there, by the crates, dumping liquid onto them from a five gallon container.

Gasoline, or something equivalent.

"You too are a war criminal," the colonel informed him, leading them through the line of trees. He had to focus to keep his footing, but Mac barely noticed the burning sensation in his knee. A twin-engine Bell UH-1H – a Huey - was waiting for them, pilot already running pre-flight, and MacGyver found himself shoved once more to his knees as the rotors began to turn.

"But you are not so hard to control as your American friend. You are clearly the analyst, not the agent. And I am in need of an American analyst. This is the reason you still live."

Aydin stepped away, bending his head to confer with one of his men, and for the first time since he'd come to in the tent, Mac was relatively free. But he couldn't move. His hands were shaking badly, he could feel the plastic gouging the cuts in his wrists. His fingertips were ice. His stomach was still roiling, and he felt like he couldn't quite catch his breath.

Shock. This is the beginning of shock.

"Get up."

This time he actually needed the help, and the soldier that had come to brief the colonel dragged them towards the helicopter. It was in standard configuration, room for thirteen passengers, and Mac was hauled into the rearmost compartment, away from the pilot and with an aluminum bench between him and the cockpit. He was roughly shoved into the middle seat, and he had to lean forward a bit to make room for his hands, still bound behind him.

The seats were canvas, nothing useful for cutting plastic, and they covered the aluminum framing, leaving him no sharp edges and no way to make a shim.

His new guard glared at him a moment, a rather stout fellow not too much taller than MacGyver himself but easily twice the weight. His uniform was missing anything useful like a name patch or a specialty, but his sidearm was mounted for a left-hand pull.

Mac let the shock he was feeling show in his posture, and after a moment the short soldier turned to face the loading door. MacGyver launched himself, using his left leg, and shoulder-checked the soldier, hard, into the webbing beside the loading door. He used his momentum to do a pirouette that would make any ballroom dancer jealous, yanking the nine mil from the soldier's holster, and he used his hip to push off from the man, shoving him into the wall for the second time.

The locking square of his zipties was right between his wrists, which put it in exactly the wrong place. In this case, Mac didn't care. He manipulated the gun so that it was pointing straight at the floor, shoved the muzzle against the edge of the plastic ribbon on his left wrist, thumbed off the safety, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet skimmed his wrist more deeply than he'd intended, but it did the trick, and his involuntarily flinch was enough to snap what remained of the plastic. He threw a right elbow backwards without looking, assuming the stocky soldier had gotten his feet back under him, and he got a solid connection and a grunt of pain.

Mac lurched across the back of the aircraft, intent on exiting the left side, closest to the woods. He braced his right knee as much as he could but it still gave when he hit the ground, and he rolled to his back, targeting the spinning rotor atop the helicopter. It was now at idle speed, which was plenty fast and loud, and MacGyver got two rounds off before soldiers started piling on top of him.

The gun was taken away; he barely had time to pull his finger from the trigger cage and narrowly avoided having it broken. He took a hit to the mouth and things got blurry for a moment. Rough hands pinned his wrists, then there was the too-tight pinch of those god-damned zipties, and after a few powerful waves of disorientation his felt his butt hit a canvas seat.

He blindly swung his hands, this time secured in front of him, and someone punched him in the side of the head. Mac almost blacked out, bent double, and it was a long time before he was sure the roaring in his ears and the movement he felt was actually happening. He raised watering eyes to the still-open loading door to see them banking sharply over the clearing. Black smoke was rising from the center of the camp, and the truck and jeep were nowhere to be seen.

Mac was sandwiched between two massive men, neither of whom he recognized, and they'd had the foresight to strap him in, so bailing was not an option. It didn't matter; they hadn't even come fully out of the turn before a high pitched alarm cut through all the roaring. Mac felt a brief, hollow flash of satisfaction. Jack would be proud of him for hitting a target roughly the thickness of an extension cord.

And Jack would be furious with him for getting taken back onto the helicopter he'd just guaranteed was going to fall out of the sky.

-M-

I really had intended to get a little further, I know I don't care for overly dramatic cliffies and I didn't actually mean to write one. I had hoped to cover a little of the aftermath, but it's late, and I'm tired, so I figured I'd share what I have now and see what you guys think!