Disclaimer:  Stargate Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions.   MacGyver and it's characters are the property of Henry Winkler/John Rich Productions and Paramount Pictures.   This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.

The story is set in Stargate’s 2nd season, not long after ‘Thor’s Chariot’.

            “Looks like a pretty quiet neighbourhood,” MacGyver observed as he drove Jack O’Neill’s truck through the leafy suburb on the outskirts of town.  He had been to Colorado Springs a few times before so he had some limited familiarity with the town itself.  The area in which O’Neill’s current abode was located was not covered by that familiarity however and he was having to follow directions from his son.  A couple of bags of groceries sat on the truck’s back seat, courtesy of a brief stop at a small supermarket they’d found en route.

            “Yeah, it is,” Sam agreed.  “Ah, hang a right at the end of the block here, Dad.”

            “Okay,” Mac acknowledged. As he made the turn, his son remarked conversationally.

            “You know, you’re probably gonna’ confuse the hell outta’ Jack’s neighbours.”

            “By all accounts they’re used to him coming and going at odd hours,” Mac said.  He knew what Sam meant though: he and his cousin were alike enough to be easily mistaken for one another though his hair was noticeably longer and lighter in colour than Jack’s.  Yep.  The neighbours probably were going to get confused until they realised there were actually two of them.  Mac shrugged slightly.  “They’ll probably only see what they expect to see.  This is Jack’s truck after all.  Besides, this time of day I don’t expect we’ll be likely to run into any of them.”

            “Don’t count on it.  Old biddy across the road doesn’t miss much,” Sam said with what was apparently intended to be a shiver of reminiscent horror.  “Buttonholed me the second day I was here.  Talk about the third degree.  I think in another life she must have been one of the Spanish Inquisition.” A mischievous grin suddenly spread across his face.  “Oh, an’ I think she has a bit of thing for Jack.” Sam’s grin deepened and he chuckled as he added.  “Better watch out for the ‘twin’ fantasies when she realises there are two of you.”

            “SAM!” MacGyver cast a slightly shocked glance in his son’s direction.

            “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Sam shrugged unrepentantly.  Mischief danced in his expressive dark eyes for a moment before he sobered somewhat.  “Ah, that’s Jack’s driveway coming up second on the left.” He announced, shifting slightly in his seat and helpfully pointing out the driveway in question.

            MacGyver returned his full attention to his driving and a few minutes later was bringing the big truck to a gentle halt near the top end of O’Neill’s driveway. “Not bad.  Not bad at all.  Kind of has ‘Jack’ stamped all over it,” Mac approved as he cut the engine and sat surveying the house for a few moments.

            “Yeah,” Sam agreed, nodding as he took a moment to regard the property himself, remembering what had occurred the last time he had been there.

            “You okay?” MacGyver inquired, his gaze switching to his son.

            “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” So saying, Sam resolutely opened the passenger door and stepped out of the truck.  He still had the key that Jack had given him when he had first started camping out at the house so, armed with it and one of the grocery bags he retrieved from the truck’s back seat, he headed for the front door.  MacGyver grabbed the remaining grocery bag, locked up the truck and hurried after his son.

            “Doesn’t look like the place got shot up too bad,” Sam observed, scanning the general porch area and noting some recently and expertly repaired damage to some of the woodwork as he unlocked the door.  “Out here anyhow,” he added.  Pushing the door open, he led the way inside.  “Living room’s that way.” He inclined his head in the appropriate direction.  “Kitchen’s this way,” he continued, heading in that direction.

            “Okay,” MacGyver nodded.  He briefly surveyed the hall area before pushing the front door securely shut and following his son to the kitchen.

********************

            A quick recon of Jack’s fridge revealed it to not be quite the health hazard he had predicted.  Apart from a carton of milk that was definitely in the process of going off, some slices of cold pizza that were developing distinct traces of fuzz and several cartons of Chinese leftovers, not much needed disposing of.  Once that minor chore had been taken care of and the fresh purchases stowed, Sam volunteered to give his father the ‘ten cent tour’ of the place.

            “Guess I owe Jack a coffee table,” Sam observed when they got to the living room and he noted the empty space where the item in question had once stood.  “The rest of the place doesn’t look too bad,” he added, his sharp young eyes roaming the room and searching for the damage he knew had been wrought.  “Looks like they got all the blood stains out of the carpet.”

            “Clean-up crew did a good job,” MacGyver remarked as he too scanned the room.  Anyone less observant and also blissfully ignorant of the mayhem that had occurred in the room would probably have missed most of the subtle tell-tale signs of the very effective repairs that had been carried out and which resulted in the damage looking like little more than general wear and tear.

            “Didn’t fix my cameras though,” Sam remarked wryly as, investigating an out-of-place cardboard box sitting by the hearth, he found the wreckage of his cameras.  “Or my mobile,” he added, rescuing his mobile phone from the box.

            “Probably figured you’d want to do that yourself,” MacGyver said, touring the room, noting the various bits and pieces in it that marked the place out as being Jack territory.

            “Looks like all my photographs and negatives are gone,” Sam sighed a little disappointedly.  “Damn.  I had some great stuff...” He spotted his camera bag on the floor beside one of the armchairs and went over to it.  “Hey, things are looking up,” he announced in a cheerier tone, pulling a slightly ancient-looking camera from the bag.  “Still got one working camera!  And my favourite telephoto lens,” he added, pulling the lens in question from the bag too.

            MacGyver smiled as he watched his son’s mood brighten at the discoveries. “Like your great grandpa Harry always used to say; every situation always has an upside,” he observed.  Then, his expression becoming a little more sombre as he ambled over to where Sam knelt, he asked quietly.  “You sure you’re okay with this?”

            Sam looked up.  Easily reading his father’s expression and the meaning behind the question, he rose to his feet. “Yeah, I’m fine.  What happened here wasn’t the house’s fault.  ‘Sides, I don’t think the Bad Guys are gonna’ be stupid enough to try that one again.” He cast a brief smile at his father and changed the subject.  “Ya’ know, comfortable though this stuff may be, it’s beginning to make me feel like I got drafted,” he said, indicating the green fatigues and black T-shirt he was wearing.  “I’m gonna’ go get changed, make some coffee, an’ then see if I can get my mobile working again.”

            “Okay,” Mac nodded as Sam began to head for the steps leading up into the hallway.  “I’ll try Pete again: see if I can’t get some details about that Russian Mafia connection Helen mentioned.”

********************

            Having made short work of exchanging his borrowed T-shirt and fatigues for faded blue jeans and a subtly patterned pale blue shirt over a white T-shirt, Malloy headed for the kitchen.  Ignoring the expensive coffee-making machine which resided there, he put the kettle on and set about making ‘instant’ coffee for himself and brewing some herbal tea for his father.

            Presently armed with two steaming mugs he left the kitchen to find MacGyver using the telephone in the hall and realised that the SGC ‘repair team’ must have replaced the phone cable severed by the Bad Guys in addition to taking care of the other damage that had been wrought when he and Carter had been attacked a few days before.  Reading his father’s body language, Sam swiftly determined that he was not the happiest of campers.

            “Tea?” Sam cautiously inquired, proffering the appropriate mug.

            “Thanks,” MacGyver responded, almost absently relieving Sam of the mug before returning his attention back to the phone with an exasperated protest of.  “Pete, I don’t give a rat’s pyjamas what the Feds say, I need to know.  If you won’t spill then I’ll just have to find someone else who will.”

            A grimace crossed Sam’s face.  His father was definitely not a happy camper.  Sam decided that perhaps a strategic withdrawal was called for and quietly left him to it.  Heading for the living room he set his coffee-mug down on a section of the stone-flagged hearth, settled himself cross-legged on the rug in front of the fireplace, fished his damaged mobile phone from the cardboard box where it resided with his wrecked cameras and began to closely inspect it in the hope that he would be able to get it working again.

            By the time MacGyver finally joined him in the living room, Sam’s inherited DIY patch-it-up-with-whatever-works inclinations had switched from his mobile to his two damaged cameras.

            “So?” Sam inquired, glancing up from his ‘MacGyvering’ to eye him. Mac perched his backside on an arm of O’Neill’s big comfortable couch and wiped a hand over his face before taking a drink from the mug of by then cooling tea he had remembered to bring with him from the hallway.  “Did you have to threaten to resign again or did Pete spill voluntarily?”

            A flicker of a wry smile registered briefly on MacGyver’s face before he answered grimly.  “The Feds want us to stay out of it.” Malloy snorted derisively.  Another smile flitted across Mac’s face: it held a hint of amusement this time.  “Yeah,” the Phoenix-fixer agreed.  “That’s kinda’ what I told Pete.”

            “And?” Sam encouraged, making a ‘come-on-spill’ gesture with his right hand.

            “And...And it’s confirmed that one of the guys you snapped with Vanzetta is allegedly connected to the Russian Mafia,” MacGyver answered.

            “Really?” Unmistakable journalistic interest appeared on Sam’s face.

            “One of the other men is an undercover agent,” MacGyver went on.

            “Ah...” Sam observed sagely, immediately understanding why the Feds wanted them to stay out of things.

            “Pete also said the Feds won’t say which is which or exactly which agency the undercover man is working for.”

            “Well, that’s a big help,” Sam sighed resignedly.  “Did Pete get anything remotely useful from them?   Something we can actually use?”

            “Not really,” MacGyver confessed.  “He sounded pretty ticked-off.  I think they pretty much gave him the run-around. They really want us to stay out of it.  I think they’re worried we’ll blow the agent’s cover.” MacGyver sighed in frustration.  He wiped a hand over his jaw again.  “I can appreciate their concern.  Given the company the guy’s keeping, he’s dead if they even so much as suspect he’s a plant.”

            Sam had to concede that frustrating though it was, his father was right and the Feds’ concerns were quite legitimate.  It didn’t mean that they couldn’t still do a bit of poking around though.  Sam was a journalist and he had made a number of useful contacts during his still relatively short career.  Some of those contacts owed him favours.  A plan began to rapidly formulate itself inside his head.  “So, how’d ya’ want to play this, Dad?” he inquired.

            “Well, the fact that it’s now confirmed that the Russian Mafia’s involved gives us somewhere to start.  I know some people with some expertise in that area,” MacGyver answered pensively.  “Figure I’ll make a few calls, call in a few favours.”

            Malloy resisted the temptation to say ‘Snap’.  Instead he nodded sagely and said,  “Good idea.  While you do that, I’ll go into town and hit the offices of some of the local papers, ask a few discreet questions, see what the crime-desk guys have on any local players big enough to be batting in the same league as the Russian Mafia.  Besides which, my mobile’s still out of commission.  I’m gonna’ need some new parts to fix it.  Need some for my cameras too.”

            MacGyver nodded pensively and, instead of voicing any of the objections that were quite clearly flitting through his mind, he requested.  “Just do me a favour and make sure you get the phone fixed first, huh?” A pleading look accompanied the request.

            “Sure, Dad,” Sam grinned, appreciating his father’s earnest attempt at resisting the unmistakable urge to be an overly protective mother-hen and not let him out of his sight.

********************

            Jack O’Neill blew out a breath of frustrated relief as he reached the relative sanctuary of his office.  He had just spent the past hour in the Briefing Room besieged by a gaggle of SGC geeks of various scientific persuasions, all pontificating on the status of the various projects they were currently engaged upon.  It had been a routine meeting that would normally have been chaired by Hammond, but since the General had yet to escape the tenacious clutches of Doctor Fraiser, Jack as the base 2-I-C had had to suffer the full onslaught of all the mind-numbing gobbledegook in his stead.

            “WHAT?” He snarled irritably as a knock sounded on his door before he’d even reached his desk.

            “Sorry, Colonel, but I have some requisitions here that urgently need your attention.” Sergeant Davis bustled into the room with a stack of files in his arms.

            “Pick a pile,” Jack sighed, resignedly waving a hand at the several stacks of paperwork already sitting on his desk and still awaiting his attention.

            “These are urgent, sir,” Davis re-iterated a little warily. He knew the Colonel was not in the best of moods.

            “Urgent, huh?  I suppose ‘Accounting’ is in imminent danger of running out of paperclips,” Jack remarked sourly as he settled into the chair behind his desk.

            “I wouldn’t know, sir,” Davis answered neutrally, having long since learned the art of dealing with cranky senior officers.  “These requisitions are from the Armoury Quartermaster.  General Hammond was going to attend to them first thing this morning.”

            “Oh-kaay.  Ammo-clips not paper-clips.  That I can handle,” Jack said, brightening slightly.  “Put ’em here, Sergeant,” he instructed, shifting a couple of folders from in front of him and dumping them onto the top of a nearby pile.  Davis set his bundle down before his superior and tactfully retreated as the Colonel set upon the contents of the first file with a vengeance.

            The Armoury requisitions were all straightforward and Jack whizzed through them with a fair amount of alacrity.  He then turned his attention back to the paperwork he had been dragged away from more than once already that morning.  Grabbing a file from the top of the nearest waiting stack, he opened it, scanned the top page and promptly did a double-take.

            “What the...?” He muttered as he swiftly scanned the sheet of paper again.  Sighing, he closed the folder, picked it up and headed purposefully for his office door.  Erupting out into the corridor he nearly collided with Sergeant Davis who was armed with another stack of files that nearly went flying.  “I hope those aren’t for me, Sergeant,” the Colonel growled menacingly.

            “Ah, no, sir.  Not this time,” the Sergeant responded.

            “Thank god for that,” the Colonel muttered under his breath before announcing that he was done with the Armoury requisitions and if anyone wanted him he’d be in Doctor Jackson’s office.

            “Yes, sir,” Davis acknowledged as the Colonel strode off down the corridor with the air of a man on a mission.

********************

            Jack called out Daniel’s name as he strode into the archaeologist’s office, then skidded to a halt as he saw that the room seemed to be empty.  “Daniel?” He called again, a note of puzzlement creeping into his tone and a frown appearing on his face.  “Daniel?” He repeated once more, some instinct telling him that the office was not as deserted as it looked.  He advanced on the room’s large desk and halted beside it to peer around behind it.  It came as no great surprise when he found the archaeologist sitting cross-legged on the floor, a notebook balanced on a thigh and his attention focused on a massive tome of some kind which lay open on the floor before him.  Jack noted a space among some similarly massive looking leather-bound volumes that were arrayed on a floor-level shelf at Daniel’s elbow.

            A smile flitted across Jack’s face and he shook his head slightly as he stood watching his archaeologist for a few moments:  it was not unusual for Daniel to become so engrossed in his work that he became totally oblivious to everything and everyone around him.

            “Hey, Jack.” Daniel suddenly looked round and up.

            “Hey,” Jack returned.  “Good book ya’ got there?”

            “It’s an Indo-European linguistics reference. I’m having a few problems translating some of the temple inscriptions SG-11 brought back from that mission to P5Q-210 last month.  The inscriptions have some similarity to -”

            “Ahrrgghhhh!” Jack’s hand came up in an unmistakable gesture.  Daniel promptly fell silent and blinked reproachfully up at his team-mate.  “You care to explain this, Daniel?” Jack waved the file he had brought with him from his office.

            “What is it?” Daniel asked, frowning.

            “It’s a requisition,” Jack announced, dropping the folder down on the linguist’s desk.  Actually he dropped it on top of some of the clutter of papers and open books that reigned supreme all over the surface of the desk.  “A very interesting requisition actually.”

            “An interesting requisition?” Daniel eyed the Colonel sceptically.  He had, after all, heard Jack go on at considerable length on more than one occasion about how mind-numbingly dull and boring the task of rubber-stamping requisitions was.

            “Yep,” Jack answered, his hands sliding into his pockets as he bounced lightly on the balls of his feet.  “It has your signature on it but I know you didn’t write it so you want to tell me what’s going on?”

            A frown appeared on Daniel’s face and he scrambled to his feet.  Opening the file Jack had brought, Daniel took one look at the page contained therein and said. “Oh.”

            “Oh?” Jack’s eyebrows rose.  “Twenty-three languages and all you can say is ‘Oh’?”

            “Um.”

            “Um?” O’Neill repeated before impatience started to surface.  “Daniel.  Just tell me who wrote that and why and why you signed it.”

            “Mac wrote it and I signed it because after the demonstration he and Sam gave me, it seemed like a good idea,” Daniel answered.

            “Mac wrote it...” Jack repeated slowly.  “Oh-kay, that would explain all the detailed technical specifications and the suggested alternatives,” he decided.  “But for cryin’ out loud, Daniel, what do you need a new safe for?  What’s wrong with the one you’ve got already?”

            “Well, since I’m keeping your K’Rin’sha crystals here and Mac showed me how easy it is for someone to break into the safe I have and since he also knows a lot more about these things than I do, it seemed like a good idea to listen to his recommendations,” Jackson explained.  “And he recommended I requisition a more secure safe.” His phone rang.  “Excuse me while I get that,” he said and promptly went in search of the instrument in question as Jack stared, dumbfounded, at him.  “Doctor Jackson,” Daniel announced into the phone after unearthing it from under a pile of papers.

            “Mac broke into your safe?” Jack managed to croak the slightly incredulous question.

            “Yes, put him through,” Daniel said into the phone then looked at Jack.  “It was a security demonstration,” he said in staunch defence of the absent Phoenix operative before returning his attention back to his telephone.  “Hey, MacGyver.  Yes, he’s here.  We were just talking about you in fact.  Hang on, I’ll put you on the speaker.  Is that okay?” Seconds later Daniel reached to press a button on the facia of the main body of the phone unit in response to the answer he received.  “Okay, Mac, go ahead.”

            “Please tell me you haven’t wrecked my truck!” Jack got in first.

            “I haven’t wrecked your truck, Jack.  It’s sitting here in your driveway with not a scratch on it.  At least none that weren‘t already on it.” MacGyver’s voice floated forth from the speakerphone.  There was a hint of long-suffering, mildly indignant amusement in his tone.

            "Just checking.” Jack shot a warning look at Daniel which dared him to comment.  The younger man wisely chose to heed the warning, ducking his head slightly to hide a brief twitch of a smile.  "So.  What's up, Mac?”

            "I finally talked with Pete.  The Feds wouldn't tell him much, but that 'overseas connection' Helen mentioned before was confirmed. We also apparently have an as yet unidentified 'Friendly' in the mix.  I've also made some calls to a few people I know and they're gonna' get back to me.  Meantime there are a coupla' things I'd like to check out via the Net, so I was wondering if I could use your computer.  Be a bit more private than an Internet shop in town an' save me coming back onto the base.”

            "Yeah, okay,” O’Neill answered after a moment's consideration of the request.  "It's password protected though."

            "Figured it would be.  Can you give me a clue I can work with?  Save me wasting time hacking in."

            "Ahh....Yeah.” Jack said, appreciating the fact that his cousin didn't expect him to reveal his home pc's current password over what was an unsecured phone line.  "Oh-kaay.... You remember my Great Aunt Min?"

            "Yeeaah.” MacGyver sounded a little dubious.

            "You remember her favourite flower?” Jack went on.  "And the colour?"

            "Ah yeah, I think so.” MacGyver still sounded dubious.

            "Okay.  Flower dash colour and you should be in."

            "Thanks, Jack.  Appreciate it.  Talk to ya' later.” This was followed by a click and silence as the connection was broken from MacGyver's end before Jack had a chance to say anything further on the subject.  He glared accusingly at the speakerphone.

            "Great Aunt Min?” Daniel enquired, aiming an innocently curious, slightly raised-eyebrow look at his team-leader.

            "Yeah.  Sweet old harridan.  Made Attila the Hun look like a pussycat,” Jack began reminiscently before bestowing one of his better 'I-am-a-Colonel-in-the-U.S.-Air-Force-you-don't-distract-me-that-easily' looks at his archaeologist and stating with military determination.  "You and I need to have a little chat, Daniel, about this requisition of yours,” he indicated the item in question,  “and you’re going to explain to me what the hell Mac was doing breaking into your safe in the first place.  And what does Sam have to do with it?” A slightly confused look suddenly appeared on his face as he questioned.  "Which Sam?  Our Sam as in Captain Carter-Sam, or Mac's Sam as in Sam Malloy-Sam?"

************************************

            Sam as in Sam Malloy-Sam was, at that moment, in a small specialist camera store in town.  It was an establishment that catered to the needs of the professional photographer as well as to those of the amateur who merely wanted holiday snaps developed.  Its display cases boasted a fairly impressive range of cameras from simple single-use, idiot-proof, throwaway jobs to the latest and most expensive of hi-tech photographic hardware. The photojournalist was trying valiantly to resist the temptation to check out some of the latter.

            The 'Accessories' section where Sam was trying to keep his attention focused, stocked the usual camera bags, lens caps, batteries etc.  It also stocked an assortment of spare parts for the repair-it-yourself enthusiast who had more than a passing acquaintance with the inner workings of cameras, from the most basic of conventional Single Lens Reflex models to the most sophisticated of the latest digital models.

            Sam knew his busted cameras inside and out and exactly what it would take to get them working properly again.  He took his time perusing the impressive range of bits and pieces on display, seeking out the specific items he wanted.  Once he was satisfied that he'd found everything he needed, he headed towards a counter over which hung a large sign proclaiming: 'Customer Service & Pay Point'.

            He was just beaten to the counter by a rather portly, slightly limping, middle-aged man carrying an old camera bag that looked as if it had seen plenty of use in its time.  It was immediately clear to Sam that the man was a regular customer by the manner in which the clerk greeted him.

            "Hey, Benny, what happened to you?” The clerk's tone contained both surprise and concern.

            "Ran into some yahoos took exception to my bird watching," Benny responded in a highly disgruntled manner as he opened up his bag and pulled out a camera and a visibly damaged telephoto lens.  Sam immediately identified the camera as a very expensive Nikon and the lens as a Zeiss.  "Busted up my camera and the lens.  Threatened to do the same to me.  That's how I got this.” Benny gestured at his face.  The man's reflection in the glass of the tall display cabinet behind the clerk allowed Sam to observe (without being obvious about it) that Benny was sporting a graze on his cheek and a puffy black eye.  "Anyway, can you do anything with these, Mike?” Benny indicated his damaged hardware.  "Damn yahoos snapped the lens clean off and the viewfinder's all cracked too."

            "Let me take a look,” Mike said, taking the camera and lens and examining the damage.  Benny meanwhile turned to Sam and grumbled at him. 

            "Don't know what the damn' world's coming to when a man can't take a few damn pictures of a few damn' birds without some bunch of damn' lunatics threatening to stomp all over him."

            "Yeah.  Know what you mean, sir,” Sam responded politely.  In the back of his mind his journalistic radar was stirring.  "What did the police say when you reported it?"

            "Po-leece?  Po-leece?” Benny snorted derisively.  "Don't talk to me about the Po-leece.  Damn’ waste of space the lot of them.  All they're interested in is giving honest working stiffs like you an’ me traffic tickets for this, that and the next damn' thing.  Anything else is too much like getting off their damn' butts and doing something remotely resembling some actual damn' work.  Po-leece,” Benny snorted derisively again.  He was clearly warming to his subject.  Before he could continue with his tirade however, Mike distracted him by announcing that it was his opinion that the damaged camera and lens were repairable and that he could have the job done by the weekend but it would be expensive and quoted a price.

            Benny did a considerable amount of grumbling before finally agreeing to the quote.  He was still grumbling as Mike wrote out a work-slip and a repair receipt.

            "Ah, excuse me, sir,” Sam said politely as the grumbling Benny watched Mike doing the paperwork.  "Would you mind if I asked where you ran into the guys who...?” He gestured at the damaged camera then at Benny's black eye.  "My fiancé and I have plans for some hiking this weekend.  Kinda' like to avoid running into the same guys you did."

            Benny regarded Sam, his expression denoting that he was wondering if the younger man was a wuss or not.

            "If it was just me I wouldn't be too concerned.  Used to be a sprinter in college," Sam explained.  His manner was one of concerned sincerity as he continued to lie through his teeth.  "But my girl's expecting.  Just coming up on twelve weeks now.  Wouldn't like to think I'd be putting her and the baby at risk if there's a bunch of crazy guys running loose in the hills beating up on folk just innocently minding their own business.”

            Benny's manner changed and he nodded in approval of the younger man's concern for the welfare of his supposedly pregnant fiancé, before proceeding to tell Sam just where exactly he had encountered the 'yahoos' who had done damage to both himself and his camera equipment.

************************************           

            His purchases safely stowed in his camera bag which in turn was safely stowed in the generous lockable cargo box on the back of his rental bike, Malloy donned his helmet, fired up the bike and headed off to track down the offices of one of the main local newspapers.  Some charm, flattery and fast-talking got him past the pretty twenty-something receptionist at the desk in the foyer and into the main newsroom.

            As with newsrooms all over, the place was pretty much a hive of activity.  Sam stopped a harassed-looking young man with an armful of files and inquired as to the location of the crime desk.  He was duly pointed in the general direction of the far end of the room.

            "Hi,” Sam said as he approached a desk behind which a middle-aged, sandy-haired man sat tapping furiously at a computer keyboard.  "Name's Sam Malloy.  I'm a Stringer. Generally work out of L.A. but -”

            "If you're looking for a job kid, you've come to the wrong place.  Garvin does the hiring and firing around here." Without so much as pausing in his assault on his keyboard, the man tilted his head towards an office that bore the legend on its door: 'Sam Garvin - Chief Editor'.  "And he ain't hiring."

            "Not looking for a job.  I'm looking for some background information for -.”

            "This ain't the public library."

            "Sam?  Sam Malloy?” A deep baritone rumbled in surprised, but delighted tones.  Sam looked round to find a tall, wiry black man a good fifteen years his senior bearing down on him, a broad smile plastered across his face.  "Well, I'll be.  What the hell brings you here kid?"

            "Chris!” Sam exclaimed, his delight matching that of the dark man as they warmly shook hands.  "Didn't know you were here.  It's good to see ya' again.  How's the back these days?"

            "Fine, 'ceptin' when the weather gets cold.  Twinges like a bitch."

            "So naturally you move to Colorado."

            "Yeah. Go figure,” Chris laughed, slapping Sam playfully on the back of his right shoulder.  Sam winced slightly and a muted 'Ahhh' escaped him.  "Hey, you okay?” A frown immediately graced the older man's face.

            "Yeah,” Sam nodded, gingerly rotating his shoulder a little.  Despite his injuries having been rapidly healed, he was still experiencing some tenderness through both his shoulder and chest.  Not that he had admitted that fact to either his father or to Janet Fraiser.  He knew fine that if he had, both would have insisted on his staying put in the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain for another day or so.  "Had a recent run-in with some guys took exception to having their mug-shots taken."

            "Uh-huh,” Chris said with the knowing aura of someone who had been there, done that and had had the bruises to prove it.  "And you were taking their mug-shots because...?” His face was a study in hopeful journalistic anticipation.

            "Well, actually I wasn't.  They just thought I was.  I was interested in someone else but it turned out they were in the background and....Anyway, it's a long story I don't really have time for right now.  What I do need is some background on the local crime scene.  Who the local big shots are.  What their crimes of preference are.  That kind of thing.  Think ya' could help me out?"

            "Sure.  No problem.  After that little fracas you bailed me out of in South Carolina a coupla' years back, it's the least I can do.  C'mon.  There's a great little bar just down the block.  I'll buy you that beer I still owe you and you can fill me in on what kind of a hornet's nest you've gotten your ass in this time."

*************************************

            With a deep sigh, MacGyver shifted in the undeniably comfortable, high-backed, leather swivel chair behind the computer desk in the basement 'den' of his cousin's house.  Stretching to ease a kink out of his spine, he washed his hands up over his face and pushed some straying strands of his shaggy sun-bleached hair out of his eyes as he did so.  Returning his attention to the computer screen before him he endeavoured to ignore the dull ache developing behind his eyes which warned of an impending headache if he persisted in staring at the monitor for much longer.  When his stomach started to grumble at him too, he finally decided that a break was probably in order.

            He logged out of the Phoenix Foundation's secure database and then out of the system altogether before shutting down the computer and, scooping up the hefty pile of paper which was sitting in the printer's 'out' tray, hauled himself to his feet.  Making his way upstairs he headed for the kitchen, dumping the papers on the dining room table en route and went to put some water in the kettle.  He was in the midst of making himself a sandwich when he heard the unmistakable sound of the phone in the hall ringing.  Wiping his hands on a cloth, he went to answer it.

            "O'Neill residence,” he announced into the phone.

            "Hey, Dad.  It's me.” His son's voice sounded cheerfully in his ear.

            "Sam!  About time.  I was beginning to get a little concerned.  Where are you?” Mac could hear the distinctive sound of numerous voices in the background, along with the clink and clatter of glassware and crockery.

            "In a bar in town.  I ran into an old friend I didn't know was working here on one of the local papers; Chris Thomason.  Think I told ya' about him.  We kinda' helped each other out of a tight spot in South Carolina a coupla' years back.  That land development scam story I was working on.  Remember?  Out Orangeburg way."

            "Oh, yeah,” MacGyver nodded, wracking his brain and coming up with a vague recollection of the incident to which his son was referring.

            "Anyway, he's still a crime reporter.  Works here now.  Gave me the low-down on all the local low-life.  From what he told me I reckon it'd be worth our while checking out a guy called Osterbach."

            "Osterbach?  As in Simon Osterbach?” MacGyver questioned as his brain made a connection with some of the research he'd spent much of the morning on.  "Of Osterbach Industries? Trucking... Pharmaceuticals...  Electronics... Among various other things?"

            "Yeah.  That's the one.  Lots of money and fingers in a lot of pies.  Moved here from Las Vegas about six months ago, an' before that he hailed from New York, Boston and Chicago.  Apparently he sails pretty close to the wind in a lot of his business dealings and acquisitions; close enough to raise eyebrows in several police departments but no-one's ever been able to prove anything against him.  Seems the coupla' times the authorities have thought they might have witnesses against him the witnesses have either disappeared, suddenly developed chronic amnesia, or turned up dead,” Sam went on.  "Anyway, according to Chris, Osterbach owns some land up in the hills. Thought I might head out that way an' take a look."

            "Sam -”

            "Don't worry, Dad.  I'm not gonna' do anything stupid.  I'm just gonna' take a look is all.  You got a pen there?  I'll give ya' the address and directions Chris gave me."

            "Hang on,” MacGyver said, frantically scanning the hall table for pen and paper.  There was none.  He yanked open a small drawer under the table.  It contained what he was looking for.  Snatching out a slightly blunt pencil and a small pad of paper, he told Sam.  "Okay.  Shoot.” He scribbled rapidly as Sam gave him the information obtained from Chris Thomason.  "Okay.  Got that," he said a few moments later.

            "Okay, I'll check in with ya' later then, Dad."

            "Sam…” MacGyver began, only to hear a click followed by the distinctive buzz that announced that his son had hung up on him.  Mac sighed heavily and dropped the handset back on its cradle.  His stomach rumbled, reminding him about the sandwich he'd been in the middle of preparing.  Ripping the top sheet off the notepad he had used, he tucked the slip of paper into a pocket of the fatigues he was still wearing and headed back to O'Neill's kitchen.

************************************

            Malloy stood for a moment with his hand resting on the handset of the payphone he had just used to call MacGyver.  He was trying to decide just how mad his father was likely be when, given what Sam's immediate plans were, he eventually learned that Sam's mobile phone was still out of commission.  According to the clerk in the repair shop Malloy had taken it to before he'd gone hunting for spare parts for his damaged cameras, the device was repairable.  On the downside, it would be a few days before he would get it back.

            He might have inherited his father's tendency for rash impulsiveness, but that did not mean Sam was stupid.  He was well aware that trailing off into the hills, solo, to check out Osterbach's extremely isolated back-yard with no means of communication with the outside world once he got there, had its risks - especially if, given Osterbach's apparent reputation, he was involved with the guys Sam was after and no-one knew that that was where he was going.  Not that Sam was expecting to run into trouble.  He was only going to have a quiet, unobtrusive look around after all.  But if he did run into more trouble than he could handle, well it was only prudent that someone - like his father for example - knew where to start looking for him. 

            Blowing out a breath Sam decided that his father's potential ire about his failure to mention his lack of a working mobile phone was something he'd worry about later.  He had just told the man where he was going after all.  One out of two wasn't bad. 

            Turning away from the pay phone, Sam began to make his way through the bar's late-lunch throng, heading back to the booth where he had left Chris Thomason nursing the dregs of a beer and eying up anything female that wandered past.

************************************

            Mac had barely sat down at the dining room table with his lunch and his stack of computer printout when he heard the front doorbell ring.  He was still chewing on a mouthful of sandwich as he made his way into the hallway.

            Given what had happened to his son a few days before, MacGyver took the precaution of glancing out of the window beside the solid wooden front door to see who was there.  He found a youngish, dark-suited, muscular-looking man with close-cropped fairish hair and dark glasses loitering on the porch in a purposeful manner.  The man had what appeared to be a clipboard and a large manila envelope clutched in his left hand.

            A mixture of mild surprise and curiosity flitted across MacGyver's face.  The visitor had 'Fed-of-some-description' stamped all over him.  Mac opened the door.

            "Gordon Wilder.  DXS.  Your name MacGyver?” The 'Suit' announced, briefly flashing some I.D.

            "I'll answer that when I get a proper look at that,” Mac indicated the I.D. his visitor was already starting to pocket.  Wilder gave MacGyver an 'Are-you-serious?' look.  Mac gave him a 'You-better-believe-it' look in return, accompanied by a 'Come-on-give' gesture with his right hand.  Wilder flipped open his I.D. wallet and held it out.  MacGyver scrutinized it carefully, noting that it confirmed his visitor's name to be Gordon Wilder and that he worked for the DXS - an agency MacGyver had had more than a passing acquaintance with over the years.  "Okay, Mr Wilder.  What can I do for you?"

            "You MacGyver?” Wilder questioned stonily as he returned his I.D. to his pocket.

            "That'd be me,” MacGyver nodded. 

            "Can I see some I.D.?” Wilder requested flatly.

            "Sure.” MacGyver nodded.  He duly produced his Phoenix Foundation I.D. card and held it up for the other man to see.  He waited patiently as Wilder studied the card, clearly comparing the picture on it with the actuality of its owner. 

            Apparently satisfied that Mac was also who he claimed to be, Wilder informed him.  "I have something for you courtesy of Mr Craig Bannister of our L.A. office,” Wilder indicated the envelope in his left hand.  "Sign here, please,” he went on, holding out the clipboard which was now in his right.

            MacGyver took the clipboard and scanned the sheet of paper it held.  He recognised it to be a standard DXS receipt form required for 'secure' packets.  "Can I see the envelope security number?” He asked.  Wilder held up the envelope.  Mac checked that the number stamped on it corresponded with the number printed on the paperwork.  Unclipping the pen attached to the top of the board he signed the official receipt form and then handed the lot back to Wilder who in turn handed him the manila envelope.

            "Have a nice day,” Wilder said before turning and marching off down the pathway to the nondescript sedan parked at the curb.

            MacGyver retreated back into the house, pushing the door firmly closed in his wake.  He headed back to the dining room and resettled at the table.  He took a quick drink of his herbal tea and another bite of his sandwich before turning his attention to the envelope that had just been delivered.

************************************

            Opening the large envelope, MacGyver found it contained a couple of manila folders and a fax note.  The note was from Bannister himself and was brief and to the point; 'Mac.  Hope this is what you need.  Watch your back.  These guys play dirty pool.'  Bannister's signature sat beneath the scrawl.

            Craig Bannister was one of several people whom MacGyver had called since arriving at Jack’s house earlier that day.  They were old friends, having worked together on several occasions back in the days when Mac had worked for the DXS himself.  They had pulled each other's asses out of some pretty hairy situations more than once.  Mac was therefore not overly surprised by the fact that his phone call to Bannister that morning had apparently produced results.  He was a little surprised however by the speed with which it had produced results, but then, as Bannister had ruefully reminded him as they had talked, he did still owe Mac a favour or two.

            MacGyver opened the first folder.  It contained copies of several reports compiled by various government agencies on the activities of known associates of the men who had already been identified as Malloy's attackers and any links either known or merely suspected with organized crime syndicates within the United States, or with shady pseudo-political groups of sundry persuasions.  Mac scanned them quickly then turned his attention to the second folder which, he quickly discovered, contained some of the information he had asked Bannister for concerning Russian Mafia activity in the States.

            Several pages in to the file MacGyver's blood ran cold as he set eyes on a 10" x 8" black and white photograph of a face with which he had more than a passing personal familiarity.  It was a face that was a good deal older than he remembered, but he still recognised it immediately.

            "Mikhail Kostovitch...” he murmured softly, inwardly shuddering at some unpleasant memories which tried to surface.  "Now there's a face I kinda' hoped never to see again."

***********************************

            Jack O'Neill started slightly, his gaze shooting up from the paperwork in front of him to his part open office door as an odd feeling of disquiet suddenly washed through him.  For a moment or two he remained frozen where he was, his senses on full alert as he listened intently for any clue as to what had triggered his unease.  Then, tossing his pen aside, he rose and went to the door which he yanked fully open.  Sticking his head out into the corridor he saw no sign of anything untoward.

            Having long-since learned to pay attention when disquiet tapped him on the shoulder however, the Colonel made his way to the SGC Control Room.  The section was a picture of calm routine as the duty staff went about their various mundane duties.  SG-11 had returned on schedule and the post-mission de-brief, although short and sweet, had been a welcome legitimate distraction from his paperwork blitz.  No other teams were currently off-world and none were due to head out for another couple of days.

            "A problem, sir?” The Duty Controller inquired, looking warily up from her keyboard as she registered the Colonel's presence at her elbow.  The word was out around the SGC that the Colonel was tackling paperwork and she was only too well aware of his reputation for extreme crankiness when so occupied.

            "No, Sergeant.  Just...stretching my legs.” O'Neill responded.  "Carry on with... whatever...” he instructed, waving a hand vaguely at the equipment on which the woman was running a routine diagnostic of the Gate systems.

            Leaving the Control Room staff to their work and well aware of the collective sigh of relief which broke out in his wake, the Colonel headed back upstairs.  The feeling of unease that had rousted him from his office was still with him as he returned to it.  Settling into his chair again, he scowled in frustration at the pile of paperwork still awaiting his scrutiny before blowing out a disgruntled breath, snatching up his pen and endeavouring to return his attention to his work.

************************************

            MacGyver sat for some while just staring at the photograph he was holding, lost in memories of the events of nearly sixteen years earlier that had brought him up against one seriously ruthless Major Mikhail Kostovitch of the KGB; events that had nearly cost him his life.

            It had been an 'intelligence' mission deep behind the then Iron Curtain, as indeed had many of his 'covert' assignments in those days.  The 'brief' had been simple enough: steal the blueprints for the circuitry of a new, top-secret, long-range missile guidance system the Russians were working on and if possible either steal or destroy the prototype hardware. And it would have been simple enough if his contact hadn't been compromised and the Russians hadn't been waiting for him.  

            A protracted game of cat and mouse had ensued, along with capture and escape followed by more cat and mouse as he had been chased across the Ukraine into Hungary, all the while keeping just one increasingly exhausted step ahead of an extremely pissed off Kostovitch.  It had been in the wilds of the Hungarian countryside that the Major and his cohorts had finally caught up with him.

            MacGyver shuddered inwardly, his right hand straying absently to rub at his upper left arm as he remembered the bayonet that had sliced into his flesh on that bitterly cold winter's day; remembered going over the side of the old wooden bridge as a section of rotting barrier had given way when he had impacted it courtesy of the same soldier who had nearly taken his arm off with the bayonet.  It had been a long and terrifying drop down into a torrent of icy cold river-water that had rapidly swept him away.

            Luck had not totally deserted him that day.  Certainly the freezing water had given him the worst case of hypothermia he had ever had before or since, but it had also saved his life, the intense cold dramatically slowing his blood loss; a blood loss that would have quickly been fatal otherwise.  He had only the vaguest memory of being fished out of the water somewhere downstream, more dead than alive, by some gypsies who took him in, hid him from his KGB pursuers despite the inherent risks to themselves of such action and cared for him until he was able to look out for himself again.

            A slight frown crept onto MacGyver's features as he found his memories of the time he had spent with the gypsies were oddly hazy. 

*************************************

            "Ah crap,” O'Neill muttered, dropping his pen down on the open folder before him and leaning back in his chair, rubbing both his hands over his face as he did so. Straightening again, he contemplated the feeling of unease that was still nagging at him and doing its best to distract him from the job at hand: not that it ever took much to distract him from paperwork.  He still had no idea what the cause of the unease was for everything on the base was quiet and running like clockwork.

            A thought suddenly occurred to him and he reached for the phone sitting on his desk.

************************************

            MacGyver was snapped abruptly out of his reverie by the persistent ringing sound of a telephone.  Setting down the photograph he'd almost forgotten he was still holding, he rose and went out into the hallway.

            "O'Neill residence,” he announced, picking up the handset.

            "Hey, Mac.” Jack's voice sounded in his ear.

            "Hey, Jack,” MacGyver returned in surprise.  "What's up?"

            "That's what I was gonna ask you.  Everything okay there?"

            "Yeah, sure.  Why?"

            "Oh, no reason.  Just wondered is all."

            "Paperwork getting to ya', huh?” MacGyver remarked with a quiet chuckle.

            "Ya' think?” Was the slightly wry response.  "How's yours going?  Got anything we can use yet?"

            "Pulled some stuff off the Phoenix database might be useful,” MacGyver answered.  "And an old DXS buddy in L.A. just sent me a couple of multi-agency files by way of the Denver office that I was just in the process of looking through."

            "And?"

            "And...I'm working on it, Jack. Okay?” MacGyver responded a little more sharply than he intended.

            "Hey, no need to get all tetchy on me, big guy.  I was only asking."

            "Yeah.  Sorry.  Listen, I'll catch ya' here later, okay?” MacGyver apologised, wiping a hand over his face as he did so.  "Maybe I'll have something by then."

            "Yeah.  Okay.  Later."

**********************************

            For a few moments Jack sat staring at the telephone he had just set down.  Prior to his brief exchange with his cousin, unease might have been just lightly tapping him on the shoulder.  Now, it was jumping up and down and yelling 'coo-eee' at him.  Loudly.

            Reaching a decision Jack rose to his feet and left his office.

***********************************

             Still in O'Neill's hallway MacGyver blew out another heavy breath as, having set the phone back down on its cradle, he stood just staring down at the instrument for several moments, lost in thought.  He hadn't meant to get snappy with his cousin and realised that the discovery of the picture of Mikhail Kostovitch had rattled him considerably more than he liked to admit.  Hungary in the early eighties hadn't been the only time he had come across the Russian and on that second occasion it hadn't just been his own life that had been on the line.

            Turning, MacGyver leaned back against the front door as unwelcome memories surged up.  He fought them down, refusing to allow them to replay themselves in his mind again.  The passage of time had done nothing to lessen the intensity of the emotions that always accompanied them.  Nor had recent events.

            Blowing out another breath and resolutely pulling himself together, he returned to the dining room and the files Craig Bannister had sent him.  Steeling himself, he looked again at the photograph of Mikhail Kostovitch for a moment before he turned his attention to the several reports that were attached to it.

            His expression grew progressively grimmer as he read.  It remained grim as he waded through the rest of the contents of the file and studied the numerous other photographs it contained; photographs that had unmistakably been obtained covertly.  A frown crept onto his face as he presently began to arrange some of the photographs across the table for easy comparison.  Then, ferreting through the stack of stuff he had earlier downloaded from the Phoenix Foundation database (and elsewhere), he pulled out several newspaper articles which had photographs included.  The articles concerned various aspects of the almost meteoric success of Osterbach Industries since its creation several years before; the early ones full of praise for Osterbach's business acumen; later ones focusing on just how close to the wind he sailed in his business dealings; the most recent ones speculating about officialdom's various investigations into both Osterbach and his company.  Right at that moment it was not the articles as such which MacGyver was interested in, it was the pictures they carried.

            Folding the sheets to temporarily dispense with the text, MacGyver arranged the various newspaper pictures across the table with the photographs Craig Bannister had sent him.

            MacGyver surveyed the array of images.  Simon Osterbach of Osterbach Industries featured prominently in the newspaper pictures.  Ignoring Osterbach, MacGyver focused his attention on the people pictured with the shady industrialist and those who lurked in the background.  The former were mostly legitimate business-people.  The same could not be said of all of those in the background however.  Several of them matched with faces from the files on organized crime that Bannister had provided.  One of these had also been covertly snapped several times by officialdom in the company of Mikhail Kostovitch, not to mention several of the ex-KGB man's known associates. 

            Mac checked on where and when some of the pictures had been taken.  Some of them were recent.  Very recent.  The most recent having been taken in Denver within the past several days.

            "Damn,” MacGyver muttered.  Rising, he headed for the phone in the hall and swiftly dialled a long-since-memorized number.  “Dammit, Sam,” he complained with frustrated annoyance when a tinny-sounding pre-recorded voice informed him that the number he was trying to reach was out-of-service.

            Abandoning the phone, MacGyver headed for the spare bedroom where the few belongings that he had originally arrived in Colorado Springs with were currently housed.  Jack had rescued the stuff for him from his motel while he had been laid up in the SGC infirmary several days before.  It took him only moments to find his travel bag which sat behind the door alongside his son's and, after a brief rummage, he hauled out the medium-weight, charcoal grey, half-zip fleece he wanted.  Stripping off and tossing aside his borrowed fatigues shirt, he pulled the fleece on over his black T-shirt then rummaged in his bag again.  This time it was his mobile phone he pulled out.  A quick check of the battery level had him tossing it back into the bag in disgust; the battery was as flat as a pancake and he didn't have time to hang around recharging it.

            Making his way back through the house, heading for the front door, he fished the keys for Jack's truck from his pants pocket as he went.  There was a house key on the key-ring and he took the time to make sure the front door was secure before he hurried to the truck.  He was about to climb in behind the wheel when a thought suddenly occurred to him.  Moving purposefully around the outside of the big vehicle he ran a hand around the inside of the wheel arches and checked both front and rear fenders.  It wasn't until he checked the spare-wheel casing at the back of the truck that he found what he had been looking for.

            "Nice try, Jack,” he muttered with a brief flicker of a taut smile as he tossed the small tracking device in the general direction of a rose bush at the foot of the house steps.  "But you're staying out of this one."

            With that slightly terse utterance, MacGyver finally clambered into the truck, fired up the powerful engine and began to reverse the vehicle out of the driveway.

************************************

            Sam Malloy meanwhile, was already well out into the wilds of Colorado in search of the remote property Chris Thomason had told him had recently been acquired by Simon Osterbach of Osterbach Industries.  He took a couple of wrong turns on the back-roads before he found himself approaching a closed gateway across the single track hardtop he was currently on.  The gate bore a bold sign that proclaimed the land beyond to be private property and warned trespassers to keep out.  Beyond the gate and sitting to one side of the roadway sat a monster of a big, black, four-wheel drive vehicle, the windows of which were darkly tinted.

            As Sam brought his bike to a controlled halt some yards short of the gate, the two front doors of the vehicle opened.  The men who stepped out did not radiate a friendly aura.  One was clad in camouflage pants and jacket, the other in dark jeans and black zipper jacket.  Both wore dark glasses and carried automatic weapons: AK-47s.  The cammo-clad driver hung back by the vehicle while his dark-clad companion advanced towards the gate to yell an inquiry at Sam about his reading abilities and emphasising the fact that he was approaching private property

            Sam pushed up his helmet's visor and, over the noise of bike's idling engine, yelled back. “Yeah, I can see that.  Look, I seem to have gotten a little lost.  Can you tell me whose place this is?”

            “None of your damn' business.  It's private property and that's all you need to know!” was the yelled response.

            “Oh-kaay,” Sam remained amenable in the face of the clear hostility of the other man.  “Could you give me directions to Blane's Farm then?” he asked.  He had spotted a sign-post to the property in question way back down the road and knew that it meant that the road he was on led to Osterbach's property.  The answer he received was not polite and indicated he should depart from whence he had come forthwith unless he was desperate for his health to dramatically deteriorate in a very rapid and unpleasant fashion.

            “Okay, okay.  Keep your shirt on,” Sam responded with mildly ruffled indignation.  “I can take a hint.  I'm going.” He dropped his visor back down, turned his bike around and headed back up the road until he was out of sight of the gate, whereupon he swung the machine off the road and onto an overgrown dirt track that appeared to run roughly parallel to the fenced property-line. 

            Some way along the track the trees thinned out and Sam brought the bike to a halt as he found he was on high ground overlooking a collection of buildings.  Parking the bike amid the cover of some shrubbery, Sam left his helmet perched on the seat and advanced on foot to cover by the wire fence that ran along the edge of the steep, rocky drop that lay beyond it.  After a brief survey, he returned to his bike, pulled out his remaining undamaged camera and his telephoto lens.  Attaching the lens, he returned to the shrubbery by the fence.

            Squinting through the camera's viewfinder and adjusting the lens as appropriate gave him a much closer view of the array of buildings below.  The compound consisted of several buildings and corrals surrounded by a high wire fence and the glint of sunlight off the wire suggested that it was fairly recently installed and had not yet had time to develop a coating of dirt and rust.

            Sam’s vantage point gave him a clear view of the rear of the main house which was a large and pleasant looking two-storey timber construction typical of Colorado.  The house’s back yard seemed to consist of neatly trimmed lawn that ran the length of the building and round the sides and was bordered by equally neatly trimmed shrubbery and a low, dark-coloured wooden fence.  There was a smaller structure attached to the southern end of the house which Sam assumed was a garage since there appeared to be a paved area beyond it on which sat a vehicle of some sort;  Sam didn’t have a clear enough view of the vehicle to identify the make or model.

            A small cluster of what appeared to be sheds of varying size occupied the south-eastern corner of the compound.  Two large barns, one of which was in something of a state of disrepair, lay to the west of the compound, complete with a couple of corrals.  Another shed lay between the southern-most corral and the compound’s main gate.  On the northern side of the compound, almost directly opposite the main gate was a low building with a covered porch; Sam guessed it was probably a bunkhouse. A couple of mud-spattered four-by-fours sat in front of this building.  A battered-looking old pick-up sat near one of the barns and an ancient relic of a farm tractor sat rusting in the area that lay between the two barns.

            Sam took a couple of general shots of the compound and then, with the camera tucked carefully inside his jacket, he began to look for some way past the boundary fence and down into the compound.

************************************

            Presently Sam was settling into cover at the northern end of the Osterbach compound and was contemplating the glinting, six-foot high, wire-mesh fence that lay only a few feet ahead of him.  Bypassing the fence which marked out the outer boundary of the secluded backwoods property had been a doddle: it had been in poor repair and was little more than a few rusting strands of plain wire hanging loosely between rotting fence posts.  There had been evidence of a few footprints suggesting the passage of the occasional person along its length, but Sam had so far not encountered any guards and had reached the main compound’s rather more business-like fence unchallenged.

            From the relative safety of the shrubbery in which he now lurked, Sam took the time to survey the compound again, or at least that area that was now visible to him.  He had a good view of the front of the main house and the neat gardens there.  The building at the far end was definitely a garage and the vehicle sitting in front of it looked big and expensive.  From the angle he was at it was hard for Sam to be sure of the make, but he thought it might be a Mercedes.

            He also had a pretty clear view now of the main entrance to the compound.  A couple of men not dissimilarly clad to the duo he had encountered earlier, lounged by the gate.   They both appeared to be carrying automatic weapons.  Sam hauled out his camera and took advantage of its telephoto lens again to take a better look at them.  Almost immediately he recognised one of them as one of the men who had tried to kill him at O’Neill’s house. The Phoenix Foundation’s Face-finder program had identified him as ex-CIA operative Edward Peter Cameron, who currently sported a nose-splint, a pair of beautiful black eyes and a sour expression.

            Sam couldn't help a small smile of approval as he saw the damage he had caused when he had used one of his currently still-wrecked cameras to stop the man from shooting Sam Carter.  He also smiled because now he had a definite connection between Osterbach and Cameron, which meant he now had a connection to the men he had inadvertently photographed in the High Winds Tavern.  Okay, it might not stand up in court, but it was a start.  Still smiling to himself, Sam proceeded to take a couple of photographs of Cameron.  Then, with the camera once again tucked carefully inside his jacket, he turned his attention back to the fence before him.

            Assuming there wasn’t anyone actively patrolling the mesh-fence there was a good chance of reaching the nearest building undetected if he could scale the barrier.  If there was a guard on a regular patrol however, there were no immediately obvious, safe, potential hiding-places to be able to easily duck into.

            While he weighed up the risks, Sam decided the first step was to check whether or not the fence was electrified.  Being fried was not high on his current ‘To Do’ list.  Fishing in a pocket of his jeans he pulled out a coin and tossed it at the fence.  The coin struck the mesh and dropped to the ground without causing any sparking that would betray the presence of an electrical current.

            Moving cautiously forward Sam retrieved his coin and then even more cautiously risked tentatively touching a finger to the fence.  Again nothing happened to suggest the fence was protected by electricity.  Sam blew out a soft sigh of relief.  Scaling the obstacle was not going to be a problem.  He decided to follow it for a while though to see if he could find a spot with rather more cover on the other side than there was at his current location.

            A little while later he found himself on the western side of the compound at the rear of the two large buildings that appeared to be barns.  Peering around the trunk of a tree Sam cast an observant eye over the pile of lumber and the stacks of crates and barrels that nestled up against the back wall of the more dilapidated of the two barns.  He also noted the several holes in the barn wall courtesy of missing and/or rotting planks.

            Reaching a decision Sam emerged from behind the tree, sprinted the few yards to the mesh-fence and scrambled up and over it, taking great care not to do himself a mischief on the string of barbed wire that topped it.  Dropping down on the other side he bolted across the open area between the fence and the piles of wood and other stuff.  The sound of someone coughing reached him as he neared the potential cover.  It spurred him to traverse the last few feet even faster.  He dove behind the first of the crates just as the owner of the cough rounded the corner of the crumbling barn, an Uzi dangling from a shoulder-strap slung over his right shoulder and a cigarette in his hand.  Another man armed with an AK-47 accompanied him.

            From his hiding place behind the crates Sam heard the sound of coughing grow closer and heard a disparaging comment be made about ‘cancer sticks’ which was met with a crude suggestion about what the speaker could go do to himself.  As quietly as he could, Malloy wriggled a little deeper into cover and then froze as he heard the voices of the two men drawing closer to his position before passing him by. He did a slow count to fifty and then risked rising to a crouch for a cautious peek over the top of the crates in time to see the two guards were walking on past the second barn.  Their casual manner indicated that they had no inkling of his presence and no particular expectation of stumbling across anything untoward.

            Sam blew out a quiet breath of relief and waited until he saw the duo round the far end of the second barn before he turned his attention to the crates amongst which he hid.  There was nothing particularly remarkable about them.  They were pretty standard wooden crates, mostly of a fairly uniform size.  There didn’t appear to be any labels on them to indicate what they might have been used for though some staples with small, torn bits of paper caught under them suggested that some had borne labels of some sort at some point.  None of the crates looked as if they had been sitting out in the open, exposed to the elements, for any great length of time.

            Turning his attention to the barrels that were stacked alongside the crates, Sam lightly tapped the side of one of them.  The hollow sound he heard indicated the barrel to be empty.  He tapped another couple, with the same results.  Like the crates, the barrels appeared to be devoid of identifying labels.

            Glancing around to check that he was still unobserved, Sam reached to cautiously unscrew the cap on one of the barrels.

            “Ah phew!” He quickly replaced the cap after getting the briefest whiff of what the barrel had once contained.  “Aviation fuel unless I miss my guess,” he muttered.  “Now what do you suppose anyone would need that for?” He glanced around, once again checking that he remained unobserved.  A speculative look crossed his face as his attention turned to the two large barns and a thought occurred to him; Big enough to house a small plane, but there’s no room to fly one in or out of here.  Chopper maybe?

            Sam made his way swiftly to the nearest of the holes in the barn wall and peered through it.  The interior was gloomy and he couldn’t see much that looked even remotely interesting.  The existing hole wasn’t large enough to readily grant the journalist access to the structure so he carefully tested the planks on either side.  Both were a little loose and it didn’t take much effort on Sam’s part to persuade them to move enough to allow him to squeeze through into the barn.

            For a few moments Sam listened intently for any sounds that would betray the presence of anyone else nearby.  He heard nothing to suggest he might have company and moved forward to the front of the dilapidated old horse stall he found himself to be in.

            “Hello,” he murmured softly to himself as, peering around the part open and slightly sagging-on-its-hinges stall door, he made a discovery.  Parked in the middle of a large open area within the centre of the barn was a large, metal-sided semi-trailer.  More than a little curious he ventured forward for a closer look.

            The trailer was painted a pale colour and the side bore a logo, but not one Sam had half-expected to see.  It was in the form of a racing cheetah under which was the legend: ‘Fast Cat Transport’.  A frown crossed Sam’s face as something about the logo caught his attention.

            Turning away from the trailer, Sam swiftly scanned his immediate surroundings.  A few moments later he found what he wanted: a lightweight, ten-foot length of aluminium ladder lying on its side against some mouldering straw bales.  He swiftly checked it out.  The ladder was by no means new, but it looked to still be usable.  Picking it up he took it over to the trailer and set it up against the side within easy reach of the cheetah logo.  Clambering up he took an up-close-and-personal look at the logo.  He quickly discovered that it was not painted directly onto the side of the trailer but was instead stuck on.  Sam picked at the crinkled edge that had earlier caught his eye and prompted this closer investigation.

            Within a few moments the journalist had managed to peel the giant sticker back far enough to find that another logo was hidden underneath it.  He peeled a bit more back, curious to learn what was being concealed.  He soon discovered the distinctive and decorative letters ‘O’ and ‘T’ on a non-specific road-map background that was the logo of Osterbach Trucking.

            “Curiouser and curiouser,” he murmured at his discovery.  As he pondered on why an Osterbach Trucking trailer should have a false logo on its side and be parked in a dilapidated barn on a remote backwoods property belonging to Simon Osterbach, owner of said trucking company, Sam carefully pressed the semi-peeled fake logo back into place.  Descending the ladder he returned it from whence he had borrowed it.

            Heading for the rear of the trailer Sam checked the doors.  They were padlocked.  Making sure that he was still unobserved, Sam reached into his jeans pocket for his Swiss Army Knife.  A few moments later the padlock surrendered and Sam was cautiously pulling the doors open.  He discovered the trailer contained a number of barrels similar to those he had already found outside.  He also noted the presence of several crates.  These crates however, were flatter and longer than those he had seen outside, were a dark shade of green much favoured by the military and bore the stencilled claim: ‘Property of USMC’.

            His curiosity most definitely piqued by the latter find, Sam hauled himself up into the trailer.  Since they were nearer, he tapped on one of the barrels.  The dull sound that resulted told him that the barrel was full of something and the odour that permeated the trailer suggested that the ‘something’ was probably aviation fuel.  Grimacing at the smell, Sam turned his attention to the crates.  Using his knife again he managed to work the lid of one loose enough to pull open.

            “Guess this would go some way to explaining the false decals,” he muttered as his gaze alighted on the neatly packed automatic weapons the crates contained.  He replaced the lid and went deeper into the trailer to check another crate.  More weaponry.  He checked a third crate and this time found blocks of C4 explosive and a cache of detonators.  “Are these guys nuts or what?” He muttered, shaking his head.  “Stacking C4 with detonators and aviation fuel.  This has got to be an accident waiting to happen.” He quietly closed up the crate and headed back to the rear of the trailer.

            Dropping down onto the ground Sam froze as two men sprang into view on either side of him from around the end of the trailer.  They were the same two men whom he had previously avoided outside the barn and they had him squarely in the sights of the AK-47 and the Uzi they respectively carried as they told him to ‘Hold it right there’. 

            “Hey, guys.” Sam tried a smile which he hoped didn’t betray too much of the fear welling up in him as he kept his empty hands clearly visible to the duo.  “Would you believe I’m from The Bureau of Health and Safety At Work, an’ I gotta’ tell ya’ you appear to be in gross violation of several Hazardous Material Storage Codes?”

*************************

            Approaching a fork in the narrow backwoods road MacGyver pulled O’Neill’s truck over to the side and reached for the map he had earlier dug out of the door-pocket and which currently lay on the passenger seat.  After consulting both the map and the directions previously given him by his son, he quickly concluded that he probably wasn’t far from his intended destination.  He then spent several more minutes trying to determine two things; the best way to make a covert approach to his goal and the likeliest route that Sam would have taken.  The one did not necessarily preclude the other, but Mac knew Sam would be primarily relying on instinct and the directions gleaned from his newshound friend Thomason, while he himself had the advantage of a detailed, military-issue map.

            Coming to a decision Mac tossed the map back onto the passenger seat and got the truck moving again, opting for the right-hand fork in the road.  Just as he made the turn he caught a glimpse in the rear-view mirror of a black SUV with dark-tinted windows coming at speed down the road he’d just come off.  It took the alternate fork in the road and was closely followed by a nondescript, dark-coloured panel truck.

            Mac subconsciously noted the two vehicles but otherwise paid them little heed, his primary focus being on getting to where he wanted to be and on what he was going to do when he got there.

*************************

            Sam Malloy’s indignant protests fell on deaf ears as he was quickly and efficiently frisked by one of his captors while the other kept him effectively covered with an automatic weapon.  He was relieved of his camera, his Swiss Army Knife and sundry other items that were in his pockets before he was prodded towards a doorway that opened onto the main compound.  He had little option but to comply. 

            As he was escorted towards the building that had a covered porch running the length of the side facing into the compound, Sam scanned everything that was in visual range, making a mental note of anything that could conceivably be useful should an escape opportunity arise.  He also tried engaging his captors in idle chatter, hoping to prise some useful information out of them, but they refused to rise to his subtle baiting.

            Sam’s attention focused on the building to which he was being shepherded as a door opened and a man stepped onto the porch that fronted it.

            “Found him poking about in the old barn,” one of his captors reported.  “He had this.” The man brandished Sam’s camera.

            “Hi,” Malloy greeted with false affability as he recognised the man on the porch; Carmen Santarelli, one of the trio who had tried to kill him at O’Neill’s house and the man whom his father had pegged as being responsible for the booby-traps that had been set at the home of the late Airman Grierson.

            “You are proving to be a remarkably persistent source of irritation, Mr. Malloy,” Santarelli responded fixing Sam with an icy stare.  “And you would seem to have more lives than a cat.” Santarelli stepped down from the porch to circle around the prisoner.  “I take it you searched him?” He asked the twosome who had captured Sam.  They confirmed that they had.

            “Aside from the camera and his wallet, he just had a load of junk in his pockets,” the man holding Sam’s camera reported.

            “Dump it all on the chair,” Santarelli ordered inclining his head in the general direction of a wooden chair that sat on the porch behind him. “I’ll take care of it later.”

            “What do you want we should do with him?” Sam’s other captor wanted to know.

            “How about you just give me back my stuff and let me go?” Sam suggested.

            “Bring him,” Santarelli ordered, favouring Sam with another icy, almost predatory look before stepping purposefully past the journalist and his two captors.

******************************

            “It looks quiet enough,” Daniel Jackson remarked as he drove his car carefully down the semi-deserted-looking street towards the house belonging to the man currently occupying the vehicle’s front passenger seat.

            “Looks can be deceptive,” O’Neill responded, scanning the street intently for anything that seemed even remotely out of place.  Nothing did, but the sense of foreboding that had been plaguing him at the SGC was still nagging at him.  “It’s a close-run thing, but Mac’s an even bigger trouble-magnet than you are.”        

            Daniel cast a curious glance towards his companion as Jack pulled something from a pocket of his black leather jacket. “Jack?” he questioned when, after a second quick glance, he realised what it was O’Neill was fiddling with.

            “Looks like our birds are still here,” Jack responded, looking up from the military issue, hand-held G.P.S. tracking device he had requisitioned.  Daniel did not miss the note of relief that was in his tone.

            “You bugged them?” Daniel sputtered incredulously, shooting an outraged look Jack’s way.

            “Try not to run into the back of my truck when you pull in.” Jack ignored his companion’s indignation as they drew near to his driveway.

            “Ah, Jack...” Daniel began a few minutes later.

            “Ah crap!” Jack swore as he saw the empty space where he had expected to find his truck.

*******************************

            The absent truck was, at that precise moment, bouncing its way along a narrow, pot-holed, winding and slightly overgrown dirt track through dense woodlands.

            “Whoa!” MacGyver exclaimed as he swung the vehicle around a sharp bend and was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid running straight into a massive tree-trunk that was lying across the track, totally blocking it.  Blowing out a breath of relief at having barely avoided doing some potentially serious damage to the borrowed vehicle, he simply sat there for a few moments contemplating the unexpected turn of events before climbing out to more closely assess the situation.

            The fallen tree, he quickly discovered, was firmly wedged between other trees on one side of the track while on the other it was caught between trees and an outcropping of rock.  Mac sighed.  There was no way he was going to be able to simply drag the obstruction out of the way, even using Jack’s truck and the coil of rope that was in the back.  Nor were there any convenient overhanging branches that were anywhere near strong enough for him to be able to rig some sort of a hoist.  He needed a chain-saw and inventive though he was, not even he could transform a Swiss Army Knife into one.

            Returning to the truck, Mac consulted the map one final time before securing the vehicle, scrambling over the fallen tree and continuing on down the track on foot.

******************************

            “Ahhh, Jack...What are you doing?” Daniel questioned dubiously as his companion halted at the foot of the steps leading up to the front porch and began to poke around among the rose bushes there while swearing softly as a thorn scratched his hand.  “Oh,” he added when, after a moment, O’Neill straightened and tossed something at him.

            “Paperwork on ‘lost’ equipment is a bitch,” Jack said as Daniel fielded the miniature tracking device that MacGyver had earlier discarded amongst the roses.  As Daniel gawped, Jack continued on up the steps onto the porch.  It came as no great surprise to the Colonel to find that his front door was firmly secured.  He fished a spare key out of his jacket pocket, unlocked the door and, although he was now fairly confident that the house would be empty, he still checked that no-one was lurking behind the door before he advanced far enough inside to allow Jackson to follow him in.

            “Mac?  Sam?” Jack called out as he headed down the couple of steps into his living room.  The house ‘felt’ empty, but he needed to check all the same.  After all, as he had not long since finished telling Daniel, appearances could be deceptive.  “Guys?  You here?” He bellowed a little more loudly, aiming the query towards the back of the house as he headed back towards the hall.

            “Maybe they left a note somewhere,” Daniel offered helpfully, frowning slightly at the empty space where Jack’s coffee table usually resided.  About-facing, he trailed after O’Neill.  As he re-entered the hall he glanced out the window beside the front door and saw a SUV pulling up across the foot of the driveway.  “Teal’c and Sam are here!” He called out to Jack who was already disappearing into the rear section of the house where the bedrooms were.  He didn’t really expect Jack to answer and he wasn’t disappointed.  He began to follow the Colonel only to halt at the entryway into the small dining room.  “Jack, this could be something!” he yelled, automatically advancing into the room to investigate the enticing clutter of papers that were scattered all over the dining table.

            “What?”

            “Not sure,” Daniel admitted.  He was already poking through the confusion of folders, loose papers, photographs and computer printout as Jack joined him.  “How do you suppose Mac got hold of some of this stuff?” Daniel wondered aloud.  He had been working at the SGC long enough to recognise official government material when he fell over it.

            “Mac knows a lot of… people…”  O’Neill’s voice trailed off as something on the table caught his attention and he discernibly tensed.

            “Jack?”  Daniel questioned looking round, a puzzled frown creeping onto his face.  The frown deepened as he registered the tension emanating from his companion and saw the expression that was on the man’s face.  It was an expression Daniel was all too familiar with.  It was the chillingly blank one the Colonel usually adopted when faced by a highly distasteful situation and he was clamping down, hard, on his feelings about it.  O’Neil’s gaze was unwaveringly focussed on something on the table.  Daniel switched his own gaze to the table, trying to determine what that something was.  He noticed a black and white photograph that had slipped out from among some of the papers he had been moving around.  It was a close-up shot of a cold-eyed, hawk-faced, greying haired man.

            Daniel looked swiftly back at O’Neill, his curiosity level escalating rapidly as he heard him mutter softly but venomously under his breath.

            “Sonuvabitch.”

*************************

            “WHOA!” MacGyver exclaimed, nearly tripping over his own feet as a wave of acute disquiet suddenly hit him like a runaway express train.  It vanished as abruptly as it had struck, but the sheer intensity of it left him quite shaken.  Leaning against the nearest tree for a moment he endeavoured to regain control of himself and figure out what had just happened.  Before he had a chance to do much of either however, his attention was rudely snapped back to where he was and why by the sound of a triumphant exclamation.

            “Well, lookit what we got here!”

            Operating on pure reflex, MacGyver dropped immediately into the nearest available cover even as he rapidly scanned his surroundings for the owner of the voice.  He saw nothing to indicate that he was the cause of the shout.  He did however hear a lot of rustling suggestive of much activity coming from a little further along the twisting track he had been following.  Keeping to cover as much as possible, Mac carefully crept towards the sounds.

*************************

            “I take it you know this guy?”  Daniel ventured cautiously, reaching to pick up the photograph that his companion was staring icily at.   O’Neill’s answer spoke volumes.

            “Oh yeah…”

            Daniel’s eyebrows rose in an interrogatory manner, but before he could say anything Sam Carter’s voice intruded from down the hall.

            “Colonel?  Daniel?”

**************************

            MacGyver’s heart sank.  Two men were extracting a motorbike from amongst a thick clump of shrubbery where it had evidently been concealed; a motorbike that Mac recognised.

            “Yeah, that’s Malloy’s alright.” One of the men stated.  MacGyver recognised him instantly; both from his son’s description of him and from the file sent him by Willis at the Phoenix Foundation: Tony Von Deane, ex-NSA agent and alleged military ordnance thief.

            MacGyver ran an experienced eye over the spot where the bike had been concealed.  It was a good one; one he might have chosen himself had he wanted to hide the bike.  His heart lurched again as he realised that in order to have found the machine, the two men had to have been actively searching for it in the first place.  That meant they knew Sam Malloy was around.  Or worse.  Sam had been caught.

            A wave of panic rose within the Phoenix operative at that last thought.  He fought it down.  Panicking wasn’t going to help his son if the Bad Guys were indeed holding the journalist.  It occurred to him that perhaps that was what had triggered the wave of ‘distress’ that had hit him out of the blue such a short while ago.  After all, even though Fraiser had told him that the level was definitely dropping, he did still have a fairly significant level of the K’Rin’sha neural enhancing substance in his system.  Jack O’Neill and Sam Malloy also still had the substance in their blood, though at lower levels and, as far as Mac was aware, Jack was still safely ensconced in the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain which logically meant that if one of them had been the source of the…‘distress wave’, then it had to be Sam.

            Remaining where he was, Mac watched silently as Von Deane used a radio to report the finding of Sam’s bike to someone and request instructions on what to do with it.  A few moments later Von Deane’s cohort was hot-wiring the bike and climbing aboard.  Von Deane climbed on behind him and the twosome roared off down the track.

            MacGyver waited until they were out of immediate sight before he broke cover and advanced quickly along the track a little way to an area where the tree and shrub-line on one side ceased.  He found himself at the top of a small cliff-face over-looking a cluster of buildings surrounded by a high, gleaming mesh fence.

            Dropping into cover MacGyver surveyed the compound. A couple of mud-spattered four-by-fours were parked in front of one of the buildings and several men were scattered around various parts of the compound, seemingly going about their business in an unruffled fashion.  Of Sam there was no obvious sign.

            MacGyver scanned the rest of the compound, searching out the most promising covert-access points and also the likeliest places where a prisoner might be securely stashed.  He was still assessing the situation when he saw the two men with Sam’s bike arrive at the main entrance to the compound and be admitted.  They took the bike to the less dilapidated of the two barns and disappeared inside the structure with it.

            With only the vaguest semblance of a plan beginning to formulate itself in his mind, MacGyver retreated from the exposed area at the top of the cliff and began to backtrack in search of a way down to the compound.

*************************

            “In here, Carter,” O’Neill called out, deliberately ignoring Jackson’s inquisitive gaze.  He knew how tenacious the younger man could be when his curiosity was aroused so he wasn’t in the least surprised when Daniel asked tentatively.

            “So… Who is he?”

            “A sadistic bastard.”  O’Neill answered curtly.  He turned away as Carter appeared in the doorway, Teal’c behind her.  “Ah, Carter… Teal’c… Just in time to join the party.  Mac’s left us a pile of paper that may or may not tell us where he and the kid have taken off to. Get yourselves in here and give Daniel a hand.  See if you can dig a clue out of any of this stuff.”  With that, he headed off in the direction of his kitchen.

            As Daniel watched him go Carter and Teal’c approached.

            “Whoa,” Carter observed as her gaze roamed over the array of papers, folders, and photographs adorning the dining table. “This is going to take a while.” 

            “Indeed.”  Teal’c agreed, as he too surveyed the mass of paper.

            “Who’s that?”  Carter inquired, frowning at the photograph Daniel was still holding.

            “Oh, ah, no idea,” Daniel was forced to admit.  Something made him refrain from mentioning that Jack knew who the guy was.  “But there has to be something here that’ll tell us.”  He could hear O’Neill moving around in the kitchen and was tempted to just simply go and ask him about the man in the photograph.  Again something made him hold off from doing so.  He turned his attention to the papers on the table which Carter was already beginning to sift through.

            “Ah… This looks like it belongs with that,” the woman announced as she lifted a sheet of paper which had a small, passport sized black and white photograph attached to it.  The photograph was of the same man in the picture that Daniel was still holding. Carter scanned the information on the sheet of paper. “His name’s Mikhail Kostovitch,” she summarised.  “He’s Russian.  Was KGB.  Came up fast through the ranks to become a Major then it seems his career got stalled after an incident in which the blueprints for some highly classified experimental technology he was responsible for were stolen by a foreign agent.  The agent destroyed the one and only working prototype.” Carter paused as she scanned further down the sheet.  “Kostovitch caught the agent, retrieved the blueprints... But the agent escaped.” Carter’s matter-of-fact tone changed slightly, betraying a hint of amusement.  “And stole the blueprints again.”

            “Well, that would certainly put a dampener on his career prospects,” Daniel conceded, chewing absently at his lower lip. 

            “It also says here that Kostovitch reported to his superiors that he caught up with the foreign agent again in Hungary....The agent was eliminated, but the blueprints were never recovered.”

            “Does it say when all this happened or who the agent was or worked for?” Daniel asked tersely, his mind racing at the mention of Hungary.

            “1982,” Carter answered, “but I don’t see any mention of the agent’s name.” She scanned the sheet further.  “He was American though.  Doesn’t say which agency... ”

            “I think I know,” Daniel muttered softly, a gleam of sudden inspiration coming into his eyes.

            “What?” Carter frowned at her team-mate.

            “Ah… never mind,” Daniel answered absently as he set Kostovitch’s photograph down on the table.  “Um, I think I’ll just go help Jack…  I think he’s making coffee.”  He said as he started to head off in the direction of the adjacent kitchen.  “I’ll be right back.”

            “Daniel?”  Carter questioned, bewildered by his sudden change of tack.  Daniel ignored her however and disappeared into the kitchen.  She looked at Teal’c, but it was apparent from his raised eyebrow response that he had no more idea than she did about Daniel’s reaction to the information she’d discovered about Kostovitch.

**************************

            Jackson entered the kitchen in time to hear a darkly muttered curse and glimpse something fly through the air to shatter into numerous pieces against a cabinet a couple of feet to the left of where he stood.  It startled him, but he managed not to yelp out loud.  He looked across the kitchen in time to see Jack spin around and lean on the kitchen sink, his hands tightly gripping the rim of the sink.  Glancing over his shoulder Daniel saw Sam and Teal’c looking quizzically towards the kitchen doorway.  He shot them both an apologetic look and told them.

            “It’s okay.  I just knocked over a glass someone left on the edge of the shelf here.”

            His team mates appeared to take the statement at face value and turned their attention back to the papers arrayed on the dining room table.  Daniel glanced down at the broken glass on the kitchen floor then looked across the room to where Jack was still standing by the sink.  Tension was radiating from the man and his tone was terse as he questioned.

            “Found something already?  That was fast.”

            “Ah no. Not yet,” Daniel said.  “I ah, thought you might be making some coffee.  Thought I’d help.”  He gaze strayed towards the inactive coffee-making machine that sat on one of the work-tops.  “Guess you weren’t… You ah, mind if I ah…?”

            “Knock yourself out,” O’Neill responded, making a ‘go-ahead’ gesture towards the coffee-maker, which Jackson promptly headed straight for.

            Whilst Daniel busied himself with the coffee-machine he kept an unobtrusive eye on Jack, watching the latter fetch a brush from a cupboard, rescue an old newspaper from a recycling box in a corner of the kitchen, and make use of both to deal with the shards of broken glass lying on the floor. 

            “So…”  Daniel ventured as he watched the broken glass be safely disposed of in the trash bin.  “Mikhail Kostovitch…” He saw the sharp look that came his way, but refused to be intimidated by it.  “Where’d you know him from?”  He asked, leaning back against the counter as the coffee-machine burped and gurgled behind him.

            “Let it go, Daniel,” O’Neill advised as he returned the brush to the cupboard in which it belonged.

            Daniel hesitated for a few moments before he busied himself with fetching three mugs and a glass tumbler from the respective cupboards which housed them.  He then went to the fridge where he was pleased to find fresh cartons of orange juice and apple juice.  Subconsciously he noted the various other items of fresh produce stowed in the fridge and guessed they there were courtesy of the missing MacGyver and Sam Malloy since some were things O’Neill would not normally purchase.  Selecting the apple juice he opened it and poured some into the glass before returning the carton to the fridge.  Retrieving a tray he set the mugs and the glass upon it then, as the coffee maker continued to gurgle in the background, he turned his attention back to Jack.

            He noted the Colonel had made no attempt to escape his curiosity and was rummaging in the newspaper recycling box, apparently looking for something.  Daniel took his continued presence in the room as an invitation to pursue the subject he had been told to drop.  He sidled a little closer to where Jack was down on one knee.

            “So… I suppose you were just cleaning that glass and it went off.”  Daniel said, keeping his voice deliberately pitched at a level that would not readily be overheard by his team-mates in the dining room.  He witnessed Jack shoot a slightly withering glower his way as the man abandoned his rummaging and rose to his feet.  “Oh-kay,” Daniel refused to be intimidated by the look. “So it had something to do with Mikhail Kostovitch then.”  He held his ground as he was glowered at again.  It was a glower that had been known to strike terror into a large number of the personnel employed in and around the SGC - marines included.  Daniel refused to be terrorized.  He just folded his arms and regarded his friend with an expression of determined patience on his face.  “I’m guessing he’s not at the top of your Christmas card list…”   Jack said nothing but made to step past him.  Daniel was about to sigh in frustrated exasperation but O’Neill abruptly stopped at his shoulder.

            “Iraq,” Jack said quietly, flatly.  “He was one of the bastards tried to break me.  Came damn’ close.  He…”  He paused, remembering past horrors.  Then, still standing at Daniel’s shoulder and without looking at the younger man, he continued in the same quiet, flat, unemotional tone. “He enjoyed inflicting pain.  He also enjoyed watching while the guards…”  Again he paused as unwanted memories tried to surface from the dark recesses of his mind where he normally kept them well buried.  Firmly squashing the upsurge of memory, he headed towards the burbling coffee-maker.

            Daniel paused for a moment before turning and walking over to join the older man as Jack began to pour coffee into one of the mugs which the archaeologist had already set out.  To Daniel’s surprise Jack handed him the mug and then turned to lean back against the counter as he went on to tell him in  a quietly matter-of-fact tone.

            “It’s a miracle Mac was able to get me outta’ there like he did.  I was half out of my mind.  I vaguely remember him trussing me up and slinging me on a camel at some point...” He shook his head slightly as if he still found that memory hard to accept as being a truly remembered thing and not just a figment of a mind tormented almost to insanity.  Then, his tone still flat and emotionless, he continued.  “We were out in the middle of nowhere when we stumbled across a bunch of Brits.  Small SAS infiltration and intelligence gathering team.  Don’t really remember much about that either.” A trace of a wry smile flickered across Jack’s face as he turned around to pour coffee into the two remaining mugs on the tray Daniel had out.  “Apparently they were on their way back to friendly territory from a covert op.  Took us with them and called up a med-evac to airlift us out at the first opportunity.”

            “Um.  Jack,” Daniel said, still keeping his own voice quiet so as not to be readily overheard by their companions in the other room.  “I think Mac and Kostovitch may have met before.” At the sharp look that came his way he continued hurriedly.  “There’s a report with that other stuff, says Kostovitch’s career with the KGB was pretty much stalled after an incident in which an American agent stole some top-secret intelligence from him.  Twice.  He apparently reported to his people that the agent died in Hungary in 1982.” He regarded Jack steadily.  “I know Mac was in Hungary around then.  I also know he was badly injured then too.”

            Jack sighed and rubbed at his face with his hands.

            “Jack?” Jackson prompted, an edge of concern in his voice.

            “Yeah.  Kostovitch thought I was Mac when we met up in that hellhole in Iraq.”

            “Oh, God...” Daniel breathed, horrified at the realisation that not only had one of Jack’s interrogators been a bastard to start off with, he had been a bastard with a serious grudge - albeit against the wrong man.

            “Couldn’t convince him otherwise,” O’Neill stared blindly across the newly filled coffee mugs, remembering.  “He was seriously pissed.” He sighed.  “Thought I was being a smart-ass when I denied having ever met him before, denied stealing some damn blue-prints from him years before...Vowed to make me pay for ruining his career.” A barely perceptible shudder ran through the Colonel. It probably would have gone unnoticed by anyone who didn’t know him as well as Daniel did.  “He was a vicious sonuvabitch.”

            “He probably still is.  Question is what is a dossier on him doing here?  And where are Mac and Sam now?” Daniel asked

***************************

            Sam Malloy blew out a heavy breath of frustration and leant back against the post to which he was still securely tied.  His right shoulder was aching a little and his wrists were burning where he had rubbed them almost raw in his attempts to wriggle free of his bonds.

            The journalist surveyed his surroundings again in the hope that ‘Plan B’ would jump up and tap him on the shoulder, preferably the one that wasn’t aching.  His attention inevitably went to the crates and sacking stacked against the wall behind him.  Sam slid himself around the post.  It meant he now had his back to the door but at least he could survey the crates and sacks without giving himself a crick in the neck.

            The beginnings of ‘Plan B’ began to formulate in his mind as he noticed that one of the crates had a loose lid that was resting slightly askew on it.   At least one nail was visibly protruding from that lid which also had what looked like a small heap of empty sacking sitting on it.

            Straining against his bonds, Sam extended a foot towards the crates.  The one he was after proved to be just out of reach.  He tried again, coming frustratingly close but not quite close enough.  A third attempt proved equally fruitless.

            Sighing heavily and leaning against the post at his back again, Sam surveyed the problem.  Short of dislocating his shoulders there was no way his present tactics were going to give him the reach he needed.  He needed a new plan.

            Sliding himself down the post and manoeuvring onto his knees so that he had a foot on either side of the post, he struggled to loosen the laces of the sneaker on his right foot.  It was extremely awkward, but he managed it.  As an afterthought and despite the difficulty involved, he also loosened the laces of his other sneaker.  With a great deal of effort he managed to get himself back up onto his feet, ignoring the protestations from his healing shoulder and raw wrists.  Using the post at his back to lean against, Sam toed off his right sneaker, then his sock.  The next manoeuvre was fiddly.  He attempted to anchor the sock around his big toe and use his other toes to grip it.  He then extended his foot towards the crate and, flicking his foot, attempted to hook the sock onto one of the nails protruding from the crate lid that he was after.

***************************

            Jack O’Neill was carrying a mug of coffee and had a business-like air about him as he returned to his dining room.  Daniel followed close behind him armed with a tray upon which sat two steaming mugs and one glass of chilled apple juice.

            “So.  What have we got here, Carter?”  The Colonel inquired, gesturing with his free hand at the array of paper spread out over the table as Daniel stepped around him to distribute the drinks from the tray.

            “An assortment of dossiers and files from the D.X.S., the N.S.A. and the F.B.I., sir,” Carter answered in a mildly distracted manner as she shuffled papers about in a purposeful fashion.  She cast Daniel a brief “Thanks, Daniel,” as the man handed her a steaming mug.    Directing her attention back to O’Neill who was already sipping at his own coffee, she went on.  “There are confidential F.B.I. reports on the financial status of several leading multi-national conglomerates and various members of their respective boards.  Also there appears to be quite a lot of Intel on various individuals and/or organizations here in the U.S. who are suspected of having connections with the Russian Mafia. There’s also a pile of stuff here that appears to have been downloaded from the Phoenix Foundation’s database this morning, sir.  A lot of it looks like archived newspaper articles.”

            “All of which tells us what exactly?”  O’Neill wanted to know.

            “To be honest, I’m not sure yet, sir,”  Carter admitted as Daniel handed off the glass of apple juice to Teal’c who inclined his head in acknowledgement. 

            “What about Mikhail Kostovitch?”  Daniel asked as, his own mug of coffee now in hand, he propped the now redundant tray against a leg of the dining table.  “What else do those files say about him?”

            “According to this report from the D.X.S. he has political aspirations in Russia these days,”  Carter answered, fishing out a sheaf of stapled-together sheets of paper.  “They believe he’s here in the U.S. right now, trying to source ‘clean’ funding.  They also think he’s got connections to the Russian Mafia.”

            Daniel glanced over at Jack as Carter spoke and was aware of the man almost imperceptibly stiffening at the mention of Kostovitch’s suspected presence in the country.  The Colonel’s face was giving nothing away however.

            “That would make sense,”  Daniel said, keeping a wary eye on Jack whilst starting to poke one-handed through the papers on the table.  “Politicians need money to fund their campaigns and in Russia a lot of the people with the money these days are the Russian Mafia, right?  Supposing Kostovitch’s funds are coming from them and he’s trying to find a way to clean up that money by funnelling it through legitimate overseas businesses?”

            “And the Russian Mafia gets what exactly out of it?” Jack questioned.  “They’re crooks, not philanthropists.”

            “Political influence,” Daniel responded.  “Power.”

            “By all accounts they’re pretty powerful already,” Carter interjected.

            “Legitimate power,” Daniel shot back.  “At least on the surface.” He looked at O’Neill. The man’s expression was bleak and his tone was a little terse as, waving a hand at the array of files and papers on the table, he questioned.

            “Any clue here as to where Mac and the kid might have taken off to?”

            “Not yet,” Carter admitted, apology for the failure flitting across her face.

            “Keep looking,” Jack instructed.  Abandoning his coffee he departed the dining room.  Once in the hallway he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cell phone.  It took him a matter of moments to retrieve and dial the number he wanted from the phone’s memory.  Bleak disappointment flickered across his features when a slightly tinny-sounding voice informed him that the mobile phone he was trying to reach was switched off.  He tried a second number, only to be informed by the same tinny-sounding voice that it was currently unobtainable.  “Crap,” he muttered darkly.  “Where the hell are you, guys?”

            As he returned his phone to his pocket, Jack’s attention alighted on the hall table.  Picking up the small note-pad lying on it, he angled it to the light coming in the window beside the front door.  There were definite indentations on the blank top-sheet.  Putting the pad down on the table again he picked up the pencil that had been lying beside the pad.  With the same care that his team’s archaeologist might exercise to take a rubbing from some ancient artefact, Jack used the pencil to bring life to the indentations on the pad’s surface.  He immediately recognised the handwriting that his actions revealed: MacGyver’s.

**************************

            MacGyver was, at that precise moment, cautiously approaching the mesh fence at the northern side of the Osterbach compound.  In an ideal world he would have preferred to wait until dark and attempt entry to the property from the western side.  The conviction that his son was in trouble and being held somewhere by the Bad Guys prompted him to more immediate action however.  Access from the southern side was way too exposed, the main gate being there.  The high ground lay to the east and little in the way of cover lay between the foot of the cliff and the fence, while to the west there seemed to be a lot of sudden activity going on in and around the two barns.

            That left the northern approach that Mac was currently employing.  It was not ideal; for large sections were readily visible to the armed guards at the main gate should they happen to direct their attention across the compound.  However the building with the porch lay on the northern side of the compound and it effectively screened a good chunk of the northern fence from the guards at the gate and provided partial concealment from the men working in and around the barns.

            As his son had done before him, Mac cautiously tested the fence with a tossed coin for any indication that it was electrified.  He made the same discovery as his son had; it wasn’t.  It surprised him a little but he wasn’t about to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth.  After one last check that the coast was clear he broke cover and scrambled up and over the fence, careful not to do himself any lasting damage on the barbed wire at the top in the process.

            Dropping to the ground on the other side, he mentally thanked the K’Rin’sha for the efficacy of the repairs done to his right knee: the normally troublesome joint didn’t so much as twinge in protest at the impact.

            Mac sprinted the short distance to the back wall of the building Sam had earlier earmarked as being a bunkhouse.  His senses on full alert for any indication that he had been detected he briefly flattened himself against the wall before he began to sidle along it.  Reaching a window he listened intently for any indication that the room to which it belonged might be occupied.  All seemed quiet.  He risked a quick peek.

            That fleeting glance told him all he needed to know.  The room was empty.  He tried the window.  It was locked.  The latch was a simple one however and Mac was easily able to slip it back with the blade of his Swiss Army Knife.  Moments later he was inside and carefully closing the window again in his wake.

            The room in which Mac found himself contained a set of bunk beds, a couple of cupboards and a couple of plain wooden chairs, all of which conspired to make the room feel somewhat claustrophobic.  The thin mattresses on each of the bunks were all neatly rolled up and a fine layer of dust covered everything, indicating that the room was not currently in use.

            Mac crossed to the door, listened intently for a moment, then cautiously eased it open.  Peeking out he saw no signs of life, just a long empty corridor.  He stepped out into it glancing alertly in both directions and noting that there appeared to be several further rooms all on the same side of the corridor as the room he had just vacated.  On the other side were windows spaced out at regular intervals allowing natural daylight to readily illuminate the passage.

            Going to the nearest window but keeping to one side of it, Mac glanced out.  He got a partial view of the main ranch house and its neatly maintained front garden.  He also got a pretty good view of the main compound: there was still plenty of activity going on in and around the barns.  He watched for a moment, curious as to what was going on and also taking the opportunity to do a rough head-count of the opposition.

*************************

            Much to Sam Malloy’s relief he succeeded in snagging one of the nails protruding from the crate lid.  He then held his breath as he gently tugged, hoping that this time the sock snare wouldn’t slip off again as it had on several previous occasions before the lid shifted far enough to slide off the crate on which it was resting.

            “Yesss!” Sam breathed triumphantly as the lid moved, tipped and finally hit the floor with a resounding clatter.  The Hessian bags that had been resting atop the lid also hit the floor and they made rather more of a thump than empty bags might reasonably be expected to make.  “Oh-kay... Looks like we’re finally on a roll here,” Sam muttered delightedly as he saw the two slightly rusty-looking hacksaw blades that spilled forth from the Hessian.

            It took some agile stretching and manoeuvring but, after some three or four attempts, he managed to snag one of the blades with the same sock he’d used to tip the crate lid.  As soon as he had the blade underfoot he slid it around the back of the post to which he was tied.  He then carefully slid himself down the post until he was sitting on the floor.  With a bit of blind groping he managed to get his hands on the blade.  Despite the rusty bluntness of the old blade Sam began to saw at his bonds with it.

*************************

            Having roughly gauged the strength of the opposition but still not really much the wiser about the reasons behind the activity around the barns, Mac made his way quietly along the bunkhouse corridor until reaching the closed door at the eastern end.  He listened for a moment before tentatively pushing the door slightly open.  He listened again for any indication that anyone was in the room beyond before he pushed the door a little further open and peeked around it.

            The room before him was large with a small kitchen area at the far end.  There were a couple of long, trestle-style tables with benches at the same end too.  There was a door situated about halfway along the right-hand wall that Mac deduced led outside onto the porch that ran along the inner compound side of the building.  The nearer part of the room contained a couple of large, pretty battered looking old couches and a couple of equally decrepit looking armchairs.  These surrounded a square of fading and, in patches, bare carpet.  A TV sat on a stand in the corner with an old VCR and a much more modern DVD player.  Some tapes and discs were lying carelessly on a shelf beneath the TV stand.

            MacGyver’s attention however homed in on the laptop sitting on one of the trestle tables.  After a quick glance out of the nearest window to check that the Bad Guys were still all pretty much occupied, Mac headed straight for the computer.  Opening it and powering it up he was faced with an on-screen request for a password.

            “Damn’...” he sighed.  He wasn’t particularly surprised that the device was password-protected but he had harboured the slim hope that it wasn’t and that he might have been able to readily access some intel that could have been useful.  Cracking the password could take hours, days, weeks even and he didn’t have that amount of time to play with.  He shut the machine off and closed the lid down again.

            Mac was in the midst of determining his next move when a long-since-familiar prickle at the back of his neck warned him of impending danger.  He was already halfway back to the door by which he’d entered the room when he heard voices and the unmistakable squeak of a loose tread just outside.  Seconds later he was pulling the passageway door almost shut in his wake just as the main bunkhouse door swung open.

*************************

            Approaching the part open doorway to the basement room which he knew served as O’Neill’s ‘den’, Daniel peeked around the door.  Discovering Jack to be within, he hesitated, trying to determine his next course of action.  Jack was standing by the desk, his back to the door and a phone to his ear.

            “Thanks, Andy.  I owe ya’ one.” Daniel heard the Colonel say before the phone was returned to its cradle.  Jack then glanced over his shoulder and said.  “Hey, Daniel.”

            “Hey,” Daniel returned.  Responding to the subtle invitation that had been in his friend’s tone he stepped into the room.  “Everything okay?” he asked, concern showing in his eyes.  He hadn’t been unduly worried when Jack had initially left him and the others at the dining room table poring over the various papers and stuff they had found, but when some time had passed and there had been no sign of him returning, concern had begun to set in and Daniel had decided to go look for him.

            “Yeah,” O’Neill nodded.  He shot Daniel a grim smile, understanding immediately what lay beneath the apparently innocuous question.  “I’m fine.”

            “Okay,” Daniel accepted the assurance.  “So...?” he prompted, hoping to find out what had been keeping the other man.

            “I was checking something out.” Jack turned back to his desk and, as Daniel moved to his side, he realised that Jack had a map spread across part of its surface.  Before Daniel could ask the obvious question, O’Neill handed him a small piece of notepaper.  “Mac left us a clue as to where he went after all.”

            Daniel examined the paper.  He immediately noted the fact that what was written on it hadn’t actually been written directly on it at all but that it was an indented copy with the words revealed by means of rubbing a pencil carefully over its surface.  He also noted that the handwriting, though clearly hurried, bore a strong resemblance to Jack’s own scrawl.

            “You think this is where he and Sam went?” Daniel looked up from the note which gave the name of what he assumed was an out-of-town property of some sort along with what appeared to be directions on how to get to it.

            “Is there anything in that stuff upstairs about a guy called Osterbach?”

            “Er, yes.  Quite a lot actually.  He’s an industrialist with a wide range of business interests.  Why?”

            “Because apparently he recently bought some land around here,” Jack said.  “And I’d like to know why that should interest Mac enough for him to have written down the address and how to get to it.  What else does the paperwork say about this Osterbach?”

            “The F.B.I. think he’s a crook but can’t prove it,” Daniel answered, succinctly summarizing what he had read so far. 

Jack blinked at him and the grim smile returned. “Yeah... That’d do it.” He reached for the map and gathered it up.  “C’mon.  Let’s go see what else is in those files that got Mac’s attention focused on this guy.”

**************************

            Malloy blew out a soft breath of triumphant relief when, after much awkward sawing with the semi-blunt saw-blade, he finally felt his bonds give way.  He grimaced slightly at the soreness that flared through his right shoulder as he brought his hands around in front of him.  Slowly flexing both his shoulders, he rubbed gently at the right side of his chest.  It eased the discomfort.  Another grimace flickered across his features as he checked his wrists and saw how reddened and raw-looking they were.  He resisted the temptation to rub at them, knowing that the action wouldn’t improve their condition any and turned his attention elsewhere.

            Rescuing his sock and sneaker, he hurriedly pulled them on and tied up the laces.  He then rose to his feet and crossed swiftly to the door that led outside.  He wasn’t surprised to find that it was securely bolted from the other side.  After listening at it for a moment in an effort to determine if there was a guard lurking or not, Sam went to check out the room’s other door which led into another part of the small building.  This door opened easily as soon as he tried it.

            “Oh-kaay...” A smile of delighted approval appeared on his face.  Unlike the first room this one was full of an assortment of junk and old tools, all of which added up to a myriad of possibilities.  It also had a door in its back wall that appeared to lead outside.  Sam immediately went to check it out.  Unsurprisingly, it was locked.  He turned his attention to the room’s clutter and began to rummage with speedy efficiency.

            Several minutes later Sam was advancing on the ‘back’ door with an almost empty aerosol can of spray lubricant, a length of narrow-diameter tubular steel, a wooden mallet and some oily rags.

*********************

            Ready to bolt at the first indication that either of the two men in the bunkhouse living area might be headed his way, MacGyver listened intently at the door.  He hoped that a spot of eavesdropping might lead to his discovering the whereabouts of his errant son.  He also hoped he might learn something useful about what exactly the Bad Guys were up to at the compound.  The current topic of conversation between the duo in the other room however seemed to concern repairs to a generator and when power was likely to be restored to the compound’s perimeter fence.

            Mac filed that titbit of information away for future reference.  Unless he found Sam quickly and they high-tailed it before the opposition had the electricity supply to the fence restored, escaping from the compound was not going to be as easy as gaining entry had been.  Shoulda’ known getting in here was just too darn easy, he thought to himself.

            He heard one of the men say something about coffee and ask if the other wanted any.  An affirmative response followed as did the unmistakable sounds of someone clattering around in the kitchen area.  Cautiously Mac risked easing the door a little further open.  Dropping down onto one knee he risked an even more cautious but fleeting peek around its edge.  One man was at the table, tapping on the keyboard of the laptop; the other was busy in the kitchen area.  Neither man saw MacGyver but he saw enough to identify both of them; the one with the laptop was Carmen Santarelli, one of the trio who had attacked his son at Jack’s house.  The other was Tony Von Deane.

            Mac was just about to pull the door almost shut again when he heard the musical sound of a mobile phone ring.  He decided to hang around a little longer and eavesdrop some more.

            “Santarelli,” he heard.  Followed by.  “Yes, sir.  Came in just a little while ago and being taken care of right now.  We might have another problem though...  That journalist Malloy’s here... Yeah, I know he should be dead, but he isn’t.  Looks as healthy as you or me.  Mellor and Grimes found him poking around in the trailer in the old barn.....No, sir, don’t worry.  He’s locked up nice and secure in one of the sheds well away from -” A slightly longer pause than the previous ones was followed by.  “I’ll be sure to ask him nicely, sir...  Yes, sir, it’ll be a pleasure...  See you then, sir.”

            MacGyver’s blood chilled as he listened.  Especially to that last bit.  It was clear to him that Santarelli had been instructed to have an unfriendly little chat with Sam.  Santarelli’s next utterance confirmed it.

            “The Man wants us to loosen Malloy’s tongue before he gets here.  We’ve got about an hour.”

            MacGyver’s blood chilled further as he heard the malice in Santarelli’s voice and Von Deane’s answering comment about an hour being more than enough time for them to get Sam to spill his guts.  Abandoning the door, MacGyver high-tailed it down the corridor as quickly and quietly as he could to the room by which he had initially gained entrance to the building.  Moments later he was slipping out the window.  Dropping to the ground he checked that he was unobserved and then sprinted towards the eastern end of the building.  Peeking carefully around the corner he saw Santarelli and Von Deane heading across the compound towards the cluster of sheds in the south-eastern quadrant.

            Adrenalin surging through his system, MacGyver made a dash towards the fence that marked out the ‘private’ yard-come-garden of the main house.  Reaching it he scrambled quickly over it, thankful that it was low enough for him to be able to do so and ducked down amongst the bushes on the other side.  He checked that he was still unobserved and that his quarry was still on course towards the cluster of sheds before he pushed his way through a gap in the neatly spaced shrubbery to sprint swiftly along the neatly trimmed lawn on the other side.

            A moment later he reached a path that led from the garden gate to the front door of the house.  The path also ran along the length of the main part of the house to the garage at the southern end.  A colourful flowerbed bordered the stone-flagged pathway, separating it from the neatly trimmed grass.

            Keeping low, Mac sprinted up the path towards the house, but veered away from the steps up to the door at the last moment onto the flower-bordered section of pathway.  He plastered himself briefly up against the wall to suck in a few deep, nerve-settling breaths before ducking again and sprinting along the path towards the garage at the far end. Reaching the garage, he had to negotiate his way over and through the flower-border to be able to peer around the front corner of the building.  He sucked in some more deep breaths and surveyed his surroundings and his quarry.

            Santarelli and Von Deane had reached the cluster of sheds, had passed between the two nearest to where MacGyver lurked and appeared to be on course towards another in the far corner of the compound.  MacGyver looked over towards the barn in the south western part of the compound.  There was still a fair amount of activity going on in and around it and Mac knew his current position was pretty exposed should any of the men working there happen to look in his general direction.

            MacGyver ducked and advanced swiftly to the side of the big Mercedes parked in front of the garage.  He took a cautious peek inside to see if anyone had been careless enough to leave the keys in the ignition; no-one had.  He moved to the front of the vehicle, using its bulk to shield him from any prying eyes over on the other side of the compound and directed his attention back to Santarelli and Von Deane. 

            Realising that he could be easily spotted if either of the two men looked around as they approached their destination, MacGyver dropped down flat and wriggled swiftly under the big Mercedes.  The move also served to provide some semblance of concealment from anyone emerging from the house behind him, or being readily spotted by anyone glancing out of any of the front windows. 

            Mac found he had a fairly limited view of the shed which Santarelli and Von Deane appeared to be heading for.  He chewed anxiously on his lower lip as he wondered if he dare risk breaking cover and sneaking over to the cluster of buildings.  If the duo didn’t go to the door which was in his line-of-sight...  

But they did and Mac blew out a soft breath of relief.  He watched as Von Deane pulled back the bolts securing the door and pulled it open, stepping aside to permit his companion to enter the building ahead of him. 

************************

            Breezing back into his dining room with Daniel close on his heels, Jack immediately observed that both Teal’c and Carter were no longer seated at the table.  Instead both were on their feet.  Carter was leaning over the table and was shuffling assorted folded computer-generated newspaper articles around in a distinctly purposeful manner.  Teal’c was standing close by her elbow and was attentively watching the paper-shuffling.

            Recognising all the classic signs that Carter was onto something, Jack inquired. “Whatcha’ got there, Carter?”

            “Not quite sure, sir,” Carter answered without looking up from what she was doing.  “I’m trying to determine the significance of why some of these articles that have been downloaded from the internet have been folded the way they have while the others haven’t.  I think it has something to do with the pictures in them, but so far I can’t figure out what.”

            “Something to do with a shady corporate tycoon type called Osterbach, by any chance?” O’Neill ventured coming to a halt a little way short of where Carter and Teal’c were hovering.

            “Ah, yes actually.  He’s in all these pictures,” she confirmed.  Then, waving a hand at a stack of unfolded sheets of computer printed papers sitting neatly to one side she added.  “He’s also in several of those ones too but they don’t seem to have caused the interest that these have.  They’ve not been folded the same way.”

            “So presumably these have something else in common besides Osterbach,” Daniel observed.  Carter and Teal’c both moved aside slightly to allow Daniel access to the neatly arranged papers.

            “And that would be?” O’Neill inquired, finally venturing forward for a look himself even as Daniel began to study the pictures in question. 

            “Don’t know yet, Jack,” Jackson said in his best slightly-absent-professor tone as he carefully scanned the images on the table before him.  “Possibly it’s some  one, or some thing in the background somewhere.  It could take a little while to –” He broke off and looked sharply round at O’Neill as he sensed a sudden aura of tension momentarily emanate from him.  “Jack, what is it?” he queried, concern as well as curiosity in the look he bestowed upon the older man.  “Jack?” He prompted when, instead of responding, Jack leaned over the table for a closer look at the array of pictures.

            “There’s your connection right there,” the Colonel announced abruptly as he tapped one of the pictures before straightening up and assuming a briskly businesslike demeanour.

            “What is?” Daniel homed in on the picture in question even as Carter moved in for a closer look too.

            “Those two men standing by the trunk of that car were in the background of those photographs Malloy took at the High Winds Tavern,” O’Neill stated flatly.  “Probably you’ll find either one or both of them somewhere in all of those other pictures.”

            Carter and Jackson both blinked at him in surprise then switched their gazes back to the array of pictures.  Teal’c merely twitched an eyebrow slightly.  O’Neill headed for the hallway.

            “Hey, Jack!  Where are you going?” Daniel’s startled question followed him.

            “To see a man about a little place in the country.”

***************************

            Chewing on his lower lip Mac began to rapidly consider his options for extracting his son from the clutches of the opposition.  He was probably going to need a diversion... An idea occurred almost immediately.  The car under which he currently hid could provide a pretty nice diversion if the gas tank were to mysteriously explode...  Mac was in the midst of pondering the best way of arranging such an event without blowing himself sky-high in the process when he heard angry yelling erupt from the direction of the shed into which Santarelli and Von Deane had gone.  Seconds later Santarelli came storming out of the shed in a manner denoting that something had seriously pissed him off and was looking around in a manner that clearly indicated something was more than slightly amiss.  Moments later Von Deane came running around the side of the shed, clearly having exited it by some means other than the doorway within MacGyver’s field of view.  Santarelli rounded on Von Deane who shook his head and made a slightly helpless gesture.

            A little smile crossed MacGyver’s face and a soft chuckle escaped him: his son it seemed, was no longer where the Bad Guys had expected him to be.  Mac’s expression sobered swiftly.  Where was Sam?  Had he left the compound already?  Or was he still snooping around somewhere?  Mac realised that that pretty much depended on how much Sam had already discovered.  If he had found out what was going on and had managed to get hold of some incriminating evidence to take to the authorities, then his priority would be to get the heck out of Dodge pronto.  On the other hand, if he’d found just enough to pique his curiosity before the Bad Guys had caught him, then he’d want to snoop some more and get hold of any evidence he could...

            Even as he pondered on the situation, Mac kept watch on Santarelli and Von Deane who were engaged in a heated argument which lasted only a minute or so before Santarelli began striding back across the compound yelling loudly for everyone to get their asses outside on the double.  Von Deane followed briskly in his wake.

            It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that Santarelli was going to organise a search of the compound and probably of the area beyond it as well.  MacGyver decided that if he was going to hang around and do some snooping of his own, he was going to need a much better hiding place and he was going to need it quickly...

*********************

            Malloy smiled in satisfaction as he dropped, almost cat-like, down from his hiding place in the rafters of the shed that had been his prison.  He could hear Carmen Santarelli yelling orders and organising a search of the compound and the woodlands immediately around it.  Still smiling he shook his head ruefully.  It really was amazing the number of people who failed to look UP when confronted with an apparently empty room instead of one where they had fully expected to find a tied up, helpless prisoner.  Especially if you provided them with an apparently obvious means of the prisoner’s exit...

            Still pondering on that interesting little quirk of human nature, Sam crossed quietly to one of the grime-covered windows at the front of the building.  Keeping carefully to one side of it he peered cautiously through a corner of it as best he could.  He couldn’t actually see much since his view was pretty well obscured by dirt, but he could hear plenty: vehicle doors slamming, engines starting up, Santarelli still bawling orders...

            Ducking down, Sam crossed over to the door that Santarelli had left standing wide open in his wake when he’d stormed from the shed.  Crouching down behind the door, Sam peered out through the gap between the back of the door and the doorjamb. It didn’t do much to improve his view of what was going on outside for most of the main compound was fairly effectively blocked by a couple of other sheds.  From the sound of revving SUV engines that he could hear, it sounded like vehicles were heading for the main gate.  He made the reasoned deduction that they were heading out to search beyond the compound for him.  He had no idea exactly how many vehicles were heading out, but assuming perhaps three and a minimum of two men to a vehicle, that meant six less looking for him inside the compound.

            Smiling to himself, he settled himself on the floor behind the door and leaned back against the wooden wall.  He would give the search parties remaining within the compound some time to convince themselves that he was long gone, then he’d get back to work on finding out just what it was that the Bad Guys were so keen to keep hidden from public scrutiny...  Besides which, they had something that belonged to him; his favourite camera.  There was no way he was leaving before getting it back.

********************

            Adrenalin pumping through his system, his senses on full alert for danger and his eyes constantly scanning his surroundings for Bad Guys, MacGyver blew out a breath of relief as he reached the corner of the shed undetected and flattened himself against its back wall.  He sidled carefully along the wall until he reached a wooden door that rested against it beside an opening in it.  He sniffed the air as an oddly familiar odour reached him.  It smelt like a proprietary aerosol lubricant.  Mac’s attention went to the door’s hinges.  They were rusty.  He touched his fingers to the top one and they came away smelling of the lubricant.

            Edging past the door to the opening, Mac glanced at the hinge-fittings in the doorframe.  They looked as rusty as those on the door.  His eyebrows twitched slightly as he contemplated this interesting discovery before he glanced around the opening into the room beyond.  His eyebrows twitched again as he saw the wooden mallet and the can of aerosol lying on the floor just inside the doorway, along with an oily rag, a short length of narrow diameter metal and the pins from the door hinges.  Way to go, Sam, he thought.  A ripple of pride ran through him as he ducked inside the shed and flattened himself against the inner wall.  Taking a door off its hinges in order to affect an escape from a locked room was a trick he had employed upon occasion himself.

            Turning his attention back to the situation at hand, he scanned the room in which he found himself.  His eyebrows rose slightly again as he surveyed the assortment of old tools and equipment scattered about the place in a disorderly clutter.  He would, he decided, have been extremely disappointed in his son if Sam had been unable to escape from a shed filled with so much potential.

            His gaze alighted on a doorway that led into another part of the building.  It was ajar.  Moving quietly, he crossed to the door and halted behind it as a familiar tingle on his alert senses warned him that the shed was not as empty as he had first thought.

*********************

            Sam Malloy wasn’t sure what made him go on sudden alert, but something was telling him he was no longer as alone as he thought he was.  Moving swiftly but silently, he cast a quick glance outside via the crack in the doorjamb.  Satisfied that no-one was approaching from that direction he rose and darted to the room’s only other point of ready access, snatching up the crate lid that lay on the floor where he had earlier left it.  With the crate-lid held ready to swat whomever might venture through the par-open door, Sam waited, his heart thumping like a jackhammer.

********************

            MacGyver’s heart thudded as he leaned back against the wooden wall for a moment.  Then, moving stealthily, he endeavoured to squint through the narrow gap between the door and the jamb.  The action told him nothing useful.  He chewed on his lower lip as he considered his next move.  His senses were positively screaming at him that there was someone lying in wait on the other side of the wall.

            A sudden thought occurred to the Phoenix operative.  He closed his eyes and tried to still his mind, sucking in and releasing a quiet breath as he did so, concentrating on what his senses were telling him.  Instinct tapped him on the shoulder and he listened to what it whispered to him.  Opening his eyes again he blew out the softest of breaths and chewed momentarily on his lower lip before he decided to go with what his gut was telling him.

            “Sam...?” he called quietly.  “That you?”

********************

            A stunned expression flashed across Sam Malloy’s face as he heard the oh-so-familiar sounding voice that floated to him from the other side of the wall.

            “Dad?” he responded, still poised with the crate lid despite his recognition of his father’s voice.

            “Yeah.  You okay?”

            “I’m fine.” Sam relaxed, lowering the crate lid and setting it down against the wall.  “What the heck are you doing here?” He asked as his father sidled a warily into the room.

            “Looking for you,” MacGyver replied, casting a swift, threat-assessing glance around the room then regarding his son with concerned appraisal.  “I take it that’s your handiwork back there?” He briefly inclined his head in the general direction of the other part of the building.  The innocent smile on his son’s face was all the answer he needed.  “Thought as much,” the Phoenix operative sighed as he headed over to the grimy window at the front of the room to check on what the Bad Guys were doing.  “So you’re still here because...?”

            “A little misdirection never hurts and besides, they took my camera and I want it back,” Sam answered, joining his father but staying clear of the window himself.  “Figure since I ‘escaped’ from here, it’s the last place they’re likely to look for me so I’d lie low for a while, let the dust settle and then - “ He broke off as he caught the expression that briefly graced MacGyver’s face:  it told him that Mac had pretty much had the same idea.  Grinning, he observed.  “Great minds, huh?” As Mac gave him a little ‘hey-you-know-how-it-is’ shrug, a thought occurred to Sam.  “Hey, how did you know - ?”

            “I overheard Santarelli and Von Deane talking just before they headed this way,” MacGyver confessed, shifting to lean back against the wall beside the window.  Fixing a grim look on his son he said.  “I think we need to compare notes.”

*********************

            The comparing of notes didn’t take long.  Mac quickly brought Sam up to speed on the most salient points of what he had gleaned from his digging in the Phoenix computer archives and from the files Craig Bannister had sent him.  In return, Sam told him of the curious discovery he had made in the old barn just prior to the Bad Guys catching him.  MacGyver was visibly pensive on learning of the weapons and explosives his son had discovered.

            “Makes ya’ kinda’ wonder what they got stashed in the other one, doesn’t it?” Sam grinned, easily reading his father’s expression before shifting to peer cautiously out of the dirty window above them to check on what was going on in the part of the compound that was immediately visible.

            “Yeah,” MacGyver nodded.  “It does.” He checked his wristwatch, gauging how much time they had left of the ‘hour’ that Santarelli and Von Deane had been given to loosen Sam’s tongue before ‘The Man’ - presumably Osterbach himself - was expected to arrive.  It was then he realised just how much time it had taken him to successfully sneak his way, undetected, to the shed in which he and Sam now hid.

            “So.  We gonna’ check it out since we’re already here, or what?” Sam prompted, dropping back down onto one knee beside him.

            “Yeah,” Mac decided, hauling himself to his feet.

*************************

            Checking out the barn in question posed a few difficulties, the main one being actually getting to it.  A stroll across the main compound was the most direct route, but it was also the most likely to get them caught within seconds.  Sam and MacGyver were therefore forced to opt for the indirect route which, although longer and more time-consuming, was sneakier and much more covert.

            Their first move was to retrace MacGyver’s steps from the back door of the shed to the bunkhouse via the gardens of the main house.  This was not without risk since not only did they have to avoid being seen by anyone who might be in the house, they also had to avoid being spotted by anyone who might be up on the high ground over-looking the main compound searching for any sign of the ‘escaped’ Malloy.  The advantage however, was that there was at least some cover they could make use of.

            Much to their relief the two men made it to the rear wall of the bunkhouse. They paused there to regain their breath for a moment before proceeding along the length of the building to its western end.  They were about halfway along the length of the building when, out of the corner of his eye, MacGyver detected movement beyond the perimeter fence.  A wave of panic surged through him.  He reacted more on instinct than anything else.  “Quick!” He hissed at his son as he pushed open the window by which he had previously broken into the building.  “In here!”

            “Dad?  What the-?” Sam began to object only to obediently launch himself through the window as he saw the panicked look that his father was aiming towards the woods beyond the perimeter fence.  He was still picking himself up off the floor when Mac dove through the window in his wake and nearly flattened him in the process.

            Quickly picking himself up off the floor, Mac peeked warily out the window to check on the movement in the woods that had prompted him to urge his son into the bunkhouse.  Sam, on the other hand, being reasonably confident that MacGyver hadn’t completely lost his mind and knew what he was doing, went straight to the room’s only door to ease it cautiously open just far enough to check out what lay beyond it.

            MacGyver blew out a breath of relief as he saw the two armed men who emerged into view amongst the trees beyond the perimeter fence.  They gave no indication of having seen anything untoward as they poked at shrubbery in a half-hearted manner.  Mac watched them for a few moments then turned to speak to Sam, only to find the young man disappearing out of the door.  With a quiet hiss he called his son’s name.  Sam didn’t answer.  Mac hurried to the door and ducked out through it into the corridor beyond.  He found Sam scuttling towards the communal living area.

            “Sam!  Where ya’ goin’?”

            “To get my camera back.”

            “What?”

            “They took my camera.  I want it back,” Sam threw over his shoulder as he continued on his way.  MacGyver sighed in resignation and trailed carefully after him.

            Reaching the door at the other end of the corridor Sam paused to listen at it for a moment before cautiously pushing it open and risking a glance into the room beyond.  Confident that the room was empty, he slipped inside.  MacGyver followed.  As Sam headed over to the front door his gaze roamed the room and alighted on the unattended laptop computer resting on the table.

            “That could be something,” Sam gestured towards the laptop.  “You wanna’ check it out while I get my stuff?”

            “It’s password-protected,” Mac responded.  As Sam cast him a quizzical look, MacGyver shrugged and explained.  “Checked it already... last time I stopped by this way.”

            “Oh,” said Sam.  He had reached the door by then and listened momentarily at it before easing it open just a crack.

            “Sam, where...?” MacGyver began to question as he followed his son to the doorway.

            “You wanna keep an eye out?” Sam responded, indicating a nearby window, well aware that the guards at the main gate would have a grandstand view of the bunkhouse door should they happen to look in that direction.  “This should only take a moment.” MacGyver looked rather dubious, but chose not to argue and went to the window.

            “Looks clear,” Mac said after a cautious peek out of the window.  “Sam?” He questioned in alarm as Sam ducked out the door with a muttered.

            “Be right back!”

            Keeping as low as possible, Sam scooted the short distance to the chair that sat on the bunkhouse porch.  His camera and the other belongings that had previously been confiscated from him rested on the chair where he had seen them being dumped earlier.  He grabbed the camera, noting with relief as he did so that it appeared to be undamaged and tucked it safely inside his jacket.  He then quickly snatched up his Swiss Army Knife and assorted bits of sundry junk which he stuffed rapidly into various pockets before he grabbed his wallet and ducked swiftly back inside the bunkhouse.  He shot a grin at his relieved-looking father as he shut the door behind him and leaned back against it, blowing out a relieved breath of his own.

            As MacGyver continued to keep watch at the window Sam did a quick check of his wallet. “Damn thieves,” he muttered as he discovered its contents were intact apart from the eighty bucks in cash that had been in it when he’d arrived at the compound.  He swiftly shoved the wallet into a back pocket of his jeans and turned his attention to his camera, which he proceeded to give a quick but thorough once-over.  “Least they didn’t wreck this on, just yanked the film.” The relief in his voice was unmistakable.  He reached inside his jacket again and appeared to grope in his armpit for a moment.  He grinned in amusement at the raised-eyebrow glance that came his way.  “Learned a long while back it pays to keep a spare roll well hidden,” he explained, producing a roll of unused film from a concealed pocket in his jacket’s lining.  With the easy speed of much practice under pressure, Sam quickly had the film installed in his camera.  “Okay.  I’m good to go.”

*************************

            Well aware that exiting the bunkhouse by the front door would hardly be the wisest move they could make, Sam and MacGyver opted for the side-door that lay at the end of the corridor by which they had gained access to the living room.  Mac went first, darting across the space between the building and the corral that lay opposite the side door.  Using the sturdy wood-rail fence at the rear of the corral as cover, he dropped to a crouch and waited for his son to join him.  Sam did so a few minutes later and the pair scuttled along the length of the fence, keeping low until they reached the north wall of the barn to which the corral belonged.

            Keeping constantly alert for any sign of Bad Guys who might spot them, they paused for a brief moment to suck in a few breaths of relief and exchange ‘so-far-so-good’ looks before they hurried along the length of the barn wall.  Still leading the way, MacGyver paused at the corner to peek cautiously around it before he nodded to Sam and continued on, heading straight towards the crates, barrels and stacks of lumber that loitered against the building’s back wall.  Sam followed close on his heels. 

            “I should get a few shots of that trailer and its contents again,” Sam said, slipping past his father and making a bee-line for the hole in the wall by which he had previously gained access to the dilapidated building.  He didn’t wait for Mac to say yay or nay and Mac had little option but to follow him.

            Upon entering the barn the they paused to make sure they were still unobserved and when they were sure no-one was lurking within they made their way over to the trailer Sam had discovered on his previous visit.  The trailer’s doors were standing wide open.

            “Damn...” Sam breathed when he looked inside and saw that the barrels of aviation fuel were still there but the crates of weapons and explosives had vanished.

            “Makes sense they’d move the arsenal in case you made it clear and managed to persuade the authorities to come take a look.” MacGyver was unsurprised by the discovery.  “The barrels they can probably explain away without too much trouble, unlike the ordnance.”

            “Yeah, I guess.” Sam was reluctantly forced to agree.  A thought occurred to him and he went to check the side of the trailer.  He muttered another ‘Damn’ under his breath as he saw that the false decals had also vanished.

            “Forget it,” MacGyver advised, although he was not unsympathetic to his son’s frustration.  “C’mon.  Let’s go check out that other barn.”

            Sam sighed heavily, but nodded.

            The two men proceeded to make their way across the barn to the part open main doors.  A quick glance outside gave them an excellent view of a large area of the centre of the main compound.  Things appeared quiet.  Line-of-sight to the main gate was effectively blocked by the couple of sheds that bordered the eastern end of the corral belonging to the other barn.  That meant the guards at the main gate were not a problem.  At least not immediately.  The two armed men lurking at the two eastern facing doorways to the other barn were a different matter.

            “Oh-kay...” Mac decided as he ducked back into cover inside the safety of the dilapidated building.  “Plan B.”

            “Which is?” Sam enquired, lingering by the doorway and mentally weighing up the chances of sneaking up on the armed men guarding the other barn.  When no reply appeared to be forthcoming, he looked around in search of his father and found he was investigating a sliding door in the barn’s southern wall.

            “Wanna give me hand, see if we can get this open a bit more?” Mac asked as Sam joined him.  The door already lay open a couple of inches.

            Sam squinted through the narrow gap.  Some twenty-five or so feet away across the gap between the two barns was a similar door.  A smile flitted across Sam’s face.

            “You did notice the padlock?” he inquired, the twinkle in his eyes betraying that he already knew the answer.

            “Yeah, I noticed.  Kinda’ makes ya’ even more curious about what they’re hiding, doesn’t it?”

*************************

            Initially the dilapidated door was resistant to being shifted but eventually it succumbed to the two men’s cautious but persistent persuasion, aided along by some grease retrieved from the axles of the semi-trailer and applied to its rusting runners.  Both men winced and froze as, despite the judicious application of grease, the door squeaked and creaked a ominously as it suddenly slid a little way on its runners.  Much to their relief no-one came running to investigate so they guessed the noise had simply sounded a lot louder to their taut nerves that it actually had been.

            They gave it a few minutes though before they resumed working on the stubborn door.  Eventually they succeeded in easing it just barely far enough open to allow them to gain access to the outside.

            “Watch my back,” MacGyver instructed as he squeezed through the still tight gap.  Mild irritation flashed across Sam’s face but he refrained from arguing: it was neither the time nor the place for one of their adult son/over-protective parent debates.  Instead Sam settled for positioning himself as best he could at the door in order to do as his father had requested and watch the man’s back.

            Reaching his goal MacGyver paused just long enough for a quick glance around to be sure he was in no immediate danger of being spotted by anyone before he focussed his attention on the padlock before him.  It was new, as was the hasp through which it hung.  The woodwork to which the hasp was secured was also new, indicating that the padlock would not be defeated simply by prising the hasp from the door, not that Mac happened to have a crowbar handy anyway.  MacGyver was familiar with the particular make and model of lock with which he was confronted and knew that picking it would take time, patience and no small amount of expertise.  Fortunately he was long on the expertise part.  The patience and time parts however, given the circumstances, were a whole other kettle of fish.

            Arming himself with his Swiss Army Knife he selected the most appropriate of its tools for the task he had set himself and went swiftly to work.

**************************

            Watching from the doorway of the other barn Sam tried not to fidget with anxious impatience while keeping one eye peeled for Bad Guys and the other on his father.  Panic surged through him when, after several painfully slow minutes had crept past, the unmistakable sounds of vehicles approaching the compound at speed floated through the air.

            Unable to yell a warning to his father lest the opposition hear it Sam instead emitted a short, sharp whistle that emulated the call of a startled bird issuing a warning to its fellows.

To Be Continued….