By startrails68

"I wish I knew, sir. I'm no doctor, but it doesn't take an MD to know that three bullet holes can't possibly be good for the human body."

"Bullet holes?! Jesus..."

Though the man was hundreds of miles away, Mac could picture him as clearly as if she were standing before him: He'd pull off his reading glasses and pinch the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to ward off the kind of monster headache that was so often caused by the half-cocked escapades of his two senior attorneys. "You two are the only people in the world who could go out on a simple investigation and turn it into a John Wayne movie."

"Paul Newman, sir. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

"Huh?"

"Never mind, sir."

The Admiral sighed. "What's his condition?"

"Well, sir, I wrapped the wounds as best I could, but he's still lost a lot of blood. We had a hell of a time making our way to this
hangar, and the woods and brush we scraped through weren't exactly sterile. He had a bullet lodged in his shoulder, and I managed to remove it with a pocket knife I sterilized in some whiskey we found here, but I'm worried about infection. These aren't surgical conditions, sir."

"No, I would imagine not. And what about you, Mac? Are you all right?"

"Yes, sir. Some cuts and bruises, but nothing some band-aids and an ice pack won't fix when we get back to civilization."

"Right. About that - Mac, from what I gather from you, and from what I learned from this Chameleon person of yours, I think it best to come for you in the morning. These drug-running scumbags will only come out at night, like the rats they are. At the moment, there's no telling how deep their operation runs, and who at LeJuene is or isn't in on it, so don't look for any help from there. I'm sending a small recon team down from Quantico. They'll come by for you at first light, so you'll have to keep holed up in there for a few more hours. Think you can manage?"

Mac looked over to where Harm was sleeping fitfully. "Yes, sir, he'll be okay."

"I wasn't talking about Rabb, Mac, I was asking about you. Will *you* be all right?"

She watched as Harm tossed and turned, murmuring something unintelligible. In her darkened state of mind, she was certain he was using what little strength he had left to shake the memory of the previous hour out of his mind forever. He didn't love her, and he never did, the selfish bastard. He was only using her to get some one last time before he died.

Well, it was only fitting, she reasoned. Sarah Mackenzie, unwitting prostitute, giving it away for free without even having to be asked. But, was it really free, or did it cost her, at the very least...everything?

Her mind swam with a thousand thoughts, nine hundred of them convincing her that to Harmon Rabb, she was nothing more than a pair of ample breasts and an enticing heat, and he was just the latest in a long string of men to use her and cast her aside.

Well! She steeled herself. He was in for a rude awakening, because she had more experience in dealing with men like him than he had in flying dying F-14s. Nobody had truly broken her in the past, and she'd be damned if she was going to crumble for the likes of Harmon Rabb.

"Colonel?" The Admiral's worry skyrocketed when she hadn't answered right away. "Will *you* be all right?"

Mac sighed, resigning herself to her fate. "Does it really matter anymore?"

He had never heard her sound so dejected. So...hopeless. This wasn't the determined, level-headed Marine he knew at all. Christ, just what had happened in the short time they'd been trapped there? AJ knew only one thing - whatever it was, it was big. "What are you talking about, Mac?" His tone softened to a concerned whisper. "What the hell happened down there?"

"Sir," she began tentatively, not exactly sure where her answer was headed.

Mercifully, the Admiral cut her off. "Never mind. I'll get a full report when you're both back here, after you've been treated and
cleaned up."

"Sir, I wouldn't be so quick if I were you…I mean...'both' of us...I think there's a chance only one of us will make it out of
here."

"Colonel!" The old speaker crackled as the Admiral's voice boomed through the radio. "You stop that kind of talk right now, do you hear me?! I won't stand for it! You and Rabb have been through much worse than this together, and if you can just hold out till morning, I'll get you out of there, and then we're gonna figure out how the hell a couple of corrupt SOBs are managing to run an illegal drug operation right under the noses of people who are SUPPOSED to be US MARINES!"

"Hoo-rah, sir!"

"That's what I want to hear, dammit! You hang tight, and I'll see both of you in a few hours."

Mac noticed Harm stirring on the palette across the room. He really wasn't looking good. "First light, sir, no later. I don't think he has much time."

"You have my word, Colonel." AJ was quick to add something that he believed very strongly, and which, he hoped might transfer some of his conviction to the officer he was connected to via the airwaves across hundreds of miles in the middle of the night. "Mac, for God's sake, make sure he pulls through, because I'll be damned if he gets the satisfaction of dying in a goddamn airplane hangar! We already almost lost him twice to that, and if I have to call Trish Burnett in the middle of the night because of it a third time, well, he'll just have to resurrect himself so she can scream in his ear instead of mine."

Mac smiled, despite herself. Fucking airplane hanger. What the hell kind of joke was this, anyway? Whoever was telling it was decidedly not funny.

"Yes sir."

"You stay tough, okay, Colonel? 'Cause you can 'semper fi' me to hell and back, but those two words aren't worth a damn if you lose heart, you copy?"

"Aye sir! We'll make it."

"Goddamn right you will." AJ said it with the calm finality of which only he was capable. "Out."

Mac heard a click and the faint static of the dead airwaves as the connection was severed.

The commotion of the conversation had woken Harm from his distressed sleep, and Mac watched from across the room as he took in his surroundings, scanning for something familiar, for some clue as to where he was and why he couldn't feel his arm.

His eyes finally settled on Mac, and his face wrinkled in confusion. "Did we get them?" His voice was scratchy, and Mac
didn't take it as a good sign that it took such effort for just for him to speak. The last time he had sounded like that, she remembered, was at Bethesda, after his punch-out. She'd give almost anything to have him there right now, with the best medical care available.

As it was, they were probably only a few miles from LeJuene's infirmary, but they couldn't risk trying to get there. First, there
was no way Harm could make it there on his own, and, Marine though she was, Mac couldn't carry two-hundred-plus pounds of sailor all the way there. And second, they had no idea where the smugglers were, so leaving the hangar would be a suicide mission. What had she said a year before, when Harm was caught in the minefield? He had wanted to take his chances and walk straight back to the humvee. Afghan roulette, she had called it. Well, this was Carolinian roulette. They wouldn't stand a chance out there against rifles, grenades, and who-knew-what-else, when their most threatening weapon was a rusty screwdriver.

"Mac?" Harm asked again. "Did we get 'em?"

"Who?"

"The poachers."

Had she not already been sitting on the floor next to the radio, Mac was sure would have collapsed. "What?"

"The poachers - did your flare gun work?"

Mac's body froze, even as her mind scrambled in a hundred different directions. Jesus...

Was the infection spreading? Maybe the blood loss and the heavy humidity were paying tricks with his head. Oh God...what if...what if a few hours of trauma had erased his entire memory of their time together from that night in the Appalachians forward? All those years. All those cases. All those...mistakes.

On second thought, maybe starting back from that night would be the best thing that ever happened to them. But then again, maybe the heat was getting to *her*, too.

"The...poachers?" she asked cautiously.

"I'm sorry," Harm continued, his voice still weak. "Sorry you had to...kill him. But I'm glad you were quicker than him." He looked away from her, his green eyes dark in the dim light from the oil lantern. "If he had put his hands on you, I would've ripped him apart." He paused to take a labored breath. "Would've taken the state police a month to find all the pieces."

Mac's heart softened at the pain in his voice. Even if he was talking about something from years before, his concern for her was evident. A concern much deeper than she had realized the first time around.

Although her darker side was screaming that this was another trick, another way of getting her to let her defenses down only to get hurt again, the deepest part of her heart melted with the feelings she couldn't deny, no matter how much she wanted to, if only for her own sake if he didn't make it.

She went to him and sat beside him on the palette, taking a cloth to wipe the sweat from his face. She cupped his cheek in her hand and lowered her lips to place a gentle kiss on his forehead. "You hang in there, flyboy."

"Yeah," Harm replied, meeting her eyes and smiling. "I know - I owe you breakfast. Isn't that what you said that morning - most men at least fix you breakfast after you spend the night with them?"

Mac nodded and she couldn't help the tear that fell along her cheek and down onto Harm's bare chest.

"Hey," Harm said softly. Mac knew that if he could have moved his arm, he would've reached up to brush it away. "Smile for me, ninja girl. Think about that breakfast. I'd say after what you did for me-"

"What we did - together-"

"After what we did, together, I owe you an omelet, potatoes, and toast. And because I love you, I'll even throw in bacon and sausage."

Mac smiled as brightly as she could. "You'd do that for me?"

Harm returned a smile to match. "Cook meat? Sure. I'll have to keep your strength up if we're going to…do that again sometime."

"Sometime?"

"Preferably as soon as possible," he answered, "but I don't know how soon that'll be, or if..." His voice trailed off, but Mac knew what he was thinking.

"No. No way, Harm. Don't you dare think that way. Not after tonight." She reached for their insulated canteen, and mercifully, there was still some cool water left in it. She poured a little onto a rag and dabbed Harm's face with it, just as he had for her with stream water on his scarf all those years before. And she echoed his words back to him. "I'm gonna get you through this, Harm, I promise."

She wasn't sure what place or time Harm's mind was in, but it was clear that at least some part of him remembered their experience tonight, their desperate yet tender lovemaking.

Still, the question remained: would it finally be any different when they got back to Washington? If they got back...

Back to Collaborations Continue On To Part 15