War Stories Part 4

Los Angeles, 1994

MacGyver waited outside Pete's apartment until he heard the door buzzer, and then went through the door, shutting it quietly behind him.

"Pete, am I glad to be here!" MacGyver went across to the window, drawing the curtains. Cooper was a decent shot as well as a good tracker and MacGyver wasn't going to take any chances. He stood aside as Pete came out of the kitchen carrying a cookie jar.

"Mac, I'm glad you're here safe. Help yourself to tea or juice and I can tell you what I've found out." He set the cookies on the table and sat down, feeling for the jar lid and taking one for himself. "Seeley should be here any minute too, with the report.

"You found it?" MacGyver sat down in the chair opposite Pete. "The original report on the mortar strike? Pete, you're a genius!"

Pete smiled and saluted MacGyver with the cookie. Finding the report had meant calling in a lot of favours and he'd dispatched another field operative, Seeley Atkins, to the Phoenix building to pick up the fax received from the National Personnel Records Centre in St. Louis.

"So what did you find out?" MacGyver sat forward in his chair.

"Well, your report stayed buried until just this month." Pete located his coffee mug and took a sip. "Then President Nixon died and a whole lot of stuff got declassified. Some of it paints the US Army in a very unfavourable light, so I'm not surprised it was classified at the time. It looks like you were right – a mortar strike WAS ordered on that location on that day, by an artillery officer Alfred Hawkins." He took another bite of his cookie.

"Hawkins…" MacGyver shook his head. "I don't remember the name. Why would he want to bomb the village? There wasn't anything there, no military target…" he broke off as Pete's door buzzer sounded. Pete thumbed the intercom, checked their visitor's identity and let him in.

"Mac, this is Seeley. You two may know each other, I think you've crossed paths a few times at Phoenix."

"Yeah, I believe we have." MacGyver grinned and held up the cookie jar. "Cookie?"

Seeley looked from Pete to MacGyver and back again. He shook his head at the jar and pulled a file out of his briefcase.

"Hello Mr. Thornton, MacGyver." He opened the file on the table. "Mac, what does Cooper's file say about you?"

"Yeah, that." MacGyver took the file from his sports bag, flipped through it and threw it on the table in disgust. "It says I ordered a mortar strike on a civilian target, which killed everyone in it." He waved a hand at the offending file. "No wonder Cooper was after me, except that I didn't do it!"

Seeley reached out for the file, picking out a typed page and placing it next to a page from his faxed copy.

"This is the page you need. It shows the strike was ordered by Hawkins at 11:15 that day, when you were out on a completely different assignment. He turned the page round for Mac to see.

"I was. But why me? Why did he use my name?" MacGyver got to his feet and paced.

"My guess? You were an easy target." Seeley shrugged and smiled at MacGyver's outraged expression. "Think about it. You were the odd man out there, borrowed from another squad, you didn't know anyone and you were going to disappear back to your own unit in a few days. If I'd wanted to pin a crime on someone there, I'd have picked you too!"

"Yeah, OK." MacGyver frowned. "But why hit the village at all? It doesn't make any sense."

"I may have the answer to that too." Seeley turned to the back of his file. "Hawkins was eventually prosecuted for involvement in the black market, so it's possible that your village had some connection with that."

MacGyver nodded, remembering the crates the squad had dug out of the ruins and the odd heaviness of the truck on the return journey. The horrors he'd witnessed at the village had dulled his thinking – he'd never even suspected that the squad were up to no good.

"So what's the plan for dealing with Cooper?" Seeley leaned forward, looking keen.

"In the broad strokes, we go back, convince him of the truth and then get him the help he needs to come to terms with losing his family. He's basically a good man, he's just not himself right now. Let's work out the details when we get there, OK?" MacGyver gathered the papers and moved his sports bag into a corner where Pete wouldn't trip over it. He thought for a moment, then retrieved the hockey stick.

"You're seriously going in there with no plan?" Seeley folded his arms. "This man is armed, trained and a prime candidate for a section eight! We need the layout of the building, more backup, a solid plan of action…" He shook his head as MacGyver grinned at him with the hockey stick on his shoulder. "Not sports equipment and blind faith!"

"You coming?" MacGyver opened the door and gestured Seeley through.

.

.

Seeley brought the car to a halt near the empty building Cooper had chosen. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and stared at the alley mouth in the headlights. The sign reading 'Allen's Professional Printing Company' hung faded and askew on the wall beside it.

"I don't like it, Mac." He drew his gun and checked it was fully loaded.

"Me neither. After all, it's me he's going to be shooting at!" MacGyver glanced at Seeley. "Hey, put that thing away, would you?"

"You're joking, right?" Seeley stared in disbelief as MacGyver shook his head.

"I hate guns." MacGyver gave Seeley a look that was more sad than angry. "I really hate 'em, Seeley." They have a habit of killing the wrong people." He unclipped his seatbelt and opened the door, picking up the hockey stick. "Come on."

MacGyver pushed the door, listening before ducking inside. Seeley drew his gun and then followed. They crept along the narrow corridor, past the room MacGyver had been held in and down to a set of double doors, a faint light streaming out from underneath. MacGyver used the hockey stick to poke the door open a crack, standing well to the side.

"Cooper?" He flinched as a bullet cracked off the door, then poked it open again. "Cooper, you've got this all wrong!" A second bullet shattered the glass in the door's small window.

"Eleven o-clock, high." Seeley pressed himself against the wall and inched nearer to the door. "He must be up on a balcony, or something."

"Then there must be stairs to get up there. If we're really lucky, they'll be on this side of the door." MacGyver looked back along the dim corridor, but they hadn't passed any stairs on the way in. Cooper fired another shot, the flash from the gun showing, just for a moment, the steel of a staircase bolted to the far wall.

"Three! Plan, MacGyver! Now!" Seeley cocked the gun, ignoring MacGyver's glare.

"I'm working on it!" MacGyver lay down flat and peered through the crack in the door. "OK, got it." He crawled backwards and stood, tucked in as close to the wall as he could get. "I need to get to that staircase. To do that, I need you to distract Cooper while I make my run. Seeing as you've brought that thing –" He gestured to the gun, "- you can use it to help me out. Fire at the ceiling so that Cooper stays down and too busy to shoot at me, OK?"

"And if I get a clean shot at him?" Seeley glanced at MacGyver, watching him pull up the hood of his old black sweatshirt and pick up his hockey stick again.

"You continue to shoot at the ceiling, Seeley! Cooper is basically a good man, who didn't deserve what happened to him. I don't want him perforated!" Another shot ricocheted off the door and MacGyver ducked.

"Four! He's shooting at you and you don't want me to shoot back." Seeley shook his head. "You're crazy, you know that?"

"It may have been mentioned once or twice, yes." MacGyver grinned at Seeley and crouched down behind the door. "Ready?"

"Go!" Seeley aimed the gun through the door's broken window and fired up. MacGyver ran in, keeping to the shadows and moving fast and low. He skidded to a halt with his back to an old printing press, his black sweatshirt making him all but invisible in the gloom.

"Go!" More shots rang out against the ceiling and MacGyver made a dash for the staircase, hiding himself in the shadows underneath it. He listened to the scrape and click of Seeley changing clips on his gun and curled up small as Cooper took the opportunity to fire back. Three more shots sparked against the metal door and MacGyver heard Seeley swearing under his breath as he counted off Cooper's shots.

"Go!" MacGyver launched himself up the stairs bringing his hockey stick up and over in a scything arc that cracked down on Cooper's gun hand.

Cooper yelled and spun, just in time to catch MacGyver's return stroke flat across his cheek. He lost his balance, the gun clattering on the metal catwalk and falling away into the darkness.

MacGyver dropped, pinning Cooper down.

"It wasn't me, Cooper!" He fought to keep Cooper down. "It wasn't me!" Desperation lent strength to Cooper's struggles and MacGyver felt his grip slipping. Leaving his weight pressed on Cooper's chest, he moved around him, Cooper's flailing hand catching him a stinging blow on the ear.

"OW! Stop!" He could hear Seeley running up the stairs. He slid an arm around Cooper's neck. "I don't want to do it, Cooper. Stop fighting me, would you?!"

"Mac, you need a hand?" A flashlight clicked on and showed Seeley, stopped at the top of the stairs with his gun raised.

"No, I got this." MacGyver tightened his grip, watching as Cooper's struggles grew weak, then stopped. Seeley watched as MacGyver checked Cooper's pulse, held a hand in front of his mouth and then laid him flat to wait for him to come to. Reaching behind himself, he pulled the reports out of his pocket.

In the glow of the flashlight, Cooper stirred and woke, squinting into the light and sighing as he recognised the gleam of the gun barrel pointing straight at him. He closed his eyes, his expression defeated.

"Cooper. Cooper!" MacGyver shook the reports. "I can prove it wasn't me, but you have to read these. Look." Cooper opened his eyes and reached up a hand to take the reports.

"What is this?" He angled the papers to read them by the flashlight's beam.

"This is the original report on the mortar strike that destroyed the village your family was living in. Look at the name at the top. That's the officer who ordered the strike." MacGyver tapped the top of the page.

"Hawkins…" Cooper held the pages side by side, his gaze flicking between them. "Hawkins…" Then his eyebrows shot up. "Fast Freddy Hawkins! But he's – he was – a…"

"Purveyor of unauthorised merchandise, yes." Seeley holstered the gun. "We're rounding him up right now because as well as being armpits deep in the black market, he ordered a mortar strike to a civilian population." He sighed, impatience clear on his face. "Mac, are we going to stay here all night?"

MacGyver ignored him, looking down at Cooper.

"If I let you up, are you going to take another swing at me?" Cooper shook his head, looking weary. In the flashlight's beam, MacGyver could see how grief had aged Cooper. He was thinner than MacGyver remembered, looking as though far more than twenty years had passed.

"Just help me up, Corporal." He held out a hand and MacGyver got to his feet, pulling Cooper up with him.

Seeley strode ahead, with Cooper and MacGyver hanging back. Cooper laid a hand on his arm, slowing him.

"You know I'll go after him, don't you?" MacGyver stopped and turned, facing Cooper in the dark room.

"Don't, Cooper. If you kill him, you're the crazy guy who shot the Vietnam vet, and nobody gets to know the truth. If we bring him to trial, he gets made into an example and a warning to others as to what happens if you cross the line." MacGyver watched Cooper in the poor light, waiting for him to think this through.

"He killed my family. I owe him." Cooper's voice trembled, and MacGyver was unsure whether with anger or grief.

"I know you do." MacGyver put both his hands on Cooper's shoulders, staring into his eyes. "If we bring him to trial, it might help stop the same thing happening to other families in warzones. You know it's the right thing to do." Cooper glared back, years of pent-up hate clear in his eyes.

Eventually Cooper swore, stuck his hands in his pockets and started walking again.

"You're right. I hate it, but you're right." He kicked at a coke can lying on the floor, sniffed hard and scrubbed his sleeve roughly across his face. MacGyver looked away, pretending not to notice. "I'll give evidence. I'll give all the evidence they want, and I'll recommend the harshest punishment for him. I can do that, right?"

"You can do that." MacGyver nodded. "And when it's done, I want you to talk to someone about all this, OK? Keeping it all locked away doesn't work, Cooper. Trust me, I know." MacGyver met Cooper's gaze calmly, letting the older man stare as long as he needed.

"Yeah, you do, don't you? I remember. OK, I will." Cooper nodded, then took a deep breath and looked over at Seeley, waiting impatiently at the door. "Who's your friend?"

"Colleague, Cooper. He'd not be happy to hear me call him 'friend'…" MacGyver grinned. "He reckons I'm crazy."

"Not a bad appraisal!" Cooper's answering smile was watery but genuine. "He's laced pretty tight, isn't he?"

"You have no idea." MacGyver scooped up Cooper's fallen gun, dismantling it and stowing the pieces in his pockets.

"Oh, you'll get him knocked into shape!" Cooper squared his shoulders and strode through the door with a trace of his old confidence, ignoring the filthy look Seeley turned on him. Grinning, MacGyver saluted Seeley with his hockey stick and followed him out.