“How’s it going?” Dr Ortega came into the office, shutting the door behind her.
“Well, I’ve managed to backtrack it a bit further, and it looks like Dr Gregory has links to an organisation called Atlas. That mean anything to you?”

“No.” Dr Ortega shook her head. “Should it?”

“No clue.” Willis shrugged. “That’s as far as I can get.” He turned around as the office door opened. “Mac, does Atlas mean anyth… Whoa, careful!” He grabbed a handful of paper towels and used them to mop up the coffee MacGyver had just spilled.

“Willis –“ MacGyver’s tone was sharp. “Did you just say ‘Atlas’?”

“So that’s it, Pete.” MacGyver switched his grip on the phone and waved his free hand in frustration. “And now it looks like Atlas is involved. That name has been cropping up all year and now here it is again!” he took a deep breath. “Sorry, Pete. It’s just… Yeah.” He sighed again. “So what happens now?”

“Well, Mac, “ Pete sounded worried, “Now we wait for the police to deal with Gregory and you two finish up at Wellforce. We have to carry on as if everything’s going according to plan, at least until we decide how we’re going to handle it.”

“What happens when it gets out that Phoenix has – however accidentally – been funding biological weapons?” MacGyver lowered his voice, even though no-one was around.

“I’m meeting with the rest of the directors this afternoon.” Pete sounded tired. “I’ll call you this evening and let you know how it went.

“Ok Pete, thanks.” MacGyver hung up and went to oversee the superbug machine being dismantled. He arrived just in time to see the germs in their test tubes being bagged for disposal. He frowned through the window, unable to remember whether there had been five trays or six…

At the end of the afternoon, MacGyver and Willis climbed wearily into the Jeep. MacGyver cranked the seat handle, moving the seat back far enough to accommodate his long legs, and set off for the motel. He frowned, wondering why it needed changing at all. No-one else had been driving the Jeep, after all… he shrugged, dismissing the thought.

“Can you drop me downtown?” Willis asked. “I’m meeting Lucy and some of the other students for coffee.” He looked shy. “They want to hear about our environmental work.”

“Oh really?” MacGyver grinned. “You going to tell them about the time you got stuck in the quicksand?”

“No!” Willis sat upright and blushed. “I thought you’d forgotten about that!”

“Not a chance.” MacGyver pulled up at the kerb. “Have a good time, OK?”

He was about to set off again when the carphone rang.

“Hello?”

“Mac? Cooper! Hoped to catch you.” The voice in his ear was tinny, not the usual clear tone.

“Hey Cooper, how’re you doing?” MacGyver looked up at the clouds building in the sky, wondering if a storm was interfering with the phone reception.

“Good. I’m good. Listen – do you mind meeting up? I’ve got some information I think you’ll find interesting.” Cooper sounded really keen, making MacGyver feel even more tired.

“Uh, sure. How about we meet back at my motel? I’m pretty beat…” MacGyver waited, hoping that Cooper would take the hint and agree to meet up tomorrow instead.

“No problem!” Cooper sounded pleased. “Just give me the location and I’ll meet you there.”

MacGyver told him the address, and directions to find it. They agreed to meet in an hour, giving MacGyver time to stop for takeout Chinese food. He pulled up outside the motel just over an hour later, seeing Cooper’s car parked out front, empty.
He’d just got out of the Jeep, balancing the bag of takeout and his Phoenix files, and shutting the door with his foot, when the world exploded.

Instinctively, MacGyver dived behind the Jeep, ducking and covering as debris rained down around him. He turned to see dust and smoke rolling out of what had been his motel room, a jagged hole blown in the wall and window glass glittering on the pavement.

“COOPER!” MacGyver yelled, coughing on the dust. “COOPER!”

The police and crime scene investigators took all evening to finish their work.
MacGyver was checked out by the ambulance crew, asked for a statement and was then left while the work was carried out.

Willis, arriving in a cab around eleven, found MacGyver sitting on the hood of the Jeep and staring at the hole in the motel.

“Hey.” Willis sat beside him on the Jeep. “I came as soon as you called me.” He nodded to the policemen. “Do they know what happened?”

“He’s dead.” MacGyver didn’t look at Willis. His voice was faint, shocked and hoarse.

“Cooper? The army buddy you met up with yesterday?” Willis flinched. “Mac, I am so sorry…”

“They knew I was here. They knew he was coming.” MacGyver coughed, voice rough from the dust and smoke. “How did they know, Willis?”

“Who, Mac? Who would do this?” Willis was worried, MacGyver sounded very far away. When MacGyver turned to face him, Willis blanched at the pain and anger he saw there. MacGyver spoke one word:

”Atlas.”

MacGyver and Willis arrived late to Wellforce the following morning. They’d spent the remainder of the night at Willis’s motel, with MacGyver sitting in the chair and staring at the darkness.

MacGyver had insisted on taking the Jeep to pieces before they got in it again, in case of a hidden bomb, and had discovered the bug in the carphone. Furious with himself for not realising someone had been tampering with his car, he’d crushed the bug under his shoe before Willis could rescue it for analysis.

Since then, he’d behaved like a man sleepwalking, responding to questions and going through the motions of his job on auto-pilot. Only once had he turned to Willis, in the middle of an unrelated discussion, his voice quiet.

“That bomb was meant for me.”

Willis hadn’t known what to say to that, especially when a phone call from the police confirmed that the bomb had been wired to MacGyver’s motel room door handle. If MacGyver hadn’t been stuck in traffic, and had made it to the motel before Cooper, he would be dead.

All through the morning, one train of thought ran through MacGyver’s head: ‘Cooper’s dead because of me. Atlas wants me dead. Atlas is too big to fight, and I’m putting my friends, my family in danger by being near them. I can’t beat Atlas. I need to be away from those I care about…’

He did his work, spoke to Dr Ortega, and Willis, and the lab techs, and read Willis’s report on the computer surveillance programs he’d discovered and removed from Wellforce’s network, but it all seemed far away and unreal.

When the telephone rang, it made him jump.

“It’s for you.” Dr Ortega handed MacGyver the receiver. “Director Thornton.” Her expression was worried.

“Pete.” MacGyver blinked, as though just waking up.

“Mac, are you OK? Willis told me what happened. That’s terrible! Mac – Mac?” Pete stopped, waiting.

“I can’t… I don’t want to talk about it, Pete.” MacGyver blinked hard, this time feeling tears prick his eyelids. “Just tell me what we’re doing next.”

“Well, that’s the thing, Mac.” Pete sounded equal parts embarrassed and angry.

"Phoenix have been offered a very generous donation in return for keeping this quiet. Some of the directors are of the opinion that we should take it.” He sighed. “I’m fighting it, but I’m in the minority here!”

“Pete, you can’t!” MacGyver’s face showed emotion for the first time. “Keep quiet?! That goes against everything Phoenix stands for!”

“I know, Mac. I know.” Pete sighed. “The problem is the amount of money involved – the argument is that with so much, we could do everything we ever wanted to, help as many people and projects as need us, do so much good…”

“In return for allowing superbug research to go on under our noses.” MacGyver’s voice was harsh and scornful.

“I agree.” Pete fell silent and MacGyver listened to the static on the line. “I’m going to keep fighting but Mac – I can’t promise you that I’m going to win.”

“I understand.” MacGyver put the receiver down with a gentle click. He left his hand on the phone for a moment, then drew a breath and turned back to Willis and Dr Ortega’s faces as though nothing had happened.

“Dr Ortega, you were saying?”

The drive back to L.A was silent. Willis had called Pete and been filled in on Phoenix’s dilemma, and was as silently furious as MacGyver. When MacGyver pulled up outside Willis’s apartment block, Willis thanked him for the ride and paused as he got his bags out of the back of the Jeep.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Mac.” He waited, but MacGyver made no response. Eventually Willis gave up, patting the side of the Jeep and moving away. “Thanks again, buddy.”

He was half way to his front door when he heard the Jeep start up and drive away.

The following morning, MacGyver was out before sunrise. Leaving the Jeep in his garage, he packed a rucksack and headed out to Phoenix on the bike.

He let himself in to the building, there even before the cleaners arrived, and took the stairs up to his floor. He stood, looking at his desk for a moment before picking up the photo of Sam he kept there and stowing it inside his jacket pocket.

He turned and left, his sneakers making no sound on the carpet.

He went up to Pete’s office and across to his desk. He took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and propped it on the computer keyboard. Someone could read it to Pete when he got in. His fingers brushed across the Wellforce leaflet on the corner of the desk, and then he was gone.

MacGyver fired up the bike and walked it back out of his parking space. He paused, looking at the sleek, modern home of the Phoenix Foundation, then turned and rode north.

To be continued in ‘Fight Club’…