“This trip would go a lot faster if you hadn’t wrecked my Firehawk,” Xia pointed out from the backseat.

Murdoc tightened his grip on the steering wheel, envisioning all the possible (and painful) ways to dispose of his two companions. “Would you stop it? I won’t listen to you complain.”

“For what it’s worth, I really am sorry about that,” MacGyver said. “It’s a beautiful car. Do you have the WS6 suspension and steel exhaust on it, too?”

She perked up immediately. “Yes, I do. You know cars? That explains how you were able to get past me. …I guess I have to admit that that was a nice trick with the hairpin turn.”

MacGyver shrugged modestly. “I just know the roads.”

“It’s great to see you making new friends, MacGyver, but we’re all going to end up dead if we don’t come up with a plan,” Murdoc said.

“It’s hard to plan for what you don’t know,” Mac replied. “Besides, plans usually go wrong anyway.”

Murdoc scoffed. “Tell me about it.”

Xia shrugged. “Usually, I’d suggest going in with the flamethrower blazing, but I’m pretty sure I wasted the last of the tank on you, and I’m all out of napalm.”

“Fire would make a pretty good diversion if we needed one,” Mac said slowly, thinking it over. “We just need a little gasoline and some Styrofoam.”

Xia blinked. “What?”

Murdoc shook his head. “Just let him do it and don’t ask too many questions. You’ll only encourage him.”

The gas station was out-of-the-way and quiet, which was perfect, since MacGyver and his unlikely comrades didn’t need people asking why they were buying gas for a flamethrower. MacGyver had sent Murdoc in to pay and to find some styrofoam while he and Xia filled up the tank.

“Can I ask you something while Murdoc isn’t here?” MacGyver asked.

Xia shrugged. “You already did.”

Shooting her a look, Mac said, “I just want to know why a nice girl like you is working for a ring of professional hitmen.”

She raised one curved eyebrow. “I’m not a nice girl. And I don’t have some kind of pathetic sob story, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m just curious, that’s all.”

“There’s not much to it. I was arrested for arson a few years ago and while I was waiting for my trial, a man approached me and recruited me for HIT. They had a job that required some...pyrotechnics, I guess you’d say. They liked my work and I liked the money, and I didn’t want to go to prison, so I never looked back.”

“And now you want to replace Murdoc.”

“Not replace.” Xia shook her head. “Surpass.”

MacGyver fixed her with a stare. “Do you really want to be known for being good at murder?”

“It’s either that or arson. I’m not good for anything else.”

“I’m sure you could think of something,” MacGyver said quietly.

Before she could reply, Murdoc returned with a package of Styrofoam plates. “Here’s your foam, MacGyver. It’s the best I could do.”

Mac nodded. “This’ll be fine. Help me tear it up into pieces.” His quick fingers shredded one of the plates and he dropped the fragments into the flamethrower’s fuel tank.

“What exactly are you doing?” Xia protested.

“Well, napalm is basically just gasoline and a gelling agent,” MacGyver began.

“Of course,” Murdoc muttered. “The gasoline will dissolve the polystyrene, which will thicken it enough to make it usable as fuel for the flamethrower.”

MacGyver nodded. “Exactly. Not the best, but it’ll do in a pinch. And it’ll burn well enough to be a good distraction.”

“Or a weapon,” Xia added.

“No. No killing. And no unnecessary violence.”

“I don’t intend to die today, MacGyver!”

“And you won’t!” Mac shot back, “but there are other ways to fight that don’t involve taking a person’s life.”

“We need to keep moving,” Murdoc interrupted, watching the two of them intensely. “We’re running out of time.”

Daylight was turning into dusk by the time they reached the address Sonia had given Murdoc… And the master assassin was certain that this little rendezvous was a trap.
“I don’t like this, MacGyver,” Murdoc said as they stepped out of the car and approached the warehouse.

“For once, I agree with you,” Mac replied quietly. “Sonia’s probably waiting for us inside. Probably an ambush. We need to be careful, and we’ve got to stick together. Watch each other’s backs.”

Xia took in a deep breath and hefted her flamethrower. “Well, if it isn’t a trap, then she’s expecting me, so I should go first. If we can, you two need to keep up the element of surprise.”

Murdoc gestured to the warehouse’s flat gray door, just a few yards away. “Then by all means, go ahead. Lead the way.”

“Funny that you should be letting the ladies go first now, Murdoc. You’ve never been much of a gentleman before,” Sonia Chapel’s cold voice sounded as she emerged, aiming a pistol, from the warehouse.

Five well-armed assassins dressed in black followed hot on the HIT chairman’s heels, closing in, surrounding MacGyver and his companions.

Mac blew a sigh as he watched the assassins circle the three of them like vultures, mentally assessing the possible ways to escape the ambush. There weren’t very many. The three unlikely allies were outnumbered and outgunned, and any attempts to run away with this many weapons trained on them would almost certainly result in being killed. There was still the vague possibility of somehow outsmarting the assassins, but nothing was going to be easy. “Oh, man.”

Sonia’s teeth bared in a joyless smile that made Murdoc look like an innocent child. “How interesting that you should be joining us, MacGyver. After all, you’re supposed to be dead. But I guess if you want a job done well, you should do it yourself.” She cast a withering glare at Xiuhcoatl, who responded with a haughty stare.

“I guess good help is hard to find these days,” MacGyver quipped, hoping to keep her talking and buy time to find a way out.

Murdoc must have been on the same page, because he lifted his arms in surrender and said, “All right, Sonia, you’ve got me. But what did you expect me to do, really? You tried to take my perfect record away from me. It’s a matter of pride. You know that as well as anyone.”

“You did that yourself,” Sonia answered coolly, leveling her Glock pistol straight at Murdoc’s chest. “After all, you had your chance with MacGyver more than once, and you failed every time.”

The assassins’ voices became distant as MacGyver noticed a flickering of light on the ground. It looked almost like a reflection from a mirror, and the flashes seemed to be forming a pattern…

“When I tell you to, you need to hold your breath and get ready to use that flamethrower,” Mac whispered to Xia. “Torch a semicircle on the ground.”

Xia tilted her head in a gesture of assent. Just a moment later, something clattered to the ground next to MacGyver’s feet. Something metal and cylindrical…and smoking.

“Now!” MacGyver hissed.

Right as the smoke grenade erupted, Xiuhcoatl sprayed a layer of liquid flame onto the ground in front of the hitmen, wincing as some of the smoke burned her eyes.
With the assassins coughing and off-balance, it was easy for MacGyver to charge and disarm two of them before the others realized what was happening. Xia tackled a third, while Murdoc was occupied with Sonia herself.

But that still left two very big and very disgruntled HIT employees…and both of them were intent on assaulting MacGyver. Backed up against the wall, Mac prepared himself for the worst.

Just as he dropped into a defensive crouch, something came flying at one of the burly assassins, plowing into the towering man. A knee strike to the solar plexus, a forward elbow smash to the face---MacGyver recognized those tactics. He leaped to attack the other hitman as Agent Robinson took down one brutal assailant. The hitman pushed MacGyver away, flailing and grabbing for a weapon. MacGyver slammed him with a low kick at the same time that Robinson’s leopard fist knocked him out cold.

Mac grinned. “Perfect timing!”

Clapping MacGyver on the shoulder, the DXS agent replied, “I could say the same about you! When I saw Sonia and her hired muscle rolling in, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.” He nodded at Xia, who was still standing amidst the circle of dying flames. “So where’d you pick up the flamethrower?”

“Well, if everything goes according to plan, we have another witness,” Mac said.

Robinson’s face turned serious. “Did you find the envelope I left for you?”

“Yeah, I did. I think we’re going to nail ‘em this time.”

“Well, I certainly hope so,” Murdoc interrupted as he stepped over Sonia Chapel’s unconscious form. “Otherwise, all of this insanity was for nothing.”

Robinson did a double-take. “Is that…?”

Mac sighed. “Yep.”

“But I thought---”

“It’s better you don’t ask.” As MacGyver watched Murdoc’s approach, he glimpsed movement behind the assassin that caught his eye: Xiuhcoatl’s hand, twitching toward the throttle of the flamethrower. “Look out!”

Murdoc jumped out of the path of the flames just in time, launching into a combat roll away from Xia and using the momentum to propel himself into a rapid dash for the warehouse door. Xia switched off the flamethrower and gave chase, but Murdoc had already vanished into the shadows.

“I’m on fire!” Robinson yelped, struggling out of the navy blue coat that had been grazed by the stream of fiery napalm.

MacGyver quickly used his knife to cut the burning fabric away, stepping back as it fell to the dusty concrete. “Are you hurt?”

“No. Let’s go after them! Before they get away!”

“Or worse---before they kill each other,” Mac said grimly, and followed the DXS agent into the darkened warehouse.

“Do you hear that clanging noise?” Robinson whispered as they followed the trail of sounds. “They sound like two angry cats, yowling at each other and banging around like that.”

“Yeah, except angry cats don’t usually fight to the death over foolish pride. C’mon, I think they’re going onto the roof.”

By the time Mac burst through onto the roof with Agent Robinson in tow, Murdoc was standing triumphant over Xiuhcoatl’s crumpled body, the flamethrower in his hands. Grinning madly, he aimed the nozzle at the woman and prepared to throw the switch that would end her life. “Sorry, but I hate snakes.”

“Murdoc, no!” Without a single second to spare, MacGyver reacted to the situation with the only solution available: he charged at his rival and shoved Murdoc as hard as he could, desperate to stop him from igniting the flames. The tactic worked: Murdoc lost his balance, stumbling backwards and forgetting his weapon.

Unfortunately, the illustrious assassin stumbled just a step too far.

“Murdoc!” MacGyver lunged for the edge of the roof, snatching Murdoc’s hand. He was heavier than MacGyver expected him to be, and those slick leather gloves that he was wearing weren’t helping Mac’s grip. “Murdoc! Come on! Give me your other hand! I can’t hold you much longer!”

The assassin reached up, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the bricks. And then---
He slipped.

“MACGYVER!”

Mac reeled backwards, squeezing his eyes shut, unwilling to watch Murdoc fall. Slightly dazed, he heard Robinson checking over the edge.

“I think he went into the bushes, but it’s hard to say,” Robinson said. “Wow, forty feet, straight down. What a drop.”

“Forty feet?” A wave of vertigo washed over MacGyver as he remembered the way Murdoc had hurtled downward. The image of the concrete and scruffy hedges being so far below left MacGyver feeling dizzy. “Man, I hate heights.”

“Hope he didn’t land on his head from this far up. Forty feet down, onto concrete? That’ll split your skull wide open. Of course, landing on his back would be just as bad. That could break your neck or your spine, leave you paralyzed. No, he can’t be in good shape right now. He probably broke all kinds of bones from this height. If he’s even still alive. I’d hate to fall from this high up.”

None of that was helping MacGyver’s vertigo; he had to take deep breaths and stare down at his hands just to keep his head from spinning. “Rob, stop talking! I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Sorry. I think I saw a telephone on the way through the warehouse---I’ll call for backup.”

Mac swallowed hard. “Yeah. You do that.”

“Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” Robinson said after most of the mess from their entire altercation had been cleaned up.

“Okay, what is it?” MacGyver asked.

“Which do you want first?”

Mac shrugged. “Depends on how bad the bad news is.”

“Huh. Well, lemme put it to you this way: the good news is that your friend Xia’s going to be just fine. Murdoc just knocked her out, and the DXS has her in custody now. She went ahead and agreed to be one of our witnesses. We also have lots of soon-to-be ex-HIT employees under arrest and ready to go behind bars.”

“Okay, so what’s the bad news?”

“Sonia Chapel wasn’t one of the ones that we captured. She’s mysteriously gone missing. In fact, she was already gone by the time our backup showed up.”

MacGyver groaned. “Great! Just great.”

“But wait, there’s more!”

MacGyver groaned again and ran a hand through his hair. “Let me guess: no Murdoc, either?”

“You got it. Boy, you’re good at this guessing stuff.”

Mac sighed. “He’s going to come back. He always comes back.”

Robinson shrugged. “Look on the bright side. We might never catch Murdoc, but at least we got a lot of other killers off the streets.”

“Yeah,” MacGyver said slowly. “Maybe you’re right.”

Robinson scrutinized the troubleshooter for a moment. “Hey, man. Go home. Get some rest. You deserve it.”

MacGyver smiled just a little bit. “I will. Thanks.” Then the smile faded a he ran a hand through his hair. “Of course, now I’ve got to deal with the hard part.”

“What’s that?”

“Explaining to Jack Dalton why I’m not dead!”

“Okay, Pete, I’m here, so what’s this about?” Jack Dalton said as he shut the office door behind him.

“Take a seat if you haven’t already,” Pete replied calmly.

Jack squinted at the Phoenix Foundation’s director of field operations in suspicion. “Okay, what’s going on?”

“Just sit down. Trust me.”

Still eyeing the man across from him, Jack obeyed. “I’m sitting. Now will you tell me why you called me up here?”

“I think maybe I should do that,” MacGyver said as he stepped into view.

Jack’s eyes saucered. “Mac?! You’re alive!” He sprang up out of his chair and froze. “Unless you’re a ghost. Pete, are you seeing this, too? Wait---never mind.”

“He’s not dead, Dalton. He never was,” Pete said, trying to will his blood pressure to stay even.

Jack stared at his best friend and smashed both of his palms against MacGyver’s face. “It is you!”

“Hi, Jack,” Mac sighed through his friend’s sweaty hands.

Slowly, Jack backed away. “You’re warm and everything! But how is this possible? You were dead. I touched you, Mac. I touched you, and you were dead. Now I’m touching you and you’re alive. Mac, what’s going on?”

“Well, it’s kind of a long story…”

“Was it voodoo?”

“No, Jack, it was nothing like that.”

“Hypnotic trance? Vampirism? One of those things where they freeze you alive and then bring you back centuries later in outer space?”

“Outer space?! Jack, what are you talking about?!”

“It happened on Star Trek!”

“Would you just listen to me? It was a drug! A drug, Jack! The medical examiner injected me with something to make me look dead!”

“You mean like in Romeo and Juliet?”

MacGyver sighed impatiently. “Kind of, I guess.”

“So who’s the beautiful lady?” Jack waggled his eyebrows mischievously.

Rolling his eyes, Mac replied, “What do you mean, Jack?”

“Well, somebody had to wake you up with a kiss, right? I’m guessing that it was a beautiful lady.”

MacGyver shook his head. “There was a beautiful woman involved, but no kissing. And that didn’t happen to Romeo and Juliet. You’re getting your stories mixed up.”

“Story of his life,” Pete snorted under his breath.

Ignoring him, Jack said, “So you admit that there was a beautiful woman involved in addition to an elaborate plot to fake your death just like in a spy movie, and you didn’t invite along your oldest and dearest friend Jack Dalton? That’s criminal, Mac, absolutely criminal!”

“No, what’s criminal is Murdoc and the rest of the assassins who may or may not---”
“Wait, Murdoc?” Jack interrupted MacGyver. “I thought Murdoc was dead. You mean he isn’t dead?”

“Murdoc has died at least seven or eight times now, but he never stays that way for long. I’ve almost given up hope. If we can at least put the majority of HIT away, then at least that’ll make things easier. That’s what this whole thing was about, Jack. I had to pretend to be dead to keep everyone safe while I helped the DXS investigate the assassins. I’m sorry I lied to you. I hope you understand.”

Jack shrugged. “I understand, Mac. I just wish that you could’ve taken me along with you. I’m great with undercover work! Remember that time when Pete and I pretended to be filthy rich German guys to sneak into that winery so we could save you and get back those priceless jewels before the bad guys killed you and auctioned them off? We made a pretty good team!” He sighed heavily. “Yeah, those were good times. But nowadays, I always miss the good stuff. Next, you’re gonna tell me that you were in a car chase or something just like on TV, and I missed all of it.”

MacGyver shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe next time, Jack.”

Jack’s eyes zeroed in on the movement and narrowed. “You were in a car chase, weren’t you, Mac?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a car chase. It barely lasted five minutes.”

“Uh-huh. And how fast were you going?”

“Oh, not too fast…” Mac trailed off, but his friend stared at him expectantly, waiting for an answer. Sighing, he glanced away. “Maybe...120 miles per hour, or so…”

“One-twenty? One hundred twenty? You were in a car chase without me! I don’t believe this. You faked your death, met a beautiful lady and an assassin, and got into a car chase without me! That’s not fair!”

Exasperated, Mac replied, “You faked your death and didn’t clue me in on it! And you do crazy stuff without me all the time! How is this any different?”

“Two words, Mac: Car. Chase. Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to be in a real car chase? And you probably got some kind of undercover disguise to go with it, didn’t you? Did you look like James Bond?”

“I looked like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Western with a fake beard! C’mon, Jack, give me a break! I just came back from the dead here!”

“No, no. No way. The only person who gets to fake their death around here is moi, and the very next time you’re in a car chase, I’m going to be riding shotgun!”

MacGyver sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Pete, a little help here?”

Pete chuckled. “Sorry, MacGyver. I can help you with a lot of things, but when it comes to Jack Dalton, you’re on your own!”

When MacGyver walked through his front door, all he wanted was to take a hot shower, watch a classic Western, and pretend that the rest of the day had never happened. He was going to need a lot of time to decompress after everything that had been happening recently---especially his ordeal with Jack.

Mac flopped down on his couch and leaned back, trying to clear his mind and relax.

But then he saw the note that had been taped to his coffee table:

Remember, MacGyver: now we’re even.
---M

All Mac could do was sigh.

“Oh, man.”

The End