The Bargain

Part VI

Location: Afghanistan, Ghazni Province 2011

Lara stood next to Dalton while Mac climbed under the humvee. It was late afternoon and the last bomb of the day was Mac's.

"You know how hard it is keeping track of you kids," Dalton complained.

"Why don't you write a letter of complaint then, Dalton? If it's too hard for you," Lara said glaring at the overwatch. She was over the man's complaints, 'You're too slow.' 'I can't believe I'm babysitting.' 'You can't do your jobs because I can't cover both of you.' 'How did I luck out with two kids?'. The complaints were endless but never creative.

"Now talk'n about letters," Dalton said, giving her a glare at her suggestion that he was going to bail out and changing the subject. "Mail came in this morn'n. How come you got no birthday mail?"

"None of your business, Dalton," Lara spat. She'd turned nineteen two weeks ago and the mail had since got in. She wasn't expecting anything. Her good-for-nothing Uncle hadn't even turned up for her mother and brother's funeral. It had been harder than she'd expected. She'd been snappy the entire day until eventually, Mac had asked what was wrong. She'd told him and it had gotten back to Dalton. She didn't want to think about it.

"What sour your boyfriend didn't write?" Dalton asked. She'd had enough of his jokes about boyfriends, particularly as she was unable to shake the feeling of being alone. A feeling that had been renewed by her birthday.

"There's no one to write," Lara snapped. "Is that what you wanna hear, Dalton? If I die out here ain't nobody gonna care."

Jake didn't say anything and Lara turned her back on him. She was really beginning to hate the dude. That's what she focused on as she fought tears. How every operation was push and pull, pull and shove. She'd given up trying to understand how stressful it had to be keeping tabs on two EODs. The dude was a butthole, the voice of her brother supplied a more creative synonym. 'Don't go there', she warned herself as she tried to again wrestle that part of her into its neat little box. It didn't fit. It wouldn't. Instead, it continued to ooze over the sides, under the lid.

"Hey!" Jake said crouching down to check on Mac, knocking aside his feet as he did so. "Wonderkind. Just admit you can't disarm it."

"I absolutely can disarm it," Mac told the man. "I just need you to stop putting your foot in it, stop talking and give me a minute."

Lara smiled slightly at that. At least there was Mac.

"I'll give you a minute. But that don't mean I gotta stop talking," Jake told him. "See this is why everyone hates working EOD, man. Everything has to take forever. As for Princess over here? she's a walkin' minefield."

"Well, you know what?" Mac told him. It was the most placid conversation that the two had had all week. "There's a quicker way to do this."

"Really?" Dalton asked.

"Yeah, it involved a loud boom and shrapnel in your body,"

"Hah, hah, very funny,"

The two continued back and forth in a similar manner until the car began emitting a low-frequency hum. And drifting over to the car.

"Mac?" Lara asked, using the familiar sound of danger to compose herself.

"Is that the bomb humming right now?" Dalton asked. It was official. Lara hated cars.

"Uh... Unfortunately yeah," came Mac's unwanted response.

"Well, what happened to 'cut this wire and were all good'?" Dalton asked glaring at the offending bomb in the hood.

"Do you have any more chewing gum?"

"Yeah, I don't see how you chewing on a stick of gum gonna help our situation,"

"Just give it to me and... and your sat phone,"

"You want gum and my sat phone?"

"Yes, only if you want to win,"

"Dalton, just hand the stupid things over," Lara interjected. She wasn't sure what Mac was going to do but the bomb was about to go off.

"There you go," Dalton said as he passed Mac a stick of gum from his pocket and his sat phone from his belt. "Enjoy."

Half a minute later the bomb was smoking and Mac crawled out from under the humvee.

"All ways late, worth the wait," he told them as he slipped the gum into his mouth.

"Did you just disarm a bomb with a stick of gum?" Dalton asked in disbelief.

Mac smiled triumphantly at Lara as he collected his helmet from Lara

"Yeah," Mac said as if it wasn't a miracle they weren't all standing there.

"Well, technically, it wasn't the gum," Mac ceded. "It was the wrapper."

"You burnt out the circuitry by combusting the aluminum-coated paper?" Lara asked in disbelief as her brain caught up to what Mac's had figured out in a split second. "You're lucky the explosive didn't go off."

"Huh?" Dalton raised his eyebrows at the two of them. "Is there somethin' wrong With you? I mean I don't think I can spend another forty-seven days around you."