Chapter Text
She comes to his apartment one morning after they break up. It's a funny, in-between, not-quite-real-feeling hour: early enough that the sky is light but most of the city's windows are still dark. She's left something, he's not sure what (she was always leaving things, a little breadcrumb trail, and he'd liked it at first, a reminder that she'd been there, but for months after she left he was still finding things: a photograph she'd dropped on an end-table, a book she'd left in his office). Whatever it is, she's found it, and everything starts with her leaning against the railing of his balcony, holding a half-empty glass of something and looking up at the just-light sky.
Did you know, she says to him, that when Alexander the Great's army crossed the Oxus in Afghanistan, they had no boats so instead floated across using leather tents as rafts?
He finds he cannot answer her, not to tell her that no, he didn't know that, not to tease her (You learn that at Oxford?), not to tell her what he really wants to tell her (Don't go. Please, don't go.)
It's when he can't speak that Will knows this is a dream, a dream he has had so often the moment is distorted and unreal. It's the cognizance that brings wakefulness into the corners of his vision, drawing in like a curtain, everything blurs and he tries to hold onto it, to keep Mac and the balcony and the sky all together, to hold onto her face for a moment longer, because it's only in dreams that he sees her anymore.
He wakes up. February, June, December. It's always the same; he's had this dream so often he's not sure if it ever really happened.
April 21st, 2009
He wakes up.
It's unnaturally cold for April; the night has left a thin, half-hearted frost against his window that has already begun to disintegrate.
The water from the shower is hot enough to mark his skin red, but one of the kitchen windows was left open overnight and it's enough to make him consider favouring the coffee maker in his apartment, the one he's never turned on, over the one at ACN. He doesn't, in the end: despite being marketed as automatic, there are too many buttons he wouldn't know how to use and thinking about it just makes him more tired.
The lady who does his shopping and cleaning sometimes leaves a plate of curry or a pan of brownies or something else in the fridge, and while he's never been above eating it for breakfast, today the fridge is bare save a know of butter and a wilted package of spring onions.
Another day, another wad of cash thrown at the AWM Executive Dining Room.
The car is waiting for him when he gets outside, and he sighs a breath of relief when he makes it from the lobby of his building to the passenger seat without being badgered for an autograph.
"Spring might have been a false hope." the driver remarks (Will can never remember his name, and is honestly unsure whether or not it's a different person each time). He checks his phone. Two missed calls from Charlie, it seems a waste to call back when he'll be there in minutes. He lacks confidence in most of his staff but on days he can't care less he leaves what little trust he has in Charlie and Elliot. In any case, breaking news isn't going to make traffic move any faster.
New York is already in full swing outside the tinted windows—when he misses Washington, that's what comes to mind. New York never sleeps and his hours are different and he misses it—to watch a city come awake every morning and be lulled to sleep every evening. To watch something every day be built and taken apart. He used to sit on his balcony at the end of a long day and watch as one by one lights were turned off.
With Mac. He used to sit on his balcony with Mac.
She's been on his mind of late: it's been barely a week since the announcement of her second Peabody. The win wasn't a surprise, of course, but he'd been hoping, vaguely, that it might come with a current photograph (It didn't).
He'd thrown out everything she'd left behind, since moved offices and apartments, and she's never understood the internet well enough to leave any kind of lasting impression on it. He hasn't seen her face since she left, hasn't had any way to see for himself if she's unharmed or even alive.
The car pulls up outside AWM. Will thanks and tips the driver, ignores the shouts as he emerges onto the crosswalk, and makes his way inside and into the elevator.
When he reaches the newsroom, it's empty.
Not empty, exactly: it takes him a moment to locate the lone blonde head peeking up from above a computer.
"Where's my staff?" He asks.
The girl looks up, startled. "They're, um, in a lunch meeting." She stands, obviously flustered. "Char-"
"Who's on the assignment desk?" Ellen, he thinks. Her name is Ellen.
"I am. Char-"
"What kind of lunch meeting?"
"Um, I'm not sure. I think Don bought everyone pizza. Charlie Skinner needs to see you in his office immediately."
"Did he say why?"
The girl shakes her head. "Just that you needed to see him as soon as you got here."
Will eyes her, attempting to discern whether or not she's withholding any information. "A lunch meeting with all my staff? Except you?"
The girl just shrugs apologetically. "They're in the upstairs conference room. But you need to see Charlie Skinner right away."
"Call up for me. Tell his assistant I'm on my way."
She nods and Will turns back towards the elevator.
There's an uneasy feeling in his gut- a gnawing anxiety, the kind he tends to deal with by drowning it with scotch. If nothing else, he's sure Charlie can provide that.
"Will, come on in." Charlie orders. Will pulls the door shut behind him. Everything about the stranger in the room screams ‘military’—freshly pressed suit, clean-cropped hair, stiff demeanor.
"Mr. McAvoy, my name is Sergeant Zachary Gorenstein. This is a typical notification process we go through for close friends and relatives."
For all he's been thinking about Mac lately, she doesn't occur to him now—she’s not enlisted, and his mind goes to his brother. It's Jackson, he thinks and Will didn't even know he had another tour and he's already got to wondering what he's going to say to his father at the funeral when Gorenstein shuts that line of thinking down.
"MacKenzie McHale has gone missing."
Will feels hollow. "Missing." he repeats.
"We don't have a lot of details at the moment."
"What—What details do you have?"
"Ms. McHale disappeared on the 12th."
"What do you mean disappeared?"
"I'm not at liberty to say much, obviously you understand revealing more information could potentially compromise Ms. McHale's safety or any ongoing rescue operations—"
"Are there any ongoing rescue operations?"
Gorenstein shifts uncomfortably. "The combat outpost has been sending out patrols, but..."
"But?" Charlie prompts.
"They have no idea where to start. She's a needle in a haystack and there are Taliban insurgents hiding behind every fifth piece of hay."
"What are they... going to do?" Will asks. "I mean, it's been over a week, and if the search parties aren't working, what's plan B?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm not able to speak any more on the subject, not even to close friends or rel—"
"I am neither a relative nor a close friend of MacKenzie McHale." Will says. "Or any other kind of friend, for that matter. And frankly I'm not sure why I'm being contacted."
Gorenstein consults his notes. "Her initial physical before being imbedded in 2007 was conducted by a physician at Cathedral Heights Medical Center, the clinic had you listed as her emergency contact."
"Those records are outdated."
Gorenstein nods. "In that case, my apologies for disrupting your day."
"You can go now." Charlie says.
Gorenstein obeys.
:"Sergeant," Will says, causing the man to turn in the threshold of Charlie's office.
"Yes?"
"Her father, he lives in London—"
"We've already contacted him."
"Right, of course. And her sister, she works for—"
"All of Ms. McHale's immediate family has been contacted."
"Right." Will says again. "Sorry. Good day, Sergeant."
"You okay?" Charlie asks once they're alone.
"Yeah."
"I just mean, kid really did a number on you when she left. I remember. I know you're not over it."
"I'm fine." Will says.
"Well, if you need anything."
"I think we should report it."
Charlie pauses. "Alright," he says. "If you think you're up for it. I'll call our Middle East bureau, see who we can get manning local coverage, we'll get bookers on the phone and start sketching out segments. Pick a couple APs to work on it."
Will shakes his head. "I mean I'm going down there."
"Will!"
"Elliot will be fine on his own for a week, it'll raise the profile of the story, increasing the chances of her getting home safely, and we can pull some of our Middle East material off the shelves, not to mention ratings will go through the roof if I so much as step foot outside the studio."
"You're not serious! Oh my God, you're serious!"
"Journalists are getting killed and we need to be talking about it, Charlie!"
"In Iraq! We don't even know that she's dead, not to mention the hell it'd be to clear your reports with the DOD if she isn't found by the time you get back."
"They can vet everything, we'll put in a lengthy broadcast delay if we have to."
"This has to be a joke."
"It's not."
"Are you planning on going down there as a reporter or as a search party? You know what, it doesn't matter. There's no way I'm letting you go."
"Then I welcome you to try to program against me."
Charlie says nothing, nothing for long enough that Will starts to wonder if he's gone too far. "Go to Afghanistan." he says finally.
"Charlie—"
"Go. Get out of my sight."
The newsroom is still almost empty.
"Must be some lunch meeting." Will comments to the girl.
"I wouldn't know."
"Skipped out?"
"Wasn't invited."
"You're an associate producer?"
She hesitates. "Yeah."
"Do you have a go bag?"
"Um, no."
Will pulls out his wallet and drops a credit card on her desk. "Get whatever you need. Tell an intern we need two tickets to Kabul. Plus, a fixer." He'd almost forgotten that part. Foreign coverage is not an area in which he can claim expertise.
The girl looks unsure. "The tickets are for—"
"You and me."
"You know," she says. "There are more experienced APs, I can—"
"I want to bring you."
"Why?"
Because you're young enough not to realize I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. "I don't have time to wait for anyone's lunch to end. Be back here as soon as possible."
"I—I will." She grabs her jacket and Will's card before making a dash for the elevators.
Will can't remember the last time he used his go bag but it's still there, a duffel tucked into one of the cabinets behind his desk. He can't remember, honestly, ever using it, but it's been a constant in every office he's occupied since 9/11 (the day he learned, if nothing else, to always have spare deodorant).
There's little he can do until his AP gets back, and after glancing aimlessly around his office for a few minutes, makes a decision.
Courtesy of Don's Mystery Lunch Meeting the edit bay is empty—as well as dark, quiet, and containing exactly what Will wants.
(He does consider checking in on Don, but the last things he wants to see right now is another living soul).
He opens the program that stores the footage database—everything's kept online now, even things deemed insignificant, in case of an anniversary broadcast, or a retraction, or God knows what else.
He's sure ACN has it—every major American network has it, he's just not sure when they would have gotten it.
He selects "Licensed—Other Networks" from a drop-down menu and a date range: July 7th through 31st, 2005.
<Showing 1-10 of 329>
He edits the date range: July 7th through 14th. This brings up a little over a hundred results, and he begins scrolling through.
It takes less than a minute to find. CNN LONDON. MCHALE, M. RUSSELL SQUARE.
He double-clicks the file and it begins to download. He's never actually seen the video; he's heard the story enough—once told to him, and a thousand other times recited at countless parties and galas. To hear how often she was asked about it you'd think it was the only interesting thing that'd ever happened to her.
Probably not anymore, he muses.
He remembers it all well enough—how in 2005, MacKenzie had just left the BBC with sights set on working in America, job pending. How she'd been the first reporter at Tavistock Square while the press crowded outside of the tube stations, how she'd cold-called American networks and told them she had a camera with her and was working for the first network to break in. CNN had her on the air in under thirty minutes.
He barely recognizes the Mac in the video, and it's not just her age. This is Mac before he knew her. Her hair is shorter, her lipstick brighter, and there's an unfamiliar affect to her voice—she'd never liked being on camera.
It feels almost a violation to watch her—she shows obvious competence and talent, no surprises there, but there's little in her that bears any resemblance to the woman he shared a bed with for two years. She's a paper imitation.
As much as he hates her, he misses her.
The door opens. "Mr. McAvoy? It's time to go."
He calls Molly from the plane.
Leona Lansing has allowed him use of the company jet as far as Frankfurt. From there, the AP has produced two Safi Airways tickets to Kabul.
The AP (he still thinks it’s Ellen, but he’s not sure enough to call her that) is somewhat terrified of him: she keeps several rows distance on the plane, fiddling with the camera as if it's some unnatural and unfamiliar object.
He pulls up Skype on his laptop, skipping through his contacts. His Skype is on his personal email, the one that hasn't changed in years, and he can't remember ever emailing Molly but he must have at some point because she's there—the remnant of some long-forgotten dinner party invitation or off the record research for a story.
She doesn't answer the first call, but she answers the second.
"Molly," he says as her image slowly becomes less pixelated. "How are you?"
"Maybe we could cut the small talk?" Molly suggests. "I'm assuming you're not calling to ask how I am." He can barely hear her through the background noise; she's in the middle of a crowd.
"I wouldn't call you if I had any better options."
"I'm not commenting on any of your stories."
"It's not that." Deep breaths, McAvoy. "MacKenzie's missing."
"What do you mean, missing?"
"I—I don't really know. They can't find her, I guess."
"They can't find her, you guess?"
"She's been gone nine days. I'll know more when I get down there."
"When you get down there?"
"I'm on my way to Afghanistan."
"Hang on, this just got—" The sound fritzes out momentarily and her image blurs as she distances herself from the crowd.
"Where are you?"
"Paris. Conference." He hears a door shut and the noise disappears. "Never underestimate the power of a good janitor's closet."
"Molly, I need... I need to know what to do."
"Has a missing persons report been filed?"
"In Afghanistan?"
"In the States. If she has a missing persons report we can give it to Interpol and they'll put out a yellow notice."
"I'll find out when I get there."
"You'll also need to find the unit she's embedded with and make sure someone's notified Personnel Recovery at CENTCOM. I'll check in with the DIA and CIA to see if they know anything. You know that given the region this is likely a kidnapping, right?"
"I know that."
"If she's in Pakistan any rescue or ransom payment needs to be cleared through the CIA. I'm going to make some calls."
"These things... they turn out okay, right?" Will asks. "Journalists—they get home, people get freed."
Molly takes her time formulating her answer. "I imagine the fact you're rich as fuck is a point in your favour." she says. "And she's the smartest person I know, But she doesn't have a gun, and they most certainly do." A silence hangs between the two of them for a moment. "Why are you going down there?"
"To report on it."
"Seriously?"
"To find her."
"Right, but why?"
"I have to go." Will says, voice heavy. "Let me know as soon as possibly if you find out anything. Anything at all." He ends the call.
He sits next to Maggie on the flight to Kabul (when she ordered him a Dr. Pepper in the Frankfurt airport lounge without being asked Will figured she might be deserving of a name).
She admits to him quietly that it’s her first time leaving the States before noticing the magazine in her seat pocket. It’s an English-language tabloid featuring Will on the cover, and she carefully removes it and turns it over before returning it to the pocket so that he doesn’t have to stare at himself for eight hours.
It strikes him as kind, in a strange and understated way.
She falls asleep almost immediately afterwards, somehow curling herself into a ball such that her whole body fit in the seat, covered by a purple travel blanket.
When they land, they’re greeted by their fixer, who introduces himself as Sikandar, and their driver, whose name Will forgets immediately.
“Do you know where you want to go?” Sikandar asks, shepherding them into a car.
“Wherever MacKenzie McHale’s crew is.” Will replies.
“Gotcha.” Will opens the door to the passenger seat and Sikandar gives a him a pointed look until Will acquiesces and gets in the back seat.
“So, you’re Will McAvoy.” Sikandar says once they’re underway.
Will nods. “That’s what they tell me.”
“And you’re reporting on MacKenzie McHale’s kidnapping.”
“Disappearance.” Will corrects.
“At least we know what it takes to get the big shots down here.” Sikandar says. When Will makes no acknowledgement of the comment, he continues. “A rich white girl.”
“That’s not at all true.” Will objects.
“No?” Sikandar says. “Three weeks ago a school in Pesawar collapsed from IEDs. Nineteen dead, eleven of them kids. Didn’t see it on any American network. What’s so special about this one, hey?” He sees the look on Will’s face. “Ah. You know her.”
“We used to work together.”
“I wouldn’t have talked like that if I knew you knew her.” Sikandar says, not sounding particularly regretful. “I hope this turns out okay—she’s one of the good ones.”
Will looks surprised.
“Yeah, I’ve met your girl.” Sikandar continues. “Sharp as a tack, that one.”
“When?” Will wants to know.
“A few times over the years. Last would be… Kandahar, I guess. A few months ago. It’s crawling with Marines over there.”
“Are we going to a Marine base?” Maggie asks.
Sikandar shakes his head. “Her crew’s in Khost right now, at FOB Salerno. The Marines don’t have installations that far east.”
“So, what was she doing there?” Will asks.
“You’d have to ask her crew.” Sikandar replies.
It’s not long after that that Will puts in his headphones; they’re not connected to anything but Sikandar can’t see that from his angle (Maggie can, smiles at him, and keeps her mouth shut). He’s been under enough stress in the past twenty-three hours and conversations with new people rank low on his activities of choice right now.
“What made you decide to be a journalist?” Maggie asks Sikandar.
“Not a lot of money in teaching over here.” Maggie grins. “You laugh,” he says. “But no job over here pays as much as the Americans will.”
“Do you ever get any footage yourself?” The note of anxiety creeping into her voice isn’t lost on Will.
“I’ve had pictures in Scientific American.” He says. “I know a bit about video; sometimes my clients aren’t wildly experienced.”
“That’s great!” she says. “I mean, it’s really cool that you learned all that.”
Will fiddles with the buttons of his new satellite phone to kill time.
He’s known, from the beginning, that MacKenzie could very well be dead.
During a panel on the show a few months ago, a guest asked him if he knew how many journalists had been killed in Afghanistan since the war’s beginning and he’d realized he did (Fifteen, he’d replied, surprising not only himself but also the guest). She might never come home. He might never see her face again.
(Because after the initial Get the fuck out of my apartment, that had always been the plan, hadn’t it? At least, in some deep recess of his brain? There’ve been too many nights he’s been inches away from calling her for him to believe otherwise.)
And then the reverse, what to do if tomorrow she shows up at the FOB, perfectly fine. What could he possibly say to justify him flying halfway around the world for someone he’d spend the better part of three years pretending not to care about (Unsuccessfully, for the most part: he still catches himself, in odd moments, while cooking or reading or skipping through television channels, thinking this was more fun with Mac. Because her presence never made him tired the way other people’s did, because it was nice to have someone to come home to).
As they draw closer to FOB Salerno, Sikandar explains it’s positioning—little more than a stone’s throw from Pakistan, sheltered the Hindu Kush mountains.
The driver stops at the gates. “Can you get us in?” Will asks.
Sikandar shakes his head. “We’re not Americans.”
“What do we do?”
Sikandar shrugs. “You’re American and a journalist, they’ll let you get away with murder. Try bribing them.”
It doesn’t turn out to be necessary: Will’s calls to the DOD were kicked down the chain faster than anticipated and the soldiers at the gate are expecting him.
Once out of the car and inside Salerno, Will spots a guy standing at the edge of the base talking into a cell phone. “I bet it’s him.” Will says. “He works with Mac.”
“How could you tell?” Maggie asks sarcastically.
“Not many people wear Kevlar over a button-down.”
“Sure,” Maggie says. “His vest also says ‘press’ in big letters on it.”
“Ah.” Will says, somewhat sheepish. “Missed that.”
The guy stands when he sees them walking towards him, says something into his phone and ends the call.
“You shouldn’t be here.” he says as they draw closer.
Will holds out his hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Will McAvoy, ACN.”
“Jim Harper, CNN.” The guy counters, ignoring the offered handshake. “And I’m telling you, she wouldn’t want you here. You need to leave.”
“Not gonna happen. Where’s the rest of your crew?”
“Everyone else flew out a couple days ago. Not much to be doing around here without her.”
“No substitute EP?”
He shakes his head. “CNN pulled our timeslot.”
“Do you know where Mac is?”
Jim stares, upfront and annoyed. “No.” he says shortly.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I’ve been working day and night trying to keep this shit off the wires and you show up here like nothing’s happened between the two of you and I’m supposed to give you an interview?”
Will turns to Maggie, Sikandar, and the driver. “Why don’t you guys set up the camera and see if you can get some b-roll?”
Maggie bites her lip and nods, leading the other two out of earshot.
“Off the record.” Will says to Jim. “When did you last see her?”
“Taking me off the record isn’t going to make me like you any more.”
Will looks Jim in the eye and speaks quietly. “You can’t run a half-assed rescue operation from a FOB. We both know hostage negotiations will take months if they go through DOD. If you’re serious about bringing her back safe, you need someone with money and connections outside the military. You’re a second-string journalist and I run the second most popular news broadcast in America. You need me.”
Jim’s stance relaxes marginally and he begins fiddling with his CNN lanyard. “We came to Khost on the 6th.” he says. “Our home base is usually FOB Delhi but CNN wanted us here to cover troop movements and diversify coverage- not too many journalists east of Kandahar- and Mac’s not… opposed to the 80/20 split.”
“Twenty percent of what they want for eighty percent of what you want.” Will’s heard it before. Hell, he’s heard it from her before. Of course, then she’d ended up with CNN’s news director and “One segment for you, one segment for me.” Which she’d routinely bitched about over dinner with him as though she didn’t realize it was a steal on an early fringe timeslot. But Will doesn’t think about those days. Not anymore.
“Two Peabodys in, CNN lets her do pretty much whatever she wants as long as they can call in a favour every now and again.” Jim continues. “And I guess they called it in. We’re not that used to the Army. Anyway, we spent a week a COP Spera, and there’s not a whole lot of movement in or out so a Red Cross convoy leaving Vriche agreed to give us a lift. When they dropped me back here, I realized she was gone—she was supposed to get in one of the other vehicles but she never showed and the Red Cross assumed her plans had changed.”
“What time did the convoy leave Spera?”
“Around ten.”
“Did you see her before that? On the day, I mean.”
“Yeah, I mean I wake up next to her every morning. We ate and then split up to get as much coverage as possible before we had to leave. I have no idea where she went or why she didn’t show.”
Will stops paying attention after I wake up next to her every morning. It’s not jealousy, exactly; Mac has a type and Jim is definitely not it, being neither tall nor dark and only passably handsome.
It’s that Jim knows her well. Better now, probably, than Will himself.
“Come back with me.”
Jim is taken aback. “To the States? No way! Not until she’s found.”
“To Spera.”
“There’s no way in or out for another two weeks.”
“I’ve got a driver and a fixer. Come with me.”
Jim nods slowly, looking over Will’s shoulder. Will turns, seeing Maggie and Sikandar messing around with the camera, laughing. “She’s young.” He murmurs to Will.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t bring her to Spera. Just in case something happens.”
“What could happen?”
Jim doesn’t answer.
“Maggie!” Will calls, watching her put down the camera and run over to him. “There’s no internet at the outpost.” He glances at Jim, who nods his confirmation. “I need you to stay here, call Molly Levy and do whatever she tells you to do. Talk to people here, find out if there’s anything we could be doing that we’re not doing. Ask about Personnel Recovery at CENTCOM And, keep filming.” he adds as an afterthought, forgetting the pretense of his trip. “Ask around about Taliban kidnappings, disappearances, that kind of thing.”
“Got it.” Maggie says and Will hands her his laptop.
He turns to Jim. “Let’s go.”
Will and Jim sit in the backseat, Sikandar and the driver up front. “I want to warn you,” Sikandar says. “Spera is half a mile from the Pakistan border. It’s a very dangerous place to be.” He glances at Jim. “Not, like, Helmand Province dangerous or anything, but, you know.”
The conversation quickly ends and when Sikandar is speaking to the driver in Pashto, Will turns to Jim. “You’ve been to Helmand? With her, I mean?”
Jim shifts. His jaw is a harsh line, he is defiant but no longer hostile. “Yeah. Our first few months out, we spent a lot of time in Garmsir. When our contract ran out we were sent to Iraq, we were in the Green Zone ten months but we were back in Helmand the first chance CNN gave us, up to a couple of weeks ago.”
“What brought you back?”
“Mac. When she won the Peabody CNN was willing to do pretty much anything to keep her on staff. She wanted to come back here.” He pauses. “I think she likes it here. Or, not likes it, I guess. She gets this war, I think, in a way she doesn’t get Iraq. I think we’re the only journalists our media handler’s spoken to in a couple of years who wanted into Afghanistan.”
Will wants to ask Was she happy? but gets hung up on the verb tense: is, was, has she been. They all sound equally wrong.
He wonders just how much Jim knows about MacKenzie. Does he know, for instance, that when she was nine and decided she wanted to be a journalist, she carried a notebook around writing down everything any politician said to her father in her presence, invisible in her childhood, and that by the age of fourteen she had amassed three journals full of affairs and world secrets and bribes and petty disputes? Does he know that MacKenzie’s father was the first United Kingdom Ambassador to Pakistan? Does he know about her Cambridge thesis (a document Will had read in its entirety prior to meeting her), a treatise of wars and governments and disputes, tracing the cultural geography of the Middle East?
Does he know that what she likes most about this country is its title, the Graveyard of Empires, something vast and unconquerable and everlasting?
She spoke to him of Afghanistan only once after they broke up, the morning he didn’t tell her not to go.
He’s still not sure that ever really happened, and the heat isn’t helping.
Jim breaks his train of thought, passing him a plastic canteen. “You look like you need some water.”
“Thanks.” Will accepts and takes a sip. Outside his window, the rocky outskirts of the FOB have disappeared and small shrubs are pushing through the barren landscape. “My FBI contact said something about filing a missing persons report in the States.”
“Yeah, I got her dad to file one in the UK. We brought it to Interpol; they’ll recognize her if by some magic she ends up at a Pakistani police station.”
“What do you think happened to her? Or, what’s your best-case scenario?”
“Best case scenario, in the next twenty-four hours she ends up on Al Jazeera reading a ransom demand.”
“You’re kidding.”
“She has K&R insurance and she’s a civilian. That goes bad one of two ways: somebody finds out who her dad is or somebody finds out she knows you. If they realize she has that kind of influence they start pushing for prisoner release and we’re playing political chess trying to negotiate guys out of Gitmo.”
“Wouldn’t it be ideal if she’s just lost?”
“For ten days?” In the middle of nowhere? I’d rather take her chances on a kidnapping, to be honest.”
“Could she be in Pakistan?” Will asks, remembering something Molly had said earlier.
“Yeah, I mean even if she wasn’t kidnapped, she could have walked there by now. That’ll mess up any rescue operation quite a bit. That’s why we’re hoping for a ransom.” Jim looks at Will. “I don’t want this to be mistaken for me liking you, and I’m only asking because there’s no way I’m letting her die and right now my options are limited to you and GoFundMe: If the insurance falls through, would you pay to get her out.”
“I didn’t come here as a reporter.” Will says.
“Then why did you come here?”
COP Spera is built of wood and impermanence, a stark contrast to the FOB (in the brief time they’d spent there, Will could have sworn he’d seen a coffee shop).
Jim gets them inside, as the soldier guarding the gates clearly knows him. As does the first one they see when they get inside. “Any news?” one guy asks, kicking out a cigarette. Jim shakes his head, about to speak when another one calls “Jim Harper’s back!”
Everyone on the outpost, it seems, knows Jim.
“You’re Will McAvoy, right?” The guy speaking looks a little frightened, he’s twenty, maybe twenty-two, and flanked by six or so others. “Our CO said you were coming down.”
“Indeed I am.” Will says. “Nice to meet you, Corporal.”
“We, um, we wanted to help.” he says, holding out a stack of documents for Will. It’s a mess of pages, a mix of handwritten and typed. “We thought, if we could help you with your story maybe it’ll help MacKenzie. We made a bunch of calls last night- no internet and all that- a bunch of calls to get stats and stuff, from the DIA and other places, about kidnappings and journalist safety. There are some quotes too, from some of our bosses you could use in your reporting, or as background, or whatever.”
Will takes the papers. “Thank you, Corporal.”
“We just wanted to do something to help Mac, and all we could think of was search parties and this.”
Trust Mac, Will thinks, to be popular even in the middle of a war zone.
“And if you have any questions, about kidnappings or anything, we can help.” the Corporal adds.
Will glances around for Jim—he’s talking to a couple of the other guys, thoroughly engrossed in his conversation. He’s not quite embarrassed to ask, he’s just—he doesn’t know what. “Did she ever talk about me?”
The question takes them by surprise. The leader looks around at his group to see if anyone will offer an answer before replying himself. “Not… to us, at least. But we only knew her a week. You might have better luck talking to the Marines.”
“It’s… not important.” Will says. “Thank you for this.” He gestures to the papers. “I’ll see that they get used.” He nods to the group of boys and returns to where Jim and Sikandar are standing.
“So, what’s the plan?” Sikandar asks Will.
Will doesn’t exactly have a plan. The goal was to get as close as possible to where Mac disappeared and then… what?
“I think her stuff’s still in her bunk. Maybe we should take a look?” Jim suggests.
It seems to Will as good an idea as any.
Jim leads them into one of the buildings (if you could call them that). The outpost is tiny and overcrowded, and Jim explains that had another unit cycled in, her things would likely have been burned.
“As is, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been picked over.” Sikandar says.
The bed Jim leads them to is neatly made with a duffle resting on top.
“Not hers.” he says.
“Harper!” someone calls. “You looking for Mac’s stuff?”
“Yeah.” Jim replies.
“We needed the bed, but we set it all aside over in the corner. Made sure nobody messed with it or nothing.”
“Thanks.” Jim says, pulling her duffle and backpack out from the indicated corner. The soldier stands for a moment, clearly unsure what to say.
“I hope she’s okay.” is what he settles on before leaving.
“She’s got quite the fan club out here.” Will remarks, lifting the duffel onto one of the beds.
“Well, some people like her.” Jim says brusquely, following suit with her backpack.
Will’s not sure he wants to hear whatever story Jim was told about the ending of his last relationship.
“I didn’t think to go through these or anything.” Jim says uneasily. “I don’t know… it feels private.”
“There might be something, like—I’m not sure.” Will says. “It’s a chance, and I’m taking any of those I can get right now.”
The contents of the duffel are wildly impersonal and somehow disappointing. Will sorts through methodically; it’s mostly clothes, and not ones he recognizes.
“Her necklace.” he says suddenly. “The gold one, with the—”
“It’s in Germany.” Jim says. “She doesn’t bring it on assignment.”
“She has a place over there?”
“A shitty one-bedroom, yeah. Sublet.”
Jim is in the process of neatly laying out the contents of Mac’s backpack. Laptop. Another change of clothes. Some tangled USBs. Datebook. Sat phone. Foundation. Cigarettes.
The cigarettes give Will pause. He thought she’d lost that habit for good. “Did she start—”
“Bribes.” Jim explains quickly.
Will opens the datebook and flips to the current week. It’s mostly empty. Call Dad. Footage A3 due. Skype call with Capt Nolan. No, seriously, call Dad.
On April 9th there’s an entry before Red Cross.
“What’s K.B.?” Will asks.
“I don’t know.” Jim says.
“8:30 A.M. K.B.” Will reads. “Then a string of numbers.”
“Might be a phone number?”
“That’s… sixteen digits. Long phone number.”
Jim shrugs. “Area code, plus an extension, maybe? We can check when we get back to Salerno.”
“Speaking of,” Sikandar says. “If we’re getting back before nightfall, we need to leave now.”
The drive back is disappointing. Will had been hoping to find—something. Her.
A room of the barracks has been reserved for them (two rooms, really, but Maggie decides she’d rather not sleep in a room alone).
“I talked to Agent Levy.” she says, typing away on Will’s laptop, legs dangling off the side of the bed. “She did some digging and found out MacKenzie has a CIA file.” Will peeks over her shoulder: she’s got a video editing program open and is cutting together footage from her day of shooting.
“Saying what?” Jim asks.
“She said the first part was normal and mostly old—stuff about being her being an ambassador’s daughter and all that. I guess it’s a security thing. Here’s where it gets weird: there’s a whole chunk of file after that but it’s all codeword clearance. She couldn’t get in.”
“Did you know about this?” Will asks Jim.
Jim shakes his head. “I didn’t. And the phone number’s a bust.” He turns up the volume of his sat phone and a pleasant female voice informs the room the number they have dialed does not exist. “And I’m still stuck on why she wouldn’t bring her phone with her, wherever she went.”
“Agent Levy also got into her emails.” Maggie says. “I guess—the CIA can just do that? But she says it wasn’t helpful, mostly just stuff to CNN—asking about tech stuff and permission to go to Khost and that kind of thing.”
“Wait.” Jim says. “Agent Levy said Mac asked to come to Khost? You’re sure?”
“Yeah.” Maggie bites her lip. “Why? Is that bad?”
“She told me CNN wanted us to come here.” Jim says. “I thought it was weird, there wasn’t really much going on here out of the ordinary.” He stares at the map of Afghanistan pinned to the wall. “Where the fuck was she going?”
Nobody has an answer.
“There’s one more thing.” Maggie says to Will. “It wasn’t from Agent Levy, and it may be a bad time to tell you but your, um, staff quit?”
Will freezes. “Are you asking me that or telling me that?”
“Um, telling you.” She looks as if she’s afraid of being struck. “I got an email… from Don, and I think he didn’t mean to use the asterisk because it’s addressed to you and there are some… colourful remarks on your personality.”
“The lunch meeting.” Will says after a pause.
“I think so.”
“You knew about this?”
“No! No, I didn’t.”
“But you’re leaving.”
“I’m not leaving. I’m staying at News Night.”
“Okay. Who else on the staff is staying?”
“Nobody. Just me.”
“Great.” Will takes a beat. “You know, I think this is a cross that bridge when you come to it situation.”
“You seem pretty close to the bridge.” Sikandar points out.
“The bridge is in New York. It can stay there.”
They resign themselves to being out of options for the night. One by one, Sikandar, Maggie, and the driver fall asleep.
“Will?” Jim says into the darkness.
“Yeah?”
“You do know, right, that she’s probably dead? I mean, it’s good that you’re here and everything, but there’s been no ransom demand and nobody’s saying they’ve got her and… she really is probably dead.”
“I know.”
Will doesn’t sleep, and doesn’t sleep, and doesn’t sleep. How can he, sleep that is, knowing Mac was either dead or being held hostage? He can’t allow himself rest when she’s in danger.
It’s a noble, if misguided and fruitless, pursuit. But after the thousandth time he mulls over the facts, wonders where she went, the fact that it’s been over a day since he last slept catches up with him and his eyes shut.
Though not for long.
“Jim. Jim.” Will shakes him into consciousness in the pitch-dark room. “The phone. It’s a sat phone, not a smartphone. No GPS.”
“What?” Jim says, bleary with sleep. “She has a separate GPS. We both do.”
“Where? It wasn’t with her stuff.”
“She must have had it… on her.” Jim sits up. “It wasn’t a phone number.” He grabs his bag, roots through it for his GPS, pulling the crumpled piece of paper onto which he scribbled the numbers out of his pocket. “It’s not far from Spera. Right outside Vriche.”
“We’re going.” Will says. “Wake up the others.”
“Now? You’re just going to walk off the base?”
“I’m not going to let her die! I’m not going to fucking—We know where she is now!”
“You know where she was nine days ago. Face it—there’s not much we can do until someone sends out proof of life.”
“And by the time we’re done waiting they’ll have dumped her corpse into a river. I’m not doing nothing.”
“Fine.” Jim says. “Let’s go.”
The sky is streaked with crimson as Sikandar and the driver leave with Will, Maggie, and Jim crammed into the backseat.
“It doesn’t matter how many search parties they sent out looking for her.” Jim says. “If it’s not a kidnapping, I mean. People looking around Spera wouldn’t go out that far. They never would have found her.”
They reach the spot and its empty.
For an hour, they circle with flashlights until it’s light enough to longer need them.
“I think I found something!” Maggie calls, holding up a fragment of circuit board. Within minutes, Jim and Sikandar have found pieces of a shattered screen and plastic casing.
“It’s her GPS.” Jim says. “It’s looks like it’s been crushed, with a rock or something.”
“What reason would she possibly have for breaking it?” Sikandar asks.
“It might not have been her.” Jim says.
“Or she wanted to make sure nobody could find her.” Maggie says.
“You can’t track a GPS.” Sikandar says. “The signal only goes one way, it can only receive information.”
They fall to stumped silence.
“Guys,” Will says. “This is MacKenzie we’re talking about. Have you ever seen her send an email? There’s no way she knows a GPS can only… whatever it is that you said.”
“So, she was afraid of being followed.” Jim says. “By people smart enough to hack a GPS.”
“Where would you go?” Will asks. “If someone was after you.”
“Back to Spera.” Jim says. “Or Salerno.”
“Wrong question.” Maggie says quietly. “Where would she go?”
“Same.” Jim says. “Spera.”
“Well, she didn’t.” Will says. He turns to Sikandar. “If you were trying to get away from someone? What would your options be?”
“Getting to an outpost.” Sikandar says. “Hiding in the mountains. Hiding in the forests.”
“No.” Will says, frustrated. “She wouldn’t stay.”
“She wouldn’t have the resources to do anything else.” Jim says.
“She wouldn’t give a fuck about resources, either.” Will says. He turns back to Sikandar. “How would you leave? Where’s the nearest airport?”
“Khost.”
“Civilian airport.”
Sikandar thinks. “Urgan.”
“If she went to Urgan,” Jim says. “She’d have gotten out, she’d be safe, and we’d know about it.”
“Then she’s not there yet. Which way is Urgan?”
“South-east.”
“Let’s go.”
“Are you crazy?” Jim is almost yelling. “We’re supposed to go look for her, unarmed, in one of the most dangerous places in the world based on your guess that she’d try to get to an airport? It could take days to search from here to Urgan, not to mention the risk of us getting kidnapped!”
“It’s not a guess.” Will says. “I know her. This is what she would do.”
“You can’t know that.” Jim says. “She could have tried to hide in the mountains. She could have tried to hide in the forest. She could have tried to get to Pakistan to find help.”
Will doesn’t know how to explain how he just knows, knows her, knows what she would do. She would never hide if she could just go somewhere else, somewhere she could forget it had all happened. However impractical, her impulse had always been to run rather than outlast. He’s not sure she’s even capable of it, to hide, to wait for the tide to turn. She would get out and get out fast.
That is, of course, how she left him.
“If you want her to die,” Will says. “Feel free to go back to Spera.”
They search for hours, the five of them. Long enough that they develop rules (always have at least one other person in their line of sight, yell if you see or hear anything strange, water breaks every half-hour) and long enough for Will and Maggie to split one of the MREs in Jim’s bag (he offers them the choice of beef stew or chicken pasta before admitting they taste pretty much the same cold). They trudge on toward Urgan, searching the road and its surroundings (they’ve spread out— Jim suggests they aim to cover a couple hundred feet across, in case for some reason she veered off the road), which have changed from quasi-desert to thick forest. Thankfully, it’s early enough in the morning that the road is empty.
“Guys!” Jim yells.
Will is the last to reach him, heart pounding. “What is it?”
“I just got off the phone with our digital editor. He says he’s found messages through the site between Mac and someone else.”
“Who?” Will asks.
“It’s hard to find someone in New York to translate Pashto after midnight—Mac’s is pretty bad to begin with—but they mention the GPS coordinates she had written down as a meeting point. We haven’t verified the guy’s identity yet, but if he’s who he says he is then he works for a group responsible for getting millions of dollars of opium into Central Asia.”
“Mac was meeting with a drug lord.”
“More like… a drug lord’s assistant’s assistant, but it looks that way, yeah.”
“So, if she was working on a story about this, and that’s why she came to Khost, would that be enough incentive for them to arrange a fake interview and…” Will’s not really sure how to end that sentence.
“Maybe. I don’t know. Here’s the thing: the first line of the first message, from the guy to Mac, translates to I know what you have.”
“What was he talking about?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Let’s keep looking.” Will says.
Jim looks like he wants to argue, but doesn’t—Will isn’t sure if he’s restrained by fatigue or pity of something else.
“Let’s keep looking.” he echoes, and they go into hour four.
Will doesn’t see her at first.
What catches his eye is the amber of a manila envelope, bright against the dirt. “Get over here!” he yells.
It’s then that he sees, a few feet ahead, a figure lying face-down on the ground. He turns her over, as gently as he can. Her face is caked with dirt and there’s a brown patch on her jeans that smells of dried blood. Despite all this, it’s unmistakably MacKenzie.
“Jesus Christ.” he hears Jim say, footsteps rapidly approaching.
How long has she been unconscious? Will wonders. That is, if she is unconscious.
Frantic, he feels for her pulse.