VIKING

Viking was the name used by the anonymous bomber who threatened the lives of the 1100 passengers aboard the cruise ship Victoria. When the ship had been in dry dock, Viking had installed four separate explosive devices, one using plastic explosive and a timer, and the other three using an elaborate and sophisticated series of mechanical, electrical, and chemical triggers.

An initial phone call to the ship alerted Captain Howard to the first bomb on board, and when he went to investigate, he was killed in the explosion. Viking threatened that another explosion would follow unless he was given $6 million in exchange for instructions on how to diffuse the bombs. To deal with the crisis, Pete Thornton called in MacGyver and Charlie Robinson, with whom MacGyver had worked as a bomb-diffusing team when they had served together in Vietnam. Also working the case from Los Angeles was Mike Donahue, another bomb expert and Vietnam veteran who had run a bomb squad out of Da Nang and who had lost a leg while commanding the lead sabotage control group in Cam Ranh Bay. Viking communicated with Pete Thornton and his team at the Federal Building by using a series of prerecorded phone calls in an electronically disguised voice sent from an apartment in Westwood, and his messages indicated that he was familiar with the personal lives of the members of Thornton's team who were tasked with apprehending him.

MacGyver and Charlie Robinson took a jet to Midway and a helicopter to the Victoria's location in the North Pacific Ocean, leaving them approximately three hours to disarm the bomb. Acting Captain Carole Tanner escorted the team to the bomb they had discovered in the engine room, but as the search of the ship continued, Second Officer Atkins brought word that two more identical bombs had been located. The bombs were clearly the design of an expert. Disguised to look like a fake electrical panel behind sealed glass, they included a yellow chemical powder in a dish, a heat sensitive thermocouple, cylinders of acid which carried an electrical current, and a timer.

Thornton made the decision to meet Viking's ransom demands and to pay the $6 million dollars, and Donahue, Carlyle, and a team of agents left a briefcase with the money in locker number 324 at the downtown bus depot as instructed. However, Viking retrieved the money through a fake back panel without being detected, and in retaliation for dealing in bad faith, he refused to give the instructions for diffusing the bomb. Aboard the Victoria, MacGyver and Charlie began working to diffuse the first two bombs, maintaining radio communication between them and with Thornton's team in Los Angeles. However, as Charlie penetrated the seal around the cabinet in order to test the yellow chemical, he breached the vacuum inside, revealing that the chemical was phosphorus, which flashed when exposed to air, triggered the thermocouple, and set off the bomb. Charlie died in the explosion.

Carole Tanner volunteered to take Charlie's place and to work in tandem with MacGyver to diffuse the remaining two bombs. Although MacGyver's tools had been lost in the ocean when he arrived, he and Carole used materials at hand to diffuse each trigger. A tube from a neon sign was used to create a momentary suction and safely withdraw the phosphorus from the vacuum, and the electrolyte acid was neutralized using a pastry tube, oven cleaner, and low fat milk so that it could be safely drained. MacGyver realized that the chemical detonator, the thermocouple, and the unstable electrolyte fluid had all been signatures of the Ling Chow Bomber in Cam Ranh Bay in 1973 when Donahue had commanded the sabotage control group there, and that Donahue would have been familiar with each of these triggers. When Pete ran a cross check, the computer determined that Donahue was the most likely suspect for Viking's identity.

Although the bombs seemed to be disabled after the acid was drained, they suddenly reactivated with a timer connected to two fuses, one yellow and one blue. MacGyver urged Donahue to make a judgement call about which fuse to pull in order to save the ship and capture Viking, and when Donahue insisted that he pull the blue, MacGyver pulled the yellow. The bombs were deactivated, Donahue's identity as Viking was confirmed, and he was immediately arrested.

Cross Reference: Officer Atkins, Mike Donahue, Captain Howard, Pacific Ocean, Charlie Robinson, Carole Tanner, Victoria

Episode Reference: Countdown