Zero Hour
Author's note: I'm going to try about making this the last story in the series, but seeing as how I've been trying to do it for 7 previous stories now, I'm not sure how good of luck I'll have with it. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is the last post-"Brutus" hurrah for the A-Team. A word of warning, this story is going to be a bit darker than previous others. Hope you enjoy.
Face rubbed one eye and said, more to himself than anyone else, "Okay, so let's try this again: we have General Stockwell, we also have General Fulbright – the Terror of Toledo, and we also have our old friend, Dimitri Pedavich, Russian butcher of the century…how do they all tie together? What did they all come together for?"
18 hours. It was now 18 hours since Hannibal Smith had been kidnapped, Hannibal and Murdock's fiancée, Jean Rhodes. 18 long, slow, dragging hours, 18 lifetimes, 18 eternities, no answers, no leads, nothing that they could go on to figure out what was going on, or where their Colonel had been taken last night.
Murdock sat in a chair across from Face and looked at him with tired, blank eyes that hadn't slept and had hardly even blinked in the last 18 hours. If he was actually listening to Face, who could tell?
The two men could hear B.A.'s heavy boots stomping around the house as the Sergeant restlessly paced from room to room, pausing only to look out the windows one at a time before moving on. This sudden turn of events had taken them all by surprise and they hadn't yet figured out how they were going to solve the problem. Initially after the abduction, when Face revealed to Murdock and B.A. who they were going up against again, they'd tried to get back on the trail of Hannibal's captors but by that time the getaway truck had been long gone. The tracks its tires had made had only gone so far before the torrential downpours and the asphalt of a paved street caused them to run out suddenly. They'd tried getting on the right trail again but after a while found they were only going around in circles, so they decided to double back to the house so they could figure out what they had to do now; and so far they were coming up empty.
"Okay," Face tried again, "So Stockwell was supposed to be at that airport last night to meet with Pedavich…why? How could these two possibly come together? Granted they have in common that they're the biggest scums of the earth, but still…and why Fulbright? Why was he there? Could he possibly be working with the two of them? If so, what's his gain in all this?"
Murdock finally blinked his eyes and kept them shut for a few seconds before finally forcing them open again.
"It all goes back to Stockwell," Murdock said.
Face looked at the pilot to see what he would say next, if Murdock was starting to brainstorm, it just might tornado. Murdock looked at Face with a now haunting expression on his face and said, "Jean tried to figure out what hospital he was taken to…"
"She never found out," Face assured him.
"He wasn't there at the airport last night," Murdock said, "Is he still in the hospital?"
Face shrugged and said, "Only one way to find out…we know where he was taken."
Murdock got up at the same time Face did, but Face reached over and pushed Murdock back in the chair and told him, "No Murdock, I better go this one alone, if Stockwell's there, or if he's conscious, you're the one he's after so you need to stay out of sight."
"But Faceman, I'm the only one here not a wanted fugitive," Murdock told him.
"Murdock, I'll be fine," Face assured him as he picked up his MP clothes, "I can work any scam a hundred ways, you know that."
Murdock got up and went over to the Lieutenant and just stared at him for a minute; Face stopped what he was doing and stared back at the Captain to see what happened next. No words were exchanged, and then finally Murdock leaned over, kissed Face on the forehead and told him in one of his more somber voices, "Godspeed, my friend," and then Murdock retreated from the living room and disappeared upstairs.
Face didn't really get what that was about, but didn't let it slow him down. B.A. came into the living room just in time to see Face finish getting into uniform.
"Where're you going, Face?" he asked suspiciously.
"Going to the hospital to make sure Stockwell didn't do a disappearing act in the middle of the night," he answered as he picked up his helmet but carried it in the crook of his arm, "See I've got this idea, B.A. I go to the hospital dressed as an MP, and I ask the nurse if any other MPs have come to see the General. And I convince her that the real MPs are fake MPs and make her believe I'm a real MP and tell her if any other MPs to show up to call me first and stall them from seeing Stockwell, you see?"
"No," B.A. answered firmly, "But good luck and don't get caught."
Face nodded and headed for the door. A few seconds after B.A. heard the car leave, he heard a noise from upstairs that sounded like something or someone hitting the floor.
"Murdock?" he called, and there was no response from the second floor, so B.A. took the stairs two at a time to see what was going on.
He found Murdock mostly sprawled on the floor, only slightly leaning against a dresser, banging one hand against the wood paneling on it as he cried out in anguish and fury. At his feet lay Jean's Captain Midnight decoder ring with the tracking device in it. B.A. knew what was going through Murdock's mind, if only. As it was they were left with absolutely no idea where Hannibal and Jean had been taken or even where to start looking for them. B.A. knelt down, grabbed Murdock under his arms and pulled the pilot to his feet, and he didn't know whether to be relieved or worried that Murdock didn't even try to fight him.
"What're we gonna do, Big Guy?" Murdock asked him, "What if we don't find them in time?"
"Hey Murdock, now's no time for your crazy talk," B.A. told him gruffly, "This ain't the first jam we been in without Hannibal, it ain't gonna be the last either, get that through your head," and he tapped Murdock on the side of his head, which might as well have been a well placed strike as strong as he was.
Murdock pulled himself together long enough to say to the Sergeant, "Hannibal's gone, I gotta figure out how we're gonna get him back now…I gotta…I gotta come up with…" but he couldn't finish the thought before collapsing against B.A. and burying his face in the larger man's shoulder as he started to sob uncontrollably. B.A. let him stay there for a few minutes until Murdock could compose himself, and in the meantime he maintained a neutral front for the pilot's sake, but he knew exactly what was racing through Murdock's mind, it wasn't anything he hadn't thought the exact same of about a thousand times since last night. Where had they taken Hannibal?
Hannibal tried to move slightly without waking the woman who had fallen asleep leaning on his shoulder. He'd had a good long time to get to know their surroundings, which currently was merely a single room, perhaps 30 feet by 20, with absolutely nothing in it, except the two of them.
Over the night, he'd tried to explain to Jean just how bad they could expect things to be now at the hands of Dimitri Pedavich. Out of all the bad guys the A-Team had gone up against, he had been among the worst, not merely because he was pure unconcentrated evil, but because he was smart as well. And this was just further proof, the man had been smart enough, unlike many of their captors over the years, to throw them in a completely empty room not filled with a bunch of odds and ends that could be put together to make a way out for them.
He felt Jean move against him and noticed she was starting to stir. No use putting off the bad news he supposed.
Jean yawned and rubbed her eyes and, remembering where they were, asked Hannibal, "How long have we been here?"
"About 12 hours I think," he answered.
Jean groaned and asked him, "Why didn't you wake me up?"
Hannibal explained simply, "We have no food or water, we have to save what strength we have."
Jean pulled away from him and ran her sandpaper tongue over the dry roof of her mouth and she asked Hannibal, "When're they coming for us?"
"Sorry to break it to you kid," Hannibal told her, "But part of how this guy works is he likes to leave his victims locked up for a couple days without food or water. He likes a challenge on occasion, that challenge being when people try to fight back on pure adrenaline and self will alone, unfortunately it's usually not enough with the way he plays…but we're gonna have to try."
Jean scratched the side of her face and asked Hannibal, "Can they hear us out there?"
Hannibal shook his head, "Doesn't matter, they won't come in until they know we're too weak to do anything."
She looked at him and asked, "Do you know where they brought us?"
Hannibal shook his head again, "I suspect half of the time we spent in the back of that truck was them driving around in circles just to throw us off, and it probably worked. Then we were blindfolded before we even got off the truck, all the way into this room. I told you before, this guy's actually competent, he knows what he's doing, that's what makes this hard."
Jean looked down at the floor and tried to think, she told Hannibal, "I remember stepping over the threshold to get in the front door…"
"If it was the front door," Hannibal told her.
"I remember crossing over three other raised thresholds before we came to this room…" she looked at him mournfully and added, "But I've never been good at judging distances, especially when I can't see them."
"It's alright," he said, "It wouldn't help us anyway."
"Do you remember anything?" Jean asked as she crawled over to him.
He shook his head, "They're smart, nobody talked, there were no noises in the background…"
"And people say the Japanese are the smart ones," Jean sneered.
Hannibal looked at her, and felt sorry for what he knew they had to look forward to.
"It's going to be a long wait, kid," he told her, "Why don't you just rest?"
A small laugh escaped through her lips, a laugh that didn't sound like Jean at all, not even when she acted like a maniac, though it did sound like something from that neighborhood.
"Go to sleep?" she asked bitterly, "So it won't hurt when they shoot us?" She shook her head, "No thanks, when our time comes, I will stand."
If only it was that simple, kid, he thought to himself, I wish it were.
"Come here," Hannibal put an arm around her and pulled her closer to him, "You would've been a good soldier, kid."
Jean didn't say anything in response, but he could feel her shaking her head against his shoulder.
"Listen, Jean," Hannibal said, his voice firm but low, "There's something that I need to say to you and you probably don't want to hear it but…"
"Let me guess," she picked her head up and looked at him, "Uh, 'Accept that we could die right here, anything else is just very good luck, figure you're dead', is that it?"
Hannibal couldn't stop a small chuckle from escaping, "You've heard that speech before, huh?"
"A couple times," Jean answered as she leaned against his shoulder again.
"I see," he replied as he rubbed her back slowly.
"Hannibal," she waited until he looked at her before she said, "We are going to die, aren't we?"
Hannibal paused briefly before telling her, "Any job my men and I take, there's always the chance that some…"
"Don't give me that," Jean cut him off, "Don't give me maybes and what if's, I'm not talking about that and I'm not interested in your hypotheticals, you and I are going to die here, aren't we?"
He was silent for a few seconds as if he was flabbergasted by her sudden outburst, and then he calmly told her, "Yeah, I think we are. Can you accept that?"
Jean nodded, "I've accepted death long before now. You know what it's like to be locked in a Cong sweatbox all day, but do you know what it's like being locked in a walk-in freezer until the temperature's below zero? Do you know what it's like to get caught in a car bomb and come out on fire?"
Hannibal gave a small smile and said to her, "You're a survivor kid, a fighter, just like us."
He could feel her shake her head again, "No, I'm nothing like any of you, I never was. I tried to be…I failed."
"Little early for last regrets, isn't it?" he asked, hoping it would get some kind of response out of her. "Hey maybe you can explain something to me, kid…Pedavich's men thought that they nabbed up Face last night, exactly how did they get you instead?"
Jean looked down at the floor and explained, "Face tripped coming back, I heard someone coming, I kicked him down the hill and a few seconds later they grabbed me, I offered no resistance so they wouldn't get curious and look around."
"You let them think you were Face, why?" Hannibal asked her.
She looked up towards him and said uncertainly, "I had a bad feeling about what was going to happen last night…seems I was right. Would Murdock have been any better off with both you and Face dead? Or just you and me instead?" She made eye contact with the Colonel and explained, "You see this way if we don't come back, he still has two of his best friends with him, he would be better off than if only one survived."
Hannibal was left speechless momentarily by her comment. When he was able to speak again, he said to her, "You're very brave, kid."
She shook her head, "I had it right the first time, I'm a coward. Accepting death doesn't mean you stop being afraid of it." She looked up towards the ceiling and asked Hannibal, "What do you suppose it's like? In the minute that it happens…what…"
Hannibal tightened his hold on her and told her, "Don't think about it."
"How can I not?" Jean asked. She looked up again and added, "I haven't killed anybody since you first found me. You'd think that would count for something but it doesn't, because thinking about something makes you just as guilty as if you'd actually done it. And since there have been and still are so many people in this world I want dead, I guess I know where I'm doomed to end up."
"Is a soldier damned merely because he killed? Do the reasons matter why?" Hannibal asked in his usual mind-twisting rhetoric. "It's more complex than that, and simultaneously, much simpler than we're willing to give credit to."
"Oh well," Jean sighed, "At least once it's over, I should be able to ask someone up there if my life was all in vain or not."
"God doesn't create lives without a purpose," Hannibal told her.
She looked at him and explained, "I meant my uncle…even before he died it had been a good long while since I last saw him or talked to him. But we were so much alike and we understood each other so well, maybe he can explain what all this has been for. You'll think it's weird, but I would've sworn I could feel his presence with me last night when we went out."
"Probably was," he said.
A moment of silence passed between them before Hannibal looked at Jean and said to her, "Listen, Jean, if we are going to die, and I think it's a safe bet that we are, there's something I want to tell you."
"What?" she asked uncertainly.
"I've enjoyed having you as a member of this family," he told her, "It's been a pleasure having the chance to watch you grow up over the last couple years, and it's been fun having the opportunity to see Murdock have someone else in his life, someone who was able and willing to take the job full-time," he held her close in an awkward hug and said, "Thanks for the privilege."
Jean tried to smile but her eyes were beginning to cloud up with tears, still she maintained a small smile and tried to sound nonchalant as she said to Hannibal, "You'll excuse me…I seem to be doing more crying in the last few weeks than I ever did in my whole life."
He smiled back in response and said, "Nothing wrong with that, kid."
Jean's face pressed between his shoulder and the crook of his neck again, for the first few seconds she was stiff as a board, Hannibal couldn't even hear her breathing. Then, after a little while more, he could feel her whole body trembling against him as she broke down sobbing. He patted her back sympathetically and said softly, "It's okay, kid…it's okay."
Face removed his MP helmet and tossed it like a football, not even bothering to see where it landed. He walked over to B.A. who was in the process of either loading up or unloading the van and explained, "Stockwell hasn't gone anywhere, he's still blissfully unconscious in that hospital, I think the skull fracture took."
"You sure he ain't faking?" B.A. asked, a loud note of skepticism in his voice.
"B.A., this guy has almost no brain wave activity coming up on the monitors," Face told him, "And besides, just to make sure, I lit a match against his foot until I singed one of his toenails." He shook his head, "If that guy's faking, he's the best there is." He eyed the contents from the van and asked, "Eh, what's going on?"
"Murdock says he' got an idea how to find Hannibal," B.A. said.
"What is it?" Face asked curiously.
Murdock came out the front door and as if he'd been listening to the conversation, said to Face, "It occurred to me that the plant at the Federal Building wasn't for Stockwell, it was for Pedavich. The men who ambushed us last night, who took Hannibal and Jean, they were all dressed as MPs. Now, Stockwell was supposed to meet Pedavich last night, which we've deduced means that somehow these two men put their massive differences aside to join forces and work together for the purpose of catching us, the A-Team."
"Stockwell wants you, Pedavich wants Hannibal," Face realized.
"And where does that leave us?" B.A. asked.
"That," Murdock said, "Is a very good question, Big Guy, unfortunately I haven't been able to figure out the answer just yet. But! The point is for these two to work together, they have to have a go-between who can get in contact with both sides at any given time."
"What about Decker?" Face asked, "We haven't seen him since last night."
"No but…" Murdock gave a mischievous smirk as he deepened his voice and said, "General Bullen of the United States Army", though it sounded like his impersonation of Henry Kissinger, and then resumed his normal voice, "Called Colonel Decker this afternoon to find out what he knows about last night. Officially he is as stumped as we are."
"And unofficially?" Face asked.
"Unofficially he knew I was calling but we're taking no chances that the line may be tapped," Murdock said, "The unasked question was if there was something leading to a higher power, General Bullen in question himself, that could tie it all in? How far does this corruption within the military run? There are already two U.S. Generals involved in this, why not three? Decker mentioned without explicitly saying anything, that Jean had mentioned having friends in high places who kept an eye on the General and all he oversaw."
"Not us," Face said, "We don't know anything about him."
"Correct, Faceman, we don't, but I think I know who does," Murdock said, "Who're the only other friends Jean has beside us?"
"The stuntmen from the film studio," Face said.
"That is correct but you will recall she is not particularly close to Jason Crowley or Peter Kellerman, which leaves…"
"Tommy Trang," Face said, "And probably his five brothers and sister as well."
"And you go to the head of the class, oh Facial One," Murdock said, "And if he's not our man I suspect we'll find the correct one somewhere in the same bloodline. After all it bears stressing that during our absences, Jean enlisted the help of the Trangs to infiltrate the Federal Building under the guise of workers; allowing them to move about undetected and perhaps to gain insight to far more of the personnel there, and their goings-on, than we know of. So I believe we need to go pay the Trang Seven a visit immediately, they've already been informed that we're coming."
"This guy Pedavich must be pretty good at who he hires," V.C. Trang told the A-Team when they came to visit, "He gets a bunch of Russians who come to America, they lose their accents, they speak English, they act American, they all get jobs as MPs so we don't know we're supposed to be looking for them. How long in advance could this have been planned?"
"A guy like Pedavich," Face said, "Time's not a priority to him, only vengeance, he could've had this planned since we got him put in prison six years ago, my question is how he got out?"
"Because European criminals can't bribe their way out, right?" Tommy Trang asked, "Did this guy have diplomatic immunity or something?"
"He has universal immunity," Face said, "He's responsible for murders committed in Russia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Ukraine, nobody ever touched him until we came along, they should have lined this guy against the wall and used a firing squad."
"Yeah, but they're so much more civilized than America with capital punishment, therefore they let him live so he can break out or find a way to get out, and start butchering people all over again," V.C. said, "And do it on a global basis."
"We're wasting time," Face told the others, "We need to figure out where these guys went so we can figure out where Hannibal is."
Murdock turned to V.C. and said, "You guys would be at the building after hours, did you ever see the MPs leave for the night? Maybe see where they went? Maybe you heard something?"
"I'm sorry, Murdock," she replied, "We weren't there to notice them, we were there checking for bugs in the phone, looking through records, paperwork…"
"And you're sure that this General Bullen isn't involved?" Face asked.
"No-no-no," V.C. shook her head, "I clean his house every week, I hear everything that goes on, he's really not interested in catching the A-Team either, like Decker he's only putting on a public display of interest in the matter due to political pressure."
"How did you manage to pull that off?" B.A. asked.
"His wife doesn't do a lot of background work on her domestic help," V.C. said, "Ignorance can be bliss for both sides sometimes."
"So we're back to square one, Stockwell and Fulbright, and how do they tie together?" Face asked.
"And how does Stockwell tie to Pedavich?" Murdock asked.
"This guy came in on a private jet, where did all of his accomplices come in from?" Stephen Trang asked.
"I don't know," Face said, "Another private jet I suppose?"
"At the same airport?" he asked.
"What about the airport?" V.C. asked, "Did you try following the tire tracks from the armored truck?"
"Rain wiped part of them out, and the other part we followed until they ran out when the paved roads started up again," Face said, "But after that, there are about a hundred different possibilities as to where that truck could've gone, where it could've turned off, where it might've gone to, where it could've been stashed or abandoned or set on fire. We checked as many as we could with the limitations we have, we couldn't find anything."
"So what?" Tommy asked, already heading towards the door, "What difference does that make? We have the resources, let's exhaust them all."
"He's right," V.C. said, "Now that the rain's stopped we can get a chopper and check by air."
"You know how to fly?" Face asked in disbelief.
"No, but he does," V.C. pointed to Murdock, "He was your pilot, right?"
"That's what they all say," Murdock said.
"Alright," V.C. said to Face, "You're the con man, so con a helicopter, he'll check by air, B.A. can go in his van, you check in your corvette, we'll split up and cover the rest, and we'll stay in touch through our radios."
"When did we keep in radio contact with you?" Face asked.
"You didn't," V.C. told him, "We kept in contact with each other back when we were hitting the grocery trucks, remember?"
"Never mind that," B.A. said, "We gotta get moving 'fore Hannibal runs out of time."
"He's nearing 24 hours without any food or water if we know our butcher friend," Face said, "Now he survived Ho Chi Minh's death camp so that's not going to be too bad for him, but…"
"But deprivation for the purpose of disorienting is only a small part of what's in store for both he and Jean," Murdock said, "We gotta move, now!"