Mischief Night

The door to Colonel Decker's office was dark, no light shone through the frosted glass window. It was late, the Federal Building was largely empty, most everyone had gone home for the night hours ago. The approaching footsteps echoed deafeningly as an unexpected visitor marched down the large and vacant corridor leading directly to the colonel's office. The door was unlocked, it opened, and very little light shone in, but enough to see the Colonel leaned back in his chair, his head tilted back, and Roderick Decker was in a dead sleep.

Hannibal Smith closed the door behind him without making a sound, and went around to the desk and watched the Colonel sleeping soundly for a few seconds before tapping the not-so-esteemed Colonel on the head to wake him up. Decker opened his eyes, even in the dark able to make out who his uninvited visitor was, let out a slow exhale of contempt, sat up straight, and collected his hat from where it rested on his chest.

"Trick or treat," Hannibal said with an all too confident grin on his face.

However the other colonel wasn't about to give in to Hannibal's jokes and his comment was disregarded entirely.

"I'm having a sign painted on that door," Decker said in a low, groggy voice as he straightened himself up.

Hannibal smirked knowingly, "Oh really? What's it say?"

" 'No visitors'," Decker replied, and he asked Hannibal, "What do you want, Smith?"

"I just thought you might like to know," Hannibal told him in a slightly more serious tone, "If you want to continue this wild goose chase for the sake of your superiors, we've got a new mission we're leaving for first thing in the morning."

It had been a few weeks since they'd last had an encounter with Decker and the MPs and Hannibal had decided it was time to get everybody riled up again. The truth of the matter was that he and Decker were equally in a position that each could just barely tolerate the other; Decker had no interest in seeing the A-Team caught and court-martialed, but he was willing to go along with it. The general who had sought him out for the job was dumb enough to believe it, and the MPs were young and inexperienced enough to blindly buy every word he said; if he said jump, they jumped, if he said chase down the A-Team, they certainly tried, but the whole lot of them always wound up looking like the last place losers of a combination demolition derby/wacky race. Hannibal knew at the core of it all, Decker got a laugh out of how stupid the army wound up looking every time this happened, and yet they still hadn't learned their lesson and still expected somebody to catch the A-Team. Neither one of them knew how long it would be before they transferred Decker out to bring in somebody more 'competent', but the two colonels had decided in whatever time they had, to give the army a run for all they were worth, and make the whole military look like an even bigger bunch of jackasses than Lynch was able to in his whole 10 years chasing the Team.

To Hannibal, it wasn't even a matter of revenge or 'getting even', because nothing could even the score of what the army they had served in had done to them, but he did get a kick out of making the men in green and their superiors actually giving the orders all look like a bunch of idiots. For Decker it was more personal though, he'd confided into Hannibal early on that he saw it as a perfect opportunity to indirectly make the army suffer for 'knocking the hat off his career and any possibility of furthering his rank'. They'd come to him because he was the best at what he did, but he knew even that wouldn't be enough to guarantee a higher rank, even if he did capture the A-Team himself, they would find some loophole to keep him exactly where he was. He knew full well from the start that they were just stringing him along to get somebody else to do their dirty work for them, as usual. If he was going to go down anyway, he intended to make sure a few others came with him; if he was going to be disgraced by his constant failure to capture the A-Team, he would see to it the Generals who gave him the job looked like the bigger idiots for selecting him.

Hannibal didn't necessarily agree with the man because he still remembered what Decker had been responsible for back in Vietnam, but he also knew nothing could change the past and if they could wind up with a trump card up their sleeve that would further ensure their constant getaway from the MPs, then he was willing to call a truce with the disgruntled colonel. Still, for now, Hannibal had decided this was best kept between the two of them only; as far as the rest of the A-Team was concerned, Decker was their enemy who would have them on the first plane back to Fort Bragg if he caught them. It made for a much more convincing show for everyone involved when Face, B.A. and Murdock thought they were giving it their all to get away from the MPs; though Decker had taken measures to make sure Murdock's part on the Team remained a mystery. Any time they met up during a confrontation, Decker always made sure to purposely not see Murdock, because few of the MPs on the job were familiar enough with the pilot's background to actually identify him. And so, like clockwork, Hannibal would get in touch with Decker and give him a tip about an upcoming mission, where they could be found, and like clockwork Decker would come with a parade of MPs for a big show, just like clockwork, never fail.

"I don't care," Decker replied dismissively.

Hannibal did a double take, that wasn't the Roderick Decker he knew. "You sick or something, Decker?"

"You might say that," Decker opened his jacket and pulled up the right side of his shirt, revealing a discolored lump sticking out of his abdomen.

"Looks like you're trying to pass an egg," Hannibal said, "How long have you had that?"

"I've been waiting for a damn sawbones to look at it for three weeks. You remember, don't you, Smith? The time you had that Sergeant of yours flip our car like a cheeseburger?"

Hannibal snorted and tried to cover it, and tried to say with a straight face, "Sorry, Roderick ol' boy, you walked into that one."

"And spent half an hour getting it back on its wheels," he replied.

"3 weeks and no one's even looked at it?" Hannibal asked in disbelief, "Boy the country sure knows how to treat the men that served it, doesn't it?"

Decker only groaned under his breath in response as he buttoned his jacket again.

"So when are you getting it looked at?" Hannibal asked.

"8 A.M. tomorrow morning," Decker told him, "After which I'm sure the surgery will be imminent, followed by roughly a 2 week recovery in the hospital. You're on your own, Smith."

"Well don't think it won't be fun without you, Decker," Hannibal told him, "Because it will."

"Very funny," Decker replied.

"Providing the local yokel arm of the law doesn't get involved, we could actually have a job for once with no interruptions," Hannibal said, "We're overdue for one of those."

"How did you even get in here?" Decker wanted to know.

Despite being in the dark, Hannibal pointed to her wristwatch, "It's after 1 o' clock in the morning, Roderick, anybody who's still here isn't going to pay attention."

"Should've guessed."

"Oh well, good luck at the doctor's tomorrow," Hannibal said as he turned and headed for the door.

"By the way, Smith, what is this latest case of yours?"

"Oh, you'll get a kick out of this one," Hannibal told him as he turned back towards the colonel, "A haunted house." With that he went out the door and pulled it shut behind him, notably louder this time.

"Why not?" Decker asked over a grimace as his hernia gave him a fresh bout of trouble.