A/N: This short story comes from a vague idea I've had for a long time but am only now finding myself ready to pursue. I'd like to thank (blame) my sister and her boyfriend for watching the A-Team and inspiring in me a most sentimental nostalgia for the days when I had an A-Team quote or story for every situation. Instead of pretending I don't still enjoy the show almost as much as when I was truly, certifiably obsessed, I've decided to embrace this renewed enthusiasm for my old flame of a fandom while it runs its course. Note: This story may or may not fit with a chronology including my other stories. I'm not sweating the truly small stuff with this one, but letting the story take me in its own direction of choice and enjoying the ride.
Chapter 1: The Accident
I firmly believe there are people in this world who were made to survive in cold climates. I also firmly believe that I am not one of those people. In fact, only under the rarest, most dire misfortune would you ever find me in a location where the temperature is anywhere below a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
This was an instance of such dire misfortune.
Since we received our presidential pardon and got out of Stockwell's stranglehold, our fame as a group of soldiers for hire exploded like a row of Roman candles on Independence Day. Everybody wanted to hire the legendary A-Team to solve their problems... no matter how small. Even without the military breathing down our necks, Hannibal had his work cut out for him with screening clients, making sure they had no ties to our old enemies and that the cases they presented were truly worth our time. We did accidentally take a case that turned out to be a publicity stunt for a celebrity, and intentionally take a case involving an overbearing homeowners' association that was really just an excuse to help an older veteran and his wife repair their roof. Otherwise, we mostly dealt with loan sharks, corrupt law enforcement, and the other usual problems that were too unimportant for the government to handle, and as long as we didn't damage anything too vital, the same government looked the other way.
But among the run-of-the-mill cases, we occasionally hit the jackpot. Our current case was a dream on paper: a wealthy widow hired us to protect her beautiful daughter after an attempted kidnapping. After three weeks, Ms. Amelia Whittaker would leave for her new job in Paris as a fashion designer, but until we could see her safely onto the plane, we took up residence in the family mansion, accompanied the girl everywhere as her bodyguards, and were paid an extremely generous amount.
In theory, all of this should have made up for the fact that we had to stay in Wisconsin for three weeks in the dead of winter. But I knew the case sounded too good to be true, and when Hannibal elected to take it despite my misgivings, it didn't take long for all my worst fears to be confirmed.
The beautiful Ms. Amelia turned out to be as icy as the weather and rebuffed all my attempts at a friendly short-term relationship. And even in the heated palatial dwelling of the late Charles Whittaker, formidable dairy tycoon, the cold still managed to squeeze its numbing fingers into the corners of every room. As we accompanied Ms. Amelia throughout her day – standing at strategic posts around the house when she was in, chauffeuring her in one car and following with an armed escort in another when she wanted to go out, and taking turns standing watch outside her door all night – no diversions distracted me from the fact that I was really truly cold. In those long hours after midnight as I sat outside the door of the shapely brunette who never gave us a second glance unless we got in her way, I almost wished she would get kidnapped despite all our efforts. Then at least if we rescued her, she might show us some gratitude. And then we wouldn't have to keep watch out in the hallway after the sun was long gone and central heating couldn't keep up with the drop in temperature. By the time BA relieved me each night at 3 AM, my hands, feet, and nose had turned to ice, and I had to make a concerted effort to stop shivering. It became my ritual to slip into the bathroom and run a steaming hot bath, sinking as deep as I could into the water, enjoying the one time in the day I could be really warm and praying this would all be over soon.
When I lodged a formal complaint with Hannibal (not counting the regular hints I had been dropping of how inconvenient the whole situation was), he told me I was being overly dramatic. I strongly disagreed.
Towards the end of our second week of torture, everyone else on the team decided my grievances regarding the temperature were ruining their idea of a good time, and they had no qualms about telling me so. Murdock at least tried to coax me into believing things were not so bad; BA basically told me he was done putting up with my bad attitude (which was ironic, coming from him), and Hannibal switched to military mode when addressing my complaints or if I even happened to look as miserable as I felt, giving me no sympathy whatsoever. I knew things could only go downhill from there.
Then came the afternoon when Hannibal decided to straighten me out using one of his favorite techniques as a commander: making me do the very thing I didn't want to do in the hopes that I'd snap out of it. He ordered me to drive out alone to a dinky hunting supply store to find out if anyone fitting the descriptions of our protectee's attempted kidnappers had bought weapons there recently. The store, called Landon's, was the closest place to buy guns relative to our current location – and, like our current location, it happened to be in the middle of nowhere.
Naturally, I begged; I pleaded; I set out every single argument I could think of about why we didn't need to go, why I shouldn't be the one to go, why the effort would be useless...
In the end, Hannibal cut me off with, "We need this information, and you're the one who's going to get it for us. That's an order, Lieutenant."
I hate it when he pulls rank on me.
That was how I found myself in a plaid shirt, jeans, and boots, with a heavy parka, scarf, gloves, and an orange knit hat, driving the gardener's beat-up Ford pickup in 26 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of 19 down back roads covered with new-fallen snow. New as of this morning, so the snow plows hadn't found time to come out and clear it away yet, and it was hard to see or avoid the potholes which had accumulated since the first snow, probably around November. How wonderful to see our tax dollars at work.
According to the map spread out on the seat beside me, Landon's was about twenty miles from the mansion, which on snowy back roads meant it would take at least half an hour to get there. The heater kicked on ten minutes into the drive, just about the time my teeth were ready to chatter right out of my head.
"I swear, Hannibal," I muttered around the clickety-clack, "if I get frostbite on this trip, you're paying the doctor bills."
It was early afternoon, and the roads were quiet. Anyone up to braving the elements for work had left hours ago. Even crazy people who willingly spent half the year in the Midwestern Arctic weren't taking any pleasure trips today. I had passed maybe three vehicles since I got out on the road. We really were down in the boondocks.
The thought brought back a hit from my teenage years. By this time my jaw was mostly stationary again, and I found myself humming the catchy tune.
"Down in the boondocks... down in the boondocks... People put me down 'cause that's the side of town I was born in."
I began to serenade the steering wheel.
"I love her, she loves me, but I don't fit her society... Lord have mercy on the boy from down in the boondocks."
The song always reminded me of Lisa Gates, the stunning sixteen-year-old I fell in love with during Geometry who could never be convinced that I was good enough for her. Her parents had a very successful law firm and instilled in their lovely daughter the value of reputation and money, neither of which I, as an orphan, had at the time. So Lisa remained forever out of reach, and I became more determined than ever to make a name for myself as soon as I was legally old enough to control my destiny.
Of course, it was obvious how well that had turned out. Twenty years later, I was somewhat famous as a member of the no-longer-fugitive A-Team, but that did me no good in the eyes of our client, another daughter of well-known, well-to-do parents. For all my years of experience and wealth of charm, I was still the orphan with no family name. True, I had to admit that Hannibal, BA, and Murdock had become my second family – we certainly fought like family – but formally speaking I had no ties. Well, except for my half-sister Ellen, who had kept herself and her family at a distance even though I no longer lived undercover.
The last line of the song seemed to fit my mood now:
"One fine day, I'll find the way to move from this old shack. I'll hold my head up like a king, and I never never will look back. Until that morning I'll work and slave, and I'll save every dime. But tonight she'll have to steal away to see me one more time."
I sighed and stretched a little. I should be getting to Landon's soon. I looked at the clock: forty-three minutes had passed. That didn't make sense; I should have found it by now. Had I missed it?
I picked up the map and tried to locate my intended path. I had been traveling along Blackwood Road, and I should have reached a turn-off for Salome Drive several minutes ago. Either I had miscalculated the timing and it was still ahead of me, or I had passed it without seeing it.
I drove a few more minutes without seeing Salome Drive. Most likely it was behind me, so I made a three-point turn on the two-lane road and headed back the way I came, cursing my distraction for prolonging the uncomfortable journey. This time, I would not miss the turn.
As I drove, I used my left hand to steer and my right hand to hold up the map. Glancing back and forth from the snow-covered view out the windshield to the map in front of me, I tried to find a landmark or something to pinpoint where I was. Nothing popped out. I squinted at the map and wondered if maybe I could have taken the wrong road entirely somewhere along the line.
That's when it happened.
Underneath a layer of unplowed snow, a patch of black ice remained concealed... until I drove straight into it. The tires lost their grip and the truck went skidding sideways toward the edge of the road, out of control. There was no shoulder on this road; only a sharp slope down into a ditch.
Panicking, I spun the steering wheel hard to the left, but all that did was cause the back of the truck to drift forward until the vehicle was facing the opposite side of the road as it shot over the edge.
I braced myself and watched the front tires leave the road as the back of the truck tipped over. My eyes snapped closed, and I stopped breathing until the impact shuddered its way up the truck. Crashing, careening, slamming, rolling, with me inside, held against my seat by nothing but a fragile strap of fabric. In a matter of seconds, I might be dead.
And then, the movement stopped with a final clang. Several seconds of silence. I sucked in a huge breath and nervously opened my eyes.
Outside, the sky was where the ground should be.
My heart pounded in my ears. I was gasping for breath. Military training kicked in. I checked my hands and arms. There was pain in my left shoulder - it was out of place. Dislocated, probably from falling hard on the seatbelt. I checked my legs. They were sore, but nothing was broken as far as I could tell. I ran my right hand over my face and found where a strip of skin had been scraped off my forehead, probably by the steering wheel. It was bleeding a fair amount, but wasn't deep. I didn't know if I had internal injuries, but considering the seatbelt had kept me pretty secure in the seat, it was unlikely.
Now, how to get out of the truck. The cab was mostly intact, if a bit flatter, and also upside down, which meant my head was pointing towards the ground as my full weight rested in the seatbelt. As soon as I undid the seatbelt, I would fall head-first onto the ceiling, which was now the floor. Normally, I would keep a grip on the top part of the seatbelt while unfastening it to slow my descent, but the belt was on the same side as my dislocated shoulder, making things more complicated. With some squirming and a little pain in my sore shoulder, I swiveled around until my back rested on the seatbelt and I was facing the seat. This position gave me an even better handhold on the seat itself with my right hand, and once I had a good grip, I could just reach the seatbelt buckle with my left hand, unfasten it, and then lower myself gradually out of the seat.
Once free, I tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge. The crank for the window worked just fine, though, and within moments I had an opening. My shoulder made crawling out on top of the snow a painful maneuver, but at long last I got clear of the truck.
The first thing I did was sit down, pull my scarf off, and tie a makeshift sling for my arm so I didn't aggravate the injury any more than necessary. When that was done, I stood and took a few steps backward to survey the damage. The hood and the bed of the truck had been visibly compacted, one of the tires lay several feet away, and the roof of the cab could not be easily distinguished from the ground beneath. I was lucky I hadn't been seriously hurt.
I took stock of my surroundings. The bare white landscape stretched from the ditch out to the distant woods. I climbed up the side of the ditch to stand on the road. Still nothing but snow and trees in sight. Maybe I wasn't so lucky after all.
The wind with its chill of 19 degrees hit me hard at my new vantage point, and I shivered. I needed to find shelter, and fast. And I needed to get to a phone and call the team so they knew what happened.
Carefully pulling up my left sleeve so as not to jostle my arm in the sling, I checked my watch. It had been almost an hour since I left the Whittaker estate. Soon, once I hadn't returned or called to check in within a reasonable time, the team would assume I'd been attacked or worse and come out to track me down. They would probably think Amelia's kidnappers, whom we suspected we'd seen tailing us during a few of Amelia's outings, had possibly tailed me to Landon's and then been tipped off when I started asking questions about weapons. The team would come out prepared for a firefight. Little did they know that I, with no help from our vicious friends, had simply gotten lost and driven into an ice patch without ever reaching my destination. At least now, maybe Hannibal would consider my point that winter in Wisconsin was no picnic. Or he might just assume I'd been trying to make a mess of my assignment in protest – because how could I be stupid enough to do this on accident? That was a question I was still trying to answer myself.
I took a deep breath and blew out a giant cloud. I would follow the road back in the direction of the estate and keep a lookout for Salome Drive or any other turnoff that looked likely to lead to a pocket of civilization. Just one house would do. One house with an occupant and a phone.
Pulling my hat down around my ears, I began to walk crossways into the wind.
A/N: I'm indebted to Billy Joe Royal for singing the fun lyrics of "Down in the Boondocks" (1965) and to the Rolling Stones for inspiring this story's title with their song "Winter" (1973).