Safe and Insane
"We can't even take a vacation without running into trouble," Face groaned as he threw the back door of the van shut.
"Well we'd run into it a lot less if you'd stop stopping for every pretty girl on the side of the road, Faceman," Murdock told his friend, "Everybody knows by now that that's your weakness."
"And that's how we keep winding up with the MPs on our tail," Hannibal added.
"You're not going to give me a break, are you?" Face asked, "What would you have done, a woman stranded by the side of the road with her car broken down?"
"First of all make sure it's actually broken down," Hannibal told his Lieutenant.
"And after that?" Face asked.
"Face," Hannibal said to him, "I'm going to ask you one question and I want you to think about the answer."
"Alright," Face said, not sounding concerned at all as to what the question might be.
"In all the women you've seen stranded by the side of the road, what are the odds that none of them, not a single solitary one of them, belongs to the Auto Club?"
"Besides," Murdock threw in, "The way they're usually dressed, they'd have no trouble getting a ride to a payphone if nothing else."
"B.A." Face turned to the Sergeant, without question the most respectful towards women member of the Team, "Help me out here."
"No way, man," B.A. shook his head.
"Why not?" Face wanted to know.
"Because they' right," B.A. responded, "Anytime somebody breaks down when you driving by, they all look alike."
"Like what?" Face asked inquisitively, temporarily ignoring the blaring July heat burning down on them as they stood out under the full sun.
"You know what," B.A. told him, "Never any mothers with their kids, never any dudes broken down, never no old ladies either, always just a bunch of long legged, long haired, bleached blonde…"
"Bimbos, B.A.?" Murdock offered only too happily.
"Well…" B.A. was hesitant to actually say it, "And there's a reason they all look alike, because they all specifically look like that to get your attention."
"Which they do," Hannibal added.
"Jeez," Face remarked, "If I wanted to get it from all ends, I wouldn't have come on this vacation."
"And if you hadn't come on this vacation with us," Hannibal reminded him, "You'd be right where Decker wanted you to be, in the cell of a military prison."
Face was tightlipped for a few seconds as he considered that, before asking, "Okay, so who wants to barbecue for lunch?"
Hannibal looked to the lake house Face had managed to scam for them last minute, pretty impressive given so many places on the water were taken up for the 4th of July holiday. All the same…Hannibal had already been inside to give the place a once over, check it for bugs, cameras, traps, and also to see if it was actually worth staying in for the weekend. Overall the house itself was in pretty fair condition, but…
"This place is pretty bare boned," Hannibal told his men, "We're going to need to get some groceries."
"Right," Murdock said.
"And," Hannibal turned to Face, "We're going to need to get some fireworks."
"Fireworks?" Face repeated as if the word was foreign to him.
"You know, Faceguy," Murdock said as he went over to his friend and said, "Those things with fuses in them that you light and then get the hell away from before they blow up and make ooh so 'purdy explosions."
"What do we need fireworks for?" Face asked.
"Well incase you forgot, Face, it is the 4th of July," Hannibal said, "We wouldn't exactly be drawing attention to ourselves since everybody and his brother is going to shoot them off. Besides, certain kinds will come in very handy incase Decker and the MPs decide to pay us a little visit."
"Like what?" Face wanted to know.
"Like those 5 minute smoke flares," Murdock said, "And bottle rockets we can aim at them."
"Long rolls of firecrackers we can place under their cars should they leave them unattended," Hannibal added, "We could light them and make a break and be long gone before they were ever able to actually get in their cars again."
"And flashing strobes," Murdock continued, "Nothing will confuse the hell out of them like some of those things in the middle of the night."
"And there's nothing wrong with getting a few that are just visually appealing, that is the main purpose of their creation," Hannibal added with an all too familiar grin on his face.
"Alright, alright," Face whined, "Get me a list and I'll figure a way to scam us a few boxes of the stuff."
Hannibal shook his head, "Negative, Face, we're not scamming any of it, you're our finance man, we're going to finance this little transaction."
"What in the hell for?" Face asked, "You know how much that stuff's going to cost? It'd be easier to just pull one over on them, could say uh…manufacture recall or…"
Hannibal shook his head again and raised his hand to get his Lieutenant's attention, "Not this time, Face. This time it's going to be strictly by the book."
"How come?" Face wanted to know.
"Because this is not the fireworks manufacturers or their retail warehousing, these are little Mom and Pop vendors who give up their whole holiday to make a living off of making sure everybody else gets to enjoy their holiday with the products they sell. From sunup to sundown the whole holiday weekend they're out in this obscene heat, no breaks, no shift changes, at best only a couple hours in the whole Independence Day stretch to enjoy it for themselves with their own families. That's devoted service."
"That's one weekend out of the year," Face pointed out.
"A major weekend, especially to the vendors who have kids of their own, missing a regular humdrum weekend with their kids is bad enough, but giving up a national holiday with them to make some money and make other people's holiday enjoyable, that's something else altogether. They're entitled to every dollar they make because of the sacrifice it takes to earn it, that time lost is not something that can ever be replaced, and they do it every year, without complaint, so other families can have a good time."
Face was quiet for a few seconds after Hannibal's speech, and said lowly, "I never thought of it like that."
"Well now you will," Hannibal told him, "The vendors here are like the soldiers on the front line, they just answered a call, it was somebody else thousands of miles away who made the call in the first place to be answered."
"Deep, Colonel," Murdock said, "Real deep."
"Oh brother," B.A. just rolled his eyes.
"Alright, we'll split the work up, Face, you and B.A. take the van first and pick up enough groceries to last us through till Monday, should we get lucky and the MPs don't follow us here."
"Right," Face said.
"Murdock," Hannibal turned to his Captain, "You make a list, and when they get back from the store, we're going to go make some firework vender a very rich man."
"Aye-Aye, Colonel," Murdock saluted excitedly.
"You realize of course," Face said to B.A. as they headed towards the van, "It doesn't matter if Decker shows up or not, those two are going to spend the next 24 hours blowing up 3 million firecrackers just for the hell of it."
"You just figure that out?" B.A. asked.
"Well, I guess while we're out it'd be a good idea to invest in some earplugs," Face thought.
Behind them they heard a particularly loud array of noises and realized it was Murdock imitating the explosions of a few choice items they planned to set off later.
"Try a few boxes of them," B.A. replied.
"You don't suppose it'd be too much to hope for a large downpour so nothing lights, do you?" Face asked.
"Knowing Hannibal," B.A. told him and shook his head, "He wouldn't let that stop him."
"Yeah, I suppose not," Face groaned in defeat.
"Okay, Murdock, now explain to me again what happened?" Face asked.
Murdock remained indifferent at the aloe gel being put on the burns on his arm as he started to explain from where he sat on the kitchen counter, "You know those bee fireworks? Those flying bees that go up-up-up and then crash and burn?"
"Yeah," Face said as he rubbed the aloe in.
"Well one of them crashed and burnt on one of the paper bags the rest of the fireworks were in," Murdock said, "And I tried stomping it out before it spread to the rest of the fireworks but obviously I was too late."
"Uh huh," Face said, "So what happened?"
"Oh it was terrible," Murdock said in a dramatic tone, "Sparks hissing everywhere, things screaming," he gave a high pitched demonstration, "Things reporting" and gave a rough facsimile of the booming reports, "Things shooting!"
"But what happened to you?" Face asked.
"There was this little bomber airplane in there that got airborne and came right at me."
"Uh huh."
"And I fell back just before it hit me when it exploded."
"And that's how you hurt your back?"
"Yeah."
"And what about your arm?"
"One of the things that went off was this orange smoke ball, and when it went off it started spewing hot ashes out like a volcano, and they splattered all over my hand and arm."
"You're lucky none of it's blistered."
"I know it," Murdock replied.
"I knew you was a crazy fool," B.A. said, "You'd have to be to have so many things go wrong at once."
Face washed his hands and then picked up a Q-tip and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide as he turned around towards the kitchen table and asked, "And what happened to you, Hannibal?"
Hannibal sneered as he got the bloody cut in the corner of his mouth dabbed with the peroxide and said, "Nothing so fantastic as all that."
"Well tell it to us anyway," Face told him as he examined the skinned spots on Hannibal's arm.
"You know those thunder firecrackers?" Hannibal asked, "Those really loud ones?"
"Yeah, what about them?" Face wanted to know.
"Well they are also the fastest ones to go off, usually when you light a string you have what, 2-3 seconds before they start exploding? I'd barely even turned around when they started blowing up, I thought some of them hit me in the back and I tripped, wound up face first on the pavement."
"And crawled the rest of the way before the explosions stopped," Murdock added.
"You scared the hell out of us, Hannibal," Face told their leader.
"How?" Hannibal asked in disbelief.
"HOW?!" Face repeated, "We saw you fall, right on your arm, and then when you didn't get up I thought for sure you'd broken your arm in the fall, do you realize what would've happened then?"
Hannibal paused to think on it and asked humorously, "What, I'd get sent to bed without any supper?"
Murdock snickered and said, "Have to admit, Faceman, you're doing a mighty good impression of a mother hen right about now," and did a chicken call, drawing a chuckle out of Hannibal as well.
Face was still not amused. "Really, Hannibal, a man your age, a Green Beret, how do you do these things? Why do you do these things?"
Hannibal's only answer was an amused, "Why not?"
Face let out an unintelligible sound of frustration and practically grabbed at his hair.
"Faceman," Murdock said, "The 4th of July only comes once a year, what better time to get beat up, knocked down, burnt up, cut up, if not now?"
Face shook his head in disbelief and just grumbled.
"Something I've remembered all my life," Hannibal said to nobody in particular, just it seemed to hear himself talk, "In a movie, Bob Hope says to Paulette Goddard that he's mentally retarded, and I quote: 'I'm still 11 years old when it comes to the 4th of July, circuses, and haunted houses'."
"Don't flatter yourself, Hannibal," B.A. said.
"That would explain so much though," Face remarked.
"Well get used to it, Face," Hannibal told him, "Because it's not even night yet, we've still got all the big stuff to shoot off when the sun goes down."
Face hit himself in the head and murmured, "Sometimes I think it'd be easier just to get caught."
"I heard that, Lieutenant," Hannibal spoke up.
Face's whole body seemed to spasm, then tighten up, then he stood straight again and headed out of the kitchen saying, "So did you get any rockets? Those are always good."
The three remaining members of the A-Team had a good laugh at the Lieutenant's retreating exit.
"Hannibal," B.A. addressed the Colonel, "I said it before, and I'll say it again, you getting to be just as crazy as that fool Murdock."
"Aw thanks, B.A.," Murdock grinned, "I knew you'd learn to love us."
"I didn't say that!" B.A. raised a fist to Murdock's face.
Hannibal maintained an amused look around the bumps and bruises his face had sustained that afternoon and said, "Good to know some things never change."
"After this much time, Colonel, I really don't think it's a possibility," Murdock commented.
"I hope not," Hannibal replied as he got up from the table, "Well, let's go see if our dinner's been cremated yet."
Mmmmm," Murdock hummed amusedly, "Cajun hamburgers," and laughed all the way out to the grill.