How long now since they'd been locked in this room? 14 hours? It would be too much to hope for 16, time certainly did drag when you weren't going anywhere. Hannibal sat in the middle of the room and tried to think. Jean was over by the wall and he could hear her clearing her throat, or trying to anyway. She'd picked up the worst cough he'd ever heard. Worse than smoker's cough, it sounded like she was being ripped apart from the inside, and truth be told, probably felt the same as well. What it felt like, she'd explained to him, was a sudden rush of acid jumping clear up her throat from her chest, choking her to the point, if she'd had anything in her, she was sure she'd throw up. It was the worst case of heartburn he'd ever heard of and he knew they were in for quite a bit of it because they didn't have anything to treat it. It came and went but the gaps between were never long enough, it always came back after a while.

"Hannibal," she said in a low, almost congested voice.

"Yeah?" he asked.

She turned to see him and crawled over towards him and said as she dropped on the floor beside him, "I'm sorry."

He tiredly nodded his head and replied, "That's alright, just don't do it again…" then he turned to look at her and asked, "Do what again?"

"I know that I've caused a lot of trouble for you guys over the years," she said.

Hannibal managed a weak chuckle and said, "Trouble's our specialty, you didn't give us anything we couldn't handle."

Jean rested her head on his knee and said to him, "Sometimes I wonder if I should've died when Frank Carter shot me. Maybe I did."

"What do you mean?" he asked her.

"Nothing really, just thinking out loud I suppose," Jean said, "You know those people, those macrobiotic diet people who never eat anything besides brown rice and bean sprouts?"

"Never heard of any such animal," he remarked, "I don't think they really exist."

"I was reading a book one of them wrote a while back, talked about how before he adopted the macrobiotic lifestyle, he got so sick one night, he about died, and in retrospect he said he did die, the old him died, the new him was born that night…I wonder…maybe something similar happened when I was in surgery. Maybe when I started to wake up halfway through, I died and this is the new me that came out of it."

Hannibal patted her head and said to her, "Now don't go getting the idea of comparing yourself to those tofu-eating whack jobs. They're the nuts that give California a bad name."

Jean laughed hoarsely, choked on another bout of heartburn, and replied, "I don't know, I wonder if it could be possible. Nothing's really gone right since…now that I think of it…nothing's ever gone right in my whole life." She looked up at him and added, "And now look at me, here I am I've only dragged four more people into the mess that's my life."

"Well I wouldn't say that," Hannibal said.

"I would," she replied as she repositioned her head against his knee, "I'll tell you something, Hannibal, been plenty of times I don't even know who I am anymore, and I can't remember who I used to be before either. Lot of the things I've done…and I mean even after Brutus…I'm not very proud of them, though I sure was at the time, or felt like it anyway. Seemed to be a real glory in it all."

"That's the life of a soldier, kid," Hannibal told her, "And I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's your fate…look at me." She tilted her head back to look up at him and he told her, "It doesn't do any good to dwell on what might have been, how your life might've turned out differently, the fact is it wouldn't be any different, because accidents don't carry on this long…what you are, what you do now, is what you're destined to, there's just no other way to look at it."

Jean paused for a beat before she replied, "So you were meant to be a fugitive from the government?"

"Certainly looks that way, doesn't it?" Hannibal asked, "Who doesn't love a good underdog?"

"Or martyr?" she returned, and quoted, "Play the man, Master Ridley."

"Look at all the people we've helped, could we have done that if we were average Joes working 8-5 jobs with the picket fence, wives and 2.3 kids?" he shook his head, "World would be a lot worse off if we didn't do what we did. Naturally it had to come at a price, but we could've been a lot worse off too."

"And this is how it ends," Jean said as she lay back down.

"Well…" Hannibal said, "You know what they say about all good things."

Jean closed her eyes and murmured against Hannibal's leg, "All that glitters is gone."

"That's gold," he told her, "All that glitters is gold."

He felt Jean shake her head 'no', maybe she knew what she was talking about.

"Hannibal," Jean rolled her head back to look up at him and asked, "Isn't there something we can do? Isn't there some way we can get out of here?"

Hannibal scratched his fingers through her hair like he was scratching a dog behind its ear and told her, "Go to sleep, Jean…everything will be alright."

"No it won't," she replied, "Nothing's ever been right."

"What do you mean?" Hannibal asked her.

" 'A lifetime of opportunities misused', that's what Dickens wrote, isn't it?" Jean asked, "That's me…I look back now and can't help wondering what the hell I ever thought I was doing with my life. Anytime I ever thought I'd found a purpose, it turned out to be nothing."

"Well you're young," Hannibal replied with a small smirk.

"Not that it matters much now," she said.

"Believe me, it happens, no matter how old you get," he told her, "But when you think about it, Jean, what have you done that could qualify as a 'misused opportunity'?"

"Well let's face it, Hannibal, what have I ever accomplished?" she asked.

"What's more important?" Hannibal asked, "What you've accomplished in life, or what you've enjoyed in life?"

"That's not an answer, Hannibal," Jean said, "What have I ever accomplished?"

"Besides the obvious?" he returned, "You liberated a man, remember?"

Jean waved it off, "Murdock could've gotten himself released from the V.A. at any old time, he didn't need me for that."

"He did," Hannibal told her, "You gave him a solid reason to get out, to finally be free."

"Murdock's the only one of all of us who's ever been free, he's always been free, even before he was released," Jean told Hannibal, "He can do anything, he doesn't care how ridiculous it is or how ridiculous he looks, he's not worried, he can't be embarrassed, he's not yielded by stigmas, that is free, truly free. He's probably the luckiest person who ever lived."

"How do you figure that?" Hannibal asked her.

"His father walked out on him when he was 2, his mother died when he was 5, he was raised by his grandparents and must've been his mother's parents, therefore there was nobody to hold him to any expectations based on what they were like or what his father was like. He escaped that great parental trap."

"You speak from experience of course," Hannibal half said, half asked.

"I had no brothers and sisters, when you have them you're compared to them, when you don't, your parents compare you to themselves, and when you go to school, you're compared and contrasted to every other kid there: on any team, in any club, any group, compare and contrast, that's all there ever is, no appreciation for the individual person, no room for what you are…everybody expects you to be like someone else, nobody can accept that you're nobody else, you're only yourself and that's all you can be." She shook her head, "Except there's no room for that, so you spend your whole life running wheels and never getting anywhere, trying to figure out what you are supposed to be since there's clearly something wrong with yourself. What is that, Big Brother? No, that's the One State, no that's not it either, The Family and UniComp perhaps…it's not a Brave New World, maybe it's the Mockingbird world, definitely something with a nice dystopian ring to it. My it's certainly true what they say about starvation and dehydration affecting the brain, isn't it? Can't think," she tapped the side of her head, "Feel like Snitter."

Hannibal sat back and watched her as she tried to complete her thought, and when it was obvious she couldn't find it, he said, "And you think Murdock's never had to experience any of that?"

"Not as much," Jean said, "His father," she said the word venomously, "Sure as hell couldn't be there to say 'when I was your age', and his mother, nice woman though I'm sure she was, could never say when she was his age or that his father never did that, I'm sure his grandparents were so overcome by the death of their daughter they didn't dare give him any of those lectures. Hannibal, do you remember after we got married the first time? I asked what Murdock was like before he 'went crazy' in Vietnam, do you remember? Nobody could remember him being 'normal' before that time…the Air Force, the Thunderbirds, the Army, they all apparently took him as he was, to some extent he had to have already been as he is now, correct? Otherwise the change would've been most obvious and you would recall him not being this way."

"I suppose you're right," Hannibal said, "I never really thought of it before."

Hannibal grunted as he felt Jean's nails dig into his arm. She really didn't have nails after her encounter with Stockwell, but enough pressure behind the grip still had him gritting his teeth.

"You realize of course," Jean said to him, "If we weren't going to die horribly in a few hours, I wouldn't be telling you any of this…"

"Those are always the most interesting ones," he said lightly.

"Do you have time for one more confession?" she asked.

"Always," he answered with smile leaning more towards his trademark variety that always set Face on edge.

"I did something a while back that…I probably shouldn't have, but I haven't had time to decide if it's something to regret," she said.

"What's that?" he inquired.

"A couple weeks ago, I stole some papers from Decker, and then from Fulbright, and from General Bullen…not files, their official stationary, wrote three different letters to the president of the United States, from 3 members of U.S. military personnel, recommending pardons for all of you guys…" she shrugged and said, "If it actually works, it won't be in time to do you any good, but the others…I don't know if it will work, I'm terrified that it won't, but I'm hoping it will. If it doesn't…well, if we'd live past this, and it didn't work, I don't know what would be left to try."

Hannibal looked slightly surprised by this revelation. He paused a beat, then pulled Jean towards him and kissed her on the top of her head and told her, "A commendable action, kid."

"If we're turned down again…well, we'll be dead so it won't matter for us, but for the others, I'll have failed," Jean said.

"Not possible," Hannibal insisted, "You had the initiative to try in the first place, more than once, that's more than anyone else has ever done for us, that's what counts. When did you send them out?"

"I…didn't," she confessed, "I got them ready, and I couldn't decide if I should send them or not, so I left them with somebody to mail out incase something happened and I got killed."

"Who?" Hannibal asked.

"Decker's man Friday, Crane," Jean answered, "He's holding onto them for me currently."

Hannibal looked at her curiously and asked, "How'd you manage to talk him into that?"

"Wasn't hard surprisingly," she explained, "Decker's the one who lives for the chase, I think Crane's getting tired of it."

"And…exactly how would he know when it was time to send them out?" Hannibal asked.

"Because it'd be the first time in a year Decker's had any peace and quiet," she answered.

Hannibal laughed and replied, "Smart."

"Like I said, it's not going to do us any good now," Jean shook her head, "I should've sent them out sooner."

"Even if you had, they'd probably still be in limbo somewhere between here and the White House," he told her.

"I'm sorry, Hannibal," she replied.

"Bah," he waved it off.

"Hannibal…" Jean said softly, "One more confession?"

"Sure," he nodded.

"You're pretty good at deducting things, Hannibal, did you ever put it together just how I wound up out here a year after the fact?"

"You said why already, warm weather, job opportunities in movies…"

"Not lies, not the truth either," Jean said, "The truth is I hoped I would find you guys again…mind you, the day we all caught up again, was pure coincidence, but…I mean it, Hannibal, after the Army, after Carter, after the hospital…I wasn't the same anymore. I stayed home for a year, trying to adapt back to the old life, just couldn't happen. I…moved out here, hoping to meet up with you guys again. I…I started writing Murdock when I was back in New York, when he was at the V.A., he couldn't really write back but it was something, it was some form of contact. I needed it. You don't know what those first three months out here were like."

"I can imagine," he nodded, and added, "Loneliness is an under-acknowledged disease, as real as cancer, just as deadly as a heart attack."

Jean let out a weak snort and replied, "Probably causes a few too. You don't know how relieved I was when you guys caught me zipping around the course, I thought….'Thank God, real people again', people who…could understand what I'd gone through."

"Better than most, that's for sure," Hannibal said.

He noted that Jean's eyes had taken on a very distant look now, he wondered where exactly she 'was' right now. As if reading his mind, she told him though without making any eye contact with him, "Murdock was there, he's been walking me along the razor's edge every single step of the way, he's always been the one there to say 'this is acceptable', 'this is normal', 'this is what happens' so I knew I wasn't losing my mind…and I can't help wondering now if…" Now she looked up to Hannibal and said, "I swear, Hannibal, when I agreed to marry Murdock the first time, I was sure at the time it was purely to get him out of the V.A., now I wonder if I also did it for my own reasons. Out of the V.A., he needed a place to stay, I had 3 extra rooms, and a double bed in my own, and we'd slept together plenty of times before the year before…you can't plan it much better than that, can you?"

"Fate's a funny thing, kid," Hannibal told her, "Hey you two are happy together, what difference does it make now?"

"If it's true, it's just one more deception in a long line of them," Jean said, "When you can't even remember when you lie and when you're being truthful, that's when you start doubting your sanity…not that it's probably going to make much difference now, right? If we're not dead by tomorrow we'll probably be going insane anyway from…what does this guy Pedavich do to his victims anyway?"

"I'd say not to concern yourself with that little detail except I know you wouldn't listen," Hannibal said, "So I'll just leave it at that."

"Wouldn't it be better to know in order to 'accept death'?" Jean asked.

"No, just like when B.A.'s flying, if the plane crashes and he's knocked out, he doesn't know it, therefore he doesn't tense up, therefore he walks away without a single injury," Hannibal said, "Sometimes ignorance is bliss." He hooked an arm around Jean and pulled her closer to him and told her, "Go on to sleep, kid, I'll keep an eye on everything."

It took a few minutes before Jean settled against him and fell asleep. When Hannibal was sure Jean was out cold and blissfully oblivious, he reached down and tilted her head back to expose her neck. A good, strong neck, usually a sure way to tell who did and did not work out. One quick move…wouldn't take five seconds, and all her problems would be over, if it came down to that, he prayed that it wouldn't. Unfortunately, he knew all too well what was in store. Over the years the A-Team had gone up against every slime ball imaginable: animal poachers, drug smugglers, cultists and Nazis, gangsters who left bodies buried under all sorts of unsuspected places, but this was one case that gave Hannibal indigestion every time he even thought of it. Following a lead from their investigative reporter they liberated from a Russian lockup, they found Pedavich's 'chop shop', no victims at that time, and there had been plenty of chances to clean up before their arrival, but the evidence they'd gathered up on Dimitri and his men had been nonetheless very compelling once the authorities found out. Which left him wondering when and how this guy ever got out, let alone on a plane out of Russia and to Los Angeles?

Everybody keeps records, even ones they never want found, remember Nixon? He'd said that once to Face, and it was still true in this sadist's case as well. Hannibal read through hundreds of pages of documentation of what only a few of the people Pedavich had eliminated had had to endure before they finally died. True to form when it came to lowest of the low, he had a special preference for targeting women and children. If Pedavich had things his way in a few hours, he'd torture Jean first and force Hannibal to watch long before he ever started on the Colonel. He remembered flipping through the pages of accounts and deciding then and there that he had no faith in the basis that in the eyes of God, one sin was not any worse than the other, and he firmly believed there had to be a specially reserved section of hell for the likes of this guy. And just why was it that these kinds of people were never the ones caught in plane explosions or car crashes or struck by lightning, or even crushed to death by an elevator in some horrible freak accident? Okay, so there was a little bit of sadist in even him, but he had a perfectly good excuse for that; dealing with people like this would awaken the vengeful sadist in anyone. People who oppose the death penalty would want to take this guy's head off themselves and play catch with it.

Hannibal sighed to himself, the only thing they could do was wait, and while he knew the suspense was killing Jean, she still had it better because of the two of them, Hannibal was the only one who knew what they had to look forward to. Since getting out of the war zones from jungles halfway around the world, he never thought that he'd ever again have to contemplate killing someone to spare them from suffering. And if it had been under any other circumstances, he knew that he wouldn't, but everything was working against them this time: he was alone, he didn't know where his men were, he had no way of contacting them to find out, he didn't know where they were, he didn't know how far they were from Los Angeles or if they were still within the area, they had both been thrown into this barren room with nothing on them but the clothes they wore, that door was reinforced and he couldn't possibly kick it open. And even if he could, it wouldn't matter because Dimitri Pedavich always traveled in well company. They could try fighting their way out but the problem was Hannibal knew there would be so many people out there, they wouldn't get any further than knocking a couple of them out before the rest of the guards ambushed them. They could try, that was all they could do, and if they failed…he looked down at the girl sleeping against him, if their options ran out, he knew what he had to do, and he wasn't looking forward to it.

"See anything yet, B.A.?" Face asked into his car radio as he zipped along at a steady pace of 75 miles an hour, slow enough that he could keep his eyes on the road but keep his mind on what the other people on the radio were saying.

"Nothing, there's no sign anyone's been here," was B.A.'s answer.

Face tried again and looked to the skies, "How bout it, Murdock? You seeing anything from up there?"

"Up where?" was Murdock's response.

Face felt his eyebrows move up, "What do you mean up where? Aren't you in the chopper?"

"Yes, but I'm engaging in a little contouring and a little NOE right now," Murdock said.

"What does that mean, Murdock?" Face asked.

"It means," Murdock answered, "I'm either climbing over trees or going around them depending on which is easier to maneuver right now."

Face could hear B.A. coming through the radio waves again, "You crazy fool, whatchu doing on the ground? You supposed to be in the air!"

"Some things are easier to see from a lower level," Murdock replied, "And I think I see something!"

"What is it?" Face asked.

"I do believe it's the truck that they took Hannibal away in last night."

"Where?" Face asked, looking ahead incase it turned out he was in the vicinity of it.

"Hang on, I'll give you the coordinations, and then I'm gonna head on and see what's ahead and what we're gonna need to get in," Murdock said, "After that I'm gonna have to ditch this bird and double back to you guys. They tried concealing the truck under a tree that's half down, probably harder to spot actually on the ground, from there…"

"Murdock, you still with us?" Face asked.

"At a higher altitude now but yeah, it's pretty empty clearing after that, looks like about two miles of empty land, and then I see a building up ahead, looks big enough."

"One building in a clearing?" Face asked, "What is it?"

"Uh…looks like it used to be some kind of warehouse, mostly ground level."

"Lot of space for big semi trucks, if it's been emptied out by now, that's plenty of room alright," Face said.

"Lot of trucks around," Murdock came back on the waves, "I don't see anyone but there's gotta be someone there now, it's all too new to be abandoned."

"That's gotta be it, B.A.," Face said, "Where is it, Murdock?"

27…28…29…30. Hannibal opened his eyes again. He couldn't afford the luxury of sleep. He knew that by all logic, those doors wouldn't be opened until tomorrow, nobody would come for them for at least 12 more hours, but all the same, he couldn't afford to let his guard down for a minute. He had to stay vigil at all times to make sure they weren't ambushed prematurely.

Jean lay a couple feet away from him on the floor, the longer she could sleep the better it would be. And it would be easier for her to stay asleep. He knew how it worked, if you stayed asleep you didn't pay attention to how dehydrated you were, and if you didn't move much when you were awake it was easy to fall back asleep, and forget about starving, forget about the unbelievable thirst, and for a little while it would take the focus off the fact that they might die soon. If she could stay asleep from now, until it was time…it would be better if she did.

Jean had woken up once about an hour ago, while she'd been asleep the last time, her lips had gotten so dry that they essentially glued themselves together. When she tried opening her mouth, they both split and started bleeding, and since then the blood had congealed and her lips were stuck shut again. His own throat felt like sandpaper and cotton all the way down his neck, his tongue was like old shoe leather, his lips felt heavy like they were covered in plaster. His stomach felt like there was a hole in him the size of a basketball and leading all the way out through his back. It wasn't exactly anything new for him; he and the others would've starved to death long ago if it hadn't been for Lin Duk Coo. He still remembered those days in the POW camp well, too well.

Still, that was over 15 years ago, he'd been a lot younger then, he had more endurance back then, or maybe it only felt like it in comparison to now. Who could really tell anymore? But Jean on the other hand, this wasn't something she was used to, it wasn't something that she'd already gone through. And with that in mind, she'd taken the facts of their situation very well; the whole time they'd been there, she'd never said anything, never complained because she knew it wouldn't do any good. It took a lot of character and strength to suffer in silence when you knew there was no hope, he admired that, he was just sorry she had to know what it was like.

His eyes were starting to burn again, so he closed them and mentally started to count to 30. And as he did, he thought back to a conversation they'd had while trapped in this room.

"Did Murdock tell you about our last client?"

"No."

"Pregnant woman named Maria Tepe. 8 ½ months pregnant, went into labor during a shootout we had with her ex-husband, who knew stress could help speed up a delivery, eh? Anyway, she waited 2 hours until all the excitement had died down to tell us, and you can guess what happened with Face and B.A., I'm sure."

"They were out colder than a dead fish, right?"

"Yep, so it was just her, Murdock and myself to bring her baby into this world. It's a pretty amazing thing getting to see new life entering the world."

"What was it?"

"Girl, 6 pounds, 7 ounces, 18 inches long, completely bald except for one small blonde curl on top of her head."

"That must've been nice," Jean commented.

"It was. Murdock kept her with him until the mother was recovered enough to hold her. Born in the midst of a shootout with her father. Interesting how something so wonderful can come out of something so horrible, eh?"

Jean grumbled something to herself. Hannibal continued, "You know Murdock wants kids."

"I wouldn't mind a few either someday," Jean said, "But we both know it ain't gonna happen now."

Hannibal put an arm around Jean and pulled her close to him as he told her, "Seeing that baby, holding it, it awakened something in Murdock. Man's 40 years old, he's in the prime of his life now."

"Yeah well, he's gonna have to find some other prime rib to raise a little Cain with now, isn't he?" Jean asked.

Hannibal laughed at her attempt at a joke.

"New life is always a miracle," he'd said, almost reminiscing about something, "Always seems to put things in perspective. Life…is beautiful."