"So if this guy Murtaugh is only 25 miles away, why aren't we going out there first thing in the morning?" Face asked Hannibal as they drove out to the movie studio to pick Jean up.

"Two reasons," Hannibal answered as he lit his cigar, "One, I want to see the cemetery tonight and see if there's any chance we can find the men responsible for Jean's attack last night."

"Do you really think it has anything to do with grave robbers?" Face asked.

"Could be," Hannibal answered.

"What for?" Face asked, "For that matter, why would anybody want to rob graves in this day and age? Medical schools don't pay for donated bodies anymore…do they?"

"Well," Murdock spoke up, "There's always the black market to consider, they get the fresh corpses, harvest the organs and they can sell kidneys and lungs and hearts and lips and thumbs for mucho dinero, you know?"

"After the autopsies, Murdock?" Face asked.

"Maybe they weren't donors initially," he thought, "Or if they were religious they'd have to be buried within 24 hours and wouldn't have time for an autopsy. Or maybe somebody's just decided to start playing hide and seek with the corpses."

"That's our first order of business before this new job," Hannibal told them.

"And behind door number two, Colonel?" Murdock asked.

"Before we head out to check on this guy Bullen, I think a refresher at the old obstacle course is in order."

"Aw Hannibal, not that again," Face said, "We just did that two months ago."

Hannibal was unmoved, "Regardless, I've noticed on the last few jobs we've pulled that we are not at the top of our game, we got lucky. One day at the course will help get us back on track and it isn't going to kill you, Face."

Face sneered and asked, "According to who?"

"Besides," Hannibal smirked, "I've got a few new plans arranged for the course."

Face groaned and sank against his seat in the back of the van.


"Well this is the place," Hannibal read the sign on the gate, "Forever Peaceful Cemetery." He turned to Jean and asked her, "Where are the graves that were hit?"

"I'll show you," Jean led the way in. Hannibal followed behind her, Face was next and he glanced left and right as if he expected somebody to jump out and yell 'boo!' at him, behind him Murdock met the creepy atmosphere with a goofy grin on his face as if he were planning to jump out and scare somebody, and B.A. just growled quietly and kept his eyes straight ahead.

"I don't know what you expect to find, Hannibal," Jean told him, "I've been over these graves a dozen times, they're in different places, they're all different ages, different religions, everything's different, the only thing they have in common is they all died within the last two weeks, and they're all missing now."

"And the police aren't looking into this?" Face asked.

"Sure but what're they going to do, post a cop to watch the corpses all night?" Jean replied, "Nobody cares about the dead, until a few years ago it wasn't really even a crime to steal a dead body because it had no worth, now if you stole the coffin then they could arrest you, but bodies, nobody cares about them. Just like that rock star that died and wanted to be cremated in the desert, remember him?"

"Now that is true," Murdock spoke up, "If Burke and Hare had only stayed as body snatchers, there wouldn't have been such a fuss, but because people started coming up Burked, then it's a big deal." He got a weird look on his face and he started singing in a low creepy voice, "Up the close and down the stair, in the house with Burke and Hare, Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief…"

His song was abruptly cut off when B.A. reached out and started choking him with one hand.

"Shut up, fool," B.A. warned him, and released the hydraulic press grip on his throat.

"This was the first one they noticed had been robbed," Jean pointed to a plot near the entrance.

Hannibal knelt down to read the tombstone, "Mary Ellis, 70 years old, beloved wife and mother."

"Why would anybody want to do that?" Face couldn't help asking.

Hannibal saw three other graves in a row with the dirt caving in and he read those markers as well, "John Lynch, 58 years old, Veteran, Paul Mattox, 43 years old, husband, Jessica Knox, 32 years old."

"Dead at 30, buried at 60," Murdock read off of another tombstone in another row, and he did a double take and jumped back from that one. Then he went to another one that was very old and he had to kneel down and squint to read the worn away engraved epitaph, "You're…standing on…my…head." He looked down at the ground beneath his feet and not only jumped back but practically jumped into B.A.'s arms, but B.A. dropped him like a hot potato and told him, "Quit playing around, fool!"

In all they found eight graves that had lost their occupants, and Hannibal was recalling what they had found out, "These were three women and five men, their ages range from 23 to 70, two of the men were army veterans, six of them were married, four of them had kids, we know that one of them was Jewish and at least two of them were Catholics."

"And what's it all mean, Sherlock?" Jean asked.

"I don't know yet," Hannibal shook his head, "Maybe it's not so much who they are, but where they are."

"What do you mean?" Face asked.

Hannibal opened his mouth to answer, then closed it and turned his head and glanced over at Jean and called over to her, "Hey Brutus."

Jean's head turned mechanically, like Hannibal had pulled a switch that operated the gears in her head and her neck, and her eyes, her eyes had been the first to move, like a vampire. Brutus may have been dead and gone, but the memory remained and was razor sharp as ever.

"Remember how we found you?" Hannibal asked her, "On a map you left the kills of those traffickers in a pattern to follow."

"You think the same thing's happening here, Colonel?" Murdock asked.

"It's definitely possible," Hannibal said, "We're not having any luck finding a pattern based on who they were."

So they retraced their steps through the cemetery, marking where each robbery had taken place, but they still couldn't find anything about it that told them anything.

"It's almost dark, Hannibal, we ain't gonna find anything here now," B.A. told him.

"Yeah," Hannibal was willing to agree, "We'll have to figure something else out." He turned to the lieutenant and told him, "Face, I think we're going to need a helicopter."

Murdock's eyes lit up when he heard that.

"A helicopter, what for?" Face asked.

"Aerial shots," Hannibal pointed to the sky, "You and Murdock go overhead and get pictures and from there we can get an aerial view and a better idea if there's any kind of pattern to mark the graves that were hit. It might give us a clue as to what we're looking for."

Well, Face thought, on one hand they might have their hands tied up enough with that, that Hannibal would forget about running the obstacle course in the morning.

"There's something else," Hannibal told Face, "We need to find out who all has been buried here in the last two weeks, are these eight all there are, or were there others that were overlooked for some reason?"

"Think maybe we should have Amy look into that?" Face suggested.

"No," Hannibal shook his head, "Anybody can check the obituaries in the newspaper records, we don't have to bring her into this."

"Who's Amy?" Jean asked.

"A friend of ours," Hannibal gave her a vague answer.

Jean scoffed and replied, "You actually have a friend?"

"Hmmm," Hannibal seemed to be brainstorming, and he told the others, "We'd have to do it early in the morning because we'd have to finish that first and then get out to the obstacle course for training." He ignored Face's groan and continued, "At that time there wouldn't be anybody here yet most likely."

"But if you're wrong and there is, somebody could be asking just why a helicopter's flying over the cemetery at six in the morning," Face told him, "And just where am I supposed to get a helicopter that early? Do you have any idea how hard it is trying to scam one at a regular hour of the day? Does it have to be a helicopter? Can't we get a small plane instead?"

"People would wonder why a crop duster was flying over the cemetery too, Face, and I think we could get better shots from a helicopter."

"I don't care what they get, so long as I ain't flying in it," B.A. told Hannibal.

"No worries there, B.A.," Face told him, "We wouldn't have any use for you."

Jean tapped Face on the shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Hannibal turned and noticed this and asked him, "Something you'd like to share with the rest of us, Lieutenant?"

Face moved away from her and said, "Jean says she knows where we would have access to 20 helicopters."

"Terrific, where is it?" Hannibal asked.

"There's a hangar near the movie studio," Jean told him, "They're working on a Vietnam film and have 20 restored Huey copters ready to go for the air scenes, a few of them double for the flight stunts and also for the cameramen to get the footage of the other choppers from on account of it's kind of low budget and they have to double up on anything they can."

"So we just go over there and borrow one of theirs," Face guessed.

"Wouldn't work," Jean shook her head, "They know everybody who's connected to the movie, cast, crew, mechanics, everybody, they'd know you weren't involved."

"So why'd you bring it up?" Face asked, looking like he wanted to strangle her.

"I was thinking," she gestured towards Murdock, "Since Hannibal could find work as an actor, we can get Murdock in as a stunt pilot, and we get you in as a new cameraman, and somebody tells the director they need more air shots, the last batch weren't any good, they shoot the air scenes at an abandoned base that's a few miles away from here. So when the caretakers see the helicopter flying overhead in the morning, they'll just think it's part of the movie being made."

"Then we'd high tail it over to the base, get a few air shots for the movie, return the chopper and the camera and then conveniently disappear," Face concluded, and turned to Hannibal and told him, "I think you're rubbing off on her." He turned back to Jean and said, "Only one problem, why would they need a new stunt pilot?"

"Well I was figuring we could have B.A. go up to one of the pilots and convince them that they've suddenly become sick and need a few days off," Jean explained.

They looked to B.A. who had a rare look on his face, he was grinning like the cat that just finished swallowing the last of the 500 pound canary.

"I think that can be arranged," Hannibal said.


"Face, the next time I say we need aerial shots," Hannibal said as he flipped through the pictures they had gotten that morning, "I think we'd have better luck if I just stuck you in a tree."

"Now there's an idea," Face cynically replied and told him, "We had to take the chopper down so low to get the pictures that we about hit every tree, power line and bird between here and the hangar."

They had returned to the cemetery early in the morning and Hannibal had marked the tombstones so from the air they would know which ones they were looking for. He put the pictures together to make a sort of map of the cemetery's layout, and all four men looked at the pictures from every angle conceivable and they still couldn't find anything that would tell them anything about why these graves were targeted.

"Unfortunately," Hannibal told Jean as he handed her the pictures, "Our living client and his problem takes precedence over these people for the time being."

"I understand that, Hannibal, but you also know me," Jean replied, "You know I believe in justice for the dead just as much for the living."

That had been the start of the whole mess they went through last year. It certainly wasn't anything he would forget any time soon.

"Let me ask you a question, kid," he said to her, "How did you get involved in what's going on over there? You're new out here, and you don't have any connections to anybody buried in that graveyard, do you?"

Jean shook her head, "I guess you could say it's just my morbid personality; somebody in the late 20th century is robbing graves, I want to know why."

"Well do us a favor while we're gone, don't go back there again until we get back," he said, "In the meantime, is there a friend you can stay with?"

Jean looked at him like he was crazy and told him, "I didn't move out here to make friends, and at that I've been pretty successful."

"Don't you know anybody?" Face asked.

"A few of the other stuntmen, that's about it," she said, "Nobody I particularly like."

"Well, we shouldn't be gone more than a few days, I doubt that's enough time for any real damage to be done back on this end, when we get back we'll figure out what to do about the cemetery, but while we're gone, since we couldn't find anything at the cemetery to connect the victims, I want you to check the newspaper records of the obituaries; find out if more people have been buried here in the last couple of weeks, see if there's anything that these eight people had in common, anything that could help us figure out why this is happening."

Jean nodded and replied, "Can do."


Face heard the noise escaping his body as his own breathing, though right now it sounded like anything but. Instead it sounded like the air being wrangled from him through a high suction tube. His chest rose and fell practically as fast as he blinked and his heart was pounding against his chest so hard he half expected for it to fly right out. He looked up from where he had collapsed on the ground, to Murdock who was only doubled over with his hands on his knees and breathing a normal, ragged, jerky breathing after running Hannibal's obstacle course, and running an extra three miles to boot.

When Hannibal said he had a few new plans for the course, Face could guess what that meant, but he quickly found out he was wrong. One of Hannibal's new gimmicks was to set up a barbed wire fence that was hooked up to deliver small electric shocks if they touched it or the fence's framing; and they could only pass once they cut the wires that supplied the electric current to the wire. B.A. had gotten it on the first try, Murdock had taken a couple, Face hadn't been able to get it cut fast enough for Hannibal's liking so he reset it and had Face do it five more times, each time getting a little shock that entered through his fingertips and extended to other parts of his body.

"You know something, Murdock," Face said in between wheezing gasps, "I think our colonel's done lost his mind."

Murdock huffed and puffed like the big bad wolf a few times and told Face, "I know a doctor at the V.A. who could look into it, he specializes on people's minds splitting away from the rest of them."

Face pushed himself up and started to stand up, but lost his balance and grabbed onto Murdock but just wound up pulling both of them down. The next thing both of them saw was a large pair of silver sneakers, and following the view up, they led to an army green jumpsuit, and B.A.'s big angry mudsucker face.

"Come on you two, quit playing around and get up."

Get up? Face didn't even have the strength to give voice to those words. Get up, easy for him to say, nothing ever fazed B.A., other than getting hit in the head with a 2 by 4. B.A. quickly figured out they weren't going to get up so he grabbed them each by the hands and jerked them to their feet.

"Thanks, B.A," Face huffed out, and then when they heard Hannibal coming up screaming about time, he asked B.A., "Can't you eat that stopwatch of his?"

"How'd we do, Colonel?" Murdock asked.

"Well, you made good time on the run," Hannibal said as he put the watch away, "But you were slow on the obstacle course, Face I want you and Murdock to run it again."

Face fell right back down. Then he heard something and he looked up at the others, "Do you hear a car coming?"

Hannibal and B.A. looked around but didn't see anything, though they now heard it too; Murdock ran over to the climbing wall and upon reaching the top he looked out past the training base, and saw a white blur racing their way.

"Somebody's coming guys, get ready!" he said as he jumped off the top of the wall and made a perfect landing, on B.A.'s back. B.A. threw him off and they all went out to the entrance that separated this area from the dirt road connecting it to the outside world and they saw that the car speeding towards them was a white corvette coupe. It screeched to a halt and they saw Jean get out of it, once again dressed all in white.

"What're you doing here?" Hannibal demanded to know. He knew that they hadn't been followed here and he also knew that she hadn't been waiting around for two hours out of their sight. She had to have just come from somewhere, but they certainly hadn't told her where they were going.

"So this is where the A-Team spends its training days," she said half cynically, then told him, "Hannibal you guys gotta get out of here, we're shooting on location less than a mile away from here today, anybody could find their way out here."

"You mean like you did?" Face asked.

"When?" Hannibal asked her.

"1 o' clock this afternoon," she said.

Hannibal consulted his watch which really told him what he already knew, "We've got a while before we have to worry about that. We'll wrap up things here and then be on our way, out to Fort Gulch to see our client's shop, and the people trying to run him out of it."

"That's why you're doing this?" Jean asked, "To take on a new set of mobsters?"

When she said that, something occurred to Face and he slowly turned to glare at Hannibal and reminded him, "I thought you said this mission was going to be…"

"A piece of cake," he and Murdock and B.A. all told him.

Hannibal shrugged innocently with a coy look on his face and replied, "Regardless of how easy this job is, it's not going to hurt anybody to be refreshed in this."

Jean looked around at the obstacle course and said, sounding somewhat impressed by what she saw, "So this is Hannibal Smith's own private torture chamber."

"Really now," Hannibal said, with one eye traveling around to see Face, "Where would you get an idea like that?"

Jean gave the place a second glance and she asked Hannibal, "Since you've got a few hours before you have to pull up stakes and leave this place, would you mind if I tried your course once for fun?"

"For fun?" Face repeated, and laughed like a madman as he slowly sank to the ground again, "For fun, you've got a little sadist in you haven't you?"

Hannibal smirked and told Jean, "I don't think there'd be any harm in that. In fact," he turned to the others, "I'll have you run it with Murdock, and Face."

Face stopped laughing and started groaning at this, Murdock helped pull him up and they went back to the starting point.

"Since you never did this before, I'll give you a run-through of it," Hannibal told her and pointed at the obstacles one by one, "First you jump through those tires, then you jump and grab hold of that," he pointed to a four framed set of poles that crisscrossed like a quadruplet set of monkey bars, "And climb your way over to the other side, then, you crawl under that," he pointed to a row of barbed wire strung over a well worn crawl space in the dirt that the three other commandos had slithered across countless times, "Then you come to that," he pointed to the barbed wire fence, "It's electrified and you'll find a small set of wire cutters to kill the main circuit before you can pass through, and since the top is cleared of all wire that's how you get across, either climb it or swing over it. After that you climb up this side of that wall and then climb down the other side, then you climb up to that platform and use that rope to swing over the mud pit, you hit the ground running and come to that rope net, you climb up it and swing on the cable down to the other end by that tree. Any questions?"

"Is that it?" Jean cynically asked as she looked at him and watched his response.

"You'll do fine," he told her, "Alright guys, get ready, I've already taken the liberty to reset the electrified fence." He went over towards B.A. and took out his stopwatch, "Ready…go!"

And they were off and jumping, they made it through the tires, then swung and climbed across the massive monkey bars, and as they neared the barbed wire, Face told Jean, "Hannibal forgot to tell you something about this part of the course."

"What's that?" Jean asked as they ran towards it.

"He's getting ready to open fire, everybody hit the dirt!" Murdock told them, and all three of them hit the ground crawling just before Hannibal started shooting blanks at them with a rifle.

Hannibal moved along the side of the wire netting as he kept his aim at them and continue firing, and he stopped just as they reached the end and then made their way over to the electrified fence. Determined not to get another jolt, Face acted on pure memory and slipped his cutters around the right wire and snipped it on the first try, Murdock and Jean were both right behind him and joined him in vaulting over the fence.

B.A. watched as Hannibal alternated between watching the three of them and down at his stopwatch, and he couldn't help asking, "How they doing?"

"A little slow," Hannibal nodded towards Jean, "Her especially, but they're doing alright."

They went down to the other end of the course to meet with the three people who had just completed it and were all winded by the experience.

"Very good," Hannibal told them in his usual dismissive manner, "Though one thing I'd like to know." He turned to Jean, "For someone who never even completed basic training, how the hell did you do that?"

Jean laughed in between gasps for air and she told Hannibal, "I'm a stuntman, all we do is run obstacles, if it's not one kind, it's another." She panted and shook her head and said, "But I'll tell you, I never saw one quite like this."

Murdock saw Jean reach for a zipper on her waist and saw the one-piece race suit become a two-piece one as the jacket came off, underneath it Jean only wore a thin army green tank top and she said, "One thing I hate about this job, this damn suit's going to kill me before the explosions do. Every day I sweat off about 10 pounds in this thing, it's heavily padded for protection but poorly ventilated for whoever has to wear it for six hours."

"And probably not the best thing to run an obstacle course in," Face noted.


"Alright guys, is that everything?"

"Yup," B.A. said as he closed up the back of the van, "Ain't nobody gonna know we were ever here, Hannibal."

"Good, that's the way I like it," Hannibal turned and saw Murdock and Face slowly making their way over towards them and he hollered at them, "Come on you two, we're getting out of here!"

"Hannibal," Murdock called back as they came over to him, "I think we got a problem."

"What's that?"

Murdock pointed back towards the way out, "The Saint's car is still here."

"What?" Hannibal asked and went to see it for himself. He came back and told the others, "I thought she left half an hour ago."

"We already went over this whole place getting everything loaded up, where is she then?" Face wanted to know.

The only obvious place was the obstacle course so Hannibal decided to check it over again. It had mostly been dismantled so if anybody would come across this place they wouldn't have any idea who had been here recently or for what reason, but the fence, the bars and the wall were all still up and intact. As he neared the wall, he got his answer and saw Jean laying on the ground with her back to him. Hannibal chuckled to himself, odd place to pick for a nap. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called to her, "Alright kid, we're checking out so come on!" She didn't respond so he took a few steps closer to her and tried again, "Hey Jean, it's time to get out of here, so get up!" Still no response.

"Jean?" Hannibal was starting to wonder why she didn't get up and she didn't say anything. He started to walk over towards her but when he realized she wasn't moving he broke into a run until he practically tripped over her. He rolled her onto her back and saw her eyes were closed and she still wasn't moving, and he thought back to what she said about never having to run an obstacle that was like this, and he started to worry that there had been a reason for that.

"Jean!" his hands found their way to her shoulders and started shaking her, and that got a response.

Her eyes opened and she practically shot up and was screaming at him, "Geez, Hannibal, can't a person take a nap with you around? No wonder Face is always griping about running this course."

Hannibal felt a breath escape him that he didn't know was in him and he chuckled nervously. "I thought you were dead."

"Oh please, Hannibal, it'll take more than one of your obstacle courses to kill me," she said as she got up.

"Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yeah, just a little tired," she said, "What's going on?"

"We're getting out of here," he told her, "Incidentally, how did you find this place?"

"Oh I was doing a few more practice runs and I decided to get off the main path and see what was in the surrounding area."

"At 80 miles an hour?" he asked her.

"Well, it's what I'll be doing for the camera," she said, "I love this job, I love getting to race around in the cars, I know it ain't much of a calling but I think this is mine. I already saw death once, Hannibal, I'm not afraid of it anymore. But that doesn't mean I act like an idiot either, I know what I'm doing."

"I'm sure you do," he replied, "And I'm also sure you'll do a fine job at the newspaper records while we're gone."

She scowled at him sarcastically but finally cracked a smile and said, "Alright, Hannibal, I'll see you guys in a few days."

Jean found her jacket and zipped it to the white pants and said a round of goodbyes to everybody and got in her car and drove out of there. A minute later, Face told Hannibal, "We gotta get out of here too, we just picked up something on the radio scanner, Decker's in the vicinity and it sounds like they're on the way here."

"That figures," Hannibal said as they piled into the van, "Okay B.A., hit it."

They were gone long before Decker ever had a chance to pick up any sign of them, and they were already halfway out to Fort Gulch before Decker and the MPs ever came within spitting distance of the training base. What Hannibal and the others hadn't known was that Jean hadn't gone back to the studio; instead she had stayed to run the stunt car through a few more practice courses before filming started that day, and when she saw the line of cars with red lights coming, she knew what it had to mean. She forgot about her helmet and just put the car into gear and buried the gas pedal to the floor and drove straight at Decker's car.

There had been a few hundred yards of distance between the military convoy and the corvette, but it was quickly closed as Decker realized the white blur racing towards him at 100 mph was another car; he screamed at the MP who was driving to watch what he was doing and get them out of the way, but it was too late, the two cars collided and the noise was deafening as they crashed into each other. The immediate aftermath was as if they were watching a bomb explosion die down; everything seemed to happen slowly and the sounds of what was happening sounded unreal. Decker had been knocked back against his seat and was hit by the impact of the whole front end of the car being smashed in, but the first thing he noticed was he could still move and so could the MP, and they both got out of the car.

Despite all the training he had had in the army and all the desensitizing experiences he had been through over the years, he could still feel a shaking sensation in his hands and his legs. Still, he managed to stand tall as he marched over to the other car, that was also smashed in at the front but the rest of it seemed to be in fair order, and he went around to the driver's side door that was somehow only slightly damaged and he saw the driver was a woman slumped over the steering wheel with blood covering the front of her body and the side of her head.

"My God," was all he could bring himself to say.