Every Thought Captive

Disclaimer: I do not own The A Team movie or television series or any of the delightful characters found on The A Team.

Chapter 7 Of Geodes and Nosy Reporters

Face peered at the ground from behind glasses with lenses more than a quarter inch thick. Mopping the perspiration from his forehead with a white handkerchief, he readjusted his boonie hat. He had been at his job for almost a half hour.

If Hannibal thought that testing the security at the perimeter of Dugway was such a great idea, why didn't he do it himself?

At this moment, B. A. and Hannibal were somewhere on the Dugway Range. They were hoping to somehow climb to the summit of Castle Mountain 6748 feet above sea level to get a view of Granite Peak and its surrundings, about fifteen miles away.

Maybe all that hiking in this heat isn't such a great part of the mission either. But I'm the one walking into the arms of the military.

He took a swig from his water bottle before hacking at the soft soil with his miners' pick. Striking something solid, he laid the tool aside and moved earth with his fingers until the rock came into view. Once he held the sphere in his hand, he used the hammer to break it apart. A cluster of purplish quartz crystals filled the central cavity.

"Bingo!" he muttered under his breath.

All I need is two or three of these in my specimen bag to convince anyone I meet that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

The specimens had to be rough cut to be convincing. They couldn't be of the gift store variety. He rose to his feet and dug into the dirt with his shovel. Hefting one of the three-inch diameter stones that he turned over, he tossed it to the side.

Too heavy to be a geode.

He needed one more specimen before leaving the Dugway Geode Beds and heading west on the Simpson Springs-Callao Road. After approximately six miles, he would turn to the right and head toward Stark Road.

Only I won't be going as far as Stark Road.

Less than two miles from the Proving Grounds boundary, Face would park his rental car on a side road to the right and hike the rest of the way through the scrub brush and desolation in the direction of Granite Peak.

He fully expected to be discovered before he wandered all the way to the mountain. He hoped he would be escorted out of the Proving Grounds. If he was lucky, he could act enough like a bumbling geology professor to make them believe he accidentally strayed too far north.

I hope they buy my disguise. I'm definitely not Indiana Jones and I'm not trying to find any Ark of the Covenant. I'm just trying to locate my friends.

If they sent off his fingerprints and photo for positive identification, he would be detained and possibly arrested. But finding Amy and Murdock would be worth the risk and effort. He had to remind himself of that.

oooooo

"You were sent to retrieve Captain Murdock. Your stupidity has made our plans more difficult to fulfill, Doctor Stafford. Miss Allen complicates matters." The scowling man with the shock of salt-and-pepper hair jabbed a finger at the doctor standing stiffly in front of him.

"The Captain was armed. He wouldn't have willingly come with us. Miss Allen was the persuasive factor that made his decision easier." The gray-haired doctor leaned against the wall, taking the weight off his twisted left leg, a cold smile on his face.

"She's a reporter. If she remembers anything about the past twenty-four hours . . . "

Doctor Stafford interrupted. "Colonel Jackson, I have it all under control. Miss Allen will not remember much of anything."

Jackson abruptly turned away from the man in the lab coat. "Those are details I do not need to know. Where did you put Captain Murdock after I left him? I wish to speak to him."

"Room 27. But he won't be in any condition to talk to anyone for a while. The LSD may take hours to wear off."

Jackson pivoted in place and scrutinized the other man's face for a second. "LSD?"

The doctor nodded with a smirk. "A throwback to the good old days when we were looking for ways to loosen tongues. The Captain seems to be having what is called in the vernacular a 'bad trip.' He's seeing things which aren't there." Frowning, Stafford added, "But I have no idea how the two wounds happened on his chest. Unless a remote influencer has been at work. But I wasn't told that was going to be part of the experiment."

The other man narrowed his eyes at the doctor and smiled. "That's right. You weren't. And those are details you do not need to know." Leaving Stafford with his mouth agape, Jackson strode quickly down the hall toward Room 27.

oooooo

Stafford listened at the door to the lab for a minute before opening the door. From the sound of Miss Allen's soft crying, his assistant must be keeping her entertained.

He was almost sorry he had to give such a large dose of flunitrazepam to the reporter. She was pretty, and he would have liked to have given her something more to remember him by than relaxed muscles, a sedated state and amnesia.

Flunitazepam was a relatively new drug. Created in the early 1970s and used for surgical purposes in Europe, it had not yet been approved in the United States. That didn't mean certain agencies of the government, notably the one for which he worked, were not experimenting with it.

The drug was not going to leave her with any memory of what happened after it was given to her. They could keep her in that state until their business with Captain Murdock was done.

But Colonel Jackson wants her out of the way. And the bosses above him won't want any of what we are doing released to the general public. They don't want her to remember anything she has seen. They don't want her to wonder what happened to the Captain she was with. Jackson didn't say kill her, though. At least not in so many words.

He sighed and reached in his lab coat to feel for the vial. As he did, his hand brushed the mini-camera he confiscated from her dress pocket.

Too bad she's a reporter.

His smile faded when he opened the door. His assistant leaned over the gurney, his hand cupping the reporter's face. Her frightened eyes searched both men's faces as the doctor approached, drawing the dose of flunitazepam into the syringe.

"Time for Miss Allen's medicine, Mister Rollag. You won't remember a thing about your stay here." As his assistant held Amy's arm still, Stafford injected the drug into her vein. "And that's for everyone's good, including your Captain Murdock.

oooooo

B. A. drank heavily from the canteen and handed it to Hannibal. Swiping one hand across his mouth, he squinted ahead at Granite Peak in the distance.

"An' that's where the signal ends, huh, Colonel?" Shaking his head, the burly mechanic took out the super high-powered binoculars and adjusted them. He pointed them in the direction of the mountain and focused the lenses.

"See any movement at all, Sergeant?" Hannibal held a lighter to a new cigar and waited for B. A. to respond.

"Nothin', absolutely nothin's moving . . . wait a minute . . . "

The whump-whump of a helicopter approaching from the east preceded any sighting of it. With a new target to watch in the sky, B. A. swung the binoculars over to trace its path as it landed at the foot of the mountain.

A car waited at the base of Granite Peak. The Sergeant watched as the chopper's passengers left the aircraft and ducked into the vehicle. He lowered the binoculars and handed them to Hannibal.

"Think that's got anything to do with Amy and the fool's kidnappin'?" B. A.'s forehead creased even more with concern. It was one thing to be rescuing his friends from the criminals they encountered during their missions. This was the government, probably the military. Everything about the set-up they were going into made his skin crawl.

"Likely. Granite Peak was used by the Army Special Projects Division for testing biological weapons. The place is supposed to be huge and self-supporting. There's an underground storage facility in the mountain itself." The smoke from the Colonel's cigar curled around him as he clenched it between his teeth and continued to watch through the binoculars.

"Got a bad feelin' about this, Hannibal." The black man kept his eyes on the helicopter as it left the parked car and took off.

Instead of flying back the way it came, the chopper made a change in its flight pattern, turning toward Castle Mountain.

"Duck, B. A.!"

Both men flattened themselves onto the ground as the helicopter did a surveying fly-over of the Dugway Ridge and circled to come back directly over them.

Moments later, it landed at the Granite Peak airstrip where another car waited for the pilot and crew.

"So much for the element of surprise," Hannibal breathed.

"You think they saw us?"

"Oh yeah. Depend on it." The Colonel stood and began to pick his way down the incline.

The Sergeant scowled back at Granite Peak and followed the older man. "Just hope Face don't run into trouble when they find him."

"If they believe he's Doctor Horace Pepper, geology professor from Berkeley, he won't. Hopefully our friends in the helicopter won't link us and Face together. But I wouldn't bet on it."