"I don't understand what you want with Mr. Murdock," one of the nurses at the V.A. told Decker as she walked him to Murdock's room, "He's been very lethargic for the past few weeks and he's sedated right now, he's been very upset lately."
"About what?" Decker wanted to know.
The nurse half looked at Decker as if she was debating if she should actually tell him, but she finally decided to and answered in a hushed voice, "His dog."
"His dog?" Decker repeated in something of disbelief.
"Of course you understand the dog isn't real," the nurse assured him, "It's only a figment of Mr. Murdock's imagination, but he gets violent if anybody tries to tell him that."
"And what's his problem with the dog now?" Decker asked.
"I'm really not sure, but that's why he had to be sedated earlier," she told him, "So I don't know how much help he'll be to you."
"Oh I'm sure he'll be enough help for what I want with him," Decker replied self assuredly.
They came to the door for Murdock's room and Decker looked in the small screened window and saw Murdock sprawled out in bed with his eyes wide open and his mouth slightly hanging open as well. His eyes weren't focusing on anything in the room, instead it was like every part of him was a million miles away.
"Good luck, Colonel," the nurse said as she unlocked the door, "You'll need it."
Decker went into the room and shut the door behind him and walked over to the bed and watched for any sign that Murdock was faking this, which he was sure the pilot was, but right now it looked very realistic.
"Murdock, can you hear me?" he asked.
The man didn't even blink, he just stared up towards the ceiling and ignored the trail of saliva pouring down the corner of his mouth.
"You know who I am, Murdock?" he asked firmly as he got right in Murdock's face, "It's Colonel Decker, you remember me?" No answer, no response. "The nurses tell me you've been upset lately about your dog…what's his name, Billy?" Nothing, the pilot's eyes looked glazed over and never moved. There wasn't a single muscle movement in his whole body that indicated he even understood what Decker was saying, but Decker still wasn't ready to buy it. He made himself at home and sat down at the foot of Murdock's bed and continued talking, "I'm told by the nurses that you haven't had any visitors…but they tell me you were taken out of here a couple months ago, something about bubonic plague, does that ring a bell?"
Obviously it did not, so Decker tried something else. "You know your friends the A-Team, did you hear about the job they pulled over in Kuwait last spring? You know to get over there they had to fly? But nobody on the A-Team flies, do they, Murdock? Even Smith doesn't know how to fly, I know that much. So how do you think they got over there? They didn't use an airline, they didn't charter a plane, so the only explanation left is that they knew somebody who could fly them over there. Who do you think that was, Murdock?"
Murdock finally blinked but otherwise did not move, a low gurgling emerged from somewhere in his throat but he paid no attention to it.
"You might have those doctors fooled, Murdock, but you don't fool me, I think you know a lot more than you've ever told anyone," Decker said, "How could a crazy person ever fly?" A thought occurred to him that he was sure would get a response out of Murdock, he inched over closer to the pilot until he was practically in Murdock's face and asked him, "Have you flown since you crashed your plane back in 'Nam, Murdock?"
The brick wall still remained. Decker was starting to think he truly wouldn't get anywhere. He had heard the stories about when Lynch came to see Murdock, and the man stood on his dresser and rambled on about ammonia and his dog Billy, but this was something new entirely. He'd seen some patients act like this, the catatonic ones, but just plain sedated on top of insane? Never. Decker looked around at the contents of Murdock's hospital room and noticed a cigar box lying on the nightstand and decided to help himself. But before he could open the flap, which would've revealed instead that that was where Murdock kept his medals, and the pilot worried that Decker might notice one was missing; because after all he made it his life work to know everything possible about the A-Team in order to try and catch them, and he might just notice that the Air Medal was gone, Murdock shot up in bed and screamed, "BILLY!"
The sudden outburst shocked Decker and he spun around to see what was going on, though he wouldn't admit it he could feel his heart jump up to his neck.
"Yes, Murdock, what about Billy?" Decker asked.
But even now Murdock made no sign that he was aware of Decker's presence in the room. He looked straight ahead at the wall, with a look on his face like he'd just lost his best friend, a few seconds later he burst into tears and threw his head back howling like a wounded animal. He looked up at the ceiling and started screaming, "Billy! Oh Billy! My poor little dog, he never did anything to anybody, why did they take him away from me?"
Decker was still determined to get some answers out of Murdock, and right now he would settle for any answers, so he asked Murdock, "Who took him, Murdock?"
By now Murdock was almost incoherent and for the most part he couldn't even talk, he just bawled and gestured with his hands as he tried to speak, finally Decker was able to hear a clear line of, "He was a good dog, he never hurt anybody, they took him away from me, they took him to Holland and I'll never see him again!"
Moving faster that Decker's eye could see, Murdock lunged to the side and grabbed Decker around the throat and throttled him as he spoke, looking ahead to the wall again, "You see? You see! They're taunting me! Oooh they know I'm miserable and they're out there laughing at my expense!"
Decker managed to get Murdock's hands peeled off of his throat just before the pilot would've knocked his head back against the wall, and he made a quick move for the door and was just about to reach it when the door opened and the same nurse came in and shook her head at Decker and said, "I tried to warn you."
Decker swung his hand back towards Murdock and asked, "That is sedated?"
"We've already tried upping the dosage but the doctors said if it's increased anymore it might kill him," she answered, "He's been on the medications for so long they don't have much effect anymore."
Decker left the room with the nurse and the door closed loudly behind them and was relocked. Murdock twisted and turned on the bed carrying on in histrionics for a few minutes, then when he sensed all was quiet, he got up from the bed and went over to the window for a quick peek. There wasn't anybody out there, and he couldn't hear any voices coming from the hallway either, so he turned on his heel and ran back for his bed and jumped over the foot of it and made a crash landing on the thin squeaky mattress and buried his face in the pillow laughing. He hadn't been sure at first about trying this new act but now he decided it was the perfect one for the job, after this he doubted very much if Decker or anybody would be back to bother him.
"And then," Jean wrapped up the long story for Hannibal's benefit since she had been taking the long way around since she and Face got back to the house and met with the colonel and the sergeant in the dining room. Throughout her entire explanation, Hannibal had remained quiet and passive and watched the two of them sitting at the table as she spoke, and she knew the deadpan look on his face was just a cover and he was waiting for the first second she had to breathe so he could lunge in with his own response, "Once we got Murdock dropped back off at the V.A., Face got him checked back in with some cover story for the nurses incase Decker asks and we came back here, and that's all."
"Took you long enough to say it," B.A. commented.
"Are you sure that Decker was alone when he went to see Murdock?" Hannibal asked suspiciously, "That man never goes anywhere alone, usually wherever he goes he has a dozen MPs and a couple of army squad cars with him, not a jeep."
"Hannibal, I'm telling you what we saw," Jean told him, "What do you think he wants with Murdock? Do you think he's got it figured out?"
Face looked to Hannibal and asked him, "Do you think he's figured out Murdock's the pilot?"
"I don't know," Hannibal replied, "But Murdock ought to be able to throw Decker off the track easily enough. By now he's probably making his retreat empty handed."
"Then we can go back and get him?" Jean asked as she stood up from the table, but the colonel's response was a slow shake of his head.
"Decker may have retreated, but he's still sniffing for blood in the water," Hannibal explained, "He's not going to be gone from the picture for a few days. And besides, he may start having someone watch to see if anybody comes to take Murdock out for any particular reason."
Jean look like she'd been punched in the stomach, "You mean Murdock's just going to be left in that loony bin to rot?"
That statement surprised Hannibal and he and Face both looked at Jean as if she were the crazy one.
"It's not like it's his first time there," Face tried to explain.
But Jean was defiant and she pulled away from him and responded, "And that justifies it I suppose?"
Face felt like he'd fallen head first through the looking glass, and he couldn't even think of how to ask Hannibal what was going on. Jean looked at Hannibal and told him, "Hannibal, he's your friend, by rank he's the second in command, how can you leave him there?"
"We don't have any choice, Jean," Hannibal told her, "As long as Murdock is there and he's certifiably insane, he's safe, the minute he'd get cleared and declared sane, Decker would come after him with the whole army to get answers out of him. Believe me, he's safer there in the hospital right now than he would be out here."
Jean did not look convinced, and Face thought, if anything she looked like she wanted to rip somebody's throat out, so he slowly inched away from her before she got any ideas.
"What's going to happen to him?" she wanted to know.
Hannibal shrugged it off and answered, "He goes back to slipping pills under his tongue, attending meetings with his doctors, takes a few ink blot tests, mingles with the other patients, and when we know the coast is clear, we'll go get him out again. We've been doing this long enough that it's a routine we have down cold by now, so don't worry about it, Jean, Murdock's going to be just fine."
Face and the others didn't come back to get Murdock after Decker had left; he had expected as much. Even if Decker did think Murdock was crazy, and he was sure he'd done a good job of convincing the colonel, it wouldn't be above him to just go back to wherever he came from, he'd probably stick around for a couple of days to see if anybody else from the A-Team came to see him at the hospital or to break him out. Well, at least for the time being it was nice to be home again. Murdock knew he'd have a few days' wait ahead of him and decided to make the most of it; he got reacquainted with all his neighbors and caught up with what was new with them, which all amounted to very little. When he was alone in his room he wrote letters to Billy, but he always tore them up or turned them into paper bomber jets because he decided he didn't like what he'd written.
Every so often Murdock could hear the oh so familiar whirr of a plane or a copter flying overhead somewhere; it drove half of the other patients crazy and sent some of them crawling under their beds, but it made Murdock want to be able to jump through the ceiling and get out of there and get back in the cockpit where he belonged. Once it occurred to him that it might be a military copter up there, maybe Decker was getting a bird's eye view of the helicopter. Well good luck, colonel, he thought, Decker wasn't going to find any secret escape route, especially not from that direction. Him being the pilot of course they could never rush him out of here and into a waiting helicopter, though it would be fun if they'd ever try it sometime.
Murdock remembered what Jean had told him about when she was in the hospital with Decker waiting to get answers out of her. Indeed the colonel could be patient when he wanted to be, though he often preferred to just bust into some place and start blowing everything to bits, but you didn't get to be colonel in the United States Army by being a loose cannon, not in the beginning anyway. Indeed, Decker could be patient, but so could Murdock, so let Decker wait around for a sign, he wouldn't find anything, Murdock would be perfectly contempt to stay here now that he was back, and it would be just as if he had never left. He would stay here, day in, day out, until the coast was clear, when the others would come for him again. He'd had plenty of practice with that over the years, and he would just stay here and wait patiently until the next time Face came to bust him out, or scam him out, or whatever it was Face had planned for next time.
The days always passed slower back in the V.A., it was all a matter of routine; he had his pills to pretend to swallow and then get rid of later, he had his sessions with the doctors, more questions about anything he was willing to talk about, which turned into a lot of things, but none of them the subjects the doctors actually wanted to discuss. Sometimes the doctors wanted to show him ink blots, but he always got the answers wrong; it didn't matter much to him because half the time he deliberately said the thing furthest from what the blobs looked like. But one time he got very annoyed at the doctor's response and asked him, "Why don't these tests work like IQ tests, doc? No right or wrong answers, just answers, why don't these inkblots work the same way?" But he didn't get a satisfying answer on that one.
He managed to make it a week before he started to get stir crazy from not having a mission to go on and not being able to fly. After the bed checks that night, he got up and paced around the room in the dark; but after a while he found that boring and decided if he wasn't going to sleep, he'd get the others up as well. It had been a while since he'd gotten anybody riled up over anything so he thought it would be a good time to break that habit. They needed something to get them out of the everyday routine rut of the hospital. So instead of aimlessly pacing, he marched around the room singing at the top of his lungs, 'Over the Wall We Go', and halfway through the song he stopped when he heard a faint knocking at the window.
"Hello, who is it?" he asked in his British accent.
There was a muffled response that answered, "Double 3-4-9-2, Gov."
Murdock perked up, Face had finally come back for him! "Oh 'ang on a minute!" he replied as he headed over to the window to open it. He hadn't realized until now that it had started raining sometime during the night and now it was just about pouring. Murdock got the window up and looked out for Face, but he didn't see the conman anywhere in the dark. He looked left, then looked right, and in the corner of his left eye he saw a hand reaching for his arm on the windowsill, and he turned to see…
"Jean!" he jumped back in surprise, "What're you doing here?"
"Breaking in," Jean answered as she climbed up to the window. She must have made the journey on foot because she was half soaked to the bone. Murdock threw the window wide open and helped her in, then closed the window behind her. He realized after the fact that the storm must've knocked the power out, otherwise an alarm would've gone off by now.
"What're you doing here, Saint?" Murdock asked her again.
Jean huffed and puffed a couple of times and Murdock could see that she was shaking as she tried to catch her breath before she explained, "After we got you back here, I asked Hannibal when they were coming back to break you out…" she shook her head, "He said since Decker was around, it wouldn't be anytime soon. They've all gone back to their own places by now, so I thought I'd come here and see you."
Murdock went back to the window and asked her, "Did anybody see you?"
"Murdock," Jean huffed, "It's 1:30 in the morning, who's going to be up to look?"
"Well you never know," he said, then turned back to her and hugged her, "You're freezing."
"It hailed earlier, that's why," Jean said, and laughed a bit hysterically as she told him, "Los Angeles looks like it got a snowstorm for the first time ever."
Even in the dark Murdock could see just how soaked through she was and he asked her, "Did you walk here?"
"I left my car a few blocks away incase Decker would still be nosing around like the dog he is," she answered, "Hannibal said they'd be watching for somebody breaking out…well," she said with a shiver, "He never said anything about somebody breaking in to this booby hatch. So, how did things go with Decker? He did come here, didn't he?"
"Of course he did," Murdock replied, "You knew he would…he came and he tried to get me to talk, just like Lynch did, but," he grinned and shook his head, "He didn't have anymore luck than Lynch did either. As far as Uncle Sam's boys know, I am the king of the cuckoos!"
There was something else to this late night visit that Jean wasn't telling him and it was as obvious as a rhinoceros in the room, and he finally asked her, "What's going on, Saint? What's the real reason you came here tonight?"
Jean ignored the state her clothes were in and sat down at the foot of Murdock's bed and told him, "I'm going to be going back to work soon."
"Well that's good!" he said, then when he realized she wasn't perking up, he asked, "Isn't it?"
Jean kept her gaze low as she explained, "Peter Kellerman is in the hospital…he was doing a stunt run for the film and the car got top heavy on a sharp turn and tossed him over in it."
"Is he alright?" Murdock asked.
She eluded that question for a moment and said, "That's why I'm going back to work…they need someone else to complete the run…he's going to be alright, he lucked out, no broken bones, but the doctors are advising he stay in the hospital for at least a week." Jean put her hands on her knees and nervously rocked back and forth on the bed and said, "It's this kind of thing that hits home for all of us because it could be any of us next time…I didn't want to be alone tonight so I had a choice of who to look up, you or Jason Crowley, the other stunt driver, and you know something, Murdock?"
He leaned forward with his sympathetic ear ready as ever, "What?"
Jean looked up at him and with an expression on her face that would almost be funny, she cracked as she told him, "I don't like Crowley!"
Murdock laughed sympathetically as he sat down beside her on the bed and put his arm around her, and was surprised when he felt both of Jean's arms squeezing so hard around his back that he couldn't breathe. A minute later when they pulled away from each other, Murdock noticed she was looking around the room, and he asked her, "What's the matter?"
She turned and asked him, "Is it always this quiet at night?"
Ah, now he knew what it was, she wasn't looking around the room, she was trying to listen through the walls, and wasn't hearing any of the usual sounds associated with the inside of a mental hospital. Nobody screaming through the walls, no senseless jumble of people talking to themselves, definitely no chains rattling and also no sounds of the electricity surging as somebody got their daily dosage of electrocution therapy. Those were the things everybody always expected to hear when they set foot in a place like this, and they weren't always wrong.
"Sometimes," he answered as he turned back to see her. He paused to listen to the rain beating down outside and he told her, "Well, since you're going to be my guest for the night, I'll find something you can change into," he pointed to a door on the other wall and added, "That's the bathroom, you can change in there."
"Thanks, Murdock," Jean replied as she started taking her shoes off.
He found a spare set of his pajamas and she returned from the bathroom a minute later changed into them and was still adjusting the collar of the shirt, "How does it look?"
"Looks nice," Murdock gave her a thumbs up.
Jean smoothed out the wrinkles in the shirt and said, "I seem to wear you guys' clothes quite a bit."
Murdock looked her up and down once and remarked, "It's a good look on you."
Jean ignored his comment and went over to his nightstand and picked up a framed photograph, even though it was too dark to tell just who it was a picture of, she could guess, and she asked Murdock, "And what about this Amy Allen woman? Does she make a habit out of wearing your pajamas as well?"
Murdock laughed and answered, "Hardly, she's never even been here more than a couple of times to assist Face in breaking me out."
Jean put the picture down and asked Murdock, "Is she your girlfriend?"
He shook his head and answered, "Nope."
"Well Face doesn't seem to be interested in her, there has to be a reason for that, doesn't there?" she asked.
"He's not interested in you either, remember?" Murdock asked.
Jean shrugged and replied, "Just as well because I'm not interested in him either, but what about this woman Amy? What's she like?"
"Oh…" Murdock was wound up for the pitch and starting to take off, "She's niiiice!"
"So what's the problem?" Jean asked as she sat down beside him on the bed, ignoring how tight of a fit it was for two people on a single bed, and a cheaply put together one at that, "It's obvious you like her, and if Face doesn't want her…"
"Yeah well," Murdock reached up with one hand and flipped his cap off and scratched his hair, "I think Amy could do better than us, maybe somebody who isn't wanted by the entire U.S. Army."
"She helps you guys on missions, doesn't she?" Jean asked, "Like what she did with the newspaper before she left?"
Murdock nodded, "It's come in very handy for us having her around, being a reporter she can…"
"She's very lucky," Jean cut him off, and sensing that she did it to get his attention, Murdock watched her as she explained, "I'm sure she realizes her position and the great value of it; there's only room for four people on the A-Team, that's all there's ever going to be and there's certainly no room for any woman on the team, but she's the closest thing there is to one. She helps you more than most do, she must really like you guys."
"I think she gets a kick out of coming with us on jobs," Murdock said, and he went off on a rant about all the times Amy had assisted them on missions and all the great things about her that he liked, when it finally dawned on Murdock that Jean had fallen asleep next to him on the bed. So for the time being he shut up, and carefully rolled Jean over to his side and away from the edge, making sure to position her head against his chest again; if this helped keep the nightmares at bay he was all for that, in any case the last thing they needed was the night staff coming in because they'd heard a woman screaming in the night. It was bad enough that he wasn't allowed a roommate in this place but they would especially know something was awry if they heard a woman in the room. Then in the morning he would get Jean up and help her get out of here before the nurses came in during the wakeup call, a very simple plan to pull off. For the time being he wrapped an arm around her back and kissed the top of her head and said quietly, "Sleep tight, kid."
A week had passed since Jean had come to see Murdock at the V.A., and after she had left the next morning life resumed as usual; he mingled with the other patients and chatted it up with the young nurses that came in to bring him his medication, and for the most part he just stayed in his room and played his video games. That night he was in bed, half asleep and trying to get the other half of himself to catch up, when he heard a light tapping sound coming from the window. He opened his eye and rolled over to see who was there, and was surprised when he saw Face knocking on the glass. Murdock sprang out of bed and jumped over to the window and threw it open, and asked as Face climbed in, "Are we busting out, Face?"
"Not tonight, Murdock," Face answered as he came into the room and shut the window behind him.
Murdock felt his spirit drop at Face's answer and he was about to ask what was going on then, when he saw that Face had a travel bag strapped over his shoulder. Face turned around to meet the pilot's gaze and he said explanatorily, "I've come to take you up on the offer to spend the night, is that alright?"
Somebody had just pressed the up button on his spirits again and he about flew through the ceiling, "Yeah that's fantastic, Faceman, I just wish I'd known you was coming so I could pick up a bit."
"That's alright, Murdock," Face assured him, "I doubt it'll make much difference anyway."
Murdock grabbed at the bag Face was carrying and tried to get it open, "So watcha got here, Facey?"
He opened it up and grabbed a silk pajama shirt and tossed it behind him, much to Face's displeasure, and while Face grumbled about wrinkles, Murdock also pulled out the pants that went with it, and sent them flying, and then took out two bottles of coke, a bag of potato chips, some candy bars, and a large bag of animal crackers.
"I thought we'd start practicing on the next story we tell the nurses when I get you out of here," Face told him, "They won't hear us, will they?"
"Nah," Murdock shook his head, "This time of the night the staff all catches about 40 winks themselves, they won't be making the wakeup calls for about five hours."
"Alright," Face said as they settled on the floor, "Now, when I come to get you, you know what you're supposed to do?"
"Yeah," Murdock nodded, "I become a dog."
"Have you been practicing like I told you?" Face asked him.
Murdock barked a couple of times and got up on his hands and knees and scooted over towards Face and nudged his cheek against Face's sleeve and yipped.
"No no no," Face told him, "You're not supposed to be Benji, Murdock, you need to be aggressive with the orderlies, you need to bite them so they think the whole hospital could be at risk for a health hazard, can you do that?"
"Sure I can," Murdock answered as he sat on his legs, "I just treat them like they're cats and I'm…Cujo?"
"Close," Face told him, "Just don't rip anybody's throat out."
"Gotcha," Murdock said as he picked up the bag of crackers and tore it open.
Face turned to watch the door just to make sure nobody was coming in and he told Murdock, "The way I've got it figured is I'll come in and by that time, the nurses should be getting the general idea that you think you've gone rabid or something, and I'll tell them that's exactly what it is, and they…" he turned back to Murdock but stopped in midsentence when he saw the pilot was trying to shove his whole head into the cracker bag, and he asked, a bit too loudly, "Murdock, what're you doing?" He grabbed the bag and pulled it back and saw that Murdock had managed to pull out of the animal crackers out in his teeth.
Murdock swallowed the cracker and said, "I was trying to get the treats out like a dog would."
Face looked at Murdock with his eyes wide open even though it was too dark to be noticed, and he asked, "How, by eating the bag and all?"
"No, Face, don't be ridiculous," Murdock replied as he picked up another cracker and put it in his mouth, "I saw this dog that knocked a biscuit box over and just picked one up in his mouth at a time and ate the whole box that way, just one at a time, then come back for another."
"Oh yeah, is that a trick you learned from Billy?" Face asked, then kicked himself for saying because he knew that Murdock was not adapting well to the loss of the invisible dog like he did in the beginning.
"Na, Billy had better manners than that," Murdock told him, "I mean has." It was obvious he wanted to change the subject and so asked Face, "What's been going on with you and Hannibal and the big guy?"
"Not much," Face answered, "Decker's still in the area so we're trying to stay under the radar."
"Don't he have anything better to do than bother us?" Murdock asked jokingly.
Face laughed in response, "The man needs a new hobby."
"He ought to try painting, they say here that it's very therapeutic," Murdock suggested, "I don't know if there's any truth to that, but the paint tastes pretty awful if you want my opinion."
Murdock opened his eyes and saw the room was starting to get lighter and he shot up on the bed and said, "Come on Face, time to get up before they do the wakeup calls…Face?" Murdock looked around the room and realized that the conman wasn't anywhere to be seen. He jumped off the bed and went over to the bathroom and tapped on the door and called out quietly, "Face?" When he didn't get any answer he knocked again and asked, "Face, you fall in?" He turned the knob and opened the door but there wasn't anybody there either.
Finding himself alone, Murdock tried to think; had Face really been here last night, or was it a dream? Or was it last night, or had he been there another night? No, it had to be last night, and it had to be real, but then where was Face? He really couldn't think of any reason that Face would have to disappear in the middle of the night, unless Decker had come around again, but why would he do that, especially in the middle of the night when nobody would be up? Murdock tried to come up with an answer but he just couldn't figure it out.
Murdock heard somebody knocking at the window and he turned and went to it, but he didn't see anyone. He went over to it and opened it a crack and asked, "Who's out there?"
He heard somebody answer, "Double 3-4-2-9, gov."
It was Jean's answer, but it sounded like Face saying it. Murdock couldn't figure out how he got the password from the Saint, but he didn't really care. He opened the window and looked out, but still didn't see anyone; as he turned his head to the side to look, he felt something grab him, followed by B.A.'s grumbling voice saying, "Come on you crazy fool." And he felt himself get carried off hoisted above B.A.'s head, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Face close the window behind them and then follow after them.
Up ahead Murdock could see Hannibal standing by the van, and as B.A. put him down he asked the colonel, "Are we going on another mission, Hannibal?"
"Not yet, Captain," Hannibal replied, "But we had to get you out of there because we got something for you."
Murdock's eyes followed the direction in which Hannibal turned his head and he saw Jean walk out from behind the van and she was holding an invisible leash in her hand, and attached to the other end of the leash was…
"Billy!" Murdock's eyes lit up like birthday candles and he ran over to the dog and scooped him up in his arms, "Oh Billy, how've you been, boy? Where…" he turned to the others and asked, "How'd you get him back here, Colonel?"
"You wouldn't believe it if I told you," Hannibal said with a knowing smirk on his face, and he pointed to Jean and said, "So I'll let her do it, it was her idea anyway."
"I told Hannibal we had to go to the airport, and find a plane heading out to Holland, and when Face said he'd be spending the night with you, we knew it was the perfect time because you wouldn't be getting out and ruin the surprise before we got back," Jean explained.
"Yeah, travel 2,000 miles to find a dog in a country with 16 million people," Face added, "Go figure."
"But it turns out we didn't have to," Jean told Murdock, "Because when we got to the airport, there was a jet coming in from Holland, and when they opened up the cargo hold to get the luggage out, this little stowaway came out and hit the ground running," she pointed to Billy.
Murdock was speechless for a minute and could only laugh in amazement. He hugged the little dog against him tightly and fussed over Billy, talking to him like a little baby for several minutes; during which Face and Hannibal watched in astonishment at just how much Murdock changed now that he had his dog back, and B.A. just stood by the van and shook his head in disbelief. Murdock put Billy down and grabbed Face and then Hannibal, hugging them and thanking them for bringing Billy back, then he went over to B.A. and did the same thing, B.A. just scowled and told him, "Get off of me, man."
Murdock made his way around to Jean and he picked up Billy again and said, "Come on, Saint, come over and pet him."
"Forget it, Murdock," Jean said as she inched back away from him, "It's bad enough I had to be the one to keep him from running away, you know I don't like dogs, and that goes for Billy too."
"Aw come on, Saint, he won't bite you, he's a good dog."
"I have news for you, Murdock," Jean told him, "Every dog that's ever bitten someone was always a 'good dog'."
Face watched this and then turned to Hannibal and asked him, "Do you think it's possible for two people to share the same kind of insanity?"
Hannibal seemed to consider the idea, "The way two people could possibly have the same glasses prescription? I suppose it is."
"What do you think that means?" Face wanted to know.
Hannibal looked at Murdock and Jean and told Face, "I think if it is possible, those two would have to be the luckiest people in the world. It's not everyday you find someone who shares the same delusions you do." He got between Murdock and Jean and said, "I hate to break this up, but the sun's going to be up soon and when it does we're going to be very noticeable standing around here, so let's get out of here."
"Where're we going, Hannibal?" Murdock asked.
"Who cares? We're getting out of here ain't we?" Jean replied.
"It just so happens," Hannibal told them, "That today the studio is having a private screening of the latest Aquamaniac movie, and I managed to get you all invited to see it."
"Already?" Face asked, "I thought you just started shooting two months ago."
Hannibal turned to him and explained, "That's what the screening's for, to see if anything needs to be taken out or put in, but in the meantime there's no reason why we can't enjoy the progress made on it so far."
"When is the screening?" Jean asked.
"Nine o' clock," Hannibal answered.
Jean grabbed Face's wrist to look at his watch and said, "That's four hours away, what're we going to do in the meantime?"
"I'd suggest finding a diner open early and get breakfast," Face suggested, "I'm hungry."
"Well I don't know," Hannibal said once the screening let out and they found a restaurant for lunch, "I thought that my emergence from the water looked fine."
"Yeah, sure, Hannibal," Murdock said as they filed in to the main dining room and found a table, "Nobody makes a graceful exit from the depths of Lake Runamuck than you do."
"Maybe it's just me," Jean commented as they sat down, "But I never got the appeal in those movies. What number is this one anyway?"
"I think it's the 14th," Hannibal answered, "Incidentally, Jean, I was talking to our director about maybe getting a part for you in the next movie."
"Another one?" she asked in disbelief.
"He's very optimistic about the franchise," Hannibal explained, "Anyway, I'm sorry to report he says we don't have any use for any stuntwomen, and you'll forgive me for saying so but you just aren't what they're looking for in an extra either."
"No kidding," Jean raised a hand to feel through the mohawk she still wore, "Odds are the next job I get won't include a helmet so I might have to get the rest of this cut off."
"What?" Murdock practically shot up from the table.
"Come on, Murdock, when was the last time you saw somebody in a movie that looks like a rooster?" she asked, "And I would like to get to the front of the line someday instead of just being a human crash test dummy for the camera."
"Well…" Face started to say something but got cut off when Jean told him to shut up, he looked at her with offense written all over his face as he pointed out, "I didn't say anything!"
"Well you were about to, and nothing good ever comes out of your mouth," Jean told him.
"Oh yeah?" Face replied, but got cut off again when Hannibal reached out and grabbed both of them and came close to knocking their heads together.
"That's enough static out of both of you," he told them, "We are not the Tuttles in this place."
"Whatever you say, Grandpa," Face responded as Hannibal let go of the neck of his jacket.
Halfway through the meal, Face happened to look up from the table and he caught sight of several men coming in through the restaurant's front and it looked all too familiar for him.
"Uh-oh," he said as he slumped back in his chair, "Hannibal, do you see what I see?"
The others turned to look his way and Hannibal noted, "MPs."
"Meaning Decker's right behind them, right?" Jean asked.
"Unless Lynch found a way to get his old position back," Hannibal said as an explanation, he turned to their sergeant and told him, "B.A., get her out of here."
"Hey now wait a minute," Jean started to say, but she was cut off as her chair was pulled back and B.A. grabbed her and pulled her off towards the kitchen. Jean tried to break away from him but all that did was make B.A. switch tactics and he bent over and lifted Jean over his head and carried her off towards the back exit.
If they'd been a minute sooner he could've made it because it was at that moment that Decker stepped into the main dining hall and announced that nobody was to go anywhere because they were looking for three fugitives. B.A. was close enough to the back he figured he could get Jean out before anybody spotted them, he turned around to go full speed ahead, but as he did, Jean caught a glimpse of another MP that was coming out from the back and as best as she could in her current position of being hauled out over B.A.'s shoulder, she swung her feet out and kicked like a mule and nailed the MP in the head and knocked him out.
Meanwhile, Hannibal, Face and Murdock had dropped under the table before Decker had a chance to see them and they quickly conferred about what Hannibal's plan was.
"We make our way to the back and follow B.A.," he explained, "They're going to try and block us so just be ready for a fight."
"A fight?" Face repeated sarcastically, "This is going to be the final showdown, I can just feel it."
"Come on, Facey, this is no time to lose hope," Murdock told him, "They haven't caught us before, they ain't gonna do it now."
Hannibal hiked up the floor length tablecloth an inch to look out and he said, "We gotta move, they're starting to come this way, let's go."
They crawled out from under the table and managed to get five feet away before somebody spotted them and they jumped to their feet and took off running.
"Freeze, Smith!" Decker yelled loud enough that he didn't need a bullhorn for anyone in the building to hear him.
Hannibal didn't stop but he did slow down long enough to grab a large metal bowl off a cart and he hurled it back towards Decker like it was a Frisbee, and though Decker was fast he couldn't duck it in time and it hit him in the face. The distraction was enough for Murdock to get out the back way before anybody could see him but Face was a few seconds too late to join him because when he reached the entrance to the kitchen it was already blocked by MPs. He raised his arms and said jokingly to cover his nervousness, "Members only, eh? Okay…" he slowly backed away from them and back to the middle of the room where Hannibal had been put in a similar position.
Decker stood a few feet away from Hannibal, his scowl never left him but on this of all occasions, he seemed to be grinning just the tiniest bit at what he seemed to have accomplished. "Smith, it all ends here, I can't say it hasn't been amusing, but the fun's over."
"I'll say, Decker," Hannibal replied, "You always did know how to ruin a good time."
The explosion that occurred a split second later was the last thing Hannibal heard for about a minute; he ducked down just as he saw the front door blown open by machine gunfire and decided to take a hint. Everybody was scrambling now but along the way a few MPs went down and stayed there; Decker turned around to see what the hell was going on, but he was blindsided as something was draped over his head, which Hannibal and Face saw was a jacket and Jean had wrapped it tight around his head so he couldn't see anything as she put him in a headlock and then kicked him.
"Get out of here!" Hannibal told her as he drew a gun and started opening fire, not aiming for anybody, just breaking anything fragile in the room to make plenty of noise and get the message across, for anyone who didn't belong in this mess to get the hell out of there.
But Jean wouldn't leave, she grabbed Decker and threw him against a wall and waited until he fell down and wasn't moving before she removed the jacket from his face; she was satisfied with her work as he was out like a light. In the meantime that only left the MPs to deal with, and unfortunately there were plenty more of them where Decker had come from. One of them tried to grab her and she ducked out of the way and grabbed a plate off of an abandoned table and shoved part of a lemon cream pie into the man's face.
"Now that's what we were missing here," Hannibal said, "A food fight." He looked around quickly and saw what they needed, "The dessert cart, come on."
They scrambled over to the cart and dropped down just as the MPs started firing at them. Hannibal swiped a cake with yellow frosting off the lower shelf and threw it at the MP nearest him and hit him square in the face. Face picked up a cherry pie and about hurled it at another MP when Jean stopped him and asked, "What do you think you're doing?" She took the cherry pie and gave him a cream one and told him, "Use this, it'll make a bigger mess."
"What happened to B.A. and Murdock?" Hannibal asked her.
"They're out back waiting for us," Jean answered, "Murdock took the liberty to flatten their tires the automatic way."
"Alright, we might as well make this count," Hannibal said, "Everybody ready? Go!"
They jumped up, each with two plates in hand and they picked the targets nearest them and struck. Face shoved a chocolate cake into one MP's face and the plate stuck to it; giving him a chance to get in another round and he grabbed the man and kicked him and sent him to the floor. Then he turned on his heel and rammed something with raspberry filling in another's face and then punched him in the face and knocked him out. Hannibal threw a cherry cheesecake at another MP and missed his face but covered the man's jacket in it and then hit him with the heavy dish it had been in; then he spun and tossed a strawberry shortcake at another MP and whipped cream and strawberries smeared the top of his head as it passed right by him. Hannibal solved that little dilemma by picking up a metal tray and hitting him in the face with it, that did the trick and sent the MP right to dreamland. He turned and saw Face break a chair over another MP's head and knock him to the floor.
"What do you think you're doing, Lieutenant?" Hannibal asked, and when Face couldn't come up with an answer because he didn't see what the problem was, Hannibal told him, "That's number 21, we don't do that anymore, now we do number 46." And he picked up a seltzer bottle from the bar and sprayed it in the MP's face.
Jean had apparently learned one of the most important tricks of Hollywood greatness early on, pies were never thrown during a fight, they were shoved into some poor sucker's face, one chocolate pie in one's face and one very messy triple berry pie in another's. When the plate fell off the first man's face, Jean raised her arm and jammed her elbow into his face and busted his nose. Then while the second man was wiping the berry filling from his face, Jean knocked his helmet off his head and then grabbed a glass seltzer bottle off another table and broke it over his head and knocked him down. Then Jean picked up one large shard of the broken glass and held it carefully like the blade of a knife and raised it up to stab the MP in the chest with, but she felt something grab her arm and hold her back.
"Oh no you don't," Hannibal told her as he got her to drop the shard of glass, "Come on, we're getting out of here."
He took one side of her, Face took the other and they ran towards the back exit, and almost knocked down Murdock who had just gotten back in to find out what was the holdup. Instead, the four of them made one tight exit through the back door side by side by side by side, Murdock being slightly choked as he had both Face and Jean's arms wrapped around his neck so he kept up with them. They got to the van and sped away before anybody could come out and spot them or where they were going.
"Another typical lunch date in Hollywood," Hannibal said nonchalantly as he took out a cigar and lit it.
"How did Decker find out where we were?" Face wanted to know.
"I don't know but maybe you guys ought to consider getting out of Dodge for a while," Jean told them, "If nobody's hiring right now, then go on a long distance vacation, someplace Decker wouldn't think to look for you."
"Decker would find a way to squeeze himself through a mouse hole if he thought we'd gone the same direction," Hannibal told her.
"So now what do we do, Hannibal?" B.A. asked.
Hannibal looked to the three people in the backseat and said, "I think we have a new problem, now Decker didn't see Jean in the restaurant but probably half of the MPs did, however, everything happened so fast it's possible they didn't get a very good look at her. All the same, they may come out to your house to speak with you," he told her.
"So let them come, I'll deny everything," Jean said.
"B.A.," Hannibal turned to the driver, "Take us to her place, we're going to anticipate Decker's arrival and I've got a plan for how to deal with him."
Ordinarily Face would've taken one look at that psychologically intimidating grin on Hannibal's face that he knew only too well as being 'not even a real smile', but even he was curious to see just what their colonel had in mind for Decker.
"I have a feeling that for once I'm going to like this idea," he said.
"Well there's a first time for everything," Murdock told him.