Chapter Thirty-Six
The escaping prisoners left the slippery, wet, wooden ladder and started crawling up onto the even slipperier, soggier, wooden-shingled roof.
Somehow, they all managed to make it safely to the peak. But, if the pitch of the roof had been even just a couple of degrees steeper, they would have found themselves lying in a heap on the muddy ground of the compound, for sure!
Peck was clinging rather tenaciously to the top of the roof, by the tips of his slick—frozen—fingers. His face and eyes were all scrunched up, in response to the incredibly cold raindrops, which pitilessly pelted the POWs and increasingly dampened their clothing.
B.A. was hanging on to the rooftop by one arm. His other arm remained wrapped around the unconscious Colonel, who was still draped across his back. "What're we waitin' for?" he impatiently inquired after several soggy, silent—motionless—minutes had passed. "We sittin' up here jes' like a bunch a' targets in a shootin' gallery, man!"
"We are waiting for the General's girlfriend to arrive in her car from the city, which she does every evening—rain or shine," the man with the plan stoically informed him.
Even as the young Captain spoke, the sound of an approaching car's finely tuned engine could be heard, in the not too distant distance.
The trio peered cautiously over the peak of the roof and watched a little foreign sports car pass through the camp's main gate.
The vehicle then came 200 yards straight-ahead and stopped directly in front of the building they were presently perched upon.
The car's driver got out and opened its passenger's door. Two very shapely legs appeared, but then were blocked out by an umbrella. The girl beneath the umbrella then disappeared into Chou's quarters.
"Now, we slip quietly down, overpower the girl's chauffeur and steal his clothes and her car," their Vulcan plan man further volunteered. "Then, I tell the guards at the gate that the General's girlfriend has a headache tonight."
The two brawny skeptics glanced thoughtfully at one another. They had to admit—the plan did seem logical enough.
They were just about to go over the top, when the door to the General's quarters suddenly reopened.
The girl with the umbrella briefly reappeared, only to vanish again—behind the passenger's door of her car.
"She can't leave ye-et!" Murdock declared, in a sudden burst of emotion. "She just got here!"
But the girl and her driver made a liar out of him.
"Maybe she really does have a headache tonight?" Peck glumly proposed, as they watched the vehicle go driving off into the darkness. "O-Or, maybe the General has a head—"
"—I think I'm getting' a headache!" B.A. grumbled.
Face turned his frown in the man with the blown plan's direction. "Guess we'll just have to forget the whole thing and try again tomorrow night," he constructively suggested.
"No!" the Captain, who had not quite recovered from his complete and utter devastation, adamantly declared. "We can't go back!"
With the plan now cafluey, Peck chucked the 'Grunt's Motto' and charged full speed ahead. "Why can't we?"
"Because it may not rain again for a week!"
"So?" Face queried, failing to find that a problem.
"So-o, the Colonel won't be here in a week!" Murdock placed his splinted wrist on the peak of the roof, and then rested his rain-drenched forehead upon it. "He won't even be here tomorrow night," he sadly whispered. "This was his last chance!"
"So-o?" Lieutenant Peck calmly repeated, finding that a definite, but not insurmountable, problem. "Then we forget about the girlfriend and steal the boyfriend's car!"
"Of course!" the Captain exclaimed, snapping his head up and getting back into the old escape groove again. "We steal the General's car!"
They gazed out over the rooftop, into the damp and gloomy pitch-blackness below.
There were no vehicles visible.
Heck, there was nothing visible!
"All we gotta do now...is find it," Face further proposed, all-be-it a lot less enthusiastically.
"Man!" Baracus groaned. "I'm definitely getting' a headache!"
"C'mon!" the Lieutenant quietly urged and started scrambling over the peak. "Follow me!"
B.A. and Murdock crawled carefully over the rooftop and then dissolved, into the drizzle and darkness behind him.