Just a few notes before getting down to business. Thank you to all of those who reviewed a couple of weeks ago just when I thought no one would ever read this besides Jenn, who's been there since the beginning (Thanks, girl! You're awesome!). And thank you, Paige, for your reviews. They couldn't have come at a better time and helped me have a good day. Ok, I think that's it, so on with the show! :~)
****
The A-Team stashed the van in a patch of trees just outside the outer fence of Alliance Technologies as the last rays of sunlight faded from the sky. The four men climbed out and circled around to the back. Hannibal passed out weapons and other gear while giving orders.
"OK, we all know the plan," the colonel addressed his troops. "Murdock and BA, you two are the first to penetrate the outer defenses to let Face and me in. Once Face, Murdock, and I get the files we need from Jones' office, we'll rendezvous in the front lobby and go back over the wall, hopefully undetected. All right, lock and load!"
Murdock, BA, and Face nodded, shouldered their gear, and fanned out into the underbrush surrounding the outer wall of the Alliance Tech facility. Face and Hannibal hid at vantage points on either side of BA and Murdock where they could watch, out of sight, the swiveling security cameras on the outer wall.
Alia told the team about a crucial ten-second gap in between the scans of two security cameras—just enough time for someone to climb to the top of the wall and unplug the cameras to allow someone else to climb over the barrier before security took notice. Murdock watched the cameras intently until the two cameras were facing away from his position. He then jumped out from his hiding spot and scurried up the two-foot thick brick façade with time to spare. The pilot slid across the top of the barricade and unplugged the cameras. With the cameras temporarily out of commission, BA clambered up the barrier after Murdock and jumped over to the opposite side. The pilot quickly plugged the cameras back in so security would think that the brief lapse in picture was a minor glitch, then dropped down next to the sergeant.
Face and Hannibal waited for the signal from BA and Murdock while the captain and the sergeant crept off toward their next obstacle.
Lucky for the A-Team, security on Sunday nights was light and one lone guard patrolled the corner of the compound from which they entered, and his buddy was on break. According to Alia, his nickname was Tex for his Austin-influenced drawl—and Tex just happened to be about the same height and build as Murdock.
BA and Murdock crouched behind some bushes and caught sight of the security guard. Tex fit Alia's description to a "T". He strolled along the perimeter of trees, completely unaware of the two intruders lying in wait for him.
Suddenly Tex's radio crackled to life. "Tango One, this is Base, come in Tango One," a gruff male voice barked.
BA and Murdock could see Tex smile as he grabbed his walkie-talkie off his belt. "Yo, Jerry!" he drawled. "We ain't in 'Nam anymore, buddy! Ya don't need code names, 'specially not somethin' that dumb. What's up?"
"Have it your way," Jerry sighed. "Routine check-in, Tex. Anything happening out there?"
"Naw," replied Tex. "Quiet, like ev'ry other Sun--" he trailed off when BA rustled some bushes to attract Tex's attention. "Hold on, Jerry," Tex said, "we might have somethin' here."
Like a moth to a flame, Tex ambled over to Murdock and BA's hiding spot to investigate. Once the guard was close enough, the pilot leaped up from the bushes, laid Tex out in one punch, and then dragged him by the ankles into the hiding spot. Murdock quickly changed into Tex's uniform while BA tied up the guard with rope from his pack.
"Tango One?" crackled the radio. "I mean, Tex! Tex, are you there? What's happening? Tex!"
Luckily Murdock had had the chance to hear Tex's peculiar drawl before he knocked the guard out. "Sorry 'bout that, Jerry," the pilot drawled in a voice identical to the unconscious Tex. "Tripped on a gopher hole. Turned out the noise I heard was just a squirrel."
"Well, it's time for your break anyway," replied Jerry. "Come in and grab some coffee. Mason will cover you."
"Roger that, Jerry. Over and out."
Murdock switched off the radio and ambled towards the front entrance to the Alliance Tech main building with BA sneaking along behind in the shadows with their gear. When the pilot reached the door, BA ducked behind a small tree nearby. Murdock adjusted his "borrowed" cap to hide most of his face from Mason and Jerry, and then strolled into the lobby. A short, blond guard—Mason, Murdock surmised—leaned against the security desk along the wall on the right. He sipped a cup of coffee while chatting with a mustached guard, Jerry, behind the desk.
Mason smiled when he caught sight of Murdock. "So how's the squirrel situation, Tex?" he joked. "Think those critters could be a threat to national security?"
Murdock grinned sheepishly back while Jerry chuckled with Mason. "Y' never know wi' squirrels," replied the pilot. He scanned the room and quickly discovered that Alia's intelligence was correct once again. One lone security camera surveyed the lobby—and it plugged into the wall right next to the coffee maker on the opposite side of the lobby from the security desk. "They're smart critters sometimes." Unlike the idiot who designed security for this place, Murdock added mentally.
"Yeah, I'll keep my eye out for 'em," Mason chuckled as he strolled outside to take over Tex's patrol. As soon as Mason cleared the door, BA jumped from his hiding spot, tackled him, and knocked him out. The sergeant hid the unconscious guard behind the tree and waited for Murdock's signal.
Inside, Murdock ambled over to the coffee pot. He pretended to pour himself a cup, but instead unplugged the surveillance camera.
"Hey, that's weird," Jerry muttered and tapped a monitor at the security desk. "The camera in this room blinked out."
Murdock strolled over to Jerry and leaned on the desk. "Naw, that ain't weird," the captain said, tipping his cap up so that the guard could see his face plainly. "I'm weird."
Jerry gasped, "You're not Tex! Who are you?"
BA burst through the door after seeing Murdock tip his hat—his signal. The captain smiled at Jerry and replied, "Well, y'see, I'm Chip an' this here's Dale. Now Dale's gonna forcefully apply his knuckles laterally to your cranium, disrupting your brainwaves and resulting in unconsciousness."
Jerry managed to mutter, "Aw crap," before BA punched him. Murdock took his pack back from the sergeant and grabbed some rope to tie up the guard. Meanwhile, BA located the main circuit breaker in a closet off the main hallway and went to work "fixing" the security systems.
"Jerry?" the intercom at the security desk crackled to life. "What's going on down there? Something happened to the camera in your area. Jerry!"
Murdock quickly finished binding Jerry with the rope and shoved his limp body under the desk. The pilot answered the intercom, once again imitating Tex's drawl. "Sorry 'bout that. We're havin' some technical trouble, but Jerry's workin' on it right now. We might need to reboot the system though, so if all the cameras blink off for a second, don't worry."
"Ok, thanks, Tex," the voice on the other end of the line replied before hanging up.
"Whew, that was close," muttered Murdock. He then changed out of Tex's uniform jacket and pulled on his precious leather jacket again before checking on BA's progress. "How's the 'repair work' comin'?" asked the pilot.
"Beat it, fool!" BA snapped as he fiddled with the circuit panel for the security cameras. "I'm workin'! You tell that other guard upstairs that nothin's wrong wi' security?"
"Yeah, you ugly mud sucker," Murdock muttered in return.
BA glared daggers at the pilot. "If Hannibal an' Face weren't waitin' outside, I'd pound you right here, right now," he growled. The sergeant rerouted a few more wires, then shut off the panel to buy him a few seconds to hook up the system with simple video loops; the remaining guard or two would think the cameras were still recording what was going on around the compound when in reality they would be watching old security footage.
Outside the compound, Face and Hannibal watched as the security cameras stopped swiveling. "C'mon, Face; BA and Murdock got in," the colonel said. He and the lieutenant wasted no time in scaling the outer wall and continuing into the main building.
Back in the lobby, Murdock darted off for the fourth floor to rendezvous at Jones' office with Hannibal and Face. BA tweaked his handiwork a bit more, then stood back to admire it.
"Nice work, Baracus," a decidedly feminine voice said from the doorway. BA spun around to come face to face with Alia's tall African American neighbor dressed head to toe in black. The woman trained a pistol on the sergeant and added, "Not too smart leaving your weapon a good five feet away from you. Now if you want to keep yourself intact, I suggest you listen carefully."
"Who're you?" asked BA as he raised his hands in surrender.
Jill smiled and picked up the sergeant's M16. "We'll save that for later when we meet up with our friends upstairs," she answered. "Colonel Decker's on his way here if he isn't outside the front gate already, so--"
"I knew it!" BA growled, cutting off Jill. "You, Alia, an' your other friends are workin' wi' Decker to trap us!"
The sergeant thought the woman was going to pass out laughing from lack of oxygen. "You think we're workin' for Decker?" gasped Jill. "You're dumber than you look in that crazy getup! Decker's just a pawn in this game, like you. We'll finish this later with your friends so I don't have to repeat myself. Now patch the security cameras back into the main surveillance room, but not into the recording system. We want to see what's going on, but we don't want any evidence that we were here. Get it?"
****
Up on the fourth floor, Hannibal, Face, and Murdock met up outside Jones' office after taking out the remaining guards in the third floor surveillance room. Now the three men searched through Jones' filing cabinets for any information pertaining to his black-market sales of top-secret military weapons.
After a half hour of digging through paperwork, Face moaned, "I can't find a thing on this Jones guy! He's got detailed files on everything inside this plant, but nothing on any sort of illegal activity."
"I've got nothin' as well, Colonel," agreed Murdock.
"We've searched this office top to bottom and come up empty handed," Hannibal sighed. "What the hell's going on?"
"Hang on a second, Hannibal," Face interrupted and held up a manila folder. "I might have something. It seems Jones was suspicious that one of his employees was into something illegal and was checking it out." He flipped through the papers in the folder and froze. "I don't believe it! Jones suspects--"
"Alia Benekopoulos," finished an all too familiar voice from the doorway. Hannibal, Murdock, and Face whirled around to see Alia standing there with the blonde waitress Susan on her left and her petite Chinese neighbor on her right. Like a dark version of Charlie's Angels, all three women were dressed completely in black with their hair pulled back—and trained pistols on the three members of the A-Team.
The three men stood there for several confused moments in different degrees of shock. "Alia?" Murdock finally asked, breaking the silence. "What's goin' on, sweetheart? What--"
"My name's not Alia," the brunette interrupted.
"I knew it!" exclaimed another familiar voice from behind the three women. Jill shoved an agitated BA into the office with his friends and joined her comrades. "I knew she wasn't Alia!" BA yelled again. "You guys wouldn't listen to me, but I was right!"
"Will you shut the hell up?" screamed Susan. "Nobody cares that you were right for the first time in your life!"
Hannibal studied the blonde carefully. "I recognize you now with your hair pulled back like that," he said. "You're Maggie Coltraine."
Susan a.k.a. Maggie grinned evilly, unsettling the A-Team. "Very good, Colonel Smith," she said with a malicious glint in her eyes. "I thought you were going to blow the whole thing back in Arizona. It's amazing how I can get away with barely changing my appearance and not get recognized, while you go all out and still stick out of the crowd."
"Who are you really?" asked Face.
"Which one of us?" the blonde laughed. "We all play so many parts we even confuse ourselves."
Murdock's head spun as the scene unfolded. "Alia, sweetheart, tell me what's going on," his voice threatened to crack.
"My name's not Alia!" the brunette hissed through gritted teeth. "BA didn't imagine that body back at the house. Maggie here killed the real Alia Benekopoulos just before we arrived, but failed to hide the body in time." She glared at the blonde. "She almost blew the whole operation right there. Sloppy!"
Maggie glared back, but the brunette continued. "You want to know my real name? I'm Lola Sanchez, the leader of this outfit."
"Self-appointed bitch is more like it," grumbled the blonde.
"You watch it, whore!" Lola snapped.
"So what do you—err—ladies want with us?" interrupted Hannibal.
"Oh, we're not the ones who want you," Lynn spoke up for the first time, "though I would love to get you alone, Colonel. You were perfect stooges to break in here and do all the hard work for us so we could get our hands on some of the military prototypes Alliance builds. We admit that we made it easy for you with our mole, Lola."
"It was a simple plan really," Lola picked up the thread. "As BA will testify, I happened to almost be a doppelganger for the late Miss Benekopoulos. All I had to do was lighten my hair, get some hazel contacts, and use some makeup to give myself a more olive complexion. We kidnapped Alia and held her hostage in her own home while I took her place here at Alliance for two weeks."
"I was already in place as the neighbor Jill by then," the black woman added. "My real name is Jazzana LaSalle, but you can call me Jazz. The phrase 'on the jazz' has a totally different meaning for us," she smiled.
Lynn rolled her eyes. "Anyway, 'Maggie' and I flew to LA to track you guys down."
"I played the part of the prospective client while Lola and Jazz made certain that Alliance didn't know a switch had been made," added the blonde. "I'm Robyn Thompson, by the way. Once I was sure I had a line on the A-Team and Alliance believed Lola was Alia, or at least we thought so, Lola drove here and met up with you, pretending to be Miss Benekopoulos."
"We had to use some sources, including your pal Colonel Decker, to find you guys," Lynn said. "I called him before Lola contacted 'Mr. Lee' at the laundry. When Hannibal and she had to leave before the MPs arrived, I threw Decker off their trail by posing as Lynn Wu Lee, Mr. Lee's fictional daughter. I then wrapped up the loose ends in LA and flew back to Las Cruces. My real name is Xiang Li."
"That's when I had to move fast," Robyn cut in again. "I booked it to Arizona and posed as Susan the waitress, then drove through the night to get here and dispose of Miss Benekopoulos before you arrived. But you guys had to arrive early, so I had to drag her body over to Jazz and Xiang's place while BA ran out to get help. Strangling someone is a great stress reliever."
"And that brings us to here," finished Lola. "Unfortunately something unexpected cropped up. It seems that your Colonel Decker is much smarter than reported. He somehow figured out that I was posing as Alia and followed us here. Right now he's--"
"Smith!" boomed a gravelly voice outside the building. "I know you're in there! Come out with your hands up before we break down this gate!"
"Outside the gate with a megaphone," Jazz finished Lola's sentence. "Crap!"
Decker yelled, "And I know who you are, Miss Sanchez! You and your own team can join Smith and his team in surrendering."
"Double crap!" cursed Lola. She walked up to Hannibal and prodded his collarbone with her gun. "I know you've got one of those canister launchers in your pack. I need it to distract Decker out there."
The colonel tossed his pack at Lola's feet. "We treated you like one of our own," he said angrily as the brunette rummaged through the bag and found what she wanted, "and this is how you repay us?"
"It's not her fault we found your weak link," retorted Xiang.
"Is that all I am to you?" demanded Murdock, his voice shaking in fury. "A weak link? I loved you! I poured my heart out to you, and all along you were just lying to me to get what you really wanted!" The pilot lunged for Lola, who was loading the launcher. Face and Hannibal grabbed him just as the other three women cocked their pistols.
Lola finished with the canister launcher and said, deadly serious, "Don't make them use those on you. Those aren't water guns." The brunette walked to a window facing the front gate, opened it, and fired the launcher at Decker and his men waiting outside. The A-Team heard someone yell, "Tear gas!" above the confusion now raging outside. Lola fired another canister for good measure, then shut the window again.
"May I ask what you're going to do with us now?" asked Hannibal.
Jazz smiled. "We're gonna hold you boys here for our boss. He would very much like to meet you."
"And who is this boss of yours?" Face questioned.
"You'll just have to wait and see for yourselves," answered Robyn.
All four women aimed at a different member of the A-Team and fired. All four men looked down at their chests when they weren't blown off their feet and found tranquilizer darts stuck in their flesh before they collapsed in an unconscious heap.
"Why can't this ever be simple?" moaned Robyn as she stuffed her gun into the back of her belt.
"Stop bitching," Lola sighed. "Everybody pick an A-Team member and drag him to his own cell.
Xiang jumped up and down excitedly. "I call Hannibal!" she squealed. "We're stripping them, right?"
"Yes," Lola replied, rolling her eyes, "they're notorious for using everyday items to escape. The only way we can be sure that they can't get out is if we strip them—to their shorts only, Xiang."
"Someone's gonna have to help me with BA," said Jazz. "Think I'm gonna get rid of all his jewelry first so I might have half a chance of moving him."
Robyn stood over Face and Murdock. "I don't know what you see in that one, Lola," she said pointing to the pilot. "Did you really sleep with him instead of Face like Jazz and Xiang said?"
"Why the fuck do you care?" snapped the brunette.
"Ooo, aren't we a little bitch today," Robyn retorted. She studied Lola as the brunette stared at Murdock's unconscious form. "You actually have feelings for that weirdo! Whatever happened to your rule about not getting involved with the marks?"
"Shut the fuck up!" screamed Lola. "You've made your point already! You like Face for his looks, so go take him to his cell. Have fun stripping him." The brunette hooked her arms under Murdock's armpits and dragged him from the room, leaving the other three women in stunned silence.
****
Lola managed to drag Murdock down the hall to a small padded room very much like those in mental institutions. Murdock's been in places like this for so much of his life, she thought, I hope he doesn't do anything horrible when he wakes up. The brunette undressed the pilot with care, folding each article of clothing neatly and putting them into a pile. After she finished, she traced her finger along Murdock's jaw line and lips before moving onto the next step. Lola extracted a roll of duct tape and several zip ties from a small bag attached to her belt and proceeded to bind the pilot hand and foot. First, she rolled him onto his stomach and used a zip tie to hold his hands behind his back, then covered the tie with a thick layer of duct tape. Next, she tightened another two ties around the pilot's ankles and again covered them in a layer of tape. Lastly, Lola rolled Murdock over and placed a piece of tape over his eyes and then his mouth. Before she put on the gag, the brunette kissed the pilot one last time.
Lola picked up Murdock's clothes, checked the hidden camera to make sure it was working, and then left the cell, locking it securely behind her.
I hope to God I made the right choice, thought the brunette. She inhaled the smell of Murdock's leather jacket as she walked down the stairs to meet up with the rest of her team in the surveillance room.
****
To be concluded…
