"How is he?"
"Asleep."
"How long?"
"Long enough."
"Did you get everything you needed from him?"
"If he knows anything about Ngo Dinh Nhu's movements, he's not saying."
"So we move on Diem?"
"Yes, there's just one thing left for Captain Murdock to do in Hanoi."
"Wait, we're sending him back out there? To what end?"
"He might not be saying anything to us but who knows what he let slip to the rest of them while they were in the P.O.W. camp? No, those men need stripping of their credibility, so they can't point the finger at us."
"Can't we just have them killed?"
"I hope you're not suggesting we assassinate our own, Rogers... I don't look kindly on murderers."
"N-no-no, no, Sir, I was merely suggesting-"
"Well don't. Your place is to obey, not to suggest. Get it done."
"Yes, Sir."
-A-
Recovery was boring.
Boring, boring, boring, boring.
He'd woken up from a heavy, midday heat shed session in a blissfully familiar U.S. Army military hospital.
He'd almost wept with relief as he realised he'd been rescued; he was so relieved that the questions that had been plaguing him about the changes in the guards and in the camp had fled his mind.
He didn't have the strength to celebrate his freedom, so his emotions had to content themselves with leaking a few weak tears down his gaunt, shadowed cheeks as he lay in a clean bed, dressed in clean pyjamas, breathing clean, American air.
As soon as he was able, he had asked one of the nurses if they knew what had happened to his team back there, if they had made it back to a US base safely. He was assured that they had and was taken aback at the almost reverence he was treated with from that point on.
He knew he was already respected as a pilot; he wasn't aware that he had become a legend.
Chuckling to himself now - several days after his rescue - around a mouthful of nourishing, tasteless, hospital slop, he mused on the irony of the situation: he had become a hero by getting captured.
Relieved that his plan to assist the escape had worked, Murdock was keen to get fully recovered and back to his team. He knew what he had to do, it was all quite simple; it just required patience (which he didn't have), calm (ditto) and a big ol' heap of acting skill (plenty, thanks).
Gain weight, get fit, pass the psych tests, get back into the sky.
Simple.
Now, if only these scurvy landlubbers would stop the walls from bleeding...
-A-
Face ran a hand through his sweat drenched hair and wished, not for the first time, that he could swap with Murdock, who - they had been recently informed - was languishing comfortably in a military hospital back home, preparing for return to the field.
The recovering pilot was probably enjoying three or four square meals a day, with as much cool, refreshing water he could possibly want. He was likely surrounded by a bevy of bikini-clad nurses wafting him with giant palm leaves while one of them hand-fed him grapes from delicate fingers dripping with gold, her eyes wide and dewy as she gazed up at him in adoration...
A Vietnamese trainee slammed into him, jarring him most rudely from his fantasy and his hands twitched violently as he had to fight back the drilled-in instinct to snap the other man's neck. The young, Southern Vietnamese soldier jabbered an apology to him in his native tongue, to which Face patted him on the shoulder and forgave him likewise.
The soldier raced back to his platoon where Ray was dishing out his own unique brand of training: making the trainee soldiers do pushups with one comrade each riding on their backs.
Taking a break from the training program they had set up for this small branch of the South Vietnamese anti-communist army, Face took out a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit up. He leaned against the '53 Cadillac convertible that sat gleaming in the sunshine, bright pink and completely out of place in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle - awaiting Murdock's return to Tay Loc before it was returned to its owner - to smoke it.
He'd had enough. They'd all had enough. The war was nearly over - so they were told - surely their country had used them for long enough? Could they please just do one more mission then go home?
Face was a S.O.G., he'd become a S.O.G. for a reason.
This wasn't the reason.
Fighting in a war he didn't understand, in a country he couldn't acclimatise to, with friends he didn't want to lose to some ridiculous cause over power that they had no part of.
Just one more job was left, Hannibal said, the one that didn't sit quite right with any of them.
The job on the bank of Hanoi.
-A-
It had taken a month for the Doctors to clear Murdock as fit for duty and the team had been forced to put the last mission on hold while they waited for him. As far as Face was concerned, he would have happily taken the general's original offer of La Frois and just got this damn job over and done with; but Morrison was insistent that they wait for their regular pilot to return to the field before they set off.
Murdock had appeared back at Tay Loc exactly six months to the day of his original encounter with Face in the gym, with a spring in his step, a smile on his face and a severely receding hair line; the drastic hair loss having been triggered by the stress of the repeated, acute coercion from his captors. This very visible change to his friend's appearance was enough to distract Face from noticing the change in Murdock's eyes.
The shadows that now lurked in the honey brown depths when his guard was down would have terrified all of them, had Murdock not been smiling his ass off in an attempt to hide them.
Murdock sat happily reunited with his team and rubbed absently at the eye that had temporarily lost its sight when he crashed the Lady Crazy, and wondered for a fraction of a second why he couldn't feel an eye patch there.
-A-
B.A. stood rooted to the spot on the dirt airstrip, his usually frowning eyes staring up blankly at the slowly rotating blades of the helicopter that was patiently awaiting his presence in her belly.
The blades began to pick up speed, their motion causing a soft 'whupp, whupp' sound to fill the air and stir the dirt around it.
He blinked.
The chopper fell from the sky as if some angry God had swiped it down. The snapping of branches as they tumbled from the heavens heralded the team's descent as a cacophony of destruction. Yells sounded all around him as terror leapt into the hearts of the fearless, legendary S.O.G.s of John Smith's A-Team.
Just before they hit the ground, B.A. had chance to note that the usually vocal captain of the craft was unusually quiet.
Impact.
BA was the first to see the colonel laying unconscious and frighteningly still less than two feet away from him, and for the first time since arriving in this hellhole B.A. was terrified. Involuntarily, his mind tripped back to when he'd first started to bang heads with his C.O….
The colonel was a real hard-ass S.O.B., that's what B.A. had been told by Ray Brenner when he had first been recruited into Smith's team. Bosco Baracus, ever the anarchist, had taken that as an invitation to grate against the Rupert, and to wind him up as far as he would go.
Smith, of course, had seen straight through the bravado and tough talk and within two weeks of being on the team, B.A. had found himself called into his office.
"Do you know why you're here, Sergeant?"
B.A. had shrugged indolently, "'Cause I poured engine oil into the L.T.'s boots when he gave me double-watch?"
"No."
"'Cause I switched Eddie's shampoo for Swarfega?"
Smith had visibly fought back a smirk: Eddie had stunk for a good two days following that little incident, "No, Sergeant. One more, for good measure?"
B.A. sighed heavily; busted...
"'Cause I took the Major's jeep in for a tune up and accidentally caused it to... um... explode."
Smith smiled, "Give the man a cigar." And then, to B.A'.s shock, he actually stood up and offered him a cigar from his humidor.
B.A. had stared at the proffered box, then to Smith and back to the box again; what was this? Some sort of trick?
Coming to his senses, B.A. shook his head, "Uh, no thank you, Sir; I don't smoke."
Smith quirked an eyebrow, "You must be the only S.O.G out here that doesn't."
B.A. raised an eyebrow of his own, "I'm the only S.O.G. out here that spends as much of his time inside or under automobiles as I do. I kinda get half-drenched in gasoline in the motor pool. Don't need no V.C. to smoke me if I do it myself by setting my fatigues on fire."
Smith had nodded, "Tell me something, Sergeant. Why DO you spend so much of your time in the motor pool? Surely even you need to unwind from time to time; I've never seen you in any of Lieutenant Peck's 'establishments'."
B.A. had sneered then, his dislike of the illegality of his colleague's activities creeping into his voice, "Don't drink no moonshine, Sir."
Smith had scoffed, "It's hardly moonshine that he peddles, Sergeant. His supply of scotch for example is excellent."
"Might as well be moonshine, the way he carries on with it out here. He'd be shot back home for doing what he does."
Smith rose from his seat and moved to circle his desk, "But that's the beauty of it, Sergeant, we AREN'T back home; we can pretty much do what we like out here, provided we keep Uncle Sam happy." He perched on the edge of his desk and regarded B.A. with sharp, insightful eyes, waiting to see what the bigger man's response would be to his apparent disregard for protocol.
B.A., true to character, snarled, "Don't matter, it just ain't RIGHT," then remembered who he was snarling at, "Sir."
Smith extracted his cigar from between his teeth, and extinguished it in the ashtray on his desk behind him. "How's your mother, B.A.?"
B.A. had blinked, the abrupt change in subject matter throwing him off stride. He gathered his anger and tempered his response, mindful of the mental image of his momma's disapproving look-of-doom that she threw at him whenever he got mad.
"She's okay, I write to her every week still. Sometimes takes a while for her letters to get to me though."
Smith's eyes had twinkled as he replied, "Be sure to tell her that I have her Scooter's back."
B.A. had blinked again and felt his jaw fall slack, how the hell did he know that name? Nobody knew that name!
Smith was still looking at him, that twinkle in his eyes intensifying with every passing moment of B.A.'s shock. B.A. struggled to coordinate himself into responding, "Uh, yessir... I'll do that."
Presuming himself dismissed, B.A. had turned to leave until Smith's next comment caused him to pause.
"You'll be keeping a tight reign on that temper of yours, Sergeant, otherwise I'll be writing to your mamma myself."
B.A. coloured and was suddenly glad his back was to the other man as he responded with a brisk, "Yes, Sir."
After that short interaction in the colonel's office B.A. Baracus had been a changed man. Fear of his mother's wrath was quite enough to force him back into line, and the mischief and testing of the colonel's boundaries suddenly stopped. B.A. Baracus became the model soldier of Colonel Smith's team and he was rewarded by the one thing he had always sought from his superiors.
Respect.
It was the mutual respect that existed between B.A. and his C.O. that drove him now to lift the seriously injured man gently into his arms and carry him to safety, out of the bird that Murdock had crashed.
Murdock had crashed...
Murdock stuck his helmeted head out of the window of the chopper and waved to B.A. to jump aboard so he could take off.
B.A. couldn't move.
His heart thundered in his ears.
Murdock seemed to be moving in slow motion as he hopped out and approached the frozen soldier.
The next thing B.A. knew, time had resumed and Murdock was flat on his back nursing a rapidly bruising jaw.
"Hey, what was that for, you big, ugly mud sucker?! All I said was get on board."
Murdock had crashed and almost killed the colonel...
B.A. was blinking hard and shaking his head briskly, as if trying to reconnect something that had come loose.
Murdock had crashed and they had all been captured...
Murdock had gotten to his feet and now stood carefully out of B.A.'s reach, "B.A.? What's wrong, Pal?"
It was all Murdock's fault...
"I can't... can't get in that chopper... You..." He looked Murdock square in the eye and suddenly all of the fear over the colonel's injuries that he had bottled since the crash came bursting from him and he lunged for the rangy pilot.
Fortunately for Murdock his lightning fast reflexes had not been dulled by his month of inaction, and he dodged the first swinging fist easily, "B.A.! What are you doin', man? Calm down!"
B.A. swung again, "I ain't-" missed; lunged forward to attempt to snag the other man into his grasp, "getting-" finally managed to grab a handful of flight-suit and pulled Murdock close to bellow in his face, "IN A BIRD WITH YOU, YOU CRAZY FOOL!"
Murdock fought in vain to free himself from B.A.'s frantic grasp, he could feel stitches in his flight suit popping as B.A. channeled his fear into the uniform. For an instant, Murdock actually thought B.A. would strangle him, the other man's eyes were wide with terror, then they suddenly went blank and looked over Murdock's shoulder as he collapsed against the much thinner man. Murdock struggled with the deadweight in his arms until Hannibal came around to help him lower the unconscious soldier to the ground.
"What was that all about?!" Murdock had to yell to be heard over the rotors of the chopper.
"I don't know!" Hannibal shouted back, "Help me get him inside!"
Between the two of them, and Face who also jumped out to help, they managed to load B.A. into the Huey and secure him for takeoff. Racing around to his door, Murdock jumped into his seat, quickly buckled into his chicken plate and took off with a whoop.
Airborne and calmer, Murdock focussed all of his attention on his controls, sparing an occasional paranoid glance down at the ground. He had to blink hard every now and again - making sure that Frank couldn't see him as he did so - because he could have sworn that he could see grumble launchers being floated through the jungle on Spanish galleons.
Face's voice in his ear made him jump, "Hey Murdock, everything okay up there?"
Murdock forced joviality into his voice, determined not to let his friend see how scared he was that he was going to get them all killed this time, he keyed the response key on the radio, "Yessiree, Faceman, everything's hunky dory up he-yah, how's tricks back there?"
As Face replied with a quip, Murdock mentally shook himself and forced the visions below to vanish. He'd rushed his recovery, he knew, he'd been so desperate to get back out here to let the others know that he was fine, and convince himself likewise.
But he was far from fine.
He knew that he wasn't ready to fly yet, and part of him knew that if he let on how affected he actually was by his experience he'd never be allowed to fly again. He wasn't about to let that happen. Howling Mad Murdock without something holding him aloft was just plain old Murdock; lovable, cuddly, clinically insane, Section-Eighted Murdock. That thought terrified him more than being reunited with his friendly neighbourhood interrogator, so he lied and cheated his way through the psych tests and was returned to the field in record time.
Along with his parrot.
Landing Zone B of the D.M.Z. came into view and Murdock angled the chopper down to land gently on the grass. The S.O.G.s poured from the back and melted into the undergrowth surrounding the L.Z.. Murdock powered down the chopper and he and his boys settled in to wait tensely for their return.
-A-
A black clad man, slightly taller than the average Vietnamese, leaned nonchalantly against a nondescript truck in the city centre of Hanoi, his straw hat hiding his face and his startlingly blue eyes from view as he discretely watched the people moving around him.
Recon was one of Face's favourite parts of the job, it always reminded him of playing ninjas as a little boy back at the orphanage. He and the other boys would take turn climbing the apple trees and try to jump from branch to branch - before Tommy Hanson fell out of one and broke his arm and the nuns forbade them from playing it again. They would play a children's version of the escape and evasion he was taught as a man, hiding in bushes or up trees, or on low roofs, or in foxholes. Face always won, he seemed to have a knack for hiding, even in plain sight. It was a gift... it was also a curse.
Monsignor McGill was one of the highest ranking clergymen at the orphanage, and it was he who the young Templeton was sent to when he broke yet another rule. One of the things Face had always respected about Monsignor McGill was his frankness; he told Face outright that was he was doing was close to sinful, his constant changes of identity as a man would simultaneously exasperate and amuse the old priest. He told Face that he prayed for him as a child, as a soldier and would continue to pray for him when he returned. That always made him feel better when he was doubting whether he would make it back alive; Monsignor always said 'when' not 'if' and the little boy he would always be in the eyes of the old man held absolute faith in what he said. If Monsignor said he was coming back, then by God he'd get back.
Two N.V.A soldiers wandered into his peripheral vision.
Shit.
Ducking out of their line of sight, he made a beeline for a nearby jeep. He hadn't heard the explosives go off inside the bank but he knew that B.A. was always prompt with his explosions, so that meant he had about thirty seconds to get into position.
Then they made mistake number 1: B.A. appeared in the window of the bank, looking for Face. The N.V.A. soldiers spotted him and immediately made to run into the bank. Thinking fast, adrenaline pumping through his veins and thundering in his ears, Face drove straight at the front of the bank. Slamming through the paper-thin walls like something from a Hollywood movie, he pulled a .45 from his Vietnamese civilian robes and lay down covering fire while Hannibal and B.A. dove into the jeep with their swag bags. The men were barely in the jeep before Face floored the accelerator and shot through the opposite wall and careened down the street, sending paper lanterns flying as they raced to freedom.
-A-
The sight of a jeep blasting out from the undergrowth startled Murdock and Frank from their idle chatter; Murdock glanced quickly at Frank to make sure he wasn't just seeing things before gunning the engines to full life. Hannibal, and Face barrelled into the chopper, dragging a livid B.A. behind them and the bird lurched into the sky, bullets pinging off the belly as the pursuing V.C. tried to shoot them down.
Murdock and Frank set to the task of getting back to base as quickly and as far below the radar as possible, while in the back of the chopper, B.A., Face and Hannibal dragged themselves off the floor and into the seats. B.A. promptly suffered an anxiety blackout and passed out while upright. Face and Hannibal kept half an eye on him, just in case he started to convulse, while they panted for breath, coming down from their respective adrenaline highs.
"Hannibal, that... was almost fun." Face had a huge grin plastered across his face as he gasped for breath; the number of times he had played bank robbers as a boy, and now here he was, having just robbed a bank. It was surreal to say the least.
Face's excitement was infectious and Hannibal was soon sporting a matching grin. He shook his head in exasperation, still smiling, "What a way to make a score against Charlie." He pulled a 100,000 Piaster bundle from his sack and looked at it from all angles. "Hit him right in the wallet. I don't see how a little ten mil score like this is going to make that much difference to the bigger picture though." He tossed the bundle back into the bag and reached for a cigar from his pocket. "Still, Morrison must have a good reason, he rarely authorises anything this risky." He bit the tip off, spat the end on the floor and lit up.
The grin slid from Face's lips as Hannibal's words sliced through the euphoria. He was right; this score was tiny. How was stealing a measly 10,000,000 piasters - equivalent to 100,000 dollars - really going to make a dent in Charlie's finances? They'd been told that they were helping to end this pointless war by hitting the Bank of Hanoi, but this wasn't going to help end anything except maybe the bank manager's career; what the hell was going on?
-A-
They arrived back at base and split; Murdock went to Morrison to debrief, Frank shut down the chopper, and B.A., Face and Hannibal stashed the money in a safe place - not trusting Stores to not take a peek into the sacks if they had taken them there - before crowding into one of the hooches for a conference.
Before they could get into speculation about the orders, however, a warning klaxon screamed out over the base. An aerial attack was incoming.
Scrambling out of the hooch, the three of them raced for cover just in time to escape being exploded into wet, little pieces as the hooch took a direct hit. Racing for the anti-aircraft defenses, the three of them ran hard, the ground underneath them shaking with the impact from the overhead shelling. Just as they reached the A.A. assembly point, the main building housing Colonel Morrison's office exploded. Forcing themselves not to think about the fact that Murdock had gone into that building less than ten minutes ago - not enough time to complete a debriefing - they dove onto the controls of one of the unmanned Nike missile launchers and between them and the other two stations, they succeeded in shooting the enemy bombers from the sky.
But it was too late.
The office building had been obliterated, anyone still inside when the shells hit would now be dead.
"Murdock?" Face, reeling from a horrific mixture of combat adrenaline and shock, staggered away from the Nike launcher and weaved towards the rubble of the offices, feeling B.A. take his shoulder in a firm grasp when he came to a stunned stop. Urging him forwards again, B.A. and Hannibal flanked Face as they approached the ruined building.
Hannibal yelled out over the eerie silence, "MURDOCK?!" An answering groan made them all whip round to see a pile of rubble moving less than twenty meters away.
Vaulting over huge chunks of masonry, the three S.O.G.s hauled misshapen lumps of steel and wood aside as quick as they were able, until their arms burned, until they couldn't lift any more, until finally, they revealed their pilot, half-buried and half-conscious.
"Murdock!" B.A. this time, the concern he rarely showed for anyone peeking through as relief shone on his usually scowling face. Murdock grinned weakly up at the three men, gave them an even weaker thumbs-up, then passed out.
Digging the unconscious man out from under the wreckage, they carefully carried him over to where an emergency crew had set up a temporary M.A.S.H., before joining the other unhurt soldiers in preparing defenses for what was left of the base and searching for more survivors.
About two hours later a jeep of M.P.s rolled into the base where they immediately went about questioning everyone who was conscious. One of the M.P.s had embarked upon a preliminary examination of the ruins, but was now running back to his commander, brandishing a neat, slightly singed bundle of piaster notes. Face saw the man out of the corner of his eye and realised with a sinking heart that the weapons store under which they had hidden the money had been destroyed, which meant the money was now exposed, which meant a lot of questions that they would struggle to answer without the help of the late Colonel Morrison.
-A-
Murdock woke up screaming.
One of the M.A.S.H. nurses was at his bedside in a flash.
"Xin vui lòng không! please don't Tôi không biết bất cứđiều gì I don't know anything ye scurvy curr! Keelhaul the bastards! Bạn không thể làm điều đó, Sir. You can't do that, Sir" His body suddenly jolted and locked as he went into a full blown panic attack.
Yelling for an orderly, the nurse prepared a syringe of sedative as the orderly raced over, and struggled to hold the violently trembling pilot still.
"What's wrong with him?!"
The needle pierced into Murdock's arm and he suddenly managed, through the trauma, to lock terrified brown eyes with the nurse, "Please... no..." She smiled sadly down at him as she slid the plunger home and he slowly relaxed, his body falling limp and his eyes rolling back into his head.
The orderly released his grasp of the other man's limp upper arms and looked to the nurse for an answer to his question. As she cleaned and sterilised the needle, she explained, "His unit was taken into custody earlier this afternoon on charges of theft. Before they left with the Military Police for Da Nang, Colonel Smith warned us that Captain Murdock here has been suffering from severe anxiety attacks since his rescue from one of Chao's death camps."
"Shit."
She chuckled humourlessly, "No kidding." She smiled fondly down at Murdock and patted his arm gently, "I heard about his case from Dr Stein back home, he told me Murdock was making a good recovery but could suffer a relapse if the trigger was right. I suspect he'll be going home after this. Section 8." She raised sad eyes to the orderly, "He won't fly again."
-A-
Face rarely got the chance to languish. He quite enjoyed languishing. He'd be enjoying this languish, if it wasn't taking place in a military stockade. Rolling his neck from where he half lay, half propped himself up on the bunk, he distracted himself from thoughts of firing squads by dwelling on the information he had come into possession of.
Murdock's C.I.A. involvement.
He had been picked up during selection due to his unnatural skill with languages; he was able to absorb different languages perfectly within the space of only a couple of weeks, and he was a natural mimic which meant he was able to pick up perfectly blended accents to go with the languages he had learned. He'd been sent on a couple of reconnaissance missions, low key affairs where all he had to do was discretely listen in on a few key meetings. One of his assignment had been in Russia, the second in Japan. Following his success with those missions, he had undertaken training to go into China under deep cover, hence the knowledge of Eastern stealth and defensive techniques, but the mission had to be pulled due to misinformation. It also turned out that the C.I.A. had been using Murdock as a guinea pig for an experimental training method, using subliminal suggestion to speed up the learning process. The side effect of which had been a week of crippling headaches for the poor guinea pig, but once the pain had worn off the training had worked: he was able to read and speak Mandarin Chinese after just two days of training.
"Face." Hannibal's hiss from the next cell shook him from his musings. Rolling off the bunk, he went to the bars of his door.
"Yeah?"
"Can you make a lock pick out of anything in your cell?"
Face grimaced, "Nope, I already thought about that, but everything in here is bolted down tight."
"Did you know Lynch was in charge of this stockade?"
A slow smile spread over Face's lips as comprehension dawned, "Lady killer Lynch? Ha! Leave the doors to me, Hannibal, you get thinking about how we're going to get out of the stockade. And try not to use the front door this time, okay?" An answering laugh from the next cell was his only response.
Waiting until the rotating guard duty roster positioned a guard directly outside of his cell, Face crouched by his bunk and stuffed the sleeve of his prison fatigues into his mouth. Biting down hard to muffle the grunt of pain, he slashed his own arm with the sharp corner of the bed, deep enough to bleed convincingly, but not deep enough to do any permanent damage. Releasing the fabric from his mouth, he let out a cry of pain and fell to the floor, making sure he landed at an angle from which the guard could see he was hurt. The guard came to the bars of the door and peered at the bleeding Lieutenant, "Hey, what happened?"
Manipulate the voice just so... "Ohhhh, I don't know...must've caught the bed or somethin'. You got a band aid?" Hold up the arm for dramatic effect...
"Oh shit, dude you're bleeding really bad." He grabbed his radio from his belt loop, "Delta Five to Control, I'm taking prisoner 15-A to the med bay." He gestured Face to his feet as the radio crackled an acknowledgment, "Back away from the door and hold out your hands in front of you." He opened the cell door and advanced on Face, keeping his gun trained on him and releasing a pair of handcuffs from his belt.
Face winced as he was handcuffed for transport, "Hey, careful man, you're gonna make it worse."
The guard marched him past the other cells, Face winked at the colonel and B.A. as he passed.
Twenty minutes and one former bed buddy later, Face was returned to the cell block, his wound freshly dressed and his escape plan in place.