"What kind of place does this General Bullen even live at?" Face asked, "I've never even heard of the guy, how'd you find out where he lives?"

"You can find out anything you have a mind to, Face," Hannibal replied as he drove them towards their destination, "When you put your mind to it, and know where to go snooping around."

"Well it's gotta be a big place if we' gonna go through with this party," B.A. said, "Question is how big?"

"Apparently Army generals get paid very well," Hannibal chose as his answer.

"Maybe too well?" Murdock suggested.

"Maybe it's not the army that's funding the place," Face said, "Maybe Bullen's got his fingers in another pot that's keeping him well tended to."

"I wish we'd hurry up and get there," B.A. said, and turned towards Hannibal and said, "I don't like you driving my van."

"Now why's that?" Hannibal asked.

"Because you always messing with things that oughta be left alone," B.A. said, "You lost my tools, man!"

"I borrowed them to get into Cal Cutter's building undetected and besides, B.A., that was 3 years ago."

"And you drove my van head on off a dock and sunk it!"

"We had to do that to get away from Colonel Decker when he first found us, you remember that," Hannibal said, "You're the one who crashed it through a billboard, and a roadblock, several roadblocks."

"And you always knocking me out and putting me on planes!" B.A. told him.

"Here we go again," Face said as he covered his ears.

"WHAT!?" Murdock asked as he already had his fingers plugged into his own ears.

"B.A., none of that has any emphasis on my abilities as a driver," Hannibal said, "You're not the only one here who knows how to drive a van you know."

"I don't care," B.A. told him, "It's my van, and I don't like anyone messing with it. Bad enough this crazy fool drove it off a bridge, and put bricks under the seat! Why'd he do that?"

"WHAT?" Murdock asked.

B.A. turned and did a double take and slapped Murdock on the head and told him, "Take your fingers out your ears, you crazy fool!"

"OW! WHAT?" Murdock asked.

"Is this that wonderful Christmas spirit I'm always hearing so much about?" Face leaned forward and asked Hannibal.

"It is in this unit," Hannibal replied, then his eyes perked up, "Aha! There it is, there's the place up ahead!"

"Wow!" Murdock said as he felt his eyes bug out as far as they could.

Face and B.A. looked ahead too, and their reactions were quieter than Murdock's, but the sentiment was all more or less the same. The house they just pulled up at was not particularly fancy in appearance, but it was huge, three stories tall and looked like 3 snazzed up Brownstones pushed together into one.

"Wha-wha-what're we looking at here?" Face asked, suddenly very interested, "What is it, about 20 bedrooms in a place like this?"

"25," Hannibal corrected him, "Five bathrooms, and a basement built into the bottom of it, quite livable down there as well, could easily fit 10 more or so."

"How do you know all this?" Face asked.

"The same way," Hannibal answered, "That I know no armed guards are going to come up and bust us, nor will we be caught on the place's security cameras…"

"How do you know that, Hannibal?" B.A. asked.

"Because the guards don't turn out unless an alert comes in from the security system, and the whole security system went down last night when the power mysteriously went out."

"And pray tell, how did it go out?" Face asked.

"It's very simple when you throw a breaker," Hannibal answered.

"That would mean you were already in the house," B.A. pointed out, "How'd you do that without anyone noticing?"

Hannibal just shrugged and replied, "Who's going to suspect a lowly old Chinese gardener who needs to use the kitchen for a glass of water?"

B.A. snorted and said, "Hannibal, you keep playing that Chinese card too much one day somebody' gonna figure you out."

"I've been doing it for 13 years and nobody has yet," Hannibal felt a need to point out.

"You don't even look Chinese," B.A. told him.

"Neither did Paul Muni," he replied, "People still bought it."

"Scarface as a Chinese man?" Face asked and shook his head, "They didn't buy it because it was convincing, just because they liked him. You're not that likeable, Hannibal."

"Alright then," Hannibal wasn't fazed by that insult, "It worked for Warner Oland too."

"And if that fails," Murdock chimed in, "It also worked for Peter Lorre, remember Mr. Moto?"

"He was Japanese, not Chinese," Face pointed out.

"What's the difference?" Murdock asked.

Face smacked himself and said, "And now we're getting into 'Quincy' territory."

"Alright, that's enough out of everybody, now come on, we've got to get in there and get the power back on, the food's not going to keep much longer," Hannibal told them.

"How much food?" Face asked as they piled out of the van.

"Enough to last through a nuclear winter," Hannibal answered.

"Hell, Hannibal, if there's that much food in the house, why'd we have to get all those groceries?" Face wanted to know.

"Because, Lieutenant, the idea is that when General Bullen comes back from his vacation, he is to have no idea whatsoever that his house was inhabited while he was gone for the month," Hannibal explained slowly as though to a dull witted child.

"Hannibal," Murdock spoke up, "This General married?"

"Not as far as I know."

"He got any kids?" Murdock asked.

"I doubt it."

"Generals don't have that many friends, they sure don't get that many houseguests," Murdock pointed out, "So what does an Army general need a house this big for?"

"And how can he afford it?" Face added.

"That's none of our concern," Hannibal said, "All that is, is that he's gone and we're here and the house is at our disposal and we are going to use the man's home, his showers, his beds, his living room, and we're going to have a tremendous Christmas party here, and when it's all over we're going to put everything back the way it was and be on our merry way."

"Yeah but Hannibal," Face tried to point out, "When he comes back you don't think he's not going to notice his security cameras being off for a week, not to mention the sudden surge in his power and water bills?"

"That will not be tied back to us as long as we cover our tracks," Hannibal insisted, "The good general can scratch his head all he wants on that matter but he won't have any reason in the world to suspect we had anything to do with it, so long as everybody understands the rules."

"The door unlocked?" Face asked.

"No," Hannibal answered.

Face did a double take and grumbled under his breath, "Guy kills all the power but doesn't remember to unlock the door."

"What was that, Lieutenant?"

"Nothing," Face answered as he caught up with the others up on the porch.

"Ooh!" Murdock raised his hand and said, "I want to try picking the lock, I've been practicing."

"We'll be standing around here all night," Face said as he pushed past the others, "I'll do it."

"About time," Hannibal told him.

Face reached up his sleeve and retrieved a choice pick and in two seconds he had the bolt budging and they showed themselves in.

And inside it was even more spectacular than on the outside. Each room could easily hold 20 people, working through the rooms one by one they saw that the dining room had a table large enough to seat close to 20 in itself, and a shiny black grand piano over towards the wall. Face couldn't resist lifting the lid and tickling the ivories. Nicely tuned, he just loved a tuned piano.

"Keep moving Lieutenant," Hannibal told him, "We're not done yet."

The living room was even larger than the dining room and had two full sized couches, an antique loveseat, and several chairs in varying degrees of furniture style, with small inn tables standing here and there between so guests would have a place to set down their drinks. A large fireplace took up most of the southernmost wall, all nicely cleaned, all, Murdock noted, for some small pieces of burnt debris still in the fireplace. Obviously it had been used recently, but just how recently was anybody's guess. It wasn't particularly cold for this time of the year yet, but a festive fire always helped boost the holiday spirits as he well remembered. But he didn't think Generals had Christmas spirit.

"You wouldn't even need bedrooms," Face noted as he looked around the room in awe, "You could put everybody on the floor in here to sleep and they'd all fit."

"It's a definite possibility and one we will have to take into consideration after we get a good look at the rooms upstairs," Hannibal told him, "But we're not finished yet, let's keep moving. Onto the kitchen."

And what a kitchen it was; two ovens and stoves, a restaurant sized triple sink, two large refrigerators, two dishwashers, and three large china cabinets built into the walls that were filled to the brim with plates, bowls, saucers, cups, the works. Enough dishes to easily accommodate 50 people without anyone getting shorted. To top it all off, the kitchen was perfectly immaculate, it didn't look like it had ever been used.

"I wonder what kind of food the General keeps around here," Murdock said as he went over to the two refrigerators, "I'm hungry."

"Murdock!"

"That does bring me to something else," Hannibal said, "Follow me."

He led the others to a room behind the kitchen, a small, narrow hallway that led to two doors. Past one door was a large walk-in freezer, and the ice-riddled shelves were stacked to the brim with bundles of meat, all kinds of meat: hamburger, steak, pork chops, large boneless roasts, leg of lamb roasts, prime rib beef, 20 pound packs of brisket meat, whole fryer chickens, large turkeys, duck, goose meat, spiral hams. Face whistled in astonishment and watched as every note of the whistle turned into a white cloud rising above his head and then disappearing into the air.

"There's gotta be 200 pounds of meat here, at least," Face said.

"More than that," Murdock observed, "Lots of frozen vegetables, fresh frozen vegetables, must've had the cook blanch it all." He picked up a gallon bag and let out a similar whistle when he saw it was asparagus stalks as thick around as magic markers and taller than a ruler.

"Fish too," B.A. told them and pointed out a shelf that contained no less than a dozen lobster tails, then three large boxes of crab meat, followed by large cuts of salmon and bags of colossal sized shrimp.

"A guy could live off of the food in here for the rest of his life," Face said in awe and wonder.

"That's not all," Hannibal shook his head, "Follow me."

They left the freezer and went over to the second door, Hannibal opened it and let everybody else step in. This room was chilly too, chilly, but not arctic, not freezing. This room was a labyrinth of floor to ceiling shelves and bins and drawers that were filled to the brim with food of all sorts, and drinks; the whole bottom row of the shelf running the length of three shelves was an extensive wine rack half full of chilled bottles just waiting to be used. Past that a standing row of bottles of the harder stuff. And past that, a few cases of assorted sodas. And on the shelves above, everything from coffee, to boxes of tea bags, to pickled onions in their jars, to mineral water, to caviar, and from there a wide menagerie of artichoke hearts, cooking wines, a gallon jar of green olives, varying kinds of steak sauce, marinade sauce, tarter sauce, salad dressing, seasonings, spices.

"What I believe people used to refer to as a larder back when pantries were for keeping the food cold as well as stored out of sight and out mind," Hannibal said, "Rich people could always afford the coldest ones to keep their food fresh the longest over everyone else, evidently that's one thing that hasn't changed. Look at how much stuff this guy's keeping locked up in here, and this room's big enough to store even more in."

"Ewwww," Face said as he picked up a jar of small round shriveled reddish purple things, "What is this?"

"Imported," Hannibal said simply, and explained, "It's Japanese."

"Pickled plums," Murdock said and made an exaggerated 'mm-mm' sound, the kind of sound in the kind of tone a person might make if they were given a bowl of mud to eat.

"Sort of," Hannibal told the pilot, "Except they're closer to apricots than plums."

"Well it still looks gross," Face said as he put the jar back on the shelf, "It looks like alien body parts."

"This coming from a man who would eat this," Murdock said as he picked up a small jar of caviar, "Because it's a status symbol." He looked down at the jar and pouted, "Poor fisheys, they lose all their babies and what's worse they don't even get a proceed of the profits off of them."

"Why would anybody want those?" Face asked Hannibal, ignoring the pilot's comment entirely.

"They're supposed to be very good for hangovers," Hannibal said, "And by the looks of this guy's liquor cabinet, he probably needs all the help he can get in that department."

"And we're not to touch any of this food for the party?" Face asked.

"Not if it can be helped," Hannibal told him, "And anything we do, we'll have to replace it as we found it."

"So that means," Murdock said to Face, "No touching the pickled plums."

"No problem," Face replied, "Yuck."

"Hey Hannibal," B.A. spoke up, "How'd you have time to check all this out and nobody got suspicious?"

"I told you I came in for a drink after working in the garden out back," Hannibal said, and added simply, feigning innocence, "I got lost."

"Sure, sure," B.A. grunted.

"Well, the guards bought it," Hannibal said.

"Yeah but how's all the food staying cold, and how is the freezer still frozen if you shut the power off?" Face asked.

"It's a wonder what can happen if you don't open the door, isn't it?" Hannibal asked smugly, "Besides, I'd already cranked the cooling up to full blast before killing the power so it had longer to keep going on nothing. The freezer, cold enough that nothing could thaw out, and this room, cold enough to keep everything chilled but not to the point anything would have time to freeze, otherwise the soda would've exploded."

"Will wonders never cease?" Face asked sarcastically.

"Hey, come on," Hannibal told them, "We still have to check out the upstairs."