"I don't care if it is for a good cause, I still think Hannibal's finally lost his mind," Face said as he and B.A. turned the kitchen chairs over the table so they could get the floor cleaned.
"If he had one to begin with," B.A. replied, "Sucker's always gone along with whatever Murdock thinks up, can't be too sane to begin with."
"I mean what if something happens and this General Bullen comes back early? We're right in the lion's den and just a hair short of sticking our heads into his mouth," Face said.
"I love your metaphors, Faceguy," Murdock chimed in as he popped into the room.
"What's up, Murdock?" Face asked.
"I don't know who General Bullen has clean this house, but he can't possibly be paying them enough," Murdock said, "There's three of us here and it would take us until Groundhog's Day to get the whole place cleaned once. Thankfully the worst of it was already done before we got here."
"Hey," B.A. thought of something, "Didn't Hannibal say this sucker's also got a basement here?"
"That's what he said," Face remembered, "But we haven't seen it yet."
"So let's go check it out," B.A. said as he headed towards a small corridor leading off from the back of the kitchen heading away from the walk-in freezer.
"I think I can safely say this is one of the weirdest Christmases I've ever had," Face said as he and Murdock followed after him.
"It's not even Christmas yet, Face," Murdock reminded him, "There's still a lot of work to do before we even get there," he seemed to switch gears into high speed and said in a rambling pace, "So much to do, so much to do, do, stew!"
"Brother," Face grumbled to himself.
They found the door leading to the basement and showed themselves down the newly created concrete stairs. Hannibal had said the basement was large enough to fit another 10 people at least, he hadn't been kidding. The rooms were well made, new, reinforced, in one piece, and looked like the good general was planning to turn this into a war room of some sort. Shelves ran the whole length of the room, shelves filled with even more food, jugged water, ammunition, and plenty of firearms ranging from automatic pistols to military grade rifles. Over to another wall were cots and mattresses, pillows and blankets.
"Looks like this guy's definitely preparing for something," Face said. He looked back up the stairs and added, "Doesn't make sense though that he's got a bunker down here and that door up there wouldn't hold up against two good sized men."
"Maybe it ain't finished yet," Murdock said.
"Whatever it is, Hannibal's right," B.A. said, "If we run outta room upstairs we can put people down here, it ain't cold, it's well ventilated, got everything down here anybody would need."
"Come on, Face," Murdock grabbed the Lieutenant's arm and started jerking him back towards the stairs, "We gotta get the rest of the house tidied up before Hannibal gets back, then we can start getting stuff set up!"
"What a time," Face said, "And to think I could be spending this week instead, in Beverly Hills, rubbing elbows with the best of them and plugging them for all they're worth and they don't even know it."
"Hey Face," B.A. growled at him, "We all agreed this was the right thing to do, you got a problem with it you gonna have to take it up with me," he hovered over the smaller man and asked him, "You got a problem with this?"
"No," Face answered quickly and in a small voice, "No problem whatsoever."
"Good!" B.A. replied, "Now get moving, like the crazy fool said, we got work to do."
"The biggest tree we could get measures in at just under nine feet tall," Face was explaining to Hannibal when he and Amy came back from the thrift store. The conman walked Hannibal into the living room and showed him where they'd put the tree and pointed out, "Course these high ceilings go up to about 15 feet, so we decided to put it on a crate to give it the illusion of slightly fuller size. Got a nice big star to put on the top, huge, nicely proportionate with it, we stick that baby on and we'll still have 5 feet before we have to worry about touching the ceiling."
Hannibal looked the tree up and down and went around it feeling the branches, feeling the needles, testing it to see if anything fell off or poked excessively, and when he made it all the way around the tree he said, "It's nice, it's very nice, I like it!"
"Hallelujah," Face murmured under his breath.
"Where're the decorations?" Hannibal asked.
"We put them in the dining room when we unloaded the van," Face said.
"Everything there?"
"Everything's there," Face nodded and recalled, "Lights, star, garland, tinsel, bulbs, bells, you name it."
"That's fine, leave them there for now," Hannibal said, "We brought some other decorations just for the house, we'll get them up tonight and give this place a semi-homey feel to it for the first time since Bullen moved into this eyesore."
"What now?" Amy asked, already feeling somewhat exhausted having helped Hannibal load and unload the van with 20 boxes of clothes and shoes of all varying sizes they could get, just about wiping out the store's inventory entirely and leaving the shop workers very confused, winded, and with an extra $800 in their till for the day.
"We got the tree in here, we got the decorations in here, we got the clothes, we'll be bringing the food, after that we start getting the people," Hannibal said.
"Yeah but how?" Amy asked.
"And where?" Face added.
Hannibal chose to answer both their questions with one answer, simply, "Any way we can think of."
"Oh that really explains a lot," Face murmured to Amy.
"What was that, Lieutenant?" Hannibal asked.
"Nothing," Face answered.
"So when're you going to bring everybody here, Hannibal?" Amy asked.
"I'm figuring tomorrow," he said, "But we're going to have to really move it to get everything taken care of in time."
"Uh, Colonel," Murdock grabbed Hannibal's jacket sleeve to get his attention, "Are we going to be staying here for the night to break the place in?"
"I don't see why not," Hannibal replied, "We'll get an idea what kind of atmosphere we're putting everybody up in."
"Amy, would you like to stay the night?" Murdock asked.
The young reporter just shrugged her shoulders and said, "I don't see why not, I don't have anything planned."
"Oh goodie," Murdock rubbed his hands together like a mischievous little boy planning something.
Everybody took a room to themselves for the night, every room was spacious, luxurious, and the beds were all very comfortable, what could possibly go wrong? Well, maybe not wrong, but even with everybody in a separate room, everybody else was still kept awake by Murdock's incessant Christmas caroling to himself down the hall all the while he test drove the springs in his bed by jumping on them the whole time he was singing.
Finally around 2 o' clock, Amy couldn't take a 13th rendition of 'The 12 Days of Christmas' and put on her robe and slippers and headed down the hall to the room Murdock was occupying for the night, and went in without even knocking. All the lights were still on, Murdock was still dressed, and still hopping on the bed like a jumping bean.
"Hey Amy, you come over for a sleepover?" he asked her.
"Murdock, what're you doing?" Amy asked, "Everybody's trying to sleep."
"I can't help it, Chiquita," he said as he jumped off the bed and onto the floor, "I'm just bursting at the seams, there's so much to do and it's all happening so fast, it's so exciting!"
"Don't you guys usually do something for Christmas?" Amy asked him.
"Oh sure, but nothing big like this, this'll be the first time since we all came home that it's gonna be more than just the four of us," Murdock said as he went over to her, "This is gonna be terrific! It's gonna be HUGE!"
"Murdock," Amy said quietly and calmly, "It's not going to go anywhere if we don't get some sleep."
But Murdock wasn't paying attention to her. Instead he went over to his nightstand and picked up something. "I'm sure glad we got you back, it's been a long time since you came back from Jakarta and we've hardly seen you since. Look'a this, I got you a present."
Murdock picked up a colorfully wrapped box just big enough he could barely palm it, but he still managed to pick it up in one hand and give it to the young reporter.
"Well thank you, Murdock…"
"Go ahead, open it," he seemed to become more frantic like a child, "Open it open it, I want to see what you think."
Why not? Amy tore the paper off and opened the lid on the small box and took out a tiny little teddy bear that she could easily hold with one hand.
"It's very nice, Murdock, thank you."
"Amy, can I ask you a brutally honest question?" Murdock asked.
"Sure, Murdock."
"What in the world were you thinking sending Tawnia to us?" he asked, "You couldn't have found a nice dog instead?"
Amy was caught off guard by his question and just laughed.
"Let's face it, a dog would've been more helpful," Murdock said, "She tried to be a lot of things, and she wasn't most of them, most of all she wasn't you."
That took her by surprise.
"Thank you, Murdock." She had to admit, "It's good to be back."
They heard the door creak open and both turned to see Hannibal standing in the doorway, looking less than amused and he said to both of them, "I can certainly understand everybody being a little wired by what's going on, but if I hear anymore noise coming from this room out of either one of you, it's going to be followed by a few verses of 'ow, ow, Ow!', understand?"
"Sorry, Hannibal," Amy said with a small giggle as she took her present and walked past him, "Goodnight!"
"Goodnight, Amy!" Murdock waved.
Hannibal turned to him, "And as for you, Captain…"
"Sorry, Colonel," Murdock took it down a notch, "I'm just hyper tonight."
"So I noticed," Hannibal replied, "Do you think you can find a quieter way to be hyper? We all have to get up in a few hours."
"Oh sure," Murdock nodded, "No problem."
"Fine," Hannibal turned around and headed for the door, "Goodnight, Murdock."
"Goodnight, Colonel!"
Quiet…quiet…what could he do to be quiet? He thought about it for a moment and considered his options. He knew, he knew. Murdock went to went over to the closet and took out a Santa Claus suit he'd taken the liberty of obtaining for the occasion. He put it on and realized he didn't have the right figure to wear this thing. He tried stuffing a pillow into the waistband of his pants and buttoning his jacket over that, still flat, he tried a second pillow, too lumpy. Then instead, he tried tightening his belt as far as he could. A skinny Santa would probably work better for the kiddies than a lopsided one. He tried on the beard and hat, his own mother wouldn't recognize him in this, scratch that, his own grandmother wouldn't recognize him. Scratch that too, his whole family wouldn't recognize him now.
Say…he wondered if he'd be able to come down the chimney during the party to surprise the kids? Well, he could at least check it out from the bottom and figure it out from there. He took his suit off, quietly left his room, headed down to the living room, plugged in the Christmas lights to give him a little illumination, and went over to the fireplace. He removed the screens and the grate and squatted down to fit in it. It was already a tight fit, he tried standing up in it and found even himself trying to fit through this chimney would be like trying to fit a basketball into a ginger ale bottle. Really did make you wonder how Santa Claus managed to do it all the time?
Oh well, maybe Murdock couldn't come down the chimney after all, but he decided the least he would do is clean the fireplace out, maybe they'd have a fire during the party; Hannibal had made such a point they needed to get everything else nice and clean, why would this be any different?
Murdock hummed a little Christmas tune to himself as he swept the fireplace clean, some soot, ashes, and a few scraps of paper that had been burnt. Messy, messy. Murdock loaded it all into a dustpan and went to find a trash can to pitch it in. Now there was a fireplace any Santa Claus would be proud to land in. Hmm, he wondered if he should put a pillow down in it to ensure a soft landing? Oh well. He left the living room and went to find the trash can in the kitchen. Tomorrow would be here soon enough and they had to get ready for everybody.