Author's Note: Sorry if this one's a bit slow, hope you're enjoying anyway! Thanks for the reviews, please let me know what you think!


Chapter 4

Face woke up first. Discovering upon waking that he was not in fact a tasty pancake treat for Chinese jungle animals thrilled him momentarily. Then he realized that instead he was a severely head-rushed man dangling upside-down from the smoking remains of a jet airplane, which put a damper on his spirits. His brain was literally throbbing, and his face (though he couldn't see it, he just knew) was unattractively and dangerously red. With one hand he gripped the only stable thing he could reach, which was the leg of his own chair, and with the other he grappled with the maze-like trifecta of seatbelts he'd strapped across himself. It took him more than a minute to undo each one, the thundering beat of his blood gushing through his head sounding like war drums.

Finally he freed himself and fell suddenly down, jerking his arm painfully as he tried to keep himself from falling to the wreckage below. He managed to get his other hand around the chair leg, and waited for his numb body to receive proper circulation again before deciding what to do next.

BA was in much better shape beside him. The larger man had been strapped to all three seats in a row horizontally, so at least his head didn't resemble a tomato. He appeared not even to have woken, though Face assumed if he had at any point during the crash he would have immediately passed out again, so it was tough to tell.

Then he tried searching for Murdock or Hannibal. In the smoky remains it was difficult to see further than a couple of feet, but slowly he felt his way forward, inching along the steel bar of his chair until he met another chair in front of him and took a hold of that next. Grateful and a little surprised at the quality of airline construction, he made his way forward towards the cockpit.

He felt a thrill of dread as he saw the state of the nose of the plane. It was smashed nearly completely, and any room where two men had once been was entirely consumed by twisted metal. The dashboard and seats were torn and missing, and all that seemed to be left of it was broken glass and distorted steel. Face peered below but saw nothing but hazy darkness. He took a deep breath.

He let go.

Face felt himself falling through nothingness for a long time, until finally his legs made contact with the ground and he collapsed at the force of the fall. The wind was knocked out of him entirely as he coughed, holding onto his stomach, trying to breath. His legs felt numb, but as soon as feeling returned his left ankle screamed in pain.

"Fuck," he muttered, still unable to catch his breath. He peered around, but saw no one.

"Hannibal!" he shouted once he was able to resume respiration. "Murdock!" He picked himself up and limped around, trying to ignore what was clearly a broken ankle. He shoved aside debris, overturned huge plates of sheet metal, and found no sign of his teammates.

He was getting desperate now, his breathing coming in quick gasps as he ran a hand through his hair.

"Hannibal!"

"Here!" A voice came from the jungle to Face's left, sounding distant but strong. It was Hannibal. A sudden burst of adrenaline allowed Face to sprint off towards the sound, hopping over logs and dodging massive trees. Finally he saw a beautiful sight: sitting in the midst of the forest, the two conjoined seats of the cockpit ejected from the plane, lying sideways on the ground with a parachute trailing behind them.

At first glance Face thought they must be fine, all was well. But he realized as he approached that they had ejected far too late for a parachute to do any good. He rushed over to Hannibal, who was sitting stiffly in his chair, and Murdock, who was slumped sideways, his whole body leaning on Hannibal. Both their seatbelts appeared to have held, but they were sporting very nasty bruises, and Face spied a trickle of blood dripping from Murdock's mouth.

"We're alright," Hannibal said weakly, and to Face's great relief Murdock opened his eyes, peering up at him blearily.

Face rushed to undo their straps, but Hannibal stopped him.

"I pulled my shoulder out of my socket," Hannibal said grimly. "And I think Murdock cracked a few ribs. But somehow we managed to eject before the nose collapsed, so I guess we're lucky after all." He spared a humorless smile and winced as Face took hold of his arm.

"On three," Face said. "One," and with that he shoved Hannibal's arm back into its place with a sickening pop. All Hannibal uttered was an airy "Ouh," before relaxing, closing his eyes in pain.

"You hurt your leg, Faceman?" Murdock mumbled, wincing as he tried to pull himself up into a proper sitting position.

"Keep still," Face said. "I just twisted my ankle, nothing to worry about. BA's doing fine too, hasn't even woken up. I don't know how we're going to get him down though." Face knelt beside Murdock, looking at the immense bruise on his forehead which seemed to have broken the skin. Suddenly the pilot began coughing terribly, hacking flecks of blood all over the ground.

"Jesus!" Face said, stepping back, then forward again to rub Murdock gently on the back. His stomach sank though; coughing blood meant internal bleeding, and he had no idea how to fix that short of a hospital visit.

Eventually the coughing fit subsided and Murdock, exhausted, lay his head down on the Colonel's shoulder and passed out. Hannibal opened his eyes again, and glanced up at the unconscious younger man.

"He's bleeding internally," Face said quietly as Hannibal wiped some of the red stuff off of Murdock's face with his handkerchief.

"Maybe," Hannibal said, but didn't expand on that train of thought.

Hannibal grabbed hold of Murdock's shoulders and gestured for Face to unbuckle him. The pilot's torso twisted as the bottom half of his body sank to the ground, lowered gently by Face. Hannibal lowered Murdock's head softly onto the dirt before unbuckling himself and brushing himself off.

Face knelt beside Murdock, breathing heavily. He hadn't had any time to register just how bizarre a situation they were in, or to wonder why they had been shot from the sky without so much as a warning.

Hannibal had taken out a cigar and begun chewing on the end of it contemplatively.

"What's the plan?" Face asked, not sure if he should be angry or scared, and settling for a little of both.

"Well," Hannibal sighed. "We need some recon. We have no idea where we are. And some supplies. Go see if you can wake BA up, and then I want you to run a perimeter around the area, one kilometer radius. Tell BA to search for supplies in the wreckage."

Face was disgruntled.

"And what will you be doing?" He asked in a brattier voice than he'd really intended.

"I'm going to make us a shelter," Hannibal responded coolly. "And make sure our pilot is comfortable."

Face nodded, undirected anger still bubbling through him as he set off to scout the area, his ankle screaming in protest.

Hannibal knelt by Murdock and put his hand to his chest, feeling the pilot's breath rattling unsettlingly. The colonel frowned.


Two hours later, Face returned to the decent campsite Hannibal and BA had constructed.

"There's nothing out there Hannibal," he said, lowering himself down onto one of the ejected seats, wincing. "Nothing but weird bugs and lots of mud." He looked morosely at his ruined shoes.

"Well that's no good," Hannibal said as he and BA lifted a sheet metal roof onto their make-shift shack. "I think we have a semi-serious problem on our hands."

"Which one are you referring to?" Face asked sarcastically. "I see several, actually."

"Murdock has tuberculosis," Hannibal said plainly. "And we've all been around him enough to pretty much guarantee we have it too, although it's latent."

"Murdock's got TB?" BA asked in shock, glancing down at the sleeping pilot. "How come none of his crazy-man doctors noticed?"

Face was remembering what Davie had said. A chill ran down his spine as he spoke.

"What if…that shot Davie mentioned? You don't think, Hannibal…?"

"I don't know what to think about it Face," Hannibal said grimly. "But if Murdock didn't know about it you can bet that whatever that injection was, it wasn't a cure. For all we know, Lynch could have done it knowing it would spread to all of us and we'd need to seek medical help."

BA gave a snarl of anger and Face opened his mouth in disbelief.

"For right now, all I want to do is find a city or a town where we can patch ourselves up." Hannibal sighed. "Let's bring him inside."

Face found himself reluctant to touch Murdock. He hated it, but he was sickened by the thought that being in the proximity of his friend could kill him. But one stern look from the Colonel was enough to force himself to help BA carry the sick pilot inside the shack. The four men slept as rain began to fall like bullets outside, hammering a noisy staccato on the metal roof above.