"B.A., calm down," Hannibal told the Sergeant, who was going around the room muttering threats of great bodily harm and excruciatingly painful death, "We're going to find Melissa, we just have to be smart about this."

"What was that Crenna was screaming before the flash grenade went off?" Face asked.

"It sounded Cuban to me," Murdock said.

"How do you know Cuban?" Hannibal asked.

"I don't know," he answered with a shrug.

"Oh well that's just great," Face sarcastically replied, "Now we're dealing with Scarface."

"Maybe, but Crenna is no Cuban," Hannibal said, "So where'd he learn it?"

"Maybe from some of the people who are working for him," Murdock suggested.

"Of whom now are missing and have the She-Hulk with them," Face said, "No offense, B.A."

"So where would they go?" Hannibal asked, "To a lower floor in the building? Or out of the building entirely since they would know we'd tear apart every apartment here to find her?"

"Or maybe they've got her with them because they think she's going to tell them where whatever they're looking for is," Face thought, "Right before the grenade went off, she started to say something, when Crenna was screaming she was starting to say what it sounded like he was saying…" he looked around at his Teammates and finished the thought they were all now considering, "That she too somehow knew it was Cuban…how would she know Cuban?"

"We can find that out later," Hannibal pointed out, "First thing we've got to do is find them and figure out why they took her."

"Yeah but where do we look?" Face asked.

"Murdock, look out the window," Hannibal said, "Are there any vehicles in the street below?"

The pilot raced over to the window, looked out, and shook his head, "Negative, Colonel."

"There're 20 floors to this apartment, we'll search them all and if we don't find anything there, then we'll figure out something else," Hannibal said.

"We better find them soon, Hannibal," B.A. warned him, "Or I'm gonna get mean."

"Save that for when we do find them," Hannibal advised his Sergeant, "Come on."

The top two floors were the first ones to go; short work was made of them and then everybody split up and took different floors on their way down to the bottom. Every turning point seemed to be a bust though, no matter where they looked, they couldn't find a sign of anybody being around.

"We're not getting anywhere," Face told Murdock as the two men bumped into each other around the 15th floor.

"Sure we are," Murdock replied, "Frustrated."

"What about the basement?" Face asked.

"What about it?" Murdock asked.

Face took off to find Hannibal and told him about his discovery in the basement.

"I'll go down and check it out," Hannibal told him, "Everybody else stay up here and continue the search."

"What if they're down there?" Face asked, "We don't even know how many of them there are, you'd be walking into an ambush."

"That's fine with me," Hannibal responded cynically, "I always wanted to go out like John Wayne in 'The Alamo'."

Face saluted him and remarked, "Sayonara, Davy Crockett."

Hannibal went to punch for the elevator but decided even if it was working by now, he'd be better off taking his chances with the stairs, inconvenient though it was. He watched the doors and around the corners incase anybody would try to jump him, as Melissa had earlier. He didn't see or hear anybody the entire way down to the ground floor.

Approaching the basement entrance, Hannibal listened outside first, and didn't hear anyone inside. He kicked the door open and reached for the lights. Nobody. Nobody but as Face had said, a fine mess on the floor, tools scattered, boxes piled up, somebody had been down here before Face, but who? And why? And for that matter, back to the original question, what were these people looking for in the first place? He was still willing to bet that it tied to Melissa and this stipulation of her living in Grandpa's old apartment for another 2 years before she got her inheritance. It was a kooky stipulation if ever he heard one, kooky enough that there just had to be something to it. Whatever it was, it wasn't in Melissa's apartment because she'd already been there. It wasn't in her apartment because she'd holed up in it for the past couple days before being discovered; and Crenna's crew had been working there for the past three days, they never went into her apartment to find whatever it was. Or had they? Maybe that was why they discovered her and knocked her out and dragged her up to the top floor and tied her up. Face had said that one of the men mentioned getting half of what they were looking for, half of what? And why was the other half hidden separately somewhere?

The size of the basement made what Hannibal was considering feel quite overwhelming. If he were looking for something down here, where in the hell would he start? Face had already gone through the boxes, if all of them, he didn't know…a loose piece in the floor? Or maybe a false piece in the wall? Where? What would he be looking for? How big? He tried to think, what would a bunch of lowlife criminals be looking for in a place like this? Something small enough to hide, hide in plain sight very likely, enough of to divide and separate. He counted off all the options: cash, diamonds, stocks, documented records, something that somebody was very desperate to find, and to make sure nobody else got a hold of. And how did they figure out what it was and where it was and where to look? How'd they know to look in this building? Crenna, Rizelli, the rest of them, they had to have found a way to squirm their way into this building some time ago, they knew all the ins and outs, where everything was, how to make their way around, but it would have to be done without the occupants of the apartments knowing. How? Previous evacuations? Additional checks for gas leaks? Maybe on the pretense of bug-bombing the place, who knew?

There was also the possibility that whatever it was, wherever it was, it was somewhere, that somehow the men couldn't get to, that only Melissa could, and that was why they wanted her. It was a slim chance but Hannibal knew they couldn't rule anything out as of yet until they found her, or the men, or both of them, and could get some answers out of somebody who actually knew something. For now though, he was going to gamble on the likelihood that whatever Crenna and his men were looking for, it was not down here. So for now he left the basement, and went to join the others upstairs and continue the search.

B.A. had worked his way down to the 9th floor and was tearing the whole place apart, apartment by apartment, room by room, inch by inch. Nothing, no sign of Melissa, no sign of Crenna, no sign of anybody. It was not often that he felt on the urge of panic, but this was definitely one of those times. Melissa asked for his help, they'd come 3000 miles out here to help her, and now she was missing and they couldn't find her, and if they didn't soon, he was going to…

Hold it…he heard something. He stood still for a minute and listened to get a handle on where the sound was coming from and who it was. It wasn't coming from above, so it wasn't Face or Murdock, it was coming up the stairs, so it might have been Hannibal…but…

In spite of everything, his massive size, all his gold, he quietly moved over to the door and opened it a crack to see who was coming up. It wasn't Hannibal, it wasn't Crenna either, but no doubt this sucker had to be one of the fools working for him. B.A. threw the door open and surprised the man, in two quick steps he had him in a headlock and tossed him against the wall, then he threw the man in through the open door and he crash landed on the floor. Then B.A. marched in and grabbed the man again, and forced him back against the couch and was choking him.

"Where's my woman, sucker? What'd you say?" B.A. gripped the man's neck tighter when he tried to breathe, "What'd you say?"

From behind, B.A. heard an unfamiliar woman's voice say, "Leave him alone, you big bully!" a split second before he felt something crash on his head.

Mildly annoyed, and confused, B.A. let go of the man he was strangling and turned around and stood up to his full height and saw a woman standing behind him, who was slightly taken aback by his hulking size, but otherwise didn't move, and at both their feet were the shattered remains of a vase.

The woman was younger than Melissa, and notably smaller, she might've been 25, probably about 5'4, roughly 120 pounds, little bit of nothing, with short brown hair and hazel eyes, in a red dress and red sneakers.

"Who're you?" B.A. asked.

"B.A.!" Face's voice rang out through the hall a few seconds before the Lieutenant came skidding in the doorway, and stopped, only to get crashed into by Murdock, who skidded in immediately behind him, "B.A. we heard noises, what's going on, what…who's that?"

"That's what I want to know," B.A. told them, and addressing the woman, asked, "Well?"

But instead of answering his question, the young woman remained defiant and she asked him, "What did you do to my brother?" and ran over to the man who was collapsed on the floor struggling to breathe.

"Your brother?" Face repeated.

The woman turned back to them and explained, "I'm Betty Palmer, this is my brother, Chris, who are you?"

"What're you doing here?" Face asked.

"What're you doing here?" she parroted.

"We're friends of Melissa Morrison," Murdock said.

"And she's missing," Face added, "Kidnapped to be exact, you wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

The man on the floor choked and gagged a few times before getting to his feet, "How'd they ever get her?"

"Then you do know her," Murdock said.

"Sort of," Chris answered.

"And how do you know Crenna?" Hannibal wanted to know.

"He put a few of our friends in the hospital for not cooperating with him," Chris told them, "So we decided to see if we could get in with him and figure out what his game was, before he had a chance to come after us next."

"And?" Face asked.

"And what?"

"What is his game?" Hannibal asked.

"Well I haven't been able to find out too much from my position," Chris explained, "But I was able to find out that this project is something that goes back to his father."

"His father, and Melissa's grandfather," Hannibal made an educated guess.

"Yeah," Chris said, "Apparently the two used to work together, and he knew that the old man had a lot of money socked away somewhere when he died."

"You mean to say that old kook left all that money laying around this building?" Face asked.

Chris shook his head, "Not the money, not right away that is, first he tore the place apart looking for some papers the old man had hidden away throughout the building that reveal where the money is."

"And that's what they're still looking for?" B.A. asked.

"No, he found all the pieces," Betty said, "Now he's looking for the money."

"But that's impossible," Face told them, "We've been all over this building twice, there's nothing here."

"Not that you know of," Chris suggested, "But maybe you haven't been looking in the right places?"

Hannibal was curious and asked, "Does your position with Crenna let you know what sort of places he's looking in?"

The young man shook his head, "I only saw one piece of the plans, it was for one of the walls in an apartment up on the 13th floor."

"The walls up there all looked fine to us," Face pointed out.

"Because they'd already had time to put them back in one piece," Chris explained, "He's been making short work of the place in the last three days."

"Wait a minute," Hannibal thought of something else, "Does Crenna happen to have a Cuban working under him?"

The young man looked slightly puzzled but answered, "Yeah, Cleto Vasquez, mean guy."

"And Crenna learned to speak Cuban from him?" Hannibal asked, "That's unusual."

"That's what I told him," Betty said.

"Do you have any idea where they are now?" Hannibal asked.

"That's what we were trying to find out," she told him.

Chris raised a hand to get their attention and told the A-Team, "If they're not here in the building, they might be nearby."

"Oh yeah? And why's that?" B.A. asked.

"Because," Chris answered, "In the basement of this building there's a hidden door built in the wall that leads to a tunnel running to an underground room in the bottom of an abandoned complex behind us."

Hannibal hit himself in the side of the head. If he'd gone with his first instinct he would've found that exit, then they would've been onto something. He grabbed Chris by the lapels on his jacket and asked him, "You know where this door is?"

"Yes."

"Then show us," he said as he let go of the man.

"Follow me," Chris started for the door.

"Right behind you!" Murdock bellowed.

"Hey Hannibal," B.A. got the Colonel's attention and told him, "I don't like this."

"What, you think they're setting us up for a trap?" Hannibal asked.

B.A. merely nodded.

"Yeah, I had that thought cross my mind too," he said, "But we don't have much choice. Come on."

"When we find Melissa, I'm gonna break every bone in all them suckers bodies," B.A. told him.

"That's what I like about you, B.A.," Hannibal said as they headed out the door and followed the others down the stairs, "You always managed to stay focused on the priorities in life."