Hannibal prided himself on being a man who couldn't be surprised by much and reacted to very little. Still he felt like he'd been knocked for a loop at this little revelation.

"You're Brutus?" he repeated.

"That's right," Jean nodded, "I'm the one who killed all those people."

B.A. let out a single, humorless laugh and said, "I don't believe it."

"Well you better believe it, King Kong," Jean told him, "I did it."

"You don't really expect us to believe that, do you, Miss Rhodes?" Hannibal asked, "The way those people died…"

"They were blown to bits by machine gunfire, most of them were completely beyond recognition due to their faces being obliterated by the bullets, as well as their dental records. At every crime scene there was a trident and eagle on the wall, the same SEAL trident that's in on the kitchen wall, which I put there when I moved into this shack two weeks ago. Yes, Mr. Smith, it was little old me, I killed all those people and I don't regret it. But you can't turn me in to the police because you're wanted yourselves. So I would suggest you go back the way you came, refund the money and tell my parents you are very sorry but you couldn't find me, the trail was too cold after six months without a trace."

"I see," Hannibal said as he took out a cigar and put it in his mouth, "B.A., would you mind?"

B.A. grabbed Jean by the neck of her shirt, not applying any pressure but letting her know the threat was there. She didn't move as Face and Murdock patted her down and checked her pockets and came up empty for any weapons.

"She's clean, Hannibal," Murdock said.

"Well you don't think I'm dumb enough to carry a gun in broad daylight, do you?" she asked, "When I'm playing the civilian card. You will note all the Brutus murders occurred at night."

"In dark alleys," Hannibal said, "Just like the ones you sent us to, was there a particular reason for that?"

"It was a fitting end for those people," Jean told him spitefully.

"And just what kind of people were they?" he wanted to know.

Jean shook her head and said, "Just get out of here, Smith, all of you, go away and leave-me-alone!"

"Believe me I wish it was that simple," he replied, "Unfortunately we can't. We were hired for the precise reason of finding you and bringing you back to your parents."

"Well I'm not going," Jean said, "Don't think this is my idea of a good time, Smith, but I'm not going back. I can't go back. Not yet."

"Why not?" Face asked.

She shook her head, "It's a long story."

"That's fine," Hannibal said, "Your parents hired us for the long haul, so I'd advise you to start talking. You're right, we can't turn you in to the police, but we're not leaving either until we get some answers."

She looked around at them all and gave in, "Alright, alright, I'll tell you…but first thing's first, my parents paid you a retainer, right?"

"Yes."

"How much?" she asked, "$10,000, $20,000?"

"$5,000 up front," he remarked.

"Fine then," Jean said, "You can pay for the lunch."

While they waited for Face to get back with the food, Murdock picked up a broom and started sideswiping the cobwebs on the kitchen table like they were hockey pucks, then he focused on an invisible pest on the table and started shoving the broom at it, barking, "Back! Back! Back I say!" He turned to the other side of the table and added, "And you!" He swung the broom up over his head and slammed it on the table, "Take that!"

Jean turned to Hannibal and B.A. and said, "Let me see if I got this right, this guy is your pilot?"

"Don't ask," B.A. said.

Jean went up behind Murdock and asked him, "How'd you ever get a license?"

Murdock turned around and looked at her confused and said, "What license? I don't have them, my dog does."

"Uh huh," Jean said, "What kind of plane do you fly?"

"A Waco."

She nodded, "Makes perfect sense."

"How long did you say you've been staying in this house?" Murdock asked.

"A couple of weeks."

"Where were you before that?" Hannibal asked.

"Some of the other houses in the area," she explained as she looked out the kitchen window, "Nobody's lived here for years. Everybody cleared out when the fire broke out, and they haven't bothered to do anything with this part of the town since. Ain't gonna be anyone looking for me here."

"I'd say that's a safe bet," Hannibal said, "A normal person wouldn't look for any living thing here."

"That's the idea," she replied.

"You know, something I've been trying to figure out," he told her as he crowded in on her, "You seem like a nice kid, so maybe you could explain how you go from being Joan of Arc to being John Rambo?"

She glared at him and said, "It's a long story."

"Well?" he asked.

It was at that moment they heard the front door open as Face returned with sandwiches and cokes from a diner in town.

"Were you followed?" Jean asked as she took the bags from him.

"Followed by who?" Face wanted to know, "Or maybe I should be asking what. I don't have any idea what's going on around here."

"Yes," Hannibal agreed, "I think it's time you started to explain what this whole thing is about."

"Like I said," Jean said, "It's a long story."

"That's fine, we're not charging by the hour," Hannibal told her.

"Alright," she said in a huff, and pointed to the table, "Everybody sit down, this is going to take a while."

"It was a suicide mission, really," Jean started, "If I messed up anywhere along the way, I'd get killed, and if I actually managed to last through the training, I'd have a big red bulls eye on my back, 'soldier', and next time we went to war I'd be the first one they'd throw in the minefield. When I went to enlist I had no intention of finishing the training."

"What did you think you were going to do?" Face asked.

"I figured I'd get thrown out before the training period was up," she said.

"Why did you tell your parents you were entering the Navy SEALs?" he asked.

She inhaled and looked like having her teeth drilled without Novocain would be easier than this. "I had to tell them something, and I said SEALs because I knew they could never track me through it if they didn't hear from me, and I knew that they wouldn't ask any questions about it until it was too late."

"Yeah, but why?" Murdock asked, "Why? I mean what's this whole thing about?"

"See that's the long story," Jean explained, "I spent six weeks in basic training…all this talk about values: loyalty, duty, honor, integrity," she summed it up by blowing a razzberry.

"Sounds like you was there alright," Murdock said.

"I'm gonna tell you, when I was in high school, the army people came to the school, the…recruiters? Whatever you want to call them, they come in, talk to all the guys, give them the sales pitch, 'you serve the country, you see the world, you get training you won't get in college', whatever…and they manage to get their hooks in a lot of them. Well…the years go by, and we notice that a lot of the guys that were in our school, who went off to join the army…they never come back, we never hear from them again and nobody knows where they are. It turns out that a large amount of the guys we knew, are broken up into two groups, the AWOL cases, who disappear during the night, and then the ones who don't make it through the training and are kicked out…but in both cases, neither comes back and is never to be seen or heard from again."

"Well," Face cleared his throat, "That's certainly taking defeat to a new level of severity isn't it?"

"Somebody had to get in and find out what was going on," Jean said, "So I decided it was going to be me…I mean I…I'd never had any plans for the future, everybody always said I was flighty…so I join the army, that's something to be proud of, and if I die there, it's my life it's not like anybody's going to care. And we go out to the place where they're gonna train us…and I find out the SEALs are also being trained within the same vicinity…and that was where I encountered the other Jean Rhodes…imagine my surprise to find somebody with my name actually was in the SEALs."

"Yes, we heard about him," Hannibal said, "It seems Jean's been AWOL for the last few months."

Jean shook her head, "He's not AWOL, Mr. Smith, he's dead."

"What?"

That caused a stir with the four commandos and there was no doubt now that she had their full attention.

"Yeah," she said, "Him and several others, all executed, and put in a massive grave at the training site, like the Jews during the Holocaust."

"By who?" Face asked.

"The commanding officers," she said, "Or whatever you call the morons in charge there. I know, I was there that night, I saw it. Jean and I had met and we got along pretty well. I've always been an elusive person, I had gotten pretty good at slipping out unnoticed after lights out, so one night I decided I'd sneak over and visit with Jean for a while. I got there just in time to see he and a dozen other SEALs in training, get their brains blown out by their captains."

Nobody had said anything and the silence when Jean finished talking was so great they could've heard a pin drop. Hannibal looked like he'd been knocked for a loop, Face and Murdock looked dazed by this revelation, and B.A. looked a shade paler. Jean didn't notice though and she continued talking, "I didn't know what was going on, I just got out of there, and I just kept running all night, got as far away from that damned training base as I could. By morning I was back in city limits…I threw away my clothes and hid, like a coward, became a civilian again. I spent a week hiding out, making sure they couldn't find me. Naturally I didn't go home, that'd be the first place they'd look for me. They had to know I saw that night, because I was the only person not accounted for among the living or the dead."

"So what've you been doing since?" Face finally asked.

She glared at him through one eye as she answered, "Evening the score, life for a life and all that. Once I was out of there, I was able to find out what had happened, though it took a while to get the whole story."

"Well what was it?" B.A. wanted to know.

Jean looked down at the table for a second before she continued, "I've heard…stories through the underground, about the A-Team…wanted for robbing a bank in Hanoi of a million dollars, is that right?"

"We didn't rob that bank," Hannibal corrected her, "It was a military operation ordered by General Morrison, who died before he could clear us on that charge."

Jean broke out in a flutter of short bitter laughs as she leaned back in her chair and said, "This is why I never liked the military much…when they say to do something, it's alright…during wartimes they say kill somebody of course it's alright, they say rob a bank, that's fine…now if they said rape someone, would that not be a crime either?" She didn't give them a chance to answer, she got back to what she had started to say, "Anyway, being from that time…you recall when soldiers' coffins were used to smuggle drugs into the country when their bodies were sent home?"

"Yeah," B.A. answered, "And as I recall there were a few times when their bodies were used for smuggling the drugs in as well."

"Well," Jean told them, "What's going on is not quite so drastic but nonetheless tragic. When I was at the training base, I found out there's a whole new trafficking mess operating within the military: drugs, weapons and humans. It turns out what happens is for every 20 guys or so that they bring from our area, our schools…the sergeants in charge will pick our two or three of them who they think have the potential."

"Potential for what?" Hannibal asked.

"They're sold to the drug cartels in Colombia, or Mexico, whoever's paying the highest price, of course they don't pay much since most of their recruits are just snatched up from the border for free, but it's an investment for good service," Jean explained, "You know these guys have had some military training, they're not completed yet, so they know all the quick ways to kill someone but they're not immune to the training yet…they can be broken, in body and mind and spirit most of all…and when they're sold to the cartel leaders they're subjected to a few weeks of the most excruciating brainwashing imaginable so that they only know their lives as working for the cartel, buying and selling drugs and driving them over the lines, to whoever's in the market, supplying decommissioned military firearms that can't be traced back to their sources to the cartel leaders for a good price, and killing anybody who gets in the way."

"And that's what happened to the other Jean Rhodes?" Hannibal asked.

"Sort of…when these guys are sold off they're written up as either being AWOL, or that they were discharged because they couldn't complete training for whatever reason…that way the military isn't responsible for half of them, and the other half they put on a show of trying to find those recruits and find out why they bailed. And it's not just the army, it goes to other areas of the military too, including the SEALs."

Face took particular notice of this comment and added on his own part, "At the time of Jean Rhodes' AWOL notice, he was the only one."

"I know, everyone else was listed as being discharged for failure to meet their standards during training," Jean said, "Or however they write it up, it all means the same thing…yeah see they had Jean pegged as a good potential for the cartels, him and a few others, but he and the others found out about it and they refused, and for that they had to die. The sergeants simply couldn't have anybody live to talk about what was really going on there."

"But they have you listed as discharged," Face reminded her.

"Of course they do, they couldn't have me AWOL, because if I happen to die publicly, questions are going to be asked and might go back around to the sergeants, and that might ruin their whole plan," Jean told him.

"And that's where you come in as the public avenger," Hannibal guessed.

"They have to know that I'm the one responsible," she said, "I'm the only one who can tell what's gone on. But I didn't want to make it easy for them to figure it out. Brutus was the name of Caesar's assassin; it seemed like a good cover."

"But you were enlisted for the army," Face said, "Brutus' calling card has been the SEAL insignia."

"So all those who are targeted will know why this is happening, justice, and revenge for Jean and all those others who were shot down that night, and for all the others we won't know about," Jean told him. "It took me a while but I found out who all was involved in it; a lot of them were members of the military, some of them were retired from it by that time, and then there were outsiders who played an equal part. They killed Jean, so, they had to die to pay the debt. After the first few killings, the word started getting around about the A-Team, soldiers for hire who will find missing people and all that sort…so I started to think my parents might hire you when I never returned home. So as Brutus I had to determine a pattern in the killings that could be followed; but not by just anybody, it had to be something the cops couldn't catch on to what it was."

"And that's why when the dots are connected you get Orion minus his belt, right?" Face said.

She nodded, "I figured if you guys were smart you'd figure it out. So I started being on the lookout for four guys paying any extra attention to the Brutus murders."

"Well that explains most of it," Hannibal said, "But it still doesn't answer the question of why six months later, you haven't returned to your parents when you're only a couple of miles from home."

Jean shook her head, "It's not over yet, Smith. They're still out there. I didn't kill these guys all at once even though that would've been easier, and I started from the bottom up. So at first, maybe they wouldn't realize there was a price on their heads…but bit by bit I work my way up the totem pole, and they have to be getting really nervous by now."

"And these last two people are?" he asked.

"One of them is David Grant, he's a captain in the army, or rather he was, guess he got too old to actually be on the front lines," she said, "He oversees a lot of these operations, and the number one candidate is Jack Saunders, he was the drill sergeant who personally shot Jean that night. His death I've saved for the last and it's going to be the most painful of them all."

Hannibal had remained perfectly still while she was talking, now he was reaching into his pocket for another cigar. "I can appreciate what you've been through, Miss Rhodes, but you don't really think we're going to stand by and let you kill these people, do you?"

"The way I see it, you don't have any choice," she retorted, "I've said it before, you can't turn me in for what I've done…and I also told you they have to know it's me, meaning if I walk away before these two are pushing up daisies, it won't just be me they come after, it'll be my parents, and I've stayed gone these four months for that very reason, to protect them. Once these last two people die, the ring will be broken and we should be safe, but not until then; up to this point it was largely child's play but now it's the top dogs answering for their crimes, and they won't think any more of killing me than they did those other recruits."

"Okay," Hannibal said as he took his cigar out of his mouth for a minute, "Say we agree to help you put these guys out of commission. Where are they?"

Jean looked at him like she didn't believe him; she looked down at the table as she considered answering him. "I got a tip the other day, Grant's heading out to a place called Queensworth."

Hannibal tapped Murdock on the shoulder and said, "What town is this again?"

"Rotgut."

"Rotgut, New York, that figures, and Queensworth is how far away from here?" he asked.

"Not here, in Ohio," she answered, "And Saunders is heading out to Illinois. I can't prove it but I think they're traveling different ways to meet up at a certain point later on, and this way they don't draw any attention to themselves. Naturally I go after Grant first."

"That's about 500 miles," Hannibal said.

"I ain't flying, Hannibal," B.A. told him.

"Who said anything about flying?" he asked.

"Any time you start figuring distance, you bring in this crazy fool to fly us out there," B.A. pointed to Murdock.

"Nobody said a word about flying," Hannibal turned to Face, "Did I say anything about flying?"

"No, not a word," Face replied.

B.A. looked from one of them to the other and growled, "You ain't pulling anything with me this time."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Hannibal said with the same grin Face had described as a set of teeth playing with his mind. "We're just figuring time, 500 miles is about a seven hour drive."

"I can get us there in four hours," B.A. replied.

"Would you look at this, Face?" Hannibal said as he picked up his sandwich, "We were so focused on Miss Rhodes' story, we haven't even eaten yet." Still with the knowing smirk on his face he said, "Eat your sandwich, B.A."

"What'd you have this fool put in it?" B.A. wanted to know.

"Nothing," Hannibal insisted, "It's a simple, non-threatening, sandwich, eat up."

"I don't trust you," B.A. said.

"Why?" Jean asked, "What is it?"

"Every time we gotta fly, these crazy fools put something in the food to knock me out," B.A. explained.

"We do not," Hannibal replied, "A lot of the meals have turkey in them, turkey makes you fall asleep."

"Oh for crying out loud," Jean picked up her plate and swapped hers with B.A.'s, "Here, take mine."

"No I don't trust that either," he said, "They've pulled that stunt before too, so when they're switched I still get the knock-out lunch."

"Fine," Jean said and swapped her plate with Murdock's, then she reached over, grabbed B.A.'s plate and swapped his with Face's, "Ought to be safe now."

"Well now that that's settled," Hannibal commented as he picked up his sandwich and bit into it.

"What about that woman who met us in the hotel lobby?" Face asked, "What's her part in this?"

Jean shook her head, "Ain't one, I just asked her to deliver an envelope to my friends who were at the hotel that day and would be waiting for the message in the lobby, I never saw her before in my life, and probably won't again."

"And for four months," Hannibal said, "You spend your days bunking with the cockroaches?"

"Don't get the wrong idea, Smith, don't think I've enjoyed living like this," Jean told him, "Four months of breaking into condemned houses, inhaling dust and dirt, no clean clothes, no electricity, no water, busted windows, 40 degree nights, never seeing anyone, never talking to anyone, when I could be home with my family."

"How did you get the guns?" Face asked.

"Probably the same way you get yours," she said, "Underground's a big business."

"Yeah, but not cheap," Murdock said.

"That's why everybody goes into the drug trafficking business, big money…that's what these guys killed for, what do you think happened to the tens of thousands of dollars they were carrying at the time they bit it? That's why nobody's been able to tie drugs to their deaths or even their lives, you get found with $50 in your wallet, nobody will ask questions, but an envelope with $25,000, that's going to raise more than eyebrows," Jean explained.

"And what happened to all that money?" Hannibal asked, "I'd think with a stash like that you could afford to hole up in a nicer place than this."

"It's gone," she answered, "Guns, ammo, when you're not doing legal business they can make the price whatever they want, they know you don't have an option."

"And you have to eat," Face added.

"That's right, and those choices are extremely limited too when you don't have a refrigerator or place to cook. Believe me, there's nothing I'd like better to do than just go home, but that can't happen until these guys are dead. Of course I realize that this ring goes much farther than just the branch we came from; I have no delusions about turning the whole drug operation on its ear, but this is personal, and it's also business, and I intend to see it finished."

"This is just my personal opinion of course, but you don't sound flighty to me," Hannibal told her with his trademark smile.

She weakly smiled in response and said, "I've had a crash course in growing up. Death has a tendency to do that to people. I've never complained about the way my life's turned out due to these circumstances, I've never asked 'why me?'. Four months I've been running this operation single handedly, I've accepted it as being my fate."

She laughed dryly and added, "I don't know if any of you guys had any religious upbringing, any beliefs about God, Heaven, Hell...I do. That makes it a conflict of interest: the Bible says 'thou shalt not kill', but I have, and I'm well aware of the fact that repentance is needed for redemption, and where there is no repentance there will be no redemption. The problem is you can't have repentance without remorse for your actions and I have none and also no intention to stop it now. So if I die, I'm damned and I know it, but all the knowing in the world can't change it or what I do, I have to do this, even though I know what it'll mean when I stand before God Almighty and answer for my crimes and sins. There'll be no excuses, and I don't expect Him to show any mercy because one murder isn't any different from another. 'Vengeance is mine', says the Lord, the problem is the world is full of people trying to do the Lord's work, myself included. But I couldn't live with myself if I let these murderous scumbags get away with what they've done and what they're still doing. Jean was a good man, he didn't deserve to be gunned down like a dog, and buried under the spot where the recruits are going to be doing their morning pushups. And I'm sure God will make them answer for that but the problem is humans don't have the same kind of patience and we insist on seeing to such problems ourselves, immediately...for some of us, this world is the only time we'll ever see justice. And then there's the matter of justice for the dead...just because they're out of this world doesn't mean the crimes committed against them should be rewarded or forgotten."

There was a long silence after that, nobody said anything or even knew what to say. Finally, she took it upon herself to be the first to say something. "In the grand scheme of things I have no doubt when you four's time comes, there'll be mercy shown, Lord yes. That's the difference in us, Smith, you don't kill people, I do, and I'll be honest, I haven't completely hated it either. I've had to adapt very quickly to a new way of life, everything that I did know fell away, and in order to stay alive, I've had to stay two steps ahead of everyone else."

"There's just one thing I don't get," Face told her, "That night you had us go to the bar, exactly how did you plant that bomb and the bottle of soda before we got there, and possibly know that's where we'd be?"

"I don't know," she replied, "I guess the same way I was able to slip those sleeping pills into Smith's sandwich before he got it."

"What!" Hannibal said, and peeled open what was left of his sandwich to see two crushed up pills between the bread and the meat. His eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out face down in his lunch. Murdock took the cigar out of his hand and tossed it into the sink.

Face was half out of his chair at the sight of the leader unconscious and he asked Jean, "How did you know to do that?"

"I didn't," she said, "But this way he can't give an order to take me back to my parents, and he's the leader, right? The man with a plan."

"And that also means we ain't flying," B.A. said and turned to Murdock, "Right, fool?"

"Who said anything about flying?" Murdock asked, feigning ignorance.

"Alright," Jean said, "If you guys are serious about helping me, then we better get moving and fast, like he said, 7 hours to get there. But remember what I said, that dope money is gone, so I can't afford to pay your rates either, meaning if you do go through with this it's going to be a largely on-the-house case."

"That's alright," B.A. said, "The case just got a big discount."

B.A. laughed as he grabbed hold of Hannibal and hoisted him up over his shoulder and hauled him out to the van.

"Get a taste of your own medicine for once, Hannibal," he chuckled as he shut the door, "This is good."

Jean dug a couple of duffel bags out of their hiding places in some of the more decrepit furniture and gave them to Face and Murdock to carry out to the van; they were heavy and without looking inside the two could guess that these were the guns she used to kill those men.

"You do realize the position you're putting yourself in by trusting us with these, don't you?" Face asked.

"I do," she replied, "I also know if you tried anything with what's in those bags, I'd kill you with what's in the other one." She pulled a third duffel bag out of an overhead panel above the dining room's closet, and pulled an army jacket off the back of a chair.

"Where'd you get that from?" Face asked her.

She glanced down at it and answered, "From someone who doesn't need it anymore."