Murdock knew the second that he turned back around and went for Jean that there wasn't going to be any way the others could afford to wait on him. The MPs were in front of the diner and the van was in the back, and they had to make a quick getaway, and fast though he was, he knew he couldn't get both of them out fast enough for them all to escape together. The others would have to leave without him, and he knew they would, and he accepted that; he was going to have to find another way out of this mess. The heat was on his back and he realized that their path to the back door was now blocked by the fire and they would have to get out another way. He never even slowed down as he came back to Jean, he reached down, grabbed her to her feet and half dragged her alongside him as he ran through another corridor. The WHOOSH of the flames was deafening as a new wave of heat and fire washed over the whole building, they were fortunate to be in a pocket where the fire hadn't consumed everything yet but they were running out of time.
He found a side window that the glass had exploded out of and knew it was their only escape. He slowed down enough to grab Jean and pick her up, only a few inches off the ground but enough that she became disoriented and was screaming at him as he forced her over to the window and dropped her out of it, following right behind her a second later. He hit the ground outside, grabbed Jean by the left arm and took off running. There weren't any MPs in sight, and there weren't any jeeps, but there also wasn't any van either; he wasn't really surprised, he knew the others couldn't wait on him if they were going to get away. They ran behind the diner and beyond that was another wooded area that they disappeared into, never slowing down but making sure not to run into any trees or fall in any holes in the ground.
By his own estimation they must've run for two miles before they came out of the woods and saw a road ahead; there wasn't time to worry if it led to another abandoned town or not, but they quickly got the answer when they were almost run over by a semi heading their way at 50 miles an hour.
"Thank God, finally people!" Jean said.
Murdock looked up the road and down it and didn't see any other traffic coming but they were starting to make progress. Still, he didn't believe in slowing down now, he resumed the choker hold on her arm and dragged her across the street, turned at a corner and ran down the hill the road was on. After covering six more blocks, Murdock came to a stop when he saw something down below.
"You see that?" he pointed.
Jean squinted to see down that far, "Railroad tracks?"
"And red lights," Murdock added, "Meaning a train's running."
"Think it's a train station?" Jean asked.
"Well," Murdock waited and watched the cars pass by, "It don't look like no freighter."
"We get on a train now, is that it?" Jean was almost laughing, but Murdock could tell it was just from her nerves being shot. She sank down to the ground and sat down on asphalt and said, "We're going to need money for tickets." She reached into her shirt to see how much money she had left but Murdock lightly slapped her hand and instead reached inside of his jacket and took some money out from two hidden pockets.
That was something else that nobody ever knew about him; when he traveled, he always had money on him, he just never showed it. Since he lived at the V.A. he didn't encounter as many cost-of-living problems as the others did on the outside, so for the times they actually did get paid on a job he was able to keep most of his money. He also knew to keep it all in different places, so he kept two hundred in his jacket, one hundred in his front pants pocket, and a hundred dollar bill in each of his shoes, where nobody sane and few crazy would ever think to look.
"Come on," Murdock pulled her back to her feet and started down the hill, "Let's see what's leaving the station soon."
"I don't get it," Jean told him, "Where're we going?"
"Look, Hannibal and the others couldn't wait around on us because they had to get away from the MPs, so it stands to reason that what they're going to do now is keep on in the same direction to the next place Hannibal marked on the map, which is Cisne. Why anybody's going there, I don't know, but that's a few miles northwest of here, so we find a train heading out that general direction. Of course with the way B.A. drives we won't be able to catch up to them, but we'll be in the general area and it'll be easier to make contact with them for them to double back and get us. The main thing is we keep moving because they're already moving, and you can be sure the MPs are moving too…and this is where we might get a break because who's going to look for a couple of fugitives on a train in this town?"
"You mean they'll know we didn't burn up in the fire?" Jean asked.
"Eventually that fire's going to go out, and when it does they can tear the place apart and look for bones and if they don't find any, they're going to know we got away somehow," Murdock told her.
Jean hung her head low and her eyes were only half open as she said, "I just don't get it, how did they know we were there? And why were they trying to kill us?"
"I don't know," he said. He turned and looked at her and reached his arm around her upper back and he added, "But don't worry, honey, as long as you's traveling with Howling Mad Murdock, you' in good hands…and feet, and tonsils."
Jean laughed and pushed his hand away and said, "I got a question, why would any mother name her child Howling Mad?"
"Ah," Murdock recalled with the utmost fondness, "My mother was a one of a kind woman she was she was she was."
They'd gotten two tickets for the first train heading west and they found a place to sit that was rather secluded and nobody sat within five feet of them. A few minutes after pulling out of the station, Jean leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes and in a short while was asleep. Murdock was glad for that because he needed time to think. In the A-Team they all had their own functions: he was the pilot, Face was the conman who scammed them anything and everything they needed, B.A. was a combination of muscle, intimidation, and mechanical genius, and Hannibal was the man with the plan. Well Hannibal wasn't here now, so this time it was on Murdock to come up with the plan. And anything that they needed between here and when they met up with the others again, he was going to have to find some way to get it or scam it himself.
Looking out the window, he realized that by the time the train stopped and they got off, it would be starting to get dark, so they might have to stop off somewhere for the night. Wherever they stopped he'd look for a motel where they could get a room, and they'd be able to stay out of sight for a few hours while he pieced together the next part of his plan. He knew that it would be very easy to find out if the others beat him there first, as much as they liked to believe they were hidden in plain sight, it was actually very easy to find out if anybody recalled seeing four very different looking men arrive in a black GMC van with a red bar on it. Murdock smirked as he recalled one time that B.A. threatened to knock him clear into the next month after he made the comment that their choice of transportation couldn't be anymore obvious if they'd tied a canoe on the top.
So, when they stopped off for the night, he'd find them a place to stay, and find a payphone so he could call the van without having to worry about the line being tapped, and he'd also keep his eyes and ears open to see if anybody mentioned any new people in town. That seemed simple enough, of course they'd been through too many of Hannibal's plans over the years to know if it seemed simple, something was bound to go wrong; but he'd have to blow up that bridge when he came to it. If only he'd been able to get his hands on that copter back at the base, everything would've been so much easier. He turned to Jean who had slumped to the side and was leaning against him and he nudged her and asked her, "Saint, would you want to go up in a helicopter sometime?"
Jean's eyes were closed but he knew he heard a small 'mm-hmm' sound from her.
He grinned and said, "We'll have to go sometime, you ain't scared to fly like the angry mudsucker, is you?"
Jean made a short 'mmm' sound as her head moved slightly to the side, he took it as a no. He put his arm around her but quickly drew it back when he felt how warm her arm was. Leaning over he saw that her right arm, the same one that had been caught on the barbed wire, was bright pink and seemed to be slightly swollen; then Murdock realized that the right side of her face looked exactly the same, and he flashed on Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He knew that the burn had to have come from the fire, but he also knew that she hadn't been hit by the flames during the explosion, but the heat alone could very well have been responsible for that. They had been in such a hurry to get out of there, no, he had been in such a hurry to get out of there, that he never stopped to see or even ask if she was alright. But whatever she had been going through at the time, she never said one word about it, but why was only one side of her burnt? He supposed that as he dragged her along to the window, his body must've shielded the left half of hers; at the time he hadn't even felt anything because he didn't have time to think about it, the only thing on his mind at that time had been getting both of them out alive. So he had another thing to add on his list of what to do when they came to the station, he would also have to find a drugstore that sold burn cream.
Murdock decided the best thing for them to do first was find a motel to check into for the night; and they found one about a mile from the station. It was already getting dark and he was hoping that would work in their favor. In and out of the V.A. over the years he had gone through a couple hundred different identities and personas, some were people of his own creating and others were of people he had always wanted to be; none ever lasted more than a few days at best because he found out he really didn't like being anybody else, but he still couldn't help trying on a new role every so often either.
That was one thing he envied about Face, the man went through new identities like they were Kleenex, and each one fit him so perfectly; though most were similar, they all had to be rich so he could continue with his endless parade of expensive suits, beautiful women, $600 bottles of wine, fancy cars, it all fit Face like a glove. Aside from priests he never really played anybody who wouldn't belong in the upper class breed of people; but Murdock always thought that was a rather boring way to live, essentially playing the same people over and over and over again, where was the fun in that? But maybe that was why it was so easy for Face to maintain his different identities, because they were all so similar; Murdock on the other hand went through somebody entirely different every time, and he tried to like them but he never really did, but it never stopped him from trying somebody new whenever he got the notion either.
Well, tonight he was going to have to try another new identity, and it was going to have to be something completely different from what all the rest had been. He needed a few minutes to put it together, so they stopped at a gas station and he went into the men's room to wash up. He looked at himself in the spider web cracked mirror; he rubbed cold water on his face and wetted down his hair to make it lie down flat in the back. Already he didn't like this new person he was going to be, he didn't like him at all, there was something about this character that he could sense a hint of evil within; perhaps somebody that had the potential to be a serial killer. He needed a name, but what? Something that wasn't too obvious, wouldn't attract much attention, something that couldn't be checked.
He tried a new voice for this character, that also had to be something new and different; nothing humorous, or lighthearted, he tried a deeper, more somber voice, trying to sound smooth, suave, debonair. That stuff might've worked for Face but hearing it come out of his own mouth only creeped him out; he even sounded like somebody that could be a cold blooded killer.
A name came to him, and he spoke again in his new voice, calm, borderline flat, very serious, "Hi," he said to his reflection, watching how the muscles in his face moved as he spoke, "I'm David Thompson." It sounded good, it went with this character that struck him as being a little bit psychotic; the best kind of psychotic, one who could blend in and pass himself off as being just like everyone else.
Leaving the restroom, he found Jean and had her put on his jacket and put his blue cap on her head before deciding that was overdoing it; he took the cap off and stuffed it inside his jacket and looked her up and down.
"That'll work," he told her, "Just keep back by the door and let me do all the talking. And remember, my name is David Thompson."
"And what's mine if they ask?" Jean asked.
He thought for a minute and decided, "Joan."
"Very simple but it should work," she agreed.
"Alright, let's go darling," Murdock said as he intertwined his arm with hers and they left the gas station.
They found a motel that was only a few blocks away from Main Street where all the late night businesses were. Murdock had a sensation of pins and needles in his neck and back as they went to register; he felt like there were a million wanted posters of him all over the place and he was just hoping his disguise fooled them. He watched the manager behind the desk and tried to see if there was anything in his movement or his facial features that gave away anything; did he know, did he suspect, did he detect something was off? As far as he could tell, this man didn't have the slightest clue what was going on, and he was all for keeping it that way. The light was dim so that also worked in their favor; Jean stayed by the door like he'd told her and kept her back to them. Murdock strolled over to the desk and folded his arms on the top and said, in his newfound voice, sounding oh so smooth and oh so slick, and just the teensiest bit psychotic, "Hi, we'd like a room for the night."
"We?" the man repeated.
Murdock turned around and saw the problem, Jean was too far back in the dark to really be seen.
"Uh, dear," he said, sounding ever so slightly annoyed, "Would you mind turning around and showing the nice gentleman that you have a face?"
Jean turned slightly to the side so they could catch her profile, but she quickly turned away again. Murdock smirked as he turned back to the manager, "You know how new brides are, always so uptight, though," he said with a huff, "I can't really say I blame her, after the day we've had both our nerves are completely shot to hell." He knew there had to be a damn good reason why a newlywed couple would check in anywhere without any luggage and he told the man, "Anything that can go wrong does, what is that, Murphy's Law? Somebody must've changed the family name, we get married this afternoon, my genius brother tells me he's got a great spot picked out for our honeymoon, only a 50 mile drive, a nice little secluded place in the middle of nowhere. So what do we do? Well for one thing I listen to the damn idiot and we pack our bags and hit the road, well, I should've known anything he came up with couldn't be any good. But I didn't, and we're sure as hell paying for it now. We get 10 miles from home and the car starts sounding like the whole thing is being rammed through a trash masher and then the next thing I know we are skidding along on three tires before finally crashing into a ditch off the side of the road. Of course we had to have the top down so when the car went flying, so did our luggage, and who knows where the hell that is now? So we're stuck waiting to hear back from the garage and have no choice but to stop off somewhere for the night and this was the first place we saw. I tell you pal it's one hell of a way to start a marriage and I'm hoping things can only get better from here or I'm seriously thinking of shooting myself." He laughed to add a little humor to the black situation he seemed to be in the middle of.
Since they didn't have any luggage he had to pay $20 in advance, he did, and they were given the key to cabin 8; the manager showed them the way, outside they were caught in the blinding illumination from the streetlamps and Murdock felt like they were shining right through him so he could be seen inside and out like an X-ray and that if the man turned around, he'd be able to see inside of him and know his secret.
"Thank you," he said when the man opened the door to their cabin, and turning to Jean he elbowed her and added, "Say thank you, darling."
Jean only waved to the manager. Murdock laughed and said, "Well I never said I married a polite woman."
Jean moved for the door but Murdock grabbed her by the sleeve of his jacket and jerked her back. Purely for show, he picked her up in his arms and carried her into the room, and when he saw the manager heading back to the front desk, he put her down and closed the door behind him.
"You think he suspected anything?" Jean asked.
Murdock peered out the window to make sure nobody was watching them. "Well," he said, "If anything he's probably wondering why I married somebody who's practically young enough to be my daughter, but that's none of his business and I'm guessing it wouldn't be the first time he's seen it either."
Jean shrugged and took off his jacket and, turning it around so she could see the back, asked Murdock, "What does Da Nang mean anyway?"
He turned and looked at her; this was the problem with only having one person on hand instead of a whole team, he had to get out of here and find out where the nearest payphone was so he could contact the others when he knew they were in the area, but he didn't want to chance her going with him and he didn't like the idea of leaving her here alone either.
"Look Saint," he said, "I need to take a look around the area and see what our options are here, are you going to be alright here by yourself for a while?"
"Yeah, sure," she said dismissively, apparently she didn't possess the imagination he did to consider what danger they might be in.
He went over to her and took his jacket and felt around in the inside pockets and pulled out his gun; meeting her gaze he saw that she was starting to realize the gravity of the situation. He held it out to her and told her, "If you have to, you use it."
Jean let out a cynical laugh and said as she took the gun, "You might as well tell the sun to rise in the morning." She held the gun and explained, "By now this is as natural to me as breathing."
Murdock still felt guilty about leaving her alone, but he would rather she stay out of sight, if anybody recognized him that was one thing; if the army caught him, all they could do was send him back to the V.A. since he had been declared mentally incompetent to have participated in the bank robbery 10 years ago, if he was alone, if Jean was caught with him there was no telling what might happen to her. He forced in a large breath as he turned to go for the door, but before he could take a step in that direction he reached over and grabbed Jean and pulled her into a tight hug and told her, "You watch yourself, I'll be back soon."
"I'll be here," she said assuredly.
He sincerely hoped so.
Eight blocks down from the motel he was able to find a drugstore, a diner, and around from there was a payphone right outside a liquor store; so far there wasn't anything being said among the natives about any newcomers in town who looked out of place, so, while Murdock couldn't understand it he accepted that the team simply just hadn't arrived yet. They would have to pass through soon, so he would wait until morning and then see if anybody talked about spotting them. In the meantime he paid a visit to the drug store, picked up a bottle of aloe vera lotion for burns, a new roll of gauze, a new bottle of peroxide, a bottle of rubbing alcohol; they had been forcibly stripped down to the gears when they had to escape so he'd have to restock on all the medical supplies they'd had before.
And a few others. He had noticed that Jean was still having trouble moving around though she tried to cover it; and as covered in bruises as Hannibal had said she was, he bet they hadn't gone away yet, so he also picked up a tube of Deep Heat, though he could well anticipate the fight that would ensure then since she clearly wouldn't be able to apply it herself to some areas. It made his stomach turn to think that if she lifted up her shirt, he would see a mess of black and blue and purple and yellow marks all over her body, and why? Because she had tried to pass herself off as him. She couldn't possibly have known what the MPs would've done to him if they'd actually caught him, and even if so she had put her own life on the line to save his neck. Despite all the people he'd beaten up in fights over the years, he did not consider himself a violent person, but knowing what Jean had already been put through and how much of it was due to her involvement with them, it made him see red and his hands clenched up and he wanted to taste blood, MP blood. He wanted to track down every last man responsible for the beating she'd taken in his place and kill them all; maybe they hadn't known that she wasn't him, but what did that prove? They beat a woman half to death and just left her laying bloody and bruised in the street to work her way back to where she'd come from; and they were supposed to be the bad guys, the traitors to their country?
He couldn't possibly get mad at her for what she had done, but he had to wonder what went through her own mind after that night? She was the one who had to see the damage every night when she undressed, she wouldn't let anybody else see what had happened; he remembered how she became when she woke up and realized Hannibal had drugged her so he and Face could examine her. Yes, it had to be done, but no doubt when she found out what had happened, it had left her feeling violated to some degree, the only question was could they possibly have done anymore or any worse damage than the MPs did when they beat her like a dog? What did she think when she saw herself and saw what had been done to her? If she bore any anger within herself for it, she made sure it never showed through; she had a mask as firmly set into place as Face did, he felt certain she would never let anybody see what really went on behind those trained eyes that knew not to give anything away.
And yet, something had happened, there was a chink in her armor now where there hadn't been one before, and they were it. Six months of isolation and solitude had all come crashing down in a matter of days, and now she was surrounded by people again; people who never took no for an answer and kept chipping away at the surface until they just bore a hole clear through the chest and reached out the back. She stayed on her guard but somewhere along the way she had let her defenses down low enough for them to slip through the barricade. She was aware of the intrusion but Murdock doubted that she truly resented it as much as she let on; he thought that she was secretly relieved that there was finally someone that she could confide in and trust, even if she didn't fully trust them, that she did at all was a start. And if the last few days were any proof, some progress had been made because she seemed to trust them very much, despite her protests that they only got in her way and interrupted her plans.
After the drugstore, he went over to the diner and got a couple of hamburgers and potato chips to go for dinner; once they'd gotten out of the line of fire and the adrenaline had time to die down, he realized they hadn't eaten since breakfast. Before heading back, he went around to the payphone to see if at this time of night there were a lot of people using it; there wasn't anybody using it at the moment, but so he didn't draw any attention to himself by just standing around gawking, he went past the phone and into the liquor store, and came out a few minutes later with a chilled bottle of wine in his bag. If he encountered that man from the motel again, he decided this might make them look just the tiniest bit more convincing, what was a wedding night without champagne?
By the time Murdock got back to the motel, he got in the door and saw Jean sitting in a chair by the bed with his gun in hand aimed right at him. When she saw who it was she immediately lowered it into her lap. He was glad to know that she was on her guard but he couldn't help commenting, "Maybe next time I should yell first."
"Where've you been?" Jean asked as she stood up.
"I got us dinner," Murdock answered as he gave her the sack with the burgers in it. He dumped the other two bags on the bed and walked past her as he said, "I'll be back in a minute."
He disappeared into the bathroom, closed the door behind him and all was quiet for a minute, then Jean's attention was drawn to the door and the screams that were coming from within. She went over to the door and listened as Murdock yelled and grunted and groaned, followed by a series of animalistic noises. Half of her mind was telling her to get away from the door but she had to know what was going on, she turned the knob just as the door got yanked open and Murdock stepped out again, his body covered in sweat and his hair standing up and sticking out on all sides like he'd been hit by lightning. The sounds he was making now where akin to if he'd just come out of a surgery with no option of anesthesia and was relieved that the cutting had finally come to an end.
"Are you alright?" Jean asked him.
Murdock huffed and puffed like an asthmatic big bad wolf a few times until it seemed he was going to pass out, then he answered, "Yeah, I'm fine. I am now."
Yes, now, now that David Thompson was gone and Howling Mad Murdock was back; gone was the calm voice and the slicked back hair and the icy stare in the eyes, now he was free to be his usual crazy self again with a crazy appearance and a rapidly changing assortment of cartoon voices. Murdock dug through the inside of his jacket and found his blue baseball cap and tightly pressed it onto his head and had a dazed look on his face like he was Superman slowly being dug out of a house of Kryptonite blocks one piece at a time and his power was slowly being restored to him.
He hated David Thompson, he didn't like being that man at all, and he wished he never had to be him again, though he knew as long as they stayed here, if anybody came he would have to do a repeat performance. But for the time being anyway, at least for tonight he could shed that psychotic role like a snake's old skin and relax into his true self; the one that begged to run around like a chicken with its head cut off and climb the walls and randomly burst into song at a moment's notice, this was the true Murdock and he was glad to be back. That was the difference, Murdock was just crazy, but David Thompson was a straight out psychotic; there was a difference.
He didn't like playing this new character at all, it was like having a bad taste in his mouth only it spread into a bad feeling in his whole body. It made him want to crawl out of his skin just to be absolutely sure he was rid of that feeling, that person. And he would've settled for an improvisation; if Jean wasn't here with him he would tear off his clothes and leap around the room like Tarzan, howling and pounding his chest the entire time.
"I'm alright," he assured her, "I'll just like it when we can get out of here, waiting around here like this is going to drive me normal." He cringed and shuddered at that thought.
Jean smiled and put her arms around him as if to show she sympathized with him, but what she said next surprised him, "Do you believe in possession, Murdock?"
"I believe in exorcism," he said, and looked down at her, "Why?"
"That name that you gave them at the front desk, I hope they don't try running a make on it," Jean said, "I recall there being a David Thompson in the newspaper a while back, he...he killed his older brother for the family fortune and tried to frame his younger brother for it."
Now that was spooky. "But I never even heard of the guy," he told her, "How could I pick his name out of nowhere?"
"Just bad luck," Jean decided, "I'm sure it doesn't mean anything."
"No I think it's something else," Murdock said, "I think he's channeling me from death row." He took a step back, hissed and held his hands out like claws as if he was warding off the evil presence.
They ate, and after dinner Murdock subjected Jean to a mild examination as he changed the bandage on her arm and covered her burns in the cold aloe cream and, after some debate, convinced her to lie facedown on the bed while he applied the heat rub to the bruises on the lower portion of her back; which he was only mildly relieved to find were starting to turn yellow and green and fade away.
"I just don't get it," he said as he pulled her shirt back down, "Why did you do it? You could have been killed you know."
"I know it," she replied as she rolled on her side and looked back at him, "My life never meant anything before, maybe it would serve a purpose in death. But when I saw the guerillas lurking around I knew I had to do something to throw them off target. I couldn't let them find you."
Murdock didn't respond either in words, or in actions, but he stayed in the same spot where he stood and looked at her, and finally asked her, "Don't your shoulders ever get tired holding up the whole planet?"
Jean coughed and remarked, "What can I say? I happen to think the good guys deserve to win, I'm funny like that."
She balled her hand over her mouth as she continued coughing, but it only got worse, to the point she was doubled over on the bed.
"Are you alright?" Murdock asked as he patted her on the back.
She cleared her throat and said, "Yeah, I think I'm just getting a cold."
On top of everything else. Murdock's eyes rolled up to see the ceiling and he tried to see past it, not saying anything but all the same questioning if this was supposed to be some kind of joke. He picked up the other bag from the bed and pulled out the bottle of wine.
"What's that for?" Jean asked.
"Uh," he tried to remember, "It was a prop for the whole newlywed thing, but I think now it's going to be put to medicinal use."
"Why not?" Jean replied, "I got no objections, I can drink wine."
Murdock noted she didn't say she liked it. But he figured if she could swallow the harder stuff that she did, this ought to go down rather smoothly. Of course, if there were any problems with that, there was always plan B, also in the bag he had gotten a small bottle of whiskey; the same stuff she'd had in her bag when she first met up with them, and he recalled she'd never gotten it back since Hannibal had them hide it. Just like her pills, and Murdock also noticed that she hadn't been demanding to get them back either for the past few days.
"Who knows?" he said as he took a couple of plastic glasses out of the bag as well and started to open the bottle, "One miracle started with wine, maybe another will come about from it."
Jean smiled weakly and commented, "John chapter 2 verse 9, and Jesus turned the water into wine, people would do well to remember that instead of constantly associating alcohol with the devil. He may go with you into the bar but that's why I drink at home."
He poured her glass, and himself one to join her with; they held their glasses up in a mock toast and Murdock said, "To your health."
"Or more appropriately," she said, "Here's mud in your eye."
They clanked their glasses and drank. Murdock laid on the bed beside her and they just looked up at the ceiling for a while, occasionally saying something to each other every couple of minutes. Murdock looked over and saw she was half asleep but knew the other half wouldn't be joining the first anytime soon. So, since neither was in the mood to go to sleep yet and there wasn't anything else to do, he entertained her for a couple of hours by telling her about some of the previous missions the A-Team had been on, exaggerating in parts where he thought it might actually make her laugh, and a few times it did.
The one that took the cake was when he told her about he time he put on a white wedding dress and walked down the aisle to marry a man named Calvin Cuttor, only to leave him at the altar. Jean was already laughing to the point she couldn't talk anymore, but for a little extra dramatic effect Murdock took a handkerchief out of his jacket and blew his nose like a foghorn as he crocodile tearily explained, "I feel so guilty for walking out on him at our wedding, always a bridesmaid and never a bride, I finally get my chance to be the bride and I leave him at the altar, will I never learn?"
Jean rolled around on her side of the bed laughing until she could hardly breathe. After a few minutes she stopped laughing and started choking, and Murdock helped her into the bathroom where she spent the next half hour coughing up black stuff that Murdock figured had to have built up when they were in the fire, and for some reason she was only now getting it out. One hell of a delayed reaction in his opinion.
Once she stopped coughing and was able to stand up again, Murdock walked her back into the bedroom and helped her back into the bed. He started to remove her boots but she pushed him away and insisted she could do it herself. Likewise, Murdock untied his Converse sneakers and put them down by his side of the bed, and he reached over and shut off the lights and hoped that they would be able to get some sleep.
Murdock woke up with a coughing fit of his own, his however he attributed to a dry throat. He went into the bathroom and got a drink of water, on the way back he saw the clock and saw that it was 5:30 in the morning. Looking back to the bed he saw Jean was curled on her side still asleep, but he also noticed that something didn't look right about the lump on the other side of the bed. He went over to get a closer look and saw that sometime during the night, Jean had grabbed his jacket and was hugging it in a death grip like it was a teddy bear; her arm was draped over the tiger on the back. He hadn't heard anything from her during the night, he hoped that meant she slept well; still half asleep himself, he wandered over to the window and drew back the curtain to see if anything was going on outside in the dark.
Uh-oh, he couldn't see the blue and red lights but he knew a police car when he saw one and one was parked outside the motel right now. He watched to see if anybody was out there or if anybody was coming; he didn't see anyone, and he wondered what was going on. Apparently the cop was still in the car because after a minute he saw the headlights come on and the car pulled out of there and went slowly down the street and disappeared.
Murdock let the curtain fall back into place and he backed away from the window, and over to the bed where he promptly woke Jean up to see if she was in any condition to be moved if they had to make a quick getaway. She had a fever and still had a cough and also complained of a headache; but it wasn't going to be detrimental to her health if he grabbed her up and tried to exit stage left anytime soon if need be. He put his shoes on and slipped his gun into the waistband of his pants and went back to the window and watched for a while to see if anybody came back. He didn't see anybody outside, and no cars came by, of course that didn't mean that there wasn't somebody already there just waiting for the right moment to strike. Maybe it would've been in both their interests to get out of there right now and see how far they could get, but he wasn't wont to panic when things looked bleak and he wouldn't start now either. They would wait and see what was going on, maybe it wasn't about them at all.
Then another thought occurred to him, maybe the others were in town now and the police were on the lookout for them. But that didn't make any sense because the team wouldn't know to come to the motel, or would they? No, they couldn't possibly have figured it out, and he knew he hadn't called anybody last night. He decided he would wait a while and then go out, once again as the dreaded David Thompson, and see what he could find out from the morning gossip.
A few hours later, he decided it was time enough that he could go out and wouldn't draw much attention to himself. Much as he dreaded it, he left his jacket and his blue cap behind with Jean, as well as his gun, issuing the same advice he had last night, if anybody came in, or tried to, she was to use it and get herself out as fast as she could. Now that she was sick he really felt bad about leaving her alone but couldn't see any way around it. He also really wished now that the others were here because they could get out of here and find a new place to lay low until further notice; but first things first, he had to find out if they were already in town and had been spotted, once he found that out he could better determine what they were going to do.
He took his time getting through the downtown area for a better chance to pick up on any news; he picked up a copy of the morning paper, he stopped in at the drug store again and picked up some medicine he figured Jean would need for later, and went into a diner and got two breakfasts bagged up to take back to the motel. Through it all he heard a few dozen people talking amongst themselves and never heard anything about three men in a strange van coming into town. So maybe they'd lucked out, nobody was looking for them yet because nobody had seen them yet, but then where were they? They were coming out this way and with the way B.A. drove they should've been here over 12 hours ago. And if nobody was on the lookout for them, why had that cop car been prowling around the motel? That was the stone that sat on his stomach the heaviest; if they'd been waiting for him to leave and they crowded in and ambushed Jean, he couldn't think about that because he couldn't get back there any faster than he was.
When he returned he felt like he could breathe again, everything was just as it was when he left, there wasn't anybody or anything around that shouldn't be; he especially noted there wasn't a convoy of cop cars surrounding the place, or military transportation either for that matter. He went back into their room and found Jean hadn't moved from where she lay on the bed, her arms brought up so her hands covered her eyes to block out the light, her headache was only getting worse. Her cough had gotten considerably worse and now Murdock could hear a rattle in her chest that went all the way up to her throat, like she had swallowed a rock and was trying to breathe around it.
He tried to get her to eat something on the grounds of once she had something in her stomach she'd be able to take some medicine. She ate half of her breakfast before pushing it away and lying back down on the bed. Murdock watched her for a couple of minutes as he decided what to do; finally, he looked at the medicine he'd picked up at the drugstore, and put it away and instead he reached into his pocket and took out the bottle of the Hydromorphone pills, took one of the tablets out and gave it to Jean, who took it dry, and she said nothing, but her eyes did all the talking for her. Murdock was tempted to warn her not to get used to it again, but he said nothing since he couldn't promise that. Depending on how much pain she was in she could very well need more of these before the day was over.
Jean slept on and off through the day, and Murdock kept a constant watch at the window to see if anybody was out there. A couple of times he saw a police car drive by very slowly but it didn't look like the cops inside were looking his way. After lunch he caught a glimpse of a different car going by, and this one really made him feel uneasy, he recognized the logo on the driver's side door as belonging to the Illinois National Guard.
"If it's not us, then what the hell are they hanging around here for?" he asked himself.
Then an idea hit him and he went over to the small TV on the other side of the room and turned it to the lower news channels; and he caught a breaking news story and quit pressing the buttons to see what it was. A most unusual sight caught his attention; the MPs were being loaded into the backs of police cars handcuffed. Then the scene switched to a woman reporter who explained, "Because the terrorists had not undergone any formal military training or preparation, it is being written up as a matter for the police and the courts instead of the United States Army. In the meantime, local police and the National Guard are spreading their manpower across the state to ensure that no members of the terrorist organization are still at large, and that no bombs have been set in the surrounding churches and schools; and despite claims that Colonel Francis Lynch of the US Army called in the report himself this morning, the tip to the army is officially remaining anonymous."
Murdock woke Jean up to see the story on TV, they saw aerial shots of the base as well as the chopper, the jeeps, the armored cars and closeup shots the cameramen got of crates full of Molotov cocktails and bombs.
"That's why they're not here yet," Murdock told her, "They found out the people that tried to kill us yesterday weren't real MPs, they were terrorists."
"And you can be sure," Jean said, "The heat's on now and since the whole damn militia's out, this area's going to be too hot for them to come to. Hopefully though that'll also mean Grant has to stay where he is too."
"Oh don't worry about the guys," Murdock assured her, "Hannibal isn't going to let the National Guard stop him from coming through here."
"And you really think that they did this?" Jean asked as she pointed to the TV.
"Who else? It's got our name written all over it, saving children and little old ladies who only drive to church on Sundays, and who else would call in the report as Colonel Lynch?"
"True," she said, "So I guess it's a good thing they didn't wait for us yesterday after all."
"I told you it would all work out," Murdock said, "And everything's going to be fine."
As the day got later and turned into evening and then to night, Murdock started to get worried about Jean; she fell asleep for hours at a time and during which she lapsed into full body sweats and moaned and at some point she started vibrating on the bed. He had seen The Exorcist 30 times at the VA and this wasn't that, but all the same he could see her body bobbing up and down against the mattress oh so slightly and the sound it made was something awful. Earlier in the day he had tried some of the medicine he got from the drugstore but when that ran out of her system he instead relied on some old home remedies and managed to get some whiskey down her throat. He knew she'd had plenty of the stuff before but was still anticipating her spitting it in his face, but she surprised him and it went down as smoothly as water.
He checked the news coverage on the TV again and saw that a lot of the statewide searching was already being called off and he decided it would be safe enough now to call the others and have them come in. He couldn't wait to tell Hannibal and the others how proud he was of them, this time they weren't even on a mission and they managed to bring a whole terrorist group to its knees, things were looking up for them! Once again he knew that would mean going out, because he didn't trust calling from the phone here; he wasn't sure that with the police lurking around earlier that they didn't tap the lines for the motel. Of course one more trip out meant going as David Thompson again; but this time he was going out simply to use the payphone by the liquor store, he wasn't going to be dillydallying around so maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
Once again hew as met with the moral dilemma of leaving a sick woman alone, unattended and unprotected. He got an idea, as long as Jean was asleep she couldn't fight his plan; he went over to the bed and picked Jean up in his arms and carried her into the bathroom and laid her down on the floor with a pillow under her. He ran one of the washcloths under the cold faucet and stuck it to her forehead. If she woke up after he left, she would probably return to the bed, but this way if anybody did come in, they wouldn't see any proof that anybody was in the room or had been, and they might leave without checking the bathroom. Least of all she wouldn't be in plain sight incase somebody busted in the door. He left his gun behind incase she woke up because she would need it more than he would.
It was cooler tonight than the last and he regretted also leaving his jacket behind, but knew that anybody deliberately looking for H.M. Murdock would spot him by that as Jean had already proven, so he just kept walking until he was down at the payphone. He put a dime in and dialed the number of the van's phone, and though he didn't think anybody was around here listening in on him, he decided not to take any chances. So for the last time, he assumed the straight laced David Thompson voice, hoping it would still be recognizable to the team, and decided a cover would help, so since Jean was sick he called on for Dr. Smith to come and see his sick wife Joan at the motel. If anybody would be paying attention to the call from his end, who would possibly question that?
He had been thrilled to hear Hannibal's voice and he was tempted to break character and tell them all how proud he was of them, but knew it would have to wait. He also couldn't help but notice that Hannibal sounded shocked to hear from him. Well, he shrugged it off, they were just going to come through and search the area for them, they hadn't counted on him calling them and making the first move. Hannibal said they would be there soon, and he knew Hannibal never lied to him; so he paid one more visit to the liquor store, and then hurried back to the motel, slowing down only when he saw the manager out and about so he didn't look suspicious.
And now here they were again; Jean seemed to be making some improvement but he wanted to get her out of here quickly, and preferably without making a run for it. Lady luck had been on their side today, that they could be so close to an encounter of the military kind and nothing happened; of course he knew it wasn't so much luck, as just another one of Hannibal's brilliant plans coming together. He was sorry that he had missed all the fun, he would've loved to be there with the others for the fight, and also he regretted not making off with the Huey, ooh it was such a pretty bird, he could still hear her calling to him. But, he had his own job to do and he had done it, and though he didn't expect any praise from the others, he took pride in knowing he had been able to get them both to safety, and acting as a one-man team because they had no choice, he made sure they had everything they need and that they were in a safe spot for the others to come and pick them up. Hannibal had his plan, and he had his own, and both seemed to have gone off without a hitch.
A noise of tires squealing in the distance got Murdock's attention and he hopped off the bed and went over to the window and pulled back the curtains; even in the dark he could see the van as it drove up outside, the headlights were blaring and it barely even stopped before the doors opened up and the three men jumped out.
Murdock laughed and looked back to Jean and said, "Honey, we is about to blow this soda pop stand!" And he went to the door to meet up with the others.