He wondered just what it would be like if Murdock did have children. He smiled as he considered the possibilities.

"Tuh-rash bags! I want some trash bags!" Wendy Murdock hollered from where she stood at the top of the stairs. The 12-year-old girl was dressed as she always was in a blue jean jacket, a red baseball cap, and a pair of turquoise Chuck Taylor sneakers. She pounded the railing and continued to yell, "I want 'em, I want 'em! I want some trash bags!"

Her older brother, John Murdock, came out into the hall to see what all the yelling was about and he saw his younger brother, Peter Murdock, already there, with his arms folded to his chest and his neck craned up to see at the top of the stairs. Despite being a year apart, both boys were roughly the same size and were often dressed the same way in jeans and T-shirts with a caption or a cartoon character on them.

"What is it now?" John asked.

"The usual," Peter answered, and called up the stairs, "She won't SHUT UP!"

But she was relentless and continued, "I want some trash bags! I want some trash bags!"

John started to laugh but restrained himself and said to his brother, "Why don't you just toss some of them up there? Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll stick her head in one and suffocate."

"Good idea," Peter said. He got the box of trash bags from the kitchen and heaved the whole thing up the stairs at his sister. Wendy caught the box in hand and said civilly, "Thank you!"

"You could've just asked, you know!" Peter called after her.

"Sure," she replied, "But where would the fun be in that?"

"In the meantime," John told his brother, "Let's get the stairway cleared before Mom and Dad get home. You know they don't like it when we barricade her up there."

One by one they picked up the chairs from the dining room that they piled halfway up the stairs so Wendy couldn't get down until she got her room cleaned up, and put them back at the table so nothing was out of place. They didn't know when their parents would be home but they knew they should be getting done with work soon.


"Whose idea was it to run the Aquamaniac through 23 movies?" Jean asked Murdock as she exited her dressing room in a blue one piece swimsuit.

"At least they're finally killing him off," Murdock replied, "So he can finally rest in swamp peace."

"Murdock, they've killed him off in the last four movies," Jean reminded him, "This better be the last one they do, they better figure out some way to permanently kill this guy or I will."

Murdock laughed, "At least we only have one more scene to finish and then our end of it will be finished."

"About time too," Jean replied, "Two hours dog paddling in that lake every day for a week so we can get the chase scene finished, and we could've had it done on the first day if that nitwit in the rubber suit could keep up."

Murdock picked up a five gallon bucket of water and just before he threw it on her he said, "These new guys just don't have the finesse of playing the Aquamaniac like Hannibal did."

Jean gasped as the cold water initially hit her, then she opened her eyes and smoothed back her hair and said, "Why do I bother going to makeup? Every day I put on this suit and get hit with five gallons of water just to go out and swim in 50,000 gallons all afternoon waiting for the Aqua Slug to catch up with me. Like I told the director, the only way that thing is going to be able to catch up with me is he would have to steal a motorboat and ride in it."

"You shouldn't have told him that," Murdock told her, "You'll give them the idea for a 24th movie."

"Well," Jean said, "You know what you have to do?"

"Sure," he nodded, "I fly the police chopper out over the lake, lower it down, and you climb aboard just in time to get away from ol' double ugly."

"Right, let's try and get it done on the first try, so none of that stuff you learned in the Thunderbirds," Jean said as they headed out to the set, "I want to get this done with, and go home and see the kids before the day's done."


"Oh by the way," Murdock told Jean during their drive home after filming wrapped for the day, "Face called earlier. He wants to know if we can keep an eye on his boy while he and Toni take a week off for Hawaii."

"Tim?" Jean said, "Sure we can take him, probably just as well because he's probably already on his way here anyway, right?"

"You got it," he replied.

"I still say that ain't his kid," Jean told him, "Have you seen him? He looks nothing like Face, he's already getting too tall and he's got a head full of wild black hair, he doesn't look like his father at all."

"Bah," Murdock waved her off, "Do our kids look like us?"

She looked at him and answered, "They look more like us than he looks like Face."

Murdock laughed, otherwise they were quiet for the rest of the ride home. He parked their car up in the driveway but not up against the house because they could see trash bags full of something being tossed out of an upstairs window and landing in the driveway.

"This ought to be a good one," Jean said as they opened their doors, "Let's see what's going on."

Murdock was the first one to reach the spot under the window, and just before he looked up he heard his daughter calling, "Daddy!"

"What?" he asked as he looked around for her, then realized the voice was coming from above him.

"Catch me!" Wendy called as she jumped out of the window. Murdock didn't catch her quite so much as she fell on him, and knocked him off his balance and they both fell down against the driveway, but she broke her fall on him.

"Oh boy," Murdock groaned as he tried sitting up, "Now I'm glad we never got around to having the driveway paved."

"Are you alright?" Jean asked as she came up to him.

"I think so," Murdock answered as they both stood up, "The rocks broke my fall."

Jean stared down at her daughter and asked her, "And just what did you think you were doing?"

"What you told me to," Wendy answered, "I was cleaning my room."

"Where're your brothers?" she asked.

"In the house."

They had barely gotten in the front door when they heard a loud crashing noise and they ran into the living room where the noise had come from and saw Peter knocked on the floor by the bookcase, of which every shelf had been ripped out of one side and all tilted down, except for one of the lower shelves which came out entirely with all its heavy contents attached, and was pinned against his leg.

"Peter, are you alright?" Wendy asked as she rushed over to her brother.

"I feel like I got a shelf on my leg," he said.

"Ya think?" Wendy asked as she smacked him in the back of the head. She and John picked up the ends of the shelf and lifted it as well as the heavy antiques that were resting on it, off of his leg.

Murdock grabbed Peter under his armpits and pulled him back and up on his feet. "You feeling okay, little guy?"

"I'm fine," Peter answered, "But I don't think the bookcase is."

"Look at this," Jean said as she cleared another shelf off the case and pointed to the side, "The nails have popped out and all the brackets have been ripped out of place…what did this?"

"I don't know but we're going to get it fixed," Murdock said and hugged his son, "I specifically ordered a son 13 years ago, not a pancake."

It took a couple of hours but they managed to get the shelves fixed and everything back up and in the order it previously had been. After that, Murdock and Jean went into their bedroom, Murdock closed the door and Jean laid down on the bed and closed her eyes; she opened them when she felt a weight pressing against her body and saw it was Murdock hovering over her.

"Well we got through another shoot without anybody getting killed," he said.

Jean nodded, "And given who the director is, that's no easy task."

Murdock grinned at her and leaned into her and kissed her, but they were interrupted when they heard somebody knocking at the bedroom door.

"Of course," he said as he climbed over his wife and got up, he turned back to Jean and told her, "Don't go anywhere." Jean laughed in response. Murdock opened the door to see who was trying to kill whom now, and if it wasn't that then he knew it was a matter of what broke, what fell, or what blew up. They were great kids but he was just glad that they were at an age where they couldn't do much to surprise him anymore.


Peter and John were one and two years up on Wendy and she was and always had been the runt of the litter, and this was something Murdock considered to be a blessing, but it was also not without its disadvantages. He stepped in the front door with his daughter slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes with her kicking the whole time as he made various airplane noises and announced, "B-29 bomber coming in for a landing, repeat tower, coming in for a landing, get everybody off the runway, cleeeeeaaaaar!" and put her down.

However today, his daughter was not pleased and she looked up at her father and said, "I still don't see why I had to come home early."

Murdock had just brought her back from the city pool after he'd gotten a call of complaint about public indecency or something of that sort. It was an ongoing problem that he currently didn't see any end in sight for; by now he had learned to come prepared and showed up with one of her spare T-shirts and managed to get her in it before bringing her home.

"We've been over this before," he calmly explained to her.

"But I still don't understand why I can't just wear my swimming trunks to the pool like John and Peter do," Wendy told him, "We're all built exactly alike."

"I know that, darling," Murdock told her.

"Well then?" she asked.

Murdock rolled his eyes and struggled not to laugh as he told her, "We've had this talk before."

"Yeah and it still doesn't make any sense," Wendy told her father, "They don't have to wear tops to go swimming, so why should I?"

"Go ask your mother," he said as he ruffled her damp hair that was half stiff from the chlorine.

"Hey," Jean called out as they entered the living room, "Look who's here."

Murdock looked into the room and saw his two boys, and Face's son Tim, 14 years old and already as tall as his father, and well on his way to being built larger than him as well.

"Hi Uncle Murdock," he said pleasantly.

"Tim, we weren't expecting you until later," Murdock announced.

"Take a guess how he got here," Jean said.

Murdock went over to the front window and looked out, "I'm going to go out on a branch and guess the white T-bird out at the curb." He turned back to Tim and said, "I'm assuming you've got your license with you."

"Naturally," Tim flashed his inherited charmer grin as he showed Murdock the driver's license identifying him as 17-year-old Brian Dunigan from Palm Springs.

"That's nice," Murdock told him, "That's a good picture, you're taking after your old man, looking more and more like him every day."

"Liar," Jean replied, and resumed flashing a semi-pleasant smile at them.


A thunderstorm had come up that night shortly after everybody had gone to bed. By now, Murdock and his wife didn't think they had anything to worry about where their kids were concerned, but they quickly found out they were wrong when; sometime during the night, there was one particularly loud CRASH of thunder, and all of a sudden the bedroom door was thrown open and four children jumped into the middle of their bed. Everybody was flopping around like fish out of water and Murdock got pushed out of the bed and fell on the floor. He got up and turned on the lights to see what was going on and saw their three kids and Face's boy in the middle of their bed.

"Oh it's you," he said sarcastically, then he looked to Jean and said, "Well I guess there's only one way anybody's going to get any sleep tonight," and he pointed at John on the end and told him, "Move over."

It was a tight fit but they all managed to fit in the queen sized bed. However, as soon as Murdock got back on his end, Jean reached over and poked him and asked him, "How many children did we have?"

He looked at her in surprise, "You don't remember?"

She replied smugly, "I'm not sure I was even there."

Murdock resisted laughing and told her, "We have three."

"Oh," she looked the four kids over and said, "Then that means one of these isn't ours."

"That's right," Murdock said.

She leaned over to him and asked, "Which one?"

Murdock pointed to Tim and said, "This one."

"Fine," Jean replied, and added, "So stick a stamp on him, hang him on the mailbox and return him to sender."

Murdock waved her off and one by one grabbed the children and kissed them goodnight, Tim included, then turned off the lights and they all settled down for the night. A few minutes later another loud BOOM sounded off and six people pulled the covers up over their heads and burrowed down for the night.


The next morning, Murdock and Jean had left for their annual visit to see Dr. Richter at his summer home for his birthday, a tradition Murdock had started the year before John was born. This was fine with the children because with their parents' hectic schedule at the movie studio they were home quite often during the days and they'd learned long ago how to keep themselves entertained. Peter had gone off exploring the vacant land behind the house early that day and that left John, Wendy and Tim in the house to amuse themselves.

"So what's been going on here since the last time I was dropped off at this miserable excuse for a home away from home?" Tim asked as he looked at the knickknack décor on the walls.

"Very little really," Wendy explained, "Though we certainly weren't looking for you to come along as the solution to that."

"Yeah well it wasn't my idea either," Tim told her, "Especially when right now I could be in Hawaii lying on the beach and enjoy being a thousand miles away from both of you bohos."

"Oh, a snob, eh?" John asked as he kicked Tim in the rear.

"Too good for the likes of us, eh?" Wendy added as she backhanded him lightly.

"Wait a minute!" Tim said as he took a step back from them, "Can't I get a word in edgewise around here without you two beating the stuffing out of me?"

"No," the brother and sister unanimously answered.

Tim shrugged his shoulders and said, "That's all I want to know."

They heard somebody screaming from off in the distance and they realized it was Peter rapidly making his way back to the house. John went to open the door before Peter crashed through it and got it open just in time; Peter tore past his brother, his sister and his cousin, and ran up the stairs screaming. Nobody got what was going on, but John and Wendy followed after him, determined to find out what was the matter.

They followed him up to their room and didn't see him anywhere. Wendy opened the closet door and called in, "Peter?"

They heard a low voice hissing from under the bed, "Peter's not here."

"Oh no?" John asked as he hiked up one corner of the bedspread, "Then who are you?"

Under the bed he saw his brother reaching for something as he hissed in response, "I'm a fire breathing dragon."

John stood up and looked at Wendy and said, "Let me ask you a question, sis."

"Yeah?" Wendy asked.

He looked her in the eyes and asked, "Have I been a bad brother?"

She thought about it for a minute and answered, "No."

"Then WHY!" John kicked the metal bedstead, "Did I get stuck with a brother who always thinks he's a fire breathing dragon!?"

Peter stuck the top half of his body out from under the bed and sat up to look at his brother and sister as he answered, "Because a fire breathing dragon wouldn't be scared of the MPs."

They both turned to him, "What!?"

Peter nodded his head rapidly and said, "I saw them, I saw them, they're coming this way."

"Where?"

Peter pointed to the window. They could see that what he'd dove under his bed to get was a stun grenade they kept on hand for emergencies. Wendy went over to it and stood up on the sill and looked out. Over the tops of the trees she had a good view of the land behind the backyard and she saw two people in green coming their way.

"Oh great," she dryly said, and turning back to John she said, "Here comes your friend and mine, Decker and Briggs."

John went over to the window and looked out and he saw what she saw. As far back as he could remember, they had been in a neverending feud with Rodney Decker and Charles Briggs, the nephews of two colonels that their father knew from the army a long time ago. It seemed to be an ongoing war that had started long before any of them were born, and John imagined it would carry on with their kids and their kids and the ones after that, until they all were dead, maybe then they could figure out who started it. Rodney and Charles were 17 and 16, and the Murdock children assumed they took after their fathers in that both enjoyed dominating over smaller, weaker people than themselves. Presumably this was where they came into the picture, as the older boys' intended victims due to their ongoing feud that seemed like something out of, as their father had put it, the Hatfields and the Cuckoo-Coys.

"So this time they're going to ambush us on our own territory," John said, "Now they're fighting dirty."

"Then we'll just have to get dirty right back at them," Wendy told him.

"Right, but how?" John asked. He scratched his head and then the plan came to him, he told Wendy and had her run to the stairs and call down, "Hey Tim! Do you still have those body bags your dad scammed from the morgue last year?"


Rodney Decker opened his eyes and saw he was lying on the ground, and he could feel the back of his head throbbing, the pain went clear down into his teeth. He pulled himself up and tried to figure out what had hit him, but all he saw was a trip wire he'd gotten his boot caught on, from that he figured he must've hit his head against the hard ground…or, he looked around and saw the large tree roots sticking up out of the ground and reconsidered that maybe one of them would've been hard enough to do the trick. That was when he realized that he was alone, he looked around and didn't see Briggs anywhere. Now where did he get to?

"Briggs," he called out as he regained his balance and scanned the surrounding area, hearing no response he tried again, louder this time, "Briggs!"

He heard somebody calling off in the distance, but it didn't sound like Briggs, and he quickly realized it wasn't. He saw four people coming towards him and though he couldn't see them clearly, he knew who they were, well three of them anyway. He would know the Murdocks anywhere, unfortunately.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Rodney ol' boy," John said with a smirk as they stopped, "But we had our hands full with something else."

Decker looked past John and saw the girl and the younger boy had dropped something on the ground, something long and black. He stepped around them and saw it was a body bag and it looked like there was someone in it.

"What is that?" he asked.

"What would probably be a closest guess," Tim said, "There's not really enough left to be a who anymore."

"What're you talking about?" Decker asked.

Wendy explained with an epitaph, "Here lies Charles Briggs, we knew him well enough to wish we didn't know him at all."

Rodney glanced down at the rubber bag again and saw how misshapen the lump was for supposing to be a human body. He looked back up at the others and said, "This doesn't look like Briggs."

"Would you care to look under the hood?" John asked, "I think you'll be surprised."

"Yeah, you remember how the song goes," Peter said, and he grabbed one ankle and started hopping around on the other as he said in a singsong voice, "The foot bone's connected to the ankle bone, connected to the leg bone, connected to the knee bone, connected to the thigh…" he stopped spinning when Wendy hit him in the head again and he said frankly, "Well anyway we didn't have enough pieces left over to put him all back together again, so what you see is what you're stuck with."

He looked back at the body bag and tried to process the information they had just given him. On one hand he couldn't believe that they could possibly be telling the truth…but on the other hand, he knew it wasn't beyond what they could do.

"You really are insane, aren't you?" he said.

"Certifiably no," John shook his head, "But we're still psychotic enough to kill you here and now."

"And it sounds like a good idea to me," Wendy added.

All four of them lunged at Rodney and succeeded in grabbing some part of him and despite his resistance they dragged him off towards the backyard. Once there, they let go of Rodney and let him see the two large holes that had recently been dug as well as the wooden marker at the head of one hole that read, 'Here lies Rodney Decker, he died as he lived, worthlessly.'

"What is that?" he demanded to know, though he already knew the answer and was suddenly finding it impossible to move.

"That's a grave," John answered with a smirk, "That's your grave, Rodney."

They all grabbed a part of him again and pushed him toward the grave; he tried to break loose but before he could somebody clamped a rag over his nose and mouth and within a few seconds he was passed out on the ground.

"What was that stuff?" Tim asked John.

"Chloroform," Peter answered, "Very easy to make."

"So now what do we do with them?" Wendy asked as she grabbed Rodney by his feet and started dragging his body along the ground.

"Well there's a train currently stopped on the tracks down a mile from here," John explained, "Freight cars, we can open one of them up, stick these two suckers inside and send them off to wherever the train's going…they ought to be waking up by the time it reaches the state line."

"It's a plan," Wendy said.

"Yeah but how do we get them down there?" Tim asked.

John only stared at him in response and Tim got what the punch line was, "Oh no," he shook his head, "We're not taking them in my car."

"It's either that or you push them in a wheelbarrow," Wendy told him, "And the train leaves in 20 minutes."

"Come on, let's move them," Peter said as he disappeared around the tool shed where they'd dumped Briggs after they knocked him out as well.

"Alright," Wendy groaned as she continued to drag Rodney, "But I say next time we use plan number 532."

"What's that one?" Tim asked.

"That's where you stick them into a giant wicker birdcage and hoist them over the barbecue pit until they're a couple of nice crispy critters," Wendy said, "You hang around here more often and you'll learn the plans. There's just one thing I'd like to know."

"What's that?" John asked.

Wendy pointed to the body bag and asked, "Just what are we going to do with a hundred and fifty pounds of potatoes?"

"Never mind that," Tim shook his hand, "How're you going to get those holes filled up again before your parents get home?"

"We won't have to worry about that," Peter said as he dragged Charles on the rocky ground, "Those were already there."

"How come?" Tim asked.

"Dad dug those to catch us when we tried sneaking out of the house at night," Wendy said, "He's too smart, he made them too high for us to climb out of."

"Fortunately," John recalled, "Somehow he always seems to be just behind us when we fall in." He turned to his sister and asked, "You don't suppose he does have ESP do you?"

"Among other things, I'd say that's a safe bet," she answered, "He might not be crazy anymore like when he was younger, but he's definitely something."

"Yeah well when you find out what it is, let the rest of us know," John told her as he grabbed Rodney's top half, and Tim grabbed Briggs' feet and helped carry him out to his car in the front.

"Never a dull moment around here, is it?" Tim asked.

"All just status quo around here," John answered.


They had gotten rid of Decker and Briggs and gotten home just in time to beat their parents by a good ten minutes. Murdock pulled their car up into the driveway and as they got out they were talking amongst themselves.

"Well it was nice to see everybody again," Murdock said.

"Sure, but I didn't like when they started talking about coming out here for our anniversary," Jean replied, "Incidentally, when is it?"

"You don't remember?" Murdock asked.

Jean shook her head, "I can't remember if it's when we really first got married, or when we went back and made it official for everybody else's benefit so they could be present for it."

"Oh well," Murdock shrugged, "Doesn't matter…incidentally though, how long have we been married?"

Jean stopped in her tracks and took a minute to think about it, "Well let's see, Peter is 14…so that makes it…about 17 years now."

"Been that long already has it?" Murdock asked, "Go figure."

They walked around to the backyard where they saw the kids doing something over by the picnic table. Murdock crept up on them and yelled suddenly, "Ya-ha! Look alive! ATTENTION!" And all four kids jumped straight and saluted. Murdock couldn't resist grinning as he continued, "At ease," they loosened up and lowered their right arms, "About face!"

"What about my face?" Tim asked.

"It's facing the wrong direction, genius," Wendy said as she smacked him.

They turned around and saw Murdock standing behind them and he asked them, "So what have you four horrible little monsters," he grinned at them, they had known that joke since they first learned to talk, "Been up to while we were gone?"

"Oh…" John glanced at the others and then back to his father and answered, "Nothing much out of the ordinary, Dad."

"That's good," Murdock clapped his hand on his eldest boy's shoulder and said, "Come on now, everybody into the car, we're going to take a little trip out to Beverly Hills and visit Grandpa."

"Oh yeah?" Wendy asked, "Is Maggie going to be there too?"

"Why do you call her that?" Murdock asked his daughter.

"Because if you call her Grandma, she'll kill you," she answered.

Murdock chuckled and looked to Jean as he said, "They learn fast, don't they?"

Jean nodded and said, "Murdock, turn to the side."

He did and asked her, "Why?"

Jean only responded, "Now stick out your tongue."

Murdock did, and asked, "Na' whut?"

Jean gave him a light shove and instructed the children, "Alright, everybody fall in and follow the human zipper."

That was the last clear thought Hannibal had before he was aware of an outside voice talking, and he realized somebody was talking to him. He tried to wake up to see who was speaking but his eyelids still felt like they each weighed 200 pounds. Well, let them wait, he thought as he tried to slip into another dream.


Face thought he was losing his mind when he heard somebody laughing, but he looked down the hall and saw it was Murdock and Jean coming back from the vending machine and he saw they both had their arms loaded with candy bars.

"Where've you guys been?" he asked.

"You should've seen this guy," Jean pointed to Murdock, "He was right…he managed to shimmy into the back of the vending machine and steal all the candy bars, and then replace the back of it again so nobody would know the difference. At a quarter a candy bar I guess he must've made off with a $30 haul."

"Has anybody said anything yet?" Murdock asked as they dumped the candy bars on the coffee table the magazines rested on in the waiting room.

"Yeah," Face nodded glumly, "A nurse came out and explained that they're having to do a little additional surgery."

Jean and Murdock both wore the same shocked expression and she was the first one to ask, "What do they mean additional surgery?"

Face huffed and explained, "They said they found some scar tissue that was starting to wrap around his intestines so they had to remove it."

"How did that happen?" Jean asked.

Face scratched his forehead anxiously as he replied, "I'm not exactly sure. A few months back Hannibal was injured in an explosion and he did get a piece of steel lodged in his gut, we got him to a doctor and had it removed."

"That Maggie chick fix him up?" Jean asked as they sat down on the bench on either side of him.

"Yeah," Face nodded, "Anyway they said the scar tissue has grown and it was starting to choke his insides…" he shook his head, "I don't get it either, and the worst part is I'm not even sure they're telling us the truth."

"What?!" both of them about hit the ceiling when he said that.

Face pointed to the front desk, "They're watching us, they're going to make sure we stay here long enough that they can call in Decker and the MPs to haul us off."

"Oh yeah?" Jean stood up.

B.A. grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back on the bench and told her, "Sit down, mama, ain't nothing you can do."

"You want a bet?" Jean asked.

"Come on, Jean, be realistic," Face said.

"Why should I start now?" she asked, "Face, all we have to do is get in that operating room and make it clear that either they fix Hannibal up right or there's going to be a room full of dead bodies before this night's over."

Face started to ask how she proposed they do that when Murdock dropped a bombshell of his own and said, "I know what room they've got Hannibal in, I also know where the linen closet is they keep the extra scrubs in. We could go in looking like three more doctors and take them hostage."

"This is scary," Face mentioned to B.A., and suddenly didn't like being sandwiched between these two people. B.A. just nodded his head and looked from one to the other.

"Murdock, how do you know that?" Face asked.

"That's what I was doing earlier," he said, "I found out what operating room Hannibal's being worked on in, it would be very simple to get in there, then we could find out the truth."

"Look, how long's he been in there?" Jean asked.

Face checked his watch and sighed, "About an hour and a half."

"Does that sound like an appendectomy to you?" she asked him.

"We've got another problem," Face said, "The minute we're all gone from this waiting room, that nurse is going to ring up the army and then we'll be surrounded, there'll be no way out."

"Fine," Jean said, "B.A. can stay here, the scrubs wouldn't fit him anyway, he's too fat."

"Hey," B.A. growled warningly.

"They're either going to tell us how long this surgery is going to take or I'm going into that operating room and finding out directly," Jean said.

She started to stand up again but Face grabbed two handfuls of her shirt and pulled her back down and told her, "Sit down! Now look!" he looked at her, then to Murdock, and said, "We're all worried about Hannibal, we all want to get him the hell out of here but we have to have a plan."

"Well what do you think we're doing?" Jean asked.

"No," Face swung his leg over hers to pin her down and keep her from getting up a third time, "We have to be smart about this. We'll wait, and if they haven't come out and told us he's out of surgery within…20 minutes, then we'll go raid the OR, but only then, understand?"

"Yeah," Jean replied dryly, the wind suddenly gone from her sail.

"Yeah," Murdock agreed in the same glum tone.

"Good," Face said.

The time passing excruciatingly slow and since nobody had much of anything left to say to anyone else, the only thing they could do to pass the time was eat. After a few minutes Face noticed the dent they'd made in the candy bar stash. He didn't remember eating them but he knew he'd had a couple, B.A. had had a couple, Murdock was eating his like a bird pecked at a cracker, but Jean was mindlessly shoving another one into her mouth as fast as she finished the first one.

"Good grief," he commented as he saw the pile of wrappers in front of her, "You ate all of those already?"

Jean looked down at the wrappers as if she hadn't even been aware of it, and looking at one she replied, "Yeah, the weird part is I don't even like peanuts."

Face did a double take looking at her; he was almost certain that it was just her way of taking her mind off of Hannibal's current predicament, but all the same he wasn't entirely convinced yet that she wasn't keeping a secret from them when she said she wasn't pregnant. Actually, the more he thought about it, she never even said that she wasn't, she only hinted at it.

Jean picked up a sixth candy bar and started to take the wrapper off but Face grabbed it away from her and said, "I think you better quit before the sugar shock kicks in and you go into a coma completely."

A few minutes later, Face's attention was drawn to a strange sound he heard close by. Turning his head he saw that Murdock was biting his nails. He couldn't blame the pilot for being nervous but he still couldn't help commenting, "Murdock, it's very unhealthy to bite your nails."

"Oh I know, Facey," Murdock told him, "It's alright, these are Jean's."

"What?!" Face turned and saw Jean had slipped her arm behind his back and Murdock had her hand in his as he continued to chew the nail on her left pinkie finger.

"That doctor better get out here soon," B.A. said, "'Fore we all go crazy like that fool."

"Speak of the devil," Murdock said as he saw the doctor coming towards them.

Face was the first one to stand up, Jean moved closer to Murdock and they had their hands squeezed together as they got up; B.A. noticed that Jean was also squeezing something under her shirt with her free hand, but he didn't know what it was. They all got up and before the doctor had a chance to open her mouth they demanded to know what had happened.

"Everything's fine," she answered, "Your grandfather made it out of surgery just fine."

Murdock fell back on the bench and took Jean down with him, and he was the first to ask, "When can we see him?"

"He's being moved to a private room as we speak," the doctor told them, "But he's still unconscious."

"We're not going to ask him what destroyed the Hindenburg," Jean said, "We just want to see him. Alone."

The doctor could see that she was outnumbered and no matter what she said, they wouldn't listen to anything except what they wanted to hear. She advised them that their grandfather would need plenty of rest so they couldn't stay long to bother him, but she agreed to let them see him and showed them where to go.