If Decker would've had any idea that the A-Team had planned to pay him a visit, not even in the building where he worked, but in his own home, he probably would've had a welcome wagon equipped with machine guns and flash grenades. As it was, he was completely unaware that he was due for any company, until the middle of the night when he was in bed asleep, and suddenly felt somebody clamp his nose shut. He opened his eyes and even though the room was dark, he was able to make out the figure of somebody standing over him.
"Hello, Decker."
Roderick felt his eyelids fly open, he knew that voice! As the fingers let go of his nose and pulled away, he sat up in bed and looked at the shape in front of him and said, with the damnedest timing since that was right when the lights came on in his room. "Hannibal Smith!"
And he wasn't alone. B.A. and Face stood on either side of Hannibal, and both of them with guns drawn and aimed at Decker. Face took the liberty since Decker seemed to be in a momentary shock, to pull back the covers and make sure Decker wasn't sleeping with a piece nearby. No gun, but he couldn't help commenting with a less than straight face, "I love your pajamas."
Decker was staring daggers right at Hannibal and as he got up he demanded to know, "How the hell did you get in here?"
"Well you know," Hannibal said as he lit his cigar, "I have to give you props, Decker, you have a very state of the art security system around here…but I'll tell you it sure isn't any help if there's a sudden power failure."
Decker's attention was turned to the approaching sound of more people coming down the hallway. He looked to the door and was convinced that this night couldn't get any worse as he saw Murdock come in, with Crane following behind him, and Jean walked in behind Crane.
"Crane, what the hell is going on?" Decker asked.
"Sorry, sir," Crane shook his head, "It wasn't my idea."
"We made a little detour on the way," Hannibal explained, "Thought we'd get you two together for this one."
Crane appeared to have one up on Decker at least, he wasn't in his uniform but apparently they had gotten to him before he went to bed for the night. Jean came out from behind Crane and went over to Decker and slipped something into his hand as she said, "Here, hold this for me, would ya?"
Decker glanced down and saw a grenade pin in his hand and then he realized that Jean was holding the grenade it came out of, and he felt his eyes grow three times their natural size.
"Now," Jean said as she got in his face, "I might just be the dumb kid from New York, but it's to my understanding that without the pin in this pineapple, the second that I let go of this lever here…that means we have about ten seconds before we all get blown to hell." She pressed further down on the lever and told him, "It's a minute waltz, Decker, so start dancing."
"What the hell is this?" Decker demanded to know as he turned to Hannibal, "Have you lost your mind, Smith?"
Hannibal smirked and said, "I wonder how many times I'm going to be hearing that this week."
Decker persevered, "Whatever in hell gave you the idea to come out here?"
Hannibal look put out as he said, "That's the thanks we get for making a courtesy call to an old friend." He turned and saw that Face and B.A. were barely able to keep from cracking at that remark, and he turned back to Roderick and told him, "We're here for one of two reasons, Decker, either somebody's running around using your name to pin his crimes to, or you've been holding out on us for 15 years."
"What in the hell are you talking about, Smith?" Decker asked.
"Oh it's really very simple," Face told him, "Are you now, or have you ever used your authority in the army to oversee drug smuggling operations?"
Decker opened his mouth to respond but stopped when he felt the barrel of a gun jabbing into his back, he turned around and took a step back from Murdock and answered simply, "Hell no, what is this about?"
"If you want to get your clothes on and take a little ride," Hannibal told him, "We can show you. Somebody has been operating under the title of one Colonel Roderick Decker to green light current members of the army, as well as several imposters, smuggling millions of dollars of heroin to destinations unknown, escorted in the army's own transportation."
Hannibal might as well have been spouting off in Swahili for all the sense he was making to Decker. Still, given that he didn't seem to have any options, he got dressed and agreed to go with them to see just what in the hell Hannibal was talking about.
"Step it up, Decker," Jean calmly called into his walk-in closet, "I think I'm starting to lose my grip here."
Decker grumbled a few choice words for her under his breath as he hurriedly buttoned his shirt and threw on his jacket.
"Alright, alright," he snapped at her, "Now cork up that grenade."
"Can't," Jean answered, "You had the pin."
That didn't seem to be of a priority to Hannibal, he poked Decker in the chest and said, "Before they find it, I want to make something clear."
"What?" Decker asked.
"Well I understand that you have your job to do, that is hunting us relentlessly, and I know that for you it's more than a job, that you go above and beyond your own call of duty to try and catch us…but we're looking at something here that takes high precedence over three escapees who broke out of Fort Bragg 10 years ago. Personally, I don't give a damn if you realize we're doing you a favor by pulling your head off the chopping block before the man in the black hood shows up, but I do expect you to acknowledge that we came here as a favor to you. We're all adults here, I think for the time being anyway, a truce is in order."
Decker would've rather thrown himself over Niagara Falls in a paper bag than make a truce with Hannibal Smith, but he looked and saw that Jean's fingers were starting to loosen their grip on the lever, and that was all the persuasion he needed. "Okay, okay," he finally gave in, "You've got your truce…even though I don't have one idea what in the hell you're talking about."
"That's fine with me," Hannibal said, "Alright, now where's the pin?"
"Oh, here it is," Murdock said as he picked it up off the dresser.
He put the pin back in and Jean let out a grunt of relief as she took her hand off the lever and pocketed the grenade. As they left the bedroom in single file, with Decker and Crane in the middle, Roderick couldn't help overhearing Jean ask, "Are these impact grenades or time delay grenades?"
"Time," Murdock answered.
"Oh, poor choice," Jean said, "Those often wait a few seconds longer to explode than necessary, so if you have a quick opponent, he can grab it up and hot potato it back to you and…well talk about getting hoisted by your own petard."
Decker didn't say anything since he knew she still had the damn thing with her, but he was starting to get the idea that he was completely surrounded by a bunch of people who'd lost their damn minds.
"We took the liberty of bringing Crane's car," Jean told Decker, "However if you don't mind," she grinned to emphasize the joke, as if he'd had a choice, "I'll drive."
"And I'm coming along with you," Hannibal added, and he flashed his toothy grin at Decker and told him, "I'll be very happy to catch you up on what's been going on lately."
Decker groaned under his breath and said, "I wake up and then the nightmare begins."
Hannibal chuckled and bit down on his cigar.
They escorted Decker and Crane out to the cabin and showed them the truck and its inventory as well. After one look in the back, Decker turned around and was scratching his head, "The idiot you caught said that I oversaw this?"
"He said you were the head of the operation," Hannibal corrected him.
"What'd you say his name was?"
"James Corbin, but it won't do you any good," Jean told him, "He's not military, he only passed himself off as being in."
"He did give us the names of the two other drivers he was working with the other day though," Face said, "We figured you could run them through your own database and see if it sets off any bells. One Marcus McTeague and one Quinton Stillo."
Decker felt somebody's finger trying to stab him in the back repeatedly and he turned around and glared at Jean, who was the owner of the finger. She looked at him with an innocent grin and said, "Houston, we have another problem with this whole mess. Uh…you don't by chance have a girlfriend, do you?"
"What?" he asked.
"I take that as a no," she said, "Then this shouldn't come as too big of a shock to you. There's a woman involved in this whole matter as well, and as far as we can tell, on this end of the business she's the brains of the outfit. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
"I don't know one thing about anything that you've said since you broke into my house," he told them.
"Well that's no reason to be nasty about it," Face replied sarcastically.
"What about the truck?" Jean asked Decker.
He took a step back from her so she wasn't in his face and he answered, "There are no recent reports of any of our vehicles coming up missing or stolen."
"Then that means whoever took them out is somebody on your side who has the authority to okay them moving out," Face noted, "Of course then there's the matter of the car."
"What car?" Decker asked.
"One of your lights and sirens sedans," Jean answered, "You see whoever was driving one of those cars, was leading the convoy of dope smugglers down the road…but then, once they got done with me here, whoever was in the car chased after Murdock and Face, losing them only when the MP car hit a fire plug. Would you happen to know anything about that one?"
"No I don't," Decker answered matter-of-factly.
Crane seemed to remember something and he spoke up. "One of those cars did come up missing…we thought you had stolen it."
"Well I for one am insulted," Face said, clutching his chest in feign offense.
"Yeah," Jean added and asked, "Why would we take one of your cars a second time?" That comment earned her a firm elbow to the ribs from Face.
"Well whoever did have it managed to keep all the little specific details out of the accident report," Face said, "Which says either the driver had some pull, or was able to convince the cops who investigated the crash that he did."
"Either way you can see how this looks bad for the army, don't you?" Jean asked Decker.
Hannibal tried not to laugh but he could see Decker was starting to lose it and about ready to kill Jean himself. He turned around and knocked her back in the process and he asked her, "And just where do you come into all of this?"
"Oh, she had a center seat in it," Hannibal said, "They tried to kill her because they thought she was some competition from the Air Force."
"The what?" Decker asked.
Jean shook her head, "It's no use, Hannibal, you would've been better off letting them hang him for this mess."
"Well when a dog's already down, why kick him?" Hannibal returned as he took out his lighter and lit a new cigar, "Besides, Decker's already got enough problems with his stubborn inabilities to put the past behind him, I'd simply hate to see him wind up on charges for drug trafficking if he's really not involved. Especially since we're talking about enough dope to bypass the 20-year prison sentence and probably just aim straight for a firing squad execution."
Murdock was humming something to himself and scratching his head as a thought occurred to him, "Hannibal, I have a question. You remember back in the 70s there was that report about the Texas Tranquilizer?"
"Yeah, so?" Hannibal asked.
"Uh…" Murdock pointed to the back of the truck and asked, "What do you think would happen if one of the Air Force choppers moving this stuff out, had to unexpectedly dump all the drugs out into the ocean? You know, Corbin said that they got stiff competition with the Air Force because they can fly the stuff out, making for faster deliveries, but he didn't say that there was a better guarantee of the package actually getting to whoever's ordered it in."
"Oh boy," Face said as he considered that possibility, "A hundred keys of heroin in the water supply…" he looked to the others and said, "If that happened then that would make the odds of any zombie movie ever made coming to life a very good possibility, wouldn't it?"
"Wait a minute," something occurred to Decker, "Where is this stuff being moved to?"
"That was one thing Corbin couldn't tell us," Hannibal answered, "He's just a driver, he picks up the load, he drives it to wherever he's told to, and then somebody else takes it over from there."
"All the same, his position is important enough that he gets his orders directly from whoever is putting your name on his actions," Face added.
"And unfortunately," Hannibal told Decker, "The description that he was able to give us does match any way somebody could identify you."
"I hope you realize how lucky you are that Hannibal was willing to bet that it really wasn't you," Jean added, "If it was me I'd be fine with letting them hang you."
Before Decker could open his mouth to respond, Hannibal pointed out, "We have another problem though. We have to find out where the other two trucks are and we have to find out where they're en route to before they get smart to the fact that their third driver and third shipment has disappeared."
"Well they can't be far off now," Face said, "Obviously they had to have just gotten this batch."
Murdock made a sound like he'd developed a slow leak and he went over to Hannibal and said something into his ear, acting for all intents and purposes like an excited puppy, to the point he was practically clawing Hannibal with anticipation.
"Good point, Murdock," Hannibal said, and he went over to Decker and said to him, "We're going to need you to clear a helicopter for us."
"A helicopter?" Decker came very close to losing it right then and there.
"Right," Jean came up to him and explained, "These guys are taking back roads and places that you can't follow without drawing attention to yourself, but you can see from the air what you can't see from the ground. And if they see it's one of their own choppers, they're not going to think anything about that."
Decker groaned as he considered all possibilities and he muttered, "I can't believe I'm doing this."
"I know, but you don't really have any choice, do you?" Face asked, flashing his own trademark grin.
Decker caught in the corner of his eye a glimpse of Jean slipping her hand into her front pocket where she'd put the hand grenade and he said, much as it killed him to, "No, I suppose I don't."
Hannibal pushed the filing cabinet drawer shut with his stomach as he dropped the files on the desk, "Sorry to mess up your décor, Decker, but I think in the end it'll prove worth it."
"Why the hell did I agree to help you?" Decker asked, more to himself than the other people standing in his office, tearing everything up as they looked through the available records on everybody working there.
"You didn't," Face answered as he flipped through three thick folders, "We agreed not to blow you up in exchange for you not blowing the whistle on us."
"Peck, you said you didn't even see who was driving the car when they opened fire on you," Decker reminded him, "Exactly how do you plan to identify who was in it?"
"I don't," he answered, and pointed to Jean, "But if anybody who you work with on a daily basis was at that cabin and is up to their eyeballs in this mess, then she's going to know."
Jean hooked her thumb into the flesh at the corner of her eye and pulled it so her eyeball slanted and she said, "I might not have an eye for details but I do remember faces." She let her face fall back into its natural shape and added, "Incidentally, Decker, do you have any women working in this establishment?"
"No."
"Ah," Jean smirked, "That explains your ever-sunny disposition."
Face looked like he'd just been hit over the head with a sack full of bricks and he asked Jean, "What does this woman look like anyway?"
"Well she's about three inches taller than me," she said, "Blonde hair…it was tied back so I couldn't tell you how long it was, with brown in it, what do you call that? Sandy brown, dirty blonde, something like that? Uh…she's skinnier than I am…I think. But she wears a size larger uniform, on the top because she's got these wide shoulders."
"No eye for detail?" Hannibal asked her.
"Well…" she shrugged, "When you spend half an hour with somebody who's trying to kill you, you tend to pick up things."
"Does that sound like anybody you know?" Hannibal asked.
Decker shook his head. He heard a ringing in his ears, not realizing that it was the phone on his desk. Jean picked the receiver off the hook and answered it.
"I spend a year chasing after you," Decker told Hannibal, "And then when I get you personally delivered into my lap, I can't touch you."
"Well try not to beat yourself up, Roderick," Hannibal said, "We both know that you wouldn't be able to keep us here anyway."
"Just a minute," Jean covered the mouthpiece and held the receiver out, "Roddy, it's for you."
Decker turned and realized for the first time that there was somebody on the phone. "Who is it?"
"Says his name is General Bullen," Jean said, "That your boss?"
Decker looked like he'd just been bitten by a rattlesnake. Hannibal noticed this and commented, "I'd say that's a yes."
"Give me that phone," Decker said through gritted teeth.
Jean did, and then hightailed it over to the other side of the office where the others were as they watched this side of the phone call. Decker managed to keep his usual, borderline deadpan disposition in place as he answered, "Yes, General? Oh…nothing, just one of the new incompetents working here," he glared at Jean, "Uh-huh…look we…" Decker nodded with whatever the general was saying and he said, "I know what time it is, Bullen. We just got a tip about the A-Team's whereabouts, it's a backwoods area, we can get our cars in there but it'll be hard as hell to find anything, with the bird's eye view of a chopper we'll have a much easier time finding out if there's anybody actually there or if this is just another crank."
It was obvious that Decker was starting to have some difficulty remaining civil with the man on the other end of the line. He crossed one foot over the other and said into the receiver, "All due respect, General, I don't give a damn if you like it or not, you put me on this case to get the A-Team, make up your mind, do you want them or not? Alright, then we're going to need the helicopter…no, don't bother, I already have somebody here who can fly it." He eyeballed Murdock and then looked away with a new expression on his face, one that Hannibal could read as translating to an afterthought 'I hope'.
By the time Decker got off the phone with the General, he looked like he'd just walked out of having a root canal without the benefit of anesthesia.
"More of that political pressure the generals throw around so well?" Hannibal inquired.
"I ought to have all of you shot for what's going on here," Decker said.
"Would you stop complaining?" Murdock asked, "You caught a break, just think if word had come down that you were the one overseeing those shipments, each truck carrying 100 keys of heroin, we're talking at least a thousand kilos easy, maybe ten thousand, you know what the big guys upstairs would do to you then?"
"Speaking of which," Jean said to Hannibal, "Where are these morons getting this stuff from?"
"Same place everybody gets their supply from," Hannibal said, "Some money hungry piece of scum that cuts it with whatever's lying around handy to cut down on the purity and drag every extra dollar out of it that's possible."
"But how are they getting so much of it so fast?" Jean asked.
"To get that answer we're going to have to find out where the source is," Face said.
"And for that, we're going to have to find out where they're going," Murdock added, "So when do we get the chopper?"
Jean leaned over to Hannibal and murmured to him, "This whole thing seems to really be killing Decker."
"Yes, I noticed that too," he replied.
Jean grinned and told him, "I'm loving every minute of it."
"It is a rarity to enjoy up close and personal," he chuckled.
"You think Hannibal's going to be alright with Crane and Decker down there?" Jean asked Murdock from the cockpit of the chopper as they gazed down upon the world beneath them.
"Oh I'm sure the Colonel knows what he's doing," Murdock told her, "Besides, we already searched them both, three times, and besides we fixed the radio in their car before we went to pick Decker up last night, that way it only works with the radio in the van and up here."
"Yeah, but how do we know that Decker's going to keep his word?"
"Oh we know him better than that," Murdock said, "That's why before we took off I took Decker aside and explained to him that if anything happens to Hannibal, or Face, or the big guy, that when he gets home he's going to find a little package in his office, the type that goes 'tick…tick…tick…kaboom!'"
"Think he's convinced though?" she asked.
"Well I may have led him to believe that it was an 18-sticks-of-dynamite variety of bomb…if that went off we'd be lucky to find one of his teeth in the aftermath."
Jean looked over at him and said, "I knew you had a mean streak in you."
Murdock laughed and told her, "Honey, that's nothing…did I ever tell you about the time I tried to throw a man out of his own helicopter while it was up in the air?"
"No."
"Oh, well, this was back when we went to Arizona to help Daniel Running Bear, that man who wrote back to you…anyway he had a…"
"Hey Murdock," Jean pointed to the windshield, "Look down there."
"Ah ha," Murdock grabbed the radio and said into it, "Hannibal, I do believe we've found our mystery guests. I'm looking down the roof side of two green canvassed trucks and their drivers do not look happy."
"Great, where are you, Murdock?" Hannibal responded.
"Hang a right off the main road, head out north northeast for ten miles, and…it looks like up ahead about a mile from where they are is a small cemetery, I don't know how obvious it'll be from the view on the ground but, I'm seeing a lot of crosses up here, Colonel."
"Think there's a connection?" Hannibal asked.
"I don't know, I'm going to circle around and see if I pick anything else up," Murdock told him, "How long do you think it'll take you to get here?"
"Hang on, let me see," they could still hear Hannibal on the radio though it sounded like he'd put it down. They heard him grumble something about 95 miles an hour and then heard him resume loud and clear, "About 10 minutes, think they'll be there that long?"
"If they try and leave I'll keep them grounded," Murdock promised.
"Alright," they heard Hannibal reply, "We're on our way."
"We'll keep in touch," Murdock said.
Jean looked back after they'd passed over the trucks and she told Murdock, "They never saw us, they never even looked up."
"Of course not," he told her, "They're looking for a third truck, does this look like a truck?"
As they came closer to the cemetery, Murdock looked and saw something that made him do a double take. "Hey Saint, do you see what I see?"
She did. "More MP cars." They saw about three cars gathered inside the cemetery gates. Jean grabbed the radio and got off a brief, "Hannibal…" before Murdock grabbed the radio away from her.
"Hannibal, are the men in green with you positive that only one of their cars was stolen?"
"Why, Murdock?" Hannibal asked.
"Because there're three more at the cemetery and if it's a welcoming committee for us, then that means that lizard Decker managed to slither under our noses completely."
Hannibal was still holding onto the radio they could hear the scuffle going on in the car between the three men, but nothing was distinct, until Hannibal came back on and said, "They say they don't know anything about it."
"Hang on," Murdock replied, "I'll double around and see if I can find out what's going on."
He got the helicopter turned around so fast, Jean was knocked against the window on her side, but she too was too busy watching the scene down below to pay much attention to it. This time they were able to see men in uniforms gathered by the cars, each facing another.
"Think it's a meeting of the minds?" Jean asked.
"I doubt they have enough minds to go around," Murdock told her, "Looks more like money changing hands."
"What the hell is going on around here?" she asked him.
"I think we're going to find out soon enough," Murdock said as he looked up ahead and saw the van and Crane's car coming their way.
Murdock took the chopper down and made a relatively soft landing behind a thicket of trees, he was sure that the drivers of the vehicles up ahead could hear it go down but he doubted they'd have enough time to wonder about it. Face threw open the door of the van so they could jump in as they raced ahead to their intended destination.
"Alright," they heard Hannibal on the radio, "Let's do it."
They heard the sirens come on in the sedan and saw the red lights spinning around and saw the car speed ahead of them. By this time the drivers had moved the trucks directly up to the cemetery's entrance gates. The men by the trucks saw they had company coming and scrambled. The van and car pulled up and everybody jumped out with their guns on the drivers, who quickly realized the futility of their situation and grabbed the sky. Hannibal grabbed the rifle that was inches away from one man's grasp and said, "Now, let's get down to business." He slung the rifle over his own shoulder and asked the man, "How much heroin you carrying?"
The man laughed defiantly and told him, "None."
"What?"
That was when they realized what that meant.
"They moved it to the cars," Face said, "Come on!"
"Move it, you too," Murdock stuck the muzzle of his gun into one of the driver's backs as they headed into the graveyard.
B.A. and Hannibal went back and got the van and the car and drove them in at top speed, the noise sent the men in the other three cars scrambling as well, only they were able to get into their cars and speed off. B.A.'s van had beat them to the back entrance gate and the three cars swerved to the side and altered their course for the front gate. Face and Murdock were able to shoot out the tires of two of the cars, leaving only one on its crash course, but they could see Hannibal was ready to block that exit as well.
"What the hell do they think they're doing?" Jean asked. She swung her arms and yelled at the people in the remaining car to slow down before somebody got killed, but they sped past her and made a sharp turn, too sharp, the car became top heavy and turned over.
KABOOM!
It was like watching a miniature atom bomb go off. The car exploded into flames as soon as its roof hit the ground; the whole vehicle was surrounded by fire and the smoke billowed out like a mushroom cloud and poured up into the sky. The victims in the car could be heard screaming like a pack of wild animals, but it was short lived. The windows of the car were too full of black smoke to see much of anything else but after a very short few seconds, the screams died out, but they would live on in the ears and minds of everybody present for the massacre for as long as they lived.
Hannibal came running up from the front gate and B.A. from the back, and nobody could believe what they saw. Face and Murdock were both in shock by the scene of the fiery death trap. Crane couldn't even look at the wreckage, and even Decker looked sickened by what had just happened. Jean couldn't feel the balance in her feet anymore and half sat, half fell down on the ground as she watched in horror. Nobody was able to move for several minutes, could only look on in horror at the burning heap.
A large gust of wind came up and they could hear it howling over the noise of the fire; and it blew so hard that they were able to see something else coming out of the car windows besides the smoke. Little pieces of burnt paper came floating out in droves, some pieces larger than others, some still burning into ash, but some were almost whole, unscathed, Hannibal caught one and saw they were hundred dollar bills. Face felt something touch his cheek and he wiped it off. He felt it again, it was almost like rain. He looked at his hand and saw it was white. Jean also felt something falling on her skin and she wiped it off, and noticed the same white substance on her own hands.
"What is this, ash?" Face asked.
Hannibal felt the substance on his fingers and dabbed it on his tongue. "No."
"A hundred keys of heroin, a million dollars in cash, and four lives," Jean commented, sounding half dead from the shock, looked at the remains of the car that still burnt like hellfire, "All up in smoke."
