"You know, Hannibal," Murdock said as he adjusted the burner's frequency and put a lid on the large pan of soup he'd cooked. They had the kitchen to themselves as Jean had gone upstairs to lie down, Face was on the phone with the DMV and B.A. was in the living room watching a game on TV. "After you called from the doctor's, I got curious and I called Jean's mother back in New York."

"How come?" Hannibal asked.

"Well I told her Jean's been sick lately and asked if it had ever happened before, if they might've ever seen this before when she was growing up" Murdock said, and nodded, "She said it's been about 15 years but apparently when she was a kid she was sick a lot."

"I know," Hannibal told him.

"No, I don't think you do," Murdock replied, "She said that Jean would get the flu about three times a year, each time lasting about two weeks, sometimes two months, and then one year in between two of those times, she just started throwing up a lot for no apparent reason. Kept on that way for about a month, and then suddenly it just went away."

"Any idea what it was?" Hannibal asked.

"Attributed to a variety," Murdock answered, "Twice it was because she stuffed herself on junk food, one time was from a sinus infection, and the other time the doctors thought it might've been an allergic reaction to something, but they never found out what, some seasonal thing."

"Well seasonal doesn't mean the same thing in California that it does in New York," Hannibal said, "Any idea which season it was in?"

Murdock shook his head, "She doesn't remember, Jean might though."

"Wouldn't hurt to ask," Hannibal agreed, "So I guess we can say that overall it's the same thing now, just a nice little variety of everything."

"Or…" Murdock offered, "There is something else to consider."

"What's that?"

"I think that it would be wise if we didn't rule out stress as a contributing factor to this," Murdock said, "You know Hannibal, when they catch sharks and pull them up on ships, they throw up from the stress of being captured and hauled up onboard, so if it can happen to a shark, then it could be what's wrong with Jean, couldn't it?"

"I suppose so," Hannibal was willing to consider it, "But it hasn't happened before."

"Well, consider the stress that she's been through recently," Murdock said, "First you were sick, and she was just as worried that we were that you were going to die, then she was attacked, and she thought if she told about it that you'd be killed, then we had to team up with Decker, and that's hardly an easy fact to digest. Add to the fact that the whole time we've been here, our marriage has been falling apart and now it's finally come to a rolling stop. That's a lot of stress for somebody to put up with, so it's possible that the anxiety all went to her stomach."

"It's a good point," Hannibal said, "But you'd think by now that things are calming down that her system would follow suit."

"Well maybe when we catch this witchy woman," Murdock suggested.

"I wanted to speak to you about that," Hannibal said, "Murdock, when Face gets us the address for that woman, the four of us are going out there tonight to find her and call an end to this whole game of tag."

Murdock nodded in understanding, "I'm sure Jean will be alright by herself for one night."

Face hung up the phone and walked into the kitchen on the tail of their conversation and asked, "Can't we give her one of B.A.'s night-night pills so she'll sleep through the whole thing and won't notice we're gone?"

Hannibal shook his head, "If she gets sick in the night she'll choke on it, we'll just have to set the record straight with her, she's not coming with us tonight, she's going to stay right here."

"Uh, Colonel," Murdock spoke up, "I think you better let me tell her, she might be a bit more inclined to listen to me."

"I think you're right," Hannibal agreed. He turned to the lieutenant and asked him, "What'd you find out, Face?"

"The car is registered to a woman named Cynthia Morrison, who as luck would have it, is very close by, I'd say about a half hour drive from here."

"That's beautiful," Hannibal said, eagerly anticipating the events to come, "You remember that Jean said we didn't have it in any of us to beat up a woman because it goes against how we were raised? Well," he grinned like the cat about to swallow the canary as he said, "I think tonight I'm going to be getting in touch with my feminine side."

"Hannibal, please, we're going to be eating soon," Face replied.


It got dark early and Jean retired to bed earlier than usual, which was fine by everybody else, especially Murdock since he had taken on the job of putting her to bed. She'd managed to stomach his soup, and equally as surprising, so did everybody else, and almost immediately after dinner she went upstairs to get ready for bed. Murdock had stood by as she changed into her pajamas in the bathroom and when she came out he helped her into bed and within a few minutes she fell asleep. He got a heavy blanket out of the closet and draped it over her to compensate for the hole in the bedspread, he didn't know if they were in for a cold snap or if the house tended to get drafty, but either way he didn't want her to be cold that night while they were gone.

He'd placed a glass of ginger ale full of ice cubes on the nightstand within her reach, and he made sure she was tucked in tightly and took a minute to listen to the even sounds of her light breathing as she slept. Leaning down, he lightly kissed her on her forehead and whispered into her ear, "I love you, Saint, we'll be back later." He got up and pointed to the other side of the bed and whispered, "Billy, you stay here and keep her safe." Then he turned and walked out the door and pulled it shut quietly behind him, then went down the stairs and joined the others.

"Is she asleep?" Hannibal asked.

Murdock nodded.

"Alright, everybody move out," Hannibal said, "We're going to crash this lady's party."

They grabbed their guns and went out to the van and left.

Right after they had gone, Jean opened her eyes, pushed back the covers and stood up. She also addressed the other side of the bed and said, "Billy, stay here, don't talk to anybody, and if someone tries to break in, kill them." She got dressed and put on her Air Force uniform, collected a gun out of a drawer in the dresser, and went down the stairs out the storage room window, and got in her car and left. But she wasn't following after them.

The last few days something had been weighing heavily on Jean's mind and she didn't dare bring it up with the others because they already had too much to deal with already. When the bust at the air base was made, they'd only managed to draw in the members of the Army who were involved with the human trafficking, but there was still the matter of the Air Force to deal with. It was something she would've preferred having Murdock on her side to take care of, but that wasn't a possibility, so while they had their hands full with Russo and that Mata Hari, she was going to do whatever it took to bring down the rest of the airborne boys who were involved. She'd managed to get a location on where some of them were loading up their choppers and when, and if she timed this just right she ought to be able to catch them before takeoff.

It was already pitch dark out and she relied on the lights in the dashboard to tell her how fast she was going, and she saw the needle was already high and steadily climbing as she made sharp twists and turns off of the main road and onto rocky, bumpy paths that made the whole car jerk and jump as she sped along in the night. All common sense was telling her how little it would take for the car to roll over with her in it but she paid it no mind and just watched in a distant gaze as the speedometer climbed higher and higher. Hannibal had the jazz, she had the speed, she fed off the adrenaline like a heroin addict and the more risk was involved the more exhilarating it became for her. It was no wonder Murdock loved to fly, it gave him the opportunity to go twice as fast as any of them on the road and he could take the planes upside down and turn them on the side, anything that came into his head he could manipulate the whole plane, of any size, to do as he commanded it with the controls. Someday she would have to see if he could teach her how to fly a plane instead of a chopper.

She left her car behind about a mile from where the helicopters were, their lights were on and their rotors were starting up and the men, she saw about a dozen of them, were just about to finish loading them up with crates that contained drugs. Jean reached into her pocket and took out a packet of movie blood and made quick work of looking herself look like a massacre survivor, barely, then she saw the rotors slow to a whirring stop, so she took a second gun out from inside her jacket and fired it into the air, knowing the noise would draw some attention, and she was right. She tossed the gun down and hit the ground and rolled halfway down the hill before she was discovered by some of the men.

Her face had been coated in blood along with her clothes so it would be hard for any of them to recognize her from anywhere before, all they saw was her uniform and knew that she was one of them, and she'd been wounded and needed help. Two men lifted her up and carried her over to another chopper and one of the men climbed in it to fly her to a hospital, and Jean lay still and unresponsive through the rotor starting up, making that unforgettable, nerve wracking noise, and she remained that way as it first took off and she felt the skids leave the ground and they went straight up and then started to circle around and took off. That was when she shot up and reached across the cockpit and with her second gun she beat the pilot in the head and knocked him out, causing the helicopter to plummet suddenly and at a far faster rate than it had taken to get it up in the air.


When Hannibal said they were going to crash Cynthia Morrison's party that night, he hadn't known it at the time but he wasn't exaggerating. The address Face had obtained from the DMV was for a mansion that had a slew of cars parked at the gate. They crashed through the gate with the van and didn't stop until they'd gone through the south side wall of the house, quite literally crashing the party. As they jumped out of the van with their guns drawn, people scrambled in all directions, most got away but Hannibal determined that most of them weren't the real problem, only second rate associates. Only a handful of the people present had drawn their guns in response to the sudden intrusion and opened fire at them. The A-Team might've been outnumbered but they had the element of surprise and heavier firepower in their favor and were able to very quickly defuse the situation at hand, until there were only a few troublemakers left to deal with.

"Well, well," Hannibal said as they closed in on one of the male guests who looked very familiar, "If it isn't our old pal, Russo."

"Who the hell are you?" the man demanded to know.

"You know what?" Murdock asked, and thought about it for a second before adding, "You can just consider us the Americanized Stunt Squad, now everybody drop your guns and put your hands up and nobody dies, we don't promise nobody's going to get hurt."

"Now, there's just the little matter of your hostess," Hannibal told Russo, "Where is Morrison?"

He heard a gun cock behind him, followed by a woman's voice saying, "Right here, Smith."

Hannibal chanced turning around and saw her emerge from another room in a blood red dress with an automatic aimed at his head.

"I might've guessed," Hannibal said, "You didn't strike me as a person who'd had any qualms with shooting someone in the back."

"You should've minded your own business, Smith," Cynthia Morrison told him.

"Lady, you made this my business," Hannibal replied, "That young woman you left tied to the bed back at the cabin happens to be a very good friend of mine."

"And," Murdock said as he blindsided her and clocked her, "She just so happens to be my wife."

"Nice work, Captain," Hannibal said.

"Well," Murdock said as he wrapped his free hand over his now sore knuckles, "It's never easy to break with tradition but I had to do what I had to do."

"So now what do we do with them, Hannibal?" Face asked.

Hannibal seemed to consider their options and he said, "With Decker in the hospital, I wonder who's taken over his work for the time being?"

"Whoever we get in the army, I'm sure they'll just love this little finding," Face said.

"You've got nothing on us," Cynthia said as she grabbed onto the table to support her weight as she pulled herself back up, "You're the ones trespassing on private property who'll be facing charges of criminal trespass, kidnapping and attempted murder."

"I don't think so, lady," Hannibal said as he backed into the front hall and picked up something, "You seem to forget our lovely parting gift from the airport." He held the briefcase up for both people to see and said, "$200,000 in cash, and I'm sure Uncle Sam will be very interested in hearing just how you managed to get that kind of money. And once they find out about your overseas dealings with Russo here, and just what they involve: drugs, human trafficking, I'm sure the Army will be most interested in hearing all the sordid little details, and if you're lucky you'll get a nice quick execution at sunrise, instead of 20 years hard time behind bars."

He found a phone and made a couple of calls and told the others that they would be having some company very shortly.

"Man I wish the Saint was here to see this," Murdock said as he kept his gun aimed at Cynthia and said, "It'd do her a world of good to see this."

"We'll tell her about it when we get back," Hannibal told him.

"Speaking of which," Face said, "Shouldn't we be getting out of here? The MPs are going to be here any minute."

"That's the problem with you, Face," Hannibal said, "You always want to leave before the fat lady sings, you don't believe in sticking around to see the end of the performance."

Murdock went to the front door and said, "I think she's broken out the pitch pipe, Colonel, I see the red lights coming this way!"

Hannibal gave it a few more seconds and then said, "Alright, time to leave."

As soon as Hannibal had turned his back, Cynthia crouched on the floor and recollected her gun and fired at him before he had a chance to turn around or anybody had a chance to even see her. Hannibal heard the shot and just ducked down in time to feel the bullet rip through the sleeve on his jacket and just graze his arm. Murdock spun on his heel at the noise of the gunfire and jumped on Cynthia, and it quickly became an even match of both of them rolling on the ground struggling for the gun and also trying to knock each other out. Murdock gained the upper hand when he brought his foot up and kicked her in the face and sent her reeling back and falling on the floor; something that he seldom even did with men during a fight, but if any woman ever had it coming, this one did, for all the trouble she had caused, all the lost lives she'd been responsible for.

"Hannibal, you okay, man?" B.A. asked as he and Face rushed to their colonel's assistance.

"Yeah I'm fine," he answered as he got up, "Come on, Murdock, let's get out of here!"

"I'm right behind you, Colonel," Murdock replied as he throttled Morrison a couple of times for good measure before jumping to his feet and joining them as they got into the van, backed it out of the house and sped off in the opposite direction.

"Hannibal are you sure you're alright?" Face asked during the drive back.

"Oh sure, just a scratch," he replied as he showed them his arm.

"Man, wait'll the Saint hears about this," Murdock said, "She'll never believe it."

"That reminds me," Hannibal leaned over and told B.A., "Stop the van, I'm getting out here." He was immediately bombarded with questions as to why and he managed to explain over all their questions, "There's always a chance that they might make Jean out as another target in an attempt to save their own hides, and if that's the case it'll be better if we're not all at the house if it gets raided."

"Yeah but Hannibal, do you really think they could figure out who and where she is?" Face asked.

"I'm not in much mood for taking any chances, but if it is going to happen, I'll prefer to not have all of my men go down with me" he said, "Let's see, what time is it now?" He consulted his wristwatch, "almost midnight…you guys go back to my apartment, and if by 3 o' clock nobody's shown up, I'll get in touch with you. There's a late night talk show on the radio, Face, keep it on."

"Aw Hannibal, we're not going back to that one again are we?" Face asked, "You haven't used that one since we went out to San Rio Blanco to help Amy rescue her friend, Massey."

"I know, haven't you missed it?" Hannibal replied with a small grin, "Besides, I want to be alone when I go back, I intend to have a few words with Jean and I intend for them to be private."

"Whatever you say, Colonel," Murdock said, "You know that mi casa es su casa."

"I appreciate that, Murdock," he said.


Face drank another cup of coffee and struggled to keep his eyes open, "3 o' clock, why couldn't Hannibal pick an earlier show to call in on? For that matter, what kind of nitwit runs a radio talk show at 3 o' clock in the morning?"

"Insomniacs?" Murdock suggested as he played with the radio dials.

"Hey man, stop fooling around with that," B.A. told him, "It'll be on any minute, and I got a good idea that Hannibal's going to be the first one in tonight."

"What would ever possess him to go back to this old trick?" Face asked, "We're all here, he could've just called."

After a few minutes of waiting, they heard the announcer and heard the female host of the show come on the air and start taking calls from people who were having problems with their families. Face was rolling his eyes at this, but when the first line opened up to an older Irish woman, the three team members all looked at each other, they recognized that voice, through the accent and the high pitch and all. Murdock couldn't figure it out but somehow Hannibal must've been in the audience that night the theater was showing the Old Mother Riley movies, he sounded like a dead ringer for it.

"Here it is three o' clock in the morning, and I've not been to bed yet tonight and now it's tomorrow, and I'll tell you why I'm not in bed," the old woman said bordering on histrionics, "Me daughter's out…me daughter's out! And here's me waiting for her to come home!"

Face and Murdock looked at each other in awe, Jean was missing! But how?

"How old is your daughter?" the host asked.

"Oh she's 24 and about five months and three days, she gets to be of age and suddenly thinks she can do whatever she wants, and she doesn't care how it affects her poor mother," they could hear Hannibal milking this for all he was worth, "She doesn't care, as long as she's out having the time of her life, she simply doesn't care. I swear, no mother deserves to be put through what she's put me through."

The talk show host asked if she'd had problems with her daughter for long and they heard Hannibal respond as he blew his nose over his crocodile tears, "Only ever since she started dating, and here it is again: I don't know where she is, I don't know where she's gone, I don't know who she's with, I don't know what she's doing, I don't know what time it is, I hope she's alright."

Murdock tapped Face on the shoulder and asked him, "You don't think she's out with another man, do you?"

"Maybe he was right when he said the house could be raided," Face thought, "Maybe they just beat Hannibal to the punch of getting there."

"Shhhh," B.A. hissed through the corner of his mouth.

"That child doesn't care the pain she causes me, all the time I sit up worrying, night after night, I sat up all of yesterday waiting for her to come home tonight and now it's tomorrow. A poor mother gives her life for her daughter and this is how she repays me, that's all children are good for, they take advantage of you if you let them and even if you don't they will still find a way to do it and she knows it." Hannibal let in and out a strangled sigh and said, "It's times like this I'm thankful her father's not alive anymore…I sat up half my life waiting for him to come home, I refuse to stay up the other quarter of my life waiting for her."

"That's only three quarters," Murdock said to Face.

"Shhhh," B.A. told him.

"Our society places too much value on respecting the rights of those ungrateful brats we're forced to raise called children," Hannibal droned on, "Well now she's of plenty age and when she comes home," they could practically hear him rolling up his sleeves, "She's going to find out how she lost her father. Many's the time I told her before that any girl who stays out until 3 o' clock in the morning is only up to no good." They could hear him grin as he added, "This I know from experience."

"Tell me something, Murdock," Face said, "Do you get the idea that he's enjoying this a little too much?"

"Shhhh," Murdock and B.A. told him.

"The last time she came home late," Hannibal went on, "She told me that if I dare strike her she would get the police."

"And what was your response, Mrs. Riley?" the host asked.

"I told her not to bother, I didn't want any help," he answered, "Though I've got half a mind to call them tonight and pick her up, maybe spending a night in jail would do her some good."

"What do you make of it, Face?" Murdock asked.

"He said three quarters, that's reference to the time, meaning we meet up with him at a quarter to four for some reason…and I'd say he's either implying she simply ran out, or that she's been picked up by some kind of police, and if that's the case…any way you look at it it's not good."


Jean didn't have any recollection of what had happened that night after she knocked the chopper pilot out and took over in the cockpit. What she did know was that her head was killing her and it was swimming at the same time. Her eyes hurt too much to open them so she just turned over on her side to try and block out the noise she was hearing. She didn't feel any springs under her so knew she wasn't in a bed, instead it felt like she was on a concrete slab or something of the sort.

All of a sudden in the midst of the buzz of background voices somewhere out there, she heard one very distinctive voice enter the conversation as somebody apparently pushed his way through the crowd of, whatever they were wherever they were. Jean knew that she knew that voice, but it took her a minute to place the name to it, and when she did she opened her eyes and realized she was in a jail cell, and looking through the bars she saw two very familiar men standing on the opposite side looking in at her.

"Decker," she groaned in vexed tone as she slowly rolled off the metal bench built into the wall and found her way up on her feet. She staggered over to the bars and looked through them at the colonel, who not surprisingly looked a lot better now than the last time she'd seen him at the hospital, even if he was the last person she'd wanted to see, and of course Crane was right beside him. Jean smiled and said, more to herself than the men on the other side of the bars, "I'm hallucinating again, I've finally lost my mind."

Decker turned back to one of the cops and barked at him to open the cell and get her out of there. Jean was able to make out a few words about transfer or transportation, something that involved her being moved to Fort Knox, something about national security, and the large part that she was playing in the middle of it. It was all a bunch of senseless jibber-jabber where she was concerned, even the parts she could make out weren't making any sense. She tried to figure out what was going on but it went back to the fact that she couldn't remember what happened that night and she didn't even know where she was or what time or even what day it was.

Decker must've been convincing for the cops though because the cell door was opened and she was released into their custody. As they headed for the exit Jean looked down and saw that her blood stained Air Force uniform was gone, and instead now she was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and her corporal's jacket, ah, that must've been how Decker was able to say she was with them and get her released to him.

Little bits and pieces were starting to come to her now. She remembered the chopper almost crashing after she knocked the pilot out, but she'd managed to get it up at just the last moment, and she'd doubled back around to the other choppers and managed to catch them right before they took off. The men there had been confused by the chopper's sudden return and came running to see what was the matter. 12 against 1 were never good odds but Jean had the element of surprise because they were expecting their own pilot, and were not expecting anyone to open fire on them as soon as the door opened. But she'd collected an M-16 from the chopper and shot at them, though nobody was hit, naturally.

And then there had been the explosion. She couldn't even remember how it had happened, but one of the other choppers that had just been minutes from takeoff with a shipment of drugs in tow had blown up. The impact knocked her down and some of the debris hit her, though she was in better condition than the men who had been much closer to it than she had. After that her memory started to blur, though she must've been able to radio for help because she remembered getting out of there when other choppers came in. She ran back to her car and drove out of there, and the first thing that had been on her mind was to get home and change out of her bloody clothes.

When she got home, she'd washed the blood off of her face and changed into her regular clothes, and her corporal's jacket. If she was going to die tonight this was how she preferred to go out, as she really was, and with all the honor bestowed upon her from the A-Team as had been. She couldn't remember what had happened after that though, she had a vague memory of writing a note for Hannibal to find when he came to the house, but she couldn't remember what it was, or why she had assumed he would be home first, instead of all of them together.

"How'd you know where I was?" she asked Decker as they left the police station.

"Word travels fast when you're dealing with two exploded Air Force choppers," Decker told her.

"Ah," something else occurred to her and she asked him, "When did you get out of the hospital?"

"When we heard the news," Crane answered for him.

"Where is the A-Team?" Decker asked her.

Jean laughed, he never gave up, "You're talking to the wrong guy, they weren't even with me tonight."

"Well we know that," he replied, "There was a bust made at a private residence that just reeks of Hannibal Smith and his men."

"Hey, you're not smelling so fresh yourself," Jean told him.

"Where are they, Miss Rhodes?"

"Now why would I tell you that even if I knew?" Jean asked him, "Just because you got me out of the drunk tank that I don't even remember how I got there?"

"According to the police report you were found in the direct vicinity of the explosion and were noncompliant with the officers," Crane told her.

Jean rubbed a sore spot on the back of her head and said, "Doesn't ring a bell, and I know I wasn't drinking tonight. But for the life of me I can't think why I'd go back there either." Then it occurred to her that somebody must've knocked her out, but then how the cops got their hands on her she couldn't figure out.

"I don't know what you had planned when you went out there tonight," Decker said to her, "But all you managed to do was kick over a rock and let the scorpions out."

"I might've guessed," Jean said, "We haven't dropped the anvil on them like we did those idiots from the army, meaning there are plenty more of them where those guys came from. Any idea where they are or where they're heading?"

"As far as we know they haven't left the ground yet," Crane said.

"No surprise, the drugs went up in smoke when the choppers blew up," Jean said, "So now it's a matter of finding them before they can reload." An idea came to her and she asked the colonel and the captain, "Do either of you know how to fly?"

"No," they both answered.

"Well then I guess that means that both of you are going to be at my mercy," Jean grinned and said, "This ought to be fun."