"You don't think the idea's really going to work, do you?" Mad Dog quietly asked Murdock later that night as he joined the pilot by the hotel's mini bar to mix them a few drinks, "You don't really think we can kill Masterson without touching him, do you?"
"I don't think it's going to be necessary," Murdock explained, "Now that we've found Masterson, Hannibal is not going to let this guy walk away from what he's done, one way or another the Colonel is going to make sure that he pays for what he's put you guys through."
"Frankie doesn't believe that," Mad Dog said.
"I know, which is why we've got to keep talking to her about the plan, it gives her something to focus on and she needs something to believe in," Murdock told him, "You know the real reason she's thrilled about the plan, because it was your idea."
"I kind of figured," Mad Dog said, "These last couple years I've just felt like I'm a ventriloquist dummy or something, Frankie's had to take on everything to handle herself because I haven't been able to do anything."
"You were locked up, that's understandable," Murdock told him.
"Yeah, but it's like I was supposed to protect Frankie, I was supposed to keep her safe from Masterson, but instead, I get set up, I get locked up and Frankie is left vulnerable for that creep to try getting his hands on her again," M.D. told the pilot, "I did everything I could think of to make sure he couldn't get near her, but instead, I get arrested for murder. Every time that lawyer came to see me, I screamed at him to do something, that there had to be a way out of the mess…but he wouldn't do anything and once I got the crazy plea there wasn't anything else I could do about it, so Frankie had to take over. She's been trying to keep herself protected and bust me out of the mental hospital all at the same time, and I hate it."
"I hate it for both of you," Murdock replied, "But that's why we're here now, to squash this nasty bug into something you scrape off the bottom of your shoe. And one way or another, we're going to do it, you can take my word for that." He picked up a glass he prepared for Frankie and took it over to the woman who was just about asleep on the bed. She had her arms folded behind her head on top of three pillows she'd propped herself up on so she could watch the TV, even though there wasn't anything on.
"What is it?" she asked when she saw the glass.
"It's booze, does it matter what it is?" Murdock asked.
"Guess not," Frankie took the glass and took a sip, then she asked him, "Yes it does, what is it?"
"Rum and Coca-Cola, like the song."
"What song?" Frankie asked.
Murdock scowled at her and said, "Oh boy, where've you been? Next thing I suppose you'll say you never heard of this one," he moved to the center of the room and jumped around like a monkey and sang, "O-bongo-bongo-bongo I don't want to leave the Congo oh-no-no-no-no, bingo bango bungo I'm so hoppy in the jungle I refuse to go." He saw Frankie shaking her head even though she was about to burst out laughing.
"Are you always like this?" Frankie asked him.
"No, sometimes I'm crazy," he answered.
"What else do you do?" Frankie asked as she sat up.
"Oh I can do just about anything," Murdock gestured theatrically as if he was a great performer getting on stage and said, "I can dance, I can sing, I can do animal impressions."
"Can you do other impressions?" Frankie asked.
"Certainly," Murdock said, and he proceeded to change from speaking with a British accent pretending to be some important something or other, to then speaking with a German accent and pretending to be the Red Baron.
"Is there anything you can't do?" Mad Dog asked.
"Uh…" Murdock thought about it, "Lock picking, that's Face's area of expertise."
"So what else do you do?" Frankie asked.
He paused for a few second before a light bulb seemed to go off and he said, "Hey, I know, I want to show you guys something, I want to show you guys because I can just hear B.A.'s opinion now, and I'd rather not. I can just hear him now," Murdock turned to one side and said in his gruff B.A. impersonation, "Shut up ya crazy fool!" then turned to the other side and said in his normal voice, "But B.A., I really think that you'll like this," and turned back again and said as B.A., "You keep it up ya crazy fool and I'm gonna pound you into next week," and then turned to speak as himself again, but the others cut him off.
"What is it?" they wanted to know.
"A new type of rain dance," Murdock answered and demonstrated by hopping around the room shifting from one foot to the other, whooping and howling like the Indians in the old TV westerns.
Frankie turned to Mad Dog and told him in a dry tone, "What scares me is he seems to be the smartest one here." She went over to Murdock and jabbed him in the shoulder to get his attention and said, "Excuse me, Geronimo, but you don't really believe those things work, do you?"
"Well I've never done one before that failed," Murdock answered.
"How many have you done?" Frankie asked.
"Just this one," he told her.
"Somebody has it in for me," Decker said, "I can just feel it."
He and Crane stood out in the cold, pouring down rain and looked at the fine mess before them. Crane couldn't figure it out, there hadn't been a cloud in the sky before they left Decker's office, but as soon as they got on the road, out of nowhere a bunch of black clouds moved in and he had known that a storm was going to hit and fast. He just hadn't known how hard it was going to.
The rain beat down hard and mercilessly right away, there hadn't even been any precursor of drizzle like most rainstorms. And it built up, within a few seconds it was beating down on the car as they drove and hailed down on the windshield so hard that they couldn't even see where they were going. Still, they had pressed on, and once they got onto the main road leading to the V.A., that was when the lightning came up out of nowhere.
Everybody acknowledged the possibility of getting hit by lightning though Crane doubted few people ever actually seriously thought about it. Well, after tonight he knew he definitely would. They had been blinded for a few seconds by one particularly bright flash of it, and then they'd heard the noise of a tree breaking apart and the large body of the tree separating from the roots and crashing in the middle of the street, making one hell of a barricade, preventing them from going to the V.A. tonight.
They'd gotten out of the car to assess the damage and see if the tree could be moved, but quickly found it could not. However, before they got back to the car, lightning struck again, and they heard another sickening sound of a tree falling down, and then heard the sound of a tree falling on a car and smashing it. Turning around they saw that they had been partially right, another tree by the road had fallen over and hit the front end of the car, and now it looked like the hood and grill had been smashed up by it.
For whatever reason, Decker managed to restrain himself from flying off the deep end at this unbelievable series of events, instead just grumbling to himself about Murphy's law and anything that could go wrong did. The radio was still working in the car so he called for backup, and they now stood out in the storm waiting for another MP car to come and pick them up. It was obvious they weren't going anywhere tonight, but Decker wasn't especially bothered because he knew that likewise, Captain Murdock wouldn't be going anywhere in this weather either. First thing tomorrow when the road was cleared and the damn tree was moved, they were going to go to the V.A. and see the pilot once and for all. Decker just knew that when he was alone with Murdock, he was going to get some answers out of the former captain about where the A-Team was.
"I don't like it, Hannibal," Face said during the ride back, "I really don't like it."
Hannibal sat up front in the passenger seat of the car and kept his head down as he looked at the mini recorder that he'd managed to slip under Masterson's table when the man wasn't looking, and collect it as soon as he'd left. He didn't need to press the button to play the tape again, they'd already heard it roughly when it was live, and they'd listened to the tape a couple more times to make sure that they weren't wrong.
Masterson's associate Sosa had been late, but he had finally arrived, a Frank Sosa, a guy in his 30s who looked like he could be some hot shot lawyer, crooked of course but then again weren't they all? They'd listened as the two men conversed for an hour about nothing, and in between all the nothing, Sosa had tried to make an arrangement with Masterson for a new woman he might be interested in. They'd had a good laugh about it, and Masterson replied that he intended to get it out of his system now, because he was certain that when he got back to California he'd have someone else already waiting for him back home; in his own words, a nice, ripe, 20-year-old girl who he'd been trying to get his hooks into for quite some time. Face had excused himself from the table when they overheard the conversation, saying that he wanted to toss his lunch in private.
"Masterson hasn't gotten the word that M.D. was pulled from the hospital before the lobotomy, he thinks when he gets back to L.A. that he'll be able to get Frankie all to himself since her boyfriend's supposed to be out of the picture now," Hannibal said.
"I don't get it though," Face told him, "Frankie said once she was put in the hospital that he couldn't get to her."
"She also said he has a lot of money and influence, I'm sure it wouldn't be much trouble for him to talk his way into gaining access to her room and making himself at home when he sees fit," Hannibal pointed out.
"So now what do we do, Hannibal?" B.A. wanted to know.
"We've got to intercept the woman that Sosa's sending over to the hotel, she's going there to meet Masterson but I'm sure that if we put Face in a strategic enough place, he can make her forget about her original date," Hannibal said.
Face rolled his eyes and commented sarcastically, "Gee Hannibal, you think you gave me a dangerous enough assignment?"
"We'll be close enough by incase anything happens, don't worry," Hannibal said dismissively.
"Surprise, I'm worried," Face replied.
"Well now really, Face, when do you have a problem with getting on the good side of beautiful women?" Hannibal asked.
"When I'm the fly being suckered into a corner of the spider's web," Face answered.
"You know, Frankie," Murdock said, "I've been watching you guys for the last couple of days and I've been hearing about what you did to try and get declared insane, and I think I know what your problem is. You know the saying work smart, not hard? Well there you go, you were trying too hard to get put away and that's why nobody believed you, now, should the situation ever come up again when you're trying to convince somebody you're crazy…I would suggest taking a much simpler approach."
"Like what?" Frankie asked.
"Well, I would suggest you start with something small," Murdock said, "Like this one time we had to get into a prison to bust up a fighting ring, I drove everybody working in that jail crazy for hours just by screaming for trash bags."
"Trash bags?" Frankie asked cluelessly.
"Trash bags?" M.D. repeated.
"Trash bags," Murdock answered.
"Trash bags?" Frankie repeated.
"No no no, not like that, like this," Murdock sucked in a large breath and screamed out, "TUH-RASH BAAAAGS! I WANT SOME TRASH BAAAAGS!"
"I can see why they would think you're nuts," Frankie said.
"Hey, it worked," he said, "And it helped us to escape."
"How?" Frankie asked.
"Well we took the trash bags and had Face get us some pool chairs and big hair dryers and we used them to fill up the bags, tied them to the chair, and floated right over the prison wall," Murdock explained.
Frankie squinted one eye at him and asked, "How much have you had to drink tonight?"
"Hey if you think that's crazy, wait'll I tell you about some of the flights I did in 'Nam," Murdock told them.
Murdock picked up the phone to order room service but just before he could put the receiver to his ear, they were all scared half to death by a crashing BOOM from outside as the storm started.
"That was close," Murdock huffed excitedly as he held the receiver against his chest.
Frankie went over to the window and opened the shutters and saw the rain was beating down in sheets and already the ground below looked like a pond.
"What do you know?" Mad Dog said, "Maybe there is something to that rain dance."
Face timed his steps behind the young blonde woman in a blue dress walking towards her room on the third floor. He had spent the last few minutes going over in his head what he was going to say to her. It wasn't often that Face doubted the potential of his own cons but this was one time he hoped he didn't screw it up. He went over his rehearsed line one more time as he sped up his pace and accidentally on purpose bumped into the woman. He let out a slight 'oof' and when the woman turned around he said, "Excuse me, terribly sorry…" then he did a double take and said, "By any chance are you Tandy?"
"Yes," she answered.
Face smiled and said, "Well nice to meet you, I'm Richard Masterson, I believe I'm your date for the night."
The woman let out an uncertain laugh and shook his extended hand and said, "I was under the impression from Frank that you were older."
"Oh that's his sense of humor that only he finds funny," Face explained, "You know one time he set me up on a blind date, and right before I walked in he had her convinced that a 70-year-old man with white hair and a cane was her date."
Tandy laughed and said, "Well I guess this is a little early, I thought we were set up for 8:30."
"Oh, well I don't mind starting early if you don't," Face told her, "Incidentally, did Frank tell you what I had in mind for tonight?"
She smiled and shook her head and said, "No he didn't."
"Oh good, well then perhaps when we get back later we can spend a little quiet time alone in my room upstairs," Face said.
"I thought Frank said your room was downstairs," Tandy replied, "On the second floor."
"Of course he'd say that," Face said dismissively as he led her over to the elevator, "Frank will do anything for a gag, he'd just love hearing how you got the wrong room and walked in on an old couple here for the week with their grandkids or something like that."
Hannibal and B.A. stayed around the corner listening until Face and the woman got in the elevator and disappeared, then they came around to the main hall floor and headed back to their rooms.
"Well, the first part of the plan's taken care of," Hannibal said, "We managed to keep the hen out of the fox house."
"Hopefully Faceman and the woman don't run in to this fool Masterson when he gets back to the hotel," B.A. replied.
"Well, with that storm outside, they're not going to be leaving the hotel," Hannibal said, "And since Masterson already went out to dinner, it's a safe bet he won't be frequenting the hotel's dining hall, and I sure as hell don't think he's going to be paying the game room any visits, so Face can show her a PG time of her life, and then take her back to one of our rooms until we're sure that Masterson won't find her."
"And what do we do in the meantime?" B.A. asked.
"Now we check in with the Murdocks and see what's been going on since we sent them back," Hannibal explained.
The storm outside continued to rage on and the rain had made the temperature drop immensely, and some of that cold air was making its way in through the windows of Murdock's hotel room. He, M.D. and Frankie were piled on the bed with a blanket covering them as Frankie and Mad Dog ate popcorn and drank cokes while Murdock sat between them using his hands as much as his mouth to describe some of his more lively adventures in 'Nam.
"And then!" he said gesturing his hands wildly, "I've got this egotistical lieutenant in the cockpit with me screaming about going lower, lower, lower, we're talking NOE here."
"What's that?" Mad Dog asked.
"In air combat there are three levels of flying low," Murdock explained, "Low level where you can still fly over everything, contour where you have to climb over things like trees, and then there is Nap of the Earth, where you don't fly over anything, you maneuver the helicopter to go around them, you go around the trees, around the huts, you are inches away from touching the ground."
"Sounds like that'd be the easiest way to get shot at," Frankie commented.
"You'd think so," Murdock told her, "But it's actually one of the safest ways to fly, but because it is so tricky, you really have to be an expert pilot to know what you're doing, and to do it without getting anybody killed, which is exactly what we were facing. Now, we didn't have any trouble touching topsoil in that bird, but then the lieutenant starts screaming at me to go around so he can open fire down on the Cong soldiers. I was flying a medic chopper for crying out loud, I was trying to get a batch of bleeding soldiers to a field hospital, so I just screamed at him and said 'FIGMO, Lieutenant Napier, just FIGMO'."
"What's that?" Frankie asked.
"It's an Army abbreviation, it means…" Murdock looked at her and said, "It means 'Forget-It-I've-Got-My-Orders'."
Frankie looked at him and humorously responded, "Oh…like SNAFU means Situation Normal, All Fouled Up?"
"Exactly like that," Murdock answered.
Frankie looked at him when he didn't continue and said, "Well? Did you make it?"
"Yeah, got there just in time, those three boys were just about to get fitted for their body bags," Murdock said.
"Did you get in trouble for disobeying the lieutenant's orders?" Mad Dog asked.
"As I said, I had my orders, so I told him to have his superior talk to my superior…it wasn't pretty but I didn't come away with too much trouble," Murdock told them.
The door opened and Hannibal said, taking in the sight of the three people in bed under a blanket, "I hope we're not interrupting anything."
Murdock squirmed under the blanket and came out at the foot of the bed and said, "Hey Hannibal, how'd it go?"
Hannibal went over to the bed and told Frankie, "For the record kid, I never stopped believing what you told us, and I think we've just got the proof for it."
"What?" they asked.
"Now we didn't get a signed confession for the murder or anything like that," Hannibal said as he took out the mini recorder, "But I have a feeling when Masterson talks about the nice, ripe, 20-year-old girl waiting for him back in L.A., that you are the prime candidate there."
Frankie looked like she was going to be sick when he said that, she looked up at him and asked, "Where is he?"
"On his way back to the hotel, completely oblivious to what's going on, that man Sosa he was meeting set him up with another young woman for the night, so we had Face cut her off at the pass and pass himself off as Masterson, he's going to take her out on a date on the hotel's first floor and keep her out of Masterson's sight. I don't know exactly how this guy works but I don't want to take any chances of her going into his hotel room and coming out in two suitcases and a hat box."
"But what're you going to do about him?" Frankie asked.
"You leave that to us, we're the professionals here," Hannibal said, "Now, we're going to be going back to our room so we can hear if he makes any phone calls," he turned to the pilot and asked, "Murdock, everything going to be okay here?"
"Fine," Murdock answered with a salute, "Oh hey, Hannibal, I'm going to call down to room service, you want anything before turning in?"
"No thanks, Murdock," Hannibal said with a shake of his head.
"Yeah," B.A. told Murdock, "Have them send me up a glass of milk before bed."
"Now B.A.," Murdock said out of nowhere, "You know that you don't drink alcohol."
B.A. looked at Murdock as if he had just hit a new level of crazy, "What're you jabbering about now, fool? I said a glass of milk."
"B.A., if I get you a glass of milk before bed, the milk turns to cheese, cheese turns to butter, butter turns to fat, fat turns to sugar, and sugar turns into alcohol, so if I get you a glass of milk before bed, you will be hung over as soon as you wake up tomorrow morning," Murdock said.
B.A. grabbed Murdock by the front of his shirt and jerked the pilot forward and demanded to know, "What kind of crazy jibber jabber is that supposed to be you crazy fool?"
"Don't get mad at him, these are just the jokes," Frankie said, "I remember that off a TV show I saw growing up."
"Yeah," Murdock broke away from B.A.'s grip and howled like a donkey, "Heeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaw! Hee hee, hee haw haw haw, Hee Haw! They show that on TV at night at the V.A., right between Mr. Ed and The Range Rider."
"Just get him a glass of milk and put an olive in it," Frankie told Murdock, managing to suppress a laugh.
Murdock turned and saw that Mad Dog seemed to be preoccupied with a thought, he had a faraway look in his hands and his fingers were interlaced tightly like they'd been glued together. After Hannibal and B.A. had left, Mad Dog heard the door closing and it brought him back to reality, he folded his legs under him and sat on his feet and said to Murdock, "You know, I've been thinking about something, I think death is too good for Masterson."
"You have something else in mind?" Frankie asked.
"I think I know what it is," Murdock said with a new sparkle in his eyes, like a madman, he jumped on the foot of the bed and landed on his knees and said quietly like they were a bunch of kids talking past their bedtime, "You ever see the movie "Gaslight", Frankie?"
"I don't know," she said.
"Believe me, you'd remember," Murdock nodded, "Woman marries man, man screams at woman," and he started turning his head one way and the next again as he alternated, 'You always lose things!' The lights go out, 'You insane! You will die raving in an asylum!' Footsteps through the ceiling, 'You always lie!', the woman's not crazy but the husband tells her she's crazy and she starts to think she's crazy. Then, in come a detective to the rescue, 'Who are you? 'I'm a figment of your wife's imagination', 'How'd you get in here?' 'I'm a ghost, we don't use doors'."
"The point, Murdock, what is the point?" Frankie sharply asked.
"Hold on, I'm getting there," Murdock continued with the narration play-by-play, "The husband has been stomping around across the roof to the building next door at night, looking in the attic for some rubies he killed the woman living there for, he turns on the light upstairs and it makes the lights go out downstairs. There's a fight!" he let out a high pitched scream, "They tie him up, 'I want to speak to my wife', the detective leaves, 'Bella, get the knife, cut me loose', 'Knife? What knife? Do you see a knife? Have you gone mad my sane husband? There was a knife, but I lost it'," he mimicked tossing it away, " 'I'm always losing things, I'm insane', then she picks up the knife again and gets ready to stab him…but she doesn't, too bad too, that would've been a good ending."
But Frankie wasn't amused, "You lost me completely."
"Frankie," Mad Dog touched her arm and made her look at him, "He's right…it takes a while to get to the point but he's right…why should we make Masterson's death fast and painless, when we could gaslight him, and make him think he's gone insane? Then he would be the one locked up rotting away in the hospital while we're out free again."
She seemed to consider it for a minute, and asked, "But will it work?"
"If we can't make him certifiable, we can certainly shoot his credibility to hell by making everyone who knows him think he's lost his marbles," Murdock pointed out.
"Hey," Mad Dog snapped his fingers and asked Murdock, "Is there any chance we could bug his room so he'd hear us at night and think there was someone in the room with him?"
A crazy grin formed on Murdock's face and he said, "It's definitely an idea worth looking into."