A few minutes after the Gulfstream left the island, Murdock got on the loudspeaker and asked for Hannibal to come up to the cockpit. He pulled back the curtain and asked, "What's up, Captain?"

"I have a question," Murdock told Hannibal as the colonel sat down beside him, "You think you could get Frankie to come up here? I want to ask her something."

"How come?" Hannibal asked.

"Well, Colonel, I think I might know how her mind's working, or have some idea anyway, we've been trying to get answers out of them but I don't think we've been asking the right questions, I think I know what they are finally."

Hannibal thought about it and nodded, "Alright, Murdock, I'll see what I can do."

He disappeared from the cockpit and a few minutes later Frankie pushed the curtain back and stepped in.

"Hannibal said you wanted to see me," she said.

"Yeah, would you mind sitting down?" Murdock gestured to the empty seat beside him.

Frankie did and got herself strapped in and asked him, "What's up?"

"Well I've just been thinking about something and I was wondering if you could help me out," he said, "You probably noticed that we noticed Mad Dog's…unusual behavior for lack of a better term…he seems very dependent on you, which in part I can understand because you're the only one who really remembers what happened the night of the murder…but was he like that before it happened as well?"

Frankie shook her head, "I don't think he was ever quite all there, but he used to be put together a lot better than he is these days."

"Ah, and you think what Masterson did just pushed him over the edge?"

"Something like that," Frankie said, "You try waking up covered in blood with a murdered woman at your feet and tell me what it does for your mental health."

"Point taken," Murdock said, "Alright, I've got another question for you…I've noticed Frankie that you seem to blame yourself for what happened to him. That it was your fault because you were with him and Masterson found out…is that right?" he looked over at her and watched as she slowly drew into herself, "Do you think that Mad Dog would be better off without you in the picture?"

Frankie looked down towards the floor for a while before she finally answered, "He would never have been in this position if it wasn't for me, his whole life wouldn't have been ruined."

It was certainly hard to argue a point like that when you looked at the big picture, but Murdock looked at it from the other side as well, "And how long do you think you could've lasted without telling anyone what happened, without having anyone believe you? That helped, didn't it? Knowing that M.D. believed you, that's why you went to see him, so Masterson wouldn't find you."

"I managed for all those years just fine, I could've lasted a couple more without anyone knowing," Frankie said.

"Sure, but think of all the fun you'd have missed as well," Murdock said with a coy smirk, "When else would you get to fly to a tropical island with a sendoff from the military?"

Frankie had one of those 'don't you dare make me smile' looks on her face and it was a battle she quickly lost. But she composed herself and said, "Yeah, but at what cost?"

"Well, there's no guarantee that either one of you two would've been any better off if you hadn't met each other," Murdock said, "Now we know Mad Dog doesn't have any family, I get the impression he doesn't have a lot of friends either."

"I know the feeling," Frankie said, "He's my only friend."

"You see?" Murdock said, "You two would be hopeless without each other."

"We ain't doing much better as it is either," she replied, "It's too late to do anything about the past but sometimes I think it'd be better if he could just forget I ever existed."

"I don't think you really mean that, cous," Murdock said.

"We'll see about that," was her only response.

Hannibal seldom slept through the flights, he always had to be alert incase they needed to knock B.A. out again. But this time he fell asleep, and he had a dream that the plane ran out of fuel and they had to make an emergency landing. He didn't know where exactly they had landed, just short of the jungle, but what jungle was anybody's guess. They had no sooner come out of the plane that they had officers on them, all armed and screaming at them. One by one they were rounded up and taken to a prison that seemed more suited as a dungeon. There was straw on the floor and the cell was lit by a single torch on the wall. Their cell was next to several others where a lot of native male inmates were bunked up, and Hannibal wondered what the prisoner quota was in this country.

As the hours passed they heard the guards talking, and it seemed that the right hand man to whoever was in charge, was somebody named Abdul, Hannibal remembered that. At night, once most of the guards were left and the other inmates were asleep, he woke the others up, and asked Murdock to tell them all about ammonia. It didn't take long for the Captain to get worked up and soon he was jumping up and down screaming at the top of his lungs and howling like a monkey. That was when they heard one of the guards coming. Hannibal had the others get to the far back of the cell, he grabbed the torch out of the holder on the wall, doused it in a bucket of drinking water, pinched his nose and said in a reasonable impression of the head guard, "Abdul, get in here!"

"Sir?" the guard asked as he came to the cell, "You in there, sir?"

"Open that door you fool," Hannibal said, and as the cell door clattered open and the guard stepped in he asked, "Do you realize the reprimand this prison would be in for if word got out about one of its own guards being locked in with the common prisoners?"

"Oh yes sir!" the guard said as he saluted.

Hannibal let go of his noise and said in an equally nasal tone, "Take off your hat."

"Yes sir," Abdul said as he complied and removed his pith helmet.

WHACK!

Hannibal beat the guard over the head with the torch and he spun slightly and fell down, then everybody was running out of the cell and out of the prison, with the rest of the guards running after them and shooting.

That was when Hannibal realized somebody was shaking him and he jerked awake.

"Ha-what is it? What's going on?" he asked.

It was Face who had woken him up and he said, "Murdock says we're going to be landing soon. Hannibal, I think we're going to have a problem."

"What's that?" Hannibal yawned.

"Well where exactly are we all going to be staying?" he pointed over to Frankie and Murdoch who were asleep and said, "They don't have any place to stay, and I don't know about you but I've got a problem letting them know where any of us live long term."

"We'll worry about that later," Hannibal told him, "The first thing we're going to do once we get grounded is look up Frankie's parents, and pay them a visit, what did she say their names were?"

"Frank and Luciana Murdock," Face said.

"Well," Hannibal said as he and B.A. looked over the mailbox in the yard with F & L Murdock painted on the side, "This is the place." He saw the house again and took a step back, it was a two story house just like the one from his dream the other night. And he would just bet one of those front windows on the second floor were to Frankie's room, just like in the dream.

"I'm getting tired of this, Hannibal," B.A. said, "Why couldn't Faceman come with you for this?"

"Because, on the offchance that the Murdocks don't want to talk to me, nobody has the nerve to refuse to speak with you," Hannibal said coyly.

B.A. scowled at him and said, "You ain't funny, Hannibal."

"Shut up," he said as they went up to the door. Hannibal peered in through the window in the front door but didn't see anybody, so he rang the bell.

A woman answered the door. She looked somewhere in her mid 40s and had tan-blonde hair in a perm curl that looked like she did it herself. She wore a plain tan plaid house dress and had a green and white apron on over it.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Are you Mrs. Murdock?" Hannibal asked.

"Yes, why?" she asked.

"Is your husband home?" he asked.

She looked past them to a car pulling up at the curb and said, "Well here he comes right now, what's this about?"

"It's about your daughter," Hannibal said.

The woman's eyes widened, "Frankie?"

Hannibal and B.A. turned to see the man coming up the sidewalk; he looked about as old as his wife though he wore it slightly better, he had a head full of black hair and was dressed in a three piece suit and lugging a briefcase with him. When he saw the men standing on his porch with his now distraught wife, he stopped and inquired, "What's going on?"

"Frank, these men are here…they say it's about Frankie," Luciana said.

The man looked ready to swallow his tongue, he forced out, "What's she done now?" as he went up the steps.

"Why would you assume she's done something?" Hannibal asked as one by one they made their way into the house.

"Because anytime somebody from the hospital comes out to see us, the only reason is because Frankie's done something," Frank answered as he set his briefcase down in the hallway.

They moved into the living room and Hannibal told the couple, "Mr. and Mrs. Murdock, we're here because your daughter has made some allegations to us regarding a man named…"

"Oh Lord, not Richard again," Luciana moaned halfheartedly as she and her husband sat down in matching chairs and Hannibal and B.A. sat down on the couch opposite from them.

"Yes, I believe that was the name, Richard Masterson," Hannibal said, "What can you tell us about him?"

"What do you need to know?" Frank asked, "He's a friend of ours, he was my business partner several years ago. You know, I don't know what Frankie's problem is, but she has never liked him since she first met the man."

"Do you have any idea why that is?" Hannibal asked.

"I have no clue," Frank told them.

Hannibal shifted his attention to Mrs. Murdock, he noticed that the woman had slumped her head down and her lips were moving as if she was talking to herself.

"Mrs. Murdock?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," she said as she looked at them, "It's just that I hoped she would be getting better by now, she was always a troubled child."

"Why is that?" Hannibal asked.

"She was starved for attention," Luciana said, "She was an only child and resented us both being gone all day, she tried to convince me to quit my job to stay home with her…we both had to work."

Frank looked down for a second and added as he cleared his throat, "Business wasn't so good a few years ago, suddenly we needed two incomes to compensate for the loss of one."

"I'd always been home when Frankie got out of school before that, she just didn't like it when I had to get a job too, but it couldn't be helped," Luciana said, "But she would make up the most outrageous stories to get me to stay home with her."

"What kind of stories?" Hannibal asked.

"She started saying that Richard tried to break into the house, that he tried to attack her. I know she never liked the man but I can't understand why she'd make up such blatant lies like that."

"How long did those stories keep up for?" Hannibal asked.

"Oh, years," she told him, "They never changed, it never made any sense."

"But you don't think there was any merit to them?" he asked.

"No, she was just trying to get attention," Luciana answered.

"So why didn't she come up with a different story since she knew you didn't believe her?" Hannibal asked.

"Hey you guys are the doctors, you're the specialists," Frank said, "We tried finding out what was wrong with her a long time ago. When she was a kid we took her to one of those child therapists, she never opened her mouth the whole session, she'd never say one word to the doctor."

Hannibal and B.A. exchanged a single glance that said both were thinking the same thing. Hannibal pushed on, "Did she ever tell anyone at school these same stories?"

"No, only us," Luciana said.

"Why didn't she have any friends when she was a kid?" Hannibal asked, "I mean she didn't, did she?"

Luciana shook her head, "No, she was a shy child, she didn't like talking to anyone."

"What about when she was older?" Hannibal asked, "She started engaging in very…questionable behavior."

"Still just trying to get attention," Frank said, "She thought she wasn't getting enough attention at home so she started stealing cars and damaging property. I don't know what she thought she was trying to accomplish from it all."

"You know," Hannibal said slowly, "Some people might think that she was trying to tell you something with that kind of destructive behavior. Why did you finally have her committed to Freemont?"

"Well she…" Luciana was at a loss for words for a few seconds, "She was throwing up, violently, one night, we found out she had drunk gasoline and was trying to set herself on fire. We knew then that we had to get her professional help, we couldn't figure out what had come over her."

"And have you since then?" Hannibal asked.

"No, the doctors haven't told us much, they say they haven't been able to make much progress with her," Luciana answered.

"I see," Hannibal said, "When your daughter was a teenager, did she ever date anyone?"

"Oh Lord no," Luciana said, almost with a surprised laugh, "Frankie's never even been interested in any boys."

Hannibal and B.A. looked to each other again and this time it didn't go unnoticed.

"What?" Frank asked, "What is it?"

"Nothing to concern yourselves about," Hannibal told them, "Now let me ask you, do you remember a couple years ago hearing about a murder that occurred over in Bakersfield, a young woman was found murdered in a man's home, Alice Arden?"

"Oh yes," Luciana nodded, "I read about it in the papers, that poor woman. They arrested the young man who killed her."

"That's one way of looking at it," Hannibal said.

Frankie looked from Hannibal to B.A. and back to Hannibal and said, visibly annoyed, "Look, doctors, maybe you can get to the point of why you came out here to see us, because it doesn't sound like there's anything new with Frankie's case than there was the last time we were called."

Hannibal sat up and said, "Mr. and Mrs. Murdock, we are not doctors, I'm Hannibal Smith and this is B.A. Baracus, we're the A-Team."

Frank's eyes bulged at this revelation and Luciana's bottom jaw dropped slightly.

"What?" she asked.

"And your daughter is not at the Freemont Hospital, she hasn't been there for several days…we have her now."

"My God, is she alright?" Luciana asked.

Frank rose from his chair and demanded to know, "What're you people doing with our daughter?"

"Cool it, sucker!" B.A. told him, and that shut the man up quickly, "We ain't done nothing to her, it's that fool Masterson that's done it all."

"What my Staff Sergeant is so gently trying to explain," Hannibal cynically added, "Is that we believe what Frankie has to say about Richard Masterson, as well as about you two."

"Us?" Frank was outraged.

"Yes, you see, your daughter told us how for years she tried to get you to believe when she said Masterson tried to force his way into this house when you two were both at work, but that you wouldn't listen. From there, she did whatever she could think of to be committed to a hospital where she wouldn't have to put up with either of you and that Masterson couldn't get to her."

Frankie's mother looked like she'd been hit with cold water and she said, "You mean she's been telling the truth all along?"

"Not entirely," Hannibal said, "She did have a boyfriend that she didn't tell you about, M.D. Murdoch, the same man who was arrested for murdering that woman in Bakersfield."

"What?!" Frank was about ready to hit the ceiling.

"What more, we have reason to believe that Masterson also killed that woman and set up M.D. Murdoch for it because he knew that your daughter was seeing him," Hannibal explained.

"What?" Luciana looked close to passing out from this new information.

"Now wait just a minute, you believe that, what, based on a story that our daughter told you?" Frank asked.

"No, because your daughter knows details about the murder, details that were never released to the public and that she could only have known from being in that house on the night that the murder occurred."

"Oh my God," Luciana responded, "You mean she's been telling the truth for all these years?"

"That," Hannibal replied as he stood up, "Is exactly what I'm saying."

"Where is she?" Luciana asked, "We have to see her."

"That is not going to be possible I'm afraid," Hannibal told her, "Right now your daughter is with the other member of our team, Templeton Peck, and she's being well taken care of for right now, but when we leave this house I'd advise both of you not to try calling either the police or the Army, because if you do you'll never see your daughter again. And I also advise you against calling your good friend Masterson and letting him know what's going on either."

Luciana's mouth opened and closed a few times, then she jumped to her feet and all but lunged at Hannibal as she pleaded with the man, "Please, don't hurt her!"

Hannibal was genuinely taken aback by that, but then he remembered the propaganda that the military was only too happy to spread about them that combated the stories of their heroic deeds and he told her, "You don't have to worry about that, the sad truth is she's safer with three wanted fugitives than she's probably ever been here in her own home."

B.A. hated to leave with the way things were at the moment but he knew that there wasn't anything left to be done here. They got up and left the house and walked out to the curb and got in Face's 'Vette and headed back to get the others.

"What do you think, B.A.?" Hannibal asked.

"I got nothing towards that girl's father one way or the other, but I feel sorry for her mama," he told the colonel.

Hannibal nodded and said, "Me too."

The car phone rang and Hannibal answered it, "Hello?"

"Hannibal, we got the van," Face said, "But there's a problem?"

B.A. yanked the phone from Hannibal and said, "A problem with my van? What is it?"

"We swept it for bugs to make sure nobody had done anything to it while we were gone," Murdock answered, "Found a tracking device on it."

"We haven't gotten rid of it yet since the minute we do they're going to know we're back," Face said, "And we thought we'd wait for you to come back before we did that."

"Are you calling from the van's phone?" Hannibal asked as he grabbed the phone back from B.A.

"No, a payphone around the block," Murdock answered.

"Must be crowded," Hannibal commented, "We'll be there in a few minutes, where're Frankie and Mad Dog?"

"They're here," Murdock told him.

Hannibal smirked and said, "I'd hate to be the next guy who opens the door to that phone booth."

While Mad Dog and Frankie waited for Murdock and Face to get back to the storage garage where they had stashed their van before leaving for the island last week, they wandered around the storage building and the whole vacant street that it was located on. Frankie lifted one foot up onto an elevated curb with a concrete foundation surrounding the green grass next to the limestone sidewalk. She walked with one foot on the curb and one foot in the street, and did so all the way up and down the block and was still doing it when Face and Murdock came back.

"Watcha doing, Frankie?" Face asked, "Looking for something?"

"Nah, I was born on the side of a hill," she answered.

Face rolled his eyes and looked at Murdock, "Great, an old joke, just what we needed."

"I don't know," Murdock said as he took his coconut out of his jacket, "I think CC liked it."

"You just couldn't forget that thing and leave it behind, could you?" Frankie asked as she put both feet up on the curb.

A flash of light caught her eye and she turned and looked at the street ahead. No traffic came through here so she could see all the way up the street and saw red and blue flashing lights in a distance. "Murdock, look!"

Murdock and Face turned and saw what she did.

"Oh great," Face groaned, "The Army already found us."

"So what do we do?" Mad Dog asked.

"Back the garage, we may have to leave without Hannibal and B.A. if they don't get here soon," Face told them.

Everybody scrambled back across the street and ran around to the back of the storage garage and watched from the windows. Luck seemed to be on their side because first they saw Face's corvette speeding from around another street and pulling up to the back of the garage.

"What did you do to the bug?" Hannibal asked as they came in the garage.

"We haven't touched it!" Face told him.

"Well get rid of it!" Hannibal replied.

"How do you think they got here so fast?" Murdock asked.

"You don't think her parents called them after we left, do ya?" B.A. asked.

"Unlikely, they probably had that bug set to go off as soon as somebody came near the van," Hannibal said.

Frankie and Mad Dog went towards the front of the building and looked out the windows as all the cars pulled up.

"They're getting out!" Frankie said.

Hannibal took a step towards the window to see who was leading the parade this time. "I think we just traded up from Lynch," he said.

"In a good or bad way?" Face asked.

"This is Colonel Decker of the United States Army," the voice boomed over the bullhorn.

"Bad," Face and Murdock agreed.