"You're completely surrounded," Decker informed the A-Team.
"Aw, no kidding," Hannibal sarcastically replied.
"You know him?" Mad Dog asked.
"Enough to wish I didn't," Hannibal said as he signaled for everybody to get down.
"Everyone in Vietnam knew him," Face added, "He's one of those guys that always got the job done under any circumstances and never lost any sleep how he did it."
"Yeah, Hannibal and this guy mixed it up once in the Doom Club," B.A. said.
"Doom Club?" Mad Dog asked.
"Yeah, the Da Nang officers' open mess. I had a problem with the way this guy used to bomb Cong hospitals like it was his favorite sport," Hannibal explained.
Murdock saw Frankie slowly sink to the floor and inch away from the windows and over to the back of the garage. She stopped by the doors and seemed to be fidgeting nervously with her hair. The last thing they needed was for somebody to lose it now; he went over to her and crouched down by her to see what was the matter.
"You alright, Frankie?" he asked.
"That guy Decker's going to shoot up this place, isn't he?" Frankie asked.
"Either that or they'll break out the tear gas grenades," he answered, "Either way it's nothing we haven't dealt with before."
"So what do we do?" Frankie asked.
Hannibal tested the view in front of the windows and when nobody shot, he stood up, busted one of the front window panes and hollered out, "Hold your fire, Decker, we've got…" he almost said 'innocent civilians in here' but he knew that wouldn't faze Decker any. Not the Roderick Decker he knew anyway. So he went with a second option that would probably strike the colonel as being a little more believable.
"We've got hostages in here, and if you or any of your men take one step closer to this building, we're going to blow them to Kingdom Come and then take out you and your joyboys as well."
There was a brief pause before Decker responded, "You're bluffing, Smith."
"Are you willing to take that chance, Decker?" Hannibal hollered back, "Are you willing to have innocent blood on your hands, American citizen innocent blood?"
Murdock saw Frankie slip the back door open and run out, he ran after her and tackled her to the ground.
"What do you think you're doing?" he asked her.
"You guys need to get away, we need a distraction," Frankie said, "Hannibal can only hold them off for so long…" an idea hit her and she asked Murdock, "Do you guys keep a crowbar in the van?"
"Yes, of course," Murdock answered.
"Well go get it!" Frankie whispered loudly, "I'm going to try something."
Murdock didn't get it, but he was willing to go along with it and see what happened.
"Think about it, Decker," Hannibal called out to the window to the colonel who he momentarily had in his power and was enjoying every second of it because he knew it wouldn't last for long, "Lynch was made a laughing stock for getting military property stolen, crashed or blown up, and smashing up countless storefronts, but do you, Colonel Roderick Decker of the U.S. Army, really want to be known as the man who let two innocent hostages die for his pursuit of the A-Team?"
"Let us see the hostages, Smith!" Decker said into his bullhorn.
Hannibal turned for a quick second and looked back to the window and said, "I think we can spare you a glimpse at one for the time being." He gestured towards B.A. who marched Mad Dog over to the window and Hannibal showed the young man off as best he could through the broken windowpane.
"Take a look at this face, Decker," Hannibal said, "Does this look like the face of somebody you want on your conscience? You never lost any sleep when you did whatever it took to get the job done back in Vietnam, but this is a different jungle now, you're in the concrete jungle, and the laws of this jungle come with an actual price. You don't get to just brush these casualties off and collect your badges and smile for the camera."
Decker wasn't given a chance to answer, instead all heads turned when everybody heard a loud SMASH-ing noise behind them.
The MPs had parked their cars a small distance back from the building since apparently for all they knew, there were only the two front doors leading into the garage, and if the A-Team had chosen to make a break for it, futile though it may be, that would involve smashing directly into their cars. It was because of the short distance between the cars and the little green men driving them that Frankie was able to sneak up to some of the cars furthest back, and started playing baseball with the crowbar and their windshields.
"What the hell is she doing?" Hannibal asked as he looked out the window and saw what was going on.
Frankie made quick work and busted out the windshields and driver side windows of about five cars and managed to puncture a couple of tires and take out a couple of the lights on top before the MPs caught up with her, then she switched from batting at windows to batting at them, and they were a lot more vulnerable to being hit with a crowbar than the windshields were. Two of them went down, a couple others clutched whatever part of them had been beaten with the crowbar; Frankie moved fast, kept her head down and had also had the foresight to wear Murdock's cap and a set of dark glasses before she went out there. One MP grabbed her and she struggled in his grasp, shaking and writhing as hard as she could, it knocked the cap off, one MP tried to grab her by the hair, and he screamed and pulled back bloody hands. Frankie hit another MP in the gut with the crowbar, snatched up the cap and took off running, and made it back to the garage just before the MP could catch her. A split second later the van crashed out through the back wall of the garage and tore off down the back street.
"What the hell were you thinking!?" Face yelled at Frankie as they made their getaway at top speed, "Are you crazy!?"
Frankie sat as still as was possible with the van swerving from side to side as Murdock silently worked at collecting the bloody razor blades out of her hair as she answered nonchalantly, "That is a very good possibility."
"You have to admit, it was a good idea," Murdock said as he put the razor blades in a little bag and zipped it shut, "Whoever drives the cars that got smashed up will not be able to follow with the rest immediately. After all, when those windows got busted, the glass went everywhere, including all over the front seat, so if they had tried to follow us in those cars, they'd get their rear ends cut to ribbons in the process."
"A bit unorthodox perhaps but it did the trick," Hannibal said, and looking at Frankie in the rear view mirror he added in a warning tone, "But don't do it again."
Frankie just smiled and asked, "And what would Hannibal Smith know about orthodox?"
"Ha ha," he dryly remarked.
"Their own fault for parking their cars so far back, not exactly the best move in my opinion, but it worked," Frankie said.
"So now what do we do?" Face asked.
"There's one other place we should've checked before we left for the island," Hannibal told them.
"What's that?" Face already knew he was going to regret the answer.
"Masterson's house," Hannibal told them.
The gears in Murdock's head were already starting to turn.
Hannibal looked out the side mirror and said to the passengers in back, "Murdock, stay on the floor with them, remember nobody knows you're with us yet and we want to keep it that way."
"Aw, but Colonel," Murdock said as he got up.
Face pressed down on his head and pushed him back to the floor.
Murdock kicked the van floor with one foot and whined, "I'm getting tired of this, every time we go anywhere and the army comes sniffing around they make me hide, I'm tired of being this team's secret weapon, I want to be an exposed weapon."
Hannibal kept a deadpan expression and disposition as he said quietly, "Murdock, would you come up here for a minute, please?" It was the same tone adults used with a bad little child before beating him with a ruler. But this was completely missed on the captain's part.
Murdock poked his head up behind Hannibal's seat and said, "Yes, Colonel?"
Without turning around to see the captain, Hannibal said to him, "Murdock, do you remember the story about the Trojan horse?"
"Yeah sure, my mother told me about that one long time ago," Murdock said.
"Well do you know why it's such a famous story?" Hannibal asked.
Murdock pondered it for a moment. From the peanut gallery on the floor Frankie volunteered, "Don't think on it too hard, you'll hurt your brain."
"Nice try but I work alone," Hannibal told her, he finally craned his neck back to see the captain and told him, "It worked because the soldiers were their own hidden weapon, you see? It wouldn't have worked near as well if the Greeks had just charged head on and let the Trojans see them coming, now would it?"
Murdock shook his head, "Don't guess so."
"That is why we rely on you to remain our hidden weapon," Hannibal said, "If the army should happen to catch the three of us, they won't be expecting anyone to come to our rescue, now would they?"
"I guess not," Murdock said.
Hannibal reached behind him and patted Murdock on the head like a dog and replied, "Good boy, now, we're going to need you to help us with this next plan. We are going to go check out Masterson's house and see if we can find anything there, but we need you to keep Frankie and Mad Dog out of sight of both him and the military. If Face can get you a good alias, you can check yourselves into a hotel where nobody will think to look for you, how does that sound?"
"What happens if you get caught?" Murdock asked.
"We'll let you know," Hannibal assured him.
Mad Dog crawled over to Frankie on the floor and whispered to her, "I think we better keep a lookout for an opportunity to bail, we can't have these guys get caught on account of us."
Frankie watched the others and saw nobody had paid any attention to the two of them and she turned to Mad Dog and whispered in response, "Right, if it looks like the army's going to move in again we'll give ourselves up, they can't tie us in to the A-Team in any way, not unless that fool Lynch talked. If he didn't, there's not much they can do with us, but it'll buy the A-Team some time to get away."
Mad Dog nodded slightly and whispered in agreement, "Right."
"Worst thing that can happen is they send us back to the hospital," Frankie said, "At least this time we'll go back together."
"Now remember, Murdock," Hannibal told him when they stopped at a hotel, "Get a room with access to both the fire exit and the elevator."
"I will," Murdock said, "Also, Colonel, I think it would be a good idea to get a room this time with two beds."
"Whatever you think, Murdock," Hannibal said, "If you haven't heard from us in two hours, try our mobile phone, if we're there, give us your room number and when we come in we'll see if the room next door's vacant and we'll hide out here for a while until we can get everything figured out."
"Alright," Murdock replied.
"And make sure you've got all of your things out of the van," Hannibal told him as he passed Murdock's bags to the pilot, "Now that Decker's on the case we don't want him finding anything that ties you to us."
"Yes, Colonel," Murdock pouted.
"Oh but before we leave," Hannibal walked Murdock over towards the elevator and said quietly, "I wanted to get your professional opinion about something." He relayed how the visit at Frankie's parents' had gone and said to Murdock, "You know a little more about the human psyche than the rest of us, what's your take on it?"
"Well Colonel," Murdock said, "Psychiatry is still a new thing for a lot of people, especially child psychiatry, especially 10 years ago, few people knew about it and even fewer actually knew what they were doing. I'd say in Frankie's case she was taken to an inadequate specialist who was not trained in hard cases, of course that doesn't change the fact that Frankie never tried telling anyone except her parents about what happened."
"And what's your opinion on that one?" Hannibal asked.
"She didn't tell anyone else because nobody else needed to be convinced, teachers, doctors, any of them, there wasn't anything any of them could do, ultimately it was her parents' responsibility to take care of the matter, and they failed. Also, from what you told me about them, it sounds like we're looking at something similar to Frankie and Mad Dog here. It sounds like the mother wants to believe Frankie, but her father is dead set against the possibility that this could happen, and whatever the husband decides, the wife goes along with."
"It's like they're a split personality and the father is the dominant personality," Hannibal realized.
"Something like that, it's not uncommon, in Frankie's case she seems to have reversed the order, here she is the dominant personality, clearly she decided she wasn't going to be anything like her mother. Unfortunately a lot of women will choose to believe their husbands over their children," Murdock told him.
Hannibal could put a few of those pieces together himself and he said, "But those are usually when it's the husband abusing the daughter, not the husband's friend."
"It's always hard to pick a side," Murdock said, "Add to the fact that children are notorious for not always telling the truth, it's understandable why some parents choose not to take their word."
"But that doesn't make it right."
"Of course it doesn't," Murdock replied, "Unfortunately it's just the way it is, and Frankie is well old enough to have figured out how it works."
"So," Hannibal wanted to know, "What would your prognosis be for any chance of her reconciling with them?"
"Anytime soon?" Murdock shook his head, "In 10 years…maybe. Or maybe she'll just write a tell-all book."
"When you're famous you write a tell-all book," Hannibal replied, "When you're poor and a nobody, you write a novel based on true events."
Murdock snorted and said, "You think they aren't going to be famous after this?"
Hannibal declined answering, he just told the captain, "Keep an eye on them, and if it you see any sign that the army's sniffing around, get those two and get out of here. We'll find a way to make contact later."
Murdock saluted, "Right. Oh, by the way, Colonel, I think you were right."
"About what?"
"I think we need to enforce keeping Mad Dog and Frankie separate when they sleep."
"Alright…but why? Why now?"
"Maybe one of them will talk in their sleep," Murdock told him, "I still think they're holding something back from us."
"Ah, you get that feeling too, eh?" Hannibal asked.
Murdock nodded. "I don't think it's intentional though, they've had nobody to talk to, or trust, for so long, they don't know how to be completely truthful anymore."
"Think they'll come out of it?" Hannibal asked.
"I'd still feel better about it if we could get Dr. Richter to see them," Murdock said.
Once Hannibal left the floor, Murdock picked up his bags and took them into the room he'd gotten for the three of them until further notice. He went over to the windows and drew the blinds and curtains so nobody could see in; despite B.A.'s affectionate nickname for him, he wasn't fool enough to think that just because they were three flights up, that nobody could see in the windows.
"I think," he said to M.D. and Frankie in a more authoritative voice than he generally used, "It would be a good idea for you two to lie down and rest now, if the army comes we're going to have to make a run for it and if that happens there's no telling when any of us will be lying down again not getting fitted for a pine box."
They started to get on the same bed but Murdock came up screaming incoherent noises like the buzzers in an electronic game and told them, "No, Frankie, you're on this bed, Mad Dog, you take the other."
"How come?" Frankie wanted to know.
"Because this time we're not all crammed into one bed and I'm for keeping it that way," Murdock said as he threw himself back on the other side of Frankie's bed and unzipped his duffel bag.
Frankie saw a side zipper had come undone and a book was sticking out of the slit. She pulled it out and saw it was an old weathered hardcover copy of Peter Pan; she flipped through the pages and looked at the pictures before Murdock cleared his throat and got her attention, in the process about causing her to hit the ceiling.
"Yours?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered as he snatched it back from her.
"I read it once," she said, "Very depressing in my opinion, I preferred the movie."
"Which one?" Murdock asked.
"The one on TV where you could see the wires, with that woman, Mary Martin," Frankie answered.
"The black and white one or the color one?" Murdock asked.
"Is there a difference?" she asked.
"Oh yes," he answered, "It was the same cast but it was 5 years apart."
"Oh…the color one," Frankie said.
"Now why," Murdock asked as he crossed his feet and opened his book to the middle, "Would you say this is depressing?"
"Well think about it," Frankie said, "There's nothing to eat, Michael doesn't even remember his home and thinks his sister has always been his mother, and in the end Tinkerbell obviously dies because she's not around anymore, and Peter can't even remember anything. What the hell kind of story is that?"
"Hmmm, I never thought about it like that," Murdock flipped through to the back of the book and let out a high pitched scream as he noticed several pages were missing, "That mudsucker, he's been eating the pages out of my book again!" he slammed it shut and clasped it to his chest and moaned, "Now how am I ever gonna know how it ends?"
Frankie looked to the other bed in the room and saw that Mad Dog had already fallen asleep. It sounded like a good idea to her too, but she only lay down and half closed her eyes, she was going to keep an eye on things for a while.
Frankie pretended to sleep for a while but she kept her ears sharp for any activity in the room or directly outside. She heard the door open and chanced a look and saw Murdock disappear out into the hall. She didn't know why he left, or what was going on, but she didn't hear any indication of a struggle, so she assumed that he was right outside and would be back in a moment. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and then heard a ding as the elevator stopped on their floor. She heard the elevator doors open, and heard someone step off and heard heavy footsteps coming up the hall to their room.
Frankie closed her eyes for a minute, but then heard the unmistakable sound of somebody breathing over her. Her eyes flew open and she saw Masterson hovering over her, his hands reaching for her neck. Frankie screamed and grabbed him first, one hand squeezing his, the other clawing into his neck as she brought her legs up and kicked him hard repeatedly in both sets of ribs. He was struggling, then Frankie heard people screaming, the voices were familiar, she opened her eyes again and saw that it wasn't Masterson she was attacking, it was Hannibal.
Immediately Frankie let go of him. The colonel took a step back from the bed and breathed heavily as one hand clutched his neck and the other on one set of his ribs. Frankie was in hysterics as she realized what she'd done and about bolted right off the bed but Face and Murdock held her down.
"What do we do with her now?"
"For one thing, get those shoes off of her feet," Hannibal said.
Hannibal grabbed one of the bags on the floor and grabbed a vial and syringe out of it. Frankie struggled on the bed and came close to tearing both the captain and lieutenant apart; when she saw Hannibal moving towards her again she fell flat back against the mattress and became quiet. Hannibal was his usual nonchalant self as he calmly explained to Frankie, "I'm going to give you a shot, it's a slow acting relaxant that's going to help you calm down, and go back to sleep, understand?"
Frankie nodded uncertainly. Hannibal had Face hold her wrist steady as he administered the shot; Frankie didn't scream but she curled her feet and tried digging them under the mattress.
"There," Hannibal said as he removed the needle and stepped back from the bed, "In a few minutes you won't be aware of anything."
Frankie twisted her arm to look at it and she asked Hannibal, "Is this going to be permanent?"
"No, in a couple weeks you won't even be able to see it, the only injection marks that are permanent are for smallpox, and unless you're enlisted, they don't give those anymore," he told her.
"Or if you're a junkie," Frankie replied, "They don't call them track marks for nothing."
Hannibal turned to the others and gestured for them to leave the room, all except Murdock, he suggested the captain stay and keep an eye on her incase anything happened. As they stepped out into the hall, Face and B.A. noticed Hannibal clutching his ribs.
"Are you alright, Hannibal?" Face asked.
"Oh yeah, just a few bruised ribs is all," he answered. He turned to Mad Dog and said, "Tell me something, why has Frankie been terrorized of this man Masterson her whole life? Why didn't she ever give him that kind of treatment? That way all your problems would be over long before now."
"Did you find anything when you searched his house?" Mad Dog asked.
"Oh yeah, we found something," Hannibal said, "A whole bunch of pictures."
"Of Frankie?"
"Frankie, and about a dozen other girls when they were all the same age about 10 years ago," Hannibal told him, "There's no doubt about it, this guy's a certifiable whack job."
"And busy too," Face added.
"What I don't get," Hannibal said, "Is I always thought creeps like this lost interest in their victims when they got older and grew up."
"Well then you don't know Masterson," Mad Dog told him.
"I guess not," Hannibal replied, "Frankie seems to be his pet project, I guess she's the only one on this guy's list that he hasn't been able to get to yet."
"And that's gotta just be driving him crazy," Face added.
"Speaking of Murdock," Hannibal said, "We better make sure Frankie didn't kill him and bury him under the mattress…me and my big mouth."
"What do you mean, Hannibal?" Face asked.
"I wanted a reaction from Frankie, I sure as hell got one," he said.
"I didn't mean to attack Hannibal," Frankie continued to try telling Murdock, something she hadn't quit doing since the two had been left alone in the room.
"I know that, Frankie," he told her.
Murdock had spent their time alone trying to get Frankie comfortable since he knew when the full effect of that shot hit her, she would be out cold for a while. He'd helped her change into a set of his pajamas and had gotten her tucked into bed and dug through his bag until he found what he was looking for, a new teddy bear he'd gotten back at the island gift shop. He had planned to bring it home to his teddy bear at the V.A. so he wouldn't be lonely when Murdock had to leave on missions.
"I didn't know it was him," Frankie said.
"Hannibal knows that, it wasn't your fault," Murdock assured her as he came back over to her.
Frankie managed to open her eyes wider and she saw the teddy bear that had been placed on the bed by her and she looked down at the pajama shirt she was wearing with cartoon characters on it and she looked back up, not at him but instead staring straight ahead with a sour look on her face and she said, "This is demeaning."
"De meaning of what?" Murdock asked with a small laugh.
Frankie's eyes were at half mast again and Murdock could tell she wouldn't last much longer. In his opinion they could've saved some time if he'd brought a pair of pajamas with a T-shirt instead of one to button up.
"Be sure and tell Hannibal that I'm sorry for what happened, tell him I didn't mean to try and kill him," Frankie said.
"I know you didn't, kid," Hannibal said as he loomed over the headboard of the bed and looked down at her, "Just go on to sleep."
Frankie went with little resistance.
"So now what do we do?" Face asked, "What happens if Decker catches us now?"
"We have two options," Hannibal said, "Either we go on ahead, and leave Frankie and Mad Dog here, since the army isn't looking for them, or we take our chances and clear everybody out when we have to."
"Isn't there a third option?" Face asked, "Can't we just pack them back up in the van and get moving now? Frankie will sleep through the trip anyway."
Hannibal shook his head, "We all had a long flight and we're all exhausted, it'll do us all some good to get some rest before we take off again, and to where? Decker knows where we all live and we don't have a whole lot of friends that we can rely on to help us hide out until things cool down. We're as well off here as anyplace for the time being. We'll take turns watching from the windows to make sure we don't get ambushed but it's going to do all of us a world of good to get some sleep before we do anything else."
Mad Dog moved over towards the bed and he pointed to the unoccupied side and said, "I'll stay here with Frankie."
"No you won't," Hannibal told him, "If Frankie has another nightmare like that, you are not equipped to deal with her reactions, we all have experience in that field. Murdock, you'll take this bed, and Face, you and Mad Dog take the other."
"Do I have to?" Face whined.
"Yes!" B.A. told him.
"Just asking," Face quietly replied.