Hannibal and B.A. had heard the others coming and felt relieved to know that Murdock and the others had just fallen behind somewhere. But they quickly realized that wasn't the entire situation. Mad Dog beat the brick wall behind the alley with his fists to get out his frustration as he yoyo-ed between hysteria and rage. The A-Team watched as he injured his hands and staggered away, and came back, trying to say what was raging through him but now it just came through in sobs and tears.
"Why did they have to take her?" he went over to Murdock and yelled at him, "Why did you let them take her?"
Murdock hugged Mad Dog tightly so he couldn't get loose and hurt himself or someone else and told him, "I'm sorry, M.D., but I had to."
"What do you mean you had to?"
"If they'd caught you, they'd run your prints and find out you were arrested for murder and you'd go right back to jail," Murdock explained, "I could only grab one of you, so I got you, Frankie's got the least to lose between the two of you."
"How can you say that? Don't you know what she's already been put through?" M.D. screamed at him.
Hannibal came between them and knocked some sense into the young man, "Mad Dog, if they run Frankie's prints and they will, they're not going to come up with anything, she wasn't arrested, she wasn't even put in the hospital by a judge, her parents had her admitted, there's nothing they can do with her, they have nobody to turn her over to. She'll be alright until we can get rescue her."
This may have gotten through to Mad Dog but it didn't do his own composure any good. He buried his face in Murdock's shoulder and let out a long half muffled wail. Murdock hugged Mad Dog, this time genuinely instead of just trying to pin his arms down, and rubbed one hand around in circles on the distraught younger man's back.
"Just take it easy, Mad Dog, now listen to me," Hannibal told him, "Decker is not going to hurt Frankie, beating on a woman would be beneath even him."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Yes, believe me, she'll be alright," Hannibal said.
Murdoch took in a shaky breath and tried to pull himself together, "Alright."
"Alright, Murdock, take him for a little walk so he can clear his head, we're going to go get the van and make sure the MPs didn't try planting any bugs on it," Hannibal said.
"Sure thing, Colonel," Murdock said, he patted Mad Dog on the back and led him down the street, "Come on."
Everybody waited until the two men were out of sight and then Face asked Hannibal, "So how bad do you think it's going to be for Frankie?"
"Well, I stand by my previous statement, Decker is not going to put his hands on Frankie, that much we can be sure of," Hannibal told them.
"We don't know that the MPs won't though," Face reminded him.
"I doubt it," Hannibal insisted, "We're not quite so equalized that most people are alright yet with the idea of beating a confession out of women like they do with men. Now, since Frankie has no record, her prints are not going to come back with anything damning on her, so they can't identify her, and since they don't have a secondary authority to hand her over to, they're going to keep her with them until she tells them what they want to know about us."
"And she's not going to do that," B.A. said.
"Are you sure?" Face asked.
"Why would she?" Hannibal asked.
"Well let's face it, Hannibal, we don't know what Decker might try during his interrogation," Face said.
"What's to be worried about?" Hannibal asked, "Intelligence isn't Decker's strong suit."
"I know that's the problem," Face replied, "The man's short on conversation and overloaded on action."
Name, rank, and serial number. Those were the only things you were supposed to give when you were captured and interrogated. But Frankie had no rank or serial number, so she hadn't said anything since giving the MPs her name. She, Mad Dog, and Murdock had been running behind the others; ironic since they had been the first ones out of the restaurant. But anyway, they had been running through the street to catch up with Hannibal, Face and B.A., and Murdock had kicked a metal trashcan he hadn't seen and it fell over and tripped both Frankie and Mad Dog and they fell down. It had happened so fast Frankie hadn't even known what had happened, all she knew was something happened to her legs and then she was falling and hit the uneven asphalt street underneath her. She hadn't seen anything, but she could hear both Murdock and Mad Dog, screaming and getting up, and then she heard the MPs come up behind her and grab her. They turned her over and pulled her to her feet and handcuffed her and took her back to one of their cars.
And now, here she was in the Federal Building where Decker worked, a prisoner of the MPs. They'd taken her down the hall after stopping at Decker's office and taken her handcuffs off to take her fingerprints. They were going to run them and see what they could find about her. As they did that, Frankie tried desperately to think and to remember everything that Murdock had taught her about acting insane. The first thing she remembered was him telling her not to respond to anything, no matter what was going on. Unfortunately she was too nervous and too worked up not to respond. She also felt mad that she'd been caught. Maybe she should've been mad at the others for leaving her, but she knew it wasn't their fault and that it couldn't have been helped. She would much rather she be here instead of Mad Dog, if they took his prints they'd know he had been arrested and AWOL from the hospital. So right now it was all on her, she had to come up with something to do to keep these guys from finding out anything that she knew.
A light bulb went off in her head. She needed to buy some time to think, to get her act together, so she would react, and she would be sick. The man called Crane and the MP who had escorted her into the room weren't paying attention to her, only to getting her prints. Frankie wrestled her hand out from under his grasp and pulled it back, as if being printed was hurting her. Both men grabbed her and forced her to comply with their order to take her fingerprints; and they still weren't watching her, so she let her mouth drop open and she breathed heavily like a panting dog. Deep breaths, shallow breaths, fast, slow, in, out, in, out, her mouth was dry, she felt hot, she rolled her eyes around and felt nauseated and dizzy. When they finally let go of her to put the cuffs back on her she collapsed to the floor and seemed to pass out. She heard Crane go to the door, open it and call out, "We need a doctor in here!"
"Well, what is it?" Decker asked when the doctor came out of the room they'd taken Frankie in so he could examine her.
"As far as I can tell, other than a little mild bruising she only seems to be suffering from slight dehydration, overheating and exhaustion," the doctor explained.
"That's all?" Decker asked.
"That's all," the doctor glared at Decker knowingly and added in a lower and more intimidating tone, "But if I have to examine her again and find any new bruises on her, I'm going to report every last man in this building."
Decker didn't take kindly to being threatened or told what he could and couldn't do and he told the doctor, "This woman is suspected of involvement with the fugitive A-Team."
The doctor snorted and replied, "I don't care if she shot both Kennedys, if you want to interrogate her, that's fine, I can't stop that, but if I even suspect the interrogation reaches a physical point, I'll personally see to it that I get your head on a silver platter, understood, Colonel?"
"Did she say anything?" Captain Crane asked.
"Not a word," the doctor answered.
Crane looked towards the room the doctor had just exited from and caught a glimpse of the girl sitting at the table. He asked the doctor, "How old would you say she is?"
"These days, who can tell? If I had to guess I'd say maybe 16, 17, maybe 18 but I wouldn't guess too likely after that," the doctor said.
"Thank you, doctor," Decker said dismissively.
Well, that had bought Frankie a little time to work out a plan. While the doctor was examining her she had a better chance to figure out what she was going to do. The only thing now was making sure that she didn't respond, that her facial expressions gave nothing away, that she remained a brick wall amidst a bunch of craziness. Right now she knew that was her only chance at getting out of here without giving away anything about the A-Team. She didn't know what Decker had planned but she had already decided on what would be done; if he tortured her, if he broke the fingers on her hands, or her ribs, or any of her bones, oh yes she would scream, but she would say nothing. And if he got the bright idea to put her before a firing squad, she would go out singing.
The door opened and Decker came in. Showtime.
"In a couple of hours we're going to get the report back on your fingerprints and we're going to find out who you really are," he told her as he sat down across the table from her, "I can tell you right now it's going to go a lot easier on you if you just tell us what we want to know up front."
She could always try the 'deaf and dumb' act but that wouldn't be near as much fun as saying what she had planned. She cleared his throat and asked him, "What do you want to know?"
"For starters, how about your real name?" Decker asked.
"I told those other people already," she said.
"Franklin Murdock?"
Well it was close enough, "Yes."
Decker groaned and looked like he was getting a migraine now.
"What is your connection to the A-Team?" he asked.
"Who?" Frankie asked.
Decker looked like he choked on something trying to come up and he half rose from his chair to tower over her and told her, "Now don't start playing dumb with me."
"Who's playing?" Frankie asked him innocently.
"You really mean to say you weren't with the A-Team when we caught you earlier tonight?" Decker asked.
"Who?"
"Who? Who? What are you, a damn owl?" Decker asked.
"That depends, what's it pay?" Frankie asked.
Deflecting questions with other questions, she didn't know how long she could keep that up for but she was enjoying seeing Decker slowly lose his patience with her. Slow burner nothing, this guy could burn through 10 Edgar Kennedys like they were one matchstick.
Decker leaned over and grabbed her wrist tightly and asked her, "Were you with the A-Team when they busted out of that storage garage the other day?"
"Who? What? Where?" Frankie asked, sounding even more clueless with each question. She pulled her arm loose from his grip and stood up and faced him and told him, "If I'm under arrest, I want a lawyer."
Decker laughed, no humor in it whatsoever, a laugh that for most people would be enough to turn their blood cold and freeze it in their veins. Frankie just looked at him with intrigue.
"If I find out you were acting as an accomplice with the A-Team, no lawyer is going to be able to help you," he told her.
"Oh yeah?" Frankie asked as she assumed a defensive position and placed her fists by her hips.
The door opened and Crane came in, "Colonel, may I speak with you?"
Decker turned and asked, "What is it, Crane?"
"In private, sir?" Crane gestured outside.
Decker locked Frankie in and asked, "Alright Crane, what is it?"
"Just a thought, sir, is it possible that she's one of the hostages that the A-Team had with them?" Crane asked, as Decker opened his mouth to respond, Crane reminded him, "We never found out who those people were, it's not impossible to believe that they could have taken a couple of people hostage to ensure their escape, is it?"
Decker grumbled under his breath as he felt the fight leaving him, "I suppose not, all the same if she was with them at all, we're going to get some answers out of her."
They returned into the room and now Decker really wondered what she was doing; Frankie was standing with one foot on her chair and the other on the table and her arms spread out like bird's wings and was laughing like Woody Woodpecker. Then she started singing, "That's the Woody Woodpecker song, he's a pecking it all day long," she jumped onto the table and took two large steps towards them and continued, "He pecks a few holes in a tree to see if a redwood's really red, and it's nothing to him on the tiniest whim to peck a few," she reached down and rapidly poked Decker in the head with her fingertip, "Holes in your head."
Decker slapped her hand away and barked at her, "Get off of that table!"
"I can't," Frankie told him.
"What do you mean you can't?" Decker asked.
"Shhhh, it'll hear you," Frankie told him in a hushed whisper.
"What will?"
Frankie avoided answering that and said only, "It's down there right now, just waiting for me to come down, and the second I do it's going to attack."
Frankie was just about to do a swan dive off the table and onto Decker, he closed the gap between his face and hers and asked her, "What is going to attack?"
"The ammonia they use to clean the floor," Frankie explained. She'd been paying very close attention to Murdock, when he spoke, she listened, and when he went off on a rampage or a tirade, she took notes. She leaned in closer to Decker's face and told him, "It lays in wait on the tiles and just waits for you to step somewhere without even watching, and then it jumps up and bites, it eats through the soles of your shoes, and it burns your feet," and she about shoved one of hers into his mouth to show him. Before Decker could respond, Frankie jumped off the table and onto his back and screamed, "Look out it's on the move now!"
The sudden assault took Decker by surprise and they both fell on the floor. Crane pulled Frankie off of Decker and helped the Colonel up. In those few seconds, Frankie thought back to something she'd mentioned to Murdock, a theory of her own, that when you were crazy you didn't have any sense of loyalty to anyone or anything, not the government, not your own country. And with that in mind, she thought of a couple other songs that, in most places of the world, she would probably get shot for singing, but here and now she decided she didn't have anything to lose.
She pressed herself back against the wall and randomly burst out singing as the two men in green came towards her again, "I'm a good ol' Rebel now that's just what I am, for this fair land of freedom I do not care a damn. I'm glad I fought against it, I only wished we'd won, and I don't want no pardon for anything I done. I hates the Constitution, this great Republic too, I hates the freed man's bureau in uniforms of blue, I hates the nasty eagle with all its bragging fuss, and the lying thieving Yankees I hates them even worse." Decker and Crane each grabbed a side of her and lifted her off her feet and forcibly carried her out the door and down the hall, but all the time she never quit singing that song she'd learned so many years ago from her grandmother who came from the Deep South. She remembered when her parents had caught her singing it and she remembered getting slapped for it, and as she remembered she just sang louder as they went down the corridor.
"I hates the Yankee nation and everything they do, I hates the Declaration of Independence too, I hates the glorious Union, 'tis dripping with our blood, and I hates the striped banner, I fought it all I could. I rode with Robert E. Lee for 3 years near about, got wounded in 4 places and starved at Point Lookout, I catched the rheumatism camping in the snow, but I killed a chance of Yankees and I'd like to kill some more. 300,000 Yankees lie stiff in southern dust, we got 300 thousand before they conquered us, they died of southern fever and southern steel and shot, and I wished it was 3 million instead of what we got. I can't take up my musket and fight 'em now no more, but I ain't gonna love 'em now that is certain sure, and I don't want no pardon for what I was and am, and I will not be reconstructed and I do not give a damn. I'm a good ol' Rebel, now that's just what I am, for this fair land of freedom I do not care a damn, I'm glad I fought against it I only wished we won, and I don't want no pardon for anything I done."
"Colonel," Crane said as they put her down, "You think maybe we need to get another doctor to look at her?"
"For what, a second opinion?" Decker sniped.
"No sir, maybe a psychiatric doctor," Crane told him, "She doesn't seem quite right to me."
Decker snorted and said, "After that little number I should sure as hell hope not, Crane."
Frankie turned towards Decker and spit in his eye and started belting out the chorus of another song and was actually clapping and stomping one foot in time with the beat, "And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, the next stop is Vietnam, and it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates. Well there ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee, we're all gonna die!"
"You might have something there," Decker told Crane as they lifted her up again and proceeded to move her to another room.
Frankie meanwhile continued to sing and completely ignored the manhandling she was receiving, "Well come on Generals let's move fast, your big chance has come at last, gotta go out and get those Reds, the only good commie is one that's dead, and you know peace can only be won when we blow 'em all to Kingdom Come. Come on Wall Street, don't be slow, this war is a-go-go, there's plenty good money to be made by supplying the Army the tools of its trade, and just hope and pray if they drop the bomb, that they drop it on the Viet-Cong!" At face value she was as cuckoo as a clock bird but inside she had the common sense to be thankful that the A-Team wasn't here to see this demonstration; she had half a mind to shoot herself for the things she was doing but right now all that mattered was that she could keep them fooled and keep them too busy with her to go out and catch the others. In any case when it came down to it, Frankie really doubted that Decker was smart enough to be offended by anything she did here tonight.
"Well," Decker concluded as they reached the desired room and set Frankie down inside of it, "She may not be what we were looking for, but all the same I think this one belongs in the mental hospital as well. Crane, what's the nearest psychiatric ward around here?"
"That's the V.A. hospital, sir," Crane answered.
Decker took half a glance at Frankie and said dismissively, "Well she didn't come from there, that much is for sure, check with some of the other hospitals in the area and see if there's anybody missing who matches this woman's description."
"Right away, sir," Crane said as he left the room.
Decker closed the door behind him and locked it, then turned his attention back to Frankie and said, "I don't know what your game is, but one way or the other I'm going to settle my problem with you indefinitely."
"You come near me and I'll yell rape," Frankie told him, as casually as if she were giving him the weather report.
"You'll do what?" Decker asked, as if daring her to go through with it.
Frankie stood her ground and repeated, "I'll-yell-rape." Then she half turned and looking to the other side, said in a different tone, in a different, slightly higher pitch of voice, "And now for their next number, the Spike Jones band will present their timeless classic, 'Der Fuhrer's Face' which has been sweeping the country, and isn't it well?" Murdock had one up on her here, she couldn't do a German accent to save her life, but she proceeded anyway, "When Herr Goebbels says we own the world and space, we heil, heil!" she blew a couple of particularly wet razzberries at Decker, "Right in Herr Goebbels' face, when Herr Goring says they'll never bomb this place, we heil, heil, right in Herr Goring's face! When der Fuhrer says, we will never be slaves, we heil, heil, but still we work like slaves, while der Fuhrer brags, and lies and rants and raves, we heil, heil, and work into our graves. When der Fuhrer yells 'I gotta have more shells!' We heil! Heil! For him we make more shells, if one little shell should blow him right to," Frankie kicked the wall and continued as the song wound down and came to a close, "We heil, heil, and wouldn't that be swell?"
Decker grabbed her by her shirt and shoved her back against the wall and said to her, "I think you're faking this whole thing, I suspect that you are pretending to be insane."
"I'm not insane," Frankie told him, "I am only crazy." She shoved against Decker and pushed him back and said, "The doctor I was sent to found I was suffering from lack of oxygen and carbon monoxide so he advised me to take a walk, and I met a dog!" she slowly sank down to all fours growling and snarling the entire time. If Decker still had his doubts about the validity of her behavior, it was momentarily masked as he took a step back from her and looked like he actually thought she was going to bite him.
And then, as unexpectedly as it had started, she stopped, and got back to her feet, and she looked around the room and whistled as if calling a dog, "Billy! Billy, where'd you go?"
"Who!?" Decker asked.
"Billy, my dog, well actually he ain't mine, I'm watching him for a friend," Frankie explained, "Oh here he comes now, Billy, get over here!"
Okay, so Decker was starting to reconsider the possibility that this could be real, if for no other reason because it was simply too exhausting to keep up with this, let alone to intentionally be doing it.
Frankie pantomimed petting a dog that it seemed had to have come up to her chest, and then she pantomimed putting a leash on him, and then her feet started fidgeting as she seemed to be struggling with the big dog, "Whoa, boy, whoa, calm down, we ain't going yet." She looked to Decker and said, "He's a nice boy, doesn't usually bite until he's provoked, but ooh he can climb trees, he can WHOA!" Frankie threw herself forward as if she had suddenly been pulled off balance and seemed to be dragged along the floor a few inches before she drew her wrist back and said, "He chewed through another leash! Well, back to the drawing board."
The doorknob turned and Crane looked in but didn't stick his head in this time, "Colonel Decker, sir?"
"What now, Crane?" Decker asked.
"Just got a report back on the prints, nothing," Crane told him.
"Oh that's just great," Decker flatly replied, "Anything on the hospitals yet?"
"Not yet, sir, we seem to be having trouble with the phones," Crane explained.
"Well get somebody from the telephone company up here to take a look at them," Decker said, "I want to find out where this macadamia nut came from."
"I'm not a nut," Frankie insisted as she went over to Decker and poked him in the chest, "I'm a ketchup bottle, Heinz, only the best of the best around here."
Decker turned back to Crane and repeated, "Get someone up here to fix those phones, and hurry."
"Okay, Hannibal, I got it fixed so they can't make any outgoing calls, but they can receive incoming ones," B.A. said.
"That's great," Hannibal told him.
"So what're we going to do, Hannibal?" Face asked.
"The best thing we can do right now is get Decker out of the building and away from Frankie," Hannibal said, "And right now the only thing that's going to do that is if he comes chasing after us."
Face started to look a little worried and he asked Hannibal, "What're you going to do, call him up and tell him where we are?"
"Something to that effect," Hannibal answered as he pinched his throat and then cleared it, "But it won't be near as fun just flat out calling him as ourselves, if we can send him on a wild goose chase as a concerned citizen who has been threatened by the A-Team…" he grinned and started to laugh at the idea.
Face was less than thrilled with it, however, "As much as I like using any means necessary to make Decker look like a jackass, I still think using their own propaganda against them is going to blow up in our face someday."
"Well we'll worry about the ka-boom later, right now we've gotta get Frankie out of there," Murdock said.
"No, first we have to get Decker out of there," Hannibal corrected him, "And I think I know just how to do it."
"Crane!" Decker marched down the hall and found his captain waiting for the next job.
"Yes, Colonel?"
"We're going to have to leave a couple of MPs with that woman, I just got a call from an old woman who said that the A-Team busted into her family's home, held them all at gunpoint, then smashed the place up and left, but told her they'd be back," Decker told him.
Crane nodded but his eyes narrowed into squinted slits and he said, "Sounds a bit off for the A-Team, doesn't it, sir?"
"Never put anything past the A-Team, Crane, now let's go," Decker told him.
"Right, I'll get a couple MPs assigned to the holding room," he replied, "Speaking of which, did you get anything out of her?"
"That is one onion I'm going to need to peel the layers back with a paring knife," Decker told him.
Crane found a couple of MPs around the corner and told them which room Frankie was being held in and said for one of them to stay with her at all times to make sure she didn't try anything. He also mentioned for one of them to take her in some water to drink to make sure they didn't have to call the doctor in again. And with that the two walked out the front door of the building and went to Decker's car.
From a distance where they couldn't be spotted, the A-Team watched them leave.
"The foxes have left the henhouse," Face said, "So now what do we do?"
"I've got it, I've got it!" Murdock told the others, "Everybody leave it to me."
"Ooh man, Lord help us all if that crazy fool's got a plan," B.A. grumbled.
Author's note: Lot of music used for this chapter and a lot of it a bit controversial, but all the same, all credit must be placed where credit is due. The songs used for this chapter were: "The Woody Woodpecker Song" created by George Tibbles and Ramey Idriss; "Unreconstructed Rebel" printed in 1914 and written by Major Innes Randolph; "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" by Country Joe and the Fish; and "Der Fuhrer's Face", which was done by the Spike Jones band but with lyrics used from the 1943 Donald Duck cartoon of the same name. All standard disclaimers apply to each and every one: don't own, no infringement intended, etc.