Chapter Four - No Man Left Behind
The mission had gone to shit right around the time the crime boss recognized Face as the one he'd seen sneaking from his twenty-three year old daughter's room the night previous. The rest of the team had briefly glared at the sheepish conman before making their way toward the exit. Dodging gun-wielding minions, they were horrified when their car exploded from an inconvenient goon with a rocket launcher.
Murdock, ever the bloodhound when it came to sniffing out aircraft, was the one who'd first spotted the little Cessna 172 Skyhawk. It was a tight fit, but they all managed to get aboard. It was tough at first convincing Bosco that "airplane good - bullets bad," but he seemed to get the message when a nearly lucky shot succeeded in trimming his mohawk for him.
Unfortunately for them, the little airplane wasn't built to deflect bullets and the baddies on the ground seemed to be in no hurry to go on a lunch break.
Murdock wrestled with the controls that were less eager to respond by the minute. "You boys may want to start looking for parachutes, and I ain't talkin' narcotics muchachos!"
Face gulped. Their situation must be really bad if James Murdock was looking to bail out. In fact, with all the crashes they had previously endured, this was the very first one in which the pilot had made that decision. Needless to say they all started frantically searching the aircraft, knowing that the odds of them finding more than one chute in the tiny cabin were miniscule. These birds were simply not built for taking up groups of skydivers.
Murdock found one stuck underneath his seat and threw it over his shoulder, accidently hitting Bosco in the face. The big guy was much too freaked out to snarl, instead strapping the device to his body as snugly as he was able. Hannibal sighed in relief when he discovered a second stowed in the cargo hold behind the two back seats. Thankfully, he also pulled out a couple of harnesses from another box.
"Okay, we've only got two chutes so we'll have to make tandem jumps." Hannibal passed the parachute and a harness up to Face, who struggled to strap the safety device in the tiny confines of the cockpit. The colonel, meanwhile had secured his own harness and clipped himself to the burly corporal. "How we doing on altitude, Murdock?"
"As long as we bail in the next three minutes, we should be golden, Colonel." Murdock tried to help Face the best he could as the conman worked to get the pilot into his harness, but it was nearly impossible to do so while the pilot was seated.
And the pilot couldn't afford to pull away from the yoke for even a second, lest the plane drop too low to allow his team to safely jump.
Hannibal wished them luck before ordering B.A. out the door. Oddly enough the large black man was more easily persuaded to jump out of a flying aircraft than to step into a grounded one.
"Lift your butt, Murdock…."
"Nah, you go ahead and jump, Facey. I got this." Face looked at the pilot uncomprehendingly for a moment.
"Exsqueeze me?" An indignant tone laced his words as the pilot's meaning became clear. Anger allowed him to finish shimmying the harness up the other man's body, where he clipped it firmly. "I'm not jumping without you, fucker!"
Murdock glared at his friend. "I'll have you know that it is the captain's duty and privilege to go down with his ship, and I'd be proud to do so."
Face sighed. "Listen Murdock, if what you told Hannibal is true then we've got about one and a half minutes until we can no longer jump without turning into hamburger meat on impact. Can you give it to me straight, just once… no puppet shows, funny accents, or songs. Why aren't you jumping?"
Murdock tightened his hands on the yoke as the plane gave another sickening lurch. "I can't let her go, Faceman. If I did, she'd drop too low for you to make it out in one piece."
Templeton hitched a breath in terror of what his friend was telling him. "Can't you put it on autopilot?" Murdock had started shaking his head before Face had finished his sentence.
"Autopilot was damaged in the firefight." Green eyes met blue. "You'd better go, Face. I'll do my best to land this little birdy in one piece, but I know you guys'll come for me soon regardless."
Face took a deep breath. "Okay, bud. You're gonna be okay… I promise." Reaching around the pilot as if to offer a hug, he instead grabbed the shorter man and yanked him away from the controls before hastily clipping their harnesses together and diving from the falling plane. Murdock was screaming at him the entire way down, but the younger man didn't care. Yes, they may hit the ground too fast, and they may even be scattered across the forest in teeny bits too small for a proper burial.
But if they did go, they'd go together, damn it.
Luck was with them during the fall, the lieutenant determined, when the parachute was snagged by a huge oak tree. Murdock was still glaring heatedly at his best friend as they dangled there twenty feet above the ground awaiting rescue from the other half of their team.
They swayed back and forth with the wind, neither saying a word until, "Aw come on, Murdock! Did you really expect me to leave you there?"
No answer. Murdock had turned back around to stare morosely at the surrounding greenery.
"You're being an asshole, James." Failing to get a rise out of his friend, Temp sighed. "Okay… if our positions had been reversed would you have left me up there?"
He felt the sigh vibrate in his own chest before he heard it. "No… I just didn't want you to get killed, Facey. Especially not 'cause of me."
If the con artist had had a baseball bat, he probably would have happily given his friend a concussion. Since he didn't, however, he settled for a sound smack upside the head with his palm.
"Ow!" Face didn't let him complain long, however. "Shut up, you moron! You're not the one who shot holes in the plane. It was my fault we had to make a fast getaway to begin with! And I don't care who screws up on whatever fucking job we're doing, okay? I will never leave you behind!"
Murdock was silent for so long that Temp thought that maybe he'd fallen asleep until he'd heard a whispered, "Thanks, Face," moments before faint sounds of Hannibal's and B.A.'s calls reached their ears.
Face affectionately clasped the other man's shoulder before their screams answered their teammates'.
I thought about taking this time to complain about the major ordeal I've gone through in the last day, but decided that it would make a funny story instead. Therefore, I plan to have a new drabble up soon with Face as the central character and it will be based on true events.
On a related note, I'm sorry I haven't answered all your wonderful reviews and questions yet... they will be coming after this chapter is posted.