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Disclaimer: I do not own The A Team movie or television series or any of the delightful characters found on The A Team.
As Hannibal and Face approached the cabin's front door, they could hear undistinguishable words coming from the man inside. Partly choked sobs, partly a mixture of Vietnamese and English, the things Murdock was saying wouldn't have made sense to anyone who hadn't ever sat with him after an interrogation in the POW camp or witnessed him surfacing from the dark terror of a nightmare.
"We have to make sure where his gun is. I'm looking for suggestions, Lieutenant." Hannibal scrubbed his face with one hand as they paused by the door.
"Well, why don't we just walk right in and say hi and see if he shoots one of us?" Face's sarcasm bit at the Colonel. He continued with his angry outburst. "You were the one who thought he could be left alone to protect Melody."
"Normally he could have. Even when he's been injured in the past he's dependable. I didn't think he would get this bad this fast. And I didn't have a lot of choices." Hannibal hissed back in a tone which was just as cutting.
Dammit, what was I supposed to do?
Face ran his hand through his hair and forced out a mumbled apology. "Sorry, Colonel. It's just . . . that's Murdock in there. I'd risk getting caught by Decker just to make sure he didn't die, if that was what it took."
The older man patted the Lieutenant's shoulder. "I know. I feel the same way." He sighed. "We'll have to wait him out and be ready to get in there quick if it sounds like he's going to do something to himself."
For several minutes all they could hear was the ranting cry of someone who believed he had just killed his peter pilot and crew chief in a chopper crash.
Hannibal remembered that crash in Happy Valley.
We were on our way to a drop off near the Laotian border. Mortar rounds hit the tail rotor and we went down like a duck hit with machine gun fire. Somehow we managed to get everyone off the chopper but . . .
Lazzard, the peter pilot, had half his skull broken open. Collins, the crew chief who had been with Murdock almost from his first days in Nam, gulped in great gasps of air as a steady plume of arterial blood spurted from the gash in his chest and spattered the grass. The blood from both men speckled Murdock's flight suit as he unsuccessfully tried to revive them enough to escape the approaching enemy and their signal whistles. Within minutes, both men died from their injuries.
Hannibal remembered the pilot's wide-eyed horrified look as he scrambled from one to the other begging them to live. B. A. had to drag Murdock away from his two crew members and leave the corpses amidst the smoke, elephant grass and fumes of JP-4 from the Huey's fuel tanks.
. . . and Murdock blamed himself for the crash, for those deaths, for our capture that landed us in Major Trình's camp. He tries to stuff it away in the deepest corners of his memory. He tries to hide it all beneath petting invisible dogs, teasing B. A. and slipping into one character after another but it's still there.
A hand on his shoulder brought Hannibal back to the present. The Lieutenant had an apologetic look on his face as he murmured, "You couldn't have known that firework would do this. Hell, we've all been to see the fireworks on the Fourth of July almost every year since we've been back. He usually enjoys them as much as the rest of us."
That's the word: usually. Fireworks don't usually trigger his flashbacks but he's delirious. It doesn't take as much to send him into the memories. The pain and delirium strips him of his normal defenses. I should have known.
"All we need to worry about right now is disarming him. There's no time for blame games." Hannibal gritted his teeth, knowing that if anything happened to the pilot, he would live with the guilt for a very long time.
"I don't know how we're going to do that if he thinks we're the VC coming to take him to . . . "
"Shhh. Listen!" Hannibal interrupted the con man with a finger to his lips. Unsteady shuffling feet approached the other side of the door. The Colonel put out one hand and motioned for Face to follow him into the shadows.
If he doesn't see anyone, maybe he'll drop his defenses and leave the cabin so we can get to him easier.
The cabin door slowly creaked open. One look at the ghostly pale face of the man who staggered out onto the doorstep almost persuaded Hannibal into action.
Murdock clutched his wounded arm. His finger curled around the trigger of his Browning. As the gun dangled in his loose grip at his side, blood dripped from the end of the barrel to the rain-slick wood steps.
He gazed around him at his surroundings as if trying to figure out where he was after waking from a nightmare. Spotting the dim illumination of gentle ripples through the trees, he stumbled down the worn dirt path leading to the dock on the lake.
"What's he up to, Hannibal?" Face whispered at the Colonel's side.
The older man frowned and shook his head, motioning to follow but not too closely. A larger dark figure sneaked toward Murdock from the parked van.
After two steps, the pilot's grip on his pistol loosened and the weapon dropped in the grass beside the path. He seemed not to notice. Murdock continued to walk, his attention fixated on the lake and B. A. quietly, steadily approached from his left, closing the distance slowly.
"Now, B. A.!" Hannibal yelled.
And the black Sergeant moved.