Every Thought Captive
Disclaimer: I do not own The A Team movie or television series or any of the delightful characters found on The A Team.
Chapter 4 One of the Good Guys
As they left Los Angeles via US-15 and headed toward Las Vegas, Hannibal kept his eyes on the moving dot on the tracking screen. By the time the van entered Barstow, the helicopter was about 120 miles north of Las Vegas and heading northeast toward the Nevada-Utah border.
It was then Hannibal knew Amy and Murdock had not simply been kidnapped.
Whoever took them was not seeking ransom or even using them as bargaining chips to get their hands on the team to turn them in and collect a reward. They would have holed up somewhere nearby if that was their plan. There would have been a telephone call to let the team know what they had to do to get their two friends back. They would not have been taken out of state and not into the more remote regions of Nevada.
Whoever these goons are they either don't know about the rest of us or they don't care who we are.
Hannibal didn't know why Amy and Murdock had been taken or by whom but the longer they were on the road, the more convinced he was that they couldn't stop for any extended period of time. They had to keep moving, continue following the tracking device on the mini-camera and hope the chopper landed soon.
Except for a few terse commands the Colonel gave to B. A. to direct them on their way, the three men had been silent for about two and a half hours.
Face broke the silence. "That chopper's going faster than we are and as the crow flies. We're still going to be hours behind them when they do get to their destination. Plenty of time to set up an ambush for us." His hands were white-knuckled fists in his lap.
"That is, if they know or care that we're tracking them. Wherever they land, I'm not about to go in with guns blazing until we have an opportunity to figure out what's going on." Hannibal sat back in his seat and relit his cigar. He squinted through the smoke at the lone screen showing the mini-camera was still in flight somewhere in west central Utah.
Western Utah . . . Great Basin area, salt flats . . . maybe they're going to Salt Lake City? Or . . .
Face interrupted Hannibal's musing. "Whoever they are, there were enough of them covering that building to make sure Amy and Murdock didn't slip past them. Besides whoever was flying the chopper, I counted eight. They weren't associated with Tannini." The Lieutenant shook his head and stared at the Colonel. "So who are they?"
"Someone with an ol' grudge against Murdock? Someone wantin' to keep Amy from a story?" B. A. frowned. Even to him, the second suggestion didn't seem likely. Not with the Tannini story foremost in the reporter's mind. Like the Lieutenant said, these kidnappers were not Tannini's goons.
The first idea didn't make sense either, come to think of it. Anyone bearing a grudge against the Captain would likely have one against the entire team. Not knowing who the captors were or why this happened was unsettling him.
One thing he did know for certain: the blood he saw on the stairway wall was from either Amy or Murdock and it meant their captors didn't care if someone got injured. The thought of that blood smeared on the wall reminded him of another sure thing. Someone was going to pay for whatever harm came to his friends. The muscular Sergeant gripped the steering wheel tighter and pressed a little harder on the accelerator.
Hannibal continued to draw on the cigar and stare out the window at the high desert scenery. "We'll know more when the chopper finally lands." The worry in his voice was not reassuring to either of the other two men.
But when and where are they going to land? was the foremost question none of them spoke aloud.
The van was about two hours away from Las Vegas when the blip on the tracking screen stopped moving. The chopper had landed somewhere in west central Utah. Plotting the location on a map, Hannibal frowned.
"If this is where I think it is, we'll be walking into a lion's den. All the more reason to make sure of what we're doing before we do it."
Face peered at the Colonel. "Why? Where's the bird landed?"
Hannibal's mouth was set in a hard line. "Dugway Proving Grounds."
The Lieutenant pushed his body in the gap between the two front seats to stare at the screen and then at the map. His mouth opened but he remained speechless.
B. A. flashed a surprised look at the Colonel before muttering, "What's the fool gone and got himself into now?"
Three hours passed. The creosote bushes of the Mojave Desert region gave way to the array of vegetation characteristic of the southwestern reaches of the Great Basin. Clumps of green rabbitbrush, desert peach and sagebrush along with other ground-clinging shrubs and grasses dotted the roadside shoulders and hill slopes.
After a little over six hours on the road, B. A. showed signs of road fatigue.
"If you need someone to spell you, Sergeant . . ." the Colonel suggested after the black man snapped awake once more and swerved back onto the road from the shoulder.
The Sergeant tightened his grip on the steering wheel and growled his answer. "Pull off to the side to switch drivers an' we waste time. Fool an' Amy could be dead by the time we get there if we stop 'long the way."
The burly black man rubbed one eye and stifled a yawn. "Besides, nobody gets behind the wheel of my ride but me."
Hannibal glanced at B. A. out of the corner of his eye and smiled grimly. "We should plan on getting gas in Alamo or we'll be running on fumes through some mighty inhospitable country. It's about ten miles from here."
He noted the Sergeant's eyes drift down to the fuel gauge and sullenly nod his agreement.
"Okay. We'll stop . . . but only to gas up."
Hannibal's hand strayed to the vial of etomidate in his pocket. He knew B. A. was worried but they couldn't charge into the situation like the Sergeant wanted after twelve hours on the road either.
Whether B. A. wants to or not, he's going to take a nap. All of us need to be well-rested if we're going to rescue Amy and Murdock.
oooooo
Plunk . . . plunk . . .
The water droplets continued to fall, each plunk spaced a second after the preceding one. Murdock knew that to be true. After Amy was taken from the room, he started counting out loud, "One thousand one, one thousand two . . ." in time to the dripping tap. He got all the way to "one thousand sixty-seven" before giving it up for something that would better focus his thoughts.
He was running out of ways to keep his mind from hallucinating.
If they wanted me so bad, why ain' one o' them comin' t' tell me why they tracked me down? Bein' 'lone like this's gonna drive me crazy 'fore long. 'N' they got Amy somewhere. No tellin' what they're gonna do t' her once they figure out she's a reporter.
He leaned his head back as far as it would go to relieve the tension in his shoulders and groaned with frustration.
Nothin' I can do but wait, try t' keep my min' clear.
For a while, he tried to name every comic book superhero and villain he could think of using the alphabet.
Avalanche . . . definitely a supervillain . . .
. . . um, Bullseye, 'nother villain . . .
. . . Captain 'merica . . . good guy . . .
As he thought of Captain America and the serum that transformed Steve Rogers into the superhero, Murdock shuddered.
Stuff like that's way too close t' the truth, ' least the part where they drug ya t' make ya inta somethin' they can use. 'N' all in the name o' doin' somethin' for the good o' the country ya love.
His thoughts swirled as he remembered his own recruitment into the Agency. Henderson told him the experiments he was volunteering for were vital to the security of the United States. Henderson told him they had been tracking him for quite some time, had noticed his above-average intelligence. His talents could be used to fight the communist threat. He believed him.
He had never thought of himself as superhero material. He was just doing what he could to fight for right.
Visions surfaced in his mind of being strapped down to a gurney for hours, his head encased in a close-fitting hood that kept him from seeing and hearing. He remembered an IV in one arm that fed him barbiturates until he almost fell asleep. Then it was shut down to allow amphetamines coursing through the other IV to drive him to the point of convulsions. Try as he might, he never did figure out the purpose of that particular experiment for which he was an involuntary volunteer. Then there was the remote viewing, the travel through dimensions of time and space.
Like the Twilight Zone, only scarier.
He shook his head to clear his mind of the memories and continued on with his alphabetical name game.
D . . . Daredevil . . . one o' the good guys . . .