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 47 Close But Not Quite
The last thought transfer the military man made in the hospital room about the fate of the pilot's four friends had caused Murdock to withdraw inside himself. Jackson kept the attending nurse from trying too hard to engage the brooding patient in conversation by answering her himself.
As soon as she transferred Murdock to the front seat of the dark blue sedan, the nurse patted him gently on the knee. When there was no response, she smiled sympathetically at the military man before taking the wheelchair back into the hospital.
The Colonel finished fastening the seat belt around his passenger and frowned down at him. He hadn't intended this kind of reaction. When Murdock got too far inside his own head, it became somewhat more difficult for Jackson to control his thoughts.
Colonel Jackson dug the electronic equipment he had given the pilot out of his pocket. Placing the ear buds in Murdock's ears, he switched on the transistor radio and lied. "This'll relax you, maybe even help you sleep for a while on the road. You look exhausted."
As the military man made his way to the driver's seat of the dark blue sedan, Murdock resisted the urge to sigh in relief. He was beginning to understand a little about how to partially block Jackson from monitoring his thoughts. The key was to get him to believe he wasn't thinking about anything but bad memories.
At first, Jackson held a morbid fascination with the memories of intense torture the Captain had suffered in the POW camps. He thought almost that Jackson got a thrill out of watching the pilot suffer. And for some reason Murdock could not understand, he seemed to be remembering those nightmare episodes more often. Those and other dark incidents that happened in Nam and every brutal beating his father and classmates had given him.
But recently, Jackson let him 'see' and 'feel' all of the torture on his own. He had lost interest and no longer intently observed the agony Murdock went through each time he revisited the ghosts of his past.
Over the radio, Gracie Slick was singing about Alice in Wonderland and the white rabbit again. It seemed to be a popular song with this particular station but the pilot wasn't in the mood to try to figure that out. He would have preferred something other than a station that played songs from the 60s. They reminded him too much of everything he wanted to push into the darkest recesses of his mind.
Murdock pretended to drift asleep as Jackson started the rental car engine and moved toward the street. He knew the Colonel wouldn't be as vigilant if he was dreaming about Vietnam. He let his eyelids close and his mouth gape open slightly.
The memory he chose had to be a painful one. It was the only way he knew to get Jackson to leave his mind alone.
He allowed himself to think about one of the many times he had been trussed up in the ropes and hung from the hook in the ceiling of the interrogation hut. His arms secured behind him, his elbows touching, his shoulder joints dislocating as he hung, it was a memory that woke him screaming some nights at the VA hospital. He let out a whimper to trick Jackson into believing he was asleep.
It worked.
He felt the Colonel disengage from probing his thoughts and turn his attention to his driving.
Billy whispered to him as soon as it was safe to do so. They ain' that far 'way, brother.
The words made the pilot's heart beat a bit more rapidly.
Who ain' far 'way, Billy? Who?
He wanted to talk to his baby brother more but as exhausted as he was from his ordeal, he could not prevent himself from plummeting headlong into the nightmare. He vaguely heard a loud horn bleat a warning. It turned into the screams of an ensnared white rabbit.
oooooo
"Just hope the Faceman an' Amy're waitin' for us when I get there, Hannibal. We gotta get on the road before someone thinks too hard 'bout who picked them up." B. A. frowned at Hannibal's reflection in the rear view mirror.
The Colonel decided to let Amy have his front seat so that Face and he could interrogate Doctor Stafford on their way to Tucson. He looked at B. A. and nodded without speaking. He knew the real reason B. A. wanted to pick up Face and Amy and get out of there so quickly. It wasn't because he thought they would have to dodge the authorities.
A dark blue sedan turned right on South River Road and came toward them.
"Hannibal! Ain' that Murdock in the front seat?" B. A. bellowed his surprise as he idly glanced at the car. Hannibal leaned forward and peered through the windshield.
What he saw made his stomach go sour again. Murdock seemed to be either sleeping or unconscious. His face was so badly sunburned and blistered, Hannibal could see the damage from where he sat. The ear buds the pilot had worn so much since their escape from the Granite Peak Installation were in place, making the older man wonder again about the reason for them.
"Turn around and follow them." The Colonel reached for a cigar in his pocket and transferred to the front seat. The doctor dug a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with shaking hands. He had experienced the mildest of Hannibal's interrogation methods and he wasn't sure he wanted to know what more the Colonel could do to him.
"But what 'bout Faceman an' Amy?" Even as B. A. spoke, he did a fast U-turn in the middle of the intersection. The driver of a hospital linen laundry truck blasted the horn at the near accident he avoided.
"They'll understand if we have Murdock when we come to get them, now won't they?" The Colonel chewed down on the cigar and kept his eye on the car already two blocks away. "Step on it, B. A."
oooooo
Jackson didn't see the black van with the red details until he was two blocks from the hospital. He glanced over at Murdock who had begun to whimper and twitch with the onset of a bad nightmare and noted the tailing vehicle in the side mirror.
It's got to be his friends. Who else would follow us?
Tightening his mouth into a firm line, the Colonel watched for any way to prevent them from following him into the southbound lanes of US-15. Once on the interstate highway, he figured he could easily lose them.
He found his opportunity to leave the van behind at the junction of South River Road and East 100 South Street. A city police officer directed traffic around a three-car pileup in the intersection. Sandwiched between a red Ford Pinto and a station wagon, Jackson impatiently waited his turn to proceed through the resulting single lane.
An ambulance, its lights and sirens going, approached the A-team van from behind, forcing the driver to pull over to let it pass. Jackson had been fortunate the emergency vehicle arrived when it did. He was already on his way through the intersection and, unless the driver of the van could make it fly, he would not catch up by the time the traffic officer allowed it to go ahead.
He watched in the rearview mirror and eased his way around the accident scene as directed. The van remained stopped at the intersection as the officer routed traffic from the left around the crumpled cars. Speeding up, he drove past gas stations, restaurants and retail stores until he came to Saint George Boulevard.
Jackson noted Murdock's whimpers had become a restless murmur as he moved his head from side to side.
"Face . . . Face . . . don' let 'em take me. Don' let 'em . . . " The agonized words became an incoherent mumble interrupted only by an occasional hitching sob.
The military man smiled and let the nightmare continue.
He won't escape me again if he's too worn out to fight me.
Turning left, Jackson took the entrance ramp onto US-15 headed south and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw there was no van following him anymore. He would have to stop somewhere between Las Vegas and Phoenix to rest and make sure the Captain was ready for his mission.
But after that, Tucson, and an end to the last person who knows what I did over in Nam.
oooooo
B. A. slammed a fist on the steering wheel of the van as the ambulance passed them. Giving Hannibal a frustrated glare, he muttered, "I coulda had him if I'd been a couple minutes quicker gettin' ta the hospital. What we gonna do now, Colonel?"
"We can't leave Face and Amy stranded while we chase Jackson all the way to Arizona." Hannibal smiled grimly as B. A. turned left on East 100 Street, then went one block south on 1200 East before turning again toward South River Road. "We have a pretty good idea where Jackson's taking Murdock." The Colonel swiveled in his seat and grasped Stafford by the wrist as the doctor raised his cigarette to his lips. "Get to the hospital as quick as you can, B. A. Jackson doesn't have that much of a head start on us. I'll keep our friend here company."
Stafford swallowed hard as he realized what that probably meant.
oooooo
In less time than Hannibal thought it would take, they picked up Amy and Face, made the reporter as comfortable as she could be in the front passenger's seat and were on their way south on US-15.
"Now, I'm going to ask a very simple question and I want a complete answer. How do we get our pilot back safely?" The Colonel contemplated the tip of his lit cigar without looking directly at the medical man beside him. If there was any rough treatment to be done, he might ask B. A. to pull over at his convenience and do the honors. He was rapidly getting tired of Stafford's constant stonewalling answers that weren't answers.
"This trip you're taking to Tucson won't stop Captain Murdock from what he has been told to do. Jackson won't let him out of his sight now that he has him. By the time you get there, he will have completed everything required to send your pilot on his way to fulfill his part of Silent Arrow."
"What do you mean, doc?" The Lieutenant grasped the scientist by his collar. Stafford choked out a surprised squawk.
"Face, let him go." Hannibal barked out the order.
"No, Hannibal. Not this time. See, I was thinking while I was waiting for Amy to wake up. Murdock seemed awfully protective of those ear buds and that radio. Remember how he panicked when you had me take them away from him? He had them when he found us in that room at Granite Peak. And the music seemed like it was intended especially for him." He drew the doctor closer to himself and glared into his eyes. "Was it?"
"Jackson chose the music like I said before . . . I didn't. I can't possibly know why he decided on those songs." Stafford tried his best to glare back at the Lieutenant but Face's tightening hold on his throat made that difficult to muster.
"I can't believe Colonel Jackson wanted to be a nice guy and give Murdock a gift. The radio and its songs are part of Project Silent Arrow. They have to be. Every time he listened to whatever was on that radio he reacted." Face kept his hold on the doctor but addressed Hannibal as he did.
"He's got a good point. What's the secret behind it, doc?" B. A. scowled so fiercely in the rearview mirror at the medical man, he reconsidered holding out on answering. The doctor would make sure not to offer more information than the question called for but he would answer to preserve his own skin.
"The songs Jackson selected have a special audio tone calibrated to Murdock's own brain wave patterns. When certain songs play, there's a tone that only his brain can pick up." Stafford realized he was stammering. God, what I wouldn't give for a cigarette about now.
"For what purpose?" Hannibal squinted through cigar smoke at the medical man.
B. A. frowned at the mention of the radio and the specially blended songs. "Ya mean he was maybe listenin' to that music when we saw them leave the hospital? Maybe that's why he wasn't tryin' ta escape? Maybe that's why he tried ta kill the three o' us?"
Stafford took advantage of B. A.'s interruption to buy time before answering. "He wasn't listening to the radio when he tried to kill you. Remember?"
"So what's the trick? What's he being set up to do? And what does it have to do with Cazador?" Hannibal gave a satisfied smirk when he saw the doctor startle when Cazador's name was mentioned. He had not been awake when Face and the Colonel had their telephone conversation.
"The United States government made a mistake . . . " Stafford began, fumbling for the right words.
B. A. snorted. "Gov'ment made a mistake wit' us, too, an' they ain' got 'round ta correctin' it."
Hannibal silenced the Sergeant with one look and nodded to the doctor to continue.
Stafford coughed gently and shrugged. "As I was saying, the government mistakenly allowed for the sale of several types of firearms and other weapons to a front organization operated by Cazador. He supplies the rebels in a certain small Central American country to the south of us. Until recently the arms sales and shipments were under the scope."
"In other words, it was a covert illegal venture the government got into in order to topple one dictator and put another in his place? Smells strongly of CIA involvement." Face smiled as if he had come up with a million dollar answer. There was cold disgust in the tone of his voice.
Hannibal finished the thought. "And Uncle Sam wants our Captain to dispose of Cazador and make sure the press don't ever hear of those weapons transfers?"
B. A. grumbled from the driver's seat. "Only way of doin' that'd be ta kill Cazador an' destroy the weapons."
None of the men had thought Amy was awake until she gasped. "Oh God, no!" Face released the doctor and scrambled to her side.
"What's wrong, angel? Are you hurting anywhere?" He clasped her hand loosely in his and brushed her cheek with the fingertips of his other hand.
She shook her head furiously and choked out her response over the fear that suddenly chilled her. "Murdock's going to crash a plane into the side of a mountain and he's going to kill Cazador and himself doing it."