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 64 The Struggle for Life
Amy hugged her casted arm to her abdomen. She paced the length of the room, refusing to look at Hannibal. Instead, she stared at the door to the library as if doing so would bring B. A. or Cazador back with news of Murdock and Face.
The Colonel had found a copy of 'Memoirs and Selected Letters' of Ulysses S. Grant. He had the book open but he had not turned to the next page since settling back in the crushed red velvet armchair. That was over a half hour ago. With each muffled voice from the room across the hall, he raised his head to peer at the closed door.
She's making me jumpy, pacing like that. But I'm not going to be able to get her to settle down until we know what's going on.
Amy came to a stop in front of him and placed her hands on her hips. "When do you think we'll hear something, Hannibal? I don't remember it taking this long when Murdock gave B. A. his blood."
"Transfusions take time, at least an hour or so, and we don't know how much blood Murdock lost that has to be replaced." Amy gasped at the thought of how serious the injury might be and Hannibal quickly added, "Besides, B. A. has to stay put for a while if he has to give any amount of blood. I don't think any of us would want to try to pick him up from the floor."
He watched the reporter tuck her cast against her abdomen again with the other arm and turn to pace. An irritated snort escaped her. Shaking his head, Hannibal closed the book and stood to replace it on the shelf.
No sense trying to pretend to read. I have to think about what we're going to do once Murdock and Face are able to travel.
To think that either man was not going to leave Cazador's ranch with them was not something Hannibal wanted to entertain.
Of course they'll both be coming with us. Why wouldn't they?
"If the transfusion went so well and B. A.'s just recovering from giving blood, then why isn't Cazador here having that talk he wanted to have with you?" He could barely hear the enraged mutter but her tone made her point.
He answered with silence and absently continued to look through the book titles on the shelf. Her question was something that he wanted to hold at the outer fringes of his mind even though he had already thought about why Cazador had not returned.
"Something's wrong. I can feel it." She spun back on Hannibal and stomped back to stand directly in front of him. A tear had escaped one eye and trembled at the bottom of her jaw before falling to the fabric of the silky coral blouse Face had bought her before leaving the hospital. The high pink patches of anger were back on her otherwise pale cheeks. "If I have to wait much longer, I'm going to go and find the room where they are and . . . and . . . "
She's scared and tired of waiting. I can't be angry with her no matter how much she holds me responsible for what happened to Face and Murdock.
She couldn't say any more without letting her emotions spill out and the Colonel was relieved in a way that she couldn't. He held out his arms and she allowed him to embrace her. Rubbing her upper back with one hand, he let her cry.
"Shhh. We'll hear something soon. And if not, I'll break the door down for you." He hoped it wouldn't come to that.
Come on, Cazador. Bring us news.
oooooo
Colonel Jackson wasn't certain where he was but he remembered what had happened to him. He was leaving Cazador's ranch to get closer to where Murdock was flying the Lucky Lady. He hadn't even got to the main road when a black van flew at his dark blue rental sedan. It was the same one he remembered ditching in Saint George after he left the hospital with the pilot. The driver refused to give him room to pass.
Murdock's friends?
At the last minute, he careened off to the side to avoid a head-on accident. After that . . . so much pain. A muscular angry black man with gold chains around his neck came out of nowhere, lifted him out of the wrecked car and set him on his feet. And then everything turned black.
Had Murdock followed through with Silent Arrow and crashed the plane with Cazador and Hanson on it? The pilot's resistance had grown so weak he knew one more command would push him over the edge. He gave him the trigger word 'ammonia' several times. Maybe it had been enough. He had to find out if the 'mission' was a success.
But finding out was going to be more complicated than he at first realized. He soon discovered that wherever he was, his wrists were bound tightly behind him and his ankles were likewise securely tied. His head pounded with a massive headache.
He lay on his belly on a canvas tarp in a darkened room. The oil and gasoline smell rising from the fabric told him the tarp had been used for some kind of work on machinery.
Lord knows where Murdock's friends took me. Maybe I'm in a garage. If I am, there should be something I can use to get free.
He wriggled to his left and forced his body into a sitting position. The pounding in his head turned into evenly timed rhythmic explosions. Letting his eyes do the moving instead of his head, he scanned his surroundings and let out a quiet groan. There was nothing he could use to free himself. Instantly, he listened for any sound outside the door to the room.
They could be waiting for me to wake up.
He heard two men carrying on a muffled conversation but the words were unintelligible. They had not heard him.
Good. Well, if I can't get myself free from these ropes, maybe I can focus on Murdock and see if I pick up any thought waves from him. If he's dead, there'll be nothing. If he's still alive . . .
He closed his eyes to block out the pulsing pain in his head and directed his thoughts to the pilot. After only seconds of remote viewing, Jackson found his target lying on a bed in a dimly lit room. The black man who had lifted him from the sedan laid beside Murdock, intravenous tubes connecting the two men.
At first, he wasn't sure what was happening. He identified the others in the room. Two men seemed set apart from the rest, as if they were observers and not participants in the drama happening before them. He recognized Murdock but didn't recognize the other spirit form. He set his mouth in a firm line.
So you escaped the crash, did you? There's Cazador but it looks like you didn't fare too well yourself. Hanson must have got you instead of his target.
As Murdock hugged the companion that bore such a striking resemblance to the pilot himself, Jackson suddenly understood what was happening.
He's on the verge of dying.
The softly glowing figure of the younger man faded away and Murdock entered the tunnel that led to his physical body. Jackson mustered every last bit of his concentration, ignoring his own thundering headache, and conjured an image he thought might prevent the pilot from returning to life.
"Ya ain' gonna make it, boy. Yer gonna be trapped b'tween th' livin' 'n' th' dead," Harley McKeever sneered.
Murdock answered him through gritted teeth. "Leave me 'lone, Pa. Billy said I gotta get back there now."
Billy? So that's who that was. His younger brother. Yes, I remember that from Murdock's file.
Cazador would be taken care of somehow. Maybe a surprise attack by a hit team who specialized in eliminating loose ends. It was Murdock he was concerned about.
Thinking of what he had just witnessed, Jackson knew what he had to do to make sure the Captain never regained consciousness again. If the image of his drunken abusive father couldn't stop Murdock from fully re-entering his body, then something else would.
oooooo
Both Face and B. A. heard the huge choking breath Murdock took.
"Doc! He's alive! My buddy's alive!" Face released his hold on the blanket covering the pilot. He gave B. A. a wide relieved grin and clapped him on the shoulder. "He isn't dead. You helped save him, B. A."
The Sergeant kept his face turned to the man beside him. He frowned. "So why ain' he wakin' up? Shouldn' he be wakin' up?" The big man's voice was surprisingly tense.
Doctor Willis had a puzzled expression on his face. "The atropine I gave him shouldn't have acted that quickly. It's for getting the heart beating at a regular pace again, not for respiratory failure. But to answer your question . . . " he nodded at B. A. " . . . his system has experienced quite a bit of trauma. I expect it will take a while before he regains consciousness."
oooooo
The jolt he felt as he left the tunnel was nothing like he had ever experienced before with remote viewing. He opened his eyes. Glass lay in his lap and all around him. The Huey's cockpit window had shattered on impact.
He shook his head and removed his helmet. He could have sworn moments before he was somewhere else . . .
. . . 'n' Billy was with me. I'm almost pos'tive he was. Billy? Where are ya, brother?
The mangled canopy, the broken windshield, the heavy impact he felt before opening his eyes, told him they had crashed.
Moving carefully in case he was injured, he swiveled slightly in his seat to see how his peter pilot had fared. Lazzard stared back, his lifeless eyes accusing Murdock of the recklessness that had taken his life.
"Lazzard!" His voice was a choked gasp. How had everything gone so wrong?
"Collins? Lazzard's dead. How's everyone back there?" He had to make sure. An enemy round had caught the tail rotor as he was about to leave Happy Valley and skim the trees, heading west to the Laotian border.
That I 'member. We must o' went down fast.
The fumes from the ruptured fuel tanks and the smoke billowing from the wrecked chopper told him they didn't have time for much conversation.
Collins didn't answer. He heard no groans or anxious words traded back and forth between the men he had been delivering to their next mission. There was nothing but electrical fizzling sounds and the crackling of a small fire somewhere on the wreck.
We don't have time fer this. Ever'body's gotta get out quick as they can.
He impatiently left his seat and stumbled to the rear compartment of the chopper. No one moved.
Tripping over an outstretched arm, the M-16 beside it, he fell directly on the body. His panicked eyes met unblinking blue eyes glazed over with death. The black Sergeant not far from the white-haired Colonel he was even now scrambling away from was also dead. The man's mouth gaped in a final shout of terror.
Murdock's eyes raked the rest of the compartment for any sign of life but found none.
Face? Where's Face?
Smoke started to fill the area he was in. He coughed and swiped his sleeve over his streaming eyes.
We gotta get outta here. Gonna suffocate if we don'.
Hesitating for only a moment, he gripped Hannibal by his ankles and tugged at the body to get it out the side door and onto the grass. His mind screamed at him that what he was doing made no sense, that his actions would make no difference to any of the men in the wreckage.
But I can' leave 'em there. Ain' no place fer 'em t' stay.
One by one, he removed the corpses from the wreckage. The last one he found was his best friend. He almost retched on the floor of the chopper when he discovered the broken body and realized he was as dead as all the others he pulled from the burning bird.
His adrenaline drained, he collapsed beside the row of bodies, beside Face. Raising himself on one elbow and leaning over the body, he grasped the Lieutenant's olive drab shirt in both hands. "Ya can' all be dead. Ya can'." The last two words were almost a whine of wounded desperation.
How'd I get outta this with no injuries? Why'm I still 'live?
The shouts of men coming toward them made him lift his head and anxiously scan the area around him. The voices spoke Vietnamese.
No, no, no, no . . .
Letting Face's body sink back in the dense foliage, he searched his flight suit for his weapon. The distant elephant grass and brush waved violently back and forth and rustled with the approach of several soldiers.
"Billy! Wake 'em up. Don' they see we're all gonna be captured if they don' wake up?" The chatter of several voices was clearer now.
Only one way t' 'scape 'em. Yer whole team's dead, all dead. You should o' died, too. I'm waitin' t' take ya where ya b'long. Jus' let go, brother.
oooooo
Jackson kept the false memory vivid in Murdock's mind. He was glad he had heard enough of Billy's voice to be convincing when he spoke.
I can't let him think for a second he's anywhere but in Nam. If he sees he's going to be captured and he'll be all alone when he is . . . Too bad I can't make him visit the POW camp interrogation hut just once more for old time's sake . . .
He focused so much on Murdock that when the door opened, letting light spill across the floor and assault his eyes, he startled.
oooooo
The assistant pumped up the blood pressure cuff. She frowned as she took the first reading and inflated the cuff again. After the second attempt, her expression turned anxious. "Doctor, his blood pressure's fallen again. 60 over 50. Pulse is very weak."
"Dennie?" Cazador stood behind Face where he knelt and placed a reassuring hand on the Lieutenant's shoulder. Face didn't shrug it off. He seemed unaware of anything but Murdock's shallow breaths and the doctor's actions.
"I don't know, Juan." The doctor readied another syringe of atropine, then used his stethoscope on Murdock's chest. "I'll repeat the dose if his heart rate hasn't stabilized in five minutes."
"Is he gonna live or not, sucka?" The Sergeant scowled at the medical man. The fear on B. A.'s face was more pronounced than before. He tried to sit up but seconds later sank back on the bed. He closed his eyes for a second and then turned his gaze back on Murdock. "He's gotta live, doc. Ya better do somethin', make sure he does."
"I said I don't know! I'm doing everything I can." Willis spat the words, his face paling as he continued to listen for the pilot's heartbeat.
"Come on, buddy. You can't go like this. Not like this," Face rasped, reaching for Murdock's hand.