CHAPTER FOUR
April 18, 1985
Hannibal didn't realize the phone was out of service until he began to wonder why they hadn't received the 6:00 call.
"We must be just outta range," BA said. "It worked last night an' we were only a few miles down the road when he called."
"More like twenty," Hannibal corrected, hanging up the useless phone. "And the last gas station we passed was a lot farther than that."
"It's a long drive just to make a phone call," BA observed. "He ain't gonna answer anyway. It's Saturday night."
"I'll get a hold of him," Hannibal stated confidently. If he wasn't near the 'Vette, Hannibal had the number to the hotel where he was staying. And if he wasn't there, he'd at least have left a time and date of check in with the front desk. This pattern had been well established years ago.
BA shook his head slightly. "Just be careful you don't make us run outta gas, man," he warned as Hannibal reached into his pocket for the keys. "Remember, we gotta be able to get to a gas station when we leave here tomorrow night. And it's a long way."
Hannibal shoved the key into the ignition, but didn't have a chance to turn the engine over before a flash of white down the long, winding driveway caught his eye. BA turned to look as Hannibal stood, hanging out the side of the van for extra height as the white Corvette inched its way slowly over the rough, gravel driveway toward the house. Surprised, but no less amused, Hannibal smiled as it pulled to a stop before the last big potholes, and Face stepped out of the driver's seat.
"I thought you weren't coming, Lieutenant," Hannibal greeted brightly.
Face glared at him before hopping over the mud puddle in the middle of the walkway. "Not my bright idea."
That would mean it was the bright idea of the man sitting in the passenger seat. BA had seen him too, just an outline in the quickly dimming evening light. The unfamiliar presence made them both frown. Who was that? It definitely wasn't anyone they knew.
"I tried calling you," Face started, kicking the mud off of his shoes every other step. "You were out of range."
"Yeah, I was just about to go find a pay phone." Hannibal took his eyes off the figure in the car and looked down at Face. "Who's your friend?"
"I'm not so sure he's a friend." Very slowly, the man stepped out of the side of the car. BA instantly stood a little straighter. The guy was probably 250 pounds of pure muscle - that much was evident even at a distance. Face glanced back, over his shoulder, rocking on his heels. "He wants to talk to you. And just so you know, he's got a Colt .45."
Hannibal nodded, and dropped down to the ground. "Doesn't sound too friendly to me."
He kept the door open, ready to reach for the M-16 next to the driver's seat if the need should arise. As the dim light from the setting sun caught the glint from the weapon in the stranger's hand, Hannibal felt the need had arisen. He grabbed the rifle and calmly propped it on the open window. But the intruder didn't lift his gun. In fact, he reached behind him and tucked it into his belt.
Hannibal's eyes narrowed. "State your business, friend."
"You Colonel John Smith?" the man called back, his tone unreadable.
"That's me," Hannibal answered coolly. "Who are you?"
As he stepped out of the shadows and into the dim evening light, Hannibal felt the change in BA's stance like a physical sensation. "Alan?" BA exclaimed, as if on cue. "Alan Parker, that you?"
"BA Baracus," the newcomer returned with a smile. "I was hoping I'd get to see you."
Hannibal and Face exchanged glances, and Face shrugged. "Guess he has a name now," he sighed. "Ten hours of driving and I couldn't get one out of him."
Hannibal lowered the gun out of the window as BA and Alan slapped each other's shoulders in a friendly greeting. "It only took you ten hours to get here from LA?" he asked, amused.
"He's from the Nha Trang Mike Force," Face continued quietly, ignoring Hannibal's curiosity in favor of more important topics. "He's got it tattooed on his arm. And I suspect he was a POW, but I'm not sure."
Hannibal didn't take his eyes off the newcomer. "What makes you say that?"
"Gut feeling," Face answered uncomfortably, then quickly changed his tone as he asked more loudly, "Where's Murdock?"
He glanced around the yard and at the cabin, where all the lights were still off. "Oh, he's... around," Hannibal replied, watching the two men exchange greetings and laughter. The innocent question from Face was much more serious than he realized, Hannibal was sure. If Face had recognized Alan Parker the way Hannibal did, he would've realized the evening was about to get much more interesting.
September 22, 1969
Dropping out of a Huey five hundred yards from a camp swarming with NVA was not what Murdock would have called a clandestine drop. It made his skin crawl to be hovering this close to all those RPG launchers, even if they weren't firing yet. The colonel had assured him they would only need fifteen minutes on the ground. Although Murdock wasn't sure what could be accomplished in fifteen minutes, he didn't argue. He was just along for the ride.
Pulling back as the team hit the jungle floor, Murdock circled wide. Fifteen minutes wasn't long enough to return to the base and he had to stay close enough to be within range of the portable radio they carried. He also had to make sure he was far enough up in the air to avoid getting shot out of the sky.
The lack of chatter on the radio seemed distinctly wrong. He was not communicating with Covey overhead, since he wasn't there, or the target camp, since it was overrun, or even the base that had sent him, since the mission they were supposedly carrying out was very different from what they were actually doing. Flying off the radar and out of contact with anyone who'd know where to find their bodies was a new and almost terrifying experience.
For the first time in a long time, stranded in the sky without even a crew to talk to, Murdock felt truly alone. Privacy was such a rarity in war, with other soldiers wandering in and out of just about any room at any time. He'd trained himself to think of it as safe, to appreciate the presence of nearby reinforcements should anything threatening come barreling his way. It made his current predicament - where the danger was very real, near, and known - exceptionally unnerving.
His mind wandered as he hovered, watching for the muzzle flares and tracer rounds of enemy fire. So far, there were none. Seven minutes, and not a flash. The enemy had to know they were there; the Huey wasn't exactly quiet and they'd practically knocked on the door of the camp. He frowned deeply as he considered the enemy, ready and waiting for Smith's team to show up. What kind of an insane strategy would incorporate that kind of risk? This was by far the wildest operation he'd ever pulled. And in only fifteen minutes? Smith had to be out of his goddamn mind.
The first muzzle flashes made Murdock's shoulders tense. Something always happened in his brain when he saw that. Something cold and unfeeling took over, mentally preparing him for the bloody horror of what he was about to witness. He'd seen enough death in the back of his chopper to last a lifetime, and it never got easier. The haunting voices echoed in his head even over the rattling of the chopper's blades. Some nineteen-year-old kids cried out to their God as they bled out in pain and hopeless agony. Most of them called for their mothers.
Eleven minutes.
It was still so strange to be in this chopper alone. Eerie, even. There should be a copilot. There should be a maintenance engineer - the "owner" of the Huey who did all its repairs and flew in it every time it left the ground. There should be a gunner - preferably two, one on each side. Instead, there was only him, alone in the ink-black sky over the jungle trees. There was nothing to hear except the chopper blades, nothing to see except the glowing red instruments on the dash and the red and green tracers shooting at each other in the camp a few hundred yards away. For every green streak, there were fifty red. It made Murdock anxious, in spite of himself. His team was vastly outnumbered down there.
He could feel the sweat running down the back of his neck, soaking his collar. A few more deep, slow breaths of heavy, saturated air. The fifteen-minute mark had come and gone. What were the chances of this plan succeeding? He didn't really know enough about it to even guess. He only knew the part he had to play - drop off and pick up, and keep his mouth shut about it all. Hopefully, there would be more to pick up than he'd dropped off and not less. They were going in there for POWs, after all...
His thoughts trailed off, mind fading out of focus. Fifteen MIA. Two Americans. One of them was from the Mike Force. His chest tightened as he shut his eyes.
"RT Cannon to Howlin' Mad."
The interruption startled him, and he brushed his leaking eyes roughly, then cleared his throat before answering. "Howlin' Mad, ready in the wings. SITREP?"
The unit on the ground - the voice sounded like Harring's, but he couldn't be sure - ignored his request for a situation report. "How about some fireworks to liven up the party?"
Fireworks? Without a gunner? What the hell was he supposed to do - shoot out of the cockpit while flying? "What kind of fireworks did you have in mind, Cannon?" he asked, stunned and confused.
"The kind that'll give us some relief from that north wall."
Murdock's jaw dropped. They knew he was the only one up here. What was he supposed to do without a gunner? He glanced to the side and in the dim light from the dash instruments he saw that at some point, someone - had to be Peck - had laid out several grenades well within his grasp. Murdock's eyes grew wider. Was he kidding?
"Are you kidding?" he laughed tensely.
"Anytime you're ready, Howlin' Mad! Over!"
He wasn't kidding.
It would violate every rule in the book. Not only was he without a co-pilot, he'd be flying one-handed while dropping grenades with the other and taking his eyes off of the instruments to make sure he didn't blow up the wrong thing. In the dark! How would he even pull the pins? Was this really what they were asking him to do? Could he even physically do it? Who the hell were these guys?
The really funny thing was, they were not only asking him to do it, they expected him to comply. They'd staked their lives on his ability to do so. Murdock felt his deep, concerned frown quirk up into a slight smile. Talk about a challenge. He took a deep breath, and his voice was even and confident when he answered again. "10-4, A-Team. Be there in a minute. Over."
April 18, 1985
Eyes closed and sitting back against the rough bark of a fallen tree, Murdock hadn't been expecting to hear the sound of Hannibal's voice cackling over the walkie-talkie. It took him a moment to reorient and fumble through his jacket pockets until he found the device.
"Murdock, you there?"
He glanced briefly at the woman resting beside him in the quickly dimming light, her head on his shoulder. Not sure if she was actually asleep or just relaxed and contented, he resolved not to disturb her. "Yeah, Colonel?" he replied quietly.
"Face is here."
A burst of energy shot through him. Something wrong? Something very right? Why would Face come here after making it so clear he had no desire to join them this weekend? Murdock shifted and Kelly sat up straight, blinking at the world around her.
"Be there in a minute," he promised, vaulting to his feet.
Kelly rubbed her eyes with one hand, stretching the other over her head as the radio fell silent. Shoving it back into his pocket, Murdock offered an outstretched palm. With a smile, she placed her fingers against his and he pulled her up easily.
She struggled a bit to keep up as he bounded over the uneven ground towards the cabin. Preoccupied with the possibilities - some of them good, some bad - for Face's unexpected arrival, Murdock barely noticed her difficulty. The sound of her voice registered, vaguely, but he couldn't really make out words. Something had to be wrong, but Hannibal hadn't sounded concerned. Maybe it was just a minor problem, easily fixed. What kind of minor problem would drag Face out into the wilderness?
As they approached the cabin, he saw Hannibal first, waiting out on the porch. Uh oh, something was wrong, and Hannibal was out here to head him off before he walked right into it. Keeping his concerns veiled, Murdock's tone remained light and carefree. "Everything okay, Colonel?"
"More or less," came the response, and Murdock immediately knew it was less and not more. Suddenly, he felt even more uneasy.
Pausing halfway up the steps, he lowered his hand to the small of Kelly's back. "Why don't you go on inside," he said gently, smiling as he guided her on ahead.
"Okay." She smiled politely at Hannibal as she passed and disappeared through the screen door. It clacked closed behind her and Murdock's smile faded immediately into a look of concern. "What's wrong?" The lightness was gone from his voice as soon as Kelly passed out of earshot.
"There's someone here to see you," Hannibal replied, not wasting words.
Murdock raised a brow. Clearly, he didn't mean Face. But that would've been Murdock's only guess. "To see me?" he asked, confused. "Who? Why?"
"To be clear, he says he's here to hire us," Hannibal reconsidered. "But I told him we wouldn't discuss business until you got here, and unless you agreed to it."
Murdock shook his head, even more confused. Since when did he have the final say on a job? And who would come all the way out here? Overwhelmed with questions, Murdock wasn't sure what to say. "Okay...?" he offered weakly.
If Hannibal had intended to say anything more - and it looked like he did - he thought better of it before the words actually formed. After a brief pause, he turned and led the way into the cabin. Murdock followed a step behind, mentally preparing himself for anything.
Almost anything.
His eyes came to rest on the man - the one character out of place in this scene - almost immediately. His mind registered what he was seeing a half-second later. "Alan?" He couldn't have stopped the exclamation if he'd tried, but immediately cursed himself for it as the man turned. Their eyes locked, the mountain of a man sporting features rougher and more scarred than Murdock remembered, but still painfully familiar after so many years.
Shifting a bit uneasily, the man offered a tight smile before speaking in a gravelly voice that sent a chill down Murdock's spine. "Hey, Mark."
"Mark?" BA exclaimed, as if the name left a bad taste in his mouth.
Murdock didn't look at BA. He couldn't pry his saucer-wide eyes away from the giant standing near the fireplace. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hannibal lean against the back of the sofa, watching the scene unfold carefully, warily. On his other side, Face was looking back and forth between the two men with growing anticipation and concern.
Finally, after a tense moment of silence, Face finally broke it with a quiet, uneasy chuckle. "Oh, this is going to be good."
September 22, 1969
Maneuvering the helicopter into position was the easy part. Then it got complicated. Murdock quickly lost all perception of time. He wasn't aware of passing minutes or even the deafening sound of the chopper as he made creative use of a bandana to control both sticks with one hand, only just keeping the damned thing hovering. He had no distraction to spare between the juggling act to keep the bird in the air, the flare of rockets aimed in his direction and the fuckers on the ground he was blasting the hell out of. He'd never tried dropping grenades out the side of a chopper while flying. It was a neat trick!
He'd heard the SOG Green Berets wrapped their grenade pins in tape so that they could pull them with their teeth if they were wounded in one arm. He now found that to be true. Using his teeth and the hand not occupied with the controls to drop grenades right into the center of the huddled groups of NVA in the camp, he did his best to keep the chopper steady - a feat that was almost impossible. As much fun as the challenge was, he sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to attempt it with anyone else in the aircraft. He almost lost control twice, to say nothing of the danger from the RPG fire coming up from the camp. In any case, he didn't imagine he'd ever get to do anything like this again. It went against so many regulations, he wouldn't even be able to tell anyone about it without running the risk of losing his wings.
The fires he'd started on top of the fuel barrels stacked against the wall made the confusion on the ground a little bit more visible. Apparently, they'd never seen grenades dropped from a helicopter either. The team was silent, at least on the radio. The tracers from AK-47s below suggested they were still engaged. The commie bastards were shooting up at him, too. The familiar ping! of bullets through the metal would've concerned him more if he'd had people in the back. But as it was, unless they hit him or one of the necessary components to keeping the chopper in the air, he could care less how many bullets they wasted on this bird. She'd survive.
"A-Team to Howlin' Mad." He was ready for the voice this time. With a smile on his face at the pure chaos that had erupted below, he took the radio. A flash directly ahead forced him to bank right so fast he nearly lost control again. These choppers weren't made for maneuvers like this.
"Howlin' Mad on the radio. State your claim, A-Team."
"Water's nice and hot." His mood, already elevated by the adrenaline and, frankly, the fun he was having, rose even more. Hot water was better than cold - it meant they had found living prisoners. It was also better than warm, which would've meant that the prisoners were alive but too injured to aid in their own escape.
"How many you got, A-Team?" It suddenly occurred to him that he was going to have to not only land in an enemy camp but lift off and fly in this mess while loaded. Maybe even overloaded.
"Ten standing, two wounded."
He winced. That was pushing it - especially with the rockets coming up at him.
"Roger that," he answered, careful not to let any of the concern filter into his voice. "Let's see some of them pretty red flares on the LZ. Then get ready to run 'cause I'll be comin' in fast."
Seconds later, a flash of red went up into the sky. It illuminated the open area on the southwest side of the camp for just long enough to imprint the image in Murdock's mind. Armed with that knowledge, he positioned the chopper, and began a descent that would've been called "recklessly fast" under any circumstances. It startled the radio operator below.
"LZ is red, Howlin' Mad! Repeat, LZ is red!"
If Murdock hadn't figured out already that the landing zone was under fire, there wasn't much he could do about it now. "No shit?" He grinned as he pulled up just short of the point of no return. Another two seconds at the current rate of decent and he'd be landing in a spectacular crash. "Red's always been my favorite color."
The noise of the rotor was deafening. He let it cloud his thoughts, and focused entirely on the gauges in front of him. M-16 fire echoed from the cargo area, and a few more sharp pings made Murdock's grip flex and tighten on the control arm. Pure adrenaline raced through his veins as he counted off the longest forty-three seconds of his life before he heard the yell. "Go! Go!"
He pulled the chopper up hard, accounting for the difference in the way she handled now that she was loaded. The loud, adrenaline-soaked victory cries from the back were music to his ears as he exchanged altitude for speed and headed off toward the base.
"That was fuckin' amazing, man! Who the hell are you guys?"
The chatter of Vietnamese and half-coherent English was too much for him to decipher all at once.
"God, look at you! You're fuckin' bleedin' all over!"
Murdock winced as he caught that statement and switched to the intercom. "Aw, come on, guys, don't you be bleedin' in my chopper..."
It was a second later that Harring appeared beside him, grabbed his head in both hands and planted a huge, exaggerated kiss on his cheek. "I love you, man!"
Murdock couldn't help but smile as he pulled away. "Yeah, yeah, okay. Tryin' to fly here." Harring could not possibly know how difficult it was to keep this bird in the air with so many people in it. It would've been difficult even in broad daylight, and it was even harder in the dark.
There were no words for the thoughts in Murdock's head - a thousand voices all at once. Elated by the success and confused as to how it had happened, he let the rush come. Beneath it all was the slowly building awareness that thirteen men in this chopper meant they'd picked up seven on the ground. "Hey, Colonel?" he called back, eyes still on the controls that were his only guide in the deep darkness all around him.
A moment later, Smith appeared beside him. "Yes, Lieutenant?"
Murdock did a double take at the sheer amount of blood covering the older man. Some of it was transfer - a man he'd carried, perhaps. He'd said they had two wounded. But some of it was spatter. He'd killed at least a couple of those bastards up close and personal.
Good.
"You said seven," he pointed out. "What about the others?"
"At least three were killed," Smith informed him, with the same neutrality as if he was reporting the weather. "The others weren't there."
"Where's Parker?"
Smith paused for a long moment, and Murdock dared to take his eyes away from the controls for long enough to exchange a quick glance with him. "Alan Parker," he repeated. "He's the reason we were going in there, right?"
Clearly, Smith was surprised that he'd known anything about the significance of this rescue, particularly when he'd left Parker's name out of the team briefing. Murdock hoped he would just answer the question.
"Alan Parker is dead," Smith finally replied.
Murdock's heart sank, the smile melting from his face. Hearing those words felt like a physical blow to the chest. His breath caught, and he gripped the controls tighter, forcing his breathing to remain slow and even and his mind to remain on the task at hand. No matter what he was thinking, no matter what he was feeling, he had to keep this bird in the air.
But even with his eyes firmly fixed on the flight instruments, the words kept echoing in his mind. Alan Parker was dead. He'd died in Vietnam, in the attack on A Shau. Alan Parker was dead and he would never be going home.
Murdock's only brother was dead.