CHAPTER FIVE

September 22, 1969

It had taken Hannibal some time to find Lieutenant Murdock. He'd disappeared almost as soon as they touched down in Pleiku, even before debriefing. Not wanting to cause trouble for the young pilot, Smith put the others on hold while he went to find him. Besides, the rest of his team was just as covered in blood and gore as he was, and they would do well to clean up before presenting themselves to Davids.

"You okay, Lieutenant?" Hannibal asked, shrugging his weapon off his shoulder as he approached.

Murdock was sitting on the ground, his back against the corrugated steel of the hangar with a cigarette hanging loosely between his fingers. The long grey ashes on the end indicated just how long it had been since the young pilot had moved. His gaze lingered on the Skyraider under the dim circles of light, prepped with napalm and rockets, but the emptiness in his eyes made Hannibal wonder if he even saw it.

As Hannibal sat down beside him, Murdock glanced up. "No offense, Colonel," he said flatly, "but you really need to shower."

Hannibal grinned. "Yeah, I know." He felt his pockets, and realized that the cigar he always kept in his breast pocket had been broken - probably that last time he'd had to duck. Still, it was worth it just for the few minutes that it would last.

He was less successful finding his lighter, but before he had a chance to ask, Murdock had offered his own. "Thanks."

Hunched over his knees with a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, the man looked remarkably like a lost little kid. Maybe it was the faraway look in his eyes. It wasn't the glazed look of a man who'd seen too much blood and could no longer cope; that look was far more distinct. It was the look of a man who was realizing the sheer insignificance of life, and having a hard time accepting it.

"So you wanna tell me what you know about Parker?" Hannibal asked.

For a long moment, Murdock was still. Then, slowly, he sat up and reached into his breast pocket. Without a word, he withdrew a folded Polaroid picture and handed it over. The muscular man was clearly a soldier, and to his left was a Vietnamese woman, arms hanging around his neck, kissing his cheek. The worn crease down the center of the photo told something of its age, and how often it had been unfolded.

"My brother," Murdock said quietly. "Alan Parker."

Hannibal stared at the photo, studying it carefully, then handed it back. "I'm sorry," he offered, sincerely. He'd known there was more to the Skyraider story than met the eye, but the connection wasn't obvious when Murdock and Parker didn't share a last name.

"You always know it could happen, right?" The distance in the pilot's voice was almost eerie. "You just hope... And you don't think about how you're gon' deal with it when it does happen."

Hannibal looked away.

"I guess it wouldn't even be so bad if I just... had a body. You know? Something to..." He trailed off, shaking his head.

"He's gone, Lieutenant," Hannibal stated, a simple matter of fact. "And there's nothing you can do about it. Settle that for yourself right now, or the guilt will eat you alive."

Murdock turned his head. His distant eyes were glistening, but the clenched jaw made it clear that he was a man who refused to break down and cry. That was good, at least. Hannibal had never been comfortable dealing with that sort of thing. "We've all lost people in this goddamn bloody war," the colonel continued, avoiding eye contact in favor of studying his cigar. "There's no way around that. You just keep going. Keep doing what you have to do."

"You know, it's funny..." Murdock laughed, but it was without humor. Out of the corner of his eye, Hannibal saw the man lean back until his wrists were on his knees. Staring out the open side wall of the hangar, he watched a helicopter lift off the ground against the backdrop of early-morning sunrise. "I didn't have to come here. But I guess I'm crazy 'cause I actually wanted to. I left a nice, prestigious commission when I found out they needed chopper pilots in 'Nam..." He laughed, and his eyes slid closed as he shook his head. "I didn't care what they put me in to fly, I just couldn't wait to get over here, to do something worthwhile. But right now, maybe the first time in my entire life..." He trailed off, and Hannibal glanced at him. Their eyes locked as the younger man continued in a whisper. "I just wanna go home."

It was a very real sympathy that Smith felt for the man all of a sudden - an unusual feeling. Death was a part of life out here, and none of them ever really expected to live through the day. None of them really knew if their friends and teammates would come back alive when they crossed the wire. Even within his own team, Smith was careful to gauge the emotional distance that had to - by necessity - remain in place. They worked together, they thought as one. But they would have to do that even when they were missing a part of the team. Even when that part of the team was never coming back. It had happened before. It would happen again.

"How short are you?" he asked quietly.

Murdock shook his head, turning back to watch as the chopper headed off in the general direction of Saigon. "I just extended my tour. I'm in 'til November at least." He dropped the forgotten cigarette in the dirt and squished it with the heel of his boot. "That's assuming they don't court martial me. Still don't know how that's all gonna work out."

Smith nodded slowly, taking another hit off the cigar. "Your record is... impressive," he observed. "And with your performance tonight... I never knew such a heavy chopper could move like that."

Murdock nodded, but didn't otherwise reply.

"My men like you," Smith continued. "And you're certainly the most daring chopper pilot I've flown with since I've been here."

"What are you getting at, Colonel?" Murdock asked disinterestedly. He'd learned a long time ago to beware of flattery. Particularly when it came from a superior officer.

Hannibal turned and studied him for a long moment. "I can't send you home, Lieutenant. But I may be able to arrange a place for you on this team."

Murdock blinked in surprise, attention sharpening. "On an A-Team?" He shook his head, confused. "I'm not Special Forces, Colonel. I'm not even Army."

Hannibal paused for a moment before answering. "Do you know why I went through the trouble of requesting you, specifically, for this assignment?"

The briefest of pauses, and a halfhearted shrug, preceded Murdock's answer. "I figured it had something to do with the Skyraider thing."

"Initially," Hannibal admitted with a nod. "But more importantly, you were able to look me straight in the eye and say you were the best. And you believed it."

Murdock straightened a little before he answered with complete confidence, "Still do, Sir."

"Then you'll understand what I mean when I tell you that my team is the best damn SOG unit Special Forces has ever seen. We're not just an A-Team, Lieutenant. We're the A-Team."

Murdock smirked as he recognized an arrogance that rivaled his own. "So what do you want me for?" he asked, still confused.

"I want a pilot I can rely on," Hannibal explained. "For drops and extractions, mostly. But also for transport and air support and anything else we need. And I'm going to request that you be assigned to us on a more permanent basis. After we arrange to have the charges on your court martial dropped."

Murdock studied him for a moment, then nodded, forcing a smile. "If you can swing it, Colonel, I'll be there."

"Oh, I don't think it'll be too hard," Smith grinned. "I can be pretty persuasive."

Looking away again, Murdock sighed with the resignation of a man unwilling to get his hopes too high, who simply had nothing better to do than wait and see. Still keenly aware of the loss preoccupying the pilot's mind, Hannibal afforded a moment of respectful silence for Alan Parker, offered a sympathetic smile, and stood, heading for a much-needed shower.

April 18, 1985

Standing at the fireplace, Alan drew in a breath and shifted anxiously before speaking in the gentlest tone a man of his stature could manage. "You look good, Mark."

"Don't call me that!" Murdock cried as an instinctive reaction, something he'd neither expected nor knew how to control, forced him to cover his ears and close his eyes. Head down and blocking out the world, his thoughts raced as he struggled to cope with an overload of information. It was a sensation that bordered on pain.

"Don't call me that," he said again - more of an order, this time, than a cry of desperation. He forced himself to look up as he plowed through the next words. "What are you doing here? Why are you here? How did you get here? You're not real."

Alan laughed briefly, and when he continued, the anxiety was gone from his tone. "If I didn't know better, I'd almost think you weren't happy to see me."

"What do you want!"

Murdock was not laughing. Closing his eyes, he resisted the urge to cover his ears again. Hear no evil... see no evil... speak no evil... Evil tricks his mind was playing on him. He was seeing things, hearing things. This wasn't real. God damn those drugs the doctors put in his head and the ghosts they conjured up. God damn the confusion between reality and a bad dream. He was hallucinating. What had triggered it? He couldn't possibly be seeing what he was seeing. The man standing before him had been dead for sixteen years...

Breathing as deeply as possible, Murdock struggled not to hyperventilate. "You need to go away," he declared, eyes still shut tight. When he opened them, the ghost would be gone. "You need to go away because you're not really real."

"Fool, what're you talkin' about?" BA demanded.

Face was appropriately concerned. "Murdock, are you okay?"

Ever the voice of calm control and reason, Hannibal gave him a direction. "Why don't you have a seat, Captain?"

Voices. Voices swirling in his head where he couldn't separate them out.

"You're not there," he repeated, over and over again. "You're dead. You're not real."

"Man, you crazy," BA dismissed with a shake of his head, as if he didn't already know that.

But when Murdock opened his eyes again, the man was still there, staring at him with a confused look. He was still real, or at least appeared real. Did they see him? Did they see what Murdock saw? Did they know what he saw? His gaze flickered briefly to Hannibal. He would know what he was seeing. But Hannibal's expression reflected only concern for the display Murdock was unable to control.

"What do you want?" Murdock demanded, looking back at the man. But it sounded more like a plea in his own ears.

Hannibal must have seen how close he was to completely losing his grip on reality. "Murdock, sit down." This time, it was an order.

"What do you want?" he gasped again. A hand on his arm - Hannibal's - made him flinch, but he didn't strike out. He just let it guide him to a nearby chair. "What are you doing here? How did you get here?"

"How about we start with the basics," Face cut in. He looked at Alan. "For the benefit of the rest of us, who the hell are you?"

Face could see him too. If Face could see Murdock's hallucination, maybe he was simply dreaming. Maybe this was all a dream. Where had he fallen asleep? He shut his eyes hard again and concentrated on waking up. Wake up, wake up, wake up... You're asleep in your own bed! Wake up!

He didn't wake up.

"My name is Alan Parker." Murdock's eyes opened slowly, but remained unfocused as he stared right through the man still standing near the fireplace. "And I'm your friend's brother."

"Brother?" The surprise in Face's voice was perfectly evident.

"Murdock ain't got no brother!" BA said firmly. "An' if he did, it wouldn't be you!"

"He's telling the truth, BA." All eyes - except Murdock's - turned to Hannibal as he spoke, voice flat and even. Murdock's gaze remained on Alan, much older and more scarred than sixteen years ago, but still undeniably him. Very slowly, Murdock was beginning to realize the hallucination was real; he really was standing there.

"You never said anything about no brother!" BA's surprise was aimed directly at Murdock now, and he shrank back instinctively. Handling BA's over-the-top displays of abrasive confrontation had become second nature over the years, but right now, it was too much.

"What's going on?" He almost didn't recognize the female voice that suddenly entered the room. As he tried to place it, Murdock found himself struggling to figure out the entire world around him. Kelly... He wasn't hallucinating. This was for real. "Whose brother?"

"Murdock's," Hannibal answered conversationally. "Come have a seat. We're just getting started."

"You have a brother?" Kelly asked, confused.

Out of the corner of his eye, Murdock saw her approach. But he didn't look at her. Couldn't deal with her right now either. Couldn't deal with any of this. He needed to get away. He needed to sort through the millions of simultaneous thoughts, none of which made any sense at all.

"Murdock, if you had a brother," Face started cautiously, "how come you never said anything about it?"

Far from accusatory, he sounded curious, maybe even concerned. Murdock wanted to answer, but he didn't have words.

Thank God Hannibal had a response ready. "Had a brother," he emphasized. He then turned to Alan. "I was under the impression you were killed in A Shau."

"A Shau?" Face's eyes widened a little.

"What's A Shau?" Kelly asked quietly.

Murdock shut his eyes. "It was a camp in Vietnam," he explained, his own voice just as quiet and unassuming as hers. Maybe if he could explain this to her, he could manage to wrap his own mind around it. Maybe he could even process it, one small piece at a time. "It got attacked and... not everyone got out."

"You were at that camp?" Kelly questioned, looking up at Alan.

"Sort of," he answered, shifting a bit uncomfortably. "I wasn't stationed there. I was with a group of soldiers that went there to defend it."

"That's right, you went into the Mike Force," BA recalled. "I remember that. Never thought I'd see you again."

"What's the Mike Force?" Kelly bit her lip as she glanced at Murdock.

"They were a countrywide reaction force based in Nha Trang," Hannibal answered for him, simplifying the explanation to avoid a tangent. "A division of 5th Special Forces - same as us, but with a different focus. Whenever one of the A-camps got into trouble, a Mike Force was sent in to help them out. A Shau was one of those camps."

"They knew they were going to get hit," Alan began quietly. "The camp was pretty well cut off. An easy target. Far from any supporting artillery and staffed with a few hundred CIDG and a handful of Americans."

"CIDG?" Kelly asked when he paused.

"C-I-D-G," Face spelled it out for her. "Stands for Civilian Irregular Defense Group."

"Vietnamese soldiers," Murdock offered, struggling to put his thoughts together into some kind of coherent order. "Most of the ones we worked with were from minority groups, like tribes up in the mountains."

"The LLDB had, er - " Alan glanced at Kelly and gave a slight smirk. "The Vietnamese Special Forces had abandoned the only other two camps out there a few months earlier. So A Shau was the only one left blocking the Ho Chi Minh trail. The NVA - the bad guys from the north - had been moving in for quite a while when we got the call. We packed that place full, and armed ourselves to the teeth. But I found out later they still outnumbered us six to one, and a whole bunch of the fuckin' CIDG were gonna turn on us."

Murdock opened his eyes again and looked up at the man. The unwelcome trip down memory lane helped him to focus, to pull through the shock and confusion. As fast as it drained, the emptiness was filled with an unfamiliar and surprisingly potent anger. How dare he show up here, now, after all this time! How dare he be alive and breathing after so many years of being dead!

"How 'bout we get to the part where you got out alive," Murdock demanded, his voice as tight as the muscles in his shoulders.

"General Carl Davids sent a team after me," Alan began. Face and Hannibal exchanged long glances, but Murdock remained stoic and centered on Alan. "He sold his balls to the Agency almost at the start of the war, and I was the only one still alive from that first mission he ordered to keep them from tightening their grip. So he kinda needed me back." Alan shifted uncomfortably. "I was there when the team came. I heard the explosion when they took the door off the holding cell."

"Everyone who came out of that camp said you were dead," Hannibal informed flatly.

"I'm sure they thought I was," Alan answered. "I'd been in -" He halted suddenly and a shadow passed over his eyes before he looked away, jaw set. "- interrogation for three days. They'd already killed two of us in that time."

Face and Hannibal exchanged glances again, but didn't speak. Alan continued after a brief pause. "After that, they sent me to Son Tay."

Murdock's eyes closed. Shit...

"Then Dong Hoi when Son Tay flooded," Alan continued. "Then Hoa Lo in Hanoi after Operation Ivory Coast."

Murdock opened his eyes again and stared directly at Alan. "You weren't at Hoa Lo when they released their prisoners," he stated confidently. "I checked."

"No, I wasn't," Alan confirmed. "During the transport from Dong Hoi, four of us made a break for it. I don't know who the other three were. I never even got their names. We'd all been kept in solitary for so long... I didn't really even remember my own. All three of them were shot. I managed to get away."

Alan took a deep breath, lowering his head and staring at a spot on the floor. "I spent weeks in the jungle, just heading south. Then I... fell down." He shook his head. "I remember falling face down and closing my eyes and thinking how fuckin' ironic that this was how I was gonna die. And I don't remember anything else until I was standing on a street corner in Saigon."

"Why didn't you go to a base?" Hannibal asked. "When you found yourself in Saigon, I mean."

"I wasn't ready," he answered simply. "Solitary confinement makes you a little crazy."

Murdock shifted uncomfortably, avoiding eye contact.

"I had conspiracy theories galore, and it took me a while to work through them. When I did, I checked up on a few buddies and found out Carl Davids had died under mysterious circumstances in his office." Alan looked up, met Hannibal's eyes with an empty stare, and shook his head. "I don't know if it was the Agency. But at the time, you couldn't have convinced me it wasn't."

"You checked up on a few buddies," Murdock repeated dryly. "But you let me think you were dead."

"I got married in Saigon," Alan continued, ignoring him. "I was there for six years after I escaped. We came to the States when Bach Yen got pregnant a second time. Came in through San Francisco, on a cargo ship. Bought new identities from a guy who was willing to sell them for a thousand dollars each. When our son was born, he was an American citizen." He looked away. "He died two years later. He was... sick."

Too much information. Too much irrelevant information that didn't even make any sense. At the moment, Murdock only cared about one thing: the thought that kept racing in circles around his brain. "So you just decided not to contact me 'cause you didn't feel like it?" he cried.

"I didn't contact you because you worked with the Agency, too," Alan shot back with a glare. "I ain't saying it was right, but I didn't want them knowing I was alive."

Shaking with bottled up emotion, Murdock rose to his feet. "Do you have any idea the... the hell I went through? I checked newspapers every day looking for something to tell me that they'd found you, dead or alive!"

There was a part of him that expected someone - Hannibal, maybe - to stop him. But nobody did. Nobody said a word and his thoughts tumbled fast and furious out of his mouth. "When they're sayin' there's no more POWs over there and any other MIA must just be dead, and I just wanted to find your body or... or anything! And you were alive? You were in San Francisco?"

"I wasn't in San Francisco for very long," Alan answered, as if that might somehow make it all better.

Murdock could feel his hands balling into fists, and he fought back the unusual flicker of violence that flashed across his mind - a brief picture of him grabbing the back of Alan's head and putting it through the brick fireplace. The thought horrified the part of him still capable of reason. He had to get out of here. But his escape plan was hijacked by another infuriating thought.

"You even knew where to find me!" he realized. "You knew exactly how to find me!"

"That wasn't hard," Alan admitted. "Once I found out you became part of their unit in Vietnam, I knew you'd still keep in contact with them."

Murdock stared at the monster incredulously. "And in all these years since you got outta there, you're just now making an effort?"

Alan hesitated briefly, then took a deep, cleansing breath. "I need your help."

"Oh, go to hell!" Murdock couldn't believe what he was hearing. Overcome with fury, the words tumbled quickly out of his mouth. "You must be out of your fucking mind if you think I'm -"

He stopped abruptly as he realized he was spiraling out of control. The resounding anger, echoing in his mind and painting his vision bright, blood red was not good. The violent images were no longer flashes but full-fledged scenes of vicious gore like he'd not seen in years. He could feel the worried looks of his team, watching and waiting tensely in case he went off the deep end.

He had to get away from here.

Closing his eyes slowly, he drew in a calming breath, and continued in a tranquil tone that his shrink would've been proud of. "I think I need some air."

Without another word, and careful not to make eye contact with anyone, he turned and proceeded calmly to the nearest exit, then stepped out into the quickly-cooling night. He was pleased when no one stopped him, and even more pleased when they waited until he was well out of earshot to continue their conversation.