CHAPTER TWELVE

April 20, 1985

Alan had reassured Face and Murdock it wouldn't be difficult to spot the stolen car when it stopped for gas at the station where all the vehicles were supposed to refuel before crossing the border. Concealing his own uncertainty, Face watched the parking lot from the safety of a few scraggly trees for almost an hour before any vehicle pulled up and refueled. Eyeing the pristine, dark green sedan warily, Face cast a long look at the driver with the black leather jacket and deeply furrowed brow.

"Think that's it?" he asked Murdock.

"How should I know?" Murdock answered, picking at the bark of the tree beside him.

Face sighed audibly. "Moody and brooding" did not suit Murdock, and Face was starting to get annoyed by his apparent disinterest in a charity case he - unlike Face - had voted to take. Letting the irritation roll off his back, Face focused again on the vehicle as the driver headed inside. He didn't really know enough about cars to guess the make or model of the sedan, let alone the year. But the condition it was in - freshly washed and glittering in spite of the dusty roads - was a good indication the driver had a purpose.

The absolute refusal of the station attendant to make eye contact with the man wandering around the store suggested he was used to looking the other way. Through the window and from a safe distance, Face looked for any proof that this was the man they were waiting for before finally resigning himself to the uncertainty. "Well, if it's not," he muttered, rising to his feet, "we'll probably be halfway to Mexico City before we know differently."

Looking both ways to make sure no one was around, Face moved quickly to the car while the driver was preoccupied at the counter. He didn't hear Murdock rise or follow behind him, but was certain he had. They didn't have much time, and it only took a few seconds to determine the only place to hide was inside the trunk. With nothing in the backseat to duck under, their options were limited. While Murdock watched the store, waiting anxiously for the driver to finish his chat with the attendant, Face found the latch for the trunk inside the car and it popped open. Thankfully, there was nothing in the trunk, either. But it would still be a tight fit.

"You sure you're gon' be able to get this thing open from the inside?" Murdock asked as the two of them stood at the back of the car.

A quick exchange of uncertain glances, and they were out of time. The driver was paying for his purchases. Murdock ducked down and climbed into the trunk, pressing himself as deep inside as he could to give Face room.

"Tight fit" didn't begin to describe it. It was also stifling hot and as the trunk closed down on top of them, pitch black. Face breathed slow, not sure how much air they would have and well-aware that they could be in here for a while. He could already feel the sweat breaking out on his forehead and the back of his neck. Closing his eyes was no different from leaving them open; he couldn't see a thing. Confined and distinctly uncomfortable, he struggled to find something positive about this situation to focus on. Nothing came to mind, and he finally settled on being grateful for the fact that at the moment, Murdock's fear of the dark was not rearing its head. With a slow, calming breath, Face forced both his mind and body to relax as the car engine started, and they pulled away from the station.

November 17, 1970

Huddled on the floor of a dark, rancid, muggy cell, Murdock afforded a few moments of calm introspection to consider what he had learned from this experience. It took a POW camp to make him realize he'd never known fear. Hunger had also taken on new meaning. But most importantly, this experience had taught him there were things worse than death.

The first few days hadn't been terrible. They weren't the only Americans in the camp, and they'd been kept together. There was comfort in numbers. Hannibal - who'd been caught in the run for the camp - was with them. He would come up with a plan, Murdock thought. He always came up with a plan.

A few brushes with the camp's commander - a Captain Thanh Dai - bloodied them all. Bulldog's leg turned purple and swelled up to three times its normal size. Words like "field amputation" were whispered, but Murdock didn't know if they ever went through with it. Before the determination had to be made, he was removed from the crowded bamboo cage.

His captors hadn't provided a reason for his segregation, though he had his suspicions. Most likely, they'd somehow discovered or simply deduced he was a pilot. That made him valuable, on some level. Unless they determined the rest of the team was SOG, they were less so. Knowing this, he counted on his team to keep their affiliation under their hats.

When he was taken away, he hadn't realized it would be the last time he saw them. It should've been a routine beating, and it received the routine "hang in there" gazes from each man in turn. But instead of being taken to the hut where those tortures were routinely carried out, Murdock was led away, to a man and a truck and a long, blindfolded drive that ended at fortified prison - Son Tay.

Since that day, he'd not seen another living soul except for the rare interrogation session. And he wasn't entirely sure those men who screamed at him in Vietnamese even had souls. There was an English-speaking officer here, who had once attempted to play "good cop", but that must have been months ago now. Murdock hadn't spoken to anyone - not a single word - in ages.

Time was a blur. He neither knew, nor cared how long it had been since he'd been deposited in this hell hole. Alone in the dark, hot, cement cell, with a daily ration of rice and dirty water provided by a silent hand. He'd not seen the sun for... weeks? Months? Years? He couldn't tell. In the beginning, he'd counted the number of times they brought him food, figuring that they did so once a day. But he'd lost track, and realized it didn't really matter anyway. He was here to stay and he would die here. Until then, he would wait to die.

At first, he'd thought it would be quick. More than once in those first few weeks, he'd huddled in the far corner of the pitch-black cell in a shallow pool of his own blood, bleeding from his back where the bamboo cane of the small jungle camp had shredded his flesh. Those wounds had healed now, and the infections that had been the far greater threat than the blood loss had been miraculously staved off by his body's immune system and his careful attention to protect them from obvious contaminants. The wounds were occasionally replaced by new ones, but all in all, the interrogators here were much more creative than to simply hit their prisoners with sticks...

Lying on the cement floor in the darkness, he traced invisible designs on the wall with his finger. Sometimes, he had no idea where he was. Most of the time, he remembered only bits and pieces of how he'd gotten here. Reality and fiction melded into the same hellish existence long ago and it was difficult to tell which memories were from his own life and which he'd seen in a movie somewhere or read in a book. He'd always had something of an overactive imagination.

Right now, he was imagining himself as a Prehistoric hunter, hiding in a dark cave as he waited for his prey to pass by at the opportune moment. In one smooth move, he shifted to a crouched position, forearms on his knees.

"The mighty hunter awaits the arrival of the savage beast inhabiting the dark and dangerous cave." He gasped, spinning around. "What! What's that! It is the beast! He has returned from his kill. And he is about to become... the prey!"

Murdock crept forward, using his hands as a guide though he knew the dark cell by heart. It was six short paces in any direction before he would hit the wall. "Slowly, the brave hunter moves in for the kill and with only a large rock for a weapon against the beast's powerful jaws... he attacks!"

Leaping a full two feet up and over, Murdock landed in a crouched position and wrestled with the enormous invisible foe. Showering the silence with cries of savage rage, he fought until at last, he was victorious! With the vicious pretend-beast finally vanquished, he rose to his feet and, although he couldn't quite stand up straight in the six-foot cell, stretched his arms out before beating his chest with a loud Tarzan-like yell.

Then the game was over, the silence descended, and he was bored again. Bored and alone with only racing thoughts to keep him company. Those thoughts had long ago become too confused to make any kind of sense. It had been so long since he'd seen or heard anything not self-initiated, he almost wished his captors would come interrogate him again, just so he'd have some kind of human contact. Sighing deeply, he sat down against the far wall and traced more designs, like cave etchings in the stone.

More days passed, more weeks, more "meals", which were little more than dirty water with maggots and a few grains of rice. For the millionth time, as he polished off the last of another feast, he wondered what had ever become of the rest of his team. The day he'd been blindfolded was the last time he saw daylight - the last time he'd seen anything, actually. Even the interrogators kept him blindfolded when they came for him. The last thing he could really remember seeing was... somebody. He frowned deeply.

"That's pretty bad if you can't remember his name."

Alan's voice cut through the dark silence - an auditory hallucination or an honest-to-God ghost, it didn't make much difference. Murdock sighed, shutting his useless eyes and leaning back against the hard, scratchy wall. "I remember it," he defended. "I just... can't think of it."

"If you remember it," Alan challenged, "what was it?"

Damn it, why couldn't he remember names? He remembered faces... vaguely... "Face!" he cried. "His name was Face." How could he have forgotten that?

Snorting a brief and unimpressed acknowledgment, Alan continued, not willing to be outdone. "What about the others?"

Murdock frowned. "What about them?"

"Do you remember their names?"

No, Murdock realized instantly. He didn't. Sometimes he did, when he thought hard enough. Most of the time, he tried not to think about them, about how they must have died, about the pain and degradation they undoubtedly suffered.

With a heavy sigh, he banged the back of his head against the cement wall a few times, just for the hell of it. "What does it matter?" he whispered. "I'm never going to see them again."

The challenging tone of Alan's voice dropped into a more serious, instructive one. "It matters because the longer you can hold on to the little pieces of who you are and what your life was before this, the better your chances of putting it all back together again."

Laughing out loud, Murdock stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned forward to touch his toes. "Oh, please. My life ain't goin' nowhere. I ain't ever gon' see the outside of this room again an' you know it. I'll die here." He sat up and stared into the darkness as his smile fell. "Just like you did."

"It's the little things that don't matter that will keep you strong."

Murdock rubbed his bare feet on the cement floor, scrunching his toes a few times. The scratchy texture of the ground beneath him helped to visualize it even without sight. He wondered, in the back of his mind, if this was how blind people saw things.

He slept again, ate again. This time, he couldn't keep it down. Not for the first time, the squiggling, rotten mush hit his stomach and came right back up. He hated it when that happened, not least because it meant he had to taste the vile concoction twice.

"What does it matter if I'm strong?" he challenged his silent companion, desperate for company as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spit a few times on the floor. It would dry, just like the vomit would. The entire floor was coated with dried bodily fluids of one kind or another. His sense of smell was overpowered by them every time he drew in a breath. "I'm never getting out of here and you know it."

"Hannibal has pulled off some pretty daring rescues." Alan's tone was almost hopeful. It sounded wrong, even in Murdock's own head. "Why do you think he wouldn't come for you, of all people?"

Murdock leaned heavily on the wall for support as his stomach gradually stopped wrenching. "If he was gonna come, he woulda done it already," he said weakly. Hannibal. He hadn't heard that name in a while. But then, it had to be at least a dozen meals since the last time he'd given thought to any of his team. "Besides, I'm sure he's long dead by now."

He sighed with a detached sort of indifference at that thought. Although he could imagine how they'd died if he wanted to, he distinctly didn't want to picture it.

"You're not dead yet," Alan pointed out.

Murdock considered that. Was he dead? Maybe he was still breathing, but in an ever-growing sense of the word, he was getting more and more "dead" every time he opened and shut his eyes and saw nothing but stifling hot, thick darkness. He could feel his sense of reality slipping through his fingers like sand, and he watched it go with an utterly amused fascination. So this was what it looked like when someone lost their mind...

"Hey, Alan?" he said quietly, his voice cracking a bit with uneasiness.

"Yeah?"

"Remember how Dad always used to call me crazy?"

"Uh huh."

Murdock paused a moment and took a deep breath of stale, putrid air. The smell in this room - the smell of his own body - was almost enough to make him gag every time he breathed. The walls were closing in. He was running out of air. "I think maybe he was right..."

April 20, 1985

A bit claustrophobic and drenched in sweat, Murdock was surprised he wasn't hearing more complaints from the other man crammed into the trunk with him. Once they were parked, it was up to Face - with a flashlight in his teeth and a pick in his fingers - to open the locked trunk from the inside. Murdock wasn't exactly sure how this was possible, but if anyone could do it, it would be Face. So he waited, breathing slow to savor the waning oxygen.

After several minutes of quiet work, Face let out a few choice words under his breath. Murdock was beginning to worry. "You sure you can do this Face?"

An irritated growl answered him, and Murdock heard the pop after a few more minutes of fumbling. Thank God. Murdock breathed in the rush of much cooler air, filling his lungs to capacity before letting out a deep sigh. The world outside was dim, but still seemed blinding to their eyes, which had already adjusted for the dark. As they climbed out, Murdock noticed why Face had reverted to the cursing: his hand was bleeding.

"How'd you do that?" Murdock asked, inspecting the deep gash on his finger.

Face answered him with a sarcastic look, but didn't speak. The question was rhetorical anyways. While Face looked for something to wrap his bleeding hand, Murdock grabbed the walkie talkie off his belt and turned it on. "A-Team One is inside the wire, copy?"

Alan's voice answered him almost immediately. "Copy, A-Team One, this is base. You're in the garage?"

Murdock glanced around, taking everything in. There were three cars parked in the immaculately clean, otherwise bare room. Two looked like sports cars, and one was the sedan they'd rode in with. Although he didn't recognize the make or model of the sparkling clean cars, he imagined they were all exotic in some way.

"Looks that way," he answered.

"The house is to your north," Alan informed. "You should be able to see it from inside."

"Watch those cameras," Face warned. Murdock glanced up in the direction that he was pointing and saw the camera in the top corner of the room. Its double, stationary and pointed at the garage door, was fixed in the opposite corner. Standing right up against the wall and almost near the cameras, Murdock and Face were probably just out of the lenses' peripheral view.

Murdock hugged the wall as he passed underneath the one to the right, and stopped at a window overlooking a large, well-kept lawn. He hadn't thought lawns could grow like that down here. An enormous house loomed over the few trees, built almost like a castle with dark brown trim and off-white walls. Murdock studied the intimidating building for a long moment. Somewhere inside was someone who knew where they could find a scared teenage girl. Maybe she was even in there. They certainly had the security to keep her there. He wondered what she looked like, what she was thinking, if she had reached that point of hopeless resignation to her fate. He hoped not. At least if she had, he hoped that she would be able to snap out of it when she saw that someone had, in fact, come for her.

The silent minutes stretched as they watched the house, waiting for the comings and goings, the lights in the windows to illuminate shadows as the sun slowly sank toward the horizon. Finally, positioned at the window but clearly bored, Face sighed audibly. "Man, this sure wasn't how I was planning on spending this weekend."

Sitting on the floor between the cars, Murdock blinked slowly, resisting the urge to agree enthusiastically. This was far from how he'd planned on this weekend going, too. With everything in place for a nice relaxing getaway with Kelly, he'd been sure nothing could go wrong once they actually made it all the way to the secluded cabin. He should've still been there, tucked away and enjoying the company...

"Come on, Murdock," Face pleaded, startling Murdock out of his silent thoughts. Glancing up, he saw Face's eyes trained on him now.

Innocently, Murdock raised a brow and hummed a quiet, "Hmm?"

"The silent brooding doesn't suit you," Face replied. "You've hardly said a word since the restaurant."

Murdock rubbed the back of his neck, diverting his gaze. Face didn't want to sit here in silence, and that was understandable. But what was there to say? He definitely didn't want to talk about the thoughts that were really on his mind, and they interrupted any attempts to talk - or even think - about anything else. But Face was still staring at him, waiting for an answer, an explanation.

"I keep trying to pretend like it's okay," Murdock finally said quietly, hoping he wouldn't have to explain that statement in detail. "But it's not okay. None of this is okay."

"Why?" Face asked sincerely. The look in his eyes was vaguely akin to worry. Trying to ignore it, Murdock pulled his knees up to his chest in an effort to make himself smaller.

"I mean, I know it was a shock and the guy is a bit of a jackass," Face continued. "But you're usually a lot better at just letting it roll off."

"Sometimes I have dreams," Murdock replied without thinking too much about what he was saying. If he thought about it, he would talk himself out of it. He'd learned that much from hours and hours of talking to therapists. Better to just let the words come and think about the implications later. "I wake up and for a while, I'm not sure what's really real."

"Everyone gets that, Murdock," Face sighed, offering his best effort and consolation.

Murdock cast a long, pleading look at Face, wishing he could understand this without having it explained. "I feel like I'm in a dream, Face," he admitted. "Like this is the part that's not real and I'm going to wake up and when I do, I'm gonna realize I'm back in that black hole, waiting to -"

"You're not," Face interrupted firmly, forcefully countering the words with as much conviction and serious determination as Murdock had ever heard.

With a sigh, Murdock shook his head to clear it. "Yeah, I know," he lied. "It's just... that's where his voice takes me, in my head."

"Why?" Still hard and distinctly colder now that his own memories had been triggered, Face's voice was somehow comforting in the confusion, like an anchor that wasn't easily broken loose. "That was a long time ago, Murdock, and it didn't have anything to do with Alan."

"Yeah, but it did," Murdock protested, leaning forward to cradle his head in his hands. "He was at Son Tay."

"Not necessarily at the same time you were," Face answered quickly.

Murdock shook his head. "No, no, I mean that's where he started talking to me." Glancing up in time to see Face's hard expression turn to one of confusion, Murdock sighed. "In the dark, solitary confinement, you hear things. And I heard him all the time."

Face looked away, shifting uncomfortably. He didn't like talking about that time in their past any more than Murdock did.

"Thing is, he never stopped," Murdock finished quietly. "I still hear his voice in my head and I was never supposed to hear it for real again. I've got it all wrapped up in the crazy from the black hole and I..." He swallowed hard and shook his head, looking away again. "I don't think about that crazy; I don't let it out. But when he's here, talking with that voice, it's like the crazy from the dark is in the real world."

Face sighed audibly, shaking his head in the long silence that followed. "You shouldn't be here," he finally concluded, and Murdock hid his face in shame.

"No, I'm okay," he tried to justify. "I can do this, whatever it is we're doing here. This is the easy part."

Casting a wary glance down at him, Face carefully evaluated the sincerity of Murdock's forced smile.

"This is what we do," Murdock finished. "And I don't have to think about it. This is easy. The hard part is gonna be looking him in the face again." Letting the smile fall, he closed his eyes and rested his head back against the car behind him before finishing under his breath. "He ain't supposed to be here."

"He is here," Face said calmly, patiently. "That's reality, like it or not."

"Yeah, I know," Murdock sighed. "But that's what makes it like a dream."