CHAPTER THIRTEEN

December 11, 1970

"Ever wonder what it would be like if we had wings?" Murdock asked, sprawling on the floor of the rancid cell with his bare feet straight up on the wall.

"If we had wings, we could fly," Alan mused.

Murdock frowned. "If we had wings, we'd be trapped birds inside a cage," he pointed out. But then he smiled as he considered another option. "Unless we were really little birds. Then we could fly out the little hole in the door where they stick the food."

He had tried to fit through that hole, but he was too big. He could only get an arm through.

"What color birds would we be?" Alan asked.

Footsteps on the other side of the door, echoing down the long hallway, cut Murdock's thoughts off abruptly. Instantly, Alan retreated into the nothingness, finding somewhere else to hide, somewhere far away. Left alone in the cell, Murdock rose to his feet with some trepidation. It was not mealtime; he'd already had his banquet only a few hours ago. The interrogators had been in to see him just two meals ago and it seemed strange they would be returning so quickly. Perhaps they were just bored. A shiver ran through him in spite of the stifling heat, and he clenched his fists tight, as though somehow hiding the evidence of their last amusement on the excruciatingly fragile nerves beneath fingernails might prevent them from getting the idea to experiment again.

The lock in the cell door turned, and Murdock raised his arm to cover his eyes against the blinding light of the flashlights which always preceded the blindfold. There were only two colors in his world - black and searing, agonizing white. He'd learned the very first time they'd shined those damned things at him that even with his lids closed, the darkness turned to a bright white glow as the light came through his eyelids.

"Dung!" a rough voice snapped at him in Vietnamese.

Mustering up some kind of courage - or maybe it was simply insanity - he smiled at the man he couldn't see. "Well, hello! To whom do I owe the pleasure this time?" Although keenly aware that he was about to be tortured, the friendly greeting was not entirely feigned. Oh, for the company of another living creature! He would gladly face whatever hells there might be.

"Yen lan, lon!"

Murdock ignored both the insult and the order to shut up. This man was unfamiliar to him and Murdock wondered if he spoke any English. He certainly didn't have a clue that his prisoner spoke Vietnamese. That was an ace Murdock had managed to keep up his sleeve.

"I don't get many visitors down here, you know," he rambled as the blindfold was tied around his eyes. His hands were cuffed in front of him just a few seconds later. He gave no thought to struggling. "It's not a bad little hotel with all things considered. Room service is always prompt, comfortable beds. Housekeeping leaves something to be desired, though. The room was a little dirty when I checked in this morning."

Without any response, the man shoved him forward. Blind and weakened by starvation, Murdock stumbled out into the long, familiar hallway. He was barely able to walk beyond the first few paces, and had to use the wall beside him for support. A gun at his back shoved him down the long walkway to the right.

"Hey, do you know any good restaurants in town?" he questioned weakly. The closer he came to The Room, the more his stomach fluttered with nervous, dreadful anticipation. "I've got a real taste for a great big hamburger and some steak fries. Know where I can get one of those?"

Pain was coming, in unfathomable amounts, and there was nothing he could say or do to make it less. The questions they asked, in a language he wasn't supposed to know, didn't even make sense. They thought he was an American soldier. Really, he was just a madman on vacation who'd ended up here by mistake. And the majestic scenery had come so highly recommended by the travel agent...

Fifteen steps, turn right, twenty-three steps, turn left and wait for the door to The Room to be opened. The path was familiar and well-rehearsed. But this time when Murdock stopped, his escort ran right into him. As the guard cursed furiously at him for stopping when he'd not been ordered to do so, Murdock stood there in confusion. When the gun jammed into his ribs and shoved him so hard he sprawled across the hallway, he scrambled for clarity amidst the confusion he hid behind in times like these.

Rough hands jerked him back up to his feet. The barrel of an AK-47 pushed him along. No longer sure where he was going, he fell instantly and completely silent as his confused thoughts raced. He wasn't a tourist; that was a reality - a personality, even - he'd invented to hide behind. Nor was he an explorer in the black abyss of space or traipsing through various eras of history. He wasn't blind or dead or even properly alive. He was a prisoner of war and something was different.

Was this it? The sudden thought of death caught him off guard. Were they taking him out to dispose of him? It would not be the first time POWs were lined up and shot, Geneva Convention or no. Technically, this wasn't even classified as a war - a fact the NVA exploited when it came to the legal technicalities. They did not have "prisoners of war" because there was no war; instead, they had spies and insurgents, who were prosecuted according to their laws.

Murdock was so caught up in his racing thoughts, he lost count of his footsteps. The slight temperature change was only a degree or two cooler as he was driven outside, but his senses had been heightened by the sensory deprivation for so long that it might as well have been twenty. The shouting of soldiers, the rush of a breeze rustling the trees in the surrounding area, the sound of footsteps squishing in the mud all made him dizzy. He felt the sun hit his skin - it burned so hot it almost made him cry out in surprise and pain - and stumbled forward until he fell forward into the scalding metal of a truck, trapping his hands against the vehicle. He didn't dare cry out.

"Nhan duoc ben tong!" the guard ordered, and Murdock obediently climbed into the back bed of the truck.

Confused, he huddled into the corner where he was shoved, cuffed hands in his lap. He struggled to make himself as small as possible, breathing in air that was fresher than he'd savored in... he didn't know how long. Was this the last reprieve before death? Where were they taking him? Maybe he was already dead, or making this all up for a place to hide while the sadistic torturers did unspeakable things to his body in another universe...

He gave no thought to removing the blindfold, even though he could have easily reached it. Instead, he just sat still, confused thoughts racing as the truck pulled away, jostling and bouncing him around. He tried to press tightly against the wall, to keep from flailing all over like a ragdoll. With his hands still tied, he didn't have the best chance of keeping his balance if he gave up the support of the two walls in the corner.

As the truck jolted and loudly groaned its way through the camp, he realized he wasn't alone. It occurred to him to wonder if the others were Vietnamese or other American prisoners. But he thought it best to say nothing. Not that he had much to say anyway. They were all about to die, he was fairly certain. Best to save his last words for something really good. What did he want his last words to be, anyway?

Indistinguishable conversation from the front of the truck signaled the required stop at the camp gate. Then, starting off again, they headed in an unknown direction. How far would they go? Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't an execution after all. What if they were transferring him to another camp? His heart lightened for an instant before sinking to new depths as he realized it probably wouldn't be an improvement over his little solitary cell. At least in the darkness, he had Alan to talk to.

"Murdock, you look like hell."

The words, in a language he'd not heard for almost as long as he could remember, startled him. Not immediately sure if anyone else around him had heard what he just had, he hesitated to reply. "You speak English?" he finally managed, trying to get his bearings. It was beyond comprehension that the speaker actually knew his name.

A hand on his shoulder made him jump nearly a foot. So acutely aware of every sense other than the sight he had been so long deprived of, he had been expecting a subtle hint of a presence rather than a firm grip.

"It's okay, Murdock," the unfamiliar voice said comfortingly. "You're safe."

Safe? His thoughts raced. How was he safe? Who was that voice and why could he feel him just as clearly as hear him? He wasn't used to being able to feel his hallucinations, and it was unnerving. Drawing in a determined breath, he reached up to remove the blindfold and confront the emptiness he was sure would be waiting for him when he took a proper look around.

"No no no, don't do that," another voice cut him off quickly, grabbing his hands and lowering them back down to his lap. "You've been locked in the dark for almost six months. You'll burn your retinas out if you take that blindfold off right now."

Murdock shook his head in bewilderment. Six months? Questions were forming out of the confusion, but he didn't even know how to ask. "How...?" he began uncertainly, but couldn't finish. It took several tries before he had words. "Who are you?"

"Aw, come on, Murdock." The low tenor of that smug voice made him straighten. "You didn't really think we wouldn't come for you."

Scarcely daring to draw in a breath lest the spell should be broken, Murdock worked his jaw a few times before managing a weak, "Hannibal?"

"Sorry it took so long, kid," Hannibal answered with true regret. "We had a hell of a time finding you."

"Here," the owner of the first voice interrupted, removing his hand from Murdock's shoulder and placing a pill in his hand. "Take this."

"Cipher?" Murdock guessed, not sure he dared hope for an answer.

"Vitamin D," Cipher replied, ignoring the question. The sound of his voice, suddenly unmistakable in its familiarity, was enough to confirm the hopeful suspicions. Closing his fist around the pill, Murdock realized his hands were shaking. An instant later, the rope fell from around them and he was free. Still blind, he was now shaking with... what? Fear? No. Excitement? Maybe. But still so much confusion...

"Drink," BA ordered, placing a bottle of water against his hand. Without thinking, Murdock ripped the top of it off with such enthusiasm, he almost lost the pill in his other hand. Gulping down the fresh, clean water, he half-drowned trying to swallow as fast as he was pouring.

"Pill," Cipher reminded, and he dropped it in his mouth between swallows.

When the bottle was empty and Murdock was gasping for breath, he dropped it on the bed of the truck and held on as they passed over a particularly rough spot in the road. Maybe he was just dreaming, but if so, it was the nicest dream he'd had in a very long time.

"I thought you were dead!" he cried.

"Yeah, well, we thought the same 'bout you." BA sounded angry.

Murdock was almost too stunned to respond. Shaking his head again, he stammered a few times before finding words, tripping over them in his excitement. "How did you...? Who's driving this thing!"

"That's Giap," Hannibal explained as they jostled over the bumps. "We borrowed him from the LLDB."

Murdock felt his chest tighten with a feeling of anticipation that he'd become completely unfamiliar with in the past few months. "You mean... he's with us?" He was almost afraid to believe what he was hearing, but the longer the dream went on, the more sense it began to make.

"He's with us," Hannibal confirmed. "You're safe, Murdock. Now we just need to get you fixed up, and you'll be on your way back home."

Murdock realized he was shaking all over. Home. He never thought he would hear that word again. He was going home. Home to chicken dinners and apple pie and brewed coffee and American cigarettes and real, live, English-speaking people! With tears quickly soaking the protective blindfold, he pulled his knees up close to his chest, leaned over them, and sobbed loudly with complete and utter relief.

April 20, 1985

In the uncomfortable silence of the garage where Face and Murdock waited for any indication of the movements in and around Corrolini's mansion, Face took a few minutes to admire the cars. Avoiding the cameras, he was particularly interested in the one furthest to the left - a 1983 Corvette. More accurately, it was the 1983 Corvette. Only 40-something prototypes of the model had been made, and only one had survived. If Face was right, and this was the only one of its kind, they'd stolen it out of the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky. Face did his best not to drool over the polished white finish. He might not have known much about cars, but he seemed to have done his research on the one very much like his own.

It seemed Alan was right about the rarity of the cars. Murdock didn't really know or care what kind of market there really was for such things. He just wanted to get the girl and get out of here. The waiting was killing him slowly, but he knew it would be safer to approach the house in the dark. Besides, the longer they watched, the better indication they had of who might be inside. They still had no idea if Corrolini was home, but the man who'd driven them hadn't come out yet so the house was certainly not empty.

"A-Team One to Base," Face called into the walkie talkie, peering back out the window. The setting sun made the shadows too thick to see the house clearly, and it was just about time to move.

It only took a few seconds for Alan's voice to return the call on the otherwise silent channel. "Go ahead, One."

"We haven't seen any patrols around the house," Face reported. "Nobody coming or going since the guy who brought us in here."

Sitting between the cars, carefully avoiding the cameras, Murdock suddenly realized he was hungry when his stomach rumbled. With a sigh, he stood and brushed himself off before joining Face at the window.

"You probably won't meet up with any patrols," Alan informed over the radio. "Corrolini likes his technology - cameras and alarms. Though armed security will come if you trip any of them."

Face took a moment to glance at Murdock, the silent question passing between them with a nod. Both were anxious to do something more than sit here and watch and now that night was falling, they could move about more safely.

"Where is Corrolini likely to be?" Face asked, tapping gently on the windowpane. The door wasn't an option for getting out of the garage; the cameras were pointed straight at it. But the windows didn't appear alarmed. Handing the radio over to Murdock, Face unlatched one and slid it open before lifting the screen out and setting it on the floor.

"There are three big windows on the ground floor," Alan reported. "The closest one to the back door looks down a hallway with a stairwell going up to the second floor. The smaller window on the second floor, just to the left of the hallway window, that's Corrolini's office. He spends most of his time in there."

Murdock identified the window easily. It wasn't exactly easily accessible, but it was dark. They would be able to have a snoop around.

"We placed charges near the guard shack at the second gate," Hannibal cut in unexpectedly. "If you need a distraction, we've got them hooked to a remote detonator."

"Copy," Face answered with a smile. "We're going in, so we'll be offline."

"Be careful," Alan offered just before Face turned the volume on the walkie talkie all the way down, cutting them off from the rest of the team. Then, exchanging quick glances with Murdock, he jumped up and through the open window.

Murdock followed behind, staggering a few steps on the grass before he found his footing. Face was already scanning the perimeter, pressed against the brick wall of the garage. The sprawling lawn was empty and almost eerie in the dim light. Other than the lights in the windows on the main floor, none of which illuminated any shadows or profiles, there were no signs of life.

Keeping low, Murdock followed Face across the open lawn to the mansion, so close he almost stepped on his heels. They skirted around the holly bushes and up against the wall, just right of the large picture window.

"There's cameras in the trees," Face said quietly, pointing out three of them. One was aimed directly at the back door, effectively sealing off the obvious entrance. After checking a few windows and finding them all locked and alarmed, their options diminished even further. More importantly, several of the rooms on the first floor were occupied.

Murdock looked up at the six-inch ledge winding around the building just under the windows of the second story. Casting a quick glance at Face, he knew they were considering the same possibility. Around the corner, they found what they were looking for - a vine trellis that looked like it could possibly hold their weight. Starting to feel the buzz of energy as he considered the danger of getting caught, the thrill of climbing up to trespass on the privacy of a threatening megalomaniac, Murdock couldn't help but smile as he gave a nod to Face.

"After you," he whispered politely, with a gesture inviting him to go first.

April 9, 1971

Winter seemed especially cold. "Home" seemed especially lonely. Standing still and silent at the window of the hotel room he'd been living in for almost two months, Murdock held a cigarette in one hand and a near-empty bottle of vodka in the other. He'd removed the sling almost as soon as he'd set foot back on American soil, not wanting to advertise his injuries. A fracture in his arm hadn't broken all the way through the bone, and had healed itself sometime during his captivity. The same was true of several cracked ribs. Nobody needed to know how they'd been broken.

The money would run out soon, and although he'd tried three times in as many weeks, he couldn't seem to hold down a job for more than a day or two. The war had changed him more than any of these hippie bastards could know, and he was beginning to seriously doubt if he would ever fit in again. It frightened him to think he might've been one of those hippies had he not gone over. He might've even been involved in a few protests, holding blood drives for the NVA and waving anti-American banners. But since he'd been spared that fate, and since the general population wanted nothing to do with him as a result, the best course of action was simply to lock himself in a dark room and watch life from the window through a haze of numbing drunkenness.

His body still bore the scars of Vietnam, and the youth of America spoke a language foreign to him, littered with intonations of carefree naiveté and ignorant bliss. He hated them for it. Maybe when the B-52 bombers were done with Vietnam, they could come back over here and make craters out of these goddamn universities where the traitorous fuckers hung VC flags in the classrooms filled with whining brats whose education amounted to little more than draft evasion.

Anger was part of the grieving process, he'd been told.

He took a shot of vodka from the bottle, savoring the burn on its way down. The overcast day was easy on eyes that still hadn't completely healed from prolonged disuse. He'd only just stopped having to use the sunglasses when he was forced to slip out of the room and to the liquor store on the corner. The glasses had attracted a few stares, since he only went out at night when he was less likely to meet anyone sober enough to hold a conversation. Not that he would've been sober enough to indulge them if they'd tried.

Closing his eyes, he let the vertigo of drunkenness take him for a ride. What was his team doing right now, on the other side of the world where it was tomorrow morning? Boston had gone home to Oklahoma or Kansas - Murdock couldn't remember in his drunken stupor - and Bulldog was dead. Hannibal was probably still trying to make nice with Westman after disobeying a direct order to stay away from Son Tay. Murdock didn't quite know how to feel about that, or about the gaping holes in the abbreviated story he'd gotten from BA, who wouldn't look him in the eye when he told it.

They'd thought he was dead. After escaping from their own camp - Face was very non-specific as to how - they spent several months looking for any indication of where he'd been taken. Finally, by blind luck, they snatched an NVA soldier who'd been stationed at Son Tay and identified Murdock. Hannibal went the same day to get approval for the mission. When he couldn't get it, he called back to the team and told them he had.

It was a bold move. If they'd failed, Hannibal would've been up against a court martial for sure. They put it all on the line for him, risked everything and then some more. And for what? When he found out he was going home, he'd felt nothing - no relief, no surprise, no joy or sadness. He should've been happy. Alan kept telling him to be happy, to feel lucky that he was still alive. Most POWs didn't get that relief, in the end. Most of them died in filth and agony.

Murdock frowned deeply, chest rising and falling as he took a deep breath. Yeah. Lucky. Shutting his eyes, he took another long drag from his cigarette. Somehow, with no purpose, no family, and nowhere to go, he didn't feel particularly lucky. He hadn't even bothered to contact his few friends when he'd come back home. They were too busy marching in protests to care about his return anyways; he didn't want to see them.

The knock on the door startled him. In cutoff jeans and nothing else, he stumbled to answer it, setting the bottle on the dresser. When he opened the door, his eyes widened immediately and he stood up a bit straighter. "Colonel!" he exclaimed, surprised.

Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith stood in full uniform, just outside the room. Murdock opened the door wider without even thinking, inviting him into the room. "What the hell are you doing here?" There was no one in the world he would've been more surprised to see.

"I should ask you the same question," Hannibal answered, removing the familiar green beret as he stepped inside. Murdock shut the door behind him. "I just came from the VA. They told me I could find you here."

"You found me," Murdock confirmed. "Why are you looking for me?"

Hannibal's eyes scanned the room, and Murdock immediately felt self-conscious. He'd not let housekeeping in here for over a week. Cans and bottles and empty cigarette packs littered every flat surface. Aside from the Vitamin D pills he'd been strictly ordered to take after so many months in a dark cell, all he'd really consumed since he'd returned to the States was liquor, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the occasional pizza when he was willing to risk the repercussions. His dreams of steak and eggs had proved too much for his stomach after so many months of starvation.

"This place is a mess," Hannibal declared, taking a step further into the room and picking up an empty carton of Marlboroughs, tossing it in the general direction of the heap of trash with the plastic bucket underneath. Leave it to Hannibal to state the obvious.

"I wasn't expecting company," Murdock answered, studying him warily.

"He's come to tell you everyone's dead." The voice in his head was so real, it was almost audible. "Either that or to drag your ass back to that hell hole."

Murdock set his jaw as he answered silently, but firmly. "You may think so, Alan, but you've been wrong before."

Hannibal turned to look him up and down with an unfamiliar, almost compassionate look. "Get dressed," he ordered. Then, with a long look at the disaster area of his living space, added under his breath, "That is, if you can find any clean clothes in here. Let me buy you dinner."

Stunned at the common, friendly gesture, Murdock could do nothing but nod. The man had come all the way from the other side of the world to buy him dinner. That was normal, right? Perhaps it was no wonder that he simply didn't recognize normal anymore.