The pilot Hannibal had recruited in Murdock's absence, Snap, was a bit of an enigma. A bit high strung and definitely by-the-book, there was no logical explanation for how he had survived one drop with Hannibal, let alone six.
"He's good," Hannibal explained, pausing beside Murdock who was watching the exterior pre-flight check from a safe distance.
"Well, you're not dead yet." Murdock smirked as he glanced briefly at Hannibal. "So that counts for something."
"He's got nerve. That counts for a lot." Hannibal knelt beside his pack, checking pockets. "When Face fell through the trees, he took us back. He didn't have to. A lot of pilots wouldn't have. It was pretty hot."
Murdock nodded, thoughtfully. "Is that where you met him?"
"Yeah. About a month and a half ago." Hannibal paused. "He's definitely a rules and regulations type. Drives Cruiser up the fucking wall."
Murdock grinned. "And you?"
Hannibal smiled as he stood again and reached for his cigar. "You forget, Captain. I went to West Point. I'm good at that game."
Murdock offered a lighter before Hannibal could find his, then dropped it back in his pocket.
"You shouldn't have a problem," Hannibal continued with a lingering glance in the direction of the chopper. "You outrank him. He'll be… exceedingly polite."
"You mind if I fly right side?"
Hannibal raised a brow, curious. "No."
"Good. How old is he?" He didn't give an answer to Hannibal's implied question. Why didn't Murdock want control of the chopper? He was the senior officer, and had more experience, and was closer to the team. But he wanted to be the co-pilot?
Hannibal could've asked. Instead, he let it go. "Nineteen."
A brief laugh, and Murdock shook his head. "Just a baby…"
Hannibal chuckled. "You're all babies, as far as I'm concerned." He grabbed his pack, hoisting it over his shoulders. "Hell, Face is barely twenty."
Murdock blinked, surprised. Not that Face looked a day over sixteen, but the numbers didn't add up. "I thought he'd been here longer than that."
Hannibal only smiled, and glanced over as Face, Cruiser, and BA appeared between the hootches, heading for the chopper. "Ready, Captain?"
Murdock smiled, pushing the thought aside. "Ready as I'll ever be."
Murdock flew right-side to drop his team off in North Vietnam, about five clicks from a small collection of buildings that had been scouted from the air a few days before. He wasn't the only chopper. They were inserting an entire Hatchet Force of forty CIDG alongside RT Cannon. They were anticipating that camp to still be in use.
Snap was a bit uneasy in his role as AC while a senior officer flew as co-pilot. Murdock wasn't sure if it was the "co-pilot" part or the "senior officer" part that got to him. If Murdock's own experience was any indication, Snap had been flying solo for Hannibal at least half the time. And the request to let Snap have the authoritative role in the chopper had certainly caught everybody off guard. Murdock had said it was because he was out of practice; he'd only been back in-country for two weeks, after all. But really, that wasn't his reason. His hands were made for these controls, and he didn't think he'd ever be uncomfortable behind them. He flew on the right so that he could watch Snap. It wouldn't take long to get a reading on him when he was the one in charge.
Hannibal was right. He was by the book.
All the time in the air, lowering into the LZ, waving good-bye and good luck to the team, he barely said a word that wasn't straight out of the operations manual. It was amusing. This kid was going to be fun to break-in. Efforts to stir up conversation on the way back were repeatedly thwarted. But Murdock was nothing if not determined. As one topic after another stalled out, he came up with new ones – all the way back to the FOB.
"So where are you from?" Murdock asked as the blades wound down.
"Michigan, sir," Snap answered curtly, beginning his post-flight check. "Alpena."
"Cold up there. How are you handling this heat?"
"Feels like I'm in hell, sir."
Murdock chuckled, and watched him as he went carefully through the procedures. Twice. Lack of confidence? Or maybe it was just intimidation. Murdock couldn't imagine he did this every time he flew. Nobody was that tedious.
"I've got a bottle of whiskey in the hooch," Murdock said as Snap finally finished. Conversation topic number 421 had stalled out. Maybe liquor would loosen the kid's tongue a bit. "Why don't you let me pour you a drink?"
"I don't drink, sir," he clipped. "Especially not with my team on the ground."
Murdock blinked, startled by the line that sounded almost like an accusation. "I never said we were going to get shitfaced," he clarified.
"Actually, I'm going to take a nap. I didn't get much sleep last night." He nodded his acknowledgment in lieu of a salute. "Captain." And without another word, he turned and walked away.
As Murdock stared after him, stunned by the abrupt end to the conversation, he slowly felt a smile creeping across his face. No wonder he and Cruiser were at odds. Snap was definitely going to be fun to crack. But that was okay. Murdock enjoyed a challenge.
BA was tense and on edge. It had nothing to do with the mission. Taking the camp had been pretty straightforward. The "battle" had been more like an extermination. They had a grand total of ten injuries for forty VC dead - and most of those injuries were not severe. None of them needed an immediate extraction. They'd rushed the camp so fast - from all directions - that the enemy hadn't had a chance to react. In ten minutes flat, they had the camp and all the information inside was now theirs for the taking.
"Sergeant, you're awful quiet."
The implied question was obvious, but BA hoped that for once, his CO was just killing time instead of leading somewhere with it. BA was a man of few words and Hannibal was a master at them. With his rifle across his lap, Hannibal was perched on the edge of the bunk in what appeared to be the commander's quarters, thumbing through a stack of papers. BA scowled at him briefly, and gave a noncommittal grunt before resuming his watch at the door.
Hannibal chuckled under his breath as he went back to his papers. "What's on your mind, BA?"
What was on his mind? Funny that a full bird colonel was asking a enlisted man like him that question. Even funnier that he meant it. It had taken BA a while to get used to Hannibal's style, but in the end, he really appreciated it. He'd never forgotten what it was like to be trapped without a voice, treated like a piece of machinery. That's all the Army really saw him as, and the man standing there looking at him with a soul piercing stare was the only one who changed that.
Didn't mean he wanted to talk about this. Because he didn't. If it was anyone else asking, BA would have hit him just to not have to think about it, But he owed Hannibal an answer. More than that, he owed him the truth.
"I'm thinkin' 'bout those fools we bunk with." Maybe Hannibal would hear the anger and let it drop. Anger was so much easier to handle then the conflicting feelings he was having.
"Which ones?" He grinned slightly, keeping his tone light. "We've got several."
The smile and light tone didn't fool BA in the least. Hannibal didn't miss a trick, especially when it came to the team. He was all smiles until he felt the need not to be and then God help whoever was in his path. Even looking through the papers, he was still assessing BA, looking for something that BA frankly didn't want to give. It would be easier to give it up than have him poking and prodding until he found it. But the words got tied up in his brain and his instinct took over.
"The same three stooges from before. Larry, Moe, and Curly."
Hannibal glanced at the Face and Cruiser, who were safely out of earshot, and raised a brow at BA. "What about them?"
The question was unassuming, but he clearly recognized the significance in the "three." BA shot a hard look at Hannibal before his voice lowered and words came out in a angry rush. "Aw, come off it, Hannibal. You know what the problem is."
He didn't want to talk about this. He didn't want to have to feel it again. Flexing his shoulders, he felt the scars on his back pull. Memories and shame and a bunch of other stuff he never thought about washed over him all at once. He looked down. "Seein' him is hard. And they don't know what to do with it." And neither did he.
Hannibal studied him for a long moment, then lowered his head again to continue through the papers. "Seeing him is hard." He paused. "But they'll adjust. And so will he. It's just going to take a little while for him to get back into the swing of things."
BA was silent for a full thirty seconds, mouth opening and then closing as he stared at Hannibal, scowl deepening. "Swing of things? That ain't his problem an' you know it."
Hannibal watched him carefully. "What is?"
BA growled. The skinny flyboy had no problem getting into the swing of things, and that was the problem. "He happy to be here, Hannibal, Happy to think he ain't ever goin' back to the real world." BA took a step closer. "He ain't the same and he ain't never gonna be."
No longer merely trying to assess the legitimacy of the conversation, his voice dropped the light tone. He wasn't challenging, but he sounded harder. "None of us will be. What's your point?"
BA's shook his head. It wasn't coming out right. He didn't know how to make it come out. He didn't even know how to make it stay in. Frustration, worry and ager at the injustice of it all hit BA all over again. And if he felt it, then Hannibal had to feel it. He wasn't looking for a real answer. But what was BA supposed to say? "Look in his eyes, man. Part of him is trapped in that hole. We got his body back, and it walk and talks an sounds like him, but he lost."
Hannibal didn't answer. BA dropped his eyes to the floor as unwanted emotion rose up inside of him. Jaw clenched, he swallowed hard. "He gave it up for us, Hannibal." He looked back up, pained. He felt like he was begging. It felt wrong and unnatural and weak and BA hate it. How was he supposed to deal with that? How could any of them cope with it? "He chose us."
"And we chose him," Hannibal answered solemnly. "We couldn't have done any more than we did to get him out of there as soon as we could. And we can't do any more to bring him back from being lost than what we can do."
"I know that. But it don't change nothin'."
Hannibal paused for a long moment before he continued with deep reverence. "War is hell, Sergeant. It's broken stronger men than all of us. But this is the path you've chosen. It's the path Murdock chose. Whatever happens to us along that path isn't always within our control. You can either keep going or you can lay down and die. I don't see that any of my men have done the latter."
BA's jaw set. He knew all about how war broke strong men. It had broke every last one of them in one way or another. And they taken the cracked and chipped pieces they could find and patched each other up again. All except Murdock. He had been all alone in the dark.
BA snarled at the thought of it. Six months of no light, being treated like something less than even an animal. Six months and he never sold them out. BA hadn't lasted six weeks. They owed him... something. BA owed him. But he had no idea how he was supposed to pay back that kind of debt.
When they had pulled him out, he was just paper skin wrapped around bones. But he'd been smiling. And he was still smiling now. BA would've known how to deal with the anger and regret and fear and hate… but how was he supposed to deal with smiling?
"I'd be more worried 'bout the three of them killing each other," he finally said.
"What do you mean?"
Murdock’s first night back and Cruiser was swinging at him. Second night back, BA had him pinned up again a wall. "Murdock don't know how to stop and they don't neither."
He glanced at the door and then back to Hannibal. They all had problems. No one could go through what they'd gone through and not have problems. Big ones. But those three didn't even seem to notice they had problems. Worse, they didn’t seem to care. Face was walking around determined to carry the weight of the world all by himself, not caring if it crushed him. Cruiser was drinking more and feeling less. And Murdock with his desperate happiness and crazy eyes... They were all walking around just waiting to either get killed or self destruct.
"How we supposed help them?"
Hannibal smiled faintly, almost sadly. If BA still prayed he would have, in that moment. He wanted Hannibal to have the answer. He would do whatever was asked, whatever was needed, whatever it took. Anything to stop this helpless feeling. But he had to know what to do. "Hannibal…"
"The same way they help you," Hannibal answered quietly. "By being there. Because here and now we're all in this together. Regardless of what happened back there."
BA looked away. Those words, and all the words contained in them that were left unsaid, cut him to the core.
Hannibal hesitated for a long moment and finally sighed. "I don't pretend to have an answer for you, BA. Don't take it that way, because I don't. I don't know how this is going to work out. But I do know that we all have a much better chance if we stick together."
No one had the answers. BA knew that by now. He wasn't sure why he even bothered asking anymore. Was it habit, hope, desperation? Did it matter?
"Boston had someone to go home to," Hannibal continued quietly. "And he's recovering. He's safe. Murdock wasn't. He's got a better chance here for recovery. And without that, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference if he's safe."
BA shut his eyes, and let out the breath he'd been holding. None of them were healing. None of them were safe. But if Hannibal's only word on the subject was that they needed to stick together, BA trusted that. They would stick together. Maybe they would survive long enough to find both healing and safety. Even if they didn't. What else did they have?
Still, BA didn't envy Hannibal's position. Dealing with those three was like trying to handle a bunch of over-energetic kids with guns. With a small snort BA turned back to the door. "Only a crazy fool like Murdock would need a war zone to heal."
