This is a work of fiction owned by the author, and may not be reprinted in any fashion without the author’s express written permission. The A-Team is owned by Stephen J. Cannell, Frank Lupo, MCA/Universal, and fX. The Thunderbirds are owned by the United States Air Force and the U.S. Government. Copyright June 1998.

This piece of fiction was published in The Dwight Papers in September 1999 by Sockii Press.

This is the Murdock payment piece -- he was a great help during my window seat out of Orlando. Don't know how I channeled this guy though . . . . And why does this always happen when I'm trying to write another story . . . and why always when I’m doing something else in which I need to be actively paying attention!!!

Doctor A. L. Richter, eminent psychologist to war-battered veterans of Vietnam, Korea, and World War II, and himself a vet, defied anybody to deny Captain H.M. Murdock anything. When it was something he wanted, those dark spaniel eyes grew wide and sorrowful, holding all that pain and awe out for the universe to see, begging the poor shmuck for 'just this one thing' like a child in a toy store on Christmas Eve. He'd turned the pilot out of his office, ignoring the slyly sulking protests as his patient trudged out, insisting that he needed to weigh the issues and think about it. Damn Murdock anyway, he thought, annoyed. When Murdock unholstered those eyes, brother, you didn't stand a chance.

And dollars to donuts he knew that perfectly well.

Soldier's first rule: know your weapons.

Richter sighed. He had to be strong, he had to be firm; Murdock simply could not do what he wanted just because he wanted to do it. It was too dangerous, just 'too potentially very bad' as Murdock might say. There was too much of a very real chance of it being very harmful to the pilot's already precarious mental state.

No, Murdock would just have to go without this activity. God alone knew he didn't need anything else to shove him further out on the plank above the shark-infested murky waters.

This might just do that.

Richter sighed again and turned away to stare out the window. He'd known when he shared his deepest, darkest, most shameful secret with Murdock that it hadn't been a mistake. After all, he reflected, it wasn't as if we typically discuss fraud at our daily sessions. Although he lacked a medical degree, he shammed one well -- he'd had plenty of time and incentive for that -- but Murdock had never answered the question.

Was Captain Murdock a master mental patient, a psychiatric fraud, a shining example of the professional lunatic?

Or was he what he gave the impression of being -- a seriously demented war-torn Vietnam vet, lost in a fantasy world of his own creation, but with occasional flashes of lucidity?

Sometimes Richter thought he knew the answer.

Other times . . . he wasn't so sure.

It was no secret that the V.A. Staff and most of his own professional colleagues were bitterly divided on the issue of whether or not Murdock was faking. He even knew of a professional luncheon that not only had been disrupted but had been totally decimated by a discussion of that very persistent subject. Besides, the look on Doctor Wilkes' face when the slice of espresso cheesecake smacked him in the face had been priceless. It'd been even more priceless since to this day Pruneface Wilkes had no idea who'd thrown the cake. Still . . . it was a damn shame to waste good cheesecake.

Murdock had coped fairly well during his doctor’s rescue, courtesy of the A-Team, from that lunatic with delusions of godhood running his own private little war. Even though the rough spots had been evident, so many new facets of the pilot’s fractured personality had emerged over those few days.

If Murdock was released tomorrow, free and clear, with his sanity papers, would he be able to cope, out in the world? Maybe. Richter wouldn't have bet much on his chances, though, not without his three best friends to help him. Since those friends were fugitives from federal justice, their positions weren't stable enough to really be of any great assistance. Besides, their personalities weren't exactly stable either.

But could he, in good conscience, keep Murdock here, a prisoner -- albeit a willing prisoner -- but a prisoner all the same? If he left, what would Murdock do, out there in the Real World, all by his lonesome?

Not piloting aircraft, that was for damn sure. After almost twelve years in a straightjacket, even if he and half the staff recommended him for everything under the sun and all the stars in the sky, the FAA would never give Murdock back his pilot's license.

Not even if he asked nicely.

Would Murdock be able to cope without flying?

Richter doubted it. Murdock was the type of pilot who had the wind and the steel and the fuel and the flight in the fabric of his being. The Captain was a flyboy's flyboy.

At least, safe within the confines of the V.A. Hospital, Murdock could fly now and then, winging his friends -- his unit, he would say, no doubt -- to wherever they were needed for whatever miracles they needed to perform. Smith and Peck didn't seem to mind that their favorite pilot was certifiably insane; Baracus just didn't like airplanes and anyone associatiated with them. In any case, they accepted their pilot as normal . . . and, to them, perhaps it was. Perhaps Murdock had been like this while in country, only now, back in the world, the coping behaviors wouldn't go away because the war hadn't gone away. The war had been seared into his subconscious, a scar made visible, a waking nightmare.

This trip Murdock wanted to make . . . would it make his condition better or worse? Worse, Richter decided, because it would be yet another reminder of things he loved and couldn't do.

A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts, and it was Murdock, as expected. The pilot bounced into the office, pointing those eyes at him, lethal as any M-16, pleading on a nonverbal level. It wasn't long before the pleading on a verbal level began.

"Please, doc? Pretty please? With cherries and whipped cream and those itty-bitty flicks of sprinkles on top?" Murdock looked as if he would drop to his knees and beg any minute. "Pleeeeeeeeease, doc? I'll be good, I swear on my momma's eyes, I'll be good . . . ."

Richter felt the decision he'd just spent three hours sweating over evaporate in the pilot's presence. "Murdock," he waited until their eyes met before continuing, "why is this trip so important to you?"

"Because it is, doc."

Murdock was deliberately being vague, he was sure of it. "But I would think that seeing it, being there, would be," he paused, trying to find the right word, "painful to you."

The captain squirmed a little in his chair, but didn't let up on his mission. "Well, yeah, it is, a leetle bit, but it don't matter. I have to go, I have to do this."

Richter sighed and irrationally wondered -- not for the first time -- why he didn't just become a lawyer like his father had wanted. "But why is it something you have to do when it's something so painful?" He paused, trying to find a way to get a real answer -- for once -- out of his most difficult, most complex, most frustrating patient. "Explain it to me."

Murdock looked doubtful. "I don't know if you'll understand."

"Try me." Richter steeled himself for whatever it might be, no matter how emotionally agonizing.

"It's because I want to be up there so much, I used to be up there with them . . . and sometimes I remember what it was like in position and it hurt so bad and so good I cried and laughed at the same time. I want to do it all again and I can't, and that hurts all the way to the bone, doc." Murdock paused, holding back his wishes and pain, trying to feel his way to the answer he knew was in there somewhere, searching for an answer his shrink would comprehend. "I got the slipstream in my blood, doc, and it don't come out . . . if I don't fly, I die, and this," he shrugged absently, "is the next best thing."

Richter glanced into the dark eyes of his most needy and most independent patient -- who may or may not be the most successful psychological fraud that ever wore a straightjacket -- and simply nodded his head in acceptance.

Murdock's eyes grew wide as he threw his long arms around the other man and hugged for all he was worth. "Maybe we can get a chance or two to talk to them later, you never know . . . after all, I used to be one of ‘em," the pilot added, almost shyly. Richter nodded, distracted, searching for the telephone number and the brochure that had started this conversation. A few moments later, Murdock bounced out of the office, chattering excitedly about the trip to his dog Billy.

Richter dug out the number and dialed. "Hello, Box Office, I'd like to purchase two tickets for this Saturday's performance . . . yes, ma'am, that's right, I and . . . a friend . . . would like to watch the Thunderbirds fly . . . ."

Don't forget to feed the Muses!

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