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It was simple. Frankie wasn’t one of them, never really part of the dynamics. He was an add-on. Sure it was nice to be able to use him for what he did well, special effects, but there were also the times when the canister didn’t blow or the smoke lifted before the mirrors were in place. And if we’re being honest, it was a regular occurrence. Sure, Frankie was always sorry and promised it wouldn’t happen again. Yet, he never truly embraced what they were doing didn’t allow for someone to call “cut” and start over again. He never quite got if his bit of the plan had a hitch, the plan was still a go. Improvising was in order, not turning to “Johnny” and asking what he should do now. He never quite put together his part in the team, and due to that, he would never be fully accepted by the team. From the outside looking in, there was no other way to see it.
There were heated discussions, angry debates. Sometimes they were off to the side amongst two or three of the core group, other times in the open with Frankie taking on every point of contention as he would a physical bruise. And like bruises, the blows to his ego faded in a matter of days, and he was right back to being the pain in the ass at which he so excelled.
Stockwell’s fuse was getting shorter and shorter. He was fed up with the contentiousness and loss of equilibrium amongst the team. The distrust in Frankie was palpable.
BA and Murdock’s relationship had devolved to the point of them not being able to tolerate the other’s presence in the same room for more than five minutes. Face’s complaints on everything from the selection of groceries brought in for them to BA’s perpetually sweeping for electronic devices had become nothing short of incessant. It was easy to put it down to a way of coping. And Hannibal, who had always called Face on his bitch-fests but never missed an opportunity to somehow lay an affection hand on his “kid,” now snapped at him, causing another divide.
Face had always been forgiven for his constant complaints. Hannibal had always understood it was his second’s way of releasing stress, of trying to regain some of the autonomy that had been stolen from him. No doubt Hannibal still knew the root of Face’s issues but had stopped acknowledging them. In turn, it put a strain on the relationship between the two men. It didn’t take a genius to see Face’s insecurities weren’t being tamped by Hannibal’s affection for him. One must be blind to not see the thirty-seven-year-old’s deep disappointment and hurt feelings.
Whereas Hannibal had previously ignored BA’s foul temper and petulance, he was now challenging it. “Use your words, BA,” he scolded. He made it clear the big man’s grunts and growls had poked and prodded through to a raw spot. Whereas Hannibal had always so appreciated the contributions of the mechanical genius, he couldn’t care how the man behaved and often used that contrary nature to the team’s benefit. Now, he could pretty much only chastise him for his excessive affectations.
No one could ever remember Hannibal being short with Murdock and his wacky ways. The silliness that exudes from Murdock’s pores had always humored their Colonel. No longer. Where before Hannibal would smile at the wonder that is Murdock, it was plainly in view the pilot’s freewheeling ways had lost their novelty and charm. One evening as Murdock attempted to grate sidewalk chalk over a dish of pasta in the center of the dining table, Hannibal lost it with him. Murdock’s eyes betrayed the crushing hurt he felt as his Colonel told him to shape up or he could find himself a permanent job and actually support himself. The team didn’t need his distractions anymore.
“Ahw, Hannibal. Look what you did,” Face shot at him as he chased Murdock to the door where he soothed and cajoled. With his arm hooked through the pilot’s, he guided him back to the living room, where they sat on the sectional to murmur between themselves. All the while ignoring BA’s newfound voice as he called Murdock crazy and a fool before turning on Frankie, the words a torrent from his mouth describing in great detail exactly how incompetent he was.
Frankie turned to Hannibal for support. “Look Johnny. I know...”
But Hannibal was on his feet. “No Frankie, you don’t know!” he roared. This was a side of Hannibal rarely seen.
Typically, when the Colonel was mad, everything about him became determined. His walk became a stalk. His voice became ominous. He held his cigar before him, palm up, squeezing the living daylights out of it. He kept his other hand on his hip, his words pointed and harsh. His voice climbed only a few decibels.
But this wasn’t one of those times. The man was positively raging. “You know Frankie, on this last job not only did we need to straighten out another one of your fuck ups, you nearly got BA, Murdock AND Face killed.”
“Well, it all turned out alright in the end!” Frankie’s veneer had formed stress fractures. Like a vase whose glaze hadn’t melded with its clay, he was crazing. Interesting word, that one. So appropriate for not only Frankie but the team as well. In Frankie’s case, they were surface cracks. For the team as a whole, they were deep fissures threatening to explode into countless pieces, destroying the team and their usefulness to Stockwell.
The General didn’t like to admit it, but he had made a serious error foisting the young man into what up until then had been a smoothly running machine. It hadn’t taken long for the team to figure out Frankie was a plant. Yet, even before that, the FX expert had determined that since there were sides to be chosen, he preferred the company of the team over Stockwell’s coldness and Carla’s Maschinenmensch-like indifference. But it never came together, and Stockwell needed to make a decision.
It was easy to determine Frankie’s presence was the catalyst for the recent and obviously stress-induced behavior amongst the veterans, and he needed to be removed. The question then became how to otherwise use him. That answer was soon provided to him by a man whose opinion he greatly admired, though would never confess.
After the night of the congealed pasta, the morning found the men back at each other. Face, who normally bunked with Hannibal, which had Stockwell often wondering on a different tangent, had locked the Colonel out and gave his spot to Murdock, who spent the rare night at the Langley house, leaving Hannibal on the couch for the night only to make him cranky in the morning. Especially cranky after bitterly complaining to Frankie about how the last time he slept on the couch found him stiff and sore in the morning, to which the dense kid said, “I bet you were Johnny. Must be rough on those middle-aged bones. Well, goodnight,” before heading down the hallway to his own room and bed, closing the door behind him.
“I made pancakes for everyone,” Murdock offered as an olive branch, only to find himself slapped upside the head with said branch when Hannibal started barking about how unfit and flabby the group of them had become. Frankie had been sitting at the table, just reaching with his fork to stab a couple of the sweet delights to put on his plate, when Murdock snatched them away. “Gonna be like that about it, Hannibal? I’ll just dispose of them.” The sound of pancakes being scraped from the plate, presumably into the running garbage disposal, left Frankie with his fork still in the air at the end of his outreached arm.
“Everyone put on sweats. We’re going for a run,” Hannibal ordered, exasperation clear in his voice.
Like an idiot, Frankie asked, “What about breakfast?”
“You can have a bowl of cereal when we get back,” Hannibal threw over his shoulder.
“Aren’t we suppose to fuel our bodies before exercise?”
“Shut up Frankie, before you make things worse,” Face commented in the whine he’d perfected over the years.
“Hey! What did I do?” Frankie was getting a little tired of this shit.
“What did you do?!” Hannibal had turned on his heel and was on his way back down the hall, knocking Face’s shoulder hard enough in passing to send him into the wall.
“Really Hannibal?” But he didn’t stop to rumble.
Hannibal ignored him, also ignored the pilot slipping past him, his attention focused on Santana. “I’ll tell you what you did. From the very start you’ve screwed up one thing after another.”
“That’s not fair, Johnny!”
“No?! Was it fair to leave Murdock inside that cockpit when the movie projector crapped out? How was that fair?! And that was just the start!”
“That could’ov happened to anybody,” Frankie defended.
“But it didn’t happen to ‘anybody,’ did it?!” Hannibal crooked air-quotes.
“You should talk, man. Who’s the king of a plan not coming together?” asked BA.
“Stay out of this, BA. Go change.”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I gotta work on ma van.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that van! Go get changed!”
“Who’s going to make me?” BA had stepped forward.
“What? Are you twelve?” Hannibal wasn’t having any of it.
BA stepped forward again. “No. I ain’t twelve, but the question remains. Who’s going to make me?” His hands were on his hips, mirroring the Colonel’s.
“If he doesn’t have to go, I don’t think I should have to go either,” Frankie piped in.
Hannibal turned on him. “You! You follow orders! You follow orders because you need to learn what teamwork is. You need to learn how to work with the rest us.”
“Yeah. That’s it right there, isn’t it? You’re all ‘us.’ I’m not part of ‘us.’ I’ll always be the odd man out. I’ll never be a part of the team.”
“You said it,” Hannibal snapped back.
Face and Murdock were emerging back down the hall. Face stepped forward, it was obvious he was going to challenge Hannibal, but Murdock’s hand on his arm and a silent shake of the head put an end to that.
“You know, Johnny, if you’d act a little more like I’m part of the team then maybe the team would follow your lead.”
“Let’s get some things straight here. You are not a part of my team. We’re stuck with you. I can’t imagine what else Stockwell can do with you besides set you free. There’s nowhere else for you to go, so we’re saddled with you. And one other thing, Frankie. I’m not ‘Johnny.’ I’m Hannibal, or preferably from you, Colonel or sir! One person calls me John and it’s not you! Got it?”
After watching the recorded feed of these most recent encounters, Stockwell had to admit, there was no place for Santana. He couldn’t afford the discord playing out amongst the team. It had gotten so bad they didn’t even bother trying to hide it from the ubiquitous surveillance placed throughout the house and property as they would between the four core members. No, Hannibal was right. Santana couldn’t be pulled out of there fast enough and sent on his way.
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Face drove the rental car through the streets of LA, Hannibal quiet by his side. They hadn’t been back since the court-martial, and it seemed to them the city had a pall over it, nothing like the days when the West Coast was their playground. Being back under Stockwell’s rule was dragging on them, a stone weight around their collective necks.
Hannibal had given Stockwell the kiss off prior to reuniting teenage runaway Paula Anderson with her father. Truth be told, the reunion gave each of them more of a feeling of accomplishment than thwarting plans to sabotage the Star Wars Weaponry Program. Frankie had been carted off by a group of seniors, and the guys talked about what they could do if they were able to take their lives back. It was nothing but wishful thinking. In the end, Stockwell had dispatched Ables more competent than usual to round up the team and provide an armed escort back to Langley.
Things had deteriorated quickly after that. Face had been shot, requiring downtime for the rest of the team. Hannibal had begun making noises about Frankie’s place, or more accurately lack thereof, within the team. He argued he wouldn’t subject BA and Murdock to the possible folly of a plan blowing up around them with an integral man down and their concentration diverted by their responsibility to protect Santana from himself. Their next two missions were pulled off on a wing and a prayer more than by coordinated effort, and the blame was put firmly on the FX man’s shoulders. Once he was gone, they managed to get their groove back, though things were much different.
Each was overly protective of their Lieutenant. Bending over backwards to accommodate him. Were it up to Hannibal, Face wouldn’t have come off the DL. They had come too close to losing him. Face, of course, pointed out that both Murdock and BA had taken bullets while they played Merry Mercenaries and Hannibal had been seriously wounded by enemy fire back in Nam. Didn’t matter. Hannibal held himself together during the restaurant siege and all through the hours of the night and next morning as surgeons fought to keep Face in this world. It was only after the doctor had come to speak with them, cautiously optimistic; if Face could survive the next twelve hours, he would most likely survive the massive gut-shot wound. Only then did Hannibal break down.
Murdock and BA had been waiting for it. They knew what they each meant to their leader, but they were also very aware Face was Hannibal’s favorite. There was no animosity regarding it, because frankly, Face was everyone’s favorite. Just maybe Hannibal’s a bit more so than the others. It may have been a secret to everyone else, but not the pilot and mechanic; the other two shared a much closer relationship than any other combination.
Hannibal doted on Face. At first, BA and Murdock questioned his attentiveness but soon understood what he had seen all along. Face wasn’t bouncing back. His often flippant demeanor was all but absent, lost somewhere in an emotional storm churning just below the surface. As time went on, he couldn’t stop obsessing over Frankie’s departure. Though he fully understood the situation, he wished he hadn’t been so harsh. Hannibal did what he could to alleviate the feelings of guilt, telling him repeatedly it was for the best and he had nothing to beat himself up over.
It was before setting off for California that the three, with Murdock’s support, had proclaimed to Stockwell as one, there wasn’t an Able alive who could continue to keep them captive. The General could either cough up the pardons as easily as he had for Santana, or they would go back on the run without a second thought.
Stockwell understood immediately this was the end. He also understood Hannibal was so tired, not only physically himself but also emotionally frustrated for his men. He couldn’t be trusted with anything less than those pardons making a timely appearance. The team avoided casualties at all costs, but the General didn’t think for one moment Hannibal wouldn’t personally put a target on his back, one the Ables couldn’t protect him from.
So here they were in California on their final mission, not even anything complicated or particularly dangerous, driving down the street, minds elsewhere when they saw him at the same time.
Frankie.
“Let’s stop,” Face said already slowing the car.
“Of course,” Hannibal agreed before adding, “Do you want to talk to him?”
“I wish we both could, but you should go.”
“Yeah. It’d be best if we weren’t both out in the open.”
Face steered the car to the curb along a no-parking zone. As Hannibal opened his door, the younger of the two had to say, “John?”
“Yeah, kid.”
“Tell him....Well you know.”
“Okay, Tem. I will.” He smiled and reached for Face’s hand, giving him a gentle squeeze before climbing out and skipping across the traffic lanes to the young man carrying grocery bags on the other side of the street.
“Frankie,” he said to the leather vest-clad back.
Frankie spun around and looked straight into those blue eyes. “Hannibal?” Before the Colonel could respond, he had his arms full of Santana. “What are you doing here? Oh my god, are you free?” He now had a firm hold of Hannibal’s upper arms, grocery bags set to either side on the sidewalk.
“Soon Frankie, soon.”
“Are you alone?”
“No, Face is in the car. Think he’s driving around the block.”
“I wish I could see him.”
“He does too. That is would like to see you too.”
“How is he? I think about him all the time. He was so....” But he cut himself off with a shrug of his shoulders. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing.
“He’s hanging in there. He had a real hard time with how you left. He still misses you and he feels bad about the whole situation.”
“Wha...Why? We were all doing it. It’s not like...Aw man, I don’t want him feeling bad about it. Last thing I want.”
“I know Frankie and you know what? He does too. He knows. He’s been a little oversensitive, still a little emotional, still...since the shooting.”
“I can’t blame him for that. Not one bit. But you’re taking good care of him, aren’t ya Hannibal?”
“Doing my best. But tell me, how’s your dad?”
“Not so good.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He has good days and bad days, but the bad days are more and more becoming the norm. Don’t think he’ll be with us much longer.”
Hannibal dropped a hand on his shoulder. “And your mom.”
“It’s hard on her, seeing him failing like that. He was always...You know? He was like you. Always there in the lead.” Hannibal watched as clouds formed over Frankie’s perpetually sunny disposition. “You’re taking care of Face and I’m doing my best to take care of Mom.”
“I know it can’t be easy for you.” Hannibal always understood, and Frankie appreciated it.
“Hannibal, I couldn’t thank you the way I wanted when I left. You and the guys. I really don’t think I can thank you enough for what all you guys did for me. Mom and Dad really needed me to be here. I just can’t say thank you enough for orchestrating it. And I’m sorry Face feels bad about it. Tell him not to, okay? But look at it this way, we could all have a career in acting.”
Hannibal laughed. “Those were some Oscar winning performances, weren’t they?”
“They sure were.” Frankie couldn’t help but give the Colonel another hug. “Thanks again, Hannibal.”
”Frankie, we all knew you needed to go, to get home, but you need to understand one thing. We were all proud to have you on the team. I’m telling you, anyone who could deliberately screw things up as badly as you did without anybody getting hurt, I consider a craftsman. And it’s not just Face who misses you, we all do, kid.”
”Thanks, Hannibal. That means a lot to me.”
As Frankie reached down to gather his bags, Hannibal couldn’t resist, “No more Johnny?”
“Thought only one person calls you John.”
“I can say with certainty, he won’t mind.”
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