Author's Note: UGH you guys this is not a good chapter AT ALL I am so sorry. The writing is terrible, it makes no sense, it's boring, BUT it's getting us over a big hump, and hopefully after this things will start to pick up. Intrigue and mystery and action and adventure. Seriously, I promise the rest of the story will not be this caliber of crap.

CHAPTER 5

The next day was a long, grueling slog. To everyone's relief, Murdock awoke in the morning seeming much the same as always; although he had been battered badly by the crash, he was awake and alert as ever, much to BA's annoyance. The four men were soaked to the bone within the first five minutes of their trek through the jungle, as the rains continued to pour down in an unrelenting torrent.

They were a wreck by the time they made it to a main road, a remarkable find in the midst of such a dense jungle. Hannibal, Face and Murdock were limping with various injuries, and although he seemed to be more normal than the day before, the pilot was still coughing terribly, hacking coughs which made the rest of the team flinch every time.

They followed the road for miles, dragging their feet in exhausted desperation. Each man was carrying a make-shift sack of useful items, weighing them down but too precious to drop. Not seeing any cars concerned them, but eventually they spotted a street sign.

"Damn, it's in Chinese!" BA moaned, unable to decipher the characters on the sign.

"Murdock, can you read it?" Hannibal asked, but the captain was doubled over in a coughing fit, the rain pouring down his hair and dripping over his face, mixing with the blood he was hacking up.

Face ran over to him, sloshing around in his suit, and placed a comforting hand on his back.

"Let's just keep going Hannibal; we need to get to civilization soon. Whatever it says, it means there's a city along this road somewhere."

Hannibal nodded, frustrated that he couldn't light a cigar in this downpour.

Once Murdock recovered, they set off again.

"Jeez Colonel, I can't even read that," Murdock yelled, his voice sounding raspy as he passed the sign. "My Chinese is much more colloquial, you know. I don't know how to read or write it; did you know they got over 2000 characters?" Murdock laughed. "Now that's crazy."

"Shut up fool, stop wasting your strength on jibber-jabber," BA said, giving Murdock a light shove. The pilot laughed as he stumbled forward.

"If I were makin' up a language it sure as hell wouldn't have 2000 characters! Maybe 7 really pretty ones, and a couple ugly ones to make the others look prettier," He grinned at his teammates.

"Kind of like why I keep you guys around," Face said with a smile.

Before Hannibal could respond with a witty retort, the sound of a truck approaching rumbled over the torrent of rain. The team turned around to see a small semi barreling down the highway.

All four men began waving their arms and shouting, but it was hopeless; no driver could see them in this storm. As the truck approached, Hannibal's eyes glinted with a familiar spark.

"Guys, I got an idea!" He shouted, and he tore open his cloth sack and rummaged through it. He produced a thin steel rope salvaged from the plane. Quickly, he tied the rope tightly to the road sign, and formed a lasso with the other end.

"Hannibal you're nuts!" Face yelled, watching as his boss prepared to lasso the speeding vehicle. "You'll never make that throw!"

"You're right!" Hannibal said with a grin. "You're a much better aim Face!" He tossed the con man the steel wire, and the truck neared.

Face had no idea where to throw the rope, but with a desperate instinct he didn't know he possessed he focused his attention on the details of the semi. Antennae would break, the cab was too big…and then he saw the large knob sticking up from the side of the truck, one used to attach the cab to the cargo. It would be tricky, hell it would be impossible, but Face leapt forward and threw with his whole concentration.

It was a miraculous thing. The wire caught the knob, tightening immediately around it as it was pulled forward, and with a terrible crack the road sign snapped off. The driver swerved dangerously, his momentum thrown off, and skidded to a halt.

The team jogged forward and swiftly opened the back of the truck, leapt in and closed it again before the driver could find them and express his anger.

Dripping wet and in a suddenly very dark, very quiet space, Face moaned.

"Was that entirely necessary?"

"Well," Hannibal said, finally lighting a cigar. "How else would we have stopped him without breaking the truck?"

Face sighed. "I can think of a half a dozen ways, you just like to be overzealous."

"Look at it this way, at least-" Hannibal's next remark was cut off by a sudden violent coughing fit from Murdock. In the low, nearly non-existent light, Hannibal could make out the shivering form of his captain.

"BA," Hannibal said, but didn't need to elaborate. The big man wrapped Murdock up in his arms to warm him, feeling the rattling of the pilot's lungs as he did so. He wasn't afraid of catching the damn disease anymore; helping his friend was more important.

"He's burning up, Hannibal," BA said when Murdock had finally drifted into a restless doze. "We better hope there's a hospital wherever we're going."

"We better hope where we're going isn't some slaughter house," Face said, eyeing the cargo boxes suspiciously. They were stamped with Chinese characters he couldn't understand, but something in the space smelled badly of livestock.

The truck lurched forward again, apparently having freed itself from its strange tag-along sign at last, and the team huddled in silence as they made their way to an unknown destination.

Murdock wasn't really sleeping, but he had his eyes closed and was laying down on the floor of the dark truck, using his jacket as a pillow. The rumble of the engine was relaxing, but he felt sick and achy in every bone of his body, and sleep didn't come easily. Instead he strained his ears, trying to hear what the rest of the team were talking about.

They're talking about me. He thought glumly, although he couldn't hear their low whispers clearly. I must have something really wrong with me. He groaned quietly, willing the daggers to remove themselves from his lungs, and the jackhammer from his head, and the pins from every inch of his skin.

The truck barreled along for a long time, and eventually the whispers of his friends stopped. He assumed they were sleeping, all except Hannibal who was probably planning something. For the first time in his life, Murdock hoped it didn't have to do with flying. He did not trust himself with a throttle just then.

Suddenly the truck slowed to a halt. The rain that had been soaking them hours before still drummed on the top of the container.

"Murdock," Face's voice came out of the darkness gently. "Wake up," he shook Murdock's shoulders very softly, though the pilot had never been asleep. But the movement caused him to erupt in a coughing fit again and Face staggered back as if he were terrified of catching something. Which he probably was, Murdock thought sadly. Hannibal however barged over and took the pilot by the arm, hauling him up and helping him hobble behind some crates where BA was hiding. They crouched low, Murdock willing his coughing to stop, as they waited for the truck driver to open his container. Finally, dislodging a sickeningly large ball of something from his lungs, Murdock managed to swallow his coughs and come to silence just in time.

The door opened, and two men spoke rapid Mandarin while the daylight illuminated everything. Some boxes were shifted, and the men seemed to be carrying them somewhere. The team took this opportunity to dash out of the truck and emerge onto the street of a busy city center.

They were disoriented, blinded in the suddenly daylight (although clouds and rain darkened the scene slightly) and stuck out like sore thumbs in the sea of Chinese men, women and children going about their business. Murdock was suppressing his coughs painfully, trying hard to keep up with his team as they weaved through the crowds, putting some distance between them and the truck.

"Let's figure out where the nearest hospital is," Hannibal said quietly to Face as they shoved through throngs of poor-looking people. "Then we can try to find out where we are, and how to get to the mission." Face nodded, and looked around.

"Hannibal," he said, nodding towards a store that seemed to be geared towards tourists. "They might speak English."

Hannibal nodded and he led BA and Murdock to the gift shop, keeping an eye on the pilot whose energy seemed to be fading fast.