TITLE: The Archer

AUTHOR: hectical

RATING: Rated M for one awkward almost sex scene.

SUMMARY: Face/Amy romance/action. Post Season 5. "You're dead," she said slowly. Face shrugged. "Well, you can't believe everything Tawnia tells you, you know." The A-Team bursts back into Amy Allen's life bringing danger and complications in their wake.

DISCLAIMER: Written for pleasure, no profit gained, The A-Team and associated concepts and characters are not my intellectual property, I'm just a big 80s nerd and Steven J Cannell is my god. You know, the usual.

Little Lies

"Amy Allen is dead." Stockwell's voice was calm, dispassionate. He had tracked them down and joined them for lunch – or rather, simply arranged to be where he knew they would be. Peck and Murdock together. From what he knew, these two would be the greatest influences over Smith accepting the work he needed them for. "She was killed in a professional hit in her apartment in Jakarta yesterday."

"What?" Murdock almost leapt out of his seat.

"Amy's dead?" Peck asked, his voice slightly unsteady. "But…"

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, gentlemen. When I heard the news, I felt I should find you and let you know. As a friend."

Murdock was sitting ramrod straight in his chair in the tiny deli diner, his pastrami bagel all but forgotten on its small white plate. Beside him Peck had frozen, his face open and his expression quickly covered up as his fingers curled around a sweating glass of ice water. Stockwell was rather pleased by how his tactics had worked. Carla's in depth research had paid off again. She had suspected that something may have occurred between the reporter and Templeton Peck prior to her departure and suggested that her current predicament may be the leverage he needed to get the A-Team involved. Stockwell made a mental note to keep a closer eye on that woman's intelligence gathering skills.

"As a friend?" Murdock said, his eyes narrow and shrewd. "You ain't no friend."

Stockwell did not reply. Instead he sipped at his glass of mineral water.

"He's lying." Peck said sharply, regaining his composure. He shook his head. "He's lying to us. Why?"

Stockwell nodded once, graciously, to him. "Yes. I am indeed lying. Or, rather, simply pre-empting."

"Pre-empting?" Peck sounded angry. Once again, Stockwell was pleased.

"Yes. If you don't act to prevent it, I won't be lying when I break the news to you again in seventy two hours. Your friend Miss Allen will be dead."

Peck sat back in his seat. "What do you want? We don't work for you anymore, Stockwell."

Again, Stockwell nodded. "True. But I'm hoping that the chance to rescue the lovely Miss Allen will prove enough incentive to at least hear my request." He finished his mineral water. "Please ask Colonel Smith to meet me here tonight at six pm. I will give you all the information you will need then. Tell him to consider it a favour."

"To who?" Murdock asked bitterly. Stockwell simply shrugged. He left the diner, pausing to look back at the two men he'd left behind him. Murdock was talking low and fast. Peck had his elbows on the table, face guarded. Hunt Stockwell turned his face into the sunshine and walked away.

His carphone shrilled a little while later. It was Able Nine, who had spent the last twenty minutes crouched in the back of a surveillance van.

"It's Nine, sir. They've contacted Smith, arranged the meet."

"Excellent. Arrange their transport to Indonesia, departure eight pm tonight."

Hannibal studied the lines on his lieutenant's face with a growing air of awareness. Face was not sleeping. The others slept, or tried to, in various positions in the airplane seats around them. BA had, to Hannibal's surprise, managed to board the plane under his own steam but had succumbed first to panic and then to knock out drops as soon as the engines spooled into motion. The stewardess had come past a little while ago and topped up drinks, handed out airline blankets and small flat pillows before the lights dimmed. Stockwell had not sprung for private transportation, but had at least not made them fly coach all the way to Jakarta.

Hannibal was not sleeping either.

He had accepted a glass of rather ordinary whisky from the stewardess' cart and it burned in a familiar sort of way as he contemplated Templeton Peck. It was a risky business, he thought, trying to navigate those particular murky waters, and they had become murkier in the last twelve hours. Hannibal considered his lieutenant's weakness: Face was always needing something, a weapon, a nice suit, a country club membership, a woman to tell him she loved him… always something Hannibal couldn't supply. Not that it mattered. Face had a way of getting almost everything he needed. His expression as he stared out the window into nothing but darkness and his own reflection was set and impenetrable, but Hannibal figured that he might have an idea of what was going on behind it.

"Amy Allen will die if you don't get involved in this, Smith," Stockwell had said in that way he had of pronouncing words as if they were passages from a Tennessee Williams play. "I need your connection, your civilian status."

"And Amy is the perfect leverage," Hannibal had replied distastefully. Stockwell had him, and he knew it. There was no way he could refuse. For a moment he felt physically nauseated. "What's the rest of the story, Stockwell? There's more going on here."

Stockwell splayed his fingers across the scarred formica tabletop in the corner booth of the deli, which was starting to close down around them. He looked shrewdly at Hannibal from behind his tinted glasses.

"Your part is small compared to the rest of this operation," he began. "As is Miss Allen's. In someone else's hands, she could be made useful as an unfortunate casualty, a martyr to the war against organized crime. I have considered this course of action to be… unhelpful."

Hannibal felt, rather than saw, the others become tense around him.

"Yeah, you're a real hero," Face said softly. He was seated to Hannibal's right as usual, and hadn't spoken before this.

"Don't sing my praises yet, Peck," Stockwell said without a trace of irony. "I make this consideration because we can't afford any sort of publicity to be attached to this operation. The death of a journalist is exactly what we don't need."

Hannibal bit back his first choice of reply. "Sounds like a tricky situation."

"I need this to run quickly and quietly. There are," and here he paused and looked at Hannibal with a small smile, "significant political interests at stake. The potential for damage to diplomatic relations between the USA and Indonesia must be contained, especially in the current international climate."

"Yeah, well, that's what happens when you deal with countries like – " Murdock began.

"It's not… their involvement that needs to be contained, Mister Murdock. Some unwise decisions have been made by certain parties that need to be reversed," Stockwell replied, holding up a hand. "The Indonesian government is not involved or aware and I wish to keep it that way."

Hannibal narrowed his eyes.

"And you think Amy has the evidence you need to take down this crime group before they get established?"

"And disappear," Stockwell said with a single slow nod. "They are at a crucial point right now on these shores. One debilitating blow and they crumble. I need you to give me the ammunition for that blow. Regardless, evidence or not, my sources have confirmed that the price on her head is real, and high enough that all sorts of takers will try for it." He leaned forward. "What sort of price would you put on her head, Smith?"

Hannibal grabbed Face's knee under the table when he felt the younger man tense. He risked a glance. Face wore a grim expression that Hannibal had seen only rarely.

"That's a low blow, Stockwell, considering you know we can't refuse you."

Stockwell didn't reply. He produced a large manila envelope from his briefcase and laid it on the table.

"All the intel we have at the current time."

Hannibal looked at his team. BA and Murdock stood together behind him, faces set and watchful. Face was still grim and looked back at Hannibal with a kind of question across his handsome features.

After the cabin lights were dimmed, Hannibal lifted himself out of his seat and crossed the aisle to the empty seat beside Face.

"This seat taken, mister?" he asked quietly, gesturing with his glass of whisky. Face looked up at him, obviously broken out of a train of thought, and smiled.

"Sure, sit, sit." He sat up straighter as Hannibal settled in beside him.

"Can't sleep?" the older man asked. Face shook his head.

"Nah. Not really. You neither?"

Hannibal shook his head. "Your loud brooding is keeping me awake. Want to quiet down a little?"

Face looked surprised, then relaxed his face and closed his eyes, leaning back into his headrest.

"Better?"

Hannibal shook his head. "Not really. What's bothering you?"

Face didn't open his eyes. "Nothing. I just… found some grey hairs this morning is all."

"We'll get her out, Face. We'd do the same for any old friend." Hannibal was watchful, observing every shimmer of expression that crossed his friend's face. "I wonder what she's doing now, our Miss Allen."

Face didn't reply. Hannibal sat back.

"There lies complications, Lieutenant," he said softly.

Face smiled his salesman's smile at Hannibal, who didn't buy it for a second. "It's not like that. You know, Colonel, our old friend, the intrepid Miss Allen in trouble. That's all."

Hannibal regarded the younger man with intense misgivings.

"Alright then." He glanced back at his seat. "Do you mind if I stay here? BA's passed out in the seat behind me and he snores."

Face nodded and closed his eyes. Hannibal watched him for a while, then pulled up his blanket and did the same.