Night has fallen, the nurses are between shifts, and it's Sam's best chance to get out of the camp. He sneaks across the compound, glad he was still mostly dressed when the doctors put him in the post-op bed. "Okay, let me get my bearings." He whispers aloud to himself. "I came from that direction.. the sun was behind me.. so.." He whirls in frustration to snap, quietly, at the empty air. "Could you please stop humming?" He rolls his eyes and peeks back around the edge of a tent. "I don't care if it *is* Mission Impossible, it's making it hard to think."

There's someone outside the tent. Sneaking around. Talking to himself. BJ looks incredibly unsurprised - not that anyone can, you know, see his expression. It's dark. He's reading a letter from Peg anyway. Got the damn thing memorized, see. He sighs quietly, setting it down, and tiptoes over to shake Hawkeye awake. "We've got a midnight prowler who talks to himself about impossible missions," he whispers. "Wake up."

"Mmmrfffrm," is the typically sharp-witted response. Hawkeye attempts to bury himself in the limited depth of his mattress. I can't hear you, my head seems to be stuck under my pillow.

All of a sudden, Sam jumps a foot into the air. He almost hisses at Al to knock it off, when he remembers that nobody else can hear Admiral Calavicci's ruckus. Instead, the hologram gets a Look, and quiets accordingly. "All right," Dr. Beckett whispers to his cohort, "I've just got to get across this courtyard and I'm home fr--" Crash! Bang! Bash! 'Watch out for the garbage cans, Sam.' "Nngh."

"He's absconding with your nurses," adds a desperate BJ, still shaking Hawkeye lightly. "He's taking them back to China, and he's going to bind their feet." What? Ooo. Garbage cans. "Come on!" Tug. Pull. Drag. He runs for the door.

Nooo, I was *sleeping*, I want to sleep some more. Curse you, Hunnicutt, curse you all the way back to Ireland. "I'm sharing a tent with Rin Tin Tin," Hawkeye mutters, taking a moment out to find his bathrobe before following BJ out of the Swamp.

Noise tends to draw attention. From nosy doctors who're foolishly trying to sleep, sure, but more importantly, the night patrol officer. Sam spots the approaching flashlight beam, recognizes that this is a Bad Thing, and dives into the Swamp. Two collisions in one night. Shall we make it three?

Wow. Sam piledrives into his front, and Hawkeye's only a step behind. BJ's gonna end up with -something- broken. Maybe his pride. "OOF!"

Only just having recovered his balance from the whole 'wow, just woke up, is it spring already?' feeling, Hawkeye doesn't stand a chance. Hurray for involuntary dogpiling.

A dark, empty tent is what Sam meant to run into. Not two doctors. He lands on top of BJ, on top of Hawkeye, and then rolls with his momentum. Good thing that still's there to help him stop. If Hawk and Beej are lucky, Sam's body will break its fall.

"N-" BJ starts to howl, then remembers Charles, and instead does his best to limp to his feet and try and catch the thing. Well, see, if it crashes, it'll wake the third doctor. Um, not to mention it would be REALLY BAD.

Hawkeye whimpers. BJ is a substantial guy to have land on you. But never mind him! Save the still!

Sam reaches up to help catch the whatever-it-is, more to keep it from smashing on him than just to keep it from smashing. When the still is rescued from the clutches of gravity, the Chinaman from Iowa looks up and swallows, smiling his best innocent grin. "Uh. Hi doc."

"Hi," whispers BJ, glaring, settling the bits of the still that'd shaken loose back into place. "Keep your voice down, for pity's sake." He leaves the Chinese Iowan on the floor and goes back over to see if his flattened friend is all right. "Y'okay, Hawk?"

"You have to go on a diet," is the wheezed response. "You almost put an end to my chances of ever having children." It's a good thing Hawkeye isn't hungover or he'd probably have been spectacularly sick. Speaking of which. He scrambles to sit up, grabbing at BJ to use him as a climbing aid. "Is the still all right?"

"Sorry." Sam whispers, glancing over at the snoozing surgeon. He takes note of the sleep mask, and hopes the guy has earplugs to match. Getting to his feet, the doctor examines the jumble of tubing, pipes, flasks and beakers. Ohhh. "I suppose these things are standard issue in M*A*S*H units, huh?" Disarm them with humour, then run like hell.

"No. We're special," hisses BJ back, brushing Hawkeye away once he's on his feet, then turns and crosses his arms. "What's the big idea? No, wait. I have a better idea. Let's all go for a walk."

"Yeah, right back to the ward. You're meant to be in bed." Hawkeye pauses. "*I'm* meant to be in bed. Sleep well, Charles," he growls at the still-dozing blueblood, and heads outside.

"All right, you two walk that way, I'll walk this way." Sam makes for the edge of the camp. What are they gonna do, turn him in? They'd be busted for harboring an enemy soldier, acts of treason in time of war, and several other official-sounding phrases.

Boy, this guy is difficult. "What a pain you are. How about we all walk to Rosie's and have a drink, and you explain what the hell you're doing? I swear, there's no reason you'd want to go back unless you wanna help kill some more people, OR if you're a spy, and if you're either of those and you've been playing innocent with us, I'm turning you in myself." Beej sounds irate.

Eep. BJ's getting all...how he sometimes gets. "Yeah, why are you so anxious to get back to the fighting? You're safer in here than you are out there." Hawkeye follows along with Sam, retying the girdle of his bathrobe.

Sam doesn't intend to stop walking, but his indignance gets the better of him. He spins on BJ and levels a finger. "Now look. I don't like this war any more than you do, and I sure as heck didn't get into it voluntarily. I have to get back out there because I've got important information that will save lives. Information that won't do any good by the time you doctors decide let me go." He's annoyed at BJ's accusation, and it doesn't help that Al's encouraging him with the occasional 'Yeah!' and 'You tell 'em, Sam!'

BJ has a little problem with finding out, or thinking that, people aren't what they seem at first. But he never seems to learn to trust his trust, or to not trust in the first place. "Yeah? Save some lives but end some others? Sounds great. Whaddya think, Hawk?"

Oy. "I think I'd rather be in bed." Hawkeye stands just a little apart, ready to back up BJ if it looks necessary but not quite convinced that it *is* necessary just yet. "Why don't you tell *us* the information and let us get it to someone who can help?"

Mustn't snipe, mustn't snipe. Will not say anything about fixing soldiers up so they can go kill some more. Sam looks away for a moment, using his glare at Al to exercise the urge to say something unkind to the doctor who's only trying to help. Looking back to BJ, he rests his hands on his hips. "No, just save some lives." He looks at Hawkeye for a moment, as if sizing him up. "There's a platoon of soldiers," he glances briefly at BJ, "/American/ soldiers, making their way, as we speak, down the.." he pauses for a moment, as if asking silently for a prompt, then picks back up, "..Ten Lau Valley. They're headed right for a mine field, and none of them will survive." Don't ask me how I know about that last part.

"All right, so tell me how an *American* commander is gonna believe a guy," BJ starts, reaching into his pocket and pulling out Sam's 'necklace', and reaching forward to put it around his neck, "whose dogtags identify him as a Chinese soldier." Then he stuffs his hands in his pockets and adds coldly, "And tell *us* why *we* should believe you? If you're really out to save these lives, then why are you skulking around *here* acting suspicious? Why did you have to look at your tags to remember your name? Why did you wander into an American MASH unit in a Chinese Communist uniform, with *no* attempt at cover?"

Oh boy. Oh dear. Oh Lord. Hawkeye thinks all those questions are excellent ones, and he's extremely curious about the answers. But. He waits until BJ is finished, then says quietly to Sam, "How do you know?"

Sam listens to BJ's questions, and to Hawkeye's question, silent all the while as he tries to think of a story. Any story. He can't even tell them what he'd planned to do, on account of his having no idea in the first place. He'd hoped to come up with something by the time he reached the platoon. He sets his jaw and straightens, trying to impress upon the two men as much integrity and honour as he can. "I just know. You'll have to trust me." If integrity and honor fail, he'll have to fall back on making a run for it.


"Trust you." Uh-huh. "Trust you? Listen, mister, if you'd told us up front, we probably would've believed you. But this sounds *much* too much like a last-second dodge." A beat, and BJ looks back at Hawkeye, then at Sam again. "And if you make a break for it again, I'm calling I-Corp and -telling- them that a Chinese national is making a run for the Tau Lau Valley to sabotage that platoon's mission." This is a bluff, but Beej hopes it's not too obvious. After all, the guy's probably not even headed there. "I can guarantee the MPs won't be as forgiving as we are." Then his voice gets significantly more quiet. "But I also can't risk you being right." We're gonna have to go with him.

"We're going with you." He's gotten very quiet. Hawkeye doesn't know what to believe. But the risk is too great. And if the guy is right, and they arrive too late, doctors on the scene might make a difference. You never know.

'Dong' frowns and glances past Hawkeye, raising his eyebrows. "Can this M*A*S*H unit spare two surgeons?" He's not asking anyone present. Not anyone physically present, at any rate. Al pokes and whacks at his handlink, attempting to wrangle statistics from Ziggy.

"That's the question we ask ourselves every time we take a day pass to Seoul," answers BJ lightly, already ditching his robe and pulling on a shirt, then fishing around for reasonably clean trousers. "And besides, if you're right, then we'll have a lot less casualties than we would have if your message doesn't get there in time. If you're right and we're too late, then we'll just end up accompanying casualties back here. If you're lying, then it's not a question, is it?"

Since BJ is effectively handling all the talking that needs to be done, Hawkeye contents himself with searching around on the floor for the clothes he was wearing yesterday.

Al lets Sam know that, no, they won't need Hawkeye and BJ around for the next couple of days. At least, they won't if Sam does his job. Nodding to the empty air, 'Dong' watches BJ look for his pants. "We're leaving now? They won't even reach the valley until Saturday. I would've hung around a while longer, but I thought it'd probably take that long for me to get there on foot."

BJ Hunnicutt pauses in his search. "What're you, psychic?" he asks, exasperated. "Listen. The more advance time they have, the happier they'll be about listening to two crazy doctors and a turncoat communist. They'll want to send out a scout either way. If they can do it before they're actually -close-, and find out you're right, they'll be less likely to just barge ahead because they're already there. Unless I'm crazy. Am I crazy, Hawk?"

"No comment." Hawkeye is getting dressed in that slow, ever-so-slightly-comatose way which indicates someone who really didn't want to get up at all. "It seems like the less time we give them to think about it, the better."

Sam nods thoughtfully, as if considering BJ's words, while ignoring the psychic comment. Actually, he's happy to have help. He doesn't usually get help. Not the sort that needs to use doors to get from one room to the next, anyway. "Okay, let's go. You two drive." He knows he can, but he's not sure he remembers all of it. Plus, he knows he can't remember which side they drive on in China. Or Korea, for that matter.

"Sure, okay." BJ starts lacing up his boots, then eyes Hawkeye. "Are we asking Potter, or are we going to hope the end justifies the means?"

Hey, no fair asking me. Hawkeye hesitates. "What are we gonna tell him? The Chinese soldier we didn't tell you about before apparently had a psychic flash and we believed him?" Or I did, anyway.

"If we're going to be on the road together, do you think you could loan me some traveling clothes?" Sam looks down at his undershirt, his dogtags, and his Communist Trousers. "I wouldn't want to give any checkpoints a reason to ask questions."

"Good point." Swish, swish, mustache. Eyebrows raised. Finishing lacing up and tying his boots, BJ scoops up his captain's bars and caduceus again, stuffing them in his pocket. Then he glances at Sam again, rubbing his chin. "Another good point. Hawk, remember the Tuttle story you told me? You still got those tags around somewhere?"

Oo, hey, good point. "Yeah, somewhere." Hawkeye delves into the terrifying confines of The Space Under His Bunk. Fear. "As far as I'm concerned, Dong, you can wear anything you find running free on the floor." Hopefully some of it belongs to Charles.