One last shot and then I give up.
Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't the real world and it's not a Disney Princess story.
Crystal City – October 2015
One thing that happened as soon as they accepted the President's watchdog roles was that Chuck and Casey had targets painted on their backs, so they had to increase their security presence in Washington. Since Chuck had accepted the DNI's role, they'd maintained some security (Spetsnazovtsi) and maintenance staff at the Carmichael hangar at RR Airport, but their two to four man protective details had normally came and gone with them.
Initially Casey had been flying the VSTL in and landing on the roof of the Pentagon, and the protective detail who went with him would normally stay with the aircraft while he was in the office. As Chuck, and then Zondra, Ellie, Dasha and Carina were added to the team working in Washington though, they needed more support, so they leased the hangar. That way their aircraft could be refueled and maintained in Washington and they had extra security who could be on-site quickly with the VTL that they kept there. They also kept up appearances better by arriving by car at the government facilities.
So far they had been putting the people stationed at the Carmichael hangar up at the nearby hotels, as with the rotating security details they didn't need that many rooms, but in the new scenario that wouldn't be viable any more. That was why they started looking for a suitable building in Crystal City to buy and renovate.
As usual, a quick and easy sale reduced the price, and they had possession of the building and started renovations inside two months. Chuck had initially been looking for a smaller building, but when he stopped to think about it, with most of the core group working here now and the need for a bigger security force to cater for the increased threat profile, it made sense for them to be based here most of the time. Therefore he started looking for a building that could cater for over a hundred families living and working there.
Once again, Uncle Roan requested their leave to design it to fit the image that they wanted to project. This time the active security was designed into it from the start so it blended in better, and the Carmichaels shared the Penthouse level with the Coburns, Emma, Mary and Stephen. The next floor down had Anna and Dasha and their kids, the Mahoneys, the Rizzos, Sydney, Lynn and Syd, and Diane and Roan (with the rest of the family in Washington, it made more sense and was better for them to be with them) in similarly lavish apartments. The rest of the Carmichael Industries and Shadow Security team were on the floors under them, then the Spetsnazovtsi and technology people and their families.
The ground floor was offices for Carmichael Industries, Fox Information Consulting, Novatech, Shadow Security and the Special Projects Group (including offices for those who were currently allocated to other roles), and they had three levels below the ground, set up much like the Dungeon. They still had a roof garden and pool, but it was a little smaller than El Castillo's.
They didn't have much trouble getting all of the kids into the Sidwell Friends School with the President's support. The prestige of the Carmichael name and the fact that there were eleven flag officers between the parents and grandmothers didn't hurt either.
Overall, this was better for everyone, they didn't have to commute to Washington, the kids were in a secure, private school where they were protected better than they had been in L.A. and they had more time to be with them. Some of their people stayed behind in L.A. and the others kept their apartments and offices as they were. This made it easy to fly back out if they had business to address or social events to attend.
The Carmichaels' penthouse apartment in Carmichael House in Crystal City wasn't as lavish as the Keep, as Roan had separated the formal entertainment facilities and moved them up to the roof. This way when functions were put on, they didn't need to let people into their home. With the kids being five going on sixteen now, he did away with the nursery/kids' room and designed it with individual rooms for them, though there were adjoining doors between all of them and the master bedroom so they weren't separated. It was still quite good for entertaining, but it was more informal and comfortable for them.
To keep up appearances, each of them who had an external government job was normally escorted by a protective detail of six to twelve in three or four vehicles, and the same applied to getting the kids to and from school. Ellie and Roan had the longest commute up to Fort Meade, but as Chuck's office was over the river from where the kids' school was, when he could make the time he went via the school in Bethesda to drop them off before swinging back across the river to Liberty Crossing, which made his commute take almost as long.
Liberty Crossing – October 2015
Chuck started his revised role as the DNI in October 2015, and he found it rather aggravating that after being in the DNI's position for over two years, there were still people (usually military or ex-military) who came into his office and insisted on going on about what a disgrace it was that he was displaying the two flags that he was entitled to, as they refused to accept that he was.
The thing was, he also had pictures from the more significant award presentations up on the walls of his office, so the proof was there to see if they chose to look. His ribbon board, shoulder board and his command ashore, qualification and identification badges were also mounted in a picture frame on his desk, but visitors rarely saw that as it was facing him, along with his wedding and family pictures.
His patience had ran out with these people within a few months of starting as the DNI without his temper cooling at all, so he'd developed a process to deal with them that satisfied him, but not them usually. His first call was generally to their Combatant Commander or Director. If he couldn't get an answer or he wasn't satisfied with the answer, his second call was to the Secretary of Defense. If he couldn't reach the Secretary of Defense his third call was to the President's private line. If he couldn't reach the President, things tended to get rather bad for the person who was pissing him off.
The Combatant Commander or Secretary of Defense generally got someone there to remove the idiots from his office before things got to that point though, as they'd taken measures to ensure that they always had Military Police on site in the ODNI offices since he put the first ones in hospital.
Liberty Crossing – February 2016
The most difficult of those ones he had in his office was the Secretary of Homeland Security, because he couldn't deal with him the way that he desperately wanted to. After listening to the man rant at him for over ten minutes, Chuck called the President's private line and began speaking in Indonesian when he answered. "Barry, it's Chuck." As Chuck had never addressed him with that sort of familiarity before, or spoken Indonesian for that matter, the President knew that something was seriously awry here. "Hey Chuck, what's up?"
"Do you remember the agreement we had whereby I could resign from this role if it became more trouble than it's worth?"
"Yes?"
"Well I think that time has come."
"Wait. Wait, tell me what's wrong first and maybe we can fix it!"
"Well I have your Secretary of Homeland Security in my office and he's telling me that Homeland Security will not relinquish any control of the Intelligence elements of the department to me. Oh, and he's also telling me that he will ensure that I am prosecuted to the full extent of the law for the unlawful display of the flags that I have up in my office."
"WHAT? What the hell is he even doing in your office?"
"He just barged in and told me that I had to justify the executive order giving me control over all elements of the American Intelligence Community before he would even consider giving me any access to them."
"Shit! Can you put me on speaker? No, can you set up a video conference so I can see for myself that he gets the point?"
"Yes sir. Just a moment…. There it is!"
With that, the eighty inch flat screen on the wall lit up with the President's image and he barked.
"What are you doing in Admiral Carmichael's office Johnson?"
"Mister President!… What? Admiral Carmichael? You mean that that's real?"
"Yes Johnson, it's real! As you would have seen if you'd bothered to look, I awarded it to him myself! And President Bush was the one who awarded him for the other part of what you're threatening to have him prosecuted over!"
"But Sir, how can that be? I've never heard of Carmichael before we got that order saying that he had control over our intelligence groups."
"Well obviously you haven't been in the loop on intelligence matters then, because Admiral Carmichael has been the DNI since before you were made the Secretary of Homeland Security, and he's been a major player in our intelligence community for well over twenty years now. As for why his rank and medals haven't been advertised, if you saw his medals and had any idea about what you were looking at, you might have recognised among them the Special Operations Command Medal, Distinguished Intelligence Cross, National Intelligence Cross, National Security Medal and National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. We don't advertise our top people in those fields because it would get them killed! You shouldn't know about them now but rightfully displaying his flags and pictures is the Admiral's minor rebellion within the privacy of his own office because we took him out of the field against his wishes to do a job that no-one else could."
"Now! What's this I hear about refusing to relinquish oversight and control of your intelligence groups to the Director of National Intelligence, as per the Executive order you received?"
"That. That's not exactly correct Mister President..."
"Admiral. Please repeat what Mr Johnson said to you."
Chuck repeated the diatribe that he'd been on the receiving end of, and which he'd just given the President the gist of, word for word.
"Thank you Admiral….Johnson, if you want to try and claim you haven't said something, you should make sure that the person you were speaking to doesn't have an eidetic memory."
"Now, from what the Admiral just repeated to me, you have wilfully disobeyed an executive order from your Commander In Chief, which would be me, by refusing to relinquish control of the intelligence groups in your department to the government's person in charge of all intelligence matters, which is the Admiral. You have five minutes to explain yourself and convince me why I shouldn't dismiss you on the spot! Talk!"
Johnson was still going fifteen minutes later when Chuck got a text from Sarah to say that she was waiting outside with the kids. He forwarded it to the President, giving him a look so he'd check it.
The President read the text and looked at him, nodding at the door as he cut Johnson off. "I haven't yet heard your assurances that you'll be giving the Admiral full cooperation and access to the intelligence resources in your Department Johnson. Will you be complying in full with the lawful executive order you received, or will your Deputy be elevated to Secretary by the end of the day?"
Johnson was almost wetting himself "Oh no sir! I can assure you that the Admiral will get everything he needs from my department straight away!"
At that moment the door of Chuck's office opened and three pint sized terrors ran straight past the man standing with his mouth wide open to their father (Johnson had no idea that Sarah had told them to do exactly that after she got the text from Chuck).
The President barked at him. "Johnson, I expect to hear that the Admiral has received formal confirmation that he'll get every assistance from your people by the end of the day, otherwise your Deputy will get a promotion, now get out!"
As Johnson turned for the door, his jaw dropped again when he saw Sarah, as she'd made a special effort to look nice for Chuck because this new job function was running him ragged. The President barked at him again. "Do you have a death wish? The Admiral was decorated for his operations with the SEALs, Delta Force and the CIA's SOG as well as Israel's toughest special operations groups before he was out of his teens and you're gawking at his wife in his office? Get the hell out of there you fool!"
He only just managed to hold on until the door closed behind the man before he burst out laughing.
Sarah grinned at him. "That was cruel Mister President, and might I say a little sexist? I'm quite capable of killing him myself!"
"Oh, I know that quite well Sarah, but we'd already covered off the fact that the medals that Chuck has are quite real. That was part of Chuck's beef with him, as he was trying to threaten to prosecute Chuck for unlawfully displaying his flags..."
Sarah cut him off. "WHAT? Oh I am going to kill him!"
The President put his hands out to placate her. "Calm down Sarah, we've addressed that, and he's scurrying back to his office to make sure that all of his people cooperate fully with Chuck on any intelligence matters. According to what a lot of people have told me, including Bob Gates though, he's actually supposed to be one of the good ones, that's why I appointed him. I think we've scared him enough to toe the line now. If not, well we can quietly let him know that General Carmichael is even more dangerous than her husband, and maybe you can have some fun."
"With that I'll leave you good folk in peace. Don't forget that there are two young ladies who want a dance with you at the ball tomorrow night Chuck. Bye kids."
The Carmichael terrors chorused "Goodbye Mister President!" and he grinned as Chuck cut the link.
Chuck hugged and kissed the kids and then pulled Sarah down for a kiss.
With the important things out of the way, he threw the things he had to work on at home in his bag and they headed out. Chuck took the time of the drive back to Carmichael to talk to the kids and ask what they'd done that day, as he knew that he'd be working most of the night, especially with the ball tomorrow night that the President had just reminded them about.
When he asked Sarah whether their outfits were ready for the ball though she just gave him one of her 'are you really asking me that?' looks.
He smiled as he leaned in to kiss her. "OK, OK, I knew you'd have it ready but I had to ask. I'm getting buried under the extra work that's coming out of the changes they made."
Chuck sighed. "At least it should mean that Ellie, Zondra, Carina and Dasha can come back as soon as they get suitable replacements ready though, as we'll have enough visibility into each of the agencies to see when something's going bad."
Sarah nodded. "That's good, because Mama and Auntie Mary are getting more and more serious about retiring. If they do, Ellie could take her side back from Mama and I should be able to take Auntie Mary's groups off her if I farm a few out to the others."
Chuck just nodded and pulled her into him, tuning out what she was saying as he didn't want to think about work at the moment.
The next day, once they had all the formal confirmations from Homeland Security they set up the raw feeds so that Chuck could review what came through them. This was one of the primary ways that they could provide the watchdog function, as they would review everything from these feeds with the intersect and compared the results with what was being reported by the agency. If there was a discrepancy, the individual and then the agency would be investigated.
Chuck was just thankful that the whole team was using the Carmichael Intersect now, rather than it being just him using the CIA/NSA Intersect as the few who officially knew about the intersect believed. If it were just him under those conditions the workload and constant flashing would have wiped him out and/or driven him crazy.
As it was though, they had several people reviewing every part of the feeds. This served to both spread the workload, and have their differing perspectives and knowledge bases improve the probability of picking something up. They did the same on Casey's side with military information and activity, if the orders didn't match the information, they investigated the individual and the unit. What most didn't know was that they were also doing the same with government information and activity.
That was why the President was doing everything he could to take the load off Chuck and make things easier for him. He genuinely liked and respected this young man, but he was just waiting for the day that the strain of going through every piece of government, intelligence and military information inevitably overwhelmed him. So any way that he could reduce the strain on him, like bringing a little humour into the situation or dismissing a government official who was making things difficult for him, he'd do it.
That night at the ball, they were having a good time, especially Sarah and Ellie as they ribbed Chuck and Casey about behaving themselves when they were dancing with the President's daughters. Casey had been determined to get back at Chuck for the President's daughters calling him 'Uncle Sugar Bear' until Sarah told him that it had been her, not Chuck. The girls had been intimidated by him (like most people), so she told them to call him that to soften their fear of him and let them see the man that she and the family knew and loved.
The fun stopped when Chuck, and then the others, got a flash on an assassin at the ball after he'd noted his suspicious behaviour. Once they'd identified him, they looked for others and found them, another half a dozen in fact. They notified the First Family's protective detail, but at the President's orders they shielded them in the ballroom rather than removing them to prevent a panic.
As they observed the assassins, it became clear that it was them, rather than the President, who was their target here. While it worried Sarah that they were almost certainly after Chuck, she chuckled evilly when she catalogued what they had available to deal with them. Chuck looked a question at her and she leant in to whisper in his ear. "It hardly seems fair, does it?"
His expression clouded with confusion for a moment before it cleared and he grinned as he got her point. Of the dozen of them who were attending the ball, only Leslie wasn't an operative and from the way Carina's arm was inside the back of his jacket, he was obviously carrying weapons for her, just as Chuck was for Sarah and the other guys probably were for their partners as well.
As he leant in to give her a quick kiss, he ran through what they had to work with, just as Sarah had already done. There were the two of them, Ellie and Casey, Carina with whatever Leslie was carrying for her, Zondra and Vinnie, and Dasha and Anna had come with Yuri and Rob as their partners for the night. They also had another dozen Shadow Security people salted through the staff. All of them except for Leslie were armed and extremely dangerous.
It wasn't too difficult for them to quietly extract the assassins from the ball without disturbing proceedings, and they sent the others back in while Chuck waited for Sarah to get confirmation that there weren't any other assassins at the ball. The response she got was negative, but most of them hadn't known about the others who were there either, so that wasn't too reassuring.
They went back in for a while and then begged off and went home to see what Mary had extracted from the would be assassins. Chuck shook his head as he thought that grandmothers were generally noted for their ability to bake or host a reception, not for the fact that they could break just about anyone alive and get their secrets out of them. Mary extracted the details of how and what each of them had been engaged for on this hit and handed the information over to Chuck and the others to follow up. Just as she could get whatever she needed out of a human better than anyone else they knew of, no-one else could work their magic on computers the way her baby boy, the Piranha, could.
There weren't any great surprises when they found who had sponsored the hits. Unfortunately, most of them were too prominent to respond in kind, so Chuck and the others had to settle for sending them a message. The ones who had sent payments to the assassins went from being smug rich bastards to totally penniless and terrified overnight. What they took off them wasn't much in the scale of what the family had taken off the ones that they'd taken down in the last fifteen years or so, but it was enough to destroy some of those who tried to have Chuck killed.
Wiping out the ones who had financed the planned hit at the ball stopped them being a threat, but didn't stop the ones who were really behind it. Over the next eight months there were over two dozen other attempts to get rid of Chuck. About half of these he dealt with himself, taking out his would be assassins with guns, knives or his bare hands, while his protective details took care of the rest.
It took the other side a surprisingly long time to work out that their vehicles were armoured and give up on trying to get him by attacking the vehicle Chuck was travelling in. Presumably this was because the ones they sent didn't have a chance to report their failure before they were killed or captured themselves.
After a few months had passed and almost a dozen more attempts had occurred, Sarah, Mary and Casey decided that enough time had passed to prevent connections being made between the ones who'd financed the hit at the ball and the attempts on Chuck's life, so they brought them in for a 'talk'. By the time they'd shown up dead by accident or suicide, the family were following up what Mary had gotten out of them.
Unfortunately, the ones who were behind the order were a lot brighter than the ones they'd delegated to finance it. Aside from the few who were too powerful to go after openly and who had a clean enough public image to hold up to most investigations, they disappeared. Their attempts to get Chuck continued, but slowed as the family got closer to them through the intel they got out of the would be assassins they captured at each attempt.
After seven months they had a breakthrough though, as they managed to locate one of the ones who had gone into hiding and through him, tracked down the others in hiding. Mary extracted enough information from them to let the family break the back of their organisation and strip away just about all of their assets.
Washington – October 2016
The final step to stop them going after Chuck was when Mary visited each of the 'untouchables' in what were supposed to be their impregnable sanctuaries and told them what had been done to their organisation. She also told them what specific information about them would be supplied to the media around the world to start investigations into them and their nefarious dealings if the attempts on the Human Intersect's life didn't stop immediately.
Her parting shot after telling them that if the attempts on his life didn't stop, she'd be back when they were no longer untouchable was what terrified them. "Well I will if I can convince Sarah Walker and John Casey to let me be the one who deals with you. Oh that's right, I haven't introduced myself, have I? I've used many names, but I'm probably best known as the CIA's Agent Frost, I'm told that I was quite famous as that."
All of the remaining hits on Chuck were called off within a couple of weeks of Mary making those visits, as soon as they'd found out who Agent Frost was and had confirmation that the woman who visited them matched what descriptions they had for Frost. They didn't need to ask about who Sarah Walker or John Casey were as they certainly knew THOSE names. Now that they knew who they were up against, they weren't about to risk tempting fate any more.
Crystal City – October 2016
For the past six months, as Chuck had said, those who had been seconded to head up the major intelligence agencies had been identifying and vetting suitable replacements and they returned to the Special Projects Group as soon as their replacements were confirmed.
Carina and Zondra were the first, and Zondra took over as the Director of the Intersect Project while Carina took over as the Deputy Director.
Dasha was replaced and remained as a Lieutenant General when she returned from the DIA in August, and Mary retired as a Lieutenant General with Sarah, Carina, Zondra and Dasha sharing the load of taking over her Intelligence and Operations groups.
Ellie didn't manage to locate and prepare a suitable replacement until September, and he took over in October. She remained a full Admiral when she returned to the Special Projects Group and took over as the Deputy Director and Deputy Commander. She also took over the majority of Emma's groups when she retired as a Lieutenant General. Anna and Sarah took over Emma's other groups.
Neither Mary nor Emma stopped working with the Special Projects Group or Carmichael Industries, they merely relinquished control to their children and worked for them.
With these changes, the Special Projects Group showed as having two O-10s, one O-9 and three O-8s for its control structure. Officially it was four O-10s because Chuck's and Casey's O-10s were still attached to the group as long as they were seconded into the DNI and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff roles.
In December 2017, just before the new administration came in, Diane and Roan also retired, having made their recommendations for suitable replacements for their roles. This meant that the four of them would now be available to make use of their vast intelligence knowledge as they took on some of the load of processing the information that they were going through about Government, Intelligence and Military developments.
With Diane and Roan's retirement, the family also cut its final ties with the GRU and SVU, because the rest of the Shadow Group had been dropped by them as useless five to ten years before. Diane and Roan had presented compelling evidence that the failures of their predecessors in the roles they held at the end had seriously curtailed the level of information that they had access to, but as long as they were in positions where they may get access to high level information their Russian 'masters' weren't about to release them. As soon as they announced that they'd retired (they were both over sixty, so that was believable) though, their 'masters' cut all communications with them.
Stephen also 'retired' when the others did, so Leslie took over Novatech, just as Ellie had taken over Fox Consulting from Emma when she retired.
Crystal City – January 2017
No-one from outside the family saw any of the older set working in the Carmichael Industries or Special Projects offices any more, but they were in fact working just as hard as they had before when they weren't chasing after or training their grandchildren, they were just freed from the time wasting requirements for constant meetings.
Sarah was grateful to them for taking on much of the general running around after the kids, because having Chuck and Casey tied up with their government jobs meant that she and Ellie had the lion's share of the responsibility for the Carmichael Industries businesses and the Special Projects Groups. Seeing the kids, and Chuck when he got back from Liberty Crossing or the White House, were the highlights of her day, but as she couldn't function without sleep the way that Chuck did, she had limited time to do what she wanted and meet those responsibilities.
Like Chuck and the other parents, Sarah wished that she had the time to take their kids to and from school so that they could have more time with them and be more a part of their lives, but each trip to the school via Liberty Crossing took over an hour and a half from home. It also added at least twenty minutes to Chuck's commute to his office, so they couldn't manage it every time, or even every day. Chuck tried to take them to school and she tried to pick them up and take them to Liberty Crossing to bring him home with them as much as they could, but they struggled to manage that more than once or twice most weeks.
They'd been struggling even more before, back when Ellie, Carina, Zondra and Dasha had been filling the government positions as well as Chuck and Casey, because it had been mainly Sarah, Emma, Mary and Anna who had to handle the majority of the ten trips a week between them because the Friends' School had strict rules on who could drop off or pick up the kids.
The three years since Casey accepted the first role in Washington had been increasingly difficult, with all of them getting snowed under with the workload from their 'official' positions and the rest of their responsibilities to CI/Special Projects, and it had only gotten worse when the kids started school.
To protect them against their enemies and unwanted attention, their kids had been enrolled as 'Bartowski' and Clara was enrolled as 'Casey', but the Bartowski name was still famous itself in the Arcadia school district because of Ellie and Chuck's achievements, so that had brought its own attention. They'd maintained the house in Arcadia as a separate base if they needed it since Mary and Emma moved into the Castle, and the argument for moving Ellie and Chuck to Arcadia for the best schools still applied when the kids were getting closer to school age, so they were registered at that address as the Bartowskis and Caseys. Chuck did his usual magic to cover up that they were using one address for seventeen children from fourteen families.
The workload and time management issues had only gotten worse when Chuck and Casey agreed to take on the watchdog roles and they'd relocated to Washington. The ones with outside jobs had more time with their kids, but the workload had gone up considerably, as had the stress. The commute to the Friends' school was three times as long, and the terms that they'd agreed to to get them in at short notice meant that only a limited number of named individuals were authorised to drop off or pick up the kids.
On top of that, with the way politics and military protocols worked, it was Sarah and Ellie who had to attend most of the meetings with the President and the government's representatives as the most senior members of the group. At least most of those meetings were held in the Pentagon or the White House, so travel time was short, but they took up a lot of time. That was why having their grandmothers 'retired' and able to cover the majority of the trips to and from the school was such a boon.
The two things that Sarah looked forward to the most each day were when the kids came home from school, and when Chuck came home from 'work', so the days when she could make the time to go to pick up the kids from school and Chuck from work were doubly good.
A/N: This story doesn't seem to be working for anyone. If this continues I'll probably tack these two chapters onto the end of Sleepers, delete this and give up on the story. I may try to finish the other stories if that happens, not sure at the moment.
Of course, I may buckle and stretch this out to six chapters to see whether Billy Jack and the others who wait that long before they start reading pick it up. I hate it when I'm weak like that.
