Mack Truck
"Look, Casey," Chuck started as they entered the large indoor firing range, "this isn't quite what I had in mind." The firing range was run by the Los Angeles Police Department, and several officers passed by as Casey walked up to the desk and showed the attendant his badge and gun. He had exchanged his Buy More Polo with a black tee shirt in the car.
Casey turned to Chuck as the attendant gathered up safety glasses and ear protection for them. "What's your point?"
"Well," Chuck whispered, "I'm just not the Clint Eastwood kind of guy, I mean, I can barely be trusted to hold a gun, much less fire it."
Casey shook his head and accepted the safety equipment from the attendant. "Look," he said firmly, "you don't have to carry a gun. But you should at least be familiar with how to use one. And, you came to me for help," he reminded him. Casey headed through a set of soundproof doors.
Maybe Casey is on to something, thought Chuck. He remembered how he wasn't able to shoot the lock off the door when Sarah was trapped inside a freezer last year. Besides, Casey seemed happy to do this, and he didn't want to mess that up. He knew that he owed Casey his life several times over, and maybe this was a small way to start paying him back. With those thoughts, Chuck followed Casey through the doors.
The barrage of gunfire noise hit him like a Mack truck. He was immediately transported to the snowy woods where he was almost killed. Casey was standing over him with a gun; and he remembered that he panicked at first, knowing that he wouldn't see Sarah or his family again. And then, it was as if a blanket of stillness floated down on him and he felt calm. At least, until Casey's gun went off, and the bullet burrowed into the ground, barely an inch from his head.
Casey turned and placed a headset over Chuck's ears. He noticed that Chuck had paled and wondered if he was going to faint. "You okay?" he asked.
Chuck licked his lips nervously and nodded his head. They walked into a small partitioned area, and the noise level dropped. Don't freak out, Chuck told himself, his heart hammering in his chest.
Casey held his gun out to Chuck. "This is a Smith & Wesson M&P 45," he said. "It has a reinforced polymer chassis and a ten-round capacity."
"Nice," said Chuck loudly.
"You bet it's nice," said Casey, as Chuck gingerly accepted the gun. "It's not loaded. I want you to get the feel of it first."
Casey also demonstrated how to disengage the safety, and Chuck practiced a few times, feeling less like he was going to faint. It wasn't so different from his video game guns, aside from being able to kill someone. Or shoot a lock, he reminded himself quickly.
Casey took the gun and showed Chuck how to load it properly. Both men put on their safety glasses. Then Casey turned toward the target at the far end of the shooting area. He fired the gun rapidly, using all his rounds, seemingly without taking aim. He pressed a toggle switch on the side of the booth and the paper target moved up to them. Only two holes were evident on the human outline; one in the head and one in the chest. Chuck nodded his head in appreciation. Casey replaced the paper target with a fresh one and pressed the toggle switch again, sending the target to about the midway point from the booth to the end of the shooting area.
Chuck took the gun, loaded it, and aimed it at the target. Casey showed him how to hold the gun with two hands, and emphasized the importance of squeezing, rather than pulling, the trigger. Chuck took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger. He stepped back a little as the gun kicked a bit, and he gave Casey a nervous look.
"That's okay," said Casey. "Just strengthen your stance and try again."
Forty minutes later, they turned in the safety equipment and walked out to the Herder. Chuck felt good about the experience. Casey only yelled at him once, when he accidentally pointed the gun at him while trying to load it. And, he managed to hit the paper target pretty often, thanks to his gaming experience. Even so, he hoped he would never have to touch a gun again, much less aim it at a real person.
Casey wondered if he had made the right decision, especially in the beginning, when he thought Chuck was going to faint. He didn't think about the gunplay Chuck had been through just recently. He was surprised, though; Chuck seemed to recover quickly and actually did a fair job, for his first time. Beckman was following his recommendation that Chuck be allowed to continue living on the outside, and he wasn't about to forget that. Chuck had a way of screwing things up, and Casey was determined to keep that from happening this time. Much as he hated the thought, he should probably spend a little more time with Chuck, teaching him how to stay out of trouble, if that was even possible.
Casey and Chuck got in the Herder and drove toward the Orange Orange.
"So it went okay didn't it?" asked Chuck.
"Well, I managed to get through it without losing an appendage, so that's something," replied Casey.
***
As Casey and Chuck descended the steps into Castle, Sarah looked up. "You're late," she said.
"Traffic," Casey muttered, moving to a seat in front of the large display screen on the wall.
Chuck simply shrugged his shoulders, moving toward a seat behind Casey. Sarah approached him and touched his shoulder, giving him a smile. Chuck immediately blushed and nearly stumbled over one of the chairs. Sarah's eyes crinkled with amusement as Chuck felt for his chair and sat down, not taking his eyes off her as she glided into a seat next to him.
"Ahem." General Beckman's image had appeared on the display. "Is the Inter…, I mean, is Mr. Bartowski feeling okay?" she asked severely. "He looks a little flushed."
"Fine, General," Chuck replied, tearing his eyes away from Sarah. "I went jogging with my soon-to-be brother-in-law today, that's all. You know, trying to keep in shape." He gave a short laugh and looked away from the screen.
Ignoring him, General Beckman continued. "We have encountered a situation for which you may be able to provide assistance. Edward Smith, a doctor with a specialty in infectious disease and biological warfare, was attending a symposium in the Los Angeles area last night when he disappeared." A picture of Smith appeared on the monitor: a large man with dark features, a small mouth, and piercing blue eyes.
Chuck felt some of his initial excitement fade; he wouldn't want to meet that guy in a dark alley, he thought. "He doesn't look much like a doctor," he commented.
"He was recruited as an asset several years ago; three years ago, he demanded operative training," Beckman said.
"So you have agents out there who were formerly assets?" asked Chuck with a start.
Sarah answered him. "I've heard of this guy. Smith is the only one, Chuck."
"And apparently, that may have been a mistake," said Beckman. "We've have been investigating Mr. Smith for the past four months. Some of his research had turned up in Chinese and Russian intel. We were looking for a money trail to determine if he was leaking the research, or if the research was being smuggled out by someone else. We found his Cayman account a few days ago, and we planned to bring him in after the symposium."
"Why wait?" asked Casey.
"He was working on a special project, involving a virus transmitted via a water supply. Although the half-life was very short, the advantage was that the virus was undetectable, even at peak levels. The project was to develop a method of detecting and neutralizing the virus. His final communication with our scientists revealed that he was meeting someone at the symposium who could help him finish the work." Beckman paused. "Obviously, we preferred that he finished his project before taking him in. He erased all evidence of the project in the base computers, and the files at his Washington apartment were similarly destroyed."
"What can we do, General?" asked Sarah.
"Mr. Smith has gained quite a reputation as an excellent, though somewhat reckless, operative; it's doubtful that he was grabbed. We are assuming that he finished the project, and that he is now preparing to either meet a buyer, or perhaps simply flee the country. We want Mr. Bartowski to review what information we have, and we want you and Agent Casey to escort him to the Stonegate Hotel, where Smith stayed. There is no indication that he left Los Angeles. Perhaps Mr. Bartowski can use the Intersect to determine where he might have gone. I will await your findings." The screen went blank.
"Great," said Chuck glumly, turning to look at Sarah. "The one other asset who became an operative is a bad guy."
"Don't worry about it, Chuck," Sarah reassured him. "Even Beckman knows that you're a different type of asset." Secretly, though, she was worried. This case coming up just as Chuck was trying to shake free of being an asset seemed like a bad omen. She thought she had made a horrible mistake, letting Chuck know that she had feelings for him, but he seemed to be handling it well. And she had hoped that as Chuck became more of an operative, they wouldn't have to hide their feelings from Casey and Beckman anymore. She hoped this mission was a simple find and recover. She shuddered at the memory of seeing Chuck lying on the ground, thinking he was lost to her forever. She couldn't bear to go through anything like that again. She followed Chuck and Casey up the stairs. She was definitely going to stick close to him during this mission.
