A/N: Still flashback. In this chapter: Chuck and Sarah get some good news from their doctor. Also: gunfire, explosions, anarchy in the streets. Action-packed is how they say it in Hollywood.

I'm debating whether this story really needs the M classification. Thoughts?

Disclaimer: Blah. Don't own Chuck. Blah.

Chapter 4: Ring of Fire

Sarah was grinning like the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary on the way back from this week's ultrasound. Doctor Reynolds had finally given them the long awaited news, that everything was ship-shape in her belly again, so to speak. It was still just kind of belly shaped, had been Chuck's considered response to the doctor's attempt at levity. Sarah had specifically asked her doctor five times if it was okay for them to resume the sexual component of their relationship, though of course, she hadn't phrased it like that. That was Chuck trying to be respectful in front of the doctor. Sarah had been much less restrained in seeking the gory details of what they could and couldn't do.

And there were conditions, specific things she couldn't have Chuck do to her that she'd been missing for almost three months. That, Sarah wasn't thrilled with. She still wasn't relieved completely from bed rest either, though the doctor had relaxed that part of her treatment a little as well. The doctor had strictly forbid her from resuming any kind of workout regimen, but she couldn't really make herself care. The only workout she was looking forward to today was in the bedroom. She still had to be sitting, or lying down for at least eighteen hours a day, but even just the thought of being able to walk to the mail box and back was enough to put her in a good mood. The sex-news made her practically giddy, and drowned out any other possible concerns. Once Chuck pulled the car into the garage Sarah took off her seat belt and threw open her door and started trying to clamber out and waddle to the bedroom.

"Hey, slow down there, Tiger." Chuck said, while the garage door grated shut. He leaped out of the car and slid across the hood to get around to the passenger side faster. "Let me help."

"I'm perfectly capable of standing on my own, Charles Irving Bar-Murtaugh." Sarah flushed at her slip. Chuck grinned. "Wipe that smile off your face and help if you're helping." She held her arms out and he dipped down to pick her up out of the car like always. She looped her arms around his neck and he straightened. He grunted with effort, which was new, cradling her like a groom carrying his bride across the threshold. She'd missed that at their actual wedding.

"Did you put on weight since this morning?"

"What!" Sarah said. "What kind of question is that?" Her feet kicked the air.

"It's just you seem a little doughy around the midsection lately."

Sarah's eyes narrowed, something was off, Chuck didn't normally... She sighed. "You're just trying to rile me up for angry sex." It was decidedly not a question. Sarah was absolutely certain of this.

"Am I that transparent?" Chuck asked. "We've never had angry pregnancy sex."

"Yes. You are exactly that transparent. While there's a first time for everything, hon, I think angry sex is a bad idea right now. I wouldn't want to crush your pelvis."

He grinned. "Death by snoo-snoo. I've heard of worse ways to go."

She gave him a thin smile. He knew she wasn't really mad when she made Futurama references. They'd just watched that episode in bed a couple nights earlier when the internet went down and laughed together and snuggled. It had been good. It felt almost too good to be true, just lying in bed watching old cartoons and laughing. He had a glimmer of the feeling he always got back in Burbank right before Casey came over to tell him they had a new mission. A sense of foreboding, but he just put it down to nerves.

Chuck carried her to the door, where Sarah dug her keys out of her purse and reached down one handed to work the lock. They had it down to a science after the ten or so trips to the hospital over the last two and a half months. "I'm not an eight foot tall Amazonian, though."

"Five nine ain't bad honey." Chuck shot back. They squeezed through the doorway sideways.
"And amazons got nothing on you."

"Laying it on a little thick, there, aren't you?" Sarah mused as he kicked the door to the garage closed behind them.

"I thought maybe I overshot on the angry sex gambit and there wouldn't be any sex." They made there way through the utility room into the front hallway.

"Put me down."

"I did overshoot." Chuck said and let her put her feet back on the ground. "I'm sorry, I thought it would be funny. I didn't really—"

She pinched him on the hip. "Quiet. It's been three months, I'm not letting your motormouth ruin the mood."

"Sorry." He said again and Sarah smiled, full of teeth.

"Stop apologizing, and come on. I can walk thirty feet to the bedroom." She said, suiting her words. Sarah glanced over her shoulder at him and arched an eyebrow, nodded for him to follow. But Chuck was just looking at her waddle away from him. How sexy was that! There was something really wrong with him. He was having another one of his, 'can't believe this is real moments,' but he snapped out of it before she was halfway down the hall, and darted after her.

At this point in her pregnancy, just a couple weeks away from full term, he was noticeably faster than she was, more agile, and Chuck had a good idea why she was being so competitive online lately. Just before he caught up to her, Sarah stumbled half a step and put her hand to the wall to steady herself. Chuck swooped in, slipping an arm around her shoulders. "You okay?"

"Fine, it's nothing. Just some cramps. And the baby isn't being much help on that front either. We've got to decide on a name. She's doing tumbling practice again."

Chuck frowned, but Sarah put his hand on her belly so he could feel her kicking around in there. "How about Lisa."

"My middle name? Wouldn't that be a little weird?"

"No weirder than 'Apple' or 'Pilot Inspector.'" Chuck said. "I like 'Lisa.' Girl's going to be a chip off the old block anyway, I can already tell."

"Fine, Lisa it is. Now let's go."

"Maybe we should hold off on the sex. At least until she goes back to sleep."

Sarah growled in her throat. "If the next words out of your mouth aren't. 'Ha ha just kidding,' I'm going to hit you with a chair and have my way with your unconscious body."

"Um. Ha ha. Just kidding?"

She patted him on the cheek. "Smart man. You know I married you for your brains, right?" Chuck pulled her in for a kiss, and her hands began to dip, tugging at his belt buckle. She pulled him into the bedroom by the belt loops and backed herself neatly to the edge. Sarah pushed herself up on tiptoe to kiss him, when the doorbell rang. She growled again into his mouth."Don't even think about answering that."

Chuck pulled away briefly. "I don't even know what you're talking about. I didn't hear anything." Sarah laughed and fell backwards, trusting Chuck to slow her fall. He let her weight pull him onto the bed, and was careful to land next to rather than on top of her.

"Hands up." Sarah said, all business once again, and started pulling his shirt up off over his head before he had done as she asked. She threw his shirt aside and began to kiss her way down his neck to his chest. The doorbell rang again. "Shh." She whispered hoarsely into his chest. "Don't move. Maybe they'll think we're not here and go away."

Chuck ran his fingers through her hair, causing a shiver to run down her spine. "They probably saw us drive up. It'll stop eventually." The doorbell chimed again, but this time, their early afternoon caller leaned on the thing, pounding nonstop. Chuck groaned. "That's going to be a little distracting, but I'm still game if you are."

Sarah rolled onto her back and huffed angrily. "That's going to be impossibly distracting. Go get rid of them. Take my gun, and shoot them if you have to."

"Sarah." Chuck said, and she shrugged. "No guns. I will inform them politely that we have a posted No Solicitors sign, and then I will slam the door in their face."

"Does it still count as coitus interruptus if we didn't even get started?"

"Don't worry, I'll be right back once I get rid of them."

"Make it snappy, or I'll start without you."

Chuck started to walk around the bed for his shirt, but took in her expression. She was serious about starting without him. No time for shirts. As he padded back down the hall, he thought to himself how it might just be simpler to disconnect the doorbell rather than actually spend time talking to whoever it was that thought today was a good day to make a nuisance of themselves door-to-door.

"Relax! I'm coming!" He said, with his voice raised to be heard over the doorbell and through the heavy door. He didn't bother to load up the security screen he'd installed at Sarah's insistence. Things might have turned out differently if he had. "What the hell do you want?" Chuck said, tearing open the front door. He flashed immediately.

***

Vincent was in radio contact with the second team from his van across the street, but they had only been in position for moments when someone drove into the driveway of 1236 Main Street, Clarkdale, AZ. They hadn't had time to set up the cameras yet, and Vincent didn't get a good look. "Was that him?" He said, grating his teeth. "Was that Carmichael?"

"Team-two lead, unable to confirm." A voice said over his headset. "We can't see into the house itself, they've got shutters on most of the windows."

Vincent turned in the passenger seat. There were half a dozen men in full tactical gear crouched in the back. He pointed at random. "You. Put on the Electric Company uniform, get someone to come to the door. Vincent pulled a pair of binoculars from the center console. "Once I identify the target, move in."

The gold watch he had received as a 'retirement' gift told him that is was a little after half past one. This would be a banner day for the Ring, at 1334 hours Mountain Standard Time, they would finally get their hands on a walking talking, human intersect. It didn't even matter if they killed him. Just having the brain to dissect would be worth billions in research & development. Their scientists might even be able to recover some of the data if his team could get the body to a lab quickly enough. The thought gave him pause, and Vincent keyed his microphone so that all him men would hear it. "No headshots. If you have to take Carmichael down, aim low. We need that brain of his intact."

The wait was making him impatient. Impatient people make mistakes, and mistakes were unprofessional, so he ground his teeth and waited while his randomly hand-picked advance man undressed and quickly donned the stolen uniform. "What is taking so long back there." He finally demanded.

"The shoes don't fit."

"Forget the shoes, just put your boots back on. Nobody looks at shoes."

At last, the man let himself out of the van, walked across the street and up the sidewalk. The disguised commando walked through the yard, really more of a rock-and-cactus garden, and rang the bell.

"No answer."

"Do I really need to spell it our for you?"

"No sir. I'm ringing again." Another lengthy pause. "I hear him coming."

Vincent stared intently through his binoculars. This was it. The man who'd taken his legs. Revenge was unprofessional. The door was opening. This was business, he reminded himself. "It's him. Go, go, go. Take him."

***

Chuck blinked out of the flash, cut it short, something he'd figured out how to do when he kept flashing on people in the photographs on Casey's walls all those months ago in Burbank. He saw the 'Ring Agent' flag come up in bright, bold, blood-red lettering over the man's file, and blinked. That was all he needed to know. The second flash was one he needed, and it only took a second. But that was almost too much, even when it gave him close quarters gun disabling and disarming techniques.

The Ring agent in the Electric Company uniform already had his gun out of its holster and coming up when Chuck could move again. He sidestepped and seized the man's wrist with his left hand, pushing it to his right, across the man's body, out of line with Chuck's vital areas, and also away from the side of the house Sarah was in. A quick knuckle strike just below the sternum had the Ring agent gasping for air and Chuck spun side-on to the man to lend weight to the elbow chop to the side of his neck. Before the man could fall, Chuck took control of the agent's weapon, fingers pinching the nerve ending inside his elbow hard to make him loosen his grip.

"Sarah, Ring agents incoming!" He shouted, spotting five men in combat gear running across the harshly sunlit street. A heat haze wavered in the air, and for a split-second he could almost imagine they were part of the mirage. Chuck fell to one knee, hands coming together on the grip in proper fashion, and sighted in.

There was no time to think, only to act, and Chuck wasn't going down without a fight. He squeezed off a round, then another, then a third, each bark of the pistol accompanying a shot taking one of the approaching commandos square in the chest. They staggered with the impacts but kept coming. Kevlar, damn.

Two of the black-clad men stopped, taking up similar firing stances to Chuck's. He rolled backward and kicked the door closed with one foot. Their weapons were silenced, but he could hear the mechanical chatter of their automatic weapons cycling, the impact of their bullets with the door. He thanked Sarah for being paranoid enough to insist on the ballistic Kevlar insert between two layers of quarter-inch steel that made up their front door. The bullets made a pleasant pinging sound as they hit the door harmlessly. Though the cactus on the front patio was probably done for.

Pounding footsteps alerted him just soon enough to make a difference. The door itself may have been reinforced, but the frame was standard, something Sarah often griped about. It would have drawn attention to reinforce the frame. Cops inevitably made the 'drug dealer's stash house' assumption, when they noticed reinforced door-frames, so they'd done without.

Chuck scrambled to his feet and darted to the left, threw open the closet and slipped inside. "Flashbangs, flashbangs." He whispered fervently. "Where'd I put the flashbangs?" The box fell off the top shelf, and it was raining flashbangs. The first Ring agent shoulder blocked the front door and the frame came apart, sending whirling splinters into the room. Chuck bobbled one for a moment before pulling the pin and tossing it out of the closet. He scooped up another pair from the floor, one in each hand, tossing them all in quick succession. He closed the door behind them and stuffed a spare in his jeans pocket. After the third bang, he shoved the door open and leaped out.

Thankfully they were all still woozy from the grenades, because one was actually pointing his gun directly at Chuck's midsection when he came out of the closet. The flash still fresh in his mind, Chuck slapped the barrel of the man's assault rifle down and away, sidestepped left and tugged on the man's arm, spinning him around.

One hand swept around the agent's neck in a choke, and Chuck put his hand over the agent's on the grip of his assault rifle. He sprayed wildly in the hopes of downing even one of the agents. The chatter of silenced weapons was thick in the air. It wasn't loud, but there was no mistaking the sound of automatic weapons cycling for anything good.

The agent in Chuck's grasp jerked from multiple impacts, but Chuck held the man up, using the wounded and probably dying man as a human shield. He felt around on the man's chest for a moment, found the telltale shape of multiple grenades. There was no way to see what kind, but he hoped stun grenades or concussion grenades.

With a quick peek around his shield to see where they were bunched up, he pulled the pins, shoved his captive at them, and dove over the little stucco half-wall into the living room. He forgot to stick his fingers in his ears, and the blast hurt. He could feel blood running down the side of head closest to the blast. Must have been frags. "Sarah!" Chuck shouted at the top of his lungs. "We have to go! Get to the car and let's get out of here!"

"I'm a little busy here, babe!" Sarah shouted back, and he heard the whip-crack of her Remington 900 bolt action hunting rifle.

***

Out in his command van, Vincent heard it as well.

"Team One," He said. "What is your status. Team one, report. Damn. Team two, report." The radio crackled instantly. "Sniper took down one—" Vincent heard the second gunshot echo over the radio a barely noticeable fraction of a second after it first rang out. "Make that two of us! We're pinned down. No visual on the shooter."

"It sounds like a bolt action, rush them. There's still four of you." Damn it all to hell. This was a disaster in the making. His superiors had given him the position of command, told him to pick the team he needed to capture or kill two agents, taken unaware and potentially unarmed. Conventional wisdom said a six man team —with two more in the van to drive and offer surveillance backup— would be more than enough. Most true professionals would have taken that number and doubled it and come in from two directions, just to be sure. Vincent wasn't most professionals. "Team three, halt overwatch. You're needed here." He'd tripled it.

***

Chuck went over to the smoking pile of bad guys and fished out one of their assault rifles. There was less blood than he'd been darkly expecting, and a couple of them were groaning. So, maybe only two or three deaths on his conscience. There was another echoing gunshot from the back bedroom. They'd come from both sides, there was no window from there facing the front of the house, so that was the only explanation.

Chuck quick-timed it to the sliding glass doors out onto the back patio from the living room. The glass had shattered, and shards of it crunched under his feet as he slipped around the back of the house, stolen assault rifle at the ready.

Three men in black combat fatigues just like the first team were charging at the windows of the master bedroom. Chuck fired from cover, pressed against the back wall of the house in the shadows, low, to take out their legs. Some part of him just couldn't stomach the thought of killing. They fell like cut barley, and the sharp bark of Sarah's rifle split the air again, and a fourth man lost his head. Chuck tossed his spare flashbang, and it hit one of the wounded agents in the head, bounced up into the air and exploded. That close, it knocked both men out for the count.

He circled back around, into the living room. Sarah was shuffling down the hallway to him, her rifle in one hand and her silenced Smith & Wesson 9mm in the other. "Now we can go." She said simply, and made her way to the garage. "Nice work with the flashbangs, honey."

Chuck scampered after her, got in the car and started it. "What are you waiting for? Come on."

"I need to make sure we're clear." She said, and knocked out one of the teeny little windows in the garage door, rested her rifle barrel on the hole she'd made and sighted out.

***

Vincent glanced at his watch again. 1:39. Five minutes gone, and two teams disabled or killed. He had to hand it to Carmichael and the Blonde they were the CIA's best. However, if team three got there in time, he could maybe still salvage this debacle. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, the flare of sunlight off something. A rifle scope!

He ducked, slumped in his seat and the window shattered. His driver fell forward in a cloud of red just as the gunshot echoed through the canyon. Vincent snatched his pistol and fired out the window blindly, only hoping to keep the sniper's head down. He emptied the clip at a leisurely pace, clicking off the rounds one every second or so, as his free hand searched for his driver's M-4 carbine, which should be slung between the seats right. Yes. There it was. He kept up the stream of fire, buying time for Team three to arrive.

***

"Sarah get in!" Chuck shouted from the car, dumping his borrowed assault rifle on the dashboard. Sarah was huddled in the corner of the garage, and bullet holes were appearing in the garage door.

"One shooter, white van across the street." Sarah shouted back. "Keep your head down and go baby! Go!"

"Not without you!"

"I'm pinned down! Go dammit!" She glared at him. "I'm not asking, I'm telling! Go take him out!" With a wince, she put her hand to her side. Damn cramps.

Something clicked into place in his mind. Those weren't cramps. Those were contractions. About five minutes apart, was that right? The baby couldn't have picked a better time? He stomped on the gas, launching the car backward, through the garage door. Bullets kept peppering the car, but he had his head down, looking straight up to see the rearview mirror, angled down.

A figure in black combat fatigues rose up behind the car, and disappeared. The car jerked and shuddered and bounced as the Ring agent fell under the wheels. Chuck winced a little in sympathy and floored the accelerator. The remains of the garage door sloughed off, pinwheeling in the middle of the driveway. Chuck centered the white van in his mirror and curled up in a ball, braced for impact.

Vincent saw it coming, and he grabbed the wheel, shifted the van into reverse and wedged the dead man's foot onto the gas. The van jerked backward maybe a dozen yards. He popped his head back up, shifted gears, crushed the dead man's foot back onto the pedal.

Chuck's car hit the curb and bounced up onto the sidewalk, crumpling the safety railing. The impact jostled him around a little, but he was alert and unharmed. He glanced out the back. No sign of the van, what had... Chuck blinked, and tried to remember if their car had side-curtain air bags.

The van plowed into Chuck's car and the sedan jumped with the sound of squealing metal as it's back bumper bent the safety railing further. Vincent leaned the dead man's foot harder on the gas. Tires squealed and the van shimmied sideways, pushing Chuck's car around against the maimed railing. A support snapped and the car shifted a little further.

There was a steep embankment beyond the railing. The man was trying to knock his car down it, Chuck realized. He pulled the pistol from the small of his back and aimed it out his shattered window, really seeing who it was driving for the first time. His mouth dropped open for a moment, but he fired anyway. How many lives did this jerk have? Vincent ducked back down behind the dashboard.

Chuck's pistol came up empty, and he glared at it then threw it out the window at Vincent. It added yet another crack to the windshield, but that was all.

Vincent's head popped back up, smirking. And then they both heard the rotor. Vincent grinned wider, eyes darting up to watch the chopper's progress. Chuck spotted the chopper through his sunroof for a second. "Good to see you made the party, team three." Vincent said into his microphone. Concentrate on the house. I'll deal with the car."

Chuck could only make out a few of the words, but merely from Vincent's tone of voice, he knew it was the wrong kind of reinforcements. The van reversed away, and Chuck grabbed the assault rifle from where it had flown in the initial crash and pumped bullets into the van's hood until the magazine came up empty. Smoke started pouring from the engine of the van, but it hardly slowed, crashing back into the side of the car. Chuck's side of the car crumpled, and he wriggled across into the passenger seat, tucking his legs up by his chest, trying to get them as far as possible from the crushing force of the van.

The car started to tilt up on two wheels as Vincent's van drove the car harder against the safety railing.

***

Sarah heard the helicopter before anyone else. She wasn't in a great position, but she grabbed a golf club they'd never gotten around to using and levered it against the wall of their garage to knock over the giant tool cabinet they'd also never used. With a sigh, she sat herself down, glaring through the scope at the approaching Huey. She'd need a more secure firing platform.

The angle was off, even from her lower position, and she didn't have a shot on the pilot until the helicopter was close enough she couldn't risk it crashing on Chuck. As more ring agents started to zipline down, she zeroed in on what looked like a team leader, and put a round in his throat.

Her bolt action rifle was intended for use on big game animals, moose, bear, the occasional mountain lion. The light body armor worn by the rappelling team was no match. The range was under fifty yards, and Sarah barely needed to bother with the scope. The action made the click-clack sound that sometimes haunted her dreams, but she chambered a new round and took aim again.

The van was about to push Chuck's car over the embankment. She had to do something, even if it risked a helicopter crash. Sarah shifted aim and fired. The helicopter jerked sideways, toward the house, and as she worked the bolt to feed another round, she had a shot at the pilot. Two of the zip-lining ring agents lost their grip and fell forty or fifty feet to the ground with bonecrunching thuds. Her belly was a pit of ice as she glanced through the scope and held her breath. The recoil stole her breath for a moment. The pilot slumped over on the yoke and the helicopter banked over directly for the house, a couple of agents still clinging to their ziplines. Sarah realized as the chopper disappeared from sight over the top opening of the garage door, that she was sitting in a puddle. Her water had just broken.

***

Vincent and Chuck watched helplessly as the chopper's rotor cut into the roof, as the huge machine slammed into the house. "Sarah!" Chuck shouted. Vincent held one hand to the sucking chest wound that Carmichael had given him, a lucky shot that had penetrated through the van's hood, engine compartment and dash. He leaned sideways, his weight pushing his dead driver's foot down harder on the gas pedal. A last support beam snapped and the mangled vehicles lurched forward, over the edge. The van caught on one of the broken off support columns, and metal shrieked, but the cars stated linked, making a funny T-shaped tangle of metal.

Chuck's car angled down crazily and he fell backward, the door flew open and chuck managed to hook an arm through the window, hanging over a twenty foot drop. He punched the glove box open with his free hand, scrabbling for the spare gun Sarah kept there.

Vincent broke the windshield out with his fist and hauled himself out on the hood, so he could speak to Carmichael directly. The man deserved that much.

He was not expecting more gunfire, and a bullet shattered his wrist. Another grazed his shoulder, a third punched him in the stomach. The others missed. He coughed and looked down at Carmichael hanging from the car door, empty pistol still in hand, and said, with well earned respect. "Well played, Agent Carmichael. But today, everybody loses."

With his good hand, Vincent pulled out the detonator for the twenty pounds of semtex strapped to the floorboards of his van.

"You lose, Carmichael." Vincent said, popping off the safety cover over the detonator switch.

Chucks eyes widened in horror and he let go, falling twenty feet from their ruined family sedan. He rolled with the impact and tumbled down the embankment as the world went white.

TO BE CONTINUED...

A/N 2: I remember I said: all Chuck POV last time, but things got a little more hectic this chapter than I had anticipated, and I needed the freedom. Also, I didn't mean to end on a double cliffhanger, but this chapter was past 5000 words already, so I had to split it somewhere.

I'm going to try to put up a poll on whether the story needs to stay M or can safely move down to T. Also. Over 1200 hits!