NoMoreNextTime04

T/N: I don't type anymore, just edit. Thx for the reviews while we were gone. No more travelling for us for a while. Finishing school and finding a job. He's 'retired' again. Lemee see that's twice now. 42 and done already. He still doesn't have the p-word. NOW he says he doesn't want it. hahaha. Cancun was nice, some rain, mostly room shine if you know what I mean.

Joint NSA/CIA Training Base Camp – 'Desert One'
Cafeteria

She cooked spaghetti. No sauce, just noodles. No salad. Chuck looked at his plate and then at her and then at his plate again. Carefully picking up his plate and a fork he walked over to the trash bin and scraped off the plate.

"Disgusting. Show me the fridge. And then go someplace for 90 minutes. Jesus, do you eat crap like this every night? No wonder your attitude sucks. Be gone. I'll expect you in an hour and a half. Bring your appetite. We'll debrief then. Also, where the hell is your beer and booze?"

Deena looked like she was going to break down in tears. She couldn't cook. She'd been living on MREs but didn't want him to have to suffer 'Meals Rejected by Ethiopians'. Now she felt…inadequate and useless. She hadn't felt this way since high school.

"Don't start bawling, Deena. Just go… do something." He hadn't meant to hurt her feelings but he was hungry and this…this crap was not going to get it.

Transient Agents Guest Quarters
NSA Headquarters
FT Meade, MD 2am

She was pulled from a restless sleep by the ring-tone of her cell. She'd have to figure out how to change it. It was another one of the infiltrations she'd allowed during her time in Burbank. She really didn't need the cruel reminder of her loss.

"Hello?"

"Sam, it's Daniel. I – I – miss you, baby and I can't sleep. Can I come over? Or would you rather come over here? Please, Sam. We need to resolve these issues if we're going to be…"

"It's Sarah, blockhead. No, I don't want to see you. You make me feel…ashamed. This partnership is doomed and you know it. I've already asked Beckman to send me ho…I mean back to Burbank. It's late and I need to sleep. Do what you want with your time. I'm done talking to you."

"Like it or not, Agent Walker, I'm senior agent and I'll decide where you go. Now, get your ass over here and let's discuss these issues like adults. 48 hours ago you were grunting and moaning with me between your legs and now you're like some…manikin going through the motions. 48 hours ago you were a bitch in heat and rutting with pleasure and now you're mooning over some loser who's on borrowed time anyway. I'll see you in five minutes. Don't bother dressing for me, Sam."

Walker got up slowly, unsure of what to do. Her eye caught the flash of silver about her wrist and she knew. Quickly throwing on a sheer nightgown she'd bought when she and…no. No more thinking about the past. She ran a brush through her hair and put on a deep red lipstick and left her room and walked barefooted down the hall and knocked quietly at the door of Agent Shaw's room. It opened almost immediately.

"Sam…"

"Daniel…"

She walked in and he closed and locked the door.

Joint NSA/CIA Training Base Camp – 'Desert One'
Cafeteria

She followed her nose back to the cafeteria and found plates with bourbon chicken, new potatoes and a salad waiting for her.

"Marry me, Charles Carmichael. Cook for me every night and I'll be your love slave." She hadn't eaten anything this good in months. Not since she'd driven into the little town 40 miles north of the Ark and treated herself to dinner and a movie.

"Nope. Don't believe in marriage. Don't believe in love either. It's all bullshit. Especially in the spy business. Now, finish eating and lets get moving on the debriefing. And then I have questions about the remaining scenarios. I have a tight schedule and I need to move on to the next training phase. I think it's the parachute course but Beckman didn't exactly provide me with a curriculum listing. I just call a number and the plane picks me up at an appointed time."

"You've got 2 more days here and then you move on to Air/Sea Ops. Don't be in such a hurry, Charles. There's an 80% failure rate here and almost 90% in the next phase. If you think today was tough, tomorrow will probably be a killer, literally."

The debriefing lasted twenty minutes and consisted of identifying the flash sequences, their impacts and problems, physical responses and evaluation of the overall effectiveness in measuring the utility of the intersect. It was very dry and very boring as well as being repetitive. By 1am they were both yawning and called it a night. She pointed him to his room and left him to his own devices.

Transient Agents Guest Quarters
NSA Headquarters
FT Meade, MD 2:15am

She closed the door to Shaw's room quietly and walked to the concession area and found the ice machine. She loaded the plastic ice bucket and returned to his room.

"Here, Daniel, ice them down. Maybe you'll be able to walk in the morning. I don't care. Talk to me like that again and I'll cut them off not just knee you in the groin. I'm an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency and I am in my prime. What I do with my personal life is just that – personal."

"He's not a loser. He's the man I'm going to marry if he'll come to his senses. I made a mistake but so did he. You were my mistake. Hannah was his but I really can't blame either of us, y'know? Never speak of him again unless it's with the utmost respect, understand? Nod, Daniel. I can't understand you when you moan."

"Ohhhhhh…"

"I'm going back to my room now. I'll see you in the morning. This never happened, Shaw, and we'll not speak of it again." There was no answer, of course.

Joint NSA/CIA Training Base Camp – 'Desert One'
Chuck's Room 4am

Rico pounded on the door of his room. Dressed in boxers and a t-shirt and still groggy from sleep, he threw open the door and glared at her. "Deena, you do realize that it's 4am and it's only been a few hours since we wrapped up the last scenario, don't you?"

She was dressed in a tank top and running shorts and her desert boots. She was carrying 2 MP-5s and a brace of side arms and an open duffel bag loaded with additional magazines and ammo for their weapons and a loose collection of grenades and gas bombs.

"Security breech attempt on the airstrip entrance. They're not through yet but it's only a matter of minutes until they breech the gates and the elevator blast door. I've locked the elevator down but it's just a temporary obstacle. They've taken out the external cameras so I have no idea what we're facing. I sent the coded 'WildFire' alert to NSA but I don't know if we'll get reinforcements in time. C'mon. Throw on some clothes, Chuck. We need a plan, something to buy us time. Any ideas?"

"We're going to have to work the Ark against them. Meet me in the control room in 10 minutes. Swing back by the armory and bring any explosives you can carry. We'll turn this whole place into a trap. And bring water. We're going to be leaving as soon as we trap the rats."

NSA Headquarters
FT Meade, MD 10:15am

Breakfast with Shaw had been a tense and quiet affair. From the gingerly way he walked and then eased down into the chair across from her, she knew she'd gotten her point across to him. She was not Shaw's anything. She was someone else's and she would do her damnedest to get him to see that. The 'someone else' was Chuck Bartowski aka Charles Carmichael.

Their problems weren't insurmountable and each bore a share of blame for the 'breakup' even though they weren't 'together'. Sarah was certain she could make him see that, if only she had the opportunity. She planned to 'make' such an opportunity by requesting immediate reassignment back to Team Intersect and Burbank and once there she was going to put Chuck to bed and tell him everything there was to know about her from her earliest memory up until she dragged him to bed. 'Sam' would never come between them again.

General Beckman's aide ushered them into the office, warning them that the General's schedule was 'in shambles' because a training site had declared a security emergency and had not been heard from since. There was a high-value asset in training there.

Beckman acknowledged the Agents, pointed to Walker and a chair and then to Shaw and the door. When he started to sit in the visitor chair beside Walker she snapped her fingers, glared and pointed at the door. The message was clear. Get out!

"Colonel Casey, assets from Nellis have been scrambled but it will take them more than 20 minutes to get there and there's no guarantee they'll be able to make much of a difference except to shoot up any units still on the surface. That Ark was built to take a near miss from a multi-megaton nuke but they apparently had inside information since they hit the most vulnerable entrance."

She listened and then flicked the conversation over to speakerphone.

"Colonel, I have Agent Walker here. Agent Shaw is cooling his heels in the outer office so speak freely, John."

"Hey, Walker. We've found some anomalies and inconsistencies in Shaw's dossier that don't add up. For instance, his wife isn't dead." She could hear from the conversation that Casey was in a chopper probably on the way to Desert One.

"But John, he told us Eve was dead, killed by Ring agents when she was in deep cover. Her rings were in the lockbox we opened along with those disks. It's probably why the General gave him free rein over the Team, correct General?" She desperately wanted this conversation to go anywhere but the obvious: her relationship with Daniel Shaw.

"Yes, for the most part. I believed that no stronger motivation existed to accomplish bringing down the Ring that avenging the loss of a spouse or close loved one. I still do but now I have to wonder, was I wrong about that and were the ensuing actions truly beneficial to our struggle?" Beckman was being unusually candid.

"There's no record of a divorce or of her death. Those could have been anyone's rings or hers that she returned to antagonize him. We never got to read the note that accompanied the rings, did we? Unless he showed it to you, Sarah, when you guys were…"

Sarah quickly interrupted. "No. He never showed me the note. He burned it. And he never told me what was in it, either."

"I believe that this Eve person defected to Fulcrum and then progressed up the chain to the Ring. She disappeared from operations about the time Fulcrum came into its own. It would make sense."

"Then his goal is still to destroy the Ring, regardless of the reason. So why the concern now? And wasn't he fully vetted before joining us in Burbank?"

"He lied, Sarah, pure and simply. That makes his actions suspect. He did try some risky tactics with Bartowski despite the intersect being put at risk." Beckman still seemed to have a problem with the fact that Chuck was the intersect and not a separate entity.

"Speaking of which, where is Chuck now, Casey?"

Beckman answered. "Bartowski is the 'high-value asset' at Desert One, Agent Walker."

Joint NSA/CIA Training Base Camp – 'Desert One'
Control Room

Chuck glanced up when Deena Rico burst into the control room dragging two full duffel bags and wearing her rucksack.

"What are you doing, Chuck? I can…" Just then there was a loud 'BOOM' and a sprinkle of dust trickled down onto the workstation from the overhead.

"That must have been the blast door from the airstrip elevator. They'll be here in 10 minutes, tops, Chuck. Let's get out of here now while we still have a chance. We don't want to get stuck down here at the end of a dead end corridor."

"Wait a minute. I found the ops manual for the Ark. We can monitor their progress from here via the CCTV cameras and take our pick of where we want to do battle as opposed to just running into them head on. With these internal blast doors opening and closing at 'random' we'll stand a better chance of getting out of here undetected. Let them waste time looking for us down here when we'll be up there", pointing in the general direction of the surface.

"So what's the plan?" Deena was fascinated by the way his mind worked. He was devious, in an innocent sort of way. She realized how contradictory her thought was and started giggling.

"Deena, you're taking 'cool under pressure' to a whole new level. I mean, talk about…" She interrupted him with a quick kiss. She wasn't normally so brazen but given the excuse of the 'heat of the moment' she went for it.

She broke the kiss and smiled and said, "If we get out of here alive, Chuck, you're going to be a happy man."

"Um, well, OK. I need to get us out of here anyway, no sense ignoring a benefit like that one." He was rambling again.

"Chuck! Focus, please!"

"We follow their path through the corridors and close blast doors and channel them to where we want them. Then we either kill them or capture them. Your option. I'd prefer capture since there's no telling how long it will take a relief force to arrive. Dead bodies stink up small spaces."

Chuck sent Deena out along the perimeter corridors to set the gas grenade traps and the three claymores she'd found in the armory. The C-4 they'd reserve for destroying any vehicles they found topside to hinder pursuit.

Chuck guided her back over the talkie and then started shutting off lights and closing blast doors as the first of the invaders appeared on camera. They didn't even suspect they were being herded until three of the teams met at one cross-junction of four corridors. That's where Deena had displayed her fiendish side. She'd placed four gas grenades and 2 flash bangs in the acoustic ceiling and rigged them all to detonate when the last blast door closed.

When the 3 teams of four soldiers met, Chuck had given her the honor of pushing the button. When the flash cleared and the TV camera cycled on line, all twelve of the invaders were incapacitated. The gas grenades were nicknamed 'ExLax' since they prompted immediate loose bowels and Pukes and several of the soldiers were puking their guts out. Three-quarters of the invading team had been captured and incapacitated and were now 'locked down' in the hallway junction. All without firing a shot.

The effects of the gas lasted between twenty and thirty minutes. The smell must have been disgusting. They both laughed over that. They wouldn't be here to clean it up.

"OK, Deena, let's boogie on out of here. I've closed off all access to our escape route to the pool area. We'll go out that way and be behind them on the surface. Call your contact and report our status. We'll meet them topside."

They'd lost track of the fourth team but Chuck was fairly confident they'd boxed them in with the blast doors. There were few spaces not covered by cameras. Unfortunately, the 4 soldiers were in one of those spaces, waiting for word from the other 3 teams.

Their plan was to either overwhelm the defenders or herd them toward the team patiently lying in wait but since they'd lost contact, they broke cover near the swimming pool and took the open course that led to the control room, the escape route that Chuck had 'created' using blast doors and lighting.

NSA Headquarters
FT Meade, MD 10:30am

Beckman had dispatched John Casey to Desert One with two missions: aid and assist with any rescue or identify the body of the trainee. She still wouldn't refer to Chuck by name and this pissed Sarah Walker off immensely and it showed.

"Is there something wrong, Agent Walker?"

"You mean other than the fact that my asset may be fighting and dying while I sit here drinking coffee? Yeah, General. Why do you insist on dehumanizing Chuck Bartowski? You never refer to him by his given name, always calling him 'Mr. Bartowski' or 'Mr. Carmichael' or 'the asset' or 'the intersect'. Why is that?"

"Because I need to stay objective and keep any 'feelings' for him at a distance. The day may come when I have to make a hard decision and I don't take the death of any American lightly but I do have feelings and so I protect myself, Sarah, just as you do. He's the kind of guy who gets to you, who makes you question what you do and why and so I have to keep him as a thing at arms' length, for my own selfish reasons. Understand?"

Beckman's aide interrupted via intercom asking if she wanted to speak with the Agent at Desert One. "Of course!" she snapped.

She toggled her phone and the speakerphone hissed.

"This is General Beckman. Who is this?"

"Ma'am, this is Agent Deena Rico. We have a 'WildFire' situation. Carmichael and I have captured ¾ of the invading force and he's mapped a way for us to get up to the surface. They came in through the airstrip elevator and Chuck herded them into a group using the blast doors and we hit them with gas then closed them off and disabled the doors. Tell the relief to wear MOP4 gear. It's not pretty. And the gas is still potent."

"Excellent. What is your status?"

"No casualties. We're getting ready to…" Whatever she might have said was lost in a rattle of gunfire.

Chuck had been standing in the door to the corridor settling his rucksack on his back when he saw the first black-clad invading trooper in his peripheral vision. There was no time to give warning and still maintain the element of surprise so he just stepped out into the corridor and opened up with the suppressed MP-5. His first burst took the soldier in the chest but Chuck knew he was wearing body armor and so he walked a burst across the man's legs to bring him down and then aimed and took a head shot.

"Deena, we've got visitors!' was heard over the speaker and then Rico finished her report in a burst of words. "General, the last team of four is outside in the corridor. Carmichael's taking them under fire but they're wearing…good shot, Chuck…wearing body armor and GRENADE!"

The explosion must have destroyed the equipment because all that could be heard at FT Meade was the hiss of the carrier wave and the ragged breathing of one CIA agent who was trying unsuccessfully to 'keep it together' in front of her boss.

A/N: I wrote this on the plane coming back from Houston. I was bored. If you're bored, OK. If you're not, review. And keep in mind that I don't read them but SHE does. Thanks for taking the time to read the trype. I figure some other than venillashiz will take me to task. APR