Here's the next one.
As usual, many thanks to kroblues for his patient and untiring work with the betareading, and for his precious support and hints too! And as usual complain to him if you want the new chapters to come out faster... *giggles*
My dear readers, I'll never get tired of asking you a feedback: did you like/dislike/love/hate it? Please, just spend a couple of seconds of your spare time to let me know if you have any suggestion, hope, criticism, or whatsoever. It's a simple deed, but means a lot to me. ;) Thanks!
ED
Inside an Abandoned Ranch
"Who do you work for? Feds, National Security or CIA?" the mysterious voice inquired, this time with a harsher tone.
Its owner kept himself out of Chuck's visual field.
"D-don't, ah, you think that's a bit rude of you to start a dialogue without introducing yourself first?" Chuck said, trying to stall, "At least, since I'm the guest here. In exchange for your ID, I'll turn a blind eye to the fact that you're holding me here against my will. But just because it's you…" he proposed with a complicity tone.
"You think you're smart, don't you?" he asked, "Just because you left your wallet at home."
Chuck bravely grinned, "Great idea that, don't you agree?"
The other man put a hand on his shoulder, "Oh, don't overestimate your abilities." he said, bending forward and getting closer to his ear, "You've just been lucky that we've found only the burned remains of your mobile phone into the wreck of your car, otherwise…"
"What?!" Chuck cried, interrupting him, "NO!"
The German frowned and moved one step back, confused and surprised by his overreaction.
"That iPhone cost me a month's salary, not to mention the twenty five hours of overtime!" Chuck moaned.
The other impatiently clenched and unclenched his fists a couple of times. Then he said, calmly, "Ah, my boy, my boy, I must warn you, I'm about to lose my temper. Now tell me, how did you get in touch with him?"
Chuck raised his eyebrows, pretending to be taken aback, "Him who?"
He gave a cold laugh, "You insignificant and presumptuous boy… You like driving people mad, don't you? You must be an NSA blockhead. You know, the ones who always seem to be out of context, even in their own office."
Chuck couldn't help grinning when he thought about Casey playing the dj and vocalist at Sarah's High School Reunion party.
"Ah, I'm very glad that you're having fun and enjoying this little talk," said the German, a bit too obliging, "Okay, I've been playing around with you for a while but now, if you don't mind, it's getting late and I'd like to talk about the man you were waiting for, tonight."
Chuck nodded, "Oh, him…" he said, narrowing his eyes as if he'd just remembered of an old school mate. "Well, you know, that's classified information." he stated with a sorrowful expression.
"That's a shame." the other whined, "Never mind. I wish you good luck. Goodbye Mr. No-named-man." he said, giving Chuck a pat on his shoulder.
As he heard some steps behind his back, Chuck frowned and, without thinking about it, he asked "Hey, are you leaving just like that?!"
"No," whispered the German, but his voice was dangerously closer than Chuck would have ever expected. "You're the one who's leaving forever…" he hissed, violently grabbing his brown curls and suddenly pulling back his head, "…if you don't take this whole thing a bit more seriously!"
Chuck felt the burning icy steel of a knife pressing on his throat.
He had always been deadly scared of needles, but he had to admit that that knife did its job wonderfully too.
"What was Mr. Larkin about to give you?"
"Lar…?" Larkin?!
The name smashed him like the Armageddon asteroid hitting a rusty satellite. And he didn't have Bruce Willis to ask for help. Also, the Intersect seemed to be affected by his feelings, showing him a flash on a succession of blank sheets of paper.
Chuck's lips mechanically moved to mould an astonished 'what?', but no sound accompanied their silent question.
Unaware of his astonishment, the sand in the eternal hourglass of Time carelessly continued to flow, without him even noticing it.
Left breathless, voiceless and deaf by the news, he didn't even feel the kick that his jailer gave to his back, and he noiselessly faced the dusty ground that was coming towards him at full speed.
His shocked mind barely registered the impact with the ground.
"That filthy bastard!" cursed Sarah.
Casey reached the two black cars and the SUV parked beside the house. "What's up?"
"Someone is beating him." she said between her teeth.
"We'll pay him off with 50% interest… at least. But now I need you to stay focused and show me the way."
She heaved a meaningful sigh, swallowing hard.
Casey sneaked towards the vehicles, guided by Sarah's voice coming from his earpiece, "Two guards around the north-eastern corner of the building. Another one is five meters from you, behind that black SUV. He's busy lighting up a cigarette. You should be able to neutralize the target whenever you want, if you approach him from south."
Casey snorted and, instead, stood up and cheekily strode towards him from north, cockily saying "Hey, need a lighter?"
The other didn't even raise his eyes, too busy trying to get his own lighter to work, and just answered "Geez, that would be great, dude."
Those words were the last sound he emitted, as Casey knocked him out with a powerful blow to the temple.
As Sarah begun protesting about his rough-and-ready style, he defended himself, saying "The gravel on the ground could have warned him that I was coming."
She huffed, slowly releasing the tension, "Try flying next time. Or maybe you could lose some weight…"
Casey grabbed the unconscious man and hastily dragged him away."I've always thought that cigarettes were deadly." he whispered, panting from the strain.
"And what about cigars?" Sarah jokingly asked.
Casey snorted, "Those extend life, especially if they're the cigars of victory."
"Hmm, interesting, you're tougher than I expected." said the man without a face, grabbing Chuck's chair and pulling him up, back into his original position, "Maybe I underestimated you…"
"Aaaaah!" Chuck cried out, when he finally realized that a new sharp ache, coming from his bleeding nose, had added up to the pain from his ribcage.
"…or maybe not," the other corrected himself, shrugging. "You sure are quite disarming."
He started yelling "Aah! My nose! My nose!"
The German ignored him and continued, "However, since it's extremely unlikely that you mastered your acting skills in the last few minutes, I'm forced to deduce that you had already heard that name before." the German said, "Nevertheless, it's crystal clear that you didn't put that name together with the man he belongs to." he ended, giving his head a little shake of disapproval.
Chasing back the pain, Chuck hid himself behind a curtain of silence, insistently staring at his toes.
"He did get in touch with you," that was an assertion, not a question, "and you bureaucrat-infested and over financed secret agencies didn't have any clue of his identity. You have to agree with me that that's quite embarrassing for you."
That said, his steps resounded into the room as he slowly walked around Chuck, still keeping himself on the edge of the blinding cage of light, hidden like a shadow in a moonless night.
thump… thump… thump… thump…
His walking was rhythmic and regular on the wooden floor.
thump… thump… thump… thump…
Chuck could see only his footwear. A pair of shiny, elegant shoes, apparently indifferent to any grain of dust or sand.
thump… thump… thump… thump…
"Done," affirmed Casey after he'd shot down the last visible guard that had been charged with keeping the manor exterior under surveillance. "Have you found any trace of the enemies inside the building?"
"Two or more shadows on the second floor. They're going round every window. I bet that at least one of them is a sniper." she revealed.
"Hey Blondie, thanks for warning me before!" Casey said sarcastically.
She smiled briefly, "Don't worry, they can't see you. You've always been covered from their sight by the front porch or the balconies."
He grunted, "All right, all right. Any other swords of Damocles hanging on my head?"
"Plenty of 'em."
Casey winced, "Don't spoil me, I could get used to it."
Chuck could still feel the insistent gaze on him.
thump… thump… thump… thump…
He quashed the urge to look up, and persisted in staring down at the ground.
thump… thump… thump… thump…
A thought had silently slipped into his mind. A thought shaped as a face. The face of a girl with blond hair and magnetic blue eyes. Not to mention all the rest…
thump… thump… thump… thump…
He needed her. He desperately needed to know if she was alive.
thump… thump… thump… thump…
He needed to know if he still had areason to keep fighting.
thump… thump… thump… thump…
He blinked, suddenly perturbed. Larkin. Who would have ever said.
thump… thump… thump… thump…
Giving his head a little shake, he admitted to himself, of course no one would have thought about that… Bryce's dead, for God's sake! Or… at least he should be!
thump… thump… thump… thump…
thum-thump.
After a couple of rounds, seeing that Chuck continued to ignore him, the German had stopped right in front of him. Yeah, that slim, awkward guy was definitely disarming, he thought.
He'd been able to completely detach himself with a surprising ease.
All of a sudden, the unnamed man decided to do something unusual for him. Normally he would have carefully restrained from showing himself to any stranger, but he was deeply intrigued by the man in front of him. So he stepped forward, and his dark tailored suit peremptorily invaded the white field of light.
thump… thump… thum-thump.
The previous interruption in the rhythmical flow of his steps didn't escape Chuck, and that anomaly had taken him back to reality. So he was trying with all his strength to think of something, anything else, but his mind was a useless blank.
"That girl, Sarah, she was outstanding, wasn't she?" the other asked, almost innocently.
Was…?
Chuck started and, in the end, he instinctively raised his wide-open eyes.
And he couldn't help swallowing hard.
"Crap," burst out Casey, snorting as he touched the cut on his eyebrow with his fingertips and the one on his chin. The last opponent had been a tough one.
"I've sent the guard in the kitchen to sleep." he calmly informed Sarah. He raised his hand and looked at the makeshift weapon that he'd just used, smirking, "They don't make frying pans like they used to…" he added, thinking of the good old times with a saddened expression. "Walker, check the nerd's situation." he ordered as he got back to the present.
Her reply came fast "I'm already on it."
"I would have bet that." he sighed.
"They're still talking." she reported emotionlessly, glossing over the fact that her mind was upset by Chuck's panic-stricken expression. Chuck, hold on, trust me!
"Okay, it's your turn now. Take down the two sentinels upstairs." ordered the Colonel.
"Wait, I need both of them to be within sight." Sarah affirmed calmly.
Why the hell did he say that Sarah 'was'? And…
Chuck blinked twice.
An albino?!
The German standing before Chuck was a statuesque albino, around his fifties. He was tall and bright as an ancient Greek hero, carved from a single block of snow-white marble and used as a mannequin by an Italian stylist.
The only two visible imperfections that were staining his face were his light-grey eyes.
He didn't bear any resemblance to any albino Chuck had ever seen. Well, to be honest, the sole albino he'd ever seen was the monk in The Da Vinci Code… Luckily, the one in front of him had nothing in common with that fanatic, evil, murderer, movie character.
Except the 'evil' part, of course.
And maybe the 'murderer' one…
He rather looked like a better-rounded-off Jean-Claude Van Damme that had somehow mistaken a bleach bottle for a foam-bath one.
When the German cracked a smile, Chuck didn't even notice his perfect set of teeth between his pale lips. All he could think to was that that man had the expression of a cruel bastard.
"Condolences for your loss." the other delivered the blow, after an unmistakably fake sigh.
And then, almost unexpectedly, Chuck flashed.
He abruptly shut his eyes and lowered his head, hoping to successfully hide the Intersect from the German's eyes.
"Here's one of the bad guys." Sarah mumbled, carefully scanning the upstairs windows.
Casey nodded, saying into the microphone "When you're ready, let me know."
"Wait… Target Number One is talking with someone, probably Number Two." The sniper scope allowed her to see that the man was turned towards the inside of the house and was waving an empty diet coke bottle, eloquently pointing at it.
"Walker, I don't give a…" he began complaining.
"Hush!" she silenced him, "Casey, is there a fridge in the kitchen?"
"Yeah, though it's a pretty old one, why the hell are you asking?"
"Is it working?"
"At full speed." He snorted, "It's not an A+ class, if it's what you wanted to know… Walker?" he called, waiting for an explanation.
She winced, "Get ready to welcome a guest!"
"Sarah… What a beautiful name." continued the albino.
Don't listen to him, he must be lying! She's alive, she must be! Wiping away all his fears for Sarah, Chuck looked again up at him, but this time he forced a knowing grin on his face. "Not as beautiful as yours." he picked at the other.
The albino smiled creepily and shook his head, "I'm afraid you won't never hear my name." he said as his eyes got sadder.
"Oh, yeah, I bet that your actual name is completely different from the one you used when you where organizing that bombing in… Hum, where was it?" Chuck pretended, slowly moistening his lips with his tongue, "Damn, it's on the tip of my tongue!"
The German furrowed his brows, but quickly recovered his composure. "You must've watched too many action movies." Interesting, the boy is counterattacking. Let's see how sharp his claws are. "So you thought that I was a terrorist and you've gone blindly on. Well, let me say that yours was quite a banal choice, that of the 'bombing' thing, I mean."
"Could be, but it happens that I'm talking about a nuclear bombing. Speaking of which, I think that your choice to buy a nuclear warhead from the Koreans was utterly banal. They're notoriously untrustworthy."
The other burst out laughing. His laugh was a bit excessively deep and overbearing. "Oh boy, you're merely listing all the clichés of the genre. Nice try, though."
"It's a shame that we were able to stop you in time, intercepting the container hanging under that rusty cargo ship, wasn't it?" he winced at the albino's dumbstruck reaction, "Geez! Don't tell me that you really never suspected someone else's hand behind that sinking?! That's a total lack of style from you…"
The albino's laughter grew stronger, but the amusement in his eyes was rapidly fading down, like a cat that had got tired of playing around with a mouse. A little, insolent mouse that had managed to scratch his nose. "I must admit that you're really entertaining, but I'm getting a bit tired of your nonsense, however fanciful it is."
"Oh, now I remember!" Chuck nodded, and the corners of his mouth slightly twitched upwards. "1995, off the coast of Cape Town. You were going by the name of Dieter Rosenthal and the cargo was the San Isidro, sailing under the Chilean flag. It's a pity that the CIA hasn't caught you, either that time or later," he continued, "when you recklessly tried to get that awful child trade from Weihai to La Paz off the ground."
After a few instants of waiting, Chuck winced with annoyance.
He was curious to see if an albino could turn paler, but the harsh light didn't allow him to see any change in the color of the German's skin.
However, while a panicked look crossed Dieter's eyes, as a black lightning crossing the white sky in the negative of a photograph, the albino could undeniably show a stunned expression.
Ah! Knowledge is power!... Or powder, as Jeff's mother would say.
"A guest, you said?" whispered Casey, stepping back from the door that lead to the corridor. He had disarmed an enemy and was now keeping him like a shield, with an arm wrapped tight around his throat and pressing the barrel of his gun at his temple.
"Why?" inquired Sarah's hesitant voice from his headphone.
The Colonel gazed at the two men that were pointing at him as many guns. "I'll tell you later…" he murmured, glancing around for some way out of that standoff.
Damn that 'power of knowledge'! thought Chuck, brilliant idea that, getting your own personal torturer actually pissed off, while your hands are handcuffed and your arms, legs and buttocks are tightly tied up to a chair!
Regaining his composure, Dieter Rosenthal gave an icy sneer and said "Did it really take you fourteen years to make all the proper logical connections? And, the same, I'm quite sure that you found me just by chance."
Think fast, Chuck, think fast!"Well, that's not completely true…"
"No?! Do you really think so? I've been going undisturbed around your country for the past ten years! I've made agreements, pacts," he growled, "I've become part of the most powerful organization to act behind the scenes of American history and you won't stop us, not now, not ever!"
Damn, he's definitely mad! Stay focused, Chuck, stay focused! Think like Casey, what would he do? he winced, he would have surely faced death with a defiance glimmer in his eyes, calling his executioner every name under the sun. He couldn't help imagining Casey in place of Mel Gibson, in Braveheart, screaming at the top of his voice 'for you, Sir!' addressing Reagan, instead of the original 'freedom!' scream…
He couldn't hold back a smile as he said to Rosenthal "Sorry, but I haven't seen you on the Forbes or Times covers. Which month did they publish the interview with you?" he asked.
The other gaped at Chuck, left wordless by his attitude. But that respite didn't last long, since an evil grin appeared on his face, as he cracked his knuckles and stepped towards him, threatening "I'll make you regret your impudence!"
A cold shiver of fear run down Chuck's spine. How would Sarah act? he felt a pang at the very thought of her. He shut his eyes tight, trying to confine the apprehension in a corner of his heart and focus on something else. "Wait, wait, wait!" he shouted, "How did you end up working for the Ring?"
The sadist expression on his face flickered, leaving some space to bewilderment, "I'm not in the mood to have conversations. However, that's none of your business, my boy. Not anymore." he retorted, raising his fist.
Time seemed to stop, as Chuck's mind was spinning at top speed, groping for a rope which he could cling to before he reached the worst waterfall of his life. What would've Bryce done? I don't know, besides, I'm not him! he thought, Whoever else?! Hell, I don't know! Devon? Morgan? he silently cursed himself with frustration, why don't you include Bruce Willis too, you idiot?
All of a sudden, he opened his eyes wide.
He didn't remember if Bruce had ever done something like that in one of his films, but to Chuck it seemed fitting to his style. Maybe in some Die Hard…