Chuck vs. the Virus
Chapter 9: The Escape
The women were snipers. Each of them could hit an orange taped to a small remote controlled car moving throughout the warehouse from as much as a hundred yards away. Sarah fit in perfectly. Many, she knew, were skeptical of her. The role she had entered into probably looked submissive, as they had intended. If John looked like the leader, and Charlie looked like the bad ass, then she looked like the pretty girl they drug around for the distraction.
Of the five women, only one spoke English. The rest attempted to speak to her in Portuguese, but the closest Sarah came to their language was Spanish, and not Peruvian Spanish but variations of Columbia and Spain. Her Spanish, she knew with regret, was learned for the more proper forms of infiltration, not exactly the gang-level.
For the meet, the women were to be ghosts: unseen, unheard, elusive, and scary. Just when the enemy camp thinks they've got one up on W, as the women referred to the gang, the snipers would reveal themselves through sharp bullets right through the cranium. The six women took up their posts an hour before the meet. They were to get comfortable with their environment, develop unique tactics for whatever their location might permit.
Sarah had a clean view of the outside where the Pound jet would be landing. Henrietta, the English speaking Brazilian with short brown hair and burning black eyes, had insisted based on the results of the practice rounds. She did not strike Sarah as a trusting woman, but she did know the value of putting the best shot where the best would be needed.
The night was a deep blackness that shrouded the small camp in a large, dense shadow. Sarah was completely blind without her gun, which had a night vision viewfinder. She didn't like not being able to see Chuck and Casey without it; it seemed to make them further away.
Chuck and Casey stood with a group of five other men, waiting for the jet. Three of the five men, including Kipper, spoke English, and seemed to have a lot to say.
"Your wife calls you Charles," said one of the men. "Did you know this? My wife tells me she does not call you Charlie like everyone else." Sarah removed her eye from the viewfinder and thought about that comment. In private she only called him Chuck, but when around others, she realized she did indeed only call him Charles.
The sound was scratchy, but the voices came in clear through the coms. Casey grunted, and Sarah pictured Chuck grinning awkwardly.
"Do you find that funny?" asked Chuck.
The man laughed. "No, no. Just interesting." He said something in Portuguese to the other men, who made noises as though they understood what was going on.
Chuck whispered into Casey's ear. "He said, 'What, no pet name for her Sun Haired husband?'"
"Sun Haired?" asked Casey.
"Er, hair like the sun," said Chuck, "literally."
Sarah frowned. The observation of affection between spouses extended further than simply the physical, apparently the verbal counted as well. That was very perceptive, she thought, for a gang member.
Kipper hushed them. "Americans do it differently," he said. "A nickname does not carry the ease of speech as it does in Portuguese." He repeated his statement in Portuguese. The men grumbled.
"What does she call you in the bedroom, señor?" asked the first man, again. He laughed at his own comment loudly. Casey groaned and then the coms went silent. Sarah figured they must have turned them off. She rolled her eyes. As though she hadn't heard worse.
They'd seen a jet circle above head about ten minutes ago, and in the distance she could hear it returning. It was shocking, and a bit unsettling, to watch Chuck handle a firearm. He had always been against guns, and horrible at handling them; but now he looked like he was in his natural element, like the gun was a limb, not an accessory. She wasn't going to let it distract her, though. They had a job to do and finally Chuck could take care of himself.
Then again, if Chuck could take care of himself, what the heck was she doing here anyway? The CIA's decision to reinstate her into her old post was confusing at times, or curious, rather. She desperately wanted to be a part of this team, she knew the three of them functioned well together, but after threatening to fire her, and then her public humiliation of Chuck confirming their fears, she wondered if she was a part of a larger scheme.
It annoyed her that Casey had been forbidden from speaking of his solo mission, the one that regardless of where they went he seemed to have a piece of the puzzle to complete. There was always something to do in every location they visited.
The jet landed and she cleared her head. Time to focus. She lowered her weapon from the deep black shadows of her hiding place and peered through the viewfinder. The semi-automatic was thick between her fingers, but she held it with ease. It took twenty minutes for the Pound crew to get off the plane after the quick landing by the small aircraft. The plane looked odd, and Sarah kept the men in her sights all the way from the plane to the small group of me.
When the Pound members were about fifty yards away, another ten members of Pound came out of the Warehouse. Sarah knew the plan was to not reveal how many people were in the gang, if at all possible. However many men Pound brought out, Wallstreet would have at least two more.
Somehow, and perhaps this was just from her extensive work with and against terrorists, Sarah thought Pound probably knew everything about this gang operation in Brazil. The in-flight had given them all a false perception of their dealings, and even Agent Kipper's descriptions and helpful hints were of little value on the ground.
Above Sarah's head, a security camera whirred and clicked. She froze. She'd taken the time to carefully examine her nook. It was accessible only by a wrought iron ladder, five feet to her right. She was wedged into a corner where Wallstreet had designed a sniper to sit; the chair was almost vertical, purposefully to tilt the sniper forward. Oddly comfortable, but not in a way that made the sniper complacent and forgetful. The camera was on a horizontal access. It swerved from side to side every ten seconds, and the end of Sarah's gun was just shy of breaching the camera's view.
Below, the men turned their coms back on and Sarah heard Kipper speaking with the Russians.
"Welcome to Rio," Kipper said, English being the mutually agreed upon language. None of the Russians spoke Portuguese, and only Chuck, presumably, spoke Russian. "Your flight was quick, yes?"
"It was airplane," said the man in front. He was large and beefy. "Dmitri Sho. We spoke on the phone."
"I recall," said Kipper. "I am Kipper, obviously." He shuffled toward the Russians. "Are we going to make this quick, or are we going to have a problem?"
"Do you have the money?" asked Dmitri.
"Do you have our weapons?" asked Kipper. The men had come with a single crate, not nearly large enough to hold all the weapons Wallstreet had ordered. One of the men behind Kipper pulled out his laptop and showed the screen to Dmitri. "All I have to do is enter my account information, then you your information, and our part of the deal is complete. But we have yet to see your contributions."
From her distance, Sarah could not distinguish the guns the men carried. She and Casey had poured over the specs, each very alarmed at how identical the units appeared. They had consented it would be only Chuck who possessed the advantage in detecting the difference. If she had to wager, however, Sarah guessed only the man in the very back held a real firearm.
The monitors were crystal clear, high definition for an espionage mission that might be blind otherwise. She snickered as she watched Dmitri and her men approach the small group. The man with flaming white hair was tall and thin and the man next to him, though slightly shorter, held the size and build of a military man.
She narrowed her eyes and leaned forward, switching the large frame to the different angles she had access to. The last one was a view from the top button of Dmitri's coat. Kipper was speaking to him, now, and looked quite at ease. Dmitri rotated to silently and motionlessly greet the other men standing around.
To her shock and amazement, she recognized the blonde man and his companion, both clearly American and very out of place. She quickly put on her com radio link.
"Dmitri, this is a direct order. You must not make the exchange. Get back on the place as quickly as possible," she said into the com. She got out of her seat and ran to the cockpit. "Pilots, the moment my men are on board, start the engines and get us out of here." Her head spun. What were the Americans doing here? Anger flared.
She marched back into the main cabin and picked the Herring up from the seat. Their ultimate objective would not fail.
This was why she would not let Jill come along. Something unforeseen would inevitably put an obstacle in their way and cause the girl trouble. Professionals, experienced and trained assassins and mercenaries, such as Irina herself, could handle these situations. But Jill was emotional, attached, and thoroughly unprepared for life as an active Pound operative.
As Irina made her way to the lower level of the plane, she prepared the Herring.
Chuck stepped forward when the man calling himself Dmitri introduced himself. The flash had associated him very closely with Irina Kopp, though that was of little surprise, what concerned Chuck was the man's behavior.
Dmitri twitched involuntarily and stepped backward, making the slightest of gestures toward his ear.
"Is something wrong?" asked Kipper, looking wary.
Chuck's eyes flickered to Casey, briefly, then beyond their group to the plane. Something was very wrong. Instinctively, Chuck knew that someone aboard that plane had recognized the undercover team, either himself or Casey, and that the mission was going to be a complete wash.
They had to get aboard that plane.
He turned to Casey, but looked beyond him into the open space. Casey raised an eyebrow, but Chuck ignored him. "Sarah," he said, through clenched teeth, "take out every camera you have in range." Ten seconds later he heard the faint sound of a camera being ripped off a wall, then two muffled gun shots.
"There are only two cameras on the outside of this building," said Sarah into the com. "They're both completely off the walls." She was silent for a second. "What about the antennas on top of the building?"
"Too dangerous," said Chuck, still looking at Casey. "Stay hidden in the shadows." The darkness was like black paint the way it hid the features of the men around them. The lights on the surrounding streets were not quite strong enough to spread light on the entire lot in front of the warehouse.
The Pound men raised their weapons and, as they did so, ten additional members of Wallstreet raced out of the warehouse brandishing much more intimidating weapons. Only the two men in the far back held weapons that could actually harm another human being, and they did not look like they were about to use them. But, regardless, they moved to the front of the throng and one of their comrades managed to put a jump on Kipper, holding him fast as a large rifle was pointed at his head.
"You're going to let my men and I walk out of here, calmly," said Dmitri. "You have not done as we requested, Mr. Kipper, and therefore we shall not be exchanging weapons today."
Several shots were fired and two men dropped to the ground. Both let out screeches of pain and, somehow, Chuck could smell the blood pouring from the bullet wounds. One voice continued on, while the other was muted indefinitely. Chuck felt Casey grasp the material of his shirt, holding him steady, ready to, surely, cast himself in front of Chuck if need be. Chuck grimaced and tried to push Casey off him. Regardless of what the Intersect enabled Chuck to do, it did not give him the strength to overpower a marine.
Dmitri and his henchmen looked around, confused; Dmitri waved his gun around, looking for the shooter, but none of the men standing around were holding their weapons in an offensive position and anyone beyond them was lost in the darkness of the early morning. Another couple shots rang out, these not as muffled, and the man holding Kipper flopped to the ground. Chuck had been staring directly at the man holding Kipper and saw the bullet hit the man squarely in his temple.
Chuck shuddered and looked away, horrified.
"Casey, we've got to get to that airplane," said Chuck, under his breath. "We've got to get the weapons." He turned around, looking at the men standing around, thinking quickly. What were his resources? After all the information he'd downloaded from the Intersect, what was it that would help him now?
He spotted the laptop, ready to transfer money into the Russian's account. He didn't flash, but had a brainwave of tremendous proportions. He didn't need the Intersect for this one, he had an idea from his own head. He hurried over to the small man, Juan, and took the laptop from him.
"Oi!" said Juan, reaching for the laptop. Chuck elbowed him in the face.
The Pound members were taking Dmitri and the remaining men to the ground and, in the distance, he could hear the engines of the plane begin to whir. Chuck dashed toward the plane, still holding the laptop. He could feel Casey right on his heels.
"Chuck, what are you doing?" Casey screamed, dropping all pretenses.
"If I can get close enough, I can hack the plane's onboard electrical system and shut down the engines," he said. "I just need to stall the plane somehow…"
"I'm on it," said Casey. He split off from Chuck and began running toward the head of the plane, firing at the tires, still motionless.
When Chuck determined he was close enough, he knelt on the ground and pulled up the computer's command prompt. A loud explosion wrenched him from his task. He looked up and saw that the front tires of the plane had been blown apart. Casey had dove out of the way, apparently he hadn't been the one to cause the damage. He lay still in the middle of the road, sprawled on his back.
"Sarah, Casey is down," said Chuck, looking up and around. "Where are you?"
"Chuck, I am fine. We have to get out of here. Drop whatever the hell you are trying to do right now and get back inside. If there are more people on that plane, they are more than just a threat to us, they are your death warrant."
"I am just about to disable the plane's electrical system," he said. "Just give me a moment."
"No, Chuck," Sarah yelled. "Stop it and get away from there."
The screen told Chuck he was a second away from flipping the switch that would power down the plane, but what he was doing didn't seem to have an effect on the plane's functions. The engines should be stalled, with an intruder into the system's console, but it seemed to only pick up its juice. He hit the kill button and there was a loud whooshing noise.
Chuck looked up, expecting some sort of power down of the plane, but he saw the bottom compartment open like a hatch on a spaceship. A woman was hanging from ropes as the plane began to move.
"Chuck, get out of there!" Sarah was screaming now, but there was so much noise from the gunfire behind him, he could barely hear her.
Chuck stood up, still holding the laptop, and looked closely at the woman. It was Irina Kopp. She held a gun, a military weapon; the Intersect only knew its model, an M14 semi-automatic. He gulped. This could not be good. In one fluid motion, he closed the computer and prepared to dive.
Irina was aiming the gun at him, or so he thought. He heard the gun blast and braced himself for the piercing pain as he hurtled through the air. But the only pain he felt was as he landed on the dirt lot, scraping the side of his face and tearing his clothes.
From his horizontal position on the ground, and as though his eyes were masked with a fuzzy film, Chuck saw Irina ascend back into the plane. Before the blackness took over his body, the plane moved forward and Chuck heard the muffled sound of someone screaming his name.
Sarah was running to Chuck when he dove to the ground. The lot was chaotic with Wallstreet members gathering around the captured Pound agents. They all sounded mad and vengeful, a couple tried to follow Sarah, but she turned on them, pulling out her small weapon from her boot.
"If you follow me, I will kill you," she said, pointing the gun at them. Even though they held weapons of their own, they seemed to see something in her face that discouraged them from helping her.
She raced to Chuck and knelt beside him on the ground. "Chuck?" she whispered. "Chuck, can you hear me?" She slapped his face and bent low to feel for his breathing. She held her fingers against his throat. His pulse was fast and his breathing slow, almost as if he were sleeping, having a nightmare. She kissed his lips. "Chuck, please wake up." She kissed him again, feeling her eyes burn with exhaustion and emotional strain.
"Oi!" shouted a voice from behind her. She turned to look at the group again, and in what little light there was, she saw he was pointing to further up the road. In the direction he was pointing, a large, black van and come to a stop right in front of Casey and was loading him in through the side.
The breath caught in Sarah's throat. "Okay, Chuck, there is no time like the present to be awake. We've got to move." She slapped his face again, but he was as motionless as though he'd been tranqued.
Before she looked up again, she felt herself lifted off the ground, two enormous arms wrapped around her, completely overpowering. On the ground, two more figures, clothed entirely in black, lifted Chuck off the ground and brought them both to the van.
"As long as no one tries to follow us, no one will be harmed. The Supreme Federal Court has issued an outstanding warrant for the arrest of John Baylor and Charles and Sarah Baylor, international fugitives." Sarah heard the loud commanding voice from somewhere behind her. She continued to struggle, but now she knew that this must be an extraction team.
The man holding her threw her into the van with a bit of force, and she rolled against Casey. Then they set Chuck down with a loud thump and shut the door. Moments later, the van sped off, with all five of the extraction team spread out throughout the van. The three still masked took off their headgear. Sarah didn't recognize any of them.
"What is wrong with the asset?" asked one man. He had short dark hair and a very young and chiseled face. Sweat lined his forehead, but he looked composed and confident.
Sarah blinked. The asset, she thought, does he not know Chuck is an agent now?
"I don't know," she said, looking down at Chuck. She repositioned him on the ground and held his hand in hers, not caring about what the other agents might think. She still wore the ring, as did Chuck. She caught her breath again at the sight of them. "He dove to the ground for some reason, and then just…lost consciousness."
The man sitting in the front seat turned to face her. "We were monitoring your progress from an offsite location. When you took out the cameras, we decided to come in and extract you. Our most recent sources say that Irina Kopp was on that airplane."
Behind Sarah, Casey groaned and rolled over, pushing himself into an upright position. He looked around at his surroundings. "Where the hell are we?"
"Colonel Casey." The first man, the man with short dark hair, saluted Casey. "I am Major Arthur Pent of the United States Army. I was appointed to a special CIA team to oversee Brazilian-based CIA missions and have, for the last year, assisted General Halloway in the infiltration of the Wallstreet gang."
Sarah looked at Casey, who purposefully avoided her gaze. "Who is General Halloway?" she asked, in a low whisper. Casey did not acknowledge her question.
Major Pent turned to his left. The woman with long brown hair, and an equally young face, gave Sarah and Casey a grim smile. "This is Private Jenna Cole," he said, and to his right he nodded at the more experienced man, "and this is Special Agent Rick Addai." Pent narrowed his eyes at Sarah, but she held his gaze. "But you, Agent Sarah Walker, shouldn't you be aware of General Holloway?"
Casey cleared his throat. "Major, the information about General Holloway is above Agent Walker's clearance." Sarah stared at him, mouth hanging open slightly. This General was a part of his solo mission. He had to be, she thought, what other reason would he have to keep it from me?
Pent nodded. "My apologies." He looked at his watch. "We will be taking you to a secure facility where we can examine Mr. Bartowski, and then determine the next move." He gave Chuck a sideways glance, as though he recognized Chuck, but did not like what he saw. "That hair…"
Sarah and Casey sighed. "We know…"
The small room was not unlike a patient's room in a real hospital. It had white walls, a white bed with side bars, large pillows, and monitors that beeped and whirred. Chuck lay motionless on the bed, the covers pulled up to mid-chest. He'd been redressed into a white shirt and white pants, and when combined with his bleached blonde hair, his skin looked unnaturally pale and gaunt.
Sarah stood at the observation window. She'd wanted to go in, but everything she thought of, every excuse for why she might be sitting at Chuck's bedside, sounded lame and rehearsed. Not to mention the fact that she and Chuck were supposed to be broken up, in the eyes of everyone but themselves. She already feared she'd given too much away.
Casey appeared next to her. "The doctor has several theories as to what might be the problem, based on the current state of his vitals and general lack of information from blood samples. The only options left to us here are to take a couple various cultures, and if we have to, extract spinal fluid." He pulled out a small pen. Sarah looked down at it, then up a Casey. He clicked the end.
"Bug killer, we've got 120 seconds," he said. "Look, there isn't much I can tell you, and even less I want to tell you, but all I do know is that we cannot bring Chuck back to the Amulet in his current condition."
"What? Why not?" asked Sarah.
"I don't trust Agent Brook," said Casey, "at least not when it comes to Chuck. He has revealed way too many suspicious comments about Chuck as an active agent and I am worried to see what might happen to the kid if we brought him back there with no knowledge of his condition."
Sarah looked back at Chuck through the window. "I don't get it, Casey, what changed with you?"
Casey growled. "Don't read into it, Walker. I just know Chuck is valuable, and I don't think Brook shares that point of view." He frowned, now looking almost hurt. "I also know that you two haven't really broken up, so you can drop that whole act around me."
Sarah didn't try to deny it. This was bound to happen.
Casey looked at his watch. "What is the deal with Heather Burrows?" he asked.
"I created her as a cover," said Sarah, "for the breakup to work, he might need a rebound, or we might need a cover."
Casey breathed in deeply. "Well, all I can say is that it's working," he said. "The agency isn't suspicious at all. Which sort of worries me as well." His watch beeped. "My best bet is that he was hit with an EMP gun," he said, sounding official. Sarah guessed the watch beeping had been a timer. "There are no real studies to indicate their effects on humans, so it might have just short circuited his brain. Just a matter of time before he wakes up. You should go in and talk to him, sometimes a familiar voice can help pull people out of this faster. At least, that's what Major Pent says." He turned to walk away. "I'll let you know what the plan is, once I've heard from Langley."
From inside the room, the steady beeping of the monitors changed, and Chuck's heart rate increased. A door opened down the hall and the only doctor within the compound rushed toward them. He hurried inside the room and clicked a few buttons on one of the monitors. Sarah and Casey followed the doctor in.
"What is it, Dr. Kent?" asked Sarah, watching the doctor move around Chuck's bed.
Dr. Kent put a hand to Chuck's wrist to check his pulse manually. Then he pulled down his stethoscope to check his heart. He shook his head.
"All signs seem to show that Mr. Bartowski…" Dr. Kent began, looking up at Sarah and Casey.
"Agent," said Sarah and Casey, in unison.
Dr. Kent nodded apologetically. "That Agent Bartowski seems to be fully conscious. I think he can hear and understand us, he just cannot communicate with us."
"How is that even possible?" asked Casey.
Sarah rounded the bed and picked up Chuck's hand. "Chuck?" she asked softly. She ran her hand through his hair, which wasn't quite as soft after the bleaching as it used to be. "Can you hear me?" He didn't open his eyes, his eyes didn't even flicker. "If you can hear me, I want you to squeeze my hand." She left her hand pressed against his cheek. "Come on, Chuck. Squeeze my hand."
"Agent Walker," said Dr. Kent, kindly. "He may be able to hear you, but I believe something is inhibiting the synapses in his brain from delivering the necessary reactions from his brain to the nerves associated with the action. If this is the case, urging a response from him might frustrate him and send him into a coma."
Suddenly, the lights, machines, and electrical units in the room began flickering chaotically. The lights went on and off dozens of times and the monitors tracking Chuck's vitals flashed with strange characters and numbers with no meaning. The glass in the window and door began to shake as from somewhere, a high-pitched tone echoed throughout the room. The doctor dove off to the side and Sarah hopped onto Chuck's bed and covered him with her body. Casey pushed the bed as far away from the clear glass window as possible, while diving under the bed as it rolled. The glass shattered, sending fragments the size of a tennis racket hurdling toward Chuck and his protectors.
Throughout the hallways, the facility, and the local, surrounding buildings, computers flashed and sizzled like Kung Pao chicken on a frying pan, and all electrical units emitted the same loud, high-pitched noise they'd heard in Chuck's room. Windows and mirrors and any glass within a two-foot radius of any electrical unit shattered. Cars rocked in their parking spot and the ones in motion came to a screeching halt as the street lights blew out and sent glass raining from the sky. When the noise died away, the hum and crackle of the computers remained, and a small Russian character was inlaid onto the main screen of each. Then everything went black.
Chuck let out a long, slow groan and opened his eyes. Sarah still laid on top of him, but she sat up when she heard his groan. Her eyes were full of relief and she quickly pressed her lips to his. The lights turned back on a moment later and she pulled away.
"Oh thank God, Chuck," she said, pushing the gurney away from the wall. She got off the bed, but stood really still after taking a better look around the room. Casey and Dr. Kent were both picking themselves up off the floor, a few cuts and scraps and blood trickling from several places, but both seemed to be without serious injury.
Casey noticed Sarah staring at Chuck and turned his gaze. Chuck was staring up at Sarah, very confused, and clearly not noticing the large piece of glass sticking out of his arm. Dr. Kent approached Chuck's bed, watching the blood ooze from the enormous wound and stain the pure white sheets. Carefully, he lifted Chuck's arm and tried to pull it away from his body, but the shard had penetrated so deep it had gone completely through his arm and was wedged in his side.
Chuck let out a single gasp of pain, still having yet to look at the injury, and unconsciousness overtook him once again. Dr. Kent let go of Chuck's arm and stood back. "Agents, we've got a problem."
Casey stepped forward, intimidating in his stature. "What might that be, doctor?"
Dr. Kent swallowed hard. "I am a physician, not a surgeon. I cannot perform the extensive surgery this injury requires."
"Don't you have a medical staff on hand, in case something like this were to happen?" asked Casey, his eyebrows narrowing.
"We are primarily a research facility. Only the Army is on base to protect Kipper and other agents. I have no clearance to be performing surgery on other agents. We hardly even know who you are."
Casey took another step toward the smaller man, but Sarah rushed to stand in front of him. "Casey, we have to do something," said Sarah. "Can't we call a team from somewhere in the States? Or someone we can trust?" Casey took a deep breath and stopped his forward momentum toward the doctor. Sarah turned to face Dr. Kent. "Even though you can't perform surgery, can you preserve the injuries long enough for us to get a surgeon from the States down here? Say, ten hours?"
Frantically, Dr. Kent looked from Chuck to Sarah, and back to Chuck. "Yes, yes I think I can. Because the shard hasn't been removed, we can seal the wound for now. If I change the bandages and dressings every two hours, we can stave off infection."
"Good, do that," said Sarah. She grabbed Casey by his arm, right above the elbow, and pulled him out into the hall.
"We can call Devon," said Casey. "He's officially Chuck's CIA medical liaison."
"Great," said Sarah. "I will do that, you call Beckman and Brook and tell them something to keep them off our trail." They both pulled out their phones. Sarah's was blank. She tried to turn it on.
Sarah and Casey looked at one another, holding out their phones for the other to see. On their screens was the same character: an oval with a vertical line through the center. Then the symbol disappeared and their phones turned on, in perfect working order.
"What the…?" asked Casey.
"Doesn't matter, get on the phone with Beckman. Meet back here in ten," said Sarah. She hurried down the hall, holding her phone out in front of her as she searched for service.
Ellie was asleep in his lap when his special CIA phone rang. Devon's eyes widened and he carefully lifted Ellie's head as he stood up and replaced his lap with a pillow. She stirred only slightly and shifted in her sleep.
Devon hurried down the hall to their bedroom and found the phone Velcroed to the wall side of his bedside dresser. He looked at the screen.
"Sarah?" he said, under his breath. He answered the phone. "This is Devon Woodcomb."
"Devon, it's Sarah," she said. She sounded out of breath. "Chuck is in serious need of a surgeon we can trust."
The nerves in Devon's body froze. Her voice and her urgency frightened him, but only for a moment. The seriousness of the matter, and his ability to offer his expertise, empowered him.
"Where do you need me?" asked Devon.
"Listen to me carefully, Devon," said Sarah. "I need you to follow my instructions exactly. Do not ask questions, do not skip any steps, and do not, for the love of God, waste any time."
"Tell me what to do."
"First," said Sarah, still panting, "find your passport."