Chapter 10: Under Siege II
A/N: I couldn't resist, although that's the one on the train and it doesn't make any sense in this context, but hey. I would have felt weird not having anything to say before blasting right off.
Disclaimer: Don't own Chuck.
The Bunker's Armory:
Sarah dumped a full rucksack of gear out onto the table. "What the hell are you doing, Blondie?" Nancy shouted, strapping herself into a body armor vest. "We don't have time for you to root around in your purse looking for tampons.
"Quiet, skank." Sarah shot back. "Throw me half a dozen of those ceramic vest plates and an extra tactical BDU."
Nancy glared at her like she was insane. "You're joking. What the hell are you doing needlepoint?"
Sarah grunted and ripped the webbing off of a combat harness. "Making a damn baby carrier, what do you think I'm doing?"
Nancy's radio blared and she rolled her eyes. "Hostiles on Sub-level 4. Da—sksh—ey're going for the armory! Say again. Anyone in the Armory respond."
"This is Broyles." Nancy said into her handset. "I've got... Ford with me."
"About a dozen hostiles —sksh— ed your way, Broyles. Get out of —sksh— fast before you get trapped."
"Shit." Nancy said. "You about done with arts and crafts time over there?"
"Don't rush me!" Sarah pushed down at the bottom of the jury rigged carrier, and the plates fell down and pinched her hand. "Damn it. Buy me a couple minutes."
Nancy sighed and stuck her head out the door. The whine of bullets on metal came almost immediately, but no sound of gunfire. Nancy took cover and stuck her M-4 out into the corridor, spraying wildly. "Buy her a couple minutes she says. No problem. Ten to one odds, and I have no idea what I'm facing, but no problem." She tossed her empty magazine out into the corridor to the sound of more bullet impacts. "They're using silencers. No way to even get a fix on how many are out there!" But Blondie was still occupied with the baby carrier-rucksack. Nancy snapped a fresh magazine into her carbine and sprayed the hallway blindly again.
Sarah cut a slit in the side of the rucksack, then threaded the BDU pants through it, tied the cuff in a knot on the outside. That should hold that, which only left. "Hurry Blondie!" Sarah growled under her breath and wove the plates through the shredded BDU shirt, tying the ends of the sleeves around the rucksack's shoulder straps to secure it in place. She stuck her fist in again, and the plates didn't move. But, she needed to know for sure before she would risk putting her daughter in the thing. Sarah grabbed a pair of shotguns off a rack and dropped them in. All told, they should be about twelve pounds, Lisa was barely more than ten and a half. Slipping her arms through the straps, she lifted the awkward burden, down her front so she could look in and make sure the plates didn't— yes. It was ready. Bullet proof baby carrier, she should patent the thing and make a fortune.
She dumped the shotguns out and stuffed a couple t-shirts in it for extra cushioning and slipped the rucksack on properly. "Okay, let's move." Sarah said, slinging an M-4 from one shoulder and a shotgun from the other.
Nancy shook her head. "Too late, Blondie." She said, and smashed the security lock on the inside. "They got guys down the other end of the corridor already. Must have got somebody to smuggle the layout to them. We're trapped."
"Well how the hell did you let that happen?" Sarah barked. "We've got fucking C-4 and flash bangs in here! Why didn't you say something?"
"Me!"
"Shut up, too late to bitch about it now." Sarah said, waving away the other woman's angry scowl and trying to remain calm. Chuck and Lisa were out there and they needed her. "See if you can raise any backup on the radio."
"Who put her in charge?" Nancy muttered, but dug out her radio. "This is Broyles. We are hunkered down in the armory. Need assistance. Repeat need assistance."
***
"Negative, Broyles. —sksh— on your own." Chuck heard someone official sounding say over the radio. Dammit, mommy needed help too.
"Shush. Baby." Chuck said in a hoarse whisper, glancing over the counter. He clicked the radio handset off and ducked back under cover, hoping the blare of static hadn't given away their position. But the commandos crab-walked by without discovering them.
He'd been spotted a few minutes earlier trying to hack a door reader that Sarah's ID keycard hadn't had access permissions for. It hadn't been on the schematics he remembered, but it was the only way up from where he was, and doing it with an arm full of fussy baby hadn't made it any easier. Just as bullets had started pinging off the walls to his left, the door had come open and he'd slipped through.
Now he didn't know where he was. The place wasn't on the schematics he'd flashed on weeks earlier. That or the flash was fading. Either way, he was pretty much lost. It looked like something straight out of an office building, desks, office supplies, computers. Computers meant intranet, meant he could hack his way onto the main trunkline and maybe help guide Sarah to safety. So, yay for computers.
On the downside. The door hadn't shut properly behind him, and the half dozen commandos who'd followed didn't seem like the nice 'taking prisoners' type of commandos he and Frank had met on the way to Daycare. But they were gone for now, and Lisa made an odd mewling noise and Chuck frowned down at her in worry. "What's wrong, baby?" He whispered. "Dirty diapie? Hungry? Cause I can only help you out with one of those, and I'd have to use my only shirt." Lisa seemed to quirk an eyebrow at him.
"Glb." She said.
"Huh." Chuck said, and scratched his head. "This is going to be difficult if you won't cooperate." He held her up to his face and sniffed. "No dirty diapie. Sorry baby, we need mommy if you're hungry." Chuck shrugged and cradled her carefully in both arms, rocked her gently. The mewling trailed off a little and Chuck grinned and held her up so he could make a funny face for her. Lisa made a weird pouty face he couldn't figure out, then puked milk down his chest. And after that, she grinned. "Uch. Really? No no, don't be sad. I still love you anyway."
Chuck peeked his head over the counter again, still all clear. Being extremely careful to always support Lisa's head properly, he crept over to a nearby desk, and tried the drawers. Locked of course. He blinked, and just managed to secure Lisa in his arms before the flash hit. Chuck shook his head, and snatched a paper clip from the cup on the desk, bent it out awkwardly with one hand still full of month-old baby. Picking the lock was surprisingly easy. He blinked again, at the tag at the end of the lockpicking tutorial, and grinned. "Mommy really is the best at that. It even says so in the supercomputer in daddy's brain. Isn't that nice?"
The drawer was full of file folders, which Chuck spread across the desk, frowning. Top Secret, Eyes Only, all those kind of things he was used to seeing, they were commonplace. But there was one folder that was matte-black, not the usual manilla color. A gray tab sticking out of the folder bore two words. Project Bespin. "Cloud city? What, did Lando work for the CIA too?" He whispered to Lisa, sliding the folder closer. And then he flashed again. Chuck winced at the throbbing in his temples and blinked half a dozen times. "Well, that's useful to know." He yanked the keyboard over and lowered Lisa gently into his lap, grabbed the handset and clicked it back on while he typed. "Broyles, go to channel... 13."
The radio crackled. "Broyles."
"Put Ford on."
"Who is this?" It was Sarah's voice. Even if he didn't recognize it himself, the way Lisa seemed to perk up told him it was her.
"Carmichael. This may be a party line, so careful what you say. Precious cargo in tow. You have a terminal in there?"
"Yeah? I'm loading it up. What now?"
***
Sarah held the radio handset, frowning. "What now?" The terminal suddenly sprang to life. Large block letters filled the screen.
False floor in conference room, under the table.
Escape tunnel.
"Copy that?" The radio crackled back to life.
"We copy." Sarah said. "How do we get there? We're pinned down, and the door's sealed."
"I've got it covered." Chuck said from the radio. The terminal beeped and the screen shifted.
Got Fbs? Now's the time. Don't use NVGs.
And then the lights went out, and the screen shifted to a view from the handful of cameras in the hallway that had so far escaped detection. Once the night vision cameras switched on, Sarah and Nancy could make out the commandos putting on their vision enhancers.
Nancy stared at the screen in awe. "That husband of yours is something else."
"Don't become a problem for me, Nancy."
"Aw, you're warming up to me. You actually remembered my name."
"Don't push it, okay?" Sarah said. The door swept open, and both women slid a pair of flash bangs out, one of them facing each direction, squeezed their eyes closed and plugged their ears. A split second before the stun grenades went, the lights came back on. Sarah rolled into the corridor, M-4 at the ready. Nancy took the other direction down the hallway, but in both cases the commandos were all down, clawing at their eyes or moaning. "Okay, I'm turned around." Sarah admitted. "Which way's the conference room?"
"Follow me, Blondie." Nancy said.
***
Chuck hid under the desk and grunted, glad that he'd grabbed that MP-10 from one of the commandos Frank had killed, and equally glad it was silenced. He patted the bulky shape strapped to his back, just to make sure it was still there. He wasn't thrilled about the idea of having to fire an actual firearm while carrying a baby, but at least it wouldn't shatter her tiny eardrums if he had to. Luckily enough, the access keys he'd gotten from the last flash had let him access the full bunker schematics right off the base computers, something he was sure Gomez the Barber hadn't been able to betray to the ring, especially if they hadn't even been in the intersect. He should be able to slip past most of the Ring agents and meet back up with Sarah in the parking lot without too much trouble.
"He must have doubled back past us." One of the Ring commandos remarked. "Besides, we don't have time to clear all these rooms. The AirCav should be here in less than half an hour." Chuck glanced under the edge of the desk and saw their boots retreating back the way they'd come. Once he was sure they'd left, he levered himself and Lisa out from under the desk awkwardly. Now he just had to print up a copy of those plans and he could slip out to meet Sarah. That would just take a couple of quick hotkeys and—
Chuck squinted at the screen. Tray 2 Load Letter? Tray 2 Load Letter! Seriously. Someone was going to get a strongly worded letter about refilling the printer paper in a timely manner when he got out of there. "So munchkin?" Chuck remarked and tickled Lisa's nose with a fingertip. "If you were a ream of printer paper, where would you be?"
Lisa drooled milky spit down her chin and burbled happily. "Hmm." Chuck whispered. "I'll check, but you're on the hook if it's not in the supply closet."
***
"So what exactly is the deal with you two?" Nancy said, covering a side-passage branching off their escape tunnel.
Sarah scrunched her nose and huffed her bangs out of her face. "What are you talking about?"
"Please. I've never seen a woman so blatantly overprotective of her man before." Nancy said. "I mean, seriously, he can obviously take care of himself. Did they show you the video of him taking down Frank and Carl at the same time while cuffed and shackled?"
"I don't know what you mean." Sarah said.
"He's supposed to be project lead on some super-science weapon project and he just happens to also be some kind of martial arts expert?" Nancy said. "Come on!"
"You're pushing it Nancy." Sarah growled. "You don't need to know."
"I'm not asking for government secrets. I just meant." Nancy shrugged. "Never mind. Clear this way. Let's go."
They walked in silence for a couple minutes, except for calls back and forth of 'clear' as they passed side-tunnels. Finally Sarah grunted. "Fine. He's the first person I ever met who loved me for me besides my dad. Not who they thought I was, but who I actually was. I'll kill anyone who so much as looks at him wrong."
"No offense? But that's kind of fucked up, emotionally speaking. You know that right?"
"Of course I know that." Sarah said testily, and silence reigned in the escape tunnel but for the sound of steam hissing through the pipes overhead and the hum of electricity. Finally they approached what looked to be the end of the line. A door marked with the usual 'Emergency Exit' lingo. Sarah stopped and turned to the brunette. "You can head back if you want. Relief teams will be here in another twenty minutes or so."
Nancy frowned. "Hey. I'm not leaving you without backup. We look after each other in this unit, Blondie."
Sarah tried not to let her surprise show too much on her face. She clenched her jaw to keep it from dropping open. "I appreciate that. Really, I do. But our escape plan is only good for three."
"Right. You, me, Chuck."
"Not what I meant." Sarah said, pulled her tranq gun and put one in Nancy's neck.
"Why..." She mumbled. Sarah closed the distance and caught her so she didn't collapse awkwardly and hurt herself.
"Nothing personal, just can't risk you getting captured." Sarah said, setting her down gently. "You know about my daughter. That and..." She glanced down. "Aaand... she's out."
Sarah undid the velcro on Nancy's vest and pulled it off over the other woman's head before stuffing it into the rucksack. Chuck needed the vest more than she did. The door was confusing at first. There was no knob, no pushbar, just the red and white emergency exit signage. She frowned, and finally spotted the card reader on the wall.
***
"Oh god, I'm blind!" Chuck covered his face with the forearm of his gun hand. The sunlight on his face after three weeks in the bunker was brutal. He stiffened his knees to keep them from buckling and slowly his vision returned. Chuck scanned around the maintenance shaft he'd used to reach the surface and realized he was on top of a large hill.
Off in the distance, he could see other huge hills. He still had no idea where he was, but at least there was fresh air there. The ground sloped away to the east, and he spotted the winding pillar of smoke from the burning guard shack, then his eyes were pulled down to the handful of helicopters. Chuck squatted and started crabwalking down the slope, trying to keep his outline from being easily spotted in the early evening light. With the sun at his back, Chuck shouldn't have been to easy to spot as long as he didn't let himself get outlined by the sun on the top of the hill.
About halfway down the hill, Chuck stopped. It was only a hundred yards or so to the Ring commandos' helicopters. There were a handful of commandos left outside watching the helicopters. Now if only Sarah and whoever was with her would answer their radio. A hand clamped over his mouth.
"Shh. Don't freak out, baby." Came Sarah's harsh whisper. Chuck relaxed after a moment.
"How did you find me?" He whispered back. Sarah wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.
"Did you forget about the GPS tracker I put in your shoulder?" She said.
"Yes." Chuck said. "Did I remember to tell you lately how creepy that was?"
Sarah chuckled softly. "Its not creepy, its sensible. The amount of trouble you get into, it's a wonder I didn't do it years ago."
"It really hurt too." Chuck said.
Sarah kissed his cheek again, then reached down to play with Lisa's hair briefly. "Here, I've got a bullet proof vest for you. Let me put Lisa in the carrier."
Sarah shrugged out of the converted rucksack and they juggled Lisa and the bulletproof vest awkwardly. She hugged Lisa to her chest and breathed in her scent, sighed and tucked her carefully in the armored rucksack.
"Sarah?" Chuck said softly. "A little help?" She looked up and grinned. Even after everything, he was still the same. He was trying to put it on upside down. It only took half a minute to get Chuck squared away.
"Put your hands out." She said, and slung the rucksack with Lisa in it on him backwards. It felt, horribly, like putting all her eggs in one basket, but if anyone was going to get shot it was going to be her, and so, Lisa went with Chuck. Thankfully Chuck was smart enough not to back-talk her."Okay. Now stay low and let me do all the shooting."
Chuck pulled her into a brief kiss and handed over his silenced submachinegun. "Here. I'll stick to tranq darts." Sarah nodded, handed over a couple spare clips, and bent to plant a kiss on Lisa's forehead.
Toward the bottom of the hill, the scrub brush gave way to small trees and more scrub brush, giving them decent cover. It was still fifty yards or so to the closest helicopter. The ring strike team had stationed four men by the blown in doors to the bunker complex, and another four waited in a loose huddle near the back of the CH-47 cargo Chinook.
Sarah waited for the attack helicopters orbit to take them out of sight around the hill before tapping Chuck on the shoulder. "Make for the closest Blackhawk baby. I'm right behind you. Run!" She said in a low whisper, but full of determination.
Chuck grabbed the baby-carrier in both hands to make sure Lisa was secure and not jostled around too much and sprinted for the helicopters. Sarah took a firing position on one knee, extending the MP-10 as far as the sling would allow and sighting in on the group of commandos near the door. They were closest to where Chuck would be running, but farther from Sarah--about seventy yards-- so it would be dicey as far as the range went. But the others had little chance of spotting him on the run. Sarah squeezed off a three round burst. One man went down, but hit in the thighs. Sarah groaned at her mistake. She'd forgot to take bullet drop into account. Damn rookie mistake.
The second burst took the wounded man's head in a cloud of pink, and she shifted fire, rippling off the rest of the magazine quickly, with only brief pauses to compensate for recoil. The ring commandos shouted into their tactical radios, but they didn't seem to have spotted Chuck, or cottoned on to her location. Most of the group at the crumpled blast doors was down, and Sarah was out of 10-mm ammunition, so she tossed the smg aside and flipped her M-4 off her back. The A-cog sight and the more powerful 5.56 mm nato rounds gave the carbine better accuracy at long range. Sarah flicked the selector switch to semi-automatic and walked in the strange rolling gait that would keep her accurate on the move.
The shorter range to the group of commandos only now reacting to the attack on their compatriots only made things simpler. She squeezed the trigger four times and four men went down, and then she sprinted after her husband.
Chuck was already in the cockpit by the time she caught up with him, two unconscious pilots laying in the dirt next to the blackhawk. Lisa was bawling. "Cover her ears!" Sarah said as she rolled into the cargo section. The blackhawks all had door mounted M134 7.62mm miniguns. Sarah slung her assault rifle out of the way and took up station on the door gun. The barrels were turning before Chuck had the chopper off the ground.
A three foot tongue of green flame spouted from the minigun with a sound like the hand of an angry god tearing a giant bolt of cloth in two. Casing shot out of the underside of the gun at a blistering 3000 rounds a minute. Sarah ran the stream of fire across the cockpit of the nearest blackhawk, then cursed under her breath. The attack choppers were on their way back. The gun could traverse most of the width of the open side door, but it wasn't designed for anti-aircraft work. She couldn't angle the gun up much beyond twenty degrees. She let off the firing stud for a moment, just the ringing in her ears and the sound of the electric motor spinning the barrels competing with the roar of the Blackhawk's turbojet engines.
"Up! We need to get up, Chuck!" She screamed.
"I see it." Chuck growled back and jammed the cyclic control to the redline. The Blackhawk shot up, and Sarah centered one of the Apaches in her sights. The one issue that Apache pilots had been complaining of ever since the model's introduction, was their light armor, and suceptibility to small arms fire. It wasn't any less armored than any other close attack aircraft, really, it just got a lot closer to the action than most. It also wasn't much more armored, and there wasn't a lot you could do to make bulletproof glass thinner.
3000 rounds a minute made short work of the first attack chopper's cockpit, and the helicopter tumbled down to crash in the employee parking lot. There wasn't a giant fireball, just an explosion of concrete dust and paint chips from the impact. Sarah eased off the minigun again. "Where's the other one? Do you see the other one?"
"He saw his friend bite it!" Chuck reported. "Ducked behind the hill to the Southwest. Where are we heading?"
"Just head north until I get my cell reception back and I can get the drop coordinates from Casey."
***
"This is Bird-dog 2! Bird-dog 1 is down. Repeat, down." The remaining attack chopper pilot growled into his headset. "Blackhawk 3 is compromised. Engaging with guns." Tracer fire from the twenty-five millimeter arced out and peppered the back half of the offending blackhawk.
"Negative, Negative! Check fire!" Came the word from command. "Check fire dammit. Our objective is in that chopper, and we need him alive."
"I hit them in the back quarter, but they're still airborne. Please advise."
"Pursue and report, but do not re-engage."
"Target losing altitude, command." Bird-dog 2 reported. "Heading 043, fifteen miles north of the LZ."
"Understood."
"Wait, no. They've made a landing." Bird-dog 2 cursed under his breath. "There's a black SUV waiting for them."
"Engage the SUV."
"Roger command." The 25mm autocannon made short work of what was probably a really nice Suburban. It disintegrated in a ball of flame. "The Target Blackhawk is moving again, heading west, bearing 133 now."
"Stay with them Bird-dog 2."
"Shit. They're losing control. Target is in a flat spin, going down. Target is down." The Blackhawk bellied in, but going much too fast. Its landing struts collapsed, the chopper rolled over, shedding snapped off rotor blades, and ended up in a dry creekbed. The fireball was slightly washed out in the evening sunlight.
"Target is dead, command. No one could have survived that."
***
Two Days Later: Ring HQ South Central United States
"Will we have access to the autopsy reports? It's a shame that we lost a resource like Carmichael. What happened exactly?"
"Only one of our units even reported engaging Carmichael. Bravo Subteam 2 lost communications with Bravo lead, then Carmichael took them down. After that, reports are sketchy, our surviving agent from that team didn't remember anything after Carmichael declared himself. What we do know, Carmichael and a blond CIA agent, probably his old handler somehow eluded our ground forces, escaped the Bunker facility and fought their way to one of our helicopters, while most of our men were engaged in the assault.
They used the stolen helicopter to take out one of our transport choppers as well as one of our attack assets. Our remaining attack asset opened fire before I could countermand them. It pursued, disrupting an attempt to change to ground transport. Carmichael's helicopter eventually crashed due to mechanical failure, probably from the damage sustained at takeoff, and exploded. No one on the chopper survived. We found three badly burned bodies on board, matching the descriptions of the joint CIA/NSA team that we had been tracking from Burbank. Agents Carmichael, Walker and the NSA man, Colonel Casey are all confirmed dead. We checked dentals as well as their DNA profiles straight from central records."
"Is it possible they faked their deaths, forged the DNA results somehow?"
"They had no warning of the attack on the facility. There simply wasn't time for them to orchestrate the immensely complicated legwork needed to fake this. They were on the ground for all of a minute."
"Very well. Keep tabs on the current intersect computer project, the last human intersect is dead. Close the Carmichael file. We were very close. Ah, well. At least the whole team is dead. They nearly gutted us the last fourteen months. I suppose this could have been worse for us. Thank you, Victor. We have your next assignment when you are ready."
"Yes sir. On the bright side, the sonic cannon was given its first successful field test."
The man in the center of the table sighed.
___
A/N 2: So have you ever read any fics where the Ring wins? You have now!
Just kidding. Cliffhangers are fun. For me.