Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters portrayed.
They were all laying about the living room of Casa Bartek, Ellie had decided that they needed a good old fashioned games night, and no-one was about to say no to her when she was in that state of mind. It was turning out to be a fun night, mainly for Ellie, Casey and Jeff as they came out with stories about Chuck when he was younger, but everyone was enjoying it, even if Chuck was turning fifty shades of red.
About halfway through the night, though, Sarah and Casey started looking at each other, because they, and Chuck, could feel that they were being watched. Chuck casually draped his arm over the end of the couch so he could reach the integrated keyboard laying there, using it to bring up the big LED screen on the wall (which he'd made sure was positioned so that it couldn't be seen from the outside) and bring up the external cameras, flicking through them until they found their watcher and zooming in on them.
When they got a good look at the intruder, Sarah dived on Chuck and started a pretty full on make out session with him. After their initial shock, the others laughed and made cracks about it, because they knew that it was related to the image up on the screen that they weren't supposed to be looking at. The discussion that the make out session was covering up was mostly businesslike, after. "Sarah! Less tongue, I can't think when you do that!" (Sarah actually giggled at that).
"Sorry, our visitor is Carina Miller, my old CAT Squad partner and friend, I trust her as much as anyone outside of this room, but I don't know where her head is nowadays as I haven't had a chance to see her, or even talk to her as much as I'd like, for a while. After the CAT Squad were broken up, the DEA threw her right back into the same shit she was forced to do before, she's been forced to sleep with more men than we've killed and I don't know how she's kept a shred of sanity through all of that shit."
She could see that Chuck was horrified by what she was telling him, and being Chuck his reaction was "Can we find some way to help her get out of all that?" Sarah pulled back to look him in the eyes, and the kiss that she came back with was totally different from the frenzied cover make out session that they'd had before. "That would be great if we could, but I need to talk to her first to find out why she's here, if it's a mission I'll text you and we'll meet you and Casey at Casey's to talk about it, if it's something else, I'll take her back to my apartment and talk things out with her there, is that OK?" "Of course, whatever works for her, if you need me just call me."
"You are a beautiful man Chuck, and while it's tempting to leave her out there all night and enjoy this, I think I should find out what this is about." With a final kiss, Sarah climbed off him and said that she needed to get some sleep because the boss was such a slave driver (which got a laugh), before going to kiss Ellie goodbye, grabbing her keys and heading out the front door. Once she was outside, she walked straight to the side of the house where Carina was, calling out. "Come out Carina, you must be getting sloppy, because I could tell that it was you."
Carina appeared in the light, swearing. "There was no way you made me!" That made Sarah smirk at her as she said. "I think the fact that we're standing here like this shows that I DID, Red." Carina grumbled a bit more but Sarah had to cut her off. "Are you here for work, Carina, or are you here as a friend?" Carina started rambling on and avoiding the question, but Sarah couldn't afford the time to let her play these games so she snapped at her. "Cut it out Carina! Are you here for work or not? If you don't give me a straight answer I'll go back inside and that will be that!" Carina looked at her with a sullen expression and then snapped "Yes, it's for work, Alright?"
Sarah nodded, pulling out her cell phone and sending a text before saying "OK, come on" as she led the way to Casey's place. When they got there she let them in with her access and waved Carina to the couch, heading into the kitchen to snag a couple of bottles of booze and four glasses. Casey and Chuck came in as she was putting these on the coffee table and Casey growled when he saw his best whiskey out, but when Sarah looked at Carina, he conceded the point and nodded, with Miller here they were probably going to need it.
When they seated (Sarah close to Chuck's side again, Carina noted), Sarah looked at Carina and said "OK Red, spill!" Carina flicked a look at Sarah and Casey (lingering on Casey) before turning her attention to Chuck as she was saying "I know you two, but who's this?" Chuck just said "I'm Chuck, the new guy" and Sarah cut in with "Chuck's our analyst, he's part of our team now." Carina started going on about not being comfortable trusting her operation to someone she didn't know and Sarah came back with "Well, tough, we're a package deal now, so if you want my help you'll work with my team!"
As this was starting to escalate and Sarah had already slipped up once (probably without noticing, but package deal?), Casey swore and picked up the integrated keyboard to initiate a video link to the General. She was in bed when she came on and looked both flustered and worried. "What's wrong? What's happened?…. What's Agent Miller doing there?" "That's what we've been trying to find out General, but we're not having much luck with that." "I see, Agent Miller, will you wait outside while I talk to my team, please?" Carina said "Yes ma'am" as she stood and walked to the front door (snagging a glass and the bottle of vodka to take with her).
They waited until the door latched behind her before anyone said anything, the the General started. "Miss Miller is here because Graham has done a deal with one of his DEA buddies to help her grab a drug diamond from a drug financier's Malibu mansion. As it's Graham's deal, it'd be best to wait for the briefing that you'll be called to in the morning to go into the details, to let him think that he's in control." They nodded, but just before she cut off the link, she added. "And Sarah, you may want to be careful about that (pointing down) while Graham's on the line." They looked down to see that Sarah was gripping Chuck's hand tightly. Casey kicked himself, how had he missed that? And more to the point, had Miller seen it?
They quickly agreed that Sarah should try and find out where Carina stood in this, so Sarah was going to try and get her to stay with her that night and see if she could get her to talk. With that decided, Sarah went up on tip toe to kiss Chuck goodnight and they headed for the door. When they went out on the porch, Sarah said "We can't get anything from our bosses until the briefing in the morning, so do you have a room Carina, or do you want to stay with me?" "I'll stay with you if that's OK?"
Sarah nodded "Let's get going then." as they turned to leave, Casey said "Miller?", holding his hand out. Carina smirked, downing what was in the glass and handing it and the bottle to him with a "Thanks Johnny" before she followed Sarah off the porch. They could see them talking on the footpath and Carina pointing down the street, so that Sarah started her Porsche and moved it down the street, pulling up near the Mustang that Carina had pointed to.
After the two cars had taken off in what was obviously going to be a race back to Sarah's apartment, Casey held up the bottle and grimaced as he saw that Carina had polished off nearly a third of it in the short time she'd been out there. With that, Chuck shook his head and said that he'd see Casey in the morning before walking back to the house.
When he walked in, the others were still there, waiting for an explanation, so he told them. "Our visitor was Carina Miller, a friend of Sarah's that she used to be partnered with, we're being assigned to help her on an assignment she has here, that's all I know at this point. She'd bound to be around us while she's here, so just remember, you're all civilians." With that, Ellie and Anna saluted him with a facetious "Yes, Sir!" and they called it a night.
As they walked into Sarah's apartment, Carina was saying that the only reason Sarah had beaten her was that she knew the local shortcuts, and Sarah laughed at her, saying "Yeah, just keep telling yourself that Red." Sarah waved her hand around the studio apartment and said that it looked like they'd have to share the bed again. The look in Carina's eye as she said "I guess I can put up with that" pained Sarah, because after the relief from her nightmares that she got from sleeping with Chuck, she had a new understanding of what that had meant to Carina, and she didn't want to think about what she was going through most of the time.
When Carina said "I'm glad to see that you've gotten over the whole Bryce thing", Sarah said "That's just our cover to convince the civilians in his life that's why I'm here, us being boyfriend and girlfriend." Carina snorted at that, starting to say "Yeah, right.." when Sarah cut her off urgently with a raised hand. She pulled a device out of the purse she'd brought up from her Porsche and swept the apartment, leaving it activated in case someone turned on any bugs that were there, but currently turned off.
"OK, it's not just a cover, but the CIA and NSA has to think it is or I'll get reassigned!" She turned to Carina with a smile "Do you remember what I told you about the guy I met when I went to a twenty first party just before Graham grabbed me and dragged me into the CIA?" Carina nodded "That was Chuck, his name is actually Karol, so you can imagine how shocked I was when I turned up to meet the team and I saw Chuck there!"
That got a laugh out of Carina, and Sarah could see that she hadn't had much to laugh about in the past couple of years. Sarah pulled out a bottle and a couple of glasses and they settled down to talk about their lives since the CAT Squad was broken up. Carina's story was as terrible as Sarah had thought it would be, Sarah's hadn't been good through the Bryce period, but nothing like what Carina had had to go through.
When Carina started asking what Sarah and the team were doing here, Sarah wanted to tell her, but Carina was too much of an unknown in her current state, so she couldn't risk it and she just had to evade her questions. She tried to feel her out a little about whether she'd be interested in a quieter life with less disgusting bastards in it, but while it sounded like something that Carina did think sounded nice, she couldn't get anything definitive from her (the three empty bottles laying on the floor in front of them may have been part of the reason for that though).
Through the night, Carina's nightmares were worse than they'd been back in Paris, but Sarah managed to settle her down fairly quickly each time. In the morning, neither of them were in any fit state to face the world, but they had to get up to head back to Casey's for the briefing with the General and Graham. They headed out in Carina's Mustang so that Sarah could leave her Porsche in the apartments' secure parking area.
When they turned up, Casey snorted at seeing the state they were in, but greeted Carina with a mug of coffee and asked her nicely if she could wait on the porch while they had their briefing with their bosses. Carina thanked him for the coffee and settled down on the porch swing without complaint.
When the video link came up, Graham asked what Chuck was doing there, and the General told him that she'd asked Major Casey to bring the asset because from what she'd been told, the whole reason for the team being assigned to the case was to make use of the Intersect? Graham grudgingly agreed and proceeded with the briefing, telling them that they were to assist Carina in acquiring a diamond from Peyman Alahi's compound in Malibu.
When he said that they were to take Chuck to Alahi's compound to get the Intersect data on the alarm system and set up the operation for the following day, Sarah thought that she had to make at least a token protest so it wouldn't look like they were giving in too easily, so she went in with "Sir, Carina is a tremendous field agent, but we can't trust her, Chuck is way too valuable."
Graham ignored her, carrying on to say that Alahi had wider connections outside of the drug trade and the intel was that the diamond was being moved within the next seventy two hours, so Casey had a try "Ah, I've had dealings with Carina in the past too, she can be a bit of a, wild card." Graham just dismissed that with "We're aware of what happened in Prague, Agent Casey, which is why you and Agent Walker will return the diamond to us, under no circumstances should Carina be entrusted with it."
That led to a smirk from Sarah, and Chuck could see Aunt D trying to hold one down too, so that was obviously something to find out about, but he stayed quiet until the end of the briefing. When the General and Graham disconnected the link, Sarah went to get Carina in and they discussed the mission, Carina was still doing the initial setup with Alahi's crowd, but they'd be going in as part of Alahi's perpetual pool party (he liked being surrounded by women without many clothes on) the next day to do their recon as it was more believable on a Saturday than during the week.
While they were there, Carina kept trying to get details of their current operation out of them, and was getting frustrated when they kept stonewalling her. When they finished nutting out the details for the following day, Chuck, Sarah and Casey headed into the CCE shop to get their cover work done and Carina headed off to do her thing. Unfortunately for Carina, the shop, like Casa Bartek, had far more security monitoring equipment than any cover business would be expected to have, so they caught her trying to do surveillance on the shop.
Sarah slipped out via the loading dock out back and swung around the block so that she came up behind Carina's Mustang and knocked on the window. When Carina let her in the car, she put a signal jammer in the console and told her "Yes, there are things going on here that we aren't telling you just yet Carina, I wish I could fill you in, but I can't at the moment, just stop pushing please?"
She looked imploringly at her "We'll help you get the diamond away from Alahi, we'll turn it in so you'll get the credit for the operation, and we're trying to come up with a way to get you out of the situation you're in now, but you have to trust me." Carina looked at her "So you want me to trust you but you don't trust me enough to let me in on what you're doing here? It doesn't sound like I'm getting much out of this Blondie."
Sarah had tears in her eyes as she told her that she was giving her as much as she could at the moment, and got out of the car to walk back to the shop. Chuck looked at her when she came in but she shook her head, so he just put his arms around her and held her. After a while she pulled away and looked at him. "Chuck, I love Carina like a sister but the way she is now, I'm not sure we can trust her, she's as wild and unpredictable as she ever was, if not more, and she's likely to pull some crazy stunt. I need you to stay with me when we're in there tomorrow." She wouldn't let that go until he agreed, and they tried to concentrate on the work after that, with limited luck.
That night, Carina said she was busy when Sarah called to suggest that they go out clubbing, so Sarah stayed with Chuck. In the morning, Casey headed out to get a limo from the CIA garage, then came back to take them to the party. Carina was still standoffish so they just walked around the building cataloguing the security setup, and things started to really go off plan when Carina made a key card for the room where the diamond was, because instead of leaving as soon as she'd confirmed that it worked, she went straight in to look at the diamond.
Sarah was trying to get her to leave when they heard guns being cocked behind them. When they turned to see Alahi and two of his guards, Sarah went into ditzy valley girl mode to try and talk their way out of the situation. She got pissed off with Carina when she introduced them as sisters and Chuck as their brother, but that was something she was going to have to take up with her later because Alahi immediately started to get very handsy with her. Given the fact that Alahi was obviously taken with her, it made sense for her to be the one who had to take him out of the room and distract him, while trying not to show the disgust she was feeling as he kept touching her.
Inside the room, Chuck got a flash of intel about additional security features for the diamond that Alahi hadn't mentioned when he was boasting that it couldn't be stolen, like the twenty thousand volts that were running through the stand and would light up anyone who tried to grab it. When Carina asked how that could be circumvented when they came back for it, he said that something like compressed air could be used to blow it off the stand, or that fire extinguisher that was on the wall.
Chuck freaked out when she immediately grabbed the fire extinguisher and shot a blast at the diamond to blow it off the pedestal, but managed to catch the diamond as it went flying. Kicking a stand over to block the door coming down to seal off the room and destroying a possibly priceless bust in the process, Carina did a quite passable little league slide to get out under the door, leaving Chuck to follow her while she and Sarah took out the guards that were arriving (Alahi had sent the first two guards away when he thought he was going to get to play with two sisters, and Sarah had knocked him out when the alarms went off).
As soon as Chuck had slid out under the door, Sarah grabbed his hand and they ran, with Sarah and Carina taking on the guards who kept popping up in front of them. Sarah sent a call to Casey to meet them on the beach because Carina had improvised and grabbed the diamond, so Casey took out the guard who was running past him and started for the limo, before changing his mind and taking the Hummer that was there (it was probably Alahi's anyway).
Casey turned up just as they were cornered by the guards on the beach and laid down covering fire while they got in. Back at Casey's, Carina wasn't at all happy when Casey made a point of smugly putting the diamond in the safe there before they headed down to the shop to get some of the work that CCE was expected to deliver on a Saturday done, but Sarah was still too angry about the stunt she'd pulled at Alahi's compound to remember that Carina was quite capable of breaking into a safe like that.
When the alarms for Casey's place went off in the shop, Sarah suddenly remembered about Carina's safe cracking abilities and swore, jumping on the computer to do a search on hotel reservations in the area to try and find one in the name of one of Carina's known aliases. Unfortunately she found about ten reservations in the names that Carina had used, so she ran back to the apartments to get her Porsche and head out to check them out. Chuck had wanted to go with her, but she told him that she needed to sort this out with Carina herself.
Chuck put another hour's work in and then headed home to wait for Sarah. As usual he changed into sweats and jumped on the computer in the workroom to catch up on their backlog (they always had a backlog), but about ten minutes after he'd started, the external motion sensors pushed an image of the rear deck up on screen, and he saw Carina, rocking back and forth and crying, so he headed down there to see if she was OK.
When he sat down beside her, Carina turned to him and buried her face in his chest, saying how sorry she was, and she just needed to get Sarah to forgive her. Chuck put his arm around her, rubbing her back as he pulled out his phone and called Sarah to tell her that she could stop looking for Carina. When she responded by asking him to find Carina and tell her to bring the diamond, at first he thought she was still so angry that she hadn't heard him, but then his blood ran cold when he realised what had happened, so he said he'd try to find her, hanging up.
The way he'd stiffened got through to Carina and she'd pulled back to look at him. The face she saw when he turned to her and told her to give him the diamond was totally different from the man that she'd seen up to now and it, quite frankly, terrified her. She asked him what was going on and he told her that Sarah had gone looking for her and now Alahi had her, and he was holding her to get his diamond back, repeating "Give, me, the, diamond!"
"No, no Chuck, Sarah wouldn't forgive me if anything happened to you, I'll get her back." Chuck just ripped the diamond out of her hand, telling her "At the moment I don't trust you to save her, just leave it to the people who love her" as he turned and walked inside, pulling off the sweats he was wearing and pulling on jeans and a shirt he got from the laundry. While he was doing that, he called out "Casey! Outside in two minutes, Alahi has Sarah and we're going to get her", hearing a "Roger" over the speakers. When he got to the van, stuffing a pair of pistols in the back of his jeans, Carina was standing there, looking him in the eye and telling him that she was coming with him, she put Sarah in this and she was going to help get her out of it. He looked at her briefly and then nodded, hopping in and tearing out of the drive, barely doing a stop and go to pick up Casey outside his place.
Carina couldn't believe how fast this van could go, or the way that Chuck was driving it, drifting it though tight city streets at three times the speed of the rest of the cars, it was a safe bet that no-one had ever driven from Glendale to the hotel in Santa Monica anywhere near that quickly before. He'd slowed down to drop Casey off around the corner, so by the time he parked the van on the street outside the hotel, there was nothing to draw attention to the van, other than the smell of burning rubber emanating from it.
As they were walking into the foyer, Carina whispered to him "Let me do the talking, please?" and he nodded just enough for her to see. Carina's dialogue with Alahi had two purposes, the first to wind up Alahi and the second to give Casey time to get in place from the back. Chuck was keeping up his terrified civilian act as he identified Alahi's men, which was apparently everyone in that half of the foyer at the time.
Carina kept winding up Alahi until she switched to Swedish to cue Sarah up when to move (because she'd seen Casey behind her), and when Sarah burst into action, all hell broke loose. Alahi had over a dozen men with him, but in less than twenty seconds they were all down, half dead, half incapacitated, and they hadn't managed to get a single shot off.
Alahi was one of the ones who went down with a bullet between the eyes, because Sarah had seen him staring at Chuck after he'd taken out over half his men, and she couldn't afford word of what he'd seen getting back to the CIA or anyone else. Aside from that, she was going to have to shower a few dozen times to get the feel of his slimy touch off her skin, so she was pretty sure she was doing the world a favour.
Luckily, the General and Graham had been in meetings the last time they'd been back at Casey's, so they'd merely sent word that they'd been successful and arranged for an Agency courier to be sent out to pick up the diamond. The courier and his escort had picked up the diamond just before the video link from the General and Graham came up, so they didn't have to worry about it being stolen from them again and they were a little more relaxed as they gave their reports.
While they didn't try to cover up Carina's improvisation in Alahi's compound, they did gave it a spin so it looked like the optimal solution. They left out any mention of Carina stealing the diamond from Casey's, and it was Carina who was grabbed by Alahi and his men and just Sarah and Casey who saved her in the version that they told, Chuck wasn't even there according to what the General and Graham were told.
Their bosses were happy with the outcome, and while the DEA probably would have preferred that the diamond came to them, there was little market for a diamond like that, especially after word got around that it disappeared when the drug financier who had it was gunned down in a shootout with federal agents, so Carina was in a fairly good space too. As soon as the video conference was finished, they got up, Sarah grabbed Carina and they went straight to Chuck's.
The screen lit up a few minutes after they walked in the door, the woman on the screen was nothing but General as she barked "What happened?" They were trying to work out what to tell her when Carina stepped forward.
"It was me, I got angry when Sarah asked me to trust her without sharing anything about what was going on here, so I decided to grab the diamond when we were in Alahi's mansion. After they left to go to work I broke into Casey's and stole the diamond from the safe, but they obviously had a remote alarm because Sarah went looking for me to get it back, and probably to repay me for what I did to her while we were in the mansion."
She stopped to draw a breath before going on. "The problem at that was that when Sarah found the hotel I was staying at, Alahi and his men were there looking for me as well, and they grabbed her to use her to get the diamond back. Chuck found me sitting out the back here, because I'd come back to try and straighten things out with Sarah, but when he called Sarah to tell her he'd found me, he found out that Alahi had her."
Carina turned to look at Chuck. "At that point your "analyst" here turned into Rambo on steroids, he took the diamond off me and went inside to get changed, calling out something to Casey, I don't know what because it got cut off when the doors closed. I went to his van to make him take me with him to help save Sarah, and then after picking up Casey without stopping we headed down to my hotel faster than I would have believed possible. When we got there I stalled them until Casey was in position behind them and then gave Sarah the signal. I think I only got about three or four shots off, because Rambo took out most of them and Casey and Sarah took out the rest. So it was all my fault."
Everyone was silent until the General quietly spoke with an annoyed voice "Stop calling him Rambo please, Carina, if you aren't going to call him Chuck at least use the name that was given to him for this." Carina looked at Chuck as she asked "What name is that?" whipping her head around to look at Sarah when she answered "Mowgli", Carina then looked at Casey as he nodded with a proud grunt.
Carina was staring at Chuck, but speaking to Sarah "Are you telling me that the guy that you were pining over for five years because Graham grabbed you to drag you into the CIA the day after you met him, is fucking Mowgli, the same guy we all spent two years talking about?" Sarah's "Yes" was barely audible, but they did hear it.
The General cleared her throat, and they all turned to face the screen again. "What are we going to do about you Miss Miller?" Carina just looked at her without changing expression as she realised that the most logical thing to happen was for her to disappear, but the General went on. "No-one would expect Sarah to deal with you because she cares too much about you, and Chuck would never dream of hurting her by doing anything to you, but I think Major Casey's concern for Chuck would override his concerns about Sarah's feelings, and I know that Chuck's Godfather and Mother would certainly place Chuck's well being over everything else, before you scoff, Chuck's Godfather is Agent Mills and his mother is Agent Frost, and I'm pretty sure you know those two names." She looked at Carina for a while and then said "But I don't think we need to worry about that, do we Carina? I'm banking on the fact that you're going to choose to join us, now that you know who we are?"
Carina just kept looking at the screen as she said "I'd love to, but the DEA has never been willing to release me, because they can't find anyone to replace me in what I do." As they were behind her, she didn't see the expressions of anger that crossed over Sarah and Chuck's faces at her words, but the General did. "Let me worry about that, if you want out of there, I'll get you out of there, so do you?" Carina almost broke down "Yes, please."
She felt Sarah's arms go around her as the General spoke again. "Special Agent Carmichael, will you assist me by preparing the case to push through getting Agent Miller released from the DEA and assigned to your team, please?" Carina whipped her head around to look at Chuck when he quietly said "Yes ma'am" in answer to that question.
The others didn't seem to find it strange that Chuck just left the room and went upstairs without another word at that point but the General answered the question written all over Carina's face "He's gone to start preparing that case, in a few hours I'll have something to get the President to sign off to get you transferred to the DIA."
"DIA? I thought you were NSA ma'am?" The General smiled "The NSA is my public hat, but for the past thirteen years I've been commanding a team in the Defense Clandestine Services that's had a significant impact across the military and intelligence communities. That team has done so much and has such a reputation for integrity that the President will sign off on any requests coming from it, almost sight unseen, that is where you'll be transferred to, as long as you don't mind working for Special Agent In Charge Carmichael?"
Carina looked at the screen "Not at all…. General, who IS he? He appears to have so many different identities that I have no idea who he is!" The General mused, almost to herself at first. "Well, to me his most important identity is as my Godson, but that's not really relevant to anyone else, he is the son of one of my best friends, Agent Frost, but for a number of reasons Frost and his father had to disappear when he and his sister were young, so his Godfather and I tried to keep an eye out for them. Ellie is the only one who can claim any accolades for raising him to be the man he is, though." After that she looked at Carina.
"Chuck is the closest thing to a real identity he has, Karol Bartek was the identity given to him when he was twelve when we moved him and Ellie to somewhere safer. When he was thirteen he started working for the government, in my team, and he acquired four other identities to operate under within the government, Charles Carmichael, John Smith, Charles Gancanagh and Max Powers."
"When he was fourteen he acquired the identity of the Piranha, one of the best hackers in the United States, if not the world, and when he was fifteen he also acquired the identity of Mowgli, the special operations legend. His government identities are all commissioned, US Navy Commander Carmichael, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Smith, US Air Force Major Gancanagh and US Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Powers, Carmichael and Smith are also DIA Agents, while Gancanagh is an NSA Agent and Powers is an FBI Agent. They're his primary identities, he uses cover identities at times like everybody else in the business, but they're his core identities."
"Well, he did have another identity for a while, but that one's history now, isn't it Sarah?" Sarah nodded with a smile, and after a pause the General added "While Chuck's upstairs, why don't you take Carina downstairs and show her the wall, that may give her an idea about part of who Chuck is?" After the screen blanked and they started to turn to head downstairs, though, the screen lit up again and she added. "One more thing, sorry, Carina, but at first I think we'll need to keep you based out of D.C. to keep you out of sight of the people who are watching the team in L.A. We'll try to get past that as soon as possible, but it's really for your protection." Carina glanced at Sarah and saw that she seemed inclined to trust the General in this, so she nodded and said "Yes, ma'am" to the screen, the General nodded and the screen went blank again.
When they went downstairs, Carina was impressed by the gym and games room they had down there, but was a little worried when they went into one of the guest rooms, closing the door behind them, and Sarah led her into the closet. Carina could hardly believe it when Sarah opened the hidden door in the back of the closet and led her into the Bunker. Like Sarah when she first saw it, she was amazed that this was down there and spent a bit of time poking around, but her jaw dropped when Sarah showed her the wall.
The main change to the wall was that there was a new section added for Sarah Walker, it had certificates from her training with the CIA, for her degrees, and for the CIA records that she'd won and held. It also showed that she held the rank of USN Lieutenant Commander, USA Captain, USAF Captain and USMC Captain, was a CIA Agent and DIA Special Agent, Naval Aviator, USAF Pilot, USA Aviator and had a few medals, the highest being the Silver Star medal, it also had a number of pictures from her training, some missions and award ceremonies.
Carina was impressed by Sarah's section, and what she saw of Casey's section, but when Sarah dragged her to Chuck's section she was riveted, so much that they were still there when Chuck finally came down. Sarah looked at him when he walked in, reaching her hand out to him. When he got to her he took her hand and pulled her in for a kiss, but she pulled back a little afterwards to get a good look at his face before smiling and coming in for a hug, quietly asking if it had gone off?
Chuck's response of "Yeah, I sent it through to Aunt D, so as long as she can get in to see the Eagle tomorrow it should be done by tomorrow night." surprised Carina, to say the least, so she asked "Are you telling me that whatever you put together in the last hour and a half can override all the red tape and get me transferred out of the DEA and into your team in one day?"
Chuck looked tired as he said "Yeah, well, General Beckman has a lot of clout in these circles, especially when she has a Presidential signature on the paperwork." Sarah looked exasperated with him as she added "And so does Special Agent in Charge Carmichael, that's what the General was referring to about the President signing off anything he gets from the team, it's because he trusts him."
Knowing that he wasn't going to win, Chuck suggested that they head upstairs and get dinner ready, as he was looking forward to a quiet night, the two women agreed, though Carina asked if a quiet night could include coming down for a few games of snooker or pool, and giving the bar a workout, and Chuck agreed to that with a laugh.