First up, an apology to anyone who read the early version of the previous chapter, when I started on this one I realised that I'd left structure holes big enough to drive a truck through, so I've revised it, Ellie has been added as a Navy Commander and Jeff and Anna were added as navy Lieutenants with a few (non combat) medals, because they needed to be military for similar reasons to the others, and the others' medals got extended a little.
NB: In case I didn't make my point too well last chapter, the reason for the commissions and the medals is that, IMHO and from what I've seen, combat hardened elite military types wouldn't generally be prepared to follow civilians without battle experience into the type of operations that the team was running. For that reason, they were given the ranks and medals that their experience and achievements justified, and which would hopefully be what was needed to give other military types the confidence to follow them.
In response to the question in the guest review, no, IMO Morgan wasn't really a friend at all, he constantly undermined Chuck, letched on Sarah (and Ellie), as well as using any excuse to try and touch them, and his every action was predicated on what he could get out of it, if a "friend" ever did to me what he did to Chuck in Versus The Crown Vic or Versus The Anniversary (just to name two episodes) I'd kick him so hard he'd never come down. He didn't keep Chuck sane, he was part of the reason that Chuck was so screwed up, that's my reading of watching the episodes closely many times.
Sorry, I'm not going to spread my dialogues out over several pages to separate them, that just doesn't look right or work for me. To me an intense back and forth dialogue "feels" better depicted the way I have it, not that I have that many of them. If I lose readers over that, I'll just have to take it on the chin. FWIW
The rating on this one's up as it contains rather unpleasant topics.
Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters portrayed.
Chuck and Sarah tried to do a proper job of returning the snappy salutes they received with the greetings "Captain Carmichael, Sir!" and "Captain Carmichael, Ma'am!", but they were still struggling to get used to the uniforms, salutes, the whole military protocol thing. At first, some of Sarah's uniforms were too tight, her skirts were too short and her heels were too high to comply with the uniform regulations, but she was dialling it back with the requisite uniform changes as her pregnancy progressed, she'd just wanted to have a little fun pushing the limits for as long as she could. For that matter, the fit of Chuck's uniforms were too snug and tailored to comply with uniform regulations as well, but his suit tailor could be temperamental, and he was just too good a tailor to risk upsetting him by forcing him to work strictly to the regulations. (They were, quite frankly, amazed that Carina, Zondra and Anna (mainly Carina) hadn't flaunted the uniform regulations even more than Sarah had so, as with Chuck's tailor, they decided to let it go as their uniforms were close enough.)
As they had to deal with the various branches of the military (along with the intelligence community) while organising and running these joint operations, and it wouldn't do to bring them to a secret base under the offices of their cover business, they'd been allocated a suite of offices in a secure area of the Los Angeles Air Force Base (the LA AFB was the only active military facility in LA for them to use for this), along with a small staff. Their group had been named the Joint Operations Command, and some at LA AFB questioned that none of the senior officers were there much of the time, but they couldn't deny that when they were there, the place was a hive of activity, with representatives of the Army, Navy, Marines Air Force and Coast Guard (and dodgy types from the three letter agencies) coming and going at all hours. The fact that this group was very top heavy with a two star Air Force General, two Navy Captains, a USMC Colonel and three Navy Commanders was noted, as was the fact that these senior (and flag) officers didn't seem to have much of a support structure under them, the General had a Major for an assistant while the Navy Captains seemed to have two Lieutenants supporting them (though they obviously had other roles too) and the Marine Colonel had a Marine First Lieutenant for an assistant (while Josie wasn't included in the first round, as soon as they set up the offices at LA AFB they'd realised that she needed to be part of the military to be with the group there, so they'd arranged for her to be commissioned into the Marines as a First Lieutenant), but their remaining staff was only about a dozen seamen and petty officers with an Ensign and a Warrant Officer to manage them running the offices, all in all this was a very strange group by US military standards. The badges and ribbons they wore on their uniforms were part of the quandary, all the Naval officers (and most of their staff) wore Information Dominance Warfare insignia, and one Naval Captain added the Naval Aviator insignia, Combat Action Badge, Naval Parachutist insignia and the Special Warfare insignia to that, while the other Naval Captain and two of the Naval Commanders added the Naval Aviator, Combat Action Badge and Naval Parachutist insignia, and the Marine Colonel wore the Naval Aviator insignia, Combat Action Badge, Naval Parachutist insignia and Combatant Diver insignia (these five also had Combat Action Ribbons, Expert Marksman ribbons for pistol and rifle and Expeditionary medals). These people seemed to be a weird mix of information warfare, aviation and combat that didn't fit into any normal military groups.
When they called the operation team leads together for the briefings, there was usually at least one or two there who knew some of the team (if not all) because they'd all been in the business and working with special ops groups for over ten years or more, so there were more than a few questioning (and jealous) looks at the warm greetings between old comrades when operations were convened. The conference room that they generally used had pictures up around the walls from all of their pasts showing them with various special forces groups (including Ellie when she was doing her special ops training and the more observant ones noted that Casey was present in most of the pictures with Chuck and Ellie, as he'd been with them on their special ops training sessions, and was part of most of Chuck's ops with the Army, Navy, Marines or Air Force) the purpose of this was to reinforce the message that their medals were telling, that this team had the experience to lead these operations. The medals and the pictures worked with the ones who cared (and were bright enough) to pay attention, and the Joint Meritorious Unit Award ribbon with oak leaf clusters that they all wore told the story that this was a highly successful unit, and had been for some time, but any group that was engaged for operations included at least one or two who thought that they were god's gift to the world, and especially to women, and they would invariably focus on nothing but the women in the room.
The ones who knew the team members were usually waiting for the douches to start trying to hit on or make comments about Sarah (Carina, Zondra and Ellie were beautiful, too, but it was invariably Sarah who caught their eye first, even when her pregnancy started to show) before they pointed out the obvious, that there were two Captain Carmichaels there, and while Captain Charles Carmichael may not have quite as many decorations for valour as the Colonel, he'd earned the reputation that had made him a legend in special ops circles. If the douches didn't back down or switched to target the other women after that, they figured that they deserved whatever happened to them (they didn't bother pointing out that the three Commanders were also immediate family to the Carmichaels or that there were at least five people in that group who were quite capable of decimating anyone they came up against).
The re-imaging of the team into a military command had made their operations a lot smoother and saved a lot of wasted time, which improved the effectiveness of the unit, but it didn't take away their other responsibilities, running Piranha Security & Technology as an successful business, delivering the Intersect Team's other responsibilities and delivering the DCS team's objectives (though the DCS team was under the umbrella of the Joint Operations Command now and half of the Intersect team work was handled as part of JOC as well, so that alleviated some of the load). Most of them spent at least three or four days a week based out of the Fish Palace (they were working six or seven days a week), so they were only spending two or three days a week in the JOC offices.
Over the past three to four weeks, Chuck had been doing a lot of "business" trips on his own, and as Sarah knew that there was no chance that he was playing around on her, she enlisted Jeff and Anna's help to find out what he was actually doing. It took them nearly a week to come up with something which looked like it may be related, and when they did it was a shock. There was a new serial killer on a killing spree who was being called Vlad the Impaler (because he impaled his victims in a very specific way on stakes), and the location and probable day and time of his (presumably) kills was a disturbingly close match to that of Chuck's "business" trips. They followed this for another couple of weeks, and it was becoming more and more obvious that Chuck was Vlad, but they couldn't understand why the sweet and gentle man that they knew was doing this, until the count had almost reached forty and the face of one of the victims brought back very traumatic memories for Sarah of what had been done to her fourteen years ago. She asked Jeff and Anna to dig out everything that was known about all the victims (making a point of asking them to search through the CIA records) and brought Carina into it at that point. It was making sense to her now why all Vlad's victims were male, in their early thirties to late sixties, and little was known about them publicly, because most of them were, or had been, involved in hardcore porn or the intelligence community. When they looked at earlier pictures of the victims, Sarah or Carina recognised most of them, and more than a few of their faces were familiar to both of them. Chuck had obviously extracted who had been involved in what was done to them out of Graham and Decker, and was going after all of them.
While Sarah was could understand why Chuck would do this for her, and Carina, it had to stop, so she compiled a file of the pictures of Vlad's victims, and when he got home one night, she threw the file on the table so that the pictures sprayed across the surface, asking "Are you about done yet?" He looked at the pictures before calmly looking back at her and saying "No, there are at least fifteen to twenty left on that list yet, and something much worse has come up now." She looked at him, and accepting that she wasn't going to be able to stop him, asked what had come up, but his response was to call Casey, Carina, Zondra, Jeff and Anna to meet them in the Dungeon for a briefing.
When they were in the conference room and it was locked down so that Emma, Ellie, Josie and Molly couldn't see or hear anything that went on in the room, Chuck started explaining what had happened to Sarah and Carina when they were at the Farm, what he had been doing as Vlad, and what had come out while he was tracking these men down. Obviously the ones who were involved in what was done to Sarah, Carina and untold others had seen opportunities in this, because they'd extended it into a much bigger and more profitable undertaking, apparently sick bastards would spend a fortune to watch things being done or do things to defenceless women, and these bastards were maintaining a portfolio of hundreds of young women (down to pre-teens) that they used to put on their shows. Obviously some of the ones involved in this had been part of the Ring at one time, as they were using the drug (which wasn't on the books for legitimate agencies) that Shaw had been given by them to use on Sarah to control the victims (it took the majority of control of their bodies away from the victims, so they couldn't fight back much), as well as variants of the twilight dart drug to prevent them from remembering what had happened to them. The shows were ramped up over time with the victims so that they could milk the most money from it, in the early stages the twilight drugs were enough to ensure that they didn't remember anything, but the time frames were accelerated as the shows got rougher and more invasive so the effects couldn't be covered up, until they were sold off as sex slaves or used in snuff films. (Chuck made sure that the pictures and videos he showed them were only of the early stages, the nightmares he was having about this were bad enough, he didn't want Sarah or Carina (or the others for that matter) seeing that.)
As the shows progressed, the fees charged went up, and they were charging six to seven figure sums to buy the girls, commission a snuff film or be involved in the later action (Chuck was still putting this together as he'd only found evidence of this when he flashed on something a few days ago). After he'd shown them what they were up against, he told them what he was planning to do, take out everyone who was actively involved, grab all the funds of those involved on either side (there were billions of dollars involved in this and it needed to be out of their hands to stop what they were doing with it), and turn the lesser players over the authorities with enough evidence to ensure that they could be prosecuted. The others sat there, shell shocked about what they'd seen and heard, but Jeff had the only question. "What do you mean by take out everyone who's actively involved?" Chuck just looked at him for about thirty seconds before he responded. "Vlad the Impaler will be the most prolific serial killer in history." Jeff blanched at that, but everyone else around the table nodded, and after a short delay, looking at what was on the screen, so did he. After that, Chuck asked "Who's in?" and Casey looked around the table, getting agreement before he turned back to Chuck and said "We all are!"
As they'd started moving on those involved, it became quickly apparent to the authorities that Vlad the Impaler had to be more than one man, as some days dozens of victims were turning up all over the world (Chuck, Casey, Carina, Zondra and Anna were working as a team on this, with Sarah and Jeff providing support from the Fish Palace), while in the background, Chuck, Anna and Jeff were putting all the time they could into collating the evidence and removing the liquid assets of everyone involved. Their top priority was recovering any girls who had been taken or sold, and doing what they could to help them recover (along with the ones who hadn't been taken yet but were having problems), but giving them large amounts of money didn't help them (except for the ones who needed new lives to start over again, away from anyone who knew what had happened to them), as it would probably draw attention to them and what had happened to them. They did provide funding for a lot of the programs that were being used for the girls' recovery around the world, so that they could get the best care without any need to pay for it. Over the space of a month, Vlad the Impaler's kill count went well into the hundreds, and the authorities received reams of evidence that was quite sufficient to convict thousands on child pornography and sex charges around the world (though hundreds of them were already victims of Vlad, so they had been properly punished). The authorities couldn't understand why the ones on the lists were turning themselves in and confessing, until they found out about the untraceable messages many of them were getting, in various languages the gist of the message was "The authorities or me, your choice, Vlad". There was quite a bit of public outcry about how vigilante killers couldn't be allowed get away with massacring hundreds, but they'd sent less graphic and gruesome versions of the information they'd sent to the authorities to the media, so the ones demanding that those who made up Vlad the Impaler be hunted down and brought to justice were shouted down and put under public scrutiny, as people asked how they could be against monsters like that getting their just deserts? Afterwards, they had arguments with Auntie D about what they'd done, until they showed her enough photo and video evidence to make her speechless with horror, and they didn't speak of it again.
After they'd wound up the Vlad requirements, they went back to their normal lives of Piranha, the Intersect Team and JOC work, they were getting used to the uniforms (the girls settled on trousers most of the time as being more practical after they'd had their fun winding up the guys who came in) and military protocols in the JOC offices and other military facilities, and their staff in the JOC office were getting up to speed to provide the equivalent of DIA analyst functions to support the team. They'd laid out the JOC offices similar to the Piranha offices, Chuck and Sarah had their offices next to each other, with Casey's beside Sarah's and Ellie, Carina and Zondra's offices were opposite them. Anna, Jeff and Josie's (and the General's assistant's) smaller offices were down the hall near the rating's area, while Auntie D's larger office was on the other side of Chuck's, near the primary conference room (she was usually on the East Coast, but as the group's nominal Flag Officer, her office had to reflect her position, so they used it for their team meetings when they needed to conference her in, as they had full video conferencing facilities in there). The only wedding pics that Chuck and Sarah had in their JOC offices were the "proper" arch of sabres pics, because there they were the only ones that fitted into this environment.
Sarah, Carina, Zondra and Ellie still had to deal with some of the tools who were brought in for the joint exercises, but minor damage and/or a pistol to the head or privates was usually enough to put paid to their bullshit, if not Chuck or Casey got their chance to go postal on them (they let the girls deal with the matter themselves until they were given leave to step in out of respect for them, because they didn't want to undermine them by giving the impression that they couldn't handle it themselves, but as soon as the leash was slipped they went to town, especially Chuck if it was Sarah or Ellie who was being hassled). If, after all that, the tools still didn't get the message, a call to the head of their command, or failing that their corps or agency (Chuck had them all on speed dial and the people at the other end of the call knew who he was) would have them recalled to be replaced in a matter of minutes. The few times it got to that point, the rest of the team leads would be staring at the idiots, shaking their heads, because they'd watched them being given every chance and they'd still thrown their careers away. There were also the other idiots, the ones who refused to believe that someone as young as Chuck or Sarah could have reached the rank of Navy Captain or earned the medals they had (they, along with Casey, were the most decorated people in the room), even though they'd been told by the top brass down of their corps that these people were the real deal, and most of the special ops veterans of the various corps had stories of how many records Chuck (as Mowgli) had set in all their trainings as a teenager, or the operations they'd done with both of them (and the others), which happened to be where they'd won half their medals. These ones were also replaced with a phone call to however high it took, which just proved how powerful these people were to anyone who stopped to think.
Over the following months, the operations that the team ran were amazingly successful, so much so that all joint operations that involved multiple corps and other federal agencies were allocated to them, not just the ones that were generated out of the intel that they uncovered. Because of this, their workload went up so that they were spending three to four days a week based at the JOC offices and three to four days a week at the Piranha offices, and it got harder when Sarah had to go on maternity leave with the twins. Once Sarah had to start working from home (she never stopped working, only coming into the JOC office due to her mobility issues), Uncle Bry was brought in to take up the slack, so in a similar deal to the rest of the team, his rank was taken from Captain to Colonel in the Army, and he was retroactively awarded the medals he deserved to add to his existing credibility (of course, that meant that they had to photoshop his image in all the arch of sabres pics to show his new rank and medals, but that wasn't too hard for them). When Bry was brought on board, and they were called to D.C. for his promotion ceremony (being able to fly door to door with the Wraith Van made it easier for Sarah), they had a second ceremony as they'd also promoted Ellie to Captain (from observation by the powers that be, it had been decided that she deserved the higher rank, and that it would cement her authority better, given that she had to take over more of the functions that Sarah had done with the JOC). Chuck joked that Uncle Bry's addition and Ellie's promotion made the group even more top heavy now than it had been before, and he didn't miss the smirk that Auntie D gave him at that, she was up to something, he just wasn't sure what.
As Sarah was getting closer to her due date, Chuck pushed back on the number of operations that they wanted the team to take on, because he wasn't going to miss being there for his wife at the birth of his children, or when she needed him, and the rest of the team were family, too, the aunts and everyone else weren't about to miss being there either. After weighing up the various options, they'd set up everything that could possibly be needed in the SkyTruck and had a full team of agency approved medical personnel on standby, when the time came she'd be picked up and flown to the medical team as fast as possible, and if Chuck wasn't with her when she was picked up, he'd fly there in the Wraith Wagon, as it would be where he was if he wasn't with her. When the day came, it all went fairly well, Sarah was on the roof of the hospital where the Agency doctors were in the Wraith Truck with plenty of time to spare, it took ten and a half hours' labour for Charlotte and another half hour for Samuel (not too bad for a first birth with twins) and both they and Sarah were fine, though Dad of course was a wreck. Stephen and Mary and Auntie D had flown in when they knew the day was getting close, and Auntie D had been working out of her office in the JOC since she'd arrived (as she wasn't about to miss the birth of her godson's children, she'd held Chuck the day he was born, and she was determined to do the same with Charlotte and Samuel).
When they were born, Charlotte and Samuel obviously took after their parents, Charlotte had her mother's blonde hair (as much as she had) and blue eyes, while Samuel had his father's brown hair and eyes, but from what they could see at that early stage, both had their mother's features (which made Daddy ecstatic) and their father's curls (which Mommy was just as happy about). Emma and Stephen were both choked up when they heard that their grandchildren had their names (middle names were fine, and flipping Chuck and Sarah's names for their first names was brilliant). Chuck was even more sure that Auntie D was up to something when he saw her whispering something to Sarah, as Sarah's shocked look went from her, to him and back again, and then she'd laughed and hugged her after they'd said a few more words. Once Sarah and the twins were cleared by the doctors (including Ellie), they were flown back to the Fish Palace and settled down in the master bedroom, while a team of technicians dismantled the equipment that was installed in the Wraith Truck and re-installed it down in the Dungeon (just in case it was needed).
Over the next four or five months, Sarah worked from home, either in their apartment, or with the twins in her office downstairs. After working together every day for so long, the six months that Sarah was off on maternity leave was getting to Chuck, because he really missed not being able to see her whenever he wanted (as well as not being able to see the twins whenever he wanted) on the days he had to be in the JOC office without them, so when Ellie (as the family doctor) agreed that it would be OK for Sarah to come back to work at the JOC office (with the twins in her office like they were in the Piranha office), Chuck was ecstatic.
While the JOC operations were a great success and the powers that be were happy with their achievements (so much so that their staff had been more than doubled in the Information Dominance area and Anna and Jeff were both promoted to Lieutenant-Commanders to manage that side of things), they were having recurring problems with some Marine, Army and Air Force Colonels who had issues with submitting to the authority of people who were only at the same level as them, especially ones as young as Chuck. For that reason, the decision had been made that Auntie D would hand over command of the group to a new Flag Officer, who would be located in the JOC offices to bring the Colonels etc into line, while her role with the group was formalised into what it had always been in reality, the liaison between the JOC and other bodies. Therefore, her office was in the process of being refitted for the new Flag Officer who was taking over the team, but no-one was being told who they were yet, and Chuck was a little aggravated that they were putting all this work into this new officer's offices, but nothing was being done about setting up Sarah's new office yet (as Bry had taken over Sarah's office when she went on maternity leave).
As a result, Chuck was a little out of sorts when the team were summoned to D.C. for their new Flag Officer's induction into the role of Commander, Joint Operations Command. What he couldn't work out was why Sarah was happy, but he just put that down to the fact that they were getting out as a family for once. As far as he knew, Emma and Molly came along so that Emma could look after the twins while he and Sarah were tied up with the ceremony. At least the trip was comfortable, the Wraith Van got them around everywhere now and they didn't have to worry about getting in and out of airports, it was an easy point to point hop (at about twice the speed of most commercial flights).
When they got there though, Chuck was starting to twig to the fact that something was up, because looking around the room, the only Flag officers that he could see were the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, Chief of Staff of the Army, Commandant of the Marine Corps, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Commander in Chief, Special Operations Command, the Commander of the US Cyber Command (sort of their boss on two fronts, via the Information Dominance Corps and the NSA), the Director of the DIA, the Commander, Special Operations Center, Pacific Command, the Commander, Naval Special Warfare Command and Auntie D, and obviously none of them would be taking over JOC, and the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy, the Director of National Intelligence, and his parents were all there as well. Chuck looked at Sarah and knew that she was in on whatever was going on here, because her eyes were shining and her smile lit up the room, so he turned to her, putting his arm around her to pull her in and quietly ask in her ear "Where is our new Flag Officer Honey?" "Ah, that would be you, Sweetie." He stepped back to look at her "WHAT?" Nearly everyone in the room turned to look at him at his exclamation, and half of them were smiling and snickering.
One of the skills that he'd acquired from the Intersect was the exceptional ability to lip read (in multiple languages), so he easily picked up the discussion between the SECNAV and the Chief of Naval Operations out of the corner of his eye. "What is the man of the hour going on about?" The Admiral smiled. "I'm guessing, mister secretary, that his wife just told him that he IS the man of the hour." The SECNAV looked at him in shock. "Are you telling me that he didn't know?" Another smile. "No, General Beckman thought it would be better, well more fun, to just tell him and the team that they were coming to meet their new Flag Officer who's taking over the team, and we (waving around the other military people present) agreed." He looked over at Chuck before adding "It looks like we were right" with another smile, but his look turned serious as he turned back to the SECNAV and added "As you're well aware, mister secretary, the circumstances here don't fit into any normal frameworks, and that young man has been doing great things for the country and shouldering responsibilities way beyond his years since he was barely in his teens, so we didn't see the harm in making his promotion ceremony a little unconventional here" that got a nod from the secretary and they turned away. Looking around he could see that similar conversations had obviously just taken place between the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense and others. Chuck looked accusingly back at Sarah and she gave him that cute li'l apologetic smile that always made him melt so he gave up, making a half hearted attempt at growling "This isn't over" in her ear though, thinking back, he realised that he did know when Auntie D had told her about this, that time she was whispering to her just after Charlotte and Samuel were born.
When things had settled down, Captain Charles Carmichael was called up to be promoted to Rear Admiral (lower half) Charles Carmichael and have his induction into his new role of Commander, Joint Operations Command by the Secretary of the Navy in front of the small but very prestigious group of military and intelligence officials, and his family. Sarah took the chance between the promotion and induction to replace the jacket that had his Captain's insignias with one that she'd had their suit tailor make up with the proper accoutrements for his new rank (adorned with all the proper medals, ribbons and badges, of course), so the pictures taken for his induction showed him in the proper uniform. Of course, the surprises didn't finish there, because once Chuck was done, Emma was called up to be commissioned as a Commander in the Navy (to act as his assistant and expand the Information Dominance force of the JOC).
Considering the officials present, the ceremonies and the celebratory dinner that followed were remarkably casual, friendly affairs. The assembled VIPs looked at the people who made up this important (well, world changing) group and tried to get their heads around who they really were, starting with Captain Carmichael (at least there was only one of them now), looking at the incredibly beautiful woman sitting with her baby in her lap, it was hard to believe that she was by far the most dangerous person in the room, but the reports and the statements by some of their best Special Operations people who'd done operations with her made it quite clear that that was what she was. She'd apparently set a bunch of records at the CIA's Farm that no-one had come close to since then and what's more she'd apparently saved the world from chaos pretty much on her own a few times before she took up with her husband and other partner, the Marine Colonel, Casey. Now that one at least LOOKED like what he was, a grizzled veteran of the military and intelligence communities and the second most dangerous person in the room, he'd done some very impressive things in his time, too, but it took being put with the kid who rewrote the rule books to bring out the extraordinary in him, which brought them to the man of the hour. Admiral Carmichael (that was going to take some getting used to) was sitting there with his beautiful wife, holding their other baby in his lap and laughing at something someone said, but he looked so ordinary, an attractive, intelligent and interesting man, to be sure, but nothing about him came out and SAID that he'd turn your world upside down without even blinking.
Most of the officials there had been players in the military and intelligence communities for decades, but they'd only found out about eight or nine months ago that eighteen years ago they'd been basing most of their career decisions on the work of a couple kids in high school, Admiral Carmichael had been THIRTEEN when he started doing intel analysis and planning for the Defense Intelligence Agency, THIRTEEN, and his sister, Captain Van Der Graaf (they'd have to ask her about that name) had been only sixteen, but what they'd came out with was more solid, insightful and worthwhile than the rest of the agency, or anyone else, ever did. General Beckman (their Godmother for Christ's sake!) had hidden them behind multiple layers of identity, they knew that Carmichael and Van Der Graaf were at least one or two layers away from their real identities, but to most of them, the names they knew them by was John Smith and Susan Jones (those names weren't obviously made up at all, but the intel was so good they didn't care). They remembered asking the General back when she'd dropped the bombshell about Carmichael being Smith and Van Der Graaf being Jones whether their reports had been rewritten before they were forwarded, but she was adamant that they'd been sent as is, which was hard to fathom now that they knew how old they'd been as those reports were insightful, professional and provided projections and predictions that were frighteningly accurate, and the recommendations and directions pretty much always worked. They'd been sure that they were dealing with the pick of the intelligence community's veterans, and when they'd followed the directions that they'd laid out, they hadn't failed, especially Smith's. That was why they hadn't had to debate much when Beckman had proposed making him a Captain to allow him to work effectively, he'd been delivering at pretty much a senior officer's level at thirteen, so at more than twice that age he was definitely ready.
Then there was the special ops stuff, their Godfather, the Army Colonel, Bryan Mills, had pulled strings with his special forces buddies to get them both put through the Ranger, Marine and Special Forces training when they were teenagers, hell, he'd even got Carmichael through SEAL training, and they'd both done pretty damn well. Van Der Graaf was one of the first women who ever got through those trainings and she'd made the grade, beating many of the soldiers that she was training with, but Carmichael had blitzed it. He'd set records that still stood right, left and centre in every course he did, early on someone had nicknamed him Mowgli, from the Jungle Book, to try and put him in his place, but it'd quickly become a term of respect. Very few who had ever had anything to do with him then referred to him with anything but awe and respect. They'd both had Casey (and Mills, too, quite often) with them as protectors through their trainings, but they hadn't assisted them in any way, their achievements were their's alone, though some of the officials musingly looked over at their mother, the stories were that Mary Bartek (like that was her real name), or rather Frost, as she was known as then, had been an earlier version of Captain Carmichael (or Sarah Walker as she'd been then), an unbeatable force, and apparently a lot of the records that Captain Carmichael took at the Farm had been her's, so maybe she passed on some good genes. That thought made them stop and look at the babies sitting in their parents' laps, what would these two turn out to be with parents like this? They just shook their heads, those kids would probably save or destroy the world, but they went back to their father. Mills had got him ride along gigs on all the corps' and agencies' special ops missions fairly regularly, nominally to keep up his skills, but the stories they'd heard were that he'd wanted to build up the boy's confidence, and he'd thought that the respect and admiration of men like these would be good for that, but whatever the reason Carmichael had performed admirably (many said exceptionally), the reports coming from the units he'd been with on those missions had made it a simple matter to get those medals for bravery from all the corps approved, and the leadership he'd shown at times on those missions just made his commission a shoe in.
The flying thing must have gone along with the Special Ops angle, but they were pretty sure that that had come from Casey, as he'd been certified on a number of aircraft before he was hooked up with Carmichael. Apparently Carmichael liked it though, because he'd gotten certified on all of the Navy's and Marine's carrier aircraft and helicopters, along with all variants of the Hercules and the Blackhawk, the Osprey, most of the military's business jets and small transports, the C-17, Apache, Thunderbolt, F-15, and the F-16. Casey was certified on most of those, too, and they'd pulled off a number of quite notable escapades, getting the special ops teams they were with out of sticky situations by "borrowing" all sorts of aircraft and using those skills. Beckman must have called in a lot of favours to get those two the training that they did, but given that they'd had some notable successes as a result of their training it could be said that it was worth it. Apparently Captain Carmichael, Colonel Mills, Commander Miller and Commander Rizzo were certified on a number of aircraft as well, and though it was unlikely that they had quite the breadth of certifications the Admiral and Colonel Casey had, it had been noted that Captain Carmichael was obviously qualified on the F-16, as she'd flown one across the country at least once.
They pondered Admiral Carmichael as they watched him with his family, he'd earned his rank, few of them questioned that, he may not have been in traditional command roles for the past eighteen years, but he'd been making command decisions and helping guide the military, hell, the government, in the right direction over that time. Yes, he was over a decade younger than the next youngest Admiral in US history, but those numbers didn't take into account that he'd had at least as much valid command experience as most of them had had when they reached this level. Still, it had been a bold move on Beckman's part to all but blackmail the President into pushing it through by telling him that if Carmichael didn't get the authority to do his job properly he'd give up and walk away. The gamble had paid off though, the President and the rest of the politicians were so afraid of what might happen without Carmichael and his team to stop their world coming down around their ears that they'd pushed his promotion to flag rank through as a priority (even with the priority, though, the process still took over six months). It WAS an interesting move to get his mother-in-law commissioned to work with them at the same time, mind you, from the reports that Beckman had shown them, she'd been an incredible analyst in her day, too, and she was doing great work as part of their intelligence teams again, so it wasn't simple nepotism, any more than the rest of the Joint Operations Command was, even if they DID look like the poster child for nepotism.
They were still having a hard time getting their heads around just how close the ties in this group were. Navy Rear Admiral (lower half) Charles Carmichael and Navy Captain Eleanor Van Der Graaf were brother and sister. Navy Captain Sarah Carmichael was Admiral Carmichael's wife. Air Force Major General Diane Beckman who'd created the Joint Operations Command and got all but Colonel Mills and Colonel Casey their commissions was Admiral Carmichael and Captain Van Der Graaf's Godmother. Army Colonel Bryan Mills was their Godfather. Marine Colonel John Casey was Admiral Carmichael's partner and had known and worked with him for over sixteen years. Navy Commander Carina Miller and Navy Commander Zondra Miller were Captain Carmichael's sisters. Navy Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Barnes had been Admiral Carmichael's partner for over fifteen years, while Navy Lieutenant Commander Anna Wu had been Admiral Carmichael's partner for over ten years. Navy Lieutenant Commander Emma Linea was Captain Carmichael's mother. Quite aside from the legends that the Carmichaels and Van Der Graaf were, Mills and Casey had been legends in the military and intelligence communities in their own right for decades. Miller and Rizzo had been famous in the intelligence community for well over a decade (well, sometimes infamous, but their success records were outstanding and the reports from respected Special Operations people said that they were both a force to be reckoned with and that they did amazing things). Barnes and Wu's towering reputations in cyber intelligence went back to before they'd been "recruited" by Admiral Carmichael and were brought onto his team, and the reports were that they were the about only ones who came close to him in that field, and reports about Linea were that she was the best in her day, too. So yes, the team that made up Joint Operations Command was closer than kissing cousins, but it was made up of the best in their fields and they got results that no-one else could even dream of, so the officials who were assembled there to create the youngest Rear Admiral in US history were quite prepared to go with "If it ain't broke, don't fuck with it!"
A/N: Yeah, I know it's a stretch, but Chuck's been doing big things for the govt since he was thirteen, and I've never seen a politician who isn't in CYA mode, so falling over themselves to keep the ones that saved their arses several times in the last few years around? I can so see that happening ;)