A/N: Hey look I'm not dead in a ditch from all the snow we've had. I know you're all surprised. Lord knows I am. Sorry for the big delay, but life and stuff happened. Anway, I apologize for being gone for so long, but again make no promises for timing in the future.
I'm going to thank everyone who read, followed favorited and especially those of you who reviewed. I know I haven't gotten back to those of you from last time, I'll try harder going forward.
As always, I don't own Chuck, and I'm sure not making any money at this, for obvious reasons really. I'm just playing in somebody else's sandbox.
If you're looking for cannon well feel free to keep reading but you're not going to find it here. If you're looking for cannon I suggest The Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park. I actually got the idea for how the Wildcard works from the missle room on the USS Little Rock.
Chuck and Sarah exited the conference room they had been in with Chuck in the lead. They took the opposite direction from the way they had come in running down the hallway side by side. At a security door ahead she could see one of the base's security personnel holding the door open and another holding a door about 10 feet away that looked like it could have been the little brother of the Norad steel door. They ran through both and suddenly they were at an elevator. Inside they found the flight suits, personal weapons, and personal armor that were kept in the base armory for cases like this. They each had identical equipment back at the bases in L.A. at Edwards, in their apartment and in their vehicles. One of the team's unofficial mottos was 'Redundancy is good; Redundancy is good.' They quickly changed and were about halfway done when the elevator came to a stop at the main level and opened out into one of the hallways surrounding the launch bay. The doors came open and yet another security team member held the elevator open as they finished up and they sprinted across the hallway through a set of double doors also being held open by security personnel and into the main launch facility.
"Casey's going to be pissed he missed this, but it's probably just as well he shouldn't handle high G's yet," said Chuck.
"High G's?" Sarah asked.
"You'll see."
Entering the bay Sarah immediately noticed the craft in the middle of the bay oriented at a 45 degree angle on some sort of a rail system that attached to a tunnel to the surface now that the blast doors had been opened. She'd like to say that it was her well trained powers of observation that called her attention to it, but honestly with the bright white color, the two enormous rocket boosters and all the activity around it she was pretty sure that the least observant person in the world would have noticed it from a mile away.
She did manage to keep up with Chuck until he finally slowed to a stop in front of a grizzled veteran who had to be in his fifties who was yelling at the various techs working on the craft. She opened her mouth to ask what this was, but a quick look at Chuck and she realized she could wait.
"Are we ready to go Chief?" Chuck asked.
"Will be in minute Hammer, just finishing with the Dragon now." Everyone could see a large steel box being inserted into the cargo bay of the white craft as they were speaking.
"Took us a bit to load the Wild Card container and hook in the rearm ports. But she's good to go. One of the techs is running prefly right now, should be done by the time you board. You'll be ready to launch as soon as the two of you are aboard and strapped in."
There was a loud series of bangs as the Wild Card unit was securely locked into its mount points. "That's it, go!" exclaimed the Chief and Chuck and Sarah were off running again passing a tech as he exited down the ramp.
"Dragon's got a green board sir!" he called after them. "Good Hunting!" With that he left the craft and secured the ramp behind him.
Chuck and Sarah quickly entered the cargo bay of the Dragon which was completely filled by the Wildcard cargo container. It even matched the shape of the doors when it was closed. The only opening was the very tight hallway leading to the cockpit right down the middle of the bay.
Once in the cockpit neither of them said anything as they strapped into their seats, and connected the cables that had gone to their headsets into the helmets they had put on with the armor. As soon as they did, tactical heads up displays appeared on the inside of the helmet visors. As soon as they were set they sat back as Chuck waited to be cut into the launch com circuit. A few seconds later a slight burst of static was followed by a controller's voice.
"Dragon 2 this is launch, say status."
Chuck answered calmly, "Launch, Dragon 2 has two souls aboard, and a green board. We are go for launch."
"Ok Sarah, this part isn't going to be pleasant. You need to look straight ahead, and keep your helmet against the headrest of the acceleration couch and your arms on the armrests," Chuck explained. "We're going to be going through a high G launch and acceleration stage, and I don't want you getting hurt."
"Ok Chuck," she responded following his directions.
"Launch confirms blast shields in position you are go for ignition."
"Launch, Dragon, lighting all." Chuck and Sarah were suddenly surrounded by a world of noise and vibration as the two main engines and the rocket bootsers exploded to life.
"I'm showing four in the green, ready for launch."
"Launch in 3, 2, 1, Launch."
Chuck slammed the throttles to the stops. This action also triggered the mag-rail system they were sitting on to catapult them up the launch tube like a fighter jet off of an aircraft carrier, with the same basic results. As the craft cleared the outer doors, the carriage dropped away and continued on its own much shorter parabolic course. Unlike a fighter jet, the Dragon continued to accelerate at over 7Gs adjusting course to put them over the drop zone outside of Buenos Aires.
"Dragon 2 is away," came Chuck's strained voice. "ETA drop zone in 27 minutes."
"Confirmed Dragon we also show you as 27 minute flight time to target zone. You are now being transferred to operations control. Launch out."
Seeing her chance, Sarah finally shouted over the background noise, "What the hell is this thing Chuck?"
"Specialized insertion version of the Dragon. Fastest aerospace plane on the planet. She's got about the same time to target as an ICBM with the same flight profile." Chuck answered.
"Why is it bright white?"
"Side effect of the heat shielding materials. She'll be scorched up pretty good when we re-enter."
The com system came back to life, "Dragon you're go for booster sep in 3…2…1…sep." Chuck hit a button on the control panel and an audible thunk was heard in the cockpit as the two boosters were released and allowed to float away from the Dragon.
Suddenly one of the LCD displays changed from an instrument panel to a video conference. They could see Sherrie's face in the screen.
"Hammer, we're linking you in to satellite imagery from the target location. It doesn't look good. They've got the better part of an infantry company doing a hard target search of the area. Thankfully they don't have our surveillance capabilities. We've isolated your target and we're in the process of trying to solidify a match." The screen next to Sherrie's face was replaced with the satellite image of the target zone with their target highlighted.
"Looks like we're going after a woman," was Chuck's only comment as he studied the imagery, and then went on to study the search pattern the hostiles were using and extrapolating where they'd be when they arrived on scene. The answer he was coming up with was awfully damn close to his target. This was going to be a whole lot closer race than he would have preferred. "Do we have any way to contact her?"
"Negative," Sherrie came back. "What we got was a standard agent in distress beacon no reception capability on that equipment."
"Who was that beacon issued to?" Chuck asked.
"That's the other bad news," Sherrie said, "and some good news too. The agent it was issued to was Carina Miller."
"Oh crap!" exclaimed Chuck.
"Carina?!" was Sarah's response as her eyes widened in surprise. Unfortunately Chuck missed it in a bout of swearing.
"There is no telling what crazy stunt she's going to try to pull to get herself out of this situation. Please tell me we have the satellite until we're on station." Chuck pleaded.
"That's one of the pieces of good news. We'll have solid imagery right up until your ETA, we won't lose her due to loss of visual lock. The systems on the Dragon will take over for the satellite once you arrive. The other good news is sitting in the seat next to you. Hammer, meet one of Carina's few partners that are still on speaking terms with her."
Chuck's eyes shot to Sarah, "You know Carina Miller?"
"We were both on a special joint operation called the Covert Alternative Tactics Squad or CATS for short, I still think some asshole in operations came up with the acronym first and just slapped the name together because we were an all-female unit. We keep in touch and back each other up when we can. She's probably my best friend in the business or probably period."
"Ok, now I'm scared. Your best friend is Carina Miller, queen of the frequent fliers?" Chuck asked in disbelief.
"Queen of the what?" Sarah asked.
"Frequent fliers, that's what we call agents that we've had to pull out two or more times," said Chuck. "This will be Carina's seventh extraction. She knows of two, three counting today since there is no way we can extract her covertly. The next highest has four."
"Ok, that sounds like Carina. I'm guessing the extraction plans tend to go south a lot with her?" Sarah asked.
"We don't even try to plan for her anymore. We just show up and hope we can wing it through because she's so unpredictable that every contingency we come up with has a tendency to not be available by the time we're ready to use it. Makes the short timing on this op easer though," said Chuck. "On the other hand she's so fun to watch operate, we generally don't mind much. This one time she walked naked through a… Let's leave that for another time shall we," Chuck finished happy that the visor on his flight helmet hid the blush.
"Please let's," said Sherrie with an eye roll. "Be that as it may, we have a unique opportunity here. Sarah, you're going to perform the actual extraction today. It's why I sent you. I'm hoping Carina seeing someone she knows will be more willing to get into the Dragon allowing you to exfil the area with the minimal amount of damage."
"I'll certainly do my best." Sarah agreed.
"Hammer do you have a broad outline?" Sherrie asked.
"Very broad," Chuck replied. "And minimal amount of damage is definitely not part of it."
Sherrie visibly winced on the screen, "How much damage are you thinking Hammer?"
"You remember the day Michael gave me my new call sign?"
Sherrie went from wincing to pale on the screen.
"Not that much, but I don't think it's going to be far off in a localized area, say 200 meter radius, smaller zones out to a mile. I'm going to dump enough ordinance around Agent Miller's position to guarantee a 100 meter buffer zone. Then I'll drop Sarah with one of the rescue suits for Agent Miller, and lift off again to continue providing close ground support to the area. I'm expecting some snipers here, so I'll be doing a sniper hunt while Sarah is recovering Agent Miller and putting her into the suit, as well as continuing to push that buffer zone out to around 200 meters. Once they're ready to be extracted, I'll land again and Sarah and Agent Miller will load in the back. I'll button us up once they're aboard, and lift once they're strapped in."
Sherrie had noticeably relaxed when he had given the radius of destruction but was still obviously concerned. Sarah started to wonder what exactly he had done to earn his call sign if mentioning it caused Sherrie that much concern. Which of course made her wonder what his old call sign was. She filed it all away as something to ask him later.
"For no planning time and what we have to work with I think it's as good a plan as we're going to get," said Anna. "There's not much we can do from here to help you Hammer. I've run the standard cross agency and DOD sweeps, there are simply no assets in the area. That doesn't make sense to me, why doesn't the DEA have a backup team nearby?"
Sherrie's face went dark. So did Chuck's behind his visor, "Angel, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Yes, I believe I am," Sherrie nearly hissed. "Operator, I need your other skillset, break into the DEA's operational database, and find me the mission she was on."
"You don't think…" Anna started.
"Unfortunately I do think," said Sherrie. "I'm calling the Director, I think this might be best handled in the open. He can decide whether he wants it or if he hands it over to the FBI. Just find me the evidence Operator."
"I'm on it," came Anna's reply nearly growling like Casey.
"Ok, that's in process, anything else we need to know,' asked Chuck.
"Other than a Clipper is about 15 minutes behind you for your return trip, no. Not beyond what you see, we're running other sweeps with a second satellite we're about to lose over the horizon, but we don't see anything else in the area for you to worry about," said Sherrie. "We'll keep the com lines open, and you have the running feed, let us know if you need anything else."
"Roger that Angel, Hammer out," Chuck said, followed by the video feed cutting off. "Ok, Sarah, there're some things you need to know."
"Yeah, like what the hell's a rescue suit?" asked Sarah.
"That actually was the first thing," Chuck said. "At the top of the ramp in the starboard side of the bay you'll find a flush mount hatch with a simple twist and lift latch. Inside you'll find three duffle bags. Inside each is what looks like an EOD bomb proof suit. Good news is, ours are a lot lighter. Grab one and take it with you. The instructions to put in on, and adjust the size so it can be worn are printed on the suit itself. Once you find Miller, make her put it on. When you're ready. Just tell me, and I'll come in for the pickup. Got that?"
"We're going to have open coms the whole time?" Sarah asked.
"Yes, don't worry about jamming, the system can deal with it automatically. No this part is going to sound bad, but there's a reason. I want you to use Carina for cover as you move from her hiding position to the back of the bird." Chuck said.
"Chuck! I'm not putting Carina's life in jeopardy any more than it is. Sacrificing her for myself is not…"
Chuck cut her off, "That's not what I meant. The suit you're putting her in is big bulky and slow but it will take any round up to and including a 50 BMG and laugh at it. That's why we use it. In order to stay with her you're going to have to go as slowly, and your armor while better than anything else we've ever seen is designed to let you move and hence more vulnerable. You're also expected to be shooting back. And shooting from moving cover is better than standing out in the open, ok?"
"Oh," was all Sarah could say. "Sorry, I jumped to conclusions."
"Not a problem," said Chuck, "but it's game time. Systems on voice."
"Voice commands excepted," came the computer's reply.
"Your plane talks too? You never told me that," complained Sarah.
"You never asked. I thought you'd been working in the simulators?"
"Just the basics so far," she replied.
"Well if you'd tell me these things, I could help," Chuck said with a smile evident in his voice.
"I wanted to surprise you," Sarah answered.
"Ok, I'll take that. But when we get back we'll pull the manuals and I'll take you through the systems ok?"
"That'd be great Chuck. It's a date."
"We really have to start getting you out more," replied Chuck focusing back on the flight.
"Two minutes to re-entry," came Anna's voice over the com system. Whatever Sherrie had asked her to do must not have taken that much time.
"Roger that Operator." Chuck started to quickly run through the last of the pre-combat checks.
"So how does this work?" asked Sarah.
"You really don't want me to ruin the surprise do you?"
"Yes I do."
"Re-entry in 5, 4,…" came over the com system.
"Too late," said Chuck
"1, insertion."
The world fell out from underneath them. The Dragon began its re-entry into the atmosphere feeling like it was about to shake apart. A bright red light was clearly visible though the canopy as the heat shields began to glow from the heat of reentry. They lost coms as they passed through the upper atmosphere. As the atmosphere got thicker and they slowed down, the glow receded and they were left screaming through blue skies on their way to their target.
Chuck reached over and flipped on the high resolution cameras, and the screen in the center where the video conference was earlier was now a direct feed from their forward camera array. On it, what they saw confirmed the satellite imagery from before. The closest hostiles were now 50 meters from Agent Millers hiding position, on the feed from the satellite they could see her getting ready to burst into the open.
"Oh hell," cursed Chuck. "She's about to do something stupid. No time to be perfect. Dragon, go to war."
"Full combat mode engaged, weapons off safe, gun doors open, missile systems online, Wildcard replenishment system detected and tied into arsenal. Command complete," was the computer's reply.
"Missile system select, cluster, targets as follows," Chuck started working a small thumb joystick on this throttle control to move a large circle around on his targeting display clicking a trigger on his control stick as he moved it in a circle about 30 meters from where Agent Miller was hiding." Once he had the position completely surrounded with highlighted rings he spoke again. "Confirm targets."
The rings on the screen went from green to red. "Targets confirmed."
"Weapons release, Fox Two," Chuck gave the command to initiate combat. In rapid succession 10 missiles dropped from the missile bay. The Wildcard system immediately replaced the expended munitions by pulling 10 cluster warheads from its inventory and marrying them to 10 missle bodies and feeding them out of the replenishment system back into the Dragon's missile bays. Two seconds later a ring of fire and steel surrounded the location Agent Miller was hiding. Each missile had exploded at 30 feet above the ground a creating a 20 meter diameter swath of death beneath them. This killed the closest hostiles outright, and wounded many more. Seconds later Chuck hit the trigger on his control stick while saying, "Guns, guns, guns" as the GAU-8 cannon on the centerline of the plane spat fire making the plane look like its namesake. Chuck throttled up to compensate for the recoil. He released the trigger and pitched up into a turn bringing the plane back around to perform the same run on the opposite side of Miller's hiding place. A quick check of the imagery from the IR camera feeds showed that she was now rolled up into a tight little ball all thought of running out into the melee forgotten. Extending his turn he strafed the remaining two sides in short order, using the VTOL systems to reduce his turning radius and bring him on target faster while slowing down. By this point he had his 100 meters according to the feeds and the hostiles regrouping back from his kill zone. He really didn't want to think about how many people he'd just killed. Time for that later.
"We're going in," he told Sarah as he brought the Dragon to a hover with its rear ramp facing toward the small concrete storage shed Agent Miller had hidden in about 10 meters away. Sarah got ready to go retrieve her friend.
The second they touched the ground Sarah was running for the back of the plane. She quickly found the storage locker right where Chuck said it would be, and pulled one of the three duffels that were stored there. It was lighter than she expected when he'd said bomb suit, but it was bulky and still not something she would consider featherweight. "All set, drop the ramp," she told Chuck over the com system. The ramp immediately dropped a whole lot faster than she'd ever seen it drop before. The second it hit the ground she was off running again, and the door closed behind her and she could feel the VTOL throttling up and lifting off the dust giving her visual cover as she began the 20 meter run to the shed. She felt as well as heard when the gun started firing again. But she had a job to do.
Sarah approached the shed carrying the duffel over her left shoulder, and a Smith and Wesson 5902 pistol in her right hand at near run. As she approached the door, she flipped up her helmet's visor and called out to the occupant, "Carina, are you in there? It's Sarah."
"Stay back," came a voice form inside. "Come any closer and I'll shoot you.
Anna's voice spoke over the com, "Sarah, she doesn't appear to have a gun, but she does look like she has either a knife or a maybe a baton, it's hard to tell from this angle."
"No you won't Carina, because I'm here to get you out of this mess, just like all the other ones I've gotten you out of. Remember Rio? So put down that knife and let me come in and help you."
"Sarah, is that really you?" came from inside.
"Yes it is, now I'm coming in before I get shot." She made it inside and out of the line of fire just as a bullet hit the wall in front of where she had been standing at about head height. "Ok, that was too close. Remind me to kick your ass later for nearly getting me killed trying to rescue you because you didn't want to let me in."
Suddenly there was a massive explosion from about where she guessed the sniper that shot at her had to be hiding.
"Whatever," was Carina's reply. "So, is that a friend of yours in whatever that monster airplane is?"
"You could say that," Sarah said as she removed the bulbous armor suit from the duffel bag and read the instructions on the side. 'Seems simple enough' she thought.
"You don't call and you don't write, then suddenly it's help they're going to kill me," she said as she quickly dragged the suit over to Carina. "Here, put this on."
"Like you're one to talk Sarah, and I am not wearing that," Carina protested. "I will not be seen looking like the Michelin man."
"Carina put on the suit," Sarah said looking her in the eyes with a glare that absolutely defied any argument.
"Aw, why do you get the cool modern day Valkyrie look, and I have to look like the Pillsbury Dough boy?" Carina complained as she picked it up and read the directions.
"Because I had to wait three weeks for mine and you gave us 45 minutes notice that you were about to get killed. Be thankful we could get here at all. You're just lucky you caught us where we were when the alarm came in."
Carina had read the directions and with Sarah's help began pulling on the suit. "At least it's lighter than it looks, is this going to stop anything?"
"Supposedly it's better protection than the armor I'm wearing. I'm supposed to use you for walking cover when we extract. They say it'll take a 50 BMG and you'll laugh about it afterwards."
"The 'they' in your statement, do you trust them?"
"Given that they've already saved my life twice, yes," was Sarah's response.
"Well I trust you, but remember if I get dead doing this I will haunt that fine ass of yours," Carina replied with a smirk adjusting the sizing of the suit.
"And there's the Carina we all know and tolerate," said Sarah with a smile at her friend and handing her the full helmet that went with the suit.
"And there goes my hair," Carina complained as she put the helmet on.
"Trust me you were already having a bad hair day," Sarah replied. "Think if it like a baseball cap."
"Right, did you hit your head on the way here?" asked Carina.
Ignoring her friend she said. "Hammer we're ready for pickup."
"Roger that Valkyrie, pickup in 10," was Chuck's reply. "You can thank Agent Miller for your new call sign. I think it fits pretty well myself."
"Oh I am so going to kick your ass," Sarah rounded on Carina.
As soon as Sarah had left the Dragon, Chuck had hit the hatch controls and then lifted off vertically circling away from the building firing the cannon in a sweeping spiral around the two spies on the ground. He continued to use the gun as he swept around the ever increasing buffer zone.
Suddenly Anna's voice broke in over the com system. "Hammer, sniper coordinates on screen."
He swung the Dragon around as he painted the snipers hide on his targeting display. "Missile system select, hyperbaric, confirm target."
"Target confirmed."
"Weapons release, fox two."
A missile was released from the bay and a second later, a hyperbaric warhead went off right on top of the hide. The sniper was now burnt paste, if the overpressure didn't kill him the fire would. 'Yeah, I'm definitely going to have to see the doc today.'
He continued interdicting the hostile force, and took out another sniper nest. After a couple of minutes Anna's voice came in over the com system again, "Well Hammer your girlfriend just got her call sign, and it's so awesome."
"Oh God," he began. "How did this happen."
"Actually Carina came up with it. She was complaining about how she looked like the Pillsbury Dough boy and Sarah looked like a modern day Valkyrie. We've voted back here, and she is now and forever more Valkyrie."
"You know that really does kind of fit." Chuck said with a smile.
At that moment he heard, "Hammer, we're ready for pickup.
"What did I do?" Carina backpedaled wondering if the suit would stop an enraged Sarah Walker.
"They heard you calling me a modern day Valkyrie, and guess who now has a new call sign?"
"Then you should be thanking me, that's a pretty cool call sign, if I do say so myself," Carina said miming like she was buffing her fingernails on the front of the fat suit.
Sarah stopped in her advance on Carina, and after thinking about it decided it could have been a lot worse. "Ok, you can live this time."
They heard and felt the Dragon come in for a landing right in front of the door. Carina came out first with Sarah taking cover behind her, switching to in front of her as the angles changed. Several rounds hit Carina as she waddled towards the ramp. Sarah fired her pistol back, not really expecting to hit anything at these ranges, mostly just trying to back them off with her muzzle flash. And then they were up the ramp.
"We're in," Sarah reported, and the ramp came up nearly as fast as it had gone down. The intercom came alive so that Carina could hear. "Hang on to something back there, Elevator going up."
In the cockpit Chuck engaged vertical thrust and brought the Dragon off the ground, then slowly transitioned to level flight and started to climb away at an even gentler acceleration than a commercial airliner to keep his passengers from getting hurt. Once he reached 10,000 feet he leveled out and pointed toward the rendezvous with the Clipper. He called back to Sarah and Agent Miller, "Valkyrie get Agent Miller out of that armor suit and both of you come up here and get strapped in please."
In the back of the plane, Sarah helped Carina out of the armor then stuffed it back into the compartment it had come out of. She then led the way forward to the cockpit and Chuck.
A/N 2: Hope you enjoyed the ride. Next time more Carina. 'nuff said.