Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, and this wouldn't happen in the normal world.

When she realised that there was no way she was going to get out of this, Carina said. "OK, let's go up to your place, because I'm going to need alcohol for this, lots of alcohol."

Chuck and Sarah looked at each other, wondering whether they really wanted to know this but they agreed with one of the looks that drove the others around the bend (because they still couldn't understand how they communicated so much with just a look), and Sarah turned back to her, saying "OK, come on."

Up in the penthouse, they settled down in the living room, Carina with a line of bottles in front of her and Chuck and Sarah sharing a pitcher of a non-alcoholic fruity drink that Chuck had made up (Sarah told him that there was nothing stopping him from drinking, but he didn't want her to be not drinking alone). Carina downed her first drink and refilled her glass before looking at them and asking "So, what do you want to hear?"

Sarah settled back into Chuck's arms and said "Why don't you start with how it was that Casey took you home to meet his dying mother?" Carina nodded and, downing half of her second drink, started.

"It was about four years ago, just after Prague, we'd gotten back together so I could make it up to him for leaving him handcuffed to the bed in his boxers and sending the picture to everyone. He'd made a dick move with something he'd said to me, but I went totally overboard with my reaction to that, so I was feeling a little guilty."

Sarah cut in at that point. "Why didn't I hear anything about this other than getting that picture?"

"You were stuck with that bastard Larkin and were having a hell of a time with him, so we hardly had a chance to talk at the time, that may have been why I went off the deep end at Johnny. Anyway, while we were together, Johnny got a call to say that his mother was in hospital and they didn't expect her to last the month out." She stopped to down another drink and top off her glass.

"Johnny started talking about how she'd always worried that he'd be alone with no-one to look out for him, and how he hated her going thinking that she'd left him all alone, because she was the only family he had. It was probably the amount of alcohol we'd drunk, but somehow we came up with the idea that he'd take me home to meet her so he could tell her that he had someone now, and she wasn't leaving him alone."

"Anyway, so we fly home to this little town in the mid-west and I get myself a whole new girl next door wardrobe before we go to see her, and she sees straight through the act as soon as I walk in the door. The woman was on her death bed and we just about gave her a heart attack by trying to convince her that her only son was shacked up with a Jezebel."

"There was an upside to the story, though, because seeing him with me gave her the resolve to live, and get him back on the straight and narrow, so she was back on her feet and out of hospital within two weeks. Since then they've been talking quite often and she's still holding up well for her Johnny Boy." The others gave her a weird look at that and she grinned.

"Why do you think I call him Johnny? He was the third generation of Alex Coburn, and his father had hated being called Junior so much that there was no way he was going to do that to his son, so they called him by his middle name, John, or Johnny Boy to be more precise."

Sarah nodded at that "Well, that's one mystery cleared up, now, how did you and Leslie get together, I thought Mei would have protected him from your predatory ways?"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence sis! We became friends before we did anything else! Actually, Chuck's probably a lot of the reason that that happened."

That made Chuck sit up "What? What did I do?"

"You're you, and you make people want to be better. Leslie was a mess after what the CIA did to him for sixteen years, and he didn't know anything about the world outside of a bunker, so after I got past his fear of me coming after him that someone had put in his head (glaring at Sarah), we started taking him out to see the world."

"Mei came with us sometimes, but it wasn't really her scene, so quite often it was just Leslie and me, and we had a great time. He's a great guy, smart, funny, caring," (She looked at Sarah "Remind you of anyone sis?")

"So he started asking me why I went out to pick up guys in clubs, and I ended up telling him a bit of why I can't sleep alone, which led to him making the same offer that you did, sharing his bed to keep the demons away." (She looked at Sarah again. "And yes, I kept to the must wear pyjamas rule with him when he did that for me.")

"We were just sleeping at first, and he was doing a great job of keeping the demons at bay, he still is actually, we talk every night before I go to sleep and I hardly ever get the nightmares, but we started getting more affectionate, and after we'd accepted the fact that we cared about each other, things went from there."

"So who knows about you guys?"

"Johnny, of course, I talked to him about whether I was doing the right thing when we were starting and he was really supportive, Mei, and Zondra, because she's there when he calls at night. Chuck's parents, or his mother at least, know something's going on, but I'm pretty sure that they think it's just sex."

It was the first full Sarah smile that either of them had seen from her lately when she said "I'm really happy for you, both of you!" That got a shy smile from Carina as she said "Thanks sis."

Chuck spoke up next. "So how did I miss the fact that my sister is having a romance going on right under my nose?"

Carina looked at him "You heard me telling Johnny, you're working flat out all the time trying to keep Operations Command, the Special Projects team, the Intersect team, and Piranha running smoothly, and make time for the girls and Sarah. I know from Sarah's bitching about it that as soon as she goes to sleep, you get up and go back to work in the boudoir, hell, you even missed the fact that your wife was pregnant for three months! How is it a surprise that you didn't see what's going on with Ellie when you hardly have a chance to talk to her nowadays?"

Chuck slumped at that and Carina jumped in. "I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong Chuckie, it's just that you've been burning the candle at both ends and working yourself to death, so it's hardly surprising that you're not seeing what's going on around you."

Chuck nodded tiredly and asked "Are they happy together?"

Carina nodded. "They seem to be, Rick is in Ellie's room most nights and they're together when we go out clubbing, he's a good guy Chuck, Ellie's laughing and enjoying herself and he's looking out for her."

Chuck nodded again, a little more positively this time, and turned to Sarah. "I did see that you were changing, actually, but I thought that you were putting on a little weight because you weren't getting a chance to exercise, and I didn't want to upset you so I didn't say anything."

That got a laugh and a kiss from Sarah before she added. "Well, I couldn't have complained if you hadn't, because I was so stressed out over the Shaws, Forrest, your parents and everything else that I was just putting everything down to being my reaction to those things." Turning back to Carina, she asked. "So, aside from this budding romance between Casey and Mei, what else are we missing?"

Carina looked away as she filled her glass, downed it and immediately refilled it. "RED?"

"Well, Anna and Josie are sorta seeing each other, too, and Josie's worried because she doesn't know how her mother will handle finding out that she's bi."

That made Chuck and Sarah look at each other, Josie had a point, Roan wouldn't turn a hair at anything people do for fun, but Aunt D was more straight laced, as far as they knew, the wildest thing she'd ever done was getting herself knocked up by Roan in the late eighties and going against her family's wishes to have the baby out of wedlock. Even there, she'd given Josie up to a married cousin to raise as her own until Josie found out that she was adopted when she was in her mid teens, so yes, Aunt D was likely to be the problem there.

Chuck shook his head as he picked up his glass to drink and jokingly asked. "So, Vicky or Zondra aren't with Jeff or Vincent?"

When Carina's response was "No, they're just friends with benefits most of the time." He sprayed what he was drinking across the coffee table. "WHAT?"

"What do you mean, what? A girl has needs you know, and they're much better off with a nice guy that they like than some random douche that she picks up in some club. From what the girls tell me, Jeff's actually very good in bed, he really knows how to show a girl a good time. And he likes to cuddle, do you know how hard it is to find a guy who's happy to just cuddle instead of getting his rocks off? They say that Vincent's quieter, but he's caring and considerate, he sounds like Johnny actually, which isn't a bad thing, I can tell you."

Chuck and Sarah looked at each other, and Chuck was regretting asking now.

"Why are you acting as if it's so strange that we've all been hooking up within the group? We're all living and working together pretty much twenty four seven because you've been dragging us along with you as you rush around saving the world. And in case you didn't notice it Chuckles, you tend to attract interesting people to you. So when we're given a choice between the interesting and exceptional people that you've surrounded yourself with, and we're comfortable with, and random strangers that we pick up in clubs, it's not that surprising that we go with the devil we know, is it?"

"OK, I've filled you in on the rest of the crew, now it's your turn, who was Ellie talking about when she went off at Bry about telling the one he really cares about how he feels?"

Chuck asked "What do you mean?"

"When your father was being a douche after you saved him, Johnny told me that Ellie let Bry off the hook on not trying to make your parents see what you were going through because of your father's petty jealousies, but she did have a go at him about forgetting about the bitch that took his daughter and left him and telling the one he really cared about what be felt, who is she?"

Sarah looked at Chuck in confusion and Chuck grimaced. Sarah said "You know, don't you?"

Chuck nodded at that. "Yeah, she was talking about your mom. Apparently she was falling apart after your father took you away, and Uncle Bry would call and see her whenever he could to make sure she was OK, because he cared so much about her and it killed him to see her hurting that way. Aunt D told us that he'd always cared for her, but he wasn't going to make a move on her because she was a married woman up until a year or two after your father took you and left."

"The problem was, he was sent back to the States for convalescent leave around that time and he got Kim's mother pregnant, and he married her to do the right thing, so by the time your Mom stopped being married, he was. Lenie, Kim's mom, got tired of waiting for him to come back from his missions overseas and divorced him when Kim was about eleven or twelve, getting re-married straight away to some sleazy business tycoon, but Bry's sense of duty still made him put aside what he wanted because he thought that that was what he should do for Kim's sake. From what Aunt D told us, though, he's never stopped caring for your mom or seeing her whenever he could to make sure she was OK. So yeah, it was your mom that Ellie was telling him to tell the truth about his feelings to."

"Does Mom know about this?"

"From what Aunt D told us, the attraction was never one sided, but she had the same hang-ups about the sanctity of marriage that he did, and she respected his choice to stay single for Kim."

That made Sarah run through the mental footage of the two of them together in her head, and she registered what she'd been filtering out before, all the looks, smiles, touches, hugs that they shared whenever they were together. She looked at him when she'd finished and nodded. "Yeah, they're right, Mom and Bry are into each other, I think I need to talk some sense into my mother."

Chuck raised an eyebrow at that, so she qualified her statement. "He's a wonderful man, and they both deserve their fair share of happiness, I may not be in a position to slap sense into Bry, but I can try with Mom."

At that Carina stood up, staggering a little, and slurred out "OK, my work is done, and I think it's time for me to go to bed." Sarah smiled indulgently at her, but when she took in the empty litre bottle of hundred proof vodka and almost empty tequila bottle in front of her she looked at Chuck. He nodded with a smile and said "I'll make sure she gets to bed OK."

With that he put his arm around Carina and led her to the elevator after she'd given Sarah a sloppy kiss goodnight. As he was undressing her in her room, Carina asked him if she was being selfish, wanting the fairytale for herself? He answered "Of course not.", and then after he'd gotten her clothes off and slid her into bed, he sat on the side of the bed and brushed her hair out of her face.

"You two have had a bad deal from life up to now, far worse than you deserve, so if you can find happiness together, it's nothing less than either of you deserve." He leaned over to kiss her goodnight, said "Night, Red." and got up to leave. When he turned to the door, Zondra was leaning against the door frame, smiling at him. He quietly shut the door behind him and Zondra said "You know, we didn't do too bad for a brother-in-law." Chuck smiled and gave her a hug at that, and Zondra nodded to the door. "I take it from that that you know about her and Leslie now?"

Chuck gave a wry grin, saying "Yeah, she forgot to turn off her mic when she was driving back with Casey, so we found out lots of things that have been going on that we didn't know about. She was just upstairs filling us in on the situation, but given that she also went through about two litres of high proof liquor, she's likely to be feeling sorry for herself in the morning." That got a low laugh and agreement out of Zondra, and with another hug and a kiss goodnight Chuck went back to the penthouse.

Chuck had been continuing on with his task of mining the CIA's backup archives for anything that Graham may have left, and also for anything relating to Graham's known associates, like the Acting DCI. He'd been filling in a lot of holes, but there wasn't really enough to formally indict Graham's puppet yet, and that work was slowed down by the amount of time Chuck was having to spend working on getting all of the intel out of Keller at the moment.

Chuck was putting Keller through at least one or two interrogation sessions a day, but after two weeks the end still wasn't anywhere near in sight, as he'd determined out at the cottage that night, Keller was a gold mine of intel on the Ring and other nefarious activities. There was one thing that worried Chuck, though, he kept referring to Graham in the present tense, even when Chuck had clarified that he was, in fact, referring to Langston Graham.

The references to Graham being alive made Chuck go back through all the footage of the morning when Graham brought ten CIA agents into the Intersect facility to load the Intersect, and from what he could see on the security cam footage, it had certainly looked like Langston Graham who had gone into that room, just before they were all fried.

But now there were doubts, because the powers that be had decided that there was no point in going to the extraordinary lengths that it would have taken to extract DNA evidence from the charred corpses that were left in that room when they had video evidence of who had gone into the room before everything was fried to a crisp. So now they had to decide what to believe, a man talking under torture, or the evidence that everyone else had accepted at the time?

It eventually took nearly a month to get everything that they thought that they were going to get out of Keller, and then they let Casey do what he'd been wanting to do since he heard about Keller's plans for Alex, process him appropriately.

As Chuck had been extracting what Keller knew, the others had been following up on the leads he supplied. One advantage that they had was that the other side obviously presumed that Keller had been killed along with all his men (because none of them had ever turned up in any NSA black sites, and there was no hope of identifying any bodies that the cleaners processed), and they hadn't bothered clearing out the facilities and groups that Keller knew about. That meant that the team had a lot of live leads to follow up, and they were making quite a bit of headway.

After Chuck had finished with Keller, the DNI requested Director Hanson to come in for an off the books meeting that no-one else in the CIA was to know about. Given that Hanson had his own concerns about the way that the CIA was being run, it didn't take much for him to agree.

When Hanson arrived at the location that he'd been directed to and was escorted into the room, though, he found three people waiting for him, the Director of National Intelligence, General Diane Beckman and Special Agent Carmichael. The DNI stood up and walked over to greet him with a handshake. "Good to see you Director Hanson, I believe you know General Beckman and Admiral Carmichael?"

The conversation stopped there as Hanson's head swivelled between the DNI and Carmichael "ADMIRAL Carmichael?" The DNI faltered as he realised that he'd put his foot in it, he turned to Chuck and said "Sorry Chuck, I sometimes forget that people don't know who you are, especially given that Director Hanson is here as your nomination."

Turning back to Hanson, "Why don't you have a seat Director Hanson and we'll fill you in on our mystery man."

Taking a seat himself, the DNI brought up an image on screen of Chuck in full dress uniform being inducted into his role as Commander, Operations Command. "The man you know as Special Agent Carmichael, and Mowgli, is also Rear Admiral Charles Carmichael, Commander of Operations Command, which is nominally under Special Operations Command and Cyber Command, and has formal liaisons with the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and the Joint Chiefs." Hanson stopped him moving the picture on to ask about the medals, the DNI just said "Yes, they're all real, he won the combat medals as Mowgli, but he doesn't like talking about them."

He went on "Admiral Carmichael is, as you know, the Special Agent in Charge of the NSA's Intersect team, but he's also the Special Agent in Charge of the DIA's Special Project team, and the Station Chief of the NSA/DIA Glendale Station, which gives him the authority and influence to do more than most people attached to the government realise."

"Which brings us to why you're here, as a result of the mission that Agent Carmichael's team had to do with Daniel Shaw, he began an operation to retrieve the intel relating to DCI Graham from places that hadn't been cleaned out. As a result of that operation, we now have better intelligence on what Graham was actually up to, and also who was working with him."

With that the DNI brought up what Chuck had extracted about the Acting DCI, Director Hanson didn't get to his position by being naive or stupid, and he could easily understand what he was seeing. The Acting DCI was in bed with the Ring. He brought his attention back to the DNI, who had taken in the fact that he'd recognised what he was seeing.

"Yes, the Acting DCI has to go, we don't have the evidence together yet to move on him, but when we do, we'll need a replacement who will uphold the ideals as that the office is supposed to. That's why you're here Director Hanson, Admiral Carmichael has proposed you as that replacement, and after having investigated your background, the President and I have decided to support his nomination, if you're interested in the position?"

Hanson was looking from the DNI, to Carmichael, and back. 'CARMICHAEL had nominated him, and that was the reason he was being offered the position of the DCI by the DNI and the President? Just how much power did this guy have? According to the records that he'd been able to locate Carmichael was only thirty five, though he didn't look anything like that, how could a guy in this mid thirties have the ear of the most powerful people in the country?'

He was brought out of his musing by the DNI "Director Hanson? Would you accept the position of Director of Central Intelligence if we offered it to you once it's vacant?"

"Sorry sir, yes, it would be an honour to serve as the DCI if you see fit to offer the position to me."

The DNI nodded, handing the gavel, so to speak, over to the General to fill Hanson in on recent events. When she brought up the recent trace cell mission, Hanson interrupted to ask Chuck just what he'd done to that guy. Chuck waved it off as a localised nerve strike that had no effect on anything other than arousal and erectile function, saying that he knew that he shouldn't have done it, but he'd been angry about the comments being made about what he'd like to do to his wife. "Wife?" Aunt D stepped in, still not happy about the incident. "Yes, Agent Walker is Agent Carmichael's wife."

Hanson laughed at that, but when he saw the looks he explained. "I could see that you two are together, but I never dreamed that you were actually married." He took another look at the expressions in the room and added "Don't get me wrong, I think it's great what you did, I've got two teenage daughters that I worry about all the time, if more of those animals were turned off, the world would be a better place!"

The DNI chuckled and brought up the group photo from Chuck's wedding, pointing out the girls and saying "These are Admiral Carmichael's daughters" "This is his sister" (pointing to Ellie), "and these are Colonel Carmichael's sisters", pointing to Carina, Zondra and Molly.

When Hanson looked confused and asked "Colonel Carmichael?" the DNI grimaced. "Sorry, I've done it again", he brought up the image of Sarah's induction as the Deputy Commander. "Agent Walker is also United States Air Force Colonel Sarah Carmichael, Deputy Commander of Operations Command, and she manages the Operations group in Operations Command"

He stopped to think for a moment and then brought up the group photo of the OC's senior officers, pointing each out as he talked. "While we're getting this out of the way, The Admiral's sister is Navy Captain Eleanor Charlemagne, managing the Information Dominance group in Operations Command. Agent Casey is a Marine Colonel directing operations, Agent Miller and Agent Rizzo are Navy Commanders directing operations, Agent Mills is an Army Colonel directing operations, and Colonel Carmichael's mother is a Navy Commander under Captain Charlemagne, it's sort of a family affair in the team."

Hanson realised something else about this, and the DNI nodded "Yes, Director Hanson, you're in too deep to back out now."

With that, they went back to filling Hanson in on the recent activities and the implications, informing him that the Trace Cell had just been a cover for blackmailing someone into stealing something for the Ring, and that the request for the Intersect team to do it had come from the Acting DCI. That prompted Hanson to remember that the Acting DCI had originally instructed him to get Shaw to work with the team as well.

This led into the General bringing up the fact that the DCI had requested the team for another mission in D.C. the following week, and in light of what had been happening, that didn't bode well. They wound up the meeting with Director Hanson getting direct contact details for all of them, and him giving the undertaking to try and quietly find out something about this upcoming mission within the CIA.

The next week, even though none of them had managed to track down any intel on what was being planned, they found out exactly what it was about. The other side had apparently decided that the team was causing too much disruption to their plans, so they'd scraped together most of their heavy hitters, senators on oversight committees, a few three and four star Generals and senior agency people, enough to ensure that they made up over two thirds of the "committee", under the direction of a four star General, General Merriweather, to preside over a kangaroo court to put the entire team behind bars.

The Ring, or whoever it was was running with this, had played their cards well, they arranged for Chuck, Casey and Carina (they couldn't force Sarah to go on a mission, with her pregnancy at the advanced stages as she was, but they discounted her as a threat because of that) to come to a given room for the briefing meeting, but when they entered, it was effectively a courtroom, and they were held at gunpoint as they were disarmed and relieved of their phones.

At the same time, an military escort burst into Aunt D's office and took her straight from there to the "court room" without any chance of her contacting anyone. This was apparently all set up as an attempt at an end run around the DNI, and therefore the President, to disappear the team (including the General), before anyone could do anything about them.

What the Ring didn't realise, of course, was that her assistant was onto the DNI's private line as soon as they were out of the office, or that Bry, Zondra, Mei, Vincent, Rick, Vicky and Mary were in town with a sixteen man platoon of the most able bodied of the Operations Command staff to form a strike team to back them up, and Sarah, Ellie, Emma, Jeff, Anna, Leslie and Stephen were there to follow the trails and determine how to get them out. As soon as the General's assistant called the DNI, he notified the others and they leapt into action to try and find them.

Inside the "court room", the proceedings were going as expected for a kangaroo court, they were given no opportunities to present any evidence to refute any of the charges against them. The Ring also trotted out Clyde Decker as the special agent who'd supposedly been investigating the group for years now to unsettle them.

Decker kept hanging around their table making quiet threats about what he was going to do to Sarah and their families in an attempt to get a reaction out of Chuck and Casey, but he wasn't making them worried and unsettled, he was giving them something to focus their anger on, big mistake!

They brought up the damage that Chuck did to Johnson, the one who'd been trying to blackmail Sarah into being a sex slave for him and the others, as well as what he'd done to the CIO and the threats he'd made to the CEO before he'd turned up dead, along with what Sarah did to the other two that had been in on it.

The issue of what Chuck did to the one who was describing how he wanted to do Sarah after the Trace Cell mission came up as "evidence" of how unstable Chuck was, citing his "unprovoked" attack of the CIA official, as was Carina's outburst in that meeting.

They also brought up what Sarah did to Shaw when she killed him, and showed medical reports and doctored footage which gave the impression that Chuck, Sarah and Casey had been instrumental in Larkin's death, after they'd attacked him.

The fabricated or doctored evidence was laying it on pretty thick that all four of them were involved in unjustified deaths and attacks in many instances, and they were claiming that the General had been fabricating evidence to cover up their "killing sprees" and activities to keep her team viable.

The "straight" members of the committee who made up the court (who had been told was merely an informal hearing) kept asking to see the other evidence that the General and the team were talking about, but were being overruled every time, and they weren't allowed to stand down and leave because the proceedings had already started.

The outcome of the "hearing" was a foregone conclusion, pretty much from the start, so at the end any dissenters on the committee were overruled, and they were all sent away to be locked up pending sentencing. The problem at that point was that the General was taken somewhere separate from the others, as she was deemed to be the one who needed to be hidden from the DNI and the authorities, to the Ring the others were considered to be little more than her foot soldiers.

Her separation from the others unfortunately meant that when Jeff, Anna and co engineered a brief power outage as Chuck, Casey and Carina were being escorted to their cells, Aunt D was still trapped elsewhere. As soon as the lights went out, Chuck, Casey and Carina had no trouble overpowering their guards and took off. They followed the flashing lights directing them to their exit point, ducking into rooms that they opened or indicated at the times when the search parties were getting close to them.

When they got out of the CIA facility, Bry, Zondra, Mei and Vincent were there waiting in an armed (and armoured) electric stealth transport that was the latest creation from Novatech. By that stage, they were all quite prepared to wage all out war on the CIA and its minions, but there was no need to, as once the three had hopped in and the transport was closed up, they just rolled away silently and invisibly, and as far as the CIA could see they'd just disappeared as soon as they left the building.

They slipped back to one of the hidden Novatech labs where the others were waiting, and once the three of them had been reunited with their significant others, Chuck took over the search for Aunt D. As good as the others were, this was the Piranha's world, and he'd identified her location and taken control of the security system so that they could communicate with her inside an hour and a half.

That was where they had their first win in this thing, because with the ego that Decker had, he hadn't been able to resist boasting about what they were going to do. What she managed to pass on to them before someone started heading for the cell again was that it appeared that she was actually the prime target for this operation, and they'd apparently just wanted to get Chuck and the team out of the way to prevent them from interfering with their objective.

Aunt D had been selected, as the senior inter agency representative of the the American intelligence communities, to chair an intelligence conference that was coming up in a couple of days in D.C. which was hosting the heads of the world's intelligence communities. That was why the Ring's representatives had needed to take her out, so that they could replace her with their own man (Decker), because they had big plans for that conference.

The ring already had their people in positions of power throughout the world's intelligence communities, the intent with this conference was to stage a coup that would wipe out any significant figures that weren't bought and paid for, by way of a fake terrorist attack at the Conference. They planned to replace the ones they killed with their minions, and as a result, get control of the world's intelligence communities. Once they controlled the intelligence communities, they could influence their governments enough to make them do what they wanted, and the truly frightening thing about their plan was that, unless someone managed to stop them here, they would succeed.

There was another nugget that was unearthed in Decker's boasting though, and Aunt D wasn't sure that he'd realised that he'd let it slip. All of the Ring Elders were actually going to be there at the conference, as they were all the heads of intelligence agencies in Europe and the Soviet Block, and they had decided to be there to witness the crowning achievement of their plan for domination over their weaker adversaries.

They kept the link up to keep an eye on Aunt D, so that they could intervene if any moves were made against her, and Chuck slipped out to fill the DNI in on what was happening and organise the forces that they would need to ward this off. Chuck already had the connections to bring in enough special forces teams to take out the fake terrorists and any other forces that the Ring could front, and he'd made the calls to organise them and ensure that they'd be here in time before he went to the DNI.

The DNI was needed to fill in the President and the people that they knew were part of the good guys, so that when it all came down, they'd have the official support needed to prevent a bloodbath when legitimate forces reacted to what was happening.

He also had to make arrangements for the arrest of the significant Ring figures who'd been outed by the Ring's kangaroo court, Keller's testimony and other items uncovered, people like the National Security Advisor, the Deputy Director of the NSA, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Acting Director of Central Intelligence, General Merriweather and the others that the Ring planted on the committee for the kangaroo court. Clyde Decker would be arrested, but that had to be after Chuck and the others took him down.

To deal with Decker and the Elders, they had to be inside the Conference, so they went looking for suitable people to take over their invites from. It didn't take too long to identify one female and one male attendee who weren't coming, but were close enough to Zondra and Chuck for them to use their identities. Chuck removed any records or indications that they weren't going, inserted travel details that would get them there in time from their official departure points, and amended the details on file so that they would have no problems with getting in, while Jeff and Anna ensured that Carina, Mei, Vincent, Rick and Vicky could get in the back way without being detected.

Casey and Bry would be coming in the front doors with the Special Ops teams as soon as they'd taken out the Ring forces who were pretending to be terrorists. It had been decided that they were the best known after Chuck with those guys, and that well known faces would make the troops more comfortable with staging a military strike inside the government facilities.

By the time the conference started, they had everything in place, and Zondra and Chuck had no trouble getting in with their assumed identities of the missing (Spanish and Russian respectively) representatives. It was easy for Zondra to distract Decker with a little cleavage as she slipped a phone into his pocket, and then she covered Chuck as he reconfigured the Audio Visual system to accept a feed from Decker's office.

Once the A/V system was reconfigured, Chuck headed to Decker's office to set it up to provide the requisite feeds, while Zondra went to make sure that the others got in OK (and to get the tactical gear and proper weapons that they'd brought in for her, once she'd changed into the gear and armour, she was a lot better prepared for the fight that they were expecting).

When Decker took the stage for his fifteen minutes of fame, Chuck smirked to himself as he called him to tell him that they were on to him and that he knew that the Ring Elders were there. He kept pushing Decker's buttons until he'd sent warnings to the Elders to make sure that they got away. Decker also sent messages to the other Ring agents to go with them to protect the Elders, that wasn't part of the plan, but they had enough people down there to deal with them.

Decker was feeling pretty pleased with himself once he'd gotten the Elders away safely, and he asked Chuck where he was? Chuck enjoyed taunting him a little, saying that he was in his office, of course, knowing that he'd come after him. When Decker got there, he entered the office cautiously, but was confident that he could handle an analyst like Carmichael, so he didn't attack him straight away, as he wanted to find out everything he knew before he killed him (as planned).

Chuck was enjoying playing Decker, feeding him all the right prompts so that he felt compelled to dispel Chuck's misconceptions about what had been achieved, and by whom (as he had to feel important). Chuck gave him just what he needed to making him keep boasting about everything that he and the Ring had done. When he'd given up all the intel needed to prove their case against him, and the Ring, beyond any shadow of a doubt, Chuck interrupted him, hitting a few keys as he asked him how the Ring was doing for technical specialists? As he turned the screen around to face Decker, he thanked him, because without his help they wouldn't have been able to convince everyone else of the truth of what was going on.

When Decker saw himself on the screen, he realised how well Chuck had played him, and just how much he'd given up about the Ring. At that he pulled his pistol and started emptying it in Chuck's direction. Chuck dived below the edge of the desk, working his way around to pop out around the corner of the desk and put a bullet into Decker's shoulder and make him drop his pistol. He quickly tranqed him and secured him, collecting his pistol and magazines before taking out the phones and shorting out the locks to make sure that he'd remain there as he ran out to help the others.

By this stage, the Elders were trying to make their escape via the rear stairs, but they found Carina, Vincent, Rick and Vicky waiting for them. When the fifteen or so Ring agents that had gone with the Elders to protect them drew their weapons and started firing, they started going down pretty quickly as the team was entrenched with assault rifles and armour.

As soon as they saw what was happening, the Elders and the rear guard turned around to head back, but they found their way blocked by Zondra and Mei, and Chuck, who'd just arrived with a pistol in each hand, so they were fighting on two fronts. All the guards were down soon after that, either dead or wounded.

While the Elders and the guards were being secured, Chuck went back to Decker's office to collect him, and they all went out the way the others had come in. They were going to extract everything they knew, but it wasn't going to be done in any official capacity, because few of the methods that they'd be using would be even remotely legal.

That wasn't something that Chuck or the others were really comfortable with, but playing by the rules when the other side had nothing but disdain for those rules was just a recipe for failure, and failure in this had far reaching consequences that were too severe to take the risk.

They couldn't leave D.C. immediately, because they had to have meetings with the President, and the foreign dignitaries that they'd saved that day. Casey and Bry had collected the information and pictures of their targets from the Ring's "terrorists", and this intel, and the plan, had been shared with their targets. The President was in communication with the other heads of state in regard to the agency heads who were already bought by the Ring, and while most were cleaning house aggressively, the reaction that he got from some was a worry, in that the heads of state were obviously part of the plot.

Chuck and the team were queried about the Elders and others who'd disappeared, but the implication that that gave was just that they'd been disposed of. The DNI was the only one questioning them who knew Chuck well enough to read his expression when he gave his response, and he knew that they would be going somewhere to be processed before they were actually disposed of.

As soon as they were released, the team headed home with their guests in WT1, the enhanced Wraith version of the T1 transport aircraft. The handling was about the same, but the plasma emitters added about 50% to the cruising speed and improved the range a little, so that it could go across the country at around Mach 1.5. On top of that, it was as undetectable as the transport that had been used to get them away from the CIA building has been.

It took them a few weeks to process the Elders, Decker and the ones they'd taken with the Elders. Casey, Carina, Zondra and Vincent also had the Fulcrum Torture database loaded now, so they shared the load of interrogating them. As they extracted intel, it was passed on to the others to follow up, and within two months of the attempted coup the Ring was all but eradicated.

As far as they knew, all that was left was the dregs who'd run when the hammer came down. One thing was certain, not one of the major players that they'd identified was still holding any positions of authority, and that had caused a major shake-up of the intelligence communities around the world, as well as the United States military and politics.

The DNI had elevated Director Hanson to acting DCI as soon as his predecessor was arrested, and once the Ring clean-up operation was wound up to the powers that be's satisfaction, the senior officers and the staff who'd come to D.C. to support them were called back to attend his official induction into the position.

Of course, there were other reasons to call them to D.C. and they also had to go through the ceremonies for a Presidential Unit Citation (Navy and Marines, but the Army and Air Force people in Operations Command didn't mind), and there were also Presidential Medals of Freedom awarded and presented to the key people in the operation (awarded with distinction for Chuck and Sarah, along with additional awards of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal and National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Intelligence Cross for Chuck).

Chuck and Sarah also had sessions with the French, German and British ambassadors, because Chuck was awarded the French Legion of Honour (Commander) and the German Gold Cross of Honour for Outstanding Deeds, and was made an Honorary Military Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, and Sarah was also awarded the French Legion of Honour (Commander) and the German Silver Cross of Honour for Outstanding Deeds (as the criteria for the Gold Cross specified 'at the risk of one's life'), and was made an Honorary Military Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath. (It had been made clear to all concerned that while Chuck was the man inside, Sarah had been planning and commanding all the activities from outside.)

While others may not have agreed, those three countries had regarded their actions to be of great moment, considering that they had stopped the heads of their primary intelligence agencies being assassinated in order to replace them with the puppets of an international criminal organisation, and they wanted to show their gratitude.

The French and German ambassadors had been a little shocked when both Chuck and Sarah addressed them in perfect French and German when they were talking to them (and that Sarah was about ready to drop). The American politicians who were present were a little worried because the discussions were going too fast for them to follow, and politicians never like being out of the loop.

The politicians hadn't appreciated it when they asked what they were discussing, and Chuck told them that they were swapping recipes, but they couldn't do anything to the heroes of the hour. They appreciated it even less when the British Ambassador smiled charmingly and had his own conversation with them in fluent French, as he'd seen the reaction to the previous discussions. The actual discussions weren't about anything that concerned the government, they were around how two people of such obvious youth could have won the medals that they had (because the powers that be insisted that they attend the award ceremonies in full uniform, even though Sarah was over eight months pregnant at the time), and as usual they'd both just waved the matter off as just being in the right place at the right time (or more to the point, being in the wrong place at the wrong time).

The ambassadors had shown extreme scepticism at their responses, but then the discussions had moved onto Sarah's pregnancy and when she was due after that, and they'd extended invitations to visit their family estates with the children when they had the time. While they were certain that they hadn't been told the truth about the medals, they were enchanted with this young couple, so full of life (Sarah very much so).

After all the ceremonies were done, they piled back into WT1 and headed back to L.A. to catch up on what they'd missed doing while half of the team was tied up in D.C. playing nice with the politicians. They'd wasted a couple of days on this jaunt, but they'd ensured that the Ring was burned, which hopefully meant that they could go back to working through the issues and preparing for the babies without that hanging over their heads any more.