Disclaimer: I don't own Numb3rs or its characters, I just publish weird stories about them under the cover of a fake name.
Rating: T
Timeline: Let's stay in season 3, that feels so comfortable.
A/N: Thank you so much for your support! A special thanks goes out to 1) my boyfriend, who helped me make sure that the technical details in this story were more or less credible, and to 2) whatever55 and Guest for providing me with this excellent title. I tried to do my best with it.
Undercover
Charlie looked around the room, letting his gaze shift from one serious face to the other, and feeling his heart-rate quicken painfully. He swallowed, trying to prepare himself to assuage those expectant expressions by giving them an answer, yet not entirely sure he was about to give them the right one.
"I'll do it," he said, trying to put as much conviction in those words as he could summon and quite satisfied with the result. And he did know it was the right answer.
It was, wasn't it?
"Excuse us for a moment," Don said and stood, his face grim and his grip steely as he was pulling Charlie up at his arm and out of the room.
Charlie was so befuddled that he couldn't even protest, he only felt the heat rise to his face with embarrassment when he realized that his big brother was treating him like a child, and that not only in front of the team, but also in front of their boss, A.D. Ambrose Thorndike. However, it was only when they were out in the hallway and the door had closed behind them that his ability of speech came back.
"What are you doing?" he asked with some indignation, jerking his arm out of Don's grip.
"What am I doing?" Don gave back, just as upset. "What are you doing! Did you hear anything of what Thorndike was saying?"
Charlie clenched his jaw, preparing to fight. "I did," he said levelly.
"Oh, then I suppose you want to get killed! You did hear the part about why they're looking for a new tech geek, right? You're telling me you want to end up beaten to death like him?"
"I don't," Charlie replied. "But I also heard the part when Thorndike said that you guys would be doing everything you can to ensure my safety."
"But that's no guarantee!" Don exclaimed. "Do you have any idea how many things can go wrong in an undercover job like this?"
Charlie opened his mouth, but Don wouldn't let him reply.
"You don't!" he answered for him. "And you know why? Because this isn't your job! Last time I checked you were still a math professor, remember? So how about you leave the secret agent stuff to us, like this is supposed to work!"
Charlie forced himself to stay calm, but he couldn't ban the tremble from his voice when he asked, "And let you get killed?"
The words bore no effect other than to make Don sigh with exasperation. "You don't get it, do you? This is part of my job. I'm trained for this. You're not. So you can't let Thorndike trick you into agreeing to this. You're just a consultant, he can't make you go undercover."
"But he can make you go," Charlie insisted, remembering the words Don's boss had used few minutes earlier. I'm glad we all agree that we need to send someone undercover to fill that position; the problem will be finding someone who's not only available, but also fit to take on this job. I'm thinking that if we can't find someone better suited, you'd be a good choice, Agent Eppes, but I still think it would be better to look for a solution outside the box. He'd looked at Charlie then, and all of a sudden, it had become clear why a mere consultant had been asked to attend this meeting.
"He can make me go because I'm a federal agent!" Don shot back. "When will you get it that this is my job, and only mine?"
"Then explain to me how you wanna do this!" Charlie retorted, now just as agitated as his brother. "What are you going to do when they ask you to hack into a foreign system, or write a program to spy on their rivals?"
"I'll just have a crash course to learn the basics and then I'm gonna fake it, that's what undercover work is all about!"
"And how do you intend to do that? You can't even write code! What am I saying, you can't even read code!"
"That's why I'm going to –"
"Fake it?" Charlie interrupted him. "How long do you think that can work? Just tell me, how long do you think you can sit in front of a computer and act like you know what you're doing? An hour, two? And then what do you think they'll do to you?"
Since Don didn't find an answer to that immediately, Charlie, who'd talked himself into a rage, went on, "Face it, Don, you also lack the right training for this job, but the difference between you and me is that I am more what they're looking for than you are. I don't have to be an agent to do what they're asking of me, I just need to be good at math, and I think we can both agree that I can handle that."
He was about to return to the others, but Don held him back at his collar. "You have no idea what you're getting yourself into. These people are dangerous, and –"
Charlie jerked out of his grip and interrupted him, "And they're gonna kill you within a day if you try and pretend to be their new computer expert, and I certainly won't let that happen."
With that, he tore the door to the conference room open with force. "I'll do it," he repeated his earlier words, though now without the doubts he'd felt earlier.
Charlie's throat was dry and his conviction was wavering a little when he was sitting in the surveillance van getting the microphones taped to his body by a technician. It was a little stuffy in here, a little hot, and quite full, with Megan, Don and the two technicians with all their equipment.
"Just remember to keep to yourself and play it naive," Don said for about the third time this evening. "Talk as little as possible, and avoid talking about yourself if anyone starts a conversation with you. What's your name?"
"Cedric," Charlie replied obediently. "Cedric Elsworthy."
"What's your job?"
"I've studied computer science and had some part-time jobs at different business firms and smaller banks over the years, but I was fired once again last week due to my drinking problem."
He swallowed thickly. The words sounded as memorized as they were, artificial. A shudder ran through his body, and he wasn't sure whether it was because of the breeze chilling his bear chest and slightly sweaty back, or because this was getting serious.
Don squatted down before him, looking him intensely in the eye. "You don't have to go through with this, Charlie. Just say the word and I'll take your place. Nobody's forcing you to do anything here."
Charlie shook his head, but it took a moment until his voice came back. Yet, his mind wasn't changed. "I'll do it," he said levelly. True, now that he was actually about to go undercover, the endeavor sounded more terrifying than exciting, but it still was the most logical thing to do. He knew that Don would have much more difficulty gaining access to the data they were doing this for in the first place, and anyway, it would be almost impossible for him to act as if he had the skills that would let the group make him one of their members. No, this job was much better suited for Charlie's skill-set, so if he had to bite the bullet and step out of his comfort zone to accomplish that, so be it.
"We'll be able to hear everything on your side and you'll be able to hear me over your earpiece. Finally, it pays off that you never bothered to get a proper haircut." Charlie was inclined to force himself to smile at that, but he abandoned the effort when Don remained completely serious. "If there's anything wrong with the connection, or if anything seems fishy to you, just get out of there as calmly as you can and return to this van. David and Colby will try to make sure nothing happens to you, but they can't come too close to you, and under no circumstances can you let it show that you know them. Do you understand?"
"I'm sure it'll –"
"Yes or no, Charlie," Don interrupted him sternly, "do you understand?"
Charlie swallowed and tried to hold his brother's firm gaze as he nodded. "I understand."
Don stood. "Good," he said then.
They did another test of their devices and then, things got really serious: it was time to leave the van and enter the enemy's territory.
It took him a moment to get his bearings. The room itself was dimly lit, only the tables where the games were on were brightly illuminated. Don had told him that they had some solid proof that the cartel they were investigating was tightly affiliated with this casino, and even though they hadn't figured out yet what kind of ties lay at bottom exactly, the agents still thought that there was a good chance the group would look here for new members to recruit.
Instinctively, he tried to spot David or Colby, and when he couldn't, he had to fight a sense of panic. Then, however, Don's voice sounded over his ear-piece, telling him to get some gaming chips, and he forced himself to calm down. He knew he shouldn't look for them, so he just had to stop that and trust that they were around here somewhere.
At least following Don's instructions about appearing naive and a little lost was no challenge, even though he felt rather stupid asking his way through to the Black Jack table. Then, however, he'd made it that far and started watching, concentrating on the game and waiting both for the table to get hot and for a player to leave it so he could take their place.
He'd never been in a real casino before, and his little mistakes in its etiquette were probably rendering his character even more credible – or so Charlie told himself. As time went by, however, he felt more secure, he was winning far more than losing. Counting cards – something he'd basically only done theoretically so far – was actually working, and it was making him feel good, somehow empowered. He was actually starting to have fun, so he was a little disappointed when after what seemed only a couple of minutes, Don told him to stop and hit the bar.
Charlie did as he was told and once he'd stood up from the table and glanced at his watch, he had to take a double look. He'd really been sitting there for over an hour?
He was just looking for the least impassable path to the bar when he felt a hand at his elbow and flinched violently despite himself.
"Hey there," a man with a deep, pleasant voice was saying. "Why don't you let me buy you a drink?"
Charlie felt himself blush and wondered if this was indeed happening, or if maybe David and Colby were playing a joke on him. "I'm sorry," he stuttered. "I'm not that kind of guy."
The man laughed, then smiled disarmingly. "Believe me, I'm not that kind of guy either. But I am the kind of guy who would like to offer you a business proposition."
Then, it hit him. This had to be it, this had to be a member of the cartel. He'd almost opened his mouth to agree when he remembered Don's warning from the van – one of his many warnings, to be exact. He couldn't jump into this too quickly, he needed to stay authentic. And, if possible, not let it show that his heart was beating like crazy.
"I'm not sure I understand what you're saying," he told the man and was pretty pleased with his noncommittal answer.
"Then let me explain it to you," the man said and pulled him towards the bar. He ordered for them, but didn't wait for the drinks to arrive before he continued in a talkative mood. "I'd like to get to know you a little…?"
"Cedric," Charlie replied obediently to the unspoken question.
"Cedric," the other man repeated. "I've noticed you're pretty good at Black Jack. What's your secret?"
Charlie shrugged, trying to make it seem real. "I'm not sure I have one. Luck, I guess."
His collocutor gave him a smile of superiority. "We both know that's not true. I've been watching you. You're counting cards. And judging from your winnings, you're pretty good at it, too."
Despite himself, Charlie swallowed nervously, before he realized that it was actually the most authentic reaction there was. "Isn't counting cards forbidden?" he asked with an attempt at sounding innocent.
"Well, I'm sure that the owners, whom I'm very close with by the way, would take appropriate measures if they found out. I'm sure you wouldn't want that."
He let the threat hang in the air until Charlie felt compelled to ask, "What do you want?"
He leaned in closer to Charlie then and changed the timbre of his voice to something less menacing and more business-like. "Let's talk openly, shall we? The minute you walked in, I could tell you didn't fit in here. You're not here to party, and since you're on your own, you're not here because of peer pressure. You're not someone who just tries this out, you're here on an agenda, and when I watched you at the table, it became clear what that agenda was. You would have never set foot in here if you hadn't known you were going to win. Still, you didn't look at all comfortable with this and you clearly haven't done this before, so you're not choosing to make money this way, you have to. You're in dire need of money and you've stopped worrying about crossing lines to reach that goal."
Charlie was silent, waiting for the other one to make his final move.
"So tell me, where did you learn that?"
A little thrown off by the turn their conversation had just taken, Charlie fumbled for words in his mind. Before he'd even opened his mouth though, it occurred to him that he shouldn't just blurt out his cover story. This was what Don had told him, he needed to play a little hard-to-get. So he swallowed the words down and instead asked, "Why do you want to know?"
"As I told you before, I might have a business proposition for you. A very lucrative one in fact."
Charlie gave him a deep sigh, acting as though the decision of telling his new acquaintance was difficult instead of his intention all along. "Okay. So if I knew how to count cards, I might have learned it from a fellow student at Princeton."
"Princeton, huh?" the other man said. "Rich kid?"
Charlie shook his head. "I went there on a scholarship."
"Smart kid then, as I figured," the other one concluded and instantly became a little livelier. "That's exactly what we're looking for. So you've shown you're good at counting cards, but how are you with computers?"
Charlie gave him another shrug. "I've studied computer science, so I guess I know my way around."
"I'd like to see some of that sometime," Charlie's new acquaintance said and then, to Charlie's dismay, he downed his drink and stood from his stool. "Meet me here tomorrow morning at 11 and I'll make it worth your while."
With that, he left.
Charlie looked after him, unsure what he was supposed to do next, so he was quite glad when few seconds later, Don's voice was back in his ear. "Wait until he's gone, then finish your drink and leave. Walk back the way you came, we'll be waiting for you in the van."
"There he is," Don said when he spotted his brother in the rearview mirror. Only now that he set eyes on him did the pent-up tension leave his body.
They opened the sliding door at he side and helped him in, and the second the door closed behind him, it seemed as though someone had let out the air of an inflatable puppet. At the same time, the color was leaving Charlie's face, giving him an alarmingly pale complexion. Don, who'd been about to take his arm away again after helping his brother in, quickly decided that it couldn't hurt keeping it in place for a little longer.
"Whoa, you okay there?" he asked with rising concern.
Charlie nodded. "Just let me sit," he mumbled and Don stepped away so he could lower himself against the now closed sliding door.
Don squatted down next to him. "You okay?" he repeated.
Charlie nodded, thereby appeasing the jittery feeling in Don's stomach. "Yeah, it's just my legs that are trembling a little. It only just now occurred to me where I'd seen his face. That's the guy you suspect of having killed their former computer expert, isn't it?"
Don nodded gravely. True, he hadn't seen him, but David and Colby had both come to the same conclusion. They didn't know his name, but they assumed he was a rather high-ranking member of the cartel – and one who didn't refrain from violence. "Yeah, seems to be him."
He didn't know what to say to make this better, so he changed the subject, starting the review of their most recent operation. "Did you spot David or Colby?"
"No. They were really there?"
Don hid his grin. "Yeah, they were."
Charlie shook his head. "I'm sorry, I had no idea I would be so bad at this. I didn't even get his name, I'm sorry, I totally screwed up your investigation."
"You didn't," Don hastily assured him and put a hand on his brother's shoulder. As much as he'd been against the idea of Charlie going in that casino, he was still dismayed to hear his brother's critical account of his first undercover work. "We didn't expect you to get his name, or any other data tonight. This was just for him to invite you in."
"But I told him my cover story far too quickly, and I don't think it sounded very authentic. And I didn't find out a thing about him, I didn't even spot David or Colby, I was so fixated on not screwing this up that I wasn't aware of 99 per cent of what was going on in that room."
He stopped for a moment to breathe then and Don seized the opportunity to interrupt his soliloquy. "Charlie, listen to me: this isn't a quiz where you have to get all the answers straight. On the contrary, if you try too hard, you'll make the wrong impression on an overall level, and that's what undercover work is all about. You need to be convincing on an overall level, and that you were. You did good tonight."
Charlie frowned, but his lips twitched to a smile, the pleasure of hearing Don's praise dispelling his doubts. "You think so?"
Don nodded slowly. It was true, he still didn't like the idea of Charlie going undercover, but he couldn't deny the fact that tonight's plan had gone remarkably well. "I do," he said soberly before standing up again and stretching out a hand towards his brother. "Let's get you out of here now. You need to be sharp tomorrow."
Charlie was just ending his phone call when Don entered the room.
"Dad says hi," he told his brother before he put his phone on the kitchen counter and thus someplace where he wouldn't be tempted to take it with him the next morning. "The others left?"
Don nodded. "It's just us now." He paused for a second, taking in the apartment that the FBI had originally rented for witness protection, but that was now serving them as some kind of command center in this operation. And for Charlie and his 'room-mate' Don as a place to stay, for they couldn't take the chance of the cartel watching him and figuring out his true identity. "What did Dad have to say?"
Charlie shrugged, but was aware that it probably didn't look very natural. He really needed to improve his acting skills. "Nothing much."
"He's still angry?"
"I wouldn't say 'angry' as much as 'worried'."
Don grimaced. "Yeah, maybe concerning you." He shook his head. "I should have never agreed to letting you do this, and Dad knows it."
Charlie couldn't help it, he was a little hurt. "But everything went fine today, didn't it?"
"Yeah, but nothing's really happened today." He bit his lip, obviously thinking hard. Then, he made a decision. "Let's go over what you need to look out for tomorrow once again."
Charlie was strongly tempted to roll his eyes and ask Don to give him a break. His big brother's mother-henly behavior was getting quite tedious. Besides, it was getting late and with the adrenaline peak he'd experienced earlier dropping fast, he would have liked nothing more but get some shut-eye. When he saw the pinched look on Don's face though, he didn't dare to complain. After all, going over everything once again couldn't hurt – even if 'once again' in this case meant for about the dozenth time.
"Cedric! Glad you could make it."
Charlie forced himself to smile as he crossed the street to meet his new acquaintance in front of the now deserted casino. "Well, you really managed to make me curious. You were pretty mysterious last night, I don't think I even caught your name."
"Just call me Ben," the other one said and greeted him with a hearty handshake. "Come on in, the owner's a friend of mine, we can use one of his offices for your job interview."
Charlie frowned. "I thought you'd show me your own business today. How else are we supposed to figure out whether I have the skills you need?"
"Don't worry, we'll figure it out," Ben replied smoothly and put an arm around Charlie's shoulders to lead him inside, and Charlie couldn't quite free himself from the impression of the bogeyman taking away an unsuspecting child.
Ben led Charlie through a series of hallways through the surprisingly large basement of the casino until they'd reached a small room that contained hardly more than a desk with a computer and two chairs, but Charlie guessed that it was all they needed.
"My company does a lot of stuff concerning internet security," Ben now finally did some explaining. "Now for the purpose of this interview, let's assume that we're trying to help a bank launch a campaign to warn their users about internet crime, in this case phishing. You know what phishing is?"
"Of course. It's a form of identity theft by tricking people into giving you their personal information."
"And that's what you're going to do now." He held out a shred of paper to Charlie. "This is one of my e-mail-addresses and the name of the local branch of my bank. You are to send me an e-mail that makes me think my bank wants me to log in on their website – a website that, of course, you created to intercept that information. You've got three hours, if there are any problems, you'll find me in the room right across the hall. Got it?"
"I got it," Charlie said and was immensely glad that the FBI had expected that kind of work, so he was prepared. Sure, his consulting work on phishing and other forms of cyber crime had made him some kind of expert in that field, but his specialties lay more in back-tracking phishers than in building phishing web-sites himself. But his consulting work had at least given him the opportunity to study those web-sites and their setup, and since he'd freshened up his skills on building a web-site in his preparation for this job, he felt quite well geared-up for the task given to him.
As a matter of fact, it was hardly more than two hours before he got up and knocked at the door across the hallway. He'd briefly thought about grasping this opportunity for snooping around a little, but given Ben's conduct so far, he was still being too careful to just leave important information there for Charlie to be seen. The risk of blowing his cover on a mere chance like that was not worth taking.
"Come in!" a voice called out from inside.
When he opened the door, he found Ben sitting across from another man, who seemed to be of native American descent. He was much older than him, maybe in his sixties, and apparently the two of them had been discussing the content of some folders that, however, they had closed before Charlie had opened the door.
"Darrell, this is Cedric, the tech-guy I was talking about," Ben introduced them. "Cedric, this is Darrell, he's a business associate of mine and a member of the tribe this casino belongs to."
"Nice to meet you," Charlie said and took Darrell's outstretched hand.
"So what's the problem?" Ben asked.
"No problem. I just wanted to let you know I was done with the web-site."
Ben frowned and glanced at his watch. "You're sure?"
Charlie shrugged. "Why don't you decide for yourself?"
"Alright," Ben agreed and turned the computer screen on Darrell's desk in a way so they could all look at it. When he logged into his e-mail account, Charlie covertly glimpsed at his fingers on the keyboard, but the password seemed to be the same as the e-mail address, so this was obviously a trash account for exactly these purposes. The assumption was encouraged when Charlie saw that there were merely a dozen e-mails in Ben's inbox, one of which was still unread and, as the sender's name seemed to suggest, coming from the bank Ben had given him.
He opened the e-mail and scanned the text that Charlie had tried to fit into the bank's design that he had copied from their original web-site.
"Alright, this looks good so far," Ben mumbled and then clicked on the link that made Charlie's fake web-site open.
Charlie couldn't hide a grin of pride when he saw Ben's and Darrell's eye-brows go up, and he could flatter himself to really have done a good job with this. The only thing that gave him away was the domain in the address bar, and that was something that couldn't be helped. And even here, he'd used a domain that only someone cautious and observing would spot as not belonging there, not your average bank customer.
"Okay," Ben mumbled and entered a number and password he was reading from another piece of paper. When he pressed enter, a message appeared telling him that an unexpected error had occurred and that he should try again later.
"And you also managed to save the data I just inserted and store it somewhere?" he asked with some incredulity.
"I can show you," Charlie said with confidence while fervently hoping that everything had worked out the way he'd planned. When they'd reached the computer he'd been working on, the information that Ben had just entered in the other room was showing there in plain text.
"I didn't know what kind of output I should use, so if you prefer a chart, I could fix that in a couple of minutes."
Ben and Darrell exchanged another glance before Ben spoke. "I have to say, I'm impressed. I assume this isn't the first time you've done this?"
Charlie shrugged and went for the mysterious reply. "A magician never reveals his secrets." If they thought he'd participated in a scheme like this before, all the better.
"Well, I'd certainly like to see some more of your magic tricks. What do you say, Darrell?"
Darrell looked Charlie over from head to toe before he said somehow grimly, "I think we should have a little talk with the boy."
"Charlie? Everything okay? What's wrong?"
Charlie took the time to close the door before he tried to dispel his brother's concerns. "Everything's fine," he said and would have given them a report of the day's events if his brother had let him.
"What are you doing back so early? Did they suspect something? Did your cover blow?"
"I think everything went fine," Charlie repeated and managed to steer Don into the living-room where he could tell the whole team what they wanted to hear. "It was just a day of trial work."
"And they didn't suspect anything?"
"I don't think so. They asked me to put up a phishing website, and that's what I did. And since the opportunity was so perfect, I also did that other thing you asked me to do."
Don frowned. "What other thing?"
"Infiltrating their system. By clicking on the link to the phishing website, they also installed that little spy program that Amita and I wrote on their hard-drive, so you should now be able to monitor everything this Darrell does on his computer. I'm not sure of his position in the cartel though, maybe he's just working with the casino and the data from his computer won't get you anywhere."
He saw the agents exchange a meaningful glance, but contrary to Ben and Darrell earlier, he couldn't quite decipher its meaning. "What is it?"
Neither of them was saying anything, they were all looking at Don, so Charlie too turned to his brother, who, however, was avoiding eye-contact.
"What?" he asked again, failing to see the problem.
"Nothing," Don said and his voice sounded a little growling. "Just that Thorndike will be pretty pleased with himself for getting you to take this job."
With a frown, Charlie turned back to Colby, David and Megan, who were all trying to hide a grin, and now he finally understood that there was indeed no problem at all, that this was simply his brother's unique way of saying, Well done!
Charlie was getting nervous. He had an appointment with Ben for 9:30 this morning, it was 9:40 now and he was still nowhere to be seen. The casino was deserted, too, and a bad feeling was spreading in the pit of his stomach. Maybe they were suspecting something after all? Maybe he'd made a mistake and hadn't even noticed it? Maybe while he'd been under the illusion of having done a great job yesterday, he'd actually blown this entire operation, and if that was indeed so, he was more than a little apprehensive of returning to their new command center.
Just as he glanced once again at his watch, a car rounded the corner and halted next to him.
"You Cedric?" the driver said, a kid who couldn't be a day older than twenty.
"And who are you?"
"A friend of Ben's," the boy said. "Come on, hop in."
Charlie looked up and down the street, but decided he didn't have much of a choice, so he got inside the car.
He was half expecting the windows to lock down and gas protruding from somewhere, but nothing happened other than the kid starting the car with an accelerating performance that was cruel both to the tires and to the engine. And, not to forget, to the poor guy on the passenger's seat.
"Where's Ben?" Charlie asked and made sure to clench the grab handle. He felt like being prepared for the not-so-unlikely event of an accident.
"Busy. He asked me to pick you up. That's kind of my job." To Charlie's great dismay he turned his head towards him then and stretched out his hand without ever decelerating the car. "I'm Tommy, by the way."
Charlie quickly took the hand to let his new friend focus back on the road as soon as possible. The thought crossed his mind that if all members of the cartel had been as fit or rather unfit for their job as cab driver Tommy, the FBI probably would have easily rounded them all up by now. And it also crossed his mind that when Don had enumerated to him the dangers of an undercover operation, there had never been a mention of dying in a car crash caused by a crazy person.
"Oh, I almost forgot," Tommy said and leaned over to open the glove compartment. "There's a sleep mask in there, just put it on, okay?"
Charlie frowned. "Why?"
"So you won't see where we're going, genius," Tommy replied as though a safety measure like that was the most natural thing on your first day on the job.
Charlie complied and tried to maintain some idea of where they were going, but it was of no use, especially since he also had to concentrate on making small talk with Tommy. But even without the small talk, Charlie doubted he would have maintained an overview of their movements, since they were on the road for almost twenty minutes.
Eventually, they came to a stop and Tommy led Charlie over some fine gravel into a building and down some stairs. Only here was he allowed to take off his blindfold, and they knew why. This was a basement, it could be anywhere, there were no windows, nor any other pointers as to where Tommy had brought him.
The thought was making Charlie a little nervous.
Then again, he told himself not to panic. They had taken precautions. While he didn't have his own cell with him, they'd given him another one with some fake names all leading to the team and, more importantly, whose GPS device was constantly turned on, so they'd already gained one important information: the team now had the address of this building, whatever its exact purpose in the cartel's scheme was. (In fact, they now had this information twice, since Don had insisted on sewing in another tracking device in Charlie's jacket.)
"Cedric!" Ben greeted him. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and Charlie actually flinched a little. "Welcome. Let me show you around."
The 'showing around' let Charlie meet at least a dozen new people, some of which he'd already seen in Don's case files. During Ben's introductions, he involuntarily listed the things he knew about them in his mind, which was primarily their rap-sheets. There were some drug-related offenses and two with priors concerning battery – and those were just the ones that the FBI had already identified. Instead of thinking too much about that though, Charlie tried to figure out something about the place they were at, but couldn't determine anything other than it being a rather large basement, maybe of an old factory.
"And this is where you can set up," Ben finished the tour in something that actually had some resemblance to a regular office, save for the old couch in the corner and the stuff on the coffee table that looked and especially smelled a lot like weed.
"These are Billy and Cal," he introduced two men who had to be around Charlie's age, "and you already met Tommy. So what we'd like you to do –"
"Hey, Ben?" they got interrupted then. "The boss wants to talk to you."
"Just look at the bank I told you about yesterday once again, find out as much about their security system as you can, I'll be back later," Ben told him and as he left the room, he took the phone that the other guy was holding out towards him.
Charlie tried not to let his uneasiness show when he found himself alone with his three new colleagues, who could probably all be described as criminals. Luckily, however, they seemed to be busy with their own tasks and left him alone while he got on his computer to research the bank.
It was almost two hours before Ben came back.
"Take a break," he ordered as he strode into the room and Charlie was just about to get up from his seat when Ben added towards him, "Not you, you stay."
Charlie sat back down and tried to read Ben's facial expressions, but all he could see was that he was definitely not in a good mood. Whatever his talk with the 'boss' had been about, it hadn't left him very happy.
"Let's get down to business then, okay?" he said with some grimness that didn't make his words sound like a question. "You studied the bank's internet security?"
"As far as I could. But I already showed you yesterday that setting up a phishing website isn't a problem –"
"Forget the phishing. Look, we've run into some bad luck lately, so if we don't want to close down this whole business or risk our guys to go on the barricades, we need to make some cash fast, and I'm not talking about your phishing scheme here, I'm talking about the big money."
"Okay," Charlie said hesitantly, not sure what to expect. And he didn't like not knowing what to expect. Knowing what to expect was what enabled him to be prepared, so it was kind of a prerequisite for him to deal with this undercover stuff. "What do you have in mind?"
"You'll be blown out of your mind, the idea's genius, I just need someone to work out the technical details, and that's where you come in. So listen: instead of sending out phishing mails to the bank's customers, we're going to attack the bank itself, we'll be infiltrating their servers so that they think they're doing all the work on their own servers while in fact, they're entering all information on our servers. And with all that information, we'll then be able to clear out the whole bank. What do you say?"
Charlie was frowning. "Well… I'm not sure I understand. I mean, what do we gain if they work on our servers when the money is still lying on theirs? And anyway, how do you plan on infiltrating their servers?"
Ben clearly wasn't satisfied with Charlie's less than enthusiastic reaction and let that show by increased impatience and irritation. "Well, as I said earlier, that's the technical details that I hired you for."
"But..." Charlie started, still wondering how he was supposed to get these 'details' to work. "How did you plan on hacking their servers from the outside?"
"Well, be creative!" Ben gave back and Charlie flinched. He was almost shouting by now. "Why not use something like you've done yesterday, with the phishing e-mail, but addressed to the bank's employees?"
Charlie was shaking his head. He just wasn't sure this was a sensible way to proceed. "It could work, of course. But if we pursue a bulk phishing strategy, we run the risk of getting busted. Bank employees aren't your average customer. They have pretty strict codes of conduct concerning how they should behave online, they're more likely to see right through such a phishing attack. And even if they don't, I still can't see how we should be able to get remote access on their servers by that. This is not something where it's enough to get just one password, any bank's security system is much more complex than that."
"Then think of something," Ben hissed and had grabbed Charlie by his collar.
Charlie swallowed, or he wanted to, but his mouth was dry. "I…" he croaked, "I'm just not sure..."
"What do you think I hired you for?" Ben hissed and at the same time pulled Charlie up from his seat and pushed him against the wall. There was a solid bump when his back made contact with the concrete, and when his head was flung backwards, he was seeing stars for a moment.
"Look, I just think that you have the wrong idea about how this stuff works –" he tried to explain, but Ben was beyond reason.
His fist was pressing harder against Charlie's sternum, so hard that he had trouble breathing. He brought up his hands and tried to fend Ben off, but he was just so much stronger than him.
"Let me go, please," Charlie then resorted to begging, and as the words were leaving his mouth, he was getting scared. If the FBI was right, Ben had already killed a guy this way.
Ben's other arm came up then, pressing hard against Charlie's throat, and he panicked. "Stop, please," he begged, tears springing to his eyes. "You're hurting me."
"I'm hurting you?!" Ben exclaimed, and a second later, the arm was gone, but before Charlie had even realized that, he was flung forward and down on the floor.
He was hitting the ground hard, but before he'd regained his orientation, the air was leaving him when a solid kick landed in his guts.
"I'm hurting you, huh?" Ben snorted while kicking him. "You're the one hurting me, you dumb-ass, with your stupid questions! So what, you're done asking shit now?"
Charlie, still writhing on the floor, somehow managed to bend his knees then and bring them up to his body, and when Ben saw he'd lost his favorite target, he stopped for a moment.
Charlie was still trying to catch his breath, trying to deal with the pain, when he sensed Ben kneeling down next to him.
"Okay," he said in a low voice that made shudders run down Charlie's spine. "Let's try this again. So what do you say about executing the plan I told you about."
Charlie was on the brink of crying. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say. He couldn't agree to doing what Ben was asking of him, because it simply couldn't be done the way he was planning this, but he couldn't decline either, because he couldn't risk Ben to continue his assault.
"I asked you a question!" Ben hissed, squeezing Charlie's jaw so tightly that it hurt. He'd put a knee on Charlie's torso, effectively clamping his right arm, and Charlie panicked. He couldn't move and he couldn't breathe and there was a mad-man sitting on him that was going to beat him to a pulp.
He lifted his left hand to pry Ben's iron hand from his face, but the other one wouldn't let him do that.
"I asked you a question!" he repeated loudly and the hand was gone then, but only for a moment. The fracture of a second later, it had morphed into an iron fist that flew against Charlie's cheek, and it was then that his head exploded into a fireball of pain.
"I think it's time we send what we have over to Mick Butcher's team," Megan said. "They'll have more use for that information in their tax fraud investigation on the casinos."
"I guess it can't hurt if they're the ones to sort through the data," David agreed with her. "We just need to make sure they understand they can't use any of that information as long as Charlie's still working undercover."
"I agree," Thorndike said and with that, the matter was settled. They all were keenly aware of his authority in this operation. He was supervising them on this case due to their being personally involved, and his daily visits in their command center were just one reminder of that.
Don also nodded his consent, but they all knew it was more of a formality than anything else. Besides, David had the distinct impression that Don hadn't even paid much attention to their exchange, for he seemed to be focused on his watch. Over the course of the past minutes, he'd glanced more often at it than at his coworkers, and when David checked the time himself, he could understand his impatience. It was getting late, and Charlie still wasn't back. David had to admit, he too didn't know what to think about this. Sure, Charlie could fake a technician better than anyone on their team, but that still didn't make him an agent.
He heard Don emit a soft sigh next to him and when he gave him a glance, he could see the relief on his face. He'd heard it, too, a key was turning in the lock of the apartment door that was opened shortly afterwards.
"Hey," Charlie called out from the door as he made sure to close it again.
David didn't quite know what it was that set him off, he just had the impression that the greeting didn't sound as chipper as usual, it was a little subdued, and now that Charlie stepped from the dim hallway into the brightly illuminated living-room, David had no trouble making sense of that. In an instant, they all were on their feet, but only Don made the steps to intercept Charlie's entrance.
"What happened?" he asked, obviously appalled by the bruises on Charlie's face. Yet, he got closer to study them. "Are you alright?"
He didn't even leave his brother time to answer the question, for to tell the truth, his examination was probably giving him more information than he needed anyway. "He needs to go see a doctor," he decided, turning to Thorndike and the rest of his team.
"I'm fine," Charlie insisted and fended off Don's hands until they were at a safe distance from his face, before he took a seat next to David on the living room suite, Don following him. "My cover's still intact," he then added towards Thorndike.
"Then how do you explain your face?" Don asked with a little more force than necessary, but David could tell he immediately tried to restrain himself, and he knew why. If he gave Thorndike the impression that he couldn't handle this operation, their boss might take over for good – maybe even shut Don out.
"Ben got a little hot-tempered," Charlie said. "He asked me to take over a bank's security system, and I told him it simply wasn't possible, not the way he intended at least. He got rather angry then."
He shuddered, and despite his role in this operation, despite the successes of the previous two days, David saw him as what he was then, a civilian that technically had no reason whatsoever being here. Once again, he was wondering if Charlie was truly aware of what he'd gotten himself into, and whether he wasn't regretting his consent by now. The two questions had been nagging at him from the very beginning, and on the afternoon before Charlie had made contact, the night he'd gone into that casino, he'd felt compelled to make sure his friend knew what he was up against. He'd known that Don had tried to talk to Charlie as well, but he also knew that when the stubborn heads of these two brothers clashed, neither one was likely to back down, no matter what reason was telling them to do. So in the end, Don's attempt to change his brother's mind might have very well made Charlie pursue his goal with all the more perseverance, regardless of whether or not he was feeling positive about his decision.
So David had had to make sure that this was not just a competition among siblings to get their way.
"Why are you doing this, Charlie?" he'd asked him point-blank, waiting for a moment when they'd been alone.
"Come on, you too?" Charlie had asked. "Won't any of you grant me the ability of making decisions for myself?"
David had shrugged, trying to avoid a direct answer. "I'm just curious. I mean, what makes a math professor bring himself into a situation like this? I mean, I might have seen you do it for the excitement two years or so ago, when we started working together, but I think you've gotten that out of your system long ago."
Charlie had been silent then, a half-smile on his lips that had only made him look grimmer, not happier. "I'm not doing it for the kick, believe me."
"So why?"
Charlie had shrugged. "You heard Thorndike. It seems to come down to either me or Don, and we both know Don's not cut out for passing off as a computer geek. That seems to hold for all of you. It's just a fact that I have the best chances among all of us to do this job successfully."
"I see," David had replied thoughtfully and put his worries aside. He'd seen the fear in Charlie's eyes, he knew very well what he was getting himself into, it just had taken David a while to see that under that never-wavering look of conviction lying on top.
David grimaced. He could still see the conviction on Charlie's face, but it had definitely gotten a blow – literally.
Also Don, who'd sat down on Charlie's other side, was still studying his bruises. "Did you lose consciousness?" he asked, concern evident in his voice while he was trying to give himself an air of professional efficiency.
"No," Charlie replied and David could tell he'd been able just barely to stop himself from rolling his eyes.
Don wasn't deterred though and continued down the list. "Any dizziness?"
"Only for a couple of seconds."
"Head-ache?"
Charlie raised an eye-brow. "You're not seriously asking me that," he said, and even Don had to see that if concussion or not, some form of head-ache might be expected under the circumstances.
Before Don could go on further, Charlie stopped the interrogation, "I'm fine, Don. The altercation happened hours ago, and I've been feeling okay ever since."
"I'm glad to hear that, Dr. Eppes," Thorndike took over. "However, that still leaves us with the question as to how to proceed further."
David pressed his lips together, half expecting an outburst from Don, but his anger was merely smoldering so far.
"What do you mean by 'proceed'?" Don asked in a tone that was a little more confrontational than advisable when talking to his boss. "Obviously, there will be no more proceedings, Charlie's not going back there."
"I agree that today's events suggest a termination of this operation, but still –"
"Still what? Last time that guy lashed out against their technician, the altercation ended with a body-bag and a search for a substitute! So what, now we just wait for that to happen again?"
"How about we listen to Dr. Eppes' report first before we decide how to proceed from here," Thorndike made his decision sound like a suggestion.
Don said nothing to that. David guessed that there was probably nothing that Charlie could say that would change his brother's mind, but they could still do the professional thing and debate that after having learned the most recent turns of their case. And so, all eyes turned towards Charlie, who cleared his throat and started his account of the day's events.
"When I told him it couldn't be done, he lay into me with his fists until some of the other guys pulled him off from me," he eventually reached the most unpleasant part of the day and needed to clear his throat. His hands were still shaking at the thought of what might have happened if Tommy, Cal and Billy hadn't stepped in when they had. As he went on, he had to realize that his voice was trembling too, but he forced himself to win his calm back. Everything had turned out fine, it was good now, so he just needed to relax and see this through.
"Anyway," he continued, "it took some time, but eventually I convinced him to try an alternative plan. I suggested that instead of gaining access to their servers by phishing, we needed to just make the servers break down by causing more traffic than they could handle, that is by accessing the bank's website and making a ton of there-and-back transactions from all computers that the cartel owns and that have an internet connection. This way, we could gain access to their servers while their whole infrastructure is down and they're trying to repair it. So I offered him to write a program that automatically causes such traffic once it's installed on the cartel's computers, while he doesn't know that the program will also contain that spying program we already installed on the casino's computer and simultaneously sent their MAC addresses and IP addresses to you. This way, tomorrow, when they all installed that program, you can identify pretty much the whole network and take them down."
There was some silence after Charlie's words, all agents thinking hard.
"Well," Thorndike eventually broke the silence, "it certainly sounds like a promising plan. I just need to ask you, Dr. Eppes, if you're sure you're up to it. If I understand you correctly, this plan would require you to go back to the cartel once more."
Charlie nodded. That was indeed the part about his plan that he was most apprehensive of, but that was exactly why he knew it couldn't be helped. He'd gone over a dozen of other scenarios in his head, and if they really wanted to make use of this opportunity to bring this cartel down and thereby prevent an uncountable number of crimes in the future, he just needed to swallow this pill.
"I'm aware of the risks involved," he said and would have given a lot if his voice hadn't sounded so hoarse, but that was just another thing that couldn't be helped. "I still think though it's the best way to proceed, and from everything you've said, I don't think we'll get another chance that big anytime soon. Besides, as long as they all think this is working, I don't have anything to fear from them."
"Well, obviously we'd have to ramp up the safety measures taken so far," Thorndike said, and Charlie tried not to show his relief too much on the outside. Planning to increase the safety measures was the best thing he'd heard today. "Apart from that, however, I have to say this looks very promising, so if you are willing to see this through, I think we should sit down and work out a plan that minimizes the risk for you ."
Charlie nodded. He half expected to get interrupted by his brother, but Don had the decency of letting him respond to the inquiry himself. "I think that sounds perfect," he said and carefully turned his head to get a glimpse of his brother. Don didn't look happy, true, but after all, what could he say?
Megan had stayed a little behind, so now she was the last of them to leave, and Don figured that it was by design.
They were standing in the open door when she proved him right.
"Are you okay?" she asked, concern evident in her voice.
He thought for a moment, not about the answer, but about whether sharing it. "I'm not sure," he finally admitted.
She put a hand on his arm. "He's going to be fine. You said it yourself that this has been going much more smoothly than you would have expected."
"Yeah, that was before today."
"And he came fine through today. Despite appearances, he's the right fit for this job. He hasn't made any significant mistakes, he's been thinking on his feet and he has the skills to actually give us some solid information."
"But he hasn't been able to defend himself," Don pointed out.
Megan's face was serious when she replied, "And what if he had been, Don? What if he'd had some of our usual training, what do you think would have happened then?" She looked at him hard. "You know that chances are that Charlie wouldn't have survived a real fight with Ben. If that Ben is truly responsible for the death of their former computer expert, we know what he's capable of, and I don't think the FBI's training course would have been enough to make a regular guy fit for a confrontation like that."
Don was silent, knowing she was right. Truth be told, he was well aware that if he himself had been in that fight, he might have gotten off a lot worse than Charlie. Ben too, true, but that wouldn't have helped Don if he'd ended up in the ICU or six feet under.
"You know you can't freak him out now," Megan warned him. "He needs to stay confident tomorrow."
Don nodded. Yeah, that was exactly the dilemma he was facing. He knew that Megan was right, if Charlie did this, then Don should encourage him and let him know he believed in him, for if Charlie seemed insecure tomorrow, their whole plan might fall apart – with Charlie caught right in the middle. The problem was that he didn't want Charlie to go back to the cartel to begin with, so everything he should say about the upcoming operation were warnings to change his brother's mind. In the end, though, he knew that it wasn't his decision to make. For one, Thorndike was trumping any decision he might make anyway, and also Charlie didn't seem to be willing to get out of this mess while he still could, and if he was willing to stay on this after what had happened today, Don couldn't very well dissuade him by telling him he didn't know what he was getting himself into. Charlie had gotten hurt today, he'd seen the ugly side of undercover work, and still he was set on seeing this through, so keeping everything in perspective, it was clear that he only had one option left: letting his brother go through with this.
Still, when Megan had left, Don's feet took him to the bedroom, the room they'd put up Charlie in, on their own account.
He hadn't even come to a full stop when Charlie, who seemed to be in the process of getting ready for the night, groaned in exasperation. "Look, Don," he said, "I know what you're gonna say, so just save it, okay? You won't change my mind, and I've had a pretty rough day, so I'd really appreciate it if you just let me get some sleep before tomorrow."
Don nodded slowly. "Okay." Still, he couldn't make himself leave. "Maybe just five minutes?"
Charlie was frowning, the expression on his face turning from exasperation into confusion, maybe even concern. "Uh... yeah, okay. Sure."
Don nodded again, not really knowing what he wanted to say. But then, when he thought about it, he knew exactly what it was. "I just need to know… why are you doing this?"
The frown on Charlie's face increased, and a certain caution entered his voice. "I already told you. It doesn't make sense to break this off now. The truly critical point was today, and if we don't round this up tomorrow, all this would have been for nothing. Besides, I said I'd do this, so I can't just back out now."
"I know," Don interrupted him. He knew that Charlie wouldn't just leave this work unfinished. "That's not what I meant. I just… Why did you take this job in the first place?"
Charlie shrugged a little uneasily, but stayed silent.
"Buddy, please. Just tell me."
Charlie gave a deep sigh and when he spoke, Don noticed he made sure to give his voice a calm, determined tone. "Look, a lot of people have been hurt by that group. They are getting more and more powerful, and more and more aggressive, and I just figured we had to stop them."
Don scoffed and shook his head. That was what he'd been afraid to hear, at least part of that, and he still wasn't willing to just leave it that way without putting the record straight. "This isn't how this works, Charlie. You're not a part of this 'we' that needs to stop them, you are part of the group that gets protected by that 'we'."
The frown was back on Charlie's face. "I don't think that's a very fair system. At least not when your people have to pay such a steep price for protecting the rest."
Don bit his lip. That was another thing he'd been afraid to hear. "You mean Miller?" he asked in a low voice. They hadn't talked about it much, but Charlie knew that one of their agents had died last week during a shoot-out with a group of the cartel. As far as they could tell, none of that group had been working in that basement Charlie had seen today, but still, they were tightly connected. They'd known for a while now that the cartel was dangerous, there had been a number of assassinations leading back to them, not to mention all the deaths leading back to their drug selling and arms dealing. Losing one of their own, however, had been a blow none of them had been ready for.
Charlie just nodded, apparently unwilling to elaborate.
"His death was unfortunate," Don admitted and had to clear his throat. Unfortunate hadn't really been the proper expression. "But as tragic and unfair as it is, stuff like that happens. That doesn't mean a civilian like you should step in."
Charlie didn't say anything for several seconds and when he did, the volume of his voice was so low that Don had to strain his ears. "What if it had been you?"
Don felt his throat constrict. That was the third and last thing he'd been afraid to hear. So it was true. Charlie had consented to doing this in order to protect him.
He took a deep breath, noticing it was trembling just slightly. Yet, he needed to see this through, he needed to make it clear to his brother that he did not want him to make that kind of sacrifice, for if there was still a way to keep Charlie from going in there tomorrow, it was this.
"Charlie – when I decided to do this job, your involvement has never been part of the equation. I knew it came with a certain risk, but it was me who took that risk, and I was fine with that. I'm not fine with you taking that risk in my place."
He waited. He was anxious to hear his brother's reply, hoping it might change his mind and fearing that it wouldn't. When Charlie shook his head, he knew he'd lost this argument – for good.
"I'm sorry," Charlie said, no bit louder than before, and still his words were clear. "But I couldn't let you go through with that. What if something had happened? I would have never forgiven myself if you had gotten hurt."
Don felt a lump in his throat. Yeah, he knew exactly how that felt. "But now you got hurt," he pointed out in a low voice.
Charlie shrugged as though it was no big deal, but Don knew that it was, he could see that the experience had freaked him out, as Don had known it would. This was exactly what Don had been afraid of and why he'd wanted to keep his brother from doing this. He just wouldn't have expected Charlie to ignore the voice of reason even after an event like this and see this through.
"It's my risk," Charlie said, "it has nothing to do with you or your job. I mean sure, I… You and your team and everyone on the force, you inspire me in a way, with all those selfless deeds you do every day. But at the end of the day, it's my decision. Just like you decided to protect the rest of the world, I decided to give some of that back. And why shouldn't I be allowed to do that, just because I don't have the same training you do?"
Don nodded, slowly. "I understand," he said quietly, and the worst part was that he did.
He hesitated. He didn't want his brother to freak out, but if this was going down tomorrow, and if… Anyway, he just needed to clear the air.
He stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. "Just take good care of yourself tomorrow, alright? We'll have your back, just keep your eyes open to look out front."
He felt Charlie nod against his collarbone while he was returning the hug. "I will."
Charlie was feeling sick while he was waiting in front of the casino again. He was so not looking forward of going back into the lion's den, but here he was, so he'd better man up and do his best not to show his anxiety.
His resolution was complicated further when the car rounded the corner and he could see the driver behind the steering-wheel. Tommy again. Maybe he should have made his will yesterday after all.
Stretching the laws of physics and probability, they actually arrived at the cartel's hideout without any incident and Tommy led a blindfolded Charlie over the gravel into the house and down the stairs, where Charlie took a deep breath. Things were about to get serious now.
He'd finished to alter Amita's and his spying program for their new purposes the day before, but hadn't wanted to implant it without the okay from the agents, so during the first hour or so, he was mostly busy with making sure that every computer of the cartel with an internet connection installed that program on their hard-drive, both inside and outside of this hideout.
"It's installed on almost every computer by now," Ben informed him. "Can't we start already?"
Charlie shook his head. "There is a timer in the program, one that I can't change now. Besides, we should make sure to install the program on as many devices as we can, the more traffic we cause, the better."
"And you set the timer to..." Ben glanced at his watch, "three hours from now?"
"173 minutes," Charlie specified. And thus an hour after the FBI will have smashed this cartel, he silently added. With everything in place, his work was done now, so all he needed to do was to get out of this place at the right time, but that was easier said than done. He needed to hope that by now, he'd gained enough trust so that Ben would let him go out on his own to get some fresh air, while he couldn't risk making him suspicious. So if Ben didn't let him go out, then Charlie would have to stay here until the raid was over, and that was something he would like to avoid. True, the FBI had given him a bulletproof vest that was so thin that he could wear it under his clothes, but that still didn't make him feel very safe. What if something went wrong during the raid, if shots were fired? Sure, they had told him to lock himself into his office in an event like that and wait for the FBI or SWAT to get him out, but what if that didn't work? What if –
The arrival of another member of the group stopped his panic-inducing thoughts, but, as it seemed, only to give his nervousness another direction to go.
"We need to get out of here," the guy, Wayne, if Charlie wasn't mistaken, told Ben with about as much fear in his voice as Charlie could feel in his guts.
"What's going on?" Ben asked, immediately on the alert.
"Rick just called, they're planning a raid on this place."
"What?!" Ben exclaimed, incredulity and shock clearly visible on his face. Then, before Charlie had truly understood what was going on, Ben whirled around towards him and had grabbed him at his collar.
"This is your doing, isn't it?" he hissed and pressed him against the wall, which, as Charlie realized with some relief, didn't hurt as much as the previous day, the pressure being cushioned by the vest.
His relief was short-lived, however. "What's this?" Ben asked and a moment later pulled up Charlie's shirt to reveal the disturbing factor he'd felt. "You little piece of shit," he hissed before he turned around and shouted orders to Wayne, "Tell everyone to pack up their things and get out of here, now!"
He was still holding him pinned against the wall and in his eyes, Charlie could see a hatred that made him catch his breath. Or maybe he just couldn't breathe because Ben was once again pressing off his air supply, who could tell in this chaos.
"Billy, Cal!" Ben called out over his shoulder, summoning two of the guys that might have saved Charlie's life yesterday, and it crossed his mind that today, they might have changed sides. He felt his knees grow weak.
"He's coming with us, we'll take the black Mercedes," he told them. "Get the duct tape."
The next moment, Charlie was thrown to the floor and four knees were pressing him down on his back and his arms. A moment later, his arms were jerked back hard and bound together tightly. "Search him, I'll be right back."
Cal and Billy obeyed, retrieving Charlie's keys and cell-phone from his pockets and throwing them aside carelessly. Charlie tried to fight them off, but all he could move was his legs, and even with those his mobility was restricted. It was hurting, too, so he stopped the attempt, reason winning over his panic. It was two against one, he didn't stand a chance against them anyway.
Cal and Billy turned him on his back then, pulling up his shirt and ripping the vest off from him, thereby finding the next safety measure just when Ben came back.
"They've been eavesdropping on us," Billy said and pulled off the microphone that was taped to his chest more roughly than would have been necessary, and Charlie couldn't stop himself from crying out with pain. The next moment, Billy crushed the microphone under his foot, so Charlie's connection to the FBI was gone now, and it was then that he became aware of just how desperate his situation had become during the past five minutes.
"Come on, let's go," Ben said and retrieved a gun from his belt that he gave to Cal. Belying his actions a little, he added, "And be careful with him, we might need him as leverage."
With that, Charlie was dragged up the stairs, the gun in his back, into the sunlight. They were still in an inner courtyard when they got inside the car, Ben on the driver's seat and Cal and Billy on the backseat with Charlie in the middle. He could feel the muzzle of the gun in his side and it felt as if it was about to go off any second now. The thought made his throat constrict and bring tears to his eyes, but he forced himself to keep breathing, to keep watching out for an escape strategy. That's what Don had told him, they had his back, they knew where the hideout was and they had heard that Charlie was about to be taken away, they had even heard the part about the black Mercedes. So Don would make sure not to let them get away, so Charlie just needed to do his part too and then everything would be fine.
As they made their way through traffic towards the outskirts of the city, Charlie's conviction was dwindling and the shaking of his body increasing. Apparently, Don and the others hadn't been in position yet when the cartel had been tipped off, they weren't anywhere to be seen, and Charlie's panic was back to its old force. What if they managed to flee the city and get away? They'd said it earlier, they only needed Charlie as leverage, so as soon as they felt safe, they might be wanting to dispose of him. Or maybe they would keep him alive to bargain for their fellow accomplices? That would at least give him some more hours, maybe even days. Days spent as the captive of a hot-tempered guy like Ben.
He closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm down his breathing. He hadn't managed yet when he heard Ben's loud curse. His eyes shot open and he immediately saw what had made the criminal so upset: there was a roadblock ahead of them. They'd left the city by now, but not the range of the police force, and for a moment, Charlie felt so relieved that the tears almost came back. But only a second later, his relief was gone, for roadblock or not, Ben didn't seem willing to stop. Instead, he accelerated, keeping the car straight ahead, straight towards the police cars, trying to squeeze through a spot in the middle.
Then, the shots rang out. A moment later, the car was swiveling, no matter how hard Ben tried to regain control. Charlie watched one of the police cars that was blocking the road come nearer and nearer, as if everything was playing in slow-motion, but still leaving him without any chance to stop the event, or to even cry out in fear.
Then, there was the crash, a loud noise accompanied by forces being set free that were so strong Charlie had never felt anything like it before, and then, before the pain truly registered, it was all gone.
"Shit," Don could hear Colby softly curse beside him, while his own mind was reluctant to process the information his eyes were presenting to him. He noticed that his fingers were hurting, but it took a while until he realized that he was cramping his hand around the grab handle so hard that his knuckles had turned white. At the same time, he registered the nausea that had settled in his stomach, but was now threatening to make its way upwards, but he pressed it down, he needed to press it down for as long as they didn't know what exactly had happened.
Colby was bringing the car to a stop and as Don stumbled out, he heard the other car with Megan and David inside halt behind them with screeching tires. His eyes, however, were directed at the scene before them, desperate to spot his brother.
The police officers were just in the process of taking out two men from the backseat that seemed a little unstable on their feet, but otherwise not hurt too badly. That had to be Billy and Cal, while Ben and Charlie were nowhere to be seen, which had to mean that they were still inside the car.
The thought made Don swallow nervously. The black Mercedes had crashed against one of the empty police cars that had been blocking the road. Since they had most likely shot out the tires, the velocity had probably decreased some before the crash, but still the whole front of the car was badly smashed in, like an accordion.
With his legs acting on their own account while his mind was giving them two opposing orders, Don felt himself getting closer to the damaged car until he caught a glimpse of the inside, and at that point, his legs refused their service. Charlie was lying in the foot-well of the back-seat, facing the windshield, his head towards the police officer bending over him.
"Can you hear me, Sir?" the officer was saying, but it was as though the sounds were traveling to Don's ears through a mile-long underground tunnel, echoing and distorted.
He felt a movement beside himself and the next moment, Colby was in his line of sight, kneeling next to the officer. "We got this one," he told him. "You already called for an ambulance?"
The officer confirmed that they had and it was as if that was Don's cue. Help was on the way. He just needed to make sure that Charlie was still in a state to receive help when they arrived.
He was kneeling next to Colby in an instant, looking into his brother's face. His complexion was pale and his eyes closed, but the thing that was worrying Don the most was the laceration on his forehead that was bleeding forcefully.
"Hand us one of those," Colby turned towards the police officers tending to an equally unresponsive Ben on the front seat, and a second later, he had a cotton pad in his hand, evidently taken from a first-aid kit.
"We need to get him out of there," Don heard himself say and at the same time told himself to shut up, at least as long as nothing helpful was coming out of his mouth.
"Hold on," Colby told him and pressed the pad against Charlie's head wound, which finally got them a soft moan from his brother. "We can't rule out any spinal injuries at this point."
Don just nodded, but his attention was focused on his brother, who seemed to be slowly coming round. He gently lay a hand on Charlie's shoulder, afraid even the light touch might cause him pain.
"Come on, buddy, open your eyes for us," he said, and even his own voice seemed to be traveling through that damn tunnel.
There was another moan, then his eye-lids were fluttering and his pupils became visible, jumping from one place to another, seeking orientation.
"It's okay, buddy, you're safe now," Don said, wondering at what point the mere act of talking had become such a difficult undertaking. "The ambulance will be here any minute, okay? Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Charlie nodded softly and his arms twitched as if he was trying to get them to his head. He couldn't, of course, they were still bound behind his back.
"Take it easy, Charlie," Colby told him. "Everything's going to be fine now, we just need to take it slow, okay?" He waited until he'd gotten another slight nodding movement before he went on, "Can you tell me which parts of your body hurt most?"
"My head," Charlie's hoarse reply came without hesitation. Then, the look in his eyes told them he was making an inventory of the rest of his body. "My ribs and my right knee. The rest is more or less okay."
Colby nodded and Don allowed himself to breathe again. That didn't sound too bad, definitely not as bad as he'd feared.
"Can you move your toes and fingers?" Colby asked.
Don could see the concentrated look in Charlie's eyes mingling with the pain and fear, but at last, he nodded.
"Can you sit up?" Colby went on.
"I can try," Charlie mumbled and started a careful attempt to lift his upper body. It wasn't easy with his hands bound in his back and his entire body cramped up in the foot-well, but when Don and Colby saw that he could move on his own, they decided that the question of spinal fractures seemed to have been answered negatively and then, with David's help, dared to lift him out of the car.
When Colby had cut through his bonds, they helped Charlie to lean against the rear tire with his back, and now, with Charlie sitting up and his eyes open, Don felt reassured enough to tell his heartbeat that it could return to a slower, less alarmed rate now.
"Are you okay?" he asked softly as he put the pad against Charlie's forehead again. It was soaked by now, he needed a new one, but he told himself not to be too worried about that. Charlie was alive and breathing and talking, and the paramedics would soon take care of the rest.
Charlie nodded as an answer. "I think it's just a couple of bruises, although my ribs feel as though one or two of them might be cracked," he said, his voice still strained and slightly trembling. As a matter of fact, his whole body was trembling, and when Don realized that, he quickly took off his jacket and laid it over his brother.
"Thanks," Charlie said.
Before Don could make sure further that his brother was indeed alright, Megan joined them. "Is he okay?" she asked no-one in particular while she was pocketing her cell-phone.
Don was about to answer, not knowing whether 'okay' was really the appropriate expression, when Charlie beat him to it. "I'm fine," he claimed, still with a slightly mumbling quality in his speech, before putting his words into a more credible perspective, "or anyway, much better than I could have been. I should have known this undercover thing would end with a car crash."
Megan gave him a tight-lipped smile before she filled them in on what had been going on around them. "If it's any consolation, Ben seems to have gotten away even worse from this accident than you, but he too will survive." She turned to Don. "Thorndike just called, apparently it was Richard Benton from SWAT who tipped them off, they're interrogating him as we speak."
"That finally explains how they always managed to stay under our radar," David threw in. "They've had someone on the inside to feed them with information."
"Didn't help them though in the end," Colby pointed out as he handed Don a new cotton pad he'd somehow gotten a hold of. Don accepted it gratefully and exchanged it with the soaked one in his hand while Colby went on, "With the program Charlie made them install, we have enough information to take the whole network down. I mean, true, we'll still have to hunt some of them down, but their cartel is definitely smashed."
"And that without any fatalities," Megan added.
"Yeah, about that," Charlie said and cleared his throat while he tried to sit up a little straighter. However, when he noticed that the motion wasn't very agreeable to his ribs, he quickly abandoned the attempt. "I, uh… I've been meaning to thank you, guys. That was… really good timing."
Don pressed his lips together and gave his brother's shoulders a tight squeeze, unwilling to think about how true his words were.
"How did you even find me?" Charlie asked then.
Don's lips twitched to something that under different circumstances might have turned into a smirk. "By that little GPS device in your jacket that you all told me I was being paranoid to put there."
The words were out before he'd really thought about them, and now, in hindsight, he wondered if there was something he could say to soften the blow, for he hadn't meant to make them sound like the 'I told you so' they'd turned into, definitely not with his brother still in shock and waiting for his injuries to get treatment. Especially not when originally, Don should have been the one in his place.
Instead of getting upset, however, Charlie emitted a soft, nervous chuckle. "Alright, we get it. You were right all along, you were the sole pillar of reason."
Don abandoned his caution then and let the smile spread out on his face. "I knew that eventually, you'd see my true worth."
Charlie nodded and was silent for a while with his head bent down in concentration. When he lifted it again and looked him in the eye, there was an expression on his face that took Don's breath away. "Seriously, Don – thank you."
Don was uncomfortable with that look, not just because he felt that after everything that Charlie had done, Don wasn't the one deserving thanks, but also because he was keenly aware that his team was standing only a couple of feet away and watching the exchange. "Hey," he replied lightly, "it's the FBI who has to thank you here –"
"No, Don, I mean it," Charlie insisted. He took a moment to assemble the words in his mind, so when they came out, it was with a force that Don had nothing to counter. "I know you were against this from the beginning, but you never let me down."
And I never will, Don replied silently, knowing that his brother could read the words in his eyes. Aloud, however, he chose the less intimate reply, "Well, you're in luck. For I know exactly how you can thank me for saving your butt there."
"How?" Charlie asked with a willingness to repay him that Don knew he would soon regret.
He grinned. "By finding a way to explain this to Dad."
- finis -
