A/N: Thanks to Aerox on another super-fast beta turnaround time. So, fair warning, it's about to get crazy in here.

Chapter 2:

Chuck and Sarah walked to the beach from their hotel after a light breakfast. The noise complaint from the people in the room underneath them had dampened their enthusiasm about their original half-baked plan to stay in and have room service all week. The beach wasn't too crowded. Aside from a family building a sandcastle and a couple running with their dog, it was mostly deserted.

"Huh," Chuck said. "I figured this whole place'd be more crowded. Wonder what's up."

"I think this falls under the heading of not looking gift horses in the mouth," Sarah said, leading him out onto the sand. It was pleasantly warm; not quite eighty degrees out. The sand wasn't even hot enough to burn their feet when they shrugged out of their flip-flops and stretched out on beach towels. Maybe that was it? Not hot enough for most tourists? Didn't seem likely.

There was a kiosk set up renting beach umbrellas but it wasn't hot enough to need one. It was peaceful, aside from some gulls squawking off in the distance. The sun warmed them and Chuck stared off into the sea for a while.

Sarah cleared her throat, and Chuck blinked and turned to her. "What's up?"

She tugged her baggy t-shirt off over her head, shaking her hair out. Sarah grinned at the poleaxed expression on his face and stuffed the borrowed shirt away in the beach bag. "Didn't want you to miss that," she shrugged, digging in the beach bag and came out with the squeeze bottle of sunscreen. "You mind?"

"Um... Sarah? Are you feeling alright? When have I ever turned down the chance to rub stuff on you?" He blushed and took the sunscreen from her. "Um... forget I said that."

Sarah laughed and pulled her hair over her shoulder. "Good to know where we stand."

Chuck carefully massaged the sunscreen into her shoulders and down her back, then did her arms. Sarah peeked over her shoulder at him, and grinned. He leaned in close behind her and they kissed, slowly, soft and lingering. Chuck rested his forehead against the side of her neck after. "So, snorkeling? I saw a sign on the way for..."

Sarah half-turned and shushed him with a finger to his lips. "It's fine. I kind of just want to soak up some sun, if that's okay?"

"Whatever you want. It's your birthday trip."

"My birthday was four days ago," Sarah said.

Chuck shrugged. "Don't care. Still your trip. We do what you wanna do."

Sarah pressed her lips together to stop the grin from engulfing her entire face. She slipped an arm around his waist and pressed closer to him. "Okay," she said dropping her head down onto his shoulder.

They sat like that for a few minutes in silence, until Sarah's stomach started growling. Chuck raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you have almost as much breakfast as me at the hotel?" he said. "Where do you put it all?"

Sarah pulled out of the embrace and shook her head at him. "We had this talk already. I swim like four hours a day on average. Plus my KFM classes twice a week. It adds up."

"So this is my cue to go get food and drink," Chuck said. "Any requests?"

"What's that drink where they mix champagne and orange juice? One of them."

"I meant to eat."

Sarah shrugged. "Something French."

"Alright. Back in a flash," Chuck said, kissed the top of her head and hauled himself to his feet. "You think of anything else you want, I got my phone." He tapped the fanny pack at his hip.

Sarah nodded and rolled over on her front and undid the string tie of her top so she wouldn't get a tan line. Chuck blinked and stared in consternation.

After a moment she turned her head to look at him, raised an eyebrow. "That is entirely unfair," Chuck said.

"Hurry back."

Chuck kicked up a dust-tail on the loose-packed sand of the beach.

He went barely half a block before spotting a likely looking cafe. European dining wasn't known for fast service. But they got enough tourists that this particular establishment had a sign in English offering a 'to-go' menu. He slid up to the bar and ordered a pair of Mimosas and a pair of croque-monsieurs to go. That, despite what he'd told Sarah earlier, stretched his knowledge of French near its limits. He could remember more when he was just trying to understand somebody, but speaking it himself was more difficult. It was a quirk.

The bartender brought over the drinks and held up his thumb and forefinger. "Deux minute," he said. Chuck nodded and opened his fanny pack to retrieve his wallet. The cafe was, like everywhere else, remarkably deserted. Well, not completely deserted, but sparsely populated. There were just a couple of patrons aside from Chuck, and they were mostly interested in their brunch menus. He reached for his Mimosa and blinked when someone sat next to him, snaked away Sarah's drink and took a sip.

"Mmm..." she said. "Thanks, Chuck. Fancy meeting you here."

He stared gape-mouthed for a moment and tried gamely to recover. "Yeah. Aren't you supposed to be in federal prison somewhere, Jill?"

Jill's eyes widened momentarily, but she erased the surprise from her face in a split-second, so fast he almost thought he'd imagined it. She smiled thinly and took another sip. "You heard about that."

"Yeah," Chuck said. "And you owe my girlfriend a fresh drink."

"Girlfriend?" Jill said. "I guess I should have known. You always were a catch."

"Stop trying to butter me up, and tell me why I shouldn't have Interpol drop on you with both boots."

"Wow. So I guess you took Bryce's version hook, line and sinker. I don't even get to tell my side? You know he's a liar, Chuck."

"So he doesn't work for the CIA? You didn't break up with me so you could join a rogue faction of the CIA called FULCRUM run by Teddy Roark?"

"For certain values of 'rogue', perhaps," Jill said. "But do you really think you can trust everything the CIA tells you? I know you took that class junior year, on the kind of shenanigans they got up to in the fifties and sixties."

"You're avoiding the question. Why aren't I calling Interpol on you right now?"

Jill sighed. "I was hoping this wouldn't be necessary," she said. "There is currently a sniper with your girlfriend's spray-on tan, bleached-blonde head in the crosshairs. My boss wants to talk to you."

"Why doesn't he come himself?" Chuck said, not rising to the bait and mentioning that the tan and the blond hair were come by naturally.

"The French government isn't exactly on the best of terms with my employer, Chuck," Jill said. "He doesn't go strolling around on beaches, is my point. Best all around if you just come with me. We'll keep an eye on your girlfriend for you."

Chuck bit the inside of his cheek. His father, before his disappearance, had taught Chuck never to hit girls. But for just a second there, he considered making an exception.

Jill smirked. "Pay for your brunch, and let's go."

Chuck grimly counted off Euros onto the bar and put away his wallet. While he had his hand in the fanny pack he hit end call.

Sarah felt a shadow break across her back. "Chuck? That was quick."

A babble of French was her response, and she frowned and opened one eye, looking up at a man in a black speedo. She winced and shaded her eyes, twisted her arms around behind her back to re-do her top. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't catch that."

"Ah, Americaine," the Frenchman said, grinning. He was tall and wide, nearly half a foot taller than her and probably twice as wide. Sarah didn't like him, or his grin, or his speedo. "What is such a beautiful woman such as yourself doing at zee beach, all alone?"

Sarah rolled her eyes. And thanked her lucky stars when her phone buzzed. "Excuse me," Sarah said, dismissing the man. She dug into the beach-bag and retrieved her cPhone and her shirt, tugging it on over her head before hitting the slider on her phone. "What's up, baby?" Okay, so maybe she hadn't dismissed the man completely; he was still standing there, but at least he looked embarrassed by the come on now. And baby was one of those expressions that translated well into French, right? So the Frenchman knew she was talking to her boyfriend.

Chuck's voice came through, but he was talking to somebody else. What... sniper! A sniper was covering her?

Almost instantly her entire body went tense. Panic gripped her for a good four seconds.

She then took a breath and tried to calm down. Okay. Game on. Make a plan, carry it out. No second guessing. There couldn't be a lot of lines of sight to her position. He would have to be in one of the hotels nearby. And from what she was overhearing over her and Chuck's open push-to-talk line she wasn't the real target. Taking Chuck was their priority. The bad guys were casting her in the damsel in distress role. And that kind of pissed her off. She eliminated a couple of hotels right away, since the windows were awkwardly placed. Too far away and almost no windows facing the beachline. Someone with a sniper rifle would have to be out on a balcony in order to get anything approaching a clear shot at her. And a sniper on a balcony would get spotted himself in short order.

There were only two multi-story buildings nearby that would afford clear shots. And if TV and movies had taught her anything, snipers had kind of an unhealthy attachment to high spots. She was sure there was some kind of ballistics reason behind it. Bullet drop or velocity gradients or something physics-y. But it made them predictable. She scanned the top few floors of the closer hotel, on the assumption that he'd put his back to the sun if he could. Snipers could be accurate at absurdly long ranges, but only if they weren't blinded by glare. It was still before noon, so the sniper would be in the hotel off to the east.

And slightly tubby French guy might come in handy after all, as a human shield. "Can you take a step to your right please?"

"Pardon?"

"Uh. Droit... could you..." Sarah waved the guy over.

He frowned, but took the step she needed. "My English not so good. What is happening?"

Sarah waved at her phone. "Apparently my boyfriend has been kidnapped."

"You do not sound so very concerned..."

Sarah shrugged and got to her feet, scooped up the beach bag and whipped her wrap skirt around her waist. "It's not like it's the first time," she said. "Come on."

"Should you not call the gendarmes? Comment-vous dit... the police?"

"Just walk right there," Sarah said. "Between me and that building."

"The hotel? Qu'est ce qu'il s'passe?"

"Uh, that's where I think the sniper is," Sarah said. "You're my human shield. Make up for the sleazy, come on."

The man sputtered out a protest, but by then they were nearly to the beach umbrella stand. Sarah dug her billfold out of the beach bag. The umbrella rental clerk raised an eyebrow inquisitively. Oddly enough, even under his pavillion he wore a floppy brimmed hat. "I'd like to rent an umbrella or three. And buy that hat off you."

"We must call the gendarmes to rescue your copain!" Sleazy guy said.

"My what? I know what I'm doing," Sarah said. "Just open the umbrella and walk toward the hotel."

"Pourquoi?"

"Flush out the shooter so I can clobber him. You ever heard of a shell game?"

"Eh, non. And 'clobber'? Qu'est ce que c'est ca, clobber?"

Sarah grinned. "You'll see."

"Damn it," he said, and keyed his microphone. "I've lost visual. I think the girl made me somehow."

"Get it under control, these are not trained spies."

"Crap. She's definitely made me. The rifle's too high profile if I need to change positions.."

"The next words over this channel better be 'Back on target'." A pause when he didn't respond. "Do you copy. You can say copy."

"Copy."

His rifle was specially designed to disassemble quickly, which was how he'd smuggled it into the hotel in the first place. Smuggling it out quickly, and without attracting attention meant he'd have to disassemble it once more, and stuff it in his shoulder bag. It would be impossible to use in those circumstances, and his sidearm was a dinky little .22, not exactly confidence inspiring for him.

He hesitated before taking that step. It wasn't like he was up against some super agent or anything. The umbrella thing was weird, more than clever. It made it impossible for him to risk a shot, if he was even authorized to take a shot, which he wasn't. But at least he still knew where she was. There wasn't enough foot-traffic today for her to hide in the crowd. Then the situation changed. A second umbrella opened and started in the opposite direction. How the hell had she recruited help so quickly? His mission was screwed to the wall now. At the briefing it had seemed so simple, keep eyes on a hot blonde at the beach. Every male agent's dream assignment.

Now a third umbrella opened up, heading in still another direction and he ground his teeth. His elevated position was worse than useless. Time to move, and quick. The rifle snapped apart into two pieces with a quick twist of his wrists.

He went down the back stairs two at a time, as fast as he dared without tripping himself up. He paused at the landing windows to keep track of the umbrellas' progress. The first was heading almost directly for the hotel exit at the bottom of the stairwell. The other two were still in sight, but further away. At the next landing one of the umbrellas was missing. He cursed and fished out his sidearm from his shoulder bag, and screwed the silencer into place as he went down the last flight. He just had to get her back under control somewhere. Killing her had never been a part of his orders; even with what they had on Bartowski, the threat was immensely more valuable to them than following through on it. If anything, killing the girl would make an enemy for life out of the guy. Still he couldn't let her get away, and whoever she'd recruited couldn't be that loyal to her so quickly.

He shouldered open the door and scanned for the closest umbrella. A bewildered man in a speedo was under it. Not the hot blonde. "Shit!"

He kept the gun down at his side and stormed over. "Where's the girl, asshole? Which one is she."

"Eh? Je ne parle pas l'anglais."

He brandished the pistol. "Where's. The. Girl?"

"Behind you," the man said.

He whirled around in a panic. For a split-second he didn't recognize her. She'd covered up the blonde locks with a floppy brimmed hat, and somewhere she'd managed to scrounge a change of shirt. His brain scrambled to try and fit that into a scenario. She'd had him so focused on those damn umbrellas he'd somehow missed her sprinting ahead into position. How the hell had she figured out his position so quickly? Then the realization crashed in that he'd turned his back on a fairly beefy guy. Idiot! They had him boxed in. Threat assessment happened by instinct. A quick snap-shot to disable the greater threat. He started to turn back, and only then did he register the real threat out of the corner of his eye. The girl was charging him. What the hell? She was on him before he could set himself, inside his guard. He tried to backpedal away, and her elbow came across out of nowhere. The pistol went flying. He grimaced and swung awkwardly as he staggered back.

Sarah didn't even bother to bat the barely aimed swing away. She juked her head back and the punch sailed wide. Then she continued wading in. The gunman tried a kick, which was a stupid move, backing like that, he'd lose what little balance he had. Sarah fell deeper into her crouch and blocked the strike with a forearm shield, flowed her arm around it and tucked his foot into her armpit. She turned her shoulder and hips and drove an uppercut into his junk as she got her right foot out behind his remaining unengaged foot.

He tumbled over onto his back and Sarah followed him down, a left hammer-fist to the side of the head even before he landed stunning him for a moment. She used her momentum as she dropped to smash her forearm into his throat, driving him into the sand. She grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and yanked him up into a headbutt that smashed his nose across his face in a welter of blood. The impact sent her hat flying. Sarah shot back to her feet and fell into a defensive stance just in case, but he was out cold.

"Putain," Sleazy said, astonished at the violence of her assault. "Vous l'avez tue?"

"Huh?"

"He is dead. You killed him!"

Sarah checked the man's pulse and shook her head. "Nope. Still alive. Probably for the best, all things considered." She pursed her lips. "Still, his skull might be cracked. You should call him an ambulance." Even with the beach relatively deserted, their brief scuffle had attracted eyes, and someone would be calling the police soon.

"How you do this. You super secret super spy, yes?"

"Sorry, nope."

"Mais... you have a black belt? This at least, yes?"

"Not quite," Sarah said, plucking at the unassuming brown rubber bracelet on her right wrist. "My test is next month." She patted down the unconscious sniper for more weapons, or a wallet, but came up empty on both. Then she spotted the shoulder-bag and carefully slipped it off over the man's head. Inside the bag was... some kind of rifle. Duh. Sniper. Sniper-rifle. Okay. Sarah hoisted the rifle bag to her shoulder and thought to search the man's pockets for car keys. No luck. She went over and retrieved the sniper's pistol, and shrugged sheepishly, before pointing it at the Frenchman who'd helped her out so far and wiping the sniper's blood off her forehead. "You got wheels?"

A mesh pocket sewn into the waistband of his speedo produced a key, and he waved jauntily as she headed for the street. Sarah heard the sing-song sound of sirens before she got to Frenchie's Vespa. She thought of the guy riding around in his speedo on a scooter, big as he was... It was good for a chuckle. Sarah dug her cPhone out of her beach bag and snugged her new hat back down on her head as she started the scooter.

Sarah putt-putted away down the street as the police converged, and paused down a side street to fiddle with the touch screen. She and Chuck shared a minutes plan, since his 'gift' of a new phone for Christmas had been so complicated she'd just nodded and tried to trip him into bed. Eventually she had mastered all the various features, but they kept a joint cell plan so they could maintain the push-to-talk option. As a side-effect of that, both of them had online access to the wireless account and could, when the need arose, use the GPS in each others' phones for creepy possessive tracking purposes. Sarah figured this was as good a time as any.

"Is the hood really necessary?" Chuck said. He tried to keep the whine out of his voice, and the hood muffled his voice a little so maybe it had its good points after all. Jill stuck a gun in his ribs.

"We're here. Get out," she said. He heard the car door open and slid in that direction, questing ahead with his feet in the dark. Jill and someone else, who had yet to make a sound grabbed him by the collar and hauled him out of the car.

It was forty three steps from the car before Jill spoke up to warn him they were heading up some stairs. Four steps up and a pause while someone opened a couple of deadbolts, then down a hallway, feet clicking on hardwood or granite. Hard to tell just by the sound. Not that that knowledge would do him any good. Chuck found his brain churning along, trying and straining for any data. He couldn't turn his brain off.

Then a wait again, and a chime. Forward a few steps, and turn around. Suddenly he felt heavy, acceleration pressing him into the floor. An elevator, for about thirty seconds. Depending how fast the elevator was going that could be anywhere from three floors to ten. He remembered the express at Roark Instruments, and didn't think this one was that fast. Maybe four or five floors.

The bell chimed again, and Jill and the silent, nameless thug ushered him down another hallway. A heavy hand on his shoulder pressed him down into a chair. The hood ripped away and he blinked away dust and grit from the rough black canvas hood. The first thing he noticed were the bars on the window, and Chuck felt a moment of panic. But then he noticed they were largely ornamental, as were the shutters keeping out most of the late morning sun and leaving the room in dim and shadows.

Chuck was seated in front of a massive mahogany desk carved with lion's heads at the corners, and more carvings down the legs. A man lurked in the shadows behind the desk, a big man, probably at least Chuck's 6'3", but more muscular. Chuck couldn't tell another thing about him. Age, race, hair or lack of, whether he was about to shoot several holes in Chuck's precious fleshy bits. Nothing.

"So," Chuck said, trying to fill the ominously awkward silence. "What's so important you couldn't just try me on the phone?"

"Mr Bartowski, I'd like to offer you a job."

"Huh?" Chuck said. "I uh... I'm sorry I just really wasn't expecting that. What with the snipers threatening my girlfriend and all."

"Roberts, tell the sniper to disengage."

"Um, sir... we've lost contact with him and police are en route. The girl is in the wind."

Chuck grinned. Of course she was, which meant they'd lost their leverage. Other than the guns trained on him, and that kind of thing didn't really faze him the way it used to.

"How the hell did that happen!?" the man behind the desk bellowed, leaning forward in anger enough that Chuck got a vague outline of him, but little more. The man recovered his composure almost instantly, in a way that sent a chill down Chuck's spine. Towering rage one second, utter calm the next? Amazingly scary, but maybe intentionally so, to put Chuck off guard after the disclosure of their rifleman's ineptitude. "No matter. We had no intention of harming Ms. Walker. The threat was necessary to bring you to this meeting."

"And without it, I think I'd appreciate you dropping me off back at my hotel."

"There's more than one kind of leverage, Mr. Bartowski." A folder slid out of the shadows and across the desk. "Take a look."

Chuck frowned and leaned forward, flipped the top of the folder, and stared. He spread half a dozen glossy pictures out in front of him. Him standing over Teddy Roark with a smoking gun in his hand. Him firing a pistol into Teddy's back at point blank range... Only... that wasn't how it had happened. Not at all. "What the hell is this? These are Photoshopped."

"Oh, so you didn't kill Mr. Roark in Manila last year?" the voice from the shadows inquired cuttingly. "Would you be willing to swear to that in court?"

Chuck opened his mouth to protest and stopped short of claiming self defense. That was an admission of having killed Roark. Who's to say they weren't recording this? They obviously wanted to blackmail him into something, no reason to give them more ammunition. "Any court would throw those pictures out in a heartbeat, because they're entirely fakes."

"But very convincing fakes, Mr. Bartowski," shadow-man said. "I feel confident you'd be hard pressed to prove that they were not in fact quite genuine. And they do still say a picture is worth a thousand words, don't they? At any rate, it's not as if you can deny killing Mr. Roark, after all. We both know the truth of that. It's in your CIA file. Granted, Graham wanted to give you a medal for it, as opposed to the use we're putting it to..."

Chuck grunted. "You said there was a job offer in this somewhere. I hope you don't think I'm just going to blindly agree to whatever plan you're hatching, blackmail or no blackmail. I need to know what the work would entail, you understand, before I could possibly agree."

Silence met this assertion, for a long drawn out moment. Chuck made as if to stand, and Jill pressed him back down into his seat with the muzzle of her pistol in his neck. Chuck peered into the darkness, trying to get a sense of the man behind the desk. If he ever got out of this room alive, he'd need to know what their plan was, so he could tip off the proper authorities.

"You could at least tell me your name..." Chuck said. "Or a name. Something. I've been calling you shadow-guy in my head."

"Decker."

"Like in Blade Runner?"

"Decker. Not Deckard," Jill said with careful emphasis. "I asked him the same thing."

Chuck half-turned in his chair. "Wait. That's his real name?"

"At the tail end of World War II, the Germans knew they were all but beaten, they began sending-"

"Sunken U-boat! You want me to find a lost, sunken U-boat! What's in it. Gold, jewels? Baby Hitler clones?"

"Plutonium."

Chuck made a strangled noise. "What?"

"Not much, of course. The Nazis never really got their production up and running, and their bomb designs were exceedingly inefficient. In 1945 they didn't have enough to build even one bomb. With modern methods, that same material could be turned into a handful of tactical yield nuclear weapons, if it fell into the wrong hands. We'd like your help seeing that doesn't happen."

Chuck shook his head, the cognitive dissonance overwhelming him. "The 'wrong hands'. Like yours. Sorry, no sale. You might as well shoot me now."

"I'm glad you feel that way."

"Do what now?"

"You seem to have gotten the wrong idea, Chuck," Decker said. "We're the good guys."

"Um. Really. You break Jill out of secret CIA jail, you try to blackmail me with murder charges in the Philippines, threaten my girlfriend with sniper fire-"

Decker leaned out of the shadows, grinning. "To see how you'd handle it. And you passed with flying colors." He slid a card across the desk to Chuck.

Clyde Decker

Deputy Director, CIA

Chuck held the square of cardstock up to the light, checking it for imperfections, or something. He wasn't exactly up on forgery techniques. He gave it up as useless. "So wait. Jill was in prison, right? You just let her go?"

"Pardoned," Jill said, putting away the pistol.

He wasn't convinced. "No offense, but I trust you as far as I can throw you, Jill. You have something in writing on that front? Preferably with the President's signature on it?"

"I told you he'd say that," Jill said.

Decker sighed and produced another folder and shoved it across the desk. A presidential pardon, made out to Jill Roberts, signed and sealed. Official looking as all hell, as far as Chuck could tell.

Chuck regained his composure after a long silence. "Okay. What else can you tell me about this lost U-boat? We should probably bring Sarah in on this. She's the salvage expert."

"Supposedly it went down in March of 1945, somewhere off the Bahamas."

"That doesn't really narrow it down."

"The records aren't exactly complete. This was more than sixty years ago, remember. It's not like we can just run a database search."

"Yeah. I get that, but still, you'd think..." His phone began buzzing. "Hang on, that'll be Sarah." He glanced at his watch. "She made good time."

"What?"

"We've got this newfangled thing called autodial," Chuck said. "I called her when I spotted you at the bar."

"That's how she made the sniper," Decker said. He snorted a laugh. "Imagine what these two'd get up to if we actually gave them some training. Okay, put it on speaker."

Chuck nodded. "Hey, Sarah. You're, uh... you're on with Deputy Director Decker. And Jill."

"This is Decker, how did you elude our man?"

"He pointed a gun at me. I beat the shit out of him. Thankfully, I'm only being figurative. He should be out of the hospital in a couple days."

"Hospital?!" Decker said. "What did you-"

"Hey, shut up," Sarah cut across him. "That's not why I called. You guys know there's a bunch of guys done up like commandos about to storm your front door?"

"What!" Chuck blanched.

"Roberts, check the sentries," Decker snapped.

She nodded and put her hand to her mouth, talking into a wrist-mic. He noticed the earpiece for the first time. "Alpha one, report in. Alpha one acknowledge, now." Jill's eyes widened in horror as the sentries failed to report back.

The building shook and roared with some kind of explosion from below them, masonry quivering and plaster dust trickling down onto the dark wood of the desk.

Jill drew her weapon and ran out the door, the two men flanking the door following her. Moments later pistol shots rang out, and chattering bursts of automatic weapons in reply. A man screamed in agony. The gunfire and shouts continued.

Chuck looked at the phone in his hands. Sarah could hear that, it was still on speaker. "Sarah, I gotta go." He didn't want her to hear him getting shot if it came to that. And if they didn't shoot him, an active phone call might tip them off she was nearby.

"Chuck wait-" but he disconnected and stuffed the phone back into his fanny pack. He turned to Decker. "Okay, give me a gun."

"What? I don't have a gun. I'm senior staff. I'm management for Christ's sake."

"Not even a little gun?" Chuck said. Decker shook his head. "Like none at all?"

"What do you want me to say?" Decker shrugged helplessly behind his desk. The gunfire in the hall was trailing off, but the last fire they heard was automatic fire, not the slower pistol fire.

A machine gun barrel appeared around the door-frame, and then a man poked his head in. Two men followed in black tactical gear head-to-toe, black balaclavas covering their faces. They surveyed the pair of them. One looked back at the others, nodded, turned and drilled a three-round burst through Decker's chest. The Deputy Director slumped back into the shadows behind the desk and his chair fell over full into the darkness. Chuck clapped his hands over his ears against the roar of the gunshots, so close together that they sounded like just one long blast of sound. Just barely he thought he heard one of them say, 'Package Secure,' but that made no sense. They'd just shot a CIA deputy! What did they want with Chuck?

He kept his hands raised, on the off chance they still might think of him as a threat. One of the men came over, while his two buddies kept their guns trained on Chuck. The gunman who'd killed Decker came up to the desk, leaned over and spat at the dead man. He looked at the photos Decker had doctored and grunted, looked at Chuck askance. "You're the one killed Roark?" The man's face was unreadable behind the black mask. "Boss is gonna want to have a... conversation... with you."

TO BE CONTINUED...