A/N: So. Time for a car chase! Thanks to everybody who has reviewed so far, love the feedback. Also thanks to Aerox for letting me bounce two sets of mutually exclusive potential spoilers off him to make this story better.

Chapter 3:

They still hadn't spotted Sarah in her hastily chosen surveillance position across the street. But judging by the way Chuck had hung up on her, he was about to be captured or-she flinched from the thought-killed. And he didn't want her hearing it when it happened. Sarah grit her teeth. Kidnap her boyfriend, would they? Not if she had anything to say about it. She didn't have long to plan anything out. But their getaway vehicles had to be close. They weren't gonna take Chuck and flee on foot. She didn't know if they were even after Chuck. But after the sniper incident she wasn't going to take the chance.

Sarah glanced around and spotted a truck. It wasn't an eighteen wheeler, but a smaller cousin, almost along the lines of a U-Haul truck, but of course, whatever the French brand equivalent of that was. There was a picture of a fish on the side. So, a delivery truck. But nobody around. She'd need... there. Brick.

Sarah hefted the brick through the side window and opened the door, stooped to pry open the steering column. Hopefully her fathers lessons on hotwiring cars hadn't atrophied, and were applicable to European models. She breathed a sigh of relief when the motor turned over. Now, she just needed a way to keep the thing on target. Sarah grunted and tugged at the knot holding her gauzy wrap-skirt in place, threaded it through the steering wheel, and mashed the gas pedal down with her scavenged brick. Now she just had to wait until they came out to get in their getaway cars.

Whoever this new bunch of gun toting maniacs was, Chuck wanted no part in ticking them off. At least not unarmed and outnumbered, at least four to one. Probably more. One of the gunmen grabbed Chuck's wrists and bound them with a nylon zip tie. Chuck winced as it cut off circulation.

"Time to move," the man said, grabbed Chuck by the collar and shoved him toward the door. They didn't bother to put a bag over his head, like they wanted him to see their nonchalance. Like the dead bodies they passed on the way through the hall and down the winding staircase were just a demonstration of their resolve. Or their indifference to his potential testimony at a later date, which was even more chilling. These people didn't think he'd see the light of day ever again. And frankly, Chuck's hopes on that front were fading fast.

There were four more gunmen at the bottom of the stairwell, and it was only then that he realized he hadn't spotted Jill among the bloody bodies littering the upstairs. He tried not to get his hopes up that she was alive. The odds didn't seem exactly favorable that he'd be getting out of this one.

They hit the street and a trio of black SUVs swooshed up to the curb. "Get the package inside and-shit!"

A large panel truck was racing toward them down the street on an obvious collision course with the first SUV in line.. Most of the gunmen whirled that way and opened fire in a raucous chorus of gunfire. But two of them stayed by Chuck, holding him awkwardly each by one arm, while they tried to aim M4 assault rifles one handed in every direction.

Chuck tried to cover his ears, but the gunmen shook him roughly and one kicked his knees out from under him. The truck kept coming and its momentum was enough to crumple up the first SUV in a titanic crash of twisting, squealing metal and shattered glass. The gunmen fanned out around the truck and two went to check it. "Nobody in the cab!"

"What the hell is going on?" one of the men guarding Chuck demanded.

"Doesn't matter. Get him in the van and let's-" he cut off mid-sentence with a thwap-thwap, and his head spewed a red mist. The second gunman whirled and went down. Chuck stared in shock. Twenty feet behind them, Sarah sat on a moped, the smoking barrel of a silenced pistol leveled at the two dead, or dying, men.

He didn't waste any more time than that first second of shock, and grabbed the combat knife from the closest dead guy's combat vest, cutting his ziptied hands free. Chuck bit down on a sudden urge to vomit and spotted a pair of grenades on the man's web gear. The others were still looking the wrong way, but that wouldn't last forever, and Sarah was a sitting duck on that moped. He pulled the grenades free, not even bothering to try and figure out if they were lethal, or just flashbangs. Chuck snatched the pins out and lobbed them down the street toward the gunmen. Then he rolled the second man over and did the same thing with his pair of grenades.
The first grenade rolled right up behind one of the unknowing gunmen and struck his foot.

The man had just enough time to glance down and snap his eyes wide in shock, before the world disappeared in a blaze of white heat.

Chuck felt a surge of relief that he'd been lobbing flashbangs and not high explosives, despite the fact that these men had shot up a CIA safehouse and killed Decker and probably Jill. But that was all he had time for. Chuck grabbed one of the dead men's guns, scooped a pair of box magazines from the pouch on the front and sprinted toward Sarah and the moped, his sandals flapping and making horribly audible slapping sounds against the soles of his feet.

Sarah revved the engine and spun the moped around in a half-circle so he could just jump on behind her, and once he had his arms around her midsection, she hit it.

Sirens blared from the side street Sarah initially tried, and she braked to a sudden stop. "Crap."

"Back the other way," he said. "They'd have mapped out an escape route, maybe we can find it."

"You want me to drive back toward all the guys with guns!"

"They're still trying to shake out the cobwebs and figure out what's going on," Chuck said. "Hey, new bag?"

"There's a sniper rifle in it," Sarah said, whipping them around in a quick 180 degree turn and heading back toward the scene of the crime at the moped's top speed.

Chuck unzipped the bag and dropped his spare mags into the main compartment, then slung his captured M4 off his shoulder. "Um, try to cover your ears, this is gonna be really loud," Chuck said, wincing himself in anticipation. He swung the gun around Sarah's midsection and rippled off the whole magazine in one roaring burst as they passed the line of SUVs. He kept the fire low, trying mostly to take out tires. But he wasn't really aiming so much as he was sweeping the gun like a broom down the whole formation. Black-clad gunmen still stood in the street shaking their heads and trying to recover from the volley of flashbangs. One of the SUVs sagged down on its rims, but the other two peeled out behind them. He realized if he'd left them well enough alone the gunmen might not have even noticed them in the confusion of their raid being ambushed.

"Ow!" Sarah shouted.

"Oh no, are you hit?"

"No! That was just really freaking loud!"

"I tried to warn you."

"Forget about it. See if you can do something about that other SUV!"

Chuck thought about it for a second, clinging to her and leaning into a turn as they tried to steer away from the sound of sirens that seemed all of a sudden to be coming from every direction. "I don't want to let go with both hands to try and aim. Give me that pistol?"

"Take it, just makes driving harder."

"Um. Where is it?"

"Waist of my bikini. Left side."

"Um..."

"Don't get squeamish. It's not like you've never had your hand in there before!"

He felt around gingerly for the weapon, and snagged it. Sarah swerved suddenly. "Crap!" She said.

"What?" Chuck said. "Are you alright?"

"Fine, you... just kind of... snapped the string."

Chuck looked down, and despite the situation, still managed to blush at the expanse of bare flesh on display. He tried to split his attention between helping repair the damage and not fumbling the pistol. "What happened to your skirt!"

"Stop worrying about my bikini, you prude! Shoot out their tires!"

Chuck flushed a deeper shade of red, and half-turned. But shooting out the tires of another vehicle from the back of a swerving moped with one arm around the waist of a half-naked, wildly cursing Sarah proved more difficult than it would seem at first glance. And it seemed plenty difficult at first glance. Chuck emptied the whole clip and sparks flew up from the pavement, but that was it. None of them managed to hit the behemoth rapidly closing on them. The gun ran dry and the slide locked back on an empty chamber. "You got any more bullets for this thing?"

"No!"

"Good riddance," Chuck said and hurled the tiny automatic at the lead pursuing SUV. This time somehow, his aim was true, and the gun smashed into the windshield, sending a spiderweb of cracks across the windscreen. The SUV swerved and plowed into a parked car before the driver could recover. The second SUV slowed to skirt the wreck, but it only bought them a little time. The remaining SUV's driver was sticking a pistol out the side window now. Chuck would have to risk trying to reload the assault rifle and turn to fire it at the SUV.

Up ahead, Sarah spotted the beginnings of a police roadblock and cursed. Then her eyes widened. "Chuck, hold on tight. I've got an idea."

"Oh God, I don't like the sound of that..."

"Grab on tight!"

Chuck squeezed his arms around her as tight as he could, and Sarah hit the brakes. The SUV suddenly seemed to be racing toward them impossibly fast in what Chuck could see of the rearview.

"Lean left, now!"

Their massive deceleration was probably the only thing that stopped them from flying right off the moped as they swung 90 degrees. Sarah twisted the throttle and they zipped forward down a side alley. The SUV overshot the alley and its tires screeched as it tried to stop suddenly.

Chuck's eyes widened. "Sarah?"

"Yeah, I know. I see 'em."

"Please tell me we're not..."

"Sorry. Only way."

She tried to throttle back, but they were already teetering over the edge of a narrow pedestrian stairway, which happened to be full of people.

Chuck glanced over his shoulder. The SUV had backed up, and... no way. It was following them. The alley was barely wide enough for people to go back and forth up the stairs at the same time. The SUV's side windows smashed off in a flare of sparks, and then it was crashing down the concrete stairs behind them, with barely an inch or two of clearance total.

"Faster. Must go faster."

Sarah's eyes widened when she spotted it in the moped's rearview. "Get outta the damn way!" she shouted. "Move it, people!"

Chuck tried it in French, waving frantically. "Bougez vous! Allez-vite! Uh... s'il-vous plait?"

But people were still staring in shock, for a moment. Then they turned and ran, a flood of screaming humanity ahead of them.

The jolting, bone shivering ride stopped momentarily when they hit a landing. One man, later than the others in overcoming his shock, spotted them on the moped and tried to shove Chuck and Sarah off and take the vehicle for himself. Sarah elbowed him in the gut and revved the engine. The man made another grab, desperate, and Chuck punched him in the face as they passed. The man reeled back against the wall and nearly lost his balance. But Chuck couldn't spare the man another thought. The SUV was gaining.

He heard the man screaming in French, and then the voice cut off. Chuck didn't look back. That could have been us. The thought shivered through him as they rattled down another section of stairs.

The crowd was bleeding away into other, even narrower side alleys, with a few brave souls peeking back around the corners. "Think we can fit down one of those side passages?"

"I don't want to risk it and be wrong," Sarah shouted her reply. The alley made a sort of shallow dog-leg turn and... "Oh crap."

The crowd and the slight turn had obscured the fact until now, that the alley stopped against the back wall of a building, splitting into a T-intersection with much narrower alleys to either side, at least it looked like it. "If I never get a chance to say it, know that I love you very much," Chuck said.

Sarah's eyes widened at the surprise admission. Her face hardened in determination. "Today is not the day we die, Charles Bartowski!"

She revved the moped and hurtled down the last stretch of stairs, and somehow managed to powerslide around the corner, and squeeze them at almost full speed down the left arm of the T-intersection barely a second ahead of the SUV as it slammed into the building behind them. The busted windshield must have kept the driver from realizing his peril until the very last second. He hadn't even tried to slow down. Chuck risked a glance over his shoulder, and saw deployed airbags and a cloud of stone dust amid the twisted wreck. It was impossible to tell if anyone survived within, before the twisting alleyway hid the wrecked SUV from sight.

They came out onto a street, suddenly blinking against the shift to bright sunlight from the gloom of the alleys, and turned to put the sirens behind them. They went a block or so, and then headed down a second alley, and finally stopped. "I think we lost them," Sarah said shakily.

"Yeah," Chuck said.

"That means you can let go of my boobs."

"What?" Chuck said.

"You're..."

He looked down and blinked. "Sorry! I didn't mean to... grab... those. You said hang on tight."

"Yeah, and you certainly did," Sarah pinched the cup of her bikini through her shirt and shifted it back into proper position.

"Um..." Chuck said, now distracted by the snapped side of her bikini bottoms. "What happened to your skirt?"

"I had to steer that truck somehow while I circled the block."

"Wow. I take back that thing I said."

Sarah frowned, pausing in the act of tying the snapped ends of her bikini back together. "What thing you said?"

"Yesterday. About you not having the right qualifications to be a superspy. Seriously. You threw that whole thing together in what? 90 seconds?"

Sarah shrugged. "Would have just got myself killed if you hadn't thought quick with the flash-bangs."

Chuck shivered, remembering. "We need to get off the street. Fast. Whoever those guys were, there's still like half a dozen of them running around with assault rifles. And they killed Decker and all his CIA guys. Probably Jill too. Though I didn't see her body."

"Speaking of which..." Sarah said. "You want to ditch that thing? Might attract a little more attention than we need right now."

Chuck nodded. But then paused. "Might need it later though," he said. "Hang on, let me see if I remember how to do this..."

Sarah turned to watch him fumble with the weapon. "Don't shoot yourself."

Chuck ejected the magazine and worked the charging handle. He tilted the weapon so she could see the empty chamber. "It's empty, don't worry about that," he said. Though he did remember to put the thumb selector switch back to safe, which he'd forgot to do during the chase. "There's a pin somewhere that... aha, gotcha!"

The gun seemed to split in half, the top part, barrel and fancy attached optics and all, swinging forward and down like a break-action shotgun. "Right, then this pin at the front and..." there was a metallic snap, and the top half came off entirely. Sarah's eyes widened and she shrugged out of the shoulder bag she'd pilfered from the sniper at the beach after she'd headbutted him into unconsciousness. It just barely fit inside, in its half-disassembled state. Chuck slung the now fairly heavy bag over his shoulder and they walked away from the moped. Too many people had seen them on the thing, and the crowd from that stairway alley was going to be spreading, asking questions. The police would be setting up a perimeter at some point, probably. Chuck and Sarah needed to be far away from the moped when that happened. They hit the street again and walked back in the direction of the beach.

"We need to get off the street," Sarah said.

"Hotel, up at the corner," Chuck pointed.

"Looks kind of scuzzy," she said.

"Beggars can't be choosers. And we can't exactly use our travelers' checks or credit cards. They knew who we were."

"You sure?"

"They wouldn't have shot everybody except me if they weren't after me, specifically," Chuck said. "And that SUV driver came after us like we were his Moby Dick."

"Talk later," Sarah said and they filed into the lobby.

It looked like any number of hotels witnessed in old movies set in Europe, cramped and dim, but not necessarily seedy. Though the carpet should probably have been replaced years ago.

"How much for the night. Uh, desolait. Parlez-vous anglais?"

The man at the counter shrugged. He eyed their beachwear and didn't answer aloud, just rubbed his fingers together in the universal signal for 'gimme some scratch, yo'. The posted nightly rate was €49.99. It was the European equivalent of an econolodge, Chuck realized. "I don't have a credit card, or ID," he said. "Is that a problem?"

The clerk just shrugged. Just what Chuck wanted to see. That made their efforts to disappear a little less fraught. Chuck dug his wallet out of his fanny pack and handed over a fifty euro note. The man took the note and looked at it. Then beckoned for more.

Chuck narrowed his eyes and glared. The clerk eyed him, then Sarah up and down, eyes lingering on Sarah's legs, and leered. Again the man never said a word. Chuck grimaced and selected a twenty. The man at the counter eyed it and then raised an eyebrow as if offended. Chuck peeled off another twenty, and the man nodded, turned on his swivel stool and took an old fashioned key down from the pegboard behind him on the wall. He tossed it to Chuck and the money disappeared.

Chuck started toward the elevator, and the man cleared his throat, tapped the actual old fashioned paper guest registry. Sarah shrugged and took the pen, wrote down the names Heather Chandler and Dick Duffy.

Chuck raised an eyebrow as they waited for the elevator, and Sarah shrugged. "People I knew in high school. First thing that came to mind."

"So, this Dick Duffy? Should I be jealous?" Chuck said, punching the button for their floor.

Sarah wrinkled her nose. "No. Definitely not. I just went for the most different from us you can get. They were the worst. Forget about that."

"Right. We've got more important things to worry about." The elevator stopped, and they walked to the door. Sarah stopped him when he reached to unlock the door.

"Not this one. I don't trust the clerk any farther than I can spit."

Chuck's eyes widened. "Then what?"

"You still have those paper clips in your nerd-pack?"

"Fanny pack."

"I stand by my phrasing," Sarah said with a twinkle in her eye. Chuck grumbled and produced a pair of paperclips.

"What are you doing?"

"Remember the peg-board with all the room keys? I spotted that the room next door wasn't rented. We'll stay there instead," she explained while she bent the paper clips into a makeshift pick and torsion wrench.

"What if somebody comes in and takes that room, only to find us in it?"

"This isn't exactly a tourist hotel. There's like two other rooms with people in them, Chuck. It's a risk, paid off clerk or not, if the cops show up, he's sending them right to the room he assigned us."

While she spoke, she began working on the door. Sarah glared at him. "What kind of lookout are you?"

Chuck shrugged and turned to shield her hands from anyone who happened to show up. But she was right, the hotel was mostly vacant. It had that feel. "Okay, finally got it," Sarah said a minute or two later.

The room was tiny, a bed and a chest of drawers and a window overlooking an alley. That was about it aside from the sink and a tiny closet. There was no bathroom, and Chuck frowned in consternation. "Probably at the end of the hall," she said. "Old building like this."

Chuck nodded. "Okay. we need to figure this out. How did they find us?"

"Who? The CIA or the mystery goon squad?"

"Let's take it in order," Chuck said. "CIA first."

"Well, our plane tickets are in our names. Our hotel reservations are in our names. Our cell phones have GPS and are in our names," Sarah said. "Pick one."

"Okay, so we're not being very sneaky and anybody on the grid can be found. Okay. CIA explained. How did the mystery goon squad find us? And is that really what we're going to call them?"

"You got a better idea what to call them?"

Chuck shook his head sourly. "No. Whatever. How did they find the CIA safehouse?"

"Followed the car from wherever Jill shanghaied you?"

"I'd figure the CIA would be able to pick up a tail, wouldn't you? Those SUVs weren't exactly subtle. Did you see anyone else watching the place?"

"I don't think so. But CIA didn't spot me tailing them."

"You were following my phone's GPS, not physically watching the car."

Sarah pursed her lips in thought. "Did they scan you for bugs?"

"No. But why- Crap," Chuck said. "That's it. I'm bugged. But how?"

Sarah shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not exactly an expert in spycraft. I've got some overlap in skills, from my misspent youth, but..."

"Phones have GPS, internet, onboard power. Your target always keeps it on them, even when they change clothes or go swimming, they keep the phone safe. That's the simplest way to do it," Chuck sounded more confident. "If it was me. There's plenty of redundancy if they want to track you all kinds of different ways. But I haven't left my phone just lying around anywhere. It hasn't been out of my direct control for days."

"Except at airport security," Sarah said.

"So, what? You're saying they had an inside guy at Heathrow?"

"Check your phone first to be sure. Remember that guy took forever searching your stuff?"

Chuck nodded and quickly began disassembling his phone. It took him a full minute to find the bug, because it was so small. If he hadn't built his phone himself from the ground up, he probably never would have spotted the tiny extra bit of circuitry attached to his phone's motherboard.

With the tiny phillips-head screwdriver he kept in his fanny pack, Chuck removed the bug and paused. "The rest of those guys could still be following this tracker right now."

A seagull alighted on their windowsill and Sarah grinned, digging in her purse. "I've got an idea," she said. Her hand reappeared with a small protein bar. She pinched off a tiny piece and Chuck passed her the tiny bug. Sarah pushed it into the hunk of protein bar and inched the window open. She shoved the little morsel out onto the sill and the gull went for it almost immediately.

Sarah slammed the window closed, and the startled bird took off, disappearing down the alley.

"That ought to keep them busy for a while," Sarah brushed her hands off and frowned. Chuck was looking a little upset. "What's wrong?"

"I went off to get you food and you had snacks in your purse?"

"It's my emergency protein bar," Sarah waved the offending snack and wrapped it back up, dropped it in her purse. "Not my 'mild-hunger-that-the-boyfriend-can-just-as-easily-satisfy-with-real-food' protein bar. This was an emergency."

Chuck rolled his eyes and finished reassembling his phone. "Whatever. Should we change rooms? Or floors or something?"

"I don't know," Sarah said. "Eventually, absolutely. We're going to need to change hotels entirely. And figure out a way to get out of the country, right? What did the CIA want with you anyway?"

"It was weird. A job offer. They wanted me to find some lost U-boat full of plutonium." Chuck filled her in on the few details Decker had given him as to where to find the thing.

"Plutonium?! We should call Bryce- or no, maybe it's better to go straight to the top. I still have Graham's card in my wallet somewhere, from when they tried to recruit me out of high school," Sarah paused. "Wait. A whole U-boat full of plutonium? That's... I don't know off the top of my head what the cargo capacity on one of those was. But that's... that's a lot of plutonium."

"I don't think it's a whole U-boat of plutonium. I think Decker said only enough to make one bomb back in the forties. I don't know how much that was. I'm guessing like ten or twenty pounds? I seriously don't know. But there had to have been a lot of cargo room left over."

"Like for plunder?" Sarah's eyes lit up.

"Oh, good grief," Chuck said. "You want to go after it ourselves."

She gave him an impish grin and shrugged. "Maybe. Not by ourselves though," she retrieved her wallet and found Graham's card eventually.

She took out her own phone and stopped. "Actually, check my phone for bugs first. Now I'm paranoid."

But Sarah's phone was clean. It was another weirdness. Why hadn't they had a tracker on Sarah? "Okay, it's ringing," Sarah said.

"Hello?"

Sarah frowned. It was a woman. Wasn't this supposed to be Graham's direct line? "Hi, I'm uh... nevermind. I need to talk to Director Graham. It's important. Bryce Larkin will vouch for me."
"What?" Sarah's face went bone white and she turned to stare at Chuck in horror. "What do you mean. Bryce or Graham? Oh, god. They're both dead?"

TO BE CONTINUED...

A/N: One more time, I'd like to thank you all for reviewing. Especially now that the show is long gone, your continued reviews feed my desire to write this story.