A/N: Sorry for the long gap between postings. I'm trying to pick up the pace again, so be on the lookout in the next couple weeks for chapter 8 hopefully.
Chapter 7:
"Chuck," Sarah said. "C'mon. Snap out of it. You've been in zombie mode for almost an hour." She snapped her fingers in front of his eyes and he blinked and startled slightly, glancing around.
He blinked again. "Uh... wow. Sorry. That just...I did not expect to see my mom there."
"I guessed that much."
"So, um. Where are we?"
"Motel 6, South side of town," she said. "If you hadn't been pretty much catatonic I might have considered trying to tail them, but I figured I needed to get you someplace safe. You feeling up to talking about it now?"
Chuck shook his head. "Not really, but it's not like I've got a choice."
"You've always got a choice," Sarah said softly, sank down on the edge of the bed beside him and looped her arm around his waist. She laid her head down on his shoulder. "You never talk about your mom, so I'm guessing it's not a happy story."
"I was eight," Chuck said after a long silence. "Ellie was twelve, I think. When mom left. The day before she left, we made chocolate chip cookies, the whole family. And she and Dad were happy and laughing, and probably playing grabass when me and Ellie weren't looking, in hindsight. That kind of laughing. And then she was just... gone the next day. Not a word, not a warning. Just her car missing from the driveway. It crushed my dad. He wasn't really there afterwards. Oh, he was around, but just not...all there... any more. He waited until Ellie was out of high school and I had my driver's license before he bailed."
Sarah's arm tightened around him and she kissed the top of his head. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that."
"Mother's day was the worst, the first couple of years. Until we came up with our own twist on how we didn't need her anyway," Chuck said. He knew he was rambling. "But still, never knowing why she disappeared. I didn't realize how much it ate at me."
"At least now you know," Sarah said. "And at least she's not one of the bad guys. She left to join the CIA."
Chuck blinked. "How do you figure?"
"Well, how else did she show up at the Archives looking for us?"
"I meant: how did you figure she isn't one of the bad guys? She was running those guys who nearly shot us. And anyway, they weren't CIA, remember the business cards."
"They had orders to bring us in alive, though," Sarah said.
"If possible," Chuck said. "And they had their guns out."
"Not like it did them a lot of good, if you remember. The Walker-Bartowski tag team cleaned up pretty good." Sarah grinned, trying to cheer him up, and gave him a somewhat awkward pat on the back.
Chuck nodded. "Anyway, my Mom's still working for a shady corporation, if not the out and out bad guys." He paused and rubbed his hand over his hair. "Still, it begs the question, no matter who she's really working for. How did they know we'd be coming to the archives looking for leads?"
Sarah wrinkled her nose and scrunched up her face. "Ugh, good point. CIA probably could have had facial recognition at the airport flag us. They've got all kinds of satellites and stuff that could have tracked us, from there. If they were really looking for us hardcore."
"But we haven't even heard one peep about Decker's death. And that ought to be international news," Chuck said. "Unless they're purposefully covering it up, I'm thinking the CIA might still be in the dark over our involvement."
"Which means your mom and whoever she's working for, found out from somebody else. Maybe the bug in your phone was more than a tracker. Maybe they were listening to your conversation with Decker. Crap; that means your mom is one of the bad guys."
Chuck was silent for a moment. "Let's think about this. How do we even know Decker is who he said he was?"
"What?"
"How do we really know?" Chuck said. "He had a presidential pardon for Jill, he got Jill out of a top secret federal prison. That could have been BS. Secret prison gets broken out of, they'd keep that a secret. Plus, I don't know a genuine presidential pardon from a hole in the ground. It could all have been a smokescreen. He said he wanted us to recover this U-boat and the plutonium in it, for him. Why would the CIA need us for that. Couldn't they just talk to the Coast Guard, or the navy? Even do some recruiting if they had to? I mean, we're not the only game in town. But we do have exposure. Wired magazine cover exposure."
"I don't even-" Sarah shook her head, as the consequences of that train of thought raced to a completely unrelated conclusion. Decker the bad guy, meant the people who had tried to kidnap Chuck in France were the good guys. Which meant she had-she flinched from the thought. "How do we find out for sure?"
"CIA doesn't exactly advertise who the head of their Ops department or whatever you want to call it is."
"Directorate," Sarah put in. "Clancy novels."
Chuck nodded. "So, from what you remember, are the high directorate offices technically secret?"
"Actually, I think at least some of them require senate confirmation. We should be able to find some trace of Decker on the public record. Testimony before congress, or something. That kind of thing."
Chuck shook himself, nodded again. More certain. "Okay. I'm gonna look into that. You want to look through the charts and stuff I got? Electronic snooping for me, nautical snooping for you. Play to our strengths."
"I'll see what I can see," Sarah nodded. Then she grunted, and looked at him intently for a moment. "You okay?"
"Not hardly, but having work helps."
She nodded and rubbed the small of his back for a moment, pressed a kiss to his temple and moved to the little table to dig into the files he'd pilfered from the national archives.
It was heavy going, mostly from photocopied records, with little rhyme or reason, and the single thick file folder Chuck had swiped was full to bursting. Finally she did find a mention of action against what had to be their target. The American destroyer which presumably sank the U-boat hadn't had the benefit of GPS, and more likely than not, the U-boat wouldn't have immediately exploded. More likely it had continued to move at the speed it had before the depth charge exploded. Sarah didn't have a good set of charts, and she'd need them, in order to track down the U-boat's final resting place.
But finally, she was back in her element. A hunt for a sunken ship had a rhythm and a feel to it much different from being on the run and under fire. She was looking forward to getting back aboard a ship. Which just left the problem of finding a ship.
"How's your search coming?" Chuck asked.
"Pretty okay. Preliminary at this point, but I've got us a starting point. You?"
"Decker was indeed CIA deputy director Decker," Chuck said. He grinned. "So you rescued me from the bad guys, not the good guys. I know you were probably worried about that," Chuck said. He leaned against the edge of the table. "But… that doesn't really solve our problems. And it means my mom probably really is one of the bad guys."
Sarah grimaced. "I'm sorry," she said.
Chuck shrugged. "Not your fault, but thanks. In either case. We probably need to get moving don't we?"
"Not tonight. Our funds for the rest of this… mission? Are going to be waiting for us at the wells fargo across the street in the morning. Then we can go. Until then, we've got…" Sarah dug in her jeans pocket and produced a rumpled ten dollar bill and a handful of ones, along with some small change. "Thirteen sixty-two, and whatever you've got left. I could barely afford the room."
Chuck let out a low whistle. "Man, I hadn't realized we were cutting it that close. I think I've still got a couple of twenties, if you want to I can order some takeout."
"God, yes. I'm starving," Sarah said. "I think there's a yellow pages in here somewhere."
Chuck cleared his throat, and produced his cPhone, waggled it. Sarah rolled her eyes.
"Just don't order sizzling shrimp. Once was enough, thank you."
He made a moue of clutching his chest as if mortally wounded. "How dare you!" Chuck said, then he got serious. "I thought 'An evening with Morgan' went alright."
"It did," Sarah shrugged. "But your boy Morgan doesn't just have eyes bigger than his stomach, he has eyes bigger than Texas. We had those leftovers for a week, Chuck. A week. Might have put me off shrimp for life."
"Well, pizza's usually a safe bet."
"Done. But no pineapple."
"Man!"
The next morning, they collected the express shipment from their new Swiss bank and booked AmTrak tickets down to Florida. Before they left, there were a few items on the agenda. Mostly, shopping. The number of miscellaneous items that one needed for the kind of expedition they were contemplating were many and varied. And there was still the clothing situation. Their funds weren't limitless, but they were safely away from the brink. Still, Sarah took control of that aspect of the shopping. No more lacy negligees were in the offing, unfortunately. Good sturdy hiking boots for both of them. Plus a few odds and ends. Basically she was assembling a pair of survival packs for her and Chuck; the rest would wait until they got to Florida. On the train ride, she and Chuck looked through all boat listings in the Miami area, then expanded their search to other ports along the Florida coast, and even up into the Carolina coast as well. But finally they settled on an eighty foot former research vessel that they got for a relative song. It put quite a dent in their operating capital, but it was still better than they had any right to expect.
Of course, it didn't come with all the gear they needed, just most, and while Sarah went shopping for underwater cameras and scuba gear and geiger counters, he spent a couple of days on the boat with weather almanacs and history textbooks, among other easily available resources, and his new laptop, coding up some better numbers for the potential location of the wreck. Sarah would come in briefly from time to time between trips, and peer over his shoulder at the equations and the charts and shake her head,
Sometimes she made a correction, but that was mostly because Sarah's relationship with charts was a little less theoretical than his. She wasn't correcting the math, but helping him read the charts. Most of the time when Sarah was aboard the still nameless ship, however, she spent in the engine room. The huge diesel engine was in pretty good repair, but pretty good was not adequate.
The second day on the boat, Chuck went all over the ship looking for her, and it took him nearly fifteen minutes to find her. They were rattling around the ship like two lone beads in a maraca. Chuck leaned on the door-bulkhead-Sarah's nautical jargon was slowly seeping in, and watched her work on the huge engine for a few seconds. Sarah turned and arched an eyebrow.
"Quit staring at my butt and give me a hand here," she said.
"You sure? Engines aren't exactly my thing. I mean I know electronics."
"Whatever, pass me the 3/8th ratchet head," Sarah said. "You can just be my tools gofer."
Chuck passed her the tool in question and pulled up his front lip in a horrible gopher impression. Sarah rolled her eyes. She had a smudge of motor oil on her cheek. Chuck leaned in to wipe it off and Sarah looked up at him. He was standing closer than he really needed to be.
She bit her lip softly and Chuck groaned. One thing led to another.
It turned out, eventually, when Sarah got back to working on the engine, that they were just about done with repairs. She needed a couple parts, but then they'd be able to set out in the morning. Of course, that would have been too easy. It was nearing sunset when Chuck's cPhone rang.
"I think I'm being followed," Sarah said on her way back from the Marine Diesel Parts warehouse. Chuck blinked at his phone. "Wait, seriously?"
"This is not a drill, Charles Irving Bartowski."
He winced. Sarah never went full-name on him unless he was in big trouble. Or she was, in this case. "Can you lose him?"
"Not so far. He's pretty good. "I was only a half mile from the pier when I spotted him."
"Just one that you see?" Chuck said. "Where are you? I'll come back you up."
"I've only seen one. But I'm not exactly a professional spy here, Chuck. And neither are you. Be careful. And don't you dare quote Han Solo at me."
"I'll be careful," Chuck said, after having to stop the instinctive reply. He checked his M4 to make sure there was a round in the chamber and the safety was on before he stuffed it into a duffel bag and headed out.
Sarah had taken a taxi and left him the rental car in case something happened. When he'd pressed her on what it was she'd been expecting to happen, she'd simply rolled her eyes and said 'the unexpected.' He was glad of it now, because it meant he didn't have to leave her swinging in the proverbial wind any longer than he could help. Sarah ditched the cab and cabbie to avoid any awkward questions or leading the pursuit back to the boat. If they didn't already know about it. He ground his teeth.
They kept the phone channel open, and Chuck parked along the side of the road several blocks ahead of the route Sarah was taking on foot through the muggy Miami evening. Chuck turned off the engine and slumped low in his seat He slid his hand into the duffel to clutch the pistol-grip on his assault rifle. He was tense, and now with the AC off, starting to sweat.
After a moment he unclipped the 3x magnifier from his assault rifle and used it to scan around him. It wasn't as much magnification as the rifle scope, but he'd left that with the sniper rifle back aboard the ship. He'd been in too much of a rush to come help Sarah to think about that. But now he had nothing but time to think, and he figured maybe it was better. The magnifier was shorter than a full-blown scope, and he could pretty much hide it in his hand. Still, anyone who spotted him at all would know he was holding something to his eye. Anyway, it was better than nothing. He remembered the heavy duty binoculars which had been left aboard the ship when they purchased it and cursed himself.
He settled in to wait, scanning the street back the way Sarah and her pursuit should be coming every thirty seconds or so.
"How's it going?" he said into his speaker phone. The line to Sarah was still open. "I'm in position."
Sarah fished in her purse one handed and muted Chuck's end of the call. Her tail was still too far back to hear, but it'd be better not to risk it. And Chuck would still be able to hear her. "I'm muting you," she said softly. "I see the rental up ahead. I'll make the turn a couple blocks after I pass you, and head west. Keep an eye out for anybody else trailing the one I've already made. If you spot something honk your horn and come pick me up. Otherwise maybe we need to be thinking capture and question instead of evade." Sarah paused. "I'll look for an alley or something to run an ambush."
As she approached the car, she frowned. She couldn't see Chuck in the front seat, which was odd, but-Sarah blinked and nearly let her stride hitch-Chuck had a hastily scrawled paper sign pressed to the passenger side window as she passed.
Give me loc and a minute to get set before you ambush
Sarah almost nodded. Instead she spoke softly, hoping it'd carry to her cPhone in her purse. "Gotcha."
Chuck slumped even lower in his seat once Sarah had gone past, using just the mirrors now to survey her backtrail. He spotted her pursuit before she got halfway to the end of the next block.
He was tall, but not especially so. Probably a little shorter than Chuck, maybe about six-foot even. African american, in his mid thirties, close cropped hair and stubbly beard a couple days past a five o'clock shadow. He was wearing one of those olive drab coats with all the pockets, like stereotypical homeless men always wear on tv. Chuck thought about that for a moment. Probably all those pockets come in handy; means you didn't have to have the traditional hobo rag bundle on the end of a stick. What was that called? Irrelevant. The myriad of pockets would make good stashing locations for surveillance gear and weapons as well. Chuck grimaced and tried to stare through the man's forehead into his brain and see what he was thinking.
The tail was walking on the opposite side of the street from Sarah. There was always the possibility that he wasn't an enemy agent. He could just be a homeless guy following Sarah. A run of the mill mugging-but no. Sarah had spotted the tail originally when she was in her taxi, which meant the man had ditched his transport somewhere as well.
Chuck scanned the rearview mirror for headlights, or a car moving without headlights. Usually a tail would have two people in the car, right? For just this kind of situation. He didn't see anything though. Chuck slowly raised the magnifier to his eye and peeked over the edge of the driver's side door. The tail was just passing on the opposite side of the street. Chuck concentrated his scan on the man's face. And saw the radio earpiece. He was in touch with somebody. Whether they were close enough to swoop in and help was another open question. But he wasn't a random mugger, if that had ever really been a possibility. Hobo-coat notwithstanding.
The man probably wasn't completely on his own. There had to be more, somewhere. Chuck waited while the tail crossed the street at the corner and followed Sarah east at the turning.
She was heading away from the waterfront into what Google Maps claimed was an old industrial park, a mostly abandoned adjunct to the port of Miami.
Chuck waited until they were hopefully out of earshot before starting the car and following. He kept his speed to a slow crawl and the headlights turned off, keeping an eye out for cop cars. Getting pulled over with an unlicensed fully automatic rifle in the passenger seat would be a good way to wind up on the news, not to mention in jail. Either of which would probably be eventually fatal given their current circumstances.
But police presence was thin on the ground, this far from the Miami night-life. It was dismal and abandoned, with nothing left to steal, and no residential buildings. Nothing but empty warehouses and the occasional abandoned factory. And it was difficult to walk off with real estate. There was nothing here for the police to serve and/or protect.
Sarah's voice came through the speakerphone periodically, giving him street names and turnings as they glided through the night, pursued and pursuer and pursued. After what seemed like a year but was only four minutes by the dashboard clock, she gave him the go ahead to turn down an alley for the ambush.
He heard grunting over the still-open phone line, and then a thump and a high pitched muffled shout. Chuck gunned the engine, spun the wheel and hurtled down the alley. He flicked on his headlights expecting the worst as he screeched to a halt. He scooped up his rifle and got half-out of the car, aiming before he really took in the scene.
"You okay?" he said. Even though it was obvious even as he asked the question. Sarah had a gun in her hand and her pursuer was crumpled up in a fetal position, clutching his unmentionables.
"I'm fine."
Chuck grinned. He couldn't resist. "I was talking to him."
The wounded man groaned. "Girl... fights dirty..." he gasped.
Sarah shook her head in exasperation. "Help me get him up and in the trunk, and let's get out of here."
Another car turned into the far end of the alley. A moment after that, a second pulled in behind Chuck's rental. Chuck's hands tightened on his rifle, and Sarah pulled her pursuer half to his feet to use him as a human shield.
A tall figure in a suit and tie slid out of the car and strode forward. The wash from the cars' competing headlights made it impossible to make out his face. Until he spoke. "You're in enough trouble already, Moron. Stop pointing guns at me."
Chuck's jaw dropped and he lowered the rifle instinctively. "Casey?" He said dumbfounded.
"You wanna let Captain Jackson go there, Walker?"
"Are we under arrest?" Sarah said.
Casey's grin was eerie backlit by the headlights of his government sedan. "Do you want to be?"
TO BE CONTINUED...
A/N: So, the plot continues to thicken. Shoot me a review if you're in the mood.