"Listen, Carly...you can cry all you want once we get out of here." They didn't have time for hysterics. "Come on, we're out of here."
"You got shot. I saw you go down."
It dawned on him that she had seen him being shot with the tranquilizer rifle. She continued sobbing and he gave her a quick hug. "You're fine and I'm fine. We're going to all be OK, but I need you to focus." In her confused state, she could do something that might jeopardize their getting out of there. "Can you do that for me? Do you think you can focus on the situation and help me get us out of here?"
She looked at him like a puppy that didn't know any English. Her eyes continued to leak water, although she was no longer making any crying noises, that might alert the guards. "I can't leave here with you. You're just a paranoid illusion brought on by lack of sleep."
"You want to sleep?" Sam paused for just a moment, before he thought of what he needed to do next. "Sorry, but I don't have time to explain." He struck her at the base of her neck and she collapsed into his waiting arms. "Right now, I don't think you would get it, even if I took the time."
Carrying her fireman style, he appreciated her lightness compared to the others he had lugged around on the job. Of coarse, he hadn't had to lug them around as far as her, but she was comparatively easier to handle. There was only one way in and out of the West wing and that was the way he had come in. They passed the guard room undetected.
Both guards were still arguing about the cameras in the sloped, and brightly illuminated hallway. They were facing the camera on the far wall, over the exit and pointing at the Five-seveN hole in the side of the camera's casing. Neither of them knew what had caused the short in the wiring, but they knew it had to do with that strange hole. Both men were facing away from him, which would be to his advantage, if he was going to get them out of the way and stop them from blocking his escape. If his Sc-20 hadn't been jammed, he might have been able to bounce a couple sticky shockers or air-ring foils off of their heads, but as it was, he would just have to race up behind them and knock them senseless. He laid Carly down and maneuvered himself into a comfortable spot from which to attack. Even with all the lighting and slippery slope, neither of them spotted him, until he was an arms length away from them.
"What...who?" He clanked their heads together like a couple of ripe melons, smashed one man in the face with the butt of his SC-20, slammed a foot into the ankle of the second, breaking the bones, and took them both down with a few quick kicks to the groin and a jab to the esophagus, that paralyzed their breathing and dropped them to the ground out cold.
He gathered Carly in his arms again and hustled out into the main hall and off towards the front exit. He knew from Dr. Zithers' information and the blue prints he had glanced through, that this exit had a guard shack and a camera, but the back exit had a camera, a guard, and a massive twenty foot fence that had razor wire around the top just in case. Sam was in no mood to try and hoist an unconscious woman over a towering fence and then get cut to shreds trying to shimmy past some wire. It was hard enough to do it on his own, but to have some woman slung over his shoulder like Tarzan? The front door did have an alarm, but it had to be manually triggered by the guards and he could handle them. Sam didn't bother with the cameras this time, since he was in a hurry. His rescue mission no longer called for stealth, just a quick departure. Hitching Carly's limp body up more securely, he sprinted through the double doors that led to his freedom.
It was a moonless night, yet the stars seemed to be overcompensating for the lack of moonlight. It was lucky for him, that the guards had such meager lighting to work with and that he had the advantage with his night vision, which he switched on. There was a single streetlight handing over the very end of the driveway and Sam couldn't shoot it out without gaining a lot of attention, so he did the next best thing. He let Carly rest on the ground and worked his way stealthily, to the rear of the guard shack, where he saw his golden opportunity. The rear of the shack had a window and that window was propped open enough for him to get his hand in there, or better yet, a grenade. He set the CS grenade on a ten second delay and got the hell out of there. He had seen that both men had been armed with machine guns and he found that extremely strange for mental institute. Were they there to guard the patients or shoot them? he hadn't seen anything more than a nightstick on the guards inside the hospital, but these guards looked ready for more than battling crazies.
The grenade went off and gas filled the lungs of the two guards. One man tried desperately to get out, by knocking the door down, but it was too late. He fell face down on the door he had just broken and lay as motionless as a lump of coal. Drool pooled from his open mouth and his partner was slumped over a computer with a keyboard as a headrest. The weight of his head was depressing the keys and the screen read 6jjowhajljlaf over and over, filling the page.
Sam took a moment to knock the unconscious man out of his seat and scroll up to the top of the screen to read what the man had been typing. "To the housekeeper: Fishing trip cut short. Fish not biting. Need house cleaned before departure..." It got cut off there and Sam hurried to take a picture of the message with his OPSAT and went back out to get Carly, to find that she was sitting up. She was rubbing her head and staring at him like she had seen a long lost friend.
"Sam! Let's get out of this place." Carly was up before Sam could reach her and her hand grasped his, as she nearly ran past him. "I knew you would come for me."
"No time for chit chat Charlie Brown." Sam quipped and whisked her off into the world.
"Where are we going?"
"Away." He replied.
They were still running, when Sam heard a familiar sound, that confirmed his sanity and made him smile. "Fisher. Come in Fisher."
"Lambert." His free hand went to the implant in his throat, like metal to a magnet. "It's good to hear your voice again, Colonel."
"God damn it, Sam! Where the fuck have you been?" Lambert rarely cursed and it was even more rare for him to bring God into it. "I've been trying to contact you for more than a week."
"Sorry Colonel. I was a little tied up and things were kind of crazy, but I'm better now." Sam slowed to a quick trot and allowed Carly to have her hand back. "Our little problem in Ecuador get solved?"
"I had sent someone else, since you were no longer available. We had a few glitches come our way."
"What was that?"
"Our contact went sour. He was working for both sides of the equation and threw a few bugs into the system. If Carly had been here, we could have had them fixed sooner, but we had our entire team working overtime." Lambert had more bad news, if the tone of his voice was any indication. "I have more bad news."
"Don't keep me in suspense Colonel." Carly and Sam were resting some distance away from the institute. He could barely see the glow of the streetlight that hung over the driveway.
Lambert cleared his throat and Sam felt the need to clean his ear. "A few of our agents are MIA"
"Dead?" Sam had his thermal vision on and was trying to scope out any people that might have followed them.
"Possibly, but we haven't gotten any reports of bodies being found. Nobody has been able to contact them. And there is more...Carly St. John is on that list. She's been missing for three weeks and her parents are getting anxious. I'm not sure what I should tell them."
Sam stopped him from babbling too much. "I have Carly with me."
"You're a friggin miracle worker, Sam. I don't know how you managed it, but good work." Lambert sighed heavily. It was obvious to Sam, that everyone had a special place for Carly, including Sam. "Tell me where you are and I'll have a transport pick you guys up."
"That's a slight problem, Colonel. I'm not sure where we are. The only information I can give is that we're definitely in the united states, probably in the Midwest by their accents, and I passed a sign that said Institute for the Criminally Insane."
"Jesus, Sam! I'll have to have more information than that." Lambert grumbled. "I'lll have to pull an allnighter and get the entire team to look into possible locations, based on the information you provided. Anything else?"
"Yes. Take a look at this." Sam took out his OPSAT and sent Lambert a picture of Dr. Zithers. "She works at the institute as the chief of staff. Find out what you can about her employer."
"Good. That should give us a lead on where you are. Until then, I want you to sit tight and I'll call in the day crew." Colonel Lambert signed off.
Sam switched his attention to Carly. "I have a change of clothes in my Osprey, if you don't mind them being wrinkled and entirely too large for you?"
"As long as they're warm, anything would be better than a hospital gown." She took the clothes he offered her and slipped them on over her pajamas. "You wouldn't happen to have a pair of shoes stowed away in there? My feet are as cold as ice."
"No, but I have some spare socks." Sam dug through his Osprey and handed Carly the only pair of socks. She took them without comment, although they were huge, white gym socks, that went past her knees. On him, they only came up to the middle of his calf. "I'm sorry that they're so big."
She sat down next to him. "They're fine Sam. I'm just glad to be warm."
Sam Fisher, who was never much good at expressing his feelings, had apologized to two separate women in one day. Dr. Zithers might have said he was making progress with his therapy, had he not knocked her unconscious. "Go ahead and lean on me, if you're tired. I'll stay up and keep watch."
"Really?" Carly rested her head on his shoulder, when he gave her the affirmative. "You're not as bad a guy as you want people to think, Fisher."
"When you wake up, we should be going. We're not far enough from that place to suit me." He put an arm around her, to keep her from sliding sideways as she slept.
"Maybe you should sleep and I can keep watch?"
"No. You sleep." He felt her body relax against him and knew that she was already sleeping. "I can't sleep anymore."
