NOTES: A quick note on the foods: kolbasa is a kind of Russian sausage, golubsty is meat and rice wrapped in cooked cabbage leaves, kotlety is a kind of meatball dish made with minced (usually) beef and bread and egg.
Dialogue in / / indicates Russian.
CHUCK vs. THE NO-WIN QUESTION CHAPTER 18: Our Daily Bread 3
The hills outside Los Angeles, Sunday, January 24th, 2010, 1:55 p.m. local time...
"Look out at the valley, Bartowski," Colonel John Casey ordered, "and tell me what you see."
Chuck obeyed, looked up and down the canyon. There appeared to be relatively little to see, from their vantage point near the entrance to the canyon.
"I see a stream bed running along the bottom of the canyon, dry right now. I see evergreen trees on the slopes...except where the ground is too steep or rocky, then it's scrub. I see some kind of big antenna on the far side of the ridge. There's a tower near the antenna, probably an old fire lookout tower."
Chuck and John Casey were engaged in what Chuck thought of as 'spy training', since Beckman had reactivated Team Bartowski. On this fine Sunday afternoon, Chuck had been able to get away from the Buy-More long enough for Casey to bring him out to the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains, and specifically to this isolated canyon.
"Yeah, you pass 'spot the obvious', Numbnuts, now look again, moron," Casey ordered.
Casey's words were harsh, his tone was actually somewhat friendly. Chuck was actually slightly relieved that he was out here with Casey and not Sarah. Since Team Bartowski was back in business, Casey had actually been somewhat friendly, and had been doing most of the teaching for Chuck. Chuck had learned more from Casey, in the last couple of weeks, than the teachers at Beckman's academy had managed to instill in months, and in spite of Casey's often abrasive manner, Chuck was enjoying most of the lessons. Casey was actually a good teacher, when he so wished.
Things between himself and Sarah, on the other hand, were still...well, glacial was the word that came to mind, and Chuck was at a loss for how to reach her, or even if he could reach her. The memory of how things had been between them less than a year earlier still haunted him, they had been so close to making it work. He recalled them sitting in that cell in Castle, and making a joke about a two-bed prison cell, and her little comment, 'two beds?' that had implied so much. Now all that was gone.
She's furious at me for not going with her in Prague, Chuck mused, as he looked down the long canyon again, trying to spot whatever it was Casey wanted him to see. I'd like to explain...but how can I when I'm not completely sure why myself?! Stop it, Chuck, focus! You chose to be a spy, pay attention to the man teaching you how!
Chuck swept his gaze up and down the canyon again, and then suddenly, he saw something, high on the left hand wall of the valley, amid a stand of trees. A sudden, very brief, but very intense pinpoint of light. It came and went so quickly that barely caught it, but it had been there!
"Up there," Chuck said, pointing at the stand of trees. "I just saw a flash of...something."
Casey nodded. "Not bad, Bartowski. Not for a first try. But don't point at it like a nimrod, if there's somebody up there watching that tells him you've spotted him."
Chuck lowered his arm and nodded. "I hear you."
"Good, remember it. Now, what might that flash be?"
"Well, it was too bright to be a flashlight or anything like that, and it's broad daylight anyway. We wouldn't even be able to see something like that from here with the sun in the sky-it's a reflection! Sunlight reflecting off something!"
"Right," Casey nodded. "And that's the first part of this afternoon's lesson, Chuck. If you're hiding during daylight, a flash of sunlight off a reflective surface can give you away from miles away. And just about any reflective surface can do it. That's why when you're hiding out, like my man up in that wood, you make sure you've removed or covered or turned any reflective surface. If you're wearing a watch, you turn it shiny-side to your skin. If you use a phone, you make sure the glass can't catch the sun. All it takes is a split-second flash of reflection to give you away.
"Now, what do you think my guy up on that hill is doing that's giving him away to us?"
"Hmm..." Chuck said, his mind working. For just a moment, his personal problems were forgotten, his issues with Sarah, lying to Ellie, the endless nightmare of the Buy More and Jeff and Lester and Emmett, faded away, and his mind worked over the question of what might have caused that flash.
A phone...no. It was too still while it lasted, if he was using a phone it would move a little. A watch? Same issue, the reflection didn't move...there it is again!
Indeed, the flash came and went again, in the exact same place as before. As far as Chuck could tell, it was rock steady.
The sun is behind us right now, Chuck realized. Which is another reason it probably isn't a phone or a watch or anything that, they would reflect at a different angle, we wouldn't see it...and then Chuck knew.
"A rifle," Chuck suddenly said, nervously. "He's pointing a rifle at us, and the sun is catching off the sight! That's why the light doesn't move, we're in his crosshairs!"
"Good," Casey said with a nod. "You're starting to think like an agent, Bartowski, just a little bit. Finally. About time."
Casey started walking along the valley floor, still explaining as he did, Chuck followed.
"Now ideally a sniper would have anti-reflective gear on his sights to reduce the chance of being spotted the way you just did," Casey was saying. "But no anti-reflection is perfect, and sometimes a shooter is too careless or lazy, or sometimes he just doesn't have access to it. So that little flash can sometimes give away a shooter's presence and position, it can save your life if you're paying attention for it, Bartowski!"
Casey continued to explain the various ways a shooter could be spotted, warded off, or evaded. Along with that, Casey also spoke of how one could avoid being spotted if you were the shooter, or an observer, as the two men hiked further up the valley floor.
A FULCRUM safehouse in Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 7:30 a.m. local time...
"This would have been a lot easier yesterday," the FULCRUM agent going by the name 'Crandall' said. "We had this Bartowski and Roberts in a public place, and we had the drop on them, it would have been an easy shot."
"No doubt," Thomas Delgado replied coldly. "But we had our orders then, and we have our orders now. We're to take out Bartowski and Roberts will all deliberate speed, and that's precisely what's going to happen."
Behind his cold, professional 'face', Delgado privately was thinking much the same thing as 'Crandall', it was frustrating that such a perfect opportunity as they had had yesterday had been allowed to slip by, only to have the kill order come in afterward.
Then again, Delgado mused, the kill order came because we identified Roberts...may she rot, Delgado mused. Delgado had personal reasons to loathe Roberts...which made her connection to Bartowski the more infuriating, because he had a grudge against Chuck Bartowski, too. Bartowski and Roberts?! What kind of insane world is it where those two are together? And apparently have a kid?! Well, too bad, brat, you're going to be an orphan in the immediate future...and I'm going to enjoy making it happen!
"We know Bartowski is staying at the Gagarin-Tolstoi Hotel," Delgado was telling the men gathered around the table in the safehouse, "under his 'Terry Stanton' alias. We could probably take him out there easily enough, if necessary we could bomb the place, but that's a last resort. Not that it would bother me to do it, but Shadow Man wants the lowest-profile hit that's compatible with getting the job done. So bombing the hotel is a last resort.
"As for Roberts, now that we know who she is, we've been able to trace some of her movements, too, though we're still putting together a complete picture. But we know she and her people are getting ready for a 'meet' with the representative of the Chinese rogue operative. Ideally we'd wait and strike at them all at once, but Shadow Man believes the risk of waiting is too great, given her knowledge and ability to understand the implications of the EREBUS weapon.
"So we're going quick and dirty," Delgado went on. "We'll 'tail' Bartowski, the way we did yesterday. We're pretty sure he'll meet up with Roberts at some point today. When he does, the moment we have a good opportunity, they're gone."
"What about the other targets? We've waited this long to avoid alarming any of them and giving them warning," said a FULCRUM man going by the alias of 'Rodrigo'. Delgado appreciated Rodrigo for his calm, methodical approach, he rarely overlooked any aspect of a situation.
"True," Delgado said. "But 'needs must when the Devil drives', as the Brits say. We're interfering with their communications, and we can hope that holds out for a little while longer. But just for insurance, we're going to task our 'guests' to be keeping the CATs busy while and right after we take out Bartowski and Roberts, and we'll draw on our own resources if need be to keep his sister and the CI people busy. OK, people, let's get busy ourselves, we're burning daylight."
As the six men and Delgado stood up and began their rapid preparations, in another room of the same safe house, Augusto Gaez removed an earbud from his ear and concealed it. The bugs he and Amy had managed to plant to listen in on their 'hosts' were proving very useful.
Gaez knew that he and his paramour, 'Amy', were the 'guests' Delgado had referred to.
So Amy and I are to keep the CATs and their people occupied, are we?" Gaez thought with a smile. This might just be the opportunity I've been waiting for!
The bathroom door opened, letting a cloud of hot steam into their bedroom, and Amy emerged as well, her slender form covered by a towel, her wet blond hair against her shoulders.
"Morning, lover," Amy said. "Why do you look like the cat that just dined on canary?"
Gaez put a finger to his lips, mindful that their own room might be bugged, and said, "Oh, I'm just in a good mood. Let's just say that maybe, just maybe, some cats will dine on something besides canary soon."
Amy was the furthest thing from stupid, she knew exactly what meant, and a grin appeared on her face. "Well, well, well..." she whispered, "are we going to be feeding the cats?"
"Let's hope so," Gaez whispered back. Aloud, he added, "Now let's go see about some breakfast, shall we?"
An SVR facility somewhere in Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 8:15 a.m. local time...
/"Would you like to make a bet on that?!"/ John Casey snarled at the Russian sitting across the table from him.
/"Would you care to argue the point with me?!/ the burly guard at the door of the room responded instead of then man Casey had addressed.
/"Enough!"/ said 'Elaine Carmichael' and the highest ranking Russian in the room, a man who had simply been introduced as 'Sergei', in unison. Ellie and Sergei looked at each other in surprise, and Ellie nodded at the older man.
/"We are not here to bicker,"/ Sergei, who looked to be in his early seventies, said. /"For the moment, at least, our organizations are working together, let us not do our opponents' work for them!"/
Ellie desperately wanted sleep. She had been awake for more than twenty-four hours, and the long boredom of the stakeout the night before had given way to confusion and chaos in the wee hours since.
As soon as the gunshots had been heard in the motel room, the Carmichael Industries and SVR personnel had both gone in, and to Ellie's surprise, her first assumption had been wrong, the suspected FULCRUM double agent was not dead. Instead, the man FULCRUM had sent to meet him lay half-conscious, two bullets lodged in his chest. He would likely have died, except that 'Elaine Carmichael' knew how to keep him alive until the ambulance could arrive.
Not, Ellie mused wearily, that I necessarily did him any favors. If he doesn't cooperate fully...the SVR can be very, very ruthless when it suits them.
As for Bocharov, the bureaucrat who had been working for FULCRUM, he was telling everything he knew. Whether out of fear of interrogation, a guilty conscience, or because he wanted protection from FULCRUM, or all of the above, he was answering every question fully and completely. Apparently, when he had demanded more money, the FULCRUM emissary had pulled a knife and was about to slit his throat, leading Bocharov to pull a concealed pistol and fire. Bocharov's account tallied with the physical evidence, apparently he had been defending himself.
Since Bocharov's capture, the CI team leaders, Ellie and Casey, and the SVR representatives, had been meeting in an SVR facility. Everyone was exhausted, worried, and on edge, and tempers had flared several times over the previous few hours. The apparently evidence that FULCRUM, thought to have been effectively defunct for ten years, was apparently back in operation and had penetrated the SVR, had shaken everyone. Ellie knew reports would be going up the ladder in the Russian power structure, this entire matter had just turned substantially nastier and more serious.
Ellie was just as exhausted and on edge as everyone else, but in addition to all that, something else was bothering her. Ellie had checked in with CI HQ before attending the meeting, making her report and getting an update on events elsewhere. She had been told that Chuck was back at CI HQ, but was jet lagged and asleep. She had told them not to awaken him, he could read her report when he woke up. As serious as matters were, a few more hours were unlikely to matter.
The conversation had seemed normal...but something...something...wasn't right, and Ellie knew it. She just could not quite put her finger on what was wrong, and the fact that her mind was fogged from lack of sleep did not help.
Ellie would have been even more disturbed, had she known that her brother was not, in fact, asleep back at Carmichael Estates, but was at that moment wide awake and less than five miles away from her.
At that moment, elsewhere in Moscow...
"I wish Jill and the Schnook would get here," 'Tony Rogers' said to his girlfriend. "We need to get this started, once the play begins we have to get everything right the first time."
"Don't borrow trouble," Darya Kamkin said to him, and 'Tony', also known to some others as 'Jack Burton', felt his heart rise a little in spite of the seriousness of the situation. Darya had that effect on him, and had had, almost from the day he had met her in Paris, about a year before.
The two were standing in the 'law offices' that had been the headquarters of their current scam since it began. Actually just some rented office space, nicely appointed to look like a lawyer's office space, it had served their purposes quite well.
"We've got all day, Tony," Darya said to him. "Yes, we have to be ready, but the final meet is still a week away."
"I know," Tony replied, "but this angle isn't like most of the ones we ever worked. I can't help but be kind of nervous about it."
After a quiet moment, Tony laughed in a self-deprecating way, and added, "I guess I'm just not used to being on the side of the angels. For real, I mean, not just pretending to be."
Darya laughed, a pleasant sound, and put a hand on Tony's arm. "You think I am?! This is a new experience for me, too, my sweet. But you're not the only one with grandchildren."
Tony smiled. That was, in fact, one of the reasons he had not departed Moscow double-time when he had learned of the enormity of what was going down. He had a granddaughter, and a daughter, and the thought of them living in the world that this damned thing could create if it got loose was more than he could live with, aging con man or not. Darya, apparently, felt similarly, because she had agreed to stay and help him and Jill carry off a con meant to more or less 'save the world'.
Tony smiled ruefully. Just thinking that made him feel embarrassed, it sounded so ridiculous and overwrought. But if Jill was right about this thing...it was true. It was actually, literally true that he and his swindler girlfriend were trying to work an angle to keep the whole damned world from starving or blowing up or both.
He sighed and took Darya in his arms. Succeed or fail, he thought, at least I'm trying. Even if they never know it, I'm trying to do something good for my little girl and my granddaughter.
At that moment, elsewhere in Moscow...
Chuck ran from the taxi, wishing he had an umbrella against the on-again, off-again rain, and grateful for the warm coat he was wearing over his casual clothes. May in Moscow could be high variable, sometimes very hot, sometimes cold, today, it was chilly and rainy. He dashed up some stone steps and into the shelter of a small restaurant, where he was supposed to meet Jill for 'brunch', before they went to meet with Jack and his new girlfriend.
Damn, I wish I had been able to find out more details about Darya, Chuck mused, as he went into the restaurant. It's nervous making to be trusting someone I know so little about, but I hardly have a choice!
Chuck had done a limited search on Jack's new girl once he had first met her, but there had not been time for a true 'deep dive', and it was difficult to do a 'deep dive' in a hurry without revealing that it was happening. Which meant that he would just have to trust to Jack Burton's instinct for people, and hope for the best.
Which is risky, Chuck mused. Jack is compromised, he's got strong feelings for Darya, and that can cloud anyone's judgement.
In time with that thought, memories came rushing back to Chuck as his eyes fell on a beautiful brunette waiting for him at a corner table. Memories of how she had tricked him into releasing her from her restraints,, playing on his feelings for her.
Of course, she did that in part by mixing a lot of truth into her lies, at the time, Chuck reminded himself. Even so, it was still a useful memory to keep in mind when dealing with feelings and trust. The more so because he had done exactly the same thing to her shortly afterward. Feelings can cloud judgement. Much as I hate to admit it, Beckman and the CIA had a point about that.
"Hi, Chuck," Jill said softly as Chuck sat down opposite her.
"Morning," Chuck said. "Ready for the big day?"
"I think-" Jill started to say, but a yawn interrupted her in spite of herself. Chuck smiled slightly, he knew the signs, had been familiar with them since he was 19. Jill was always a 'night owl' at the best of times, it was a rare night when she was asleep before eleven p.m., and Chuck suspected she had been up most of the night before preparing for the day's activities.
I'd hate to have to be the one who woke her up this morning," Chuck thought, hiding a smile. That's something she and Sarah have in common, neither of them have ever been 'morning people'.
A memory came to Chuck, of a hung over 20-year-old Jill, in a dorm room at Stanford in 2002, trying feebly to turn off an alarm clock and eventually giving up and throwing it out the window. He suppressed the accompanying laugh just in time.
"I think so," Jill finished after her partial yawn, giving no sign of having noticed Chuck's amusement. "But I want to go over the plan with you and Tony before we move, so you'll be all the way up to speed and maybe spot anything we missed. But we've got time for breakfast."
Chuck ordered fried eggs with kolbasa and sweet tea, and Jill did the same. As they ate, Jill was filling him in on some of the details of the situation.
The food was good, though Chuck would have liked the kolbasa to be a tiny shade less spicy, and the conversation continued after they left the restaurant. The intermittent rain had stopped, and the sun was shining through gaps in the cloud cover. After a moment of indecision, they decided to walk the modest distance to the fake law offices where Jack and his girlfriend were running their scam.
They were about half way there, and still engrossed in their quiet conversation, when Chuck happened to catch, out of the corner of his eye, a flash of reflected sunlight coming from atop one of the nearby buildings. A small but intense flash, characteristic of a certain reflective surface...
"DOWN!" Chuck ordered, grabbing Jill and pulling her toward the shelter of a nearby storefront doorway. Even as he pulled Jill into the shadow with him, the tell-tale sound of a high-power rifle bullet missing them by a narrow margin echoed. Moments later, the sound could be heard twice more, and a pedestrian fell to the ground, a red stain already spreading where he lay.
The Intersect came roaring to life in Chuck's mind, at full emergency mode. Adrenaline flowed, but in carefully-measured amounts, his time perception accelerated, making the world seem to go into slow motion. He scanned the nearby rooftop and caught a glimpse of a human figure, slowly rising and pulling back from the edge, a rifle in his hand. Though it seemed that the man was moving as if mired in molasses, Chuck knew that only about 4 seconds had passed since the shots were fired.
Chuck's first instinct was to see if the man who had been shot was alive, but the professional in him overrode that. If he was alive there was nothing he or Jill could do for him without exposing themselves and other by-standers to another shot, and if there was one shooter he had to assume there might be more. The best thing to do for their own survival and the safety of the people around them was get away fast!
Chuck looked around, assessing the situation, a combination of 13 years of experience and the program of the I-8 evaluating possible escape routes and possible danger sources. Grabbing Jill by the hand, Chuck ducked into the store, which proved to be a lingerie store of some kind. He had spotted a fire exit opening onto a side alley and they were moving toward it, Jill now keeping up on her own as she realized what had been happening. They were halfway across the store when a bullet struck a mannequin to one side of them, shattering the plastic. Chuck looked behind them and saw a man with a pistol in his hand standing in the front door, taking aim at them for a better shot. Customers were panicking, which was a distraction for the shooter, but which also meant that more bystanders might be hurt or killed at any moment.
The man's aim was jostled by the panicked crowd, and he ducked and came after them...only to be met with a Chuck-thrown piece of sharp plastic from the shattered mannequin, the jagged edge embedding itself in his throat. A cry of pain and curses followed, Chuck knew it had not penetrated deeply enough to be a serious wound, but the pain had slowed him down. A moment later, he was lying on the ground, a bullet from Jill's 9 mm pistol having done what broken plastic could not do.
Chuck by now had his own nine millimeter out, but the last thing he wanted to do was get into a fire fight in the middle of a store full of panicked shoppers! They ran for the side exit, but they knew better than to just rush through it. Instead, Chuck grabbed a wheeled stand that held racks of teddies and chemises, and shoved it through the door into the alleyway. When no shots immediately rang out, they went out as fast they could, but for the moment they seemed to have gotten ahead of their attackers.
"Who can you get for backup?" Chuck managed as they ran for the back side of the building. The enemy might or might not be waiting back there, but they knew the enemy was on the main street!
"Nobody quickly," Jill said, as they rounded the corner and found themselves in a narrow back street. "I don't have many people in Moscow right now and most of them are with Tony!"
They started to run down the back street looking for shelter or a way out, but as they did, a car came crashing around the corner, and Chuck saw a man lean out of the passenger window with a gun in his hand.
The I-8 proved its worth in that moment, Chuck locked in on the approaching car, his arm came up, and two shots were fired, all in a single fluid movement. It was an inhumanly difficult shot...but the Intersect made Chuck Bartowski slightly more than human. The bullets struck their target, a spiderweb of cracks filled the windshield of the approaching car, and the driver lost control!
The car plowed into the back of the lingerie store, tearing part of the driver's side of the car off, before coming to a screeching stop. The passenger jumped from the car almost as soon as it stopped moving, firing as he did. Chuck and Jill dove to either side from professional habit. There was little cover, but moving to either side forced the shooter to choose a target, divide his attention.
Chuck landed, rolled, raised his pistol and fired again, once again with the inhuman perfection the I-8 made possible, two shots rang out and both struck their target, who fell to the ground but was obviously otherwise unhurt.
He's wearing a jacket, Chuck noted, but he still felt it.
Running away would have been futile, the man would have been back on his feet and shooting before they could reach cover, and his weapon had greater range than their pistols. So Chuck did something that seemed crazy, but was really the only option, he charged! It caught the shooter by surprise, apparently he had been expecting Chuck to run away instead of toward him, and his next shot went wild as he tried to get back to his feet.
Chuck's muscles were running far above their normal limits, as the I-8 relaxed the normal 'safety limits' in the human body, and flooded his system with adrenaline and other hormones to maximize performance. To Chuck, his quarry seemed to be moving at about one quarter normal speed, because of the time sense change the I-8 induced. He saw the man trying to get to his feet and aim his .44 at the same time, but by the time he brought his weapon mostly to bear Chuck was on him, and the punch Chuck delivered, powered by his adrenaline soaked muscles, sent the .44 flying and knocked the man back against the wrecked car!
Unfortunately for Chuck, though his mind and body amplified by the I-8 could do many marvelous things, they still could not evade the laws of physics. He had charged his quarry as fast as an Olympic sprinter could have done, and now that momentum, together with the spin from his punch, slammed Chuck himself against the wall of the building seconds later!
Chuck was momentarily dazed by the impact. The I-8 cleared his mind after no more than a couple of seconds, but in that time the man had rallied and jumped him and knocked him to the ground and was pounding away, and he was easily fifty pounds heavier than Chuck and it was all muscle. Chuck struggled to get some leverage that would let him throw off his attacker, but he was pinned and having trouble getting any movement. The man grabbed a piece of metal that had broken off the car when it struck the wall, a shard with a jagged broken edge, and quickly raised it up and started to bring it down on Chuck!
Then there was a single clear, crisp 'click' sound in the air. It was not a loud sound, but it was distinct, definite, and it froze Chuck's attacker in place. Chuck knew why, it was a sound he had learned to recognize a long, long time ago, shortly after Bryce's email had changed his life forever.
/"Make a move and it's the last one you'll ever make,"/ Chuck heard Jill say, her normally flirty, warm voice colder than chilled steel, her nine millimeter in hand and ready to fire. /"Get off of him, slowly, and don't make a movement until I say you can, and maybe you'll be alive tomorrow. Maybe."/
Chuck wearily, shakily began to climb to his feet, his body aching. The Intersect had already informed him that he was mostly intact, bruised, battered, but no broken bones or serious internal injuries.
If he'd landed that last blow, though...Chuck thought, and shuddered. He knew that that metal bar would have finished him if it had landed, given the man's obvious strength.
"You OK, Chuck?" Jill asked.
"I-I'll live," Chuck managed to get out, still gasping for breath from the beating he had been taking.
Their captive looked frightened, as well he might with Jill pointing her pistol at his head.
"We need to get out of here, Chuck," Jill said. There were sirens in the distance getting closer and louder, and they knew there were almost certainly other attackers in the immediate area. The bodies of the enemy they had killed in the store and the bystander shot a few minutes before lying in and on the other side of the building, and there were panicked people all about.
"No kidding," Chuck said. "I think that car might still be drivable, at least for a little distance," Chuck said, pointing at the car their attackers had been using. "But we'll draw attention!"
"Should we take this guy with us?" Jill asked. "We might need a prisoner to trade for or interrogate."
Chuck wanted to. Badly, both because of the reasons Jill had given, and because the alternative was to kill him in cold blood here and now. But he would be a dangerous burden and hard to manage...unless...
Chuck reached into concealed pocket in his jeans, pulled out a thin cylinder, and walked over to the prisoner, who looked at him with a mixture of anger and hate and fear. Chuck broke off the tip, revealing a sharp needle, which he jammed into the man's arm with little consideration for his comfort. Moments later, their attacker passed out.
"Whoa, that was neat," Jill said. "Even faster than a tranq round."
"Lasts longer, too," Chuck said, as he manhandled the now unconscious figure into the trunk of the car. "But let's just pray this car is still drivable!"
It proved to be, and they headed out through the back streets, trying to put distance between themselves and the crime scene.
A few minutes later, a few blocks away...
"Damn them!" Tommy Delgado snarled. The hit had gone wrong almost from the first instant. The sniper on the rooftop had reported an almost perfect shot lined up, but something had clued Bartowski in at the next-to-last-moment, and the shot had missed.
After that, it was chaos. Delgado knew that one of his men had been killed, two others had reported that they had cornered Bartowski and Roberts...and then gone silent. He had sent in reinforcements who had discovered the body of one of those men in a back street, the other man was missing, along with their car. By now police were swarming the area, and normal procedure in that sort of situation would be to abort the operation and pull a fast fade, and make another attempt later.
This was not a normal situation, however, it was a very strange one. Was it worth the risk of trying to finish off the hit now, under these conditions? Delgado reluctantly concluded that it was. Cursing the fact that he had so few men available (and three of them now missing or confirmed dead), Delgado began to organize a desperate attempt to finish what they had started.
They were monitoring police communications, and a report came in of a car, driving at high speed through the back streets, a car with the driver's side doors gone and a massively mangled driver-side fender. Gambling that it had to be Bartowski, Delgado had thrown his remaining forces into the game, and joined them himself. A few minutes later, amid the chaos and confusion in the streets, evading police and other authorities, Delgado and his men spotted their quarry, and a car chase had ensued. This was just exactly the sort of thing Delgado hated, an operation gone sour, highly public, no way to plan or deal with contingencies. Still, it was something of an emergency!
Delgado and his men had two cars, Bartowski one, and the latter damaged and limping. Unfortunately, Delgado discovered that Bartowski was a decent driver and seemed to know the city amazingly well.
"How is he doing that?!" Delgado snarled, as he and his fellow FULCRUM agents came close to trapping their quarry in what they thought was a blind alley, but which proved to have a tiny side exit.
Chuck and Jill...
"I'm impressed," Jill said, nervously, as they slipped through a side-alley barely wide enough for their car. Chuck was acutely aware of the brick wall inches to his left, aware because their car had no doors! "How did you spot this?!"
"Well...I kinda have a map of Moscow in my head," Chuck replied, as they rounded a corner and merged into main traffic again, "put together from satellites observations. Intersected, that is. It has most of the little stuff the public maps don't show!"
"How did you know you'd need a Moscow map?" Jill demanded.
"I didn't," Chuck said. "Ellie and I kinda have Intersect-maps of most big cities in our heads."
"Damn, I need to get an Intersect," Jill muttered.
"Ask Sarah and Morgan about that before you get too attached to the idea," Chuck warned her. "These things are double-edged."
Chuck was about to say something else, when the motor, which had been spluttering, began to vibrate wildly. Chuck knew they were going to have to find other transportation.
"Oh well," Chuck said, as they emerged, leaving their half-wrecked car in an alley, and running, "we were kinda conspicuous anyway!"
There was no time to bring their prisoner, and he was out cold and unable to reveal anything if they found him, so they wasted no more time on him. They knew their pursuers, or the Moscow authorities, would be on them in minutes.
Sure enough, as they rounded a corner, they saw two familiar cars coming down the street toward them. Looking around frantically, they saw a possible hiding place: a big tank truck was in the process of refilling the gas tanks of a service station. There was a gap between the truck and the wall of the station where they might be able to hide, and moments later they were cowering in the shadows, and their pursuers raced past them.
Chuck breathed a sigh of relief, and looked at his old girlfriend and said, "That's a relief. If we can just-"
"Chuck," Jill interrupted, "they're coming back!"
Delgado...
"Turn around!" Delgado snarled at his driver. "They've got to be hiding behind that tanker! It's the only place they've had time to reach where we couldn't see them!
Delgado had almost missed it. They had been racing up the road after they found the abandoned car and the unconscious prisoner in the trunk. Delgado would question the man when he recovered, and then he would decide whether to shoot him himself for his incompetence or not, but that was later. They had been racing along, and it was only when Delgado had asked himself what he would do if their positions were reversed that it had struck him that there was a hiding place behind that truck.
Sure enough, as they raced back toward the service station, Delgado saw movement, two people getting into the cab, and then the truck pulled out, far faster than was entirely safe.
They can't possibly outrun us in that, Delgado mused. He took out his gun, then hesitated. That tank might be full of gasoline. It probably would not explode if fired upon, or driven into a crash. It was very unlikely. But it might if conditions were just right, and if it did the explosion would kill the FULCRUM men as well, this close.
Even if it just caught fire, the thermal bloom might get us, Delgado realized.
At the same time, though, they were running out of time! Only a few minutes had passed since this charlie foxtrot of an operation had started, but by now panic was spreading through this whole section of Moscow, and it would only a matter of minutes, at most, before the police and other authorities would be all over this area. They had to do whatever they were going to do, almost immediately, and get out.
"What are they doing?!" the driver exclaimed, and Delgado's own eyes widened. The tanker had just turned off the road onto a construction site. A new building was going up, but so far all that had been done was to dig out the foundations, and nobody was working today because of the weather. Indeed, even as the tank trunk swerved off the road, the rain began again.
Delgado was trying to decide what to do when it happened: the truck skidded against some metal construction equipment, which turned over. The truck slammed to a stop, and then, before the unbelieving eyes of the FULCRUM men and the crowd of stunned onlookers and drivers, the gasoline truck went up in a colossal fireball! A blaze of red and gold light filled the air, reflecting off the low-hanging rainclouds, and even inside his car and as far away as they were Delgado could feel the heat coming off that conflagration!
The fire swiftly engulfed both the tank and the cabin, and began to spread as combustible items on the construction site caught fire. The flames rose two stories high and spread as they watched.
"Damn..." Delgado said softly, slowly.
Elsewhere in Moscow at that moment...
"What is it, Tony?" Darya asked, as she saw Tony Rogers looking out the window of their 'law office'. Darya had gone out for takeout and brought it back, and found her man looking out the window at something going on a few blocks away.
"I don't know," her boyfriend-of-a-year replied. "But there were sirens and now there's some kind of fire, I can see the flames from here. Must be quite a mess!"
Ellie and Casey...
Ellie and John Casey had emerged from their meeting with their Russian 'colleagues', and were sitting in a small café eating lunch when they heard sirens in the distance, coming closer. That was nothing all that unusual, of course, Moscow was a city of over ten million, and such cities were never quiet, nor were sirens anything out of the ordinary.
"Getting closer," Casey commented, as he cut into his golubsty.
Ellie was enjoying her own lunch of kotlety with fried mushrooms and a strawberry drink, as she and Casey saw fire trucks, ambulances, and several police vehicles go racing past the café. What caught her attention was what looked like a Russian version of SWAT personnel.
"Must be something pretty serious," Casey commented, having noticed the same thing.
"There'll be something on the radio about it, probably," Ellie said.
"And it might even be true, but I wouldn't count on it," Casey smirked.
They finished their lunch, and Ellie was thinking longingly of her bed back at her hotel room, as they emerged from the café and onto the sidewalk. It was still early afternoon, but she had not slept in twenty-eight hours and was quite prepared to go to bed extremely early. The slow, steady drizzle only added to her longing for sleep.
As they walked toward their car, though, all thoughts of sleep were banished when a roar in the distance filled the air, followed by towering columns of flame rising a few blocks away.
"OK, whatever's going on is major-league serious," Casey commented, as they watched the flames blaze in the distance and saw the blood-red light reflecting from clouds.
Sarah and Carina...
"They're playing with us," Sarah snarled, as she and Carina Miller looked out at the city-scape from the roof of the Gagarin-Tolstoi Hotel.
"Too right," Carina agreed wearily. "They let us catch a glimpse, then they're gone. They see us but we can't see them unless they allow it."
The two women were meeting atop the five-star hotel in which Carina was staying under her current cover. The rain looked to be about to start again, but they were standing in the shelter of an overhang attached to a maintenance structure, which was sufficient to keep the light drizzle at bay. They were on the roof awaiting a single from a member of CAT Two, who would signal completion of her assignment with a flash from another rooftop. Sometimes, in their line of work, low-tech worked better.
Sarah and Carina and their support personnel had had several 'Gaez sightings' over the previous couple of days, as well as some 'Amy sightings', but never long enough or close enough to be useful, and it was obvious by now that they were being toyed with. It was a feeling that was rubbing Sarah's nerves raw.
"The question is, what do we do about it?" Carina went on.
"I think we might try-"
Sarah fell silent as a light appeared, some distance across the city. It was certainly not the tiny flare that they were looking for, it looked more like a baby volcano had suddenly emerged in the midst of the city, with pillars of flame rising high into the sky in the distance.
"What the Hell-?!" Sarah muttered, as the blonde and the redhead watched the chaos in the distance.
TO BE CONTINUED...