A/N: I know...I know...ownership of Chuck. Right? Ok, done. Now let's go.
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The helicopter landed in the parking lot of NSA headquarters. There were a dozen official looking cars, including Fort Meade military police, near the building entrance with lights flashing.
Sarah and Chuck were met by an NSA agent and rushed past security into the building. Beckman, Graham and Ellie were sitting together in a conference room when Chuck and Sarah arrived. Chuck and Sarah immediately hugged Ellie. "Are you ok?" asked Chuck.
"Fine," said Ellie with a small smile. "Don't worry."
Sarah turned to Graham and Beckman. "What happened?" she asked.
"Well, to start with, Dr. Bartowski is a hero," said Beckman. "Seems these things run in the family."
Ellie made an impatient gesture indicating that Beckman should skip that part. Beckman continued, "Four men made it inside the building intending to steal two critical components of the Intersect. The Cipher and the Intersect Data Drive. They got away with only one of the two, the Cipher."
"How did they get in?" asked Sarah.
"Inside help. Fulcrum, no doubt. We are having problems tracing it, but it seems someone put in an emergency request for boiler maintenance for tonight...last night, I mean. The men had the right ID to get through the gate. Their vehicle was searched and there were no weapons, but someplace here their inside contact had left them four UZI's from our own armory. They went directly to the room with the Cipher and blew open the safe, taking that device. They would have found the Intersect Data Drive there as well, but it was being worked on at the time."
"And they didn't find it? Even if someone had it out?" asked Chuck.
"They were interrupted. Once that happened they swept through the Intersect offices and corralled everyone into one of the larger rooms, demanding the location of the Data Drive. That's when Dr. Bartowski … intervened." General Diane Beckman looked at Dr. Eleanor Bartowski with no small amount of pride.
All eyes turned to Ellie, who looked a little embarrassed. She smiled a tiny smile and said, "Well, I just turned on the MRI machine..."
"What?" asked Chuck with a bark of laughter. "And then what?"
"Well, the magnet disarmed them, so we ran away," said Ellie, as if it were no big deal.
Sarah laughed. "That must have been priceless. What happened then?"
Graham took over the story at that point. "Dr. Bartowski hit the fire alarm and got her people out safely. By the time the security crew figured out what had happened and got to the MRI room, three of them were gone with the Cipher. The last man had a metal plate in his head from a prior injury. With the machine running they had no choice but to leave him."
"Along with all the metal they had been carrying. Seems they couldn't figure out how to turn off the machine," said Beckman.
"But they took the Cipher," said Chuck.
"Yes. Carbon fiber. And the metal fittings are copper, not ferrous metal," said Beckman. "Just bad luck for us."
"What is it?" asked Chuck. "What's the Cipher?"
"It's the brain of the Intersect. It holds the software that controls the image encodes and the transfer algorithms."
"The magnetic field from the MRI probably made a hash of the data on the Cipher, so I'll bet they didn't get anything useful from it. But, more important, tell me you've got it all backed up someplace, General. Please. You must have backed this stuff up offsite."
"We did, Chuck. We took your earlier criticisms into account in our plans this time around. The problem isn't the software. It's the hardware. The Cipher is meticulously constructed. It took us months to get this one fabricated. The company that did it makes space equipment for NASA, that's how tight the tolerances are. It's not the kind of thing we can run out to Walmart and buy a half dozen of." She sounded frustrated.
"So, we get it back," said Sarah. "What do we know about the thieves?"
Graham answered, "Mercenaries led by an American. A US Army vet named Mike Colt. Big African-American guy. Really big."
"Bigger than you?" asked Chuck.
"Yeah, bigger than me. My height, but he's got at least 60 pounds on me," said Graham.
"He's right. The guy is huge," said Ellie.
"And you still totally messed him up, Big Sister," said Chuck. "I'm proud of you."
Ellie smiled and shrugged. "He still got away with the Cipher."
"Ok," said Sarah. "We've got one of his men. That's our lead."
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Colt and his two remaining men pulled into the old abandoned industrial building in the shadow of the Baltimore Washington International Airport. One of his men jumped out to close the doors behind the van.
The men were battered and dejected. They had had to leave Marty behind, unable to either pry him away from the machine or somehow turn it off. The loss of one of their own had hit them hard.
Almost with a growl, Colt said, "I'm going to get rid of this fucking thing and we go to ground. We have to make a plan to get Marty back. Sooner we are done with this job, sooner we can get to that operation."
"When do we hand over the gadget?" asked one of the men.
Colt's burner phone on the table off to the side of the room began to buzz. "Now, I hope." He picked up the phone and spoke a few words into it. Disconnecting the call and turning to his men, he said, "Few more hours." The men grumbled about their employers needing a beauty rest.
They spent the next few minutes collecting their gear and stowing it in two plain sedans, then sat down to wait. All three of them had been soldiers and excelled at the fine art of waiting.
Dawn had broken by the time a car horn beeped from the closed door. One of them opened the door for the newcomer.
The man appeared to be in his early twenties and was dressed in jeans with a leather jacket. "Morning," he said, getting out of his car with a laptop bag. "Do you have them?"
"The Cipher, but not the Data Drive."
"Then you only get paid for half the job," said the young man with a shrug.
Colt stood to his full height and stalked up to the young man, "We get paid in full. Your guys gave us faulty intelligence. The Intersect Data Drive was not in the safe. You can't make us responsible for your own failures."
"Ok, ok. I'll tell my guys. Jeez. Don't get your panties in a twist," said the young man, clearly intimidated. "Let me see the Cipher."
Colt handed it to the man, who took the Cipher to a side table and connected it to a computer he had taken from the bag he carried. When the computer accessed the contents of the Cipher, the young man frowned. What a mess, he thought.
"Hey, what happened to this?" he asked.
"Strong magnetic field. Someone there turned on an MRI machine," said one of Colt's men.
"Ah," said the newcomer. This device was essentially wiped clean as the software it contained had been corrupted beyond any hope of recovery. He'd lost the benefit of the Intersect software Fulcrum had wanted. His bosses were going to be pissed. Not his fault, but nonetheless. That wouldn't affect the rest of the plan, though. And it made his betrayal of Colt and his men easier to stomach. He could still use the Cipher as the Trojan Horse to sabotage the government's Intersect project. With that thought in mind, he put that part of the plan into effect, wiping out the damaged software and downloading the special software into the Cipher. It was close enough to what they expected the Intersect software to look like that it would pass a cursory inspection, but it held it's own surprises.
"Ok. It's not too bad," the man lied.
"So, pay us and let us get out of here," said Colt.
"Huh? No, that's not me. I was just here to check it out. Somebody else comes to move this thing to the next step. I just give the thumbs up." He took out his phone and pretended to send a text message. "Ok. That's that. Someone will be by to take the Cipher off your hands and pay you. Probably within the next couple of hours."
The young man handed the Cipher back to Colt, got into his car and left. Colt and his team were annoyed, but had no choice but to accept the further delay.
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Colt's fourth man was sitting in a small interrogation room in Fort Meade, chained to the table. He still wore the coverall's bearing the name of the boiler maintenance service. He had a bad headache from the magnetic field from the MRI affecting the plate in his head.
A young lanky guy with curly brown hair and a laptop came in and sat opposite him. Opening the computer, he said, "Plate in your head. That's what they tell me. Magnet like that must hurt like hell. Need an aspirin or something?"
Colt's man shook his head. He wasn't going to start accepting favors from his captors. He'd been through the Army's SERE training – in which the "R" stands for "resistance." He knew enough to keep his mouth shut, confident that he could withstand interrogation long enough to allow the rest of his team to make it to safety.
"Ok, then. If you change your mind, just let me know," said the lanky guy with a smile. "Let's get started, huh? What's your name?"
Colt's man stayed silent. "Ok," said the lanky guy. "Let's start with an easier one. What's your favorite color?"
The man in chains looked at the lanky guy for a moment or two of confusion and tried to hide his amusement. Finally he said, "Blue."
"Ok, so that wasn't so bad. Next question. What's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" said the interrogator.
Before the man could answer the question, the door burst open and a beautiful blonde agent burst into the small room. "What do you think you are doing?" she demanded angrily.
"I'm beginning the interrogation," said the lanky man, surprised, but not defensive.
"This is my case, and you know it," said the blonde, leaning over the seated man.
"I know no such thing," the guy said, holding his hands up in a slowdown gesture. "Look, don't get excited. If this guy is yours he's yours. Let's just call Beckman and get it straight." He took his phone from his pocket and began to enter a number.
As Colt's man watched with surprise, the woman violently smacked the phone from the man's hand. Then she pulled a gun with a silencer attached and shot the other man once in the chest. He flew backwards from his chair and collapsed onto the floor face down. A pool of blood began to run out from under him.
The woman muttered, "Dammit. I had hoped to avoid that." Moving quickly, she unchained Colt's man and pulled him to the door.
"What is...?"
"Shut up," she said. She pulled him to the door and, after a quick glance around, into the corridor. Keeping her hand on his arm, she led him through the building and out a side door. A medium sized sedan was parked near the door. She opened the trunk of the car and told him to get in.
Although he didn't know who this woman was, he knew that the outfit that had hired them had people on the inside – it was where the UZI's had come from, after all. He assumed that this woman was one of them and was effecting his escape as a contingency plan.
The lid of the trunk closed on him, enveloping him in darkness.
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In a following van, filled with heavily armed NSA agents, Chuck said, "Signal is still strong. Take the next left." He had managed to scrounge a clean shirt, so he didn't have to walk around and startle everyone with the fake blood.
The man in the passenger seat said, "There's an alert coming through. Maryland State Police have a report of three heavily armed men in an abandoned building near the airport. One of the men is reported to be a huge black guy. What should we do, Agent Carmichael?"
Chuck said, "Tell them to stand down and that we have it covered. But get the address from them. Agent Downs," Chuck addressed the driver, "are we headed towards the airport? I'm not familiar with this area."
"No, Sir," said the driver. "But the airport isn't far at all. Just a few minutes from here. Agent Walker is taking him in the other direction."
"Of course, she is. She doesn't know that the rest of his team is at the airport. She's driving him randomly away from Fort Meade. Let me know when we get the address."
He went back to concentrating on the monitor. When his man gave him the address, he opened his channel to Sarah and relayed the information. She gave him a single click in acknowledgement.
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Colt's men came alert to the sound of a car approaching. They drew handguns and waited tensely. From the far side of the closed door came the voice of their fourth man, Marty. "GUYS. IT'S ME. OUR INSIDE MAN... WOMAN...BROKE ME OUT. I'M OPENING THE DOOR NOW."
The door opened, revealing Marty and the lovely blonde agent who had freed him from the NSA's custody. Marty's friends greeted him happily with slaps on the back. The woman walked over to Colt without preliminaries and said, sounding more than a little angry, "What a goddamn snafu. I thought you guys were supposed to be top-notch. You not only get taken apart by a civilian, you only accomplish part of the mission. Honestly, I wouldn't put this one on my resume if I were you."
"There were unexpected complications," said Colt, "but the biggest problem was with your people's intel. The chip wasn't in the safe, and..."
"And you can't improvise without having someone glue you to a wall? That sounds like a pisspoor excuse to me." Colt began to open is mouth to respond when Sarah held up her hand to forestall him. "I don't want to hear it. Just show me the Cipher."
Colt took it from his pocket and handed it to her. "Good," she said. "It doesn't look damaged."
That was the signal for Chuck's team to move in, her statement that the Cipher was present. As if she were studying the Cipher, she seemed to move aimlessly among the men.
The large side door burst in and four heavily armed men ran into the room screaming at them to raise their hands and surrender. Simultaneously, a smaller door behind them also slammed open and three more men ran into the room.
There were several assault rifles on the table behind Sarah and she had deliberately positioned herself between them and Colt and his men. Colt lunged at her, eager to push her aside to get to his weapons. Sarah took his lunge and pulled at the sleeve of his shirt on the right side, while stepping forward towards him. The combined motions broke his balance. She took a second step forward with the other foot, swiveling to put her back to him. Still using the momentum of his lunge, and controlling it with her hand on his shirt, she bent at her hips and pulled. It was a classically executed O-goshi judo throw over her right hip. As large as he was, he crashed to the concrete floor with a thud.
His men were taking cover behind various pieces of machinery, but were outnumbered and outgunned. None of them had commenced to fire at the swarming agents.
Sarah gasped from surprise as Colt's arm swept her from her feet. She hit the floor and rolled away from him, coming quickly to her feet while keeping him in sight. He was also on his feet and rushed at her. She waited for him to try to get his weight on his forward foot and grabbed at his shirt once again. While he was still off balance, she put her right foot onto his belt and rolled backwards. He was pulled over her head and, as she pressed upwards with her foot in his belly, he flew over her in tomoe-nage, the judo circle throw. His huge bulk flew in a wide arc over Sarah to land hard on his back. Without the padding of tatami judo mats, Colt's landing on the concrete floor was brutal.
While he was still lying on the ground groaning, two NSA agents put the muzzles of their rifles into his face. He nodded once to show his surrender. His men had also been rounded up by the armed agents. One of them announced "all clear" into the radio.
Chuck, having waited in the van, came into the building and went right to Sarah. "You ok?" he asked her.
"Yeah, fine," she said, giving him a kiss.
Marty, Colt's man who had seen Chuck "killed" in the interrogation room looked at them both with chagrin. Just before he was twisted away by the men taking him out of the building, he said to Chuck, "An African or a European swallow?"
"I don't know that," responded Chuck in an English accent with a funny high-pitched voice.
The two agents had handcuffed Colt and lifted him to his feet. As he was being led away he turned to Sarah and said, "You're good. You're very good."
Chuck, one arm around Sarah, grinned at Colt and said, "You're damn right she is."
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A/N2: Colt's man, Marty, went through Survival, Escape, Resistance and Evasion (SERE) training at Fort Rucker, Alabama, as a member of the US military.
A/N3: I hope no one was too disappointed that this story didn't include the rooftop fight and Casey catching Chuck. The thing is, I couldn't really figure out a way for Chuck to find himself in that position with Colt without having made some really stupid decisions. And, by this point in my story, Chuck doesn't make really stupid decisions. Also, while Sarah more than held her own against Colt in canon, she ended up fighting him on his own terms. While suitably dramatic, a slugfest with a guy of Colt's size wasn't the wisest strategic move. It must have seemed to her that she was fighting a tree. Using the gentle art of judo was a much more pragmatic solution given the size difference.
A/N4: Chuck and Marty were reciting the famous lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). Unlike my story, in that movie the questioner didn't fare so well.
A/N5: I don't know about you folks, but I'm a little worried about the sabotaged Cipher returning to the Intersect program. In canon that one didn't end so well. (Well, maybe in canon it did end well, as canon-Graham was a real schmuck and tried to have Chuck killed by Casey.) Please let me know what you all think of this one.