A/N: Ownership of Chuck is adrift on a sea of possibilities. (I don't even know what that means, honestly, but at least there's a boat in this chapter.)
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Earlier that evening
"Yeah, it's a bomb." Chuck said, his voice was flat.
"Oh, God," said Captain Weller, looking like he was going to either cry or wet himself any moment.
Chuck turned to one of the sailors who looked the most competent. "Go get me the medical kit for the boat. Hurry." The man ran from the room as if he were on fire and was back soon afterward with the large bag containing the boat's medical supplies.
Chuck opened it and immediately found the shears. All three backpacks were connected by wires to each other. Carefully, he began to cut away the cloth from the first backpack, exposing the bomb within, but never touching the bomb or its components itself. Once he'd cut away the left side, he cursed softly.
"What?" asked Casey.
"Trembler switch. Spring loaded. If we had moved it...boom. If we breathe on it too hard even."
"Can you deal with it?" asked Casey.
Bryce was looking on with amazement at what his old friend was doing.
"Well, I don't want to be dogmatic, merely optimistic," he said with a frown of concentration. Chuck looked around the room and saw a paper sign on the wall covered by a clear sheet of plastic. He pointed. "Bryce, give me that bit of plastic covering the sign."
In a moment, Bryce handed it to him. Using the shears from the medical bag, Chuck cut the plastic into the shape he needed. Being very careful not to touch any part of the bomb, he slipped it between the spring-loaded pin and the striker plate above the pin. Once the plastic separator was in place, he deliberately tapped the device with a finger. The pin snapped closed onto the striker plate, but separated by the plastic, could not make any electrical connection to set off the explosive.
Chuck handed the shears to Casey and said, "Open up the others, please, Case. They may all have the same device." While Casey was carefully cutting away the cloth, Chuck was using medical tape to immobilize the plastic onto the trembler, so that it couldn't fall off. Once the packages were open, they discovered that neither of the other parts of the bomb had anti-handling devices on them. They were merely bundles of explosive wired to the detonator in the first package.
When he was done, Chuck said to his team, "Ok, guys. Now get out of here. Take a lifeboat and go save Roan. Hurry."
"You sure you got this, Kid?" asked Casey.
"Yeah. From here on it's a piece of cake. I'll make it look from shore that the bomb blew up the boat. She clearly wants Roan to see that. Might be the only thing keeping him alive," said Chuck.
"Ok," said Sarah. She bent down and gave him a kiss. "Please be safe," she said.
"I was going to say the same thing to you," he replied with a small smile, his eyes showing her all the love in his heart.
Casey turned to the boat's captain and said, in his best impersonation of a Parris Island drill sergeant, "Launch one of your lifeboats. We are going after the people who you allowed to leave without their bomb." Casey pointed to Chuck. "While I'm gone, you listen to him as if he's the only one in the world who can keep you out of federal prison. You understand me?"
The captain whimpered his understanding.
Bryce said, "Good luck, Chuck."
"You too, buddy," Chuck replied with a wave.
Weller led the four members of Team B out of the room. Chuck looked at the digital numbers on the countdown clock. He had twenty-five minutes left before the bomb exploded. He studied the wiring, concentrating so hard he ignored the noises from the rest of the boat.
Finally, he heard, from the doorway, a man yell, "Hey. Hey, you with the bomb."
Chuck looked up. Two sailors were holding back an African-American man in his late twenties. When the man caught Chuck's eye, the man said, "Marine Corps EOD. Two tours in Iraq."
Chuck said, "Yo. Let him in." He waved the man forward. The sailors parted.
As the man came across the room he said, "I'll be fucked if I'm going to let you save my ass while I hide behind my girlfriend."
"How'd you know about the bomb?"
"The gossip is flying fast out there. Some people want to jump and swim for shore."
"Shit. Hey," Chuck called the sailor who had gotten the med kit. "Once my team is launched, get the captain to make an announcement for everyone to be calm. Everything is under control. Don't freak out. Then bring me back the boat's stretcher, please."
"Yessir," said the man, running from the room.
"What's your name?" asked Chuck.
"Leslie. People call me Les."
"I'm Charles. People call me Chuck. Here's what we have, Les. Device is here" Chuck pointed to the mechanism, "... and is wired into explosives here, here and here. Trembler switch on this one, but I've immobilized it. My team is going after the bombers. For reasons I'm not getting into, we want the bombers to think it's been a successful detonation. You with me so far?"
"Yeah."
"Ok. There's a timer and we are twenty minutes left of boom. No receiver here for remote detonation, so I'm not worried about it before the timer runs. I don't think we have time to separate these two loads of explosive from the rest, so we are going to deal with the whole lot at once."
"Agreed. What's your plan, Chuck?"
"One of the lifeboats. Towed behind this boat. When the bomb goes off, we kill all the lights here and play dead. At least until my team ashore tells us it's safe to come back to life."
"Makes sense."
The sailor returned with the boat's stretcher and said, "Sir, your team is off and heading to shore. One of my friends is piloting them."
"Thanks. Tell your captain we need another one of his lifeboats. And this one he's not getting back."
Working together, Les and Chuck carefully put the bomb on the stretcher and carried it out to the lifeboat that the sailor guided them to. Party guests either stood in shocked awe as they moved through the boat or cowered in fear towards the bow. They were totally silent.
The lifeboat with the bomb was lowered to the black water. A long rope was connected to the bow of the lifeboat and walked back to be connected to the stern of the party boat. The sailor knotted a second rope to the first, lengthening it so that they were more than one hundred yards from the bomb. With no significant shrapnel to worry about, that distance should be more than sufficient to protect the boat and its passengers (who had been told to congregate in the bow, in any event).
Chuck left Les in control of the rope at the stern, keeping an eye on the lifeboat, while Chuck went to the captain on the bridge.
"Steer the boat perpendicular to the shore, dead slow. When the bomb goes off, kill every single light onboard. You understand? Every one. Immediately and all at once. If there's a single switch for all the power, use it."
"Got it," said the captain, who looked a little happier now that the bomb was far astern.
Chuck spoke into his watch, "Things go boom in about five minutes, guys. Playing dead afterwards. Let me know when we can come back to life."
"Roger that," whispered Casey. "We're almost there."
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The lifeboat with the balance of Team B aboard, traveling without the customary lights, pulled up to a dock less than a hundred yards from where they believed Roan to be. They left the boat and the sailor with instructions to wait for their orders to head back to the Miami Wench. Moving silently through the blackness, they approached the building.
From a distance, they could see that the lights were off inside and the large doors leading out to the sea were open. Just inside the doorway, they saw Roan alive and tied to a chair with Banacheck sitting next to him.
In their ears, they heard Chuck say, "Things go boom in about five minutes, guys. Playing dead afterwards. Let me know when we can come back to life."
"Roger that," whispered Casey. "We're almost there."
"Split up," said Sarah. "Amy take this corner, but don't let her see you from where she's sitting. Casey, you and me around back. Bryce, swing around the back of the building and take the corner opposite Amy."
The team acknowledged her instructions. They were all in position waiting silently when the bomb blew up on the water and the lights of the boat disappeared. Casey and Sarah couldn't see into the building and relied on the description by Amy and Bryce of what was happening, at least in the sliver of the front part of the building that they could see without being seen.
Sarah said, "I don't trust her. We don't move in until Banacheck is away from Roan." Casey and Sarah had their backs flat against the wall next to the rear door in the back of the warehouse with their weapons in their hands and pointed at the night sky. They waited. According to Amy, Sasha still sat with Roan, talking to him in a low voice. Amy said, "Get ready. She's standing...no, no...she just picked up something from the table..she's back with him. Shit."
They resumed waiting for her to move away from the bound man.
Suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, the rear door to the warehouse opened and one of Banacheck's men walked out carrying a large tool bag. He started with surprise at seeing Sarah and Casey and said, "Holy shit."
Larkin said, "What's going on?"
Sarah shot the man and turned to enter through the open door. That's when the second of her men came out of the side and hit Sarah in the jaw with a lunging punch. She was knocked off her feet and Casey came up right behind her. He dodged the man's next punch and said, "Turner, Larkin, take Banacheck. We got blown in back." Casey shot the man attacking him.
Banacheck did something to Roan with the device she had with her, dropped it and began to run to the dock with Amy and Bryce in pursuit. While on the run, Bryce fired once and missed her. Sasha stopped running, spun and shot Bryce in the chest. The force of the impact tripped him off his feet. As he fell, he hit his head on a dock cleat and tumbled into the water. Banacheck resumed her run down the dock.
Amy took aim at Banacheck's back, but the woman was too far to make the shot realistically. She contemplated chasing after the Russian woman as she began to untie the speedboat at the end of the dock. But then she saw that Bryce face down in the water beside the dock.
Choice.
'What would Chuck do?' she thought.
She dropped her phone onto the dock, holstered her weapon, and jumped into the water. As she turned Bryce over so that his face was out of the water, she heard the roar of the speedboat departing from the dock. She checked him quickly and saw that his vest had taken the round from the Russian woman's gun. It was the bump on the head that had put him out. She began to swim to shore with a sidestroke, holding up Bryce with her hip as she did.
In the building, the last man had surrendered to Casey. Sarah ran to Roan who was slumped in the chair. He was unresponsive and seemed dead. She picked up the device Sasha had had in her hands and recognized it as a jet injector used to administer drugs...or poison.
In a flash, her knife was in her hand and she was cutting the ropes binding his body to the chair. Casey joined her. Desperately, she said, "Help me get him flat."
Together they lifted him from the chair and laid him out on the ground. Sarah ripped the tape from his face and in her mind ran through the steps she had learned. She put her hand behind the back of his neck and tilted his head up, thrusting the jaw upward and opening the airway. She checked his mouth for obstructions and found a ping pong ball. She flipped it out with an index finger and listened for breathing. None.
She heard Casey on his phone calling for emergency medical assistance.
Placing both hands on the center of Roan's chest, one hand on top of the other, her fingers interlocked, she began to press rhythmically. She kept her arms straight and leaned over him, to use her body weight to help give strength to the thrusts. Each compression of his chest was about two inches deep and she did them to the rhythm of Stayin' Alive, the disco song by the Bee Gees from the 1970's.
She counted out thirty compressions and turned to his head. Pinching his nose shut, she gave two strong breaths into his mouth and watched his chest rise as she did so, indicating that the air was going into his lungs and not his stomach.
Meanwhile, Amy had gotten Bryce up on land, touched her watch and said, "Chuck, bring your ship back to life. I'm calling the Coast Guard now. Banacheck took off in a speedboat."
She ran down the dock to her phone as she heard Chuck say, "Right. How's Roan?"
Amy glanced at the door to the warehouse, "Don't know. Sarah's giving him CPR."
She reached her phone and called the Coast Guard. Using her federal credentials, it didn't take too long to be speaking to the duty officer in charge for the evening. "Agent Turner. Federal officer. Listen, you saw a boom on the water off Government Cut. It was a terrorist attempt to bomb the Miami Wench, a party boat, but we stopped them. No one was hurt on the boat. The terrorist just took off from Dodge Island heading seaward in a speedboat. Get out there and find her. Tell your people she is armed and very dangerous."
The man acknowledged her instructions. She continued. "I also want you to send some men to meet the Miami Wench. One of our agents is on board, together with several prisoners in his custody. But, I want all the guests on the boat detained so we can check them for connections to the bombers." Actually, she was sure they didn't have a connection to Banacheck, but wanted to know if they had connections to Fulcrum.
Sarah was still performing CPR on Roan's body. Every thirty compressions, she would breathe into his lungs. She was getting tired and starting to sweat with the exertion. But, goddamn it, she had promised herself to bring Roan home to Susie Case and she was damn well going to do it. Her sweat began to drip from her chin onto his chest.
Amy was still on the phone with the Coast Guard when Bryce came into the warehouse, still wet from the water. He saw what she was doing and said, gently, "Sarah, it's ok. You did everything you could. He's gone."
Sarah gave two breaths to Roan and came up to her position over Roan's chest. While keeping count, she said, in a harsh snarl, "Casey, get Larkin the fuck away from me."
Casey grabbed Bryce by the shoulder and said, "Go wait by the road for the ambulance. Lead them here when they arrive."
"But..." started Bryce. He stopped when he saw the look on Casey's face. He left without another word.
Once Bryce was gone to the road, Casey said, "Let me have a turn." He knelt down on the other side of Roan and let Sarah finish the two breaths, then he took over the compressions. It was only minutes, but for them it seemed like much, much longer that they continued their efforts. They changed once more before the ambulance crew arrived and took charge of the patient and the jet injector. The crew didn't share with them any odds on Roan's survival.
Sarah sat on the floor of the warehouse, exhausted. She wished Chuck was with her. She really wanted to put her head on his chest and have a good cry.
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OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
APRIL 26, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Agency is saddened to announce the death of Mr. Roan Montgomery, a legendary officer for many years. Mr. Montgomery, in his long career, was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Cross and five separate Intelligence Stars, making him the most highly decorated officer in the Agency's history.
Mr. Montgomery's service to this Nation spanned decades and continents. He had been responsible for many operations to protect his country and our allies from forces that would do us ill.
The men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency will mourn the loss of this American hero.
The funeral will be held in a private ceremony in New Orleans, Mr. Montgomery's hometown. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations be made to the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation.
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A/N2: The character Les deserves a few words. EOD is explosive ordinance disposal. Bomb squad guys and gals in the military who would, among other tasks, dispose of the improvised explosive devices left to kill our men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq. I have a female friend who is a Marine EOD and did tours in both countries. (Never use the past tense of the verb when identifying a Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine.) National Explosive Ordinance Disposal Day is an annual day of recognition for these brave men and women and occurred on May 1 this year.
A/N3: The method and rhythms of CPR that I've described here are accurate as of 6/21. However, I've taken CPR classes three times over the last forty years and every time I take one the standards have changed. Please rely on the latest guidance, rather than my explication.
A/N4: The CIA Officers Memorial Foundation is the (real life) charitable organization established to support the well-being and educational needs of the family members of fallen officers.
A/N5: Love to hear from my friends here. Let me know what you think, please.