A/N: Welcome back. The positive reviews were greatly appreciated. As Ch. 2 is shorter than the first, I decided to post Ch. 2 and Ch. 3 together. The pace of action picks up considerably. I hope that you enjoy.
Chapter 2: Chuck versus the Gunfight at the OO Corral
The driver of the faux minibus spotted the imposing man in the green polo shirt when he had entered the stop from the freezer. The driver immediately notified the squad leader of the presence of John Casey, NSA agent and froyo thief.
"Sir," the driver called out to the Team Leader, "there is movement in the objective."
The Team Leader moved up to the front of the bus, peering through the windshield with binoculars even though they were yards from the target. "I don't see anything…wait, a second..."
Turning to the men assembled in the back of the bus, he continued "We've spotted John Casey inside the stop. We're going to move up the assault to take advantage of the opportunity to eliminate him. We will deploy as planned. Move out."
As the men poured out of the side and rear of the bus heading to their assigned assault positions with guns drawn, they didn't realize that their movement had been noted by the sole occupant of the yogurt shop. John Casey was never one to let down his guard, not even when poaching gummy bears at the break of dawn, and spotted the first of the gun-toting mercenaries to step out of the bus. The frozen yogurt cup in his hand dropped to the floor.
With one hand whipping out his phone to hit *99, the other hand reached over to the cash register to simultaneously hit the "price check" "print receipt" and "discount" buttons causing the smart glass windows and door to turn opaque. As soon as the phone call connected, he quickly spoke, "This is Colonel Casey. Authentication alpha, alpha 305. Crash Castle. Repeat Crash Castle. Code Zero." Peeking over the register, he saw the SAW operators lining up in front of the door. "LZ is going hot. Casey out." He quickly drew the omnipresent Sig Sauer P229 from the pancake holster at the back of his waist.
At the command input into the cash register, the smart windows to the stop activated, while reinforced steel rods barricaded the front and rear doors to the store. Automatically, an email alert went out to NSA headquarters. The technician on duty at NSA headquarters in Ft. Meade, Maryland checked the protocol set up for that particular substation and immediately notified General Beckman of the lockdown. Shortly after she received the alert from the technician, she was notified by the call center that John Casey had ordered that Castle be crashed. She started marshaling assets to make sure that the Intersect was protected, and that a fast action response team was immediately dispatched to Burbank.
Outside, the Team Leader spoke into his Ring communications device, "Movement spotted inside the objective. Engaging." Just as the "crash Castle" command was given inside the stop, the leader saw the change in the glass in the windows and door. "Damn, it. We've been made." Looking over at the SAW operators, he gave the command "Light it up."
The two men stepped from being the bushes they had been using for cover and opened fire on the front door to the shop. The glass quickly became a maze of spiderwebs as the bullet resistant smart glass absorbed round after round from the machine guns. The other mercenaries brought their weapons to bear, but with no greater success than the machine gunners had experienced. Instead of plexiglass shattering and the NSA agent getting cut down before knowing there was a threat anywhere in the vicinity, the door handled all of the incoming fire.
The Team Leader quickly realized his mistake, having forgotten from the briefing that intel suggested the shop was reinforced. The front door was damaged, but still in place. The problem was that not only did Casey and the NSA know that he was being attacked, but everyone in the shopping plaza couldn't help but hear the roar of the machine guns. As stealth was no longer an option, the Team Leader ordered the full squad to attack the building in force, but the rest of the windows proved as resilient as the shop front door.
Across the parking lot, the figure inside of the minivan had gone from confused when he heard the report of movement inside of the OO, to frustration when the report came through that the assault team was moving up their attack, to full rage at their incompetence as they uselessly alerted everyone in Southern California to their attack while not putting a dent in the bulletproof windows. He had cautioned during their briefing that a fortress was hidden under the facade of a yogurt shop. He let out a curse, railing at the fact that operational security was about to compromise operational effectiveness because he couldn't contact the team to take command.
When the mission had first been proposed, he had accepted the fact that he would only be able to monitor communications and not speak directly with the assault team. He realized that operational security dictated the lack of direct contact in order to protect his identity. But his temper was spiraling out of control as he watched his carefully laid plan get ruined by the incompetence of the men assigned to carry it out.
The man started cursing a blue streak while pounding the steering wheel in frustration. The fools had ignored his warnings that the building was reinforced. They had disregarded his caution over not taking on John Casey unless absolutely necessary. Instead of taking out Colonel Casey, the trigger happy squad leader had tipped their hand-as well as sending the few early bird shoppers in the Plaza screaming for cover.
With Castle on lockdown and the Code Zero issued, Casey had reached back into the storage compartment where he had gotten the spoons in the front counter of the shop, but this time reached up to a hidden panel at the top of the compartment. He quickly pulled out an M4 rifle with three spare clips and two hand-grenades. Casey then punched another command on the cash register, changing its screen to bring up feeds from the surveillance cameras covering the Buy More Plaza parking lot. He clicked to enlarge one feed right in time to see one of the enemy combatants loading a round into a recoilless rifle. His eyes going wide, Casey pushed down the momentary flash of jealousy at the sight of the portable artillery piece, and quickly ducked back down behind the counter to prepare for the assault to begin for real.
Moments later an explosion rocked the inside of the store, bending-but not breaking-the steel frame of the doorway. An electrical line crackled with energy as it dangled from the ceiling, swaying back and forth with a spray of sparks. Being careful not to touch the energized power line, Casey crawled out from behind the counter to make his way to the front windows. Looking through a small hole blasted into one of the windows, he saw the recoilless rifle shooter positioned near the front of the shop. He then noticed the shooter's teammate reaching into the bag nearby to grab another high explosive round.
In the blink of an eye, the rocket powered round had flown across the parking lot and detonated directly in the middle of the door. It had taken a moment for the smoke to clear before the recoilless rifle shooter could see that the first shot from his beloved weapon hadn't knocked down the front of the store, merely twisting the door and knocking a few small holes in the bulletproof windows. The mercenary stood in his spot for a moment, stunned that the yogurt shop was still standing. After getting a tap on the shoulder from his loader to let him know that another high explosive round was ready to shoot, the recoilless rifle operator went to take aim at the shop entrance door for a second time. He was still so surprised at the lack of results from the first shot that he failed to notice a piece of black metal protrude out of one of the holes in the glass window beside the door.
Casey had thanked his lucky stars that the blast had hit the reinforced front door, rather than the large picture windows on either side. He spotted the recoilless operator standing there looking like an idiot, Casey snapped off a quick three round burst from his rifle before dropping to the floor and rolling to the other side of the door where another small opening had been made in the bulletproof glass. He knew without having to look that his shots had ended one of the threats deployed against him.
Casey shifted his aim to the pack on the ground near the dead recoilless operator. He needed a miracle to detonate any of the rounds in the pack. Keeping the rifle set to three round bursts, Casey tried repeatedly to set off some of the remaining recoilless rounds without success. As he went to take aim more carefully, he thought to himself that he had been in one spot for too long.
The SAW operators had been surprised when the recoilless shooter dropped his weapon and collapsed to the ground dead from Casey's pinpoint shooting. One of them spotted the barrel of Casey's M4 poking out of the blast damaged window pane of the Orange Orange. The machine gunners sent a withering barrage of fire towards the small opening where Casey's rifle had briefly appeared, causing him to hit the deck. Every tenth round from each SAW was a tracer, which allowed the operators to accurately pound away at the small opening in the window. The problem was that while the tracer rounds showed where they were hitting, the shots also showed where they were coming from.
Ducking down to avoid any rounds that leaked through the blast hole in the, Casey waited for a lull in the shooting. Even with the limited visibility through the heavily damaged window, Casey was not only able to pinpoint the locations of the SAW operators, he noted that they were cocky. With new toys and superior numbers, they weren't bothering to move positions after firing a burst. A gunnery sergeant at boot camp had emphasized to Casey-or Alex Coburn as he was known before his life in the NSA began-that after you shoot, you need to scoot. It was a lesson that Alex had taken to heart, and a lesson that wound up saving Casey's life on more occasions than he could count.
Before the smoke from the machine guns had cleared, Casey jumped to his feet and fired bursts back down the line of fire that the tracers had lit. Casey taught the Ring shooters Gunny's the lesson the hard way. A gurgling scream told Casey that one of his kills hadn't been as clean as his shooting normally achieved. But the silence from the two machine guns let Casey know that he had two less threats to face.
Casey knew that the blast hole in the window would serve as a two way street. With all of the damage to the bulletproof windows, it was getting harder and harder to be able to see out. That meant that eventually one or more of the Ring troops would sneak up to Casey's improvised gun port and use it as a gun port of their own, or simply toss in a couple of the hand grenades that Casey was sure they were carrying.
Chapter 3: Chuck versus the Red Alert
Sarah was still working on stopping her smile at the sight of Chuck modeling his Princess Barbie life jacket when a noise reached her ears that made her smile disappear instantly and her blood run cold. She cut her eyes to Chuck who was looking like he was already starting to spiral into a full on freak out. Both looked to their phones, which had simultaneously started making the "red alert" sound effect from the original Star Trek series. While Sarah was familiar with the sound effect after several late night marathon sessions (usually as a result of a Night of Morgan), neither she nor Chuck had heard their phones make that sound ever since he programmed the alert- which would only be triggered in the event of an NSA emergency evacuation order.
Before Chuck could so much as blink, Sarah's trusty Smith & Wesson was in her right hand as she scanned the store for any sign of a threat. While Chuck's first thought was fear over whether Ellie and Awesome were ok, Sarah's only thought was that nothing was going to get through her to Chuck. Intersect or no, he was too important, too good, too special to allow anyone to harm him. Before the first note of the red alert had ended, Sarah Walker had disappeared. In her shoes stood the Ice Queen ready to eliminate anyone foolish enough to pose a threat to Chuck.
Chuck was now freaking out on several levels. First, from hearing the red alert evacuation signal. Second, over the fact that Sarah had drawn her service sidearm so fast he hadn't seen her move. And third, over the fact that Agent Walker was currently standing in the middle of a popular retail store with her gun drawn and a look on her face that promised agonizing pain for anyone who got in her way. The woman he loved had been replaced by Langston Graham's Enforcer. Although, the presence of the Enforcer was also a calming factor, as Chuck knew without a doubt that he was safe as long when she was in that mode.
Sarah snapped her phone to her ear while circling Chuck with gun in hand, causing shoppers around the couple to scatter for the exits. "Walker, in public."
"Agent Walker," General Beckman began. An emergency evacuation order was bad on multiple levels. Getting a call directly from the NSA director was so much worse. "We are dispatching a Coast Guard helicopter to your position. It should be on station in under three minutes. You and Mr. Bartowski (at least she wasn't referring to Chuck as "the Asset" for once) will rendezvous with the SSN Key West. Make sure that no one learns the identity of the Asset. We will speak again once the two of you are onboard."
Damn her, Sarah thought to herself, not only did she slip in a reference to Chuck as the Asset, but she hung up without giving any details as to the threat. There wasn't any time to debate the many annoying habits of Diane Beckman. Sarah needed to get Chuck to the roof and then off of the grid, so they needed to move now and worry about Beckman later.
One of the reasons why she was the best of the best at the CIA was that Sarah automatically identified all ingress and egress points to any building or room upon entering it. Without having to think of where she was going, Sarah grabbed Chuck by the shoulder and started propelling him towards an employee only door that would give her access to the roof to meet up with the helicopter.
As a beautiful woman, she regularly attracted attention from men and women alike. As a beautiful woman holding a gun and pushing a man while looking extremely pissed off, she was now attracting a lot of unwanted attention. Despite the employees and shoppers diving for cover once Sarah had drawn her gun, a Loss Prevention employee from the store went to block their path to the door.
Seeing the gun start tracking toward the unarmed teenager, Chuck urgently whispered, "Sarah!" Sarah had limited time to get to the roof, and unlimited options as to how she could handle the situation with a Code Zero declared. But her time with Chuck had tempered her proclivity to use force to overcome any obstacle. She could easily get past the young man by pistol whipping him, or a spinning roundhouse kick to the jaw. And not long ago, that is exactly how she would have handled the situation.
Sarah quickly shook off the need to eliminate the barrier between Chuck and his exit to safety, instead reaching with her left hand into a hidden pocket in her brown leather jacket and drawing out a badge and ID, "Katie O'Connell, Secret Service. I've got orders to evacuate this VIP via your roof. You can assist us, or you can wake up tomorrow in the hospital, your call." She realized the guy was only trying to do the right thing, and probably wasn't making any more per hour than Chuck did in his job as the Nerd Herd Supervisor.
In the back of her mind, Sarah realized the ridiculousness of her ploy. She wasn't dressed in a g-man outfit with the requisite mirrored sunglasses and blatant ear piece, and Chuck was a casually dressed twenty-something who happened to be wearing a neon pink Barbie life jacket. But between the (real) gun, the (fake) ID, and the expression on her face that brooked no fool, the teenager spun and opened the door for them, calling out the access code for the roof hatch located at the top of a flight of stairs.