A/N: I am supposed to be working right now, but instead wanted to get this out. Last chapter before the epilogue. I hope you enjoy it.
Ch. 12: Chuck versus Beckman's Master Plan
Chuck, Sarah and Casey were assembled in their usual positions around the conference table in the main room of Castle, their attention to the large monitor before them. Chuck was always amazed at how General Beckman, for such a tiny woman, was able to look down at them through the monitor.
"Ma'am," Casey started, "I understand you have a new mission for us?"
"Yes, Colonel," Beckman agreed, looking at each member of the assembled team. "First, I will need you to return to Ft. Meade in order to assist with dealing with the mole who shut down the Reaper that was tasked to assist in the attack on the Ring mercenaries. Thanks to Mr. Bartowski's information, we have identified Clyde Decker as the mole. As you are aware Colonel, Decker is well connected and very dangerous. You need to be cautious on this mission."
"Mr. Bartowski, you will be assisting Colonel Casey," Beckman continued, remaining impassive when she saw Walker bristle at the mention of Chuck being away with Casey but not her. "However," she continued, "you will remain in Los Angeles in this tech support capacity."
"Colonel Casey, you are dismissed. There is a plane at Andrews AFB waiting for you to fly back to Pax River. You will need to use an alternate i.d. for this flight. I do not want the Ring getting word of you coming back to headquarters."
With that, Casey nodded to Walker and Bartowski, then went to his locker in Castle to get a clean legend ID and a go back for his flight back East. Sarah and Chuck returned their attention to the monitor.
"Now, having discovered that Shaw and Decker were affiliated with the Ring, it is clear that there need to be safe houses in or around Los Angeles should either Castle, Orange Orange, the BuyMore or Mr. Bartowski's residence in Echo Park come under any future threat. Agent Walker, we have created an account in cryptocurrency for you to convert to untraceable funds in order to acquire three properties to be set up as safe houses in case of any such future emergencies. As far as the United States government, including the NSA and CIA, are concerned, the cryptocurrency account and any properties bought through it do not exist. I do not want any connection between the government and these safe houses."
Sarah's eyes grew wide at the implication of what the General had just said. "No connections, General?" Sarah cast an involuntary glance towards Chuck, who, while attentive to the meeting, appeared to not be picking up on the subtext coming from the General.
"None Agent Walker. There is to be no paper trail. No identification in any report," Beckman continued with a meaningful glance at Sarah. "No monitoring. The only people to know of the existence of these houses will be you, Mr. Bartowski, and Colonel Casey after his return from headquarters."
"Now, it is my understanding that the two of you have a cover date planned with Drs. Bartowski and Woodcomb next weekend. I will have the account information left at the dead drop at your hotel Agent Walker. With the 'remodeling' of the Orange Orange and the BuyMore, the two of you should be able to take some time this coming week to identify and possibly purchase a property before your trip."
With her usual lack of pleasantries, Beckman cut the video feed. Sarah turned to Chuck, a gleam in her eye at this development-a location where she and Chuck would be approved to go to periodically, but where there would be no surveillance of any kind. Chuck, on the other hand, looked stunned. He spun to face Sarah at the mention of "no monitoring", and saw the unrestrained smile she briefly flashed. He was like a child that had just discovered that Santa Claus was real. One look at Sarah's expectant face, and a broad grin burst out on both of their faces.
"Well, Mr. Carmichael, why don't we fire up the computer and start looking at property listings. It's time to go house hunting!"
Out of the driver's side window, he watched as a seagull rode the wind currents over the gently lapping waves. He thought back to his recent meeting with General Beckman. It wasn't a question of whether she had been withholding information from the briefing, it was a question of what information and how much. He had a reputation in the NSA ranks as an enforcer who did not question orders.
If the NSA had a problem, he got rid of it, permanently. Sometimes the solution was discreet, with the person disappearing as though he or she had never existed. Other times, when a message needed to be sent, the solution was messy and public. This time her problem was Daniel Shaw, who needed to be removed from the black site and disposed of without the Ring learning what information Shaw had revealed while in custody.
His NSA issued black Suburban with heavily tinted windows sped down the road. Between his evasive driving training, the bulletproof windows and doors, the arsenal stashed inside of the SUV, and his marksmanship skills, he was confident that he would be able to withstand anyone foolish enough to challenge him in the urban assault vehicle.
It took him a moment to realize that his confidence was about to be put to the test. The OH-6 helicopter was next to invisible, with its paint scheme black and varying shades of grey and no operating lights. The small helicopter had been flying at its maximum altitude of 10,000 feet when the pilot swooped down near the Suburban as the road switched from suburban sprawl to bisect a state park. With the shrouded tail rotor and composite rotor blades, the helicopter was practically silent in its approach.
The pilot and gunner onboard were well aware of both the capabilities and limitations of the vehicle they were targeting. The sudden flash of taillights revealed the moment the NSA agent spotted the aircraft. The pilot had anticipated the action, dropping the nose while pulling up on the collective as the gunner slid open the rear door and targeted the large SUV. Powering up the electric motor on the minigun, he lined up the sights and pressed the trigger. A tongue of flame lept from the ends of the barrels towards the SUV below.
The manufacturer of the armor plating used in the NSA Suburban guaranteed that it could handle a minimum of 30 7.62 rounds or 20 .50 caliber rounds before bullets would start to leak into the vehicle interior. The gunner on the OH-6 was aware of this information, but with his 7.62 minigun cranking out 3500 rounds per minute it would take a grand total of half a second to exceed those specifications. Added to that was the fact that his ammunition was explosive tipped rounds, which defeated the armor plating sooner than the manufacturer guarantee.
After a ten second burst from the minigun, the passenger compartment of the SUV was completely engulfed in flames. The fuel tank was punctured, the gasoline bursting into a fireball that rose up into the night sky, curling towards the overhead clouds. The pilot swung around to the opposite side of the burning vehicle, now motionless in the middle of the road. The gunner unleashed another ten second burst from his gun into the vehicle, leaving behind a wreck so mangled that police would have a difficult time identifying the make and model from what little was left of the gutted vehicle. The gunner poked his head out of the helicopter to look back at the inferno on the road below, cackling maniacally as the OH-6 disappeared into the night.
General Beckman looked down at her cellphone, seeing a picture of flaming wreckage. She promptly sent off a text message to a different cellphone, which read "Stage 1 complete. Commence Stage 2." A moment later her computer received a report from John Casey, sent from Castle. A quick check showed that Castle's biometric scanner had verified Casey's access into Castle over an hour earlier. A second check brought up the internal surveillance for Castle, showing Casey currently sitting in the armory, cleaning his sidearm.
The only problem that Beckman had with these confirmations of John Casey being alive and well and working away in Burbank, California was that she knew the confirmations were in fact, lies. Lies that she had arranged. A beep from her cellphone took her attention away from her computer. The new message read, "Stage 3 complete." Shortly after she read the message, that message and her outgoing text message vanished without any trace.
Beckman had to grin at the skill level being displayed. She had no doubt that the telephone company no longer had any record of the text messages ever being sent or received. She was also fully confident that the State Police now had a record of a full investigation into the single vehicle fatal "accident", even though the accident had just occurred. Per her direction, the police investigation concluded that the SUV had crashed while transporting chemicals and equipment for cooking methamphetamines, and the resulting fire had set off numerous firearms being transported as well.
The police report would conclude that due to the intense fire, the identity of the driver could not be determined. However, a trance of the VIN from the SUV showed that it was owned by a known M13 gang leader. Beckman also knew that there would be absolutely no trace of the Suburban as ever belonging to the NSA-no records within the DMV, and more impressively, no records within the NSA. Even the bane of bureaucracy, standard vehicle maintenance records, no longer showed the vehicle as ever having been in the NSA pool.
There had been many occasions in the past where she had unleashed The Casey on some enemy of the nation. This was the first time she had ever unleashed The Casey and The Piranha on someone. As an added bonus, Casey had finally gotten to use his M134 minigun on an operation. Maybe now he wouldn't requisition for use on every single mission. She could have sent the man into a nudist colony, and he would have requested permission to bring that weapon. Beckman wondered what Gertrude Verbanski would think if the NSA were to send Casey off to a nudist colony on a mission. She would likely find the prospect as funny as Beckman did. And Casey thought that his little dalliance with Verbanski was a secret. Didn't the man remember who he worked for?
Clyde Decker had been well connected, and desperately feared within the NSA. Given his senior status, and clearance level, the amount of information he had fed to the Ring would have been invaluable. But it had taken someone with both senior status and a high clearance level to shut down the Reaper drone during the Battle for the BuyMore. He had to know the risk he ran authorizing the shutdown of the Reaper. From what Bartowski had shared with her, Decker had covered his tracks very well-but not well enough to outfox the Piranha.
Officially, Decker was missing, and General Beckman would oversee a highly thorough search to figure out how and why he disappeared. Unofficially, Beckman would be using the missing persons search to scour his records to determine who had been assisting Decker on behalf of the Ring. Having Shaw captured and Decker killed eliminated two key sources of intel and recruitment for the Ring.
With a tinge of disappointment, Beckman pulled the folder on her desk over to read it through once more, as though the words on the pages might have changed since the last time she had opened the folder an hour earlier. The red and white striping indicated it was Eyes Only, with a list of just six people who were authorized to read it. An involuntary sigh and slight downturn to her mouth were the only visible signs of her disappointment.
The General had been surprised when she was notified that Walker had taken Shaw alive, especially in light of the fact that Shaw had, moments earlier, been threatening the life of the Intersect. While Beckman was ruthless in her efforts to keep the Intersect alive and secret, she had nothing on Graham's Wild Card Enforcer when it came to Bartowski's safety. The path of destruction the Enforcer would leave behind her would be both terrifying and awesome.
But the report wasn't about Sarah Walker. The picture just inside the cover showed Daniel Shaw trussed up in a straight-jacket, a maniacal gleam in his eyes, hair askew. She barely could reconcile the man in the picture to the man who had participated in numerous briefings with her on the Ring. Previously, he had been the model agent: intelligent, but emotionally detached-even stunted; nearly robotic in his approach to mission planning; dispassionate; the antithesis to Chuck Bartowski. As frustrating and vexing as briefings often were with Bartowski, the opposite had been true with Shaw. Watching paint dry was often more exciting than listening to his summarizations.
According to the shrink at the black site detention center deep in the forests of Poland, Shaw must have been supremely confident in his ability to pull off the attack. As soon as the tranquilizers had worn off (and Beckman made a mental note to check with Agent Walker on why so much tranquilizer had been used, and why she had been packing a tranq gun in the first place), Shaw had completely lost grip in a complete psychotic break, transforming into a raving lunatic during his every waking moment. The only coherent things he could say were "I would have gotten away with it if not for that meddling magnet" and, in a sing-song voice "Sarah, I'm coming for you!"
Now that Casey had had his fun dealing with Decker, maybe she should send him to Poland to see if he would be able to bring his powerful skills of persuasion to get Shaw to open up. Regardless of whether they ever obtained any actionable intel from Shaw, the fact that he and Decker, both previously unknown and unsuspected moles, were off the table for the Ring was a serious blow to the subversive organization. It would be difficult to impossible for them to get two more such highly placed assets within the intelligence community. Although that wasn't saying that the Ring wouldn't try.
Beckman had decided not to reveal to the powers that be that Chuck Bartowski was The Piranha. Given the level of penetration of Fulcrum and the Ring into the intelligence services, she was certain that word would get out that the Piranha was now assisting the NSA. Bartowski already had a big enough target on his back with the Intersect. As it was, only she, Col. Casey and Sarah Walker knew of Chuck's other alter ego.
Diane Beckman turned her attention to the next objective for Team Bartowski, the mission that she had used to convince Walker to leave Decker to Casey. Beckman swirled the cognac around the snifter, thinking briefly back to when Roan Montgomery had gotten her hooked on the drink as a way to decompress after a stressful day-which recently had been every day of the week. Once again, her team in Burbank had carried the day without so much much as a scratch. Once again, she had received congratulatory phone calls from 1600 as well as the Chair of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and the Chair House Intelligence Oversight Committee. While a lot of spin control would be needed to explain away a paramilitary assault on a frozen yogurt shop in a retail shopping center near a major metropolis, the loss of life had been limited and was only among the Ring mercenaries. No one had seemed upset over the fact that Shaw had been sent to a black site detention center hidden deep in the forests of Poland.
The President and Chairs had already promised her a sizable allocation to rebuild the OO, and add to its defensive capabilities. Diane reflected on the unusual team that was winning her such accolades. Her man in the unit, John Casey had been a cold-school killer, ruthlessly effective at any mission he was assigned. After over two decades as an operator, he was nearing the end of his career in the field, and had been showing signs of burning out. At least, he had been burning out until he teamed up with Walker and Bartowski. If anything, he was more effective now.
And she knew that he enjoyed his off the books mission of eliminating the Ring mole, Clyde Decker. It still wasn't clear whether Decker or Shaw had been in charge of the attack. Decker was too high up the chain of command, knew too many skeletons in too many closets for him to be taken into custody with any expectation that the Ring wouldn't find and free him.
Taking a long sip of the cognac, letting the flavor build before swallowing it down, Beckman next turned her thoughts to Sarah Walker. Langston Graham's Wild Card Enforcer. Stunningly beautiful, highly intelligent, and-in her own way-she had been just as ruthless as John Casey. She had the reputation of always completing her missions, usually with a trail of dead bodies in her wake. After Graham's death, the Acting DCI over in Langley had been perfectly content to cede operational control of her over to Beckman.
If the rumors over at the CIA were to be believed, the new DCI didn't think anyone at headquarters would be able to control her. They feared what she could do, and even more so, they feared what she could reveal if she ever told Congress about the non-sanctioned missions she had undertaken over the years for Graham. Beyond that, they feared both what she was capable of doing, and her well known contempt for any sign of incompetence or corruption. As a result, Sarah Walker was on the CIA payroll, but she reported directly, and solely, to Beckman on the Intersect Project. The fools at the CIA probably thought Walker would see the long term assignment in Burbank as a punishment.
Then there was Chuck Bartowski. A genius who possessed possibly the only brain on the planet capable of fully utilizing the Intersect. Son of Orion, the architect of the Intersect. The Piranha. An unlikely hero, in the form of an innocent, naive, bumbling nerd who always seemed to step up when needed, to figure out a way to snatch victory out of the jaws of death, yet remained both humble and unwilling to follow the proper chain of command.
Given the penetration of the Ring into the corridors of power in the government, Beckman was keeping a tight reign on information about her Team, or why it alone was so successful in defeating Fulcrum and crippling the Ring. Personal glory aside, her team was vital to defending freedom for US citizens-and she would do anything and everything in her power to give them the protection they needed in order to carry on that fight.
Now, if Walker and Bartowski would only. If sending them off for several days of unsupervised house hunting while posing as a married couple followed by a couples whitewater rafting trip wasn't enough to seal the deal, she couldn't think of what would do it. But Roan was convinced that this would do the trick. There were plenty of times when she regretted just how knowledgeable Roan was at the art of seduction, but he was the best and he genuinely cared for these two. It was rather remarkable, especially given how for the longest time he had only cared about the next martini and companion for the evening. She was hoping that Roan would be right again, for the sake of Walker and Bartowski-although she was also secretly hoping to lose the bet she had with Roan over this little plot of intrigue and seduction.
Looking back, this was certainly not where she expected to be, both personally and professionally, when she had received that fateful phone call that Bryce Larkin had blown up the Intersect. What a long, strange trip it had been.
A/N2: I doubt many people were fooled by the ambiguity in who was driving the NSA Suburban. In the original draft, I had a single sentence where Beckman was dispatching Casey to eliminate Decker. But in one of the earliest reviews on this story, Baldcoder expressed a hope that Casey would get to use his minigun, "Betty". At the time, I had already written Casey's retreat into Castle, and wondered how I could make that happen. I think the resulting 10 to 12 paragraphs were the easiest writing I've ever done. The whole scene was there waiting to be written down. If only the rest of the story was that easy to write. The epilogue is in its finishing touches, but work is going to be all consuming for the next four to five days, so the final upload likely won't be until late in the week.