It was nearly four in the morning by the time they reached General Beckman's house, north of Baltimore. Casey and Sarah got her out of the car and helped her into the house.
After lying her down on her bed, Sarah removed a sterile syringe and a vial from her purse. Sticking the needle into the vial, she withdrew a milliliter, and tapped it to remove bubbles.
"What is that?" General Beckman whispered, still in shock from her encounter in Virginia.
"It's something that I received in pill form three nights ago, General," Sarah replied.
General Beckman's eyes went wide. "Rohypnol?"
Sarah nodded, her face expressionless. "Medicinal grade," she replied. "Inject you with it, you'll be out for eight hours. Don't worry, nobody's going to do anything to you."
And then, without a word more, Sarah bent over General Beckman, stuck the syringe into a vein in her wrist, and pressed down the plunger.
As she and Casey were walking out of General Beckman's bedroom, Beckman softly whispered, "Agent Walker."
Sarah turned around. "Yes?"
"Why are you doing this?"
Sarah paused, as if unsure of how to answer the question. Finally, she looked General Beckman in the eyes.
"I made the mistake of falling in love."
It was the third morning of Chuck's captivity in the secret government facility. He was worn out from the prior two days of terrorizing Beckman and Graham.
As he came to, he realized something was wrong. The refrigerator was gone, replaced by one of those little Arrowhead water coolers. The plasma screen TV was gone. The media cabinet was gone. The sofa was gone. All that was left was the water cooler and his bed.
"The hell?" he grumbled, sitting up.
The door opened, and Director Graham walked in. He was accompanied by two men in dark suits, armed with Tasers.
"Good morning, Bartowski," he said, a smile on his face.
Chuck didn't return his greeting. He just did like he had the first morning – stared expressionlessly at the Director.
"I see you noticed the lack of furniture and décor," Graham said.
Chuck simply nodded.
"Well, that's because you're no longer a guest here," Graham informed him. "You are now a prisoner. You will no longer be referred to as Bartowski. You are now Prisoner Number One. You will answer to that. You will not cause trouble. You will obey orders. If you step out of line, you will be stunned."
Chuck swung his legs over the side of the bed, stood, and stepped toward Graham. Immediately, one of the dark-suited men lifted his Taser and pulled the trigger. A tiny dart impacted Chuck's upper arm, and suddenly, he felt like he'd stuck his finger into a high voltage outlet.
As Chuck collapsed back onto the bed, Director Graham stepped toward him and looked down at him. "Enjoy your day, Prisoner Number One," he said with a smile.
Graham and the two men stepped back out of the room. Chuck just lay on the bed, recovering from the electric shock. Eventually, he rolled on his side, facing the wall.
He curled up into a ball. He could feel the pressure building in his chest, but he tried to hold it back.
Finally, he could control himself no longer. The sob burst forth from his chest, and unbidden, he began to cry.
Sarah, Casey, and Ellie had caught the first Southwest Airlines flight of the day out of Baltimore. It had left at 5:15 AM, and arrived in Los Angeles just after 9:00 AM Pacific Time. "The Rohypnol will be wearing off within a few minutes," Casey warned as they ran through the airport. "Ellie, I need you to call Devin and give him an address to meet us at."
The address Casey gave was in south central Los Angeles. He maintained a safe house that nobody – not Sarah, not the NSA, not the CIA – knew about. "I figured I might need it some day, but not for this," he explained.
It didn't look like much from the outside – just one more run down ranch house off of Florence Boulevard – but on the inside, it was a virtual armory. Casey had just about every weapon one could acquire legally, and several illegal ones as well.
"So what's the plan?" Devin asked.
"We know the location of the facility that Chuck's being held at," Casey replied. "There's a tiny airport just a little distance away. It's big enough to land a Learjet at, and I just so happen to have one – off the books – parked at Hawthorne Airport."
"Okay," Ellie said. "So, my question is, why do you want me and Devin along on this retrieval mission?"
Sarah took a deep breath. "Ellie, there's a good chance that Casey, or I, or both of us, or possibly even Chuck, is going to need medical attention when we get back to the plane in Moab."
Ellie's eyes widened. "What kind of medical attention?"
"Gunshot wounds," Casey answered her simply.
Ellie blew out her breath in one big puff. "Well. Okay."
Devin held up a hand, almost as if he were a child in grade school, asking a question. "So, who's going to be flying this thing?"
"That would be me," Casey answered. "It's my plane."
"But you just said you might be injured. What if you can't fly?"
"Walker's trained to fly a plane of that type in an emergency."
"What if she's wounded too?"
Casey and Sarah looked at each other. It was pretty clear that they hadn't thought that far in advance.
"Chuck," Ellie said simply.
"What?!"
"Bartowski? Come on."
"Ellie… as awesome as he is, I'm not sure Chuck can do that."
"Of course he can," Ellie insisted. "He's the world's biggest video game geek. He's played every version of Microsoft Flight Simulator to come off the line. He could probably start up and fly a Learjet in his sleep."
Sarah looked at Casey again. "Well…" she started. "I guess, all the training I've received was in a simulator… Chuck may well be just as qualified as me."
"Alright," Casey said. "So Bartowski's the backup to the backup. Let's try not to get to that point, shall we?"
"We're going to need medical equipment," Ellie mentioned. "Probably a fair amount of it."
"Not a problem, babe," Devin said. "I know a guy over at L.A. Metro Med Center – it's a mile the other side of Hawthorne Airport. I'll give him a call –"
He started to pull out his cell phone, but Casey reached out and grabbed it out of his hand. "Use a land line, a pay phone, but not a cell phone," he warned Devin. "I guarantee you the instant one of our cell phones goes active, the NSA will be all over us."
Devin shrugged. "Not a problem, big guy."
"Okay, so weapons, medical supplies – how exactly are we going to transport this all?" Sarah wanted to know.
"Come with me," Casey replied.
Sarah, Ellie, and Devin followed Casey into the backyard, to a ramshackle garage. Casey opened the door – and there was an old, faded blue Ford panel van. "That'll work," Ellie said.
It took about fifteen minutes to load all the weaponry that Sarah and Casey had decided to take – "Looks like you're planning to start World War 3," Devin joked, although it didn't draw a smile from either Sarah or Casey.
At 3:00 PM, they left the safehouse, headed for Hawthorne. They stopped at a 7-11 on the way so that Devin could call his friend at the hospital. That was their next stop, fifteen minutes later, where they managed to abscond with a crash cart, two diagnostic units, two IV units, and enough type O- blood and plasma for a small army, among other small supplies.
They got everything loaded without incident. At four o'clock, Casey was taxiing out to the runway, when a half dozen police cars came screaming onto the field. "John Casey," one of them announced over his loudspeaker. "This is the Los Angeles County Sheriff. You are under arrest. Shut down your engines and exit the aircraft."
"Like hell," Casey muttered. Pulling the yoke all the way over to the left, he brought the right hand engine up nearly to redline, spinning the aircraft around in a circle, so that its tail was pointed at the sheriff's deputies. He then redlined both engines, causing the Lear to leap forward, headed the wrong way down the taxiway, the jet blast knocking the deputies over to a man.
"Everybody buckle up. This is going to get real interesting, real quick," Casey shouted to the back of the plane.
"What the hell is going on, Casey?" Sarah shouted back.
"We're taking off from a taxiway, with the wind," Casey yelled back. "Either one of those is dangerous by itself. Together, they might be fatal!"
He laughed, almost maniacally. "Rock and roll!"
In the back, Devin had a white knuckle grip on his armrests. "Not… awesome."
Casey somehow managed to get the plane off the ground with just inches to spare. He practically scraped the fence on the border of the airport, and screamed over Prairie Avenue low enough to terrify people on the street.
He pulled the nose of the Learjet up to just before the stall point, and pushed the engine throttles to their max stops. The business jet struggled to gain altitude, but it wasn't climbing fast enough.
"Shit," Casey muttered. "All right!" he yelled out. "Time to hold on again – we're gonna be flying straight through LAX airspace!"
Sarah's eyes went wide, as Ellie's squeezed shut. "Oh my God," they both whispered.
Casey brought the nose back down on the horizon, pulled his flaps all the way in, and let the airspeed build. He rocketed toward Los Angeles International Airport, trying to aim his path to go over the terminals, and not over the runways.
He was encountering more and more turbulence as he approached the airport. To his left, a United Airlines 747 took off, the jetwake buffeting his aircraft. Casey closed his eyes and said a small prayer as he crossed the airport boundary –
- and then they were through. Casey could hear the angry shouts of pilots and air traffic controllers behind him over the radio, but it didn't matter. They were out over the ocean, and he finally had enough airspeed to climb.
He pulled the nose up, and set the auto-altimeter to 32,000 feet. When they reached cruising altitude, he entered the coordinates for Moab, set the autopilot, and walked out into the cabin.
Casey was greeted by three very pale looking individuals. Sarah and Ellie were holding on to their armrests for dear life, and Devin was clutching a barf bag. A smile broke out on Casey's face.
"The captain has extinguished the seatbelt light," he said. "At this time, please feel free to move about the cabin, and thank you for flying Air Casey!"
Sarah gave him a look, shook her head, and whispered, "I hate you so much sometimes."
Chuck lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling. He'd been doing the same thing for most of the day.
He had gotten up to use the bathroom twice. He had tried to get up when the men in dark suits brought him his lunch, and had gotten Tase'd for his efforts. So, when they brought him his dinner, he just stayed laying in the bed until they left.
The food was boring, but at least they were still feeding him. He couldn't believe his crappy luck – in seventy-two hours, he'd gone from slow-dancing with Sarah at the Viper Room, her body practically molded to his, to being a prisoner, to being even more of a prisoner. "This is bullshit," he muttered.
And then – it seemed like he was hearing the end of the world approaching. There was a low rumble at first, and then his bed started vibrating, and then there was an impossibly loud roar of jet engines as an aircraft passed what couldn't have been more than feet over the roof.
"What the hell is going on?!"
Casey's approach to Grand County Airport had been impossibly low and slow. He had been counting on a short airstrip, so he was mighty annoyed when he discovered that the strip at the airport was 7,100 feet long.
Sarah had been grateful for the low approach, though. She'd been able to eyeball the CIA facility that General Beckman had said Chuck was being kept in. "It looks pretty well fortified," she observed.
As Casey landed, he saw a Jeep driving down the runway to meet them. He slowed the Lear to a stop at the end of the runway, turning it around to position it for immediate takeoff.
The Jeep pulled up as he opened the door. "Airport's closed!" the driver yelled, getting out. "You can't park there, anyway!"
"NSA!" Casey shouted in reply, coming down the Lear's airstair and flashing his ID. "This is a national security matter, and I need to commandeer your Jeep."
Hearing "national security", the airport manager's whole demeanor changed. "Yes sir!" he replied, snapping to attention. "Gunnery Sergeant Mitch Tucker, US Marine Corps Reserve, at your service, sir!"
"Major John Casey, US Air Force," was the reply. Gunny Tucker snapped a picture-perfect salute, which Casey returned with equal perfection.
"I need you to stay here and make damn sure nobody touches my plane, Gunny," Casey said.
"Yes sir. Not a problem, sir!"
Gunny Tucker ran off to go retrieve his step-van and the accompanying KA-BAR knife, M-16, and Colt .45 that were kept inside. As he did so, Casey and Sarah quickly and methodically loaded their armament into his Jeep.
"I want you two to stay in the plane," Sarah informed Ellie and Devin. "Do not, under any circumstances, leave the plane. If somebody comes along and asks, tell them that you were abducted. You are not here of your own free will, you don't know what's going on, you have nothing to do with it."
Ellie nodded. "Understood," Devin answered.
Casey was sitting in the driver's seat of the Jeep when Gunny Tucker returned. "That's a whole lot of hardware you've got there," the Marine Corps reservist observed as Sarah came down the stairs. "Looks almost like you're planning to go to war there."
"Not at all, Marine," Casey replied. "We're going to rescue a United States citizen being held against his will by, uh…"
"Terrorists," Sarah finished for him.
A glint appeared in Tucker's eyes and his mouth took on a hard set. "You sure I can't come with you folks, give you a little backup?"
"I appreciate the offer, but I need my aircraft kept safe," Casey replied.
"Understood, sir." Tucker snapped off another salute, which Casey returned as he put the Jeep in gear and roared away down the field.
As they exited the airport, Sarah turned to Casey. "Are you ready for this?" she asked, a worried tone in her voice.
"Hell no," he replied. "But I'm sure as hell gonna give it my best shot!"