Chuck vs. the Seventh Day, Chapter 14
CAST (in order of appearance):
Lt. Commander Rachel Harrison - Zoe Saldana
Captain Will Williamson - Alex O'Loughlin
Sarah Walker Bartowski - Yvonne Strahovski
Bryce Larkin - Matt Bomer
Carina Miller - Mini Anden
Gunnery Sgt. Mitch Tucker - Terry Crews
Ensign Rodney Carter - Bret Harrison
Sgt. Chuck Moen - Dule Hill
12:15 AM, Belgrade Time
February 18th, 2012
Nikola Tesla International Airport, Belgrade, Serbia
Almost two hours had been spent finalizing the plan of attack.
Fly the Greyhound into Sigonella, faking an in-flight emergency – although according to Commander Harrison, if the starboard engine seized, it wouldn't be too much effort to fake it. Steal an ES-3 Shadow at gunpoint. Fly it out to the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – it apparently had more than sufficient range.
Things got a little murky from there. The basic plan was, to start with, to use the Shadow's electronic warfare gear to shut down radio and radar onboard the Eisenhower. Then, they would get the Shadow refueled – again, probably at gunpoint. They would find Commodore Saxon, get him onboard the Shadow and off the Eisenhower.
The problem with that was that the Shadow only sat four, and there wasn't room to stick a fifth person. "No problem," Will Williamson said. "I'll stay, get off the ship another way."
Sarah shook her head adamantly. "No. That is not an option."
"I'm sorry, Agent Walker," Williamson replied, "but I am, first of all, a United States Marine, and secondly, an F/A-18 Hornet pilot, an aircraft of which there happen to be thirty-six onboard the Eisenhower. Worst comes to worst, I'll steal one and get the hell out."
There was some gear that Sarah had stowed onboard Williamson's Hornet that she absolutely had to get out before they left. So, they had waited another two hours after finishing their plan for the airport to get quiet for the night.
Sarah and Williamson snuck out of the Greyhound and ran across the taxiway to where they'd parked their Toyota Camry. As they got in, Rachel Harrison fired up the engines of the Greyhound, the starboard one emitting a thick, oily black smoke.
As soon as the Camry passed the Greyhound, Harrison pushed the throttles forward, moving it out of the spot she'd parked it in. It rolled slowly down the taxiway, letting the Camry open up some room.
Sarah was running with her headlights off as they approached the F-18F sitting, dark and cold, on a hardstand off the taxiway. The NSA agents who had surrounded it earlier had left, leaving only two agents to keep watch over the plane.
When the Camry was maybe one hundred fifty feet from the plane, Sarah turned on the lights and hit the highbeams, blinding both agents instantly. Williamson leaned out his window as the two NSA agents fired their guns blindly. Calmly and smoothly, he shot them both directly between the eyes.
As the two carcasses dropped to the pavement, Sarah brought the car to a halt. She and Williamson both jumped out, and he opened the tiny cargo hatch under the cockpit of the Hornet. She reached up and grabbed her messenger bag, and they turned around to watch the Greyhound approach.
Rachel Harrison throttled back and coasted, her speed being about fifteen miles per hour as she approached the CIA agent and the Marine pilot. They began running before the Greyhound reached them, and jumped onboard as they came even with the open port hatch.
"All clear!" Bryce Larkin shouted as he slammed the hatch shut. Immediately, Harrison pushed the throttles to full, and the Greyhound jumped down the runway as if it had been kicked by a mule.
"It's a good thing this thing was designed to take off from aircraft carriers," Rachel said through gritted teeth, "because this is gonna be close!"
The twin turboprops of the old Grumman aircraft howled as it gained speed. Finally, the front wheels of the Greyhound lifted off the ground, and it cleared the edge of Nikola Tesla International Airport with mere feet to spare.
"That was close," Rachel whispered. She turned and smiled at Bryce, and then turned to look at Sarah and Williamson. She opened her mouth –
"I swear to God, if you say one word about 'thank you for flying Air Harrison', I will slap you," Sarah growled.
4:15 PM Mountain Standard Time (12:15 AM Belgrade Time)
February 17th, 2012
Grand County Airport, Moab, Utah
She looks lost, Mitch Tucker thought to himself, as he watched the woman enter the main terminal building from the window of his office. She was quite a woman to look at, too – five foot ten inches of what looked like nothing but lean muscle and red hair.
He walked out the door of his office and headed down the hallway toward the door the woman would've entered. "Excuse me, ma'am, can I help you?" he asked, as he approached her.
She turned, and he felt like his skull had been pierced by the gaze of her green eyes. "I'm looking for Gunnery Sergeant Mitchell Tucker," she replied.
Mitch's jaw dropped. Was this his lucky day? Had one of his friends sent him a really hot stripper to break up the monotony of the day-to-day at Grand County Airport? "That's me," he said quietly.
"Gunny Tucker, I'm Agent Carina Miller, DEA," she informed him. Inwardly he groaned and cursed his luck. "I need your help."
2:30 AM, Italy Time (6:30 PM MST)
February 18th, 2012
Naval Air Station Sigonella, Sicily, Italy
"Mayday, mayday, this is Arrow-Two. We have lost starboard engine and we are losing altitude rapidly."
Ensign Rodney Carter was pulling his first watch as radar controller. Engine loss? Altitude loss?
"Show it to me," he commanded. An NCO switched a terminal to the main screen. There it was, Arrow-Two. Transponder identified it as a US Navy C-2 Greyhound.
"Uh, Arrow-Two, this is NAS Sigonella," he responded. "How far are you from us?"
There was a moment of silence, and then the voice of the female pilot came back on the radio. "Uh, we're maybe fifteen miles out," she replied. "We can see your lights from our position."
"Do you believe you can make the runway?"
"I can make it if I pour on every available ounce of power through the port engine and feather the starboard propeller," she replied. "But the starboard engine's already seized and I'm afraid the port engine's about to do the same."
Onboard Arrow-Two
The situation was looking entirely too grim. Rachel Harrison looked like she was about to throw up into her oxygen mask. Bryce was holding on to his seat so tightly that the dried out skin on one of his knuckles had cracked and was bleeding. Will Williamson had started praying.
And all Sarah could think about was Chuck and her kids. Facing the very real possibility of the Greyhound crashing into the Mediterranean Sea, she couldn't block them from her consciousness – they invaded her every thought.
The port engine began to howl as Rachel pushed its throttle to the stop. She reached over and flipped a switch to feather the starboard propeller, allowing it to pinwheel freely in the slipstream.
They were still dropping, but it felt like the rate of descent had slowed. "I think we're gonna make it!" Rachel called out with a victorious note in her voice.
Sarah allowed herself to smile slightly as the Greyhound dragged itself toward Sigonella. They weren't out of the woods yet, but it was looking better.
Well, it looked better very briefly. As they crossed the edge of the air base's property, the port engine seized. The Greyhound dropped like a rock.
"Oh God!" Harrison wailed, pulling back on the yoke with as much force as she could muster – but it wasn't enough. The Greyhound was dropping, hard.
Sarah closed her eyes and breathed deeply. As she did so, a dizzying array of images assaulted her mind –
Chuck standing behind the Nerd Herd desk, the first time she'd ever seen him –
Chuck staggering out of that helicopter in Long Beach –
Chuck smiling at her and telling her that if they were a real couple, they'd be forced to kiss –
Chuck in that ridiculous Shai-Hulud outfit –
Chuck when they rescued him from the facility in Moab –
Chuck when he got down on one knee and proposed –
Chuck's face when she announced she was pregnant –
Chuck holding newborn Lisa Erin –
Chuck holding her just before they embarked upon this insane mission –
And she breathed in again, noticing a bright light approaching. This must be it, she thought, allowing the light to get brighter and envelop everything –
"Sarah!"
Bryce's hand on her shoulder shook her out of her state of semi-consciousness. She opened her eyes to see a flashlight being shone in her face. "Yeah, that's not cool," she muttered, lifting a hand to shield her eyes.
"Sorry," Bryce said. "It's just, the plane stopped five minutes ago, and you haven't moved."
"What?"
Sarah looked out the window of the Greyhound. Sure enough, it had stopped. "Rachel landed it, both engines out," Bryce told her, a huge grin on his face.
"It was freakin' incredible!" Williamson added.
Sarah sighed. This mission needed to be over, soon, so she could go home and go back to her family.
6:45 PM, Mountain Standard Time
February 17th, 2012
Somewhere over New Mexico
"So, what's this all about?" Tucker finally asked as they flew across New Mexico.
Agent Miller had told him only that John Casey had called her, and told her that she needed to go to Moab, and find Gunny Mitch Tucker. From there, he would be her pilot in his Beech King Air. He was to head to El Paso, and that was all she was telling him at the moment.
When he had objected, wanting to know more, she had grabbed him by the back of the neck, and kissed him like he hadn't been kissed since… well, since that one girl in Thailand, he thought. It seemed to have special powers though, because he immediately complied with everything she asked.
"There's a plot against the President, Mr. Tucker," Carina replied. "A group of people – domestic terrorists, if you will – want to unseat the President, and put their own person in his place. This group is called Fulcrum."
"Yeah, and their plot's called ECOMCON," Tucker shot back. "I know that much. Now, can you tell me what exactly's going on?"
Carina sighed. "Senator Langston Graham, from North Carolina, is the former director of the CIA. He went to Fort Bliss, in El Paso, to do a so-called Congressional inspection of the ECOMCON command facility. Unfortunately, Fulcrum figured his plan out, and captured him. So you and I are going to go get him out."
Tucker's mind just about exploded with that statement. "EXCUSE ME?" he bellowed. "A DEA agent and a Marine Reservist taking on an entire goddamn US Army fort? Have you totally lost it?"
"No, of course not," Carina said. "We know exactly which building Senator Graham is in. We'll land on the road right next to that building. Then we go in. You appeal to the enlisted men with your intimidating, drill sergeant ways, telling them that they have the choice of either disobeying their superior officer or committing treason. I'm pretty sure they'll go with the choice of disobeying their superior officers."
Tucker stared at her for a moment, and then shook his head. "Springing a man from terrorist custody. Blowing up a drug warehouse. Stealing an F/A-18. Rescuing a man from Fort Bliss."
He looked Carina in the eyes. "Are ALL intelligence agents batshit crazy?"
She smiled and laughed. "Oh, no," she said. "Just the good ones."
2:57 AM, Italy Time (6:57 PM MST)
February 18th, 2012
NAS Sigonella
Ensign Carter had ridden out to where the Greyhound had rolled to a stop. He wanted to make sure all the passengers were okay.
And they seemed to be. As his Saab pulled up to the aircraft, the emergency vehicles began to roll off, leaving just the four occupants of the Greyhound, two of them in uniform – the pilots, Carter assumed – and two of them in civilian clothing.
As he got out of the Saab, though, all four pulled guns on him. His eyes widened and it was all he could do to not lose control of his bladder.
"You have ES-3 Shadows here, correct?" the woman in uniform asked, a hard edge to her voice. Carter recognized her voice as that of the woman who had called in the mayday.
"Uh… yeah?"
"Alright, get back in the car and drive us to one," the other woman told him. "We need one."
Too scared to say anything else, he got in the car. The blonde woman in civilian clothing got in the Saab, her gun pointed at his head. The other three got in the back seat.
Carter put the car in gear and headed off toward the hangar where the Lockheed electronic warfare aircraft were kept. About halfway there, he finally got up the nerve to say something.
"Why are you doing this?"
"For the good of the United States," the blonde woman replied. "There's a plot to take down the President, and we're trying to stop it."
He took his foot of the gas, and turned to look at her, incredulous. "Jesus, why didn't you just say so?"
Carter reached down and picked up his radio. "Ensign Carter to squadron three."
"This is Sergeant Moen."
"I need an Echo-3 prepped, like yesterday. Don't log it, don't put it on the books, just get it ready to go."
"Uh… Rod? What's going on?"
"Can't say, Chuck. It's apparently a matter of national security."
The blonde woman looked at Carter. "Did you just call him Chuck?"
"Yeah, Tech Sergeant Chuck Moen," he replied. "One of the lead maintenance guys for the electronic warfare squadron."
She smiled and laughed softly. "That's my husband's name," she said quietly. "It's almost like it's good luck."
When the young Navy ensign's Saab reached the squadron three hangar, the doors had been opened, and the lights turn on. A black-painted ES-3 had been rolled halfway out of the hangar, and it was being fueled.
"Thank you, Ensign," the blonde woman said. "Now, I need you and Sergeant Moen to leave and forget we were ever here. We'll finish pre-flighting the aircraft."
Moen looked at Carter and shrugged. "We go," Carter told him.
Sarah watched as the Saab drove away from the hangar. She couldn't believe their luck so far. Carter had unquestioningly accepted her brief explanation of what was going on, and then for Sergeant Moen's name to be Chuck?
She smiled. It was things like this that made her think that maybe there was a God after all.
"Let's go!" Harrison shouted five minutes later.
Sarah left her sentry post at the door of the hangar, running for the stairs up to the ES-3's hatch as the airliner-like turbofan engines spooled up. As she stepped into the hatch, she pushed the stairs away with her foot, watching them roll to the wall of the hangar.
Rachel Harrison and Will Williamson taxied the ES-3 Shadow out onto the runway, and without waiting for clearance or even acknowledgment of their presence, brought the throttles up. The little aircraft leapt down the runway, speed building rapidly.
As it reached 145 miles per hour, the Shadow left the runway. True to its name, the black electronic warfare aircraft disappeared into the night sky, the sound of its jets the only clue it had ever been there.