Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.
Back in Langley, Graham was furious, because everything had been going to shit... ever since he suspended Larkin really. Obviously he'd had no idea just how much his staff had been compromised by Larkin, because it had to have been one of them who told him about the new Intersect facility. Then Larkin sends the Intersect to Bartowski, who could actually use it! It was obvious now who it was who actually got that ninety eight percent result in the Subliminal Imaging tests at Stanford.
It got only worse after that because he'd been blind sided by that pint sized bitch Beckman, and she'd somehow played him, and apparently the DNI, to not only get sole control of the human intersect project but to get it taken outside of all the normal chains of command. On top of that, she'd also managed to take his best agent off of him, and he needed Walker for when Frost came after him!
He knew from discussions with his people in the DEA and the FBI that Beckman had gotten Miller and Rizzo too, and that the Director of the FBI had started an investigation into why Rizzo had generally been relegated to insignificant dead end operations since he disbanded the CAT Squad and she was sent back to the FBI. That was unfortunate, but hopefully the fact that it had been on his orders had been buried far enough to remain a secret. The plan had been to make sure he could find her when he was ready to use her, Miller too, but having the DEA keeping her malleable by using her to soften up drug lords all the time had worked too.
That was what rankled the most, the fact that that bitch Beckman almost had exactly what he'd had in mind for the Omaha project, to have the Human Intersect teamed up with the rest of the U.S. Intelligence communities' best agents to form the ultimate team. The only thing that bitch was missing was the fact that the Human Intersect was meant to be an agent who was good enough to handle whatever was required of them, but her's was a civilian, and a mewling mommy's boy at that! so she would never achieve what that team was destined to achieve with him.
This current business though, that just added to his problems. It was supposed to have been easy, give them just enough clues so that they'd look ridiculous when the Brits came in and solved it right under their noses. That would have given him and his supporters the ammunition they needed to argue that a civilian was obviously incapable of doing what was required of the Human Intersect and start the ball rolling to get that project disbanded and get Walker back where she was supposed to be. But that idiot Bartowski fluked it and came up with enough to move it forward. He'd thought that that could still work for him though, send Bartowski in there so that La Ciudad killed him like everyone else who'd gotten close to him and that would give them pretty much the same result. Yeah, they'd be without the Intersect Database until they rebuilt the Intersect computers, but America had survived for hundreds of years without the Intersect, a few more months wouldn't hurt.
But them having that run in with the Brit agents and those stupid Brits opening their big mouths had made it all blow up in his face, especially with everyone being so incensed about Walker getting handled like that, and then being forced to come clean about all the agreements he had been making like that, that was going to hurt him! The cherry on top of the big steaming turd was the fact that after all that, they had somehow managed to capture La Ciudad, so Beckman came out of this looking good, damned good, while he was going to get his arse kicked.
A couple of days later, Diane filled them in on the outcome with the Brits and others. "The President agreed with the DNI and he has been formally revoking all the agreements Graham made, starting with the British SIS. The President received an almost immediate response from the British Prime Minister. The Chief of the SIS has also been called to account for every agreement that he's ever made with any foreign organisations and threatened with penalties up to and including prison if he tries to hide anything or make any further agreements without proper authorisation. The Prime Minister asked what the President was going to do about Director Graham, and he advised him that he would be imposing similar measures on Director Graham."
"Graham's losing a lot of his power with his foreign allies now because everyone knows that he's no longer able to follow through on most of the promises he makes, so he won't be able to get any favours from them. Needless to say, Director Graham won't not at all happy about any of this and unfortunately he still has enough support in our government to prevent him being dismissed, so we should expect him to try to get back at us, and Sarah will be his most obvious target, so we need to be careful….."
She stopped to think for a bit and and asked the others if she could have a private word with Chuck and Sarah. Once the others had left, she looked at them and said. "Chuck, Sarah, did you mean what you said in DC?"
"Yes Auntie Di, we both did, but we didn't say that because you'd cleverly manoeuvred us into it like you thought, we want to be married because we don't want to be apart again!"
"I'm glad Honey, I truly am, but I still believe that you getting married would make Sarah safer."
Sarah looked at Chuck nodding resignedly with a smile. "So are we getting married?"
"Yeah. The day we marry will be one of the happiest days of my life! I just don't like the idea that we're having to do it to protect you from Graham and those other bastards."
"We aren't Charlie! Like you said, we're doing this because we mean the world to each other and don't want to be apart, ever again."
He had a question in his eye as he looked at her, she smiled and nodded and he took her hands. "Samantha Lisa Blake, Sarah Lisa Walker, Caitlin O'Connell and any other name you choose to use, would you make me happy by agreeing to be my wife and spend the rest of our lives together, please?"
"Yes, Charles Philip Jaworski, Charles Irving Bartowski, Charles Philip Carmichael and whatever names you choose to use, I'd love to marry you and spend the rest of our lives together!"
Diane smiled with a tear in her eye and sent message to Mary, Emma and Ellie to go back to the meeting room. When they returned, Diane explained that they'd discussed marriage half jokingly before, but Chuck and Sarah now agreed that it was the best way to make Sarah safer, because as they'd covered previously, as a married woman, she would have legal grounds to refuse the sort of things that people like Graham and his ilk were likely to push at her, even if they did somehow manage to shut the project down.
Diane paused and Chuck turned to Emma "Auntie Em, do I have your blessing to marry your daughter?" Emma nodded with tears in her eyes. "Of course Chuck, I've been waiting for this day since you were children!"
Sarah turned to Mary with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "Auntie Mary, do I have your blessing to marry your son?" Mary laughed, but had tears in her eyes as well "What do you think? I've been waiting for the day that you officially become my daughter as well."
At that Sarah turned to Ellie "Ellie, are you OK with this?" Ellie just burst into tears "Are you kidding? I've thought of you as my sister since the day that you were born, so I've been waiting for this for all your life!" At that they were both crying in each other's arms.
Mary turned to her son with a smile. "Haven't you forgotten something Chuck? Someone else you're supposed to ask?" As Chuck went to answer, Diane put up the video of Chuck asking the question and Sarah's response. When it was done Mary laughed and said. "Okay, you didn't forget, but strictly speaking you should have asked Emma first."
Emma shut her up. "Oh stop it Mary, we're going to be the family we were always meant to be, but the girls, Vivien, Bry, Kim and the others do need to be part of this too."
Sarah looked panicked at that. "Oh no! How could I forget about the girls? I can't marry their father without their blessing!" With that, she took off out the door, with laughter wafting after her.
Chuck left soon after, to see his little sister, then Uncle Bry and Kim, Anna and Lou and then he was knocking on the door of Carina and Zondra's apartment (because they'd decided almost straight away that living there with everyone else was where they wanted to be). He was relieved to see that Carina wasn't showing much more than the other girls did when she opened the door in shorts and a tank top. She just pulled him inside, calling out "Zee!", because she had a good idea of what he was there for.
Unsurprisingly, the twins were the loudest and most excited after Ellie, but Carina and Zondra were remarkably demonstrative for spies when Chuck broached the matter with them. With the matter of Graham hanging over their heads, they decided to fly up to Vegas immediately for a quick wedding, then have a proper wedding with all the pomp and ceremony that everyone else was bound to demand when they could fit it into their cover story.
What names they could get legally married as was a question, but that was easily resolved because after Sarah left Harvard, Jane and some of the CIA techs had made sure that all the records were in place to make Sarah Lisa Walker her legal name, down to an officially certified birth certificate which she had collected from Jane's when they were in DC. Chuck's earlier degrees from Caltech and MIT were all in the name of Charles Carmichael and he'd never liked the stupid name Charles Irving Bartowski anyway, so he had done pretty much the same thing to legally become Charles Philip Carmichael when Uncle Roan asked him what name he wanted his degrees from Stanford to be issued as. The fact that all of their degrees were in those names was just icing on the cake.
It didn't take too long to work out that they'd need both planes to get everyone to Las Vegas, and even then some would have to miss out, so Casey called the airport to get both of their planes readied for a flight and organise the flight plans while Diane organised to have the paperwork they'd need for the wedding ready for them when they got there.
With all the resources at their disposal, Chuck and Sarah were married and back in LA within four hours of deciding to do so, and Chuck slipped the references to their official marriage records into Sarah's CIA files, so the CIA couldn't say that they had no knowledge of it. He actually enjoyed the challenge of turning off the alerts on access to her files (Graham's, obviously), making all the changes he wanted and turning the alerts back on without triggering anything.
Graham would be furious when he tried to access the evidence he had been keeping to use against Sarah, because unless he'd kept copies of it off-line, it was all gone! The only things left were the dates she joined and was made an agent, her records from training and the farm (except for that disgusting 'special' training, the only record left of that was the names and faces in his head and Sarah's, and they would be tracking those bastards down and dealing with them!), and the records of her missions and the outcomes (and anyone left alive from those first two solo missions would be dealt with as well). All that showed in the CIA systems for Agent Sarah Walker now were the stats and commendations of their top agent, everything else had been scrubbed completely clean.
Sarah had cried when they discussed what he'd found, but she'd felt cleaner after she got that off her chest, so she asked him to do the same for Carina, because there was far more filth about her in the DEA and CIA systems than there had been about Sarah. It took him a while, but by the time he was done, Carina's records and files were like Sarah's, they just showed what an exceptional agent she was and what she'd achieved, the evidence of all the shit she'd been forced to do was completely scrubbed from the systems.
He also checked Zondra's records, but aside from the terrible events that brought her to the FBI in the first place, there was nothing disturbing in her records, and that wasn't anything that could be used against her, so as she was OK with it he left it there.
A week or so after they were married, Sarah got her apology from the British Consul-General in Los Angeles, but it was forced and fell far short of what could have been considered a genuine apology, and as she was turning away she heard him mutter. "It's a damned disgrace! Being forced to apologise to the bitch who murdered our people!" so she turned back and stepped close, speaking too quietly for anyone else to hear.
"Listen you ignorant bastard! No-one was murdered, two of your perverts were shot when they tried to shoot my partner after the third time he'd identified himself as a Federal agent! I killed the third one! Not because he was mauling my breasts so hard that they're still bruised though, it was more to try and help save my partner! So I'd be happy if all you sick bastards would get the hell out of our country! You just better hope that I never find you away from your guards, but even that wouldn't be murder, it would be a mercy killing because you're obviously too stupid to live!" With that she nodded politely to him and turned to gracefully walk away, the very epitome of elegance, while the Consul-General hurriedly shuffled away from the puddle he'd left on the floor.
They got a message from Auntie Di when they got back to El Castillo to say that they'd had a shotgun mic trained on her at the affair and while the DNI would officially be very disappointed with her if it ever got out, he wanted her to know that he hadn't laughed that hard in years, especially when the bastard wet himself. She added that they'd be keeping all the recordings in case the Consul-General was stupid enough to try and lodge a complaint.
With the way that Graham was losing his allies overseas hand over fist, he was desperate to shore up his domestic alliances, so when the opportunity presented itself to mount a joint operation with his old friend the Administrator of the DEA, he jumped at the chance. Of course, neither of them wanted to take the risk of going up against terrorists with anyone who could be associated with them, and they'd lost their best agents to this Human Intersect Project anyway, so the Administrator quickly agreed to Graham's reasoning to have the Intersect Project do their dirty work for them.
That was why they were engaged for another urgent mission by the CIA and DEA soon after they got back from the wedding in Las Vegas. On the face of it they at least had the relevant information this time. Peyman Alahi, a drug transporter, was holding a fabulous diamond, the Nadan-I-Noor, to use to pay for missile purchases for terrorists, so the purpose of this mission was to take that diamond from him to prevent those missile purchases.
The DEA Administrator wasn't at all impressed when he tried to tell Carina that she was to go in and do whatever it took to seduce Alahi and get the diamond but Diane abruptly told him that he couldn't give her team orders or dictate how they would carry out their operation! As per the terms and conditions laid out, he could only specify the target of the operation. He was even more furious when his attempt to intimidate her with threats of dire consequences if her methods didn't get the diamond had no effect on her at all. Graham had tried to stop him, because for all he wanted to shoot the little bitch in the face, she was as much of a Pit Bull as Casey and he had to respect her for that.
While Chuck and Anna were getting into the systems to get the plans and details of the security systems, the rest of them were organising the team for the incursion. Chuck, Sarah and Carina would be the ones going in openly, with Casey on-site as their driver, while the rest of them would be waiting just off-site to come in.
Their entry into Alahi's compound was easy enough, as the pervert had a perpetual pool party going because he tried to surround himself with women wearing as little as possible. While they were doing this, part of the Thebes Security team were getting into the property via the path down to the beach so that they could be on hand quickly if things went south. Chuck, Sarah and Carina circulated until they were in a position to slip away without being seen, and then they headed for where they expected the diamond to be, confirming that the team were in place before they went inside.
Chuck had no trouble circumventing the security system to get into the mansion, but the diamond was in a sealed display room, which almost certainly had silent alarms. They didn't have the time or equipment to properly disable all the security systems, so they agreed that they would have to snatch it and run.
He got them into the room, but then they ran into another complication, as the intersect then showed that part of the security on the diamond included pumping enough electricity through the cradle holding the stone to fry anyone who touched the stone. He was trying solve that problem when they heard a round being chambered behind them. The girls kicked themselves at that, because they were the ones who were supposed to be keeping watch while Chuck got them past the security, but they'd been trying to think of a way to grab the diamond before they were caught there.
When they turned to face the people behind them though, they were met by a sickening sight, because Alahi was standing there in all his glory with two guards, and he was a fugly little toad covered in little more than his own fur.
Sarah and Carina dropped into their ever reliable ditzy valley girl personas which disarmed most men while giving them hope that they'd get lucky. Alahi trying to be smooth as he devoured them with his eyes, saying "So you like my diamond?" played right into their hands, so Sarah came right back with a ditzy "Oh, yeah, it's really pretty!"
He came forward so he could touch them, confident that his guards would stop the man doing anything when he did so, saying "You're not supposed to be here!" as if he were chiding a child, so she responded "Oh, I'm really sorry, but the door was unlocked, and who are you?"
He all but licked his lips as he leered at her "Pretty girls call me Peyman." Carina jumped in then "Hi Peyman, this is Sarah, I'm Carina, and this is our brother Chuckie" as she stepped up to Chuck to put her arm around him. Alahi thought he was on a sure thing now and turned to dismiss his guards, just as Carina's hand came back, holding the Russian OTs-38 Stechkin silent revolver that Chuck had had tucked into the waistband of his trousers. She took out the two guards with head shots and the valley girl was gone as she finished with. "And this is my little friend!"
Glancing from the pistol to Chuck she grinned, saying "I like it Chuckie!" He smiled, turning to Sarah who had Alahi on his knees, twisting the hand he'd grabbed her on the arse with up behind his back. Chuck met her eye and she nodded, because he had to keep up the civilian or at least analyst act, and she asked. "How do we turn off the security system?"
The idiot still thought that he was in control of the situation. He was expecting his guards to arrive at any minute so he was actually trying to get a better look down her dress as he leered up at her and said "You'll need the key card to do that….. but you'll have to search me to find it." That got his arm wrenched hard enough to result in a loud 'snap' as Sarah said "Oopsies" in her valley girl voice before knocking him out to prevent his screams bringing the anyone else. They called for someone to come and collect Alahi, binding and gagging him with what they could find, while Chuck was trying to work out how to get the diamond without being electrocuted.
Eventually he spied the fire extinguisher and told Carina to grab it, and as soon as the men had taken Alahi out, she fired a blast of CO2 at the diamond, blowing it off the pedestal for Chuck to catch. He got a bit of a shock from the residual electricity, but managed to hold onto it. The problem then was that as well as the alarm going off, the door started coming down and gas was released into the room, apparently they were serious about preventing the diamond from being stolen.
Chuck gave Sarah a shove that took her out of the room before the door got that far down and Carina kicked over a pedestal holding a bust over to stop the door a bit over a foot off the floor, then showed that she must have been a tomboy at one point as she slid under the door in a perfect little league slide. Chuck followed her, just scraping through but he made it. Once outside, they hoofed it with their people who'd taken out the guards who'd come running at the alarm.
As she couldn't run in those heels, Chuck scooped up Sarah while one of the other guys did the same with Carina and they took off down the path to the beach to pile into the waiting vans and Continental convertible. With electric motors in each wheel, adjustable suspension and extendible paddles in the tweels, the lightweight machines had no trouble charging across the sand, and once they were on the road with the paddles retracted and their suspensions lowered, they proved themselves just as capable on-road as off. The Continental and one of the vans split off in Santa Monica to head back to El Castillo while the other van delivered Alahi and the diamond to trusted FBI Agents on the C-21A that Diane had waiting at LAX.
As soon as they got back to El Castillo they reported in about the mission, and they had a good idea from Diane's smile what she was up to, considering what they'd discovered when they were researching this. Once Graham and the Administrator of the DEA had been linked in, Diane informed them that the diamond had been recovered, so the terrorists wouldn't get their missiles, she also informed them that Peyman Alahi had been captured and would be delivered to the DEA. The Administrator was looking rather pleased with the way that this had gone and asked when he was getting the diamond. At that, Diane had to hide a smile. "On that... I'm afraid that you will not be getting the diamond Administrator, as the President has ordered that the Nadan-I-Noor be returned to its rightful owners to shore up our relations with India, so the State Department will be taking delivery of the diamond to hand it over to the Indian government in a formal ceremony. We realise that this means that we have not quite achieved the outcome you were expecting here Administrator, so the DNI has agreed to write off the cost of this operation, and Peyman Alahi is in effect your compensation for that."
The two men were enraged by this, Graham especially as he realised that he'd been outmanoeuvred again by that bitch, but as the DNI had so pointedly reminded him, a Presidential order was something you couldn't fight against, so there was nothing that they could do about it now. Of course, the fact that he'd sold the Administrator on using the Human Intersect team as the best way for them to get the diamond at minimal risk to themselves meant that he'd shot himself in the foot, because he'd convinced the Administrator to stick his neck out on this with the promise of a fabulous diamond that would make them rich, but all he'd gotten out of the exercise was a filthy little toad like Alahi, while Beckman taunted them with the Nadan-I-Noor and gave it away.
This made it at least four, no five...six…seven nil to Beckman! First he'd lost the Human Intersect Project and Walker to her, then he'd lost one of the best agents he had left and got a pile of shit from that debacle at the Intersect facility, she'd captured La Ciudad and lost him all of his overseas support in that affair with the Brits, and now she'd earned major brownie points with the President by capturing the diamond and probably cost him the Administrator's support….
Maybe it would be smarter to just bide his time and wait for her pathetic civilian Intersect to screw up as he knew he would, because every time he'd gone up against Beckman so far, it had cost him, and he couldn't afford to lose too much more until he'd strengthened his position…. as she had hurt him more than anyone else he'd gone up against. He was starting to think that he'd been focussing on the wrong Pit Bull, Casey was dangerous alright, but not as dangerous as the bitch he reported to.
While Carina and Zondra hadn't planned on staying at El Castillo any longer than it took them to find places that suited their style, they found that they quite enjoyed sharing an apartment, and the apartment they were in was quite comfortable and stylish. The convenience of living little more than a hundred yards from both of their 'work's made life a lot easier, and more to the point, they found that they really liked living in the heart of their 'family', so that they could see any of them whenever they wanted. It had only taken them a matter of days to decide to keep things the way they were.
They did have to settle into their cover jobs, but that wasn't difficult either because in many ways this was the perfect cover for what they did, a cover paramilitary security company that was well armed to protect celebrities and corporate assets. Most of the ones who had come across had been working for the supposed parent company in Texas and its other franchises (which were all owned by their 'friends'), so they had experience in corporate security at least. Those few who hadn't been working in the security field were, like Carina and Zondra, quite capable of picking up what they needed for the 'job' due to their operative backgrounds.
Thebes Security was working out of the Shiloh Storage space while the bunker and their offices were being built. The Intersect team's bunker was already in place, the exterior finished and all the major structural work was done, now they just had to fit it out, which shouldn't take anywhere near as long as creating the bunker had.
Casey was still arguing about staff though, at least he was with the young lady who was determined to become his receptionist and assistant. Alexandra McHugh was just as stubborn as her father was, so those discussions were occasions to break out the popcorn and watch for the rest of them.
John had taught Alex many things and supported her when she wanted to study criminal psychology at university, but they went head to head when she argued that the business needed believable assistants to look legitimate and it would be the perfect part time job for her, and that was ever so entertaining to watch for everyone else.
None of them were surprised when Alex got her way, because while she may have been over a foot shorter than Casey and half his weight, she could whip her father any day of the week. Most of the time she didn't even have to break out the plaintive "Dad?" that could make him crack in five seconds flat. She was a good girl though, she didn't gloat... much.
With all the effort required to get the Intersect team and Thebes Security established, they'd been dropping the ball with their business clients though, so when they came to a slow spell in the 'spy business', they all pitched in to make a push to catch up on that side of things. That was how they ended up working late one night, and as everyone was in the mood for Chinese, Chuck and Sarah did a food run. As cliché as it was, just about all of Chuck's favourite Chinese restaurants actually were in Chinatown so they headed down there, the drive also gave them time to talk about the proposal that Auntie Di had made about changing their cover.
The purpose of Auntie Di's proposal was to shore up the move they'd made in getting married by creating the scenario where Piranha Security & Technology, Lotus Security Systems, Novatech Industries and Shiloh Security Storage had all just been bought out and became part of Carmichael Industries, which would have Charles and Sarah Carmichael running the business and becoming prominent in society circles. Having them well known as a successful married couple would seriously erode Sarah's ability to operate in other capacities, while further establishing their cover. The timing could be easily explained as being part of setting up the covers for the Human Intersect team, and the fact that Chuck's degrees from Stanford, MIT and Caltech were all in the name of Charles Carmichael also supported this move.
The other part of Auntie Di's proposal was more ambitious though, because she wanted to make Charlemagne Computers Etc disappear completely. Charlemagne was generally just an on-site tech services provider, so very few people had ever come to the office, which had made it easy to move the Charlemagne office down to the other end of the block with the Thebes offices and pretend that it had always been there. The thing was, none of them had ever liked the basic tech services work that was Charlemagne's bread and butter, that had been forced on them by the Cover Bureau as someone there had decided that that would be more believable than the work they were best at. So what Auntie Di was proposing now was that they get rid of the business by simply blowing the building occupied by it and Thebes Security up!
After the explosion, the police and community would be told by FBI agents that a new gang had been trying to move into the area, and they had apparently decided that blowing up the building was what they needed to send a 'Don't fuck with us!' message, they would also be told that the people who had worked for Charlemagne Computers Etc had been put into the witness protection scheme.
The CIA and NSA on the other hand would be told that the evidence was that the location had been leaked by a turned agent, and Fulcrum were the ones responsible for the explosion, presumably trying to wipe out part, if not all of the team and perhaps the bunker before it was secure. However, the bunker had in fact survived largely intact, as had one or two of the access tunnels, so once it was repaired and blocked off from the Thebes Security offices, the tunnels could be used to access it.
They would also be told that the organisation which had recently bought the building next door had bought the property that the Thebes Security building was on to extend their building to cover the entire block (the argument for this was that they had to do major work to repair the structural damage to that end of the building from the explosion, so it wouldn't be that much more work to extend the building and gain a third more space, and what's more, they could get the insurance company to pay part of the costs that way). They had agreed to the government's stipulation to ask no questions about what was underneath the Thebes offices to prevent their building expansion being stopped, so the Human Intersect Project's operations centre could remain where it was, and be accessed via the tunnels until the building had been repaired and expanded. After that, the only difference from their previous plans would be that the Thebes offices were occupying one corner of the ground floor of a much larger building rather than their own building.
Neither of them could see much to argue about with this proposal, because for the most part it was exactly what they and the rest of the family wanted. Sarah had a pretty good idea of why Auntie Di wanted to expand the building for from what Mama had told her about Auntie Di's plans for them, obviously she was planning on bringing a lot more of their people in so that they could work together more efficiently.
While Chuck didn't know about that, he did know that Auntie Di was pushing hard to get promotions and medals processed for Sarah's military IDs, especially her Army Sarah Walker ID. When Sarah's military identities were created back around Mid-Ninety Eight, they'd all been made about thirteen or fourteen years older than she was, because they'd started her at O-2 or O-3 with about ten or eleven years service and a few years time in grade, so that she had moved up to O-3 or O-4 level by the time she went into the advanced flight training etc in 1999. By the time she became a agent in 2002 she was at O-4 across the board, but the CIA hadn't bothered updating her military IDs since then.
Many of the special operations missions she'd been doing with the military since Ninety Nine could be easily mapped to her military IDs and there had been recommendations for medals for her from more than a few of those operations, so Auntie Di had been using the records he took from the CIA's systems before he sanitised them to get promotions and medals signed off by the big brass for her, getting them backdated as far as possible so that Sarah was now at O-5 level for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, but she was an Army Colonel. He smiled as he thought about how she was going to react when she found out that her aunt had also been establishing her as Shanti, saying that she hadn't been commonly known by that name because she'd only used it when she was operating with the rest of the team.
Auntie Di obviously had big plans for Sarah, just like she did for him and Ellie.