Disclaimer: Here we go again. Don't own any part of Numb3rs or any of the Numb3rs characters. OC's are…oh, never mind. I know Colby promised to behave himself and get well quietly, but it's driving him crazy! Me too, sooooo, enough of that!
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" The lives of many other sons? Families left to grieve?" David's horrified whisper echoed off the bathroom walls. "What is this man hiding?"
"He's a bio weapons specialist." Don reminded him. "How to create them and how to counteract them. And he's had access to the best resources and development facilities. I don't even want to think about what he could be hiding. We just need to find him, right now."
"What about Sahar?"
"David, I get the feeling that if we find one, we find the other. The clock's ticking down. Come on, let's get out of here." He pulled out his phone to call for a forensics team. The room could yet yield valuable clues to what they were up against.
Prepared to leave, Don and David heard the unexpected sound of a card key being inserted. Company. It might be Gerrard retuning. Or housekeeping. It was neither. With Don and David tensely waiting, the door opened to show two men who's suits and ties did nothing to disguise their linebacker builds and a couple of faces that had seen a lot of roadwork. As surprised by the encounter as the two agents, the scene froze for a handful of heartbeats as the four men stared at each other.
Move stupid, don't just stand here flatfooted, David kicked himself. "FBI! Freeze!" Going for his weapon, both he and Don were forced to dive for cover when the bigger of the pair of thugs (merely huge as opposed to blocking out the sun), produced an evil looking little machine pistol.
"How does somebody that big move so fast!?" Sinclair wondered, as the shots ripped into the space his body had occupied only seconds before.
"Stop! You gonna kill a couple of FBI agents!? Stupid! Go! Go! Go!" David heard the other yell, then running footsteps.
Raising his head to see an empty doorway, both he and Don propelled themselves from the floor and raced after the now fleeing gunman and his companion. They reached the hallway just in time to see the elevator doors closing, blocking out the florid, chagrined face of the man who'd tried to kill them.
Instead of wasting time calling for the next car, Sinclair and Eppes leapt for the stairwell door, pounding down the stairs two and three at a time.
Even at that, both knew they were up against a handicap. As fast as he and David were moving, reaching the lobby completely breathless, Don wasn't surprised to see football necks #1 and 2 (had to call them something) rudely bulling their way thru to the hotel's front entrance.
"Stop!! FBI!" Don yelled, scattering startled hotel guests and staff as he and Sinclair, guns in hand, tried to close the gap. He ducked again as #1 whipped around and the machine pistol reappeared.
Ppppppffffttt!!! Ppppppffffttt!!! Bullets plowed into the Doric column next to Don's ear. David could hears screams of frightened bystanders who suddenly discovered themselves in the middle of a running gun battle as the slugs gouged chunks from the decorative stone. Conscious of all those innocent, terrified faces, neither agent fired back.
Pursing fbn #1 and #2 as far as the parking lot, David was frustrated and dismayed to see a dark grey Lincoln SUV skid to a stop beside the men, who leapt in as the doors flew open. The vehicle then sped off, leaving thick black tread marks as it made a bumper scraping turn out of the lot, shattering the wooden arm lowered to block the exit, tearing off down the street.
Going full out for their own set of wheels, David was startled to hear his cell's distinctive ringtone. Only barely managing to park his butt in the passenger seat of the Tahoe and get the seatbelt buckled before Don blew off after the Lincoln, with flashing lights and siren, he nearly let it go to voice mail. Capturing the call on the last ring, he heard Colby's voice.
"David, I think I figured out where the kid is! Christopher Gerrard! I know where they took him!" Colby blurted excitedly.
"That's great Colby, but I can't talk right now! Me and Don are chasing a couple of goons who shot at us in Gerrard's hotel room! They'll probably lead us straight to the doc…!" Sinclair grabbed the dash as Don negotiated an ugly S turn at nearly fifty miles an hour, determined not to loose sight of the grey getaway vehicle. "We gotta get Gerrard, man! This whole mess just got a lot more complicated. I gotta go, alright?!" he half yelled, snapping the phone shut on Colby in mid-sentence.
"Call Liz and Nikki. Fill 'em in! Get 'em over this way!" Don ordered. "While you're at it, have somebody notify Tim King and his people! We're liable to need some serious back-up before this is all over!"
Eppes put his foot down more. David could feel the surge as the big truck picked up speed, gaining by inches on the men ahead of them.
In the Lincoln, fbn's #1 and #2, AKA Bob and Barney Craig surveyed the road behind them, anxiously watching the black SUV carrying a couple of understandably somewhat put out FBI agents gradually getting closer. Barney, flustered and freaked out, readied his deadly compact automatic weapon for round three. Before he could make any further preparation, however, Bob acted first. Making it up on the fly, he spotted a large construction site up ahead. Abandoned by it's developers as their financing went belly up in the collapsing economy, it was littered with the leavings of the partially completed project.
"Perfect" Bob thought. Their father, worthless drunk though he'd been, had finally been proven right about something. When they were kids and the old man felt like whacking on them, if he couldn't find a belt, would use whatever implement came to hand.
"Use what you got" the rheumy old boozer liked to bleat (before he at last succumbed to liver failure). "Alright then" Bob considered. "That's exactly what I'm gonna do." He moved up beside the driver, another Global ProtectX employee, although not one he or Barney normally worked with. They were at the construction site now.
"Turn in here" he ordered, collecting a double take by the other man, who nonetheless spun the wheel obediently, guiding the Lincoln onto the muddy, weed choked, rut filled ground. Bouncing and jostling over the untended patch, the luxury vehicle proved its worth, grinding all the way to the yawning opening of the almost office tower. All four doors popped open as the Global henchmen, five in all, an erstwhile cleaning crew for Gerrard's hotel room, decamped. They fled in four separate directions, seeking the anonymous darkness of twenty floors of unfinished mess to hide in.
Don and David, hot behind them, saw the exodus as they were skidding to a halt beside the building. The sound of tires squealing in the mud made them turn around. Liz and Nikki. Four against five now. The odds were improving by the moment.
"King and his guys are tied down with a hostage standoff at a bank across town!" Liz told Don. "We're on our own here."
Nodding his understanding of the statement Don and his team set out after the absconding culprits. Nikki and Liz after the driver and his normal partner, and Don after Bob Craig. That left David with Barney.
Sinclair smiled humorlessly. The shooter from the hotel. Good. "Shoot at me, will ya?" David sprinted thru the dank, murky ruin, determined to keep Barney in sight.
Barney, whose bulk apparently disguised his fleetness of foot, cast an unnerved glance over his shoulder to see the enraged fed coming. No time to take aim again. The felon, picking 'em up and laying 'em down as fast as he could, grimaced and ran faster still out of desperation. He had to get away. He couldn't go to prison. Some people didn't do at all well in prison. Barney knew he was one of those people. No prison, no way. Not for him.
David saw Barney dash thru the dark and back out into the open air, temporarily losing sight of him as Barney disappeared around the side of the building. Slipping in the mushy grime, Sinclair got clocked by a pile of cinder blocks, heard bullets carom off the bricks above his head, picked himself up, shook off the blow and continued on. He rounded the corner to see…no sign of the man he was chasing. He checked the ground for tracks, but saw none in the mixture of gravel, mud and sand. Then, spying the huge construction crane ten feet away, he got an idea. From a high enough vantage point, he could pinpoint Barney's whereabouts. David dashed for the behemoth and started up. So far, so good.
Halfway up, though, the entire venture began to go south. Without Bob around to steady him, Barney, who's judgment could be called questionable in the best of times, went totally round the bend. See his persistent pursuer occupied with ascending the crane's tower, he raised the vicious little gun in his hands and held down the trigger.
Ppppppfffftttt!!!!!!! Ppppppfffftttt!!!! Ppppppfffftttt!!!!!!! The rounds whizzing around him forced David to climb higher out of sheer self preservation. The bullets clanging and ricocheting off the steel rungs of the crane were very near misses. Ppppppfffftttt!!! Ppppppfffftttt!!! He kept climbing, finally running out of vertical room. Ppppppfffftttt!!! Ppppppfffftttt!!! Ppppppfffftttt!!! With no choice, David inched his way out on to the crane's arm and started as careful a horizontal progress as being shot at would allow. As he was nearing the monster contraption's boom end, he got another unpleasant shock.
No longer content with firing at his adversary, Barney give in to his juvenile urges, dropped the gun, and leapt into the cab of the crane. A variety of odd jobs during his teens and early twenties give Barney just enough working knowledge of the machine he sat in to be dangerous. He hotwired the engine, grinning evilly as it growled to life after months of disuse. Smiling up at the trapped fed with manic glee, he began to manipulate the arm swinging it out and away from the building until it hung swaying in the open air. Then a fiendish thought overtook him. If he swung back fast enough, maybe he could make the fed loose his grip. He located the joystick again, chuckling with delight. CLANG!!!!! Barney ducked as his mini excursion into psychotic tormenting was rudely interrupted by Nikki Bentancourt's shot missing his substantial head by a fraction of an inch. Liz charged right behind her, also firing. Barney's stout sense of self preservation reasserted itself vigorously. Immediately, he dove out of the opposite side of the crane's cab, landed badly on one ankle and took off at a limping run, leaving the machine pistol forgotten, with Nikki following.
Liz looked up to see Sinclair clinging to the unsteady looking arm of the crane for dear life. She had no idea what to do about it. Pull on the wrong thing, she would only make matters worse.
"David! Try to climb back in!!" Warner yelled as loudly as she could over the still running machinery.
"Liz, this thing is moving! I can feel it! I try to climb back in now, I'll fall!" David's voice was tinged with panic. He clamped it down mercilessly. Not only was he NOT going to die today, especially like that, but he definitely wasn't going to let a muscle-bound hound get the last laugh. Absolutely not going to happen.
As Liz was pondering her next move, with David trying his utmost not to move at all, Don intervened. Keeping cool, refusing to think too much about his agent gripping the metal bars of the giant tinkertoy like a lover, he frantically searched for and finally found someone who knew enough to get David to safety. Like icing on the cake, a TV station's nearby traffic helicopter noticed the commotion and came rotoring over. Incredibly, the traffic reporter, determined to move up the corporate ladder to hard news, attempted to interview Sinclair! The tenacious newsies only left after Don's furious call to the station manager pulled them away.
Fifteen minutes later, with David back on terra firma and all five Global ProtectX 'security specialists' in custody, team Eppes took stock of the results. They still had no Gerrard and no Sahar. Taking a gander (Sinclair visiting one filled with semi-murderous promise toward the now thoroughly cowed Barney) at their prisoners. Knowing what they now suspected, David decided it was hardly an even exchange.
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Colby replayed the brief conversation with David in his head. David and Don had been shot at?! Things were more complicated?!
He ground his teeth, feeling powerless. His partner, and the rest of his team were in the thick of a whole lot of ugly, and here he was, unable to back them up. He didn't even know where they were now. But he had a pretty good idea where to find Chris Gerrrard. The in-depth research into the Lucern family's abundant holdings provided a strong hint of the boy's whereabouts. Like most monied people, Alison Lucern Gerrard had the best toys. Among them was a ninety foot private yacht, currently residing in a custom slip at the Cabina Rey Yacht Club. Using the Bureau's muscle and a few contacts established from a former case, he'd learned a couple of things about the Lucern's opulent floating accommodations. Like there'd been a great deal of activity around it in the past several days. Provisioning and more than routine maintenance. The boat was being readied for use. Colby's contact also indicated he thought there might be a kid on board, but no family with the boy, just a bunch of big guys in suits. It had to be Christopher Gerrard.
He needed to get there right away. No time to lose. With David and the rest having their hands full (why didn't someone call!? Were they all okay??) he couldn't, and didn't want to pull them away. But he couldn't wait either. That kid needed help now! Making up his mind, he quickly dressed, packed some things he thought might come in handy and grabbed phone, id, gun and cuffs out of habit. Obeying some obscure impulse, he also stuffed a handful of latex gloves into a back pocket, and then was out the door. Currently ride-less, more specifically truck-less, he managed to sweet talk one of his neighbors, a fiftyish single divorcee, out of the keys to her Escape, promising to return it unharmed with a full tank of gas. Before setting out for Cabina Rey, he made sure to silence his phone, rather than have it sound off at an inopportune moment. A few miles into the journey, he did get a call, but between fighting the traffic and plotting a strategy for what to do when he arrived at his destination, failed to see the flash as it lit up in notification. Unseen, the message window read 1 call missed from: DAVID.
His badge got him past security upon his arrival at the yacht club. Now all he had to do was find the right berth. Not too difficult. The market troubles, Wall Street scandals and economic downturn served to thin the herd of conspicuous consumers by quite a bit. The Lucern boat stood out by its size alone. The full, uniformed crew swarming over its decks gave their own impression. So did the big, angry looking suits the crew took considerable pains to step around, rather carefully. From his hidden FO post in the parking lot closest to the yacht, using binoculars, Colby counted six, but kept in mind there could be more. Problem was, before he made another call to his partner or anyone else, he needed to verify Christopher Gerrard's presence. He would have to get a lot closer. Eminently doable, even in his current still on the mend condition. Snooping and pooping. Ranger school 101. Colby, who'd graduated top of his class, remembered every lesson.
Extracting his tightly rolled wetsuit from the hastily prepared pack, he climbed into the Escape's backseat and swiftly changed into it. (Thanks Mrs. Tellman for the gangsta dark tinted windows!). He tucked his cell phone into a waterproof pocket and slung his improvised knapsack over one shoulder securing it as tightly as possible. Picking a spot he judged to be far enough away so as not attract unwanted attention, but still close enough to where he wanted to be, he slipped into the water and began to swim, with only minimal protest from his mid-section. Still, by the time he'd reached the yacht, he was winded and needed to rest. Conveniently for Colby, the big vessel had its own private warehouse. With all the re-provisioning and preparation going on, there was a heavy duty gangplank connecting it to the gently bobbing pleasure craft. Beyond that, an open door leading to the yacht's interior. That was his boarding pass. But to use it, he would need to draw big, angry suit number seven, standing surly watch by the door, away from his post. He briefly considered a fire, goaded by the memory of his burning truck, but the FBI angel on his shoulder reminded him that arson was a criminal offense. Frontal assault was out of the question. His dad might have raised an ugly kid, but he hadn't raised an idiot. Angry suit was the size of a body building convention and most likely well armed, not to mention connected by radio with his buddies. Seeing a large forklift idling nearby gave him the beginnings of a plan. He turned that plan over in his head for a while, refining it and examining it for flaws. Rehearsing it a couple of times mentally, (he really didn't want to injure anybody, especially any of the warehouse workers or the yacht's crew) he figured he was ready. Getting as close as he could, Colby waited until the lift's operator stepped away for an unauthorized (and unscheduled) break. Yes! The man left the engine running to cover his absence. He eased his way up to it and into the driver's seat. The position of the device, parked behind an enormous wooden crate could not have been better. Granger sent up a quickie thanks for his time spent in Afghanistan (whoda thunk it!). Thanks to a clan feud and a couple of enterprising heroin smugglers, he actually knew how to operate a forklift. Wouldn't David and the rest just love to hear that story! Wasting no time, he put it in motion, scooping up the crate, pushing it into several smaller crates. The resulting collision worked out very nicely indeed. The larger crate bashing into the lesser ones created a domino effect, with crates from one row upsetting the crates in the next. Supplies for the upcoming voyage toppled over and spilled out into the open, creating epic disarray. Colby, already on his way to the gangplank and access door viewed the ear-splitting general chaos with satisfaction. Particularly since angry suit number seven chose to check it out up close and personal instead of rubbernecking from a distance. Once AS joined the crowd investigating the clamorous disturbance, Granger slipped behind the gawkers, up the gangplank and thru the now deserted doorway onto the yacht.
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