Sleeping with the Enemy3
Day 113
Airstrip
Unknown location
The heavily armed team poured out of the blacked-out civilian C-123 and into vans parked at the end of the ramp. The target was a suspected Fulcrum intel node and the mission was to download and copy all the data on their mainframes and upload timed logic viruses that would spread throughout their system. Any computer that communicated with the host mainframe would be infected and all data copied and transmitted to NSA HQ computers for analysis.
Chuck and Jill were the last off the aircraft and sat in the back of the last windowless van.
"Chuck, are you sure the virus you wrote will perform? We didn't have time to test it before we got the change in orders. I don't want to risk you on a mission that will prove worthless."
"Jill, trust me. No one will find it. It embeds itself into the bios after propagating throughout the system using the administrator codes. Relax and let me do my thing. You just make sure nothing happens to us. Let me worry about the uploads. You just watch my back and your fine ass."
She swung herself over onto his lap, straddling him. "Chuck, you be careful. No heroics. No risks. Let the shooters go in first and clear the way. You're too precious…" She couldn't go on. She was afraid for him for the first time. Somehow she'd let her guard down and he'd crept in just like before and she was totally compromised. She was falling in love with him all over again.
She kissed him hard 'for luck' and then reseated herself, forcing her emotions back under control and cursing herself for being weak. Her mission was changing and she was changing with it. The original goal of sucking his mind dry of intel and breaking him had morphed into using a complex personality-altering program to use him as an active asset.
The van stopped and the door was flung open. They were in the underground parking garage of a 5-story office building that seemed vaguely familiar to Chuck but he just shook it off.
'All parking garages look the same, Moron!' He could hear the General's voice mocking him and he smiled.
Chuck and Jill followed the security team into the main elevator. The elevator went down three levels and opened to reveal a lobby and security desk. The body of a rent-a-cop was lying over the consoles.
The team leader consulted a diagram and motioned them down a corridor that Chuck knew from the briefing led to the main computer center. There was a burst of weapons fire ahead and the team leader grunted and then folded in on himself, dead. The second man assumed the lead position and directed fire at the security station, overwhelming the guard on duty.
Chuck stepped over the body of the dead guard and took a device from his backpack and inserted leads into the electronic locking device that controlled the magnetic seals on the vault door. The door had closed and locked automatically when the team breached the lobby.
Thirty seconds. The program application began running complex formulae and algorithms and the combination began appearing, one digit at a time, in the display.
Sixty seconds. The program was almost finished. The programs guarding the combination had been changed recently and he'd had to make adjustments in his approach.
"Chuck, c'mon, baby. We're behind the curve. What's wrong?" She kept looking at her 'count down' timer and mentally urging the device on. Their teammates were busy on other levels planting explosives with very short timers.
Ninety seconds. "We're in! Let's go. Post security here and let's go, Jill. Damn, they must have upgraded their protocols. We should have been in and out by now."
Their security detail pulled on the massive door and Chuck rushed in, ignoring Jill's cry to 'Wait!" A woman Chuck recognized from someplace sat behind a console and sprayed a burst at him with an MP-3. She was panicky and her shots weren't very well aimed but two managed to hit his Kevlar vest and knock the wind out of him.
He heard Jill's 'Chuck!' She fired at the woman, killing her. He pulled himself up against the wall and saw his objective. He staggered over to the console and opened his pack and pulled out a flash drive and slapped it into the USB port and typed in the upload command. He dumped the operator's body out of the chair and sat down heavily, ignoring the blood that coated the arms and back.
Jill tried to spin him around to check him for wounds and he pushed her away, almost knocking her down. "Not now! Focus on the mission, Jill. There's no time to spare. OK! We're in and the virus is replicating throughout the operating system."
He pulled out the flash drive and replaced it with a USB cable that ran from a large box he set on the console. A few keystrokes and the data stored in the mainframe was being copied and stored in his 'black box' device as the final step before the virus corrupted the files.
"Jill, tell the team leader we'll need 7 minutes and then we'll have the data. Seven minutes and three more to get up to the parking garage. Ten minutes. They have to hold ten minutes!"
Jill smiled at the sight of a committed and focused Chuck. There was no hurry. The other teams were already waiting in the parking garage. The initial strike team had loaded a nerve gas into the air conditioning system incapacitating everyone else in the secure levels except for the computer level and the parking garage.
"No problem, baby. They'll hold. This is too damned important to let us fail now. Can't you hurry the program along? I can't believe the intel on the mag-locks was so wrong! It cost us valuable time." A little urgency went a long way.
"They're traitors, Jill, not stupid. Maybe if we could understand what our differences were we could eliminate or compromise on them. We're losing too many good people to Fulcrum. There has to be a reason they turn their backs on the agencies and our government. Has anyone asked them?"
"Now is definitely not the time for this discussion. Later, when we're alone."
She was standing behind him and ran the palm of her hand down his cheek and rested both hands on his shoulders, gently massaging them to calm him. She couldn't help it. She found she had to touch him lately to satisfy some unknown urge. He didn't seem to mind though.
"OK, we've captured all the data. The virus has replicated and all the remote locations slaved to this node have been infected as well without any alarms. Let's get the flock out of here, Jill."
He grinned up at her and then looked over at the body of the woman who'd been unlucky enough to be on duty in the center. Another good agent lost to the dark side.
There was blood all over his palms from the chair and he didn't notice the palm prints he left on the vault door when he pushed it open and motioned Jill to 'lead the way'.
They made it out to the vans without any problems and the drive to the airport was unimpeded. Once they boarded the aircraft she handed him a water bottle and two pills.
"Chuck, just a precaution. Things got pretty intense in there and your BP is probably higher than the medics want it to be. Just pop the pills and then let's cuddle up and take a nap. You'll need all your strength when we get back to the apartment, honey. I'm so ramped up right now. You were great and so focused! We'll hurry the briefing and get Casey to give us some down-time. You were so…great in there."
"Post-mission coitus? I thought that was frowned upon?"
He was teasing her, knowing how horny she got after her initial adrenalin rush died. He took the pills because she wanted him to and because he didn't want her to worry. A quick nap sounded like just what the doctor ordered.
She watched him take his meds and smiled. He had been focused and performed beyond their expectations. There'd been no hesitation, no fumbling around, and no questions, just a focused and mission-driven Chuck Bartowski.
Maybe that long philosophical discussion would bear fruit. She'd talk to her Director. Maybe they could lure him over to their side with a slightly altered version of the truth and she'd not have to surrender what she'd willingly thrown away years before?
She leaned over and whispered something in his ear that made him blush and grow uncomfortable in the tight mission coveralls. Dr. Jill Roberts Bartowski, PhD in Genetics and Neurobiology, was both a genius and a kinky lover as demonstrated by her whispered description of her planned actions once they debriefed and then 'debriefed' at home.
The cargo plane flew 'nap of the earth' and droned on across the border into Mexico and on to their base still further south in the Mexican desert and 'Winter, Nevada' where they were secure thanks to their affiliation with the Mexican drug cartel and an exchange of cash and services.
Meanwhile, in the 'real world', the remainder of Team Bartowski and its affiliated members continued on with their lives, compensating and coping and finding new relationships to fill the void that had once been occupied by the entity known as 'Chuck'.