Usual disclaimer, no rights to characters.
When the police left after answering the bogus domestic violence call at Casey's, Chuck called everyone together for a meeting, with the phrase "Once is happen-stance, twice is coincidence, thrice is certainty" ringing through his head (and making a note to check into the logic processes for uploading information into the Intersect when he had some free time, as that certainly didn't sound like something that would be in anything he chose to read). The first alarm bells had come with the anonymous feed of the most secret files to the Woodcombs to help make a case against Ellie and the Clan, since then they'd been getting fake stolen car reports that resulted in a number of them being pulled over, utilities accounts being cancelled, and now the fake call out for domestic violence at one of their houses (and Casey's at that, the most believable one among them in the role of wife beater to the casual observer). Obviously what they thought when they got the heads up about the anonymous "donation" to the Woodcombs of the files on them was right, someone was coming after them, and they were fairly good. The thing was, the way it was being done had a familiar flavour to it, as if he'd come across it before, but at the same time it was nothing that he could recognise.
When they were all at the table, Chuck ran through what they believed was happening, and that obviously led to the next step, trying to work out who it was. They started throwing up any possible names of people that they'd put away, crossed, or had a falling out with, the idea being to list everyone possible, and then try to narrow it down from there. First name up, of course, was Daniel Shaw, and they flowed from there, they laughed when Jeff added Lester to the list, but thinking on it, his personality would push him in the villain direction, even if they thought he wasn't up to it. Everyone was shocked when Mary threw up Alexei and Vivian Volkoff, but she shrugged and pointed out that Alexei may have taken over Hartley again, and they had to consider that as a possibility. Carina also threw a cat among the pigeons by pointing out that they couldn't rule out anyone they had thought was dead, unless they had actually seen them dead and buried, citing Bryce as proof of that, so with that sobering thought (which turned grim when Sarah immediately added Evelyn Shaw, Sydney Price and Mauser, then scratched Mauser as she'd shot him in the head) the list suddenly got a lot longer. It had been uncomfortable when senior agency people and political figures were being added, but they had to be considered as possibilities, too, as the team hadn't been popular with those who wanted to use them for unethical purposes, and they had refused. The only name that was discussed, purely to agree that she was not a possibility was Diane Beckman, which was crucial as they would need her help if they wanted to achieve this. After a couple of hours they had well over two hundred names, and seeing that list up there was rather daunting.
The next step was to investigate those possibilities who were supposed to be safely locked away in the government's supermax facilities, and the outcome of those investigations gave them a sense of dread, as quite a number of the key suspects were found to be gone, or more to the point to have been replaced with other men or women. The list included Daniel Shaw, the Ring Director, Laszlo Mahnovski, Manoosh Depak, La Ciudad, Sasha Banacheck, Ty Bennett, Gaez (and Amy), Robin Cunnings, the list was long and distinguished. It was apparent that someone was going to a lot of effort to create an organisation that could take on the "proper" intelligence agencies, and win. This potentially changed the motivation for coming after them, they'd been looking at this as a personal vendetta, so they expected that they'd know who was behind it, but if it was actually a rational decision to target the organisation that had been instrumental in taking out most of the opposition to the established intelligence communities, it could be just about anyone.
While this was a setback, though, it didn't invalidate the process they'd been following so far, as it appeared that some, at least, of the ones on their lists may well be part of this new organisation (which may or may not exist), so theoretically, if they could track the people they had listed down, they may lead them to this new organisation. The fact that they didn't have anything solid to go on, other than the fact that a number of people who could be quite useful to a nefarious organisation had been replaced in prison and spirited away was rather frustrating, but what they did have so far obviously meant that there was something going on, and whatever it was, it wouldn't be good.
Their clients were not happy when Carmichael Industries wound up their open contracts and advised them that they would not be able to engage in any new contracts for the foreseeable future. The General filled those peers that she trusted in on what was happening, and got them to go through their equivalents of the supermax facilities to ascertain whether they'd had any similar substitutions as well. Once again, the news was bad, all over the world it appeared that the more effective examples of the enemies of the state had been replaced in prison and spirited away, so the list of people that they were trying to track down grew to over three times what the CI team had started with. It was a bit hard not to feel that they'd always be in the crosshairs of Bad Guys R Us, as whenever they dealt with one threat, another (potentially worse) one seemed to turn up.
This exercise was turning into a repeat of the previous epics, but at least they had the support of the intelligence community, apparently some of them did have intelligence, given that they they could see how big a threat could exist if a new organisation was recruiting most of the major players that they'd been up against. The fact that they'd been going to the extent of removing these people from the most secure facilities without anyone knowing about it showed how much of a threat they were.
The recruiting practices that BGRU had been following made Chuck think seriously about his position on how to deal with people of this nature. He had some long discussions with Sarah and Casey (as the two people he trusted most who had an understanding of this subject), and eventually flew to D.C. for a private conversation with the General. They came away from that in a better place, as far as their own relationship went, as while Chuck still didn't like the idea of eliminating people, he had to accept that the world would be a safer place if some (if not many) of the people on the lists that they were currently working through had been taken out of the equation before this had happened.
He and the General could relate better now that the secret of Josie was out, part of the "Iron Pants" persona that she'd always projected was to keep everyone focused on the idea that she was nothing but a hard nosed military leader, as no-one would expect that character of being a caring mother who was worried about her daughter. That smoke and mirrors act had successfully kept the entire intelligence community from finding out who Josie was for over 20 years. The risks were much higher now, given that the number of people who knew the secret had doubled, but she and Roan (and Josie) had faith in the Carmichael Clan to keep the secret, and her daughter, safe.
As soon as Chuck was back in Castle Carmichael he was back in the swing of things, he hadn't been 100% while he was conflicted about those issues, but now that they were resolved to a large degree he was "all ahead full". One thing that he'd recognised on the way back was the point that Sarah had made (perhaps without realising it), that they could eliminate some of the possibilities for people to have been revived, by determining how they'd been killed, as there was no reviving someone after they'd had their brains blown out. While a morbid subject, it was relevant, as a lot of the most dangerous characters had been thought to be killed in recent years, but if they could identify those who were proven to be dead for a matter of days or weeks, or who were proven to be killed by a bullet to the head, then they could reduce the number that they were searching for. Unfortunately, that just made Sarah and Chuck look at each other as they realised that there was another name that wasn't on the list yet, and Sarah pulled the keyboard over to type in "Nicholas Quinn", they now knew that the Ring had risen again after everyone thought they were taken out, and they had not been involved in the clean up of his body, so that made him another potential revived and possible threat.
The list of those that they were looking for was now well over a thousand, and it was still growing as reports came in from around the world. They were getting some minor tentative hits from the searches, but nothing concrete. As well as chasing those potentially recruited by BGRU, they were trying to trace funding paths, links to the old Ring assets, new connections to officials who had been known to be compromised in the past, anything which could make this more than speculation and help them identify what they were up against.
It took over two months, but they finally started getting some more concrete leads. These leads were mainly related to security camera images that showed some of the people on the lists collecting in given cities in the USA, Russia and Europe, but it gave them areas to concentrate on and chase down leads more aggressively, and also something to hang onto that was saying that they may not just be imagining everything.
One thing that was a concern for Chuck was the fact that among the people who seemed to be involved were Laszlo Mahnovski, Manoosh Depak, Daniel Shaw, and Ricky and Vicky (the Gretas who'd had the Intersect 2.0). Though Shaw's Intersect was supposed to be corrupted by the Omen virus, and Ricky and Vicky were supposed to be suppressed, as Chuck had found after he loaded the Intersect 3.0, the databases appeared to remain in the brain when the Intersect software was suppressed. Therefore, the possibility of having at least three people with the Intersect databases in their heads, plus Manoosh (who'd managed to create a working pseudo Intersect device) and Laszlo (who was a total genius with most technology) potentially come together added up to the possibility of BGRU getting access to the Intersect data.
That scenario could potentially make this organisation more dangerous than any of the previous ones had been. The Ring had had a working form of the Intersect, but it was doubtful that they would have managed to get the full CIA/NSA databases to load into it, Fulcrum didn't even get to the point of a working Intersect (the closest was what Chuck managed to upload, as his brain was the only one capable of accepting that version). If BGRU could come up with technology to allow them to access the Intersect databases residing in the heads of their three Intersect hosts (especially if the accumulated data collected by the Omen virus was actually loaded into Shaw's head before the virus corrupted his Intersect software), the new organisation would potentially have access to data that the rest of the intelligence community had been dreaming about for years.
On top of that, they appeared to have been accumulating the best of the worst for years (if the lists that they were compiling of operatives and specialists who may have joined BGRU was anything close to accurate), and they'd be sure to have a suitably competent horde of second string agents who would support their superiors in any manner required (as they'd almost certainly be disposed of the second they failed to deliver what was required of them).
Given those points, and the indications to date that were that whoever was running this new organisation knew what they were doing (as they'd managed to keep everything under the radar until they started coming after Carmichael Industries), their leadership appeared to be quite effective, another concern for those who were hoping to stop them. The fact that they did make a move against CI now implied that they were about to commence the next significant phase of their operations, and their only mistake was that they appeared to have underestimated Carmichael Industries. (At least Chuck hoped that they'd underestimated his team, and whoever was pulling the strings wasn't just playing them with this manoeuvre, because if that was happening they were in big trouble.)
A/N: This one will be multiple chapters, probably with other topics slipped in between them sometimes. It will dredge up a plethora of bad guys to be taken care of ;^) Oh and Wilf, I'm betting that you won't see the identity of the Puppet Master coming ;^)