Unfortunately I don't own Chuck
Note the date. We are flashing back to 2005 to start filling in some blanks.
Part 2
Naples, Italy and Moscow, Russia, May 2005
Sarah looked around the others attending the briefing, which was taking place in a building on the US naval base in Naples. The room had been swept already but was undergoing a second sweep now that all the participants had arrived. The sweep gave her a chance to examine some of the other participants.
She didn't bother spending much time on Todd Richards. The tall, auburn-haired man was a CIA paramilitary operations officer like herself. A little older than her, probably in his early-thirties, they'd worked together on a couple of operations over the past few years. He was a Russia-specialist, unlike herself who came and went wherever Graham sent her. Richards was a good officer, a former special forces NCO who had made the jump to clandestine work several years ago. He was not particularly subtle, but he was a good man to have at your back if everything went to shit. He would be the back up for this operation while she went in to make contact.
Mark Kolanski was the lead CIA analyst assigned to the operation. She didn't know him directly but had heard that he was the one of the DI's (Directorate of Intelligence) bright boys, with a growing reputation. A tall man with thinning blond hair, a florid face and seemingly in perpetual movement, he sat tapping the fingers of his right hand on his left, deep into examining whatever was on his laptop.
The NSA analyst assigned to the operation was rather different. A tall black-haired man, his amber eyes were roving around the room, and they'd briefly made eye contact on at least two occasions already, the first time looking away embarrassedly, the second acknowledging each other's interest in one another and everything around them. He had warm, intelligent eyes but he seemed enthusiastic, young almost. Physically she estimated that he was within a few years of her own age, but he had a boyish enthusiasm about him. He was sat next to Rob Lowell, tall, dark haired and dark complexioned, a senior NSA agent in the Operations team with whom she had worked successfully in the past, and Claire Fisher, blonde haired and green eyed, a legend in the NSA's covert teams.
Sarah had been surprised to find the NSA involved in this operation, but apparently according to Graham, their involvement was vital.
"OK, let's make a start," Bruce Langan's gravelly voice broke through the low level chatter. Bruce was a long-time paramilitary officer and a senior member of the CIA's NCS (National Clandestine Service, formerly Directorate of Operations). He would be quarterbacking this operation, but wouldn't actually go to Moscow.
"We all know why we're here. The target is Nicolai Andreyevich Gerasimov, right hand man to Alexei Borosovy, himself a member of Putin's inner circle. As you will all know from your briefing packs, Gerasimov was turned three years ago but now he's told his handler that he wants to be extracted.
"We'll be sending a small team into Moscow to effect the extraction. CIA officer Sarah Walker will make contact with Gerasimov and actually bring him out. Luckily he's not married so it won't be a complex job. It's just him." Sarah could feel the NSA analyst's eyes boring into her back, but kept her own on Langan. "She'll be backed up by Todd Richards and CIA analyst Mark Kolanski." Langan paused, indicating the other two CIA officers. "In turn, she will also be backed up by the NSA which will be running overhead and digital surveillance. Analyst Chuck Bartowski will be supported by Rob Lowell from a separate location to the CIA team."
Introductions over, Langan then started on the meat of the extraction mission, explaining the covers and how the actual contact would be made. He didn't discuss the extraction parameters and route; that would be kept top secret between only a few people just in case there was a leak. Sarah would also have her own emergency bug out plans that she didn't share with anyone. That was just normal procedure for covert operatives. Sarah focused her attention on the briefing and promptly forgot the dark-haired man with the expressive eyes.
Lidya Antonova, as Sarah Walker was currently known, paused outside the old warehouse on the edge of the shopping district to the west of Moscow. Today she was wearing a dark wig, dark gray coat and black pants, helping her blend in with the predominantly dark-clothed Russians walking around the area. The target was supposedly inside the warehouse, but her instincts were telling her that something was wrong and not to proceed. And she respected her instincts. They'd saved her life on many occasions over the course of her clandestine career and even before when she'd been grifting with her dad.
Moscow in May was actually relatively warm, about sixty five or seventy Fahrenheit and with some blue sky visible between the clouds, just starting to cool. It was late-evening, about 6pm local time and she was carrying a good handful of shopping bags as though she'd just come out of one of the nearby malls.
"Sitrep," she asked, being careful to keep her lips still as much as possible in case she was being observed.
"Clear to go," Kolanski replied, sounding a little antsy. She waited for the NSA analyst, Bartowski.
"Stand by," he called. "Hold there, do not approach." There was something in his voice that made her pull back.
"What the fuck is going on?" Kolanski's angry voice burst over her earpiece. "I gave the all-clear!"
"Stand by," the man's voice sounded distracted, and Sarah could hear him typing. "What the?" she heard him utter, then – "Cuckoo – Abort! Repeat Abort!" His line cut off abruptly, but Sarah had heard enough. Cuckoo was her code name and the abort order indicated that something had gone very, very wrong. She continued to walk away from the shopping mall and passed the entrance to the warehouse without stopping.
"Negative, continue mission," came Kolanski's annoyed voice. Why was he telling her to continue the mission when the NSA had already told her to abort? That was weird. Could he be compromised? She disregarded him and continued to walk away from the meeting point towards a car park. She and Richards had stashed a vehicle there in case there were emergencies.
"Cuckoo, this is Wizard," she heard the stressed voice over her earpiece. Wizard was the call sign of the NSA analyst. "Escape route is compromised. You're being followed. Communications may not be secure. Break contact and head to Point Delta. Will be in touch. Don't acknowledge. Out."
Who was this guy? He'd called the mission. Richards and herself were the only ones who knew about the car, so if her escape route was compromised then Richards must be. Was he a double? Had he been captured? Turned?
Shit. This mission was heading to Hell in a handbasket. If it hadn't been for the NSA guy she would probably be heading to a Russian prison right about now. She still could be if she didn't get her head in the game.
She needed to shed her eye-catching shopping bags and lose her outer layer and black wig to change her appearance. And she had to do it in such a location that she could lose her followers at the same time. She looked up the street. There was a bus station with a busy restaurant, she remembered from her reconnaissance ahead of the operation. That would have to be the place. It would also give her the opportunity to scope out her followers. She didn't want to look around and indicate she knew she had a tail. Doing counter-surveillance exercises would be a dead giveaway that she knew something was up and would make her followers pay more attention lest she make an attempt to lose them. She wanted them to be fat and happy, which would give her a much better opportunity to lose them. She set off towards the bus station.
Sarah looked worriedly towards the bridge a few hundred yards in front of her. It had cooled down rapidly and she was slightly chilled having lost her outer layer. The street lights were on in the murky twilight but the bridge didn't appear to be too well-lit. Was that why the NSA analyst had chosen it? It had been over three hours since she'd gotten the abort signal for the operation, and the last few hours had been stressful. She thought she'd successfully broken contact at the bus station but nearly forty minutes after that it seemed she'd been made again. She'd broken contact twice more but they seemed to be able to re-establish it relatively easily.
She thought it may be her communications that were giving her away but they were the only way for her to stay in touch with the NSA analyst so she had to keep them. But things were getting to a head now. She was only a few hundred yards away from Point Delta, the bridge over a tributary of the Moskva river. Her earpiece crackled.
"Cuckoo, this is Wizard," the call came. "Do you remember that mission we did in Ecuador, how you broke contact that time?" Ecuador? They'd never done a mission in Ecuador. She had done a mission in Ecuador with Bryce Larkin and she remembered they'd been compromised and she'd had to jump off a bridge to get to a waiting boat… Oh no… No way. This bridge was much bigger and higher than that one had been and the icy, dirty and polluted waters of the river were going to be very different to the pure run off from the Andes mountains.
"Ah, I see you remember," he said drily. He must have eyes on her if he'd seen her grimace. "Don't worry, you can beat up on me later." She couldn't help a grin as he put into words what was going through her mind. "Do it now before they close in. Good luck."
And then he was gone. His warning was important. He knew the watchers were close. So she ran to the centre of the bridge and jumped. She was in the air for a few seconds, a testament to how far down it was, before she made contact with the cold, dirty water. Successfully supressing a screech of shock as the cold water covered her, she shed her shoes, then her outer layer of clothing as soon as she could to free her arms up to swim and also so she was less weighed down. She broke the surface gently, sheltering below the arch of the bridge to make herself less obvious to any watchers. She looked around at the banks. This far into the suburbs, they were tree-lined with only the occasional building. Which meant few lights. Luckily they were practically deserted at this time of night. Downriver on the far bank someone was signalling with a shaded torch. It looked like Bartowski. She struck out towards him, moving as fast as she could. Luckily she was swimming in the direction of flow but it was still tiring cutting across the current to get to the bank. As she got closer she definitely recognised the NSA analyst. That was good because she wasn't sure if she would've had the energy by that point to swim away.
He waded out a few feet to help pull her up. "Thank God you're OK," he exclaimed quietly, pressing a thin grey blanket around her shoulders. "Come on." His voice held urgency, as well it should. "Lose your comms gear in the water," he added, doing the same himself. "It's how they're tracking you."
"What happened?" she spluttered through her chattering teeth, pulling her earpiece out and the box attached to her belt. She dropped the unit back in the water.
"No time," he gritted, dragging her up the bank and towards a waiting car. She was impressed by his strength. She wasn't able to add much to proceedings, given her fatigue and shivering, but he was effectively supporting her weight. He pushed her into the back seat of a non-descript silver hatchback. "There's a change of clothes and a blanket in that bag. Which way should I head?" he asked.
"Head north," she replied through chattering teeth as he pushed the door closed and went round to get in the front seat. "Don't put the lights on til you're as far away from the bank as possible," she advised. That way any watchers on the bridge might miss the presence of the car in the low twilight.
"OK," he agreed as she set about stripping her soaking pants off. Once he'd started the car, he'd pushed the heater up to full and had directed most of the air to the back seat. She peered around but he was watching the road, not her as she changed. She was surprised. Most men would try to cop a look, but maybe he was different.
"Where's your ops officer?" she asked.
"Rob's trying to decoy them away from us," Bartowski explained, flicking his eyes up to meet hers in the rear view mirror.
"What happened?" she asked finally, unbuttoning her top. His eyes shot away from the mirror.
"Sorry," he said as though he'd been caught ogling her, which he certainly had not.
"It's OK Bartowski," she reassured him, "I know you haven't been looking."
"Call me Chuck," he said. "I guess we're gonna be spending a fair amount of time together." He smiled wanly.
She returned the smile. "Sarah," she offered, and was surprised to see a more genuine smile from him in the mirror. "I guess we are." She paused, "So?"
"Oh," he jolted in surprise. "Sorry." He paused as though gathering his thoughts. "I think Kolanski was a double," he explained. "Something had been gnawing at me all day and I just ran a final check on our comms about ten minutes before you went in. There was a piggyback signal on there, so I put a small drone up and found lots of bodies in the building - police - but no Gerasimov in the agreed place. If you'd gone in there you would've been captured immediately."
She jolted in surprise. "Were they after me?" she asked, teeth now a little more under control but still shivering. She was now topless and she dragged a grey undershirt over herself, flicking her eyes up to the mirror. Bartowski – Chuck – was focused on the road again.
"I don't know," he replied. "They could have been. It would be a huge coup to capture someone as high up in the NCS as you."
She flinched. "You seem to know a lot about me, Mr Bartowski?" she said questioningly.
"I like to know who I'm dealing with," he said noncommittally, keeping his eyes on the road.
"I happen to know that my skills are not shared out between agencies," she observed. "And how did you find out about Ecuador?" she added.
"OK, I hacked your record," he admitted, eyes flicking up to hers in the mirror. "Are you gonna arrest me?"
She giggled. She never giggled. Sarah Walker just gave a real giggle. "Maybe I'll let you off just this once." She allowed. "So you knew who I was coming in?"
"Oh no," he said. "I hacked your record when we were moving to the secondary location. I had to find some way to communicate with you what the plan was."
"So you're telling me that on the fly during an operation that went to hell, when you were on the run from Russian security forces and when communications may have been penetrated, that you hacked into the CIA and got my records…?" she looked at him incredulously.
"Well, yeah," he admitted.
"In what, about two hours?" she asked, stunned.
"Actually it was about thirty minutes," he said.
She looked at him incredulously. "Just who the hell are you?"
"Chuck Bartowski, pleased to meet you," he offered, grinning back at her from the mirror.
"We're gonna talk more about this Bartowski," she told him, "But for now find somewhere to pull in so I can take over."
"Sure," he said.
"So what's the exfill plan?" she asked.
"Rob suggested Finland," he said quietly, "But he said to leave it in your hands. Said you were one of the best. Once I got you out, you'd make sure we both got out." She saw the nervousness in his expression. Perhaps the reality of their situation was starting to set in.
"And how did that come up, can I ask? You're an analyst aren't you. Why isn't Rob taking lead?" she asked.
"I'm actually a cyber operations operative," Bartowski corrected. It didn't matter, she wasn't quite sure what that was anyway. He continued. "I've got limited field experience but not as much as a proper agent.
"It was tight getting out of the safe house where we were working," he continued. "Rob got shot." Sarah flinched in shock. "He told me to get myself to safety, but I said we had to help you." Again he made eye contact in the mirror, but then looked away as though embarrassed. "We argued, but eventually he relented. When we got clear he asked my plan. He suggested a few improvements, but told me that you were probably my best chance of getting out alive. He said he'd buy me as much time as he could and then head to the embassy. That's when I came to get you."
She injected as much reassurance into her voice as she could. "Thank you Chuck, for helping me. And don't worry, you've done your part. Now it's my turn."
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Please review and tell me what you thought. More blanks filled in next chapter.
