A/N: One year ago today I posted the first chapter of New Day. Since that time, this story has had thousands of reads, well over a thousand reviews, and has been favorited and followed by hundreds of you. I honestly cannot thank you all enough. If I (or any of us writers here) were to post a story and never hear a word about it, this nutty little hobby would get really boring really fast. It is the feedback and interaction with the readers and new friends that makes this as much fun as it is. Thank you all so much. Oh, and I don't own...well, you know.

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Here are a few things you may have forgotten, but might need to know. The CIO of Summers Currency has been taken in for questioning by the Secret Service on suspicion of providing actual currency paper to counterfeiters, but not before he was able to send a message. Sarah and Chuck have been captured by Lon Kirk and Tony Blackman's men. Two of Blackman's men have taken Casey at gunpoint in his hotel suite as well. The Secret Service agents staking out the printing facility in Roach, Nevada have been murdered and the facility itself (but not the printing plates) has been torched. The fake money has been taken out of the facility by Chen and his men. Overall, our heroes have been having a very bad day. Let's see what happens next.

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Kirk smiled at Chuck and Sarah. "Good evening, Chuck. Sarah. Please do step out of the elevator with your hands raised. Isn't that what they say on the TV shows?"

Chuck and Sarah stepped out of the elevator with their hands raised.

"Now that's good of you. Colonel Blackman and his men might have had to shoot you otherwise and that would make a mess on my carpet."

Blackman gestured to one of his men. The man holstered his weapon and stepped forward toward Chuck and Sarah. He made a point of approaching them from the side, so as not to block the shot of any of the other men. He began to frisk them for weapons. He searched them thoroughly, but professionally. He did not shy away from checking Sarah's crotch or breasts, but did not linger there. Her gun and knives were found and removed. Chuck's trank gun was found and removed.

"Ok. They are clean," he said, moving away from them to the side.

Blackman took the weapons from the man. He looked at the knives with appreciation. "Nice knives. Where'd you get them?"

"Birthday present," said Sarah, levelly.

"Kirk, I really have to ask you something. Something serious, ok? What the hell do you think you're doing?" asked Chuck.

"Well, that's pretty simple, Chuck. I'm going to take you and Sarah out to the mountains, have you shot and killed and bury your bodies in the desert. It's not a complicated plan. I'm not like some crazy Bond villain who's going to set you up to be eaten by a shark and then leave you alone to figure a way out of it. No, I'm just going to have you shot. The only reason you are still alive is that it's easier to have you walk than to carry your bodies. If you prove difficult, we can do it the other way. It's entirely up to you."

"Now, I see. That's a straightforward plan. I don't really like it, for obvious reasons, but it's simple enough," said Chuck. "But what happens next? How do you get away with this? If we are here looking at you guys, don't you think we have bosses?"

"Maybe. But I'll worry about that tomorrow. For today, I just get to shut down the whole operation. The entirety of the counterfeiting thing. Every piece will be done and gone before the sun comes up tomorrow. Totally clean house. All the evidence destroyed."

While they were talking, one of Blackman's men bound their hands in front of them with zip ties.

"Lon, listen to me. That's just the kind of short term thinking that you need to avoid in this situation. We know that Chen is the real bad guy here. He's forcing you to move the fake money. You are acting under duress. That's an actual legal defense. You know that you can cut a deal and turn on him. You know that, right? State's evidence or something. You'll hire the same lawyers that got OJ off and figure something out. Just think of the kind of deal you can cut. You'll end up as the hero of the story, if you do it right. Chen ends up in jail. It's a win/win. You certainly won't get the same deal if you kill us. It's not too late to get on the right side of this thing, Lon."

"Chuck, you're a nice kid. I sort of wonder how you ended up in this job, to be honest. But listen to me. I killed the last guy your bosses put into my organization and buried his body in the desert. You really think anyone is going to cut me a deal? That bridge has been burned long ago, son."

Chuck wasn't sure how to reply to that.

Kirk stepped up to Sarah. He said, "I don't have to tell you that you have been a tremendous disappointment to me, Sarah. A tremendous disappointment." He reached out and pinched her hard, staring into her eyes. She didn't react at all, so he twisted the pinched flesh. She inhaled sharply through her nose, clenched her teeth and squinted her eyes in rage, but made no sound. He smiled a little bit.

Chuck tried to lunge at Kirk, but two of Blackman's men held him back. He hissed at Kirk with obvious fury, "Big man, right? You're an asshole, Kirk. Fucking asshole. You like to hurt defenseless women, right? It's how you get your jollies, you sick fuck?"

Kirk let go of Sarah and looked at Chuck with a neutral expression and said, simply, "Yes. It is." He turned back to Sarah and said, "You are a tough one. I wish I had time to break you, but unfortunately, business before pleasure." He spoke with real regret. "Come on, guys. Let's take them to the mountains. Oh, and you may be interested to know that your backup, Mr. Casey, has been taken by another two of our men. So, he'll meet us at the mountains and die with you there. No salvation for you two from that direction."

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Casey stepped backwards deeper into the suite as the two men with guns entered and closed the door. He didn't say anything.

One of the men said, "Here's what's going to happen. We are going to walk out of this building together. We are going to get into your car together. It's already been called and is out in front of the hotel waiting for us. We are going to drive to the desert. There, you will meet your friends for a little reunion. The alternative is that we kill you here and have the hassle of disposing of your body. Your call, Ace."

The men were standing outside of arms length and were well apart from each other to keep him covered. If he attacked one of them, the other would shoot him. Not good odds.

He slumped and allowed his face to fall, to all appearances showing dejected resignation. In his ear he heard that Chuck and Sarah had been taken as well and were being escorted from the hotel by Kirk and Blackman.

The man who had been speaking gestured to his partner in the bellman's uniform. The man holstered his weapon under his bellman's jacket and stepped forward with a zip tie to bind Casey's hands.

As he stepped forward, he blocked the other man's aim. Rookie mistake. Casey reacted instantly. Without the slightest warning, he jumped forward and punched Bellman in the throat with the weight of his lunging body lending force to the blow, and continued rushing forward to slam Bellman's body against Gunman behind him. While Gunman was trying to get his pistol around his partner to aim at Casey, Casey grabbed the weapon with one hand and twisted it to aim away from him. The man's index finger was on the trigger and the trigger guard broke his finger. The man yelled in pain. The gun came loose into Casey's hand, but he was holding it reversed.

Bellman hit Casey with a weak left hand while trying to gasp a breath in through his damaged throat. Casey ignored the punch and hit him twice in the head as hard as he could with the side of the gun he was holding. The man staggered away, bleeding profusely from a scalp wound.

As Bellman fell, Gunman swung a roundhouse kick that caught Casey on the side of his face, made him see stars, and split his lip. The man followed up with a straight side kick that caught Casey in the center of the chest. Casey dropped the gun he was holding and grabbed at Gunman's foot. Still holding the foot, Casey spun backwards, spinning the man off balance to crash into the mirror near the side of the door, shattering it. The other man was agile and, with Casey still holding one leg, he jumped off the other foot to aim a kick at Casey's head. Casey had to let go of the man's leg to block the kick.

Casey moved in quickly and tackled the man. They both tripped over the body of Bellman, who was stunned on the floor. As they fell Casey aimed a knee at Bellman and caught him in the side of the jaw, probably breaking it. Gunman let go of Casey with one hand and grabbed at a shard of the mirror. He stabbed at Casey's middle with a shout. Casey twisted to the side and the sharp glass skidded over a rib, opening a gash. He continued the twist adding power to an elbow strike that broke the man's nose. Gunman stabbed again with the glass, but he had cut his own hand on the sharp edge and his own blood made it slippery. The shard of glass fell to the floor. Casey was trying to get to Bellman's gun from the holster behind the man's back. As it cleared the holster, Gunman also reached for it and knocked it out of Casey's hand to skid across the carpet to end up under the couch.

The men separated, stood, and faced off against each other. Gunman was younger than Casey and not as muscular, but he was tough and skilled. Casey moved straight in to him and caught him with a right, left, right combination. The man partially blocked the blows and snapped a kick to Casey's groin, which bounced off his thigh as Casey twisted his hips to cover the target. Casey continued on to tackle the man once again. With his added size and strength, he figured that he stood a better chance grappling. Together they crashed through a standing lamp to land on a glass coffee table, which shattered under their weight. Casey grabbed one of the metal legs of the broken table and hit the man with it. The man rolled over and tried to block the blow.

Casey found that one end of the metal table leg was sharply angled where it had connected to the top of the table. He knocked the other man's arm aside and stabbed him in the chest with the sharp end. Gunman groaned hard and shuddered under Casey's make-shift spear. Casey pushed it down harder and Gunman became still, his eyes glassy. Blood bubbled from the man's mouth.

That's when Bellman hit Casey from behind with a chair. The chair legs bounced off his shoulder and sent him flying to land by the broken coffee table. Bellman looked much worse for the fight, but then again, Casey probably didn't look too good himself.

Casey grabbed the fallen lamp and twisted it to put the broken light bulb towards Bellman's face. It was sparking a little. The man was no idiot and kicked at the light cord. The sparking stopped as the lamp was unplugged. Casey tried to swing the heavy base of the lamp at his opponent, but it was unwieldy weapon. He ended up throwing it at the man.

The man dodged it and came at him with one of the legs from the broken table. Casey grabbed the table leg and tried to lever it away from his chest. The other man put both hands on it and shoved it forward, trying to impale Casey as Casey had impaled his partner. He pushed Casey back to slam his lower back on the edge of the suite's bar.

Casey reached behind him and grabbed a saucer from under a coffee cup. He smashed it down on the edge of the counter and ripped the jagged edge against the side of Bellman's neck. Blood spurted out and the man staggered back putting both hands up towards his neck to try to stop the bleeding. Casey held on to the table leg and smashed it across the man's head. The man went down and stopped moving.

Casey picked up his gun from the floor, grabbed his phone and jacket and ran from the suite.

Running down the corridor, he touched his watch and said, "Chuck, Sarah, I'm on my way."

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The mountains. That's where Kirk had said they were being taken to be killed. The mountains. There were a handful of small ranges around the city, including one called the Las Vegas Range. Kirk and Blackman had no intention of taking Chuck and Sarah to any of them, however. They were heading to Seven Magic Mountains.

Seven Magic Mountains is a massive sculpture to the south of the city, off of Las Vegas Boulevard, but a few hundred yards into the desert. It is a collection of seven pillars of stone boulders, between 30 and 35 feet high and created by the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone. Each pillar is composed of boulders roughly the size of a small car and painted bright, almost day-glo, colors. In daylight it's a spectacular sight, but it was somewhat muted by the cloudy, rainy night.

The two SUV's pulled up to the parking lot and everyone got out, Chuck and Sarah at gunpoint. Rain was falling and the temperature was in the low 40's. Chuck said, "Let me give Sarah my jacket. It's cold out."

Kirk laughed without humor and said, "Neither one of you is going to be uncomfortable for long. Just suffer through it."

They took out flashlights and began to walk across the desert sand to the pillars, about three hundred yards from the parking area. Soon, Chuck and Sarah were soaked and shivering in the cold, but their captors didn't seem to notice or care. They were prodded along.

In the lee of one of the pillars they stopped to wait. Blackman approached Kirk carrying a large hard plastic case.

"Ok, Lon," he said. "Here's the weapon we were talking about. Last thing we want is a fair fight with a bunch of ex-commandos, Taiwanese or otherwise."

"Tell me how to use it. I want to do it myself. That sonofabitch Chen has been a real asshole, Tony. All the evidence against me is in that car. Once Chen and his men are gone, we can kill these two and their partner. After that, there's nothing they can use against us."

Blackman hadn't heard from the men he'd sent to pick up Casey, but decided not to worry about that at the moment. He took a missile out of the carrying case and began to assemble both it and a bipod to hold the mouth end of the weapon. The launcher itself was a four foot long tube, with the bipod mounting on one end. Attached 2/3 of the way down the left side of the tube was a control mechanism with an optical sight.

"Ok, Lon. This is called an M47 Dragon. It fires an anti-tank missile. It is optically guided. That means the whatever you are looking at through this sight," Blackman gestured at the sight, "gets blown up. If the target is moving, just keep looking at it through this and you will hit it. There's a long thin wire that spools out behind the rocket in flight and tells the rocket where to go...where the sight is sending it." He installed the battery and tested it. Then he flipped a switch on the side. "Ok. The weapon is live. I've taken off the safety. You just sit here. Look through that and press this trigger. You keep looking at your target until it goes boom. Any questions?"

"Nope. All good. I'm looking forward to incinerating that Taiwanese prick," said Kirk. He took out his phone and called Chen. The General's minivan was about five minutes out from the parking lot. Chen agreed that he'd call again when he was closer. He had no idea his partner was about to betray him in the most dramatic fashion imaginable.

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Casey drove with one hand, the other hand held his phone and watched the tracker signal for the whereabouts of his partners. He was driving very fast and trying to multi-task.

He got Kendler on the speaker phone.

"Kendler, it's Casey. It's hitting the fan. Kirk and his men have taken Chuck and Sarah. They tried with me, but I took out the guys sent to get me. I've got my partners on tracker and it looks like they are at Seven Magic Mountains. From what I'm hearing, it sounds like Kirk and Blackman are expecting Chen and are going to ambush him with a missile."

"A missile? Holy fuck. Ok. We're on our way. They torched the printing building and looks like they killed the men I had on watch. We'll be there asap. Good luck, Major."

As he approached the spot where the tracker put his partners, he killed the lights on the Crown Vic.

He could see lights out at the pillars. He drove past the parking lot and a little way further along Las Vegas Boulevard. At this distance from the city, the boulevard was an empty two lane road with nothing but table flat desert on either side, with I-15 a little bit to the west of the road. He flipped a switch inside the car to disable the brake lights, then pulled off the road on the far side of the highway. The dark car with no lights would hopefully not be noticed. Although the pillars were several hundred yards into the desert, the path to them ran at an acute angle to the road, so cutting across the desert from the road would only put them a hundred yards or so from where he had pulled off.

He reached behind him and lifted the backseat seat cushion. From underneath he removed an M16A4 rifle and a pouch of magazines. He quickly loaded a magazine into the weapon and chambered a 5.56mm round. Slinging the pouch over a shoulder, he took a pair of night vision goggles from the glove compartment and pulled it over his head. Finally, he grabbed a compact medical kit from under a seat and slung it next to the pouch of ammo.

With one last look at his phone to confirm the location of Chuck and Sarah, he left his car. The dome light had been disabled and he hoped his departure went unnoticed. He crossed the empty street and ran into the desert, navigating by use of the NVG's covering his eyes. The sand was hard and there was only light scrub growing, so running was easy. He splashed through the occasional puddle. In dry weather, in daylight, he would have been visible from the dust cloud he would have thrown up, but in these conditions, he wasn't. He kept as low as possible while trying to move quickly. He ran straight past the pillars and the men there a few hundred yards from his position. He intended to circle around and approach them from the desert side of the pillars, assuming they would be paying the most attention to the parking lot.

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Sarah and Chuck stood near each other, shivering with cold and wet, their hair plastered down onto their foreheads. Blackman and Kirk were off to the side, preparing the missile to take out Chen's car. That left five men guarding them, all standing around and mostly watching the parking lot. One man seemed intent on watching her to see just how transparent her blouse became in the freezing rain.

Kirk answered his phone and heard that Chen was arriving in the parking area in a moment.

Casey's voice in their ears said, "I'm in position about a hundred yards into the desert from you. There's no cover. I need a distraction to get closer."

Sarah made a uhhh-huuuhhh noise, then said to Chuck, "vang rur maw' DeSDu' jIH. vaj Ha' DeSDu' chongaghpa' vang rur QochQo'chuqlaw' muqIp." [Act like you are mad at me. Then come at me to act like you are going to hit me.]

He stared at her for a couple of moments, shocked at what he had just heard. "yIruch," [Do it] she yelled at him.

"You witch," Chuck screamed at her. "How dare you talk to me like that." All the men turned to look at the two of them. Chuck could feel the grip on his arm loosen slightly with the man's distraction.

He pulled away from the man holding his arm and lunged at Sarah. She redirected his lunge and tripped him to the ground. He immediately rolled away so as not to get under her feet.

She spun in a back kick to catch the nearest man in the throat with the heel of her foot. He flew backwards. At the same time, she raised both bound hands high over her head and brought them down very fast to her waist. Keeping her elbows bent, she brushed her elbows and forearms against her hip bones as her bound hands hit her stomach just below her belly button. The zip tie snapped and flew off her wrists.

Casey opened fire from the blackness of the desert. A man fell. Then another one. These were combat veterans, though, and reacted swiftly, taking cover behind the colorful boulders. Sarah grabbed a gun from one of the dead men. The man she had kicked was recovering quickly and reaching for his weapon. Still crouched by the downed man, she shot the other one twice in the center of the chest then dove for the boulder that Chuck had taken cover behind. Bullets impacted into the sand where she had stood a moment ago. Counting Blackman and Kirk, there would still be four bad guys out there. The entire scene was lit only by the light cast by the fallen flashlights of Blackman's men. Eerie.

With seven huge columns of stone, there were ample places for both sets of combatants to seek cover and maneuver to obtain the advantage over their opponents. The danger, for both sides, was extreme.

Chen's minivan picked this time to pull into the parking lot. Kirk was kneeling behind the missile, pointing it towards Chen's car. Chuck vividly remembered Kirk pinching Sarah. He said to Sarah, "I'm going after Kirk."

Casey had run up among the pillars by this point. They heard a pistol shot followed a moment later by three shots from Casey's rifle and the thud of a falling body.

Casey said, into their ears, "I've got you, kid. Go for it."

"Right. Be careful," Sarah said.

Kirk pulled the trigger on the optically guided anti-tank missile, but nothing happened for a few moments. There was a rising whine sound. Then, the rocket was launched from the tube. It traveled about a hundred feet or so when three thrusters on the sides of the rocket body ignited and began to propel it toward Chen's minivan.

That's when Chuck tackled Kirk. The missile tube, with its optical sight, flew from his hands and the flying rocket, guided by the tube itself went off course to careen through the rainy desert air.

Chuck and Kirk began to wrestle on the ground. Neither man was particularly skilled at fighting, but Chuck was stronger and younger.

The flying rocket flew off into the desert across the road from where they were. Whatever target it hit erupted in a dramatic fireball. Casey looked in that direction and said, "Aw, shit."

With the explosion in the nighttime desert, Chen's minivan turned around in the parking lot to flee the scene. At that moment, three back SUV's with the flashing lights of law enforcement pulled up into the parking lot and blocked any further movement by the minivan. A dozen furious USSS agents got out and swarmed Chen's car with guns drawn, screaming orders.

Sarah saw a man near her aiming at someone. Although she couldn't see his target from her vantage point, she killed him anyway. In her ear she heard Casey say, "Thanks, Walker." The men in the minivan in the parking lot surrendered and several agents began to run along the sandy path towards the pillars.

The last of Blackman's men stepped out with his empty hands raised, and Walker directed him to lie on the wet sand face down. Casey and Sarah began to call out to the running agents approaching her position. The last thing they needed was for the agents to misidentify the good guys for bad guys.

Chuck was rolling around with Kirk and had gotten a position on the man's back. Although his hands were still bound by the zip tie, he had his arm around Kirk's neck with the bicep and forearm on either side. Kirk was trying unsuccessfully to pry Chuck's arms away from his neck with one hand and throwing his elbow back repeatedly into Chuck's middle with the other arm. Chuck was ignoring the blows, which skidded off his hard stomach muscles.

Casey approached and said, "Are you choking him out?"

"No, Case. It's a sleeper hold. Just like you taught me," said Chuck, a little out of breath. As he was saying that, Kirk collapsed.

"You blew up my car," Casey said, bending to roll Kirk's body off of Chuck.

"Aw, shit, Case. I'm sorry. But I think, technically, Kirk blew up your car. He pulled the trigger."

"Yeah, but you..."

"Where's Blackman?" asked Sarah with urgency.

The USSS agents arrived. Kendler was just taking stock of the scene at the pillars when Tony Blackman stepped out from behind a pillar of stone with a gun in his hand pointed their way. Kendler seemed to blur, but suddenly there was a gun in her hand firing twice. She stepped forward to Blackman as he collapsed to the sand and kicked the gun from his hand.

Casey breathed, in awe, "Jesus."

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Chuck and Sarah were sitting in the warm Secret Service SUV. They were snuggling together for warmth and wrapped in blankets with the heater in the car going full blast. It was only moments ago that they had stopped shivering.

"When did you learn Klingon?" asked Chuck

"A few days ago."

"Just a few days? So fast?" he asked, with a small smile. His girlfriend was the most amazing person on the planet.

She gave him a cocky grin and said, "Hey, linguistics major from Harvard, remember? Languages are kind of my thing. I took the book from your shelf when we were packing. Seemed like a good thing for me to know. I thought it might come in handy someday," she responded with a smile.

"Like today?"

"Yup." She popped the 'p,' still grinning.

He kissed her and said, "I love you."

"I love you right back," she replied.

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A/N2: Anachronism alert. Seven Magic Mountains is a real art installation outside Las Vegas, but it wasn't created until 2016. I thought it was cool enough that I wanted to put it in the story, though. Please do check out some pictures of it online. I visited it in 2018 and it's pretty spectacular, and really is in the middle of nowhere in the desert.

A/N3: The canon episode used a GPS guided, shoulder-fired missile. There is no such thing.

A/N4: Snapping the zip ties as Sarah did is real. The locking mechanism is a tooth and tab type where a little piece of plastic engages with the plastic teeth of the tie inside the lock. When subjected to the sudden stress that Sarah put on it, the little bit of plastic snaps. If you check it out on the Internet you will find any number of demonstrations. It's a wonder that zip ties are still used as restraints.

A/N5: The book Sarah took from Chuck's shelf is The Klingon Dictionary by Marc Okrand. I'm looking at my copy as I type this.

A/N6: So, I had a little bit of surgery on my shoulder the other day. (No worries, I'm fine.) I can't type for a few weeks though. I have a backlog of chapters ready to post on my own little idiosyncratic Saturday morning schedule for the next month. I hope to be back in the saddle by then and able to continue writing without a gap or delay. But, I'm not going to be able to respond to reviews or PM's for a while. Please be assured that I still love you all, but I'm going to be unavoidably radio silent. Do not take it personally.