A/N: Ownership of Chuck makes me think about the ownership of Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank. Interesting.

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Federov and Oblonsky parked in front of the remote garage building on the side of the mountain. A second car with three more of Federov's men followed and parked behind. As Oblonsky got out of his car, he gestured for the other three men to stay put outside. Halfway between the car and the garage door, Federov stopped to light a cigarette. His hands were shaking, but eventually he managed. He glanced at Oblonsky and gave him a sour look. Oblonsky shrugged as if to say, 'What are you going to do?'

The building was a single story with two large garage doors and a wide parking and turn area in front. A few windows marked the likely location of a small office inside. The building was surrounded by deep snow on all sides except the drive up to it. Behind the building was the mountain slope. It was a very secure location, if it ever had to be defended.

The interior of the garage was dim and after the bright sunshine reflecting off the snow it took Federov and Oblonsky a few moments for their eyes to adjust. Federov took a long drag of his cigarette. When he could see again, the first thing he focused on was Casey and Mara zip tied wrist to wrist and back to back in straight chairs. Each of them had duct tape across their mouths.

To one side of the room, lying on the floor on a plastic tarp, were two dead bodies, a man and a woman. The body of the man was dressed in a tuxedo, the body of the woman in a beautiful white wedding dress. The macabre sight was unnerving, even to Federov, who had expected it.

Federov looked down at the woman he knew as Mara. She returned his gaze with calm eyes. He saw the bruise on her cheek where she had been struck. Reaching out, he touched it gently. He looked up at the three men who had brought her and Casey to the building from the hotel. Looking at one of the men he said in Russian, "Did you hit her?" The man, sensing something in his voice, just shook his head and allowed his eyes to slide sideways to look at one of his partners. Federov shifted his gaze to that man and said, softly, "Did you have to hit her to get her in the car?"

The man nodded and said, "Yes, Victor, I..." He never finished the sentence as Federov pulled out his pistol and shot the man in the face twice. The gunshots were deafening and echoed in the empty space. Once the body had collapsed to the ground, Federov reholstered his weapon and again touched the bruise on her cheek softly. None of the other men moved, but their eyes were wide with shock. Even Oblonsky was surprised.

Paying no notice to the men's reactions, Federov reached behind him for a chair and pulled it up, seating himself close to her, their knees almost touching. His face was a that of a man in tremendous pain. He took another drag of his cigarette and blew out the smoke to the side, so as not to blow it directly at her. After a moment's pause, he slowly reached out to put a hand on her knee, but stopped himself and brought his hand back to his lap, letting it fall there as if his arm had lost all strength.

He began to speak, the words choking out of him as if every word physically hurt. "It was for you. You see, Mara? All this was for you. I didn't want you involved in my world...in the crimes and the killing. The guns for the Africans. You were too good for it, you see, my love? You were a good person. You sold flowers. So, I spent the last year arranging to leave." Federov paused and tried to gather himself a bit, his emotions threatening to overwhelm him. "It cost me about $70,000,000 in transaction costs, but I washed my money and stowed it all offshore. I didn't care about the cost. It didn't matter. I arranged for the wedding here in Switzerland and invited every Russian thug I knew, just to fill the hotel with western spies as witnesses. Did you ever wonder why I didn't want your picture taken, my love? After all, you are so beautiful. I would get plastic surgery to change my appearance, but not you...I wouldn't do that to you. My dentist that I sent you to? Your dental x-rays now match that poor woman over there," he gestured to the corpse in the wedding dress. Seeing the look in her eyes, he went on, "Yes. I knew you wouldn't like that. The killings. He was a bum, a homeless man. She was a cheap prostitute, but in each case their rough builds match us. And now the dental records too. But why would anyone even go that far...to investigate? We would have driven away from the hotel and the car crashed into a deep valley. It was set to burn up. Everyone, the Russian mobsters, the western spies, the Swiss police, they would all have seen us leave the hotel and then the car crash...the fire...the bodies...no mystery. Just a tragedy. We would have been free, my love. Passed beyond that life I've led for so long. Finished. Together and at peace. For the rest of our lives. Together."

He sat back and took a deep breath. He had to pause before he could force out the next sentence "I only have one question, Lt. Colonel Fabron...was it all a lie? Did you ever feel anything for me at all?"

Fabron, never breaking eye contact with him, shook her head 'no.'

Victor sobbed once but managed not to cry. After looking into her eyes for long moments, he leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. "Good-bye, my love...my life."

He stood up and continued to look at her, then he seemed to shake himself a little and stepped around her.

He put a hand on Casey's shoulder, giving it a light squeeze, and, switching to English, said, "She screwed you over in Grozny, huh? I'm sorry, my friend. I truly am." There was nothing but compassion in his eyes and his voice. He gave Casey's shoulder another squeeze and turned away.

Switching back to Russian, he said to one of his men, "Kill them both, but painlessly. I do not want them to suffer. Then dispose of all three bodies," he gestured at the dead henchman who had struck Fabron, "so they will never be found. You understand? Feliks and I are leaving. I cannot watch."

The man agreed. Federov and Oblonsky left the building and those inside heard the roar of their car departing moments later.

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Chuck knocked on the door to the room where he thought Federov's computers were located, even though it had a do not disturb sign hanging from the doorknob.

Chuck was a tall man, significantly taller than average. It was natural for him to unconsciously assume that a stranger would be of average height and, for that reason, Chuck would generally expect to focus his eyes at about the level of his own chin. So, Chuck was a little surprised when the man opened the door to the room and Chuck was looking at the middle of that man's chest. Slowly, he looked up from the chest to a Slavic-looking heavy face on a man who was a taller than he was. The man was roughly Yuri's size and shape, maybe bigger. 'What was with these Russians?', Chuck thought to himself. 'Was it something in the water?'

Both men were startled for a moment. Chuck by the size of the Russian computer guy. Smirnov by the American agent, one of Casey's team, just knocking on his door. Chuck fired the trank pistol in his hand, shooting a dart into the big man's chest.

Due to the cold room, Boris was wearing a heavy sweater and the hotel's robe on top of it. He looked down at the dart sticking out of the robe with surprise, then back up at Chuck with a sudden flare of alarm. "Uh, oh," said Chuck. Chuck fired a second time intending to aim for the man's neck, just as Boris grabbed Chuck with his left hand and punched him in the side of the head with his right hand. As big as the man was, it was a very powerful blow. The second trank dart flew off into the room to stick in the ceiling.

Chuck was reeling a bit from the blow and found the trank gun plucked from his hand and he himself shoved into a closet in the hotel room. He heard the snap of the closet door locking.

'Aw, crap', he thought.

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The frigid mountain air whipped through the open cabin of the helicopter, blowing her hair around her head. Sarah looked back over her shoulder to see Amy looking to her for direction. They were perched in the open doors on either side of the helicopter with their skis sitting on the runners. Sarah glanced down. The drop was approaching. Sarah pulled her ski goggles over her eyes. When they were about four feet over the snow, and Claude had stabilized the hovering aircraft, Sarah turned and nodded to Amy, who nodded back. Both women pushed off and launched themselves out to hit the snow beneath them. As they had landed on a slight slope, they began to move down the hill immediately. The FAMAS rifles were slung across their backs.

Sarah normally enjoyed skiing, but today she could focus only on the mission ahead. Save Casey and the French spy. While the trip down was filled with thoughts other than skiing, she had to keep a part of her mind busy on the transit down the mountainside. They were off the normal ski trails and, as a result the terrain was dangerous, the snow very deep. People who skied off trail either had guides or knew the terrain themselves. She and Amy had neither source of expertise, which, in and of itself, so dangerous as to almost be reckless. Was that a boulder buried under the snow? A tree stump? Was there a ravine or crevasse? As they had flown up from the Interlaken airport, they had studied the slope from the air and determined that it was skiable, but that was a "big picture" determination. The little details could still earn you a broken leg.

Of course, most skiers, no matter how bold when skiing on unknown terrain, were not facing a gunfight at the end of the run. In terms of risks to be run, skiing unknown Alpine terrain was minimal compared to what Amy and Sarah were heading into. What would they find when they arrived at the building? How many enemies with what armament? Was the enemy expecting them for some reason? Where was the nearest cover if she and Amy were shot at? Did they post guards? Would Casey and Fabron be used as human shields?

Both women were hatless and their long blonde hair spread out behind them in the wind, as they carved long graceful curves in the virgin snow. When they were minutes away from the building, Sarah said into her handheld radio to the French team coming up the road, "We are approaching the target. What's your status?"

Bressard replied, "We are on the road. Tell us what you see when you get there."

"Roger," she responded.

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Federov's two Russian thugs approached Casey and Fabron from either direction. Each man had a gun in his hand. The American and the French spies could not speak to each other, as their mouths were still covered with tape. Casey twisted their wrists to rotate around each other, which locked their elbows together pulling them tighter back to back. They couldn't coordinate a plan, so Casey just hoped she would know what to do on her side.

When the Russian was close enough, Casey stood and lunged forward, pulling Fabron along with him. As he rose, the top of his head hit the chin of the man in front of him, staggering him backward. Fabron spun her leg is a sweeping kick to the jaw of the man approaching on her side. As Casey straightened and Fabron's feet hit the floor, she immediately bounced up and launched two more kicks. The first knocked the gun from the man's hand, and the second caught him in the throat with the edge of her foot. He staggered back, clutching his injured trachea.

Casey's man had recovered sufficiently to take a step back and begin to raise his gun. Casey spun in place, swinging Fabron's feet around in a huge arc. She connected with the Russian in the chest and knocked him backwards. The gun flew out of his hand

With both enemies temporarily stunned, Fabron raised both their hands above their heads. Casey immediately sensed what she had in mind and cooperated. He waited for her to move first, unsure whether she would twist to the right or left. She chose left, so he twisted right. As they both twisted in large arcs, with straight arms over their heads, they found themselves face-to-face with their bound arms now in front of them. As zip ties can be snapped with sufficient sudden force, Casey looked into her eyes and shook their hands downward once to show her what he intended. She nodded her head. They raised their hands together and suddenly slammed them downward, pushing hard against each other's palms. The sudden force snapped the tie on Casey's right hand and Fabron's left, leaving them still bound to each other by one hand.

The man to Casey's right had recovered enough that he started to come at Casey from behind. Fabron jerked her head in that direction and Casey, without seeming to look, snapped an elbow up and into the man's face. The man collapsed.

The man on the far side of Fabron began to come at them again. Together they moved to meet him. Fabron hit him with a left in the chin. Casey hit him with a right on the other side of his chin. They shuffled forward as the man staggered backwards. Fabron hit him again with a left and Casey again with a right. With a quick glance at each other, they pulled back Fabron's right and Casey's left hands and drove them forward with the combined power of both spies to connect with the man's nose. The man's eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed.

With both men down, Casey and Fabron snapped the remaining zip tie and pulled the tape from their mouths. They picked up the guns the men had dropped and moved to the window of the garage to see how many Russians were outside.

Casey glanced to his side at the woman he had thought an innocent AP photographer and then had thought dead for almost four years.

She caught him looking at her and said, with a tiny smile, "What?" Some part of his mind noticed that her Russian accent from four years earlier had disappeared.

"Damn, girl. You look good with a gun." She laughed.

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Chuck sat on the floor of the closet and turned on his penlight. 'Ok, this sucks,' he thought. Can't very well get rescued by Sarah or Casey. Sarah was busy rescuing Casey, so, he, Chuck was on his own. And that guy was really big. And tough looking. He seemed to be a nerd, but a nerd who spent time weightlifting when he wasn't doing nerdy things.

Chuck started to look around the small space. Many bottles of vodka, so he could get drunk if he wanted to, but that was not at the top of his to-do list. A box of disposable cameras. Some empty computer bags to carry all the tech stuff he'd glimpsed in the hotel room before being stunned by one punch (sort of embarrassing, actually). A box of presents. He opened one of the gift wrapped boxes to find a key chain. Not a lot of help.

He thought for a few moments. Disposable cameras. Disposable cameras had flashes. And a flash draws its electrical power from a capacitor. He was sitting next to a box of capacitors and batteries to charge them. He mentally reviewed what he knew about capacitors. They would store the electrical energy and release it suddenly at high voltage. Now that was interesting.

He took one of the cameras out and broke it open, holding his pen light in his teeth. He took out the battery and hit the button to take a flash picture, which discharged any stored charge in the capacitor. He didn't want to shock himself as he fiddled around. He found the leads from the capacitor to the flash element and broke them loose. Using his multitool, he stripped the insulation from the ends of the wires. 'Ok,' he thought, 'these leads are too short. I need something to lengthen them.' He poked around in the box of gifts and found some papers connected together with a paper clip. He took the paper clip and broke it into pieces. Using some tape that he took from one of the key chain boxes, he attached the bits of broken paper clips to the leads from the capacitor, lengthening them so they extended beyond the end of the plastic camera box. If he'd had more time and proper tools, he would have soldered the pieces together, but this was going to be a one-time weapon so it didn't have to be too sturdy. He replaced the battery and pushed the button to charge the capacitor. Time to test it. He found a piece of metal and discharged his makeshift stun gun with a satisfying crack of electricity. Ok, so it works. Time to make a second one.

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As Sarah and Amy came to the isolated garage building they heard gunfire. Sarah said to Bressard, "Gunfire at the target. We're going to engage the Russians."

"Right. Good luck. We'll be up the hill as soon as we can."

Still skiing very fast, Sarah nodded to Amy. Both women dropped their ski poles in the snow and unslung the rifles from their backs. It was a useful design element of the FAMAS that the trigger guards were extra large to accommodate those occasions when the users were wearing gloves. Each woman spy began to pay more attention to the view over her weapon's sights than at the terrain ahead of them.

With a single hand gesture, Sarah directed Amy to take the near side of the building, while Sarah took the farther side. There were three men spread behind two cars, shooting into the building. Unfortunately for them, they had taken cover to protect against gunfire from the building, not from the snowy fields on either side. Sweeping around in a smooth arc, her eyes never leaving the weapon's sights, she found the first man and fired a short burst into his torso. Shooting while still on the move, Amy killed a second man on her side of the building. The third man rose and tried to move off to better cover, but shots from the building itself killed him in mid-movement.

Skidding to a stop on the snow, Sarah called out, "CASEY."

"HERE, WALKER. COMING OUT."

Casey and Fabron stepped out of the building into the sunlight. Each held a pistol pointed to the ground. Moments later, Fabron's support team arrived in two cars.

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"HEY. HEY. OPEN UP. GOTTA PEE, DUDE. HEY. I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE. I GOTTA PEE. OPEN THE DOOR. HEY, HEY...HEY..." Every shout was accompanied by a hard kick on the closet door. Eventually, the guy opened the door to punch Chuck again and quiet him down. The moment the door opened, Chuck jumped at him and jammed the two improvised stun guns into the sides of the big man's neck, fully discharging them both immediately.

The big Russian staggered back and collapsed to the floor, onto his hands and knees, shaking his head and mumbling curses in Russian. At least Chuck thought he was cursing, it made sense, after all. Chuck looked around the room and found his trank gun on the desk, partially disassembled. He picked up one of the loose darts and stuck it into the back of the big Russian's neck. The man promptly collapsed onto the carpet.

'Phew,' thought Chuck. 'That was what I wanted to start with.'

After closing the hotel room's window, he sat down to the computers the man had running. Now this was going to be interesting.

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The team of agents, augmented by Stressor from the Swiss DAP, used the tracker previously installed on Oblonsky's car to track them from the garage. Circling through the mountain roads, they cut off the Russians near Isenfluh.

Fedrov and Oblonsky were blocked. The slope up the side of the mountain was to their right and the terrifying drop to their left. Arrayed in front of them were six weapons, held by six western spies standing behind their cars. Federov could see Mara among them. Both men left the car and squatted behind the open car doors for cover. Federov got a look in his eyes that Oblonsky had never seen before. He said, quietly, "Goodbye, old friend."

Still holding his pistol, he stood up and walked forward towards the waiting agents, pointing his weapon at them. Casey mumbled, "Suicide by cop."

Fabron looked at Casey for an instant and, with an almost panicked look in her eyes, bellowed, in French, "Ne tirez pas. Ne tirez pas." [don't shoot]

Seeing what Fabron intended, Sarah repeated the command in German and English.

They stayed like that for a few moments, Federov standing alone in the road with the pointed gun, the agents pointing their weapons back at him. No one moved. Then Marie stood from behind the car she had been using for cover and lowered her weapon. Casey hissed at her, "Don't do it." She ignored him. She put her gun on the hood of the vehicle. Victor's gun aimed at her. Ever so slowly, she walked towards him. The expression on her face was unreadable.

Amy nudged Sarah and gestured with her chin at Oblonsky who was aiming at Fabron with hatred and rage on his face. Amy and Sarah stood from behind cover and aimed at him. Their movement caught his eye and he looked away from Fabron for a moment. The sight that greeted him was unnerving. Two beautiful blondes with hard blue eyes were training their weapons on him with rocksteady aim. He well understood that any aggressive move on his part would be the last thing he would ever do. He slowly nodded, not looking any happier, and released his grip on his weapon. It swung loose on his finger held up by the trigger guard. He bent to lay it on the roadway.

Marie moved towards Victor as if in slow motion, taking one careful step after another, her eyes never leaving his. Other than the soft tread of her boots on the roadway and the whisper of the Alpine wind, there was silence.

Victor's face was twisted into a mask of pain and despair as Marie approached him. His hand, holding the weapon and still aiming at her, shook. There were unshed tears in his eyes. Once she was close to him, she stood before him silently and slowly reached up to his gun hand. Placing her gentle hand atop his, she moved the gun down until it pointed at the road beneath their feet. His shoulders slumped and he dropped the weapon to the tarmac. He began to cry. The wind and his sobs were the only sounds on the road.

The assembled agents exhaled and stood from behind their cover. Stressor moved to take Federov and Oblonsky into custody.

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A/N2: A word of advice. If you are ever a guest at a bar mitzvah and the family of the bar mitzvah boy puts those disposable cameras on the tables at the party for candid pictures, do not take that disposable camera apart and do the trick Chuck did to make a stun gun out of it. Don't. And, most especially, do not show that trick to a bunch of thirteen year old boys, who will then proceed to modify every disposable camera in the place and run around the rest of the party stunning each other. Don't do it. Really. Trust me on this one. Learn from my mistakes.