A/N: Ownership.
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Tony slapped the man he knew as Von Hayes, knocking him to the ground, and screamed, "You're stalling, you asshole."
Ralph had been dragged up to the living room area by two of the other men and left with Tony. The early morning light was streaming through the windows.
"Oh? So, when did you become an expert in decryption? You're full of shit. You have no idea how long it takes. For fuck's sake, just let the system run the program," said Ralph. His voice was strong, but in truth he was getting desperate. There was only so long he could keep these assholes at bay with the bullshit program he had the computer running. They were starting to get suspicious, and he found it hard to blame them. The only choice he had was to stay the course as long as possible.
"It's been two days since you started running that fucking program," said Tony angrily.
"Right. I know that, you bastard. Three days I've lived in that godforsaken cell. You can see the program is running. If you stop it now we have to start it over. And that will be on you, Einstein. I don't want to stay here a day more than I have to."
"I don't believe you," said Tony, taking out a knife, standing over the prone man. "Maybe you can make it go faster. I'm not going to mess with your fingers. You might need them to type. I'm just going to take off a toe or two. We'll work our way up to other parts of your body later."
The man bent down and pulled at Ralph's shoe. That's when Tony was swatted by a giant invisible hand. A puff of a red mist lingered in the air behind him. Ralph heard the sound of a window breaking as his stunned mind registered Tony's body being flung across the room.
Juliette ran in a moment later and looked at the broken window and Tony's shattered body lying in a heap. That's when a window on the other side of the room blew inward. A spray of red and gray and Juliette's body collapsed to the carpet.
Ralph heard a bang from the basement and then the stuttering sounds of a gun firing in automatic mode. He heard return gunfire in single shots, but each single shot was met by the sounds of a full auto response. There were noises elsewhere as heavy boots ran through the house. There was a burst of gunfire upstairs.
Almost twenty seconds later, two figures dressed all in black appeared in the living room from the basement stairs. A red-headed giant and a smaller blonde woman. Each was holding a wicked looking machine gun. They looked at him with what seemed to be relief. The red-head said, "You ok?" He nodded, still processing what was happening.
The woman spoke, "We have him. He's ok."
The red-head said, "Don't move." They turned their backs on him and watched the stairs.
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About sixteen hours earlier
Chuck and Sarah were holding hands in the elevator at Castle Studios heading down from the Carmichael Industries office. They were heading to the studio's commissary to get lunch. Chuck loved visiting the commissary, although the food was just ok the truth is he was hoping to see celebrities. Sarah loved the commissary when she was with him, just because his enthusiasm and happiness filled her with joy. But she avoided the tuna salad.
Her phone rang. The screen identified the caller as US Secret Service Agent Watts, who had been on the team that took down Kirk in Las Vegas.
"Walker. Secure but in public," she said.
"Watts. Secure. Hi, Agent Walker."
"Hi, Agent Watts. Good to hear from you."
"I hope it's ok to call you. I got your number from Pat," he said.
"Sure. No problem. What's up?" She and Chuck were crossing the lobby of the office building.
"Weird one. Our Vegas office got a call from Mr. Sydney Gold. He insisted on talking to the Agent responsible for the Kirk takedown. As Pat has retired, they gave him to me. I talked to him this morning. He is very insistent that you give him a call immediately or sooner. Wouldn't tell me why. Insisted on talking to you directly."
"Ok," she said.
"Mostly it was the fact that he knew your name and that you were involved in the Kirk thing. That led me to believe he was on the level. I hope this isn't some nonsense and a waste of your time. But he seemed legit to me. Maybe a little upset but conveying a real sense of urgency. He said he was the source of the information you used with Kirk."
Chuck and Sarah stepped out of the lobby of the building and crossed a lawn to find a bench in the shade.
"He wasn't shitting you, Watts. He did help. I'll call him right now. Give me his number."
He did. She thanked him and broke the connection. To Chuck she said, "Sid Gold went thru the Secret Service. He really wanted to talk to me immediately. Watts said he sounded upset."
"Simonson?" asked Chuck. Sarah shrugged as she entered Sid's number into her phone.
"Sarah?" asked Sid, picking up the phone on the first ring.
Sarah looked around and saw that no one else was anywhere close to them.
"Yeah, Sid. I'm putting you on speaker. I'm here with Chuck." She touched her phone. "Talk to me," she said.
"Ralph. He got a message to me, by email. I'm an asshole. I didn't check my email yesterday. At my age not too many..."
Chuck gave a little fist pump while Sarah nodded her head to him.
"What was the message, Sid?" she asked.
Sid read them the message, his voice catching a little bit at the mention of Pete Miner.
Chuck got up and walked away a few steps, speaking into his watch. Casey and Amy would now be on their way down to Castle.
Sid said, "Did they really kill Petey?"
"Yeah, Sid. They did."
"Motherfuckers. I wish I could kill them all," he said. Watts had been right, the man sounded upset.
"I know, Sid. I know," Sarah said, thinking, 'I'm going to.' "Thank you. Take care of yourself, Sid. I've got to go and take care of this. Is this a good number for you?"
"Yeah. It's a burner, but other than you and the Secret Service guys, it hasn't been used. I'll keep it," he said.
"Ok. I'll be in touch," said Sarah.
"Please get Ralph out ok," he said.
"We'll do our best. Take care of yourself in the meantime."
Chuck and Sarah hurried down to Castle. Amy and Casey were already there. In a few sentences they explained the new information.
Chuck said, "Ok. We have clues, but no location. I'm going to start on that bit."
"Right," said Sarah. "I'll get us transport to the east coast. Maybe the Citation X is around."
Casey said, "Heads up message from your buddy. Giving us the number of the opposition. I don't want three of us going in against five. Not in a CQB situation. I'll see if Fitz and the guys are around."
"Aw shit, guys," said Amy. "That leaves me dealing with the bosses and other agencies."
Chuck grinned at her. "But you're so good at it, Amy. We rely on you."
"Oh, God. I hate you all," she grumped, sticking her tongue out at him.
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They were in the Citation X, being chauffeured rather than flying. Sarah was informing the team of the latest while Chuck continued to work with the computers to get an exact location for Simonson.
Casey, Amy, Fitz, Leo, Billy and Marco were in the cabin, all dressed in black fatigues with small duffel bags of weapons at their feet. Chuck sat in a seat forward of the rest. He had on headphones and was humming along to a song as he worked on the computer on his fold out tray. They couldn't be sure, but it sounded like Barracuda by Heart. A half empty bottle of Chardonnay sat on the floor next to him.
"Ok, guys, Chuck has taken Simonson's message and drawn a couple of circles around the intersection of I-80 and the Delaware River. We don't know precise distances so we are working off closer and farther guesstimates and using the highway exits. The circles encompass Minisink Hills, Shawnee on Delaware and a lot of East Stroudsburg. So far, Chuck has narrowed it down to about ninety houses, but as he learns more about the houses he can eliminate them as candidates. Inside we have a stolen computer chip Fulcrum is trying to decrypt and a civilian they think can help them. He can't and, if he's still alive, he must have been doing some pretty clever shit to keep them off his back. But, of course, that can't last forever. Priorities are rescue of Simonson and recovery of the chip."
"Roger that," said Casey.
By the time the plane landed at Lehigh Valley International Airport, about forty-five minutes away from East Stroudsburg, Chuck had limited the choices to nine. The eight agents split up into two cars and a large black tactical van to scout the potential targets. This one didn't have a gravel driveway. This one was in a clearing with no trees around. One after another, the choices were limited.
An hour and a half later they had narrowed the choices to two, a house in Minisink Hills and one on the edge of East Stroudsburg. Chuck found that the one in Minisink Hills was on the market for rent. Although the listing had not been taken down, it made it likely that this house held Simonson and had been rented by Fulcrum as a safe house.
It was still before dawn when they deployed. Chuck and Leo drove by in the van and let the others off along the road. The local police had been alerted by Amy to the activity and would handle any nervous neighbors. The van parked around a bend, out of sight of the house. Chuck activated a device to block cell phone coverage at the house, but would still allow their own internal closed communication net to function.
There was a rise behind the house. Casey climbed the rise until he could see into the first floor window to the living room through the scope of his Remington Model 700 sniper rifle loaded with a 30-06 Springfield cartridge. He wore a ghille suit over his black fatigues, a large net festooned with leaves and scraps of cloth. It was designed to effectively camouflage the wearer to look like any shrubbery. Casey wasn't too worried about being spotted, as the sunrise would be in the eyes of anyone looking out the windows of the house.
Sarah climbed a tree to one side of the house to get a different angle into the living room and two of the windows on the upper floor of the house. She was trusting her black outfit to keep her hidden, as climbing a tree with a ghille suit wasn't at all practical. She was armed with a Heckler & Koch HK33, a somewhat smaller rifle than Casey's and firing the 7.62mm NATO round. She intended to be closer to the target than Casey would be, hence the choice of weapon. Early sumer foliage wouldn't allow her to be much farther away.
Amy and Fitz entered the woods about a hundred yards from the front door and worked their way through the woods to approach the house from one side, intending to sidle up to the door near the garage, so they could enter that way.
Marco and Billy had the most difficult task, climbing one of the trees on the side of the house and lowering themselves onto the roof silently. When the time came, they would swing into the second floor windows and take out any of the opposition on that floor. The team intended to wait for sunrise and the people inside to be awake and moving. They felt they needed to get a visual on the occupants. Although they were virtually certain they had the right house, they couldn't be one hundred percent sure until they could identify one or more as Fulcrum.
The six members of the team deployed around the target waited with varying degrees of patience. The sun came up and illuminated the house through the windows.
Casey said, "Movement in the living room. One man, dark hair."
"Roger that," said Sarah. "I have him."
"Left the room," said Casey.
"Can you tell if he went up or down?"
"Negative."
"Ok," she said. "We wait."
A few moments later Casey said, "Bingo. The dark haired guy is back with a couple of apes dragging Simonson up to the living room."
"Bingo. We have confirmation," said Sarah. "Ok, guys, let's hit it."
"He's smacking Simonson around...he's pulled a knife on him," said Casey.
"Take him, Case," she said.
There was a boom of the large caliber rifle firing.
"He's down," said Casey.
"The woman from the party is in the room," said Sarah. "I've got her." Sarah's rifle barked once and she thought fleetingly, 'that's for Petey Miner, you bitch.'
They heard the noises from the others entering the house. Casey saw Fitz and Amy enter the room and heard Amy say, "We have him. He's ok."
"Any more opposition?" asked Casey.
"No, Major," said Billy. "There was one up here, but he was asleep. Tranked him before he woke up."
"Right," said Casey. "Good job, guys."
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Simonson sat in the back of the van talking to Chuck and Sarah while the others worked with the cleaners and searched the house for any additional evidence to be used against Fulcrum and dealing with the only survivor among the Fulcrum contingent.
They were amazed at Simonson's ingenuity in fooling the Fulcrum men when he related his story to them.
"Why did the Fulcrum computer guy go along with the bullshit word salad you threw around about decryption?" asked Chuck
"I don't know. If I had to guess I'd say he didn't want to look stupid in front of the bad men with guns. I was sort of surprised about it myself. I was all prepared to bully my way through, but it wasn't necessary."
"So, we'll find the chip in the computer in your cell in the basement?" asked Chuck.
"Sure," said Ralph. "If you want it."
"We can't let it fall into the wrong hands," said Sarah.
"Naw," he said. "I erased it. First thing I did. I erased it. It's been overwritten with a list of prime numbers for the last two days."
"Ralph, why would you do that? If they found out, they'd kill you," said Sarah, surprised.
"Sarah, they were going to kill me anyway. Either I'd get rescued by your team, or I wouldn't and they'd kill me. But either way it turned out, these assholes were going to lose what they had stolen. Sarah, they killed Petey. Fuck them. Fuck them all."
"That's very courageous of you, Ralph," she said,
"Naw. Just pissed off," he said with a grin.
He borrowed her phone to call his girlfriend and tell her he was ok, while Sarah called Graham to give him an update. Both calls ended about the same time.
"So, Ralph, I was just on the phone with my boss. You helped us stop some very bad guys from getting some dangerous information. My boss is arranging for you to get a reward. Four and a half million dollars."
He sat back, stunned and looking at Sarah with wide eyes. After a bit he said, "Bernie. I'm going to split it with Bernie. It won't bring Pete back, but it's something at least. Thank you, Sarah, Chuck. And thank your boss."
"Thank you, Ralph. You did a good job."
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A/N2: CQB is close quarters combat. Fighting in an urban environment, like a house for example. Very, very dangerous. A man or woman with a gun waiting around every corner. Sphincter tightening, as they say.
A/N3: Von Hayes made it out of this one in much better shape than his canon counterpart. Which I think is only fair, as he was a great deal more helpful than his canon counterpart. What do you guys think? As usual, I do love to hear from you.