A/N: Ownership of Chuck. Done.

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Amy stood silhouetted in the lighted hallway, the room key in her hand. On the floor next to her were the guards. One was twitching as his blood ran out onto the floor from a slit throat. The other guard had the hilt of one of Sarah's knives protruding obscenely from one of his eyes, his body still writhing, dying hands clutching weakly at his eye.

Sarah and Casey looked at her with surprise. Quietly, she said, "I changed my mind." She couldn't quite look them in the eye.

Sarah recovered quicker than Casey did. She lowered the shower rod and said, her voice neutral, "Transport?"

"Immobilized like Casey said. I don't know where they keep the distributor caps," responded Amy, with a shake of her head.

"Weapons?"

"Other than what the guards are carrying, weapons are locked in an armory. Only my brother's palmprint will open it. I tried, but I don't have the equipment to get around the lock. But I have these too." She handed Sarah two 9mm Glocks she took from behind her back. Amy then reached down and tugged Sarah's knife from the guard's eye, wiped it on the dead man's shirt, and handed it to Sarah with its twin. "And your knives."

Taking the knives, Sarah said, "Where are the girls?"

"Down this corridor to the left. Four rooms. Locked from the outside, but.." she held up the keys in her hand. "...I hope these will work."

"So, we walk out of here?" Sarah asked.

"Or go hunting? Take out Gaez and his men in their sleep?" asked Casey.

"No. Not with the girls still here. Too risky for them," said Sarah.

Amy said, "I figured we take the girls and leave. Not the road, of course, that's stupid. Take to the hills. Gaez and his men can't follow too well off road. Get Zondra to Dr. Flores in town and call in this location to DC. Airstrike or whatever they want to do. I'm through protecting him."

For the first time, Chuck spoke from behind Sarah and Casey. "Why?" His voice was gentle.

"Because...because he told me..." she started to cry again. It seemed to her she'd been crying for days and couldn't have any tears left, but yet she started again. "...because he told me that the only kind of family was from blood, like it was magic or something...and...and..."

"And you knew he was wrong," said Chuck quietly.

Amy, still crying, nodded her head, her cheeks wet.

"Right. Conversation for another day, I guess. Let's get the girls and get out of here," said Chuck.

Casey bent down to take the pistol from one of the dead guards. It was a 9mm Beretta M-9. Sarah took the other man's gun, a huge Taurus .50 caliber Raging Bull.

Sarah handed the pistol to Casey and said, "Trade. Give me the Beretta. You take this cannon."

He gave her the Beretta. After a moment's hesitation, she gave one Glock back to Amy and the other to Chuck. Looking him in the eye she said, "Emergent circumstances."

Tucking the Glock into the back of his waistband, Chuck said, "I understand. Take their cell phones too."

They frisked the bodies, but found no phones. Casey grunted, "No phones so no distractions on guard duty. Good operational discipline. Gaez runs a tight outfit." Chuck shrugged off the disappointment. "But having one of their radios might help." Casey took the walkie-talkie from the belt on one of the men's bodies.

Amy and Sarah began to open the doors to the girls' rooms and talk to them quietly. Soon the hallway was filled the girls from the village. Chuck counted ten of them. That's the total Father Luis had told them. Good.

Casey and Chuck went to Zondra and bent to pick up her stretcher. Weakly, she murmured, "Leave me, guys. Get the hell out of here. You'll make better time without me."

Casey said, in an angry growl, "I'm a Marine, Rizzo. We don't leave a buddy behind. Shut that shit down right now."

Chuck said, more gently, but no less firmly, "Now you stop that silliness, Z. You upset Casey just now and, let me tell you, that's not a pretty sight. But we are going to need you to be quiet, ok? Can you do that?"

Zondra nodded. They had given her morphine in preparation for their attack on the guards. Hopefully, she wasn't in too much pain.

Sarah said to Amy, "Is the gate guarded?"

"Was. I killed him. And the roving guard they had making rounds. It's where I got the Glocks and your knives. Guess one of them took a liking to the blades. Everyone else should be asleep. We have about thirty minutes til dawn. Should be able to put some distance behind us."

"Right," said Sarah.

Sarah took point, followed by the local girls, followed by Chuck and Casey carrying Zondra, followed by Amy.

As they were crossing the hard packed earth of the compound, Chuck ran the scenario in his head. He didn't like the result of that exercise. They would be a decent distance into the hills, but not to the town. Even carrying Zondra, they could make ok time. He and Casey were in good shape and the added weight of the wounded woman wouldn't slow them down too much. Pablo was a wild card, and Chuck didn't want to count on that. But dawn would arrive and, with it, the discovery of the dead guards and the escape of the prisoners. The Gentle Hand transport would be brought to life and the armory opened and twenty men with guns would roar across the bridge in pursuit. That was bad. Could they outrun the men? The girls could scatter more easily than they could carrying Zondra. Most of the girls would make it to town, maybe all. Even if everyone made it to town before Gaez and his men did, the Gentle Hand would rip the town apart looking for the Americans. There would be a running gun battle among the local civilians. A disaster. Once Gaez's men made it across the bridge...

The bridge.

Chuck stopped and said, "Hold up, everybody." The group stopped too.

Chuck said to Amy, "The explosives are stored in an outbuilding, not the armory, right?"

"Yes," she said.

"Do you know which one?"

"Yes, it's got a sign. A sign for danger."

"Can you get in?" he asked.

"Probably, but it won't do us any good. The detonators are locked up separately in the armory. Without the detonators the stuff is useless."

"I know. Can you get cord?"

"Det cord? No, that's..."

"No. Regular cord. Like to tie things up. I need about fifty or sixty yards of cord," he said.

"Ummm..." said, Amy.

"I can," said Sarah. "There was cord wrapped around the scaffolding poles. The ones we used to make the stretcher. We may have to join a bunch of pieces together, but it ought to be long enough."

"OK. Go get it, please, Sweetie. Amy, take us to the building with the explosives." The local girls followed them, silent and scared. Sarah peeled off to the scaffolding pile.

The building door containing the explosives was secured with a simple padlock, which didn't stop Casey for long. Casey made a lever out of a piece of metal they found, and after a few moments the hasp had been ripped from the wooden doorframe to hang loose from the door itself, the locked padlock a useless decoration at that point.

It was dark in the room, but they could make out neat piles of C-4 explosives on shelves. On the floor was their backpack with the ten kilos of plastic explosive they had brought with them from Rio. Chuck picked it up and added another five kilos to it from the items on the shelves.

Sarah arrived with her hands full of cord. Chuck took the backpack with the explosives and began to shrug it over his shoulder.

Sarah said, "No. Give it to me. You're already carrying Zondra." Chuck handed her the bag, which she pulled onto her shoulder.

"Ok," said Chuck. "Let's go."

Casey had the front of the stretcher and said, over his shoulder, "What do you have in mind, Bartowski?"

"I'm going to knock down the bridge, Case."

"Without detonators? With some string? Gonna be a neat trick, kid. I'm not doubting you, but I have no idea what you are up to."

"The pistols," he said.

"Chuck, you can't set off C-4 by shooting a bullet or two into it. We both know that."

"Yeah, but an adabiatic shock should set it off," he said, as they were clearing the gate and walking the fifty meters or so between the compound and the start of the bridge roadway. "If I can isolate the system, it will initiate the shock wave at sufficient speed. In theory, at least."

Casey thought about that for a few moments and said, "I took the same classes you did and I still have no idea what you have in mind."

"That big cannon you took from the guard," Chuck said.

"Yeah?"

"Wrap it in C-4 and pump a smaller bullet from the smaller gun into the barrel of the bigger one," said Chuck. "The larger bullet will detonate in place and create the necessary shock wave."

They were silent for another forty meters or so until Casey said, in awe, "Holy shit, Chuck. Holy shit. That just might work." The older man chuckled deep in his chest. "Damn, kid. Glad you're on our side."

"Well, let's hope it works. I think we're in deep shit if it doesn't," said Chuck. "Stop here, guys." They were at the midpoint of the bridge, right by one of the towers. They put Zondra down. Chuck took the bag of explosives from Sarah and began to work the material into the shape he wanted, working it with his hands like modeling clay. Casey took the Taurus and got the Berreta M-9 from Sarah and made sure there was a round in the chamber and the safety was off, ready to fire. He looked around for something to connect the two guns.

While working with the explosive, Chuck saw Casey's dilemma and said, "A bootlace from Zondra. She doesn't need it at the moment."

Casey grunted and began to remove her bootlace.

His hands busy, Chuck said to Amy, "Did your brother do the car bomb?" He spoke gently and without anger.

Amy said, "Yes, but I swear I didn't know about it. I would never..."

"I believe you, Amy. The blonde woman. Whose picture we found in Gaez's apartment in Rio? Do you know who she was?"

Amy looked away and said, almost in a whisper, "Mom."

Sarah spoke in Portuguese to the girls and had four of them pick up Zondra and move her further down the road and off the bridge. The rest of the girls followed their friends.

The radio on Casey's belt came to life, demanding a response. He took it off his belt and grunted into it noncommittally. They shrugged at each other. It would be what it would be at this point.

The plastic explosive had been formed into a pocket. Casey slipped the larger pistol inside the pocket with the smaller pistol tied muzzle to muzzle with Zondra's shoelace. Chuck tucked the rest of the explosives around it to make a nice tight fit with little, if any, air pockets. He jammed the fifteen kilos of C-4 into the space between the railing and the bridge tower, with the handle and trigger of the smaller gun protruding from the bundle.

They hadn't noticed that the sky was brightening with the dawn. Suddenly, they heard shouting from the compound. The dead guards must have been discovered. They looked to each other, recognizing the urgency of the situation.

Sarah was tying together bits of cord. Chuck took an end and wrapped it around the trigger, double checking that the safety on the Beretta was off. He quickly triple checked each piece of the bomb.

The noise from the compound grew louder.

Sarah said, "Chuck, Amy and I have it from here. You and Casey go get the girls and get Zondra out of here. Amy and I can't carry her like you guys can. We can do this part now. It's just a few more knots. Amy and I can blow the bridge and run like hell. If Gaez's men are shooting across the gap, I'd rather Z and the girls were out of range."

He thought about it a bit. He didn't like the idea of leaving them there, but Sarah made a lot of sense. This would either work or not. If not, it wouldn't really matter if they were a few hundred meters down the road. But if it did work, they'd want the others to be out of range of Gaez's guns. Chuck gave her a quick kiss and said, "Ok, Sweetie. We'll just get the rest of them a ways down the road. Be safe. You too, Ames. Be safe."

Her hands busy making knots, Amy smiled at him and said, "Thanks, Chuck. Thank you." He understood that she was thanking him for more than the good wish for her safety.

He and Casey ran towards the far end of the bridge, following Zondra and the girls.

With the cord they were stringing, they were getting farther and farther from the bomb. Another few knots and they would be off the end of the bridge entirely and safe from the explosion.

They heard the sound of truck engines starting up in the compound.

Suddenly, Pablo on his horse was next to them with two spare horses. "O Sr. Chuck me enviou." [Mr. Chuck sent me.]

They were off the bridge by that point. The first SUV with the Gentle Hand men was just nosing through the gate. Hopefully, they were going to be left stranded on the other side when the bridge blew.

Sarah looked at Amy and said, "Here goes." Gently, she took up the slack in the cord and then pulled hard. One of the knots in the long connection of pieces of cord slipped loose and the now slack cord fell to the pavement. Sarah looked on in horror as all of the vehicles from the compound, loaded with Gaez's men, armed to the teeth, pulled out through the gates. Suddenly, Amy lunged at Sarah, the heel of her hand hitting the other woman hard at the hinge of her jaw. Caught by surprise, Sarah collapsed to the ground.

Amy went down on one knee and kissed Sarah on the hair on the side of her head, then turned to Pablo and said, "Quando ela acordar, diga que pedi desculpas por não comparecer ao casamento." [When she wakes up, tell her I said I'm sorry I won't be at the wedding.]

Turning and rising, Amy sprinted down the bridge to the center tower. She began to sob as she ran, crying and crying. It felt like crying was all she'd been doing for the last week.

Her right hand grabbed at the handle of the Beretta just as the last of the Gentle Hand trucks started across the bridge. The lead SUV slowed mid-bridge, with Gaez looking out of the passenger window at his sister, confused. But she didn't see him through her tears.

She heard Sarah's voice shout, "Nooooooooooooooo," but it was too late. She thought to herself, 'God, she'll make such a beautiful bride. I was really looking forward to being her bridesmaid.' In her mind's eye, she pictured Sarah in a wedding dress and almost smiled at the thought.

She pulled the trigger just as her brother's SUV came abreast of her.

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Sarah had been stunned by Amy's palm strike, but not knocked out. She was on her feet only a few moments later.

Sarah watched as Amy stood looking at the approaching trucks for a moment, her finger on the trigger. She screamed in horror, her eyes wide. Then she watched as her friend blew the explosives by hand. It seemed to be happening in slow motion, but Sarah knew that that was an illusion. The fire and pressure wave spread from the C-4, the flames engulfing Amy in their deadly embrace.

Her shattered body was thrown away from the tower and the edge of the bridge to impact the side of the first SUV with her brother in it, which veered to the other side of the bridge from the force of the explosion. It hit the railing along the far edge and came to a stop. The tower itself slowly collapsed, releasing the tension on the cables along that side as it came down. As the tension left the cables, the roadway began to sag, skidding the vehicles on it down to the lower edge on the side of the collapsing tower.

Amy's limp, lifeless body also slid down to the lower edge of the roadway, flipped over the railing and fell from view.

As all of the weight of the roadway was taken up by the cables from the still standing tower, the cables began to snap. As they did, the process accelerated as the remaining cables were called upon to hold up more and more weight with each separation. Now the opposite side, with the still standing tower was the lower, by far. One by one, the vehicles were pitched off the bridge into the ravine below. One or two of them exploded on impact, heard but unseen. In some cases, there had been Gentle Hand men in the beds of the pickup trucks. They tried to scramble to safety, but none of them made it.

Finally, there were no more trucks left on the bridge. Gaez and his men, and Amy, had been cast into the unseen depths of the ravine below. When the side with the standing tower parted all of the cables, the top portion of the destroyed tower with its cables and the roadway fell from view as well.

All that was left was a standing tower with limp cables and the broken base of a second tower. The sound of groaning metal reached her from the base of the ravine.

The Gentle Hand was gone.

Amy was dead.

Sarah fell to her knees next to the horses and began to cry.

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A/N2: Would this method of detonating C-4 work? I don't know. I couldn't find anything in my research to confirm and I found many articles explaining that the shock wave created by the gunpowder explosion in a bullet was too slow to ignite the high explosive. However, this method was used in a story I read by an author that I respect a great deal. I trust that he did his research and that his research uncovered something that mine didn't. So, I went with it.

A/N3: Yeah. I did it. I killed Amy. Let me know how you feel about it, please.