A/N: If Mr. Colt owned Chuck, would that be good or bad? Only time will tell.
A/N2: Spoilers for The Dirty Dozen (from 1967) coming up. Sorry. No real way around it. Great movie though. Check it out if you can. And if anyone wants to look back, the takedown of Colt and his men took place in Chapter 103.
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The door opened and the guard brought in a huge orange-clad man with chains on his ankles and wrists all connected to a chain at his waist.
Chuck and Casey stood up as the man entered.
Chuck said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Colt."
Colt stopped and looked at both of his visitors. His basso profundo voice rumbled to Chuck, "I recognize you. You were part of the team that got me." He looked at Casey and said, "I don't recognize you, though."
"Yes, I was. Please sit," said Chuck. They sat. It seemed to Chuck that the chair under Colt might have groaned with the strain if it hadn't been made of metal.
"This is Colonel Casey and my name is Chuck Carmichael." Colt remained silent. "I think we need to talk."
"I have nothing to say to you, Chuck." He said the name with derision.
"Perhaps. I don't really know. You see, I don't know how happy you are here. How comfortable. Maybe you like the food? Maybe there are some good movies on the TV in your cell? I just don't know."
"That's the carrot, huh? Improved conditions. So, you're good cop, then. And the Colonel here is bad cop? Not very impressive technique. I'd think you idiots could come up with something more imaginative."
For the first time, Casey spoke, leaning forward a little bit, to emphasize his words, "Listen to me, shit-for-brains. Chuck's sister glued your entire team to a magnet. Then his fiancée threw your gigantic ass around like it was a beachball. Those are the women in his life. You don't have any idea at all what he can do to you. I strongly suggest that you give him a measure of respect. Your well-being, and that of your men, depends on it."
Colt was clearly taken aback by the news about Chuck's sister and fiancée. He studied Chuck for a few moments and said, "Is that right? Dr. Bartowski is your sister? The blonde agent is your fiancée?"
"Yes. It's true," said Chuck.
"Ok. Those ladies are impressive as hell. Respect indeed. What can I do for you, Mr. Chuck?"
"Just Chuck."
"Ok," said Colt.
"Just so you know before we get started, I am not a spy. With that in mind, I'm going to do two things in this conversation that a spy would not do. I'm going to tell you some things … spies don't normally share...and I'm going to tell you the truth. You probably don't believe me...I don't blame you, but there's nothing I can do about that. This meeting is not a continuation of your interrogation. Until I've finished, you don't have to say a thing you don't want to. Do you understand?"
Colt nodded.
"Good. I've read the transcript of your previous interrogations and those of your men. I'm prepared to accept that you have told us everything you know. I suppose you might be keeping some details from us, but for the sake of this discussion, I am going to assume that you were not.
"So, let's go back to last February and your attack on the NSA headquarters to steal the Cipher and the Intersect Data Drive. You got the Cipher, but not the Data Drive. You fled, leaving your man Rostron behind. Agent Walker, my fiancée, pretended to rescue him from custody and he led her directly, and me and a team of NSA agents indirectly, to you. All of this you know.
"Here's what you don't know. While we were using your man to lead us to your hideout, this call was made to the local emergency operator. It happened almost forty minutes before we found you."
Chuck pressed a button on his computer and the recording of the call began to play.
Operator, female voice: "Emergency Services. What's your emergency?"
Caller, male voice: "Well, I don't know if it's an emergency. I mean, I guess it might be."
Operator: "Tell me, Sir, what's going on?"
Caller: "Well, I saw something. I saw some guys with guns. Like rifles and stuff like that. They were getting out of a van."
Operator: "Where did you see that, Sir?"
Caller: "Near the airport. One of the warehouses. On Traffic Drive. Off 176."
Operator: "Do you know which one? Which warehouse?"
Caller: "Umm, 1700. The warehouse at 1700 Traffic Drive. Near the airport."
Operator: "Ok, Sir, thank you. Are you sure they weren't police?"
Caller: "I don't know. They weren't wearing uniforms. That's what made me nervous...made me call. No uniforms."
Operator: "Can you describe them?"
Caller: "Not really. It was sort of dark. Only a light on at the door to the warehouse. But one of them was a gigantic black guy. Like really huge."
Operator: "Thank you, Sir. Please give me your name and cell phone number so we can contact you."
There was a click as the call was disconnected.
Operator: "Sir? Sir? Damn."
The recording ended.
As the call had been going on, Colt had begun to frown. By the time it ended, he was shaking his head. He took a breath to speak, but Chuck raised his hand to stop him.
"One more thing, before you comment on that call. Sometime after you took the Cipher and before we retrieved it, someone inserted a virus that affected the NSA systems when we activated the Cipher. It almost killed three people. So, think about all of that for a moment or two."
Colt looked at Chuck silently. Long moments passed. Finally, Colt said quietly, "No one could have seen what the caller described because we didn't have any long guns with us in the van and I didn't get out of the van outside the warehouse. Fulcrum hired us and then set us up to be taken so they could feed a trojan horse into your system. I think the man who checked the Cipher is the same one who called 911. I think I recognized his voice. He must have inserted the virus when he pretended to be checking it."
Chuck said, "That's exactly what we decided ourselves. Doesn't make sense that Fulcrum would feed in a virus unless they intended for us to recover the Cipher. And that made you and your team pawns to be sacrificed. They didn't know that we would be successful in tracking you, so they made sure that you would be found regardless. The NSA had already sent out an alert about you and your team. I called off the Maryland State Police so that our team would get to you first."
"So, Fulcrum fucked us over and then left us here to rot in a black site," said Colt, with appropriate bitterness.
"Looks that way," said Chuck.
"Why tell me this, Chuck? There's nothing I can do about it. I wasn't hiding anything during the interrogation. Now that I know how I got here...even if I hate Fulcrum...there's nothing more I have to give you to mess with them." He rattled the chains on his arms a bit and continued, "And I'm not in a position to launch my own war on them."
"Ok. Let's look at you and your team a bit. Mike Colt, Captain United States Army Special Forces. Honorable service in Afghanistan and Iraq both. Sergeant First Class Martin Rostron, also Special Forces and also served honorably. Sergeant Jackson Hershey and Sergeant Nick Frankenheimer. Same thing. All four of you spec ops guys and US combat veterans. You were in the same A-team. They were your guys...under your command. What went wrong, Colt? How did you end up traitors?" Colt reacted to the word with a scowl and a quiet grunt. "Don't like the word? Ok. Pick another word that fits the situation. I'll use that word to make you more comfortable. You took money from Fulcrum to attack the National Security Agency of your own country. If that's not traitorous I don't know what is."
Colt sighed. "Jack needed money. More money than he could make working for the government. His daughter is sick. She needs a transplant. Even when the rest of us threw in everything, we were hundreds of thousands of dollars short. So,…"
"Oh, come on, Colt," growled Casey, rolling his eyes. "I had to turn to a life of crime to get a little girl a transplant? What a tropey bit of crap. Who writes this stuff for you, anyway? You expect us to believe that bullshit?"
"Believe it or don't believe it. I really couldn't give a shit, Colonel. What are you going to do to me at this point? Anyway, we started to take jobs to get the money for his daughter. Small ones at first. We got a decent rep as a tight team. Success led to bigger jobs. We had done two prior jobs for Fulcrum. I didn't expect a bonus, but I didn't expect to get shafted by those bastards either."
"Yeah. I guess I can see that. Well, you're in a world of shit now, obviously" said Chuck, shaking his head. "Unless..."
Colt looked at Chuck with sudden interest.
Chuck continued, "A few days ago, I watched an old movie from the '60's. The Dirty Dozen."
"I've seen it. So, you want to let me out of prison to go fight Nazis?"
"No, Fulcrum. And not just you. Your men with you. As a team. For one mission only and then it's right back here. Think of it like a field trip. You must be pretty bored here. How many push-ups can you do in your cell?"
"I remember that movie. They all die," he said.
"Not so. Charles Bronson survives," said Chuck.
"One out of twelve. Sucky odds," said Colt. "And anyway, I always cry at the end when Jim Brown dies on the lawn."
"Oh, yeah. Me too," said Chuck.
Casey turned to him and said, aggrieved, "You told me you weren't crying."
"Oh, come on, Case. Everyone cries at that part," said Chuck.
Casey grunted.
"I don't want to be Jim Brown," said Colt.
"You can be Charles Bronson," said Chuck.
"My guys..."
"You can all be Charles Bronson. All four of you."
Colt sat there silently for a few moments then said, "How long?"
"Few days probably," said Chuck.
"And then right back here?"
"Sorry, but yeah. You did attack the NSA, you know. Fair's fair," said Chuck, raising his hands in a balancing gesture.
Colt shrugged. "What's the job?"
"We have a time and a place where the leader of Fulcrum is going to be. We want to stake it out but want to use some guys for the job who are strangers to the IC. Guys that won't be recognized. My own guys will be there in various disguises and with a boatload of electronic surveillance gear, but this is too important to mess it up by having us spook the guy...or gal, I guess. We need a solid ID so we can take them out."
"What if we take you up on it and then disappear? Just run when you let us out of here?"
"Yeah. I thought about that. I am sort of hoping that you won't do that. I am hoping that you are pissed off at Fulcrum for putting you here. So, you'll want to do the job to get a bit of payback on those a-holes. When the job is over, yeah, that would probably occur to you. But here's the thing. My team and I are really fucking good at what we do. Really fucking good. We would find you. And then Casey and my fiancée would kill you. I'm not threatening you, Colt. I'm simply telling you what would happen. I'm a bit soft hearted, to be honest, and I'd argue against a termination order, but all things considered, I'd be outvoted on the matter. So, that would be that."
"I'll have to talk to my men," he said. "How long will it take to arrange a conference call or whatever?"
"I think we can arrange something pretty quickly," said Chuck.
Casey went to the door and knocked. One of the guards opened it. Casey said, "Bring in the others."
"Sir, that's against protocol," said the guard, surprised.
Casey pointed to his own face. "Do I look like I give a flying fuck about your protocol? If you think you have the authority to disobey my orders, son, I suggest you go check with someone smarter than you. I have more authority than anyone who has ever set foot in this garden of paradise. Now make it happen before I get impatient."
Casey closed the door and sat back down.
"The guys are here?" asked Colt.
"Yeah," said Casey. "All four rotten apples in one basket."
"Are they ok?"
"You can ask them yourself in a moment," said Chuck.
They sat in silence for a moment and then Colt said, "Your sister...she's a goddamn force of nature. Going up against her wrecked us."
Both Chuck and Casey chuckled at that a little bit. "Yeah," said Chuck. "You have no idea. But you are one hundred percent right. She's a force of nature. You don't want to get in her way."
"Speaks well of you," Colt said.
"Naw. I'm just the little brother," said Chuck with a lopsided grin.
A few moments later there was a knock on the door. The guards led in Colt's three men.
One of them smiled a bit and said to Colt, "Hey, boss."
Chuck said to the guards, "Lock all four to the table." He pointed to the ring in the middle of the metal desk. Once the guards had done so, Chuck and Casey ushered the guards out and left Colt and his men.
Chuck turned back to them and said, "Shout for me when you make a decision."
Closing the door, he and Casey stood a bit down the corridor, leaning their backs against the wall.
Casey said, "Think they'll go for it?"
"Yeah. I do. They have nothing to lose and only upside with this offer."
"They'll try to escape," said Casey.
"Of course. I wasn't going to scare them enough with the threats about you and Sarah killing them. Those guys saw combat already. They've been shot at. They'll chance it. But, I think, only after they mess up Fulcrum a bit."
"What's your plan for that? When they try to escape? We can't have them wandering around knowing about the Intersect," Casey asked.
"Yeah. I don't have a plan yet. Something will come to us though. It always does."
"Come to you, you mean," said Casey
It was Chuck's turn to simply grunt.
About five minutes later the men in the room shouted for Casey and Chuck to come back.
"Here we go," said Chuck, levering himself off the wall.
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An hour or so later, all six men were in a black van driving to the airport. The nearest airport to Gooding didn't have a runway long enough to handle the Citation X, so it was a bit of a drive.
At that moment, though, they weren't making forward progress.
Chuck said into the speaker, "Five double cheeseburgers. Three large fries. Three chocolate shakes. Ok?"
Colt turned back to his guys. "That's good for me. You guys want anything?"
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AN3: So, we have Colt and three new guys to meet and get to know. The younger readers will think of The Suicide Squad rather than The Dirty Dozen. Me, though, I'm going OG. Let me know what you think, if you could spare a minute. All the best, my friends.