Hey everyone. It took me quite a while, but I finally got this story started. This is an idea Marc Vun Kannon came up with for a Chuck story. He put this idea out there, and I asked his permission to run with it. There are definite elements of both True Lies and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with some very Chuck-like elements thrown in. It took me a while to get a good start to it. Not to mention I've had to deal with still being injured and unemployed (lots of medical issues). The good news is, both of those issues are about to be resolved, which is a huge weight lifted from my shoulders.
As always, material is the property of NBC and Fake Empire Productions. Hope you enjoy the story. If you have suggestions for the story, feel free to tell me about them.
Thanks to Marc Vun Kannon for letting me run with this and don't forget to check out the Chuck FanFiction site on Facebook. And please leave reviews. Thanks!
CLANDESTINE ATTACK TEAM (CAT SQUAD)
"Tell me again: what plan is this?"
"This is Plan D."
"How many plans did we prepare?"
"All the way to Plan F. But Carina dies in Plan F."
"Should have gone with that plan."
"I CAN hear you."
Zondra Rizzo and Sarah Walker exchanged a smile neither Carina Miller nor Amy Monroe saw. Carina wouldn't actually be killed if they had to use Plan F. However, all four members of the CAT Squad were concerned they had already burned through their first three plans, and they were no closer to locating the hidden cache of jewels they came here to steal. But sometimes the most innocent of situations, like the party Amy was currently surveilling in a skintight dress that showed off considerable leg and ample cleavage, had their unpredictable pitfalls and elements of danger. Fortunately, this team always had each other's backs.
Sarah and Zondra kept an eye on things from a van, which was hooked up to the half-dozen wireless cameras Amy surreptitiously planted as she enjoyed the party. Carina, who could make the best cat burglars in the world kneel in reverence, lay in the ductwork of the mansion, awaiting instructions on where to go.
"There he is," Amy whispered, turning in the direction of the host, Augusto Gaez.
"The man of the hour," Zondra replied caustically.
"How do you want to play this?"
Sarah took in the scene around Gaez, who always seemed to have an entourage of beautiful women around him. Given he made himself very rich as an arms broker to terrorist organizations around the world, it didn't take much for hot women lacking in integrity and self-esteem to be attached to his hip.
"Think you can drag him away from the crowd, Amy?" Sarah asked.
Amy gave a little smile as she adjusted her dress to show even more cleavage. "Piece of cake."
Sarah rolled her eyes. She wouldn't have minded Carina or Zondra saying that, but immaturity and cockiness were not a good combination, and Amy was infamous for both. "Just make sure you get his smartphone. The files on there should give us what we need to get those jewels."
Sarah and Zondra kept watch on the monitor as Amy sauntered over to Gaez. Sarah muted her microphone as Amy chatted up Gaez. "So, who is this guy you want me to meet?" she asked Zondra.
"He works with Casey at Quantico. Casey said he's really nice. Great personality," Zondra replied.
"Isn't that guy code for 'ugly as hell'?"
"He's good looking. At least according to Casey."
"That doesn't help. Casey wouldn't know good looking if Scarlett Johansson walked up and gave him a French kiss."
Zondra quietly growled. She had been trying to get Sarah to return to the dating scene after her last relationship ended in disaster. Sarah had a hard time recovering from it, and it showed in her work. Zondra knew she had to get back on the horse for the sake of the team.
"I'm sure he's attractive, Sarah. He's a data analyst who crunches field intel for Casey's department. Case said he had just gotten out of a long relationship himself, so at least one person thought he was worth dating."
"What's his name?"
"Chuck Bartowski, I think."
"Bartowski? Not a promising-sounding name."
Zondra glared at her. "What do you want, Sarah? Were you hoping for a more Hollywood name? Should he call himself Chuck Stryker? Now THAT would not sound promising."
Sarah exhaled in begrudging agreement. "Point taken."
"Casey said he's a good guy. And I trust his judgement. Worst case scenario, you get out of the house and have a nice dinner on someone else's dime. It's not as if your entire world will get turned upside-down."
Sarah stared at the monitor as Amy started pulling Augusto away from the crowd. "Maybe you're right. I'm getting burned out from the job. Maybe I do need a night of fun to take my mind off of things."
Zondra smiled. "Worked for me. I just put myself out there and took a chance with John. Didn't take me long to like him."
"Yeah, we KNOW what you like about him," Sarah spat with ample derision.
"Hey, that's not the only reason why I like him," Zondra fired back. "But it certainly doesn't hurt."
Zondra paused. "Actually, it can. But sometimes a girl's in the mood for that," she said lasciviously, grinning and wiggling her eyebrows in the process.
Sarah sighed and did a facepalm. "Why did I ever agree to lead this team?"
Zondra snapped back into business mode. "Here we go."
Amy and Gaez made it to his bedroom. "Can a girl get a drink around here?" Amy asked him.
Gaez smiled and turned towards the small bar in his bedroom. Amy took the opportunity to pull out the bug she was hiding. She palmed it and walked up behind Gaez, reaching around to run her hands up and down his chest. She felt his smartphone in his jacket pocket.
She planted a kiss on his neck and nibbled on his earlobe. "Let's get this off of you," she purred, sliding Gaez's jacket off of him. She pretended to fold it over, reaching in and attaching the bug to the data port on his phone, and placed the jacket on a chair next to the bed.
Gaez turned and handed Amy her drink, which she downed in one shot, throwing the glass into the fireplace. Gaez's eyes widened in surprise but quickly morphed into a sleazy grin. He down his drink and threw it into the fireplace as Amy pounced, kissing him hard.
"We're linked up," Sarah said as she activated the decryption program the CIA provided to hack Gaez's smartphone. "I hope Amy can keep him busy."
Zondra chuckled. "No problem there. She'd mount a meat grinder if it winked at her."
Sarah laughed. "That was mean. True, but mean."
"Carina, ready to go?"
"Only for the last two hours," she replied in aggravation.
Zondra ignored Carina's whining as the decryption program finished its work and she found the file she needed. She read the information and compared it to the blueprint of Gaez's house they had previously obtained. "Ten meters down and make the second right turn you can."
Carina started crawling through the duct work per Zondra's instructions while Sarah kept an eye on Amy and Gaez just in case there was trouble. "Between the third and fourth grids, there should be a junction box that controls the electricity for the safe's countermeasures," Zondra said, watching as Carina moved forward. Carina made it to the junction box and removed the cover.
"Sever the 2nd yellow wire from the left," Zondra told her, looking at the wiring from Carina's body camera.
Carina snipped the correct wire and slid forward to the grate, removing it and sliding down into Gaez's office. She went to the safe and took out an electronic device to bypass the handprint identification lock. The safe unlocked, and Carina opened it.
The jewels weren't there.
"What the hell?" Carina hissed.
Suddenly an alarm went off. Gaez bolted up in his bed. He got off of Amy and quickly threw on a robe. "Stay here," he told her, taking off for his office.
Carina ran to the vent in the duct work she used to access the office and leaped upward, pulling herself into the duct work. She replaced the grate and crawled back quickly to where she started. In the van, Sarah and Zondra exchanged a look of shock. Sarah moved quickly to start the van.
"East side of the building," Zondra commanded as she watched Carina and Amy try to escape from Gaez's mansion. "Carina, take a right. There should be a vertical shaft that will get you to the basement. Amy, go down the stairwell next to the guest bathroom. That'll lead to the back of the kitchen."
Carina found the shaft and dropped down to the basement, making a landing she could teach to Olympic gymnasts. She ran for the stairs and went up to the back exit.
"Hold it," a security guard said, pointing a gun at her. Carina turned and then smiled.
Amy came up behind the guard and gave him a chop to the back of his head, knocking him out.
"And I save your ass again," she said smugly.
"Yeah," Carina replied with considerable sarcasm. "Do that two hundred more times and you'll even up the tab."
Sarah pulled up to them. Carina and Amy jumped into the van, and Sarah sped off into the night. She was boiling mad inside. She was determined to figure out what went wrong.
~/*\~
DATA OBTAINMENT GROUP (DOG TEAM)
"I don't want to do this."
"You have to. You NEED to do this."
"I don't NEED to go out on a date."
"You know how long it's been since you were on a real date? The last time you went out, John Travolta was still a Sweathog."
"Oh, shut up."
Chuck Bartowski exhaled in frustration. It was bad enough hacking into the servers of Bank of Maldives was taking much longer than he anticipated. But having his boss, John Casey, bust his chops about his social life…or lack thereof…was grating on his nerves.
"Ease up, Case," Bryce Larkin said from his cubicle at the law firm of Malone, Peterson, & Clavin, whom the NSA suspected of moving money for the Taliban. "It's not Chuck's fault Jill dumped him."
"Should I remind both of you what 'it's not you, it's me' actually means?"
"Not even a little," Chuck growled. He then breathed a sigh of relief; his malware program finally got him into the bank's systems. He began to search for the information they needed. "Bryce, do a search for any records with the code THX-1138. Those should be the files that link the law firm."
"Grimes, head to the shredding room," Casey added. "See if they have any hard copies that haven't been destroyed yet."
"You got it, Boss Man," Grimes replied with a little too much enthusiasm for Casey's tastes. Casey wasn't thrilled when he had Morgan Grimes added to his team, given he found out Chuck and he had been friends since kindergarten. Morgan used to cause more problems than he solved, but both Chuck and Bryce worked with him so he could learn the ropes. Morgan had no trouble dealing with any task, no matter how humiliating or nasty it was. And at least he was good enough to take orders without questioning them.
Morgan walked down the hall, pushing the mop and bucket he swiped to complete his disguise as a janitor. He picked the lock on the door to the copy room and went inside. He saw several reams of paper waiting to be destroyed. He clipped an adapter to the surveillance camera and waited for a minute for the device to draw the feed from the camera. He then programmed the adapter to loop the recording, making it possible for him to walk to the shredder without being seen. He started rummaging through the paperwork as Bryce came over their earpieces.
"Looks like there are a couple of folders with documents containing that code, Chuck," Bryce said, placing the USB device Chuck provided him to transfer the files wirelessly to Chuck and Casey in the van.
The transfer completed. "Got all of them, Bryce. Make your way out of there." Chuck started decrypting the files. "So, who is this person your girlfriend is setting me up with?" Chuck asked Casey.
"Her name is Sarah. She's an account executive at the same company where Zondra works. She's supposed to be very hot."
"OK, but can she rub two IQ points together?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes it matters!"
Casey shook his head in annoyance. "Zondra said she's very intelligent, As smart as her. That's good enough for me, given Zondra's the smartest lady I ever dated."
"I remember some of the women you dated before Zondra. Compared to them, Zondra is Stephen Hawking."
"You need to get out instead of moping around like a little bitch, Bartowski. Sarah's smart, attractive, and friends with Zondra. What more do you want?"
Chuck hung his head. Between his sister's constant badgering about moving on and Casey's brutish methods of trying to get him back in the dating game, it was really wearing on him. He got the feeling this might be the only solution to shut both of them up.
"OK, I'll do it," he said in resignation. "It's not like anything will come of it."
"Find anything, Grimes?" Casey asked as Bryce entered the van.
Morgan rifled through the pages in the stack faster. "Jackpot!" he exclaimed, finding a set of pages with routing numbers matching the Bank of Maldives.
He then heard footsteps in the hallway, which were getting louder quickly. "Someone's heading this way," he said nervously.
"I thought you looped the surveillance," Casey said with rising anger.
"I did. I did it just the way Chuck…" Morgan paused as he looked up at the device. "Is a blinking red light on the adapter a bad thing?"
"Yes!" Chuck exclaimed. "How could it be out of juice? I put in new batteries this morning!"
Someone began to pound on the door. "A little help?" Morgan squeaked.
Chuck froze momentarily. He then lunged for the keyboard, quickly typing in a series of commands. The door burst open, and two security personnel ran in.
"Freeze!" one of the guards said.
Right then, the lights went off in the building, taking the guards by surprise. Morgan bolted, shoving the guards to the side, and sprinted down the hallway. He rushed to the elevator and tried to hit the buttons.
"Chuck, put the power back on!" Morgan demanded. Chuck started typing, but Morgan couldn't wait. "Never mind!"
Morgan took off, grabbing a chair that was sitting in the hallway. He whipped it at the large window in front of him, shattering it. He pulled out a piton gun as he ran to the window and jumped out. He fired, the piton embedding itself to an outer wall across from the window. He landed safely on the ground as Casey pulled the surveillance van up to him. Morgan jumped in, and the van sped off before perimeter security could catch them.
"OK, that was way more exciting than I typically like my job to be," Morgan said, breathing heavily as he sat on the floor of the van next to Chuck.
"Hey, be glad I told you to bring that piton gun," Bryce said. "You weren't going to pack it."
Morgan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, stupid me. Every mission requires me to jump out of a window at a corporate office."
"Bartowski, are you certain that adapter was working?" Casey asked with increasing ire.
"Positive," Chuck answered.
"We better figure out what happened." Casey leaned back in the driver's seat. "Beckman's not going to like this."
Chuck sat there trying to figure out if he missed something.
~/*\~
Reveler's Hour, Washington, D.C.
March 22nd
7:45 PM EDT
Chuck and Casey sat at the bar, nursing a couple of beers while they waited for Sarah and Zondra to arrive.
"I should have ordered a cocktail," Chuck said as he fidgeted on his barstool. "I can't believe how nervous I am."
"Bad move," Casey replied. "Dating 101: never order hard drinks until your date does. You don't want her thinking you're an alcoholic."
"She wouldn't think that."
"Oh, really? You know how women think? Remind me again how you knew Jill would drop you like third-year French."
Chuck glared at him. "Has anyone ever told you that you're extremely talented at being an complete asshole?"
"You. Every single day."
Chuck shook his head in disgust. Casey then stood, and Chuck turned to see Zondra walk in.
"Hey, John," she said, walking up to Casey and giving him a kiss.
"You look great," he replied.
Zondra turned to Chuck and looked him up and down in approval. "As good as advertised," she told Casey as she extended her hand. "Zondra Rizzo."
Chuck shook her hand. "Glad to meet you. I'm Chuck."
"Sarah will be here in a second. She left her phone in the car."
"Not a problem," Casey replied. "I'll tell the hostess our party is here."
Casey went to the front of the restaurant. "You're not nervous, are you?" Zondra asked Chuck.
"Me? No, not at all."
"Then you may want to hide it better," Zondra said with a grin.
"No, it's just been a while, and…"
"Oh, here comes Sarah," Zondra interrupted. Chuck turned just as Sarah came around the corner.
Both stared at each other in shock.