A/N: Nobody owns anything. A state of nature, apparently.
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Sarah and Chuck were wrapped around each other in his bed and sleeping peacefully, her feet snuggled up against his for warmth, when Sarah's cell phone began to buzz. She roused herself to take it from the side table and look at it. The call was from Casey.
"Ummmm?" she managed.
"We are wheels up for New York in two hours. Just got a call from Beckman. They want us with the New York team for the takedown of the Militos."
"Huh. Why?" she asked, still a little groggy from sleep.
"Dunno. My guess is Chuck. Between his study of the Demetrios family business yesterday and the Intersect, he might come in useful there," Casey said.
"Umm, yeah." She glanced at her watch. "You'll have to fly though. I was drinking last night and it's too soon for me." The rule of thumb for a pilot was 'twelve hours from bottle to throttle.'
"Naw, we have a couple of crew this time. We're just passengers. You and Chuck can go back to sleep on the plane," he said.
She chuckled, "Yeah. I just might do that. Thanks, Case." She hung up her phone and nudged Chuck, who was mostly awake. "We're going to New York, sweetie."
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The Cessna Citation X (as in the number ten, not the letter 'ecks') was a beautiful aircraft. Although it had room for twelve passengers to travel luxuriously, its two pod mounted jet engines made it the fastest civilian jet in production. This particular plane had been purchased by an African warlord and acquired by the CIA as part of a sting to destroy the man's blood diamond network. Team Bartowski had a very comfortable ride eastward as the two man CIA flight crew handled all the flying duties. Sarah had never flown one of this type of aircraft and hovered near the cockpit to talk to the pilots about its handling.
They flew down the Hudson River towards Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, giving the passengers a postcard beautiful view of the lights of Manhattan on the left side of the plane. Chuck was huddled by the small window next to him, thrilled at the sight of the famous skyline, and said to Sarah, "Look. It's the Empire State Building. King Kong climbed it. It was Doc Savage's headquarters. It's one of the most famous buildings ever. See that? That's a dirigible mooring mast at the top."
"You ever been up there?" asked Sarah.
"No, but I really want to one day. I've never even been to New York. This is the first time," he said, excitement bubbling in his voice and giving her an excited grin. She grinned back. His enthusiasm was infectious.
"I love it here," she said. "If we have time when the mission is wrapped up, I'll show you around. It's one of my favorite cities."
Between the length of the flight and the time difference from the west coast, it was already dark by the time they arrived in New Jersey. The late November evening was cold and they pulled their jackets around them to protect against the chill. Grabbing their gear bags, they ran across the tarmac from the jet to the helicopter, which was waiting for them with the rotors turning. Casey took Chuck's shoulder and bent him almost double out of concern that his tall frame would come too close to the spinning rotor blades over his head. Stowing their gear bags, they clambered aboard. Just as soon as they were buckled in the helicopter lifted off. It was Chuck's first time in a helicopter, but with everything going on he didn't have much time to savor the experience.
From the helicopter, he saw the spotlit Statue of Liberty in the harbor and what he assumed was Ellis Island in the foreground. The lights of lower Manhattan's hundreds of buildings shined brightly, reflected in the black water of the harbor. The night was a little overcast and there were no stars or moon visible, but that just made the lights of the City seem even more vibrant. Sarah pointed out the gap in the skyline where the World Trade Center used to stand. It was a sobering reminder that what they did had real consequences for real people.
The short flight south took them away from Manhattan to an industrial harbor area just east of Bayonne, New Jersey. They could see multi-colored stacks of the twenty-foot long box-like containers that had revolutionized the shipping industry with their ease of transport and ability to be quickly and easily loaded and unloaded from ships. (And which had also had the side-effect of putting longshoremen worldwide out of work.) There were warehouses and train tracks surrounding the area. Several ships were docked in various stages of being loaded or unloaded by the huge container cranes decorating the harbor landscape like strange pre-historic birds.
A federal agent dressed in all-black tactical gear met them and brought them inside a warehouse. One end had been set up as a makeshift command center with communications gear and weapons sitting on top of wooden crates. There were about a half dozen agents, all dressed for combat and festooned with weapons. A couple of officials from the Port, wearing jackets with the Port insignia, stood off to one side, looking uncomfortable. One agent with a Colt 9mm submachine gun slung over his shoulder broke off from the group to approach the new arrivals. He was medium-sized with close cropped hair and a no-nonsense demeanor.
"Hey," he said. "I'm Barry Longshore. You guys must be..."
From behind him a blond woman agent yelled, "SARAH." She flew at Sarah and wrapped her in a huge hug, her weapons and gear clattering.
Smiling, Sarah said, "Amy. Hi. This is great. I didn't know you were on the New York team."
"And I didn't know you were one of the hotshots coming in from LA. Half of the CATS on this mission. This is great."
Sarah turned to the rest of her team and said, "Guys, this is Agent Amy Turner. Amy, Major John Casey, he's NSA, but actually okay despite that. And Chuck Carmicheal."
"Hi, guys. Great to meet you both," Amy was grinning widely and seemed to be about to burst with excitement as she shook their hands. "Carmicheal, huh? From Union Station. Wow. That's just great. It's so cool to meet you. You have tons of fans back at Langley. Half the girls in the place would love to get their hands on you. I thought you'd be older." She gave him a frank appraisal from top to bottom and giggled.
Sarah scowled. Chuck smiled, a little embarrassed, and said, "Nice to meet you, Agent Turner."
"No, no, no. Everybody just calls me Amy," she said.
Casey shook her hand, "Nice to meet you, Amy." He turned, and said, "Longshore" shaking the man's hand. "What's the status?"
"Demetrios is huddled with a half dozen men in a shed. He's not near any of the containers from the ship, so we still don't know which one to look in. There are almost 8,000 twenty-foot containers from the Militos and maybe a dozen forty-foot containers, so we might not have time to search them all before whatever clock they have running runs out. This section of the Port is locked down, though, so none of them are leaving tonight."
"Why did we let the ship dock in the first place? Why did we allow it to unload? Wouldn't it make more sense to intercept it at sea? Search it there?" asked Sarah.
"Yeah," said Longshore. "Unfortunately, snafu all around. The word didn't make it up the chain of command to the Coast Guard in time. By the time it did, the Militos had already docked and begun unloading. We were able to close this section of the Port, though, to stop the package from leaving. We couldn't blame national security for the closing of the Port without alerting Demetrios, so we came up with a bullshit computer problem excuse. The people using the facilities here are totally pissed off. They have deadlines to meet and we're screwing them up. Can't say I blame them. We can't keep it going too much longer without coming clean about the reason, and we don't know when the deadline for the package expires or when Demetrios' customer will show. We are out of time and patience, so we're going to go in and wrap Demetrios up. We can start to question him then. We were going to go in a half hour ago, but waited for you to arrive. Want to suit up and join us?"
Casey said, "Hell yeah."
Chuck raised his hand to speak, "Ummm...have we tried to talk to him?"
The other agents looked at him like he was crazy, except Casey and Sarah, of course. Longshore said, "No. We've kept our distance and observed him. I'm not sure walking up to him and asking which container holds the package is going to work too well, Carmicheal."
Sarah said, "Well, it did pretty well last night. Maybe Chuck's idea is a good one. Maybe we can avoid a gunfight."
"Why would we want to do that?" asked Casey. Chuck and Sarah just looked at him. He shrugged and grunted, but there was a twinkle of humor in his eyes.
Chuck asked, "Sarah, do you speak Greek? In case they are speaking Greek to each other."
"Not fluently, but I'll understand what they are saying," she said. "I agree with Chuck. Let's go talk to them." She turned to the two men from the Port. "Hey, guys. Can we borrow your jackets?" The men nodded.
Amy said, "We should go in with you."
Sarah said, "Amy, we are the only ones dressed in civvies." Amy shrugged to concede the point. "Chuck and I will go in together. If we strike out, you guys can follow up heavy. It's worth a shot."
There was a quick discussion of the pros and cons, but soon enough Longshore agreed.
Wearing jackets identifying them as Port officials, Chuck and Sarah walked over to the huge open-sided shed where Yari and his men were waiting in the cold. Approaching them, Sarah said, "Hey. I'm looking for the master of the Militos. That one of you guys?" It was pretty clear to Chuck and Sarah that most of the men were armed.
Yari Demetrios stepped forward. he was a somewhat heavy set man in his sixties with a round closely shaven head and a mustache. "I own that vessel. I am Yari Demetrios. What is this computer delay? I have a ship to finish unloading and cargo to move out of the Port."
"Yeah," said Sarah, grumpy, overworked, and impatient. "You and everybody else, Mr. Demetrios. I'm Walker. This is Carmicheal. We have to do this by hand tonight. The computers are fried. No idea why. Sets us back about thirty years, I guess. Anyway, the quicker we get to it the quicker we can get your boxes out of here. We've been doing this all day and have another three ships to go, so I'm really not in the mood for this. I need you to look at this manifest with me. Let's do the easy ones first. What containers are staying here in warehouses?"
Yari came over to her and put on his reading glasses to look at the manifest. She handed him a pen and, comparing Sarah's manifest with one of his own, he started to mark the numbers of the containers which would not be leaving the Port area immediately. There were about three hundred such containers, so the work took a while.
"Ok," said Sarah. "Good start. We can get those moved into warehouses right away. Any of them need special treatment? Refrigerated or something like that? Something we have to handle first? Any priorities?"
One of the other men said, with a glance at his watch, "To pakéto lígei se 15 leptá, anexártita apó tin kólasi pou periéchei." Shit, thought Sarah. Fifteen minutes before the package expires and Demetrios and his men don't even know what it is.
"What's that mean? Is that a priority container?" she asked.
Yari was about to answer when a new voice spoke up, speaking to Yari, "Geia sou, bampá." [Hi, Dad.] 'Oh, shit,' thought Sarah. This just goes from bad to worse. Yari broke off from Sarah and the manifest to greet Stavros, who was explaining in Greek that his mom had guilted him into coming east to visit with his dad despite his plans otherwise.
Sarah and Chuck exchanged a look and Sarah murmured, both for Chuck and for the waiting team, "This is bad. And the package expires in less than fifteen minutes and they don't know what it is."
"Shit." Chuck contemplated what 'expires' entailed and didn't much like where his imagination was taking him. Just as his thoughts were heading into such dark territory, the other shoe dropped.
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Longshore said, "Fifteen minutes? Holy fuck. Carmichael and Walker better pull this out. There's no time for any other alternative." He sounded heavily stressed.
"Yeah," responded Casey. "And what's worse, the new arrival is going to make them."
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Stavros said, "Chuck? Sarah?"
Yari said, in English, "You know them?"
"Yeah. They were in my club last night. Chuck fixed my computers. What are you guys doing here?" He was totally confused.
Yari didn't wait for an answer. He drew a pistol and pointed it at the two fake port officials. "I'll tell you what they are doing here. They are after the package." Each of his half dozen men also pulled out their weapons and pointed them at Chuck and Sarah.
Stavros said, "Holy shit."
"So, tell me. Who else knows about the package?" he asked.
Chuck smiled happily and said to Stavros, "Hey, Stavros. Good to see you. You have a good flight?"
Stavros still looked confused. Yari didn't and stepped forward to touch the barrel of the gun to Chuck's forehead. He said, "Who else knows about the package?"
Looking at the gun, sort of cross-eyed, Chuck said, "The CIA."
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Longshore said, "That's it. They're blown. We're going in. Priority is to collect Yari and our agents, Carmichael and Walker. We have to make Yari give up the package and do it now."
"No," said Casey. "Hold tight."
Longshore, Amy and the other agents looked at him with surprise. After all, his partners were being held at gunpoint.
"Let Carmicheal work," he said, in a deep growl.
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Chuck continued. "And the NSA. And Homeland Security and the FBI. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. Oh, and Coast Guard. Why do you think the Port is shut down, Yari? You think it's a coincidence? But Yari, I have to tell you, and it's just my opinion, that that was a really stupid question. Seriously. Who knows about the package? Obviously, if Sarah and I are here everybody knows about the package. So, a better question is what are we doing about it? That one I can answer. We are trying to get the container number from you in time to defuse the bomb."
Yari's men looked to one another with confusion. "What bomb?" asked Yari.
"The bomb that's going to explode in less than 15 minutes, Yari. That bomb. Want to know the question you should have been asking? Did you ever ask yourself where your customers are? Why aren't they here to pick up their package? Why would they stay away when there's like ten minutes left before it 'expires'" Chuck used air quotes to show what he thought of the word. "Now that's a question I can answer. They're not here because they are a hundred miles away. They don't want to be anywhere in the neighborhood when that thing goes off."
"I gotta tell you something. You want to know what really surprises me, Yari? You've always been a practical business man. Not at all political. You come from a long tradition of Greek shipping men who augmented their income with smuggling. Maybe it's a stereotype, I don't know, but Greeks seem to have an arms length relationship with authority. Smuggling is just the same as any other shipping, so long as you don't really care what the government thinks. But Yari, you've never been political. You smuggle for all sides. You smuggle into Iran for the Israelis. You smuggle into Israel for Hezbollah. You smuggle into Hong Kong for Taiwan. You don't care. It's just money. The only real thing important to you is your family. Your children and grandchildren. You are a good father and grandfather. You always attend your grandkid's birthday parties, and you have seven grandchildren so that's a real commitment. And from everything I can tell, your family loves you back."
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Longshore said, "How does he know all this?"
"Carmichael does his homework when we start a mission," said Casey. "In addition to everything else, he's our analyst. And the kid's got a memory that can't be beat."
Longshore nodded in appreciation. Amy listened with rapt amazement as Chuck kept working on Yari.
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Chuck continued. "Why would you suddenly turn into a political terrorist? There's no money to be made and it promises nothing but destruction for your business and your family."
Yari lowered the gun from Chuck's head and said, "You're wrong. It's not a bomb. I don't know what it is, but they told me it was safe." Yari's men also lowered their weapons somewhat.
"Got you. Okay then. They told you it was safe. Well then, that's just dandy. Let's go home, Sarah. They told him it was safe. So Yari, when it blows up, and you, your men and Stavros...oh, and me and Sarah, are all dead. You be sure to lodge a formal complaint because the men who wanted to blow up New York lied to you. Did you know that not all of the 9-11 hijackers knew that it was a suicide mission? They were useful, but stupid."
"What are you talking about? Why would we all be dead?"
Chuck spoke with clear exasperation, his voice rising in volume. "Yari, for God's sake, THINK. The thing has a ticking countdown, Yari. Why? What happens when the clock gets to zero? The roast is burnt? It's time to change the oil? Come on, man. Think. It's a bomb. Furthermore, what kind of bomb would make any sort of difference in this location? Conventional? C-4? Dynamite? Naw, goes bang and damages the Port facilities. So what? Dirty, chemical or biological? Nope, the prevailing winds would take that stuff out over the water of the harbor and disburse it. So what? There's only one kind of bomb at this location that would have any lasting effect."
Stavros said, "Oh, my God, Dad. He's talking about a nuke. Holy shit."
Yari went pale. His men began to fidget and look nervously among each other. "Can you stop it?" asked Yari.
"Honestly, I don't know. I can certainly try."
Sounding almost as if he were in pain, Yari said, "You don't understand. These men are dangerous."
"Yeah. And you faced down the Crimini mob in that business over Malta. You don't get scared too easily, Yari. You have courage, that much I know."
"They will come after my children, these men. My grandchildren."
"There are children in New York, too," said Chuck quietly.
Yari seemed to wilt at that and said, "Alright, alright. You win. You are looking for container number..."
There was a loud BOOM and Yari flew backwards with a spray of blood from his chest. Chuck was just registering the fact that Yari had been shot by someone when he and Stavros were tackled to the ground by Sarah, behind some boxes for cover. The second round from the rifle impacted where Stavros had been standing. The gun continued to fire, rounds coming down onto Yari's men, who had not reacted as quickly as Sarah had. At least two of them had been shot before the rest found cover. After making sure that Stavros was under cover, Sarah peaked over the top of the box she had taken cover behind, hoping the box was filled with some big heavy machinery instead of cotton balls. She said, addressing Casey and Longshore, "Guys, we are taking fire from a sniper on one of the container cranes. Yari has been hit. And some of his men too."
Chuck said, "Cover me, Sarah." Sarah looked behind her to see Chuck lunge from cover towards the wounded Yari. Desperately, she stuck her head up over the box and began to fire her S&W 5906 towards the sniper. She knew she had almost no chance of hitting him, the distance was much farther than her pistol could effectively reach, but hopefully she could distract the shooter long enough to help Chuck. Whatever the cause, his next shot at Chuck went wide and ricocheted off the concrete with a spang noise. Chuck grabbed the back of Yari's jacket collar and threw himself back under cover, dragging the wounded man with him. He left a long and wide trail of blood on the concrete floor.
Casey, in her ear, said, "Roger that. We're coming in."
Chuck was bent over Yari, his ear near Yari's mouth to hear his whispered words. Longshore's team came in with guns drawn and Yari's men started to shoot at them. Sarah saw Chuck pat Yari's shoulder and say, "We'll do our best." He turned to Sarah and said, urgently, "We gotta go." A very serious looking Amy took up position with a rifle of her own and began to take careful aimed shots at the shadow that was the sniper in the crane. There was no return fire.
Sarah grabbed Stavros and said, "Tell your dad's men to stop shooting. These are our guys. They didn't shoot your dad."
Stavros, more than a little freaked out, started yelling in Greek. Then he turned to Chuck and said, "Go. Go defuse the bomb. Good luck, Chuck."
Sarah took an extra second and placed Stavros' hand over the bleeding wound in his father's chest. "Keep the pressure there, hard." He nodded once.
Chuck said, with a glance at his watch, "Casey, we're heading to Building 5. That's where the package is. We've only got about three minutes left."
Casey responded, "I'll be right behind you. Clear things up here first. Good luck, guys."
Chuck and Sarah made their way from cover to cover away from the sniper. The sound of the gunfire from Yari's men had slowed.
They found Building 5 less than a minute later. Running inside Chuck spotted the container that Yari had indicated. He said, "Here. Here it is." They opened the container. Inside was a cylinder with rounded ends. Shaped like an enormous blue steel lozenge with a heavy seam encircling it lengthwise and several raised seams encircling its circumference. In the front of it was a digital clock counting down. It registered less than two and a half minutes remaining.
Chuck ran around the device, looking for a ready access panel. There was none. The device was smooth steel, except for plates here and there which had been bolted in place. Without a heavy wrench, they would not have been able to open them, so Chuck ignored them. He took out his multitool and pried off the panel with the countdown clock.
He hadn't flashed, so he was just using his skills with tech to explore the inside of the device. It confused him. There was no power wire coming from the timer. It seemed to be merely a timer, not a trigger. The trigger must be elsewhere. He used his penlight to try to see beyond the mass of wires in front of him. To see something inside the device that the wires were connected to. There were what looked like refrigeration tubes or maybe they were heating coils.
Sarah said, "Forty-five seconds. How are you doing, Chuck?"
"Not great. I can't see much inside it and what I can see is crap. It's not a detonator. I can't even see any explosives. Let me look at the other side," he said. There was fear in his voice, but no panic.
Twisting around, he tried again looking the other way inside the device. No joy. He couldn't see anything useful to him to defuse the bomb. He considered for a moment to just rip out the digital clock, but dismissed that as petty vandalism.
"Ten seconds, Chuck." Sarah's voice was betraying the stress they both felt. He had struck out. He couldn't think of anything to stop this machine.
He looked up from his kneeling position and gazed at her with a mix of love and sadness. "I'm sorry. I can't stop it."
Six seconds.
He stood up and took both her hands in his.
Chuck squeezed her hands and said, "I love you, Sarah. That's all that matters." He closed his eyes.
Five seconds
Sarah was frantic. She was about to die and she wanted to respond to Chuck. To tell him how she felt about him. To let him know before they died. He deserved to know. But her dad's voice came to her again. 'There's no such thing as love. It's not real. It's all a big con. You're smarter than that, honey. Don't fall into that trap.' The same mantra he had repeated to her over and over again throughout her childhood, attempting to turn her into the ultimate conwoman. Fagin to her Oliver. But...it didn't work. Something inside of Sarah shifted, profoundly and irrevocably. In her head she screamed, "SHUT UP, DAD. YOU'RE AN IDIOT."
Aloud, she said, "I love you, Chuck." His eyes popped open and looked into hers. She glanced at the clock.
Three seconds
Looking back to Chuck, she repeated, "I love you." Squeezing his hands, she didn't look away or close her eyes, but stared into his with all the love in her heart. "I love you," she said again, quietly. Her lips twitched slightly in what might have been the beginnings of a smile. This was it. In her last moments of life, she would be looking into the eyes of the first man she had ever loved, the only man she ever would love. Her Chuck. It felt right. She realized that their love was the only thing she had ever known that had any meaning at all. In that moment everything else in her life blew away like the meaningless chaff it was. Chuck was right, of course. This was all that mattered. It was incredible given their situation, but that clarity brought her a peace that she had never known.
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Casey spun through the open door of the building with his weapon in the ready position and saw Chuck and Sarah holding hands in front of the bomb. He saw the timer turn from "2" to "1" to "0". He stared hard at the zero, waiting. Moments later his shocked mind recognized that he was still alive, and, therefore, it wasn't a bomb.
There was a mechanical click from the large vessel followed by the container opening along the seam around its length. Chuck, Sarah and Casey all flinched at the noise, expecting something other than what had actually happened. A bright light came on and spilled out from the open crack of the container, along with vapor of some kind escaping with a hiss of released pressure.
Casey approached Chuck and Sarah who seemed stunned into immobility by what had just happened, which Casey considered perfectly understandable. "Not a bomb," he said, as he walked past them to the container.
"Yeah," said Chuck, never looking away from Sarah.
"Not a bomb," said Sarah, never looking away from Chuck.
Casey approached the now partially open container and grabbed the edge of the lid. He began to lift the heavy lid and said, "Need a hand here, Bartowski."
Chuck started like he was surprised to hear his own name and turned to Casey, "Oh, sorry." He grabbed the edge of the lid and together they opened it fully.
Inside, snug in a body shaped padded form was the unconscious body of rogue CIA agent Bryce Larkin wearing nothing but a pair of compression shorts.
"What the hell?" asked Chuck.
"Oh, my God," said Sarah.
"I killed him," said Casey, in a shocked whisper.
Larkin took a deep breath of cold air, startling them all.
"Not enough, I guess," said Chuck quietly.
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A/N2: So, in canon, the countdown was to measure oxygen in the container. It got to zero and nothing happened. So, Bryce did what? Held his breath until they opened the container hours later? Probably not. So, my container opened immediately once the oxygen ran out. Also, even with this technology being fictional, he would have at least an oxygen mask, an IV pumping him full of fluids and drugs, and a catheter to drain the fluids. Sort of ruins the visual, though, so I ignored that stuff.
A/N3: Here we go. The Bryce bomb has gone off. I've been planning that scene since Chapter 1 of New Day. Chuck's nemesis is back in play. Next up, the hospital interrogation. Let me know what you think, please. It's what makes this writing stuff fun.