A/N: Ownership. What else do you need to know? A few days ago, we passed the 13th anniversary of the premier of Chuck. Happy anniversary. And, if I may, in a couple of days, we hit the two year anniversary of the start of this story. Two years. Thank you for reading and reviewing. We all know that fanfiction writers don't get paid for their efforts, and that's perfectly alright. But what we do get, that professional writers might not, is the immediate feedback from our readers – the ability to engage with and chat with the folks reading our story and bang around ideas about the characters we all love. It's you guys and gals out there that drive us to write. If not for you, there would be no fanfiction. That's the honest truth. Thank you.
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RECAP: The team investigated why Grillo's bodyguard had lied and discovered that the man's six year old daughter had been kidnapped by Rosetti to use as leverage against him. Pietro Caron, an ex-special operations commando, and some of his friends took Rosetti's right hand man, Leonardo Lupo. They subjected Lupo to "enhanced interrogation" to obtain the information they needed regarding the kidnapped child. The interrogation was entirely successful.
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Caron began to brief the extended team. In truth, there was probably little reason for Tony, Megan, Lou and Morgan to be there, but they had been along at every point in this dramatic operation and no one was prepared to ask them to leave. Anyway, they were in the family's own dining room, so making a request for them to leave would be uncomfortable to say the least.
"Angelica Puma is being held in an isolated house near the cliffside at Gaeta. There are five of Rosetti's men guarding her. There's a long gravel driveway running downhill to the house, so they can both see and hear cars approach. Their orders, if the police raid the house, are to murder the child and throw the body off the cliff into the sea."
There were various gasps intermixed with a few noises that could only be called growls.
Volta said, "May I assume that I do not want to know how you obtained this information, Mr. Caron?"
Speaking quite firmly, Pietro said, "Quite correct, Major. You do not. Not at all."
"And I will not ask. But may I thank you?"
Chuck looked at Sarah and raised an eyebrow in inquiry. She whispered, "I don't think you want to know either."
Chuck looked pensive, but accepted her judgement on the question. He probably didn't want to know. His imagination began to wonder, but he pushed the thoughts aside as useless and potentially upsetting.
"Save the girl, Major. That will be thanks enough," replied Caron grimly. His normal affable air had evaporated with the news of the child's kidnapping. "We need to act on this information immediately, before Rosetti's organization realizes it has been compromised and moves the child. With every minute we plan the danger to her increases."
Chuck took the address and pulled up publicly available photos of the house. It had been marketed for rental recently and there were still a number of photos on the real estate agent's website. He blew them up and put them on one of the monitors. Caron, Volta, Sarah, Marie and Casey all stepped forward to look at the images closely.
Pointing, Volta said, "So, we have my men come in beachside on boats, rowed not motored. They can scale that cliff and get to the kidnappers before they kill the child."
Caron said, "No, they can't scale the cliffs silently. I've tried it. Ninjas are only in the movies. The equipment alone will make too much noise."
Casey said, "A fast rope landing from quiet helicopters. Middle of the night. We used them in Afghanistan. We can do it. We'll be on their asses before they can get the sand out of their eyes."
Caron said, "Wonderful idea, my friend, but what if they leave a man awake on guard? It's what any serious unit would do. We should not underestimate them."
Marie said, "Anyway, no matter how quiet the helicopters, they will hear you and kill the girl. Not worth the risk." She glanced at Sarah, who nodded, and said, "There's a better choice."
"What?" asked Volta.
Sarah gestured to her and Marie, "Can you think of a better disguise to get into the house?"
The room fell silent for a few moments as they considered the possibility. Volta looked at Casey, who nodded his head once.
Caron, who had assumed a prominent position in the discussion said, "Can you take out five men?"
Sarah said, "Yes." Caron looked in her eyes for a moment or two and then turned to Volta and nodded his head.
Chuck looked both worried and proud. But he stayed quiet.
At her mother's look of surprise and confusion Lou leaned over and whispered, "They used to be with the FDA."
Megan nodded, as if she understood. Lou leaned back wearing a tiny smile.
Volta considered for a moment and then said, "Fine. We will do it your way, but we will have a squad just out of sight ready to go in when you call."
"Good," said Sarah. Marie nodded her head.
Chuck said, "Even once Angelica is safe, we still need a plan to shut down Rosetti and his coming war."
Volta, who knew enough by now to assume Chuck had just such a plan, said, "Yes. What do you have in mind, Chuck?"
Chuck told them.
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Although cool, the day was sunny, with a light breeze coming off the sparkling blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea. If they hadn't been on their present mission, they might have very much enjoyed the weather and the beautiful view.
Dressed like the prostitutes they had seen the other night, with very short dresses with accentuated cleavage, an overabundance of makeup and short puffy jackets against the chill, Marie and Sarah drove down the driveway to the kidnapper's house near Gaeta. Marie said, without moving her lips, "Movement at the curtain in the left window."
"Got it," said Sarah.
They pulled up to the front of the house and parked the car. In keeping with the roles they were performing, they spent a bit of time in the car fussing with their make-up and hair. When they were satisfied with the act they had performed, they got out and walked to the front door, hips swaying in their high heels.
Sarah knocked and a man answered immediately. He was cautious, but clearly intrigued. "Yes?" he asked in Italian.
"Hi. Leonardo sent us. He thought you and your friends might be getting bored and could use some company," said Sarah with a seductive smile.
"Leonardo, huh? That's sure kind of him. Wait here for a second. I want to get Luco to talk to you two."
Sarah reached out and put her hand behind the man's head, running her fingers into his hair. "Is Luco as handsome as you?"
Marie put her hand behind Sarah's hand and said, "Hey. Not fair. I saw him first." The ladies smiled at each other and, simultaneously, smashed the man's head into the edge of the door frame as hard as they possibly could. He fell to the floor bleeding from a scalp wound and didn't move.
Moving quickly, but with practiced precision, they took their weapons from behind their backs and moved into the house. The safest way to clear the house would be to go together and cover each other. They had discussed their tactics, though, and needed to split up to get to the kidnapped girl as soon as possible. It was riskier for them, but maybe safer for Angelica. At a lateral hallway, still moving very fast, Marie turned left and Sarah turned right, their weapons held out in front of them and their eyes scanning down their gunsights. Their eyes and guns were restlessly covering the area in front of each of them.
A gunshot came from behind Sarah (in such a small house, silenced weapons would make no difference). Sarah didn't look around and continued down the hall. She arrived at the kitchen and found it empty and the back door to the house open, but still swinging slightly. 'Shit, shit, shit,' she thought with alarm.
Rushing through the kitchen and out onto the back lawn leading to the cliffs with the sea beyond, she saw two men carrying Angelica, who was struggling futilely. Each man was armed. Before she could take aim to kill them both, one of them saw her. They spun around and held the little girl in front of them, pointing their guns at Angelica.
One of the men screamed at her, "Drop your gun. Drop your gun or the kid dies."
Sarah said, "Ok. Ok. Fine. Don't hurt her." Sarah dropped her gun to the grass and put both hands up to the back of her neck.
One of the men roughly threw Angelica onto the grass and they began to turn their weapons towards Sarah. Shouting "HUUUNNNHHH", Sarah lunged forward, adding momentum to her throw as both hands snapped down and straight in front of her. Twin throwing knives glittered in the sunlight to embed themselves hilt deep into the throats of the two men. With looks of surprise, they collapsed to the ground.
Sarah ran to Angelica and took the little girl in her arms hugging her and saying, in Italian, "It's ok, angel. It's ok. Don't worry. Don't worry. It's ok. We have to get you away from here, baby. We have to move."
The little girl looked behind Sarah with alarm and said, softly, "Look out."
Sarah spun to look and saw a man with his gun pointed at both of them. Sarah spun the child around to protect her with Sarah's own body while drawing her smaller back-up pistol.
She heard a gunshot. She felt nothing though. As she brought her gun up to aim at the man, she saw him collapse to the ground. As he fell, she saw Marie behind him with her gun raised. They nodded to each other.
At the call from the women, the vans full of Carabinieri screamed down the driveway as Sarah and Marie stepped out of the front of the house, Sarah carrying Angelica gently. The lead van had barely stopped moving when Sofia Puma leapt out and ran to Sarah and Angelica. The little girl cried, "Mama," and reached for her mother. Sofia took the child in her arms and fell to her knees. Looking at Sarah and Marie through teary eyes, she repeated over and over again, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."
Sarah touched Sofia lightly on the shoulder in response, nodding her head, as she called Chuck. "Go," was all she said when he picked up the call.
The Carabinieri swarmed around the house. Sarah said to the senior officer, "Four dead. I don't know about that guy." She gestured at the man by the door. One of the officers checked the man and shook his head no.
The senior man said, "Clean sweep." An officer came to them from the back of the house carrying the throwing knives which he was cleaning with a dishtowel from the kitchen.
With an eyebrow he inquired as to which of the ladies belonged to the knives. Sarah reached out her hand. Handing them to her, he said, "Nice knives."
"Thank you. They were a birthday present from my boyfriend."
Marie said, with a grin, "Now that's what I call a relationship."
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Giacomo Puma insisted on talking to Rosetti directly. They didn't want to bring him up, but eventually agreed after he made enough of a ruckus. He had been frisked several times, until they were certain he had no weapon, no listening devices or transmitters, and no bullet proof vest. It was just him, defenseless and alone.
Rosetti, a burly white haired man, was behind his desk. Even with the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows of his penthouse residence, the room was thick with cigar smoke.
"What is it, Puma? I'm a busy man," he growled at the young policeman in Italian.
"I can't do it, Mr. Rosetti. I can't lie anymore," Puma started to cry. "I can't lie to send Grillo to prison for a crime he didn't commit."
"Listen to me, you little idiot. We have your brat. You go with the plan and put that judge away, or we kill her. You understand me. We kill her."
"Mercy, Mr. Rosetti. Please. She is just a little girl. Please don't do this. I won't tell anyone you had Ricci killed. I won't. I just can't let an innocent man go to prison for it."
"You think I care about having the whore killed? Or your daughter? I will kill dozens by the time I've established myself in the business. All those deaths mean nothing to me...and nothing to my men. I have the hardest men working for me, and through that, we will prevail and take what is rightfully ours."
"Please, Mr. Rosetti, I'm begging you. Please don't do this."
"Listen to me, Puma. You keep up your courage. Otherwise, I will kill her then kill you and your stupid wife and your bodies will just disappear."
"I can't...I can't..." he was sobbing.
"You are serious?" said Rosetti.
"I can't..."
Rosetti picked up the phone and dialed a number. When a man answered at the other end, Rosetti said, "Luco, kill the child. Throw the body in the sea."
The man at the other end of the phone line said, "Rosetti, the child is safe and all your men are all dead. And you, you horrible fuck, will never again breath the air as a free man."
Rosetti looked up at Puma, startled. The man had stopped crying and was looking at Rosetti with a peculiar expression. Puma said, "I made a new friend today, Rosetti. An American. Really nice guy. Very smart about techy things. His name is Chuck. You know what Chuck taught me, Rosetti? That the pane of a window will vibrate exactly how the diaphragm of a speaker vibrates when the windowpane is hit with sound waves. I didn't know that. Turns out, if you have a window in a room and you talk in that room and someone smart and techy points a laser at the window, that smart person can sort of hear everything said in the room from change in wavelength of the reflected laserlight from the vibrating window. It took him a while to explain it to me, but, when you think about it, it's really sort of cool. It works with any window. Even this one." Puma walked up to the side window of the room.
A bit horrified, Rosetti followed him and looked out the window at the roof of the building across the street. There were two men on the roof with a computer set up on a folding table and a device on a tripod pointed at the window they were in front of. Each man was wearing headphones.
Puma said, in English, "Hey, Chuck, wave to Rosetti."
The man sitting in front of the computers didn't look up, but he raised a hand and saluted Rosetti with a single finger.
Puma said, "Everything we talked about in this room is recorded and will be played to the court. Goodbye, asshole."
Rosetti growled and stalked to his desk. He took a Beretta pistol from a drawer and pointed it at Puma. "YOU WON'T LIVE TO SEE ME IN PRISON," he screamed.
There was noise outside the door as the sound of heavy boots made their way towards them. Rosetti shot Puma twice in the center of the chest. Puma flew backwards and lay still and limp on the floor.
Rosetti dropped the gun to the floor just as five heavily armed Carabinieri burst into the room. Volta, leading the group, grabbed Rosetti and pushed him facedown onto his desk. One of Volta's men began to apply the restraints. Volta said, in English, "Casey, how's Puma?"
From his knees near Puma he said, "Bulletproof jacket worked great, but he's gonna be sore a hell for the next month."
From the ground by Casey's knee, Giacomo Puma groaned and said in English, "Worth it." He started to laugh and said, "Fuck. It hurts so much to laugh. Fuck. Just glad the prick didn't shoot me in the face." Through his pain, he kept laughing.
Rosetti was marched out of the building by the Carabinieri. On the street in front of the house, in a wheelchair, was Luciano Monte, who looked at Rosetti without expression. Standing behind the wheelchair, his fingers lightly resting on the handles, was Enzo Grillo. Rosetti stopped for a moment to stare at them with a hard expression before the policemen brusquely moved him along. Behind both men were Lou, Morgan, Megan, Tony and Pietro. None of them reacted as the manacled Rosetti was forced into a Carabinieri van.
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A/N2: The laser on the window is an established method of eavesdropping. It's a bit more complicated than I have described, but the basic idea is exactly what Puma told Rosetti. It's not foolproof, though. In fact, a lot can go wrong with laser mikes. You need exactly the correct angle for the reflection to come back to the "listener." Also, if, for example, there's heavy noisy street traffic, that would produce interference on the vibrating windowpane. It doesn't work if the window is open, as the sound waves have nothing to push against. Curtains will absorb the sound waves before they get to the glass. While a planted transmitter is more reliable, it is subject to detection and requires prior access to the subject location. I read once that the White House pumps music through its windows to prevent exactly this kind of information leak, but, in researching this technique, I can no longer find any confirmation of that, so it may be apocryphal.
A/N3: Puma didn't wear a bulletproof vest, but wore a bulletproof jacket that looked normal enough that Rosetti's men didn't notice its capabilities. Clothing like that is real, albeit expensive. If you check it out on the Internet, you can find a wide variety of such special merchandise for the well-dressed (and well-prepared) man or woman.
A/N4: Mystery solved and Rosetti defeated. Whatever will we do in Rome before this arc ends? Come back next Saturday and find out what I have in mind. Oh, and let me know how I'm doing, please. It's what makes this fun.