A/N: It's just ownership of Chuck. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along now.
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All things considered, it wasn't the worst sleep Devon'd ever had. It was warm and relatively quiet in the closet in Ellie's room. He couldn't stretch out all the way, but he'd slept through worse. He thought about the one time he slept in a sleeping bag hung 1,500 feet off the ground in Yosemite. 'Yeah, this was better than that.'
He woke at about 3:30 in the morning and waited a half hour or so to creep out and wake Ellie. He tapped his earwig a couple of times to wake up John. Of course, Casey was wide awake in an empty hospital room watching the door to Ellie's room.
"I'm waking up Ellie," Devon whispered.
"Roger that," whispered John.
Devon touched Ellie lightly on the arm and she awoke instantly. He pointed at his watch and held up four fingers. She nodded and got out of bed. She used the bathroom and came back out to dress. By the time she'd come back out, Devon was wearing some scrubs they had brought with them in Ellie's bag and had shrugged on the white coat that John had acquired for them the prior afternoon. Devon took his stethoscope from her bag and slung it around his neck. Ellie dressed but choose to ignore the white coat. Presenting herself as a doctor would require her to speak Spanish. She hoped to remain silent while Devon examined Ahmad. In scrubs she would look like a nurse and wouldn't be expected to do more than follow Devon's lead. At least she hoped that was the case.
Dressed in their medical outfits, with Devon's blond hair covered by the surgical cap, Ellie touched her watch. "John, we're about ready to go," she whispered.
"The nurses on this floor are reading magazines. Things are quiet. Go for it, just don't make a lot of noise," Casey said. "The stairs are to the left out your door. Last door at the end of the corridor. I'll be right behind you."
"Thanks," said Ellie.
Devon and Ellie, moving silently, ghosted down the corridor to the stairs and opened the door. One flight up and they were on Ahmad's floor. Peaking down the corridor they observed dark and silence by the nurse's station. They had both studied the floorplan provided by Chuck and unerringly approached the door to Ahmad's room. The door was ajar and the name Lime was on a handwritten sign under the room number beside the door.
They entered and closed the door behind them. Ahmad was alone in the room, sleeping soundly. Ellie moved immediately to the window and closed the blinds, then pulled the curtains closed as well. They didn't want the light to be seen outside the hospital. Meanwhile, Devon was studying the information on the various monitors connected to Ahmad while he put on a pair of medical gloves taken from the box mounted on the wall.
When Ellie nodded to Devon he turned on the overhead light and said to Ahmad, in his friendly bedside voice, "Buenas dias, Senor Lime. ¿Cómo te sientes hoy?"
The man in the bed looked up startled from sleep and said, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish. Do you speak English?"
A little surprised by the development, Devon adapted instantly. He gave Rashad a big smile and said, "Yes. I do. How are you feeling?"
"Who are you?" asked Ahmad.
"I'm Doctor Gomez and this is Nurse Milan. Doctor Hernandez asked me to stop in to see you this morning. So, how are you doing?" Devon was trying to put on a slight accent with his English, hoping that Ahmad, whose native language was neither Spanish nor English, wouldn't be too exacting a judge of its authenticity.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"It's about five in the morning. Don't worry, Mr. Lime. I'll let you get back to sleep in a few moments. Just trying to get a jump on my day," said Devon with a huge grin.
"Uh. Alright. I feel weak. Tired. And it's hard to catch my breath." He was visibly struggling with his breathing even while lying in the hospital bed.
"Ok, then, Mr. Lime. Let's see what we can see." He moved the hospital bed up to a 45 degree angle and, with Ellie's help, pulled the gown down to Ahmad's waist. He touched the scar on the upper left part of his chest. "Pacemaker?" he asked. Ahmad nodded. Devon looked at his eyes and pulled a lid slightly down to see more of the eyeball. Devon felt Ahmad's pulse at his ankle and again on his wrist, looking at the man's hands as he did so. He put his hands on either side of the neck and felt for the pulse. He felt the jugular venous pulses. He asked Ahmad to sit up and listened to his lungs with the stethoscope. Devon then palpated Ahmad's chest to determine heart's point of maximal intensity, where the pulse can best be felt with the fingers through the chest wall. Next, he listened to the heart again after twisting the stethoscope around and using the bell end on the back of the diaphragm.
"Hold your breath, please," said Devon. Ahmad did and Devon continued to listen to the noises from his chest. "Ok, thank you."
Ellie could tell that Devon wasn't happy with what he was concluding, but he kept up a cheerful facade for the patient. Done with the examination, Devon pushed the button to lower Ahmad's bed. Ellie pulled his blanket back down to cover his feet.
"Thank you, Mr. Lime. I'll talk to Dr. Hernandez and he'll take it from there. You get back to sleep. You need your rest."
"How am I?" the man asked.
"You should get some rest," said Devon with a reassuring smile, patting the man on the arm.
He turned off the light and he and Ellie stepped out into the hallway, leaving the door ajar as they had found it.
The moment they were out of the room each felt the hard metal of a gun poking them in the side. A quiet man's voice said, "No te muevas." [Don't move.]
They didn't move.
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From an empty room nearby Casey watched the corridor and the nurses station, covering Ellie and Devon in Ahmad's room. He saw the light go out under Ahmad's door and Ellie and Devon step quietly out into the corridor. From the rooms on either side, two armed men suddenly stepped out to intercept the two American doctors.
'Shit,' he thought.
"They're out, but we got trouble," he said aloud, but quietly, certain that Chuck and Sarah would be listening.
Drawing his weapon, he stepped up behind the men and growled, "Dejen sus armas, amigos." [Put down your guns, friends.]
Before the men could react, a woman's voice behind him said, "On the contrary. You put down your gun." Lowering his gun slowly, Casey risked a glance over his shoulder, to see the nurse from the nurse's station holding a pistol pointed at his center of mass. As he was squatting to put his weapon on the ground, he touched his watch.
Notwithstanding the armed confrontation, everyone was speaking quietly so as not to rouse the sleeping patients.
He, Ellie and Devon, all with guns covering them, were quickly zip tied with their hands behind their backs and had their heads covered with black hoods.
Casey could have snapped the zip tie on his wrists and tried to draw his back-up weapon, but not while covered by three people with weapons in their hands, and not in any fashion that could protect the two civilians who were his responsibility.
Following orders to be quiet, the Americans were manhandled out of the hospital.
They went down the freight elevator and took a side door to a van of some kind. And were driven away.
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Chuck and Sarah were in their sleeping clothes, but Forrest was fully dressed. All three were in Chuck and Sarah's hotel room to monitor the part of the mission taking place at the hospital. Chuck had put the feed from Casey's watch onto the computer and they were listening through the speakers as Devon and Ellie went into Ahmad's room.
About ten minutes passed when Casey alerted them to trouble.
"Casey? Casey?" asked Sarah. Silence greeted them. Casey triggered the emergency beacon on his watch. Chuck immediately pulled up the trackers and saw all three dots moving together through the hospital.
Chuck said, "Oh, shit. Ok. Let's go."
Forrest said, "I'll go gear up." She left their hotel room.
Chuck and Sarah dressed quickly and met Forrest in the hotel hallway in a matter of minutes. Chuck was following the movement of the rest of the team on his phone. He had his messenger bag over his shoulder containing his laptop and other techy gear.
They intended to get an SUV from the parking valet and follow the trackers to wherever the other three members of the team were.
In the elevator, Sarah said to Chuck, "Don't worry, sweetie. We'll get them back."
Chuck gave her a small smile and said, quietly, "I know. I'm not worried. Well, Ok, I'm worried, but not freaking out." Sarah squeezed his arm. Forrest looked on with a bit of confusion. Carmichael wasn't acting with the cold professionalism of an agent, certainly not like an agent of his caliber (if his reputation was deserved).
As they were crossing the lobby, Sarah stopped dead in her tracks and grabbed at Chuck and Forrest, pulling them back behind a corner.
"The man from the hospital lobby last night. He's here talking to the desk clerk," she hissed.
Forrest said, "Must be part of the team that took the others. They found us."
"Not too hard. We told the hospital where we were staying," said Chuck.
"Forget the parking valet. Let's just head down to the garage and get a car. If our SUV's are parked in, we can steal another," said Sarah. "I don't want to waste time fighting with these guys here. I want to get after the rest of the team immediately. We still don't have any idea what's going on."
"A sound tactical decision," said Forrest.
They found the stairs and made it down to the garage. They spotted their SUV's against a far wall. As they were making their way through the parked cars, though, two figures came at them from the gloom on either side, appearing from behind pillars. A man and a woman, both armed. It seems that their move to the garage had been expected.
"Don't move. Raise your hands," the man demanded. A third figure, the man from the lobby upstairs and the hospital, stepped out of the stairwell behind them, also armed.
Sarah, Chuck, and Forrest stopped. The women took out their weapons and began to crouch. Chuck looked at the weapons and said, "Naw. We don't have time for this. I got it. You'll know when."
He stepped forward with his hands raised high above his head.
He began to speak loudly. "Ok. Ok. No need for violence. You want the car, take the car. It's ok, it's a rental. I'll bet the rental car company has insurance." As he was talking he was walking towards the two assailants. "It's not my car anyway. I'm sure I can get another one."
Sarah and Forrest followed his lead and moved towards the grouping.
Chuck was now next to the man and woman with the guns. "Turn around," one of them said.
Chuck turned around and the man holstered his weapon and said, "Give me your hands."
Chuck lowered his hands and brought them behind him. The man took out a zip tie and reached for Chuck. As he touched Chuck's hands he dropped the zip tie and collapsed to the ground unconscious.
Everyone looked at the body on the ground with surprise. Chuck turned around to the woman and said, "I don't know about you, but I don't think it's the right time to take a nap."
As he said that, he reached out with his empty hand and touched her on the arm. She immediately collapsed as well. By now the last man, who had approached them was freaking out looking at Chuck.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO THEM? GET AWAY FROM THEM," he screamed at Chuck.
His hands raised again, Chuck said, calmly, "You know, I actually think it's the excitement. Guns waving around and stuff. It can make people faint. Do you know if they had breakfast today? You know, low blood sugar..." as he was talking he was sliding diagonally away from the unmoving bodies on the floor of the garage, until the last man had his back to Sarah and Forrest.
With both of her hands Sarah grabbed the man's arm and yanked his gun hand down and away from Chuck's direction.
The man was stronger than Sarah and she knew she wouldn't be able to grapple with him for long. She also knew she wouldn't have to. As the man began to struggle with Sarah, Chuck took out his trank pistol and fired a dart into his belly.
Forrest was left standing with her weapon in her hand and a confused look on her face. "What...? How...?" Moments ago she'd been thinking that Carmichael's rep had been exaggerated, and now he takes out an armed three man team with no more drama than if he'd been scratching an itch. She would bet that his heartrate didn't rise by a beat.
"Who the hell are these guys?" asked Chuck, going to a knee by the bodies. Sarah joined him. Chuck and Sarah were busy checking the downed attackers for ID or anything to give them a clue who they were dealing with.
Sarah said, "He used trank darts concealed in fake thumbs. Fake thumbs like magicians use. Please get the fob for one of our cars from the valet. And keep an eye out in case these guys aren't the entirety of their team."
Forrest stood silently watching her teammates frisk the bodies, then took off at a run out of the garage. She was back in a couple of minutes with the key fob to one of their trucks. She saw Chuck dragging the unconscious woman and one of the men across the garage towards their trucks.
As she pushed the button to open the back of the vehicle for him, she said, "What are you doing?"
"We can't just call up the cleaners here. Not in Mexico. And, since we have to be on the down low on this mission we can't just leave them here to sleep off the darts. The first time the valets come down to get a car, the local cops will be all over this. So we take them with us."
"Dispose of the bodies out of town? In the desert?" she asked.
"Bodies? Don't be so bloodthirsty. We don't even know who these guys are."
Chuck hopped into the back of the truck and pushed down two of the seats to make more room. Turning back to Forrest, with her help he took the man under his arms and pulled him up and into the back of the SUV. Forrest went to help Sarah drag the other man's sleeping body over to them. Together they manhandled all three of the bodies inside the back of the rented vehicle. Likely, they would be uncomfortable when they woke up, but it was probably better than sleeping on the floor of the garage.
Team B piled into the SUV with Sarah driving. Chuck looked to Forrest and said, "In case any of them wake up earlier than expected, can you please search them for weapons and tie them up or something?"
"Sure," she said. Crawling around on top of the bodies in the back, Forrest took some of their shoe laces and used them to tightly tie their thumbs together. Then she took off their shoes and socks and did the same thing with their toes. As she was doing it, she was tossing to the floor near her seat an assortment of weapons and other gear she was stripping from the downed team.
Looking at his phone, Chuck said, "Turn here, sweetie."
Sarah did so. The sun had just risen and they found themselves driving east and almost straight into it through the desert, making it hard to see.
Suddenly, and unexpectedly, all three of them heard Ellie's voice in their ears say, "Chuck? Are you there?"
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A/N2: "The game is afoot." (Often credited to Sherlock Holmes, but actually Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part I)).
A/N3: As I mentioned before, I had the help of a cardiology professor on this chapter. He re-wrote the bit where Devon is examining Rashad. Thanks again, dude.
A/N4: Well? How'd I do?