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Chapter 5

"Hello Dad," Chuck's voice was steady and calm and Sarah marvelled at that, given her husband's inner turmoil.

"Charles," the older man rose from his seat at the table but seemed to be undecided as to whether he should come towards Chuck or not.

Chuck took the option away from him by grabbing a chair from the wall and placing it across the table from his father next to the one Casey had used. He smiled softly and gestured her into it. She returned his soft smile with one of thanks. Ever the gentleman.

Stephen Bartowski regarded them with curiosity as they made themselves comfortable.

"I only asked for you," he said.

"My wife and I are kind of a double act," Chuck said in that same even voice. "So take it or leave it Dad."

Stephen looked shocked at Chuck's reply, and well he might, Sarah thought.

"She's CIA!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, she is Dad," Chuck said mildly. "But she's also the love of my life and I trust her with my life and yours and millions of others. She's a better person that you, me and all the millions of others out there too, so deal with it."

Sarah squeezed her amazing husband's hand and wished she could kiss him. While hand squeezing was just about permissible for moral support, snogging her husband's face off in an interrogation (especially in front of his father) was probably going to be frowned upon!

"Maybe you don't know what she did before you knew her?" Stephen exclaimed, bristling.

"I do Dad," Chuck replied coldly. "Because she's told me. Not every mission, but many of them. And before you get on your high horse, I know that Mom was CIA, so I don't understand what your objection is to Sarah?"

Sarah couldn't control her rising eyebrows as Chuck neatly turned the interrogation back to Stephen.

"I don't know her, I don't trust her," Stephen said mulishly.

"Well that was your choice Dad," Chuck replied implacably. "You've had every chance to be involved in my life but you preferred to be the puppet master in the background at every stage. As we sit here, I trust Sarah a Hell of a lot more than I trust you."

"Everything I did, I did to help you Charles," Stephen said, almost pleadingly.

"Do me a favour Dad?" Chuck said harshly. "Go off and help Al Qaeda instead!" Sarah and Stephen both gasped at his words and his dismissive tone.

"The fact is Dad, your heavy-handed interventions in my life have done more damage than good. This woman sitting beside me has done more good than damage. So don't you try and imply she's a bad person, when the missions she's taken part in have saved millions of people's lives. You need to get over yourself Dad. You were a disaster as a father and you haven't been too great as a puppet master either. Either tell me what the intelligence is that you want to pass on or we're done here and we'll wait for Mom to arrive."

Chuck stared implacably at his father and gently, belying his harsh tone, squeezed her hand. She squeezed back. Her husband was getting so lucky the next time they had some privacy! No-one in her life had ever gone to bat for Sarah the way Chuck did.

Stephen stared across the table at Chuck, face moving with emotions that Sarah couldn't make out. Chuck just stared back. For a minute. Then another.

"We're getting nowhere," Chuck said, rising to his feet, and Sarah stood with him. She was damned impressed at the way Chuck had conducted this interrogation, and she would tell him so.

As they turned to leave, an impassioned "Wait!" came from behind them.

They both turned back. "Time is of the essence," Stephen said.

"Well, if time is of the essence, why did you waste it insisting on speaking with me?" Chuck asked angrily. "You know John works in my team. Why didn't you tell him? Why did you fence around with us?"

"I- I- I don't know," Stephen said, and Sarah smiled internally at his confusion.

"Tell us Dad!" Chuck ordered, facing the older man.

"I was tracking money moving between Saudi Arabia and Islamic terrorism," Stephen said quietly. "It was going through Russia."

"Russia!" Sarah exclaimed. "But Russia has its own problem with Islamic terrorism."

Stephen smiled slightly. "Yes. Yes they do," he agreed. "But there are some corrupt officials who are high up in the FSB and the Russian Ministry of the Interior who are enabling the flow of funds in exchange for a percentage. That's how I first tapped into the money flow. But they discovered me.

"But I recently found out that one of the men in Russia isn't a traitor, he's an Al Qaeda mole. And he's busy with a plot to launch a terrorist attack on the West and implicate Russia. They've taken a Russian warship and they're going to use it to attack a French port."

"What?!" Sarah couldn't control her shocked expression but Chuck actually made a loud exclamation.

"When?" asked Chuck.

"In just under a day's time," Stephen said.

"Fuck's sake Dad!" Chuck exclaimed angrily. "I cannot believe that you've frittered away hours on this. You could have told us at any time since you woke up. What the fuck is your problem?!"

"I wanted to tell you, Charles," the older man said.

"Why did it have to me?" Chuck asked. "Anybody in my team would have acted on your intelligence." He paused a second. "I'm gonna get the rest of my team in because we're the ones who'll have to sort this out and you're gonna tell us everything you know and answer all their questions just like they were coming from me. There's no time to waste on this!"

And then Chuck rose to his feet and called. "John, can you, Cole and Juliette join us please? Bring some water!"

"I cannot believe you Dad," he said exasperatedly. "You've got to get out of this puppet master mindset. If you've got intelligence, that's great. Pass it on and we'll thank you for it. But what were you going to do with it on its own? If you'd told us from the beginning we could have sorted this before it got so serious."

Stephen looked chastened and well he might thought Sarah. They'd wasted hours.

There was a knock on the door and then Casey and the others were there, Cole carrying a few cans of soda, Juliette a jug of water and Casey glasses and a few packets of chips.

"Come in guys," Chuck invited. "Dad, I'm sure you know Colonel John Casey of the NSA, Colonel Juliette Dubois of the DGSE and Agent Cole Barker of MI6. I'd trust all of them with my life and Sarah's. In fact, I have in the past. You should talk to them as though you'd talk to me."

Sarah didn't miss the looks of surprise and pleasure that flitted over Cole's and Juliette's faces at Chuck's proclamation. Casey just looked proprietary, as well he might, Sarah thought. She felt a little proprietary herself.

Chuck continued. "Guys, my father has actionable intelligence about an Islamic terrorist attack on a NATO country."

The four intelligent agents and the PJ sat back waiting for Chuck's father to start.

"What are you thinking team?" This time the speaker was Director Martinez. Chuck had requested General Beckman to get the two intelligence chiefs on the call and also Sean Walsh, Martinez's director of the NCS, if he was available.

Chuck looked at his team. Sarah nodded to indicate he should roll out the plan to get on board the hijacked Russian frigate Vyerni, which they'd discussed in basic terms.

"We'll need more bodies, ma'am," he stated. "Either SBS or SEALs if you've got any in this part of the world," he added. "But from the operational point of view, we suggest we do a HALO jump to get on board the Vyerni. Given the weather forecast in that part of the world, we may have some leakers so it would be worthwhile grabbing more bodies than we'll actually need. If we all get on board, so be it. You can never have too many bodies."

Walsh grinned at the occupational maxim. Walsh had been Sarah's boss and was the boss of the Uber team that Chuck worked with. He'd initially thought the man was a bit of a cold fish and very formal, but since he'd worked more closely with him over the course of the last year he'd found him to have a sarcastic wit and be very engaged with the people he worked with. He understood now why both Sarah and Bruce Langan, his nominal boss on Uber (although he'd been encouraged to take much more of a leadership role in recent months), got on so well with the man.

"We've got a basic layout of this sort of ship, but if DIA or anyone else has a more detailed layout, that would be great," he added, seeing the General and the Admiral both noting that down. "But we're basically going in blind. We don't know how many terrorists there are on board, whether the crew is alive or dead, and even whether they're hostages on board or elsewhere. The only thing we do know, from signal intercepts, is that the ship has been hijacked – the Russian Navy has reported that. But they have no idea where it is."

"Luckily we've been able to find it. This is the Vyerni's course track," he explained, sharing his screen. "It's heading to Marseille and will be there within the next 14 hours. We're gonna have to move fast on this one. An initial analysis of satellite data shows people walking around on deck who are certainly not in Russian naval uniform, but we obviously can't confirm that the ship is outside Russian naval control."

"OK," the General said. "We'll discuss this here and check out the availability of help for you. In the mean time, a plane is waiting to take you to Toulon. We'll stage out of there. If there are any changes, we'll reach out to you en route. Did Director Anderson arrive yet?"

"Yes ma'am," Chuck replied. "She got in about thirty minutes ago with her entourage." The entourage consisted of his mom and four agents for protection of the two of them.

"OK, leave Stephen Bartowski with them," General Beckman ordered, adding, "I'll allocate more resources for your parents' protection. Don't worry about them."

"Thank you General," he replied. This time he closed the channel straightaway. They had places to be.

Sarah looked around the interior of the aircraft which was bathed in red light ahead of their jump. They were well into their pre-breathing and the oxygen mask on her face restricted her vision.

Navy SEALs and British SBS mixed together with her small team of agents. It had been a rush to put everyone together and get them properly briefed but luckily SEALs and SBS worked regularly together so the duty SBS squadron was able to fit in easily with the SEAL team which had arrived from the US just in time to brief for the mission. The agents were used to working with Special Forces and Chuck, as a PJ, was trained to operate with Tier One operatives, so there was no problem. Everybody was very focused on getting this job done.

Chuck's plan to do a HALO jump was risky but realistically the best of the avenues that were open to them. If the aircraft dropped them from nearby the ship there was the risk that the terrorists would ID it on radar and be on alert, so they needed to drop from a distance away. They could drop in the sea in front of the ship as Chuck had done with the attack on Portsmouth, but this ship was going much faster than had been the cargo ship Chuck boarded and the sea conditions were less helpful. In addition, they would have had to disperse their teams over a large area which would mean that a large part of the team couldn't get on the ship.

The other realistic alternative was to do a HAHO (High Altitude, High Opening) jump, but that was less accurate than the High Altitude, Low Opening insertion. Using the high altitude approach they could disguise the aircraft as a passenger plane, which was what they had done. She thought Chuck was dead on with this approach. She only hoped they would be too!

"Ten minutes!" called the loadmaster and she felt Chuck's hand on hers. Holding hands was more difficult with the thick gloves that they needed to wear to protect against the cold at high altitude, but he gave her hand a welcome squeeze before he started on a final check of her equipment. She checked her own assault gear, weapons and chute.

"OK!" he announced a few minutes later as she started her own check of his equipment.

"OK!" she confirmed as well when she finished checking his gear. All around them others were checking each other out using the buddy system.

"Positions!" the loadmaster ordered as the ramp at the back of the plane started to open. He checked his own safety line. The last thing anyone wanted was for him to fall out.

Sarah stared into the darkness outside the plane. If all went according to plan they should arrive about an hour before dawn. The captured Russian ship would be just inside France's territorial waters but far enough out that its crew should not be on alert yet. That was the hope anyway. If all went according to plan the attack team of twenty should land around the ship and target the bridge, CIC, engine room, magazine and the mess deck where it was thought any hostages would be kept if there were any. Her team would target the bridge.

Sarah pictured the layout of the ship in her mind as she concentrated on the drop ahead of her. High altitude jumping, particularly in free fall, was one of the most physically-demanding methods of jumping, requiring pre-breathing oxygen to eliminate any nitrogen in the blood stream, taking oxygen during the jump itself and cold weather gear because of the extreme cold at forty thousand feet. In addition one had to be extremely physically fit to endure the buffeting of freefall and to hold one's course. If anything went wrong with the parachute opening the affected party had only seconds to fix it or deploy their secondary chute before they'd have a high velocity impact with the sea. At least it would be a quick end. But probably not painless.

She reached out to the side to assure herself that Chuck was there and he squeezed her wrist, turning to smile at her. "Love you," he mouthed through his mask and she couldn't help but smile. "Love you too," she mouthed back. They both flicked down their night vision goggles and turned to focus on the ramp and get their thoughts in order. They couldn't afford any fuck ups.

"One minute!" the loadmaster called as Sarah focused fully on the jump.

"Green on! Go!" the loadmaster shouted and Sarah advanced and jumped off the ramp, Chuck by her side, just slightly behind her.

She extended her limbs in a star pattern, holding her shape as she was buffeted by the winds and by the air as they fell. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Chuck above and to her right and another shape on her left which she thought, from its smaller size, may be Juliette. She imagined the rest of their team were spread out around them.

They would try to stay off the radio so each team member would be responsible for deploying their own chute. They would be free falling for nearly two minutes altogether. They would be coming in from astern of the Russian ship and DGSE had arranged a "forest fire" just outside Marseille so the ship would be silhouetted against it and would be easier to target. They didn't know if it would be utilising its navigation lights or not, so the fire may be necessary.

As Sarah looked down, she did see a set of navigation lights moving on the right course so she wondered if the terrorists were playing it very cool. Of course, if it was the right ship and, as she got lower, she increasingly felt it was, having navigation lights to aim at was ideal. Her body clock told her she'd been falling for about ninety seconds. She looked at the altimeter attached to her wrist. Fifteen thousand feet. Still another twelve thousand to go. The altimeter was unwinding fast and she adjusted her course slightly by leaning a little to the side in order to come up the wake of the ship below, which she was now convinced was the right one.

Six thousand. Five thousand. Four thousand. Three-five. "Three-two-one," she counted in her head and pulled her cord, tensing but feeling as the chute deployed and pulled her up. She managed to relax herself and looked out to left and right, seeing other chutes deploying around her. She couldn't see anyone above her because of her own chute, but assumed they were there. She started to focus on the port side companionway. They had discussed trying to land on the bridge wing but dismissed it as too risky. The companionway was longer and wider, a key consideration.

She saw movement on the companionway and reached down to pull a throwing knife from a holster on her torso. She looked to left and right but she couldn't see any other chutes coming to this side of the companionway. She was close now and could just make out the man she had seen. He was smoking a cigarette, leaning on the railing of the frigate, looking towards the fire at the front of the ship. He was wearing a long one piece white robe, definitely not Russian military clothing, and carrying an AK47, so she had no problem with what she was about to do.

She pressed the quick-release toggle and jettisoned her chute about a foot above the deck, landing silently, and stealthily crept forward, getting to the perfect position. She threw the knife and the man jerked, soundlessly falling over the rail. She was pleased she hadn't used the expensive ceramic knives that Chuck had bought her. She would have been disappointed to lose one of those!

"Bravo four," she radioed, giving her call sign. "One down. Port companionway." She crouched and jettisoned her oxygen mask, flicking down her night vision goggles again and freeing her gun. The Heckler and Koch MP5 was perfect for this sort of operation, small yet highly accurate and easy to use. She had one eighty degrees to cover so she put her back to the rail and surveilled around her.

"Roger, Bravo four," acknowledged the SEAL operations officer with responsibility for her team. "Wait for Bravo two, coming from behind you.

She was reassured. Bravo two was Chuck's call sign, so that must have meant he landed OK.

"Sarah," came Chuck's quiet voice from the aft of the ship. She twitched. She hadn't seen or heard him closing which must mean that she'd missed his approach. That was bad. She turned that way and saw him about ten feet away from her. He'd obviously stayed there to avoid startling her. She beckoned him to join her.

"Bravo four. Joined up with Bravo two," she radioed.

"Confirmed," came the voice of the ops officer. "Bravo three will join you inside. Bravo one and five missed the ship. You have the con."

"Copy." She acknowledged. Shit! That meant that Casey and Juliette had landed in the water. Hopefully they would be OK but she couldn't worry about that now. Casey had been the overall mission commander, so she now moved into his spot with Chuck her 2IC. They would hook up with Cole inside.

"You heard?" she asked Chuck quietly.

"Yep," he breathed, equally quietly.

"Let's go," she ordered, pulling open the nearest hatch. He didn't acknowledge but she saw him turning round to cover their rear.

"Bravo four?" Cole's voice.

"Four," she acknowledged.

"Is that you coming through the hatch?" he asked.

"Yep," she said, pushing off her NVGs and entering. The interior was dimly lit. She saw Cole's black-clad body nestled into a doorway across the way. Chuck followed her and re-sealed the hatch. She used her hands to signal to Cole that she would take point, with Chuck at the rear. The others acknowledged and she led them out, using the layout of the ship that they'd memorised.

At this time of night the corridors were deserted and they managed to get to the bridge level with no further contact.

"Bravo four, in position," she radioed.

"Copy, stand by," Ops replied. She crouched down, trying to listen to make out how many may be on the bridge. She pulled a flashbang out of her webbing and motioned to Chuck to do the same. She used sign language to explain the plan to the other two.

"We see at least six bodies on the bridge," Ops radioed. They had a drone on station so they would be able to see much of what was going on. "Thirty seconds." She looked at Chuck and Cole and they both nodded to say they were ready.

Machine gun fire came from further back in the ship.

"Go!" she ordered and she and Chuck threw their flashbangs through the door. As they went off, Cole followed them in and she heard his silenced gun go off twice. She followed and saw a man with a gun coming from aft. She double tapped him and pushed on through, conscious that Chuck was guarding their six as she and Cole pushed in through the space. There were three men on the floor, stunned.

Cole shot another man coming in from the bridge wing as she saw Chuck hit one of the stunned men with his gun as he was trying to get up. He went down like a sack of potatoes. She hit another one and Chuck seized the last one in a sleeper hold as the sound of Cole's gun came again.

That's six, she thought, checking the area. There was a door aft. Captain's sea cabin, she thought. She gestured to Chuck to check it as the man he was strangling subsided unconscious. She checked the rest of the bridge area but there was no-one else. There were a number of blood stains on the deck and walls and she grimaced. Cole was checking the men they'd shot. She looked at him questioningly. He shook his head.

"Dead," he confirmed.

"Sarah?" Chuck's voice, and she turned to look at him as the door he was guarding was pulled open and then a gun poked out. Chuck fired and the gun was dropped and he pushed through the door as she stood, frozen to the spot. "Clear," his voice came as she met Cole's worried eyes. That had been too close!

"Control, Bravo four," she called. "Bridge secure."

"Confirmed four," came the bodiless voice. "All other objectives secure. Hostages secure."

Listening to Sarah speak in Russian was damn sexy, Chuck decided. Not as sexy as French but still pretty damn impressive.

With the ship secure, a relief force of sailors en route from the French naval base at Toulon, and a chopper detailed to pick up the four operatives who'd landed in the sea things were pretty much in the bag. Most of the terrorists were dead; only seven or eight out of a force of forty had survived, including the three they'd captured on the bridge.

Chuck wasn't a violent man, but when he'd seen the state of the surviving Russian crew, he'd wondered if he should've just shot the men he'd captured. Russian frigates of this type had a complement of 180 sailors. Only forty of them remained; the rest having been murdered, either during the boarding or tortured for information. Only two officers remained alive and they were both in a horrific state. He'd sedated them. Sarah was talking with the senior surviving non-commissioned officer, a petty officer, but the remaining crew weren't in any state to sail the ship, which was why the relief crew was being sent from Toulon. It wasn't just charity; Chuck was sure that there'd be a number of Russian-speaking intelligence officers within that number. He'd already collected a computer and papers from the Captain's cabin after all, which he'd pass on once they were recalled.

"Can you ask him if that's better?" Chuck asked Cole who was translating for him as he tried to make the remaining crewmembers as comfortable as possible. The man he was treating had had a compound arm fracture and Chuck had had to reset the limb and splint it.

Cole translated and the man smiled wanly at Chuck. "Da. Spasiba."

Chuck knew enough to know that Spasiba was thank you in Russian. He was running out of equipment and, not trusting the Russian equipment, had already requested an emergency resupply. There was a medic on the crew transfer but only one and Chuck had told ops to send at least three more, including a doctor, as well as three full trauma packs and sundry accessories. It would take six hours to get the medics on board, so Chuck and Sarah and their team would have to stay til then, even though the bulk of the special forces personnel would be pulled off as soon as the new crew was aboard, which should be within the hour.

Chuck's patients also included a Navy SEAL and two SBS troopers injured in the initial boarding. The two attack injuries were not severe – gunshot wounds to limbs. But one of the SBS troopers had hit the superstructure during landing, been knocked out and then landed in the water. He had been first priority for the rescue helo but was unresponsive and there was little that Chuck could do for him except intubate him, stick him on a ventilator and hope he pulled through. One of his colleagues was keeping an eye on him.

"Can you tell him to get some sleep and I'll check on him in a few hours?" he asked Cole, noting the man's name in his notebook. He smiled at the man, who smiled back in thanks as Cole translated. He looked up to see Sarah had finished her conversation with the PO.

He raised his eyebrows at her.

"God, it sounds horrific, Chuck," she said. "They were boarded at night just after they'd left the Bosphorus. Eighty men were killed outright and most of the injured were just left to bleed out. The others were brought here. They've been in this mess area for the last four days. They did what they could for the injured with the limited medical supplies the terrorists allowed them, but thirty of them died, and the terrorists tortured all the officers and several of the senior NCOs for access to the weapons systems."

Sarah looked shocked by what she'd learnt and Chuck stripped off his plastic glove and reached out to grasp her hand, eliciting a small smile.

"It's a good thing we came, because the Captain broke. As soon as they'd got within a mile of Marseille they would have launched cruise missiles and fired the guns on the city. God knows how many civilians would have been killed. And Russia would have been implicated. As we know, a Russian would have claimed responsibility for the attack and it would have taken a long time to sort out the details."

"Well, luckily we did come," Cole intoned from his position at Chuck's side.

"Yeah," said Chuck. "It doesn't bear thinking about."

"Anyway," Sarah said, making a clear effort to pull herself out of her funk. "We've got about an hour til the helo gets here, so what can I do to help in the mean-time?"

Thanks to all who have reviewed. Reviews were very much down for the last chapter. With the current issues with FFnet we (authors) can get no idea for the popularity of stories without reviews and favourites. Please let me know what you think if you have a chance. Eagle eyed readers may spot the reference to the Last Ship in this chapter.