NOTES: Sorry about the long delay in updating, I have not abandoned the story, but real life is keeping me kind of occupied at the moment.
Dialogue and thoughts between * * represents Chinese language.
CHUCK vs. THE NO-WIN QUESTION CHAPTER 21: Fire and Ice 1
Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 12:20 p.m. local time...
"Chuck," Jill Roberts said nervously, as one hand gripped the dashboard and the other kept her pistol ready, "could you please try to avoid those deep potholes! We're driving a bomb!"
"I'll try to give that some thought," her companion replied tightly, his hands gripping the steering wheel of the gasoline tanker truck with a white-knuckle grip. "Between keeping us from being killed by whoever these people are, that is!"
The 'bomb' part was all too likely to be true, Jill mused, her stomach twisting with every bump and jar. From the feel of the truck, the big gasoline tank behind them was mostly empty...which was a bad thing. A full tank would be a fire hazard if something went wrong, but a mostly-emptied one, full of fumes and air...that was an explosion waiting to happen in the middle of a car chase and men shooting at them.
At least their pursuers, whoever they might have been, appeared to be aware of the danger as well. At least, though they were following them closely, they were not currently shooting at them. On the other hand, they both knew they were fast running out of time! A lumbering tanker truck was by no means an ideal escape vehicle!
Who the Hell are these people?! Jill asked herself. It had only been a few minutes since Chuck had shoved her aside and out of the line of that first shot from a nearby rooftop, and they had been in fight or flight mode ever since. There had been no time to think about who was after them. Now she did have a few moments as they continued on their bizarre road chase, but she still had no idea who was trying to kill them.
"Jill," Chuck said, and something in his voice made her very nervous. "Hold on to something tight, we're about to take a detour!"
"What kind of a detour?!" Jill demanded, but Chuck had already spun the steering wheel, sending their lumbering conveyance off the main road, through a fence, which gave way like tissue paper before the modestly swift mass of the tanker, and onto a construction site! Jill just barely had time to take in a sign in Russian that mentioned that this was to be the site of a new office complex.
All that was on-site currently were machines and piles of construction materials, and nothing was going on because of the intermittent rain. The truck slowed as Chuck drove them through the stacks and machines.
"Jill," Chuck said, with a low intensity, "in a moment I'm gonna turn this thing so they can't see your side of the cab from the road. As soon as I say 'now', I want you to jump for it, we should be going slow enough. As soon as you hit the ground, head toward that shack on the northwest corner, there should be a tunnel inside it that'll open into the basement diggings below the site, get down there as quick as you can!"
"What about you?"
"I'll be right behind you, don't you worry!" Chuck assured her. "But...NOW!"
Jill had a hundred questions, but there was no time to ask them. With a deep gulp, as Chuck suddenly turned the truck, she opened the cab door and jumped for it!
She landed hard enough to knock the breath out of her, and for a moment she was dazed, but they had indeed been moving slowly enough for the jump to be doable. She got to her feet, and ran for the shack Chuck had mentioned, hoping he knew what he was talking about with the tunnels. Chuck had been been right often enough about such things that she was ready to trust to it again...but nobody was infallible!
It was not that far to run, and she reached the shack just moments after she jumped. The 'shack' was a metal prefab building, built against a concrete wall of the rising building.
It was padlocked, but a shot from her pistol opened the lock, and she opened to door to see what was an empty space, metal-walled except for the back, which was concrete. Jill had no time to ponder that oddity, though,, because for a moment there was no sign of anything like a tunnel, but then Jill's practiced eye fell on a patch of floor that was not quite the same color as the rest. She pulled at the edge of the patch and what proved to be a hinged door in the floor with a ladder into underground workings was revealed.
She ran back to the door of the shack, to see that the truck was still lumbering forward, still between her and the main road. As she watched, her heart in her throat, she saw Chuck come diving out the passenger side door himself, and start running toward the shack. The rain was intensifying and Chuck slipped in a muddy patch, getting back to his feet and gesturing frantically at her to get below.
The world seemed to be moving in slow motion, but Jill knew only seconds had passed, as she reached the ladder, Chuck coming through the door of the concrete shack behind her. The truck was past the line of sight to the road now, they would just have to hope their pursuers were still watching the truck and would miss them in back of the lot.
Chuck ran across the room, and as he reached her there was a flash of light outside, and the last thing Jill clearly remembered was Chuck throwing her down, and a blast wave pushing him hard against the concrete wall behind them.
Carmichael Estates, CA, Wednesday, June 3rd, 1:45 a.m. local time...
All was quiet in the combined house shared by the Woodcomb and Bartowski families, on the secluded peninsula that was the residential area of Carmichael Estates and Business Campus. The night was quiet, only the sound of the Pacific Ocean against the cliff faces made any sound. Inside the two wings of the long ranch-style house, little stirred.
In a bedroom in the Bartowski wing, two little girls slept peacefully in their beds. One had hair of gold like the midday sun, one tresses of jet. Both rested calmly...until the dark-haired girl suddenly sat up in her bed with a loud, piercing scream!
"EIIIEEEAOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIAHHH!"
"Wh-what?!" Charlotte-Mary exclaimed, awakened by the sound and sitting up in bed. "Stephie, what's wrong?!"
Moments later, Devon Woodcomb came racing into the bedroom, to find one of his six-year-old nieces in a tearful panic, sitting up in bed and clinging to her teddy bear with a white-knuckle grip, and the other starting to panic in response to her half-sister's panic!
"Easy, easy, Stephie," Devon said, taking his niece in his arms and holding her tight. "I'm here, it's okay, you're safe!"
Stephanie Bartowski clung to her uncle, shivering in terror. Clara Woodcomb appeared in the doorway, drawn by the commotion, followed by her brother Liam.
It took Devon a few minutes to calm everyone down to the point that anything coherent could be said, but he finally managed it. Then, holding Stephanie close and letting her rest her head on his shoulder, he asked her what had frightened her.
"I-I dunno," Stephanie said softly, seeming surprised herself at her lack of knowledge. She rubbed her tear-slicked face as she clung to her uncle, her fists gripping his pajama top. "I don't 'member...just know I was scared!"
Part of Devon wanted to send his own children back to their beds, but something in him suspected that the still-trembling Stephanie was drawing reassurance from the presence of her cousins sitting on the other bed, as well as her half-sister, who now sat on the bed beside Devon and Stephanie.
"Was it a nightmare?" Devon asked gently.
"I-no-yeah-maybe, I guess," Stephanie said softly. She felt better surrounded by her family, and her Uncle Awesome felt wonderful as he hugged her, but right then she desperately wanted her Daddy...and her Mommy, too! Then she remembered that that was what had scared her!
"Daddy and Mommy!" Stephanie exclaimed, as memories of her nightmare came rushing back. "They was in trouble, hurt, scared! I...I-I mean-"
"You hadda bad dream about Daddy and Aunt Jill?" Charlotte-Mary asked.
"I...well, I guess so," Stephanie said. Now that she was all-the-way-awake, with many of her loved ones around her and seeing that she was in her familiar safe bedroom, her Uncle Awesome holding her in his lap, the fear and terror were subsiding and she could think clearly again.
"I guess it was just a bad dream," Stephanie said, sounding tremendously relieved. "Daddy and Mommy were runnin', there was bad men chasin' 'em. Then there was a big fire and I got all scared! But it was a dream, I was just bein' silly!"
"No, you weren't," Clara assured her cousin, from where she sat on Charlotte-Mary's bed. "We all have nightmares sometimes, Stephie! And they scare us, you aren't silly!"
"Yeah, even I get scared sometimes when I have'n a scary dream!" five year old Liam said.
"They're right, kiddo," Devon assured her. "Even I get scary dreams sometimes, they aren't awesome, are they?"
"No," Stephanie said with a wan smile. "I don't like scary dreams! I don't like 'em at all!"
"Me either," Devon said. "I'm always afraid people will think I'm a scaredy-cat if a nightmare gets to me!"
"You're never a scaredy-cat!" Stephanie said firmly. "You're Awesome, not chicken!"
"But even I get scared of dreams now and then!" Devon said. "So you aren't chicken either, Stephie! I'm your uncle, and if you're my niece that must mean you're awesome too, right?"
Stephanie giggled a little, and over the course of the next few minutes, the formerly terrified little girl allowed herself to be cheered up. Eventually, Devon tucked her back into her bed, and when Clara offered to sleep with the girls to keep them company, Devon gave his approval, since the idea seemed to reassure Stephanie.
Devon took a few moments to put his son back to bed, and then, since he was already wide awake, from habit he flipped on the TV and saw a special report ongoing...
"...the explosion and fire in Moscow is being variously ascribed to an industrial accident and terrorist action. Two previously unheard of groups of Chechen rebels have claimed responsibility, while anonymous sources in the Kremlin hint at Ukrainian agents..."
Devon flipped around the channels, from FOX to CNN to OAN, the story was on all of them. The anchors kept talking and trying to find new ways to say the same thing, but it was obvious they had no idea what was going on. The pictures showed a fire burning through several blocks and quite a bit of police and emergency services activity.
Devon pulled out his phone and dialed a particular number.
"CI ComCenter," a voice replied. Devon recognized the voice of Dierdre Russell, the nightshift communications and intel supervisor. "How can I help you, Dr. Woodcomb?"'
"What do you have on that fire and explosion in Moscow?"
"Only what's on the news, sir," Russell replied. "Our Moscow substations have reported in but they don't have anything yet either."
"What about from Gold Star or White Gold? Or Stubborn Mule?"
"Nothing, sir, not a word."
OK, that makes no sense, Devon thought to himself. Ellie and Chuck are in Moscow, Casey is with them. It doesn't add up that they wouldn't either check in, after something that big started happening, or call in for information from us about it. Maybe none of them know yet? But that's not probable, maybe one of them might be somewhere where they wouldn't hear the sirens and see the uproar, but all three? And nobody else has called in either? Not Morgan, or Ellie's mother, or anybody?!
A cold feeling settled into the pit of Devon's stomach.
Something is really, really wrong, he realized. Hastily, Devon began to change from pajamas to street clothes, while dialing another number.
"Hello? Yeah, Emma, it's Devon. Listen, I hate to wake you in the wee hours, but something is going wrong. Do you think you could come over and watch the kids for a while? Yeah, it might be that bad. Thank you so much!"
Devon hung up, finished dressing, and double-checked on his children and nieces, all of whom were now safely asleep again, Liam in his room, Clara sleeping in Charlotte-Mary's bed while both of the half-sisters slept in Stephanie's bed. Stephanie was peacefully asleep again, snuggled with her half-sister.
A few minutes later, Emma arrived, a yawning Molly in tow, and Devon explained as quickly as he could, and then he was out the door, heading for his car and a quick ride to the Control Building.
Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 2:30 p.m. local time...
"Chuck?!"
Chuck Bartowski heard a familiar female voice calling his name, but for the moment he could not quite place it. He knew he recognized it, but his mind was a haze of confusion and pain and dizziness and somehow he could not quite place the voice.
"Chuck?! Come on, honey, don't do this to me! You have to wake up! Open your eyes, Chuck, please!"
Wake up? Was I asleep?
Chuck suddenly realized that not only was he not quite sure who was speaking to him, but he was not quite sure where he was, either. As he lay there in a confused daze, certain physical sensations began to register. He was sore, sore all over, aching, and he was soaking wet. He was lying on his back, more or less, his head elevated and resting on something warm and soft...which was good, because his head ached like all the worst hangovers he had ever had, rolled into one throbbing silent explosion.
Well, Chuck asked himself blearily, how could he find out where he was and who was urging him to open his eyes? After a moment of careful deliberation, his thoughts working their cautious way around the pain in his head, Chuck came up with a possible way to get some information: he might try opening his eyes. After a moment of thought to remember how one went about doing that, Chuck cautiously opened his eyelids.
A beautiful face was looking down at him, beautiful even with bruises and scratches all over it. Soaking wet dark hair framed that face, and brown eyes were looking down at him. Tears were running down her cheeks.
"J-Jill?" Chuck managed to get out. His voice was barely more than a whisper, but it seemed to echo in his head, making the headache worse.
"Oh thank Heaven," Jill Roberts breathed, "Chuck, you were starting to scare me!"
Memories began to come back to Chuck Bartowski, and he managed to ask, "A-all-...all right? Are you hurt?"
"Banged up, beat up, and singed," Jill replied with a laugh through tears. "What about you? You hit that wall pretty hard!"
"Wall?" Chuck said blearily, still trying to get his thoughts to focus. He managed to figure out that he was lying on his back, with Jill kneeling beside him, his head on her legs. Chuck started to raise his head, only for a wave of nausea and throbbing pain to make him stop that motion instantly. He let his head drop back onto Jill's legs and closed his eyes as the nausea passed.
"Yeah, when the blast wave caught us," Jill said. "You shoved me down and it slammed you against a concrete wall!"
Memories began to return, as Chuck lay as still as he could manage. They had been fleeing their mysterious pursuers in, of all things, a gasoline truck nearly full of potent fumes. Chuck had been behind the wheel and he had known that it was only a matter of a few moments before they were cornered, indeed, it was probably only the danger of detonating the fuel that kept their pursuers from opening fire on their lumbering conveyance.
Chuck had known, though, that they would soon be coming at them from all sides. It was then that he had seen a possible way out, as they passed a building construction site.
Chuck had been recognized the name on the sign at the construction site as being the name of a Russian company that he knew, from professional experience, to be a 'front' for French intelligence. A check of the Intersect files in his head confirmed that the French intelligence service was constructing a station on that location, disguised as a small office block. Chuck had called up the blueprints, which he hoped the French had no idea Carmichael Industries had, and seen that the plans included an elaborate underground facility, already dug out.
That had given him the idea of driving onto the site, in the hopes that he and his brunette companion could escape into the tunnels. That part of the on-the-spot plan had more or less worked, Chuck surmised. The explosion of their fume-filled tanker had not been a part of his plan, though! Still, Chuck had seen the flash and his Intersect-accelerated reflexes had been just fast enough to push Jill down before the blast wave came in. He remembered agony as he struck the concrete wall, pushed by the blast wave as the metal shack collapsed around them, and then...nothing. Nothing until he awakened here with his old college girlfriend and current mother of his younger child.
"H-how did we get here?" Chuck said. He allowed the Intersect to run a general check on his body, nerve signals running up and down his voluntary and autonomic nervous system. Apparently he was more-or-less intact.
Encouraged by that, Chuck tried to sit up, and managed it, along with a groan of pain and dizziness.
I don't think I have a concussion, Chuck thought to himself, the Intersect isn't indicating it. But it's possible for the Intersect to miss things, too.
"You were out cold," Jill said. "I didn't want to move you, it wasn't safe, but there was no time to wait. I knew we had to get out of sight, so I had to risk it. I just had to pray you didn't have any serious internal injuries or spinal damage or the like. Looks like I got lucky.
"Anyway, I managed to get you down the ladder and into the tunnels, and close the hatchway. You may be a skinny guy, Bartowski, but you're a heavy dead weight to get down a ladder! Anyway, once we were down here, and out of sight of the entrance, I more or less waited for you to wake up. Oh, and the rain is getting down into the tunnels, which is why we're both drowned rats.
"Now, I want to know what the Hell told you about these tunnels?!"
Chuck explained about his information and idea, hitting the high spots.
"And by the way," Chuck said as he finished, "I'd appreciate it if that French Intel front company stayed secret, Wild Card. Both that it is what it is and that I know about it."
"We'll talk about that later," Jill assured him, adding with her familiar impish smile, "I'm sure we can arrange a reasonable secrecy fee!"
"That had better be a joke," Chuck said, doing his best Casey imitation. To judge by her momentary smirk, she caught the imitation...and was not unduly impressed.
Of course, Casey's intimidating manner never did make much of an impression on her, Chuck reminded himself.
Jill winked, and her smiled faded. "So...now what, Bruce?"
With a sigh, Chuck tried to get to his feet, but nausea and dizziness warned him that it was not time yet.
"Well," Chuck said, "once I manage to stand up and walk again, which I hope will just be a few minutes, we need to find out what the crap is going on, and see about getting some assistance. You said your people in town are all with Tony, right?"
"Yeah," Jill said, wearily brushing wet hair out of her face, and wincing as her hand brushed a fresh cut. "What few I have in Moscow right now."
"Okay, Selena, so we'll see about getting some help from my people," Chuck said. "I would call ahead, but right now I don't trust even my phones."
"Oh, why is that?" Jill asked.
"A hunch," Chuck replied. "Something that's been nagging at me for the last two days, but it only crystalized just before I got body-slammed into that wall upstairs. I'll explain as we go."
"Go where, Bruce?"
Chuck sighed and said, "Would you believe I need to run by the local Buy-More?"
The Mediterranean Coast of France, 2:10 p.m. local time...
The coast of France, in this region, met the water gently, and above a wide stretch of private beach, there rested a small villa. Within that villa, a man was looking out a wide picture window at the blue of the Mediterranean Sea, watching the afternoon sunlight sparkle on the modest waves. It was a lovely day, the temperatures were mild, the breeze off the sea taking the edge of the afternoon heat. Part of the man in the villa wished he dared go outside and enjoy the lovely weather of southern France on a fine Spring day. Another part of him was wondering if he would still be alive by the time Spring had passed into Summer.
The man was known to many people by various names, he had hardly used the name his parents had given him in his adult life. The most common name by which he was known was 'Pan Shen', it was a name he had been assigned at the age of fourteen, when he had been recruited from his life in an orphanage by members of the Chinese Communist Party's elaborate intelligence apparat.
Actually, it would be difficult to say if the man had spent most of his adult life working for the Chinese government or the Chinese Communist Party, there was no hard and fast boundary between the two organizations, after all. It hardly mattered now, he mused. If his former employers caught up with him now, he would quickly be a dead man.
Not, of course, that it was only his former employers who wanted him dead, Pan mused. The list of people and organizations who were even now hunting him was impressively long, and included a number of well-known organizations and more than a few powerful individuals.
*Has is really only been two months?* Pan asked himself wearily. *Two months since Ren Liu and Chang Gui recruited me for this little exercise? Sometimes it seems like two years, or two decades.*
Pan Shen had been recruited for intelligence work at the age of fourteen, and in the thirty years since that day, Pan had gone from patriotic enthusiasm through increasingly cynical careerism into bitter disillusion and resentment. Patriotism had given way to cynicism as Pan had perceived the vast gap between the rhetoric of the Party and the reality. The Communist Party theoretically preached equality and common interests...and was controlled by princelings who commanded levels of wealth that would have been the envy of emperors in earlier times.
Was it purely cynicism that had motivated him to accept the offer from the other two agents? Was is greed, or jealousy? Pan was sure his motives derived from a mix of things. Still and all, he had never dreamed how fast events would move once they actually began their plan.
It had all seemed so neat and reasonable when they were laying their plans. Chinese intelligence officers had raided a clandestine laboratory in the Russian Federation, killing a number of scientists and personnel and capturing data about and samples of a biological weapon, a wheat-destroying fungus that had been engineered for greater efficacy. It was potent enough to make a potentially useful tool of blackmail.
He and his fellow disaffected agents had seen an opportunity, if they could capture the samples and data, and sell them, they could make enough money to be comfortably 'set for life', and disappear. Their plans had gone off smoothly, at first. They were all moderately high-level, and had the contacts to carry out the first part of their plan. It was not easy, by any means, it had required careful planning and coordination, but the three of them had managed to abscond with both the live samples of the fungus and the voluminous data files concerning it, files the Chinese technical staff had still been in the process of studying, decoding, and translating when they stole them.
The original laboratory raid had been two months earlier, and Pan Shen and his confederates had begun planning their own operation at that time time. Just one month ago, Pan Shen and his fellows had secured the samples and data, departed China post-haste, and once safely clear of their homeland, transmitted a message to various governments and private parties quietly offering them for sale to the highest bidder.
All that had worked smoothly, Pan Shen mused ruefully. But since then, nothing had gone as they had hoped. The reaction had been immediate, and far more intense and direct than they had anticipated. Major and minor governments, corporations, wealthy and powerful private individuals, criminal organizations, had all set out to capture the conspirators and the samples and data for themselves, or to keep them out of the hands of their rivals.
By now, just three weeks later, Chang Gui, the original mastermind of the plan, was dead. Chang had been captured by a Brazilian agent just a week after they transmitted their offer, and died under interrogation.
Pan and Ren had immediately activated their emergency backup plans, and buried themselves as deeply as they could behind secret covers and in hidden locations. They were still in cautious contact, but carefully avoiding being physically together.
Ren and Pan had lowered their goals enormously over the previous two weeks. Just three weeks before, Pan mused to himself bitterly, he had been fantasizing about a life of luxury and wealth, mentally planning what he would do with his share of the price someone would be paying for the prize. Now, Pan would be completely content with enough money to disappear and hide out for the rest of his life. No longer was Pan fantasizing about mansions, expensive cars, yachts, or flashy suits and jewels. If he and Ren could somehow get enough money out of their cursed prize to live in safe, hidden anonymity, an ordinary middle class life somewhere safe and invisible, Pan would consider that victory and count himself very lucky. Three weeks earlier, Pan had dreamed of being a multimillionaire. Now he merely dreamed of surviving and escaping from the inferno they had ignited.
*We really, really should have known better,* Pan admitted to himself, as he looked out the the peaceful seascape, taking in the sight of distant white sails on the horizon. *We let our greed and our fantasies blind us, we got carried away with our own cleverness and didn't think straight until it was too late. Now we're being hunted by our own people, by the Russians, the Americans, the British, the French, the Indians, everybody. The Mafia, the Yakuza, the big agricultural corporations in the West, private intelligence outfits and companies, everybody's after us. We should have known better.*
Pan had never really been a field agent, though he had occasionally been part of field operations. Ren was the field man, and he had contacts, many contacts, all around the world. Ren had been working his contacts as hard as he could while keeping secret, and he had fallen back on a contact in France that had originally been a low-priority option. They had 'felt out' this option weeks earlier, but only as an emergency fallback, and now they were reduced to using it.
He had found a lead on a deal that might just provide them with enough money to finance their permanent disappearance, and let them lead tolerable new lives somewhere. Not expatriate millionaires, but enough to live quietly and comfortably somewhere in extreme secrecy. They had slipped their prize into an ongoing discussion between a group of Russian money men looking to invest in shady French patents, and the Russians had nibbled at the bait. If the deal could go through, Pan thought to himself, he might just live to see another Spring.
If not...well, there was little point in dwelling on that.
A non-descript hotel in Moscow, Russian Federation, 3:20 p.m. local time...
Ellie entered her hotel room, closing the door behind her and doing her usual 'walk through' moments later, making sure nobody was present. When she was sure she was alone, she slipped off her high heels with a sigh of relief, and debated whether she wanted to shower and go to bed early, or just skip the shower and maybe collapse asleep on the bed in her street clothes. It had been long enough since she had slept that her exhaustion was almost a palpable thing.
She had contacted CI HQ about the events in Moscow before returning to her hotel, and they had informed her that they had no current information other than what was in the news, but they would report as soon as they knew anything. They had told her that Chuck was supervising the effort to find out what was going personally, so they ought to have something soon.
In spite of her exhaustion, something about her conversation with headquarters kept nagging at Ellie. She was not sure what it was, she had no desire to spare it any thought, but it just kept coming back to her.
Something...something...something...about that exchange on the their secure phones had been...what? Too normal? Not normal enough? She could not define it but something kept nagging at her.
Ellie opted for a quick, hot shower, thoughts of her bed filling her mind as she did. She emerged, toweling off as she did, and put on a pair of panties. She was in the procesds of reaching for her pajamas, when with no warning whatever she felt a hand on her arm!
Adrenaline flowed, regulated by the Intersect Eight, and in a single motion a now-wide-awake Ellie Bartowski twisted away from the hand, whirled to face the intruder, and scooped a knife from where she had hidden it near her bed when she first arrived in Moscow. She was still in motion and ready to fight or run when it registered that the intruder was Mary Bartowski!
Her mother was standing there, having moved a few feet back as her daughter went into combat mode, and now she had a little smile on her face. Obviously she was not displeased to see Ellie reacting so quickly.
Ellie breathed a sigh of relief, and then blushed slightly as she remembered that she was standing there basically nude and still wet from the shower, holding a knife in her hand.
At least it's Mom and not a guy! Ellie thought in relief as she reached for underwear.
"What's going on, M-" Ellie started to say, as she slid on her panties.
"Shhhh!" Mary said, a finger to her lips. "Ms. Carmichael, we have a situation!"
It took a moment for her meaning to penetrate Ellie's still-exhausted mind, then she nodded and said, "What's going on, Mary?"
She's worried about bugs or surveillance, Ellie realized, and she doesn't want me to call her 'mom'.
"My contacts tell me that there's a near-total panic in the security apparat right now," Mary said. "Whatever happened a few hours ago has stirred the beehive, and nobody is sure who did what or why. But orders have been issued to detain the CI personnel in town until the SVR and the FSB and the Moscow city authorities and the rest can sort out what's going on. We've got maybe twenty minutes before someone arrives to take you and the rest to holding cells."
Damn it! Ellie thought, just what we don't need. Now we have to decide how to respond, do we cooperate with the Russian authorities and wait it out, or dodge this? Dodging it makes us look guilty of something...but Heaven only knows what the Russian power players will conclude happened, and even if they don't really believe we had anything to do with any of it, someone might be looking for scapegoats. Plus someone might get over-enthusiastic with interrogating somebody, too. No, better to take our chances dodging.
"Spread the word," Ellie said. "Everybody is to go to ground, we'll use our first level of emergency covers and try to figure out what's going on and what to do next after we're safe from being arrested. Better we disappear than let them disappear us."
Mary nodded in agreement. "I'll let HQ know what's going down, Dan Andrews is on duty in the com center at home, I spoke to him earlier. He can-"
"No!" Ellie said. In that moment, as her mother mentioned that name, what had been nagging at Ellie suddenly 'clicked', and with a cold, sinking feeling edged with panic, she knew. Ellie suddenly knew what was going on, and she was suddenly more scared than she could remember being in a long time.
"Change in plans," Ellie said quickly. "We have to assume our backup covers are compromised, and probably our secondaries too. We need to come up with a new plan on the fly! Wake everybody and get them moving, and spread the word, no contact with HQ or anybody else by phone, including each other!"
Mary wasted no time, seeing the fear and worry on her daughter's face, and a few minutes later, the entire CI party was awake and emergency plans and covers were being created even as they scattered to their vans and moved out. In the lead van, Ellie, Casey, and Mary were planning their next move. They had managed to get everyone in the CI party together and in motion except for Morgan Grimes, who was running an errand elsewhere. They dared not try to reach him by phone, for reasons Ellie was explaining as they drove.
"Something was nagging at me about my last call to HQ even before Mom showed up," Ellie explained. Mary was driving, as she was by far the most familiar with the city, Casey and Ellie were in seats beside and behind her. "Mom mentioned talking to Dan Andrews on the phone earlier tonight, and I heard his voice in the background when I was on the phone myself earlier as well.
"Which is the problem," Ellie went on grimly, looking out in the rainy Moscow streets as they worked their way through the traffic. "There's no way Dan should even be present, much less on duty. I knew that, and it bothered me on some level, but I was so occupied with other things, and so tired, that it didn't really register until Mom mentioned his name. Then it clicked."
Dan Andrews was a long-time employee of Carmichael Industries in their technical branch.
"Dan's wife was diagnosed with a fairly advanced cancer, a few weeks ago," Ellie went on. "She's currently undergoing extensive chemo and radiation treatments to try and knock it down before it can metastasize. Dan is on long-term medical leave so he can take care of her and give her moral support, she's sick as a dog right now. I signed the paperwork for that myself a few weeks ago.
"There's no reason for Dan to even come into the office right now, much less be doing anything work-related," Ellie continued. "Dan's wife is being treated at Vanderbilt Medical in Nashville, so he would have to fly back to California just to put in an appearance at the office! There's no way on God's green Earth that he would just be casually in the com center right now, much less standing a duty watch!
"We haven't been talking to HQ," Ellie went on. "We've been talking to somebody pretending to be CI HQ, maybe for days. Somebody who can get into the phone system, past our usual security protocols, and do a very good job of pretending to be HQ. I'd bet our people in California think they're talking to us, too, and aren't. There's no telling how long this has been going or how deep it goes."
"It can't have been more than a few days, at the most," Casey said. "I was talking to a guy I know at Coms just four days ago, and we referenced things that there's no way anybody else could know. So it's four days at the most, probably less, since sooner or later any such effort is going to trip up on something like they did with you today, El."
"Either way," Ellie said, "we don't know what's compromised or how much. So we have to get ourselves safe first, on our own, then get in touch with HQ for real and warn them. But we can't use any of our backup plans now, they could all possibly be wide open to whoever is doing this!"
"Leave that to me," Mary said with a smile. "I know a thing or two about surviving on my own in Russia."
Ellie nodded in agreement, and Mary led the vans through the city toward a destination of her own.
A CIA safehouse in Moscow, Russian Federation, 3:35 p.m. local time...
"The blast wiped out most of the construction site," Carla Fredericks said. "Right now, local news sources are going back and forth between Chechen terrorists and Ukrainian agents as the most likely source, but I doubt either one had anything to do with it."
Fredericks, a tall, willowy brunette with blue eyes and a figure that a beauty queen might envy, was sitting at a table with the other three members of CAT Team Two, and two of the three Senior CATS as well.
"We moved among the crowds and talked to various witnesses," Lana Payton, another member of CAT Two, said immediately after Fredericks spoke. "It's the same as usual, talk to fifteen witnesses, get fifteen conflicting stories, but we put together the common bits and it looks like there was a shooting, a subsequent road chase, with the pursued in some kind of tanker truck, that ended up on that construction site and blew up. That doesn't sound like terrorism or any kind of professional plan. It sounds more like an operation of some kind that went seriously sideways."
"The fire is still burning," Fredericks added, "and it's forced the evacuation of several blocks. Quite a few buildings are going to be damaged, but the firemen think they have it mostly contained, and between them and the rain it ought to be out in a few hours."
"What about Gaez?" Sarah asked. "You're certain you saw him?"
"I saw a man who matched the photographs and descriptions to a 'T', as they say," Payton replied, "as I was doing my rounds amid the crowd. I was about thirty feet from him, but I got a very clear look at his face. He made a point of lingering long enough to let me see him, before he vanished back into the milling crowds again."
"Playing with us," Zondra Rizzo growled.
Fredericks started to say something in reply, but her words were drowned out by the sounds of the gunfire that came blasting through the door of the room in that moment.
To be continued...