NOTES: As I said the last time, real life is kicking my ass time wise. It's been three months since I updated but I have not abandoned the story. It might or might not be that long again before I update, it depends on real life time pressures.
CHUCK vs. THE NO-WIN QUESTION CHAPTER 23: Fire and Ice 3
The SD-35 Facility in the Ural Mountains, Wednesday, June 3rd, 10:15 a.m. local time...
The Carmichael Industries special operative who was currently tagged with the code name 'Lone Wulf' crouched uncomfortably between two large metal cabinets, the remains of what had once been magnetic tape storage units. From where he crouched, he could not see the door to the room, or the man who had come into the room moments earlier...but that was to the good, because it meant that that man could not see Lone Wulf, either.
In his head, Lone Wulf could almost hear the imaginary clock ticking away the seconds until somebody realized something was wrong. It had been nearly thirty minutes since he destroyed the cameras on the cliff face outside. There was no way to know exactly how long it would be before somebody came to make repairs or at least examine the situation, the precarious location meant it would take longer than most places in the complex. It would happen, though. Lone Wulf also knew that as soon as someone got close enough to really examine the cameras, the fact that they had been destroyed not by falling rocks but my explosives would be obvious.
At that point, things would get...interesting.
Lone Wulf had entered the computer center a few minutes earlier, after making his way through the maze of underground corridors and avoiding as best he could other people. Of course, he could not entirely avoid them. He had chosen a day when the underground areas would be thinly peopled, but there were still regular checkpoints with armed guards, and he was basically forced to rely on his forged papers and stolen identity badges to get past them untouched. So far, it had worked well enough.
He was taking advantage of a gap in the security planning. The whole reason for the elaborate descent down the cliff face had been to avoid the initial checkpoints at the official entrances to the underground area. There was no ID that he could fake that would be good enough to get him past those outer checkpoints without having an escort assigned to him. Once inside, though, security was not quite as tight. Since he was already inside, the guards at the interior checkpoints assumed he had passed the higher-intensity checks at the main entrances, and his forged credentials and stolen passcards and badges had gotten him through each interior check station...so far.
He had long since shed the black outfit he had worn while climbing down the cliff face in the shadows, and now he was dressed in an outfit typical of the technical staff at SD-35, compete with a stolen security badge. So far that had enabled him to avoid being spotted by the few people who had seen him, but every encounter was a chance for something to go wrong, he was acutely aware that he needed to complete his task and get out!
He had entered the computer room and had been just about to perform his first task when somebody else had approached the door, and Lone Wulf had heard him just in time! Luckily, there had been space between the old no-longer-used magnetic tape machines against one wall for a man to duck down and hide, and he had done so barely in time.
Thank Heaven nobody ever removed these old magnetic tape machines from the seventies, Lone Wulf thought to himself in a mix of wry amusement and nervous fear. Full size cabinet units! I could never hide behind a modern equivalent!
As Lone Wulf had hoped, the other man completed his errand and left moments later, leaving Lone Wulf free to cross the room and remove a set of modern solid-state memory cards from a cabinet on the opposite side of the room. He replaced the purloined devices with similar looking blank ones in the same storage slots, and left the computer center post haste.
The security cameras in there will have recorded me doing that, Lone Wulf thought to himself, but in this outfit I look like a technician so I might pass muster when somebody looks at it. Luckily this place is a little short-staffed or they might have the interior cameras all monitored in real time!
From the computer room, Lone Wulf made his way through the corridors and down a stairwell to a lower level, sternly forcing himself not to hurry unduly. He was all too aware of passing time, but also aware that running wildly through the corridors would attract untoward attention quickly!
Now it was time to change clothes again. He had worn the technician uniform under his black outfit during the descent, but now he would have to purloin the necessary outfit for the next step.
He was now on a laboratory level, and he had examined the plans carefully and and had even visited this area under escort before. Thus he had an idea of where the gear he needed was stored, and to his relief, it proved easy enough to bypass the locks and get into the storage locker for the HAZMAT gear. He changed into the appropriate protective garb, and concealed his technician clothing, knowing he would need it again soon...if all went well.
Now came the dicier part.
The room he was about to enter had internal security cameras, and Lone Wulf was fairly sure that these cameras were being monitored in real time from one of the security rooms. There was no time for subtlety, Lone Wulf knew. Instead, he used a small flame-based cutting tool to slice a section of wall in a side corridor, removing a small section of wall and in so doing reveal a web of cabling and connections in a narrow space behind the wall. A moment later, a quick cut of a couple of cables cut off the signal from the cameras in the 'cold room'.
They'll be coming to check on that quickly, Lone Wulf thought. Time to move!
Lone Wulf returned to the main corridor, and walked down toward a large heavy metal door with two security guards posted. No alarms had rung when he cut the camera cable, but Lone Wulf knew they would likely receive a call about the dead camera in moments. As the 'technician' passed the guards, he whipped out a tranq gun and hit both guards with double-strength doses. Caught by surprise, they were out cold in moments. Lone Wulf dragged both men around the corner into the side access corridor where he had cut the cable, and left them there.
Returning to the metal door, Lone Wulf now proceeded to try to open it.
Along with the technician security badge, Lone Wulf had purloined a few other identity cards, and one of them he now inserted into a slot in a keypad, and then he punched in a series of letters and numbers. It had taken him weeks to manage to figure out which card to steal and what codes went with it, and there was always the chance of a mistake, and one error at this point would sound alarms. This particular system gave no second chances for mistaken pass codes!
The device beeped after a moment, and a heavy door in the wall slid open.
So far, so good, Lone Wulf thought nervously, as he entered a dimly-lit and very cold chamber. There was not much to see inside this super-secret and super-secured room, not much that looked terribly impressive. Several rows of metal shelving, with what looked like small safes sitting on the shelves. Each rack of shelves had four shelves stacked vertically, and perhaps five or six 'safes' sitting on each shelf. Each 'safe' looked like just that, a strongly-built metal box with a combination lock on the the door on the front, each box was about a foot on a side.
A wire connected each box to a trunk line that led into the floor, but Lone Wulf had brought the necessary tools and had the necessary skills to disarm the electronic alarms and locks on the first 'safe' he chose. Then he worked the combination, opening the 'safe' to find...nothing.
Damn! Lone Wulf thought to himself, I knew things were going too smoothly!
The empty safe was marked #3-5, meaning Shelf 3, Safe 5. Lone Wulf had memories the combinations to all of the safes, but he knew he did not have time to disarm, open and check them all. His information had indicated 3-5 was the most likely one to have what he was seeking, but there were other possibilities in his intel, and over the course of several minutes he checked several of them, finding one empty container after another.
Beginning to become seriously alarmed, Lone Wulf realized that if he could not find what he sought in the next five minutes or so, he had to abort and get out. Time was passing fast, and it took a precious couple of minutes each time to disarm the alarms and electronic locks and open each safe, and he had to rearm each one afterward.
3-1 empty...2-3 empty...1-3 empty...
Finally, though, just as Lone Wulf was realizing he was up against the deadline, he found what he was looking for in container 4-4. Inside that metal safe were several vials of liquids and fine powders, tightly sealed in glass tubes which were themselves surrounded by a layer of cushioning plastic. With a sigh of relief, Lone Wulf transferred the vials to a small pouch he had brought with him, and replaced them with similar-looking vials that he had brought in the pouch. Then he closed the door, spun the luck, and rearmed the electronic security.
His Intersect informed Lone Wulf that it was now 12:45 p.m. local time, he knew his window of time was probably closing. There were more things he wanted to do, his plan had called for him to make a couple of more stops before his exit, but he had lost precious time in the cold room. As he returned the HAZMAT suit to its rack and put on the technician suit again, he was having a ferocious debate with himself.
On the one hand, he had pressing reasons to carry out those other tasks, and there was unlikely to be an opportunity like this again. This was a day when most of the staff was either off duty or occupied in the administration area, the science work was standing down that day. That was part of why he had chosen this particular day to act. But once he left there was little chance of getting back in, and his covers would be blown by his absence. It was today or never!
On the other hand, it was pressing toward afternoon and somebody might discover the destroyed cameras, or the sabotaged ones on the plateau, at any time. Someone would certainly be arriving to investigate the disconnected cameras in the cold room, and to investigate why the guards there had not responded to calls. This would happen very, very soon, and Lone Wulf knew it. They would discover the cut cable, and the unconscious guards quickly.
Once that happened SD-35 would go on lockdown and his chances of getting out would drop to maybe 15% or less.
For long seconds Lone Wulf went back and forth, get out now while the getting was good, or risk it all to get all of what he came for. Years of experience and training led him to reluctantly conclude that a bird in hand was worth two in the bush.
Time to go, Lone Wulf concluded unhappily but decisively. What I've got will have to do!
Now dressed as a technician again, Lone Wulf headed down a long corridor, his pouch of stolen biomaterials carefully concealed, nodding in a polite way to the occasional passing scientist or technician, and once again using his forged and stolen 'papers' to get past various guard stations. His nerves were taut, he had made it this far undetected, if his luck would just hold for a little longer, he would be safely out!
Down the corridor to an elevator bank he walked, as casually as he could, sternly suppressing the natural urge to run. Elevators were a nervousness nexus for agents, but sometimes not using them was more dangerous than using them, there was, after all, no obvious reason for an innocent technician to be using the fire stairs or other methods when the elevators were in working order.
He entered an elevator car. He used it to descend five levels, emerging on a storage level that was rarely visited. The elevator itself could have physically taken him all the way to the lowest level, which was where he wanted to be, but his security badges would not make the elevator go down that far, and it was too risky to try to 'hotwire' the system.
If the plans are right, Lone Wulf mused, I should be able to use one of the old fire escape stairs to get from here down to the lowest level, and the fire stair ought to be right about here.
Lone Wulf stopped in front of an unmarked metal door, which was locked.
So much for fire safety, Lone Wulf thought in amusement. Probably somebody locked these doors years ago and nobody's thought about it since, given how few people come down this far.
Lone Wulf was just finished picking the old mechanical lock and was opening the door when a long wailing alarm sound filled the musty air in corridor, and Lone Wulf knew that his window of time had just slammed shut!
Through the open door and into the spiral stair of the old fire escape, down the stairs two and three at a time, praying as he did that nobody had connected any automatic locks on the fire doors to the overall alarm system. Past one level, past two, and now he was on the bottommost level of the underground complex. He leaned against the door to catch his breath for a moment before picking the lock, and to his surprise and delight the fire door swung open! The door was unlocked!
A lucky break at last?! Lone Wulf wondered, as he ducked through the door, acutely aware of the alarms ringing and the sound of movement echoing through the complex.
Lone Wulf emerged into a large empty chamber. Back in the 1970s when the Soviets had built SD-35, this room had housed huge diesel motors and generators to power the complex above. Later newer and more efficient power systems had been installed, based around a small nuclear reactor a few levels above. The equipment in this room was long gone, Lone Wulf suspected it had probably been sold on the black market during the chaotic years as the USSR was imploding.
Across the floor of the enormous chamber the agent ran, heedless now of caution. As far as he could see he was alone in the enormous volume, and if he showed up on any cameras it hardly mattered now. Across the floor, to the far wall, to a locked metal trapdoor in the floor near that wall. Out came a small explosive charge from a pouch on his person, which he used to destroy the locking mechanism and lifted the metal door, revealing to his delight a dark shaft with dim sunlight coming in from one direction!
He dropped into the shaft, pulling the metal door closed above him as he did, and ran toward the daylight.
His long study of the old plans had paid off. Back in the days of ABBA and shag carpeting, the enormous diesel generators had been water-cooled, and the warm water was dumped down this old shaft and into the river that ran along the base of the plateau. Now Lone Wulf followed that same path, and emerged into the bottom of the valley, far below the plateau surface, almost directly below the air vent he had entered through hours before.
Lone Wulf spared a momentary glance up at the vent, and saw that there were men standing near it, obviously examining the destroyed camera mounts.
Don't look down, don't look down, don't look down, Lone Wulf silently urged the three men above, as he ran toward the tree line near the river. If he could just reach the trees, he might make it yet!
Sirens were filling the air now, and to his horror, Lone Wulf heard the sound of a helicopter lifting off from the plateau, far above and behind him. He had known that there were helicopters up there, but if they were in the air looking for him his chances were rapidly fading!
Ninety feet...eighty feet...Lone Wulf ran on...sixty feet to the trees...suddenly he heard a shout from above and then a shot rang out! He knew from the direction of the sound that it had come from one of the men near the air vent far above. Fortunately, the distance was too great for accurate firing with their pistols!
It was no use trying to hide or dodge, they could see him running and either they would get him with a lucky shot or they would not. Their weapons probably had enough range to kill him even at this distance, but accurate firing was another matter. If they managed to pick him off with pistols, it would be by sheer luck, so he kept running, his Intersect driving his muscles past normal safety limits, moving him at the speed of an Olympic sprinter plus a little more.
Luck or not, a shot struck a rock not far away from him, and Lone Wulf shuddered at how close that one had come!
Just keep running, almost there...another thirty feet...twenty...
Time seemed to stretch to infinity, the seconds needed to cover the last twenty feet seemed an eternity, but then, suddenly, blessedly, he was at the tree line and out of direct sight from above!
Not, of course, that he was safe, but he now had a few seconds out of direct view, and the trees ran along the river for miles in both directions.
Through the trees Lone Wulf ran, making for his pre-concealed escape option, or one of them, anyway. If all had gone according to hope, he would have been using a different exit route, but he was where he was. Through the trees, along the line of the river, making for a concealed item.
Then, along with the sound of sirens and helicopters in the air above, Long Wulf heard a new sound, one that send cold chills down his spine: barking. They were after him in the trees...with dogs.
Lone Wulf knew all too well how nearly futile it was to try to lose trained tracking dogs, once they had your scent. Hopefully they might not have that scent quite yet, but if he was not out of this in the next few minutes, he was sunk without a trace and he knew it.
At last he reached the point where he had concealed his 'package'. To his desperate relief the box was still where he hidden it, not far from the edge of the river. Inside was a wet suit, an air tank and a breather, and an inflatable raft with a few modifications and a tiny air pump and power unit to drive it.
He set the pump to inflating the raft even as he changed into the wet suit. By the time he pulled the tank into position on his back and made sure the air supply, regulator, and breather were in order, the raft was inflated...complete with what looked from a distance like a fairly believable human occupant sitting in it.
Not bad, Lone Wulf mused, as he pushed the raft into fast-running mountain river. The lab boys actually made that inflatable figure look pretty realistic!
The current rapidly carried the raft away downstream, and Lone Wulf slipped into the water, and dove below the surface. None too soon did he do this, because just moments later, armed men with dogs straining at their leashes emerged from the trees near the river, and one of them spotted the raft now some distance away. Shots rang out, but again the distance was too great for accurate pistol fire, and the raft and its real-seeming occupant survived unscathed.
The men did not linger, but pursued along the side of the river, and overhead, the helicopters did the same.
Meanwhile, in the opposite direction, Lone Wulf was swimming, slowing but steadily, against the current, staying underwater as he did. It was hard work, but after a while the current eased as he reached an area of gentler slope, and when he finally emerged, it was several miles upstream from ST-35, and near a paved road that crossed the river on a bridge.
Lone Wulf emerged from the water under the bridge, and ditched the wetsuit and tank in as secure a hiding place as he could manage to find. He had concealed ordinary clothing under this bridge when he scouted the area in planning the operation, and it was still there, to his relief. A few minutes later, Lone Wulf was walking along the road, looking very much like a tired and completely ordinary Russian.
The road linked to mines in the mountains to the west, and it heavily used by trucks carrying ore and workers and equipment in both directions. It was almost trivial for Lone Wulf to manage to sneak aboard one such truck when it stopped at a road crossing, concealing himself semi-comfortably in the back with the crushed rock. The relief of having (so far) managed to evade pursuit made him almost giddy, and he desperately wanted sleep, but he dared not risk that quite yet. Still, he knew that every hour that passed made his capture less likely now.
I might be getting too old for this shit, Long Wulf mused, but I suppose I could always ask Ellie and Chuck for a transfer to the accounting department...nah. Too ironic. But I think I will ask for a long vacation.
A secret location, Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020, 4:00 p.m. local time...
"I don't care if you're certain he could not have survived!" Langston Graham said into the telephone, his voice cold and level but even so heavy with implied menace. "I want to know what he was doing there in the first place. If he isn't dead, I want him captured. If he is dead, I want the corpse! You say he tried to make a getaway in a raft. Fine, that raft surely still exists in some form, or in pieces, below the rapids. Take your men out and search! And go over ST-35 from top to bottom and find out what he did or didn't do! You're supposed to be running a high-security operation, start acting like it!"
Graham's anger was not feigned. Just about everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong that day, and the day was not over yet.
The 'hit' on Roberts and Bartowski had gone sideways almost from the first moment, and turned into a charlie foxtrot of a high-publicity public disaster. Fires, explosions, media coverage on screens around the world, it was an epic fail, the more so because Delgado could not confirm the status of either target either way. Either one or both might be dead or might be alive, and in all the confusion there was no way to find out. Reports were still coming in of a shootout in a lingerie store and a bizarre car chase through the back alleys of Moscow, all culminating in a gigantic explosion that had made world news.
Still, Graham mused with sour weary humor, it must be admitted that this situation is classic Chuck Bartowski! Things never seem to go according to sane plans when he's involved, maybe I should have expected something like this.
All that was bad enough, but in the middle of the chaos and confusion of the afternoon had come in reports from a FULCRUM-controlled facility in the Ural Mountains that someone had managed to penetrate what was supposed to be a high-security facility, to do...well, nobody was sure what he had done or what his motives had been. Somehow Graham doubted that a player competent enough to find and penetrate that facility and then make such a daring escape or near-escape had not done something while he was inside.
The reports were still fragmentary but apparently their mystery-intruder had tried to escape on a raft down-river and gotten swept up in the heavy rapids to the south. The field officer in charge at ST-35 was sure he was dead. Graham was not so sanguine, and he was already going over a mental list of more-competent personnel to replace the complacent twit on site.
The technical teams at ST-35 had been somewhat more competent. They had determined that the intruder had sabotaged several security cameras, rigging them to transmit false images when remote-triggered, and had apparently managed to 'case' the entire facility for days before he made his move. They were still putting the pieces together, but someone seriously competent had apparently been at work.
Which led Graham to doubt very strongly that he was dead. Whoever this was had been very professional and very thorough, surely he would have been aware of the rapids downriver and made some preparation for dealing with them.
The labs at ST-35 are critical to Project Persephone, Graham mused. It's too big a coincidence. If our intruder had some inkling of what we're doing...
Graham called the security chief at ST-35 back and directed him to check on the contents of the biological materials vault. About thirty minutes later, the report came back that Graham's hunch had been on target. The intruder had stolen several key items from the secure vault and replaced them with inert fakes.
Hearing that made Graham's mind race and his stomach roil as he considered the implications.
No way. Whoever did this was too professional and too thorough to steal what he stole and then risk it getting loose by trying to go through those rapids! I don't believe it. To do that he'd have to be an operational genius at tradecraft and a total idiot at everything else. It would be way too easy for a vial to break or come unsealed in those rapids...and whoever did this is not stupid. The stuff he stole...it's too big a coincidence that he would take those particular vials by chance, and if he knows what he has he'd be insane to risk taking it into the rapids.
I don't believe he was even on that raft, Graham realized as he thought the matter through. He sent that raft into the rapids so we'd think he was dead...and he made his getaway while our people were fixated on the raft. Hell, he might have walked out of there at his leisure for all we know! And we have to assume that he still has the samples, too!
We're going to have to move up the time tables, Graham realized to his dismay and disgust. Another damned year...Hell, another six months...and we'd have been completely ready. But now we're going to have to rush things, and that's always risky. But we can't risk waiting...if I can just convince the Others to go along with it.
"Tara," Graham said to his assistant, "please arrange a meeting of the Conclave at their earliest convenience, tell them that it's a matter of some urgency."
"Yes, sir," Tara Phelps said, as she left his office.
Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020, 6:25 p.m. local time...
"We have unknowns approaching from the east, on the back side," a security operative said from the doorway of the living room. The three people in the living room looked up, and Niles Foxe said to 'Tony Rogers' and 'Darya Kamkin', "wait here, it's probably another false alarm."
The house was a non-descript structure in a residential district in the suburbs of Moscow. The neighborhood was average, neither particularly wealthy nor notably downscale. The house was much like the houses on either side and across the street. If its shades were currently all pulled, that was no oddity on a chilly, rainy evening. The neighbors on either side and across the street were ordinary Russians, with lives and problems of their own to concern them. In short, it was a perfect 'safehouse'...as long as it remained secret, of course.
Tony and Darya looked at each other nervously, but then, moments later, Niles Foxe returned, accompanied by two people that were very familiar to Tony (and a little familiar to Darya). One was a tall brown-haired man in a Buy-More Nerd Herd uniform, the other was a very pretty, if somewhat bruised and scratched, brunette in jeans and a sweater.
Tony breathed a sigh of relief.
"Trouble, about time you got here!" he said, pretending to exasperation. "How come you're with this Schnook?"
Jill and Chuck and Tony and Darya took a few minutes to go over some of what had been happening over the previous day.
"So that big blast this afternoon, that was you two?" Darya asked in amazement.
"Yeah, we kind of made a mess," Chuck replied.
"Has Trouble here told you what we've been doing?" Tony asked.
"If you mean about trying to prevent world-wide starvation, yeah. This caper is a little different, Tony!"
"I know," Tony replied, looking at Chuck. "I'm just an aging con man, I'm nobody's hero and I know it. But...if this thing gets loose...well, I have a granddaughter. I don't want her growing up in a world like that...or worse."
The two men were silent for a moment, and Tony knew that he and the Schnook were both thinking about the same tiny blonde six-year-old that shared their genes.
"Time is working against us now," Jill said. "We've got agents from at least five nations in play so far, and probably more than we don't know about. We'll need to move up the timetable."
"That's dangerous," Darya said. "Rushing a con is a good way to blow it."
"I know," Jill replied, "but what choice do we have? The water's getting hot."
"The original buy was supposed to go down next week," Tony said thoughtfully. "But maybe we can move it up if we can convince the other side that it's their idea..."
"What did you have in mind?" Chuck asked.
"You don't con a mark," Tony replied. "You set things up so the mark cons himself. You want the mark to be thinking he's getting the best of it, that's he's outsmarted you. That's why it's usually easier to con people who consider themselves unusually intelligent, their pride trips them up. If the mark isn't at least a little greedy or desperate, he's not usually a good mark in the first place."
"From what Jill told me, your seller is probably both," Chuck said. "I mean trying to sell this monster at all suggests greed, and by now, with half the intelligence agencies in the world trying to chase it down, he's probably desperate, too."
"Greedy, desperate, and thinks he's clever," Tony nodded. "The classic mix. A genuinely smart man wouldn't have tried this stunt in the first place. He'd know he was kicking a hornet's nest and not do it. But these people kicked it anyway. They probably had it all planned out in their heads how they thought it would go, and weren't realistic or smart enough to see where they were deluding themselves. Most likely they had their eyes on the prize and it blinded them. Greed again. So... we're dealing with greedy and desperate."
Tony's mind raced, he had been doing this since he was a teenager, and as he had once told his daughter, he had a talent for 'reading' people, in specific and in general. In his mind's eye he could almost see their marks, how they thought, the blind spots that had led them into the mess they were now in.
Right now, our Chinese rogues are desperate and scared, all they'll be looking for is a way out, an exit strategy to keep from getting killed or captured by somebody who won't be gentle with them. They're like a man hanging on a rope over a cliff, all he's thinking about is getting to safety. But underneath the surface, they're still who they were at the start. The greedy is still there, and if we made them think that there was a way to do more than just reach safety...dangle their original dream in front of them again...they might get stupid again.
"I have an idea," Tony said. "I think I know how we might just be able to make this happen, maybe in as little as 48 hours."
It took Tony about half an hour to explain his thinking, with Darya and Jill asking questions and making suggestions as he did. Chuck did not say much, but Tony knew that of the four in the room, Chuck was the closest to an honest human being. Which Tony respected, even if it meant that Chuck was not quite as quick on the grasp of a con as the women. Still, he followed well enough and even made some good suggestions as they went.
"We'll need to set up the site beforehand," Tony said. "The meet was supposed to be at the Gagarin-Tolstoi, that's where it should still be. But we'll have to get it ready immediately for this to work."
"We should start immediately," Jill said. "Like I said, time is not on our side anymore."
A few minutes later, Tony, Darya, Chuck, and Jill were on their way through the rainy streets of Moscow toward the Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi, Chuck and Jill in the Nerd Herder and Tony and Darya in a non-descript vehicle like any of a thousand in the Russian capitol, while Jill's security people carried out other assignments.
Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020, 8:00 p.m. local time...
Sarah Walker eyed the tower structure that was the Gagarin-Tolstoi Hotel from her vantage point across the street. Beside her, Zondra Rizzo was watching the people around them without being obvious about doing so.
"I see her window," Sarah said, "but on her current schedule Carina won't be in her suite right now."
"No matter, if we can reach her suite undetected we can wait for her there," Zondra observered quietly. The two women were sheltering from the now-steady rain under an awning attached to a restaurant.
"Should we be trusting Amy's intel?" Sarah asked her friend. "I mean it does come from Amy!"
"What choice do we have?" Zondra said, a hint of a snarl in her voice. "They've got it set up so we have no other choice but to trust that chirpy little bitch!"
A few hours earlier, Sarah and Zondra had been facing the prospect of imminent death at the hands of Chinese agents of one organization or another. Moments before that execution would have been carried out, however, they had been rescued...by possibly the least-likely savior imaginable, other than perhaps Augusto Gaez himself. Sarah felt her gorge rise at the memory...
"Hi, girls! Long time no see!"
The memory of that hated voice, so cheerful and pleasant, but with a dark edge to it, still sent a chill down Sarah's back. There were very few people on the planet Earth that Sarah Walker actually, genuinely hated. She had many enemies, she had killed more people than she cared to remember, but she had not hated most of them. Many of them were professional opponents, often it had been her or them, very occasionally, it had been people in the wrong place at the wrong time, people who had seen too much or worked for the wrong employer. But rarely did Sarah Walker hate any of them. Only a few people produced that reaction in the long-time agent.
The woman known to Sarah as 'Amy Goddard' was one of those few.
Amy had been a friend, once, or at least pretended to be. They had fought together, worked together, played together, got drunk together. They, along with Carina and Zondra, had gotten into misadventures the memory of which could still make Sarah blush, laugh, or both, depending on her mood. They had done all that...and Amy had sold them out to their arch-enemy, and tricked Sarah into suspecting one of her best friends, and vice versa, for many needless years.
There was no question that Amy had saved Sarah and Zondra's life a few hours before. She had incapacitated the Chinese agents with a kind of tranquilizer rifle, and then calmly walked over to where the former friends she had betrayed were tied up, and spoken more-or-less as if it had all been nothing but a girly spat in high school.
In spite of their situation, Zondra had greeted Amy with snarled insults, and Sarah understood that loss of self-control, but Amy had shrugged it off, and proceeded to tell them a few things in that impossibly eager, chippy voice.
"Listen up, girls, I don't have time to waste, our Chinese friends here will start waking up in half an hour or so. I don't think I want to untie you two just now, I think I'd just have to tranq you both if I did from the look in your eyes. Especially you, Zonnie!"
Zondra had replied with some unprintable insults, managing to address Amy's attitude, her actions, her IQ, and her sexual preferences, all in a few words. Amy had simply grinned, obviously enjoying the helpless frustration of her former teammates.
"Here," Amy had said, sliding a sharp knife toward Sarah's hand. She caught it easily, as Amy had obviously intended.
"There, I know you can get loose with that," Amy said, "so while you're cutting free I'll tell you a little of what you need to know."
Sarah had not been wasting any time, slicing at the ropes holding her and Zondra back-to-back against the metal pole. But she had kept much of her attention on what her traitorous ex-friend was saying.
"Believe it or not, we're on the same side, at least for the moment. Augusto and I are working under duress, we were extracted from prison by your old friends FULCRUM, but they didn't do it for our health. They want to use us to get at you and your new Kittens, and we're pretty sure we're disposable once they're through with us."
"FULCRUM?!" Sarah had exclaimed. "They're out of business!"
"Tell that to them," Amy had said with a shrug, "apparently nobody told THEM. Anyway, for the moment, like I said, we're all on the same side. Augusto and I don't want to end up in a shallow grave when FULCRUM is done with us, and that's pretty likely what's on the agenda. You girls don't want to end up in the same place, and I think that's what they've got in mind for you. So we might just maybe be able to help each other.
"By the way, FULCRUM has completely screwed with the world-wide electronic communications network," Amy had put in, that insanely cheerful voice still full of enthusiasm. Sarah had remembered Chuck saying something to the effect that nobody could be that cheerful all the time for real and looking back he seemed prescient. "All your phone calls to CIA and NSA are monitored, and a lot of them are being spoofed. You haven't actually been in contact with our dear old masters in days, you've been getting fake calls and messages from them and they from you.
"I don't have time to explain what all else FULCRUM is doing, and I don't know it all yet myself. But Augusto and I should be able to find out some more and pass it on, if we can make this little alliance of convenience work."
At that point one of the Chinese operatives had stirred slightly and let out a groan. Amy had casually shot him again with another tranq dart from the strange rifle-like weapon she carried, and he was out cold. By that point Sarah had cut all the way through one rope and was starting on another, she and Zondra would be free in a few minutes. Amy had obviously been aware of that, much as Sarah would have preferred to get loose and surprise her.
"Well, it looks like my time's about up," Amy had chirped. "Either our friends here are gonna start waking up on earnest or you two are gonna get loose and try to kill me and I'll have to knock you out, and if I have to do that the Chinese are going to wake up first and you two get dead. So I'll be going...but Augusto and I will be in touch!"
Sarah remembered the blonde murderous 'cheerleader' walking away, but she paused before she left the garage, looked back at Sarah and Zondra, and called out, "Oh, by the by, Sarah, your sweetie-pie is in Moscow too. I know you probably didn't know what, what with the FULCRUM messing with the phones and all. Just thought you might wanna know."
It had only been three or four minutes later that Sarah had managed to get herself and Zondra completely free, and they had vacated the premises immediately. They had paused for a few seconds to debate whether to kill the Chinese personnel while they were easy targets, and decided against it. There was no particular reason to do so, and doing so might well escalate the Chinese activity at a time when they did not need extra complications.
They had made their way out, and into the bustling megalopolis, and then they had made their slow, careful way toward the Hotel Tolstoi-Gagarin.
Zondra and Sarah were torn about the situation. If Amy was to be believed, they dared not use their phones, even the 'special' phones they used for communication with the other CATs. But could she be believed? They was no way to know, but on balance they both concluded that they dared not risk it either way. Thus they had not tried to contact the CATs by phone. The other survivors from the safehouse attack would make their way to their fallback hideouts, but Sarah and Zondra had moved toward the hotel to make contact with Carina and warn her of the new complications.
Along with all that, Sarah's mind was turning over Amy's claim that Chuck was in Moscow. If he was, that could be either good or bad, but she still desperately needed to tell him about Zarnow!
"So if the Hotel is being watched the way we suspect it is," Zondra asked, "how do we get inside without being seen?"
Sarah grinned. "Remember how we got into the Stockman's Convention in Buenos Aires?" Sarah asked her old friend.
"No," Zondra said firmly. "Not again. By the time we got out of there my ass had been pinched so many times it was one big bruise!"
"Tell me about it," Sarah laughed ruefully. "At least you had on pants, my skirt would have embarrassed a pro-football cheerleader! But this time I think we'll borrow a trick from Sherlock Holmes. Instead of pretending to be hookers, we'll pretend to be maids. Nobody notices the help, as Holmes observed."
Zondra looked over at hotel and gave a not. "Sounds like a plan. And a maid can slug someone who gets handsy, too."
Sarah and Zondra began working out the details, their old skills rapidly returning as they did.
To be continued...