A/N1: I've come to the conclusion that we should get Rachel to look into ownership of Chuck. That girl is fly (as my sons would say – I think that's supposed to be good).
A/N2: Jill Roberts is no more and we're back in California for the next step in the war between Fulcrum and Team B. Here we go.
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Friday, December 5, 2008; 6:45 AM PST
"Stupid shit," declared Casey. "What kind of strategic genius decided to put all of Fulcrum in a hole in the ground in the middle of the fucking desert? What a bunch of fucking morons."
"Be happy, Case," said Zondra.
The big man grumbled and said, "I still worry about a trap."
"I hear you, Case," said Chuck. "But we have to take the chance that it's on the level." He glanced at his watch. "By this time, Malone and Langston will have briefed Kevin. We're putting a shit-ton of effort into the gamble that it's for real."
"Speaking of effort," said Rachel, "I just got a call. The FBI has gotten the surveillance in place at the airports." At Rachel's suggestion, the FBI had scrambled overnight to set up clandestine teams at the airports around Las Vegas and Los Angeles, even while they were awaiting a definitive location for Blackrock. Although the surveillance teams didn't know what the investigation was about, they were to notify Team B if the facial recognition systems picked up either active intelligence officers or those with a past background in the intelligence services. The information from the airports was being compared to the Fulcrum roster by Team B. There were already some hits being tallied by one of Jorge's computer guys. As the day progressed and more planes landed, they anticipated a flood.
Rachel said, "I'll keep everyone up to date as that develops."
"Thanks," said Chuck. "Anything about Blackrock?"
"Not yet," she said. "there's nothing online about the Starbright Drive-in or the land under it. We know it's owned by Roark, and Mike and his guys found nothing there on the surface. Jorge's accessed the San Bernadino County building department records, but it only goes back five years digitally. The rest is paper files, I guess. We'll keep looking into it, though."
"I'll get on to the Pentagon and get some drones or satellites overhead. Infrared scans," said Casey.
"Ground penetrating radar?" asked Chuck.
"Tough to do on a fly-by. That system works best if you're walking around above the target area. We tried it in the Iraq and Afghanistan. Mixed success on a good day. I can talk to them about it. I guess it couldn't hurt, but I don't hold out much hope that the radar will give us anything useful."
"Ok," said Chuck. "See what they can do."
"Yeah," said the Colonel.
Sondra said, "Any chance Orion's not there?"
"No," said Chuck. "Fulcrum's expecting to Intersect people, no doubt with the new and improved version provided by my dad. They'll have him there to handle that."
"Yeah," said Zondra glumly, "I guess that's right."
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Friday, December 5, 2008; 7:42 AM PST
"Brett," said Rachel.
"Yeah, Boss," he replied.
"There's a chopper landing in the parking lot to take you to San Bernadino. I got the head of the county building department out of bed. He's meeting you at the high school football field and will walk you into the building department files. Bring back anything about the site you can find."
"Right," said Brett, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair.
Shaking his head, he was continuously amazed at what his life had become.
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Friday, December 5, 2008; 8:02 AM PST
Casey hung up with the Pentagon. The infrared scans were lined up and would be run when the sun set and the desert cooled. The delay was necessary as the contrast would be sharper without the heat of the day interfering with the readings.
The ground penetrating radar, however, would be run within the next few hours, but no one had high expectations for the results of that attempt.
Casey glanced at his watch and put a call in to Kevin Graham to let him know the location of the target. He followed up with a call to get Graham and his fellow pilots the cooperation they would need at Edwards.
Team B had lots of moving pieces to coordinate.
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Friday, December 5, 2008; 10:34 AM PST
Rachel's cell phone rang and the screen told her it was Brett. He'd be calling from San Bernadino.
"Hey, Brett. What have you got?"
"Rachel, I'm bringing back what they have here. It's a couple of banker's boxes, but it's incomplete. The construction project to build the underground facility was a Federal project. Department of Energy. They wouldn't have gone through the local building department here. No jurisdiction. I'm talking to a man who's been here for almost forty years. He wasn't around when it was built, but he was here when they shut it down in the '70's. If not for his memory, we'd be shit-outta-luck."
"Ok, that's great, Brett. Good work. Get back here asap with what you have."
"Will do," he said.
Rachel hung up with him and started to look for the phone number of the Secretary of Energy.
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Friday, December 5, 2008; 10:51 AM PST
Casey was still down in Castle dealing with the military.
Zondra, Chuck and Sarah were upstairs in a small conference room in the Carmichael Industries space. They needed a bit of privacy, not intending this conversation to devolve into a debate.
"Ok," said Zondra. "The elephant in the room."
"Stephen," said Sarah.
"Exactly," said Zondra. "We are calling in a military airstrike on Chuck's dad."
"No, we're not," said Sarah calmly.
"Yeah, we pretty much are," insisted Zondra, shaking her head.
"Ummm," said Chuck. "It's not going to work out like that, Zee. What Sarah means is that now that we know where he is, we are going to go in to rescue him first."
"WHAT? That's insane. The place is swarming with Fulcrum and Carmichael and team are going to waltz in and take the single most important prisoner they have and walk out again. Guys, I've seen us pull off some incredible feats. Truly amazing stuff. But even we can't do what you are planning."
Chuck and Sarah glanced at each other and she said, "Yeah. We can and we will. Zee, Stephen is going to walk Ellie down the aisle at her wedding. He will." Sarah's voice was like tempered steel, not harsh, but very very hard.
"But Sarah, it'll be like stealing the honey from a hive of pissed off bees. For God's sake, there'll be hundreds of Fulcrum there and more arriving all the time."
"Exactly," said Sarah. "It'll be chaos."
"And it would help to be dressed like a bee," said Chuck.
"So, what's the plan?" asked Zondra.
"We go in disguised as Fulcrum," he said.
"Not 'we,' Honey," said Sarah. "We need you and Casey outside. You are overall mission commander, as per the President. And Casey is our liaison with the military. Neither of you can be away from coms. And anyway, I have to go in sneaky. A whole team isn't sneaky."
"I don't like the idea of you going in alone, though," said Chuck.
"Ok, fair enough," said Sarah. "Let's give some thought to the composition of the penetration team."
"Right," said Chuck.
"I still think it's suicide, but I'm going with you," said Zondra squeezing Sarah's arm.
"Thanks, Zee," said Sarah.
Sarah's phone buzzed and she checked the text message.
LARKIN SUCCESSFUL. SANDSTORM TERMINATED
She acknowledged receipt of the message, thought for a moment and sent a message to Bryce.
HEARD MISSION SUCCESSFUL. THANKS FOR THE WEDDING PRESENT.
She saw the three blinking dots, indicating that Bryce was typing. A moment later she read.
TRULY MY PLEASURE. GOOD LUCK ON 28TH. GIVE CHUCK A KISS FOR ME. 😍
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Friday, December 5, 2008; 11:14 AM PST
Chuck was a bit quiet in the hours after he'd heard of Jill's death. He'd known it was coming and recognized the necessity. But he still had years of good memories with her. They were tarnished by what he now understood about her character – things he'd never seen when they were together. Tarnished or not, they were his memories of some good times. As the news settled in him, he felt mostly sad at the waste.
Sarah understood the reason for his subdued mood and allowed him that time to come to terms with the death. She didn't expect it to last too long, though. They were just too busy.
Brett had returned from San Bernadino and he and Johnny were pouring over the information he had brought with him from the building department.
The planes with the ground penetrating radar had made a couple of passes over the target, but, as expected, the results didn't yield any useful information. Satellites with infrared capabilities were in position to run their scans when the sun set in the afternoon.
One thing that had been discovered was that the other parcel of vacant land owned by Roark near the target had been an airport at one point. It would have been a perfectly serviceable location to use for the launch of the helicopters which rescued the Fulcrum agents from the maelstrom in Ventura.
The FBI stakeouts at the airports had yielded several hundred hits from the Fulcrum roster, with more Fulcrum operatives arriving on every flight. There was an ongoing debate about the ideal time to hit Blackrock. Delay ran the risk of alerting the target and having them scatter, but the temptation to get more of them on target before the strike was strong.
One of Jorge's computer guys came into Castle with his arms full of rolled up plans. The Department of Energy had come through with the plans to the underground facility. It had been constructed by them in the early 1950's as part of the nuclear testing program. With the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the project was mothballed. It took another fifteen years for the government to dispose of it, though. It was sold to a developer, who went bankrupt, and then to Roark in 1998.
The files that Team B were given access to were large sheets of building blueprints. They had no printers in Castle large enough to handle those, so they commandeered a printer in the Studio's prop department. Jorge's man had just run the errand to collect them.
Sarah, Casey, Zondra, Mike and Fitz all crowded around the plans and studied them intently.
Meanwhile, Chuck was on a conference call with Malone, Beckman and Graham, keeping them informed of their progress.
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Friday, December 5, 2008; 2:34 PM PST
Sarah and Chuck sat in front of a computer screen and cycled through the pictures of the Fulcrum operatives from the roster. Sitting with them was Bea Collins, the Studio's make-up artist and a veteran intelligence officer.
After a while, she pointed to a picture and said, "That would work."
Sarah pulled up the file and said, "No go. She's based in San Jose. Too close. We need someone far away."
Collins said, "Yeah. Guess that's right. Let's keep looking."
The three of them sat at the monitor for several hours. After having had no sleep for a couple of days, the sedentary quiet activity was wearing on Chuck and Sarah. There was only so much coffee they could drink.
Eventually, they begged off and asked Collins if they could pick it up later.
They told the rest of the team that they were heading back to Echo Park for a nap in their own bed.
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Friday, December 5, 2008; 5:05 PM PST
Before going to their own apartment they stopped in to see Ellie.
Chuck said, "We found him. Sarah's going in to get him tomorrow."
Ellie, with tears in her eyes, hugged them both and said, "I knew it. I knew you could do it."
"It's not done yet, El," said Sarah.
"I know. I know," she said, wiping her eyes. "Why the delay?"
"Because the rescue is only one piece of an enormous operation. Everything has to be coordinated," said Chuck.
"Hummm. Ok. Lots of good guys with guns," she said.
"Well, yeah," said Chuck.
"Ok," said Ellie. "Where there are guns and violence, sometimes the good guys get hurt. I'll be there. We'll be there. Devon and I will be with you. It's not like you have dozens of doctors with the right clearances to be on standby. You just tell me where and when to be and I'll have us there ready to help."
Chuck and Sarah looked at each other and nodded in agreement.
"Ok, El. That sounds good. thanks," said Chuck.
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Friday, December 5, 2008; 9:21 PM PST
Chuck and Sarah were back in Castle, having rested for a few hours.
Bea Collins was still there when Chuck and Sarah returned. She'd picked three Fulcrum operatives, two based in Thailand and one based in Chile. In her judgement, they would work perfectly. Chuck and Sarah approved and Collins left Castle for the Studio where she would do her magic.
Kevin Graham had landed with his men and planes at Edwards Air Force Base. Rather than waiting to sit with Casey until the next morning, he'd taken a helicopter to the Studio while the engines on his B-2 were still cooling.
He and Casey were pouring over the building plans of the target and deciding on the ordinance necessary to have the maximum effect. Those decisions led to some borderline frantic phone calls to several Air Force facilities around the country. While the United States had more than enough weaponry to wage several simultaneous wars, not all of it was at Edwards. But with some emergency measures being implemented at the command of the top brass, everything they needed would be in place by noon the next day.
The satellite passes with the infrared scanners had been successful and showed an extensive facility with multiple heat sources. It soon became obvious that Roark had made extensions to the original plans, and Team B modified the plans accordingly. Not everything he'd done would have been visible to the scanners, so Sarah and her infiltration team would have to be on their toes for the unexpected hallway or door.
Later in the evening, Casey and Graham made another decision. That one led to a call to Admiral Olson, the Commander of the United States Special Operations Command. That, in turn, led to almost fifty men based in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina being roused from their bunks, armed for combat, and put on an overnight flight to Edwards. Three combat teams from the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command were on their way to join the Fulcrum battle.
Tomorrow it would be showtime.
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A/N3: I'd like to publicly acknowledge my dear friend Joe Watkins. It was his idea that the successful termination of Jill Roberts would be characterized by Sarah as a wedding present from Bryce. Thanks, buddy.
A/N4: Marine Corps special operations forces has an interesting history. When the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was formed in 1987 (combining under one command, among others, the Army Rangers, Delta Force, Navy SEALS, and Army Special Forces) the Marine Corps declined to participate. They took the position that all Marines were special forces. That arrangement was fine for all concerned until the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. At that point, it seemed that Secretary Rumsfeld had SOCOM on speed-dial and they got all the cool gigs. The Marines developed a sudden interest in joining SOCOM and formed MARSOC in 2005 for just that purpose. Casey could have picked any of the other Spec Ops unit within SOCOM, but it should come as no surprise that he picked the Marines.
A/N5: Canon had things happen sort of magically off camera in order to pull off coups against the bad guys. In New Day, the good guys have to work harder to accomplish the same thing. I kind of like that better. What do you guys think? Next week it will be showtime.