A/N1: If Galina Bryant owns Chuck, it's now up for grabs.
A/N2: Somewhat kinetic narrative coming up. Stay seated, buckle your seatbelts, and keep your hands and feet inside the chapter. I'll speak to you again on the other side.
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Saturday, December 6, 2008; 4:17 PM PST
They found the corridor leading to the intersect room. Unlike the other areas, this one seemed almost deserted. As they came closer to the room marked on the map as their destination, there were fewer and fewer people.
They turned the corner and stopped dead in their tracks. Facing them, equally surprised, was Galina Bryant, who was supposed to be in Chile, but somehow was in Blackrock.
Both women stood frozen in place with surprise, but only for a moment.
One of the Galinas reacted first, as the other drew a breath to shout her alarm. The fingers of the other one's right hand were extended and stiff, palm down, in the nukite spear hand strike. She lunged forward and drove her hardened fingertips into the other woman's throat. Galina Bryant's trachea was crushed by the attack and she instantly found herself unable to take a breath.
With one hand at her throat, her eyes wide with panic, her open mouth gasping fruitlessly for air, she tried to strike at the other woman, but found herself swarmed by her doppleganger and the two men with her. The men held her arms in strong grips while the fake Bryant crowded her with her body, pushing her back against the wall. Her silent efforts were desperate, knowing that she had only moments to live. She pushed, pulled, shook, kicked, anything to struggle against these people. Her diaphragm was convulsively trying to drag air into her lungs, but it was a useless attempt through her ruined throat. Her panicked and desperate expression, with her open mouth trying to breathe, was hideous enough that all three of the people holding her quiet looked away. The only sounds she could utter were almost silent convulsive 'huhhh' gasps. Without air, it took only a couple of minutes for her to weaken. And then the blackness overtook her. Her struggles ceased and her body became literally dead weight. She had choked to death standing up. Only one Galina Bryant remained alive.
"Someplace to hide the body?" Kemp asked Bryant, looking around the empty hallway.
"Bring it with us," she said.
"Right," said Newton. Seemingly without any effort he took the body from the others and tossed it over a shoulder. Looking at the others he said, "Let's go."
Knowing they were only a moment away from being discovered carrying the dead body of a Fulcrum operative, they walked quickly towards the Intersect room.
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Saturday, December 6, 2008; 4:22 PM PST
Stephen Bartowski sat and fiddled uselessly with some of the electronics in front of him. He'd done what he could with the Intersect. Roark would use it on his people tomorrow and they would all die immediately. He fully expected them to kill him afterward, but that couldn't be helped. In the meantime, he would just waste time until then.
The door opened and three people he didn't recognize entered. Well, four people, if you counted the one being carried by a short muscular man.
The scientists with him looked up, equally startled.
"Hey," said one of them. "What are you..." He never finished the question as the tall man took out a suppressed pistol and shot him once in his open mouth, blowing the back of his head off.
Without preamble each of the new entrants drew suppressed pistols and killed everyone in the room, except him. The white-coated Fulcrum operatives scrambled and dodged, but the result was inexorable. One woman fell to her knees and begged for mercy. None was available that afternoon. Blood splattered on the computers and electronics. The shots were still echoing and the piled bodies were stilling. The nine Fulcrum scientists were all dead. The shooters had acted without any apparent emotion, as if they were exterminators dealing with an ant trap. It made Orion think of the deadliest people he'd ever met.
While the smell of cordite hung in the air, the woman with the smoking pistol in her right hand looked at him and said, with sparkling eyes and a smile, "Hi, Dad."
He grinned at his soon-to-be daughter and said, "Hi, Sarah."
The short man dropped the body, who bore a striking resemblance to the disguised Sarah.
"Let me guess," said Stephen smiling broadly, "Leo and Frankie."
"Bingo," said Leo.
Stephen pointed towards a body, "He has the key to the chain at my ankle." As Frankie bent to frisk the dead man, Orion took a wrench from the table in front of him and smashed the glass tube holding the Intersect cube. Picking up the blue cube from the broken glass on the table, he dropped it to the floor at his feet and stamped on it several times, breaking it into hundreds of pieces. The software was the tricky part, but destroying the hardware certainly couldn't hurt.
As Frankie unchained him from the desk, he asked for a pistol. Sarah reached to her ankle and handed him her back-up piece. As she was doing so, Leo was stripping the bloody coat off one of the bodies. Sarah took a mask and wig from her pocket for Stephen and moved to help him don it. Leo had taken the bloody white coat and was taking off the clean coat Orion wore to replace it.
Sarah said, while adjusting the mask, in a clipped professional voice, "Orion went insane. Grabbed a gun and began to kill everyone. Sachem ordered us to get you to a hospital. We bluff our way out. You with me?" She sounded nothing more than a military officer giving orders in a combat situation.
"Yes," said Stephen.
"Ok," said Sarah. "We're on the clock. The moment we're gone this place is hit."
"But they'll run. They'll scatter," objected Stephen.
Sarah turned back to him exuding hard determination. "Dad, right now Kevin's got a flight of B-2 bombers in the air just waiting for word we're out. This place is history within the hour," she said.
"Damn," murmured Stephen.
Frankie said, reaching for Stephen, "You're wounded and I'm helping you walk to the car to the hospital."
"Got it. Let's go," said Stephen, draping an arm around Frankie's shoulders.
Sarah put a device down on the table and the sounds of shouts and gunfire sounds filled the air.
They moved into the hallway and headed for the stairs. When they encountered people, shocked at the bloody appearance of the man who no longer resembled Orion, Sarah shouted, "Orion. Orion's gone insane. He's shooting. We've got to stop him before he destroys the Intersect. Sachem ordered us to get this one to the hospital. Be careful with the Intersect. Be careful."
By that point they were past the curious and heading up the stairs.
As the alarmed men and women of Fulcrum approached the door of the Intersect room the screaming voice from within shouted, "I WANT TO TALK TO THE SACHEM. BRING HIM AND NO ONE ELSE. YOU HEAR ME? I'LL DESTROY IT. I'LL DESTROY THE INTERSECT, YOU ASSHOLES."
With the fear of the destroyed Intersect as a threat, they hurried to get Roark. Thirty seconds later, more screamed demands could be heard from the other side of the door. With all the demands, Roark arrived at a jog.
"Stephen," yelled Roark. "Don't be a fucking asshole. Open the door. You know that if you don't, I'll just kill everyone in your family. Right? You..."
Before Roark had finished the voice screamed out again, "I'LL DESTROY IT. I'LL DESTROY THE INTERSECT. LET ME TALK TO THE SACHEM."
"Stephen, I'm here. You want to talk? Let's talk," shouted Roark. Smith was keeping him back from the door in case the mad Orion fired through it. "Stephen, you hear me? I'm here."
"LET ME TALK TO THE SACHEM. GO GET HIM," screamed the voice.
Roark and Smith looked at each other, understanding dawning at the same time.
Smith turned to one of his men and said, "Open it when I say go."
He moved to the side of the door with his gun drawn and looked to the Fulcrum man, nodding once, he said, "Go."
The door was thrown open just as the voice in the room started again. "GO GET THE SACHEM. I NEED TO TALK TO HIM DIRECTLY. I NEED." After a quick glance around the room over the sights of his pistol, Smith holstered his weapon, picked up the device on the table, and switched it off. He had noted the bodies, the smashed Intersect cube, and the empty chain on the floor denoting the absence of Orion.
Only a moment later Roark was in the room. He'd taken in the scene instantly and come to the only possible conclusion. Throwing his head back, Roark screamed the scream of the truly insane, "CARMICHAELLLLLLL"
Sarah, Leo and Frankie half carrying the supposedly wounded man were crossing the garage floor making their way to their car. They were shouting the same message to anyone present, that Orion had gone insane and began shooting people. Recognizing the emergency, Stacey had already run to open the door at the head of the ramp.
Suddenly a klaxon began to howl and Smith's voice came over speakers, "Shut everything down. Carmicheal's team is trying to rescue Orion. Shut it all down."
Fox Team reacted immediately, as did Fulcrum. All around them, men and women began to pull out weapons. Frankie shrugged off Stephen's arm and sprinted for the office with the switch to open the door.
Stacey was in the process of reversing the switch and the door began to close. He was also trying to draw his weapon at the same time. The combined effort proved difficult and he didn't get the weapon fully out by the time Frankie was in the doorway. Frankie killed him with two shots, then moved the body aside to access the control panel. It only took him a second to find the appropriate switch and reverse the door once again, so it began to open. He watched it for a moment and then pumped two bullets into the mechanism, hoping to disable it going forward.
Stepping out into from the office the garage proper he saw total mayhem. Many people were shooting at each other. He killed the three people he could get shots at and began to run across the open area between him and the car. Sarah, Leo and Stephen were moving towards it, while firing at the multitude of Fulcrum agents engaging them. He saw them get to the car and begin to climb in, Sarah, of course, taking the driver's seat. Leo reached into a hidden compartment and pulled out an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, a machine gun capable of spraying 850 bullets per minute downrange. Fourteen bullets a second was the rate of fire that had saved many infantry squads over the decades of its service.
Even with that covering fire, Frankie was hit in the leg by a round while in mid sprint. He hit the ground and skidded to a stop on his face.
With the bullets flying, with Leo laying down covering fire and Sarah moving the car for their escape, Frankie expected the end. But Stephen threw himself out of the car and ran to Frankie. He grabbed him and half dragged him to the car.
With all four of them in the vehicle, Leo kept up his rate of fire, hosing down the Fulcrum operatives coming up the stairs. The enemy were piling up like cordwood at that entrance. But there was another stair entrance on the other side of the huge room, which he did not have a clear shot at. Hot brass from the spent cartridges spewed around the inside of the car and the noise was deafening. Fulcrum bullets hit everywhere, but the car had as much armor as top-line military vehicles and the bullets bounced off. The glass suffered, but not enough to scare the passengers. With the push of a button, they began to spew CS and smoke from under the car.
Sarah said, urgently, "Buckle up, guys." None of them took the suggestion lightly.
She crashed through two cars in her way and headed for the ramp. Behind her, she could see two cars starting up and heading her way to give chase. Her car had been modified and, while it appeared to be a normal sedan, it was an insanely powerful machine. Even in the short distance between her parking spot and the edge of the ramp, she was already going 45 miles per hour. By the time she got to the top of the ramp she was pushing it over 80 miles per hour. Sunset had been a few minutes ago and the desert was gloomy without the sun. She came out into the surface and flew through the air for a few moments before the wheels reconnected with the ground.
Once on the ground, Sarah skewed the car into a hard right turn.
"Castle Bravo, do you read?" she hollered.
Jorge's voice came back to her instantly. "We read you, Foxy Leader. Status?"
"We're out with Orion but coming in hot. We have three..."
Stephen, looking out the splintered back window of the car said, "Four."
"Four," said Sarah, "bogeys on our tail."
Jorge said, "No worries, Foxy Leader. Put the pedal down and come home to your loved ones. We've got it from here."
He switched frequencies and said, "Fox Team inbound. Four bogeys."
"Roger that," said Marco. "We got it."
With the Fulcrum cars behind her, Sarah put down the accelerator. She heard the discussion in the back seat as Stephen applied a tourniquet to Frankie's leg. When she glanced at the speedometer on the dash she saw that she had pegged out the device, exceeding 130 miles per hour. The distance to safety diminishing by the second.
She whipped past the command center without slowing down and watched in her mirrors as her teammates engaged the Fulcrum vehicles chasing her.
Four lines of fire grew out of the sides of the road forming a fiery triangle as four Javelin anti-tank missiles sought the Fulcrum pursuers. The following vehicles, and their occupants, were blown to fiery pieces.
Sarah didn't realize it, but somehow, she was out of breath. She inhaled deeply and, for the first time in almost a week, allowed herself to relax.
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Saturday, December 6, 2008; 5:06 PM PST
Chuck spoke to the White House Situation Room and said "Sir, I have an update. Fox Team is out and we are about to activate Hammer Team."
"Great news, Chuck. Orion ok?"
"Yes, Sir. We got him out."
"Excellent. Be sure to give Sarah a kiss for me. On the cheek," said the President.
At the same time, in the Team B command center, Casey pushed a button on his console. "Buster, this is Leatherneck."
"Read you, Leatherneck."
"Target is clear. You are weapons free. Bust it."
"Consider it busted, Leatherneck." Switching frequencies, Major Kevin Graham said, "We're on. Hammer Two, you're up."
"Roger, Buster," said the second plane in the Hammer Squadron.
Smoothly and silently, Hammer Two dropped out of formation in the black sky heading to the GPS coordinates programmed into their systems. The drop was graceful and invisible in the darkness, as they were flying without the normal navigation lights. All other air traffic having been redirected from the area for military exercises.
His face lit only by the red lights of the cockpit panels, the pilot said, "Release at your discretion."
"Roger," said his companion officer and best friend.
After confirming the GPS lock on the screen in front of him, his said, "Weapon away."
The bomb dropped from the belly of the aircraft. The GBU-43B, more commonly known as the MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs), fell towards its target. It was the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US military arsenal. On its way towards the ground, the device spewed aerosol fuel. When it was close enough, it ignited the fuel in the air. The resultant fuel-air explosion blew away everything standing on the ground. Cactus for hundreds of yards in every direction was blown over. The explosion formed a miniature mushroom cloud in the desert night sky.
The door to the ramp was still open. Some of the Fulcrum operatives had been assembling in the garage to head after the fleeing Fox Team. Those men and women were essentially vaporized. The cars were tossed around like a child's toys. The force of the explosion blew in all doors and windows in the interior of the garage.
Buster spoke again into his microphone. "Hammer Three, hit it."
Hammer Three veered down and out of the formation and headed for the cloud of dust and debris kicked up by the GBU detonation. Once at the desired location the bombs were released. The two BLU-113 bombs, known as the Super Penetrator, were designed to penetrate the ground more than 20 feet before detonation. They hit within twenty yards of each other and reached the lower level of the Fulcrum complex before exploding.
The explosions ripped apart hundreds of Fulcrum operatives who were scrambling to reach the surface following the initial attack. The upper levels of the complex collapsed onto the lower level, crushing hundreds more under fallen concrete.
Buster ordered Hammer Two to return to the target and hit it one more time.
The second bomb dropped by Hammer Two was also a bunker buster and, by pure luck, it hit one of the crowded stairwells. It fell to the lowest level before detonating. Several hundred Fulcrum operatives were killed instantly and there was a further collapse.
The Fulcrum base was a smoking ruin, collapsed into three large craters. Buster ordered Hammer Two and Three to return to Edwards.
Casey spoke into his radio connection. "Mustang, you and your men are up at bat. Come over and join the party."
"Roger, Leatherneck. See you soon," said Major Kona.
Immediately the three Ospreys lifted off from Edwards and began to fly without lights across the Mojave.
Sarah and Orion came into the command center no longer wearing their masks and were greeted with hugs from the men and women present. Leo had stayed with Frankie as Ellie and Devon got to work on the wounded man's leg.
Twenty minutes after the detonation of the third bunker buster, and all according to plan, Hammer One dropped a second MOAB onto the target. The thinking was that by that time the Fulcrum survivors would have managed to crawl out of the debris hoping to escape to the surface.
The pilots of the inbound Ospreys had been briefed to expect that explosion, but even so, they were awed by the size and power of what had been unleashed on the target. No one could be alive in that maelstrom. Their aircraft shook from the pressure wave.
His job over, Hammer One returned to Edwards, hopeful that they had accomplished their mission.
Chuck spoke to the President, "The hammer phase is over, Sir. The Marines are here and are about to enter the complex."
"Thank you, Chuck. I wish them good luck and good hunting."
"Yes, Sir. I will tell them you said so. Sir, I think this part of the job is going to take a long time. The Fulcrum base is a wreck. I'm not even sure the Marines will be able to get to it all."
"I got it. I won't be at the edge of my seat when we hang up. I think the heavy lifting is over. I got it. Thank you. Thank you and your team. The country owes you more than it can ever repay. Don't you worry, that will be recognized. But now listen to me, Son. After the Marines head in, I want you to take your bride and your dad home and get some rest. There's nothing you can do anymore. You've been running yourself ragged at my order. Now I'm giving a different order. Take your family home and get some rest. And have anyone on your team who can break away do the same. This thing is basically over now, except for the clean-up. There may still be fighting ahead, but we've crested the hill. Go home, Son."
"Thank you, Sir. Yes, Sir," said Chuck, crossing his fingers.
The President wasn't done. "Chuck, don't forget I know you. I know the way you think and I know you will take responsiblity for eveyone else and always put yourself last. I know that. I need you to promise me. Promise me you'll go home when the Marines go in."
Chuck sighed and chuckled slightly, knowing he'd been caught by the older man. "Ok. You got me, Sir. Fine. I promise to go home and get some rest." Chuck started to laugh. "You happy now?" He said with mock offense and somewhat flippantly to the most powerful man in the world.
Chuckling himself, the President said, "More than you can imagine. Talk to you tomorrow, Chuck."
"Thank you, Sir. Goodnight."
The Marine Corps planes landed at three points around the still smoking target and each disgorged the warriors, the fourteen man special forces unit plus one spy each. Major Kona and a radio man, established themselves at one edge of the target area. Kona began to direct his men for the entry.
As his men moved to three separate areas to enter the destroyed facility, Chuck reached Kona on the radio. "Mustang, just wanted you to know that I just got off with National Command Authority. He wanted me to wish you and your men good luck and good hunting."
"Thank you, Sir. Good to know," replied Kona.
Kona passed on the President's good wishes. Moments later, at his command, the three teams entered the ruins of the Fulcrum base prepared for battle.
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Saturday, December 6, 2008; 7:14 PM PST
Rachel drove into the night, listening to the music on the radio and letting her mind wander.
Sleeping on the passenger seat next to her was Chuck's dad, Stephen Bartowski. Codenamed Orion and such a brilliant inventor that the entire American response to Fulcrum was arranged around the need to rescue him. Sleeping behind her were Chuck and Sarah, wrapped around each other so thouroughly you'd have to look closely to see where one ended and the other began. She found it adorable that, just like at school, Sarah was sharing a very quiet feminine snore.
Rachel smiled to herself in the dark. She almost couldn't believe it. She was party to one of the most consequential actions in American history. Coming to work with Sarah had been the best decision she'd ever made. If she wouldn't wake her passengers, she'd have whooped with exuberant joy.
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A/N3: I tried to do what we never got from canon; a true breaking of Fulcrum. The scene in Colonel when they were all in their nice suits at the drive in was visually cool, but logically silly. (OK, so much of the show could be characterized the same way.) So, I hope to have done a better job of showing the destruction. Are there some stragglers out there? Yeah, but I didn't want our guys to get too greedy. So, they struck when they deemed they had sufficient targets. The end of the remaining Fulcrum members will continue for months if not years.
A/N4: Everyone knows I love reviews. So let me know what you think. I do love to hear from you. Tell me I'm horrible for the huge body count in this one, if you want.