9:15 A.M., Central Standard Time
Saturday, August 15th, 2009
Lac la Plonge Auxiliary Air Field, Saskatchewan, Canada
Chuck Bartowski wasn’t quite sure why he was awake. He hadn’t fallen asleep until close to 6:00 A.M., so just over three hours of sleep was certainly nowhere even close to enough.
Veronica had cried herself out around midnight, and fallen asleep herself around 1:00 A.M. Chuck had tried to fall asleep, but the sounds of Veronica’s voice from the day before wouldn’t stop running through his head.
And now he was awake again. He found himself with decidedly murderous intentions running through his head. As far as he was concerned, Martin Ducard was the walking dead.
Veronica had fallen asleep still completely dressed the night before, in a sweater and a pair of jeans. That couldn’t have possibly been comfortable – but Chuck couldn’t blame her.
He sighed. He was going to have to go out of his way to avoid his morning guilt trip. Veronica was going to need him to be normal and sane this morning. He couldn’t be wallowing in his own self-pity today.
It was about another five minutes of lying there before she began to move. She slowly stretched out her arms, then lifted her head and opened her eyes. A tiny smile crossed her mouth as she looked at Chuck.
“Hi,” she whispered. Chuck didn’t say anything, just looked at her and smiled.
Neither of them said anything for a moment, and then Chuck spoke. “How are you feeling?”
She sighed. “Violated,” she replied. “Not the first time.”
Chuck raised an eyebrow as he looked down at her. “You’re taking it surprisingly well,” he said softly.
“Not really,” Veronica said, slowly shaking her head. “This is what’s called coping. You know, when you’ve been raped, and then somebody tries to do it a second time… when your best friend gets murdered… when you see somebody jump off of a fourteen story hotel right in front of you…”
She sighed again. “You learn how to deal.”
Chuck shook his head. “God,” he breathed. “You are made of some strong stuff.”
Veronica smiled. “Gotta compensate for my small size somehow.”
About forty minutes later, both of them had cleaned up and were feeling more human. Veronica was slowly nursing one of her bottled frappucinos, while Chuck had gone straight to the source and popped open a Rockstar.
Neither of them was expecting a knock at the door, but when it came, Veronica nearly jumped out of her skin. Chuck could hardly blame her – the knock at the door this time yesterday… well, he was assuming that was a trip she’d rather forget.
But the person at the door today was the incognito Bryce Larkin. “Good morning, Mr. Bartowski,” he said, holding a finger to his lips. Pulling a device that looked like a cell phone from his pocket, he hit three buttons, and a green light immediately started blinking on it.
“Bug jammer,” he explained, walking into the cabin. “The four of us can talk freely now.”
“The four of us?” Chuck asked. “You have a monkey in your pocket, perhaps?”
“No,” Bryce replied. “The fourth is coming in with breakfast.”
That’s when Carina Hansen walked in. She was also dressed in a Canadian Air Force uniform, her hair pulled up underneath the cap, but that didn’t slow her down one bit. “Hello, Chuck,” she said, her usual flirtatious smile right where it always was.
Veronica’s eyes widened at the voice. She turned around and saw Carina. “YOU!” she gasped, standing up and pointing.
“Oh, Jesus,” Carina groaned. “Insane blonde pixie alert. Please tell me she left her howitzer at home, Chuck.”
Chuck nodded. “Congratulations, Carina, you win the insensitive bitch of the day award, and it’s only 10:00.”
Carina looked at him with what appeared to be a real look of offense. “Excuse me?” she asked. “I come here with Bryce for the express purpose of rescuing your ass. I bring you breakfast, and this is the thanks I get?”
Chuck crooked his finger, indicating that Carina should come to him. She did, setting the two to-go boxes she carried down on the table.
As Chuck whispered an explanation in her ear, Veronica opened one of the boxes. “Wow,” she said. “Pancakes made by somebody other than me!”
“We grabbed some food from the mess,” Bryce replied, as Chuck backed away from Carina. Carina’s facial expression had gone from annoyed to horrified.
“Oh my God,” she breathed. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Veronica.”
Veronica looked down at the table. “It’s okay,” she said quietly.
“No,” Carina replied, “no, it’s not! You can’t just tell yourself that!”
Bryce looked confused. “I’m lost,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”
Chuck sighed and closed his eyes. “Yesterday, Veronica was taken to see the base doctor, this guy named Martin Ducard.”
“Yeah, I know who he is,” Bryce said. “He’s the one who put the bugs in here.”
“Right,” Chuck replied. “Anyway, he told Veronica that she was a month pregnant, and then…”
Chuck stopped for a moment. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and blew it out again. “Then he restrained her, and aborted the pregnancy against her will.”
Bryce’s face froze. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even breathe for a moment. Finally, he slowly blew out his breath. “My God,” he whispered. “What a sick bastard.”
“Dead man walking, as far as I’m concerned,” Carina said softly.
Bryce closed his eyes. “I… I seriously think I’m gonna be sick,” he muttered, crossing the kitchen to the sink. He bent over it, but nothing happened. He took one deep breath, then another, and stayed bent over. “Do you have some water?”
Chuck opened the refrigerator, grabbed a bottle, and passed it to Bryce. Bryce twisted it open, took a swig, swished it around in his mouth, and spat it out in the sink. Then he leaned back and took a long drink of it.
Then a confused look crossed his face. “Wait a second,” he said. “She was pregnant?”
Uh-oh. This was a moment Chuck had not been waiting for. “So, you…” Bryce pointed at Chuck.
“Well, it wasn’t an immaculate conception,” Veronica deadpanned, trying to put some levity into the situation.
“Chuck,” Bryce said, a note of anger entering his voice, “correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you ENGAGED?”
“I didn’t have a choice, Bryce!” Chuck replied, a cold fury tinting his voice. “Doctor Ducard was going to KILL her if I didn’t!”
Bryce raised an eyebrow. “Do you even know what goes on up here, Bryce?” Chuck asked, and then plowed ahead, without waiting for an answer. “It’s what they call the ‘Humanity Project’. They’re trying to breed the ‘perfect human’. If you ask me, it sounds a lot like the ‘Final Solution’!”
Now Chuck had a full head of steam. “You know, you know my grandparents on my dad’s side, they would’ve been sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau if they hadn’t escaped from Warsaw, and, and ended up in Florida? Well, that’s what this is! This is like the Canadian Auschwitz! That’s what Fulcrum’s doing! They don’t want the Intersect, they want the goddamn Aryan Nation!”
Chuck’s face was bright red, and he was breathing in great, heaving gasps. “Chuck,” Carina said quietly, “calm down, okay?”
Chuck’s face twisted in furious disbelief as he turned his rage on her. “Why the hell should I calm down?!”
“Because you’re about to start hyperventilating,” she replied, stepping towards him and laying a hand on his shoulder. “You need to breathe, and sit down, before you hurt yourself.”
Chuck blew out his breath in a great huff, and collapsed in a chair. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “This just… it all makes me so angry. And worst of all is what he did to Veronica… and I couldn’t do anything to stop him.”
He looked like he was going to say something more, but at that moment, the device on Bryce’s belt started beeping. “Oh, shit,” Bryce muttered. “Ducard’s in the clinic. We’ve got to go.”
Bryce hit a button, and the green light on the device stopped flashing. He headed toward the door, and pulled it open. Carina walked out the door, but Bryce turned back to Chuck.
“Tomorrow,” he said, and then he too walked out, closing the door behind him.
Chuck looked after them for a moment, and then his head drooped, falling into his hands. He just sat there for a moment, not doing anything. It was only when his shoulders heaved upwards that Veronica realized he was crying.
She quickly pulled up a chair next to him and sat down, putting an arm around him. “Hey,” she whispered. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“You would’ve been better off if you’d never met me,” Chuck choked out. “You, Sarah, Casey, Bryce – all of you.”
“No,” Veronica replied firmly. “You’re wrong. We’re all better off for knowing you. You’re an incredible man. Everybody should be so lucky as to have you for a friend.”
Chuck didn’t say anything. His problem was so much deeper than Veronica thought. It wasn’t just guilt. It went so far beyond just that.
He felt like his heart was slowly being ripped in half.
11:30 P.M., Pacific Daylight Time
John Wayne International Airport, Santa Ana, California
Sarah Walker slowly walked through the retired Starlifter. The cargo area was packed with vehicles – Crown Vics and Suburbans parked side by side, bumper to bumper. They were already loaded with weapons.
The FBI’s UH-1H Huey was stowed at the very end of the cargo hold, by the huge loading door, its rotors folded, its tail extended over the very front row of Balboa County Sheriff’s Crown Vics. The helicopter, just like all the vehicles, was securely anchored so that it wouldn’t shift a millimeter in flight.
She went forward, to where jump seats had been bolted down for the sixty-three people who would be going on this mission. Sarah looked at the starboard bulkhead, and noticed that it appeared to be covered in scratches.
When she looked more closely, though, she realized that it wasn’t just random scratches – it was actually engravings. Cocking her head, she tried to make sense of them. After a moment, they became clear.
Each engraving included the name of a soldier, the outfit he was attached to, a date, and a destination. The latest date that Sarah found said, “PFC Rodney Mitchell, USMC 1/7, 3/19/03, Iraq”.
Sarah was intrigued by this flying wall of history she had stumbled upon. She kept reading the engravings, finding some that were more than forty years old, some that were within the last ten years.
Then she found two that were totally unexpected. One came as a surprise, one as a total shock. The surprising one read, “Cpt. John Casey, USAF 366 FW, 3/21/99, Kosovo”.
But the other one was something she never would’ve expected to see. When she read it, it felt like a shock of electricity had been sent down her spine. The engraving said, “SFC Sid Bartowski, USA 1/10 ACR, 11/29/67, Vietnam.”
“Can’t sleep either?”
Her head jerked around to the right. John Casey stood at the back row of seats. “Casey, you’ve got to take a look at this,” she said.
With a puzzled look on his face, Casey joined her, and bent down. She pointed out his own engraving first.
His eyes went wide. “I will be damned,” he said quietly. “This is my bird – Mad Martha!”
Sarah turned a strange look on him. “There were two crews that flew this plane during the Kosovo campaign in 1999,” he explained. “I was the pilot for the Blue Crew – we deadheaded on the way over to Kosovo, while the Gold Crew flew. I REMEMBER engraving this, too! I saw all the other engravings, and figured I should add my own.”
Sarah smiled. “Take a look at this one,” she told him, pointing to the engraving made by Sergeant First Class Sid Bartowski.
Casey peered at it closely, and then looked up at her. “You don’t think…”
She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t just think, I know,” she replied. “Sid Bartowski, deployed November of 1967. Promoted to Master Sergeant February 1968, KIA June 17th, 1969. Had a son, Irving, born 1957, and a daughter, Marilyn, born 1963. Irving had two children – a daughter, Eleanor, born in 1979, and a son, Charles, born in 1981.”
Casey nodded, a rare smile coming to his face. “So Chuck’s grandfather is riding along for the rescue mission, huh?”
Sarah smiled back. “Hey, I’d say we can use all the help we can get on this one.”
Casey stood. “Come on, Walker, you need to get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”
“Yes, yes it is,” she agreed. “A big day indeed.”
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