10:00 AM, Pacific Daylight Time
Thursday, July 5th, 2012
Studio City, California
Chuck Bartowski sat in his office in the SCCS building, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose. Ellie had convinced him three days before that it was time when he started squinting to read the scores of baseball games on his sixty-inch television.
He didn’t like them, not at all. They were an annoyance, and they made his vision fuzzy when he looked elsewhere. To make matters worse, Sarah had told him that they made him look “dignified”, which John Casey had immediately decided meant “old”.
Chuck didn’t want to look old. He was only thirty-one. But here he was, reading glasses, and God help him, he had actually found a gray hair that morning.
“It is so time for a haircut,” he had muttered immediately after finding the gray hair.
But right at the moment, he was reading over a contract. George Clooney’s Section Eight production company had taken Chuck’s first video game – Mindnode – and turned it into a movie two years before. A story about an average Joe who gets a database full of government secrets stuck in his head, it had starred Lee Pace, Kristen Bell, and Gareth David-Lloyd, and had been a moderately successful summer movie, grossing just over 170 million.
Now, Section Eight and Warner Brothers wanted to turn it into a TV show, for a mid-season pilot launch. Apparently, they had lined up Josh Schwartz, the guy who had come up with “The O.C.”, to produce it, and Joseph “McG” Nichol to direct the pilot. George Clooney himself was overseeing it, and had Anton Yelchin, Miley Cyrus, and Sean Maher onboard to play the three main roles.
And of course, it involved eighty pages of legal bullcrap that Chuck had to read over himself because he refused to hire an assistant other than Morgan.
Chuck wasn’t sure about Anton Yelchin or Miley Cyrus. Sure, Yelchin had been okay as Chekov in the Star Trek movie back in 2009, but then again, Chuck would probably never be entirely okay with whoever played the character based on him. And for that matter, Hannah freakin’ Montana as Sarah’s character?! Come on. The only acting choice he was completely behind was Sean “Simon Tam” Maher for the character based on Casey.
He sighed and closed his eyes, leaning back from his desk. He just couldn’t concentrate on this right now. He was impatiently waiting for Sarah and Casey to come up with a worthwhile plan of attack on the Firestone Slayers that didn’t involve mayhem and destruction – something that was less than simple for them, since mayhem and destruction was a specialty for them both.
That’s when Chuck’s secure phone rang.
It never rang. He almost didn’t recognize the warble at first, and then looked at it like it was a snake. Gingerly, he reached out, lifted the receiver, and held it to his ear.
“Bartowski, uh, secure?”
“Bartowski, this is Director Tyler.”
Sam Tyler on the phone. The Wisconsin-born, Manchester-raised CIA director with the accent that made him sound like he belonged on something produced by Russell T. Davies.
“Good morning, sir. What can I do for you?”
“We’ve got some backdoor intelligence for you from the DEA regarding the Firestone Slayers,” Tyler replied. “Interested?”
Chuck sat bolt upright in his chair. “Absolutely!” he said sharply. “Do continue…”
Tyler chuckled. “Alright. So it seems that the Slayers tend to spend a lot of time a LONG way from their namesake street, at a little place called the Empire Center in Burbank. You know of it?”
Chuck groaned. “You could say that…”
Sam Tyler paused a moment, but didn’t press the issue. “They have a car audio store there – Hermosa Audio – and that seems to be a front for their operations. The DEA seems to think they launder a lot of money through there.”
Chuck sighed. “Well, thanks… is there anything else?”
“No, that’s all. You have an idea on how you’re going to proceed with this?”
“Unfortunately,” Chuck replied wryly.
Tyler chuckled again. “That’s kind of what I figured. Keep me posted.”
And he hung up the phone. Chuck sighed, much more deeply this time, as he replaced the handset for the STU-8 in its cradle.
Reaching over to the standard phone, he picked it up and dialed a number he knew by heart, and when the automated system at the other end picked up, he dialed extension 111.
It rang twice, and then picked up. “Thank you for calling Buy More Burbank, you’ve reached the office of Lester Amanpoor, General Manager, how can I help you?”
“Lester, it’s Chuck. I need your help.”
12:30 PM
The team had assembled in the conference room at Chuck’s request – minus Carina, who was in Juarez running down a lead on a drug-trafficking ring. Chuck wanted desperately to not have to put this plan into action, and was as such hoping that Casey and Sarah had come up with something good.
“Alright,” Chuck began. “Good afternoon, everybody. Let’s make this simple. Morgan, what have you got?”
“Can’t get any phone records on any of these guys, Chuck,” Morgan replied. “These guys are too smart. It would seem that they buy those prepaid phones from places like 7-Eleven, cash only, and toss them before they can be traced.”
He turned a page in front of him. “All their other bills – utilities, rent, everything – are paid through a company called –“
“Hermosa Audio,” Chuck interrupted him.
“Yeah,” Morgan said quizzically. “It’s completely legit – we’ve got nothing there.”
“Lovely,” Chuck muttered. “Bryce?”
The ex-CIA agent shook his head. “I can’t get an exact trace on how they’re getting their weapons,” Bryce replied. “There are rumors, that they bring them in over the borders, mostly through North Dakota and Arizona, where there’s pretty much nobody watching, but then there are rumors that they pick the weapons up at gun shows that are completely unregulated – well, it’s just a mess.”
“What about the rumors I’ve heard about them having military grade weaponry?” Chuck asked. “Any leads on that?”
Bryce shook his head again. “As much as I’m sure none of you want to hear this, military weapons go missing all the time. A misplaced shipment here, a Hummer that loses its payload there – and way too much of it can end up in south central for me to keep track of.”
Chuck rubbed a hand against his forehead. “That’s just fantastic,” he grumbled sarcastically. “Ellie?”
His sister didn’t have any better news. “According to my colleagues, they see Slayers at the L.A. Medical Center down in Hawthorne on a fairly regular basis, but there are absolutely no records – none – for any of them. They must have somebody on their payroll, somebody who can make sure that no permanent records exist for any of them.”
Chuck was astonished. “How is it that a group of street thugs from south central Los Angeles can be better organized than the freakin’ Mafia?!” he exclaimed. “This is ridiculous!”
He turned a pleading gaze on John Casey and Sarah. “Please tell me you have something. Please. Please. Please.”
“You’re sounding desperate,” Casey cracked. “Must be the… uh… dignity from those glasses wearing off on you.”
Chuck gave Casey the evil eye. “Just tell me your plan of action.”
“Uh…” Sarah sighed. “In short, we don’t have one.”
Chuck couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You don’t HAVE ONE?!”
Casey shook his head. “You told us that declaring war and deporting them were out of the question, and that REALLY limits our options,” the former NSA agent said. “You heard Morgan and Bryce and Ellie – we have no way of tracking their phones, their weapons, their hospital visits. Their bank accounts – all in the name of Hermosa Audio. How exactly are we supposed to go after these guys?”
Chuck buried his face in his hands. “There’s one more option,” he muttered.
“Really?” Sarah asked. “Why didn’t I know about this?”
Chuck took his hands back away from his face and shook his head. “I just got a call from Director Tyler a couple of hours ago,” he replied. “He had some intelligence from the DEA for me. Apparently, the Slayers spend a LOT of time at the shopping center that Hermosa Audio is in.”
He sighed. He was doing that a lot today. “That shopping center happens to be the Empire Plaza in Burbank. I figure that the easiest way for us to keep track of their movements is, well, an undercover operation.”
As soon as he said that, the faces of John Casey, Morgan Grimes, and worst of all, Sarah Walker, turned to stone. “You have got to be kidding me,” Casey growled.
Chuck shook his head. “I REALLY didn’t want to do this,” he replied. “But it sounds like we have no choice.”
“I swore to God Almighty that I was done with that place,” Sarah said, her eyes narrowed. “You are REALLY pushing the boundaries of ‘to have and to hold’ with this one, bucko.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” Chuck sighed. “But we all start Monday. And yeah, we’re all back at square one – Sarah, you’re back on the line at the Wienerlicious. Morgan, Casey, you guys are back on the sales floor at the Buy More, and guess what – I’m right there with you guys.”
He closed his eyes. “Back at the goddamn Nerd Herd desk.”
12:00 P.M., Pacific Daylight Time
Monday, July 9th, 2012
Burbank, California
Chuck Bartowski had never before seriously contemplated killing himself.
Never before, that was, until now.
He was a multi-millionaire. He owned a wildly successful video game company, not to mention a consulting firm with a 20 million per year government contract. He was married to a beautiful woman and had two amazing kids.
And yet, here he was, standing behind the unholy of unholies – the Nerd Herd desk of the Empire Plaza Buy More in Burbank, California. The place he had spent seven unfortunate years of his life, one of those years as the assistant manager of the store.
Three years had passed since he had told Big Mike to take his job and shove it. Three years. In that time, John Casey had risen to general manager of the store and then departed. And now, somehow, Lester – LESTER! – had made his way to the top of the dog pile.
He had greeted Chuck with a smirk that morning, and introduced him to his team. A rather unfortunate looking eighteen year old Hawaiian kid named Albert. A far-too-perky co-ed from Occidental College who dressed in as little as possible. And Jeff.
If there was anything that astonished Chuck about the Nerd Herd, it was that Jeff was still part of it. He had been part of it long before Chuck had come onboard, and God willing, Chuck wouldn’t be there long enough for Jeff to quit or get fired.
But Chuck had spent the last two hours fielding inane questions from some truly unintelligent people, and it was driving him crazy. He had seen Morgan and Casey a couple of times – Morgan looked like he was going to cry, and Casey looked like he wanted nothing more than to burn the Buy More to its foundations.
And then, just after noon, it happened.
The part of Chuck’s day that he had always looked forward to several years before. The moment when the doors slid open, and in walked a pig-tailed, blue-eyed blonde in a German beer wench outfit with a little Wienerlicious nametag.
The difference now, of course, was that he was married to said blonde. And he had to admit, Sarah still looked DAMN good in the outfit, even after having been pregnant with twins and having been shot by a psychotic ex-NSA director.
“Why, hello,” he said sarcastically as she walked up to the counter. “Welcome to hell – uh, Buy More. How may I assist you?”
Sarah smiled. “Oh, come on, Chuck, it’s not that bad. You’re not running the Superfry Death Machine!”
Chuck couldn’t help it. He smiled and shook his head. “I remember when you refused to call it that.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, gotta have something to get me through the day.”
She moved in closer to him. “I came over here because a group of the Slayers were in the Wienerlicious for lunch. I overheard them talking about a drugs-for-weapons swap they’re doing out in San Bernardino on Thursday night. We might want to have a couple of people, you know, check that out.”
Chuck nodded and smiled. “I knew I could count on you to get me what I needed.”
Sarah leaned back and smiled as well. “You wait a few hours, I’ll give you whatever else you need.”
Chuck raised an eyebrow. “You know, I do believe I’m going to hold you to that.”
Author's Note: the reason I picked "Folsom Prison Blues" as the title for this chapter is simply because of how I figure Chuck, Casey, Sarah, and Morgan would all feel about their old jobs after having escaped them for so long.
