10:04 P.M., Pacific Daylight Time
Thursday, July 12th, 2012
Redlands, California
Chuck Bartowski was not comfortable with his situation. In fact, he was VERY MUCH not comfortable with his situation.
It had been decided that Chuck and Sarah couldn’t both go on missions late at night – one of them had to stay home with the kids. Sarah had ordained Chuck as being more important to this particular mission, since there was a good chance he would flash on one if not more of the people expected to be seen.
She had assigned Casey and Bryce to accompany Chuck to San Bernardino County. However, Casey had then come down some sort of virus, and was swapped out with Carina. Then, right before they were supposed to leave, Bryce had gotten violently ill – Ellie suspected food poisoning.
And so, here Chuck was, sitting behind the wheel of his maroon Dodge station wagon, alone in the car with the last person he wanted to be alone in a car with – Carina Hansen. They were in the Dodge because he didn’t want to risk any of the Firestone Slayers recognizing Casey’s Suburban, Mitch Tucker’s Land Cruiser, or Bryce’s Jeep.
Carina had behaved completely professionally so far, but Chuck didn’t think there was any possible way that that was going to last. She was too wild, too much of a loose cannon – part of the reason why the DEA had been willing to part with her.
But for the entire drive out to Redlands, she had been mostly silent, not really making conversation, not really flirting with Chuck like she usually did. Now, as they sat on La Paloma Street, across the street from a house just south of downtown Redlands, she sat quietly, a high-powered parabolic microphone aimed at the house.
Chuck was meanwhile engrossed in Tom Clancy’s latest novel, Follies of War – a pretty good fictional account of 1986’s Operation El Dorado Canyon, the America airstrikes against Qadaffi’s forces in Libya. The book of course utilized Clancy’s old standby characters – Jack Ryan, John Clark, Robby Jackson – but it was pretty good, far better, in fact, than his last few had been.
The F-111s had just taken off from RAF Lakenheath to head for Libya when Carina interrupted the story.
“Chuck,” she said quietly.
He looked up from his book, and looked at her over the tops of his glasses. With only the reading lamp illuminating his side of the car, she didn’t seem to be much more than just a silhouette.
“Yeah?”
“I think it’s about time.”
Uh-oh, Chuck thought, his stomach beginning to churn. “Uh, time for what?”
Carina turned on the reading lamp on her side of the car. She had a seductive and purely evil smile on her face. “Time for me to collect, bucko.”
Chuck shook his head emphatically. “No.”
“Oh, but why, Chuck?”
Chuck looked at her disbelievingly. “Perhaps because I’m married, and I have two kids, and my wife could easily kill both of us.”
Carina mockingly pouted. “Spoilsport.” But then, the smile returned to her face. “The facts are these, Chuckles: I saved your ass. Now I want a piece of it. And I’m gonna get it.”
Chuck couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Why are you so bound and determined to go through with this?” he asked incredulously. “What makes ME so special?”
Carina cocked her head to the side. “Well, first of all, you’re cute. The glasses add a special touch. Secondly, I like taking what Sarah has. You know that.”
“I’m aware,” Chuck replied dryly. “But what exactly have you taken of hers?”
“Ha!” Carina laughed. “There was this mission, in Brazil… we were down there for a couple of months, and Sarah and Bryce were sort of on the rocks. Little does she know that Bryce and I were sleeping together almost the entire time.”
Chuck’s jaw dropped. “I don’t believe it.”
“Oh, believe it,” Carina replied. “I can give you very exact details…”
“And I’d prefer it if you didn’t!” Chuck interrupted forcefully. “And you’d be better off if Sarah never finds out about that. She probably will kill you.”
Carina made a face. “Over Bryce? Come on, Chuck, that’s been over for nearly five years. She’s moved on. She’s found something better.”
“Exactly,” Chuck replied. “So why would you want to take that away from her?”
“Oh, I don’t want to take it,” Carina said, smiling again. “Just borrow it.”
And before Chuck could react, Carina had set the microphone on the dashboard, pushed herself out of her seat, and swung herself over into Chuck’s, straddling his lap. “And something tells me you wouldn’t object to being borrowed.”
“No, no,” Chuck objected. “This is not happening. You have surveillance to conduct.”
“Whatever,” Carina replied, rolling her eyes. “I’ve gotten exactly nothing from them all night.”
And with that, she traced a fingernail behind Chuck’s left ear. He closed his eyes and bit his tongue. She had hit on one of his weak spots, and she seemed to be aware of that, doing the same thing behind his other ear.
No, no, NO! Chuck’s mind commanded the rest of his body, and for the moment, it seemed to be working. But then, Carina’s left hand found its way down to his crotch. She took hold, and he gasped, his eyes flying open.
“No,” he said weakly, but opening his mouth was a mistake, as Carina quickly sealed her mouth against his, her tongue snaking its way inside his mouth.
Chuck tried desperately to force his body to keep from reacting to what Carina was doing with her tongue and her hand, but he was failing rapidly. His body began to react in a very serious fashion.
Carina realized that very quickly. “You see,” she whispered in Chuck’s ear, her warm breath making him gasp again, “the mind says, ‘No,’ but the body says, ‘Oh yes!’”
Chuck squeezed his eyes shut again. He clamped his mouth closed and hunched his shoulders, hoping that his body would stop reacting, and that Carina would take the hint.
And he thought she did. She sighed. “Oh, Chuck,” she breathed. “You are just too tense. You need to learn to relax and have a little fun.”
He felt her slide off of his lap, and began to relax his shoulders a bit –
And then she took hold of the waistband of his pants and wrenched them violently downward, the boxers going with them. Chuck’s eyes flew open as he was completely exposed to Carina.
“What the hell?!” he gasped.
“My, my, no wonder Sarah’s been so happy these last couple years,” Carina said approvingly. Carina moved before Chuck could even get a grasp on the situation. He could feel her lips – her tongue – oh God –
His mind was beginning to lose the capacity for coherent thought. Chuck’s vision was going blurry – or maybe that was just the reading glasses screwing things up – he could see the red hair on Carina’s head slowly bobbing up and down – he slammed his hands on the steering wheel, and the reading lamp reflected off the gold band on his left hand –
And that was more than enough to return Chuck to reality. He flung open the driver’s door of the Dodge Magnum and practically dove out into the street, yanking his pants back up as he came to his feet. He slammed the door shut, and leaned against the side of the car, breathing heavily.
A moment later, the shotgun door opened, and Carina stepped out. “Really?”
Chuck looked up, locking eyes with her across the roof of the car, a mixture of disbelief and rage written on his face. “You’re fucking psychotic, you know that?!”
“Oh, come on, Chuck, no harm, no foul. Hell, you could’ve at least let me finish.”
“No harm no FOUL?!” Chuck felt like he was going crazy. “You tried to make me cheat on Sarah!”
“No,” Carina corrected him, “your body was doing that all on its own. I was just trying to encourage your mind.”
“Fuck you,” Chuck spat.
“That’s actually what I was going for,” Carina replied cheekily. “Back in the car?”
“No!” Chuck shouted. “Go to hell!”
Apparently they were a bit too loud, because at that moment, the door of the house across the street opened. “¡Odele, vato!” Chuck heard. “You wanna keep it the fuck down out here, eh?”
Chuck whirled around – and his eyes rolled back in his head.
The images came fast and furious. The pictures of him, the documentation. The videos of the things he’d done. The name – Alberto Calijo, El Anillo del Fuego.
As his vision returned to normal, he could hear Calijo still shouting at him from across the street. “Seriously, yo!” he heard. “You and your bitch got a problem, get back in the car and shout it out. There’s people tryin’ to sleep!”
Another man joined Calijo on the porch. “Yo, ‘Berto, what’s goin’ on?”
Then the man looked across the street, saw Carina – and his jaw dropped in disbelief. “¡Pinche puta!” he swore. “That bitch was with the group that attacked us in Norwalk!”
“Oh, SHIT,” Chuck uttered. He looked back over at Carina. “Get back in the fucking car!”
He wrenched open the driver’s door, and cranked the engine over, putting the station wagon in drive as soon as it had started. He punched the gas and the Hemi engine responded, rocketing the car away from the curb before Carina even had the chance to get her seatbelt on.
Behind him, Chuck could see men pour out of the house, scrambling to get into a Ford Ranger pickup and a Chevy Impala sedan. The lights on both came on, and they both took off like a shot after Chuck.
Chuck took a hard left onto Fern Avenue, and then blasted out into traffic on Redlands Boulevard. Wrenching up the handbrake as he shot out into the thoroughfare, he powerslid to the left into the westbound lanes of Redlands Boulevard. Releasing the handbrake, he punched the gas again and flew toward downtown, the two Slayers vehicles still hot on his tail.
He shot down the street at nearly seventy miles an hour, scattering cars and pedestrians as he flew. Chuck heard the occasional shot come from the cars behind him, but nothing came close to hitting his car.
At this point, Chuck had no idea where he was going, but he knew he had to get the hell away from those two cars behind him. As he was passing the Redlands Mall, he took a hard right at the stoplight for the mall entrance. Putting the mall behind him, he accelerated down Third Street –
To find that it ended at a parking lot. “Oh, hell,” he breathed, gunning the engine as the two gang cars followed him up the street. He took the driveway into the parking lot hard enough to scrape the bottom of the car, and spun the steering wheel to the left, the Ranger and the Impala on his rear bumper like white on rice.
It was at that moment that Chuck realized he was in the parking lot of a Krikorian theatre. A BIG one. And there were a LOT of people. “Oh dear God,” he muttered, leaning on the horn.
Between the horn and the roaring of the engine, everybody thankfully got out of the way. Chuck reached the other end of the parking lot and bounced out of the driveway, flying out onto Eureka Street. He turned right and headed north – and it looked like he was headed toward the I-10 freeway.
Chuck breathed a sigh of relief. If he could get to the 10, he could get away… but as he came to the freeway, he came to the sickening realization that there were no onramps from Eureka Street onto the freeway. “No, no, NO!” he whined in despair as he rocketed under the freeway – and a shot blew out the back window.
Chuck ducked, and realized that Carina had been silent since they left their surveillance position. “You!” he shouted as he took a right onto Colton Avenue. “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d kept your hands off of what isn’t yours!”
“ME?!” she responded in disbelief. “If you hadn’t jumped out of the car and started yelling like a maniac, we would’ve been fine!”
“For God’s sake!” Chuck shot back. “I’m a married man, and you were trying to blow me!”
Carina rolled her eyes as the speedometer hit 100. “What, and you think Sarah never did that with a married man?”
Chuck stomped on the brakes, yanked up the handbrake, and spun the wheel left. The Magnum screeched to a halt, spinning around one hundred eighty degrees as it did so. The Ranger and the Impala both swerved to miss the car, the Ranger sliding to a halt perpendicular to the road and stalling, with the Impala stopping right in front of it.
“Not recently, though,” Chuck growled at Carina. “Not since we’ve been together.”
“Well… no,” she admitted. “But she did go through training at a place called the Sparrow School. And she was good. I know – I was her instructor.”
Chuck looked in his rearview mirror. The driver of the Ranger was trying to get the truck started again. “I really don’t care what she did before I knew her,” Chuck said darkly. “All I care about is the fact that she’s been faithful to me since we’ve been together.”
Carina blew out her breath in frustration. “Yeah, she has been.”
“Good,” Chuck replied. “Now hold on, because I’ve only ever seen this work in GTA Vice City.”
He popped the Magnum’s transmission into reverse, and hit the gas. The distance between his rear end and the rear end of the Impala rapidly decreased. Just before impact, he saw the Impala’s backup lights illuminate – but it was far too late.
The big Dodge station wagon’s rear bumper impacted the Impala’s tailgate at nearly forty miles per hour. Chuck winced as his body was pressed backward against the seat. The whine of distressed metal on the Magnum’s rear end was nearly ear-splitting –
But it was completely worth it to watch the Impala rocket forward into the side of the Ranger. The Ranger slowly tipped over, and as Chuck watched, a geyser of coolant shot skyward from the Impala’s front end.
With a grim smile, Chuck shifted the transmission into drive, and pressed the Magnum’s accelerator to the floor, praying that it would still go forward.
And go forward it did, the rear tires spinning, and then shooting the Dodge station wagon forward again. The Firestone Slayers were left far behind, still trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
Fifteen minutes later, as the damaged station wagon entered the city of Fontana, Chuck looked over at Carina. “Against my better judgment, I’m not going to tell Sarah about this,” he said quietly. “But if you ever do something like that again, I WILL tell her, and then may God have mercy on your soul.”
Carina said nothing. She just looked ahead, silently staring forward as the Dodge drove into the night.
12:05 A.M., Pacific Daylight Time
Friday, July 13th, 2012
Studio City, California
The station wagon rolled into the garage just after midnight. Chuck cursed how loud the garage door was as it closed.
And clearly, it was loud enough to wake Sarah, as the door from the laundry room opened and she stepped into the garage. Turning on the lights, her left eyebrow raised as she took in the damage to the car.
“Trouble?” she asked sardonically as Chuck stepped out of the car.
Chuck said nothing at first, just stepped to his wife and embraced her tightly. She returned the embrace, and then he pulled back and kissed her on the forehead.
He looked down at her and smiled tiredly. “You have no idea.”
