3:00 P.M., Pacific Daylight Time
Sunday, August 26th, 2012
Bob Hope International Airport
Burbank, California
Southern California was about to go to war – and less than forty people knew about it. Three of them were headed to Mexico with three kids, and two of them were sitting in a Black Hawk helicopter, waiting for the signal to deploy.
The other thirty-two people were in a rather sizable convoy about to depart from Bob Hope Airport. The gate out onto Hollywood Way was opened, and the lead LAPD cruiser pulled out, code three, lights and sirens on. A black Hummer H1 followed it.
Chuck Bartowski was at the wheel of that Hummer, with John Casey riding shotgun, wielding an M4 carbine. Another LAPD cruiser followed that Hummer, then another Hummer, with Rachel Harrison at the wheel and Bryce Larkin riding shotgun. There was another LAPD cruiser, then Mitch Tucker’s Land Cruiser, with Morgan at the wheel and Carina riding shotgun. That was followed by yet another LAPD cruiser, a SWAT truck with a six-man team, another cruiser, an M3 Bradley armored personnel carrier with an eight-man police special ops team, and a sixth cruiser.
The convoy quickly covered the block down Hollywood Way, and turned left onto Empire Avenue. Chuck could feel his stomach doing somersaults, and cursed the fact that the mile and a half down Empire Avenue took less than five minutes.
The lead cruiser pulled into Empire Plaza – and all hell broke loose. The six cruisers fanned out across the parking lot, speeding toward Hermosa Audio. When they reached it, they created a perimeter around the front of the building, leaving a ten foot wide space in the middle of the perimeter. Officers clad in riot gear popped out of their cars and crouched behind their doors, guns up and aimed.
“Here we go,” Chuck muttered to Casey, aiming the Hummer toward the gap in the cruisers and flooring the accelerator. The V10 engine roared, pushing the warfare-intended vehicle up to thirty miles an hour.
The Hummer shot between the cruisers. Chuck closed his eyes and braced himself – and the Hummer crashed through the front window of Hermosa Audio. He slammed on the brakes, and just as Casey had instructed him, grabbed a flash-bang grenade out of the cup holder, pulled the pin, and tossed it out the window. He closed his eyes and ducked, but was still surprised by the noise and the light.
Casey jumped out as the people inside the building staggered to their feet. Reflexively, several pulled out guns. That was their last mistake, as Carina Hansen and Bryce Larkin came running into the building. Between them and Casey, every person in the building holding a gun was dead within ten seconds.
Only one person was left standing. He was trembling in fear, his hands in the air. Chuck walked up to him slowly.
“Are you a Firestone Slayer?” he asked.
Eyes wide, the man nodded. He didn’t look any older than twenty.
“Where is el Anillo del Fuego?” Chuck asked.
“No sé,” the man replied, the fear evident on his face.
Chuck reached under his jacket and withdrew the Ruger revolver. He raised it and jammed the barrel against the man’s forehead. “Are you sure about that?”
“Yes! Yes! I don’t know where he is!” the man cried out. “I’m nobody important!”
Chuck looked into his eyes. This guy was clearly not important, otherwise he would’ve flashed on him. His eyes told Chuck that he was telling the truth. He lowered the gun, and the man sighed in relief.
“Is your car here?” Chuck asked him quietly.
“Yes,” the man replied, nodding his head like a bobble-head. He pointed outside, at a Honda Civic.
“You’re out of California tonight,” Chuck said. “Otherwise, you join these other men. Do I make myself clear?”
Eyes wide, the man nodded again. “Get out,” Chuck growled.
The man ran outside, jumped in the Civic, and tore out of the parking lot as quickly as he could.
Chuck and Casey got back into the Hummer and pulled back out of Hermosa Audio. Two police cruisers were left to secure the scene.
“Why didn’t you kill him, Bartowski?” Casey asked him as the convoy reformed and pulled out of the parking lot.
Chuck turned his face toward Casey. “He’s a drone, Casey, a foot soldier. He didn’t make the decision to threaten my family. He just got caught up in something he probably didn’t understand, and he willingly surrendered.”
Casey shook his head. “You know, Chuck, they don’t play by the rules… why do you?”
Chuck cocked his head to one side. “Casey, I play by the rules because I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror. When my kids grow up, I don’t want to tell them that their father’s a murderer.”
“What are you going to tell them about their mother?”
Chuck shook his head. “Don’t, Casey. The people she killed, she killed because they were very bad people.”
Casey’s face took on an expression of surprise. “She never told you, did she?”
“Told me what, Casey?”
Casey’s face took on a grim set. “Christmas Eve, 2005. She was in Brazil, on a mission. I was there, as were Carina and Bryce. The mission was to take down the da Silva government.
“Part of the mission was to destroy a pair of Tupolev model 160 ‘Blackjack’ bombers that Russia had sold to Brazil. I had gotten intelligence regarding the bombers that would allow us to destroy them with a minimal loss of life and a maximum amount of damage to the government’s reputation.
“Unfortunately, my intelligence was faulty. When the bombers were destroyed, they were loaded with Exocet cruise missiles. The missiles exploded, and took the fuel farm of the air base they were on with it. Approximately ten thousand people were killed.”
Casey paused, a pained look on his face. “I abandoned the mission and blindly fled Brazil. I ended up in the mental ward at DeKalb Medical Center in Atlanta. As for Sarah, she still, to this day, blames herself for the deaths of all those innocent people.”
Chuck didn’t say anything, just looked ahead at the pavement of southbound I-5. Finally, he asked, “Was it really her fault?”
Casey shook his head. “No. If it was anybody’s fault, it was mine. However, she felt, as the mission commander, that it was her responsibility.”
Chuck put his left hand to his forehead. “God,” he sighed. “Why didn’t she ever tell me? She shouldn’t have to carry that alone.”
“I am willing to almost guarantee you that she never told you because she was afraid you’d hate her for it,” Casey replied. “She has been very careful about everything she’s said and done around you almost since day one. With the exception of her little breakdown after Larkin resurfaced back in 2007, she has gone out of her way to not do anything that would make you think less of her.”
Chuck nodded, then took his left hand off his forehead, and pressed the button on the Bluetooth headset in his left ear. “Call Sarah,” he instructed it.
Casey’s eyes widened in alarm. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Calling my wife,” Chuck replied. “I want to tell her that I love her.”
San Clemente, California
The Suburban rolled through San Clemente, still flanked on all four sides by LAPD cruisers with their lights on. There had been minimal slowing, with the police cars clearing the way all the way down I-5.
The theme from Torchwood began to sound through the car. Sarah rolled her eyes. Chuck had programmed it into her phone as a joke after he became the leader of this “super-secret spy organization”. He had then proceeded to compare himself to Captain Jack Harkness, to which Sarah replied that if she ever caught him naked with Bryce, she would file for divorce.
She reached up and hit the button on the side of the Bluetooth on her ear. “Hello?”
“I love you,” Chuck’s voice sounded in her ear.
She smiled. “Well, I love you too,” she replied. “What prompts this, in the face of such danger?”
She heard Chuck sigh. “Casey just told me a little story,” Chuck said. “A story about, uh, Brazil.”
Sarah’s eyes widened and her stomach tied itself in a knot. “What about Brazil?”
“Santa Anita Air Base.”
Sarah gritted her teeth and blew her breath out slowly, drawing a strange look from Ellie, riding in the shotgun seat. “God dammit,” she whispered.
“Sarah, I don’t care,” Chuck said. “You were just doing your job. You had no way of knowing that those bombers were loaded.”
She had stopped listening after he said that he didn’t care. “You don’t care?” she asked, almost not believing it. “You don’t care that I was responsible for…”
Her voice trailed off. Despite all that Ellie and Devin knew, the Brazil mission was still heavily classified, and Sarah couldn’t risk them knowing about it. Fortunately, Chuck finished the sentence for her.
“…for the deaths of ten thousand people?” he said. “No. You know me better than that. You know that I have never, ever judged you based on what you’ve done – just on who you are. And it’s because of who you are that I love you. You know that.”
Sarah began to tear up a little. “Wow,” she whispered.
She could almost hear Chuck smile in response. “Hey, I knew that I was asking the female version of James Bond to marry me when I got down on my knee on Santa Monica Beach.”
Sarah smiled in spite of herself. “And I knew that I was saying yes to a slightly less nerdy version of Bill Gates.” That drew a giggle from Ellie.
Chuck gasped, in mock horror. “Bill Gates? Excuse me? Try Steve Jobs!” he exclaimed.
That made Sarah’s smile get even bigger. “Well, either way, I love you. I really love you. I love you more than I can say.”
“I love you more than that,” Chuck replied, and Sarah could hear Casey groan in the background.
“Better stop,” she said, “before you make Casey throw up.”
“Yeah,” Chuck replied. “I’d hate for the Hummer to smell like vomit.”
He paused for a moment. “Tell John and Lisa that Daddy says hi, and call me when you get to Ensenada, okay?”
“Okay,” Sarah said. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Glendale, California
The convoy was now headed east on the 134 freeway, headed toward the Inland Empire. “I love you more than that?” Casey asked mockingly. “Good Lord, what is this, junior high?”
“Oh, shut up,” Chuck replied. “What about you and Maya? You never talk about her, and Ellie says she never talks about you.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Casey shot back. “We don’t WANT you guys to know anything! I swear, when Sarah and your sister get together, they’re worse than high school cheerleaders!”
“Okay, that’s fair,” Chuck replied. “But is everything okay?”
Casey smiled slightly. “Have you noticed me stressed lately?”
Chuck thought about it. No, he really hadn’t. Then he thought about it a little more, and groaned. “As innocuous as that statement was, it really tells me more than I wanted to know,” he said disgustedly.
5:30 PM
Redlands, California
All was quiet at the house on La Paloma Street. Ten men were inside. Some were eating, some watching television, some cleaning their weapons. None were really that tense or alert. They weren’t expecting anything, and they all knew that El Anillo had threatened the man responsible for the incident a month and a half earlier, and so figured that he would back off as well.
And so none of them were expecting the door to be blown off its hinges at 5:32 PM. Nor were they expecting two men and a woman to burst in with guns blazing. And by 5:34 PM, none of them were expecting anything.
All save for one.
This one was a real diehard. He had been born into an MS 13 family, but when he was a teenager, he heard Maximillian Calijo give a speech at L.A. City College. The man had gotten him hooked – he was very much like Barack Obama in his mannerisms and the ability with which he could people at ease.
Afterwards, he had approached Calijo to ask what he could do. Calijo had introduced him to his brother, Alberto. Within a month, the boy had become a full-fledged member of the Firestone Boulevard Slayers. He had left home and moved to Norwalk. The first job he had been given was to kill a member of Mara Salvatrucha.
He had killed half a dozen all at once.
Now he was in the basement of the house in Redlands. It was full of weapons, explosives, and hard drives that detailed every last thing about the Firestone Slayers. He heard the gunshots above, heard the shouts. He knew that everything had to go.
He knelt, and grasped the crucifix around his neck. “Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos,” he prayed. “Santificado sea tu Nombre. Venga tu reino, hágase tu voluntad, en la tierra como en el cielo. Danos hoy el pan de este día…”
Casey, Bryce, and Carina came back out of the house. “It’s secure!” Casey shouted. The LAPD S.W.A.T. team went running in. The three agents strolled across La Paloma Street to the vehicles.
“Quick and easy, Chuck,” Casey told him. “That just leaves the bar in Norwalk.”
“And that’s their stronghold,” Chuck reminded him. “It’s gonna be a bitch.”
“Perdona nuestras deudas, como nosotros perdonamos nuestros deudores. No nos dejes caer en la tentación, sino que líbranos del malo.”
With trembling hands, the young man picked up a grenade. Holding it in his hand, he pulled the pin.
“Porque Tuyo es el Reino, el Poder y la Gloria por siempre, Señor. Amén.”
Casey had just finished buckling himself in when the house exploded.
The fireball blew upwards, blasting through the roof, before the walls collapsed inward. The shock wave rocked the Hummer, but the pseudo-military vehicle stayed put.
The two LAPD cruisers parked in front of the house were not so lucky. They were flipped over like Hot Wheels. Fortunately, the officers who had driven them had been standing on the other side of the street, and had taken cover behind the S.W.A.T. truck when the house blew.
Chuck stared out the window in disbelief. “Oh my God... the S.W.A.T. team was in there,” he whispered.
“What have we done?”
