Letting GoChapter 1 – History

Just a brief history lesson in the first few paragraphs and then it's off to the races in APR style.

Burbank, CA

She was leaving with Shaw and he couldn't do anything to stop her. Chuck figured that after the train station and her attitude and behavior after his 'return' that their 'relationship' was something he'd only imagined.

She told Shaw her name. After three years Chuck knew zilch about her but after a few rounds between the sheets, Shaw knew her name – her real name, Samantha, Sam for short.

"Quit mooning over her like a lost puppy, Bartowski. We're heading to DC and then on to bigger and better things, Chuck. We'll be given carte blanc on new team members, targets and amenities – oh, Chuck, the amenities."

"Colonel, you're getting drool on your tie. That's so not cool for an officer to behave in public like you are. Now, eat your oatmeal and let's get out of here. You need to oversee the shutdown of the Castle and I need to – what do I need to do again, Casey?"

They were sitting in Denney's so Casey couldn't give him the head-slap he deserved so he just growled. Bartowski had been forgetting things lately and it was beginning to annoy him.

"Write it down, moron. You need to explain your sudden absence from Burbank using the cover story Beckman's people put together for you. Memorize the copy at Castle and then destroy it. Let's go. I'm done."

Chuck walked out into the bright sunlit Burbank morning and cringed and fumbled for his sunglasses. He'd become very light-sensitive lately and it bothered him.

Casey pushed Chuck toward his car and Chuck stumbled for a moment and then walked to the car and got in. Casey noted the stumble but said nothing. He'd add it to his report and hope it wasn't anything significant.

Casey got into the car and started it and then held his hand out, palm up, to Chuck. "Give me your phone. I have a new and improved issue."

Reluctantly he handed over his phone and watched as Casey slipped out the sim card, put it into a small device about the size of a paperback book and pushed a button. He replaced the corrupted sim card and then threw Chuck's phone out the window.

"Casey! Are you nuts?" He started to get out of the car when Casey grabbed his upper arm and squeezed. "Hold your water, Chuck."

Casey took out another phone, light gray in color and with a full screen as well as folding keyboard and removed the sim card and inserted it into the device. A few seconds later he removed the sim card, replaced it into the new phone, and handed it to Chuck.

"First of all, no need to 'go secure'. It's always on secure. Second, in deference to your incredible immaturity, you'll find apps to waste your time with as well as everything that was on your old phone exceptphotographs. Where we're going, you don't want the opposition to know what friends and family look like if you're captured or lose the phone."

"Damn it, Casey, there were pictures of…"

"I know. She's gone. She made her choice and it wasn't you. Live with it. Get over it. Get mad, cry, have a hissy fit, but do it on your own time. You're an agent, Chuck. No place in the job description for love, marriage, family, or permanent relationships. Welcome to your New Normal, Bartowski."

Their first mission was simple: go to Vancouver, BC and locate Quan Ma, a deserter from the Peoples Liberation Army's Special Rocket Artillery, and bring him in. He deserted, not defected, so it was anticipated that he might 'object'. Deadly force was not authorized but he was to be brought in at all costs.

"Special Rocket Artillery? What's that, Casey?" The intersect drew a blank and it was frustrating how often that seemed to happen lately.

"ICMBs, Chuck, with nuke warheads. Our target was in charge of warehousing so he will provide an inventory and location of every one of their nukes."

Vancouver, BC
Stakeout

Chuck stunk. He was wearing tattered clothes, a baseball cap, shoes that neither matched nor fit, and he stunk. He occasionally drank water from a bottle of cheap Vodka that was in a paper bag. He looked like the saddest drunk in Vancouver. He was certain that he smelled like the worst. Casey must have looked long and hard to find the filthiest bum to buy clothes from.

"Here he comes, Chuck, right on schedule. I just love creatures of habit. Remember, stall him until I can get there. We'll snatch him and have him back in the States before supper." Chuck loved the new ear buds. They were so small and almost unnoticeable and they worked all the time.

Chuck got up from his spot beside a brownstone staircase and wandered into the alley that Ma always used to get from his apartment to the restaurant he cooked at. He killed two birds with one stone. He relieved his full bladder on the wall and when Ma walked by, he turned and pissed on his leg. Quan Ma's reaction was expected.

Chuck's was not. He ducked below the spin kick aimed at his head and swept Quan Ma's feet from under him. He was knocked unconscious by the impact of his head on the alley paving.

Casey hopped out a van he'd been sitting in at the end of the alley, secured him with zip ties and together they threw him into the back and took off for the airport where a plane was waiting to fly them back to Seattle.

"Roll down your window, partner. You stink. I hope they have a shower and a change of clothes for you before we get on the plane."

"Next time, you're the drunk. If he hadn't shown up on time, I'd have pissed my pants. Thank God he was obsessive about time."

"That was an interesting move in the alley. That definitely held him up until I could get there." He wondered how much was Intersect 2.0 and how much was his young partner.

Quan Ma began to yell in Mandarin and kick the side of the van and become a pain in the butt. Chuck flashed, gasped at the pain, and then turned and told Ma to 'shut up or I'll cut off your future', all in idiomatic Mandarin.

Thankfully, there was a shower in the private hangar and a change of clothes for Chuck. He felt human again and hoped he smelled better. He must have because Casey didn't sniff the air or make snarky comments.

Quan Ma was sleeping soundly. Chuck had tired quickly of his ranting and raving and tranked him with a large dosage guaranteed to keep him quiet until they handed him over to other agents in Seattle.

Casey's report made note of Chuck's unorthodox but successful take down of the subject, his conversation in some Chinese dialect and his growing impatience with almost everything.

NSA HQ
Ft Meade, MD

Chuck rarely sparred with any of the other agents, preferring to work out on the bags but sometimes, not often but enough that he'd developed a reputation as a poor winner, some butt head would always end up challenging him to spar. He blew off most of them and ignored their comments but one big idiot just kept pushing and pushing until he'd had enough.

"Okay, Hollister, let me get my gear and you can brag to your buddies how you finally got Bartowski to spar. Congratulations."

It turned out that Hollister had been assigned to work with a young female agent and had plans for her that required that he demonstrate his abilities. Chuck just smiled and shook his head when the young agent in question sat down to watch.

'I'll let him take me down a couple of times before I end it. No sense getting in the way of true love.'

He put on his gear, stepped to the center of the mats and touched gloves with Hollister and then had one of his recurring 'moments of disorientation'. Hollister took advantage of it and drove his fist into Chuck's midsection.

Casey told him what happened next. He didn't even remember.

Chuck dropped into a crouch, holding his stomach and then 'falling' to one knee and Hollister stepped back and waved to his honey and then came in for the kill but his blow never landed. Chuck leaped into the air and nailed him in the jaw with a straight kick, ending the fight and ruining Hollister's plan for getting his sweet thing between the sheets.

His broken jaw would require almost as much time to heal as the wrist he'd broken when he fell.

Beckman had read the report and called Casey and told him to 'get that maniac under control' and to take Chuck to Medical for a physical. This was the fourth agent Bartowski had beaten and put into medical reserve in the past 5 weeks. It had to stop. Granted, he never offered or sought out sparring partners and she'd heard Casey's comments about how Hollister was constantly badgering Bartowski to spar. But something had to be done before he accidentally killed someone.

Chuck bitched the whole time he was being poked, prodded, scanned and drained of almost all his blood but Casey told him to 'man up, Bartowski' and he did.

The doctor took one look at Bartowski's CT scan and told him to 'wait right here. I need a second opinion' but Beckman called with another forest fire that needed to be put out and the doctor finally sent the report and his recommendation to the General a few days later.

Sana'a, Republic of Yemen
2am

The daughter of an influential newspaper publisher (who contributed heavily to the administration's election campaign) had gotten involved covering demonstrations against the government. She was a reporter but that didn't make any difference. She was arrested, tried and sentenced to death as an 'American CIA Agent' who had fomented revolution against the government.

Beckman's orders were straight forward: 'Go in, get her out and get her home'. Simple. A piece of cake. Especially when you were sitting on your ass in your office in Ft Meade.

The problem was that she was being held in a military prison that was located underthe barracks of the prison guards. The entrance to the prison cells was located at one end of the barracks. Needless to say, there had never been a successful escape from Naru'laja Military Prison.

"You're sure that this stuff will knock them all out, right, Casey? I seem to remember – "

"Yes, for the 10th time, yes, it will knock them out almost instantaneously. Just walk down the aisle and hold each aerosol canister at arm's length away from your body and they'll wake up minus a prisoner."

There were no walls surrounding the prison, just a 10 ft high razor wire fence with coils of concertina wire along the base of the fence on both sides. Their intel on the prison hadn't mentioned that little fact.

Casey looked at his watch and cursed. "Any bright ideas on how you're going to get over the fence?"

"Maybe the main gate? We could breach it with the truck, y'know, batter on through and then – "

"And then wake up the whole damned base? Think again. And fast. We're running out of time."

"We need a door…"

"Doh! Tell me something – oh, yeah, two doors – one to cover the first set of coils and the other to cover the inside set. Let's check out that run-down garage. No one will be there at this time of night. We can load them in the back of the pickup and be in and out in time to make our rendezvous with the extraction team. Good thinking, moron."

The ramp idea worked 'as advertised' and Casey stood guard in a ditch beside their 'bridge' while Chuck ran from shadow to shadow and made it into the barracks. He slipped inside and surprised one guard who was on his way to relieve someone. The spray worked exactly as promised. All 20 some guards were asleep, deeper than before, and he walked carefully down into the prison proper.

It was simply a large cavern that had been carved out of the rock by a long-gone river in ancient times. The prisoners were kept in chain link kennels and as he checked out each 'kennel' for his target, he sprayed the sleeping prisoners.

He finally found her among about 10 other women. She looked pretty roughed-up but at least she was still alive. He dropped his backpack and removed bolt cutters and cut the padlock that held the chain-link door closed and walked in, spraying the sleeping women and stepping over sleepers and dragged his target out.

She started to struggle so he just sprayed her face and threw her over his shoulder and left the prison. The barracks were quiet and he walked down the aisle between the sleeping guards and was almost to the door when it was jerked open by a big man who started yelling something in Arabic.

He spotted Chuck about the same time Chuck was lost in a flash as the Intersect downloaded the language.

The big soldier started fumbling with his sidearm that was secured in a leather holster and Chuck kicked him in the nuts and then in the head and ran out of the barracks into a spotlight from the one manned guard tower.

He almost screamed out in pain as the night vision goggles flared with intense white light. Casey fired a burst at the guard tower to get their attention and Chuck sprinted across the parade ground and up and over the ramp.

"Let's go, Chuck. The training cadre will be out in force any time now." Casey climbed up out of the ditch and into the truck. Chuck threw his burden into the truck bed and climbed in beside her.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
American Embassy
Secure Room

The Porter Pilatus C-6 easily landed on the flat sand along the sea and was off again without really stopping. The flight across Yemeni airspace was problematical but solved by simply ignoring the demands of the Civil Air Control to identify themselves. They were in Saudi airspace and then on the ground where they were met by a military helicopter and delivered to the embassy.

Beckman was ecstatic and effusive in her praise. The White House had announced that a crack team of Navy Seals had stormed the base and released the American reporter but everyone 'important' knew it was really the NSA's team that had gone in and retrieved the prisoner. A nice boost in funding had been promised so she was really happy.

"Great job! No, an outstanding job! Take a week off and then report to the embassy in Rome for your next assignment." She disconnected and Chuck muttered something obscene under his breath.

"What's the matter, Chuck? We've got a whole week off at government expense. I'm heading out for parts unknown and I'll see you at the Embassy in a week."

"Casey, what am I going to do with a week off? I don't know anyone and the job doesn't allow a visit home."

"Go to Rome, tour Italy, find a nice girl and spend some time just being 'Chuck'. Relax. Unwind. Get laid and get drunk. See ya in a week. Stay out of trouble, moron!"

NSA HQ
FT Meade, MD

"So, doctor, you saw him. Does he appear uncoordinated, unable to speak coherently, any of the things you say this CT scan indicates?"

"Not now, but it's coming. We know his father suffered from dementia and physical 'disabilities'. I'm worried that young Bartowski is following in his father's footsteps. He's the only one who has survived this long out of all our test subjects."

"Concerns noted. He's useful and we'll use him until he isn't anymore and then we'll handle the problem when it presents itself."

A/N: Another chapter in a few days. I have some things on he burner in another FF world.