Castle After 4x23 / FW

11

AN: I own nothing. The characters belong to the TV series Castle. I just like to play with them.

Chapter 11 What Goes Around Comes Around

Gates said, remarkably calm, "Beckett, I don't like it even a little bit, but you are in these guys' heads. I'm going to have a chopper pick you, Castle and Shaw up in the street in front of the loft in five minutes. Be there. But do not go in the warehouse. Direct this from the outside. I know Jarvis is wearing a camera and has an ear piece, so you can talk to him. If these terms are acceptable, it's on. When it's over, you go immediately back to the loft. Understood?"

"Yes, sir. Please have my vest and backup gun in the helicopter."

"You get a full tac vest and weapons from the SWAT truck and mobile command center when you get there, but don't go in the building. Tell Castle to wear an NYPD Tac vest; it has ceramic plates in the chest to make it better for rifle shots, his vest doesn't. I will tell the SWAT mobile command to give Castle a Glock and an AR if he knows how to use one."

"I do."

Kate looked at him surprised. He started to say something, and she asked, "Research?" He nodded.

Gates finished, "We need to stop talking. Get out there."

Castle turned to Alexis and said, "You can watch on the screen here. I can't take you with us. I can't let Kate go alone."

Alexis said, "You guys take care of each other. You are all I have."

Kate quickly put on the running shoes; Castle found some hiking boots to put on. They were waiting just inside the building when the chopper arrived and were astonished to find Gates sitting in it. They jumped in and hung on as the pilot treated the vertical ascent between buildings like it was nothing and set them down about fifty yards from the two mobile command center trucks at the warehouse in question.

Kate jumped out, ran to the SWAT mobile command center and geared up with the expert help of the armorer who was there. She put on the military tactical vest with chest plates that were rated for a .308, Molle drop holster with Glock 19, several extra magazines in pockets on the vest, stuck a backup Glock 19 in the vest holster, and finally put on communications gear with earphones and microphone. She did a quick communications check.

The armorer said, "I'm supposed to give you a helmet cam. Captain Gate's orders."

"Good idea. Let's do it. Make sure the sound works. She stood still, and the armorer rigged it off her helmet so it so it looked in the same direction she did. She was to turn it off or come back for batteries in two hours. He'd leave it on for now.

Then she asked for an M4 that would do burst fire with a holographic sight on it and three extra magazines which fit in vest pouches. The armorer looked surprised but handed her one. She pointed to Castle and said, "Fit him out as you did me, but he'll take an AR15 instead of a M4." At this point she was 40 lbs heavier but much safer. She jogged over to the active command center that had been setup jointly by HRT and SWAT.

The commander she had talked with before was sullen and giving very clipped answers. She asked him to leave. He objected. Shaw had the Quantico head honcho on the phone. She handed the commander the instrument; he listened for about ten seconds, turned red, tossed the phone back and left.

Kate was surprised to find she knew the SWAT on scene commander, Captain John Davis. They had met at a bank once before when Castle and Martha were hostages. She knew he wouldn't be surprised if she was unconventional. Captain Davis acknowledged her saying, "Detective Beckett, welcome aboard. I understand I am, however unusual it might be, at least temporarily under your command. Let me give you a sit rep."

Kate offered her hand, and they shook. "Captain, I'm no more comfortable with this than you are," she said. "But, the head man in Quantico asked me to do this, and I am not about to turn him down."

"Roger that. This is the floor plan of the warehouse. It is essentially empty except for material handling equipment that is parked here. I'm told there are ten or so forklifts of conventional size, four tons capacity, and another two that are big enough to handle cargo containers. The ceiling is 60 feet clear to the beams. The catwalks around the sides of the building are at several levels; all those out here over the storage area are through the roof structure above the bottom of ceiling beams.

"It has a square grid pattern of pillars that are about two feet square. I'm told they are wall board covered steel, so they may not be cover. The building itself is six hundred feet long and two hundred feet wide. There are catwalks around the top as shown here. The good news is we think there are only seven to ten bad guys. There are just three roof exits; two of them are near the helipad on the roof. It's the only building close by that has a helipad."

Kate looked at it for a couple of minutes then asked, "Where is Agent Jarvis?"

Davis said, "Use your radio, and ask him,(;) he has an ear piece."

Kate keyed her microphone, "Agent Jarvis, Detective Beckett. Can you come to the command center and bring your opposite number from the SWAT team with you?"

"Yup, we are together, and we'll be there in about one minute." Jarvis appeared with another man, who was geared up much like Kate, and they jogged toward them from about 200 yards away.

When they arrived neither one of them was breathing hard. Jarvis said, "Detective Beckett, meet Lieutenant Cane of NYPD SWAT."

Kate offered her hand; they shook, and without further introductions, she got right to business. "You've spent about an hour oriented on the building and waiting for the brass to make up their minds about the obvious, right?"

They both nodded.

"You have to have discussed this. If you were in there how would you set up to resist being captured?"

They looked at each other; Cane nodded to Jarvis who said, "The best way out of there is the roof, but you've chased their chopper off with that Jet, which may or may not still be around. They run out of fuel. I don't know if their chopper crew was captured or not."

Kate looked at the communications operator and asked, "You heard that?" He nodded. "Find out."

Jarvis continued, "Their chopper may come back if it hasn't been taken out of action. At the moment, the NYPD chopper is orbiting the building; the FBI machine is on the ground getting refueled. Both machines can land six people on the roof if they have to. Assuming the roof is out, they want to escape to an adjacent building and work their way up or down the river till they have gotten us off their tail. They would then head inland and call for extraction. The best places to go up or down river are almost in the middle of the warehouse because there are matching openings in the adjoining buildings. That is near where the warehouse office structures are located as well. There is a covered stairwell from the office area, which is two stories tall, to the catwalks above. We are told they are elite combat vets of one sort or another, so they could run the length of the warehouse with no problem, even in full gear.

"There is refrigerated storage in the middle of this particular warehouse, but not the neighboring ones. There is a lot of plumbing, supposedly, in extra columns but we aren't sure of that.

"With that as background, I'd spread out in the catwalks with a man in the middle above the office structure. I'd try to draw you to one end or the other and make my way back to the middle and slip across to a building on either side. We are not well placed to defend that because-"

"You've been placed in each other's field of fire," Kate said matter-of-factly.

The two team leaders nodded and looked at her with new respect.

"It's been long enough that surprise is off the table, if it was ever on it. We have a choice: do we go in now or wait for dark. We also have some options about the roof. Is the roof cluttered with vents or other equipment housings other than possibly refrigeration compressors near the middle above the cold storage?"

Davis said, "The chopper pilots both said there was little cover on the roof other than the equipment enclosures, supposedly refrigeration equipment, which is mostly under the helipad, and the helipad structure itself. Based on data from the city engineers, the helipad is supported all the way from the warehouse floor by heavier than normal pillars."

Kate asked, "Does either of our choppers have infrared sensor capability onboard?"

Davis said, "Ours does, and we have portable IR detection equipment in the MCC."

"Night vision equipment including sights for the rifles?"

Jarvis said, "Yes, we do."

Davis said, "Oh, yeah."

Kate said, "Let me make a suggestion for a plan. I don't have any indispensible ego attached to this, so have at it. I want what we end up doing to be something we are all comfortable with given the circumstances. I'm going to suggest:

"One, we go in after dark with the power to the warehouse turned off.

"Two, we put the surrounding guard force on the catwalks near those vent windows at the top of the neighboring warehouses. Get them set up with night vision and rifles so they can take out any hostiles trying to cross the 50 yards or so between buildings. We will set up a sniper team on the roof at the street end of the building so their field of fire is the length of this aisle between the buildings. That way they are shooting down on the concrete deck here to minimize the risk of shots carrying out over the river.

"Three, we make a lot of noise like we are going to come in at the river end but make our actual entrance on the street end. There are several man doors there. I doubt their extraction team has night vision equipment since it was a daylight operation, and they had to travel light. We will leave the warehouse lights on till just before we go in. The night vision equipment will make up for not being dark adapted.

"Four, the choppers light up the roof and stand by to land on the helipad, but only if we end up with them treed on the roof. Otherwise the choppers become targets. They would regard anything we land up there as fair game for making their escape. I'm pretty sure at least one of them will have at least rudimentary chopper training, maybe more than one of them. Mercs tend to cross train."

At that moment, Captain Davis interjected, "Their chopper landed but the crew escaped before they could be apprehended."

Beckett replied, "Thanks Captain. They may have access to another chopper, but at least they aren't up there right now."

"Martin, I know you can hear me; can you get me information about the roof of the building. Is it safe to walk on? I'm pretty sure it isn't flat. Call my cell when you find out."

"Thoughts? Observations?" she finished.

Cain and Jarvis looked at each other; this time Jarvis nodded and Cain said, "You are reading our minds. At this point with them recovered from the gas attack, night is an advantage to us, and it's only another hour-and-a-half or two hour wait. I agree. We enter at the street end of the building, and use the portable infrared detection equipment plus the night sights on the ARs to pick off any of them on the catwalks at that end. I'm pretty sure they are wearing vests, though probably not military vests like we have – the rifle bullets we have should penetrate their vests. They do have relatively heavy armament, I'd say .308. Probably no heavy sniper rifles, no three-thirty eights for example, and no three hundred Win Mags. They needed to travel light for the extraction they had planned.

"Once that end is cleared, I'd send at least 4 people up the stairwells at each side on that end. They are covered because they stack freight against them, so if we are quiet, we can get up to the catwalks before they realize we are there."

Kate said, "They may have booby trapped the stair wells. How would you deal with that?"

Jarvis scratched his head and said, "Good point. That might make it tough. But now that you mention it, that is exactly what I'd do, and plan to exfil by roping down if I wasn't picked up on the roof; it's fast and really quiet. There is probably a rope locker someplace in this building, and no doubt, they have found it and taken advantage of the time delay to install exfil ropes at handy locations."

"Climbing the ropes sixty feet with this gear on is a non-starter. We'd be hanging ducks."

"We have a good booby trap guy," Jarvis said. "We could have him go up the stair well ahead of us. I'm no expert, but I think up is easier to detect problems than down."

Kate said, "So we'd be driving them towards the middle or the water. We need to set up to intercept them at each point. We have four snipers, right?" Jarvis nodded and she continued, "Let's set one of them up on the floor in the corner just inside the street end. It's only a 200 yard shot the length of the building. I'd also like to suggest we put a really bright light aimed into the building at the big middle door from adjacent warehouses on either side. We leave it off till we see them trying to escape from the middle, and then turn it on. If they drop their weapons they live. If they don't, they die. I'd prefer if we could shoot their knee caps, but on running people that isn't going to happen."

Jarvis said, "You are one cold lady."

Kate said, "One of those guys, Maddox, shot me through the chest a year ago. Same guy beat the crap out of me on a roof two nights ago, threw me off the roof, saw me hanging from a ledge, smiled at me, turned and left me to fall to my death. Their big boss had my mother and my Captain murdered to cover up his sins. I have exactly zero compassion for them. I won't do anything stupid. I want more than anything to take them alive and squeeze information out of them to nail their boss. But we can't fool with them. They are one deadly crew. Jarvis, the only reason you are alive is their big boss said don't kill Feds. I heard the guy that pulled Maddox from the car say that when the car was attacked, and we have it on video.

Jarvis nodded at her, "Understand."

"Okay, we have about two hours to go before it gets dark enough to do this. Who do I speak to in order to get lights?"

Gates said, "That would be me. You guys get some food in relays, round up your attack troops for the briefing in relays, I'll get lights. Really, really bright burn-your-retinas-into-orange spots lights.

Kate said, "Captain, can we keep Ryan and Esposito out of this?"

"Yes. I've had them report to the loft. They should be there in about fifteen minutes."

"Good. I'll feel Alexis is safer with them there."

"Where do we get food?"

Davis said, "That would be my job. I happen to know there is an absolutely wonderful burger place not too far from here that will deliver. How about I order a burger deluxe, fries, and coke for everybody?"

Beckett said, "I'd love a big old burger right about now," remembering she hadn't had a real meal for hours.

Davis said, "Consider it done."

Jarvis and Cane got their troops together in small groups, leaving the warehouse well-guarded. The teams were introduced to each other. They went over the plan in detail. The armorer, with the help of some of the troops, got the night sight adaptors installed on the rifles ahead of the regular scopes, and night vision goggles with helmets to those who would be using handguns. He installed grip activated lasers on Beckett's and Castle's Glocks. They checked all the communications equipment. Davis had arranged for four ambulances and paramedics to be just off site.

Finally they ate their burgers. Kate loved big thick juicy burgers with lettuce, onion, tomato, and mayo. These hit the spot. So did the fries. No tricks, no over spiced too clever by half curly crap, nothing but perfectly square cut crisp fries with just the right amount of salt. They didn't even need catsup. She thought it was awesome. She fought off the guilt by remembering the recent studies that said low fat high carb diets were worse than low carb. How about high both? Yeah, that's the ticket. At least for right now.

Beckett stopped by the armorer and had the battery on her camera gear replaced.

Finally, about nine o'clock, they made their entry. Beckett and Castle had moved down the building to be just inside the big middle door. Jarvis's vest camera was fitted with night vision so they could see at least what he was up to on the laptop Davis had given them. The first guys in, Jarvis and Cane of course, used the heat spotting equipment and night vision goggles to pick out two guys about on the centerline of the building half way to the center structure.

Kate spoke in Jarvis ear, "You are sure you are clear above? The chopper sees the same guy you do and nothing overhead, but I'd feel better if your IR equipment couldn't see anybody over your heads."

Jarvis clicked the mike twice but said nothing. He stayed on his feet but braced himself against the stairwell and took a single shot. The hot spot on the IR dropped to the floor, and they heard the guy hit. Jarvis scrammed immediately after his shot and good thing he did. Return fire chewed into the wall and stairwell exactly where he'd been located. One of the SWAT guys on the other side of the building must have spotted the muzzle flash and squeezed off an answering shot. Another IR blob dropped, and a body hit the floor with a splat.

Kate and Castle watched from their position inside the mid-length door of the warehouse where the suspects were expected to try to make their escape. Kate made sure her helmet cam was on. She wasn't sure how it would deal with the huge change in light when that happened, but at the moment, there was nothing to be done about that.

She ignored everything that was going on and stayed focused on the opening in the building across the way. She could feel Castle looking all around and almost said something but restrained herself. She thought he might see something unexpected. And he did. He whispered, "Beckett, they just threw ropes out of two of those windows just under the eaves. I think they are planning to come down them and head over here."

Kate keyed her radio and said, "We have ropes just thrown out of the windows under the eaves about a quarter of the way down the building from the street and about a quarter of the way up from the river. Snipers, stand by without your night vision scopes, I'm going to turn on the bright lights when we see them on the ground. There won't be any place for them to hide.

Davis on the other side of the building with Gates said, "No ropes on this side, but we will keep an eye open just in case."

"Roger," Kate said. She picked up her M4, tilted the night sight over to take it out of action, flipped the lever to burst fire, kept her finger off the trigger and kept watching through her night vision goggles. Then she saw it. A gray blob descending the side of the building on each rope. She keyed her radio, "I have tangos sliding down the ropes out here. Standby the lights."

Jarvis said, "I have four sliding down in here."

Kate saw grey blobs emerge from the door at the same time as two more came down the ropes. She flipped up her night vision goggles and said, "Lights."

It got really really bright all of a sudden. The bright lights caught the bad guys about a third of the way across running in their direction. Two of them stumbled as about ten million candle power hit them in the eyes. All but one stopped and dropped their weapons. That one came directly at Beckett at a dead run; it was Cole Maddox.

# # #

Kate had her rifle up, the holographic sight's red dot on the torso of the running man. She shouted, "Halt, Police."

Maddox raised his rifle in her direction, so she had to shoot, and she did. She pressed the trigger once. One three round burst hit him in the right chest. Maddox fell, his rifle slid away. Kate said, "Castle, watch him; if he moves shoot him." She called out to the rest of them, "Get down! On the concrete! Hands out to your sides! Slide the weapons away from you with your feet." When she had them all on the ground, she keyed her radio and said, "Jarvis, Cane, clear the building. Davis, anything on your side?"

"Clear here," Davis replied.

"Davis, hold station. Don't want any leaving on your side."

"WILCO."

Kate saw Jarvis come out of the building shielding his eyes. She keyed her mic and said, "Inside the building, take cover, the lights are coming on. Okay, give me normal lighting." Warehouse lights came on and she said, "Spot lights off."

The big bright lights went off. It left all of them a bit blinded but not nearly so bad as the people who had been in front of them.

Kate walked out of the building and approached Maddox. She saw his eyes blink, checked that his hands were empty and stopped about ten yards away. She could see a big puddle of blood - he hadn't been wearing a vest. She confirmed the three round burst had hit him in the right side of the chest which seemed fair, he'd shot her in the chest before and he was twice as big.

It was pretty clear he couldn't move. She keyed her radio and said, "Get the paramedics with a bus down here. We have one seriously wounded."

She got to him, looked down and said, "I told you you didn't know what you were up against." She was aware of Castle right beside her. She said, "Who do you work for; who is behind all this?" She could see him trying to say something, knelt down to be closer. He was looking almost amused.

His last words were, "He knows your every move. He hears everything you say. You are a dead woman walking. You will never get away from Oxley ..." and he died.

Kate's head whipped around to Castle and she asked, "Did I hear that correctly, he said 'You will never get away from Oxley?"

"That's exactly what I heard Kate. He also said a lot of other things that I hope the microphone got."

Kate said for the microphone, "Shaw, Martin, please use this video and sound to get a warrant for everything imaginable about Oxley, including permission to send him to a proctologist. I want to know everything about that asshole."

EN: Please review. Reader feedback is 'the' most important part of the learning process. Thanks.

06/08/2012