Chapter Twenty One - Pride

The thing with putting up a covert operation is that the less people know, the better. And that makes things difficult, because if you need help you have to count on not too many people and that makes progress move slowly.

The night Raiden had summoned Otacon in Kate's hospital room, which was turned into the base of operation quite soon after that meeting, they had decided the roles. Raiden would be the handling officer, the person in charge of guiding Castle and offering him tactical help via secured VoIP comms. He'd be relaying news and information when Castle required them, change of plans or other things he could need while infiltrating.

Kate would be in charge of intel. She'd look through what would transpire from interjected comms from Mother Base, security camera footage and the like. She'd be listening and combing through wiretapped conversations and CCTV stills and short videos, then report her findings to Raiden.

At the base of the operation pyramid, but not less important, came Otacon. He was in charge of gaining the intel Beckett had to analyze and, in case Castle would need it, open doors remotely. Most of locks on Mother Base were opened with RFID cards, pin codes or special keys designed to be impossible to forge. All of them could be hacked remotely, or controlled from far away, if you had access to that type of control. Otacon had it, being one of the engineers that helped design the network.

For five days, they gathered after Kate finished physical therapy and they worked on devising a plan of action. It felt weird, for Castle, as he had never been part of the planning stage of an infiltration, he would usually put on the appropriate clothing, receive the instruction and the deployed wherever he was needed. He seldom spoke except when asked something, he let Raiden do most of the talking and just observed the trio as they tried to devise the best strategy possible. Sometimes, Kate accused him of not being cooperative, but Raiden always managed to stir the conversation away, because the former FOXHOUND agent knew what he was doing.

He was studying Mother Base, the layouts and the planimetry, the patrols and how long it would take him to move from point A to point B, good hiding places, possible shortcuts, everything that could make it easier for him to get to the point. Commanding Platform was heavily guarded, because all the vital structures for Outer Heaven where there, and while Castle, better Captain Rogers, held quite a high status among the guards, he would raise more than some suspects if he was found wandering around the first deck of Commanding Platform, most of all the higher levels. The guards were ordered to shoot to kill in case anyone was found outside their allowed fields, and the top levels of Commanding Platform, First Deck most of all, were off limits to all the non-authorized personnel unless they received a special authorization. Castle had to get one to go and talk to Hunt in his office, that awful day. He doubted he'd get another one, Ocelot had been hesitant already the first time.

Also, if Castle were to get caught in Hunt's office without Hunt present, with or without authorization, he would have probably been shot right there and then, no questions asked.

That was the reason he was looking for shortcuts and places to hide. Anything would do: he could climb on pipes and small ledges, hide beneath and atop stacks of stuff, inside discarded cardboard boxes - which abounded around Mother Base - and many other places, like spaces between walls wide enough to accommodate his bulky form or, in dire emergency, even hanging from the ramparts if needed.

Unfortunately, urban and industrial landscapes were tough, and Mother Base was a mix of both. Woodland, marshes, even open desert were somewhat easier, with the right camouflage. Mother Base was a block of shades of gray with bright orange walls and concrete floors, the only possible camouflage he could use was a steel gray BDU he had found in the back of the chest of drawers in his room. And even with that, he was pretty sure he'd also need facepaint to obtain a decent degree of camouflage.

Also, the nature itself of Mother Base made it a nearly inexpugnable location. It was a maze built vertically, with stairs, piping, dead ends, ladders… going from point A to point B wasn't exactly easy, it often required a zig-zag route that made it quite easy to lose the way.

Castle was deeply lost in the planimetry of the third deck of Command Platform, where the infiltration would officially start, when Jack called him. "Snake? You with us?"

He jolted in his seat, so dead to the world he was. "Yes?"

"I was thinking about giving you a weapon, an edge against the guards."

"Hey, I don't want to kill anyone!"

"I never said anything about killing anyone. You remember that narcotic dart that knocked you out at Shadow Moses?"

Unconsciously, Castle found himself rubbing the exact spot on his neck he had been hit seven years before. "Of course I do, the needle mark even got infected!"

"Well, we have the same technology, only made much, much smaller," said Jack nonchalantly, as if miniaturizing that kind of munition would be easy.

"How smaller?" asked Kate.

"We can modify most nine millimeter guns to work with the sleeping darts. And they can be silenced. You in, Captain?"

"Stick to Snake, Raiden. I like it better than captain. And I'm in. Only… how can we justify guards sleeping on the job?"

"Well Snake… if you haven't lost your edge, I doubt those guards would even notice your presence, unless you sneak behind them and shout boo at the top of your lungs."

Kate seemed dubious though. Understandable, considering her formation and her unfamiliarity with the world of covert ops and infiltration behind enemy lines. "Is he really that good?"

Raiden and Otacon nodded at the very same time. "He's even better," said Raiden. "I wouldn't even be talking about sneaking in the Boss' office if Castle here wasn't that good. Now that I think of it, why did you change your name to Richard Castle? Richard Rogers wasn't good enough for an author?"

"Because you say Rick Castle very fast it sounds like Rick Asshole. And for a while, I felt like I was an asshole for having survived so much crap while most of my friends from the army were dead, so… that's it."

With the planning done, it was all a matter of waiting for the right time to proceed with said plan. Also, Raiden needed some time to smuggle the required equipment, but given his high rank in the commanding chain it wasn't hard for him to retrieve what they needed from the armory. Not only did he manage to get his hands on the specially modified gun that shot tranquilizing darts, but also the tiniest radio headset he could find.

The right night came about a week after the first planning meeting, just in time for Otacon to set up his station, connect every cable, computer, server, monitor, whatever high tech gizmo he had moved in Kate's room at the hospital.

His corner looked like the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon.

With an incoming tropical storm looming on the horizon just before sunset and Hunt notoriously out of Mother Base doing whatever he did, the small group decided it was time to act. Well, mainly Castle and Jack decided it was time to act, Kate simply couldn't avoid it with the headquarters of the operation being set up in her room, and Otacon… well, Otacon would do anything for Castle. After Shadow Moses, the engineer had sworn that if their paths would meet once again, he'd help him no matter what, to pay his debt. That time had just come.

The brewing storm became a total downpour right after dinner. Time to act.

"Alright Snake, time to get ready," started Raiden as Castle was getting ready, checking and double checking the mission loadout. Along with the tranq gun and the VoIP comm set with laryngophone and bluetooth earpiece, mission equipment comprehended top of the line night vision goggles, a stick of black facepaint, tactical knife and a small, single use only taser and last but not the least, an array of devices that would allow Otacon to crack everything in Hunt's office, as he had specifically wanted to keep his stuff off line. Everything was waterproof or had been made waterproof with some tweaking, given the adverse conditions outside. Along with all the high tech, there was a simple, but always reliable, set of lockpicks for small locks.

"No shit, Sherlock," commented the writer as he slid the gun in the thigh holster strapped to his leg.

"I so missed your bitter sense of humor, Snake… now, really, you have a large window of time and no issue with deployment, but you need to be careful. Mother Base tends to turn into the most slippery place in the world when it rains, just avoid spraining your ankle on the way downstairs, alright?"

"I'll try," he replied, drily. "You guys are all set up? Ready to go?"

Otacon and Kate nodded. "I guess we are," said the detective, pulling the laptop Otacon had prepared for her on her lap. "What exactly do I need to do?"

"Keep an eye for me on the CCTV feeds, if you can see me, and tell me when I appear of I forget one while on the way," replied Castle. "Also, if you notice a change of patrolling schedules, or more guards than we had calculated. Easy peasy, you just need to stare at the computer."

"Otacon has the tough part," said Raiden, nodding towards the engineer. "He has to maintain the videofeed stable enough, while avoiding the traps he has installed in the security system."

"Couldn't you just take those traps down?" she asked then.

The engineer sighed. "Easier said than done, Detective Beckett. Unfortunately, those traps, or better baits for hackers trying to get inside our security system, are designed to be nearly impossible to be taken down or turned off, and most of all, even if I managed to take them down, the alarm would blare like a siren and the whole Security Team would be alerted."

She nodded. "And that would make infiltration harder for him. I get it."

"Right… now, if everyone's ready to take position, I guess I can go and avoid getting killed for the nth time."

On his way out, he felt her fingers lightly touch his hand, a barely there contact that made him turn around for a second to look at her. Despite the weariness after the intense session of physical therapy, she sported the brightest smile he had ever seen on her face.

He took it as a good omen for the mission.

The moment he stepped outside the hospital ward, the pouring rain soaked him down to the bone.

"Comm check, can you hear me guys?" he murmured, hoping the delicate microphone strapped around his neck would pick up his voice and relay it to base of operation.

"Loud and clear Snake, loud and clear," replied Raiden. "How are you doing?"

"I'm wet and cold, Raiden, but I guess that if you look outside Kate's window you'd probably see for yourself, jerkass!"

His handler and former colleague laughed. "Guess I would. Now go Snake. We'll follow you through GPS and on video. Call if you need anything."

He nodded, more to himself than to them. "Will do. And Beckett, if those two guys bother you in any way, I left my gun beneath the pillow of my bed. Don't be afraid to use it."

Her laugh echoed in the earpiece of his comm set, making him smile. "I bet they'll be two perfect gentlemen, Castle. I'll be fine, just… come back in one piece, OK? I've had enough of bullet wounds for a lifetime."

"I'll do my best. Snake out."

With the rainy night as his cloak, Castle took a deep breath and reached into his memory to retrieve notions he had hoped he'd never need again. All the training and conditioning were still embedded in his brain, branded with fire by hundreds of hours spent in hostile environments, equipped with nothing but his wits and experience.

Time to do it all over again.

At least he had time, no one pressuring him. Only his need for the unadulterated truth about LokSat, and his father, to spur him on. And those alone were two big incentives to move his ass and put all those notion to good use.

It took him a while to reach Commanding Platform, as the two decks were a couple of kilometers apart from each other, but the walk in the rain gave him time to reach the required mental state to accomplish his task. The moment he set foot there, the mission had officially begun.

"Moving up!" he murmured as he sneaked in the small space beneath a staircase. He pulled the stick of face paint from the pocket of his pants and applied it to his wet face liberally, to provide better camouflage in low light conditions. With that done, he worn a pair of specially designed gloves that would give him better grip no matter how wet the surfaces he clung on would be and he was finally ready. "How's situation?"

"All clear Snake, the rain makes the guards sloppy, they tend to shorten their patrols to stay dry. You're doing good for now," answered Raiden.

"Just be careful up on the second level," added Kate. "Two guards are having a chat right on the path you have chosen, or at least I think they are."

Castle stopped in his tracks. "What do you mean?"

"I've seen them turning a corner on a camera, but they haven't come out on the other side or on the same corridor."

"Otacon, what's on that side of the walkway?"

He had to wait about half a minute to get an answer. "Nothing, it's just well repaired."

"I bet they're having a smoke," added Raiden. "They'll move when they're done, and if they don't, I'll report them to their boss tomorrow and have them put to toilet duty."

"And that means?"

Castle chuckled. "It means they will have to clean all the toilets, most of all common toilets, for an undefined amount of time," he explained as he walked up to the first level. "Typical army punishment for insubordination."

"Were you ever subjected to it?"

"Nope," he replied as he examined the walkway where the two lazy guards were having an unplanned break. Avoiding the videocamera by walking right beneath its blind spot, he reached the place where the guards were standing. Using the stairs was impossible, he would have to pass right where they were if he did so, but jumping and climbing up away from them was out of the question too, because even if he tried his best, he'd never be able to reach the border of the walkway above him.

What do I do? He asked himself. In the dim light brought by the floodlights scattered around the platform, he couldn't see too well, but he had to improvise a plan. Fast.

"Otacon, there are big pipes right in front of me. Where do they lead?"

"You want to use them to climb up?"

Castle shrugged. "Why not?"

"Because it's night, it's wet and it's a death wish?" exclaimed Kate.

"It's not, it's a good plan in fact," said Jack. "Snake, those pipes lead straight to the fourth level, completely bypassing floor two and three. Rick, if you manage to climb those pipes, you'll skip the worst possible floors, those guarded most."

"I'm going up then."

"Good luck, Snake!" exclaimed Otacon.

He heard Kate chuckle in the microphone. "He doesn't need luck, he has training!"

As he grasped the juncture that nailed the pipe to the wall and pulled himself up. "Ah, you remember that?"

"Of course I do, Castle! What you did that night… that was stuff out of action movies!"

"Glad I was entertaining…" His left boot slipped as he hoisted his body up the pipe. "Oh fuck, Jack, I suddenly regret the climbing thing!"

"Ah," she quipped. "Told you it was a bad idea."

"Not bad, just slippery!" The effort of keeping a tight hold on the pipe and the few handholds he could get made his words choppy and breathy. "Alright, halfway there, I can make it."

Otacon laughed. "You said the same on that damn staircase, back on Shadow Moses. Remember that?"

Castle had to muffle a sudden burst of hilarity at the memory. "How could I forget it? That tower was a mile long! You got the elevator, I had to climb every single step, gunning down every single guard they threw at me!" He paused to look for a secure foothold. "That damn FAMAS had a pretty bad recoil, it bruised my shoulder! And fuck, that missile launcher weighed a ton."

"Why did you need to climb that tower if it was so well guarded, with a missile launcher?" asked Kate.

He panted as he finally reached the desired floor and managed to hoist himself above the railing and climb over it, landing on the floor with a soft thud. "I needed to climb it to reach a very nasty bug and the Stinger was the perfect bug spray."

"He means he had to shoot down a Hind D, a Soviet helicopter, that was trying to shoot him with a 50. Caliber gatling gun as he proceeded," explained Hal. "Either that, or he'd be gunned down, and Washington DC would be a nuclear crater now."

As he walked beneath another surveillance camera to proceed upward, he heard a moment of tense silence, before Beckett interrupted it. "Impressive!"

"Thank you, I just wished all that impressiveness hadn't led me to a nervous breakdown that made me check myself in a drug-addicted rehab center in Siberia for six months without even telling my daughter where I was, just to find some quiet."

He had thought that such a revelation, something only his mother knew, would spark an intense debate in the small, improvised commanding center, but no such thing happened. "Castle careful!" screamed Kate though. "Incoming guard, right behind the corner on your left. Hide, quickly!"

Beneath the pouring rain, he hadn't heard the steps. The rush of panic coursed through his veins for a moment, before he spotted the perfect place to hide. A stack of barrels, probably a reserve of gasoline or other fuel for the many emergency generators scattered around, was placed on a metal shelf that rested pretty far from the wall. Enough that he could sneak through it and hide. He did so, pressing his back to the wall.

As the guard passed beside his hiding place, Castle heard Kate whisper something through the comm system. "Now I understand why your code name is Snake," she said. "I just don't understand the Venom part."

"He's lethal," said Jack while Castle moved away from the stack of cans. "Like a cobra or a black mamba. You want someone dead? You call him and he asks where he should put the bullet. From sniping posts to close range combat. I'm quite sure he could kill someone with a chopstick, if need arose. Snake, how are you doing?" he asked then.

He quietly turned a corner, sliding his boots on the slick surface very slowly in order to reduce noises in case a rogue guard had taken another smoke pause there, then answered. "Almost there. It's easier than I thought, Raiden. You guys need to tighten security!"

He basically skipped the steps of the last staircase, feeling the giddiness of a successful infiltration again after years. And for once, no one had to die. It felt great.

"Alright, I'm at the office door. No cameras around, no infrared motion detectors, nothing. Looks like Hunt doesn't really care about security up here," he commented as he reached the door and attached the remote hacking device Otacon had given him to the numeric keypad. "Otacon, do your thing!"

"Will do, Snake, just give me a minute."

And a minute it was. Hell, that man was a wizard with computers and everything else. No wonder the US government kept him at Shadow Moses to design, develop and build robots that would allow them to dismantle nukes faster and more efficiently, that guy was the McGuyver of nuclear engineering. And electronic engineering. And IT. Castle huffed, as he realised that he and Ryan would probably be best friends if Esposito hadn't already taken that place.

"What a weird password…" he commented as he unplugged Otacon's gadget.

"What is it?" asked Kate.

"It's 411972," he replied, trying to sound calmer than he was. "My birthday."

Silence was the only answer he got, so he decided to push forward and get it done as soon as he could.

"I'm in!" he whispered, triumphant, as he closed the door behind him.

The office was dark, the single window was sealed shut and Castle didn't want to attract any unwanted attention, so he donned the night vision goggles to look around. Everything was neat, every surface spotless, and he would never expect anything else from the Legendary Soldier. He noticed a computer, a very old model from the eighties probably, and instantly walked there. "Hal, he's got a relic from my high school days, you think you can crack it?"

"Of course I can," he replied from the other side. "Just put that thing that looks like a floppy disk with a strange appendage in the drive and I should be able to do it."

Castle obeyed and turned on the computer. "It's in, and the computer is on. What should I do now?"

"I need time, Snake. You can wait."

"Alright, I'll look around."

With the help of the night vision goggles, he started looking through the stacks of neatly piled documents Hunt kept on the desk, on shelves and bookcases on every wall. There were files in thick cardboard containers all named and dated. There was also a file cabinet, which was closed. The key was nowhere in sight. At least he had been smart enough to take the lockpicks with him. It wasn't a tough lock to open, and he had one of the drawers slide towards him quite soon.

"Surely Hunt is a very meticulous man when it comes to filing reports and such," he commented as he skirted the labels on the files.

"And he demands the same precision from us," added Jack. "Everything that happens on Mother Base or during deployment is reported and filed. For posterity he says, or if the UN discovers the real reason Mother Base exists and decides to pay a visit."

He chuckled. "No wonder. Did anyone ever suspect about Outer Heaven?"

"Not that I know of, but from what I know, in 1975 it nearly got destroyed by LokSat, and they slowly rebuilt it to look like this. Let's say the retaliation the Boss managed to pull on them scared the crap out of them and never tried to attack Mother Base again."

"You must be an idiot to attack Big Boss so openly, even I know that…"

His eyes fell over a thick file, simply named Rick. With shaking fingers, Castle pulled on of the folds of the file and revealed more of them, thinner this time. Operation Intrude N313 - 1995 - Serbia. Then Shadow Moses Incident - 2005 - Alaska and more of them. Every operation, every infiltration he had ever taken part of, even Afghanistan, had a file. From the Afghanistan file he pulled his complete medical record too, along with the the full, unredacted reports that weren't showed even to him.

"Man, Hunt has men in high places…" he murmured, as he pulled all the files that regarded him from the cabinet. But there was another file, named and dated, that caught his attention. Two actually. One that said Virtuous Mission - August 24th 1964 - Tselinoyarsk and Operation Snake Eater - August 30 - September 2, 1964 - Tselinoyarsk. Close to the date of the second file there was an addiction, made in stiff handwriting and with faded ink, that read LokSat.

Out of curiosity, he pulled both files and added them to his own, before going to search for a container, a bag of some sorts, to protect the paper from the pouring rain.

While doing so, scrambling a little in the dark, he noticed a frame on the desk. It was a simple frame, nothing fancy or too expensive. It pictured Hunt, way younger than now, in combat fatigues and full tactical gear in front of a helicopter, probably near the helipad on Commanding Platform, posing with an arm wrapped around that of a woman with long dark hair gathered in a ponytail, also dressed in full tactical equipment with a sniper rifle leaning against her leg as it rested upright on the floor. The woman looked a lot younger than Hunt, and she was smiling.

But what was more strange about that picture was the little girl that Hunt held at his hip, blonde hair gathered in two high tails, dressed in a pink, yellow and blue sundress that screamed this was bought in the eighties. She looked straight at the camera, wide blue eyes and smiling face beaming at it, her little hands fisted in the rough nylon of Hunt's vest. She didn't look like either of the adults in the picture though.

"Jack?" he called. "Hunt got married somewhere down the line, right?"

"Yes, around 1985 from what I know, why?"

"There's a picture here, framed. It shows him with a woman, a marksman given the gear, and a baby girl. Do you know them?"

"Of course, the woman is Rita, his wife, also known as Quiet," he revealed. The name rang a very loud bell, as Quiet was the codename of a sniper that terrorized the Soviet troops in Afghanistan during their invasion of the country in 1984. "The girl is a Kurdish refugee they found in a raided camp about a year after they got married, everyone was dead except for her. They adopted her and raised her as their own. She's basically your adoptive sister, and you may know her as Sniper Wolf."

Sniper Wolf? The legendary merc known for the extreme lengths she was willing to go to take her target down?

"What the fuck, all the fucking legends live here?"

"Well, we're missing a few, but now that you're here, I guess that yes, all the legends are here."

Castle took the goggles off and wiped the sweat and water from his eyes. The bandana he wore around his forehead was soaked and didn't really work at that point, also the warmer temperature of the room created some fog in front of the lenses, that needed to be cleaned.

"Is Mei Ling still around?"

Suddenly, Kate interjected in the conversation. "Who's Mei Ling?" she asked, and she sounded a little jealous.

Raiden chuckled. "She was the you in many of our past missions, Kate. A US Navy comm and intel specialist drafted in FOXHOUND because she invented an eco-locating device that allowed us to see through walls, in a sense. No Snake, she's not here. She has her own ship now, the USS Missouri. She's stationed in the North Pacific at the moment, and the Boss keeps close tabs on her too. She's a valuable asset, like most of us."

"The world would be way better without us, Raiden…"

"LokSat would be an ubiquitous all controlling entity without us, Snake," the younger man replied. "That's the truth. Big Boss has worked all his life to stop that man and to do so, he managed to gather the best of the best."

"Then where the fuck my mother walks in all this mess? She's an actress, not a spy!"

At that point, after a long while spent in complete silence, Kate made her voice be heard. "Castle, keep looking. I'm sure you'll find out soon enough. Come on, bring everything you can and leave before someone comes up and finds you."

Easier said than done, he thought. It took him a long while to find something suitable to carry those files out, and while he was shoving them in the plastic bag he had found, the computer emitted a high-pitched beep, as Hal had finally managed to unlock it and access it remotely.

"There you go, Snake. Looking for anything specific?"

"Download everything you find about 1971 and Costa Rica, 1982 and New York and everything regarding Captain Richard Alexander Rogers and Richard Edgar Castle. Also everything you find about Martha Rogers and LokSat, even the confidential files. I want everything and…"

As he spoke, behind the old CRT monochrome monitor he noticed a pile of old cassettes, those used in the good old days with walkmans and such. He picked one, a black SONY cassette with a green and white label. One one side there was written From the man who sold the world in neat and squared handwriting and it was marked as audio, while on the other side, in the same hand, was written Operation Intrude N313, but it was marked as data. He had already seen that type of cassette, back in the eighties data cassettes were a normal means of moving data from point A to point B, he had often been briefed through audiotapes like that, and once via encrypted data "Otacon, in your supreme nerdiness, do you, by chance, have an old MSX2 computer with a cassette reader?"

"Oh…" He seemed a bit shocked by the question. "Yes, I have one but… why do you need it?"

"Because Big Boss left me a message."

"How do you know?" asked Kate.

"Because he left me a cassette, one side is audio, the other side is data. It's MSX2 type of data, it was a staple in FOXHOUND in the early nineties. But the other side is audio, and it's marked with a message from the man who sold the world. Master Miller used to tell me that Big Boss was also called The Man Who Sold The World by his entourage, because he managed to fool everyone into thinking that he had died in 1975 but he turned out to be alive in 1984. And also because he loved David Bowie but… Miller swore he had never told that to anyone, and… and there's a huge file with the NYPD logo on it, labeled after Roy Montgomery and… Oh for fuck's sake he knew it!"

"You mean he lured you there?" said Kate. "He willingly reduced security and so you could get to his office?"

"Yeah!" he snapped as he punched the desk. "He wanted me to get here and steal his stuff… fuck, that man is always ahead of everything and everyone!"

"He wouldn't be the Legendary Soldier, right?" she quipped.

"Yeah," he repeated with a sigh of defeat. "Guess I'll grab everything he left here and fuck it… he left a walkman too, he thought of everything." He sighed again. "Alright, given the circumstances, the infiltration is over. Snake out."

When he finally emerged from the office, the rain had subsided, but the wind still howled and the air was filled with the residual droplets, and the ocean below him growled like a hungry monster. He didn't even bother with leaving the office as he had found it, and simply walked down the way he had come. He took little care with the guards, but didn't encounter any, by some miracle.

The moment he stepped in Kate's room, dripping wet and slightly disappointed, both Jack and Otacon had left, and Kate was resting on the bed, clearly wiped out.

"Hey…" he murmured as he walked closer. "So? How was your first infiltration?"

She smiled when he leaned closer to kiss her forehead. "I was hoping for some more action. Next time we add a video camera so we can see what you do, OK?"

He nodded, smiling himself. "Everything you want, Beckett. Sleep now, I'm going to take a shower and start looking at these files, alright?"

"You should sleep too, Castle. I know snakes don't really sleep but… do it for me."

Those files could wait, after all.

Word count: 75398