Beckett of Arabia

By UCSBdad

Disclaimer: It is written that I do not own Castle. Rating: K. Time: An AU period slightly after A Deadly Affair.

They found a nice flat spot that was slightly raised above the desert floor about two hours before sunset. Cowboy swept the area with his binoculars.

"I thought I saw a glint like maybe sunlight off of a windshield far to our right and even if I didn't, I'd suspect our little friends are out there. We'll set up here like were staying the night here, and when it gets real dark, we'll move a couple of miles away. And the batteries for our night vision goggles are about dead, so whoever is on watch gets them and we'll hope they last the night."

As Marian, Cowboy and Sundance worked on the tank's engine and air filter, the rest got out of the overheated tank and enjoyed the cool of the evening.

"That tank is like an oven, Castle. Makes me wonder how soldiers manage in places like Iraq."

"They're younger than we are, in better shape, trained for it, and mostly want to be there, I guess."

"Speak for yourself, Castle. I'm in great shape."

Rick laughed.

"I've never met a shape I appreciated more than yours, Beckett."

Kate blushed but made no reply.

"Beckett?"

"What?"

"You were wrong yesterday. There's a whole lot of Nikki Heat in you, not just a little bit. I only wish Nikki was as good as you are."

"Now if you'd only change the name."

"That's a great idea, Beckett. In the next book she'll be Nikki…. Rook."

"That's not what I had in mind."

"Why not? There's no reason Nikki and Rook can't be a great love story as well as a great detective story."

Marian and the rest finished their work and they sat down to eat their evening meal and set out sleeping bags. But, as soon as it was dark, they loaded everything back in the tank and left.

Castle hated the noise the tank was making.

"Daud, they'll be able to hear the tank's noise all the way to Iraq. They'll know we're moving."

"Perhaps not, Mr. Castle. They may think we're running the engine to charge the batteries. Even if they hear the engine, they won't know where we're going. Sound does carry in the desert at night, but deciding the direction is tricky. Plus, it's better than staying where we were."

Castle had to agree, but he was still worried.

They found another slight rise and oriented the tank in the direction that they thought their enemies would come from.

Tonight, Castle was on watch from 11 PM to midnight. Shortly after he went on watch, he thought he heard a noise. The noise of an engine. He strained his ears and decided he heard not one engine, but several. Their enemies were coming for them.

"Cowboy! Daud!" He whispered. "We have company."

Both men clambered onto the turret with Castle. Cowboy took the night vision goggles and also looked through his binoculars.

"Must be them. If you look real closely, you can see night driving lights."

"What are they?" Castle asked, still whispering.

"They cover the headlights of a truck so that just a little bit of light gets out. If you're careful, it's enough to drive by, especially if you're in the desert like this."

"How far away are they?"

"I think a bit over a mile, Mr. Castle." Daud replied.

"We'd better wake the others up."

They woke everyone up and prepared for action.

Castle crouched in the turret with a 37mm shell in his hands. Every few minutes he had to put it down and wipe the sweat from his hands to keep from dropping it.

"Where the hell are they?" he muttered.

"Not too far from us, Jefe. There moving kinda slowly. I guess they want to sneak up on us."

"Should we open fire now?"

"I'd rather wait until they got in machine gun range. Most of our tank's gun ammo is duds."

Castle nodded but hated the waiting.

Suddenly there was a burst of fire in front of them. Tracers crossed each other from many directions. Daud in the top machine gun turret could see the large green tracers of the heavy weapon that had shot at them earlier.

"Don't fire!" he screamed. "They're shooting at each other, not at us."

Castle managed to push his way to a vision port and look outside. Daud was right. The firefight was between their enemies. As he watched a string of large green tracers struck a pickup and set it on fire. He saw several men running from the vehicle, one was on fire.

The gunfire slacked off as the others could see that they had hit a technical and not the tank. One machine gun kept firing for several minutes before finally stopping.

Castle could hear yelling and screaming in what he assumed was Arabic, then he could hear the trucks start up and leave. They waited tensely until an hour had passed and nothing happened. In that time, the last batteries for the night vision goggles finally died.

When dawn came, they could see two wrecked technicals and several dead bodies. Nothing else was visible for miles.

"Daud, Boss, you're with me." Cowboy said. "I want to check those fellas out."

Castle would much rather have stayed in the tank but found he couldn't say so with everyone watching. Especially Kate Beckett. He made a note to himself that courage was really the unwillingness to look bad in front of people you cared about. He wondered if he'd ever be able to use that bit of knowledge in a book.

They examined the one vehicle that hadn't caught fire but had been raked by machine gun fire.

"The number plates are from Oman." Daud said. Then he knelt by the driver who was slumped over the wheel and pulled the dead man's wallet out. "Omani as well. I'll take the man's ID card. Grandfather will want to know who attacked us."

He checked two more men and found they were Omanis as well.

They walked over to the burned-out truck. The first thing they saw was the remains of the man who'd burned to death. Castle promptly threw up.

"Few people have a strong enough stomach not to do that the first time they see something like that." Cowboy said. Daud nodded but looked a little sick himself.

"The number plate is from Saudi Arabia." Daud announced. He then checked the dead men around the technical and took their ID cards. They were all Saudis.

"Two groups, I reckon." Cowboy said. "Neither one knew the other one was around. When they bumped into each other in the dark, they started shooting. It wasn't until the one technical caught fire that someone figured out they weren't shooting at us. Damn lucky for us."

Castle climbed back on the tank while Cowboy and Daud checked their small battle field for anything they could use. They got some weapons and ammo, and an intact five gallon can of water.

"You okay, Castle?" Kate asked, sitting on the tank next to him.

"I've never seen anything like the guy who burned to death. I'm not sure I'll ever stop seeing it. It was…" Castle stopped. Even he had no words for what he'd seen.

Kate put her arm around him and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"I've seen incinerated bodies, bodies that were in the water for days, bodies that were…I reacted like you did. Anyone would."

"Does it ever get any easier?"

She shrugged.

"You learn to push the images into another part of your mind and remember you have a job to do. But you don't forget."

"Ah, shit again." That was Sundance.

"What?" Rick and Kate asked at once.

"Look at the horizon to the north."

Everyone looked.

"A dust storm?" Castle guessed.

"No. That's dust and sand being kicked up by someone headed this way really fast. From the number of dust plumes, about six someones headed for us."

"Seven." Daud said. "There's another dust plume to the east, in the direction our friends from last night took off in. We'd better be going."

The tank headed more or less south and west with their enemies closing in on them.

Cowboy replaced Daud in the upper turret for a while. He kept an eye on the people trailing them.

"They're technicals, all right. I can see some of them have heavy weapons of some sort on the truck beds, but they're too far away to make out just what they are."

He ducked back in the turret.

"Marian, can we outrun them?"

"No. Over flat ground like this, the technicals will go faster than we can, and if we try to go through softer sand, we may bog down."

"That means we fall back on Plan B."

"What's Plan B?" Castle asked.

"We do a lot of praying."

It took about an hour for the technicals coming from the east, the ones that had originally chased them, to get close.

One pickup, perhaps not aware that the 37mm gun turret could fire straight behind the tank, closed in, trying to fire its machine gun into the engine and knock it out. A burst of machine gun fire from the tank wrecked the technical.

"One down and a bunch to go." Cowboy said.

Hardly a minute had passes when Cowboy began yelling.

"Turn right. Turn right. The fella with the big gun drove himself into some soft sand and he's bogged down. We can get him."

Marian turned the tank to the right and carefully approached the bogged down technical, not wanting to get the tank bogged down. Seeing the tank coming, the crew ran.

"Load me a 37mm round, Boss."

Castle did so and Cowboy took aim. They heard the flat crack of the gun and then Cowboy yelled.

"Got him. That must have been an armor piercing round 'cause it didn't explode, but I blew his engine about fifty feet from away. Hold on while I hose his damned gun with the machine gun."

The remaining technicals in the group moved quickly away and stopped well out of gun range. It looked like some sort of argument was going on with a lot of arm waving and gesturing. Finally, two technicals turned around and drove away. That led to more arm waving by the crews of the remaining vehicles, until all but one drove away. The last vehicle sat for a moment and then the driver stood up, gave them the one finger salute and drove off.

Cowboy climbed out of the turret and checked the other technicals with his binoculars.

"They're maybe three miles away. I can't tell what kind of weapons they have. If they have any kind of anti-armor weapons, we're screwed. And there's a whole bunch of them. Six groups with maybe five or six technicals each. We gotta go, folks."

They were chased for another two hours.

"We need to stop. The engine's overheating."

"If we stop, we'll get overheated permanently." Cowboy yelled.

"Suppose we stop and start shooting?" Castle suggested. "Maybe even go after them."

"If they have armor piercing weapons…"

"If they do, we're screwed, no matter what we do." Castle interrupted. "But these people have never seen us up close. For all they know we're some super-duper tank loaded down with death rays and disintegrators. It's worth a shot."

"Oh, hell." Cowboy said. Then he smiled at Castle.

"I like the way you think, Boss, even if it does get us all killed."

"Marian, we're gonna charge the bastards. Me and Castle here'll handle the 37mm, Daud get on the top machine gun and keep an eye out for anyone getting to close. Sundance, LoDon, Kate and Majida, work the 75mm gun and hope like hell the damned thing works."

"Everybody ready?"

"No." Castle yelled. "Who thought up this stupid idea anyway?"

Everyone just laughed as the tank turned and headed for their enemies.

TBC