Archeology and Espionage

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I don't own Castle, Beckett, Nikki Heat, the Middle East…but you know that. Rating: K Time: in the near future after the story The Treasure of the Penelope.

"They are?" Rick asked. "How'd that happen. I thought she was out for your blood."

"Obviously, even all of a lieutenant colonel's salary wouldn't satisfy Grace and there's little chance now that she'll get anything from me. Anything more, anyway. I've heard that her father is unhappy with subsidizing Grace's expensive lifestyle. He's threatening to cut her off and I've heard she's in the market for a rich husband." Ron laughed. "Grace has made quite a pest of herself among our former friends and many of them are quite impressed with Green Beret Colonel Fields. So, I hear a lot about what's happening with Grace."

"Ron, you know you're a Medical Corps officer, not Special Forces."

"I do, but as far as most of them know anyone in the military must be a steely eyed killer."

"Just don't get carried away by your reputation."

Ron held his hands up in mock surrender.

"Please, I learned my lesson. I'm not Doctor John Rambo."

The two men walked to the terminal and in seconds, Kate had run to Rick, threw her arms around him and kissed him passionately.

"I've missed you, soldier." She whispered in his ear.

"I've missed you, too."

"My, you were right, Kate. He is a handsome hunk." Said a woman's voice from nearby.

Looking over Kate's shoulder, Rick saw a small, silver haired lady. She couldn't have been more than five feet tall and if she weighed over a hundred pounds, she must have had an anvil in her purse.

Kate blushed furiously and moved a bit away from Rick.

"Rick, this is Dr. Ellie Brunner. She's the Israeli archeologist that'll be going with us. Ellie, this is my husband, Rick Rodgers."

They shook hands and Rick introduced Ron Fields to Ellie.

"How did the conference go?" Rick asked.

"I had a lot of fun, and I met a lot of interesting people."

Ellie snorted.

"She's being modest, Rick. Way too modest. The most interesting person at the conference, by far, was Kate. Her paper on the limes Arabicus will have people talking until the next conference in a years' time."

Seeing Ron looking a bit confused, Kate explained.

"The limes aren't the kind of limes you eat, Ron. Limes is the Latin word for borders, or limits, so the limes Arabicus were the desert frontiers and their forts the Roman Empire set up."

Kate turned back to Rick.

"What do you have planned for today?"

"Thanks to Ron I don't have anything to do until tomorrow. Right now, I'd like lunch, or maybe a really early dinner. I missed breakfast on the ship so I could get ready to come ashore."

"If you don't mind having an old lady around, there's a lovely seaside restaurant nearby." Ellie said.

"Okay, but who's the old lady who'll be joining us?" Rick said with a smile.

Ellie sighed.

"Kate, if I were fifty years younger, I'd go after your husband in a moment."

The four caught a cab which took them to the restaurant. Once settled in, Rick asked Ellie about something that had made him curious.

"Ellie, you speak English like an American. Have you spent a lot of time in the US?"

She laughed.

"I should say so. I was born in San Francisco."

"Tell him how you ended up in Israel, Ellie." Kate said.

"My parents survived the Holocaust and met shortly after the war in a displaced persons camp. They thought about going to Israel, but decided they wanted to get as far away from Germany and Europe as they could. Dad had a cousin who lived in California who sponsored them, and California was about as far from Germany as they could get."

"I grew up in the City, as everyone calls San Francisco, and went to college there. That's when things got strange. It was the sixties and all of a sudden American soldiers were war criminals, Israel was a settler state on land that belonged to the Arabs and the government was run by fascists. I had been raised by people who had been saved by American soldiers overrunning the death camps, and resented being talked down to by people who wouldn't have recognized a real fascist if one kicked them in their ignorant asses."

Ellie stopped and smiled.

"My, I still get worked up about that, don't I?"

She took a deep breath and continued.

"I had an opportunity to go to Israel for a summer and I liked it here. I became an Israeli citizen, although I'm still an American citizen, and I move back and forth between both countries quite easily. And don't worry, Colonel, I'm not a beautiful Israeli spy keeping an eye on you. We're interested in the Chinese because they make friends with other authoritarian governments, but we have enough to keep us occupied. We're happy to leave them to you."

When they finished with lunch, Rick and Kate went back to Kate's hotel room and made love. I'll pass over that so as not to upset the sensitivities of my gently bred readers.

"Do you have to volunteer for this mission?" Rick asked, running his hand lightly over Kate's naked back.

"I knew when I married you that you'd be down range a lot. And I'd be off on some dig somewhere as well. How often do we get to be together? Besides, we don't have a gang of jihadis looking to slaughter us, just a lot of Chinese who won't like what we're doing but aren't going to start as war over it. So, relax. This will be fun."

Rick slid his hand under her body.

"I know something else that'll be fun,

Rick met the next day with an unofficial representative of the Saudi government.

"Call me Ismail, Colonel. And before you ask, I have no interest in whales, white or otherwise. I have documents for every member of your expedition from the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Defense allowing you to live and work in Saudi Arabia indefinitely. I also have permits for your ship showing it to meet all standards required by the Ministry of Transport and similar documents for your aircraft. Of course, you received these in Riyadh and not in Israel, right?"

"Of course."

Ismail smiled.

"Then that's it. Have a good dig, Mr. Rodgers."

Rick then went to the Israelis who gave him a very thorough briefing on all of the threats that anyone in the Middle East might run across. They also told him that if he ran into trouble, the Israelis probably wouldn't be able to help him.

So reassured, he went to meet Kate, Ron and Ellie to look at their ship.

"The name is what?"

"Helen of Troy." Kate replied. "They wanted to name it the Heinrich Schliemann after the archeologist who first went looking for the historical city of Troy back in the 1870s, but the Explorers' Club thought Helen of Troy was sexier."

"Her face may have launched a thousand ships, but yours is better."

"Thanks, Rick, but launching ships with my face could be very hard on it."

"I was speaking metaphorically."

Kate just giggled.

They turned the corner on the dock, and he saw the ship for the first time.

"Wow! That's our ship? It looks more like some IT billionaire's yacht."

"It was designed for a bunch of very wealthy Californians, and this is probably what they thought roughing it out in the field looked like. It's a bit over 5500 tons with a helo deck aft and room for two standard sized shipping containers. The containers will hold our electronic warfare gear. We already have all kinds of electronic gear aboard, so hopefully all of their antennas will just blend in."

"Come on, I'll show you the ship. The first thing you have to see is the moon pool."

"The moon pool? What's that?"

"You'll see."

Aboard the Helen of Troy

She led them to the lowest level of the ship. There they found an opening in the hull and a young lady.

"Oh my GOD! It is you! Oh, I've read all of your books and I just love every one of them."

She was taller than Rick and muscular, except for her boobs which were at least D cups and everything was very apparent since she had on the briefest bikini Rick had ever seen.

She quickly ran at them.

Kate put her arm around Rick. She was his wife, and no one was going to get between her and Rick, no matter how big her boobs were. But to Kate's surprise, the woman stopped and threw her arms around her.

"Dr. Beckett, I've been wanting to meet you since I was in high school. I read your paper on the Antonine Wall in Scotland as a senior. I had always been interested in archeology, but all the papers and books seemed to be written by people who were more interested in impressing you with the big words they used than in communicating. Your paper was fantastic. I decided to become an archeologist and I haven't looked back."

"And you are…?" Kate asked.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sort of a last-minute addition to the crew. I'm Marcy Wallace. For a while they were afraid the authorities somewhere wouldn't let my girls in."

"Your girls?"

Kate didn't think Wallace was old enough to have girls that could go on an expedition.

"Let me introduce you."

She walked over to the moon pool and slapped the water. Immediately, two heads popped up.

"Porpoises?" Rick guessed.

"Bottle nosed dolphins." Wallace corrected him. "This is Daisy and that's Annabelle. No one has ever used dolphins on an underwater archeological expedition before. They're very smart and very hard working. Oh, here's Hal, my associate."

Hal was a bit shorter than Rick, but stockier. His arms were tattooed, and Rick recognized them as US Navy SEAL tattoos. Hal's right arm ended in a prosthetic hand. He grinned and saluted Rick.

"Morning, Colonel. Chief Special Warfare Operator Hal Diamond, retired, sir. When I lost my fin, the Navy gave me a choice of staying in to complete my twenty in some paper pushing job or take a disability retirement. I chose to retire. Luckily, I'm left-handed and I have worked with dolphins before. So, here I am."

"Good to have you both aboard."

"Marcy, this is my husband, Colonel Rick Rodgers, US Army Special Forces, and Lieutenant Colonel Ron Fields, he's our doctor, and last but certainly not least, Dr. Ellie Brunner. She's an Israeli archeologist who's coming with us."

"Oh, I know Doctor Brunner by reputation, and I'm thrilled to be able to work with her."

"Please, call me Ellie and may I call you Marcy?"

"Of course."

"If no one minds, we should all call each other by our first names. We're supposed to be an archeological expedition, not a military operation. So, I'm Rick."

"So, this is the moon pool?" Rick asked. "It's just a hole in the bottom of the ship?"

Diamond laughed.

"It's a little more than that, Colonel…"

"Rick."

"It's a little more than that, Rick. We can send scuba divers and porpoises out through this, and we can change crews on the swimmer delivery vehicles and the minisub we're getting. All in all, very handy."

"It's about lunch time, so why don't we go to the dining room." Kate said.

"The dining room?" Rick asked.

"Just wait."

Rick was surprised at the dining room.

"This looks like a high-end restaurant someplace. Oak furniture, linen tablecloths, even flowers on each table."

Kate laughed.

"Jimmy, can you come here?"

An older man walked out from the kitchen.

"Jimmy this is my husband, Rick Rodgers and our medical officer, Ron Fields. Guys, this is our chef, Jimmy Dunn."

"Chef? Not cook?" Ron asked, politely.

TBC