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.
Dr. al-Ansari and his students arrived the next day. About a quarter of them were women, who, in spite of the heat, wore long, baggy pants, long sleeved shirts and had scarves around their heads. The men were more comfortably dressed.
"I think we should allow the women to come aboard the Helen of Troy as often as possible for the air conditioning." Kate said softly to Rick.
Al-Ansari's face lit up when he saw Dr. Brunner.
"Dr. Brunner, I am so glad you are here. I've wanted to work with you for so long. And Dr. Beckett, of course."
Ellie laughed and hugged him.
"Really, Abdul, since we now both have our doctorates, we should be colleagues and be on a first name basis."
"Of course… Ellie. Of course."
Colonel Nayef led Dr. al Ansari over to Rick.
"You do understand there is more to this than just an investigation of an old Roman port?"
"You mean the military? Of course." Al Ansari smiled. "That's why I'm leading the Saudi part of this. None of the more senior, and shall we say, more conservative, archeologists wanted to get involved. I'm quite happy to be here."
"And your students?"
"They may not look it, but they're about the most liberal group of students in Saudi Arabia. This is a great opportunity for them."
They sent the rest of the day settling in and unpacking. That evening everyone went aboard the Helen of Troy for dinner.
The next day they had their first unexpected visitor.
"Radar shows a boat headed our way." Smith called out to Rick who was on the beach.
"Just our way?"
"Heading dead for us. And he appears to be coming from the Chinese base in the Sudan."
"We'd better get ready to greet him. One way or another."
The boat was a small speedboat, unarmed and only carrying four people. One, an older, white-haired man called up to Captain Smith.
"Good day, sir. I'm Dr. Ma, of the Chinese Archeological Mission to Sudan. I understand you're working on an old Roman port? Fascinating. You know there was much indirect trade between China, the Middle East and the Roman Empire once. I'm investigating Chinese trade with the Arab world. May we come aboard and compare notes?"
Smith looked at Rick, who'd come aboard. Rick nodded.
"Of course. I'll send ashore for Drs. Beckett, Brunner and al-Ansari. But come aboard and we'll have something cold for you to drink until they get here."
Two other men came aboard with Dr. Ma. Both were muscular and paid a great deal of attention to everything. Rick decided that while Dr. Ma might be a real archeologist, the other two were either Chinese military or from some intelligence agency.
When the three archeologists came back aboard the Helen of Troy and spoke with Ma, they found he was an archeologist. In fact, they had friends in common. After a half an hour, the other two Chinese began to get antsy.
"You know, we'd really like to see the rest of your ship. We have nothing like in here in the Middle East."
They had little choice but to agree as they needed to keep their cover story up as best they could.
Dr. Ma was fascinated by their underwater gear and the other two were at least interested. They had gone past the moon pool when one of the men made a beeline for a door that would lead to one of the containers that held their electronic eavesdropping equipment.
"I wouldn't go in there…" Rick began, but it was too late. The man had opened the door.
As soon as he did, there were piercing female screams from the other side. The man slammed the door and backed off.
The door was flung open and there stood Marcy Wallace wearing only a towel that hadn't quite covered her left boob.
"You pervert!" She screamed. "How dare you barge in on us while we're changing?"
The man tried to apologize, but was overwhelmed by Wallace's yelling, soon joined by Lauren Graham, with a short terry cloth robe that showed what little cleavage she had, and two Saudi women, in floor length robes with their hands over their faces. They were screaming in Arabic.
Dr. al-Ansari translated the Arabic.
"The ladies are from very powerful families here in Saudi Arabia. You've humiliated them, I fear. They'll want more than just an apology. It might be best if you all left so everyone can settle down. I'll contact the Minister and let him know what happened here. I'm sure that it was all a mistake, but the damage is done."
Dr. Ma and the others went quickly back to their boat and headed away.
"What now?" Rick asked al-Ansari.
"I will report this to the Ministry and there will be a great to do about this. The Foreign Ministry will contact the Chinese government and demand an apology. The families will be officially very upset, and our Chinese friends will be too busy doing paperwork to bother us."
"What if they do come back?"
Al-Ansari smiled.
"Then they'll see just how angry two Saudi ladies, and two American ladies, can be."
The next day the Navy minisub arrived, having taken a short detour to look over the Sudanese port the Chinese were operating from. Chief Brown insisted they'd stayed in international waters the whole time. Rick wondered about that but did nothing.
The work then got underway. The Helen of Troy did a sonar search of the sea bottom to identify possible Roman remains. Using satellite photos, the team had looked over the land near the old Roman fort and identified possible sites for digs on land. To Rick they looked like piles of rocks indistinguishable from other piles of rocks, but Kate assured him they looked like the remains of man-made structures.
"The problem is," She said, "Until we dig, we can't tell if they were built by Romans, pre-Islamic Arabs, Islamic civilizations, or some Bedu who decided to pile some rocks together last month. I'm having the choppers take small teams out to look at the sites."
A day later, Captain Smith came and got Rick while he was at lunch.
"Sir, there's a message for you coming in. It's encoded and it's flagged urgent. Do you want to come and see what it is?"
"Damn right I do."
The message was not good news. Rick read it and then called all of his people, military and civilian, together.
"Things may be getting hairy and very soon. Last night there was a very heavy missile attack on Israel from bases in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Iraq. In addition, there was a slightly lesser strike on Saudi Arabia the UAE, and Bahrain from Yemen, Sudan and Iran. There were apparently casualties in all those places, including Americans in Bahrain where the US Fifth Fleet is based and other US bases in the region. There were also attacks on US Navy ships and on various commercial vessels. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is expecting a response from Israel, the Arabs and the US."
"When?" Wozniak asked.
"I have nothing on that, but I'm guessing that response will be pretty heavy and that'll take a number of days to work out everything between the parties and bring more US forces in. In the meantime, we'll be living in the bunkers."
"There was an attack from Sudan?" Brunner asked.
"Apparently the whole of the country isn't controlled by the government. Not that that's a surprise. Apparently, I stress the word apparently, there's an Islamic terror organization of some sort that operates in the area the missiles came from."
For the next three days, everyone stayed very close to the bunkers. The only exception was the USS Tsunami which hid underwater.
They watched satellite news channels from all over the world. Broadcasts in Arabic could be translated by al-Ansari, or his students and Brunner translated the Israeli broadcasts. Satellite photos showed US Navy carrier strike groups taking up positions in the Arabian Sea just outside of the Gulf, and in the Eastern Mediterranean. British bases on Cyprus saw an influx of RAF aircraft while Israeli bases and Saudi bases began hosting US aircraft. US antimissile and antiaircraft units were also showing up in the Middle East as well as a brigade of paratroopers.
The US was very tight lipped, only saying that they weren't going to comment at all on ongoing operations. The Israelis did much the same. The Saudis and the other Arabs said that they wanted a peaceful resolution to the crisis but seemed to be in no hurry to open talks with anyone.
The Syrians, Iraqis and the Lebanese said, truthfully, that they had no control over the areas where the missiles had come from while the Sudanese government said they weren't sure anything had been shot at anyone from Sudan and if someone did shoot something, they had nothing to do with it.
The Iranians and their allies talked out of both sides of their mouth. Domestic propaganda bragged about hitting the Great Satan and its minions, but publicly the government deplored violence, but blamed it on oppression by the West and their allies.
Meanwhile, the Jordanian government announced that the USAF and the Royal Jordanian Air Force would be holding training missions and that a brigade of US armor would also be participating. The government denied that this was aimed at anyone.
Meanwhile, Rick got another message.
"They want you to do what?" Kate demanded.
"I'm to go on the Tsunami and go take a look around the Red Sea."
"Why? And why you?"
"The US Navy usually keeps a small task force, usually destroyers and frigates in the Arabian Sea and one or two ships from there patrol the Red Sea. Or occasionally, ships from the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean will sail south into the Red Sea. But all of those ships have been withdrawn to support the carrier groups in the Med and near the Gulf. But someone, somewhere suddenly remembered that they only had one minisub in the Red Sea to keep an eye on what was happening there."
"It seems to me that the US has those, what do you call them? Airplanes?" Kate said sarcastically. "Why can't they keep an eye on the Red Sea?"
"They have other priorities, I guess. As to why me, the powers that be apparently want someone more senior than Chief Brown doing the looking. Since I'm not a Navy officer, I can't command the ship, but I can sure as hell suggest things."
"Shit." Kate said, then hugged Rick.
"You knew this kind of thing could happen." He whispered in her ear.
"I did and I do. How long before… you know… things start to happen?"
"The news says that in the last twenty-four hours cargo plane flights by the USAF into the Middle East are way down. I think that means things will start pretty soon."
"When are you leaving?"
"As soon as I get my gear ready. Brown has moved the Tsunami to within a couple of hundred yards of the Helen of Troy, underwater, of course. I'll be joining her via the moon pool."
"You'd better get moving then, soldier."
Rick put what he'd need in a hopefully waterproof bag and got into Scuba gear. The moon pool area was crowded with both American, Italian and British military and civilians all helping Rick and offering him advice.
"You'll need to make sure the submarine comes up as many times as it goes down, old boy." Said Captain Fellowes, the Royal Marine.
Borghese, the Italian, gave him advice on his gear.
"I know, Junio, I know. I have done this before, you know."
"Just trying to help."
Then a scuba diver came up through the moon pool.
"Colonel? I'm Petty Officer Gianelli. I'm here to lead you back to the Tsunami.
Kate gave Rick a quick kiss before he dropped into the moon pool and both men disappeared.
TBC