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.
The Tsunami arrived back in the late morning. It remained submerged near the Helen of Troy. To Rick's surprise, both Chief Petty Officer Brown, who commanded the Tsunami and Hal Diamond, the retired Navy SEAL, popped up through the moon pool.
"Got some intel for you, Colonel." Diamond said. "Chief Brown was kind enough to give me a ride to the other side and I got to look around a bit."
Rick smiled. "Thanks. What've you got?"
Diamond, Brown and Rick sat down. Diamond pulled out a small hand drawn map, and a larger, military map.
"The jihadis have set up watchers on the coast in case anyone comes a calling. But they aren't very good. Looks like they sent their kids out to do the work. I found a dozen of them together, all sound asleep, about here." He pointed at the map. "There were another two more than two clicks to the south. Both sound asleep. I'm sure they weren't more than ten years old, but they had AKs with them. I think the idea was to spread them out on the coast in two man posts, but the kids got bored and forgot about that."
"The village is here, sir." Diamond tapped the map again. "There's not any detail on the military map, so I drew one. There's a hut here with guards all around it. I expect the women are being held there. There's a big house, better built than most and with a wooden roof made out of old packing cases. I bet that was the village headman's house and it's now the jihadis headquarters. Everything was dead quiet. There were two guards in the village square, but they were talking with each other. They never noticed a thing. I exfiltrated with no problems and here I am."
Rick turned to Brown.
"How many men can you carry? Absolute maximum?"
"If I run at periscope depth and use the snorkel for air, I can cram in about twenty-five people, sir, and I do mean cram in. It'd take forever to get everyone out of the Sweet Sue through the airlock, but if I surface just enough for the sail to show, you can exit through there. I'd recommend we surface a mile or more off shore and have the swimmer delivery vehicles tow you as close to shore as possible. We can rig lines for everyone to hang onto. Anything else, sir?"
"No. Now I have to see if anyone wants to trash their careers with me."
Rick assembled Lieutenant Commander Borghese's troops and those of Captain Fellowes.
'I know I have no right to ask this of you…" He began.
"Then it's a bloody good thing you don't have to ask, old boy." Fellowes said. "The Royal Marines can't have our American cousins swanning about in the desert now, can we? England expects that every man will do his duty, and all that."
Borghese smiled. "I agree with Captain Fellowes and his wonderful quote from the famed Italian nobleman, il Duca di Bronte. We shall, of course, accompany you."
"Il Duca di Bronte?" Rick said, confused.
"Admiral, Lord Nelson, Royal Navy, was also ennobled by the then Kingdom of Sicily as the Duke of Bronte." Fellowes said, somewhat coldly.
"So, with me, that's twenty-five people."
"Twenty-six." Diamond added.
"Twenty-seven." Colonel Nayef said. "You may find someone who speaks Arabic a help."
When Brown had said they'd be crammed into the Tsunami, he hadn't been kidding. No one could even turn around and several of the crewmen could hardly to their jobs. But they did.
"We're a bit over a mile off shore, Colonel." Brown said. "The Moon isn't up and won't be for more than an hour and there's a lot of murk between us and the shore. Do you want me to try to get closer?"
Rick though for a moment.
"No. Are the swimmer delivery vehicles ready?"
"Ready and raring to go, sir."
"Then let's do this."
Once ashore, Rick was able to see a group of heat signatures that looked like people more than two clicks from them. He guessed there were at least a dozen people there, not watching the coast.
They moved quickly through the desert scrub and when they reached the village, they came to an abrupt stop.
"Shit." Rick whispered. "The damned village is lit up like Time's Square on New Year's Eve."
The reason the village was lit up was obvious. There were three Chinese eight wheeled armored personnel carriers pulled up with about thirty Chinese troops standing around looking ready for something. In front of them was a Chinese officer, another Chinese man in civilian clothes, and a very unhappy looking Sudanese officer.
Colonel Nayef wriggled over to where Rick was.
"The Chinese are very unhappy with the local jihadists. They want the women released since they say that's going to give the West an excuse to flatten this part of Sudan and perhaps "accidentally" damage the Chinese base. The Chinese civilian, I'm thinking he's some sort of intelligence type, is threatening to stop providing the jihadis with weapons, ammo, funds and other supplies."
"The leader of the jihadis, the tall fellow with the spectacular beard is having none of it. He says the Sudanese government is corrupt and un-Islamic, the Chinese are a bunch of atheists, and the Great Satan and its minions have been decisively beaten by the forces of God. I presume the Iranians aren't admitting to getting badly beaten. Anyway, he isn't going to give the two women up."
"Shit." Rick said again. "We can't sit here all night while they gab and we sure as hell can't get in a firefight with the Chinese army."
They sat for an hour watching as the shouting got louder and the two parties got more intransigent. Finally, the Chinese civilian yelled something in Chinese and they boarded their vehicles and left.
"We'll give them and hour to settle down and relax, then we'll attack." Rick told his command group, Fellowes, Borghese and Nayef. Orders to that effect went out by radio.
For about ten minutes it looked like things would settle down. Then the bearded jihadi leader came out of his headquarters and began yelling.
"Colonel," said Nayef, "he's telling his men to bring the women out."
Kate and Tock, with their hands tied behind them were dragged out as the sleepy villagers assembled, hurried along by the jihadis.
"He's going to kill them, Colonel." Nayef translated.
Rick grabbed the radio mic.
"This is Rogers. They're going to kill the women. I'll take the first shot and it'll be at the bearded jihadi doing all the talking. Then everyone else join in. Whatever you do, don't hit the women."
Rick knew that the men he had with him were all highly trained, combat tested professionals, but he was terrified that Kate, and Tock, of course, might get hit with friendly fire.
He brought his assault rifle to his shoulder and took careful aim. He squeezed off one round that went right through the jihadis mouth and out the back of his head. Then everyone else began firing.
"Kate! Tock! Down! Now!" he screamed.
Rick ran towards the two women. Borghese was right beside him.
"Are you okay?" He asked Kate as he cut her bonds.
"I'm a lot better now."
"Can you walk?"
"I can run to get out of here."
"Me, too, Colonel." Tock said.
The blast of fire that had torn into the jihadis killed and wounded many and stunned the rest. However, every male in the village had a weapon of some sort and were used to defending their homes. But they weren't ready yet.
Ric grabbed the radio mic.
"This is Rodgers. Exfiltrate to the beach. Now!"
As they neared the beach, Rick saw a small body lying very still with an AK 47 under him. He hoped the kid was only wounded or playing dead, but he doubted it.
Brown had brought the Tsunami in as close to the beach as he could get, but he was still four or five hundred yards away.
"Colonel Rogers?" Brown called on the radio.
"You can get six of your men on each of the swimmer delivery vehicles. It'll take them three times as long to get back to the Site, as slow as they are, but that'll leave more room on the Sweet Sue for your wounded."
For the first time Rick realized that several men were being helped along and two were being carried. He cursed himself for not noticing that earlier.
"Okay, Kate and Tock go first to the Tsunami. The SDVs still have their ropes rigged so they can tow people out to the sub. Fellowes, send a half a dozen of your people to the northernmost SDV, Junio, you send a half a dozen to the southernmost. I'll command the rearguard."
As he spoke, bullets began to zip overhead from out of the dark.
"Everybody fire as fast as you can. Make them think we've got a whole company here. Now, everyone move."
The incoming fire began to slacken almost at once and people began leaving.
"Rick." Kate said, then kissed him.
"Go, Kate."
And she went.
A quick check of the wounded showed that none were badly hurt, although they were in pain. Ron Fields was all set up in the sick bay of the Helen of Troy when they got back.
"Thanks for coming after me." Kate said, leaning against Rick.
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
"I just hope I was worth the trouble."
"Eh? What trouble?"
US Embassy, Jerusalem, Israel
"Colonel Richard Rogers, reporting as ordered, sir." Rick said, saluting.
Lieutenant General George Bedrosian, Deputy Commander of US Central Command returned the salute and then stared at Rick for a whole minute.
"Oh, stand at ease and sit down, Colonel. You aren't going to be taken out and shot. Not that big Army isn't mad at you. The minority opinion is that you should be sent to the South Pole. The majority wants you to go to our new manned Lunar base."
The general picked up a piece of paper and quickly scanned it.
"The Saudis have given you quite a cover story. Forces commanded by a Saudi Special Forces officer, given support by their allies, rescued two women who had been kidnapped by jihadists from an archeology expedition in Saudi Arabia. And not a word that the Saudi Special Forces officer was the only Saudi involved, nor that the allied support involved a lot of shooting, or that this took place in another country, namely the Sudan, and they even forgot to mention that one of the women rescued was a US Marine Corps officer. Since we can't go around contradicting our Saudi friends, you've been quite lucky, haven't you, Colonel?"
"Yes, sir." Rick replied.
"And with any luck, you'll stay lucky. This comes at the end of a more or less successful minor war, and the media is, so far, dazzled with drone shots of high tech weapons being used, aerial gun camera footage, and their own stuff from embedded reporters."
"More or less successful, sir?" Rick asked.
"We sank virtually all of the Iranian regular Navy, a good part of the Republican Guards' ships, and we decimated their air force. We damaged their "peaceful" nuclear power program, destroyed a lot of their missiles and missile production facilities, and what not. We also damaged their allies all over the Middle East. But, they're still there and they'll be causing trouble for us down the line."
The general stared at Rick for a long time once more.
"Becoming a general officer requires a bit of political savvy, Colonel. I'm pretty sure you have no such savvy, so this isn't going to cost you a star in the future, since you'd never have gotten one anyway. But your job here is done. The Saudis are going to take over watching the Chinese on the other side of the Red Sea, and they'll be handling the archeological dig by themselves. I imagine your wife will be disappointed."
"Roman frontiers is her specialty, sir."
"One thing came out of this. It seems Marine Special Ops has been agitating for a squadron of special ops aircraft dedicated to MARSOC and they're going to get one. That'll take a bit of strain off of the 160th Special Ops Aviation Regiment. They've asked that Lieutenant Graham be a part of it."
"I'm sure she'll do fine, sir."
"As for you, you'll be riding a desk for a while. You'll be our liaison with the British Special Ops people. Hopefully, you won't get into trouble in London. That'll be all, Colonel."
Rick saluted and left.
"What happened?" Kate demanded as soon as he came into their hotel room.
"Not much. I was scolded, but not too severely. As long as none of this comes to the attention of the press, I'll be fine."
"They're closing down my dig, you know. The Saudis are taking it over."
"They told me that, Kate. Sorry."
"Where are you going? Or rather, where are we going?"
"London. I'm the new liaison officer with the British Special Forces."
"London, really? That's good. I was recently contacted by a colleague in Ireland. Although the Romans never conquered Ireland, they did trade with the island and the Roman British Fleet, the classis Britannica, did patrol the Irish Sea and probably the Romans sent punitive expeditions to Ireland to chase down Gaelic raiders. My friend is looking for what may have been a temporary Roman army camp in Leinster."
"Good. I'm sure nothing can go wrong with me in London and you in Ireland."
THE END
Author's note: Next up is On Her Vorlagian Majesty's Secret Service. Can the Vorlag Secret Intelligence Services' newest recruit, 00Curly, save the galaxy from terrorists?