Into Africa
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I own no Castles. Or Becketts. Rating: K+ for language. Time: The present day, but in an alternate universe.
Rick was about to grab Kate and haul her to somewhere safe, but thought better of it. He was beginning to understand just how stubborn she could be. And Julie Manning might just respond to Beckett's voice. "You will stay behind Captain Fields and if anything goes wrong, run. Understand?"
"Of course. "Kate noted to herself that while she understood what was said, she had no intention of paying any attention to it.
"Do you know how to shoot?" Rick asked.
"My grandpa taught me."
Rick took a deep breath. "This is against my better judgement…"
"But you're giving me a weapon."
The sniper team was first to arrive, Sergeants O'Meara and Driscoll, better know as the Irish Assassins. They were followed by the four Rangers. They were all blacked up for a night op and three had M 4 carbines and one M16 rifle, all with night sights. Rick made sure that everyone had suppressors on their weapons. If they were lucky, they'd kill their prey before they realized they were in trouble.
In minutes the aircraft was over them. It flew past to get a look at the LZ that was outlined with flares, then turned back. The wings slowly tilted from the horizontal to the vertical, turning the aircraft into a helicopter of sorts. Once it was down, Rick and his team ran to the back of the bird and boarded.
"Captain Rodgers?" A helmeted crewman yelled over the noise of the engines.
"That's me."
"Good news for you, sir. Home Base has authorized a MALE drone to keep an eye on your jihadis. We've got 'em in sight now. You want to come up and watch?"
Rick was followed to the cockpit by Reed and Kate.
"They have both boy and girl drones?" Kate asked.
"What?" Rick had no idea what she was talking about.
"He mentioned a male drone. A boy drone?"
"It's an acronym for medium altitude, long endurance drone." Rick replied.
One of the pilots held up a laptop showing an armed pickup truck speeding across the desert. "We're pretty sure that's your target. No one else is about except for a company sized Nigerien patrol about seventy clicks west of here. I'm betting everyone else is hunkered down for the night."
"Any chance they'll see or hear the drone?" Rick asked.
"It's too high and the drone is too quiet. Even if they stopped and turned off their engine, they wouldn't hear the drone. But if we have to attack them, they'll hear us coming, sure as shit."
Rick cursed, but sat back and watched the drone feed of the truck as it sped across the desert.
After ten minutes, the co-pilot tapped Rick's arm. "Good news, maybe, Captain. Home Base thinks they know where they're headed. There's a little oasis about ninety clicks from here called al-Obied. Has all kinds of traffic going through it: Jihadists, gun runners, drug smugglers, people smugglers, even the occasional honest man. We can go around the technical we're chasing and drop your people off here." He tapped a place on the laptop. "It's a little rocky ridge, but there's just one way over the ridge. By the time we drop your people off, we can be long gone, orbiting out of sight and you can ambush them."
"We'll do it then."
Rick watched the desert speed by below him through his night vision goggles. He felt the aircraft turn from a course chasing the jihadis to a fast sweep over the desert to get ahead of them.
Before he knew it, he and his team were piling out of the plane and running for the top of the small ridge. As they left, he grabbed Kate's arm. "Kate, you should…"
She pulled away from him and jumped to the ground.
Stubborn, infuriating…fascinating woman. He thought to himself.
He ran up the ridge and saw his team all prone on the crest. At least Fields has halfway down the back of the ridge and Kate was behind him.
"Can you see anything?" He asked Reed, who had a thermal imaging scope and was looking at the track.
"See for yourself." Reed handed the scope to Rick. Rick could only see ghostly green images of the desert. Nothing at all moved.
"Could they have gone past us already?"
Reed shook his head. "I don't see how."
They waited for what was the longest five minutes of Rick's life.
"Here they come." Reed said.
Rick took the scope and peered off into the desert. Headed for them was a pick up with no lights on. It looked like the one that had grabbed Julie Manning and Rick prayed it was the same one.
"O'Meara, when they get within fifty yards, I want you to shoot out one of the front tires. With the noise of the engine going uphill and with your suppressor, they shouldn't hear the shot. When the driver gets out and gets to the front of the vehicle, kill him."
"What if he as someone else check the tire, sir?"
"Then kill him. Everyone listen up, I want single shots and aimed fire only. Be damned sure of your target. We are not going to lose Ms. Manning. Understand?" Castle then told each shooter what their target was. Jimenez and Hebert were to take out the gunners of whatever weapon the technical was armed with.
"Hey, Billy." Jimenez whispered. "You have any idea what kind of weapon the fucker is hauling?"
"No, but since it's a Toyota pickup, I'd bet it's a Russian Dushka heavy machine gun. Maybe even one of the 14.5 mm really heavy machine guns. You want to take the gunner or the loader?"
Jimenez thought for a second. "I'll take the loader. At a distance, I'm the better shot on account of I learned to shoot in wide open West Texas. You learned shoot in them swamps in Loo-see-anna where you can't see more than maybe ten feet. Okay?"
"Okay. I'll light the motherfucker up good." Billy thought he was a better distance shot than his friend, but decided there was no point in starting an argument.
"What the fuck is that noise?" Sergeant O'Meara asked.
Reed laughed. "They're listening to a recorded sermon by some mullah exhorting them to kill infidels. They won't hear us at all."
At fifty yards, O'Meara shot out the left front tire. The truck drifted a bit left and then stopped after another twenty yards. There was some yelling from inside the cab, then the driver got out and walked to the front of the truck. As soon as he knelt by the flat tire, O'Meara fired again. The man dropped without a sound.
There was more yelling from the cab and soon a second man jumped off the back and went to look. As soon as he rounded the front of the truck, Driscoll shot him. Then everyone opened fire. Jimenez and Hebert opened fire, but to their shock and amazement, the heavy machine gun swung almost straight up in the air and began firing. As they watched, they could see green tracer rounds arc into the night sky and burn out.
"Shit! Those things'll go a mile in the air." Jimenez swore." Everyone knows we're here now."
"I got a second one in the truck bed. I think that's it." Someone yelled. Rick, followed by everyone else, ran to the truck.
"Julie? Are you okay? It's Kate Beckett. Where are you?"
After a second, they heard, "Dr. Beckett? I'm in the back of the truck bed."
Rick and Kate were the first ones there. Rick took one look and told everyone else to stay back. "She's naked." He yelled." We need some clothes."
A lot of cursing and checking showed no one had brought extra clothes.
"Oh, hell." Kate muttered and began taking off her flak jacket and helmet, followed by her tee shirt and shorts." She jumped into the truck bed and helped Julie get dressed.
"Now you're just wearing your underwear." Rick commented.
"And you can't see any more of me than if I was wearing a bikini at the beach." She didn't add that Rick had seen more than that.
Rick took off his flak jacket and pulled off his shirt. "Here. It'll cover most of you."
"You just want to see my legs." She teased.
"I could loan you my pants." He said, with a smile.
"Is the girl okay?" Fields called out. "If so, we need to call the bird back and get out of here."
"Check her to be sure, Ron. The rest of you check the truck. Take anything of intelligence value, wreck the weapons and get ready to go."
Jimenez clambered up into the bed of the pickup. "Ho-lee Shit! Guess what our very own Cajun killer, the Bayou Brawler, the…."
"If it's fucking worth all that noise, just tell us." Growled Reed.
"He shot the fucker right through the throat and severed his spinal cord on the way out. Our jihadi collapsed and his head pushed the gun up and it pushed down on the butterfly triggers. The damned gun fired a whole belt until it ran out of ammo. You won't see a shot like that every day, amigos."
Reed handed Jimenez a grenade. "We need to disable that gun and the rest of the shit here. Pile the other weapons, ammo, grenades, spare gas cans and any other shit you find. The bird is about four minutes out. When we all get aboard, take this grenade and toss it in the truck and run like hell. Got that?"
"This is Willy Peter?" He asked.
"Damn straight. So you'd better run like hell."
"Willie Peter?" Kate asked Rick.
"White phosphorus. It burns like the fires of hell. Water won't put it out. Bad shit."
The CIA bird landed well away from the disabled pickup, having been told it would be lit up. When everyone else was aboard, Jimenez tossed the WP grenade in the back and ran like hell for the tiltwing. He had just dived in when the grenade went off and the truck and ammo began to erupt.
The pilot called Rick up to the cockpit. "We hade the drone check the area. I'm sure you were seen or heard, but there's no one headed this way. We're good."
Rick went back to his seat and wearily sat. His adrenaline rush was fading and he was tired. Before he knew it, something touched his shoulder. It was Kate, sound asleep with her head on his shoulder. What the hell. He thought and put his arm around her.
He woke up when he heard the pitch of the rotors change. They were coming in for a landing. As he expected, everyone was waiting as they left the bird. Fields took Julie Manning to the medical bunker for a full medical checkup. As they reached the door of the bunker, Kate put her hand on Rick's chest, stopping him. "I'm going to get my clothes back so I can give your shirt to you."
"I won't be seeing anything unfamiliar if I follow you in." He teased.
"You won't see anything in public, Rick, but in private…." She let the sentence hang and went into the bunker. In a few minutes she called for him to come in.
"How is she, Doc?"
"She wasn't sexually violated, but she was slapped around. Just cuts and bruises, but she's also in shock. I have her sedated and she's asleep."
"Will I be able to give her hell tomorrow for pulling such a stupid stunt?" Kate demanded.
Ron smiled. "Give her all the hell you want, and give her some from me."
"And me." Rick added.
Rick's team was led away to be quickly debriefed and have any intel they had found collected and quickly reviewed. When Billy Hebert walked away, Chris Sullivan ran to him, stopping as the Ranger platoon sergeant, Hobbes, stopped him.