Into Africa

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own no Castles. Or Becketts. Rating: K+ for language. Time: The present day, but in an alternate universe.

"I hear you did good out there tonight, Hebert. When we first got you, I thought you might be a terminal fuckup, but I guess that was just a one time thing, right?"

"Absolutely, Sergeant Hobbes. A one time thing. It'll never happen again."

"Rangers lead the way, Hebert." Hobbes said as he walked away.

"Rangers lead the way, Sergeant Hobbes." Hebert replied.

"Billy, are you okay?" Chris said softly, not sure who might be around.

"Just fine. Not a scratch."

"What happened?"

"We caught the bad guys and saved the girl. What else did you expect?"

"What did Hobbes mean about that one time thing?"

Billy blushed, luckily it was too dark for Chris to see, but she knew he was keeping something from her.

"Billy, I don't like it when my man keeps things from me."

He smiled. If he was her man, he'd tell her anything. "Um, well, I had to write a sentence a thousand times for Sergeant Hobbes and a thousand times for Lt. Glass."

"What did the sentence say?"

"US Army Rangers do not eat the flesh of their slain enemies to gain their strength and it is wrong to tell your high school buddies that they do."

Chris gasped. "You didn't do that."

"I sure did."

"Why?"

"Civilians are stupid." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew he'd just made a big mistake. "Um, I didn't mean…"

"Is there another civilian here with you?" Chris said coldly.

"I meant male civilians, back home. Not you."

"Then why didn't you say that male civilians, back home are stupid?"

"Chris, I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?"

Chris thought for a very long time. She thought for so long that Billy was sure she'd never forgive him. But, finally, she spoke. "I guess I will, but you're going to have to be very nice to me. Very, very nice to me."

"Sure. Anything you want."

She took his hand. "You can start tonight when we get away from all these people."

He was very, very nice to her.

Things settled down for a while. Kate chewed out Julie Manning, who cut the chewing out short by sobbing uncontrollably. Kate found herself holding and comforting the sobbing girl, but Julie was a model archeologist from then on.

However, after several days, both the Intelligence Support Activity team leader and the CIA team leader came to see Rick.

"We have a problem, sir." Sergeant Molle of the ISA began. The CIA man nodded.

"What is it?"

"We've been picking up a lot of chatter. A whole lot of chatter."

"About?" Rick asked.

"About us." Molle went on. "It seems one of the people you killed getting the girl back was some sort of a free lance Islamic State roving ambassador of ill will. He got run out of Syria when IS got kicked out of there and went to Libya. He's been up north in Libya promising the faithful lots of money, weapons and recruits. Then he headed down here to promise the same to the various Islamic radical factions down here. They were expecting to be overwhelmed with guns, money and people and now their rainmaker is gone, so to speak."

Rick thought for a moment. "Anything specific?"

Both men shook their heads. "Just the usual demands that Islamic justice via jihad be brought down on us. People have also been issuing fatwas right and left authorizing our deaths. And not just us. They've started saying that Dr. Beckett's group isn't here to dig up some old Roman fort but to demolish an old and sacred Muslim mosque."

"Okay, keep me informed of anything you hear. I'll talk to the colonel and Dr. Beckett."

The talk with the colonel was not enlightening. "You haven't heard a word about all of this, sir?"

The colonel shook his head. "Bureaucracy. To get info to you, the local CIA and ISA people had to walk to your bunker from theirs. To get to me, that information has to go up two separate chains of command and then down to me. And there are plenty of stops along the way. But I'm on it now, Rick. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. In the meantime, be ready for anything."

Rick walked over to the dig where Kate was working with her team and a few off-duty Rangers. She smiled as soon as she saw him and headed towards him.

"Dr. Beckett, we need to talk."

"If it's Dr. Beckett and not Kate, it must be serious. Did I do something Rick?"

He smiled. "Believe me, Kate, you've done an enormous number of things, all of which I thoroughly approve of." Then he told her about the news he'd been given.

She nodded. "Okay, I've learned my lesson. If you say the word, we're out of here."

"I'm still waiting to see how serious it is. According to our listening posts, there's just a lot of angry chatter. And, there is always a lot of angry chatter among the jihadis. It may be nothing. But you might want to get things ready to go in case you have to evacuate in a hurry."

"I'm way ahead of you. When we get through with anything, we pack it up, ready to go."

"Another thing. I'm going to have to pull your volunteer Ranger assistants. I want to ramp up security and start manning more of the sangars, day and night. Plus, I want to dig everyone in deeper. Most of the Rangers will be too tired to be any help."

"That's going to upset a few of the ladies here. Except for the one who can have her meals in the officers' mess."

He laughed. "You're welcome any time. Even if it isn't meal time."

"I'll take you up on that."

Rick was kept up to date on the listening posts' information at the end of every shift. It was more of the same, a great deal of anger and threats, but nothing specific.

A day later, he heard back from the colonel. "Jesus, Rick. You should be glad you don't have my job. Getting anything out of the bureaucracy, both military and CIA, is like pulling the teeth of an uncooperative elephant. I can confirm from many sources that there is an awful lot of angry chatter directed at you and the archeological dig. However, there's been nothing to indicate any planned attack."

"That's good." Rick said, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Maybe not." The colonel went on. "The local jihadis don't have much of a technological background and tend to trust cell phones and radios more than they should. That let's us listen in to them. Regrettably, the more sophisticated jihadis know this and don't communicate by phone or radio. They either communicate by courier or face-to-face. It's a lot safer for them, and more secure, but it's a lot slower for them to mount any kind of an operation. Has Dr. Beckett asked Duquesne about pulling the dig team out?"

"I talked to her about the chatter, but she hasn't made any decisions and I didn't ask her to make any. But, she is ready to leave at a moment's notice if we say so."

"Rick, I never liked the idea of having the dig team there and I like it even less now. You might ask her to suggest to Duquesne that this is a good time to get going while the going is still good."

Rick told Kate what the colonel had suggested.

"We've done very well here, Rick. I'll hate to leave, for more than one reason, but I do think it's best. I'll use the satellite phone to call Duquesne tonight. Will you be there with me? I'm sure they'll want to hear your opinion first hand."

"Sure. Why don't you come to the command bunker for dinner? We can use my comm outfit."

Kate sighed. "I'd better tell my people. I know there have already been rumors."

Dinner that night was subdued. The call to Duquesne had gone as Kate had expected. When said that they might be leaving without completing the excavation of the dig, President McIlhenny told them that the university had been getting some heat for sending the team into a war zone, especially after the attack and then the kidnapping.

"I'm sorry to say that we've been thinking of pulling the plug on this even before this call, Dr. Beckett. However, you have done a great deal of work there and advanced our knowledge of Roman trade in Africa substantially."

"Thank you." Kate answered glumly. "When will we be leaving?"

"As I said, we've been looking into this. We can have you out of there in three days."

Kate thanked McIlhenny and signed off.

"At least we have three days." She said to Rick.

Actually, they had two.

It was just after dawn when Castle heard the distant, but familiar metallic thump of a mortar being fired. He was out of bed and halfway into his boots when the first shell hit.

Sergeant Hobbes was manning the radios. "Sir, the machine gun bunkers report they're taking pretty heavy machine gun and small arms fire. There's no attack though, and they say they can't see anyone. Probably just trying to keep our people pinned down and hoping for a lucky shot."

"How about the sangars?" Rick yelled as more mortar shells landed.

Before Hobbes could answer, Kate Beckett threw herself into the command bunker.

"Kate, are you okay? Why didn't you go to your own bunker?"

"I was in my own bunker. I wanted to be here. With you."

Rick started to say something, but thought better of it. "We'll talk about this later. Right now, I'm busy."

He turned back to Hobbes just as Lt. Glass dove into the bunker, followed closely by Warrant Officer Reed. Reed spoke. "It looks like they're trying to hit our mortar and they're on the damned peak to the east of us. I'm betting they have a forward observer on the fucking spire 'cause they're coming damned close to the mortar sangar."

Rick thought for a second. "Okay, get two drones up. Have one scout for the enemy mortars and have the other look for the observer on the spire. Get the Hummers to where they can shoot at the spire. If we can keep the observer's head down, he won't be able to spot for their mortars."

It seemed to take forever to get the drones in the air, but eventually two were up.

The drone senior operator yelled across the command bunker to Rick. "We've had to put our birds up out of the reach of small arms fire, sir. Every time we try to get lower, they shoot everything they have at us. But I got one mortar pit spotted, but it'll be a bitch to hit."

Rick moved over to look at the feed from the drone and cursed. "It'll be a bitch and a half to hit. He's dug in in a narrow valley. And the mortar pit is all underground. If we don't hit the walls of the valley, we'll need to drop our mortar shells right in the pit, otherwise, they won't hit anything."

They radioed the location of the mortar they'd found to their mortar crew. Rick watched as shell after shell dropped near the enemy mortar pit, but none found their way into the pit.

"Shit! Have we found any others? There have to be three mortars out there shooting at us."

The drone operator shook his head. "We found another one, but there's no joy. The fuckers have been watching us. The second mortar is set up where they can't hit our mortar because there's a mountain in the way and we can't hit them for the same reason. But they can shoot at the rest of our position."

"Can't we move the mortar to hit them?" Glass yelled over the sound of incoming fire.

"We'd have to set up out in the open. The pricks have spotted all of our sangars and put their tube where it can't be hit from any sangar we have." Reed yelled.