CHAPTER 5
As the community Below had welcomed their new guest, his friends Above sat in Joe's living room trying to get some sleep while patiently waiting for the vans to pick them up as scheduled.
Ryan and Esposito were on either end of the couch with their feet propped up on the coffee table while Beckett and Joe each stretched out on the matching recliners at either end of the couch.
"Who do you think we're going to be working with?" Ryan wondered aloud.
Beckett frowned as she shrugged. "CIA…FBI…Homeland Security…"
Head back and eyes closed, Esposito grunted. "Could be any one of them…"
Joe nodded in agreement. "Or all of them…"
Beckett sighed as she burrowed beneath the blanket. "It'll be great to work with any one of them…you know how welcoming they are to city detectives…"
Snorts of disgust could be heard and Beckett wondered briefly if they were sarcastic acknowledgments of her comment or if her partners had finally fallen asleep. Her eyes closed and her thoughts drifted to Rick.
What seemed like only minutes later, Joe startled awake when his mouth was covered by a hand.
"Joe…shhh…."
"Senator."
"There's been a change of plans. We're leaving now."
"What time is it?"
"5:30…go make some coffee for your crew…the vans are on their way. Where is your family?"
"Upstairs." Esposito lied easily from the couch.
Kirsten sighed as she sat down. "No…they're not…I checked. Look, you are going to have to learn to trust me."
Joe nodded as he yawned. "Safe…I sent them to be with friends of ours."
A team of heavily armed men came inside. Kirsten looked around at the sleepy adults. "Sorry…be ready to go in 10 minutes."
Beckett ran for the bathroom upstairs and Ryan headed for the one off the kitchen.
Kirsten helped Joe in the kitchen. "Do you have the files you've been working with?"
Joe looked at her suspiciously then nodded. "Yeah."
Kirsten headed towards the office assuming they were in there.
Esposito stepped forward. "I'll get them."
Joe poured coffee for everyone while Esposito ran to the basement.
"Take one of my men with you," Kirsten offered.
"I'm good," Esposito called over his shoulder.
Kirsten sighed as she put lids on the cups Joe had already poured. "Why don't I finish these and you go help Esposito."
Joe knew she had realized they still didn't trust the whole situation. "Thanks, I'm struggling with it but for now I don't have a choice but to trust you."
He left and helped Esposito box up the files. Esposito carried the box upstairs and Joe glanced at the wall that led Below to make sure it was in place and still disguised by some of the kids old toys.
He glanced at the board they had been working on and impulsively grabbed it then headed upstairs.
Kirsten glanced curiously at it as he came upstairs. "What's that?"
"Our work..."
Kirsten smiled as she looked at it. "It's primitive…"
Joe chuckled. "Well, with no funding…"
"Simpson…" Kirsten called out then nodded towards the board when the man came in.
Simpson snapped a picture of the board then glanced down at the screen of some type of camera Joe had never seen before. He pushed some buttons then nodded to Kirsten as he left.
A woman came up after Simpson left and lifted a bottle then sprayed the board with some liquid. Joe watched in horror as weeks of work ran down to the bottom of the board then gasped when the erasable board actually started to disintegrate.
"Hey! What the hell did you do that for?"
Kirsten started to explain when they heard a commotion in the living room. She grabbed two cups of coffee and handed them to Joe then grabbed the other two. "I'll explain later, let's go."
Within ten minutes, Esposito and Ryan sat in the far back seat of a van while Beckett and Joe shared the middle seat. They watched in fascination as their driver wove his way through traffic.
Beckett looked at Kirsten who sat in the front seat. "This seems like an awful lot of traffic for this time of the morning.
Kirsten nodded. "It's not traffic. It's my team working together to make sure that we get you to safety."
They all looked surprised and quickly realized that with the number of cars being used and the number of lookalike vans that it would be nearly impossible for anyone to follow them.
Two hours later, the van pulled into an underground garage and they gasped when it seemed like the driver was going to drive into a brick wall. At the last second, the wall slid to the side and the van pulled inside a hallway. They watched nervously as the wall closed behind them. Another van identical to theirs continued through the garage and back out into the street.
Their van continued on a short way and pulled to a stop.
Kirsten smiled as she got out. "We're here."
"Where's here?" Joe wondered.
"Headquarters…come on."
Kirsten escorted her guests to a dining hall. It was reminiscent of a cafeteria where there were several stations with different types of quick grab items such as fresh fruit and yogurt as well as salads and cold sandwiches.
A man stood behind a counter waiting patiently to take their order.
"Order what you want," Kirsten announced. "Pancakes, omelets, waffles whatever. Or…if you talk nice to Carl he might make you a burger or chili if you have an iron stomach."
Joe, Esposito Ryan all ordered omelets while Beckett grabbed a yogurt and a fresh fruit salad. She glanced ahead and impulsively grabbed a banana nut muffin too.
Kirsten poured everyone fresh coffee and orange juice then headed to a big table in the empty hall. She laid out silverware on the table so everyone could grab what they needed.
Beckett took a seat then grabbed for a spoon and took the lid off her yogurt.
"Quite a spread you got here…" she said to Kirsten as she put the spoon up to her mouth.
"We have a huge crew working here, you've got to feed them or they get cranky."
The guys walked up and Kirsten and Beckett made faces at their plates. Joe's was piled high with bacon and cheese as well as corned beef hash. Ryan's had bacon, ham, mushrooms, green peppers and onions as well as cheese and Esposito's was covered with salsa and jalapeno peppers.
"Ack!" Kirsten said to each of them.
"What?" Esposito asked innocently as he glanced at her plate. "I ain't a rabbit…"
Beckett smiled. "You're not a garbage disposal either."
Ryan laughed. "We don't get to eat like this too often…"
Joe choked on a piece of bacon. "My wife wouldn't let me have this much bacon even if I could wrestle it away from my kids."
They made small talk while they ate the rest of their meals. Kirsten picked up their dirty dishes and walked them over to the conveyor belt that would take them back to the kitchen.
"Did everyone get enough to eat?" Each of them nodded and she motioned for the door. "Then…if you'll follow me, our team has been waiting for you."
They cast curious glances amongst themselves as they stood and followed her down the hall through two double doors. As they followed her through the doors, they stopped and stared in wonder.
The doors led into a huge lecture room with an older gentleman standing at the front of it. Surrounding him were three levels of desks that were filled with men and women waiting patiently.
"Hello…welcome," the gentleman said. "My name is General Phillips, please take a seat." He motioned to the row of five seats directly in front of him. They walked over and sat while the man reached for a small device and flipped a switch.
"Crew A…the Senator of course needs no introductions but this gentlemen is New York District Attorney Joe Maxwell." Joe raised his hand to acknowledge the introduction. "And these fine people are NYPD Detectives Beckett, Esposito and Ryan…"
Each of them nodded to the group before Phillips looked down at them. "Crew A will be the team working closely with you and you can learn their names as you need to but for now let's get started." He hit a button on his remote and the room went dark.
"Crew A…some of this will be review for you but for our guests we will briefly go over our facts to get them up to speed."
Beckett recognized the board as being identical to the one Castle's CIA friend Sophia had used. Phillips walked up to the board and started quickly touching various points around the screen. The four newcomers listened intently while Phillips explained the information that their operatives had been able to uncover over the years.
"Okay…that brings everyone up to speed. Crew A…this is what the DA and the good detectives of New York have brought to the table.
Joe frowned when he saw the picture of their hard work flash onto the screen. Comparing it to the technology in front of him, it did seem primitive and childlike. "We did the best we could with our limited funding," he defended.
"Joe…" Kirsten warned quietly as she shook her head.
The General pretended not to hear them, and Joe and the three detectives were astonished as their information was transposed into a digital record on the board in front of them. The General "pulled" down another file and placed it on top of theirs and Beckett gasped as a new file was created from their information as well as Crew A's.
Murmurs could be heard around the room and the General smiled. "Okay, Crew A…you can thank our guests later for their input." He pushed another button on his remote. What had looked like regular desks in the room suddenly lit up.
The detectives each sat back and looked down with disbelief. In front of each of them was a computer screen that showed a duplicate screen of the data from the big screen.
"Oh man!" Ryan gushed.
"Freaking awesome," Esposito whispered.
Beckett glanced around the room to see everyone's head down, studying the data. She looked down herself and immersed herself in the new information. Her eyes quickly skipped ahead to anything on her mom's murder and she filed away in her memory the small amount of information that was there.
Silence filled the room while the Phillips waited for the crew to read through the information. He nodded to Kirsten. "Senator."
Kirsten stood in the front of the room next to him. "As you can see by the information provided by the NYPD, Ares' reign of terror has dated back at least as far as the mid 80's."
"Ares?" Kate whispered as she and the others looked down at their screens again.
Kirsten overheard her and continued. "That's what we call him…Ares…he's the head of…"
"The world…" Phillips interrupted with a sarcastic snort. Chuckles could be heard around the room before he turned serious again. "I'm sorry Kirsten…It's actually not funny at all, Detective Beckett…Ares has some type of presence in every major city or province in the world. There's not a place you can name that hasn't been touched by his power.
"With all due respect then, General…why bring us in?" Beckett wondered. "We're kind of out of our league…I mean…a DA and some homicide detectives from New York can't possibly offer you anything."
Phillips held up his hand towards the people in the room. "Everyone please stand." Every person followed his orders and he smiled at them. "Any person who is a police officer or detective please take a seat." Better than half of the people sat back down. "Now…can all of the people who have had someone important in their lives fall prey to Ares power take a seat…" Most of the rest of the people sat and Beckett looked up again at the thirteen or so people that remained standing. "This Detective is the number of operatives that we have managed to find that Ares has not bought and paid for."
Kirsten shrugged. "Kate, most of these people have lost someone as special to them as your mom was to you and my dad was to me. Can you find a better more dedicated team?"
"What about the danger of involving civilians?" Joe asked.
Phillips sighed. "We haven't done anything yet but fact find, Joe. We were hoping that you and your team would join with our operatives and help us into the next phase…"
Joe looked at Beckett and knew she was in…he glanced at Ryan who nodded slightly and Esposito who shrugged his assent.
"Yeah…we're in," he answered Phillips.
"What's the mission, Sir?" Beckett asked.
The room grew silent as Phillips clicked a button and showed a picture of an island. "Infiltrate Ares' compound."
Joe blew out a long breath as the picture of the island grew closer. "Holy shit…his compound is an island?"
Esposito chuckled. "It's freakin' huge."
"It's gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack," Ryan added.
Beckett smirked determinedly as a gleam came to her eye. "It's not big enough for him to hide from me."
The next few days, Beckett, Ryan and Esposito worked with the operatives to come up with a plan to take over the compound, while Joe worked with Kristen and Phillips to find a way to get the team of twenty to the Caribbean.
Phillips sighed aloud. "Joe, I can get the main operatives there with government funding but I have no way to get you four there."
Joe scowled. "I'll come up with something…"
Esposito looked at Beckett. "You could ask Castle…"
Beckett shrugged and thought that with the way things had been lately, he would probably tell her no.
She was saved when Ryan stepped up. "Joe, Zack could fly us there."
"Zack…good idea…can you get a hold of him?"
Ryan grabbed his phone. "I can try…"
"Who's Zack?" Kirsten wondered. "Can he be trusted?"
Joe nodded and looked pointedly at Beckett and Esposito to offer further information. "Zack's a guy that Kevin grew up with…I know he can keep a secret."
Beckett and Esposito exchanged glances and Joe knew that had both understood that Zack was a helper from the world Below.
The final meeting came before they were to leave. All operatives involved in the infiltration operation sat in the lecture room. Silence filled the room as each of them hung on every word that General Phillips said.
"At precisely 11:15, Team 1 will secure the outer perimeter of the compound as well as all the buildings included in the first diagram. When they've completed their task Team 2 will secure the inner perimeter. At this point, all of Ares' security points should be under our control. Team 3 will secure the house and remove anyone they may find inside."
"What do we do if we capture anyone?" Ryan asked.
"If we get as far as the house before we find someone it will be out of our hands and it becomes an international matter. You all have your travel plans…I hope everyone has a safe passage and we'll meet up again at our new headquarters tomorrow night at this time."
Kirsten stepped up to them. "Team 7 will get you to the airport where Zack will be waiting. Good Luck."
They traveled quickly and arrived at a desolate farm out on Long Island. Beckett and Esposito followed behind Joe and Ryan as they walked out towards a barn. A man suddenly stepped out from around the corner.
Beckett balked for a second and readied her hand to go to her gun. She relaxed when Ryan took off running.
"Zack!"
"Kevin…dude! What's up?!"
The two men hugged and pounded each others backs affectionately.
Joe walked up with his hand extended. "Hey, Zack!"
"Joe! How's it going?"
"It's going…"
"How's Jenny and the kids?"
"Good, they're Below right now…"
Zack's smile faded. "Kevin told me…that's good they'll be safe there until this is over."
"Yeah."
Ryan introduced Beckett and Esposito and within ten minutes Zack was flying them towards their meeting place.
They arrived safely and checked in with Kirsten and Phillips who were waiting patiently for everyone to arrive.
Phillips sat them all down in a back room. "First problem we encountered is how to get your team to the island."
Beckett frowned. "I assumed we'd take a boat."
"Me too. Except the local force came in…all but three of the marina's boats have been dry docked."
"Now what," said Esposito.
"There's a helicopter pad not too far from here. I'm trying to locate a chopper and pilot."
Zack stepped forward. "General Phillips, Zack Williams. You get me a chopper, and I'll be your pilot."
Phillips looked at the others. "Are you vouching for him?"
"I will," Ryan said.
Kirsten picked up the phone. "Let me get a copter here for you…"
They rested for a few hours then met up with the rest of the teams for a final briefing. Everyone headed their separate ways as it was 10:10 and in one hour the mission was set to commence.
The hour passed too quickly.
"Let's get this over with, and we can make it back for Winterfest." Ryan offered as he stood.
Joe smiled. "Amen to that…I would love to surprise my family and keep at least one promise to them…"
"Winterfest…that big party you mentioned?" Esposito asked Ryan.
"Yeah…"
Beckett thought about Castle and how anxious she was to get this all behind her and begin a new life. "Let's do it then…"