Chapter 7

Philadelphia

Booth gravitates towards Beckett when they get to the kitchen. Bones and Castle almost immediately started playing some sort of rich author catch-up game he didn't want to be a part of, and Dizz is going through cabinets doing frantic Dizz-type of things. That leaves the cop.

"Sorry about the gun, earlier," he says to the Detective. She is the tallest woman he can remember being around, even beating Bones by a few inches. He looks down - four-inch heels probably account for a lot of the extra height. He wonders if he can talk Bones into shoes like that. After the pregnancy that is. He shakes his head. He's in the middle of a war and he's thinking about sexual liaisons a year in the future.

"It's fine. If I had a piece, I'd have had it out the moment we saw you too. At least those two know each other," she replies, tilting her head at Bones and Castle.

"Yeah, I don't even want to think about how. So … law enforcement partnered with an author?"

"You too, apparently. How'd that happen?"

He blew out a quick breath. "Hated each other at first, but were stuck together. Took awhile, but found a way to become partners. Then friends." He stops, remembering what Bones had said earlier. "Then something more," he admits. He is surprised when she chuckles. She doesn't seem like a chuckler.

"What?" he asks.

"Nothing," she says with a coy look, "just sounds familiar, is all."

He nods, remembering the way she held Castle's hand, ten minutes earlier. He doesn't need more than that. This isn't one of those lady shows they have on during the day, and feelings time needs to get over in a hurry. "And how do you know, Dizz?"

"We needed a place … away from New York. Guy on my team is ex-military, thought Sergeant Dwzytowski might be able to help us."

"You guys on the run from something?"

Dizz interrupts then, "You're jumping the gun, Seel'. Sit everyone."

"So, who first?" Dizz asks with a lazy smile. Of all of them, he's obviously the only one even slightly amused by any of this. Well, Booth amends, Castle seems to have a dumb smirk on his face too. But he suspects that's a common occurrence.

Booth has no great need to explain anything to anyone except Dizzy, so he just leans back in his chair. Castle and Bones share a look, like they've already started talking, and then Castle turns to Kate. By silent committee, it appears it's her job to go first.

Kate takes a deep breath and starts talking. Booth can immediately tell that she hates story-time about as much as he does. He leans in; he doesn't need this to be any harder for any of them than it already is.

"Back in the early '90s, there was a group of crooked cops that started kidnapping guys from the Five Families. They'd hold them for ransom - keep them off the streets for a few days and bleed some cash out of the mafia. But, one kidnapping went bad and an undercover cop died. It got pinned on the mafia and the enforcer went to jail."

She takes another breath. "About a decade later, my mother got the guy's case on appeal. She was a lawyer. She uncovered the actions of the cops, but there had been someone else, a man everyone called The Dragon. He'd found out about the cops extracirricular activities and had been blackmailing them. To keep the blackmailing hidden, he had my mother killed. Stabbed to death by a professional assassin in an alley in Washington Heights to look like a mugging."

She rings her hands together. Castle makes a move to reach out to her, but she shrugs him off. Not unkindly, Booth notices, just … trying to stay focused.

"Years later, I found her killer, but he died trying to escape custody. We kept at it, but The Dragon, he took out the cops, he killed our captain, he tried to have me killed. A few days ago, we caught a case... it was a kid who'd been hired to steal information from our former captain's house. Information that would lead us to The Dragon."

"We couldn't … my Captain … my old Captain, he was involved, years ago, but I couldn't tell our new Captain that, so I had to go against orders to pursue things. But it didn't matter. The guy … he was too good for me, threw me off a building. Left me for dead."

Castle reaches for her again, which she doesn't move to accept, but she doesn't pull away either. "Afterwards, he... Maddox, went after a friend of the Captain's."

Booth tries to school his reactions, but the name Maddox, of course, strikes a chord, especially now. Dizzy flinches next to him. It's not enough for Bones or Beckett to notice, but he sees that Castle has picked up their reaction. But Kate continues before the author can question it.

"The Captain's friend... he had information that would reveal The Dragon. In trying to stop Maddox, the information was blown up. End of Maddox, but the end of our trail too. Except, we were able to piece a bit of it back... not a lot, but a bank account. A bank account that belonged to The Dragon and paid for my mother's killer. We found the account, and then we found The Dragon."

"Who was it," Bones asks.

"William Bracken."

They aren't in the circles exactly, but both Booth and Brennan deal with Capitol Hill enough know who Bracken is. Dizzy, however, does not. He looks confused.

"Should that mean sometin'?"

"He's a Senator," Booth answers before Kate can.

"A Senator that got to be a Senator by using blackmail money to fuel his rise. I confronted him, told him what we knew. Told him we'd keep quiet if he backed off. Our lives for his career. We thought he agreed."

"But he didn't," Booth says.

"He left us these," Castle says, pulling two bullets from his pocket. Booth picks up one, and Dizzy the other. The words start coming out of Booth without thought - fueled by a lifetime of training.

"Sierra MatchKing Boat Tail hollow points. Hand loaded - 175 grain... hunter's load, for decent-size game at long distances. They belong to a pro."

"Guy's not as good as he thinks though," Dizzy says. He points to the edge of the cartridge.

"No," Booth agrees. "Not top tier, not as a shooter or hand loader, certainly. But good enough for almost any job and better than most."

"It's not Maddox," Kate says, "since he's dead. But Bracken seems to have a supply of these guys."

"Maddox ain't his real name," Dizzy says.

"No... it was Cedric Marks. How did you know that?"

"If Booth's here for the reasons I'm guessing... maybe that's his story to tell."

"You know why we're here?"

"Seel', buddy, I known you fifteen years and I ain't seen you in ten. And hell, you take away the good lord, we only got one thing left in common. And I don't think yer here for confessional."

Booth blew a raspberry. He hates this - this need to break protocols, even if he'd already once just hours ago with Bones. But they need allies and information. And as he once told Bones … share a little of yourself to get a little back.

"We knew Maddox was a fake name 'cause I was Cole Maddox, once," Booth says, finally.

"What?"

It is Dizzy that answers, "People always think that cover identities are so easy to pull together. Too much TV, I guess. But they are a pain, so we only really ever developed a few truly deep covers. For most of the times, we had a big collection of light cover identities that we used when we needed. Cole Maddox was one of them. I can still remember a lot of them."

"Carl Foster," Booth chimes in.

"Wallace Morrison," Dizzy replied.

"Derek Rathbone, Giovanni Di Bruno..."

"... James Matthews, Hal Lockwood, Mark Kurlansky..."

"Did you say Hal Lockwood?" Castle cuts in just as Kate does the same. "Did you say Derek Rathbone?"

Dizzy and Booth look at each other. "Yeah? Why?"

"A guy calling himself Hal Lockwood was sent after one of the crooked cops. He kidnapped some of our guys and eventually killed our Captain."

"And Rathbone was the name Coonan... the guy that killed Kate's mom ... gave us to throw us off the scent."

"I think that seals it," Dizzy says. "Whatever you all are tangled up in, it's connected to The Program somehow."

"The Program?"

"As I was saying," Booth interrupts. "I was Cole Maddox. Without going into details … " Booth pauses. If Castle and Beckett are being shot at by these guys, they deserve to know. And since the same guys are shooting at him, and at Bones … well... "to hell with it. What I'm going to tell you … it's not strictly legal for you to know. Understand?"

He watches for the nods, and continues, "Back about the time of Gulf 1, the U.S. had a bit of a problem, which was they had a whole range of secret forces that weren't so secret anymore."

"That's the problem when you name stuff Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 an' shit… gets people's imagination goin'..." Dizzy chimes in.

"Yeah, whatever. So, this hotshot half-bird named Martinez gets assigned to create a new group. I guess he thought like Father Dizz. He named it the Operational Supply Research Efficiencies Group, or OSREG for short."

"He made you sound like a bunch of paper pushers," Kate says.

"Efficiency experts, basically. Make even the most die-hard bean-counting major's eyes roll back in his head," Booth finishes, noticing he's starting to adopt the laconic way of speaking he'd developed back at Benning. It was coming either from reminicense or from listening to Dizz.

"Anyway, we just called ourselves 'The Program.' Our real job was all the stuff … well, all the bad stuff any government has to do in war and then lie about in peacetime. I was a member. The guy that was hunting you, Cedric Marks... he was a member, even if I never knew him. Dizz here was sort of a member."

"The only Quartermaster in an organization that was full of 'em, supposedly..."

"You were the guy that could get people things," Castle chimes in.

"Yup, just like Morgan Freeman, but prettier."

"Anyway. It sounds like the guys who are after you are tied to The Program, or ex-Program, or something. So is the guy who is after us. Ex-Master Sergeant turned Hostage Rescue guy by the name of Jacob Broadsky. Last night..."

"Broadsky's takin' shots at you?" Dizz interrupts.

"Twice now, in between some sort of vigiliante killing spree. We caught him, but right after we dumped him in Leavenworth, he killed two guys and broke out."

"Like Lockwood did with McAllister," Kate says, looking at Castle. Castle nods, "Same training, same tactics, I guess."

Booth nods, semi-happy to note that Castle seems to have a bit of a brain behind the flippancy.

"Probably. Last night he challenged us to a game of Tag."

"Wait," Castle interrupts, "Why do I know the name Broadsky?"

"Well, if this Marks guy and whoever was calling themselves Lockwood are after you..."

"No," Castle says, "not that." He shakes his head, like it might loosen a lost memory.

"Something through Smith?" Kate asks.

"No … " Castle looks over at Brennan, "Oh! The Gravedigger! He was the guy who shot her head off, wasn't he?"

"You know about Taffet … The Gravedigger?"

Castle looks sheepish. "I … ah … followed the case for a few years. Thought I could … maybe pattern a villain after him … her … but then she came after Temperance and it hit too close to … anyway, I dropped it, but I still paid attention to the news around her."

"Well, you're right. That's how you know him. He's the one who shot her."

"Why?" Castle asks.

"What do you mean, why?"

"I mean why? The news said he was some sort of vigilante trying to punish the wicked... but if you're doing that, wouldn't you shoot people who got away with things? She was already going to spend her life in jail."

"You're assuming his methods are sane," Bones says, "though I am not an expert on motive, we have often found that the motives of criminals are not logical."

"Sure, maybe not to us... but they usually make sense to the criminal," Castle says. "But even if the whole avenging angel thing makes sense … why you, Agent Booth? Why the two inmates in Leavenworth?"

"I don't know, Castle," Booth says, trying out the author's name. It sounds like 'asshole' to Booth, which he's fine with. "Truth is, you're right. It doesn't make sense. Just like your Senator making a deal with you and then deciding to shoot you anyway."

"What if Broadsky feels guilty about The Program? He's hunting down those people that share his guilt..."

"Which wouldn't include The Gravedigger person or Bracken, I'm guessing," Kate says.

"Actually, we don't even know that Bracken and your thing are connected."

"No," Booth says, "we don't. But if they aren't, it seems a hell of an odd coincidence. We're not talking about 1000s of guys... The Program only had sixteen line guys at a time, plus four staff. Martinez supposedly disbanded it in like '04... Maybe you're talking about a hundred guys total. What are the odds that so many of them would crawl out of the woodwork now, and it not be connected at all?"

"I don't think those odds can be … oh, it was a rhetorical question," Bones says. "Yes, I would think it unlikely as well. But we have no evidence one way or the other."

"No," Kate says. "We don't. Bracken was an Assistant District Attorney at the time of the first Gulf War, and a Congressman by the time your team disbanded. How could he even be connected?"

"I don't know, but I know who would."

"Who?"

"Bracken."

"So, what? Are you suggesting we go ask him?"

Booth thinks about it for a second, old pathways in his brain starting to fire again for the first time in years. He can see it all laid out in his head immediately.

"Yes," he says, "that's exactly what I'm suggesting." And then, for the rest of the team, he lays out his plan.

A/N: Sorry for all the talky-talky. We'll get back to our regularly scheduled action presently...