677. Chapter 677

After After the Storm

Episode 5.01

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: You know what I'm going to say here, so why say it? Rating: K Time: See above.

They sat in a small bar not far from Castle's loft. They made sure that they could see all of the entrances to the bar, just in case. Castle and Esposito had a Scotch, Ryan a Jameson's Irish whiskey and Beckett a white wine.

They had sat there for a good five minutes before Castle finally spoke. "It won't work, Beckett."

She took a sip of wine before replying. "What won't work?"

"The deal with Bracken. We've already seen how he keeps his deals. He tracked down Smith, got the files and then killed him. Oh, Bracken thinks we have something, but we don't, so we're deeper in the shit than Smith."

"It was the only thing that I could think of. And it does give us some time to figure out what to do next."

Castle looked around the table. "Any ideas?"

After a minute, Espo nodded. "You remember the movie The Magnificent Seven?"

Castle frowned. "You're suggesting we get three more people and become gunslingers in Mexico?"

"No. Not that." Espo took another sip of Scotch. "The character played by James Coburn….?"

"Britt?" Castle said.

"The man knows his movies. Yeah, that one. In the movie, they said he did it not for the money but to test himself, to see how good he was. I knew a guy like that in the Army. A Special Forces sniper, a really, really good one. He's a civilian now, but still works as a sniper. They say he killed a Mexican cartel leader who had about a hundred bodyguards. Shot him at the range of over a mile. The cartel's people chased him for some two hundred miles all the way into Arizona before he gave them the slip. That's the kind of jobs he takes, the really hard ones, just to see how good he is."

Beckett shook her head." No. We're not going to have Bracken assassinated. That would make us no better than him."

"Bullshit, Beckett. I've known you for years, so have Ryan and Castle. You're nothing like him. We're nothing like him." Espo looked around the table. "He's being groomed for a run at the Presidency. Do you want that homicidal sociopath sitting in the Oval Office? This isn't just about us. If Bracken is elected, he'll never give up power. He'll start arresting his political enemies or they'll just die mysteriously. People like Maddox and Lockwood will end up as FBI agents or something. Killers with badges. Think about it."

Kate stubbornly shook her head. "No."

Espo looked at Castle. "If Beckett says no, then I say no."

He turned to his partner, much as he disliked him right now. "Ryan, you have any ideas?"

"We can keep working on the parts of the file we have. There are thousands of pieces we haven't put together. Maybe if we keep at it, we'll find something. Anyway, we have a name now and some idea of how Bracken got where he is. We can start looking into his life and…"

"No." Castle said quickly. "If Bracken finds out we're trying to find out about him and the dirty cops and the kidnappings, he'll know we don't have the file. He'll go right after Kate."

"And he'll probably go after all of you as well." Beckett said. "This is my fight, not yours. You three didn't sign up for this. If you want to drop out of this, okay? Ryan, you have Jenny to think about. Castle, you have Alexis and Martha."

Espo shook his head. "This is exactly what I signed up for. To put people like Bracken in jail or six feet under. I'm in."

Ryan nodded. "Bracken knows about all of us. And he is ruthless. He'll kill us all if we don't stop him first. It's as dangerous being out as being in."

Castle reached for Kate's hand under the table and briefly squeezed it. "I've been following you for years. I can't stop now when the story is just getting interesting."

Kate smiled and squeezed back. "Thanks. Thank you all. But sooner or later Bracken is going to move on us and all we can do is chase our tails and get nowhere."

Castle suddenly smiled. "Now, that's a thought."

"What is it, bro?"

"As it happens, I know a guy."

Castle met his guy two days later, after a long and arduous journey through the five boroughs of New York. He had taken taxis, buses, the subway and had walked, several times walking into a business and going out through the back door, tossing a hundred dollar bill to the surprised clerk. "Sorry, I need to cut through." He'd said cheerfully.

Finally he sat in an internet café across from a young, somewhat chubby, Asian-American young man. "Do you have what I asked for, Terry?"

Terry nodded and smiled. "I do. But this is the strangest job of encryption I've ever done." He handed a thumb drive to Castle. "You're sure you know how to copy this, Mr. Castle?"

"I may be over forty, but I'm not totally computer illiterate."

"You can ask Alexis for help if you need to."

Castle handed him an envelope full of cash and left.

Next, Castle went to a computer super store and bought over a thousand thumb drives. He then drove to Kate's apartment where the two spent the weekend inside. On Monday, Rick left Kate's apartment and drove to a post office, bought several dozen prepaid mailers, put a thumb drive in each one, addressed them and sent them off. Then went to another post office and repeated the procedure until he had mailed over a thousand thumb drives.

This did not go unnoticed.

An employee of Orantis Solutions briefed his boss. "We managed to get someone with a fake Postal Inspector's ID into one of the post offices. He intercepted two of the packages. They were addressed to an investigative reporter in Seattle and a right wing blogger in Texas. Inside each was a flash drive. Our man is sure he saw a couple of the packages going to the overseas mail, but he couldn't intercept them."

His boss examined the drive. "We have the best people in the business. We'll crack this in no time."

Two weeks later they had to admit defeat. "Sir, this may use a one time pad, or more likely it's a substitution code. And it could be double or even triple encrypted. That is if you have to have multiple keys, you use the first one and you get an encrypted message. Then you have to use the second key to decode the real message. And on and on. "

"What the hell use is this if the reporters who get it can't read it?" Bracken's chief of staff complained.

"The reporters who get it will try to decode it, and they'll fail. Some may just toss the drive. But, most won't. They'll be curious. And a lot of these were sent to reporters in the same town, sometimes even the same papers or TV stations. They'll talk and find that there were a lot of these sent out. And they'll get more curious and they'll keep the drives."

The chief of staff was getting angrier. "I repeat: What the hell good is the damned thumb drive if they don't have the key?"

"I imagine that if something happens to Detective Beckett or to Castle or to anyone else, someone, or several someones, will send e-mails to all of these reporters giving them the key."

"So? These aren't the original documents. How can they hurt us?"

The encryption specialist shrugged. "You'd know better than me. But if you give a thousand reporters a place to start looking, who knows what they might find."

There was a knock on the door and one of the encryption techs stuck his head in. "Sir. Mr. Castle's been to the post office again."

The chief of staff cursed quite colorfully.

Kate rested her head on Castle's shoulder as they sat and sipped wine on her couch. "Do you think it'll work?"

"I hope so. They'll never be able to crack the code because all that's there is a bunch of totally random five digit numbers. It looks like a code, but it isn't. And I trust that Bracken has enough men and money to have stolen some of them by now, but just in case we'll have to make up some thumb drives again and send them out. Eventually, they'll be chasing their own tails trying to figure out who got the drives and what they mean. That'll give us time to get something on Bracken."

"You are a very smart man, Mr. Castle."

He kissed her. "I learned from the best."