This is for your evening reading pleasure! Please enjoy. :)

Tariq knew that he was going to be a dead man and soon. Most likely before the sun went down. He could tell this because he recognized the man who knew John Sinclair. He was a fool to think that he could get away with killing Sinclair, his wife, and his child but with the deadline looming over him for operation Dawn he was doing certain things that he never had done before.

He stays off the grid for obvious reasons. But now, he was so far off the grid he was sure that no one would find him. He is laying low in Kabul. His cell phone was conveniently left in the hotel room. He had made all his calls to get to where he is now before he ditched the phone. He has no cash and no way to be tracked by anything. The only thing that does raise his concern is that his brother is still here with him. And that is a problem that he's going to need to deal with sooner rather than later.

His brother isn't the smartest of people. When they were younger he was always bailing him out of scrapes and fights that he couldn't get out of himself. But after he shot that female captain in the hotel room, that was the last straw. His brother was becoming a liability and needs to be dealt with. He never thinks about the consequences that his actions bring. He sits there in the small room that they're holding up in trying to think of a way to eliminate his brother. He wants to make it look like an accident but the man in charge of the operation told him that it could be done any way he felt was necessary. So while an accident will be convenient, he could always just take his gun and shoot him in the head leaving him here.

Sergeant Javier Esposito would only let this happen once. He let his captain down and now she was the one paying the price for his stupidity or lack of awareness.

When he left the hotel room chasing after Tariq and his brother Enayat he had visual contact with both of them. The only reason he lost them was that he needed to grab a tablet from their assault vehicle that was parked outside the hotel. He did have them in his sights but when he turned away to grab the tablet they blended in with the open market crowds and got away.

When he was about to make the turn on the corner he saw them last, He looks back towards the hotel entrance when sees Rick coming out the front door with blood all over his hands. The look he had on his face was one of pure rage.

Esposito knew that Tariq would head to a safe place. He wouldn't jeopardize himself in this country any more than he had to. He did see the burner phone lying on the desk which tells him that all his business was concluded before they arrived. He runs past a fruit stand and never notices the two men dressed in thawbs standing by it in plain sight. Up ahead he thinks he sees what could be to reek and he runs a little faster to try and catch up. As he reaches out his hand he grabs the man's shirt collar and pulls him back. The maneuver lands him on his back on the street. The second the man looks up Esposito realizes that he has the wrong person. He pulls his weapon and does a quick scan of the people surrounding him and finds that who is looking for is no longer here.

Rick hated leaving the room where Kate was. It was time to leave when he kept getting in the way of the medical staff trying to save her. He backed up and watched as they worked relentlessly to get her ready for transport. Once they had stabilized her she was loaded on a gurney, rolled out of the room, and out to the elevator. He tried to follow but the elevator car was full of medical personnel and he couldn't make the trip down. So the second the door closed he pushed down button for the next elevator with his bloody finger. When the door open he was on his way downstairs to the lobby. The medics were quick and they had her already loaded into the ambulance and were ready to leave for the hospital by the time he got out the front door. He watches as the ambulance drives away picking up speed as it heads North away from the hotel.

The only way Rick was going to catch who he was after was to become like him and think the way he would. The one thing that bothered him was the fact that Esposito was nowhere to be found. He had a feeling that he was going to try and take down Tariq and Enayat on his own against orders. In his eyes that was the only thing, Esposito could do.

He was relieved of his command by someone who disobeyed their orders. It will not happen again even if it is a member of the team. He returns to the lobby of the hotel to use the restroom to wash the blood off his hands. When he's finished doing that he vows that he will catch them if it means he dies in the process. He draws his weapon, a Sig Sauer P226, and racks the slide back. He ejects the clip to make sure he has a full mag and he does. Knowing that he's armed and ready to rock and roll he slips the Sig Sauer back into the small of his back between his belt and pulls his shirt down over it to conceal it.

He needs to think like the people he's chasing so he knows that they will be heading to a safe place that they feel comfortable in for at least 24 to 48 hours. The amount of Intel that they found in the room of the hotel was minimal at best. He did notice that a cell phone was left behind so Tariq had arranged for transportation before they arrived to take him down. Now he can only wonder what their mode of transportation will be to get out of the country. He leaves the restroom in steps outside onto the streets of New Delhi. He walked past many of the open-air shops and sees nothing that catches his eye. He continues on down towards the end of the open market and the crowd starts to thin out. Seeing nothing that he can act on he decides to head to the hospital and see how Kate is doing. He has the luck to find a cab and it takes him to the hospital. He thinks the entire time he is riding in the car.

Since he is a terrorist he would head to a country that would probably give him asylum. He knows that Tariq is a Syrian national and with the number of bombings and terrorist attacks he has committed against his own country they would be the first to hang him from the tallest tree limb. So he won't be going back to Syria. Rick knows that he won't go past the western side of the Persian Gulf only because he has no support there. So, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Jordan are off-limits for him. That only leaves Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Pakistan has possibilities but then again its neighboring country Afghanistan would probably be where he goes to first.

When he decided to volunteer for this mission he was issued the tablet he now holds in his hand. It has two forms of biometric identification in order to open it. The first is a retinal scan and that is easily done by holding the tablet up to your eye, the second is a five-point fingerprint match of his left hand. The reason he chose his left hand is that he draws his gun with his right and if his gun is in his hand he cannot access the tablet if he needs to while shooting at somebody.

Everybody who is issued a tablet in the team is also readily identified buying the transponder that is embedded in their forearm. Since Rick never signed the papers so he is actually a rogue user. The transponder was never deposited under his skin in his forearm so he is free to do as he pleases with this tablet. He boots up the tablet and then he pulls up a map of where he is. When the map finishes loading he sees 6 red dots overlaid on the map. He takes his finger and thumb and widens the map area to identify who these red dots belong to. When he gets down to about a city block in distance he can see that a little North from here there are five red dots that have identification tags assigned to them. The first three are easy. Kate, Hastings, and LT are at the hospital which is about 1.5 klicks away from his location. The second red dot is easily identifiable as Lieutenant Kevin Ryan. But it's the fifth red dot is the one that gets him concerned. He knows Esposito's type. And he knows what he's capable of. But what he doesn't know is that he's the type of soldier who when he goes off the reservation there is nothing that will stop him. And right now Rick is thinking that Esposito fucked up by letting Tariq's brother shoot Kate and that is something he can't live with. He's going to hunt the son of a bitch down until he satisfies his quest. That can't happen. Rick will be the one to kill Tariq and his brother. Esposito will just have to deal with the fact that has more of a stake in this than Esposito does.

He studies the tablet once more and pulls up train schedules from New Delhi to points North. What he sees in front of him on the tablet has possibilities. There are only three routes that run north of here and two of them are places he would not go too. It's the third that has him a little sure about we're Tariq could be going. Even though it was hours ago and he is already probably in Kabul, Rick thinks that this is the most practical location that he would retreat to.

He looks down at the tablet once more and sees that Lieutenant Ryan's. Is closer to the hospital. It's only about five blocks away but moving very steadily towards the hospital so he knows he's probably in one of the Humvees heading to see Kate.

The only unaccountable red dot left is that of Sergeant Esposito. He sees the dot moving slowly around uptown New Delhi but for the most part, it's stagnant. It just stays there in one place so either he's talking to some people about who he's after or he's sleeping. He believes it's not the latter. The cab pulls up to the hospital and he sees an unmarked Tahoe right in front of him, A Major quickly runs for the Tahoe to the hospital entrance and that motivates Rick to do the same.

And Hastings and LT have been around a lot of death and destruction in their time in the service. Most of it was caused by them but this hit home. With their boss being mortally wounded it brings a new meaning to the phrase death before dishonor. They had been waiting for news of her condition since they brought her in here over fifteen minutes ago. They both know that she was going to need surgery and that her life hung in the balance. They were surprised but not really that surprised when they saw an army doctor being escorted into the hospital by military police. Then he knew that Kate was going to make it through whenever she was facing. They watched as Dr. DeLuca had asked Castle who was standing next to Ryan what the situation was. He gave her his take on what happened in the hotel and then Rick was gone.

6 hours later….

She's been in combat and has been wounded before but this is something totally different. It feels like her abdomen is on fire. The last thing she remembers is seeing Tariq's brother shoot at her and she reacted to the shot but it was too late to get away from being hit. She does vaguely remember Rick holding her tightly. She knows he was there because she'd be dead if he wasn't. She slowly opens her eyes and closes them just as fast because the bright lights above her are just that blinding. She cracks open her left eye and sees a woman sitting in the chair next to her bed dressed in Army fatigues. She knows from the insignia that she's a major in the medical corps. And if she had to hazard a guess she was the one who operated on her to save her life.

"Good evening Captain Beckett. My name is Major DeLuca. Just between me and you, it's Dawn."

"Hello, Dawn." Kate rasps out even with her throat sore as hell.

"You gave us quite a scare there Kate. I had to work 4 and a half hours to get you back among the living. You had a 40 caliber round lodged in your abdomen that was close to your kidney and your renal artery. You also had damage to your small intestine but thanks to me that's all repaired now."

"Let me be the first one to thank you for your efforts," Kate replied.

"Kate that's what I'm here for. You're lucky that I was en route back to Bagram Air Base when I got the call that you were shot. It was touch and go for a while there but you were an ideal patient."

"Dawn I don't mean to cut you off but I could use a little information if you have it. When I came in here I was unconscious. Was there a man with me who stands about six foot three, brown hair, royal blue eyes, and really buff?"

"Aha! You must be talking about Mister Castle. Yes, he was here but after I got a situation report from the operation you were on he took off out of here like a bat out of hell. I don't know where it was he was going but wherever it was he was going there in a hurry."

Kate laid back on the hospital bed relieved. It wasn't a dream he was actually here with her the entire time. She would have to find him and ask him how he felt towards her. Because she knew that she was already in love with him just from what he did for today. As stubborn as she was she knew that she needs to get out of this hospital and find out what he was doing because if he got himself killed chasing the man who shot her she swears to herself that she was going to kill him again even if he was dead!

"Dawn, how long am I going to be here laid up here in this hospital?"

Major DeLuca was at the foot of Kate's bed holding her chart reviewing it. As she asked her question Dawn looked down at the chart and made a decision that she probably wasn't going to like.

"Kate with the nature of your injuries it pains me to tell you that you will be shipped from here back to Bagram, stabilized for 12 hours and then from Bagram on to Walter Reed in DC. I was only asked to come here and get you stable for transport and I did exactly that. You're going to need secondary and maybe even a third surgery in order to get you back to where you were before your gunshot wound. And then after that, you're going to need about two-and-a-half to three months of physical therapy. I'm sorry but this is what needs to be done in order for you to be productive again in the military.

Kate's shoulders slumped in her head dropped looking down in her lap because she knew that she was not going to be able to get back to Rick.

TBC