Disclaimer: The Mentalist and NCIS: Los Angeles are not mine. The story, all of it, is.
PILOT
LOS ANGELES
"Wainwright," Jane said. "Wainwright. Please reconsider this."
"There's nothing to consider, Jane," Wainwright said as he mounted tactical flashlight to his M4. "Look, I respect your hunch. Doesn't mean I have to subscribe to it all the time. Sometimes we have to take the risk."
"This isn't such time. This is a trap and I am certain of it."
"We'll burn that bridge once we cross it."
Jane turned to Lisbon. "Lisbon. Help me on this."
"Sorry, Jane. When Director has made his decisions, I can only follow him."
From Lisbon to Cho, then Rigsby, then Van Pelt. Their mouths were shut but their faces were answer enough. Much as we trust you, we couldn't. Boss' orders. Jane sighed.
"You've been warned."
"We have indeed," Wainwright said. He'd just finished checking and loading his M4.
Like everyone around the warehouse sans Jane, he wore rifle-plated vest and trotted automatic weapon. He had insisted that, as the highest ranking officer in the vicinity, he led the assault. Good boss, Jane thought. Good Special Agent in Charge. But not good enough. Should have trusted me.
A week ago, CBI had gotten an anonymous call about serial armed robber in the state. Lisbon's Serious Crime Unit was dispatched to bust the robber in their apartment, where it had found him along with his AK and three crates of 7.62mm Soviets. To CBI's surprise, the robber—Yudko Semyonov—hadn't resisted.
"My client doesn't wish for longer sentence," Semyonov's lawyer said.
Except Jane, everyone behind the one-way mirror spoke at the same time.
Lisbon: "No way."
Rigsby: "Hell no."
Van Pelt: "Absolutely not."
Then Cho himself, in the interrogation room. "I don't believe it."
"No, it's true," Semyonov said. "When I'm found, I'm found."
"That AK and three crates of bullets. Were they just décor?"
"You would've killed me if I used them."
Silence.
Jane picked up the mic, which connected him to the tiny earpiece in Cho's right ear. "He has some leverage. Wants to make a bargain with us. Ask him."
Cho did.
"A bargain, you said?"
"You heard me right, Mr. Semyonov."
Semyonov and his lawyer talked in whispers for quite a while. Alarm went off in Jane's head when the lawyer suddenly frowned. Then smiled. Wider as Semyonov went on. Why?
"My client offers an information in exchange of leniency and protection."
"Those will depend on how good his information is."
"Which will depend on how interested the CBI is about whom my client bought his weapons from."
"Go on."
"I assume you know of Regi de Foc," Semyonov said.
"We do. You bought your weapons from them?"
Regi de Foc, aka Kings of Fire, aka those damned Romanians. The newest player in West Coast gunrunning market, but already its strongest, thanks to its marketing strategy, which was flooding the market with undersold Romanian weapons to drive rivals out of business. It had been theorized that Regi de Foc was supported by dirty officials in Romanian consulate-general in LA, the only party who had enough cash to cover the losses and would get the most once Romanian weaponry gained monopoly. But due to obvious reason that was aversion to diplomatic and political fallout, cops were forbidden to pursue this theory without concrete evidence.
"Let's just say that I'm scheduled to meet them at..."
A half-finished warehouse in Compton brownfield. Tonight.
Now.
"Everyone ready?" Wainwright asked nobody in particular. Nobody said no. "Well then, let's go."
He took off and Lisbon's unit followed, weapons up and free. The plan was simple: Wainwright-led busters took the main assault, breaking through the front door and shoot-to-killing anyone with gun on his hand. The rest of CBI agents took the perimeter, waiting for anyone who fled through back and side doors.
Jane shivered as he watched his partners went. Something bad is going to happen. Something unexpected.
Semyonov hadn't told the entire story. His lawyer's sudden frown and widening smile...The lawyer himself was surprised on what his client said, but once he understood it, he eagerly rolled with it. What was it? CBI and Jane had agreed that it was an intel on the street, something Semyonov could use to bargain. What they disagreed on was whether it was genuine intel.
"He's able enough to have a leverage on us," Jane said to his bosses: Lisbon, Wainwright, and Bertram. "He should have eluded us."
"We got an anonymous tip," Lisbon said.
"Exactly. You think someone who had intel like this would be sloppy enough that someone snitched on him?"
"Stuff happen sometimes," Wainwright said.
"We got tip from anonymous call about serial armed robber, then an intel from the said robber about West Coast's premiere gunrunner. No. All this is too easy. It's been prepared beforehand. Semyonov was ordered to give us the intel."
"Lying to cops has serious repercussions, Mr. Jane," Bertram said.
"He didn't lie; he's truly sending us to an ambush."
"An ambush. Nobody ambushes cops in America. In Mexico, maybe, but not here."
"I don't mean we're going to get shot at. It's more like bad discovery, I think."
"That's what you think. You know what I think? I think we should take the risk." Bertram turned to Lisbon and Wainwright. "Assemble our men. We're going in."
"Bertram. At least bring Semyonov to the scene so we can confirm his words."
"Mr. Jane. Need I remind you about our deal with Semyonov. We agreed that he'd stay in maximum security custody—"
"—until his trial. Yes. Point is, he's holed up someplace safe while your agents are taking the risk. Isn't that a red flag for you?"
"Jane," Lisbon said. "Maybe you're overthinking it. Maybe Semyonov believes, if he's present in our raid, there's a chance he gets caught in crossfire. No one wants to get caught in crossfire."
"Exactly. Which is why—"
"Which is why that deal isn't a red flag for me, and therefore I won't allow you to violate it." Betram rose. "Mr. Jane. My word is final. If it's Regi de Foc, good, if it's ambush"—he gestured the quotation mark on the word—"as you say, we'll deal with it. Now go forth and multiply."
And the CBI did, in form of eighteen agents with enough arms and armors to occupy Los Angeles City Hall. Prelim recon on the lot had found a cargo van whose company mark wasn't in state registry, which justified the use of heat detector, which had detected four men inside. "They're waiting," Jane had said earlier, deducing from their body language.
"They're going to get surprised," Wainwright had said.
"Or us."
BLAM!
The door was rammed broken and the agents burst in, their fingers on the triggers as their flashlights sweeping darkness. Four people—armed with assault rifles—turning around with their weapons raised—
"CBI! Drop your weapon!"
And dropped to the floor as they raised their hands and locked them behind their heads and knelt. Quickly, the SCU surrounded them and prepared to cuff them while Wainwright and his two deputies went deeper—
"A black man?" Van Pelt shone at her prisoner's face again, see if she's mistaken—
"That's Special Agent Sam Hanna for you, ma'am."
For that, the black man got slammed to the floor. "And that's Special Agent Grace Van Pelt for you, sir."
"Special Agents." Lisbon scanned the prisoners with her flashlight. Nobody looked Romanian. "Who are you guys and what are you doing here?"
Because of its night-mode and unnatural angle, the footage was stilted and grainy.
"We're NCIS and what we're doing here is classified."
"Feds and classified stuff. Know what? Cuff them anyway."
But it was good enough for Gheorghe Comescu.
He almost thanked the geeks that filled the cabin. Somehow, they had modified a civilian security camera, exchanged its power source from cable to battery, connected its recording system to smartphone, set that smartphone to feed the record online, and finally linked the record to the desktop in front of him. In his van. Six hundred yards away from the scene.
For a while, Comescu just watched, see the jurisdiction friction boiling up. Words. Harsh words. Angry words. Yells.
Finally, expletives. "Shut it down."
The head geek typed the code—
BOOM!
The crate in the corner just exploded. A controlled detonation, too small to reach the agents, too big to spare anything inside the crate. Only rubble remained.