Disclaimer: NCIS: Los Angeles and related/recognizable characters/materials are copyright of Shane Brennan, Shane Brennan Productions, CBS Television Studios and any affiliated companies. I do own the character of Aileen Flynn. This Fan Fiction is not intended for profit nor is any copyright infringement intended.
Author Note: Follows my story "Therapy" (which followed "Gravity"). G's background that is alluded to in the previous two stories will be much more heavily addressed here so it's suggested that you read those two first.
Spoilers: Starts one month after the season finale ("Callen, G.") therefore anything in season 1 is fair game.
Callen's eyes slowly scanned the room while he casually browsed through his cell phone, waiting to send a signal for the Special Activities Division paramilitary team to move on the house and arrest everyone they laid eyes on. His eyes passed Aileen and he smiled slightly at the thought that, after tonight, they had been promised three months of downtime. After what happened in Cairo six months earlier, they needed the break.
She raised an eyebrow in question and he quickly shook his head to reassure her before moving his gaze to another part of the room while she turned back to the conversation she was having. They arrived an hour earlier and Aileen had immediately greeted the local neo-nazi group leader's wives with a bright smile and hugs. They had been chatting away in rapid fire German ever since; sufficiently distracting a third of the rooms occupants.
A glance at his watch told Callen that he had ten minutes before the arrival of the Al-Qaeda operatives, as Steven James, the local Aryan Nations leader, called them. Callen's nerves had been frayed to an inch of his life when he heard that description four months ago, two months after he and Aileen managed to fully infiltrate the group. Then two weeks later he had met the supposed Al-Qaeda; seven jumpy and unorganized second generation American born, Iranian descent, college students. Six months of work and they had ten minutes before it was all over; which meant he had around a half hour before he could grab Aileen, get in a car and get the hell out of the United States.
The partners had decided to leave as soon as they were sure all the targets were secure; because, while it wouldn't be the first time they had operated in the United States, it would be the first time an operation had lasted longer then a few hours or days. Six months was pushing the limit on how many blind eyes could be turned; even with a startling number of rumors that in early 2005, mere weeks from then, the Aryan Nations national leader, August Kreis III, would be calling for an alliance with Al-Qaeda*. The Agency had heard too many reports that this rumor could prove to be true and wanted to attempt to cut off any potential cells before the announcement could be made publicly.
Callen looked around the room once more as the door opened and the students began walking in to the living room of the old house. As all seven stood in a loose circle, intermingled with twenty-five white supremacists, Callen couldn't help but think how lucky they had gotten. None of the other teams had gotten remotely as close to their own targets and had all been pulled weeks earlier once it was observed that they were making no headway. Yet, he and his partner, relatively unpopular (if effective) Officers, were about to level what amounted to two terror cells, just with two different agendas.
Aileen nodded from across the room once and he saw her thumb depress a button on her cell phone. Callen immediately reciprocated the action and waited. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, and the meeting went on. The partners traded barely noticeable concerned looks and once again repeated their previous action to send the signal that said all the players were in the room.
This time they got a reaction.
At first it was just a light rumble in the distance that left Callen feeling uneasy, as though he should know what was coming next. Next came the sudden change in pressure as everyone felt like their heads had been placed in a vice. And finally, the panicked screams, as every window in the large house imploded, sending glass and anything reasonably light in the room flying.
A reaction that took thirty seconds.
Callen was forced to blink his eyes dazedly as he looked around and tried to focus and hear anything other then the ringing in his ears. The fact that everyone else looked just as stunned as he felt clued him into the fact that not much time had passed; but he still couldn't figure out why the house wasn't swarming with an SAD team. He gently probed the side of his head, where he was beginning to notice a stinging, and pulled his fingers away to see blood. A glance at the floor revealed all the items of the shelf that had been hanging behind him; one of which, a large iron candlestick, with blood.
"Oh," he whispered. "That's what happened," shaking his head again and cursing the obvious concussion as he tried to piece his thoughts together and find his partner as chaos began to explode around him.
The SAD team finally came through the house. And the two homegrown terrorist groups had turned on each other. Even concussed Callen knew three groups of combatants in a small space was not going to end up a win for anybody.
A sharp sting in his arm, and a muffled curse from his own mouth, immediately slapped the slight fog that had been growing quickly around his brain away as he realized he had been shot by a small caliber round, probably one of the Aryan Nations members, and he needed to find his partner.
His blue eyes scanned the room a few times, trying to see through the smoke of gunfire and haze from whatever blew the windows. He finally spotted her when he heard his cover name being screamed in sheer terror; a tone he had never heard the younger woman use in five years of knowing her. Aileen was crouched behind a couch, clutching a hand to her shoulder and trying to stem the flow of blood that was turning her white jacket red. Other then the shoulder wound she didn't appear injured; just pinned down behind the couch as they hadn't been able to bring weapons in or risk their covers.
It was when he was five feet, maybe twenty-steps away from her, that he felt it. If it had been any other situation Callen might have found it comical how Aileen's eyes widened in shock before different parts of the house began exploding or collapsing, in a blatant series of timed charges, including enough of the floor around her which sent her plunging into the basement as well with a scream and a flash of fire.
"No!" G screamed, sitting up in bed, eyes wide and breathing labored. "No. No."
The pleaded word fell out of his mouth a few more times until his mind and body fully pulled itself from sleep and he realized that he wasn't back in a destroyed house in Seattle; but rather in a new rooming house, still near Venice Beach, as he had moved a few days after he saw his sister's grave. The month since that day had been a constant slam of cases leaving Callen without a spare minute to begin to dig into information about himself or the possible whereabouts of his one time partner.
Thinking back of the dream, Callen couldn't help but feel as though he had been watching it, rather then experiencing it. His memories of that night were still fuzzy in some places, the doctor's having diagnosed a massive concussion upon his arrival to the hospital that night, including the knowledge of how exactly he got out of the house to begin with. His handler, Thomas, had informed Callen that one of the neo-nazi soldiers had dragged him out and then been arrested with his compatriots. The explanation had never sat right with Callen, mainly because of the presence of the SAD team in the house and the explosives themselves. An SAD team Thomas claimed never made it into the house because of the bombs.
"Steven didn't have access to explosives," he spoke aloud to the empty room, referring to the neo-nazi leader. "And I doubt those barely organized college kids did either," he added with a dark laugh.
The Agency had claimed they believed the Aryan Nations group had rigged their house as an insurance policy. The little digging around Callen had done, had told him the FBI thought that the wanna-be Al-Qaeda soldiers had rigged the explosives. Either way, all it left Callen was with more questions.
Groaning he fell back onto his pillow and rubbed his eyes as he tried to force himself back to sleep and ignore the constant nagging feeling in his gut that something was going to happen. Nate had explained away his distraction, when asked, over the last month for him; he had told Callen that with the knowledge that there might be someone out there, connected to him, keeping tabs on him, was so out of the ordinary to the life Callen had established that he was logically off-kilter.
The Operative couldn't shake the feeling that there was a lot more going on then a simple case of nerves.
*The 2005 announcement of a request for an alliance between the Aryan Nations and the Al-Qaeda by August Kreis III is true. That's what I based the Seattle Op on. It was meant to be kind of a pre-emptive strike.
This is the prologue to what is going to be a longer (though I'm not entirely sure how long yet) story addressing in detail what was alluded to in "Gravity" and "Therapy". It will be on the darker side. It's not meant to be a "hey this is what'll probably happen in Season 2" fic. The writers have their plan for Callen's family and I'm sure it's wonderful. I'll leave that to them.
That all being said, reviews are the lifesblood of an author. Especially a fanfic author. I like to know what my readers think of what I put out there, because it helps me with where I take the story in the future (I know what things might need clarifications, what points are being enjoyed and I could embellish further in the plot, etc.). If you don't review how am I supposed to know what you like and/or dislike? They also fuel my energy to write more often.
Thank you a million times over for reading. Chapter 1 within the next day or so (might be working a few hours tomorrow so I have to see what I can get to).