J The Melancholy Man

by Motsie of Atlantis

It was hard to get a smile out of Owen Granger, harder to get a compliment, and damned near impossible to see the man having a good time. This man did not just see the glass only half full, he saw it constantly evaporating until there would be nothing left. Life had left him disconsolate, and Callen had to learn how to work with him if he wanted to stay at OSP.

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J = The Melancholy Man

At the wake for the woman who began to change his life as a child, Callen looked for his boss' boss, although he knew he wouldn't see him here. It was hard to get a smile out of Owen Granger, harder to get a compliment, and damned near impossible to see the man having a good time. This man did not just see the glass only half full, he saw it constantly evaporating until there would be nothing left. Life had left him disconsolate, and Callen had to learn how to work with him if he wanted to stay at OSP.

One shot. Written as a response for 'ABC is for family', Gina Callen's entry in the Facebook Writers Challenge, the prompt being ABC and expanding my stories for 'D E F is for Team', 'G is for ? ? ?', and H I = The Second Story Geeks' and because I received requests to add to the alphabet and finish the team.

A/N: Thanks Gina for letting me use parts of your great story for this one. I just hope I do justice to your work as I try to carry on the idea and expand the alphabet for those around our agent/hero. Parts of this story were taken from my previously posted story, 'Anja's Smile' - a one-shot written for #GrangerAppreciationWeek for NCIS: LA Magazine. One scene from this story is patterned from a story by JustThisOne, 'Together and Still'. Unfortunately, there is no link to PM this author for permission or thanks to use the idea.

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J = Jaded

There was one more person who had an office at the OSP, but was not at this celebration, perhaps because he didn't feel that he was part of the team. Assistant Director Owen Granger had been appointed by NCIS Director Leon Vance to give some sort of semblance of official control over the Office of Special Projects. When Hetty had been called to Washington to answer the Special Congressional Investigative Committee witch hunt that was officially labeled an investigation into the 'White Ghost' incident, Granger had temporarily taken over the position of Operations Manager for the OSP. No one believed that he really wanted the position. Certainly, no one on the team wanted him there. But both knew that they had to play nice, or the whole unit would be shut down. The uncompromising company man of NCIS, Granger brought his melancholy authoritative presence to the Los Angeles office. That is why Callen used the letter 'J' and assigned the word "Jaded" to the man.

Callen didn't claim to know why the Assistant Director was such a solemn man. The man's personal record was far beyond the ability of the agent to access with his pay grade and security clearances. Callen supposed he could have asked Nell or Eric to access the files, but he knew if they would get caught rummaging around in them, they would be immediately terminated. Owen Granger would tolerate nothing less. Hetty knew some parts of his background. There were cryptic comments that Callen overheard between the two of them that suggested they worked together, probably in the CIA. But Nell had not come across any reference to the Assistant Director when Hetty gave her control of the files while she had been testifying in Washington. Callen was left in the dark, trying to deal with a man he considered to be joyless and judicial, the perfect administrative officer, but one ill-suited for supervising the OSP, The problem was there right in the name, Special Projects, ones that required thinking outside the box, that couldn't be played 'by the book'. Owen Granger was a man of rules and regulations, who always played 'by the book'. He rigidly tried to enforce his code of conduct on those under him, and also let it be known that if you didn't want to play that way, there would be severe consequences that you would face.

What Callen could not know was that Granger's outlook on life began in early childhood and was influenced throughout his formative years.

Owen Bradley Granger was born on February 7, 1955, and came from a family of privilege. His father, Samuel Wallace Granger, was a banking executive at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. His mother Jeanette Erma (nee Cohen) Granger was a medical legal research specialist at the prestigious Pfizer Pharmaceutical company regional headquarters in nearby Chesterfield, a 25-minute commute every morning to the western edge of St. Louis county. He grew up an only child, and the three of them lived in a sprawling 20th-century Georgian mansion on Ridgemore Drive in the Brentmoor Park neighborhood of Clayton. Owen was raised throughout the week by a series of nannies and tutors, teachers, and counselors, and spent 'quality' time with his parents on weekends. The longest time that he spent with them was the two week vacation they took every year to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. They vacationed in a rented cabin, with almost all the amenities of home. Both of his parents used the time to unwind from the stressful jobs they had. Owen could usually be found with the elderly guide they hired, who helped him use the cabin as a base for hiking, hunting, and fishing. The boy liked the simple life away from the city; it reminded him of his trips to Forest Park in the city and he wished that they could live there all the time.

Granger spent most of the first eleven years of his life enrolled in the Rossmann School. His nanny accompanied him there for pre-K and kindergarten, and a tutor continued to drive him to school through the sixth grade, the last grade they offered. A teacher was hired to work with him and drive him to the Whitfield school for his seventh and eighth grades. The family was Methodist and neither he nor his parents enjoyed the heavy dose of Roman Catholic doctrine that was included in the curriculum. After two years, he transferred to the Christian Brothers College High School in Clayton, which taught less doctrine and was closer to his home.

In 1973, when he turned 18, Owen registered for the draft, like all the other eligible men in his senior high school class. Imagine his surprise when he got his draft card and found that he was not 1-A as he expected, but rather 3-A, a hardship deferment. His father had pulled some strings to get him this deferment. When Owen questioned his father about it, Samuel became angry and berated his son for not thanking him that he had saved him from service in Vietnam. The elder Granger did not realize that this was the catalyst for his son's governmental career. Owen vowed that he would find some way pay back the person that took his place on the firing line half a world away.

For college, Owen wanted to get away from his parents, but they did not want him to go too far away from home. He enrolled in Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and graduated when he was 22 with a double Bachelor's degree in Political Science and modern European History while also auditing several courses at Washington University in St. Louis. Duke University granted him a scholarship to do graduate work, and he received his Masters only a year later.

His father made the rules and Owen was expected to follow them, no matter how strict they could appear, or suffer the consequences. These rules included which girls he could and could not date. The few girls that he liked in high school were ones his parents found to be 'not socially acceptable', because those parents were not high enough on the social ladder to equal or exceed their position in St. Louis society. They always had dreams that Owen would marry up rather than down in class.

The only problem for Owen was that the girls his parents deemed acceptable were usually snobs, their social noses so high in the air that they couldn't see anything beyond the pedigree of another person. He hated all the pretense that these girls showed and that is probably why he only went to one school dance throughout his high school years.

His second year in college he met a Jodi Barnett, a girl that he really liked. They started dating for a while, but then, all of a sudden, she broke it off. Owen was crushed after Jodi dumped him and then withdrew from SIU at the end of the semester. He tried to find her to reestablish their relationship, but she had vanished. Her roommate told him months later that some man had visited her and offed her a free college education at some other school if she would just break it off with him. Since Jodi's family was not rich, and her relationship with Owen was still in the formative stages, she jumped at the offer. Owen remembered his father telling him that if you break the rules there are consequences that you must pay, and concluded that he was the one who had paid Jodi off.

The CIA had placed him on their radar early in his college career and offered him a job when he finished his schooling. He passed his FLETC training at Glynco, Ga. in June of 1979 and joined the company. After two stints at protection duty, one here in this country and the other at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, he was ordered in 1980 to go undercover as a courier between East and West Berlin with Henrietta Lange as his handler.

While he was there he fell in love with the smile of a woman he knew as Anja, even though she had admitted that was not her real name, telling him "everyone in East Berlin is something different than they claim." She wanted him to help her defect to the West. Granger asked for Hetty's help in this, and at first she refused, but then she seemed more open to the idea.

But Hetty knew that this defection would never take place. Anja's real name was Annaleisa Kohl, the daughter of the East German spy. The CIA was trying to get her father to defect, and Hetty knew that if the daughter did it first there would be no possibility of the father's successful escape.

Owen was waiting for Hetty at the Checkpoint Bravo crossing between the divided city. He thought she would bring the papers that would let Anja escape to freedom. But Hetty never showed up, The agent could see Anja on the other side of the border, anxiously waiting for him to help her. All of a sudden, the border guards approached her and grabbed her. She pulled away from them and ran toward Owen.

The border guards yelled at her, "Stop, stand still, or we will shoot!" as they aimed at her. She kept on running as Granger screamed, "Anja, stop!"

Shots rang out. Anja finally stopped. She lay crumpled on the ground in the dead zone. The smile was gone from her face.

Granger stumbled his way back to the transportation office and found Hetty sitting there, working as if nothing at all happened. Granger screamed at her, his voice filled with the pain that was filling his heart. "Where the hell were you?"

"Right here, Mr. Granger." she calmly replied.

"You were supposed to bring Anja's papers to the checkpoint. Why didn't you show up?"

"I was ordered not to."

"Who, who gave those orders?"

"I do not know, Mr. Granger."

"She's dead. Are you happy about that?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Granger. I was only following the rules."

. . . . .

Granger hated Hetty for what she had done with Anja. The whole incident turned his heart cold and he figured that if that was the way to succeed he would out-Hetty Hetty.

Everyone, his parents, Hetty, CIA superiors, used the rules against him to get what they wanted, regardless what happened to him. He made a vow to himself on Anja's grave, that he would always play by the rules, no matter who they hurt. The only change was that he would be the one who made the rules.

He volunteered for every difficult mission that he could, and somehow, seemed to pull them all off. If you asked him about them, he could not tell you much about them, because they all seemed to blur together.

The only one that stood out in his mind was a mission he had in Nicaragua, and only because he suffered such a bad case of dysentery from crawling around in the jungle with the spiders and snakes for two weeks, that he had to spend close to three weeks in the hospital when he got back to civilization.

The US had tried to sell a shipment of 7,500 AR-10 rifles to Nicaragua, but General Anastasio Somoza rejected the order when one malfunctioned in his hands during an endurance test trial. The CIA tried to sell these same rifles to the rebels in Guatemala. Granger had an undercover agent, 'Carlos' who would meet with them on the Nicaraguan side of the border. He would provide the 'eye in the sky' cover in case things went wrong. Carlos was met by three men, two of whom grabbed his arms and held him for the third man who was pointing a gun at his head. Three quick shots from his sniper rifle, and 'Carlos' was the only one left alive.

There were some that claimed he was getting soft by protecting 'Carlos', but Granger explained that it was just more expedient to do it this way. If they would have killed 'Carlos', he would have killed them anyway. This way he saved his undercover operative so that he could use him again sometime in the future. The rebels were expendable, 'Carlos' was not. Those were his rules.

. . . . .

The company took note of how useful a tool Granger had become and decided to incorporate it into its arsenal of ways to bring about the wanted results in certain situations. When they planned to develop an elite sniper squad – to be used as an execution squad, if needed, Owen was sent to the scout sniper training course at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Caroline to hone his skills. The agent had to learn how to make use of a spotter, but his secondary assignment was to see if he could evaluate and recruit any of the men who were being trained there to work for the CIA. It was there that Granger met Donald Blye and the two of them hit it off instantly. Donald wanted to be cross trained in spotting as well as being the trigger man and usually found himself teamed up with Granger.

About a year after he completed the course, Donald found that even though he still remained a Marine, he became an important asset that was constantly being borrowed by the CIA. Under the cover story of setting up another sniper training course in Hawaii, Donald was placed into the same squad with Granger, as part of a special operations unit named 'Oscar-Sierra' running black ops for the company under the command of Peter Clairmont.

Granger grew extremely close to Donald and trusted him completely to have his back. The agent continued to volunteer for the most hazardous missions and was not surprised to find the Marine volunteering to go along with him. This was the closest thing that Granger had ever had to a friend. The friendship was sealed when Donald saved his life in the Philippines.

Granger was supposed to 'eliminate with prejudice' one of the local commanders for Abu Sayyaf, a militant Islamic terrorist group in the southwestern part of the Philippines. This local group had recently gotten into kidnapping and drug trafficking to finance their fight for an independent Islamic province in the country. Granger was the sniper and Donald was his spotter. They had the shot all lined up, when from the corner of his eye, Donald saw one of the terrorists aiming at his partner. Granger never saw him as he took the shot. Donald managed to draw his .45 pistol and pull the trigger at the same time that his partner did, just a split second before the enemy shooter. Both of their victims dropped to the ground, dead.

When the older man found out that the Marine had saved him from certain death, he promised his friend that if there was anything he ever wanted or needed, all he had to do was ask, and if it was possible for him to achieve, Owen would see it through to the end. The only thing that Donald asked him to do was that he would take care of his little girl if something should ever happen to him.

. . . . .

Donald Blye died trying to protect Brad Stevens, an American journalist who was about to blow the whistle on the leader of the Oscar-Sierra unit, Peter Clairemont, for killing a civilian while intoxicated. Granger accompanied the body of his friend to Camp Pendleton in California and watched from the sidelines as he was buried in the Marine Corps cemetery there. The CIA ordered him on a six-month undercover operation and he lost track of Don's daughter Kensi. He later heard that she had run away from her mother's home and was last known to be living on the streets. He had no clue if she were alive or dead. This was the second young woman that the CIA prevented him from saving. Perhaps it was time for him to sever his relationship with this organization.

Like most of other agents, Granger rattled around among the various alphabet governmental agencies before he found a new home for himself.

Late 1999, Granger was on a joint ATF-CIA operation in East Germany to prevent a shipment of illegal armaments being sold and shipped to several right-wing militia groups operating throughout Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. While he was there he came across information that Svetlana Chernitskaya and her lover, Anatoly Zhukov, were to be in Paris to meet with some South American revolutionaries and sell arms to them.

The NIS had already sent an assassination team against the two of them in 1995. Agents Whitney Sharp. Kurt Nelson, and Leon Vance, who would later become NCIS Director, were sent to Amsterdam, but the mission was compromised and failed.

Now they had a second chance to remove these two. Granger met with Leroy Jethro Gibbs and His probie, Jennifer Shepard, and through his contacts set up a meet with Zhukov. Gibbs kept the appointment and killed him while Jenny was to take out Svetlana. Jenny faced down the woman, but couldn't bring herself to kill Svetlana and let her go free.

. . . . .

Thomas Morrow, the director of NCIS, resigned his position in September, 2005, to become the Deputy Director of Homeland Security. Jennifer Shepard was appointed to replace him. While she was deciding who she would appoint to various positions in the agencies who would be loyal to her, she remembered Owen Granger and offered him a position In the director's office in DC.

One of the files that passed his desk the following year was a background check for a Kensi Blye, made by one Henrietta Lange, at the Office of Special Projects in Los Angeles. Granger was completely surprised. This couldn't be Donald's little girl, could it? Granger personally oversaw the paperwork, and made sure that there was an opening for her at the next FLETC class.

He surreptitiously watched her as she went through the training classes. Owen was proud of how well she scored in almost everything. He saw some little things that her father did and knew immediately who it was that had trained her so well. Donald's legacy continued to survive in his daughter, whom Owen knew would become a great agent.

. . . . .

In May of 2008, Svetlana Chernitskaya, who had changed her name to Natasha Lenkov, sent an assassination team to Los Angeles and killed Agent Decker. Director Shepard flew to LA to attend the funeral and knew it was Svetlana behind it. She and Mike Franks fought the hit team off in an abandoned diner. The four gunmen were killed, but so was Jenny. NCIS covered up her death by setting her Georgetown mansion on fire and claiming that Shepard died there of smoke inhalation. The body that was found inside was that of Svetlana, who was killed there by Mike Franks.

SecNav immediately appointed Leon Vance to be the NCIS Director and told his friend that he wanted him to clean up the mess that Jenny Shepard left and make sure 'his house' was put back into order. To do this, Vance appointed Jerome Craig to became the Deputy Director of the NCIS Washington branch, while Owen Granger succeeded him as the Assistant Director in California.

The stars had aligned so well for the new Assistant Director. He could set up his office in Los Angeles at the OSP where he could keep a protective eye on Donald's daughter, and watch for ways to bring Henrietta Lange to her knees.

. . . . .

Granger was there for Kensi as she started looking into her father's death, concluding that it was not drunk driving on his part, but rather a murder. When Marine Sergeant Chris Blake, the man who spotted for her father in his special ops unit, was killed, Kensi was accused of his murder. Then it was found she was the last one to talk to many of those team members before they too were found dead.

So she became the prime suspect, accused of killing off all the members of her father's team to get revenge for the fact that Donald had died. Granger even hauled her into the interrogation room, treating her like a suspect, not because he believed that she did it, but to force her team to get out there and prove her innocence. Kensi met with a CIA agent, who was to tell her about her father's death, since he was the group's handler for a while. A sniper killed him and only her vest prevented Kensi from dying in the attack. In the end, Granger was the one who shot Peter Clairemont, the one who actually killed her dad. Much to Kensi's surprise, she found out that Granger and her father were close associates.

. . . . .

Henrietta Lange received a secure conference call from Director Vance and CIA Director Justin Barrett with a message about a secret mission that was being assigned to the OSP.

Vance said. "The request has already been approved by SECNAV. Now it will be up to you and your people to carry it out."

"And what is this mission that we must do?" The more that was being explained to her about it, the less she was liking it.

"Director Barrett," Vance turned the call over to Barrett, who continued.

"We need one of your agents to undergo a 'special mission'. They are uniquely trained for it. The agent needs to know how to blend in with the surrounding countryside, and needs to have sniper training."

Hetty looked at him with astonishment. "You have agents that you could use. Even Sniper school graduates have qualifications that are better than what my agents have. Why have you come here to get your operative?"

Barrett looked at Vance, who shot him an 'I told you so look' and then continued. "I didn't list the most important qualification that your agent would have. There would be no connection with the military or the CIA, so there would be no leak, as has happened in the past."

Vance looked at her and then added, "Henrietta, this is a black op, blacker than night. Once it is completed, it never existed. That is why it is being assigned to your team. We need someone with sniper training to go and eliminate a traitor who has ties to the CIA and apparently still is able to get information about the Company. They need to go into the area of Forward Operating Base Chapman, in Khost province, Afghanistan."

"WHAT!" Hetty exclaimed.

"We need a sniper, someone who can operate completely off the books, to take him out, before he can get any more information on US Marine practices and tactics, how to steal supplies from a Forward Operating Base, and the best way to kill Marines, into the hands of Taliban insurgents."

"And who are we talking about?" Hetty wanted to know.

"They call him 'the White Ghost'. He is an ex-CIA agent by the name of Jack Simon. He worked for us for a couple of years, after his first Marine deployment in Afghanistan. We used him to find out what information the Corps had on the Taliban and how they were using it. But the man developed PTSD and was shipped home. They tried to give him R&R and it appeared he had recovered. We ordered him back into the field.

"But he came back to this area of Afghanistan and then just disappeared. A couple of reports that we got from some of the Taliban natives we captured was that he went native, joined a tribe and for years taught them everything that he knew about the Marines that the Taliban can use against us."

"And you are entirely certain about his identity?" Hetty asked.

"Yes. He is the only 'white man' that is operating in the Khost province helping our enemies."

Hetty knew she had to give in. "I will make sure that we put someone in the field for you."

Vance gave her a hard stare as he ordered her, "Not just 'someone', Henretta. We need the best one that you have." He paused before he continued, "The last one that we sent was Marine sniper. We found him yesterday."

"Dead?" Hetty asked, her voice seeming small and so very weak.

Barrett blurted out, "His head was no longer connected to his body. I guess that you could call that dead."

"I will send you a file with everything that you need to know about this case. I want your operational plans as soon as you can develop them," Vance added. "And I want your agent operational on the ground there in one week. Understood?"

. . . . .

Hetty managed to delay the decision for the most part of the week, then decided to send Kensi on this mission. She called the young woman to her desk and told her to get her sniper rifle along with her other gear for a possible extended mission away from OSP. She wasn't told what the mission was about, just where she needed to report and that she would be briefed at that site. No one else was to know anything about this and she was to leave immediately.

Granger saw Hetty talking with Kensi and the surprised look on Kensi's face. Once the agent left to get her gear together, Owen entered Hetty's office and sat down.

"What was that all about, Henrietta?" he asked.

"Need to know, Owen." was the woman's response.

"I.. need.. to.. know..," he said, as he raised one eyebrow, letting her know he would not take 'no' for an answer.

"She opened her drawer and pushed the file folder over to the other side of her desk. Granger opened it up and began reading, his scowl growing greater the further he read.

"And who are you sending?" he asked. Then it hit him, "No! Not Kensi. You can't do that."

"It's already done," she said as she folded her hands together on her desk.

"But why choose her?"

Hetty did not tell Granger that she knew about the history that Kensi had with Jack Simon. Perhaps the young agent could find the man and bring him home without killing him. Instead, she gave him another reason that she hoped he would accept.

"Agent Blye has a skill set that no other agent has here. She is a woman, and the women in country will sooner talk to her than any man. Afghani women caught talking to white men are all treated like whores. They usually have their tongues cut out and then they are stoned to death."

"Then I'm going with her as her handler," Granger asserted, as he got up to leave.

"You know I can't stop you," Hetty admitted. "Just watch over her, please, Owen."

He turned and looked at her before he went down the few steps. "Always, Henrietta," and then turned to get his stuff together.

. . . . .

"Agent Blye, take the shot..." Granger kept telling her through the com.

Kensi looked one final time through her sniper rifle scope, her finger again found the trigger. The sights were centered on the heart of Spin Pairay, the White Ghost. She pulled the trigger as she jerked the rifle to the side and the bullet hit the car behind him. The man yelled out as he ducked to the ground and made his way to safety at the back of the car.

Kensi rolled out of her sniper nest and pulled the silencer off her rifle. All hell had broken loose as the insurgents poured automatic weapon fire into the spot she had just occupied. Tufts of dirt were kicked up as she got up and ran toward her motorbike. One of the insurgents picked up an RPG launcher and aimed at her silhouette on the top of the hill. The shell exploded behind her and she emerged from the flying debris. The automatic weapon fire continued as she got on her bike and rode back down the trail toward Camp Chapman.

. . . . .

As Kensi opened the door and walked into the ops area in Camp Chapman, Granger was waiting for her.

"What the hell happened?" he wanted to know.

"I didn't have a good shot," she answered.

"Did you even take one?" Granger had been leery from the start of having her be the sniper on this mission, and his apprehensions appeared to have some merit.

"Yes," she said defensively.

Granger waited for her to continue, and when she didn't, asked, "And?"

Clearly nervous and agitated, she responded,"And I missed, okay? I missed. I'm not - I - I'm not even sure it was him."

"But you saw his face?... Blye! Was he a Westerner?"

"Yeah... No... Maybe... I don't know... I could... I couldn't tell. He just looked like a mooj. Anything else?"

"Yeah. I want a detailed report in my hands within the hour."

"Fine. I'm gonna go take a shower."

Afghanistan countryside

A rider on horseback stopped because of the burned car carcass blocking the road. Men appeared almost from nowhere, surrounding the rider and chambering rounds into their AK-47s. In Pashto, they ordered the rider to dismount, who obeyed, hands raised in the air. One man approached and pulled down the rider's scarf to reveal Kensi!

Camp Chapman, Ops Center

The convoy seemed to disappear completely. The drone image showed the disabled vehicle was where the insurgents left it, but everything else was gone. Granger walked over to the door of Kensi's room. Maybe she might be able to remember something that would tell them which way they went.

"Hey, Blye, we need to talk," Granger said as he knocked on the door. Getting no answer he opened the door and looked in, as he asked again, "Blye?"

All he saw was the rifle on the bed.

"She's not here. Anybody seen Blye this morning?"

All the answers he got were negative.

Frustrated, Granger ordered, "Find out if any vehicles have been checked out, or if anybody saw her leave the base."

. . . . .

By the nxt day, Granger still had no clue where Kensi had gone. He had a scheduled video conference with Hetty that he was loathed to keep. The Operations Manager was waiting for his call.

"Morning, Owen."

"We have a situation. Blye's missing."

"What do you mean?"

"She's gone. She took a horse and left her rifle."

"She had a sat phone."

"She ditched it. She had a shot at our target yesterday and she choked."

"My people don't choke."

"Then what happened?" Granger demanded. "Something spooked her. She missed the shot yesterday and snuck out of here during the night without a weapon and without telling anyone else where she was going. I tracked her horse as far as I could. She's heading into an area controlled by the insurgents.

Hetty sighed, wondering if Kensi was going to try to bring Jack Simon home.

Granger heard it and didn't understand that response, "Do you know something I don't know, Henrietta? Because if you want your girl back...now would be the time to tell me."

. . . . .

Granger went back to looking for the female agent. He thought he had found the place where the insurgents were holding her captive, and trailed one of their couriers back to a local village. While he was watching the house, Sergeant Makar drove up with three men in the car with him. He went over to them and saw it was the remaining three members of the OSP team.

Granger briefed them on what he knew happened with Kensi. He did mention that much of the intel on the White Ghost appeared to be falsified, and there could be other reasons why the CIA wanted him killed. He ended by telling them Blye acquired the target, and she missed.

Callen couldn't believe that she outright missed. "You think it was intentional?" he asked.

Granger looked at him and growled, "I know when I'm being played, Agent Callen. Until I figure out what's going on, this mission is dark, as in black as night. We're on our own out here."

Just then a man left the house they were watching. It was the courier, and Granger was going to tail him again, all the way back to where the others were.

Sam ordered Deeks to find out who lived in the house the courier had visited while he and Callen went with Granger. Deeks argued to go along to find Kensi, but Sam ordered him to stay with Sergeant Makar as his translator. Deeks didn't like it, but Granger started driving away without him.

The NCIS group followed the courier until the terrain got too rough for a truck and he switched over to a camel. The team was joined by some Afghan troops with horses that they used to follow him until they found the camel abandoned, the path too steep for anything but foot traffic. The tracks showed that others had gone this way recently. Their water gone, they could either follow to overtake the insurgents, or turn around and go back. Granger sent one of the Afghan men back with the horses to get more supplies while they pressed on.

They came upon the entrance of a cave, and when they entered they saw a light at the bottom of the passage where a room must have opened up. Sam dealt with the guard there, the only one left in the cave. The courier and everyone else continued to move toward Pakistan. A map was on the wall, marking US troop movements; a rock with blood all over it was on the floor, marking something more brutal. When they typed the blood it came up B-positive, the same type as Kensi. A crate off to the side provided bloody saws and a laptop. When Callen opened the laptop he found two photos, the first of a man who appeared dead and covered in blood, his throat cut, The second one was Kensi, appearing the same, bloody, throat cut, dead. After he looked at it, Sam just turned away.

"I don't buy it," Callen said.

"You don't buy it, or you don't accept it?" Granger asked.

Callen just didn't answer him.

Granger took out the satellite phone and called back to OSP headquarters to update Hetty. The two of them started to argue over what they knew about Jack Simon. Sam called them back to the task at hand, tracking the courier and the group he was following.

Nell's voice came across the phone, "I've found a team, probably CIA, seven miles north of you. They have accessed intel on Jack Simon."

Callen voiced what they all knew, "They're also hunting him."

The phone was dying so they cut the connection.

After a quick search for bodies, they continued their pursuit.

In the mountains, they found Sabatino. He told them he caught up with the group they were following, but they shot him. He didn't see either Kensi or Jack, but he did confirm that the White Ghost story was completely made up. Sabatino wanted to bring Jack back to the States, but the CIA want to kill him. While they were talking, a shot rang out, hitting one of the Afghan soldiers. They found it was a young orphan girl, Khatira, who was supposed to slow down the pursuit and let the insurgents cross over to Pakistan. They questioned her, but got nothing. Sam refused to leave her there alone and picked her up to carry her along with them.

As they continued to slog through the mountains, they finally got close enough to spot their prey in the next valley. There were more people than they expected, and were still too far away to see if Kensi was with them. Granger wanted them to wait until they had more ammo and reinforcements before they attacked. Callen didn't want to wait and let them get away.

Callen sent Khatira to the group ahead of them with some of the money that Hetty had provided for them. She was to deliver a message to the Taliban leader that they would trade, the money for the freedom of the American prisoners. The young girl returned to the group, followed by the Taliban troops. But instead of making the exchange, the troops started firing at them, trapping them on the top of the hill as they came at them from all sides. The rescue team was quickly running out of ammo.

The Afghan sergeant spoke up, "Maybe we should surrender. We're going to die if we don't."

Callen knew that was not the answer as he told him, "They'll kill us anyway. When we run out of ammo, we fight with our knives, our hands."

Just before they were overrun, a helicopter was heard, flying toward them. A voice in Pashto is calling over the loudspeaker.

"Cease fire!" Sergeant Makar ordered. "Rafik Shahidi, we have the cleric, your father, we want a prisoner exchange."

The shooting stopped, and the helicopter landed. Deeks got out of the chopper with the cleric, and guided him toward the Taliban. Khatira ha a rifle in the back of both Kensi and Jack pushing them forward. Both of them had been tortured and could barely walk. The insurgents grabbed the cleric from Deeks and waved him back. Then they disappeared, leaving the little girl behind.

Granger grabbed the com and called in, "Grandmother, this is Fox Three-Zero, requesting immediate close air support.

Callen was surprised, "You're calling down an airstrike on the Taliban?"

Granger answered, "Yeah, they won't make it half a mile."

When Khatira wanted to follow them, Callen had her placed on the first chopper with the wounded. .

Granger looked at Callen and complimented him, "That was a good mission."

Callen agreed, "It was."

Back at Camp Chapman, the Deputy Director watched Kensi's farewell to Jack Simon. He had promised the woman that he would give Jack a chance to get away, but it would not be long before the CIA was on his tail again. She still had some strong feelings for the man and Granger wondered if she would try to rescue him again. Then he looked and saw the pain and sadness that was etched on Deeks' face. He shook his head and wondered which would be the worse that she could end up with, a surfer clown cop, or an ex-CIA operative who had gone native. He had the long plane ride home to try to figure it out.

. . . . .

After closing the Angelo case, the mission was closing down for the night. The computers had all been placed on standby status, and the night staff was up in Ops watching for any nighttime developments. Granger was with Hetty in her office, going through administrative matters. Callen had sacked out on the couch in the bullpen, 'resting his eyes' as he took a break from the paperwork. Deeks was opening up his mail with the knife that Kensi had given him when she appeared behind him, ready to drive him home.

"Hey, Deeks."

"Ah, Kens, you ready to go?"

"Where's my gym bag?"

"Sorry, it was part of the procedure today so it is in the evidence locker."

"My sports bras don't belong in any operations. You invaded my privacy again."

"Every member of the team respects your privacy, and we all think it is impressive that you wear 'Wonder Woman' sports bras."

"They aren't really 'Wonder Woman'..."

"I saw them. That's what they are. It's fantastic because they match my 'Superman' underwear."

"Too much information, Deeks."

He went back to opening envelopes as she stood there, neither saying anything for a moment.

"So, about our thing..." she started.

"Right, I don't know what to say about that."

"What does your third heart tell you?" she asked.

He took the knife that Tuhon had made for her father, snapped it back into its sheath and pushed it across his desk toward her.

She picked it up and looked at him. "Okay..." she started to say.

Deeks interrupted her as he said, "Contrary to hundreds of years of scientific evidence...I believe that raccoons do mate for life." With that, he picked up his bag and headed toward the door.

As the Assistant Director watched the scene play out, he managed to control his anger. What had riled him up was the thought of the detective using the knife that he recognized as once belong to Donald Blye. What in all the world made him think that he even deserved to touch it? For that matter, what in all the world made him think that he deserved to touch Kensi? Maybe his giving it back meant that the two of them were dissolving their relationship. After all, both Superman and Wonder Woman were loners. Their alter egos flirted with relationships, but that is all they were harmless flirtations. Raccoons mating for life? That would never happen with these two. Over his dead body; Granger vowed to himself.

He never realized that he spoke the words out loud, with hope in his voice, "The beginning of the end."

Hetty, always butting her head against him, tried to correct him by saying, "The end of the beginning," Granger wondered if she was trying to play Cupid with them.

. . . . .

Owen Granger made a quick phone call. A little over an hour later, a car pulled up into the parking lot and a few minutes later there was a knock on his door.

He went to the door and opened it, "Guten Abend, mein Schatz." [Good evening, my dear.]

Standing in front of him was a woman of indeterminate middle age, dressed in the traditional German waitress uniform of black skirt, white blouse with puffy three-quarter sleeves, and a black vest that came up to just under her breasts and drew attention to them.

She said nothing to him, but put her hand around the back of his neck and drew him down into a prolonged, deep kiss. At that very moment, a transformation took place, as the two people were transported back in time. Again it was shortly after 1980, and it was an older Ralph Hess and matronly Anja shared the night of bliss like they should have in West Berlin. The sounds of a German couple making love filled the bedroom for several hours until they both were too tired to do nothing but sleep.

Granger woke up to his phone buzzing shortly after 5:00 AM. Still half asleep he fumbled for it on the nightstand, before he found it and brought it to his ear.

"Yeah?" he answered, not loud enough to wake his partner. The voice on the other end explaining that an intrusion had been made at Dovecot, one of Hetty's homes, and her security agent there had been shot. Everyone needed to come into Ops so they could figure out how to deal with it.

Granger rolled over toward his companion and whispered in her ear, "I'll call you."

All she answered was, "Mm-hmm."

The blond who remained in his bed did not worry. She knew that there would be an envelope on the big dresser, propped up by the mirror. In it would be her usual payment, with the nice bonus he usually placed there for her. She had no idea who this Anja was, or had been, but this man seemed to be tormented by her memory. The sex between them was usually rough and exhausting, as if he were trying to make up for a lifetime of passionate shortcomings. She closed her eyes once more and returned to her dreams.

Granger went into the bathroom and proceeded to get ready for a very long day. He knew that Hetty was safe in Washington DC, having been called to testify at the Department of Justice inquiry. At least they all thought she was safe there. He grabbed his weapon and started on the drive into the office.

On the drive in, Granger began to wonder what was happening to him. He had just left the arms of a woman that brought back memories of one he loved some thirty-five years ago. He was rushing into the office to try to help the woman whom he blamed for Anja's death. Was he starting to get soft in his old age? Or were the dynamics of this team starting to rub off on him, that he was being drawn into their idea of a family, however, dysfunctional it was? Certainly he had been calling his Anja-like stand-in less and less in the last year. And he seemed to work alongside Henrietta Lange with a lot less friction setting off the anger in the two of them. This was a topic he would definitely have to explore a lot more.

. . . . .

Callen was waiting for the other members of the team to come in. He was surprised to see the assistant director walk into the command center before the others and look around with an offbeat expression on his face, almost as if he was going to mark everyone else as tardy on their attendance slips. He wondered to himself just what the man thought of each member of his team.

Callen knew that Granger looked upon him as a loose cannon, ready to go rogue at a moment's notice. He had no idea how the deputy director viewed him as a tactician. The man did spend time up in the operation center when the team was being briefed on a new case and the lead agent gave out all the assignments. He never challenged Callen's conclusions of the evidence nor did the man ever try to make changes in those assignments. With the agent in charge, Granger's face always remained the same, appearing as if it were carved in stone.

Sam is the person who perfectly fit in with Granger's universe, the man who was programmed to always follow the rules. His thinking was always within the box and he always erred on the side of caution because of his family. He has faced death, as a SEAL and as an agent far too often to be completely stable. One of these times he is going to be forced into a situation where he will just snap, his mind will short circuit and he will be lost

Granger seemed always to have a soft spot in his heart for Kensi. Callen remembered hearing the assistant director arguing with Hetty over her decision to send the young woman as her choice for the sniper on the 'White Ghost' mission. He went out to Afghanistan to watch over her and helped mount the rescue attempt for to get Kensi back. The man seemed so protective of her, it was almost as if she were his stepdaughter.

Granger could not stand Deeks, in much the same way as Sam did when the detective was first added the team. He didn't think the man was in the same class as the other agents, being just a police detective. From reading his files, Granger should have known that the detective was just as tough as Sam was in dealing with the torture that had been inflicted on him. Granted, it took him a lot longer to recover from it, but it didn't break the man. There must be something else underneath the surface that was working in his mind to bring such animosity to the surface in his mind. Whatever it was, Callen was certain that it would have to be dealt with. If Granger would ever have to replace Hetty for any reason, something like this could destroy the team.

Callen knew that Granger had nothing but contempt for Eric. Yes, his computer skills were excellent, and he could run car locations and people IDs better than almost anyone. But Eric's disdain for wearing anything but loud shirts, board shorts, and flip flops stuck in the older man's craw. Wasn't there some sort of dress code that he should be following? If there wasn't, there should be. And the way that Eric and Nell seamlessly continued each other's sentences and thoughts when they led the briefings, that just was not normal. Granger didn't even think of them in human terms, calling them meerkats and other snide, disparaging names.

Callen's mental image showed one meerkat dropping down into the burrow while a second popped up her head. That would have to be how the assistant director saw Nell, whose presence in OSP seemed to confuse Granger at times, and at other times frighten him. She was a young female, who spent part of her time with Eric up in Ops, but had gone out on field assignment, sometimes even as his own partner. She could think inside and outside the box, and her gorgon stare was the equal of Hetty's. Granger swore up and down several times that Hetty was training Nell to take her place when she retired, because of age or a bullet, and the thought of a young Henrietta Lange scared the shit out of him.

But all of this was mostly pure guesswork on Callen's part. He had heard the assistant director comment on every member of the team. But you could never tell how serious the man was in his comments. He always looked serious, and no matter how hard Callen tried, he could not begin to crack that grim, miserable shell that Owen Granger had wrapped around himself.

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