Everything That Can Go Wrong

PenPatronus

Chapter 2 of 5

Something Round

Hetty locked herself in the bathroom and set an alarm on her watch. For precisely five minutes she permitted herself to feel her emotions. She wept. She sobbed so hard that a bystander might have misinterpreted the convulsions for a seizure. Some tears were for Sam, but most were for Callen. She was so fond of that man that if she could, she would put him in a castle guarded by a moat of fire ants, cover him in bubble wrap, surround him with bunnies and protect him with a platoon of bigger fire ants.

He was a good man. He was a special man. More than that, he was precious. So very precious to so very many.

Hetty wanted Callen safe. She wanted to see him sleeping peacefully, and to place a mother's kiss on his forehead.

She also wanted to hang his attackers with nooses made from their own spines.

The alarm beeped. Hetty wiped her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Clothing adjusted, posture corrected, makeup reapplied, hair and features defaulted to normal, she strode back into Ops just as Deeks and Kensi returned from the hospital. They both started talking at once so loudly and so quickly that Hetty reached up and placed her palm against Deeks' lips. "Report, Agent Blye," she requested.

Kensi's left temple was bruised and dried blood as thick as lipstick covered her mouth. She started to speak but Deeks declared, "Callen's tummy saved us!" Hetty, Nell, Eric and Kensi stared at him. Deeks blinked and rubbed the bandage on the back of his head. "Sorry," he said, "blame that on head trauma. What I mean, uh, is that Kensi and I would've been standing right where that grenade landed if Callen hadn't convinced us to go pick up some pizza."

"We were already outside," Kensi explained. "Missed the full brunt of the explosion. When I turned around I saw Sam and Callen falling through the hole in the boatshed floor."

"No, no," Deeks said, wagging his finger. "They rolled. Sam's clothes were on fire. Callen grabbed him and rolled them both into the water."

"By the time Deeks and I got to our feet they were nabbed by a pair of males with underwater scooters and extra oxygen tanks." Kensi clapped her hands together once. "At least we know they wanted them alive."

Eric shook his head. "That's why the cameras didn't see any sign of them. Everything happened underwater."

Hetty turned to Nell. "We need satellite images for the entire coastline. Those scooters can go pretty far on a full charge. And depending on how much oxygen they had, they could've gone to another pier, a boat or an offshore oil rig for all we know." Hetty pointed a forefinger. "Find them. Quickly." She turned to Deeks and Kensi. "You two need some more rest. Go, now."

Deeks suddenly went wide-eyed. "I bet you were a freaking fireball in your twenties, Henrietta." He rolled his tongue across the "r" with a flourish, and winked.

Hetty smiled patiently and patted his arm. "Lots of rest," she said, "but no more drugs…"

It was the older of the two teenage boys, Jake, who returned to the cell hours later with food and water. When he saw the scowling Sam, Jake took a Sig Saucer out of his sweatpants pocket and pointed it with one shaking hand. Sam doubted that the kid had ever held a gun in his life, let alone shot one, but he put his body between the weapon and Callen's unconscious form anyway. "S-stay back," Jake ordered.

Sam held his hands up in surrender. "Jake, right?"

Jake unlocked the cell door. "I'm not supposed to talk to you."

"Fine." Sam crossed his arms against his chest. "But telling me you can't talk is talking, so, I guess you broke that rule." Jake opened his mouth to argue, froze, and shut it again. He rolled a pair of water bottles into the cell like a bowler. "That other kid. Darren. He's your brother."

Jake tossed in a half-eaten bag of chips. "Yeah. Kid brother. Pain in the ass little brother."

"This pain in the ass is my little brother," Sam said with a nod at his partner. "His name's G. I'm Sam."

Jake snorted. "You two don't look like brothers."

"We're brothers in every way that matters," Sam said. "Know what I mean?"

"I guess." Jake handed over the entrée: a plastic bowl of applesauce.

"You guess what?"

"I guess you mean you'd kill for him?"

"It means I'd die for him. Twice."

"So, what?" Jake re-locked the door but kept the gun up.

Sam studied the kid for a long minute. "G here was an orphan, too." Jake's jaw didn't drop but his lips did part. "He had it rough. Went from foster home to foster home, orphanage to orphanage. Sometimes it was safer on the streets." The gun dropped a few inches. Sam risked stepping closer to the door. "At least on the streets nobody wanted answers he couldn't give. No social workers writing on forms, no cops asking why he wasn't in school… He was alone."

Jake snorted. "You starve on the streets."

Another step. "Is that why you and Darren are here with these people? Because they feed you?"

"Because they don't ask questions!" The gun ascended as Jake's brow descended. "And I ain't alone! We ain't! The gang's our family."

Sam shifted from "father" back to "agent." "What gang, Jake? What's the name of the gang?"

"Ain't telling you shit!" Jake spit on the floor. He was down the hall and around the corner before Sam could call him back.

"Nice try," said a groggy voice. Sam pivoted to see G's blue eyes blinking. "Is that applesauce?"

Sam sighed. He scooped up the bowl and helped G into a sitting position. Callen managed to stay upright under his own strength for a minute before he toppled and had to be propped up against Sam's shoulder. "Geeze, G, you smell like seaweed."

"Like you don't need deodorant," Callen mumbled. "And a breath mint."

"How you feeling?" Sam asked. He kept his expression neutral except for his flaring nostrils.

Callen stared at an unnamed spot on the floor. "Weren't we in the middle of a game?"

"G, if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, just tell me what they did to you or if I can do anything to make you more comfortable or—"

"I'll give you another guess," Callen said. "I spy with my little eye something… round."

"G—"

"Sam." Callen shuddered. He closed his eyes and took three deep breaths. When he spoke again it was in a whisper followed by a sniffle. "Sam, I'm not sure if I-I…" Goose bumps bloomed across Sam's skin. Something in the air shifted – like a storm front had just passed over. "I saw two Caucasian men in their mid to late 50's and about a dozen teenage boys – all ages, all races, all skinny street kids. Gang tats and graffiti everywhere but nothing I recognized. They tied me to a chair in front of a video camera and used knives and hammers."

Sam felt heat rise from his boots to the top of his skull. "What do they want?" he whispered.

"Don't know. They didn't ask any questions. They didn't make any demands to me or to the camera. They didn't even bother to make sure that the camera had a good angle on my face."

Sam frowned. "Doesn't make sense. The point of torture is to get information. The point of filming torture is to prove to someone higher up that there's a hostage. It's not like it's a snuff film. We weren't random targets."

"So what do they want?" Callen wondered.

Sam carefully rolled the thin tin foil off of the bowl of applesauce. With no spoon or straw, with Callen barely able to stay awake let alone feed himself, Sam had to rest the carton on G's lower lip and gently tip it into his mouth. He did the same with the water, giving G both bottles. It was Callen who eventually broke the contemplative silence. "Not the bowl," he whispered, "or the bottle caps."

"Huh?"

"They're not what's round. They're not what I spied."

Sam gently adjusted Callen's body so that his partner relaxed back against his chest like he was a beach chair. "Something round, something round," he muttered, playing along. "G, we're in a prison. There's really not much to see."

"What a poor excuse for a federal agent you are," G muttered. "I bet Deeks would've solved the case by now. We should send you back to training – haze you in again, go through Interrogation 101, bomb squad… stuff…"

"Hazing…" Sam whispered. The proverbial light bulb went off in his head. "G, what if this is a gang initiation? Gangs make kids beat up, sometimes murder another gang member as their rite of passage into the group. But if a gang's real enemies are feds, then feds are who they'd attack. It would be too dangerous for the leaders to be near the hostage so they have the initiates send a recording. G, that's it! Shit if I know if that helps us but that's it!" Sam gently shook Callen's body. "G?"

"Sorry Sam… Kinda tired…" Callen went limp and slumped against his partner. His ragged breaths turned shallow in a restless sleep.

"Guess we'll chat later," Sam said to deaf ears. Suddenly fear went through him like a bolt of lightning. For a moment he couldn't breathe or think. For a moment he was paralyzed.

And then Sam found Callen's pulse. It was like a massage against his fingertips. Calming.

To Be Continued