Disclaimer: I own nowt Numb3rs related.

A/N: Wow, guys, thanks for the reviews and alerts, I'm quite overwhelmed! I am now extremely nervous about posting the coming chapters, but I will try not to disappoint. Any constructive feedback welcomed!

I have probably taken some liberties along the way, so I'll apologise now, hope you enjoy.

Chapter One – No way.

David turned to Don. "What just happened?"

"I had to fire him."

"You had no choice Don." Megan backed her boss all the way.

"Doesn't mean I have to like it." Sighed Don.

"I just don't get it. Why would he throw his career away like that?" Liz was as confused as everyone else.

"I need to speak to him."

"That's not a good idea David."

"Megan, he's my friend, I have to hear from him what happened."
"David, you can't. There will be an internal investigation, he knew a suspect in a case and didn't say anything, there will be questions about just how much he knew."

"Hang on, you think he had something to do with the home invasions or the armed robberies that LAPD are investigating? No way!"

"No, I don't think he had anything to do with that, but you have to admit he's changed, just look at his behaviour over the last 3 weeks, coming in late, barely an apology. I cut him some slack because he had been on medical leave for 4 months, but I can't ignore this, it was a massive breach in protocol."

"You would have changed too if you had spent the best part of the last year being stalked only to have it end in being hit by a car then buried alive in a box!"

"Look, I understand you're angry, hell I am too, but he left me no choice." Don turned away from his team, he needed to speak to AD Wright, he had already had his ear chewed off by him this morning, now he needed to let him know that he had done as ordered.

"I need some air." David stated and left to spend some time processing what had just happened.

Colby unlocked his apartment door and slammed it behind him then threw his keys across his sitting room. He didn't want this. Why did they have to pick him? He wanted to go back four weeks and tell the ADIC and Chief of Police to shove it.

Colby was sitting on his sofa watching nothing much on the TV. He was bored, he had been off work for nearly 4 months and couldn't wait to go back next week, get back with the team, back to normal.

The buzzer for his door entry system went, he wondered who it could be and thought about not answering, but it might be one of his friends so he pulled himself from his comfortable position and picked up his door entry phone.

"Who is it?"

"Agent Granger, it's ADIC Wright, can I come up please?"

"Er, sure sir." Oh boy, what had he done now. He pressed the button that released the outer door and then unlocked his apartment door and waited. ADIC Wright was not alone. He was accompanied by a large man, probably in his 50's, he had authority written all over him. Damn, he was in real trouble.

"Agent Granger, don't look so worried, this is Chief of Police, Leonard Drummond." Colby stepped back admitting the two men into his inner sanctum and shook hands with the Chief of Police.

"Please, come in and sit down, can I get you anything?" He may have been stunned to have these two men in his home, but his Mom had taught him some manners.

"No, thank you, we need to talk to you and it's urgent." AD Wright informed him settling himself on the sofa.

"Um, OK." Colby seated himself in an armchair opposite them and waited, if he'd had any idea of the bombshell they were about to drop into his life he wouldn't have let them in.

"What we are about to tell you can go no further than this room. I have to make that clear from the start."

Colby's heart sank, this was not good, a conversation that started that way could only mean bad news though he wasn't sure how this involved him, however he nodded.

"We need you to go undercover for us."

"W..wh..what?" Never in a million years did he think it would be that bad.

AD Wright turned to the Police Chief. "Leonard, why don't you explain?"

"Agent Granger, may I call you Colby?"

No you may bloody not, was what he thought, what he said was. "Of course, Sir."

"Colby, we have a situation within LAPD, we have some rotten apples and I need to weed them out, to do that I need your help."

Mixed metaphors aside the man had Colby's attention, but for the life of him he wished he didn't. "I'm listening."

"You may have heard rumours of a new gang in town, I hate to say it, but it's true. They are still extremely small but they're selling guns. Not just handguns, Colby, but machine guns and rocket launchers. They may only be a few at the moment, but they are hardcore and mark my words they are going to try to take over the territory of other gangs. You know what that means."
"Turf wars." Colby said grimly.

Nodding the Chief carried on. "That's bad enough, but we think they are getting help from inside LAPD. I need a man to infiltrate the gang and try to find out who it is. That man is you."

"Why me? Putting aside the fact that I've just had the year from hell and want to get back to working with Agent Eppes and the team, all of Law Enforcement know I was a triple agent, nobody is going to accept me into a gang, especially if, as you suspect, there is someone from LAPD involved."

"You are the best man for the job Colby." Chimed in AD Wright. "You proved yourself during your 2 years undercover for Counter Intelligence."

"Sir, and I say this with all due respect, no bloody way. I am not putting my life on hold like that again. Due to my previous undercover work I don't think it would work and you would be signing my death warrant."

"Colby, we've thought about this very carefully, with the right cover story we could make it work."

"Right cover story? This I have to hear!" He didn't mean to be disrespectful, but really?!

"You will return to Agent Eppes' team as expected next week, over the coming weeks you will start to pull away from the team, you are disillusioned after all you've been through, culminating in your leaving under a dark cloud."

"Don and the team won't buy it."

"It will be up to you to sell it to them."

"It would take more than me being a pain in the arse for them to buy that."

"We can arrange for something else to happen."

"Like what?"

"We happen to know about an old school friend of yours who is involved in the home invasions your team are investigating. You will keep it from the team, we'll get LAPD to arrest him when you go to speak to him about it and Agent Eppes will have no choice but to fire you for a breach of protocol."

"Again, no, I'm sorry Sir, but what you're asking of me is impossible, not to mention unfair. I was promised that when the Chinese farce was done with I could go back to being a plain ole FBI Agent."

"Part of being an FBI Agent, if you don't mind me saying so AGENT Granger, is following orders."

"Wait, are you telling me that I have no choice?"

"I am telling you that an Agent could find himself assigned to the arse end of nowhere."

"Sir, you really aren't selling me on the idea either way, arse end of nowhere is better than dead with a needle in my chest, again." Colby resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Chief Drummond felt this wasn't going his way, he really needed Agent Granger's help and AD Wright wasn't making it any easier, he spoke up. "Colby, I understand this is a lot to take in, but there is nobody else."

"Chief Drummond, Sir, really, in the whole of LAPD and the FBI, I'm the only one?"

"We can't use any LAPD officers, we don't know who is involved, I am the only person at LAPD who knows about this operation. As for the FBI, we need someone with undercover experience, with a strong knowledge of weaponry. Between your time with the FBI and Army CID you have that. I need you to at least think about this, please?"

"I think you would be better using someone out of one of the other offices, someone who is not known to LAPD officers and gang members alike."

"One of the reasons we chose you is because you know the local area and the players."

"Hell, send in David." He sent up a silent apology for trying to land his partner in the line of fire.

"We thought of that, he's a fantastic agent with a long career ahead of him, but we need someone who is a bit, er, how can I put it?" The AD paused, grappling for the right words. "Less by the book."

"Sir, I have always played things by the book." He knew it was a white lie, but he did always try.

"Is that what you call sleeping with a potential witness?" The AD raised an eyebrow.

Shit, how had he found out about that. He was being backed into a corner, and he didn't like it.

"If, and it's a big if, I did this, the team have to be told. I will not lie to them again."

"No." Asserted AD Wright.

"Absolutely not." Chief Drummond added.

"Then I won't do it."

"Colby, you would put yourself at great risk if you told them. The only people that know about this operation right now are myself and AD Wright. The more people that are told the greater risk of your cover being blown."

He realised they were right, but he didn't like this one bit. "I need time to think about this."

"Of course you do, we'll come back tomorrow." Replied the AD.

Colby's mouth dropped open. 24 hours to decide what course his life was going to take, were these men mad?

"Sorry, but we can't give you any more time. We need to get this op off the ground before the gang gets bigger, it will get harder to infiltrate the bigger it gets."

Both men got up and left Colby sitting stunned. "We'll let ourselves out, I'll be in touch tomorrow."

Was he really going to do this? Man, what a choice. Go undercover, again, or end up in the arse end of nowhere as the AD had so eloquently put it, he had no doubt that the threat was real, or of course the third possibility was to quit, but then what would he do? Which ever way he thought about it his time with the team was finished. Damn it. What about the team? They said he couldn't tell them because it would put him in danger, but he needed them to know. In his heart he knew they'd forgiven him for the whole triple agent thing, but he doubted they'd forgive him lying to them again. If he went along with this, oh god, he was going to do it wasn't he, then he would do it his way, FBI and LAPD protocols be damned. He knew there was no way any of the team would tell anyone else, they would never do anything to put him in danger. He would just have to figure out the best way to do it without getting them all into a lot of trouble, he didn't want to lose the team their jobs as well.

The next day when the AD dropped by Colby gave him his answer. "I'll do it, but I'm not happy at the way you have gone about this, Sir."

"I understand that, but we had to do anything we could to get you to agree. We'll start to put the plan into action to get you fired, it will be about a month or so before it happens."
"Well that's something to look forward to." Stated Colby sarcastically.

"Just make sure you start off on the wrong foot once you get back into the office next week." With that the AD left.

Colby could now spend the next week worrying about how he was going to pull this off convincingly. He knew he would need to wait until after Don had fired him before he could tell the team otherwise they would try to talk him out of it. Once he was in play they'd have no choice but to go along with it.

Colby put his head in his hands at the memory of how he had been more or less conned into taking this assignment. He needed to figure out the best way to tell the team what was going on, and soon. He had thought of one way he could do it, but he was sure the AD and Chief would not be amused at how he was going to make a splash in the LA gang scene. They wanted him to slip in quietly and unobtrusively, but he had told them, in no uncertain terms, that if he was going to do this, he was going to have to make a big noise about turning 'dark side' as he put it. That noise would involve some information from them about the players, then he would pick his mark and see where it would lead him.

This was it, this was the day he was going to make his mark on the LA gang scene, well at least he hoped it was. If he had judged this even slightly wrong then he was likely to end up in a coffin for real. He watched his target, one Adam Archer. The man had sandy blonde hair and was muscular but slim. He was new to LA and seemed to be quite far up the food chain as far as the new gang were concerned. Colby also knew that LAPD and the FBI were running a joint gang task force and that the FBI contingent was being supervised by Special Agent Don Eppes. LAPD was being led by Lieutenant Gary Walker, a fact that made Colby slightly nervous over what he was about to do. He respected the man and didn't think he'd take kindly to having an ex-FBI agent going slightly nuts at one of his suspects. He looked around and easily spotted the FBI and LAPD cars, he hoped that the gang members weren't so observant. He sighed heavily and decided if he was ever going to do this now was the time.

He pulled himself up to his full height, rolled his shoulders back and confidently strode across the street, he had his phone in his hand and was pretending to send a text on it, not looking where he was going, or so it would appear to the casual observer. As planned he collided, hard, with Adam Archer.

"Hey man, why doncha watch where the hell you're going?" Demanded Archer.

"Dude, sorry, I didn't see ya."

"How about I make sure the next time you pay more attention?" He snatched Colby's phone, threw it to the floor and stamped on it. "There ya go, that should help." He sneered.

Expecting just this reaction after having researched the man Colby had picked up an old phone he had laying around. He narrowed his eyes at the man before him. "Oh, no, you didn't just do that."

"Yeah I did, whatcha gonna do about it?"
"Knock your head off your shoulders, that's what."

"Oooo tough guy, you have no idea who you're dealing with."

The guy was all talk and Colby needed to ensure that a scuffle ensued so that he got arrested so rather than respond with words he let his fist do the talking and punched the smug gang banger in the face, full force. The man's nose exploded and blood flowed freely.

"Shit!" Adam was frozen, nobody had ever stood up to him like that, he was kind of at a loss for a moment, then he retaliated, drawing a knife. This was also something that Colby had anticipated, but even so the sight of the blade glinting in the LA sun gave him a moment of pause about the wisdom of his actions, too late now, he was about to become embroiled in a fight with an armed man.

The knife missed him by mere millimetres, but in order for his plan to work he was going to have to allow Adam to save some face.

Across the road Gary, David and Don had been watching Archer, waiting to see who else he made contact with, they were trying to get an idea of the structure of the gang and how many members there currently were. In the network that Charlie was putting together Archer was six down from the top and could lead them to number five, at least that was their hope, they would then use number five to get to four and so on until they had numero uno in their sights. They would then take down the gang leader thereby collapsing the network.

"Don, is that Colby?" Asked David.

"What? Where?"

"Over there, just coming round the corner, about to cross the road."

"Yeah, it is."

"His apartment is miles away, what's he doing here?"

"Maybe your boy Granger has fallen further than you thought Eppes." Stated Gary, he had been told about what happened, he had to admit he was as surprised as everyone else.

"Don.." Megan's voice came over the radio.

"We've spotted him. Everyone sit tight." Ordered Don. All they could do was watch to see what unfolded before them, Colby was no longer his responsibility.

It was with a sense of disbelief and awe that they watched their former team mate barrel into a known gang member, then with a sense of horror as a knife came out.

"We're going to have to take them Don. Colby is out numbered and Archer has a knife."

"We do and they'll know we've been watching." Warned Gary.

"Give it a minute, if there is any danger of serious injury we'll intervene, but we'll have to be smart about it." Don added, no sooner were the words out of his mouth than Archer's knife caught Colby in his shoulder.