Dark Corners

PenPatronus

Chapter 3 of 5

Broken Men

Six Months Ago

Callen watched the scratches in the cement floor go by in a dizzy whirlwind as he was dragged from the dock by a pair of bickering teenage boys. "You think Papa will let us ride in one of those underwater scooters?" the youngest asked the oldest in a hopeful voice.

"I bet he'll let me, but not you!"

The boys dragged Callen over a threshold and dumped him, face down, in front of two pairs of black leather shoes. After the boatshed exploded, after he tackled Sam into the water to douse his burning clothes, after being snatched and drugged and taxied around Venice beach in an underwater scooter, Callen had neither the strength nor the motivation to see who wore those shoes.

One foot kicked out and rolled Callen onto his back. The movement shook loose the seawater still pooled in his lungs and he started to cough. His clothes were soaked wet with saltwater and Callen caught the distinctive whiff of rotten clams. No cell phone or weapon remained in his pockets.

"You've aged," a familiar gravelly voice said in Russian. "And you've healed."

Callen blinked past the stinging saltwater in his eyes and squinted up at the two figures leaning over him like giants.

"You are no longer a broken man. What cured you? A woman?"

"Not the woman you're thinking of," Callen croaked. The two faces came into focus. Nazarov – slim and stern, salt-and-pepper hair, wearing the exact same broken eyeglasses. On his left, Portnov – short, muscular, blond. "How did you find me?" Callen asked.

Nazarov started to pace around him. "That implies that we lost track of you. You misconstrue patience for ineffectiveness."

"My mistake." Callen wrenched his elbows under his back and forced himself to sit up. "Where's my partner?"

"Right there." Portnov pointed at something behind G's shoulder. Callen turned to find a small, fuzzy, black-and-white television that said "Live Feed" in the corner. It showed a prison cell the size of the NCIS bullpen, and an unconscious Sam Hanna handcuffed to a pipe.

G climbed unsteadily to his feet and approached the TV. Sam was injured, but not fatally. What he needed more than anything was aloe for the burns. "What happened all those years ago," Callen said, "what I did to you… has nothing to do with him. If you brought me here to kill me then do it, but let him go."

Suddenly Portnov and Nazarov grabbed G and forced him to sit on a rickety metal chair. They tethered him to it with rope and bungee cords and barbed wires that scratched his skin. Nazarov rambled, hot breath in G's ear, as he worked. "I will be the death of you. That is a promise. But first I will do to you what you did to me. Torture, yes. Imprisonment, yes. But more importantly, Agent G Callen, you will see me shoot someone you love. You will watch him die at your feet."

Callen opted for honesty. "Shooting your wife was an accident. It was a mistake, one I will never, ever stop regretting. If I could—"

Nazarov silenced G with a punch across his jaw. "We were mere storm troopers in the Russian mob," he hissed. "We did not deserve what you put us through."

"No, you didn't," Callen agreed. He spit blood onto the floor. "Nobody does. And like you said, I've been cured. I am no longer a broken man."

Portnov took a blowtorch out of a toolbox. "Unfortunately for you, we are."

Callen shrunk away from the flames. "Torturing me won't make you feel better. I know."

"Broken men feel nothing," Nazarov growled. "I do not expect to feel any better or any worse. We do this for justice. Justice for Violet, and for my child."

"Him I understand," Callen said to Portnov while cocking his head at Nazarov. "But you – is this just loyalty to your partner? Working for almost fifteen years to find me because of another man's wife. Why?"

Portnov's nostrils flared. "This man's wife," he said at a hissed whisper, "was my sister."

Present Day

Deeks and Kensi broke half a dozen laws as they sped from the boatshed back to the office. What they found inside was an extremely grumpy Sam Hanna lying on the couch with Hetty, Eric and Nell hovering over him. "Is G with you?" Sam asked when Kensi and Deeks joined the group. He tried to sit up but Hetty put a hand on his chest and guided him back down.

"No, why isn't he with you?" Kensi demanded.

"Don't ask," Eric warned.

"Nazarov and Portnov are behind this. We think Callen's going after them alone." Nell held up the handwritten letter. "He must know something we don't because there's no meeting place in this."

Hetty suddenly snatched the paper out of Nell's hand, leaving behind a shallow paper cut. Her eyes flitted down the page once, twice, three times. "Mr. Hanna," she said, "Mr. Callen read this to you – he translated it?"

"Yeah."

Hetty sighed. "I'm afraid he did some creative revising. There most certainly is an address here. Among other things…"

"I'm gonna kill him," Sam muttered for the hundredth time.

"Where are they meeting?" asked Deeks. Hetty told him and his eyes lit up with recognition. "I know that place. It's Clearfield, the mall. I went there all the time when I was a kid."

"The mall shut down five years," Kensi said. "It's completely abandoned."

"Sounds like the perfect place to set a trap," said Hetty. She looked at her watch: 11:26pm. "We have half an hour to get there and it's 45 minutes away. No time to call in a squad – no time to grab anything but guns – looks like the six of us are going after him ourselves."

Eric raised his hand like a school kid. "Even – even me?"

"Especially you, Mr. Beale."

Callen knew it was the ultimate insult to drug his best friend and steal his car, but he wanted his very last drive to be in the Challenger.

G was a block away from the mall when an ambulance came speeding from the opposite direction to a small crowd gathered around a bus stop. Curious, and doubting coincidence, G pulled off to the side of the road and retrieved binoculars from the glove box. His heart plummeted when he recognized the unconscious woman on the ground.

"Vitals are good," Callen overheard the paramedic say when he rushed across the street. "One puncture wound in the neck. All right, let's get her on the gurney."

Callen put his body in front of the paramedic, demanding his attention. "What hospital are you taking her to?"

"You know this woman?"

Callen flashed his badge. "Her name is Michelle Hanna. Her family – where should I tell them to find her?"

"What do you know about her health? Any allergies?"

"She's in perfect health. Allergic to latex. And pineapple. She was drugged?"

"Looks that way." The EMT told him what hospital, then insisted that he step aside. Callen stayed at Michelle's side as long as he could. His stomach was eating itself up with anxiety. If Sam had just left when that powder burst from that envelope, he would've been home to prevent this. Now his wife was drugged and – G knew without question – his daughter was being held hostage in that mall.

G Callen had no son for Nazarov to strangle, but he loved Sam's ten-year-old like a daughter.

"I'll find Nicole," Callen whispered to Michelle before she was out of sight. "I'll save her. I swear I'll save her."

The ambulance left and the crowd followed a few minutes later. Callen left a note for Sam on the Challenger dash, loaded up on weapons and supplies and marched to the mall. He did three laps – looking for ways to get in and out, noting anything that could be used as a weapon, calculating how long it would take to run from one section of the mall to another and checking for wires and explosives. Precisely at midnight he unsheathed his gun and walked into the only entrance that wasn't boarded up tight: the food court. It was triangular, and three corridors branched off from it. Upended dirty, rusty tables and chairs were scattered around, some piled against a still merry-go-round. The glass elevator that led up to the second floor and down to the first hung precariously from only only cable. Two escalators, as dead as the merry-go-round, flanked the elevator.

When it was open and thriving, Clearfield mall was known best for one thing: the gigantic 2-story aquarium. A glass tube of water 2 stories high and twenty yards wide stood in the center of the food court. It used to house a variety of fish, reptiles and crustaceans. People came from miles around not only to shop and eat fresh seafood, but also to watch the flocks of polka-dotted jellyfish. Children loved to run around the third floor. It was glass, and completely see-through, so they could look straight down into the tank. Now curtains were wrapped around the glass – curtains that were nothing more than blue tarps. The tank should've been emptied and dried five years before but G could smell the water in it. The Russians refilled the tank – but why?

A pair of overhead lights hanging from the domed ceiling suddenly burst alive and illuminated the room. Levers were pulled, hooks unhooked, and the dusty tarps clothing the tank slowly crumpled to the left to drape over one of the escalators. "Dammit," G whispered at the sight waiting for him. "Dammit."

"Uncle G!" 10-year-old Nicole Hanna screamed when she saw him. "Uncle G, help – help!" Adrenaline surged so hot and so fast through G's body that he thought he might fly. Nicole wore jeans, a long-sleeved green shirt, and her black hair in a tight braid. The clever girl, the daughter of a Navy SEAL, had kicked off her shoes. They must have been weighing her down as she tread water inside the giant fish tank.

"Baby girl, I'm coming!" G shouted at her. "I'm coming for you!" He sheathed his gun and sprinted up the rickety escalator.

Two steps from the top he came face to face with a pair of guns. Portnov and Nazarov sneered at him. "I'm afraid that the two boys were not very good swimmers," Nazarov said to Callen. "In fact they couldn't swim at all – I suppose no one ever taught them. Oh, well."

That hot adrenaline in G's veins boiled over. "You didn't have to kill them," he spat. "There was no reason to – none!"

"Now, this little one, she's a swimmer." Portnov gestured at Nicole with the barrel of his gun. "She's been floating in there for an hour! Must be tired, the poor thing. Must be very tired."

"G—" Nicole coughed on a mouthful of water. Her brown eyes were lidded with exhaustion and her limbs, though they moved, rowed slowly. While her right leg kicked, her left leg hung limp. G wasn't sure if it had cramped up or if she was just rationing her strength but either way, she was weakening by the second.

Callen ripped his jacket off and tossed it over the edge of the escalator. He took out the SIG in his pocket, the one sheathed in his pants and the third one latched around his calf. He tossed everything aside – including his phone the bobby pin on his belt loop. "I'm unarmed," G told them. "I'm here." He spread his arms out like wings. "You have me. This is over. I'm not even going to fight back. Let her go and kill me. I don't care anymore – I don't even care – just let Nicole go!"

Nazarov's eyes lit up like Christmas. "Good," he whispered. "Very good. You do love her like a daughter. You truly do." Tears stung Callen's eyes. His throat swelled like he was having an allergic reaction. "Tell you what. I will give you something you never gave me. A chance to hold her before she dies." Nazarov lowered his gun.

Callen bolted up the rest of the escalator, ran towards the open hatch in the glass floor and dove into the water. He came up under Nicole's body, wrapping one arm around her waist and the other around her shoulders. Simultaneously she went limp and burst into tears, every square inch of her body shaking from a combination of relief and terror and fatigue. Nicole had a long slim neck, wide cheekbones and a tiny round nose that she pressed against G's neck. "I got you, I got you," Callen whispered to her. "I got you, baby girl." Callen kicked his feet as hard as he could so that Nicole's whole upper body stayed above the water.

A minute passed. Nicole caught her breath and wrapped her arms around Callen's neck. "Uncle G?" she sniffled.

"Yeah, baby?" Callen gasped, breathless. He'd been trying to find them a way out but the water level was so far below the hatch that he could never hope to reach up and grab it. The smooth, slimy walls were three inches thick.

"I wish my dad was here."

"So do I." G hugged her tight and kissed her cheek.

A bullet whizzed past Nicole's neck and pierced Callen's shoulder. It was a large slug, a slow slug. Guaranteed to not exit Callen's body and punch a hole through the glass. G bit his lip to keep from screaming into Nicole's ear. He looked up and watched Nazarov and Portnov sit down by the hatch. With their feet dangling and their guns in their laps they looked like a pair of fishermen on a pier.

G rotated his body, turning his back on the guns and, in the process, completely shielding Nicole's body with his. Nicole started to cry again. She squeezed Callen's neck to tight he could barely breathe.

The water blushed red.

To Be Continued