Numb3rs: Defence

Disclaimer: I don't own them, I just borrowed them. Numb3rs and its characters are the property of those that created them. No copyright infringement intended. No financial reward gained. All real places and organisations are used in a fictional sense. Original characters and the storyline are mine however.

A/N: Your patience is to be rewarded, things are about to ramp up a notch...

CHAPTER FOUR

-100-1111-1110-

The first floor had been cleared as quickly as he expected. Moving up to the second floor he resigned himself to what was going to be a time consuming task. This floor, like the rest of the building, was mainly office space. There were several separate sections with individual offices and several larger areas similar to the bull pen with partitioned cubicles in each. The dark red door to Control he could ignore, moving on to the first section.

As he went from room to room, space to space on the floor Don wondered what the intruders could be after. There were no prisoners in the building to free, no important personages to attack. Nor was he aware of any agents involved in high profile cases at risk of assassination. He briefly considered the Russian Mafia, he was reasonably certain his name featured somewhere on their list of funeral wreaths to buy, but quickly discounted that theory. It had been quite a while since he had appeared on their radar. Anyway, an operation like that had to be planned. The intruders would have to know who was in the building and he was not scheduled to be there. Even the Russian Mafia would hesitate before attempting this sort of manoeuvre.

So that left the civilians and the security guard. The guard had been killed and the intruders had still breached the building, therefore the guard was not the target. What about Alexis or Mark? Or the techs? Of the civilians Don was most familiar with Alexis and could not see her being the target. Mark he didn't know as well and the techs not really at all. Surely if a single person was the target then it would be far easier to attack them outside the building. It just didn't make any sense.

Don stopped for a moment as he thought that through for a moment. His reasoning meant that it wasn't someone but something that the intruders wanted. Something that was only available inside the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office. Evidence? There were always cases on the go where the loss of evidence would cause the matter to be thrown out of court. With the court system these days it wouldn't matter how the evidence was lost. What about drugs? Clearing another office he shook his head, there had to be an easier way to get a supply of drugs, hitting a street dealer or a lab for instance. But still it was possible and he had to work accordingly. There was an evidence locker on each floor attached to each section and the main long term store up on the eighth floor. He would have to check them all. He started moving again. The intruders hadn't been in the building long, the quicker he got to them the better.

Another thought struck him. What about weapons? The armoury was in the sub-basement along with the firing range. For a moment he considered making his way back down and checking that before he proceeded further but changed his mind. The entrance to the armoury was either via the elevator or the second stairwell, not the one the wet track had led him to. That made it less likely that the armoury was the target. It was also far better secured than other areas in the building.

What else? What else was there that was only available inside this building and that was important enough to murder over? He checked the evidence locker, secure, before starting to clear another room when the desk caught his eye. More accurately, the computer on the desk caught his eye. Information. Access to the FBI database was restricted to password access and while some areas could be logged into offsite, a feature he knew Charlie had found handy, full access to the main database required the use of an internal terminal. He remembered that the system was down which was why the techs were still in the building.

"Control, 3695."

"Control."

"Where are the techs?"

"Fourth floor, lab two." Mark reported. "There is one in the third floor supervisor's office."

He'd forgotten that but now recalled seeing the tech leave their lab on the security monitor in Control. He was grateful for the reminder. "What's he doing there?"

"Apparently he'd tracked the fault to the supervisor's office in the Cyber Crime Unit just before the lockdown. He's been told to stay put."

Damn. Having them split up across two floors made his job harder. He'd been intending to make his way up to them, clearing ground behind him. Once he'd rounded them up he was planning on taking them back to Control, the most secure place he could leave them before continuing his search for the intruders. Now he'd have to make the trip to Control twice, greatly slowing his progress.

"They're secure?"

"They've been alerted and are locked in. They're working on the camera problem."

"Good. Is the system up?"

There was a pause, presumably as Mark tried to log into the main database. "Negative."

"Tell the techs to make sure it stays down. The intruders could be after the database. Tell them to lock out all passwords if necessary." Even in the security conscious FBI there were people who had trouble remembering passwords and would write them down. All it would take was for an intruder to find one to gain access. Then again, the convoluted, non-user friendly system might give an intruder pause as they tried to figure out how to find what they were after. For the first time he understood what had always seemed unfathomable, the unnecessarily difficult system had actually been designed that way for a reason. It wasn't just to make life difficult for agents legitimately trying to do their jobs as the legend held.

"Received."

"Have them check to see if any access is being attempted. Advise me of the location if they get one." He was at the next section door which buzzed again for him. Mark was consistently monitoring him and so far he'd not needed to call up for access. That he expected to change with the cameras failing.

"Received."

"3695 out."

He finished the last section, entered the stairwell and moved up to the third floor. The door buzzed and he moved through at a crouch, a waiting offender would be more likely to aim high. Again, no bullets greeted him. The tech was supposed to be in a supervisor's office. He wasn't going to call out for the man to identify himself, he needed to keep to his silent approach. For one he didn't want to scare the civilian but more importantly the floor hadn't been cleared, for all he knew the intruders could be nearby.

He popped up briefly to get an idea of the floor's layout. Grimacing he returned to his crouch, this was going to take some time. The floor was a maze of cubicles, walls and hallways providing excellent hiding places that was not going to make his life easy. Sound was also going to be an issue, at least on the other floors the separate sections had given him a small buffer, faint sounds could not travel as far. There was nothing for it but to get down to business and approach his search systematically.

He was making his painstaking way along the wall, checking the potential places of concealment in each cubicle he passed when his cell rang. The sound was incredibly loud in the almost silent office space causing him to start and his heart to pound. Idiot! Despite ordering all comms to be via his radio he'd still forgotten to turn the ringer off and leave it only on vibrate. He recovered from his automatic freeze and scrabbled at his belt, struggling to pull the phone from it's holder due to the overhanging vest, all the while it was ringing merrily away without a care to Don's attempt at stealth.

"Eppes." He snapped into the offending instrument after finally getting it off his belt and the damned ringing stopped.

"H-hey, Don." Charlie seemed a little taken aback at the abruptness of the answer. "Are you nearly done yet?"

Don pressed his back against the wall where he could watch both directions. "There's a problem…"

"Don, you promised," Charlie started, interrupting the other.

"Not now, Charlie!" Don hissed, trying to keep his voice down. With every floor he cleared it was just that little more likely he was going to come across the intruders. He also didn't want the tech on this floor to start wandering around after hearing his voice if he hadn't already after hearing the ringing. "There's been unauthorised access to the Field Office. I'm searching it now. I can't talk."

"Are you alright? Is there anything I can do? Who should I call?" The questions came rapid fire, echoing his older brother's terseness.

-1011-10101-10010-10100-

Kurt's head snapped up as he halted his stealthy movement. He crouched, listening a moment longer until he was sure but there could be no mistake, the sound was carrying clearly. He checked the men trailing behind him, all three of them had mirrored his actions and were facing the direction of the sound, weapons up and ready.

They looked at each other, each realising what the sound signified. There was an active cell phone nearby. They'd been on their way to check a slight click heard moments before, a click that could possibly have been a door. Now there was a cell phone leading Kurt to suspect that their worst case scenario might be about to play out, an agent working back late. That could cause a serious problem. They'd been assured that no agent would be in the building by this time and they'd not had any calls correcting that. As professionals though they were prepared for every eventuality and were hardly going to rely solely on their contact's word.

To that end they'd not come directly to the third floor, having stopped instead at each floor on the way up to conduct their own sweeps. They'd finished the first floor and were in the stairwell when the alert had sounded. The activation of the security systems had caused them to be trapped in the stairwell, the door to the second floor locked against them forcing them to call their contact for help. He wasn't able to tell them how they'd been discovered just that it was suspected there were intruders in the building. Even more cautious they'd searched the second floor as best they could, restricted by the need to remain in the areas covered by blinded cameras to avoid detection.

Again on reaching this floor they'd taken the time to make a very careful check, wanting to ensure that there would be no surprises before making their contact. With most of the cameras out they'd made better time and had been approaching the supervisor's office before the click and now the ringing phone had interrupted them.

Kurt pointed at the fourth man and issued a quiet order. "Matt, get to our contact and keep him quiet."

The black clad man nodded and moved off confidently, each man had memorised a schematic of this floor and knew it like the backs of their hands. It was not lost on the remaining three similarly dressed men that he was moving in the opposite direction from the phone ruling out their contact. The three split up, each taking a different route through the maze of partitions towards the sound coming from near the set of stairs they had not long exited. It suddenly stopped, suggesting it had been answered. There was only one way to be sure.

A few moments of stealthy movement and Kurt heard the voice just as he reached the corner of a hallway formed on one side by cubicles and the other by a real wall.

"I'm fine. I've called in for reinforcements." The hushed male voice floated around the corner.

He dropped to his knees and carefully peered around the wall. Luck was with him, the speaker was looking the other way. The agent's head started to turn and Kurt ducked back out of sight avoiding detection. He sat back for a moment considering.

That the man in the hall was an agent was not in doubt, not with the bullet resistant tactical vest with large white "FBI" lettering on the front and the weapon in the agent's hand. His experienced eye had picked out the second holstered on the vest. Kitted up like that also made it all the more obvious that the agent knew something was seriously wrong. Even worse the man had already called for back-up. The security guard, the agent must have found the dead guard. That answered the question as to how the alert had been raised. Kurt cursed inwardly at their increasing lack of fortune; this job was turning into a right mess.

All had been going well, they had arrived at the door in the alley and it had been unlocked as promised. They'd barely opened the door when everything almost came undone. They had been confronted by the guard who had been just as surprised as they were. The hapless man had been at the top of the stairs as the supposedly locked door opened right in front of him. With four of them against the lone guard the odds were in their favour to recover from the surprise first. Tony had won the race, his reflexes faster than the guard's, his silenced weapon firing twice in a classic double-tap taking the man out. This agent must have somehow found the body they'd tried to hide by dragging it the rest of the way out into the alley.

He cursed again and gently flicked the safety off his semi-automatic. With just a few seconds to think he came up with a less than ideal course of action. This had to be finished right now, killing a fed had not been part of the plan but they were too far in now. Kurt took a deep breath and eased back around the corner, raising the weapon and taking careful aim at the agent's unprotected head.

.