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Burnt Goose

Chapter 11

Even though G wasn't feeling up to the trip to work, Hetty insisted on him coming to NCIS Headquarters to open the second safe. On one hand he was thankful the two safes no longer resided at his house. He hoped the kidnappers wouldn't be searching his home again, but that idea didn't pan out the way he imagined it would. During his restless sleep, he dreamed about golf and then Hetty chasing him with a weapon the remainder of it.

Inside the archive room at NCIS Headquarters Los Angeles, Sam and G sat opposite the black, double-doored, gun safe which had been excavated from G's garage floor.

"Combination?" Sam asked his partner.

"Okay, this is more stupid than the other one, your birthday and year."

"Seriously?"

"I figured if anything happened to me you'd eventually figure out both of them. And I gave you enough clues."

"Clues?"

"Remember the names on the ski masks?"

Sam eyed him and dialed in the numbers on the combination lock.

"You still don't get it? Look at the name on the safe." G thought about the coincidence, the name on the guy's ski mask was the same one on the safe. How many times does that happen? The thought cycled through his mind once before he decided to snap a picture of the ski mask.

Sam shook his head. "Too simple even for me and yet a smart clue. That's probably why it went right over my head. Ready?"

"I was ready before I got shot." G grabbed the handle on the right and pulled open the door.

Together they opened the gun safe.

"I thought you said one detonator," Sam said. "I wondered why the huge gun safe."

G remembered the short time frame he had before those people hunted him down and tried to take back their property. It took slightly less than a week to come up with a gun safe large enough and sturdy enough to hold six heavy weapons. Burying it was another story and took more time than he had allotted for the task. "Yeah, well, I forgot to mention six defunct nuclear devices," G said.

"A little oversight, is that it?"

"They're defunct."

"Meaning?"

"They're missing their keyed detonators, and these guys attempted to obtain them through unscrupulous means."

"How?"

"They hinted to the possibility of using 3-D printer to replicate the detonators."

"You overheard this conversation."

"Nope, I was front and center during the discussion," G said. "After they revealed their plans, I knew I had to do something or risk the start of World War III."

"Seriously, WWIII?"

"The way they were talking I suspected they decided to use them in several countries simultaneously."

Hetty entered the archive room. "Gentlemen have you retrieved the detonator?" She peered inside the gun safe and her jaw slacked open. "What in blazes is—"

"I can explain."

"You've got more than explaining to do," she said. "Director Vance and SECNAV have caught wind of your shenanigans."

Sam covered his mouth with a hand.

"You might think this is funny, Mr. Hanna, but your partner's goose is burnt."

It was G's turn to stifle a laugh.

"Don't you mean cooked?" Sam asked.

"No, in this case I definitely mean burnt." She faced her lead agent. "I'll need a full report on my desk by noon today."

"Noon? Hetty that's only a couple of hours away and—"

"And you'll comply or you'll have to answer directly to SECNAV."

"But Hetty I'm not 100% and—"

"Get 100%!" She got in his face, admonishing him with a finger, and then she flipped on her heels and left the archive room.

"I think she's just a tad angry."

"A tad? At least she didn't rip me a new one." G guided his walker over to a chair. He sat down and removed his Surface laptop from its protective cover. "I guess I'd better get started."

"You call that not ripping you a new one? She definitely put you in your place."

"Yeah, in a hot oven and coming out burnt."

Sam chuckled. "I'll join you in a minute. Need any coffee?"

"Got any stimulates besides coffee?" G winked at him.

"Donuts."

"Don't need the sugar rush." G opened the tablet and started writing his report. Several times he nodded off and caught himself before he typed in the wrong words. Not that he couldn't correct them later, but putting in more effort required energy G sorely lacked.

Fifteen minutes later Sam entered the archive room with his laptop and sat in the other chair.

G eyed the food in his partner's hand. "Bring some for me?"

"Thought you could use something with protein." He handed G one half of his turkey sandwich.

"Oh man, this stuff makes me conk out."

"You'd better not or Hetty might threaten to do something else to you."

"I don't believe there's anything worse than having my goose burnt in an oven."

"Talking to SECNAV yourself?"

"Well, you've got a point there," G said, setting aside his Surface to eat his sandwich. "That wouldn't be my first choice." Only once in his career at NCIS had he been required to talk directly to SECNAV, and the guy wasn't exactly the friendliest man. G wanted nothing to do with another one of those chinwags.

"Personally, it would be my last choice."

"I thought you made me a sandwich before we left the house."

"It's in your refrigerator for when you get back."

"Man, I could use that right now. This half of sandwich just isn't cutting it for me."

"Want me to order something for you?"

"Lasagna."

"You're hooked on Italian?"

"Ever since I got out of that hospital it's all I can think about eating." Something about the smell of Italian spices made him hungry for lasagna. The hospital's food proved to be a horrible change in his diet. It was better than what his kidnappers had offered him each day; those torturers must've written the book on how to make someone puke by just looking at food. Every time he ate the crap they served him he gagged on it for the first five minutes before he attempted to swallow it. Not only was the taste disgusting, a cross between a heaping teaspoon of salt and the bland taste of plain oatmeal, but the smell made his eyes water.

"I think I'll order for our team and especially for Hetty."

"Think you can placate… Hetty." As usual she possessed the habit of entering a room when she was being talked about. Maybe she was endowed with extrasensory perception.

"Director Vance wants to speak with you privately," Hetty said, coming closer to her lead agent.

"Right now?" He finished off the last of the sandwich and got up to follow her.

"Now you've done it." Sam smirked.

G made a face at his partner and pushed his walker after his supervisor.

She stopped near the shooting range. When he entered the room, G's jaw dropped open. He assumed Hetty meant by a secure line not in person.

"I'll be a short time with you because I know you can't stand too long," Director Vance said. "Hetty told me we won't be disturbed here." He locked all of the doors and came back to face his agent. "You were undercover when you discovered this plot yet you never put that in a report."

G swallowed hard, wishing he now had accepted Sam's offer for coffee. "Before I could even start the report I was kidnapped and tortured by their… faction, sir."

"Is it a faction, Mr. Callen?"

"For lack of a better word, sir."

"And your report will be on my desk by noon?"

"Yes, sir, I was working on it."

"I expect your research into this faction to be included in that report." Director Vance flipped on his heels and left the shooting range.

G unfolded the Rollator's seat and sat down. My goose is more than burnt on the top. It is now crispy and inedible. Exhaustion started to set in about thirty minutes ago, and there wasn't much he could do about it. G fought with odd nightmares most of the night. Sam dragged him out of bed after only six hours of sleep.

After gaining some strength, G guided his walker back to the archive room and stood in the doorway catching his breath.

Sam looked up from his laptop. "You don't look so hot."

"I feel like total crap." He entered the room and hesitated to sit on the chair. "I don't know if I can do this."

Sam helped G into the chair. "Okay, what just happened?"

"He's here at NCIS Headquarters."

"Director Vance?"

"No, the Easter Bunny."

"And you just got called into the office, so to speak."

"Yeah, and I'm exhausted and I didn't sleep well after last night and I don't think I can—"

"Easy, man, just sit back and let me carry some of this load," Sam said. "I ordered plenty of Italian for everyone including him. Maybe that will appease the gods."

"I seriously doubt that," G said. "He wants me to research the faction, well, I called it a faction, and he wants me to confirm that it is a faction."

"Slow down."

"I can't because I have three hours to get this report finished and the research completed and I… can't do it alone."

"That's why you've got a team, G."

He sighed. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," Sam said, taking out his cellphone and dialing up their two expert researchers. "Nell, Eric, Callen needs that group, where he went undercover without me, investigated and verified as to its status, faction or some other entity."

"We've started working on it less than five minutes ago after Director Vance gave the orders," Eric said.

"What?"

G motioned for Sam to hand him the cellphone. "He's requested all of us to research this? Strange." He wondered if Kensi and Deeks were in the bullpen repeating the same assignment.

"That's odd," Nell said.

"Okay, Sam and I will start our own research." G disconnected the cellphone. "Talk about sly.

"The only way I'm going find out is to discover the reason myself ,with your help of course." In reality he understood why and now that was going to be revealed to his whole team and Director Vance. G needed to remember where the intel was in his notes. He opened his laptop and started with the information he'd gathered over a year and a half ago before going undercover. "Sam, I'm sending you my intel on these people. Two heads are better than one on this project."

Sam and G sat back in their chairs and read through the copious notes G had compiled.

After about fifteen minutes, G started to nod off to sleep.

"Hey, none of that."

"That tryptophan in the turkey is putting me to sleep."

"Don't you mean the burnt goose," Sam said with a straight face.

G smirked. "And I desperately need food," he said. "When's the food supposed to be here?"

"Around noon."

"Great. Is everything scheduled for noon?"

"Not burning your goose."

"Well, at least one thing is off the books." But only if he finished the report. With his energy level waning, the odds of finishing either one would be next to impossible without a couple of shots of coffee. "When you get a chance I could use that coffee you offered earlier."

"Not a problem. You wrote several times in your notes that you believed this group was a faction. Can you tell me what that means?"

"Yeah, they splintered off a larger organization due to a dissension in the ranks of the original group."

"Obviously, man, but I need to know what group."

"I've kept that to myself for reasons," G said. "They were good decisions at the beginning of the ops and worse toward the end of it. If I don't share the intel I think Director Vance is going to rip me a new one instead of Hetty."

"Okay, lay it on me."

G lowered his voice and leaned toward his partner. "A right wing political group."

"Okay, that's odd, especially these days."

The last time someone splintered off group, the United States Army, was Timothy McVeigh along with his two co-conspirators. "I thought so too until I discovered they both had similar beliefs except for how do deal with certain aspects of their belief system."

"You're saying these are Christians?"

"I wouldn't go that far, Sam, an off-kilter, Christian-like organization."

"You mean like neo-Nazism?"

"Not that far out either, but close." Too close for his comfort while he had gone undercover inside their loosely organized group.

"The original one?"

"Yes, and this group skewed off of them."

"Cockamamie."

"I don't think I'd put that in my report, Sam."

"Why not? Makes them sound farther out than the average faction."

"I don't think there's such thing as an average faction." G snickered.

Sam chuckled. "I dare you to put it in there."

"I hope Director Vance has a sense of humor or my goose is never coming out of that oven, and Hetty will need to call the fire department."


I got sidetracked with editing my memoir. Now I'll get back to this story.