CHAPTER NINE
"Deeks is on his way in." Kensi's voice sounded loud in the silent bullpen as she re-entered. "I didn't give anyone the full details, just that we're missing an agent, but LAPD have offered all the help we need."
"Good," Sam grunted heavily. He finally sat down, having been pacing the corridor menacingly for the past few minutes. "We need to plan what our next move is."
As if on cue, Nell came into the bullpen area with her tablet. "LAPD may be more involved in our case than they realise," she said by way of opening.
"How do you mean?" Sam asked.
"The case this morning – the prison bus?" They all nodded. The case had been handed over in full to LAPD so that the NCIS team could concentrate solely on finding Callen and Janvier. "Janvier was at that same prison!"
"I thought he was in solitary in Colorado!" Kensi exclaimed.
"He was," Nell confirmed. "Super max, triple life sentence. The minibus was transporting eight prisoners serving a shorter sentence there to a different prison to finish serving their time in general population…"
"Removing them from solitary before they are released into society again," Sam said. "It's not uncommon." He paused. "I don't understand how Janvier could possibly have been on that bus though. No way his sentence got cut short."
"I'm waiting for someone with any kind of authority to tell us what's going on to call me back from the prison," Nell said. "I've stressed it's urgent… you'd think *somebody* would have a clue!"
"Keep on them," Sam asserted, and Nell nodded. She turned to return upstairs, and almost got knocked off her feet by Eric rushing into the bullpen excitedly.
"Whoa, Beale!" Nell exclaimed, clutching one of his sleeves to steady herself.
"Sorry! But hey, guys, I've got something!" All heads turned to Eric as he swiped the contents of his tablet up onto the screen in the bullpen. "Look!"
Kensi shuddered and even Sam couldn't completely disguise a grimace as the video of Callen was once more displayed for them all to see.
"Don't look at his face, look at his hands!" Eric instructed gleefully. "Look!"
"We're all looking," Sam responded dryly. "What are we seeing, exactly?"
Eric grinned. "He's signing!"
"Callen knows how to finger sign?" Connor asked, sounding impressed.
"Callen knows how to do most things," Sam responded, only half joking. He was secretly a little impressed himself. He knew Callen had honed many skills over the years, hell, he'd teased him mercilessly for some of them. Signing was one he hadn't been aware of. If he ever got his partner back, he'd have to go easier on some of Callen's more obscure tradecraft talents: evidently even obscure talents had their uses.
"It's not *very* clear," Eric expanded. "His hands are so tightly bound together, and most letters are created with the fingers upwards and the palm towards us, like this… not downwards and backwards, the way he's been tied. But it's definitely sign. See here…" he paused the video, "That's unquestionably a C." He skipped forward a frame. "That's an I. The next one I'm not sure…. But then see, that's a D, or a 1 maybe…"
"Then another like the third…" Nell peered intensely at the video as Eric let it play on in slow motion. "Is that an R? And a P? And another like the third…?"
"And then B and O," Eric continued. "They're unmistakable. Then another one, two letters… I'm not sure. I *think* after those he starts over with a C again, but the camera moves and blurs it."
"C-I…" Sam mused. "CIA maybe?"
"Could be," Eric affirmed. "The letters I'm unsure of, they're all pretty similar, I mean, they'd look different if his hands were the other way round. But from this side it just looks like he's making a fist. So they all could be an A, an S or a T. Maybe even E, M or N."
"There's a pause between the first unknown letter and the D," Nell said. "Two words. It must be CIA."
"It would make the most sense," Eric nodded. "What about the rest though? Four blank letters overall…"
"I'm going to call Sabatino," Kensi said, looking at Sam for approval. Sam nodded. "Maybe Incognito is a CIA op… At the very least, he might be able to fill in some blanks…"
Kensi rose to go outside and make the call, leaving Sam and Connor sitting quietly in the bullpen while Eric and Nell tapped and swiped furiously on their tablets. Sam couldn't take his eyes off the video of Callen, left playing a muted loop in slow motion while Eric and Nell worked to identify the missing letters. He found himself clenching his jaw ever tighter each time he saw the hand reach into view swiping his partner across the mouth. There was something particularly distressing about the slow-mo blood trickling from Callen's lip on each repetition. Letting his eyes wander, Sam noted more blood down the side of Callen's face, and he traced it upwards to a swollen cut above his left temple, just into the hair line. Even on the video the size of the wound and the swelling was unmistakable and it angered Sam that this was clearly how his partner had been incapacitated and captured. He had obviously taken a very heavy blow to the head.
But his head was still clear, Sam reminded himself. Callen may have been knocked out, but he hadn't been knocked down – not completely at least. Even as his lips moved, saying the words Sam didn't need to have played aloud to keep hearing in his own head, Callen's face was impassive, and yet his hand worked busily as he signed the letters until the camera fell and the film abruptly cut.
"Anything?" Sam asked of Eric and Nell after a minute.
"I think there's three words," Eric informed him. "There's a pause between the first three letters and the fourth, as Nell said. There's also a pause after the next five. If we think the first three are C-I-A, then I think it's likely the next word is DARPA… I can't be sure on the two A's but what else would fit those letters that Callen would think important enough to sign?" Sam nodded affirmatively.
"Could Incognito be something to do with DARPA?" Sam raised his eyebrows questioningly, but the techs had no answer. Nell made a note to add DARPA to the sources she was searching. Sam sighed. "What about the third word?"
"Only two letters I'm sure of, B and O," Eric replied with a hint of frustration.
"I've run the letters through a word puzzle app," Nell said. "There's a few possibilities… One of the most likely is B-O-O-M, or maybe B-O-M-B…"
"Bomb…" Sam mulled it over. "He could be trying to warn us of what Janvier is planning…. A bomb somewhere?"
"I don't think it's bomb," Eric said. "He definitely doesn't repeat the B. And I don't see that he would use boom instead of bomb, when bomb would be much clearer to sign."
"Not bomb then," Sam agreed.
"Or B-O-N-E," Nell said. "Bone."
"That uses all the possible letters," Eric confirmed.
"Or B-O-A-T," Nell added.
"Boat?" Sam looked at Eric questioningly.
"Yep, that would work," Eric nodded.
"Any more?" Sam turned to Nell.
"None that would really track… If we've ruled out boom, then boat makes more sense than bone, I guess," Nell answered. "I mean, we are NCIS. And LA is near the water…"
"Could he mean the boatshed?" Connor spoke up for the first time.
"Maybe," Sam responded with an approving smile. He paused briefly to think. "Let's Connor and I go and have a nosy round the boatshed…. Maybe we'll find something. We'll go on to the site of the bus crash after… I know it's not our case any more, but I want to have a look. It all seems too much of a coincidence that bus originated from Janvier's prison, and just happened to crash the same day Janvier got hold of Callen. He *must* have been on it, however implausible that may be, so maybe there's some clues…" The two techs nodded in agreement. It seemed more than a coincidence to them too. Sam continued, "Tell Kensi to keep the pressure on Sabatino – and when Deeks gets here she can take him to the morgue to see the body of this ex-marine Ruddings…" Eric and Nell nodded again. "And you two… Contact DARPA. Just the word Incognito sounds like it could be one of their sorts of projects. We need to know what we're looking for… Keep chasing the prison, and keep digging on Ruddings too. And see what you can make of Callen's signing – bone, boat, whatever - he's trying to tell us something important. We need to work out what it is."
On the boat, Callen was having a tough time trying to hold himself together. Like a movie trailer, his mind kept replaying memories of Joelle: old ones, recent ones, a distorted blur of images that threatened to overwhelm and drown him. He agonized that he had sent Nick and Peter to a different kind of drowning – a long swim to an indeterminate shore, with no help, no clue what they had been mixed up in, and no way of even knowing the dangers that might still befall them, let alone protect themselves against.
He had let them down, let Joelle down. And now she was gone forever, and he was once again helpless in the clutches of the man he hated more than anyone on earth. Worse still – if things could possibly be any worse – he didn't believe for a second Janvier had finished his game yet. Who else would he hurt next? He was beginning to regret sending the signed message to his team. At the time, believing he was on his own and Joelle was working against him, it had seemed the best chance he had both of alerting them to the operation and of being rescued and getting the help he needed to take down Janvier. The callous murder of Joelle reminded him how little he wanted anyone he knew anywhere close to the ship, or to Janvier.
"There can be only one winner this time, Agent Callen." Janvier's voice broke his thoughts, and it was almost a relief to have a distraction from the swirling misery of them in his head. "And this time, my friend, it won't be you."
Callen couldn't summon the emotional energy to engage in the verbal sparring. Janvier smirked.
"There is a saying, is there not, that 'revenge is a dish best served cold'?" He paused as he waited again for a reaction from Callen, but continued unperturbed when he got none. "I could kill you now: after all you have done everything I needed you for, and maybe more, but where would be the fun in that?" His voice took on a darker turn. "You – YOU – have ruined my life. Taken everything from me…"
"My heart bleeds for you," Callen eventually interrupted sarcastically. He was long fed up of the whole charade, and willed Janvier to stop taunting him and just get one with whatever he had planned.
"One – joint – at – a – time…" Janvier said slowly, holding the stump of his left arm up to Callen.
"That was Vaziri, not me," Callen said carefully. He didn't like where this conversation was going. For the first time since Joelle had died in his arms on the deck, he started to think more about the present and the future, not the past. His present and future. Neither looked particularly rosy. He looked around, vaguely aware of Janvier watching him and chuckling quietly. They had not taken him back down to the dark cargo hold – a place which by comparison seemed not too bad. Now, he was in a room behind the captain's bridge. He had been tied to a metal railing at waist height, with his arms out to his sides away from his body, his wrists secured tightly to the rail. He strained against the ropes experimentally. His muscles were still weak from the taser. The ropes didn't budge an inch.
Even with the horrors of the situation confronting him, his mind still clicked through as if on auto-pilot, taking in his surroundings. What he could see, hear, feel. Possible threats, possible escape routes. The bridge was light and airy – plenty of windows looking forwards onto the sea, and out in the distance, land on the horizon. Behind, the room he was in was comparatively dark, no windows or doors other than the opening to the bridge. Although he was too far back to see down to the deck level, Callen knew the forward deck where he had helped Nick and Peter overboard was out in front and below him, roughly at his eleven o'clock. A door at the left of the bridge led down there. Not far, not far… but it might as well be the moon, from his current predicament.
Slowly, fighting dizziness, he turned his head, continuing his assessment. Possible threats… Janvier was still watching him keenly, enjoying his discomfort as he looked around the room. On either side were long workbenches. One still had some maps pushed aside on it. The rail he was tied to that ran the back length of the room had various nautical instruments hanging off it, as well as two machine guns. The bench on the other side was what made Callen's heart really sink. It was full of tools and knives, all neatly laid out, and even as his eyes wandered over them, identifying them, Janvier reached over and picked up a large hammer. He swung it in a gentle arc, bringing it down experimentally on the stump of his left forearm.
"Anticipation can often be greater than the event itself, wouldn't you agree, Agent Callen?"
"Go to hell!" Callen cursed. Not the most original of responses, he chided himself.
"Some day… some day... Not without taking you with me," Janvier responded. "You and I… Like the black and white pieces of a chess set, we fit together. Opponents to the death, wouldn't you agree?"
"Something like that."
"Except for you, your honour is your weakness, Agent G Callen. You have had your chance to end the game many times. I've even invited you to do it…. And yet still, you have let me live. I've taken the lives of many who you care about, and you, you cannot bring yourself to take mine. Are they not worthy of your revenge? Agent Renko, Agent Hunter, now Agent Taylor? Do their lives not matter?"
In a fury, Callen strained hard against the ropes.
"What about Agent Taylor's family… Drowning is not quite the death I had planned for them, but if you move your opponent's pawns when it is not your turn, you have to live with the consequences…"
"They're not pawns!" Still straining, Callen was unable to hide the hatred from his face. "And they're not dead." Callen clung desperately to the hope he was right. He couldn't stand to be responsible for their deaths too.
"Not yet, perhaps. But they are my pawns, and now that they have served their purpose, just like Agent Taylor, there is no need for them to live."
"Leave them alone!" Callen yelled. "They've done nothing. Peter is just a kid, for Christ's sake!"
Janvier laughed.
"I am surprised you care so much about them. I told you once that I knew who you cared about: maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is not your partner – your ex-partner is it now – and your team, whose loss would hurt you most deeply…"
"You leave Sam out of this," Callen snarled angrily. "Play your damn games all you want, but play them with ME. It's me you want… we both know that."
"I want to see you suffer," Janvier said abruptly, and he swung the hammer hard onto Callen's tethered right arm.
A/N: So the team have figured it out... or started to at least! Did anyone guess right how Callen sent his message?
Sorry for the mini cliff-hanger - I think it was fairly clear from the last chapter something like it was coming! There are endless possibilities for Callen-whump here... I have tried to hit the right note with it... fingers crossed.
Ps. fanfiction seems to be having some server errors at the moment, I tried to upload this chapter yesterday :( I'm hoping to pop a new chapter up a couple of times a week now, but if I go quiet for a bit, I'm not intentionally leaving you hanging I promise!