CHAPTER TEN
Back in Ops, the mood was heavy. Even Deeks, arriving and learning with horror that Janvier firstly had somehow escaped from jail, and secondly had Callen in his clutches, had been unable to dredge up any of his usual wit. Apart from some half-hearted banter when he first arrived, he had remained silent ever since he'd watched the video of Callen and caught up with the case thus far. Like the others before, he had frozen as if to stone at the sound of Janvier's voice on the video, and Sam who was with him when he watched it clapped a hand to his shoulder, but said nothing, for there was nothing really that could be said.
Once Deeks was up to speed the four agents had paired off, Sam and Connor, Kensi and Deeks, and gone their separate ways, leaving behind a tangible feeling of disquiet through the whole building. The mood lingered even after they had all returned, the usual camaraderie and cheerful banter still notably absent.
"We need a plan," Sam said heavily to Kensi and Deeks as he arrived back with Connor in tow. The former partners were sitting quietly in their usual seats in the bullpen, eyeing each other from time to time over the rims of the coffee mugs they each clasped with both hands. Sam dumped his bag back down on the floor by his chair and slumped into his seat in depression. He nodded his thanks to Connor who silently passed him a fresh coffee on his way back to his desk. The visit to the site of the bus crash had been an almost total waste of time. They'd discovered the stingers, slung behind a bush near where the dead body of Paul Ruddings had been found, but all that indicated was that the bus had been brought off the road deliberately, which wasn't exactly unexpected news. It seemed probable that Ruddings had been involved as the outside help, but it wasn't like they could ask him.
"Hey, Paul Ruddings, great to meet you. Have you been working for a French crook called Marcel Janvier?" Sam muttered sarcastically when he found the stingers. "I don't suppose you know where my partner is, do you?" He laughed it off when he saw Connor looking at him, but the state of despair lasted all the way back to the office. Even Connor, usually pretty light-hearted, was picking up on his Senior Agent's depression, and the two of them had barely spoken on the return journey.
Sam looked around at his silent co-workers. Connor had his head down, scrolling through something intently on his laptop. Briefly, Sam felt bad for the rookie agent, for the young man had no idea how deep this case cut for the rest of them. How could he, when he hadn't lived through the atrocities caused by Janvier?
Kensi had been quiet all morning, wrapped up in her own thoughts. The memories of the last time they'd had dealings with Janvier was hitting the entire team hard. Sam and Deeks' torture at the hands of Sidarov had been directly caused by Janvier's underhand play. Now, they were worried knowing that Callen was in the hands of the fearsome psychopath. It was no secret that it was Callen who Janvier harboured his revenge against. Knowing how he liked to use mental and emotional torture to see Callen suffer, it didn't seem impossible that any one of them was now at risk. Janvier had already proven he could get to any of them. To Renko, to Hunter, and now to Callen. Who would be next?
Sam knew Kensi was torn about bringing Deeks back in after what he had suffered last time. And yet she knew they had to do everything they could to rescue Callen, who she looked up to not just as a great agent and mentor but a close friend, almost a big brother. In this team she had slowly dropped the walls she had built up after the loss of her father, and got close to them all – to lose any of them now was like losing family. After Fatima's death she had built those walls right back up again to hide her hurt, and she honestly didn't know how she would cope now if they lost Callen too.
Deeks was also uncharacteristically quiet. There was still an awkwardness between him and Kensi, and it was clear he didn't know what to do to try and fix it. He had thought being away from NCIS would have cleared his mind and allowed him to focus on what was really important, but he found he wasn't sure what that was. Moreover, he was finding it just as stressful constantly worrying if Kensi was okay without him in the field as he had been when he had tried to work with her as an agent. He found himself starting to doubt more and more whether LAPD was the right place for him, but he'd lost faith that NCIS was the place to call home either.
"Come on guys," Sam sighed eventually. "This just won't do."
"Why don't we head down to the gym or something?" Connor suggested tentatively.
"I don't know about the gym, but I sure could shoot something," Deeks said with the faintest trace of violence in his voice. Kensi looked at him in concern.
"Let's go and do some training drills," Sam agreed. There was little else they could do right now, and working together as a team with some firearms practice was as good a use of time as any. It might help vent some of the built up frustration they were all feeling.
The four of them worked through some complicated drills, appreciating the focus the challenges gave them. Sam kept a covert eye on all three of his younger colleagues. Kensi was on top form, not missing a single shot. Connor took some tricky shots and performed well no matter who he was paired with. Deeks was a little rusty in some of the more technical shots but his basic form was as always correct, and Sam knew he could depend on him in the field.
They pushed through the exercises fast, with little time for thought and much less for talking, but nonetheless Sam felt the work had them all operating more cohesively together. It hardly seemed like any time had passed at all when his phone buzzed. He put his hand up to halt the others, and responded to the alert from Eric.
"Eric and Nell have been briefed by DARPA about Incognito," he informed them, slipping his phone back into his pocket.
"Well, that's something at least," Kensi said, trying to smile.
"Vance will be here soon…" Sam continued. "How about while we wait for him, we go up and find out about it ourselves?"
They traipsed up the stairs, where Eric was bursting at the seams to tell them all about Incognito.
"It's absolutely top secret… This is seriously cool, I mean, revolutionary, warfare," he said, doing a poor job of hiding his delight in the advances of technology. "It's still in a prototype stage, but it all works, it is literally amazing, you just wouldn't believe…"
"What does it actually DO, Eric?" Sam interrupted.
"Ah, right, sorry. Well, you know drones, right?" They all nodded, indulging him. "DARPA's been making these drones smaller and smaller, and they work in swarms – that means groups, they can all work together, they communicate with each other, it's seriously clever stuff."
"That's not new though, is it?" Connor, who had a bit of a hidden geek side, asked.
"No, not at all, but the way they've introduced stealth technology too is," Eric answered with glee. "Hence the name Incognito, see?"
"You mean to say these buzzy little drones are now working in teams, and unable to be seen?" Sam raised his eyebrows.
"In a manner of speaking," Eric confirmed. "Obviously they can be seen, they're not invisible or anything – now that would be super cool…" He drifted off, a far-away look in his eyes, until Nell gave him a gentle nudge on the arm and brought him back on point. "No, it just means they're undetectable on radar. And they're really, really small – you can fit literally dozens of them into a small aircraft, or even a van, as long as you've got somewhere fairly open to launch them. DARPA are still working on the range, but you can deploy them from the ground or in the air – pretty well anywhere. And they are missiles themselves – flying bombs. Once they're hit their target – boom. Totally untraceable."
"They sound very very scary," Sam said slowly. "But surely Janvier isn't selling a whole bunch of drones? Even if they're small…"
"No, absolutely not," Nell said, taking over. "The drones themselves only exist in prototype, and they're all secured and accounted for. But the plans and the coding, the software…. That's what has been stolen, and what we have to assume is for sale."
"How has it been stolen?" Deeks asked.
"We understand what we're looking for is a simple hard drive," Nell explained. "DARPA believes one of their employees stole the files when they moved their back-up data storage to a new site…"
"Tell me you're kidding," Deeks rolled his eyes.
"Unfortunately not," Nell affirmed. "The code is regularly backed up, and back ups are kept on encrypted hard drives in a secure facility. We believe one of those hard drives, the one containing the Incognito plans and early code, was stolen. Now, the good news is, it's a military encrypted drive, which means the files cannot be copied, and will self-destruct once they have been opened once. And of course they will need decrypting. The bad news is, although DARPA are able to confirm this one hard drive is unaccounted for, they cannot confirm at exactly what stage it went missing, and therefore have no idea who stole it. No suspects."
"Which means no leads on who is interested in buying it," Eric confirmed dismally. "We are literally in the dark here."
"Great," Sam sighed. "Well, at least we know what we're looking for, I guess. A military hard drive with some super-secret, super-scary technology on it, and Callen..."
Alone in the bullpen and tapping his fingers on his desk in an uncharacteristically overt display of tension, Sam stared vacantly in the direction of Callen's old chair.
"You really shouldn't have gone off on your own on this one, buddy," he muttered.
"You always say that," Callen smirked up at him, touching his finger to his split lip to check it hadn't started bleeding again with the movement. The action didn't go unnoticed by Sam who frowned even deeper. "But it was the only way."
"Still… to let them take you…without any backup G…"
"It was all part of the plan – you know that." Relaxing in his chair, Callen's posture was one of ease. "It was the only way Vaziri would believe Cherokee wasn't a threat. And anyway, it was Hetty's plan, not mine."
"Which she only cooked up because you wouldn't let it go!" Sam stated explosively. "Look at what Vaziri did to you!" He gestured to Callen's face, where the fresh white butterfly strip stood out sharply against the bruising on his cheekbone.
"A few scrapes," Callen said dismissively. "Come on, Sam. Janvier was directly responsible for the deaths of Renko *and* Hunter. You know that! No way could we let him walk. He got exactly what he deserved, being traded back to the Iranians he tried to double-cross."
"It was a big gamble," Sam said grumpily.
"A gamble which paid off," Callen said earnestly and with finality.
"I hate gambling," Sam muttered. He waited for a sardonic remark from his partner, but none came.
"Here's your lunch, Sam." Kensi dropped a brown paper bag on Sam's desk as she walked across the bullpen to her own seat. "Sam?" She looked at her older colleague in concern. He was staring across at the opposite desk, where Connor had settled himself into his seat, and was opening his lunch and starting to eat. "Sam?" Kensi said more gently, trying to make eye contact, but whatever Sam was seeing, it wasn't in that room.
"What's up brother? You look like you've seen a ghost!" Deeks teased, not realising how close he was to the truth. Sam was still staring at Connor, who began to look uncomfortable under the scrutiny.
"Did I do something wrong?" he whispered to Kensi. At last, Sam blinked a couple of times and seemed to come out of his reverie.
"Sorry guys," he apologised. "I was just thinking about G…" They were all silent for a moment. Callen had not left their collective thoughts all morning.
"Do you think we should contact Hetty?" Kensi wondered aloud. For all Sam's earlier decisiveness, he was beginning to feel like a ship without a rudder, and although Director Vance would be with them shortly, he was at present still uncontactable. Sam's uncertainty was felt by the others, waiting anxiously on him for leadership.
"What would be the point?" Deeks responded.
"I don't know… I just feel like she should know," Kensi said.
"You're probably right," Sam agreed. "But I don't know if we should tell her. Not yet. She'd only worry…"
"She might have some ideas, Sam." Kensi clung stubbornly to her point.
"Knowing Hetty, she probably already knows," Deeks tried to lighten the mood.
No closer to making a decision, they were interrupted by the phone on Sam's desk ringing, and he picked it up.
"Nell?" Listening to Nell, Sam's eyes widened momentarily. "Yes, okay, put her through…" He put his hand over the end of the phone and mouthed to the others, "It's Hetty!"
"Sonofa…" Deeks cursed. He turned to Kensi, and for a moment it was just like old times. "How does she do it?!"
"Hetty, wherever you are, your ears must have been burning. I was just about to call you," Sam lied. "No, no, there's no need for you to come in, we've got things under control…" He paused, and Kensi and Deeks cringed on his behalf: they were unable to hear the words their diminutive ex-boss was saying but they could well imagine the gist of the conversation. "What do you mean it's too late?"
"I mean, Mr Hanna, that it's too late… I am already here." Everyone spun in their seats to see Hetty approaching the bullpen from the tunnel, her phone still to her ear as she spoke to Sam. Kensi and Deeks couldn't help but smile at their ex-boss's predictably unpredictable arrival.
"Okay then, bye now," Sam said through gritted teeth, forcing one of his most charming smiles onto his face which he bestowed on Hetty as she rounded to his desk.
"Tell me *everything*," Hetty commanded.
A/N: When I'm reading stories, I hate chapters without Callen in... Did you notice how I snuck him in here, albeit only in Sam's imagination!