Kensi walked into the boatshed with more of a spring in her step.
"You're in a good mood this morning."
"What do you mean?" Kensi attempted to bury her happiness, no, satisfaction, and failed utterly.
"You have you're 'I just got laid' swagger going on. Is Deeks back in town?"
"This is all going to go pear-shaped," said Kensi, neatly avoiding the question. Callen decided to let it go. Kensi was entitled to her secrets.
"What makes you think that?"
"Tip from a CI. One of the couriers is all paranoid, thinks he's being followed." If Kensi had a CI why didn't she mention it the day before.
"That's it? Somehow I doubt Talia is going to respond well, given your little sweeping leaves moment yesterday. Especially if you can't wipe that smirk off your face."
Kensi's face dropped into a blank mask, but then the corners of her mouth rose and there was apparently nothing she could do about the glimmer in her eyes.
"You're not going to tell her."
"No point."
"So I'm not the only one with a winning personality."
"Let's just say there's a bone of contention and leave it at that."
"Fine, I'll do it. But this goes up in smoke and I get to say I told you so."
Kensi walked over to Talia."I'm sorry about yesterday. I was having some work frustration and I took it out on you, which wasn't fair. It won't happen again."
"Apology accepted."
Robertson looked at them. "That's it?"
"This isn't high school, we're adults. Kensi was a bitch, she repented. If she does it again we'll have a problem but until then how about we all act like the professionals we are."
"Yes boss," said Jameson, nudging his colleague with his shoulder.
"Yes boss," said Robertson.
"There's one other thing. I have a CI who's close to Costa. He says he was acting paranoid."
"Didn't seem that way last night," said Peterson.
"I think we could have a problem."
"I think you're being paranoid," said Peterson.
"Cool it," said Talia. "Best we err on the side of caution. I'll have LAPD standing by for backup. You think that will be enough?" She asked Kensi.
"It's overkill," said Peterson.
"I understand your position Peterson, but it's my call." Talia said firmly.
"It's fine," said Kensi. "What's the plan?"
Sam, Callen, Kensi, Nell, Talia, and the 'sons had all been sitting for more than two hours when the bagmen showed up, half an hour early. The plan was to follow the distributor's bagmen back to their boss and build a case against the distributor as well. The couriers would keep, after all they knew exactly where they would be.
The Frenchman, who may or may not have been the distributor, arrived an hour before the bagmen. He trawled the block twice, peering into cars and looking at the cameras, even disabling one that pointed directly at the meeting place. Fortunately, only Peterson and Jameson were on the block, watching from a rooftop. The rest were parked a block away, with their LAPD backup - organised by Talia - on standby in case things went sideways.
The bagmen wandered up and down the street until Mazzuno and Costa arrived, five minutes after the designated time.
A few words were exchanged. Then the bagmen and the couriers exchanged bags and the two sailors drove off. The bag men separated instantly, two heading for each end of the street before again going their separate ways.
"Okay guys, let's give them a few minutes to bed in the tails, don't want them to miss the show." Four cellphones were laid out on the table in front of Deeks. There was a map of Los Angeles taped to the wall in front of him, next to a list composed of two columns of numbers. He had a police radio hooked to his left ear and Ernest and Partridge were sitting to his right, sharing a box of popcorn.
The bagmen walked for a few minutes. The speaker in Deeks' ear crackled. "Tails are in place. Do you want us to follow the sailors?" LAPD getting confirmation on the record. Focusing on avoiding being blamed for failure was smart practice, so long as you didn't care about succeeding.
"No, we know where they're going," said a female voice, Talia Del Campo. Small world. He felt bad for what was hopefully about to happen, but her op had been blown when Partridge's source had talked. He leaned forward slightly so that his voice would be picked up by all four cell phones."Alright guys. Now."
The bagman broke into a run. Callen cursed, they'd been made. He wasn't sure how, but he knew they would catch hell for it. Then Kensi's voice came over the radio. "Our guy is rabbiting."
"Ours too," said Talia.
"So is ours," said Robertson.
Callen and Sam chased the bagman, even as Talia started calling in the LAPD backup and the onsite commander called in more units.
They ran north, along alleyways and across streets, dodging amongst the cars. Whatever else these kids were, they were fit.
" Unit 76, head east on Ford, cut him off."
"Heading north on James," said Kyle, the bagman that G and Sam were chasing.
Deeks looked at the map, quickly determining where Kyle, the LAPD and G Callen were to each other.
He picked up the centre-left phone. "Kyle, head right into the next alley."
The bagman broke right into an alley, neatly avoiding the trap G had laid.
They continued running through several different streets. This time Callen directed two units to intercept on different streets. But again the bagman broke through the box, taking routes perfectly designed to slip him through LAPD's net. It couldn't be just luck.
"They're listening in to the radios, switch channels," said Callen.
"Switch to channel 8," said another voice. Deeks looked at the list next to the map, radio channels for LAPD courtesy of one of Partridge's guys, and adjusted his own radio accordingly. The voices came back straight away.
He listened to Kensi shout her position.
"Thomas turn left onto Park."
Granger stood in Ops listening to the joint operation turn rapidly into a nightmare. "They're still listening into the radios." At this point, even if they caught the couriers and everyone else, it was going to be a witch hunt, at best.
"They must have LAPD's channel codes." Granger turned to Eric. "Crash the cell network, now."
"Are you insane?"
"You're the one who broke the internet."
"That took sixteen hours to fix and the internet doesn't carry 911 calls."
"Just do it, Mr Beale," Henrietta said.
"Fine, but I'm whitelisting 911." He started typing into the computer.
"Now, Mr Beale."
"I don't know what kind of movies you've been watching, but hacking isn't just tap a couple of keys and you're in. Getting into a system takes time."
"As I recall, you broke the internet in short order," said Henrietta.
"I already had the virus."
"Why?" Granger asked.
"Bar bet."
"Huh. Fine how long will it take?"
"An hour or so."
Granger could only growl in frustration.
A phone rang to Deeks' right. Partridge answered and listened to the person on the other end. He said, "Okay," and hung up. "Alain is clear, no tails."
Deeks nodded. "Well, all games must come to an end."
Then he shut down the phones, removed the SIM cards, and broke them in half.
Sam and Callen finally caught up with their courier when he turned up an alley. The boy, who could have been no older than twenty, saw the fence in front of him and thought better of it. He turned and raised his hands.
"Federal agents, put the bag on the ground, get down on your knees, cross your ankles and interlace your fingers behind your head." The young man complied.
Sam walked up to cuff and search the young man. "Are you carrying any weapons or sharp objects?"
"No."
Callen opened the bag. Inside was a plastic wrapped copy of the A Song of Ice and Fire books.
Over the radio, Callen could hear Talia start swearing. Same story there, he supposed. The bagman was smiling. "Lawyer."
Meanwhile, far away in another part of town, Alain Charnier stopped his car in an alley. He'd been driving around for the better part of an hour making sure he wasn't being tailed.
Shortly thereafter, the two navy men showed up.
"You wanna tell me what this is all about," said the shorter of the pair.
"Simply, we were concerned that the DEA might know about you. As it turns out, we were correct."
"How do we know it isn't you they know about?"
"I suppose you don't, but if they did, you'd be in handcuffs now." A logical leap, but whatever, Alain just wanted to get this over with. He pulled a large bag from his the trunk of his car. "There's an extra $50,000 in there." The two men raised their eyebrows in surprise. "Consider it hazard pay." The sailors exchanged their bag of heroin for the bag of money.
The taller of the men shrugged. "Well, thanks, I suppose."
"You're welcome." Alain got back into his car and drove off.
Back at the Boatshed, things were tense.
"We should have been following the couriers. They would have led us to the distributor," said Granger.
"As would the bagmen. Don't try to hide the fact that the Frenchman has someone," said Talia.
"Your agency brought this case in and it was LAPD whose radio channel we were using. My agency isn't a likely infiltration target for street distributors and our counter-intel is too good."
"Everyone says that." Talia stopped. "So you agree the leak came from LAPD."
"Excuse me?"
"You agree that the leak is in LAPD. Listen, I agree that there is the possibility of a leak in DEA and when I find the rat they will suffer. But I need to have a job in order to do that and I have enough assholes who don't like that the girl got promoted over their buddies without dealing with the fallout from this. I think we both want to tie this in a bow and hang it around someone else's neck."
"So you're going to make LAPD look bad for your own benefit."
"Well they do have a mole and I hear you may have reason to dislike them."
"There's nothing wrong with a side benefit."
"Do you mind if I use your interrogation room. I'll have my guys bring the sailors in."
"Be my guest."
When Mazzuno and Costa got back to base, Peterson and Jacobson were waiting for them. They found the money in the bag. That and the handovers in Islamabad and LA were enough for a conviction for importing, especially once they found heroin residue in the gym bag. Beyond that, the sailors knew nothing about the distributors. They didn't know names, were simply told that the buyers would meet them at a specific parking structure at a specific time and give them further instructions. The guy who picked up the drugs looked and sounded French. At the first meeting he was with some guy, blonde, surfer's build. Talia stopped short of showing them Deeks' picture. It would be rude, not least of all because he'd saved her life. She wasn't going to hang him out to dry unless it was her or him.
The report on the case made several vague references to the possibility of a mole in LAPD, which Grange backed. A DEA bulletin regarding a new drug distribution network tentatively headed by an unknown Frenchman and his California surfer muscle was issued and found its way to LAPD, and from there to IA.
Ernest, Alain, Deeks and Partridge sat around the table with the four bagmen, who had been almost immediately released after their detention, a process speeded when they all asked for Ezra Klein, one of the city's top criminal defence attorneys, and he accepted their calls.
"Well they didn't look at the whole board. Focusing on the four boys when they should have been focusing on the couriers too. If there was a next time they'd be more careful."
"If?"
"We can't do this again."
"After all the work we did setting it up."
"Four of our guys were arrested, you and Max nearly were. The line is dead. We've got people I've never even heard of crawling up our asses. We're making too much noise and people get so worked up about drugs. It's not worth the risk. Not yet. We'll find another way."
"What about the dope?"
"Oh we'll sell it, but let's try to keep the excitement to a minimum from now on."
Later that night, Deeks walked into his apartment. He immediately made for the bathroom and the plastic wrapped phone. This time he didn't bother with a text, just called the number from memory. The person on the other end picked up on the second ring.
"Hey Deeks."
"Hey Kens."
Wherever this went, they were going there together. That's how they rolled.