Kensi had been under for close to three weeks and the Office of Special Projects was falling into a rhythm. No one was happy, but things were at least functional.
A cryptic message from Hetty that Jacobs from the DEA was waiting for them at the boatshed was how their morning started. The car ride from the mission to the boatshed was filled with annoyance about Joint Task Forces, but Deeks, Callen and Sam put on their best LAPD/NCIS inter-agency cooperation smiles and went inside, where another agent had been sitting with Jacobs.
Callen made introductions.
"What can we do for you today, Agent Jacobs?"
The man was pleasant and approachable. He left his files on the table and made his way over to the coffee maker.
"Not Agent. Analyst, but Analyst Jacobs sounds dumb. So Mr. Jacobs? But that sounds really formal. Maybe just Evan." Evan returned and shook their hands.
"What can we do for you today, Evan?" Sam corrected, trying to move the conversation along.
"I have no idea," Evan answered.
After exchanging glances it was Deeks that tried again.
"What brought you hear to our lovely boatshed this morning?"
"Cool building, by the way," Even complimented. "I really don't know. I was hoping you could tell me. I got a call in the middle of the night saying that Ms. Lange would appreciate me stopping by this morning to speak to you."
"You know Hetty?" Callen asked.
"I know of Hetty. And I know enough not to turn down that … invitation," Evan joked.
"So what do you do at DEA?" Sam asked.
"Intel analysis and cartel tracking. I got a flag from Ms. Lange on a report I submitted yesterday. I assumed you all had an interest in it."
It clicked in all of their minds at the same moment.
"The Cardenas Cartel?" Deeks questioned.
Jacobs nodded his head and handed over the file. He told them the story. They'd gotten a tip on a front business that ran a bunch of buildings on the west side. It was an informant looking for an easy payday – the Cardenas Cartel was using it as a center of operations for something and had cleared out by the time the tip came in.
"Someone looking for a little cash on the side after the risk had already passed," Deeks echoed, knowing that story all too well."
"Was there anything there at all?" Sam pushed.
Jacobs face scrunched a little. "Only if you're interested in the inner workings of the Cardenas family. Looks like they were celebrating a little cartel tradition."
"Tradition?" Callen asked.
"Yeah- they have an initiation they do. No one crosses the border with the cartel if they haven't been initiated. It's pretty unusual to initiate someone on the US side of the border. Usually they initiate down there and that's how they get trusted status to cross. It's pretty brutal."
"How brutal?" Deeks couldn't help himself. "And I guess, brutal how, too?" he added, his fingers reordering the words in the air.
"They beat the hell out of someone and if they survive they're in." Evan was nonchalant while the three men joined by the crew in Ops were all hanging on every word. "The would-be initiate stands surrounded by a room of initiated cartel members and each of them gets to take a swing. The person has to stand back up after every hit. If they're still standing when everyone's had a turn, they're in."
He reached into his file and pulled out some photos of the warehouse that had dark handprints on the cement floor.
"Are those handprints in blood?" Callen asked hesitantly looking at the photos.
Evan shook his head and explained that Cardenas relates to the Spanish word for purple. They have this deep purple stain, and after you hit the person you dip your hand in the stain and mark the floor. They joke that it stops people from hitting someone they don't like more than once. Cartel house rule. Evan had seen initiations that had more handprints than they could count. This one seemed like a pretty sparse crowd based on the numbers, but maybe that wasn't surprising given it was so far from their base of operations.
"What can you tell us about them?" Deeks would take all the information this man had to give.
Deeks, Callen and Sam had never paid more attention to a history lesson. Roberto Cardenas ran the cartel for forty years. He was regarded as an honorable man, well respected and frequently asked to arbitrate disputes between cartels or to hold a summit if cartel violence began to spiral. He lost his family in the last known attempt on his life. The attack killed his wife and children, and his brother gave his life trying to save them. It made him harder, less trusting. It made him dangerous.
The brother, whose name Jacobs couldn't remember, had three children, and after the attack Roberto raised them as his own and took to being called Tio. It became the only name he answered to. The children, Antonio, Alejandro and Cristina were being groomed to run the business. They had a more global plan for the cartel. Tio held them back, but his health was failing and a changing of the guard was coming one way or the other. Tony, Tejo and Tina were getting ready to make their move.
Evan tried to be patient, but eventually he asked why they cared. He knew that the Cardenas were pretty small and pretty vanilla in the grand scheme of things. He couldn't remember anyone ever asking about them before. He wanted to know what had changed.
"We're working a possible tie to a terrorist group we are investigating. Pretty sketchy connection. Just being thorough," Callen deflected. The fewer people that knew about Kensi the better. "If we get anything we'll send it your way."
They showed Evan out and processed the information.
"So she's in," Deeks said in a voice that was equal parts worry and pride.
"She's in," the room echoed.
It was Eric that killed the buzz in the room. On the screen from Ops he told them that the information from Jacobs allowed him to analyze cell usage in the area of the warehouse and isolate videos sent from that vicinity – they were able to identify the night of the initiation. None of the clips were longer than eighteen seconds, and some of them were of the same point in time, but they had three short, non-duplicated clips of initiation night, and it brought the room to stand still.
Videos of Kensi. They didn't show her face – they were taken from behind. Each clip shows a man approaching her. They hold up a hand to the crowd and it gets quiet. Then they unleash a blow on her. One she took standing. One doubled her over. One put her on the floor. After each blow the man moves off camera, presumable to dip his hand in the stain. Then they return to the frame and hold up the stained hand. They make a handprint on the floor and the room erupts in cheers.
And each time Kensi steadied, took a deep breath, and got back in position for the next hit. At one point they could just make out Kensi spitting blood on the floor.
Deeks wanted to go through the screen. He didn't know how to process watching a room full of men cheering her pain – his partner's pain.
Sam put a hand on his shoulder and spoke quietly just to him. "That's the worst of it, right? It's behind her now, and she's in. She did it."
Deeks nodded in agreement, just praying for it to be true.
