Finally... right from the start of this story I've had major misgivings about writing Kensi and Deeks, and that's been the stumbling block at the end of this chapter. I hope you feel I have got it right.

CHAPTER FIVE

Callen wasn't certain how much ground he managed to cover before he was caught. Not enough, that was for sure. The intense heat and the pain in his arm was making him dizzy, and he would forever wonder if what happened next was because he dropped his guard. One minute he was scuffling forward with his knife at his hostage's throat, trying to decide how he could best use this small advantage he had, and the next he was down on the ground on his back, his own knife wickedly slashed across his arm as his captive pulled it out of his grasp and spun away from him. He looked up to see two more men, both with guns, and both guns were pointing directly at his heart. They were yelling at him in angry Spanish to stay still, to stay the hell still or he'd have a bullet in his chest. He stayed very still. The bright sun bore down on him, but he kept wary eyes open on the three men towering above him. One was frantically speaking into a radio, calling for the General, telling him urgently they had captured one of the American 'tourists' who had been sneaking around the compound. The radio crackled back with a strong, angry voice, giving orders that Callen didn't particularly like the sound of. The only positives, from his point of view, were that they didn't seem to have any sign of the others, and no one so far had mentioned Spencer Williams' name.

Strong arms hauled him up to a sitting position, holding him in a vice like grip while the guns were still trained on him. A torrent of angry Spanish demanded that he tell them where the woman was, where she had taken the child. He gave them his best blank expression. No comprendiendo lo siento. After so many years of practice, he could do a blank expression all too well, but it infuriated his captors and one of them back handed him across his jaw. He ran his tongue over the cut, tasting the small trickle of blood as the man repeated his questions.

"My Spanish isn't that good, pal," Callen said boldly. "Try again in English."

It confounded them for just a moment, just long enough for him to prepare himself for what came next. Two pairs of muscular arms roughly dragged him to his feet, and he felt the barrel of one of the guns pressed into the back of his neck. He was half shoved back the way he had come, forced through the thickly growing plants, scuffing up dust and dirt. One of the men was grasping his left arm so hard just below the elbow he could feel the shockwaves echoing right up through his shoulder and his neck, and he hoped he wasn't going to pass out from the pain.

As they came back within the vicinity of the wreckage of the SUV, Callen was pushed down a wider path that eventually brought them to the other side of the bridge where the General and his men had positioned themselves for the ambush. A circle of trucks were there, and Callen looked in dismay at the number of them. The General had a lot of men at his disposal. He would have to make very sure he convinced them there was no point in continuing to search for Derrick and the rest of his team.

NCIS:LA

"Sam?" Kensi spoke in a small voice, afraid of the reception she was going to get. As the day wore on, Sam's mood had become ever blacker. Sam turned to her, his expression thunderous and pain drawing harsh lines around his eyes, but he softened as he saw the look in her eyes. She and Deeks were stood a pace apart behind him, heads lowered, exhausted and miserable, all their usual gaiety long gone.

"What?" Sam said gruffly.

"I think… I think I heard some water." Deeks snapped his head up to look at her.

"Are you serious?" he asked, hope rising in his voice. They were all so desperately thirsty. His head was pounding so much he could barely think.

"Just back there a little way," Kensi gestured behind her. They all strained their ears, but could hear nothing. "I'll go and look?" she offered. Out of the three of them, she was faring the best, and it weighed down on her. The faith she had had in the burning truck that they would all get out of this situation alive was diminishing with every step they took further away, leaving Callen behind alone to a fate that was even more uncertain than their own.

"We'll stick together," Deeks said in a low voice, not meeting her eyes. "No more splitting up, we came together, we're gonna get through this together." He started to move in the direction she had pointed, and Kensi raised her eyes to Sam to confirm. He too nodded, and started to limp after Deeks. With a sigh, Kensi followed, looking carefully around her. Her nerves were on high alert and she couldn't settle them down. It was making her twitchy and paranoid, and she missed the emotional calm that Callen brought to their team. The rest of them didn't have that same cold ability to separate their emotions from the job that needed doing. For the hundredth time that morning she wondered what was happening to him, but had the good sense to keep her thoughts to herself.

As she traipsed after the two men she realised she had been right, and she had indeed heard the sound of trickling water. Carefully, fearing a potential ambush, the three of them moved through the scrub land towards the sound, realising that they were nearing a road, and the barren desert was at last coming to an end. Running alongside the road, which was a generous term, Kensi thought, for it was more of a single lane dirt track, was a narrow stream. There was a scant inch or two of water in the bottom, but it looked clear and fresh. They kept low to the ground as they approached it, but the area surrounding them appeared absolutely deserted.

"Sam?" Kensi whispered, as they came to the edge of the vegetation offering them a degree of cover. "What do you think?"

"I can't see anything," Sam replied, looking carefully around. "If I remember the map correctly, this track eventually meets up with the road going back to the north of Los Mochis. I think we're heading out of the cartel's area."

"You think?" Deeks couldn't help himself.

"Well do you have a better idea of where we are?" Kensi demanded impatiently.

"Settle down guys," Sam said wearily. "Let's have a drink, have a rest and then we'll decide where to go from here."

NCIS:LA

There was a pounding in his head that even in his semi-conscious state, Callen recognised as a mild concussion. He realised his eyes were closed, and he opened them, lifting his heavy head off his chest. He was bound in a chair in the middle of a large, furnished room. Taking care to move his head slowly, he looked around, noting with a darkening feeling of despair that escape was likely to prove difficult. There were three doors; two firmly closed with no handles on the inside. The third was ajar, and by straining forward he could see it led to a small bathroom. Two fairly large windows were blocked by heavy wooden shutters, secured from the outside no doubt. Daylight crept through cracks in the wood, and it was late afternoon sun, he thought. He surmised that he had probably been unconscious for several hours. The chair was the same one he had been strapped to and interrogated in when he first arrived back at the compound, hauled roughly by the General's men out of one of the trucks, but the room was new.

He made a half-hearted attempt to escape his bounds, but it was futile and he knew it. He had already tried when they first secured him in the chair, not so much then because he expected to be able to escape, but because he knew it was the behaviour his captors would expect.

His initial interrogation hadn't been as tough as he expected, not based on what they believed had happened to Hidoko. General Vasquez had arrived soon after he had been tied to the chair, striding about the room shouting angrily and switching between Spanish and clipped English at a speed which had made him feel dizzy. Vasquez had ordered his men in turn to attack Callen, but so far they had used nothing more than their fists and he had borne their attentions with a doggedness that was easy given his belief it would likely only get worse. Much much worse. One final blow to his head had abruptly ended that particular session, though he doubted it would be long before he had to endure another round, and he hoped it would prove as easy again to maintain his silence.

NCIS:LA

Back at the stream, the other three agents had braved leaving the relative security of the undergrowth, and lowered themselves flat to the ground at the edge of the water to use their hands to cup the water and drink. Water, blessed water at last. Kensi used it as best she could to wash the blood and dirt from her face, and glancing sideways she saw Deeks doing the same. Sam had taken his fill to drink and was sat back, looking stonily down at his injured leg.

"At least we found some water," Kensi said to him encouragingly, shuffling back to sit near him. He looked at her without speaking, and she knew that finding water, though at this moment the difference between life and death for them, was a poor consolation in the face of possibly never seeing his partner again.

"Callen will be okay," Deeks said, reading the look and joining them both on the ground.

"He could already be dead," Sam said stonily, in no mood to be reassured. Guilt was weighing heavily on him too. He had been absolutely truthful with Callen, back at Ops before they left for Mexico, that he had taken part in other missions with injuries just as bad. But Callen's repeated protests that he shouldn't have come, that he was a liability, echoed hopelessly over and over in his mind. Callen's desire to protect his team at all the costs was the only reason that he was out there on his own now, instead of with Sam to have his back. Sam knew his thoughts were useless, but they churned away inside him nonetheless.

"Sam!" Kensi said, tears welling again in her eyes. Sam met her eyes and raised his hand to her shoulder apologetically, but neither of them could get past the thought that he could well be right, and Callen could already have sacrificed his own life to save theirs.

"We have to keep thinking positive," Deeks said. "Callen's got more lives than a cat. Maybe we should be fearing what he will do to Vasquez and his men, not the other way round." His attempts to lighten the mood fell on deaf ears.

"Oh what the hell do you know, Deeks!" Kensi cried. "There's just one of him, against all those men, the cartel, the Federales… What chance has he got?" Her eyes filled unbidden with tears as guilt once again overcame her, and she furiously blinked them away, hating how they betrayed her emotions.

"And that's exactly why he didn't want any of us to come!" Deeks finally lost his barely-maintained cool. They were all tired, hungry, all feeling various degrees of guilt and misguided responsibility. He couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "This whole mission, it was ill-fated from the start! Mosley put us all in an impossible position, played on Callen keeping his word to her all those months ago. She knew he wouldn't back down, hell she probably knew if he came here, we'd all come. We've been played, and look where it's gotten us. We all should have stayed at home."

"Will you two cut it out!" Sam snapped, but Kensi and Deeks were too wrapped up in their angst to hear him.

"Well we didn't stay at home, did we? We're here, and we need to deal with it. I know you'd rather be somewhere else…"

"I think we'd all rather be somewhere else," Deeks muttered, interrupting Kensi's furious flow.

"And maybe we all would be if you hadn't wasted time trying to convince me to get on that chopper with Mosley," Kensi said bitterly, unable to meet his eyes. Deeks was taken aback at the ice in her tone.

"Is that really what you think?" he asked. "You blame me for us not getting out? For those Mexican bastards shooting a rocket at us? For Callen heading off to do his own thing, like he always does? Wow. Really?"

"For God's sake," Sam muttered crossly. "Enough with the blame game, it isn't helping!"

"You want to know the truth Deeks?" Kensi finally met his eyes, and was devastated at the hurt she saw there. "You really want to know the truth? No, I don't blame you. If I blame anyone, I blame myself. Callen screamed at me to get us out of there, and I hesitated, Deeks. I hesitated. I didn't reverse fast enough. If it's anyone's fault that he might be dead, it's mine. And I'm going to go and find him." And with that, Kensi spun back the way they'd come, running off into the bush, leaving Sam and Deeks scrambling to their feet, stunned and speechless.