"You were worried about him on Friday!" Eric suddenly exclaimed, remembering. Nell raised her eyebrows.
"Yeah," Sam nodded. "And he disappeared for over three hours at lunch on Friday, remember? Something's up, I'm sure of it. Call it a gut feeling – but like you said, I know what Callen's like…"
CHAPTER FOUR – *FLASHBACK* TWO DAYS EARLIER (FRIDAY)
"How do you want to start?" Joelle asked, as she noticed but refrained from commenting on how Callen was still lightly drumming his fingers on the table of the booth they occupied in the far corner of the little café. He had chosen the dark little table closest to the kitchen – an alternative way out – and sat where he could see all aspects of the room. Old habit, she knew, for they were in no danger here. The dangerous part was to come, but not here, not yet.
The waitress who had been hovering had taken their order for two coffees with resignation, and at least Callen's intense aura was keeping her from loitering with menus for food after she delivered the steaming mugs.
"Vance has liaised with LAC* to set up the prison transfer for Sunday. Ten of them, in a minibus with just the driver and one guard. They're all regular criminals due to be transferred anyway, save for Janvier and your man – whose name I still don't know, by the way…" Callen looked at Joelle accusingly. The CIA made Hetty look like an open book sometimes, and Callen was seething that he hadn't been able to find out who their high value prisoner was. "Anyway. They'll all be restrained so that level of security is totally normal, and I've got a man I used to work with to help me out with the high-jacking."
"Two of you? That's never enough!" Joelle exclaimed. "Let me come too."
"We don't need you." Callen knew that wasn't strictly true, but those he could trust on such a secretive mission were few and far between. Also he wanted as few people as possible risking their lives at any of the operation choke points.
"You know damn well you do," Joelle countered. "You'll need someone in overwatch in case it doesn't go to plan… What happens if Janvier won't come, or if the prisoners don't behave as you expect? We can't risk any of them escaping or this whole thing will fall apart before we've even started!"
"Do you really think it's going to work?"
Joelle looked in concern at the doubt in Callen's eyes when he turned to her.
"Don't you?" she asked. "Why wouldn't it? It's a solid plan, Callen."
"I guess so."
"Look, maybe this isn't my place to say, and I know you have a history with this guy, but are you going to be able to go through with this?"
Callen chuckled with irony, and was silent for a long time.
"Vance is right," he said in the end, working hard to keep emotion out of his voice, out of his head. To treat this like any other mission, any other sting they were running. "I know this is our only option. If the Incognito tech is sold to one of our enemies, we've all got far bigger things to worry about than my one-time grudge with a psychopath. I don't like it – but I'll do what needs to be done."
They sat in quiet companionship high up behind some rocks overlooking the dusty road winding through the canyon. Vance had informed them that the prison transfer bus was scheduled for some time Sunday, but to maintain security they didn't know exactly what time, and so Callen and Joelle had taken up position early in the morning.
Callen thought with guilt how he'd brushed off Sam's offer to go to a Clippers game the previous evening with some lame excuse about needing an early night to be ready for his flight to DC in the morning. They rarely socialised outside of work anymore, so it was out of character these days for Sam to invite him anywhere: which meant Sam knew something was up. Though in many ways Callen had wanted to go, he knew spending too much time with Sam was a bad idea. Even though they had drifted apart over the last year or two and Callen often felt neglected – a feeling he regularly chided himself for, for he was a grown man for heaven's sake – by the man who had once been his best friend, he knew Sam could still read him well… Callen hated lying to him. Evading the truth was one thing, he'd done that more times than he could count, but to outright lie to the big man about his 'Washington trip' was more than Callen could bring himself to do. Still… one last evening with Sam, and an attempt to put what was to come over the next few days out of his mind… he'd be lying to himself if he said he hadn't been tempted.
"A penny for your thoughts?" Joelle said eventually.
"I'm not sure they're worth that."
"Even for you, you're quiet."
Callen half-smiled. In the past, that sort of gently probing concern from Sam was a regular occurrence if he ever showed signs of being off his game. Hetty, Sam, Joelle…. They'd all been close to him. They'd all been people he'd learnt to trust, to be real with. More fool him.
"I heard about what happened," she continued, after a pause. "With your team."
"I don't want to talk about it," Callen cautioned.
"It must have been rough… to lose a young agent like that…"
"Jo….." Callen spoke again, warningly. What had happened was safely locked away in a part of his brain he would deal with later. One day. Maybe. The past was in the past, nothing he could do about it now.
"Here comes the bus," Joelle said lightly, changing the subject as easily as if they'd simply been talking about what they'd like for lunch. "You ready?"
Callen sucked in a deep breath as he made to scramble down the slope into position.
"I guess so…"
From their rocky hiding places either side of the canyon road, Callen and his temporary partner Paul Ruddings, an ex-marine he had worked with long in the past, before his NCIS days, threw stingers into the path of the white minibus trundling towards them. Their aims were perfect. The stingers neatly unrolled and took out both front tyres. The bus shuddered, squealed and half tipped as the driver slammed on the brakes and slithered diagonally across the road, coming to a crunching halt against the rocks. For a moment or two, there was a deathly pause, the only sound the settling dust and the low throb of the engine still turning over.
Working quickly, Ruddings rolled up the stingers while Callen boarded the bus, his eyes scanning urgently for the man he wanted. He was vaguely aware of Ruddings entering the bus behind him, holding his gun over the driver. The guard had been thrown forward in the crash and knocked unconscious, a circumstance that had played out better than they could have hoped for. The driver was undercover, and had been primed to feign a concussion and resulting memory loss of the incident, but the guard was the real deal. After Callen and Ruddings had disappeared with Janvier, Joelle was going to fake the escape of the CIA prisoner, making it look as though he had financed the whole thing. In reality she was going to keep the man under her control, and liaise with the CIA to set him up for recapture at the earliest opportunity, by whichever law enforcement agency was put on the case. Then she would join Callen again to provide overwatch.
Callen felt his stomach tighten as he laid eyes on his nemesis. He'd put away many criminals in his time with NCIS and the various agencies he'd been with previously, but not one of them got to him in the way Janvier did. He swallowed all his emotions and schooled his face into a neutral expression, ever the agent, wholly focused on his unpleasant task. Janvier stared piercingly back, his eyes cold but mocking.
"Did you miss me so much you have come to break me free, Agent G Callen?"
Callen pulled Janvier roughly off the bus, manoeuvring him unceremoniously round to the back where they were out of view, if not totally out of earshot, of the prisoners still on board.
"Well isn't this just like old times. I'm going to have to stop taking bus rides – it seems that each time I do, you appear like the devil in my dreams and think you can just whisk me away! Not this time, Agent Callen!"
"Believe me when I say I would be happy never to set eyes on you again," Callen said coldly. "And all this wasn't my idea. But orders are orders, and…"
"You need me," Janvier finished his sentence. "What is it for this time? Another deal? You've got more unexploded nuclear bombs you want to gain control of? What could possibly make you think I will do anything more for you?"
"Money," Callen responded, testing the water. "A lot of money. You're greedy. Power-hungry and greedy."
"What use is money to a dead man?" Janvier sneered.
"You're not dead. Not yet anyway."
"I might as well be. Seven and a half years in solitary…"
"And that's what we can offer you," Callen said, with distaste. "An end to your sentence. We can offer you your freedom." Callen hated having to say those words. Right from the beginning this mission had torn him apart, and Joelle hadn't been too far off base when she'd asked him if he'd be able to go through with it. The agent in him knew what needed to be done, what had to be done, for the greater good. But as a man… he abhorred the idea of Janvier walking free.
"What could possibly be bigger than nuclear bombs…" Janvier mused, looking Callen dead in the eye. It took all Callen's will not to break eye contact. He had forgotten just how much he loathed the man. Out of sight, out of mind… well mostly out of mind. He'd be kidding himself if he said Janvier didn't visit him in his nightmares from time to time, however much he made light of the Christmas cards that arrived without fail each year. Janvier continued, taunting. "It must be very big indeed, that you would risk working with me again. Tell me, how is your partner? How is Agent Hanna, and his shaggy little friend?"
A rush of blood flooded Callen's head and leaping forward with rage he pinned Janvier against the prison bus with his left arm across his enemy's throat, his right hand closing round his gun at his back.
"CALLEN!" Joelle shouted sharply. "Stop it, for goodness sake! This isn't helping!"
"Listen to the lady!" Janvier panted. There was malicious satisfaction in his eyes at the reaction he could still summon in Callen with so little effort. Still cuffed, there was nothing he could do to stop Callen's attack, but he seemed to be enjoying the agent's loss of control. Joelle touched Callen's shoulder, lightly, stepping back out of reach in case he turned on her. But as quickly as the rage had come up, the shutters in his mind crashed down, and he turned to her with his face blank, leaving Janvier catching his breath with a smile in his eyes.
"What the hell are you doing?" Joelle asked him in a cross whisper. "Get a grip, or this is never going to work!"
"It's a stupid plan anyway," Callen muttered. "We were crazy to think it would stand a chance."
"Come now, Agent Callen, have I said no yet?" Janvier spoke again, and reluctantly Callen turned his attention back to the person he hated more than anyone else on earth. "We work well together, you and I. You could at least share with me what you want me to do."
"We need you," Callen said, with a darkening sense of foreboding and déjà vu, "to help us broker a deal for some military technology that could prove very very dangerous."
"Ah yes. The Incognito technology," Janvier said with a nasty smile.
"You know about it?" Callen asked incredulously. "How?"
"That's for me to know, and you to find out," Janvier said quietly, as, suddenly hit violently from behind, Callen crumpled to the floor.
*Los Angeles County State Prison (I'm not based in the USA, so have relied on good old google to pick the prison closest to LA where prisoners could be transferred to. I don't think we were ever told in the show the name of the super-max prison Janvier was incarcerated at... so transferring 'to' a prison rather than 'from' one seemed the best I could do...)
Apologies - I managed to delete the latest chapter instead of uploading the next one - that takes a special kind of skill don't you think?!
I've had so little time recently and it's really frustrating as I'm desperate to get the middle chapters finalised in order to post more frequently for you guys! I'm loving how along the way it's taken some turns I hadn't fully plotted out... With the fleshing out of later chapters still being worked on, the characters have taken their own way a little... Deeks has muscled his way in more than I thought he would in a couple of later chapters! It's an interesting journey as following real-show events in season 10 and 11, we're not in my usual 'comfort zone' of Callen and Sam being best buddies and all... But I plan to fix that all up by the end of the story x
