Chapter 5: Invasions and Deceptions

A/N: I have watched season 6 episodes 1- 5 and now realize this story is so far from canon, it has to be rated AU. This chapter is my attempt to try to bring the two universes somewhat closer. Originally, this was based on the two teaser photos for the episode "Third Choir" and the one of hairy headed Callen in "Inelegant Heart". Some of the dialogue from canon episodes are used here. Parts of this story are condensed from other stories that I have already posted. Thanks again to G, my Russian thesaurus. I hope you enjoy it.

A/N 2: Sorry this is being posted so late, I rewrote this chapter more times than I want to count, and as it is, I still am not perfectly happy with it. The plot bunnies were not kind to me these past couple of weeks. They gave me parts to other stories I am working on, a partial outline for a whole new story, but for this chapter, they all ran and hid. It grew far too long, so I split the chapter up into two parts, and then found it had to be reworked, but it was easier to deal with. And so, before I fall too far behind the televised version, here it is:

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Los Angeles, California

Eric whistled the team up to ops.

"What have you got for us now, Eric?" Callen asked the young tech operator when everyone was assembled there.

"We're being invaded."

"What are you talking about? Has there been a break in? Has OSP been compromised?" Callen asked.

"That," Eric said, and put up the picture of their front door. Special Congressional Investigator Michael Thomas had tried to do a backdoor attack on Hetty and her team by ordering a forensic audit of the NCIS facility and all the employees working there. Several members of the Department of Justice task force were at their front door at this early hour, with their wheeled suitcases to pack away the files and other information they expected to find. In front of the group was a woman who was waving her badge around, so the cameras she knew were there could see it, as she demanded entrance for the group.

"What'll we do?" Eric asked.

"Just leave them. If nobody buzzes them in, they will get tired of waiting." Callen offered.

"Too late," Eric replied, as the door opened and they all entered the building.

Granger had come out of Hetty's office and met with the leader of the group.

"I am Chief Investigator Ava Wallace. My team and I are members of a Department of Justice task force appointed by Special Congressional Investigator Michael Thomas to do a forensic audit on this department of NCIS and the people at this facility. We have subpoena and warrant powers to compel your people to testify and produce documents. We will need a place to set up our computers, deal with our paperwork, and conduct interviews. You are required to provide all of this for us. Do I make myself clear?"

Granger didn't particularly like the fact that this woman came in with her attitude and started ordering him to provide everything that she wanted. He went back to his office and picked up the phone. Calling up to ops, he asked Nell to come down to work with this woman.

"Jones, this woman needs space for her team to spread out their stuff and work. Where would you suggest she go."

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow, as if to ask him if he really wanted her to answer that question. "I guess that the gym would be about the only place that would have enough room for them. I could get maintenance to set up a bunch of tables and bring in enough chairs for them to spread things out."

"And what about interview areas?" Wallace asked.

"There are several empty offices that you could use, ma'am. I will make sure that maintenance sets them up for you."

"Is there anything else you want right now or need?" Granger asked.

"I don't think so. That will work for us for the moment."

"We will have some temporary phones installed. If you need something from me all you have to do is use the code 9-414 and that will get me up in ops."

"I suppose I could just go up there and ask." Wallace offered.

"We prefer that you just call. The fewer times the doors open and close the easier it is on the air conditioning that cools all the mainframe computer systems up there."

"That sounds logical. How soon do you think you can get things set up here?" the DoJ agent asked.

"Give us a couple of hours, and you should be up and running." Nell assured her. She then looked at Granger and said, "I'll go up and set things up through my work station."

She hurried up to ops and informed the team what was going on with Wallace and her team. Callen looked at her and asked, "I really hate to ask this of you and Eric, but could you two stay here and hold down the fort? The rest of us will go and set up our base of operations at the boat shed. You can still channel all the information that we need over there, right?"

The two techs looked at each other and then nodded. Eric told Callen "You will have to switch the flat screen TV in the living quarters over to the operations command mode. It won't be as good as the plasma, but it is as good as you need right now."

Callen looked at Eric and Nell and said, "Thanks guys. I owe you big time." He then turned to the team and said, "Let's go out the back way so the DoJ people can't follow us, and meet up at the boat shed." With that, the four agents exited ops.

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Later that afternoon, Nell received the dreaded phone call from DoJ Agent Wallace.

"Ops."

"Miss Jones? I was wondering if we could begin our interviews this afternoon. Could you have Agent Callen come by and we can get his out of the way?"

"I'm sorry, Agent Wallace, but Agent Callen is out in the field on a case right now, and is not available for an interview." Nell told her.

"What about Agent Hanna?"

"He is with Agent Callen, and also is unavailable right now."

"Then what about Agent Blye and Detective Deeks? Would either of them be available?"

"I'm sorry. Agent Blye is off interviewing witnesses for that case, and Detective Deeks has been called back to his duties at LAPD."

"Do you know when any of them will be available for interviews?"

"I'm sorry, I do not. But the next time I am in contact with them, I will tell them that you asked. Sorry, I have an incoming call from Director Vance for Assistant Director Granger. Goodbye." and then Nell hung up. She called Granger up to ops to take the call from the Director and left to give him the privacy he needed. When he was done, she returned to ops and placed a call to Hetty to give her the daily update that she required.

"Hello, Miss Jones. How are things back home?"

"A team from the Department of Justice is set up in the gym, doing a forensic audit. They wanted to interview members of the team, but Callen has them operating out of the boat shed right now. I don't know how long I can stall them from going over the files or grilling the agents. She did say that she has subpoena and warrant powers to compel us to testify and produce documents."

"My dear, far be it for me to tell you to interfere in a Department of Justice investigation. I do want to remind you, however, that the building is old, and was scheduled to be condemned at one time."

"I think I understand what you are saying, Hetty. Otherwise we're all good and there is nothing more to report."

"Very well, Miss Jones. I leave everything in your capable hands. Until tomorrow then."

"Goodbye, Hetty."

Nell went down into the basement and found the main power switch to the Mission. With a smile on her face she pulled it, plunging the whole building into darkness. Then she turned off all the areas of the building, except for the ops centers for all of the teams. She fired up the auxiliary generator, even though it was just for show. She turned on the main power switch to power up the ops centers.

When Nell came back up to the main floor, she found Agent Wallace looking for her.

"What happened? Why is the power down?"

"Well, you know that this is an older building, and it was damaged in the earthquake of '94. It could be that some of the older wiring did not show any outward damage when they were checking it then and finally decided to quit under the added load your machines have put on them." Nell answered.

"Well, you do have backup generators, don't you? Can they be used to power the building?"

"We have only one backup generator, and that is being used right now to run the computers in all the ops centers. We have constantly asked for more backup generators to be placed in our budget, but you know how the Washington bureaucrats are. Maybe if you would place an order, we could get some more installed to power the rest of the building. Perhaps they would listen to you more than they do to us?"

Eric had come down from ops to find Nell and tell her that things were back up and running. Listening to her conversation with Wallace, he couldn't believe how thick Nell was laying it on to the older woman. He had to quickly turn around and almost run back up to ops, barely letting the doors swish shut behind him before he broke out in laughter.

Since there was nothing more that she could do, Agent Wallace returned to the gym and gave her team the rest of the day off, sending them back to their hotel. Nell maintained her straight face and went back up to ops. Safely behind the closed doors, she looked at Eric, and both of them burst out laughing.

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Eric pushed the button that sent out the call to everyone warning them about a major intrusion at one of Hetty's homes.

Sam rolled over to answer his buzzing cell, as Michelle complained, "It's only 5:00 in the morning. What could they possibly want with calling you in this early?"

"I have no idea, Chelle. Just gotta go and find out," he said as he pulled on his pants and grabbed his shirt, exiting their bedroom.

Nell was almost at the OSP when she got her call. Usually she got there just a few minutes after Eric did, but this morning she put everything she needed into her crock pot, so that her pot roast would be done and waiting for her when she got home.

Callen already had his two hours of sleep for the night and was working on his Chechen language tapes, as he read his latest on-line copy of Izvestia. He looked at the message and was immediately on his way.

Kensi wondered if it was her phone or Deeks' that was buzzing. She had tried sleeping, but again the nightmares of that cave in Afghanistan came to haunt her and drive all thoughts of rest completely out of her mind. This was the fourth night this week that she would get little or no sleep. She had called Deeks, and he immediately came over. After a couple minutes of argument, he allowed her to put in her Titanic DVD and they settled together on her couch to watch it. Both of them must have fallen asleep, because their limbs were all tangled up around each other. Deeks was groggy, wondering why she was moving around when it was so early in the morning. Both of them immediately woke up when they realized that both of their phones were calling them from slumber.

Granger got the call too, since he was the temporary operations manager. He looked over at the young blond woman laying in the bed next to him, his latest attempt to capture the magic that he once had with Anja, back in 1980 in East Berlin. Even though it was so long ago, he never forgave Hetty Lange for lying to him and telling him she would help get Anja to freedom, only to do nothing. The young woman's smile still haunted him after all these years, as he tired to recreate those days when he was so much in love. He was sure that this girl, Alyona, Elena, Irena, whatever her name was, had been provided to him by Mattias, probably with the aid of the Iskorenit cartel. She seemed awfully interested in the work he did, and even got close to pumping him for information. He let a few things supposedly slip, knowing that she would pass them on. He didn't want to destroy the NCIS unit here in Los Angeles, or provide any information that would label him a traitor, but he did want to destroy Hetty as completely as she had done to him. His bed partner did not matter to him that much anyway. There was none of the magic with her, and he felt that this might be the very last time he was with her. He didn't look back at all as he dressed and proceeded to grab his phone and head for the mission

When he arrived he went up to ops immediately. Granger looked at Eric and asked him, "Why did you call us in so early, Eric?"

"There's been a break in at Hetty's residence in Hollywood. The guard Hetty had there has been killed and they are still there prowling around so I sent Callen and Sam over to Dovecote to see if they can apprehend them, and Deeks and Kensi over to Ancora, over on Bethune, in Los Angeles, in case there is going to be a break in there.

"You got eyes on the intruders?" Granger asked

"Yes, sir. Hetty's got an elaborate security system in each of her houses. We can follow them through every room of the house. We made sure that almost every inch of the place is covered."

"One of them seems to have some sort of medical kit. It appears that they may be there more for an abduction than any thing else." Nell added .

"Has the team been notified of that?" Granger asked.

"As soon as we saw it, we sent it to their phones, along with the access codes so they can enter silently." Nell answered

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Sam and Callen arrived at Dovecote at the same time. Each of them knew how the other operated so well, that all Callen had to do was tell Sam, "Give me two" as he headed toward the back door. Sam waited the allotted time, then went to the front door and punched in access code, crouched down and entered with his gun drawn. "Federal agents, drop your weapons" he yelled out as he entered the house and immediately sought cover.

He heard Callen enter the back door, just before the fire fight started. In just a few moments, both intruders were dead. He was glad that they took the intruders out as quickly as possible, with very little collateral damage done to Hetty's residence or the possessions it contained. He would have hated to have the replacement costs come out of his paycheck, because with some of these items, it would be centuries before he would again be paid.

"Eric, I'm sending you the pictures of our two intruders. See if you can find out who they were and why they were here. Both of them had a small medical kit with a filled syringe and two vials of fluid. Have one of the techs meet me at the boat shed, and they can take it back to the lab to analyze it."

"Will run them through facial recognition. Get me the info on their car and I will also run that through Kaleidoscope to see where they have been. Kirstin will be waiting for you to get that sample over to the lab."

"Okay. We're coming in. Send anything you get over to the boat shed."

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When they were all back in the boat shed, Callen activated the flat screen and linked up with ops. "You got anything new for us, Eric?"

"The car is a rental. It was picked up at LAX three days ago." ID cards of both of the men were posted on the screen. "Both men are former East German operatives that worked both for their government and also on their own. They holed up in a motel near the airport and had only one visitor before they launched their intrusion on Hetty's house. That man is none other than..." A new NCIS ID card was added on the screen.

"Mattias Draeger, Son of a ..." Callen was nearly beside himself. "I thought that he was going into protection program somewhere in Podunk, USA. Get ahold of the Protective Operations Field Office in Washington. I wanna know what happened after they left here to go to some 'undisclosed location'. He evidently is not there, but came back here."

"Will do, Callen," Nell assured him.

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About two hours later Nell called back. "It's almost certain that they were there to try to abduct Hetty. Both of those medical kits had a syringe filled with a 0.1 mg dose of the synthetic opiod etorphine combined with acepromazine maleate to make sure it was non toxic for humans. The second vial is the human antidote, naloxone, used in case of accidental human exposure."

"I guess that Mattias did not take our warning to him about Hetty seriously. He will learn what it feels like to cross us." Callen said.

"About Mattias..." Nell said hesitantly. She really didn't want to give Callen the news that she had to deliver.

"What about him, Nell? What news do you have that I'm really not gonna like."

"I called Operations Manager Malcolm Page, in the Protective Operations Field Office in Washington, to ask if he was still in protective custody. They cannot get ahold of the two agents that were accompanying him. They failed to make their check ins all day yesterday, but nobody red flagged it, because of the low priority they set on the move. They should have been set up in Lewiston, Idaho, today, having flown into Coeur d'Alene, and driving from there. They were supposed to check in at a Motel in Moscow, Idaho, before doing the final drive to Lewiston. They never checked in."

So that bastard might be running around under the radar, and might be the one in charge of abducting Hetty?"

"Looks like it", Nell was forced to admit.

Callen swore, and furiously started typing on his computer.

"G, what are you planning to do?" Sam asked him.

"They want Hetty. Let's give them Hetty." Callen said to him with a smile on his face.

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Later that afternoon, a limousine pulled up in front of Dovecote, Hetty's home in Hollywood. Callen and Sam got out and escorted the petite person in the back seat up to the door, where she punched in the access code. Once inside, the woman turned to the two field agents and asked, "Okay guys, where do you want me to go?" It was not Hetty, but Nell as a decoy, looking just like Hetty, dressed in a wig and a smart pants suit that Hetty would not have been ashamed to wear.

"Why don't you go upstairs to the bedroom. That's where Hetty would have gone. Sam is going to stay downstairs here and act as your bodyguard. I'm gonna leave and drop off the limo and pick up the Challenger, this way if anyone has eyes on the place, maybe it will lure them out." Callen laid out their planned operation.

Not more than ten minutes after Callen left, the new hit team made their appearance. Sam counted at least six guys that were coming for their fake Hetty. Warning both Callen and Nell that they were coming in, he took up a defensive position in the house and took out the first one that came through the door. He heard the glass of the back door break, and wondered if he was going to be caught in the crossfire. When he wasn't attacked from behind, he figured that guy went up the stairs to take care of Nell.

"Nell, one's coming up," he yelled over the com. Nell didn't reply, and Sam could only hope that she would again trust the training she received and be able to deal with him.

Callen entered through the back door and joined Sam in defending the main floor. Both men were a little worried about Nell upstairs. They decided to join forces with her and fought their way to the stairway.

Nell's cell rang and she answered it. "Little busy here, Hetty. We are under attack here at Dovecote."

"Listen carefully, Miss Jones, ..." Hetty continued to give her some specific instructions on what they should do.

Leaving Sam to cover the stairway, Callen went and entered the master bedroom, preparing himself for the worst. The closed adjoining bathroom door looked like someone sprayed it with a burst from an automatic weapon. He slowly opened the door, forcing it when it was blocked by the male body lying on the floor. "Nell, it's me." he said, and then saw her, sitting on the floor in the corner, her gun trained on him, with a look on her face that Callen had never seen there before, fear, determination, relief. He offered her his hand to help her up to a standing position. "Come on, we've got to fight our way out of here," he told her. They stepped over the dead intruder and joined Sam out in the hallway.

Nell looked up and down the hallway and then she headed off toward one end. "Guys, this way."

Sam looked at where she was going, "Nell, that's a dead end." he told her.

"No, Hetty called and told me about this." she said as she started pulling on a suit of armor at the end of the hall. There was a small click and then one edge swung away, revealing the secret stairway behind it.

Nell led the way down the stairs and Sam shut the secret door behind him. "Of course Hetty would have a secret passageway in her house. Why didn't I realize that. I just wish that she hadn't built it for people who were her size and not mine." the big man said as he bumped his head on the ceiling once again.

"You could go back and use the regular stairway, big guy." Callen said.

Sam just growled at him as he hit his head one more time on the low ceiling clearance.

They were waiting for the two men left of the attack team who came through the front door. "Federal Agents, Drop the weapons." With three agents' guns trained on them, the two men complied and were taken into custody.

Sam and Callen dropped Nell off at the limousine, so she could drive it back, and then continued with their two prisoners over to the boat shed. They had sent the pictures of the four dead intruders in to Eric so he could run them through his facial recognition program. From piecing things together, they determined that five of the gunmen were just local muscle, probably hired just for this one job. But the sixth member of the hit team, the one that Nell had killed, was Russian, and was reportedly a member of the Iskorenit cartel. When Callen, heard that, he slammed both his fists down on the interrogation table, got up and walked out the door. Sam put his hand on Callen's shoulder, but he just shook it off. Not saying a word to anyone, he left the boat shed, got into his car and drove off.

Sam immediately called Eric. "Keep Callen under GPS surveillance, Eric. I'm afraid he is gonna go off the reservation."

"Sorry to tell you this, Sam, but he has already disabled the GPS tracker on his car and his phone. Callen has gone 'lone wolf' on us again."