Chapter 9: And Dealing with Foes
A/N: Well, here it is folks. The last chapter of the story. It's hard to believe that almost five months have elapsed since I first started this story. I originally wanted it to be about 3 chapters long and to have it done before the episode 6x04 "The 3rd Choir" aired on October 20, 2014. As anyone can see, that did not happen. I suppose I could offer all sorts of reasons why this happened, but I won't. What I will do is thank everyone who has stuck with this story, reviewed it, and sent me PMs on it. I hope you all will like this ending.
Some of the dialogue from previous 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.
A/N 2: Please note: this is the last chapter of this story. It is complete and has been marked so. I am not planning a sequel at this time. There are too many other stories the plot bunnies are forcing me to think about that need to be written first. Quinn has been waiting all this time to be born. Her parents deserve the happiness of finally seeing their little girl
Disclaimer: Thanks to Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan, for teaching me to play with the fantastic characters and sets that they have created. Since I don't own them, they made me promise that I return them by their curfew. Although they might be slightly (?) battered and bruised, I did send them home. All the other original characters that you do not recognize, are slaving away for me, trying to come up with an original idea for the next story that I might write.
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Santa Monica Airport
The C-130 Hercules was met on the tarmac at Pendleton by a humvee. This took Henrietta Lange directly to a helicopter, that was already spinning its main rotor waiting for her arrival. The chopper pilot flew Hetty to the Santa Monica Airport, and conducted her to a limousine that was waiting for her, just outside the hanger. Hetty had hoped to see Nell Jones there, waiting to go to the Mission with her as her backup. Instead it was Agent Corruthers, one of the lesser NCIS agents, that usually was assigned to the delivery of vehicles.
As the car sped away towards the Mission, Hetty had some time to think about what she was going to do. **As soon as I am done with Mattias, I am going to have to deal with Nell. She is much to valuable for us to lose. She might never go out in the field again, or even pick up a weapon, but she can do so much with her skills. I should have a talk with her about what she wants for her future, and see if I can't help her to achieve it.**
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Salazar's house, Los Angeles
At the same time across town, Deeks and Kensi walked up at Salazar's house to meet with Sam and Callen. They saw the police trying to clear out the bodies, and firemen rolling up their hoses from spraying down the fire after the explosion, but staying on duty to make sure no flames arose out of the charred remains.
As both of the younger partners approached their older colleagues, they were concerned about them, and gave them a quick glance, checking them for injuries. They all felt the same way about hospitals and doctors, and knew that even if Callen and Sam had gotten hurt, neither of them would tend to accept medical attention, unless they were on their deathbed.
"You guys okay?" Deeks asked as they go up on the porch, already knowing what answer he was going to be given.
"We're better than Salazar's gang." Sam said, giving Deeks an answer he did not expect. A nod of his head caused them to look along with him at the police and firemen doing their jobs.
"What the hell happened?" Kensi asked, wondering how so much destruction could have been unleashed.
"These guys didn't even put up a struggle." Sam's face told the others how unlikely that was. "I think Mattias played them. He must have found out about the reward G was offering, and he used it against us to lure us out."
Callen wasn't buying that. "If that was the case, then where was he? Why wasn't he there, waiting to pick us off, when we bailed out of the house? Why isn't he shooting at us right now?" Something just was not adding up for him. Some other bit of information was needed before things would click into place. "I mean... Mattias is old school, just like Hetty. And they're always playing the long game."
Sam tried to play devil's advocate as he asked G, "Okay, so what's the long game?"
G thought about it carefully for a moment, and the missing piece of the puzzle came to him as he answered, "...Hetty."
"Well, that game's gonna get a lot easier when Hetty shows up." Deeks said solemnly, stating the obvious.
Callen's phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket. He looked at the caller ID and said, "What do you got, Eric?" as he put the phone on speaker.
A strange voice could be head, sounding not at all like Eric, "Mattias isn't dead."
"Yeah, Eric, we already figured that part out." Callen replied, wanting some new information.
"No. I was sitting here in Ops, looking at the monitors, and I saw him. He was just in the boat shed." Callen had never heard the young tech sound so scared.
"WHAT!" Sam said in surprise, wondering if he heard Eric right. The look on all their faces echoed the response Sam uttered.
"The silent alarm went off. It was Mattias. Granger and Nate went over there to check it out. They are there now, but Mattias has gone. The place is clear." Eric reported.
"We'll meet 'em there." Callen said as he ended the call.
"How the hell did he know how to get to the boat shed?" Kensi asked.
"Because he's good. Scary good." Deeks answered her.
They all started to move, going to the cars. Kensi and Deeks turned left as they left the property, and walked up the street to where Kensi's Escolade was parked. Callen and Sam turned to the right and headed toward the Charger.
"If Mattias found the boat shed, why didn't he just try and ambush us? Why didn't he set a trap?" Callen asked his partner.
"It still might be a trap. He used Ryan Greene to lure us into the kill box, the same way he faked his own capture here for your ransom." Sam tried giving G a possible answer.
"If that's the case, what the hell was the appearance at the boat shed all about? If he wanted to lure us there, why didn't Nate or Granger find anything?" Callen countered.
"They don't do this everyday, G. Maybe they just weren't looking in the right place." Sam again tried to give his partner a possible explanation.
Callen swept his eyes from the front of the Challenger to the back of the car. Something just clicked in his mind. Could this be the missing piece of the puzzle that would allow him to see the big picture of what Mattias was doing? If it was, they were in more trouble than he first thought. "That son of a bitch." he uttered as he started to look closely at the black car to confirm his nightmare.
"What?" Sam was wondering what he was doing.
Callen looked in the rear, passenger side wheel well, then ran his hand over the interior surfaces he couldn't see. He found nothing there, so he moved to search the front wheel well.
"What? What are you doing?" Sam asked, as he look over the back end of his beloved car.
Again Callen ran both his hands over the inside surfaces, as he looked into the front wheel well. Here he found exactly what he was looking for, a tracker with a magnet to hold it in place.
"He must have tagged us when we were at the beach. He lured us there. Probably watched us as we arrived and placed it right after we came up empty, chasing him while he was on the roof. He probably went right past us to place it." Callen surmised, as he handed it to Sam.
Sam took it from his partner, but looked at Callen, and not at the device, as he asked, "Why use a tracking device if you were planning on killing us?"
"Backup plan?" Callen surmised.
"Or maybe he wasn't planning on killing all of us." Sam proposed.
Callen nodded his head in agreement. "He's gonna keep one of us alive to lead him back..."
Sam finished his sentence for him, "...to Hetty."
The final piece of the puzzle just clicked into place for both of them. They immediately moved into action. Sam started to wave his hands, directing traffic as he shouted to the police officers nearby. "I need somebody to move these two squad cars, NOW." The policemen recognized the note of urgency in his voice, and ran to move the two cars he indicated.
In the meantime, Callen had pulled out his phone, and hit the number for Ops on his speed dial. Eric picked up before the second ring, wondering what new information Callen wanted from him.
"Callen?" he asked.
"Eric," Callen said, almost desperately, "we think Ops may be compromised."
"Whoa, ...what?" Eric really started to get flustered. How many things are more chilling than Ops being compromised? Not many!
Callen reported what he found to the tech, "Mattias tagged our cars with tracking devices at the beach. He tracked 'em back to the boat shed, which means he's probably on his way right now to Ops."
Eric could not believe what he was hearing. He started to look around, wondering if Mattias could have slipped into the room with him, without him knowing it. He asked Callen anxiously, "Like, Ops Ops?"
Knowing that Callen had the phone on speaker, Sam tried to calm the younger man down, "Eric, you can handle this."
Giving him a few seconds to calm down, Sam continued, "Just get everyone out of there, find Hetty and divert her."
"Where?" Eric asked.
"Anywhere but Ops." Callen replied with an anxious voice, as he and Sam climbed into the Challenger to race back to the Mission. "Back to the boat shed. Or even better, have Hetty go to Sam's house. Michelle is an agent and can help protect her. Call us after you get Hetty away from there, and I'll call Michelle and explain things to her. The support staff can all be sent home."
Eric exhaled the breath he didn't know he was holding. "Oh, boy." he said to no one in particular, as he started the program that would tell him when Hetty entered the building. Multitasking, he also started frantically typing on his keyboard, putting out a general message to everyone else, that they had the rest of the day off. He had no clue how he was going to get Department of Justice Investigator Wallace and her crew out of the building.
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Office of Special Projects, Los Angeles
Hetty slowly walked down through the tunnel. She was smiling as she looked around, like someone glad to be back, after being gone for a long time. She hadn't been gone all that long, but the possibility of her being removed as the Operations Manager of the Office of Special Projects struck to the heart of her being. To never see any of this again, that would break her heart. It was not just because she found this place after Callen had been shot, when they had to assume that the warehouse building headquarters had been compromised, but also because it was here that her present team had come together. This whole building was part of the soul of her team. She could look anywhere in the building, and recall fond memories of her team, the ones she considered to be her children. It was oh so good to be home with her family again.
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Sam and Callen were in the Challenger, barreling down the Moreno Valley Freeway as fast as Sam could safely drive, passing every car and truck that they came upon. Sam looked down at the speedometer and saw that they were already ten miles per hour over the limit. They were trying to get back to OPS before Hetty did, and prevent Mattias from doing anything to her.
All of a sudden, they heard Eric's worried voice coming over their coms. "Ah, guys. According to my monitors, Hetty has already entered the building."
Callen responded to this news by telling the young man, "Then get her out of there! We're still fifteen minutes out."
"Ten" said Sam, as he stepped on the gas even more, and the Challenger seemed to shoot ahead.
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Hetty looked over the few prized possessions on her desk, as if this would be the last time she would ever see them. She laid one hand down on top of her desk; she placed her other hand on the armrest of her desk chair behind the desk, and eased herself down into the chair. Then she swung the chair to the left, and stared at all the memories contained within the prizes displayed in the freestanding cabinet there. She heard a door close, but it did not break her concentration. Her ears picked up the soft footsteps coming from under the stairway up to Ops, off to the right side of her desk. Those footsteps could only belong to one person. She knew that this will be the final time she would face him. One of them will not leave this building the way he or she had entered it.
As the sound of the footsteps behind her grew louder, Hetty greeted her visitor, "Mattias, my old... whatever the hell you are."
Hetty was never at a loss for words. She just didn't know how this was going to play out, what game Mattias would be playing. Friend? Ally? Captor? Executioner? Maybe if she turned, and looked him dead in the eyes, she could read what his body was saying, that his words refused to divulge.
Mattias greeted his old adversary, "It is good to see you again, Henrietta."
Eric came running out onto the mezzanine, but stopped in his tracks when he saw the scene below him. Hetty was sitting at her desk, unarmed, while Mattias was walking toward her. He had a gun in his hand, but it was not pointed at her. Even though it looked like he was carrying it comfortably, next to his leg, Eric was certain that he was not careless, and could raise and shoot Hetty at a moment's notice. The intruder seemed content right now just to talk with Hetty.
"It's been a while." he said to her, as he seemed to forget asking her to get him into the witness protection program, standing in almost the same spot, less than two weeks ago.
Eric hurried back to the Ops war room. He filled the rest of the team in on what he saw, as soon as the double doors swished closed behind him. "He's here." Eric informed them. "Mattias is here, with Hetty, in her office."
Down below, in Hetty's office, the Operations Manager tried to take over what little control of the situation that she could.
She asked him, "How did you get in here?" When he was brought here earlier, it was in the back of a closed panel van, so he couldn't see anything and remember in what direction they had gone.
Mattias reached into an inside pocket of his suit coat, and pulled out a NCIS ID badge. He looked at it before throwing it on a small table next to him, and said, "Let's just say...Dennis will be very late returning from lunch."
"You must have lost your mind, Mattias. Either that, or I am missing something. Because I cannot figure out where the logic is in all of this."
"Longevity. Be honest, Henrietta. Throughout your career, did you ever think either one of us would live this long?"
Hetty was beginning to understand. There just might be some logic in what he was doing after all. To confirm her suspicions, she asked him, "You haven't planned for your retirement, have you?"
"Retirement," he said with a little laugh, "I thought my entire retirement package would be a bullet."
Thinking about that possibility, Hetty countered, "Well, one can only hope that could still be arranged."
Looking seriously at her, he dismissed that thought. "What can I say? You are my nest egg. You will provide me with a very comfortable life."
She looked at him with incredible surprise on her face. "I know people think that I am crazy, but you are crazier than I am, if you think you're going to be able to get out of here alive."
"Well, you can tell me all about it on our flight back to Moscow. Shall we go?" he signaled with a jerk of his head in the direction of the door, and raised his gun to emphasize his point.
Hetty just stayed in her chair, her arms crossed over her chest. "Go ahead and shoot me", she said solemnly. "...You won't get five feet without being killed. I'm not moving from this chair. It's all over, Mattias."
The old spy had anticipated her refusal. He smiled and reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a capped syringe.
"It's never over, Henrietta. I think you will come with me...if I give you this." He shook the syringe slightly to emphasize his point. "You had a very bad experience with this once, if I remember right."
Remembering the incident to which he was referring, she said to him, with as much anger as she could possibly put in her words, "You are an evil son of a bitch."
"We are what they made us." he replied, his words showing his self-righteous defense, as his facial expressions was telling her, that all the hate in the world that she could put in her words, would never be able to hurt him. Then he got back down to business, saying to her, "Let's go." and again directing her with a nod toward the door.
She let out a large sigh, placed her hands on the desk, and slowly pushed herself up to a standing position.
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Department of Justice Investigator Ava Wallace chose that inauspicious moment to approach Hetty's office. She had been informed by her superiors in Washington that the little old woman had ducked out of the session of the Special Congressional Investigation. The Investigator had been to find out how Hetty got away from Washington and back to Los Angeles, without being dismissed by the committee. Her secondary mission was to apprehend the tiny woman, and return her for the balance of the Congressional Committee Investigation, especially the questioning that Congressman Michael Thomas intended for her. She had seen that Hetty was in her office, and she wanted to get this over with as soon as possible. Realizing that Hetty was talking with someone, Wallace still approached, because she had never before let something like that stop her from doing what she had to. **This little old lady was not going to give her the slip, like she did to those agents in Washington.** she thought to herself.
"Excuse me, Ms. Lange." Wallace interrupted, "We haven't had a chance to discuss these..."
Startled by her coming up behind him, Mattias couldn't help turning and looking at the intruding woman. Seeing his distraction by the younger woman's approach, Hetty made her move. She activated the spring-loaded holster that she had strapped to her right arm under her sleeve. Immediately, her Ruger SP101, small-framed double-action revolver, was thrust into her hand, ready to do its deadly work. She lifted her arm and took careful aim at Mattias' chest, pulled the trigger, and waited for the expected result of the 357 Magnum shell. Inspector Wallace gasped in shock. Mattias looked down at his chest. He was very surprised, but very uninjured.
Hetty knew that she had not missed her intended target. The Ruger SP101 had solid steel sidewalls, making it rugged, dependable, and reliable shot after shot. Tiny, but extremely effective, that is why the dimutive lady carried it as her concealed weapon. The impact from the shell should have knocked Mattias to the floor. Since it did not, Hetty realized that he must have been wearing body armor. Knowing that she only had four more shots in her revolver, she understood that she would have to carefully use them in order for her to survive. Hetty then raised her arm, changing her point of aim to Mattias' head. In that split second, Wallace had seen that Mattias also had a weapon. Since the Inspector did not recognize him as belonging to the OSP staff, and realized that he was holding Ms. Lange captive with his Glock 19, she threw herself at him and they both struggled for the gun. Hetty moved to a less vulnerable spot while the two continued to struggle over the weapon. Mattias kept his control of the gun and finally pulled the trigger. A shot rang out and Wallace ceased to struggle. Instead, she clamped her hand to the gun shot wound she had in her upper leg, and fell to the floor, injured leg down, writhing in pain. Mattias hurried to try to find where Hetty had gone.
"Aah!" Wallace exclaimed, as she began to feel the pain shooting up her leg. She struggled, trying to find a position to lessen the pain, but each time that she moved, she again cried out in agony.
Hetty was carefully circling around, trying to come up behind Mattias and make her next shots count. Mattias just found a spot where he could hide and wait for her to come to him.
"The Mattias I remember..." Hetty yelled out as she slowly advanced, her back to the wall, from one protected area to another, pausing slightly as she looked for the next spot to which she could safely move.
"Aah!" another cry of pain came from Wallace.
"...would have been ashamed to wear body armor. You've gotten soft." she said, trying to bait him.
Hearing the cries of pain from Wallace, Hetty wondered how bad her injury was. Somehow she was going to have to end this with Mattias, before the woman had a chance to bleed out.
"Come out, come out, you German bastard, and fight like a man." Hetty challenged him.
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Mattias thought he saw some movement off to the side, since he guessed that Hetty was on the move again. He raised his gun and fired off two quick shots. Instead of hitting the little ninja, his bullets shattered the mirror in which he saw her movement. He didn't get off a third shot, because from out of nowhere, someone's shoulder hit Hetty in the back, an arm going up to her shoulder, pulling her down in a full tackle, to get her out of the way. Both people crashed heavily to the floor, and crawled until they were hiding behind a pillar. Mattias saw her go down, but knew from the sound of the breaking glass that he had missed her, He ducked back into the alcove in which he was hiding, to await another shot.
Hetty got to her knees, and then turned back to see the person who tackled her. The older woman did not hide the surprise that filled her voice, as she said, "Nell?" She almost could not believe who it was, already kneeling alongside her.
"Hetty," Nell responded, as she pulled her baby Glock from behind her waist and turned toward the direction from which the bullets came. She had assumed the proper kneeling shooter's stance, and then asked Hetty, without turning her head away, "What do you think you are doing?"
The older woman turned to see if Mattias was visible, as she answered, "I'm trying to call him out."
Seeing no movement ahead of her, Nell took a quick look at her boss, trying to see if she were injured in any way. When she saw no visible cuts, or bullet holes, she again focused on the shooter beyond them. She couldn't help but show her concern when she said, "You're gonna get yourself killed."
The fact that Nell had come to the OSP, with her service weapon, along with the fact that she jumped right into the battle without any thoughts or fears for her own safety, and was willing to fire on Mattias without hesitation, told Hetty that they had nothing to worry about concerning the young woman. She could continue her training as a field agent, and someday, just maybe, she would be running an NCIS office of her own. Proudly, Hetty congratulated her, "Good to have you back, Nell."
Nell just looked at her boss, her face as impenetrably blank as the one Hetty used on people. Oh yes, Nell Jones had that part of her leadership skills down pat.
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The wounded Ava Wallace was trying to crawl toward Hetty's office, uttering a cry of pain each time she had to move her injured leg. Around the wound, the blood stain on her pants leg was growing larger. Mattias, worried that she might get to a phone and call 911 to prevent him from accomplishing his mission, shot her a second time in the same leg. New burning pain added to the agony she already was feeling, and forced Wallace to scream out even louder "Oh! Aah!"
Hetty couldn't believe how cruel this man had become. She yelled out to him, "Mattias!" Perhaps hearing his name might shock some sanity back into him.
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Up in the Ops control center, Eric had been watching the whole scene play out on his monitors, switching from one surveillance camera to another. He had wondered why Hetty had ordered him to put the full surveillance system in. His initial thoughts were that she wanted to spy on everyone without their knowing about it. Now he saw the value of having them there.
He didn't know how far out any of the agents were. They all still needed him to provide the intel that would help them resolve the situation, just as they always did. Over the com, he said. "Inspector Wallace has been shot. Mattias is on the colonnade."
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The Challenger pulled up to the wooden doors of the Mission. As he and Sam were exiting the car and running toward this main entrance, Callen updated Eric and any other agents who might be listening on their coms, "We're here, Eric. Thanks." They entered the building, guns at the ready and without any words spoken, started carefully to look for Mattias, clearing the areas, one by one, just as they had done together hundreds of times. They could hear Inspector Wallace's screams of pain, but they were not deterred from their well practiced routine. Failure to do so could get them killed. Eric had told them where Mattias was, but it was also possible that he was not alone. Sam finished clearing the side rooms and looked down that portion of the colonnade that ended at Hetty's office. There he saw Wallace, trying to raise her body up over the two low steps of the platform, on which the Operation Manager's desk sat.
Mattias felt like he had wasted enough time. He knew there was someone with the old woman because he heard them talking, but didn't know who it was. He could not afford to wait any longer, and possibly have more agents show up, so he gave them his final ultimatum. "Henrietta, both of you, put down your weapons and walk over to me, or I will kill this woman out here." To prove his point he fired another round, hitting Wallace in her posterior.
"Aah! Oh, God!" Inspector Wallace yelled another cry of pain as a third bullet tore through her body.
Sam looked toward Callen and signaled to him, one finger up and then a down turned thumb, their silent words for one person down. Callen understood and started looking to find out where Mattias' voice was coming from.
Hetty looked down at the revolver that she had and weighed all the options available to her. She realized that there were none that would work out the way she really wanted. She shook her head at the results she came up with, and softly said to herself, "Oh, bugger."
Nell looked briefly at her boss, wondering what was going through her mind, then looked back, waiting for Mattias to show himself.
"All right." Hetty called out to Mattias, knowing there was no other choice for her.
Callen looked up in surprise from his place of concealment.
"Hetty... don't" Nell said, quietly but emphatically, raising her eyebrow in surprise for Hetty's violation of the rule that agents do not give up their weapons when another agent is being held hostage, even if the hostage agent is being threatened with death. Granted, Ava Wallace was not an NCIS agent, but she worked for the Department of Defense, and they had the same protocols. The wounded woman should have known that this was always a possibility.
Hetty looked intently at Nell. She knew that she was the only one that Mattias really wanted, but that he now was desperate enough, to do whatever he felt he had to do to get her to go with him. She would not gamble with the life of Inspector Wallace, and certainly not the life of her Political Analyst. She lowered her voice so it was just little more than a whisper, and spoke slowly and deliberately to Nell, "Do exactly what he says, Nell. Let's get this over with."
Shaking her head negatively, Nell couldn't believe the order, but she would obey it. "Great." was the only word she uttered, as she tossed her Glock 26 to the floor, out in the open where Mattias could clearly see it. Hetty placed her revolver down on the floor as well, stood up, and started walking toward her captor. Nell could only remain kneeling and watch Hetty's self-sacrificial offering.
Sam signaled to Callen to go off to the left. G entered a doorway and met Deeks and Kensi coming onto the scene from the motor pool area. They had their guns already drawn, since they had been clearing the other part of the building. Callen gestured that they should go over to the other staircase and use it to take up their positions up on the mezzanine, across from where they were now. They quickly, but silently, followed their team leader's order. Sam joined up with his partner again and the two of them went up the main staircase to stop Mattias. Nell noticed the movement, spotting the agents on the stairway, then she looked back, worried to see what was happening to Hetty.
Hetty had continued to walk toward Mattias, listening to the groaning that Agent Wallace repeatedly expressed. She felt sorry for the poor woman, but there was nothing more that she could do for her at the moment. When she got near Mattias, he grabbed her, turned her around, and with a hand on her shoulder to direct her, his other hand holding his Glock 19 to her back, started to push her ahead of him as a human shield, as he attempted to move toward the exit.
Callen saw that all of the members of his team were in position. His gun pointing at the man holding his boss, he announced loudly. "That's far enough."
The German spy looked up when he heard those words. He saw Callen and Sam standing about five feet apart on the mezzanine, each one with his gun aimed at him. He looked around further, and there, on the other side of the mezzanine, were Kensi and Deeks, their guns also drawn and aimed at him. Then Mattias heard the door to the exit he intended to use open. There at the edge of the colonnade, Nate and Granger entered the building, their guns drawn and pointed at him too. Nell came out from the alcove that had been her protection, picked up her weapon once more, and drew a bead on Mattias too.
Hetty yelled out for everyone to hear, "He's wearing a bulletproof vest. Head shots only."
Everyone raised their aiming point to comply with Hetty's order.
Mattias dropped his hand from Hetty's shoulder. He looked around at all the guns pointed at his head, and knew there was going to be no escape for him. He said to Hetty, "Someone would have killed me by now, in the old days."
"Too much nostalgia, Mattias. That is your problem." Hetty responded.
The little woman slowly turned around and held out her hand, waiting for him to give up his gun.
He still had his gun pointed at her chest. He closed his eyes as he appeared once more to weigh the possibility of just shooting her and trying to run.
Hetty knew exactly what he was thinking, just because Hetty knew everything. She looked intently at him and said "We both know you don't have the balls to do it."
A look of resignation came across his face, With his other hand, he grabbed his pistol by the barrel, turned it around and handed it to her. She took it, and as she was lowering it to her side, her finger pulled the trigger. She really tried hard to look surprised as the weapon discharged, hitting Mattias in the knee.
"I'm so sorry." Hetty announced sarcastically to everyone around her, as they all saw Mattias fall to the ground, his body contorted by the pain. He started to loudly curse her out in German.
Inspector Wallace lay at the entrance to Hetty's office, holding her wounded leg. She had seen this last little scene play out before her, and smiled when Mattias was hit. **You deserve that, and more, for what you did to me, you bastard.** she thought.
"Aahhhhhh!" Now it was Mattias' turn to yell in agony, as he lay on the floor.
Hetty offered Mattias no apology, but explained what happened to him, as she tried as hard as possible to keep the sarcasm in of her voice somewhat contained, "It must have a touchy trigger."
Mattias was still groaning in pain on the floor, as Granger came over to take charge of him.
Nate saw Nell off to the side, returning her gun to its normal carry spot, tucked into the waistband in the back of her slacks. He walked over to join her. He had watched how she handled her weapon and the stress of the past few minutes, and now he asked her, "You good?"
She looked at him, thinking of all that he had done for her recently, "Yup. Thanks." A small smile came to her face and she nodded her head to confirm her words, before she turned back to look at the scene in front of them, wondering if Eric had already put in a call for the paramedics.
At that moment, Nate knew that Nell was going to be okay. She would never forget her first kill, but she was not going to let it stop her career, either.
Mattias was still lying on the ground, twisting in pain. Kensi looked at Callen, shook her head, and sighed in relief, before going off to be next to her partner. The team leader walked up toward his boss, who turned around as she sensed his approach.
"Welcome back, Hetty."
Her smile stretched ear to ear. "Thank you, Mr. Callen, it's good to be home."
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Sam had hurried down the stairs and knelt down by Inspector Wallace. He checked her wounds and put pressure on the one on her butt, as he looked at her and asked, "You okay?"
She grimaced in pain, but nodded at him.
"I guess I owe you that drink after all." he told her.
She broke out in a short laugh, that was cut off by a hitch in her breath as she moved her injured leg,, "One drink?" she questioned. "Somebody owes me a whole bottle!"
Sam gently stroked her shoulder and reassured her, "The paramedics will be here soon to take you to the hospital."
She moaned and asked "How bad is it?"
"Two are simple through and throughs, but I'm afraid that they are gonna have dig that third one out of your behind."
"Will them coming to get me compromise your operations here? Otherwise I can make it to a car and you can just drive me in to the hospital."
"No, you don't have to worry about that. We have Jeff and Tom, two former agents who got out of the business, mostly for family reasons, and now they sorta own their own ambulance service. Whenever we need paramedics for a no-questions-asked, secured pickup, especially any pickup here, we always call them. Since they are a private service, they don't have to report to anyone, but us."
"God, it hurts, even to move. Have you ever been shot? What am I thinking, of course, you must have been."
"All of the agents on our team have been shot, more than once. Even our little political analyst has at least one bullet scar on her body, and our technical analyst has been shot at, but not hit. But he has been frelted, frozen down to the temperature of deep space then nearly melted by reentry temperatures. We've been stabbed, blown up, involved in car wrecks, strangled, poisoned, attacked with biological weapons, almost any way a person can be killed. You've been shot three times, that puts you into our slightly above average shooting category. Agent Callen holds the record for our group, getting hit five times in the chest from a single shooter."
"Good grief. And you all go back out there, ...knowing that it can happen again, ...knowing that you just might not come back home alive?"
"It's what we signed up for, and it's what we do."
Ava Wallace just shook her head, "All of you are completely crazy, even more crazy that I first thought you were."
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Hetty told everyone to stand down as she turned and started walking to her office. Deeks and Kensi headed toward the bullpen. Nell and Nate went up the stairs to Ops to check in on Eric. Callen walked with Hetty, hoping that she would invite him to have a cup of tea with her. Sam stayed with Inspector Wallace. Everyone else had put away their weapons, and slowly started to return to their normal activities. Everyone but one person. Granger still had his weapon drawn, covering their prisoner. He suddenly aimed his service weapon at Mattias' forehead and slowly pulled the trigger. That shot ended the life of the old spy, but also made sure that no one could connect Granger to Mattias.
Hetty turned and looked at him, "Owen?" she asked, wondering why he would kill an unarmed man.
"He looked like he was going for another gun, Henrietta. At least, that's what it looked like from my perspective."
"We really would have liked to question him, and find out what he knew about the Russians, and who his contacts were here in the city."
"I'm sorry Henrietta. I did what I thought I had to do. I didn't want him to hurt anyone else here."
Hetty just looked at him with an arched eyebrow, wondering why he put it that way.
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Assistant Director Owen Granger regretted killing Mattias Draeger. The old spy seemed to be the perfect one to exact his vengeance on Henrietta Lange and Detective Martin Deeks. He knew that the German agent had been playing him against the Russians, but he really didn't care. If it would have accomplished what Granger had originally set out to do, he would have been completely satisfied. But Granger knew that Mattias would have spilled his guts and told everything when he was interrogated, and Granger's part in this fiasco would come to light. That option was not acceptable to him at all. The only option Granger had was to silence him, permanently.
But now the Assistant Director had to find someone else that he could direct to bring about the destruction of his two enemies. Certainly the Operations Manager had enemies galore, but so many of them had gone up against the little ninja, and ended up in the morgue, the hospital, or prison, that he couldn't imagine whom he could get to try again, even if he were to help them. He wasn't going to give up any state secrets, because he was not a traitor. That meant that the international cartels were not among the ones with whom he was willing to work. He just wanted to exact his personal vengeance on these two separate people.
Maybe, just maybe, he should request the personnel files of Detective Deeks from LAPD. He could always justify it by saying he needed more information on the man, so he could better utilize him in team operations. With his smart mouth, Deeks certainly must have left a lot of enemies in his wake. Perhaps one of them would enjoy an opportunity to get back at the Detective. If nothing else, there were always the local gangs and drug cartels throughout Los Angeles. Salazar and his group had been eliminated. But that group was only one of many. No, Granger had plenty of time to wait and plan his revenge.