Operation Formosa

Disclaimer: NCISLA characters belong to Shane Brennan. All original characters and this story are mine.

Chapter 4

Office of Special Projects, Los Angeles

Callen found himself in a position he disliked the most, sparring with Granger. He never really liked the older man and trusted him very little, although Hetty tried to get him to trust him more. But to be honest, it was embarrassing. He could handle wrestling with Sam as they were partners and brothers, but with Granger? He set his jaw tight as he narrowed his eyes over at his partner, who was chuckling over his predicament. As team leader, he was forced to play with the Assistant Director. "Laugh all you like, Sam, you're next."

Sam shook his head. "Nope. Just you, G."

Deeks and Kensi entered and watched on amused. They hung around as Callen threw Granger over his shoulder. There was no way he was going to go soft on the older man.

As Granger stood up, Eric ran in. "We have a problem." They quickly followed Eric up into Ops and saw images from a house in Santa Monica.

"Whose house are we looking at?" Callen asked Eric.

Bronte entered the mission rubbing her temples as a headache brewed under the surface. The five hour flight didn't help her already stressed levels after her meeting with Director Vance. She looked into the bullpen and noticed its deserted state as she walked to her office. She had to get used to saying that now. To her it had always been her mother's office, but now it was hers.

Why hadn't her mother told her in person that she was resigning and that she had put her name forward for the position? Instead, her mother had left it up to Director Vance to talk to her, make her sit some tests and meet with an unknown psychologist to see if she was ready to lead the team at OSP.

After dropping her bag, she climbed the stairs and entered through the sliding doors and halted. The team were being briefed on a new case and when she saw the familiar house up on the screen, her jaw dropped.

Callen turned when he heard the sliding doors opened and was surprised to see that Bronte had returned from her trip to D.C. already.

"Agent Michael Nassir," Eric replied.

"What happened?" Bronte took in a ragged breath trying to keep her emotions reined in. After all that they had been through, this is what she had dreaded the most. That was why she was angry at him for going undercover to bring the Formosa Cartel down.

"Bron?" Callen recognised that she was struggling. She merely shook her head and kept her focus on the screen.

"LAPD received a call at six this morning about a kidnapping. Neighbours heard a woman screaming and saw both Agent Nassir and his wife being dragged out of their house, fighting their abductors. Neither Michael or his wife, Melissa, have been found." Nell added.

"I had no idea he was married." Deeks breathed out, this case hitting close to home the risk they all lived with every day.

"What about their children? Ella is five and Thomas has just turned one." Callen furrowed his brow, surprised that she knew so much about the agent. As far as he was concerned, the two had never met.

"LAPD found the boy crying in his cot. No signs of a girl." Nell responded.

"She must be scared and hiding somewhere." She looked at Nell. "He's just come off Operation Formosa. Call Vance and ask for access to the operation."

"Formosa Cartel?" Callen asked her, realising what this meant to her.

Bronte nodded. "The same one. Vance had agents from around the country onboard five ships out of Norfolk to find out who were on the cartel's payroll. He's just briefed me on the operation. I just saw Mick in D.C. They'd been deep undercover for four months, Agent Jack Stevens was stabbed to death, which resulted in the operation being brought to a halt early. But Vance was certain that they were close to having proof of everyone involved bringing the drugs into the country." Bronte ran from Ops down the stairs.

"Bronte." Callen caught up to her outside. "Where are you going?"

"I've got to go. I've got to find Ella." Her body shook and Callen rubbed his hands up and down her arms.

"I'll drive." He took her keys from her and started the engine. He sent a quick text to Sam to tell him what was happening.

Bronte pulled her cell out and called Greg's parents. "Andrea. You need to get Max from school and bring him to the boat shed. The Formosa Cartel have men in L.A."

Andrea Smith looked worriedly over to her husband of forty-eight years. "We'll collect Max straight away, Bronte. Please don't worry. I'm sure he'll be safe."

She disconnected the call and told her husband the news. They left their drinks they had just ordered from a cafe and headed towards the deaf school where Max had settled in, two months ago.

When Callen pulled up to the curb a few houses down from the Nassir home, Bronte dashed out of the car and ran for the house. She showed her I.D. to the police officer and continued inside the white two storey house. She knew this house well and ran up the stairs, Callen barely keeping up with her. He found her inside a bedroom with a pink bedspread neatly laid over the bed. He scanned the room and found Bronte kneeling in front of the opened closet, hugging a dark haired girl with the largest brown eyes, Callen had ever seen. She's beautiful, he thought.

The girl firmly held on tight to Bronte, her hands around her neck and cried in her arms. Tears fell down Bronte's face as she tried to calm the girl down. "It's okay, El, Bel. Bronnie's here now. Sssh!" She rocked the girl on her lap as she soothed her.

Sam, Deeks and Kensi arrived on scene and found them upstairs. Sam furrowed his brow over to his partner. "She know the Nassirs?"

Callen shrugged. "She never mentioned them to me."

He felt hurt that she had kept her friendship with Agent Nassir a secret from him. He thought over the past six months that they had been open and honest with each other. And now he was standing inside one of their own agent's homes, feeling like there was another layer to the woman he loved he'd yet to discover.

"What do you want us to do?" Deeks kept his voice low, not to startle the girl.

"Go through the bedroom, see if you can find something that might help us find out if it is the Formosa Cartel or someone else." Deeks and Kensi nodded as they left for the master bedroom.

"G?" Sam looked to him with a questioning look.

"We'll start outside and see what we can find out." He needed some air and was pleased to be outside, talking with witnesses over what they had seen and heard that morning.

"Tommy." Ella lifted her head and suddenly realised about her brother.

"It's okay, Ella. Tommy's okay. He's eating breakfast downstairs. Are you hungry?" The girl nodded. Bronte picked her up and carried her down the stairs and headed for the kitchen. It felt weird to her to be there without at least Melissa being there. The children looked around in hope to see their mother. They'd become accustomed to their father's absence too well.

"Tommy." She put Ella down on the bar stool and lifted the little boy up and cuddled him.

"Bronnie." Thomas hugged her tight and sucked his thumb. Seeing a familiar face had soothed him and he began to drift off to sleep in her arms.

Deeks exited the house in search for Callen. "I think you need to see this."

Callen and Sam followed the detective up the stairs into the bedroom. Kensi sat at a desk looking at photos that they had found inside a large box. She lifted one of the photos up and handed it to Callen.

"We found these on the top shelf in the closet."

Callen studied the photo, his brow furrowed. He looked up at his team and shook his head. "She never said anything to me about any of this." Kensi handed him some more and he began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. "I need to speak with her." He left his team in a state of shock and struggled to speak when he saw her rocking the boy in her arms. "The social worker can take the boy. I need you to come with me."

Bronte shook her head. "No. No social worker, G. They will stay with us until we find Mick and Mel."

"Whose going to look after them while we work to find them, Bron? You can't get personally involved in every case we work."

"I am personally involved, G. I'm their guardian if anything happens to their parents. They are staying with us." It was the first time she had admitted her personal involvement with the Nassirs to him.

"How do you know Mick?" After the photos he'd seen upstairs, he needed to know.

"We went through the Naval Academy together. Became best friends and were assigned to the USS Arlington together." Bronte snuggled her face onto the boy's, kissing him softly on his cheek.

"I need you upstairs. Can you leave the children with the social worker, just for a few minutes?" He needed to speak with her away from the kids.

She relented and handed Thomas over to the lady who'd been called in to look after him as soon as he'd been found crying in his cot by LAPD. She followed Callen up the stairs and halted when she saw the box open and the photos of her, Mick and Joshua on the desk. "You had no right to go through that box." Her voice quavered and her body shook.

"Who's the boy?" Callen gently prodded.

Bronte shook her head and looked out the window. Seeing the photos brought back all the pain that she had locked away a long time ago. She choked on a sob, when she felt Callen's arms come around her and drew her in. Sam, Deeks and Kensi left them be, giving them the space they knew Bronte needed. They saw how vulnerable she was and how close she was to this case. She took in a deep breath and calmed herself down before pulling away from Callen. "It hurts so much in here." She fisted her hand and hit her chest with it. She remained in her thoughts for a few moments until she had the strength to talk to him. "He was so beautiful and such a good little boy." She looked up at Callen as her tears began to spill again. She quickly wiped them away and wrapped her arms around herself.

"His name was Joshua. He was our son. We never meant to have him, it just happened. Best friends who'd turned to each other after a tough case. We'd moved across to NCIS by then, based out of the San Francisco office. When I found out I was pregnant with Josh, Mick moved in and we became a family. Josh was the happiest baby and he brought so much love into our lives. We were on cloud nine. Nothing could dampen our lives." She furrowed her brow and picked up the photo of him, just before he got sick. "Then he fell sick. He couldn't keep his food down and he lost so much weight. We took him to numerous doctors, but they all told us the same thing. He had leukaemia and was dying. There was nothing that they could do for him."

She crumbled into Callen's arms when he realised why she had never told him. He saw her grief and understood her pain. She'd been through so much pain in losing loved ones, it was hard enough for her to talk about Lauren, Greg and Carrie. Because she had lost them more recently, her pain from losing them was more accessible. But Callen could see that this pain had been locked away for a real long time. "He was only eighteen months old when he died. Still a baby." He continued to rub his hands up and down her back and arms to soothe her. "Neither of us could get passed it. I asked for a transfer. I needed to get away from all the memories of him. It hurt so much."

She didn't need to tell him the rest. He concluded that was how she ended up in New York and met Greg. "We'll find them, Bron. But we need your help to find them. You know this cartel and Mick and Melissa better than any of us."

She looked up into his cerulean orbs and nodded. He had his agent hat on and he was focused and she realised that she needed to be as well. She nodded her head and wiped her tears away. "Good. Let's get back to the boat shed, Ron and Andrea are there with Max now. We can take Ella and Thomas. I'm sure Hetty would love to spend some time with them."

"She dotes on them whenever she visits. She'll love the distraction."