Poisk

POISK Chapter 19

Los Angeles

It had taken Eric Beale another week of searching for any anomalies, before signs of the Russian hitmen came out of the cracks in Los Angeles. Locked inside Ops had been no fun, neither being left apart from his team, his family. He'd missed Nell for five years, and after only a brief visit, she'd been whisked away from him again. She was now a mother. Her life changed forever, and he wondered if there was ever a chance of their friendship to return, once this chaos settled. There were pressure from the Secretary of Defence for NCIS to sort out the mess within its ranks.

Eric dialled their Assistant Director. "We have a problem. A Russian problem."

Owen frowned. "Where?"

"Here."

"OSP?" Owen Granger looked at his senior agents. They were discussing who could possibly be the link to Sparks within their office with Hetty. Gibbs and Garrison had been released from hospital only the day before, both men had been settled into Dovecote, and Hetty's home had become the recovery retreat, with three of them recovering from their injuries. Thankfully, no one else had been injured. But now Eric's alarm had every muscle in his body tense. The situation wasn't good. Someone had revealed their secret location to the Russians. There was another mole within OSP. There was no doubt about it now.

"Outside, or have they breached?" Owen inquired, waving his hand to catch Callen and Sam's attention.

"Currently outside. But they're trying to get inside, Sir." Eric Beale's foot tapped on the dark cool floor of Ops from nerves. He never did well under threat from the bad guys. He felt safe in Ops, but if these Russians who had massacred the Hanna home a week earlier were anything to go by, no one would be safe if they got inside."

"Shut Ops down, Beale. Go through your escape plan, I'll have Callen and Hanna meet you there." Thankfully it was early, no one else had arrived into the mission at this time." Callen and Sam understood Granger's instructions and left immediately. They were thankful for the secret passages out of that old water treatment building. How many times had the usage of it been a success. Thankfully, only a handful of staff knew of its existence.

"Will do." Eric immediately shut the computer system into lockdown. Without his passcode to log in again, the system will delete everything on there. It was situations like the one he found himself in now, that this procedure had been set in place. He locked the Ops Centre down tight, no one without the code could get in. Granger had him change the code every day, just to be on the safe side. If anyone got their hands on him, too many secrets could be revealed. He wasn't tough like the trained agents, as he was only there for his computer skills, therefore he could fold under stress or torture. Owen Granger felt the strong need to protect their Technical Operator at all costs.

Scanning his surroundings, he held his government issue weapon out in front of him as he made his way down the stairs. His heart pounded heavily inside his chest, like waves pounding on the sandy shores. Relief washed over him when he made his way into the store room, locking the door behind him. He moved behind the metal shelving in through the secret doorway. Hetty had thought of everything. The metal shelving moved with the secret doorway, so whoever came in search for him, no one would suspect that the shelving had been moved.

Quietly, he moved in the shadows of the tunnel. Hetty had provided a safe hiding place for him and Nell—-for the days when she used to work beside him, to stay put until the field agents arrived to take them to a safe place. Safely tucked away in the small confined space, Eric pulled the tablet out of his backpack and watched the Russian mercenaries breach the doors into the Office of Special Projects. His body jerked from fear, as he watched them move through the building, searching, looking. Not for things, but for people. He knew this by the way they searched. They didn't look in desk draws, or the filing room. They moved with one smooth movement up towards the Ops Centre.