So, this is the continuation of 'The Angels Led Him Away' where I nuked the status quo to see how it went. No additional nuking here, just playing in the radioactive sandbox I made.

I got the title from an episode title from The Good Wife, though it's also a Van Halen song.

This one is planned to be a long runner, divided into a number of 'episodes' each of which will be released in several "acts" because 7,000 word chapters scare me. Though the last one was supposed to have a super happy, Deeks becomes an agent, ending, so who knows.

The Mission was bustling as ever, yet its centre was oddly silent. Agents Hanna, Callen and Blye all sat at their desks but the normal banter was gone. Though Sam and Callen still engaged with one another, Granger had heard them falter every time they attempted to draw Kensi Blye into their conversations. It was a credit to both men that they hadn't given up.

He walked past the bullpen and into Henrietta's office. "They're not improving."

"Give them time."

"They've had two months. Agent Blye needs a new partner."

"You really believe that now is a good time to give Miss Blye a new partner, especially after your last attempt." True enough, Brewer had looked good on paper and in the interviews, but as it turned out he was largely incapable of accepting responsibility for his mistakes. To say that this caused tension was a grave understatement. He'd lasted a week.

Even so. "There's never going to be a good time. Betrayals are like that. You're never ready to trust again. Eventually you just have to get back on the horse."

"If you hadn't told her like you did I could have managed it better."

"You had more than a year and I wasn't going to lie to her. She's Donny's little girl. He saved my life." And all that implied. He mentally turned back to business before he started wool gathering. "She can't work alone."

"I agree. She'll have to stay in office."

"Not an option," Granger said firmly, there was too much work to be done and benching Kensi would only serve to drive her further away from her co-workers and from NCIS. "Where are Nassir and Thompson?"

"Nassir is conducting a security review at Pendleton. Thompson has the currency theft case."

"Agent Jones then."

"I don't like the hole that leaves in Ops."

"You made do without an analyst for years before Nell came along. And you've made do without a psychologist for four years." Which looked more suspicious in light of recent revelations. An absence of mental stability in her agents would make it a hell of a lot easier for Henrietta to manipulate them, Granger reflected. He would need to make finding a replacement psychologist a priority.

Before Henrietta could raise an objection, the phone rang. She settled for raising the phone, but Granger reached over and pressed the speaker button. There was no way in hell he was letting Henrietta pull another fast one on him, which meant he needed all the information he could get and needed to be thinking twelve moves ahead.

He wasn't going to stop at petty tricks either. Every keystroke and syllable that went through the every NCIS office or an agent's phone or computer worldwide was recorded for counter-intelligence purposes. Granger had diverted the take from the LA office to a team that Vance had authorised. They were sorting through it and forwarding it to him. Just keeping up with the summaries was exhausting. Whatever her other faults, Henrietta kept on top of a phenomenal amount of work, more than her responsibilities really required, though she also had a security clearance that far outstripped that required by an office manager.

"Lange, you're on speaker with Assistant Dierector Granger."

"Miss Lange, Assistant Director, good morning. This is DEA Special Agent in Charge Hammond." The two parties dealt with pleasantries briefly. "We are working a case that's crossed into your world. In the spirit of cooperation I thought it best that our agents work the case together."

Henrietta looked at him over the desk enquiringly. Granger nodded in agreement. Interagency cooperation was always good and getting Callen's team into the field would be good for them until a more permanent solution could be found.

"We would be more than happy to assist, Agent Hammond," said Hetty.

"I'll send you the casework."

Granger got up and walked to the bullpen. Who was he kidding. He was building a case against Henrietta Lange, not one that would ever see the inside of a court of law, but a case all the same.

Agent Callen, your team has a show the flag with DEA, get down to the boatshed for a briefing."

"Why us?"

"NCIS's mission includes cross border drug enforcement for one, Agent Callen. Two, you have no active cases currently."

"And three?"

Hetty had apparently walked up behind him. "Three, Mr Callen, is that you know the lead agent." He hated it when she did that.

The four DEA agents were waiting at the boat shed when the team arrived. The introductions were brief. Peterson, Jacobson, Robertson and their boss, Supervisory Agent Talia Del Campo, who made a puzzled face at the team's reduced size. Sam made a quick throat cutting gesture and Talia swallowed her questions whole.

"Congratulations on the promotion," Callen said.

"Well you do a good job for long enough and the bosses decide that you should do something else."

"What have we got?"

"We know it's a Navy supply ship between Naval Base Ventura County and Afghanistan, we know there's a load of 90% pure Afghani Heroin coming in this week, and we know that one of the crew is Matthew Johnson. Peterson scoped him picking up the gear in Islamabad."

"Seems like you know the who, the what the how, and the when. What do you need us for?"

"What we don't know is the who else. Both on the Venture Star and who their purchaser is.

"How much heroin?"

"40 kilos, street value of nearly $5 million."

"Not much."

"In most places, Agent Blye, 40 kilos is a lot of heroin."

"7 tonnes of pure heroin are consumed in the LA metro area every year." Kensi said. Sam and Callen shared a smirk. Wikipedia.

"40 kilos is still a lot of heroin. Not to mention its a line."

"A line?" Callen asked.

"Sorry, I've been working with some Brits. A way to smuggle drugs into the country. We shut it down, we slow the flow."

"From a torrent to a mere flood." Kensis tone had changed to openly hostile. Even the three 'sons noticed.

"Ok, What the hell is up with you this morning?"

Maybe I'd rather not sweep leaves on a windy day."

Callen decided to step in before things got contentious. "Kensi enough. Come with me."

"If you don't want to do this then you are more than welcome to head back to the Mission and do all our paperwork."

"Forgive me Callen, when you're sent halfway round the world as a pawn in your boss's game, you can tell me how to behave, but until then."

"Taking it out on Talia isn't going to change what happened."

"Maybe I'm just tired of being used. There is no reason for us to work this case, so its either Granger's bureaucratic back scratching or worse, another of Hetty's games. But we don't have a choice, so let's just get it over with."

"You could always transfer."

"We both know I'd probably wind up assigned to Ice Station Zebra."

"I doubt that Granger would do that."

"Yeah, but Hetty probably would."

"You really don't trust her anymore."

"If she did to you what she did to me, would you?"

Callen couldn't disagree. "Let's get to work."

Deeks was driving with his new partner – co-worker, he mentally corrected himself – Juan Alvarez, in a Lexus. Admittedly, it was a work car, but still, it was a Lexus. There was another parked directly behind them, containing two other guys who would serve as their back up. He was armed, a 9mm Sig, but that was all he expected to need. Besides, a rifle was too cumbersome and sub-machine guns were against company policy. And California law, seeing as they were here for legitimate work.

Deeks guided the Lexus into a parking space and hopped out, acompanied by Alvarez and theie compatriots from the follow car, who took up positions at either end of the motorcade, while Deeks and Alvarez headed a few yards down the street.

Their boss, Graeme Partridge had come back from Iraq after Gulf I and gone into business as a stand over man, enforcing debts for loan sharks and bookmakers. After a few years of that work, he opened his own loan sharking operation, but made the mistake of doing his own dirty work. In 1995 he'd been convicted of aggravated battery, sentenced to two years, and while in prison, met Roger Thornhill, snr.

From there he'd become a mid-level debt collector/shooter for Thornhill's crew, eventually rising to oversee a crew of soldiers. When the elder Thornhill had died in a hail of bullets, Partridge had briefly served under Roger Thornhill jnr before the latter had gone to prison.

In the two years since, Partridge had apparently reinvented himself as the head of Private Investigations and Security, which provided services from mall security and find out whether your husband is sleeping with your best friend to political black bag jobs and marijuana cash holding.

Which was where Deeks – or Max Gentry more correctly – came in, picking up the cash from the dispensaries to deliver to the fortified warehouse in Long Beach that housed the cash in exchange for a 10% cut. He knocked on the door of the dispensary. The owner was waiting and let them in, a quick count and a signed invoice and they were out again.

On the bright side, he wasn't one of the guys whose job it was to stand around on the off chance that some absurdly stupid individual decided to commit suicide by trying to rob the place. On the downside, it was a pity that Max didn't have any experience as an investigator.

Not that it would have made much difference, he got the sense that despite his relatively good assignment, he was outside the circle of trust. He was also pretty sure he was being followed. Which meant staying away from Kensi, he known that going in. He needed this job and he was prepared to make the sacrifice.

Deeks was aware that there were other parts of the operation. Like the guys who were running a surveillance operation out of a room in the warehouse. Or the crew that did something that required them to go out with drilling equipment at night and come back with bags filled with something. There had been a string of jewelry store robberies lately. Still a detective.

Beyond that, he'd learned very little in the two months since he had started work at Private (for some reason, they never used the acronym). That was fine. If three years in undercover had taught him anything, it was to be patient. Thornhill would either trust him enough to bring him in, or he wouldn't. Some big play to force Thornhill into a decision was far more likely to backfire than to achieve its aim. In the meantime, he had a delivery to make.