NCIS Los Angeles

by Jerome Preisler

  Time, he thought.

  His other stock in trade.

  His face pinched with concentration, he got to work. In his alias as TickTockDude, a vender of rebuilt and refurbished clocks, he’d earned a hundred-percent positive customer feedback rating in the electronic fleamarket. The income from his business meant nothing to him, of course. But his Shopnow! store had another function, and a very useful one, as a covert channel of communication.

  He scrolled down his item queue, eyeing his current listings. The first was a square battery-operated Roman numeral wall clock, the second a plain round indoor/outdoor model. The third listing was titled:

  Retro Alarm Clock—Black w/White dial—Twin Bell—Bedside

  Its description read:

  Blackouts in your neighborhood?

  Who needs electricity? Go with vintage windup!

  A GUARANTEED boss-pleaser!

  Works perfectly, new movement, hands, and glass dial cover.

  Like all our clocks it is tested for accuracy!

  Buy from TickTockDude and wake up on time!

  Erasmo decided somewhat randomly that this would be the listing whose photo he’d modify for tonight’s update to his zealous contractor—his hidden message was always encoded in one of the first five items on his seller’s listings. Regardless of his selection, the idea was not to fiddle too much with the image, so as to avoid attracting notice from ShopNow!—and more importantly from intelligence and law-enforcement agencies that might be monitoring the site for covert activity.

  Clicking to the REVISE ITEM link now, Erasmo navigated to the CHANGE PHOTO option, and then highlighted the picture he’d originally uploaded.

  “And away we go,” he said under his breath, clicking the DELETE button. After a moment, he dragged his cursor to ADD PHOTOS, chose INSERT from the dropdown menu, and scrolled to the replacement picture on his hard drive.

  Erasmo carefully scrutinized the picture before beginning his upload. It was superficially identical to the first, except for the time displayed on its face. Whereas the original photo read ten minutes past ten, the hands on his substitute showed three minutes to twelve.

  There was, of course, a more significant difference between the two. But that was invisible, and would be deciphered only by his rather ideologically extreme contractor after he downloaded it to his computer.

  Clicking on the replacement image now, Erasmo saw it appear in the listing and nodded with satisfaction. His modified image would remain online for the next three hours—the prearranged window—after which he would yank it and repost the original as a security precaution. But even if a third party caught on and downloaded the substitute, there was slim chance anyone besides his intended recipient could extract his coded message. Not without the correct decryption key.

  Erasmo bent and reached for his soda. What was it Albert Einstein once said? If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.

  “Or maybe a clockmaker,” he said, chuckling.

  Then he gulped down what was left in the can and tried to relax, the computer still resting on his lap.

  * * *

  Jag Azarian swam as if he were gliding like smoke through the heavens. He stroked with his arms, his breathing even and regular, his lean body gracefully extended, his muscular legs propelling him toward the mountain’s edges.

  Undeviating with his routine, he swam ten fifty-meter laps, three times a day—first in the early morning, when the pool ribboned off into the broad horizon, merging with the brightness and cloud billows. Then at dusk as the giant red ball of the sun sank below the mountains, seeming to set the water around him aflame, giving the illusion that he was diving through molten lava. And then again shortly before midnight.

  Now he took his third swim beneath the stars, alone with his thoughts of the powerful forces he’d set in motion, and the tide of blood and fire that would stem from their explosive collision. His inherited wealth, his education, his American citizenship—it was all for a purpose. Nothing was an accident. Nothing was coincidental. Though it had taken him many years to grasp it, he knew now that he’d been chosen to mete out the collective vengeance of his people, and teach the world its crimes against them were unforgotten.

  As Azarian completed his ninth lap, he glanced toward the curving glass wall of his living room, and saw Karik appear from deeper inside the house, a towel draped over one arm. Thin and wiry, his short, pointed goatee giving his face an almost bladelike appearance, he held out a small remote control unit and the wall retracted seamlessly on invisible tracks.

  Emerging onto the patio, Karik crossed to the lip of the pool, and waited.

  Two minutes later, Azarian climbed from the water. He stood facing the house, naked, his long, dark hair dripping wet, small puddles forming on the tiles under his feet.

  “What is it?” He took the towel, catching his breath. “I can see from your face you have something to tell me.”

  “A message,” Karik said. “On your computer. From the Ticktockman.”

  Azarian regarded him closely.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m going to my office.”

  “Yes.”

  “See that I’m not disturbed.”

  “Yes.”

  At his desk moments later, wearing a black robe and leather slippers, Azarian took several deep breaths, closing his eyes, inhaling the scent of jasmine incense in the ancient Turkish burner across the room. Sitting back, he pressed the tips of his forefingers together under his chin to form a steeple—the back of his right hand scarred and missing its thumb from a childhood incident.

  Relaxed, he channeled his thoughts along precise, germane lines.

  Even as the clock struck twelve, he knew a lasting midnight was soon to fall over America, one many would find far darker than any that came before.

  He opened the message on his computer now, eager to check on its approach.

  2

  “G, you smell something funny?” Sam asked, crinkling his nose.

  Callen sniffed.

  “Now that you mention it,” he said, “I do.”

  Sam looked at him. “So it isn’t my imagination.”

  Callen’s face had puckered up.

  “No, man,” he said. “Phew, it reeks in here.”

  They stood in the doorway, frowns creasing their foreheads, looking around and sniffing the air for the source of the miserable, offensive stench that had met their arrival a few moments before.

  The odor really was downright stifling, which said a great deal about its potency given the room’s spacious dimensions.

  With its high Spanish archways, exposed ceiling beams, terracotta floor tiles, elaborate wrought-iron room dividers, and orbit of special agents’ desks around its perimeter, the large ground-floor bullpen of the OSP’s mission house headquarters was an eclectic mash of architectural styles, furnishings, ornaments, and hung photographs and artwork that not only reflected Operations Manager Hetty Lange’s colorful, even enigmatic, background, but her strong encouragement of individuality within the team dynamic. She’d been around long enough to know that several good heads were better than one, and had handpicked the members of her elite undercover arm of the NCIS as much for their quirky differences, and diverse specialties, as the one very important quality they shared—which was that they were unsurpassed in their abilities, resourcefulness, and proven track records.

  Put simply, they were the best of the best.

  For all their combined expertise, though, Callen the former DEA and CIA man with deep familial roots in the U.S. intelligence community, and Hanna the former Navy SEAL and three-time war veteran, were presently at a loss to identify the awful smell clinging to the insides of their nostrils.

  “I’d say there’s a dead rodent around someplace—” Sam began.

  “But that’d be an insult to rodents,” Callen interjected.

  “Dead and alive,” Sam said.

  Callen nodded, lifted his right foot off the floor to examine his shoe b
ottom, then did the same with his left shoe.

  “Didn’t bring anything in off the street,” he reported.

  Sam checked out his soles and heels. “Me neither.”

  “Then what’s stinking up the place?”

  “Animalics,” Special Agent Kensi Blye said, approaching from her desk across the room.

  Both agents regarded her quizzically.

  Tall, lithe, and dark-haired, her left eye hazel, her right eye brown, her skin as tan as the sand on an Iberian beach, Kensi, who was sometimes thought to be of Spanish or Portuguese descent—and uncoincidentally spoke both languages like a native—was wearing skinny jeans, an oversized blue plaid shirt, and a sidearm holder with a SIG Sauer P229 pistol configured for .40 S&W ammo.

  “Aniwhat?” Sam asked.

  “Ani-m-a-l-i-c-s,” Kensi said, spelling out the second part of the word. “Actually, animalic therapy. It’s the beneficial use of fragrances obtained from animals.”

  Callen looked at her. “Like animal parts?”

  “Right.” She shrugged. “Also secretions, excretions, and, ah…” She looked at him. “The biologically correct term would be ejections.”

  Callen frowned, feeling almost like he was two hours and ninety miles back up the road with Detective Varno. Suddenly everyone he came across was a walking Roget’s Thesaurus.

  “Why do I smell Deeks behind this?” he asked.

  “Could be because I’ve singlehandedly taken on the job of changing the atmosphere around here,” offered none other than Detective Marty Deeks himself, his voice carrying across the room from the grand, sweeping staircase that led to the second floor Operations Center. “No pun intended.”

  Callen watched as he descended. “Stay where you are,” he said, holding out both hands to wave him off. “Not a step closer.”

  “That won’t help,” Kensi said.

  “What if I said, ‘not an inch’?”

  “Still won’t.”

  Callen faced her. “No?”

  She shook her head.

  “He’s rubbed those scents on everything in here,” she said.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Wrong.” Deeks hopped off the staircase to join them. “But we really oughtta call them pheromones.”

  Here we go again, Callen thought. “Does Hetty know about this?”

  “Yep,” Deeks said.

  “And what’s she think?”

  “You’d have to ask her.” Deeks nodded back toward the stairs. “She’s up in Ops.”

  “I can see why,” Sam said, fanning the air in front of his face.

  Dressed in a tee shirt and jeans, Deeks extended his wrists out to him.

  “Go on, Sam. Sniff ’em.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I am serious. I don’t want any part of your animal odors.”

  “Pheromones.”

  “A stink by any other name.” Sam scowled. “What’s wrong with you, dude? I mean, you think it smells good in here?”

  “It shouldn’t smell good,” Deeks said.

  “You think it should smell bad?”

  “I think it should smell natural.” Deeks sighed. “Take the cavemen, f’rinstance. What’d they have around them that we don’t?”

  “Caves?”

  Deeks shook his head, his tussled dirty blond hair brushing his shoulders.

  “Besides that,” he said.

  Sam looked stumped.

  “Nature,” Deeks declared, sighing again. “As in plants and animals. Our ancestors smelled them everywhere. Trees, flowers, grass… they poured perfume and nectar into their environment. With animals it was musk, urine, and fecal droppings.”

  “Oh for the good old days,” Kensi said, and grinned.

  Deeks stared at her unhappily a moment, then turned back to Sam.

  “Listen,” he said, “when your diet’s short on certain nutrients, don’t you take vitamin supplements?”

  Sam shrugged.

  “Sometimes,” he said. “But my multiples don’t have poop in their ingredients.”

  “You’re missing my point,” Deeks said. “Vitamins keep your diet balanced. They help you stay healthy and bring harmony to your system. You function better when you’ve got proper nutrition.”

  Sam looked at Callen.

  “What scares me’s that I’m starting to get the gist of all this,” he said.

  Callen frowned, looking at Deeks. “So you’re saying we need animal stink around us.”

  “To be at our sharpest,” Deeks said, nodding. “If perfume’s the magical medium that lets a plant send messages to the world, then the pungent smell of anal glands is a civet’s soul song.”

  “A civet?”

  “It’s an ugly catlike animal with a skanky butt,” Kensi said. “They live in Africa and Asia.”

  “Oh,” Callen said.

  “Ah,” Sam said.

  “The two of you should take a whiff,” Deeks said, holding out his wrists again. “Civet musk’s produced all around the world from their anal secretions. But I experimented with my own formula.” He offered a proud smile. “Blended with pureed oak moss, it’s very smooth and buttery.”

  Callen wrinkled his face.

  “Maybe another time,” he said.

  “Stay the hell away from me,” Sam said.

  “In fairness, you guys did ask about it,” Kensi said, grinning like the Cheshire Cat again.

  Callen appeared as if he might say something, then suddenly angled his head to look upstairs. A moment later, Sam’s eyes followed.

  “Gotta go,” Callen said, and faced him. “Ready, partner?”

  “On my way,” Sam said.

  The two men stepped past Deeks toward the staircase, leaving him standing there with his wrists still extended.

  Puzzled, he looked around at Kensi and realized she’d also turned toward the stairs.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Before she could answer, Hetty Lange’s voice came from the second-floor landing.

  “I need everyone on deck… including you and your terrific stink, Detective Deeks,” she said. “Immediately.”

  * * *

  Isaak Dorani didn’t like being blindfolded, not one goddamn bit. And he liked it even less while rattling along in a crappy old dinosaur of a van, bumping up and down with every dip, crack, and pothole in the road. If the damn thing ever had shock absorbers, they’d probably worn out years ago.

  The crazies. Those damn crazies. Isaak couldn’t have cared less what reasons they gave for tying a rag over his eyes, or how big he stood to score from dealing with them. They were stone killers, the whole bunch. He’d seen firsthand what they could do. The old man, his housekeeper, even that poor stinking yapper of a dog…

  He was right there in the house when they blew them away. Right there. Close enough to hear the housekeeper pleading for her life, hear every word, not that too many left her mouth before they took her out. But what she said at the end, begging them for the sake of her kids, the gun practically in her face…

  Isaak got sick to his stomach whenever he thought about that. These people were freaks, no denying it. As far as he could tell, they would do anything to get what they wanted.

  Bumping along now, up and down, up and down, feeling like he was on a wheeled trampoline, he suddenly found himself thinking of those ancient phonograph records in Sutton’s bedroom. He hadn’t gone there looking to score them. The crazies had told him to bring out laptop computers, tablets, storage disks, anything electronic. Erasmo was right about one thing: they were very clear about what they wanted.

  But after all the bad stuff went down, Isaak had noticed the records and decided they could be his personal ticket out of both the frying pan and the fire. He still didn’t know exactly what they were worth, but thought for sure it was a small fortune. They said “Edison Company” on them, for God’s sake, as in Thomas Edison. The dates on some of their boxes said they were over a hundred years
old.

  Though Isaak didn’t have a chance to grab them all, he was able to stuff a bunch into his carry bag, thinking Daggut was bound to be interested. The fence specialized in quality antiques, after all.

  Erasmo could talk all he wanted about accepting the risks. It was easy to talk when he was anonymous, hiding behind his zillion and one IP proxies and secret messages. He wasn’t the one putting himself at the mercy of these lunatics.

  Isaak really didn’t give a crap what they said to him. Bumping along in the rear of the windowless van now—key word, windowless—he saw no good reason for them tying a rag over his eyes.

  None.

  “I don’t like it,” he said, his voice almost drowned out by the racket inside the van. Besides the old junker needing shock absorbers, its air conditioner was huffing and puffing like it was about ready to croak, leaving it stiflingly warm in the back even with the damn thing running full blast. “Not one goddamn bit, Gaspar.”

  The driver swung into a turn. “Speak up,” he said. “I can’t hear you.”

  But Isaak could hear him just fine. His weird, high-pitched voice somehow cut right through the racket inside the van.

  Gaspar the Friendly Ghost, he thought, and took a breath to fill his lungs.

  “I said this blindfold sucks!” he shouted. “You hear me all right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “So?”

  “I’ve told you before,” Gaspar replied. “Think of the blindfold as protection.”

  Isaak frowned, wiped the sweat off his brow with his arm. The sun was pouring through the windshield, overwhelming the clanking, decrepit air-conditioner.

  “Come on, man,” he said. “You got no worries. Somebody could waterboard me, I’d never admit I knew anything. I mean, you know, why would I talk?”

  “I can think of some reasons.”

  “Like what? In case you didn’t realize it, my ass is on the line too—”

  “I can’t hear you, Isaak.”

  Isaak frowned. “I was just saying you people aren’t the only ones with a ton to lose by getting caught,” he said at the top of his voice.

  The van rattled and swayed as Gaspar took another turn, pushing the rattletrap up to a pretty high speed.