Case 01 - The old life of Ben Muller

AN: Anything not written in English will be translated immediately after in brackets like this: Übersetzung! [Translation!]

When I reference a certain show, I'll try my best to put the episode like this: <Show's name SxEy> (wow looks like I can't spell sexy).

I'll do the same for OCs that will be mentioned more than once and who I would cast to play this role! <Cast: Celebrity as OC>

Scene ends will have a ----- for visibility

"..." Talking

"*...*" Talking over the phone/com link

'...' Thinking

____________________________

<Before SWAT S1E1 and The Rookie (August 2017)>

<Cast: Tom Felton as Benjamin Weiss Ben Muller>

"24-David, suspect Ben Muller in sight," a young woman in full SWAT getup said, holding up her rifle in one hand while pressing the mic on her bullet-proof vest to keep the line open with the other.

A young man in his late-twenties was walking in the blistering heat of the late August sun near Manhattan Beach in LA, making his way toward a more abandoned part of the neighborhood.

He was dressed in loose linen shorts, beaten Adidas sneakers, a white tank top, and an unbuttoned floral shirt that concealed the holstered gun to the untrained eye on his left flank. His medium length blonde hair was swept back, hidden under a sports cap that did nothing to hide the many tattoos on his neck and chest. Steely blue eyes looked around every now and then as he discretely placed an envelope in a mailbox in a smooth, practiced movement.

And just as he was about to turn around the final corner to reach his destination - an 'abandoned' auto repair shop - he dropped the big bag of food in his hands, pulled his gun out and turned around in a trained fashion. Before he managed to point the gun at anyone, the suspect Ben Muller, however, found himself at the receiving end of two SWAT officers' rifles.

Before they could order him to drop the weapon, Ben already got the finger off the trigger and held the gun in a way he couldn't possibly shoot them. Simultaneously, he raised both hands and he appeared as non-threatening as possible. Seeing as who their target was and how he looked with his tattoos, appearing non-threatening was hard.

The older male officer with greying hair accompanying the young female officer whisper-shouted, "LAPD, drop the weapon!"

"Wait-wait-wait! I'll comply, but before you arrest me - I'm LAPD! Deep undercover with the White Front West Coast! Get in touch with my CO! Captain Bridges at the Mid-Wilshire Division! Officer Benjamin Weiss!"

Officer Christina Alonso, aka 24-David, still had her line open, so Officer Harrelson at the headquarters of SWAT heard the man and quickly checked the information despite being very sceptical. Deep undercover meant his file was either sealed or entirely erased - they needed to get in touch with the CO to confirm his identity.

Which quickly proved hard, Captain Bridges retired two years ago and moved out of California, the current CO of Mid-Wilshire was now Captain Andersen. Harrelson relayed that information to the two in the field, and Officer David Kay, aka 30-David, retrained his rifle on Ben's chest.

"Captain Bridges is retired, Mid-Wilshire has a new CO. Get to talking," he ordered in a stern voice.

"What!? Okay-okay! I've been with the White Front for five years, and my last order came three years ago! I dropped off all my recent findings in that mailbox over there, and it gets sent to a P.O. box run by the FBI! My handler is Special Agent Harry Owen Ford! If the new CO at Mid-Wilshire doesn't know about me, ask Sergeant Wade Grey! He was my TO. Tell him 'Ben doesn't like coffee!', he'll definitely remember me! The boot he got to teach after me was Lopez! Angela Lopez!"

SWAT HQ heard all that and quickly got to work confirming his information. It was so thorough, Officer Alonso relaxed her grip a little and pointed her rifle down.

Officer Kay was quick to reprimand her, "Get your head in the game 24-David. Just 'cause he says a lot doesn't mean it's true."

Ben had by now placed the gun on the floor and gently kicked it toward Officer Alonso and stood back up while placing both hands in plain sight. He also lifted his shirt to show he didn't hide any other guns on him. He was so compliant, in fact, that Officer Kay got suspicious.

"Why did you immediately tell us everything? What if this was a test?"

Ben shook his head and pointed at Officer Alonso, "With all due respect, sir. I could see you being sent by Martin Kraft. You have everything you need from looks to demeanor. But a hot latina like her? Shit! Excuse my manners, ma'am. An attractive woman without blonde hair? Martin would rather cut off his own dick than give such a woman a gun or power. Again, I'm very sorry, ma'am."

Officer Alonso started smirking, even Officer Kay lost some apprehension, though he never lowered his gun. And then the first round of information came back. Captain Andersen had indeed never heard of Benjamin Weiss, which was bad. But Sergeant Wade Grey indeed remembered Ben and very sincerely vouched for his character.

"Your TO was promoted and took over Watch Command. He was very enthusiastic about you," Officer Kay said with a severe expression. "But there's more bad news. FBI came back to tell us Special Agent Ford died 3 years ago. Heart attack. And there's no record in the system about an undercover op led by him for the White Front with you in it."

Ben took a big gulp and mumbled, "So that's why nobody contacted me in so long..." He looked back up with a desperate gaze and fired off, "You gotta believe me! If you're moving in on the White Front, it's gotta be because of the last shipment. We received six caches of white phosphorus grenades, five that I know the location of from some wackjob in Eastern Europe and enough machine guns and bullet belts to mount on pickup trucks to wipe out half the city! But the boxes aren't here! They're in three different shipping containers under the name... shit... break open the mailbox and find the letter addressed to Robert Muller in SF! It has the names, numbers, and last addresses I had for the big weapon caches of Kraft's operation!"

Officer Kay pressed on, "Then what and who is in the shop down the street?"

"Fuck! Okay, there's three young women and a young boy held against their will. Martin's right-hand Olaf Berger - he is some twisted psycho and duct tapes empty guns to their hands to 'give them power' but he takes sick pleasure in watching them break mentally. They barely speak any English, even their German is terrible! Don't shoot them, they can't get the weapons off and they are empty. I swear on it with my life! Other than those four, we have four men excluding me. You know the White Front's call names? Wolf, Bär, Bieber, and Vogel. [Wolf, bear, beaver, and bird.] They are in there. Despite the heat, Bär wears his stupid fully bullet-proof gear as always, so aim for his arms or head."

Alsonso and Kay watched Ben almost break down at the news as he recounted all he knew, and judged that he was indeed what he said he was, especially the less experienced Alonso. When 27-David - or Daniel 'Hondo' Harrelson sitting in the command center asked them if they trusted him over the ear-piece, Kay pressed his mic and said, "We should trust him. I got a good feeling about him. Get 22-David and 25-David to confirm the numbers with the drone, then we're moving in."

Kay got scolded rather quickly for giving orders when his promotion to Team Leader was yet to be confirmed and Sergeant Buck Spivey, aka 20-David, came up from behind them with a bag of letters. He threw it over to Ben and ordered, "Can't be arsed to find it. Get out your letter."

Ben gladly complied - anything to do real police work again - and found his letter in the pile before throwing it over to the senior lead officer. Spivey examined the letter, found the address to a PO box in SF like mentioned and opened it.

There was a flimsy USB stick and detailed accounts on various happenings and copious amounts of names, dates, and numbers in it. Ben's story once more got a good boost of credibility.

"What page of this mentions the grenade shipment?"

Ben dismissed Sergeant Spivey's impatient tone and replied, "Roman numerals top right. Look for six or VI, sir."

"I know what a Roman numeral is you bastard," Spivey countered with narrowed eyes as he flipped to page six.

While Spivey took pictures of Ben's meticulous work to send back to the station, Ben once more talked to Alonso and Kay.

"Have we established that I'm on your side yet? I want to go in and help save those women and the kid. They know me and to some degree trust me because I never treated them badly. I can talk them down and get them out of the line of fire and I'll be out of your way, I promise."

Alonso looked to her partner Kay and they both looked unsure about it before Kay answered, "We need one more info in your favor and I don't see why you can't go inside. But only to leave with the civilians. Don't go cowboy on us."

"Anything, what do you want to hear?"

"You're not in the system. What's your badge number?"

Ben took no time to answer, "Officer Ben Weiss, badge number 21337. Under my TO Wade Grey, our call sign was 7-Adam-05. I got this assignment when I was working beat as 7-Adam-18. I was the only one fit to join the White Front thanks to my age, looks, UC training, and German knowledge in the LAPD."

When Officer Harrelson once more confirmed that the badge number was unassigned - which was good - and that Wade Grey on the still open call confirmed both numbers and information about Ben's German knowledge, Alonso and Kay finally lowered their guns.

Spivey got back to the three with Ben's letter stuffed under his vest.

"Okay, we gotta be quick about this. We'll raid a container yard all the way down in Long Beach immediately after getting those four off the streets. I heard something about you going in with us, kid?"

"If you'd let me, sir. I'll bring those guys the food I got to drop off my letter and try to herd the civilians to the north entrance while they eat. It's a big open garage door - perfect line of sight for your team to know there aren't any shenanigans. I'll herd them toward the abandoned RV in the yard. I mentioned before that Olaf Berger aka 'Bieber' tapes guns to the women to give them the illusion of power in a sick twisted fetish play. Don't shoot them, their guns are empty," Ben suggested with an earnest expression.

"Welcome back to the LAPD, kid," Spivey offered after considering the proposal. "I'll give you a one-way mic so we know what you're saying inside. Give us two code words that mean 'breach' and 'abort'."

"'Breach' is 'Wunder'. 'Abort' is 'krass'. That's German for wonder and badass or cool respectively. If none of you speak German, it's going to be hard for you to get anything out of the mic, though. So be prepared," Ben answered after short deliberation.

Spivey picked up Ben's gun, placed it in his holster together with a mic from his tactical gear that he placed under Ben's cap with the order not to take the headwear off, and sent the undercover cop back to his 'friends' with a small knife to cut the weapons from those women's hands. Spivey would appreciate it a lot if their weapons were not taped to their hands, even if Ben vouched that the guns were empty with his life.

"He's been undercover for five years and three of them nobody knew about it?"

"Yeah, tall tale if there was any," Spivey answered as he followed Ben's figure with his eyes. "But Hondo said his handler died of natural causes in Hawaii. If he had died anywhere else or under mysterious circumstances, we would not have taken his offer. And it helps that I know CO Bridges. The man was as tight-lipped as a British nanny with constipation. We don't have the luxury of waiting either. If what he said is true, the shipment was much bigger than the info we acted on."

"Poor guy. Nobody even knew what he was doing here," Alonso commented.

Kay inwardly agreed with the sentiment but argued, "That's the job he signed up for."

"...But yeah, tough luck. Next deep undercover op he'll probably want to discuss emergency exits."

"Did you see his face as he realised we're going after the front? I doubt he's ever doing undercover work again," Alonso shot back with a teasing smirk.

"I only saw how he couldn't get his eyes off of the 'hot latina', again, very sorry ma'am," Kay countered with a straight face and moved toward his breaching position without giving Alonso the chance to respond. She didn't even get to see Kay's strained smirk as he did something he usually didn't - but he wanted her to feel welcome as one of the first women in SWAT and as her future team lead. Teasing her 'in good fun just like the guys' would do should help, David 'Deacon' Kay inwardly argued.

-----

A lot of German cussing about the heat and terrible Chinese food later, Ben was followed outside by three crying women near the north entrance of the repair shop. He talked to them in German, but made sure they wouldn't understand him so he had an excuse to switch to English in case any of his buddies overheard him.

"Was ein Idiot! [What an idiot!] Why did that little brat want to stay inside when he could have watched you three take a shower outside, eh?"

After he made sure SWAT knew that the boy was still inside - something he couldn't change without raising suspicions - Ben continued in German, "Als 12-jähriger hätte ich alles dafür getan das zu sehen. Entweder er ist dumm oder ein Gentleman. Was ein Wunder. [As a 12-year old I would have done anything to see that. He's either dumb or a gentleman. What a wonder (Such a novelty.)]"

Just as he reached the RV and opened the door for the three women, loud bangs and the first of many shots were heard from the repair shop. He quickly shoved the three women inside, ordered, "Hinlegen! [Lay down!]" and began cutting away the three revolvers taped to the women's right hand.

"Ich werde alles tun, damit ihr sicher bleibt! [I'll do anything to make sure you'll be safe!] I promise," Ben said to reassure the women before he went back outside. Before he did, the undercover cop pulled out some metalware from the RV's pantry and told them to hold it in front of their head and chest to make sure no stray bullet could fatally injure them and to roll up to offer as little target surface as possible.

Once outside, he surveyed the repair shop and yard and inwardly deliberated going inside to help. He had promised not to do that, though, so as much as he wanted, he kept standing guard near the RV by squatting behind a rusty old car. It wouldn't do to use the RV as cover because that would increase the risk of the women getting hit.

Eventually, Ben saw Vogel and Murat, the little brother of one of the imprisoned women, run outside with Vogel pressing a pistol to the little boy's head.

"Shit," Ben cursed under his breath. He observed Vogel steering clear of the RV - something Ben could appreciate - but he walked toward one of the armored cars of his group. He forgot mentioning those to SWAT earlier and immediately spoke into the mic in his cap.

"If anyone's still listening, Vogel took the boy to the North-East entrance. He's moving toward one of the armored vehicles on the premises. The two SUVs at the back are stolen 'tanks-on-the-road' from the car outfit shop on Fallbrook Ave in West Hills. The three women are safe and curled up inside the RV. I'm moving in on Vogel from that position - don't shoot the lone gunman with a green and blue shirt," Ben spoke as he started stalking Vogel with laser-focus. He didn't get any answer because he was given a simple mic, but he hoped the information would lead to the SWAT team recognizing him in time to not shoot him should he cross their paths.

Inside the building, there was still a gunfight going on. So maybe he was the only one moving in on Vogel anyway. The question was how to play this so that Vogel won't shoot him.

He took a deep breath and moved over to the literal kidnapper and shouted, "Hey Vogel! Was ist los? Wer schießt auf uns? Und wo gehts hin? [Hey Vogel! What's happening? Who's shooting at us? And where to?]"

"Fuchs? LAPD SWAT hat uns gefunden! Ich bring mein kleines Spielzeug zum Versteck Adam! Gib mir Rückendeckung und ich schmeiß dir den zweiten Autoschlüssel rüber! [Fox? LAPD SWAT found us! I'm bringing my little toy to hideout Adam! Give me cover and I'll throw you the second car key!]"

Since Vogel didn't move the gun away from little Murat's head, Ben played his role and pointed the gun back toward the shop. That was when Vogel asked, "Was ist mit den drei Schlampen? [Where are those three sluts?]"

Ben froze for a short moment. He didn't think of a good excuse.

"Zwei sind von Prellschüssen getroffen und verbluten in der Dusche. Die dritte war zu hysterisch. Ich wollte sichergehen was los ist bevor ich mich um die drei kümmer. Vielleicht lass ich sie aber einfach hier verbluten. [Two were hit by stray bullets and are bleeding out in the shower. The third was too hysterical. I wanted to make sure what's happening before I deal with those three. Maybe I'll just leave them bleeding out, though.]"

Vogel didn't care much since he wasn't into adult women in the first place, but Murat's eyes immediately turned bloodshot. His German was by far the best among the four people held against their will, so he naturally understood that Ben 'didn't care whether or not his sister bled out or not.'

The two heard a commotion of a barricaded door getting kicked open and both turned toward the noise. While still moving backward, Vogel kept his pistol on the head of the young boy, though he veered slightly off target and pointed it at his shoulder blades instead, but he placed the semi-automatic hunting rifle he brought on the shoulder of the 12 year old to point it at whoever came through that door with a one-handed grip.

"LAPD! Drop your weapons!"

Officer Alonso, who walked out of the broken down door first, immediately ordered Vogel to disarm after finding cover, but Vogel instead pulled the trigger of his hunting rifle.

At the same time, Ben already had his gun pointed at Vogel and pressed the trigger with unnatural calm. He didn't hit Vogel, and thankfully, the little boy glaring at him wasn't hit either - instead he shot the rifle off-target from a good 15 feet away.

As Vogel didn't quite get what happened, Ben unloaded another three shots and all three hit Vogel's hands making the man drop the pistol pointed at Murat and on the third shot the rifle he had in his hand, too.

The Neonazi dropped the weapons while wailing in pain, clutched his bleeding hands toward his chest, and fell into himself on the ground. Seeing that his work was done, Ben immediately put the safety on his gun and placed it on the ground before SWAT got a wrong signal from him.

Just as Officers Tan and Alonso moved in to secure Murat and Vogel, another shot rang out in the yard, making everyone stop and look at the little boy with wide eyes.

With an incredulous expression, Ben clutched his chest and fell to his knees. A second shot rang through the yard. This time, the hit didn't hit center mass but instead was a glancing blow that almost hit bulls-eye - literally, if you considered Ben a bull.

Alonso quickly moved toward the boy and pointed the revolver taped to his hand to the ground as she kicked Vogel's weapons away. Tan followed up by radioing in the wounded 'officer' as well as the victim and moved to Ben.

"Hey, hey. Stay with me wondershot," Tan quipped as he pressed his hand on the bleeding hole in Ben's chest. "Come on, you just saved that kid and our asses from getting turned into swiss cheese by armor piercing rounds. You can't just die on me now."

"T-tell them... r-rid of ink... b-before f-f-uner-," Ben murmured as he gradually lost his consciousness before finishing the sentence.

The last thing he heard before losing his grip on reality fully was Murat accusing him of killing his Jasemine - the sister that was likely alive and well in the RV.