Reading Time: 135 Minutes

Title: Pit of Arrogance
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Crime Drama, Drama, Episode Related
Relationship(s): Gen, background pairings.
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Canon typical violence, discussion of infertility issues, surrogacy and adoption, not MCRT friendly.
Word Count: 160,158
Summary: When the deputy manager of HR, Delores Bromstead, witnesses the MCRT’s junior agents’ insubordination of the Senior Field Agent, she decides she has had enough. If Gibbs refuses to enforce the chain of command on his team, then it is time for her to act. She might not be able to make Special Agent L.J. Gibbs follow agency rules and regulations, but she refuses to stand by and let the rookies continually get away with insubordination. Her actions will end up having far reaching repercussions for every member of NCIS, including Delores. Set during Forced Entry S02e09.
Artist: Kylia

---

---

 

Chapter 30

Tom had not been expecting that response from the FBI agent. Of course, they already knew that Haswari was back in DC, and he wanted to kill Gibbs or in lieu of him being available, would settle on a proxy. Probably DiNozzo because Tony had deliberately gone out of his way to annoy him. Still, it was odd that the FBI who had so zealously guarded Ari, convinced he was a valued asset, now suddenly appeared to be experiencing cold feet. He wondered what had caused that?

Morrow reassured Gibbs crony that they already knew about Haswari and Gibbs was in protective custody at which point, the FBI agent looked much more relieved.

This was precisely when DiNozzo made one of his infamous flashes of inspired brilliance in assembling information and making an intuitive leap.

“Mossad finally realised their undercover officer had gone rogue, didn’t they? They sent you a heads up that he’s not working for you at all,” he said derisively. “Took you all damned long enough.”

“You suspected, DiNotzo?” Tobias blurted out in astonishment, and Tom could see that Tony wanted to punch him in the nose for deliberately mangling his name.

“Hello…undercover expert. Of course, I did, Tobes,” he said sarcastically, knowing that Fornell hated contractions of his first name.

Morrow smirked. If Fornell dished it up, then he had to be prepared to take it too. “It’s true, Agent Fornelli, Tony here was explaining to us right before he went for coffee with Ari Haswari that the Mossad mole had either gone native or he was a mole but for Hamas, not Mossad who’d been duped. He had his suspicion for a while now,” he said, proudly glancing at the young agent.

“So has Mossad issued a kill order yet?” Tony asked.

Fornell looked like all the wind had been taken out of his sails. “You knew he was here?”

Balboa shrugged. “He left a cryptic invitation for coffee on Gibbs’ old phone which is being monitored by Director Morrow’s PA. Tony figured out it was Haswari wanting to meet up with Jethro for a cosy chat because they get along so well and he decided to gatecrash Ari’s little tea party instead,” he said sardonically

“Bastard tried to blow up the coffee shop,” Tony scowled.

The follicly-challenged FBI agent winced. “Think I’m going to need a SitRep,” he said. “This has all the hallmarks of a classic Charlie Foxtrot. And to answer your question DiNotzo, yes Mossad has authorised a termination. His handler is supposed to take him out but that may be problematic,” he hinted.

Remembering Abby and the evidence that Balboa brought back, he said, “Can Abby Sciuto use the lab down at the Hoover Building to analyse the bomb from the coffee shop?”

“I guess so, but why?”

“Because my intuition tells me that Haswari might target Abby to get at Gibbs. You know he thinks of her as his daughter and she’s too vulnerable down there with all that glass,” he said. “I’m just going to get her and the evidence. Ric can give you the background,” he said as he took off hurriedly, groaning at all his bruises. Hell, his bruises had bruises or that’s what it felt like to him.

Morrow looked at Balboa. “Ric, I should probably go back to the briefing and see how security plans are progressing. Fill Agent Fornell in and I’ll be back soon.

Meanwhile, Tony felt driven to get down to Abby’s lab as soon as possible. Agents Scott and Caruso were supposed to be trailing Haswari, but he was pretty damned sure that the Mossad-trained officer was also Kidon and that made it likely that he would make the two agents and ditch them. He should have warned Abby already, he berated himself in a mild panic. Calling her on his cell as he tore down the stairs, not wanting to wait on the elevator, her phone went unanswered. Probably had her death metal music turned up way too loud to hear the phone.

Bursting into the lab, his ears protested at the shrieking music that made his head hurt, what with the whole being blown up twice scenario, he looked around frantically. Abby was standing near the lab table with the box of evidence, studying the evidence log when Tony saw a red laser aiming for her chest. Barrelling into her, stepping in front of the window and blocking the laser sight, he pushed them both to the ground as a twelve-pound canon drove into his back near his left kidney region. Okay, obviously it wasn’t a twelve-pound canon…it just felt like one – the pain was so overwhelming that even though DiNozzos didn’t faint, he might just need a short nap. Which was a different kettle of fish!

As he felt the darkness enveloping him and someone shrieking, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, o-h-m-y-g-o-d is he dead?” and being shaken violently, he fervently hoped he wasn’t having a seizure. As he drifted into unconsciousness, his last thought was, ‘Lucky I never took off my vest before the SitRep.’

Later when he regained awareness… after his brief nap, he opened one painfilled green eye, which unfortunately elicited an excited Abby squealing in his ear, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod… he’s not dead, Ducky.”

Tony wished she’d cool it with the excited squeals… he had a cosmic-sized headache, although why his head felt like it was about to explode when his jacket had coped one in the back he didn’t fully understand. Still, there were more pressing matters to attend to. Like… was he lying face down on one of Ducky’s autopsy tables? Creepy much?

After he’d been assisted to sit up and hadn’t that been a really fun process, he felt like roadkill. And then Ducky for some unbeknownst reason felt it was a good idea to start admonishing him about not being so cavalier about his own health and safety.

“Seriously my dear boy, you need to start taking better care of yourself. Your body is one massive bruise, I’m afraid. Look before you leap, Anthony.”

He was in too much pain to reply to this unfair criticism Fortunately, Abby decided that Ducky was being far too severe.

“Ohmygod, Ducky. If Tony had taken the time to look before he leapt into the path of that bullet to save me, it would in all probability transected my aorta. I’m just happy he was wearing a vest and that it stopped the slug,” she told him reproachfully.

“Quite right too, dear child. As you point out, it was lucky he was wearing a vest or he may have ended up losing a kidney or worse,

While Abby gave a distressed meeping sound at the thought of him being seriously hurt, he looked across at Ducky who looked set to prattle on for hours…hours he didn’t have.

Ducky, any chance you can give me something for my head, it feels like one of Abby’s death metal drummers is inside it and it’s gonna explode?”

“Of course, dear boy.” And thankfully he trotted off to fetch it.

“Abbs, did the director talk to you about using the Fibbies forensic lab at the Hoover building downtown so you can compare the bomb that destroyed Lieutenants Westfall and Janssen’s car with the one from The Good Stuff Coffee Shop?”

“Yeah, he did, but I wanted to make sure you were alright, Tony. You scared me silly when you fainted,” she playfully slapped his bicep as he winced.

Ducky had barely exaggerated when he described him as one big bruise. To distract Abbs from the realisation she’d hurt him, he scowled at her pretty convincingly.

“DiNozzo’s don’t faint, Abbs. I was just taking a short nap. It’s been a rough day/”

“Yeah, yeah, what evs, DiNozzo. You really think that Ari made both bombs?”

“I do,” he said in all seriousness. “Now we just need proof to take that smug bastard down,” he said. “We need it ASAP, Dr Sciuto,”

“Fine, I’ll get right on it, Very Special Agent Tony,” she joshed him. “Ric is going to get Emmie and Charlie to drive me over to the Hoover building in Director Morrow’s armoured car,” she said, getting up and giving him a kiss on the cheek.

“Thanks for saving my life, tonight. You’re my white night,” she whispered tearily. “By the way, has anyone ever told you that you’ve got one hell of an impressive butt?” she said.

“You felt up my ass while I was…having a nap, Abby?” he asked her incredulously.

Giving a throaty chuckle and a leering look at his butt, she skipped out without incriminating herself further. Tony welcomed the silence to give into his aching head respite as Ducky tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a couple of small white pills and a bottle of cold water from his fridge.

“For your headache, my boy. I’ve written up a script for an NSAID in a gel formula to rub into your poor abused and very bruised body, Anthony. A nice hot bath and then application of the anti-inflammatories before bed will do wonders for you, I guarantee,” he vowed, knowing Tony’s aversion to taking strong painkillers.

Sound’s good Ducky,” he said, privately figuring that a long hot soak in a tub was not on the cards tonight. He doubted very much he’d be able to climb out of the tub, even if he went home. He’d settle for a hot shower down in the gym and the Voltaren and a fresh change of clothes, maybe he’d borrow Abby’s futon for a few hours. Until they caught the cell and figured out what their target was, the temporary MCRT wasn’t going home any time soon.

After his head let up a little, slowly Tony made his way up to MTAC, the normal route taking less than a minute, took him five as he made his way gingerly up there, feeling like he was a shaky nonagenarian. Ducky must have thought the same thing since Tony was reasonably sure that the ME had called Balboa down to Autopsy to give him a hand. Luckily, by the time he reached his destination to find that Director Morrow was showing Gibbs’ frenemy Fornell the operation at The Good Stuff Cafe, he was feeling a bit more limber. Now he felt more like an octogenarian!

“I can’t believe that rat bastard was so open about his intentions,” the FBI agent exclaimed. “Sure you’ didn’t slip him some Veritaserum, DiNotzo?” he asked, having noted Tony and Balboa slowly entering the Multiple Threat Assessment Centre.

“Never would have picked you as a Potterhead, Toby? Let me guess, you took the Sorting Hat test, didn’t you and you’re a Snake?” he taunted the fibbie.

“Let me guess, Gryffindor,” he snarked right back.

“Nope,” Tony smiled beatifically. “I’m a Craw, work harder not faster,” he told Fornell, although strictly speaking he wasn’t a Potterhead.

He’d never taken any dumbass online test since he went out of his way to avoid psychometric testing like the plague. Why on earth would he take a cliched personality test dreamed up by a stupid bint who justified abusive teachers terrorising students, or child abuse of the eponymous hero as necessary for the greater good. He had a feeling that her whole moral imperative, loudly promulgated by her grandfatherly hero, Dumbledore hadn’t been informed by the moral and ethical edict, ‘Do not do evil that good may come’ since it underpinned the whole fallacy of her series of books. She used it to promulgate the fallacy that it was acceptable to do something wrong so long as it led to a good outcome.

Tony vividly remembered an Ethics and the Law course he had taken as part of his postgrad criminology degree where the lecturer had stated that it was meant to serve as a reminder that duty belonged to the individual and events to God. While DiNozzo isn’t sure that he believed in God, considering all of the destruction and killing that was committed in his name, he definitely thought it was a worthy declaration to live by.

“And for what is worth I didn’t slip him any truth serum, either. Whoever’s been giving him information on us informed him I was as dumb as a box of rocks.”

“Hence the Agent Meatball moniker?” he interrupted having watched the entire interaction in MTAC.

“Wow! Nuthin gets by you Fibbs, does it, Tobes? Anyway, as I was saying, it never occurred to him that the rendezvous at Gibbs’ coffee shop was set up. Plus Ari Haswari is insanely arrogant,” Tony declared scathingly.

He briefly thought about shrugging but realised it would hurt too much and settled for a quirk of his right eyebrow instead. Even that hurt and he decided to refrain from further facial expressions too.

Morrow who had been watching the sparring in amusement, interspersed himself in their verbal jousting. “It’s probably redundant, but in the interests of thoroughness, Agents Caruso and Scott who were supposed to be following Haswari, reported that he seemed unaware of their tail, but at a set of traffic lights, he ran the red light and lost them. They tried to pick up his tail but were unsuccessful.”

Tony nodded. “Hard to tail someone on a motorcycle when you’re in a car. They’re too small and manoeuvrable. Plus easily hidden,” he sighed. “Hard enough if you’re on a bike yourself,” he muttered.

“So, as I was saying, before you ran off to play hero, DiNutzo and then decided to have yourself a little nanna-nap, Haswari’s handler had been ordered to take Haswari out because Mossad believed he’s been turned, but she is resistant, claiming Haswari is being set up. If the explosives from both bombs are forensically proven to be made using the same explosive and we show her the video of your chat, I think we can hopefully convince her to follow her orders and carry out the hit,” Fornell said.

Balboa glowered. “Why is his handler not obeying orders?”

Fornell looked pained. “It’s complicated. She is…influential…above the normal chain of command.”

Tony had a bad feeling about this. He’d need to do some digging – he had a contact in Shin Bet after a case he worked in Philly PD some years ago.

“Of course, if you’d bothered to let us know about this little sting of yours, we could have arrested him already,” the FBI agent groused.

Morrow looked pissed. “Ah Agent Fornell, I don’t think that it’s particularly helpful for the pot to be ticking off the kettle in this instance. You took your own sweet fucking time in alerting us to Haswari’s return to the US,” he said mildly, only the rare profanity cluing them in about just how angry he was.

As Fornell gulped audibly at his faux pas, the director continued, “As for arresting him, we fully intended to until he informed DiNozzo about the bomb which one of our UC agents verified. Without knowing if he could detonate it if we detained him, I MADE THE CALL to let him go because there were four civilians in harm’s way,” he said irately.

“One was a child about the same age as your daughter,” Balboa said pointedly

Meanwhile, Fornell looked like he was hoping a providential sinkhole might open up and swallow him since, the atmosphere in MTAC was icy and everyone, analysts and comms technicians included were directing their ire at the lone FBI agent. Tony decided now might be a fortuitous moment to confess what he’d done, having decided earlier when they were setting up the meet with Haswari that it didn’t do to put all your eggs in one basket. And in this instance, he’d decided to follow Gibbs Rule 18 – better to seek forgiveness than ask permission. He looked over at Balboa who he co-opted in his Plan B and they both concurred that now would be a good time to come clean.

“So if we had a way of locating him, then we could arrest him with the full support of the FBI?” he asked Fornell.

“Yeah, we’ll happily turn him over to the Cultural Attaché, Michael Bashan at the Israel Embassy,” he said as everyone rolled their eyes at the cultural attaché moniker since every single person in MTAC knew it was politick-speak for Mossad operative.

“Unfortunately, we can’t… because Ari managed to lose his tail,” he grumbled.

“Doubt if your guys could have done any better Agent Fornell,” Ric was quick to defend their Agents.

“Anyhoo… getting back on track, Agent Balboa and I may have slipped a GPS locator on Haswari’s motorcycle,” Tony said brightly. “Plus, when Agent Tommy was giving Remy Martin his lactose-free puppaccino with spiced pumpkin puree for Remy’s blog, I may have managed to slip one of those whizz-bang little micro locator devices in his messenger bag. Don’t think he’s ever encountered a dog drinking a puppaccino before,” he said nonchalantly.

“ARE YOU NUTS?” Fornell growled. Planting one bug was dicey when you learnt about the bomb, but doing it twice? What the fuck were you two thinking?”

“That if I was Haswari, I’d be expecting that someone might try to slip a tracker me but once he found the obvious one on his bike and dealt with it, his arrogance would assert itself, confirming his superiority complex that we…me…Agent Meatball was an idiot, and he wouldn’t look any further.”

Fornell looked slightly mollified but still was muttering under his breath. “Can we at least determine if he’s found either of the devices?”

~oOo~

In the end, it was fairly anticlimactic. Ari and his band of merry terrorists hadn’t found either of the locator devices which was sloppy but bore out Tony’s theory on Haswari’s narcissistic arrogance. He believed that his training was far superior to US federal agents. Ari’s egotistic surety that DiNozzo was nothing more than a dumb jock, who could shoot a bit and fight a bit but was certainly no threat to someone who was a Kidon-trained assassin, no doubt helped in his undoing. The supposed mole’s bombastic overconfidence in whoever had supplied him with his crap-tastic intel on NCIS caused him to foolishly underestimate everyone at NCIS who wasn’t Gibbs and gave them a big advantage. Combined, it ensured that Ari was too cocky and never even bothered to check if he’d been bugged.

The bag and the motorcycle had both been giving off signals as to the location of the terrorists’ cell and after some high-level talks between various government departments, it was decided to monitor the cell until they could be absolutely certain that Danborn Avionics was the target or Ari’s group. If the surveillance that was undertaken during the night at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds proved to be a bust, then they would arrest Ari and as many of the cell as possible. If they did try to take the newer or even one the older model decommissioned drones used for spare parts, gaining access using Lieutenant Westfall’s prints, they would have teams ready at the terrorist’s base. Plus, they would arrest anyone who broke into Danborn and hopefully take them all down in two coordinated operations.

It became a massive joint surveillance operation that involved having the terrorists leave their headquarters under constant surveillance. Some Feds and LEOs were left behind to watch in case other terrorists were still inside as several heat signatures seemed to indicate. Also of concern, it was possible that other members of the cell were out and about doing recon of the target that they were believed to have somewhere in the DC or surrounding areas. Hopefully, they might be able to round up a few more when the go-ahead was given to take them down.

Meanwhile, a large number of Feds and LEOS including the Metro PD and Baltimore PD air wings would be tracking them on their way to Aberdeen, Maryland where another contingent of NCIS and Special Agent Lina Reyes’ Terrorist Taskforce of FBI agents, along with the Aberdeen Proving Ground Security squad and MPs were already deployed. The plan was to intercept them if they attempted to steal a drone as the intel analysts believed was their intent. The Baltimore and FBI SWAT teams were also on standby to provide support, stationed at the other end of Aberdeen Proving Grounds, keeping a low profile in a warehouse if required.

Back at the Navy Yard, NCIS’s intelligence departments and analysts had spent the night hard at work, drawing up contingency plans after Tony, watching the various surveillance ops underway in MTAC had made one of his out-of-the-box moments of brilliance. He realised that a likely soft target for the terrorists was Norfolk Naval Base where many hundreds of families, children, parents, and spouses were due to welcome home their family members, from the Marine Amphibious Strike Group tomorrow. Five warships were returning to the Norfolk Port or Harbour with navy and Marine service personnel due for shore leave after five months in the Gulf. His on-again-off-again girlfriend, Special Agent Paula Cassidy was going to spend the weekend with him since Ric’s team were supposed to have the weekend off.

Of course, the Army, who was responsible for the Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) had been freaked out by the idea that a Hamas terrorist cell might be targeting the base. Given that they had a lot of potentially lethal weaponry on the 72, 500 acres (2932kms) of land and they employed more than 7,500 civilian and 5,000 military personnel, it was a huge area to cover – hence their panicking! Plus, as Tony had pointed out, having been a cop in Baltimore during the 9/11 terrorist attacks and been briefed on the Edgeworth Chemical Activity – a chemical weapons depot located within APG, he could understand why. After the horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11 they’d initiated an accelerated schedule of eliminating the chemicals held there, but it wasn’t due to be completed until February 2006.

With 21 months still to go before that process of disposal was complete, Tony could hardly blame The Powers That Be for freaking out at the thought of Hamas terrorists gaining access to APG, given the chemical weapons which were probably still stored there. The Edgewood Arsenal from 1917 had been used for the development, testing, storage, and disposal of chemical agent munitions including Mustard Gas in WWI. From 1955 to 1975 approximately 7,000 soldiers took part in experiments that exposed them to a range of chemical agents. According to the DOD, while some subjects showed symptoms at the time of the testing, no long-term follow-up studies were planned as part of their studies which was pretty messed up, in Tony’s opinion.

So given what was still stockpiled there, it was no surprise that the top army brass insisted on massive protection for the 23.31 square miles of the Edgewood facility within Aberdeen to ensure that the residual chemical agents didn’t fall into the hands of the terrorists. While The Powers That Be were incredibly squirrelly about divulging exactly what still remained at the storage facility awaiting disposal, after the bio-hazard attack on NCIs last month, Tony thought it was understandable for the Navy to be paranoid about a possible attack on Norfolk Naval Base. An attack on service personnel’s families would have a devastating effect on morale, both in the military and in the wider community. So, a lot was riding on the operation.

Still, no one was criticising the army for fortifying Edgewood so heavily, bringing in Special Ops troops to guard the remaining chemical agents. Tony got it, he just hoped that they did so discreetly, since the last thing they needed at this point was to spook Ari’s bunch of terrorists. With over 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel working at Aberdeen Proving Ground, unusual activity would soon be noticed, and scuttlebutt would spread like wildfire. They needed to catch these bastards red-handed. After the horrific debacle of 9/11 with the failure of all of the various agencies and alphabets to protect the US from terrorism, a second failure this time was not an option. Ari Haswari and his cohorts were going down.

Of course, the Edgewood chemical weapons depot at APG wasn’t the only potentially dangerous things on the base that was making the Army brass antsy about Ari’s cell paying them a visit. Their Plan A had been to fortify the base up the wazoo to stop the terror cell from getting access, thankfully vetoed by the JCS as it would alert the cell that they knew about their plans and probably wasn’t practical anyway considering the 7,500 civilians employed at Aberdeen. They had no way of knowing if any of the civilians were working with the cell or Haswari since it was unclear if he was a paid-up member of the terrorist group, or if he had his own personal agenda which involved attacking the US and Israel. They needed to prepare for both eventualities, and it would be foolhardy not to assume they had inside help on the base. After all, someone at NCIS had helped Haswari profile Ducky and the MCRT.

The Army’s initial Plan B really wasn’t that much better, to be honest. It consisted of arresting the lot of them the moment they tried to gain access to the Aberdeen base because ideally, both the DoD and Department of Justice desperately wanted to take them down with their hands in the cookie jar, but to do so discreetly, since it seemed abundantly clear that they had insiders already in situ. After the Charlie Foxtrot that was the intelligence and law enforcement communities failure over terrorists hijacking military jets and successfully attacking New York City and the Pentagon, they needed to take this group down hard and fast, and the Plan B promulgated by the Army brass was reactionary and flawed.

Luckily, Tony, Ric, Fornell and Director Morrow had been able to convince the president’s top NatSec advisors that Plan C, was the only sane option. Let the terror cell members gain access to the base, so the good guys could discover who was helping them to access a base that already had extremely high levels of security, given what was stored there. That way, they would learn not just who had infiltrated their civilian workforce but also whatever weakness they might have managed to suss out and exploit. Hopefully, that would help prevent future attacks, since it was now a fact of life that terrorism was going to be an ongoing situation.

Securing the Commander-in-Chief’s blessing, the intelligence, law enforcement and military branches all embarked on a massive operation to crush Haswari and his cell. With the intel gathered on their methods, analysts could help formulate strategies to plug any weaknesses that their enemies had managed to ferret out in the future. Plus, shore up defences rather than merely try to clean up after the shit hit the fan.

Once they had Presidential approval for the audacious operation, Director Morrow ordered Tony to get some sleep for at least an hour, since it was clear DiNozzo was dropping.

“Going to be a long night, Agent DiNozzo. More importantly, it’s not every day you are blown up twice and shot in the back. If you want to watch it unfold here in MTAC then go get some shuteye.”

Tony was about to argue that he was fine, a cup of coffee and a candy bar and he was good to go when Morrow’s highly amused demeanour warned him that the director had something planned. As a highly skilled undercover operative with exceptional skills at profiling, something told Tony whatever the hell it was, it was something he would like. He was right!

“With a quirked eyebrow at Ric, Morrow said, lightly, “Or I could just order Supervisory Special Agent Balboa here to transport you to the safe house to supervise Gibbs’ protection detail. I’m sure he’d appreciate some company.”

Oh no…not just no, but HELL NO! Talk about playing dirty pool. Tony DiNozzo had no desire to be within head-slapping distance of a rabid gunny left out of the loop when he found out about Ari Haswari.

Bowing his head in acquiescence, he nodded exhaustedly. “Fine, I’ll go grab a nap on Abby’s futon.”

Tom opened his mouth to comment but Balboa beat him to it. “Not in the lab. For one thing, it’s still a crime scene. And two, as you demonstrated, it is too vulnerable to sniper fire. “I’ll get Security to bring the futon to Conference room 3, Director.”

Tom nodded. “Good plan! I’ll see you both later. And Agents, nice job selling the plan to the President’s NatSec team,” he dismissed them as he moved to the comms technician to request a videoconferencing call with SECNAV.

The two agents made their way out of MTAC, Balboa declaring, “C’mon Tony, let’s get you into bed.”

Tony’s answer, “Only if you feed me afterwards, Ric. I’m not some cheap date, I’ll have you know,” caused a ripple of amusement to course through the room as they disappeared up the ramp.

Chapter 31

Leroy Jethro Gibbs arrived back at the NCIS bullpen on the second day back at work after being infected by that stupid whack job with pneumonic plague. He was so glad to be back. After the loss of his family, and a few attempts to replace them failed miserably, work became his sole focus. Okay, maybe his obsession…as long as he was focused on hunting down dirtbags and throwing them in jail, or if he was really lucky, shooting them when they were stupid enough to try to run from him, he was happy.

Usually, when he discharged his firearm to stop someone from bolting, it was just a flesh wound to prevent them from escaping. It was still surprisingly cathartic to put a slug in a dirtbag’s thigh or their ass. If he got lucky and the dirtbags physically resisted arrest, depending on the degree of violence they inflicted on their victims, determined the severity of where he chose to place the slug. Premeditated murderers, serial killers, and rapists as far as he was concerned, were scum and if they were armed, he never lost sleep over them if he had to kill them. Better them than him, if they were dumb enough to pull a gun on a sniper. Plus, it saved the cost of a trial, the massive expense of incarcerating them and it gave much-needed closure to the victims’ families to know they would never do it again. So it was a win all around.

Even when the dirtbags didn’t fight back or attempt to run away, surrendering meekly and then taken into custody, Jethro was still able to experience desperately needed catharsis, by dragging them straight off to interrogate them. He was almost always able to intimidate them into incriminating themselves, which was an exhilarating feeling. It made him feel invincible to be so feared. Hell, some of the pathetic SOBs pissed themselves in terror when he threatened them, frequently making the janitorial service staff complain about the fact that his suspects were always making messes in the Interrogation rooms. Sometimes the whiney-assed cowards threw up and on one gloriously memorable occasion, one cowardly prick crapped his pants. Although he swore, he had some GI condition, Chromes Disease, or some such thing although Jethro didn’t believe it for a second.

Boy did the Janitorial crew bitch and moan over that mess! Gibbs smiled at the memory – the buzz of knowing he’d made Petty Officer Edelson shat himself and he pissed off Janitorial Services into the bargain. It had been a twofer and that was a good day for him!

Sadly, it had been too long since he’d been able to blow off steam, prevented from investigating cases, hunting down dirtbags, unable to interrogate people and seek justice for his family…um the families of victims of crime because he’d been fighting off double pneumonia. Which was why his already infamous short temper was on even more of a hair-trigger than normal. It was screaming out, desperate for some sort of catharsis. He felt like a volcano that was ready to erupt, the need for release seriously impeding his ability to remain cordial. Jethro wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold it together.

It sure didn’t help any that he’d been practically abducted by a bunch of Marines, summarily dragged out of his house yesterday evening, after he’d attended a respiratory therapy session like a good little patient trying to win back his field status. He’d been looking forward to getting some sleep and without even a heads up, he’d been informed that he was being placed in protective custody, per SECNAV and Morrow’s orders, harried into a vehicle. He had been driven to a safe house and guarded without the courtesy of an explanation as to what the threat was or how long he might be forced to remain in protective custody. It was damned humiliating, and he was pissed off, but unfortunately, he was able to coerce any operational intel out of his bodyguards and that made him even more furious.

Gibbs didn’t appreciate being kept in the dark, he preferred to be the one who was hoarding intel, and naturally, the uncertainty did nothing to improve his temper. That the Master Sergeant confiscated his cell phone, like he was a rebellious teenager, it just made his rage even more volatile. He didn’t know how long he might be kept under guard, nor did he appreciate being treated like some helpless princess in a tower. I had taken all of his crumbling discipline not to melt down. Jethro had already learnt the hard way that thanks to his scarred lungs, a rage-filled screaming episode inevitably resulted in him collapsing in a heap on the ground, feeling like he’d just run a triple marathon. It was damned mortifying that his lungs seemed to have forgotten how to work automatically.

So when Ms Sgt Michelson informed him at 0530 this morning that the situation had been resolved overnight and they’d be transporting him into the naval yard in a few hours, Jethro felt a slight lessening of the fiercely burning rage that made him want to shoot someone – like Hanna Lowell. They still refused to tell him what had been so urgent that he’d been dragged kicking and screaming out of his house last evening, but he tried to cool his jets. He figured Morrow would explain what the panic had been about.

However, arriving in the bullpen, he could see that Balboa’s team had obviously pulled an all-nighter, judging by the detritus of empty coffee cups and Chinese takeout boxes on their desks. Plus, there was Ric’s young bouncy Asian agent who reminded Gibbs of a Labrador puppy who was sound asleep at his workstation, his left cheek smooshed down against the computer keyboard. Deciding to find his senior field agent who was filling in on Balboa’s team and demanding to know what the hell was going on, he rose out of his seat, cursing Hanna Lowell and not for the first time, for infecting him with the antibiotic-resistant genetically engineered Y-Pesti’s bug. As much as he liked to pretend that he was fine, he had to concede that the plague had done a number on him, but he was determined to recover.

Unfortunately, before he had a chance to hunt down DiNozzo and force him to spill his guts about what this Charlie Foxtrot was that seemed to have the whole damned office in its thrall, Morrow walked out of MTAC. He stood at the top of the stairs, watching him intently.

“Gibbs, my office. Five minutes,” he ordered the deskbound Gibbs, spinning on his heel and stalking off towards his office.

He knew that the director had granted him a five-minute leeway to negotiate the trek from the bullpen to the director’s office, normally undertaken in less than thirty seconds but it was a much longer proposition due to his weakened state. Rather than being grateful for the face-saving gesture, it had the exact opposite effect, turning up the dial on his already simmering fury. Gibbs wasn’t used to being coddled, damn it. He didn’t like it and he longed to pound someone.

Although right now, he’d settle on beating the shit out of the punching bag down in the gym… except he wasn’t cleared yet to enter the gym. Drs Allbright and Pitt insisted his exercise regime be closely supervised by professionals and that oxygen needed to be on standby in case it was required…and much to his mortification, it had been… once or twice.

Jethro decided to bite the bullet and take the elevator rather than the stairs, so he wouldn’t overtax his lungs and collapse in front of everyone. His anger at this situation reminded him that the respiratory tech had warned him that he needed to avoid stress and emotional outbursts. The problem was that emotional outbursts as she phrased it so delicately, or as Pitt more bluntly put it, his explosive temper tantrums, were how he controlled his inner demons, which threatened to make him feel like he was drowning in corrosive rage.

Now though, because of Lowell, his normal method of relieving anger – hunting down dirtbags and putting them away was off-limits to him currently. The other tried and true method of releasing anger and avoiding stress – venting his anger on his team members was also a no-no – since Gibbs imposed a moratorium on expressing his anger since he only had DiNozzo left and didn’t want him to leave too. Jethro was aggrieved, feeling that circumstances were conspiring against him, robbing him of proven techniques he used to deal with his anger and considering the unbearable loss of his family, his anger was understandable.

Yet all the medical types lectured him to avoid stress…so how the hell was he supposed to do that when he had all this rage bottled up inside of him and he wasn’t supposed to let it out. He’d really like to know!

Roughly 45 minutes later, Gibbs exited Morrow’s office, his anger even more capricious, steadily gaining in intensity. It wouldn’t take much to set him off, he thought as he stomped back down to his desk…well maybe he wasn’t really up to stomping just yet, but he wanted to and that just added to his pique. How the hell was he supposed to be the Second B for Bastard that everyone feared and respected if he was too physically compromised to stomp around and make probies and dirtbags wet themselves?

The director had just informed him that the reason he’d been taken into protective custody was because that maniac, Haswari was back and threatening that he had to kill Gibbs so he could gain the trust of the terrorist cell and learn where the terrorist attack would take place. It was emasculating…he didn’t need to be protected like some damsel in distress, he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. But more than that…he was the one who should have been allowed to take down that sociopathic son-of-a-bitch and Morrow benched him. He took him out of harm’s way when the reality was that it was Gibbs’ fight. It should have been him who took the monster down. Ari attacked his team, hurt his people, and shot him…it was his right to stop him. It was personal!

Not being able to go after Hanna Lowell who almost killed him (would have if he wasn’t just too stubborn to give in and die), his apex predator was still slavering, desperately wanting to rip out his prey’s jugular and watch her drown in her own blood. His anger was visceral – the predator within him was a bloodthirsty master slavishly demanded retribution. Unfortunately for Gibbs, Lowell was locked up in a heavily guarded prison ward, dying. The malignant brain tumour doing what Gibbs wasn’t permitted to do – devouring its host from within.

And then there was his great white whale as DiNozzo had been quick to label him. After Haswari took HIS PEOPLE hostage in Autopsy, he’d spent far too many nights sitting in front of his damned computer screens. For months on end, trying to identify their terrorist when Mossad and the Fibbs had known all along who the fuck he was. Those miserable SOBs knew but lied, denying all knowledge of him when they were the ones that wound him up and set him loose in the US as a ‘mole.’. They’d been toying with him, no doubt laughing their collective asses off at Jethro and his obsession to track down the guy who got away. He’d vowed to Ducky to put him on one of his autopsy slabs so his old friend could slice and dice him and weigh his organs as retribution for what he’d done to Ducky’s assistant Gerald Jackson.

And now his own agency had conspired with the FBI who had been laughing at him, thwarting his ‘predator’ who was unable to obtain the justice he’d earned. How dare they keep him out of the loop…not just treating him like a mushroom for months, toying with him but now they preventing him from collecting his pound of flesh. That smug bastard Haswari had threatened to kill him, had almost killed HIS agent DiNozzo twice yesterday and tried to kill Abby who was like a surrogate daughter to him, and NO ONE bothered to inform him.

His predator’ was baying for blood and those patronising fuckers had whisked him away because he was temporarily weak, thanks to Lowell and her genetically modified microbes.

That The Powers That Be including SECNAV and Tom Morrow saw fit to sideline him and worse, organised a massive manhunt for Haswari and a fucking terrorist cell planning on attacking the families of the men and women serving on the Marine Amphibious strike group was unacceptable. He was the head of the MCRT – he should have been calling the shots. It should have been him who figured out their plan to use an old, decommissioned drone, circa 1970s that Ari’s cell planned on stealing from Danborn Avionics last night to engineer it so it could be packed with explosives, effectively creating a missile that could be flown remotely. Haswari had been meticulous and coldblooded in the planning, right down to the last detail. A teddy bear with a locator beacon sewn inside it was to have been ‘gifted’ to a small child as a present for her returning parent, thereby ensuring that they would cause maximum collateral damage.

The fact that the sick fucker had intended on targeting a small child – specifically a female, was no coincidence either. They’d found detailed plans at the Cell’s HQ showing that Haswari knew about Jethro’s wife and daughter. Since he was ‘supposedly’ a Mossad mole, that meant someone in their own agency had sold him out. Ari’s choice of a young child was cruel and deliberate, Jethro had absolutely no doubts about that. There was something very sick about that bastard and he’d needed to be put down and put down hard. BUT Gibbs had wanted to be the one to do it, not have some massive joint task forces do it.

Ari was his to kill and his inner ‘predator’ demanded nothing less than to be the one who escorted him out of this world, hopefully consigning him to an everlasting abyss of pain and suffering. But Ari Haswari was dead and not by his hand and Jethro’s predator was howling his rage and defiance!

Jethro’s eyes scanned his empty bullpen where McGee, DiNozzo and Cate should have been working at their desks. They should have been fearing his wrath while simultaneously desperate to win his approval to the point of throwing each other under the bus as soon as he entered the bullpen. It used to make his predator smugly self-satisfied to achieve it. He’d loved to watch them stumbling around hoping to win favour but scared they might inadvertently invoke his ire – it made his inner beast preen and swagger. Playing head games with his team was almost as much of a headrush as taking down a dirtbag.

Being a bastard was an awesome feeling. But now his team lay in ruins. Only DiNozzo was left and even he’d been temporarily assigned as Balboa’s SFA when the TAD supposed to be filling in for Anderson, broke his leg.

Sitting down at his desk in his solitary bullpen, his inner beast wouldn’t let it go. It should have been him and HIS team to take down Haswari. His bullet should have sheared through that monster’s aorta with surgical precision. His bullet that cut a swathe through his frontal cortex, transecting the midbrain, and exited out of the temporal lobe, ensuring he was gone for good. It should have been him and his ‘predator’ was pissed that they’d stopped him from killing that monster. It was all he could do not to rip into the director who was spouting off BS.

All of this… this Charlie Foxtrot… it was solely DiNozzo’s fault. He’d destroyed Gibbs’ team because he wouldn’t keep his dumbass mouth shut, trying to usurp Gibbs’ place by disciplining the other team members. If he hadn’t been trying to prove he was a better investigator than Cate and McGee were, this would never have happened. He was much too eager to cut them down to size, forgetting that Gibbs was the only one who had the right to rip into anyone on the team. DiNozzo just couldn’t get it through his thick skull that he was perfectly capable of running his team without interference – DiNozzo had forgotten that his sole role as his SFA was to do the paperwork.

Not just the SFA’s crap but 95 percent of Gibbs’ shit too… he had better things to do with his time. And besides, it was important to keep DiNozzo busy, just so he didn’t forget his place. There was only room for one alpha on the MCRT, and he didn’t want, need, or tolerate a beta! And it worked well, McGee had been fitting into the team nicely; he might use ten or fifteen words when one or two would suffice, but he was getting there. And he was quick to leap at the opportunity to hack which was a massive time saver and when hunting down dirtbags, time was critical. Gibbs’ beast needed to be kept happy.

If that interfering bitch from Human Resources hadn’t happened to overhear DiNozzo forget his place in the team by mouthing off, trying to school his teammates, then Gibbs’ carefully constructed team would have still been together. There was no way that Gibbs would have taken that dumbass SWAK letter off DiNozzo’s desk. He only did it because he was massively pissed off by him. He was doing his damnedest not to lose his temper because he needed the dumb fuck to help him chase down the dirtbags assigned to them. Morrow wouldn’t let him work cases solo, so he had to swallow down his ire but that damned letter with its red SWAK had been like a clarion call to his inner bastard.

Okay, Jethro admitted that opening that damned letter was not his shining hour and ended up almost costing him his life. Now it had also cost him his chance… HIS RIGHT as the head of the MCRT in tracking down that sociopathic monster Ari Haswari. Leroy Jethro Gibbs was the most senior and best-qualified agent in the DC office. Damned if he’d have let the FBI worm their way in if he’d been leading the team, nor any of the other federal agencies and the various police departments. Balboa was too damned weak, letting Morrow call in the Feebs.

They were the ones who’d unleashed Haswari on an unsuspecting public in the first place – the assholes. They’d turned the whole thing into a circus. And the fake MCRT led by Ric hadn’t even taken him down – it was one of the Fibbies who shot him. Adding insult to injury, it had been the head of the FBI Terrorism Taskforce, Agent Lina Reyes who killed him. Lord how he hated that smug pushy agent he thought, becoming increasingly agitated.

He heard the ping of the main elevator as its door slid open to expel a bunch of people: Balboa and his agents, Fornell, several unknown agents, the hated Agent Reyes and HIS agent Anthony DiNozzo who was joking with that damned probie from Ric’s team who people called the Energizer Bunny. That kid was even more irritating than DiNozzo was when he was hopped up on candy bars.

The joking around was part of the physiological euphoria naturally produced at the end of a dangerous or significant mission, especially a successful one. Gibbs’ beast – his inner Bastard – was jealous! It had been so long since he experienced that chemical rush – the feeling that you could take on the world…AND WIN.

There was nothing else like it and he longed to experience it too, but they had deliberately shut him away, like some delicate hothouse orchid, denying him what was rightfully his… he needed it. He was weak and depleted because not just because of the plague but because he’d been denied what he needed.

Not able to exact revenge for what Lowell had done to him.

For being forced to subjugate his impulse to sort out DiNozzo for all but destroying his perfect team. Again and again, he had to bite his tongue when he longed to give him a piece of his mind.

And now, the very thing that would have fuelled his recovery better than any damned drugs or therapies on Earth had been cruelly snatched out from under him when it had finally been within his grasp. Hundreds of hours he’d invested in stalking Ari Haswari… because he knew a psychopath with he looked into his eyes. Cate was wrong – there was no kindness there. Only hatred!

Jethro’s inner demon – the beast he referred to as his predator turned his rage-filled eyes on his agent, seeing in him a rival who wanted to destroy everything he’d built. All at once the animosity and hatred that he’d managed to curb after the Jeremy Davison case, all but broke free of its moorings. One tenuous tendril was all that was left, anchoring Gibbs to reality. Maybe it was the thought of Lina Reyes stealing his kill that had finally flipped him over the cliff or Fornell smiling and joking with DiNozzo and Balboa.

As they spilled into Balboa’s bullpen, DiNozzo sensed Gibbs’ presence. He’d always shown an admirable situation awareness for one who didn’t have a military background. Jethro never counted his time spent at military school – that was like someone playing a doctor on the idiot box, it bore little to no resemblance to being one in real life. There were random times when DiNozzo had displayed a prescient-like ability to detect Gibbs’ presence and he would momentarily ponder about how that could be, but invariably he’d become distracted by more pressing matters.

Feeling a surge of territoriality amp up as Fornell and DiNozzo entered his bullpen, the MCRT bullpen he stalked up to meet them, delivering an almighty head slap to DiNozzo, who comically looked shocked.

“Oi, just what the hell was that for, Gibbs?” DiNozzo yelped, glowering fiercely.

Gibbs felt something inside of him shift – like a blockage had been cleared. Hah! Abbs was always going on about blocked chakras – guess she was onto something. He felt stronger. What a fool – he should have never tried to constrain his B for Bastard, he should have been feeding it. It felt so damned good to give it free rein!

“For answering my damned phone and going to the meeting with that bastard Ari instead of me. Haswari was mine to take down. You know I don’t share.”

“Wow, I didn’t realise you two were dating,” DiNozzo said facetiously, earning himself another head slap, this one even harder than the previous one. “Stop with the damned head slaps, Gibbs or I’ll lodge a formal complaint about them, and I don’t want to have to do that. Oh, and for the record, Cynthia answered the phone with your old number, not me.”

Gibbs’ inner beast exulted in the glorious feeling of head-slapping DiNozzo. For too many months now he’d been holding back… afraid to head slap his agent because he’d already lost two agents off his team thanks to the dumb assed not following his rules. Surrendering finally to his overwhelming impulse to slap him, Jethro was flooded by a massive surge of feel-good hormones. They flooded his system and what a difference they made to his feelings of impotency.

Straightaway it made him feel all-powerful!

Exhilarated!

Unstoppable!

Jethro savoured the awesome feeling. For too long since the bio-attack, he’d struggled to walk, to talk, to breathe.

Suddenly he felt invincible… a part of him knew from previous experience that this self-righteous fury was fleeting at best, so he was determined to embrace it. To make the most of it because it was always too fleeting.

“Ya should have informed ME about Haswari. This is my team and my rules. Ari was mine. If you can’t have my six, DiNozzo, then there’s no room for ya on my team,” he shouted.

“Fine by me, Gibbs. I was already thinking about walking before the bio-security breach. I’m done, consider me gone,” Tony told him, wearily.

A part of Gibbs felt an ice-cold fear in his mind at what was happening – his greatest fear was coming to pass, destroying the foundations that he put in place for his perfect team. That coldly rational part of Gibbs’ psyche knew he needed to retreat…to try to repair the damage he’d just unleashed – he was destroying his dream. But his B for bastard…his beast was utterly intent on chasing his high.

Now that it was free, it refused to be restrained… to be locked up. It had been too long!

Getting up close and in his face, Gibbs yelled at the former detective who owed him his career as a federal agent. “You’re done when I say, you’re done, DiNozzo. Seems you’ve picked up some bad habits since I went on sick leave. Reckon ya going need one helluva wakeup call to get ya back on track.”

Gibbs moved to deliver a third head slap, but apparently Tony decided he wasn’t going to tolerate any more abuse to his cranium. His hand shot up to block Gibbs’ hand before it could connect with the side of his head.

His purely defensive reaction resulted in a tussle that seemed to further enrage Jethro. After several seconds of struggling, Tony let go of the former Marine’s arm, perhaps realising he was struggling with someone who was still recovering from the plague. Maybe it was the epiphany that he was fighting with someone who he’d once looked up to. Whatever it was, he decided to retreat rather than continue their altercation.

Swiftly Tony took several steps back, obviously intending to get away from Gibbs, who was clearly not rational, yet also unwilling to let himself be assaulted again. Regrettably, his situational awareness seemed to have been momentarily MIA; he banged rather forcefully into the metal filing cabinet that used to be McGee’s. Unhappily for Tony, it connected right in the spot where the bullet from Ari’s sniper’s rifle had hit his vest last night, bang in his right lower back, near his kidney as he stepped in front of the slug meant to kill Abby. He let out an uncharacteristic howl of pain, dropping like a stone.

His yell of pain seemed to rally the rest of the onlookers who had been watching the interplay between the two men, like watching a slow-motion replay of a train wreck. Shockingly it was FBI Agent Lina Reyes who was the quickest to respond. She reached Gibbs first, which considering that Fornell was already in the MCRT bullpen, and she’d been in Balboa’s area, was an impressive display of her quick reflexes. Seizing hold of Gibbs right arm she pulled it behind him before he knew what hit him, she slapped her cuffs on his right wrist and had his left one pulled behind him and the second cuff in place almost before anyone, especially Gibbs could blink. Impressive reflexes indeed!

While the rest of the onlookers to the unfolding drama watched on in horrified disbelief, she proceeded to tell Gibbs, “Leroy Jethro Gibbs, I’m arresting you for assaulting a federal agent,” and calmly proceeded to read him his Miranda Rights.

Then she asked if he understood his rights, brought forth a roar of pure rage that made everyone pause, it was so visceral. It was as if a switch had been flipped and briefly, Gibbs struggled with a ferocity that was frightening, trying to escape the cuffs, or possibly to get away from the despised FBI agent who dared arrest him.

Just as suddenly, all of the testosterone-fuelled hostility seemed to dissipate, reminiscent of a pricked balloon, because the next thing, Gibbs crumpled in a heap, in clear respiratory distress as he wheezed, pathetically and even more frightening was that his lips and fingernails turned blue.

But while Gibbs’ anger evaporated, the emotional temperature on the floor ratcheted up as the Director, HR, and Legal all began to converge on the scene, having been alerted to the drama unfolding. Naturally, there were SitReps requested and given, often by multiple sources, all at once forcing Morrow to order people to shut up.

Plus there was the chaos of the EMT’s arrival, not to mention the earlier appearance of Ducky and his assistant, Jimmy Palmer, to render assistance as required. In fact, Ducky got into a furious shouting match with Special Agent Reyes, insisting that she uncuff Gibbs immediately since having his arms restrained behind him was impeding his ability to breathe.

The bullpen, which had only minutes before been celebrating a massive victory in thwarting a major terrorist attack, had transformed into a three-ringed circus.

One of the unnamed FBI agents was heard to remark to his colleague. “Damn it. Way to kill the mood!”

Chapter 32

The repercussions of Gibbs’ unfortunate meltdown would be monumental for NCIS.

However, right now everyone was fully focused on the here and now. Pandemonium had erupted in the bullpen. FBI Special Agent Reyes had ordered her junior agent, Ronald Sacks to call for two ambulances to transport both NCIS agents to the hospital since her counterpart, Tobias Fornell was standing around being about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Apparently, the confrontation between the two NCIS agents seemed to have broken his brain.

Frankly, Lena thought uncharitably, he wasn’t the only one. Meanwhile, Ducky had come hurrying up, bearing an oxygen tank and rebreather mask to render emergency first aid to Gibbs. Agent Balboa was checking out his temporary SFA, but despite being unconscious his pulse was strong and steady and he was breathing regularly. Even when he regained consciousness approximately six minutes later, Lena Reyes insisted that he go to the ER and be assessed by a doctor.

What Reyes didn’t explicitly state, but several people, including Fornell, Balboa and the Director immediately grasped, was that Reyes wanted independent forensic documentation, to bolster the charge of assaulting a federal agent. She was not going to let Gibbs slither his way out of this charge. Everyone treated the arrogant agent as some sort of untouchable demi-god and turned a blind eye to his outrageous behaviour.

Lena had experienced it first-hand some six months ago, last May when she and NCIS’ flagship team were forced to work a case together involving multiple assassination attempts on a naval aviator, Commander Michaela Shields. Fornell had already warned her about how difficult Gibbs could be and Lina had heard the rumours from other FBI agents. She thought she was prepared. She wasn’t!

After fighting fiercely to have the FBI removed and failing, they’d come to an arrangement. Gibbs’ team would protect the Commander and her family and Reyes’ team would investigate the bombing. Of course, that didn’t stop Gibbs from sticking his bib in and demanding SitReps on her investigation, demands that involved the arrogant agent being physically intimidating and that was something he excelled at. The Senior Agent in Charge wondered if Gibbs was a misogynist or just hated strong females who outranked him. Having seen the way he treated his 2IC in the bullpen just now, in full view of everyone there, Lina had her answer. He wasn’t a misogynist, the man was in fact a misanthrope! His fundament disdain and mistrust encompassed males and females alike!

However, Lina was furious with him trying to intimidate her so he got to question Roland Alan Moore, their suspect bomber. Moore was a former petty officer who served in Afghanistan and was radicalised by Al-Qaeda to become a bombmaker for them. Moore was suspected of dozens of bombings, the last one in Morocco. Reyes wanted to take him down permanently, to get closure for all his victims, but Gibbs was desperate to solve the case to ensure the Shield family could live out their lives free from his threat. Since Commander Shield’s terminal leave would become final in hours, he was determined to make Moore talk and force him to give up the terror cell he was in, and he wasn’t about to take no for an answer.

Gibbs blackmailed her, saying he would go to the press which would have alerted his confederates that her team had them on their radar and allow them to flee. Then he interrogated Moore with the assistance of the NCIS medical examiner after they’ ‘softened him up’ in the morgue, highlighting what his autopsy would look like after he committed suicide by hanging. This meant that his coerced confession when he caved in, spilling the beans in his confession and later recanted, was thrown out of the trial. It was only due to the forensic evidence and her team’s prior meticulous documentation of Moore’s history of bombmaking that saw him convicted.

Of course, Moor didn’t last long in prison, having sold out his fellow terrorists, he was a marked man, and it was inevitable that he would be killed. But since his confession had been thrown out, the FBI couldn’t use it to prosecute Khalib Hassan or Fernando Petroya, but hey, Gibbs wasn’t the slightest bit contrite. He’d solved the case and saved the day, even catching a neighbourhood bomber who decided to take advantage of the terrorist bombing to kill Michaela Shields because she was having an affair with Michaela’s husband while she was in Afghanistan. Nor did he face any disciplinary action over his interrogation of Moore because the arrogant bastard denied it ever happened and Dr Mallard backed him to the hilt. While she totally believed Moore’s account – it was too detailed for it to have been fabricated in her opinion, it was the word of an Al-Qaeda bomber against a federal agent and a medical examiner with an international reputation.

So, it would be fair to say that Lina had a poor opinion of Gibbs, who was as far as she was concerned also a big fat hypocrite. He’d accused her of using the Shields family as bait so she could catch her terrorists, but he’d done exactly the same thing when an ex-SEAL Jack Curtin had escaped from Leavenworth. He’d used the man’s young son Kevin and the boy’s grandparents as bait, knowing the man would come to see his son, leaving two neophytes to guard three people. It was a move so transparent, that anyone with an ounce of law enforcement experience could see the protection detail for what it was, baiting a trap to catch a convicted wife killer.

Lena had no hesitation in arresting his ass just now for assaulting a federal agent. She’d personally witnessed him strike his SFA twice on the head with considerable force. The fact was he would have done so a third time had Agent DiNozzo not taken evasive action to avoid it and ended up aggravating a previous injury caused by Ari Haswari last evening. Lena had no regrets in charging him, even though he was likely to lose his job and face jail time. She was willing to admit that she may even have experienced a moderate amount of satisfaction in slapping cuffs on the arrogant fool who she was only just now discovering, head slapped DiNozzo on the regular.

~oOo~

While DiNozzo was resistant, not wanting to go to the hospital, whether because of his fear of hospitals or because he realised that an independent analysis of any injuries would not bode well for Gibbs’ future prospects, Tom Morrow couldn’t say. Tony claimed that he’d lost consciousness due to the corner of the filing cabinet hitting his bruised back where his bulletproof vest had stopped a slug from piercing his body less than 24 hours earlier.

Although, as SAC Lina Reyes had rightly pointed out, just before he passed out from hitting the cabinet, it didn’t necessarily follow that Gibbs whacking his head twice hadn’t caused head trauma. That combined with a loss of consciousness dictated that he needed medical clearance whether he liked it or not!

While Ducky had offered to examine him, Reyes had objected that he wasn’t independent, he was Gibbs’ friend and confidant and therefore not able to remain impartial or give the appearance of being neutral. Morrow knew that Reyes was right about the loss of consciousness and gave his agent a direct order to go to the ER for a medical evaluation. Tom knew that there would be no locking the stable door on this. In all fairness, the horse had bolted long ago, fate was just finally catching up to Gibbs.

Which in essence meant that Special Agent Gibbs’ ass was toast.

And in the hours following the scene between Gibbs and DiNozzo, things started to get really ugly. SECNAV was furious, citing as mitigation, Gibbs’ infection with the plague and almost dying after Hanna Lowell’s biosecurity breach. While Gibbs remained at Bethesda after being readmitted to the respiratory medicine ward, Davenport’s fevered attempts to put pressure on the FBI to get the assault charge withdrawn had reeked of cronyism to Morrow. He’d long wondered exactly what Gibbs was holding over Davenport’s head.

As to the oft-cited claim that it was that his investigative abilities were just too good to lose, Tom never really bought that. His other less advertised abilities i.e., Black Ops work, maybe. But while SECNAV might have been able to pull Gibbs’ ass out of the fire up until now, the FBI was outside of his direct chain of command. Unless he could get the Department of Justice on his side, things didn’t look terribly hopeful.

Of course, from SECNAV’s standpoint, it had been most unfortunate that SAC Lina Reyes had been present in the NCIS bullpen and had a ringside seat to the scene between Gibbs and DiNozzo. She and Gibbs had butted heads on a case involving a Naval aviator, Lieutenant Commander Micki Shields who was targeted by a bomber following her return from Afghanistan where she’d been involved in an accidental bombing of civilians. Although there had been an investigation, an Article 32 hearing had cleared her of all charges. Serving out her terminal leave, having decided not to re-enlist, the FBI felt that jihadists calling for retribution were the most likely suspects for the bombing of her SUV in a suburban parking lot. Fortunately, aside from the Shields’ toy poodle, there hadn’t been any other casualties. But that had been more serendipitous than deliberate, a runaway shopping cart had triggered the bomb, otherwise, Lt Commander Shields would have likely shared the same fate as the family pet.

The FBI and had agreed to work the case jointly – albeit grudgingly since neither agency was willing to cede jurisdiction. Given that neither leader would yield point on the case, the two directors had agreed that the FBI would investigate the bombing and NCIS would be responsible for the protection of Lt Comm Shields, her husband David Shields and two kids, an entitled rebellious teenager, Jen and her younger brother, Willy, from all accounts, an obnoxious little brat.

To say that Reyes and Gibbs clashed over the case was grossly understating the situation; there was no love lost between the pair. Gibbs was his usual control freak self, continuing to investigate the bombing, ordering, bullying, and threatening his counterpart. Meanwhile, Reyes was equally reluctant to liaise with Gibbs, setting the Lt Commander up as bait to try to lure out the bomber which infuriating Gibbs. There was also the dubious interrogation of the bomber Roland Alan Moore, who accused NCIS of coercing a confession.

Reyes had been furious but Ducky and Gibbs had strenuously denied Moore’s claim. At the time, Morrow had discounted Moore’s accusation because he couldn’t believe that Ducky would cross the line like that. Gibbs… well he wouldn’t put it past him, but not Ducky! Tom had believed that Donald Mallard’s character was unimpeachable.

However, right before Hanna Lowell’s bio-security attack last month, Ducky had seemed to have been on the cusp of confessing to having crossed a line. Now the NCIS director had an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps he’d been referring to the alleged false confession of the Al-Qaeda bomber, later executed in prison by a fellow inmate. He just hoped he was wrong.

But it was undeniable that a lot of ill-will had been generated between the two agents on the case. Lina Reyes thought Gibbs was a boor, a bully and a renegade who ignored the law, even if she was willing to use Micki Shields and her family as bait to catch a terrorist. Plus, if was undisputable both agents’ target fixation and desire to solve the case (albeit for very different reasons) caused them to overlook evidence pointing to a second bomber targeting Micki for purely personal reasons. Bottom line, Lina Reyes hated Gibbs’ guts in a major way, so when she saw him assaulting Agent DiNozzo, she was always going to arrest him. Tom was reminded of the well-known maxim about chickens coming home to roost, and she refused any and all pressure to drop the charges, even with the fact that Gibbs had nearly died the previous month in a bio-hazard attack.

Reyes seemed remarkably uncaring about making an enemy of the Secretary of the Navy, and Philip Davenport was now an avowed foe. Scuttlebutt was running riot that she was taking an early retirement due to a medical condition. Most people figured she was fresh out of fucks to give and felt it was well past time for Jethro to be held accountable. So it seemed like she had some scores to settle and wouldn’t be susceptible to political pressures while doing it. A significant proportion of federal agents and judiciary believed that SAC Reyes deserved a medal for arresting Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ ass. More than a few expressed disappointment that she hadn’t been able to throw his ass in jail.

Never let it be said that Jethro hadn’t collected more than his fair share of detractors. Yet that wasn’t too surprising for a guy who’d gloried in his second B for bastard reputation.

A part of Tom felt the need to pinch himself to make certain this wasn’t a dream. After all his futile attempts to reign in Gibbs’ over-the-top and ofttimes borderline unethical/unlawful behaviour thanks to SECNAV’s refusal to hold Jethro accountable for his actions, a Fibbie had finally been his undoing. He heard some of his agents calling it getting hit by the karma bus and Tom had to say, it was still all very surreal.

Thanks to SAC Lina Reyes, there would be no get-out-of-jail-free card for Gibbs. With the eyewitness accounts of three FBI agents (Fornell, Sacks, and Reyes), three NCIS agents (Balboa, Lyndhurst, and Zeng) plus security footage from the bullpen, Gibbs was due to be indicted as soon as he was discharged from Bethesda. His conviction was pretty much a forgone conclusion and because he’d targeted a federal agent, he was looking at a felony charge with a custodial sentence. Furthermore, with a felony conviction, Jethro would lose his security clearance which would make him ineligible to work as a federal agent. His career was effectively over, and no one would hire him.

While Tom regretted the whole sordid incident had taken place, especially as Agent DiNozzo would feel responsible for Gibbs losing his job, it really hadn’t been his fault. Of course that wouldn’t stop the younger man from blaming himself. Having grown up with two addicts for parents, he’d been conditioned to take the blame like so many other offspring of alcoholics and drug addicts. Circumstances forced them into taking care of their parents and inevitably failing because addicts had to want to change, and most didn’t or couldn’t. It left their offspring feeling like they’d failed them, and it was common for them to suffer lifelong guilt complexes as a result.

What galled Tom was the likelihood that Tony would probably feel more responsibility and guilt for the ending of Gibbs’ career than Jethro ever would. Knowing him the way he did, the NCIS director would wager that the stubborn fool would blame Reyes, Tom and most especially DiNozzo than ever consider his own culpability for facing time in jail. And the really crazy thing was that Tony was the real victim – he had nothing to feel guilty about.

~oOo~

Two weeks later, Special Agent Matt Anderson brought his family into the office, no doubt so he could show off his beautiful new baby daughter, Luzviminda Angel Anderson and catch up with his team. Despite him still having another eighteen weeks of paid parental leave, everyone was overjoyed to see him again. While they were all happy to see the personable agent, the NCIS folks’ joy at their visit probably had more to do with cooing over their adorable baby. Delores was particularly enamoured by the wee little one, although most people couldn’t believe their eyes when the so-called Dragon Lady of the HR department acted so clucky around the baby.

Delores knew she was revealing a softer side to her nature than most of her colleagues were used to, but she was beyond caring. She was definitely feeling clucky, unable to carry a child of her own, she and her partner Kevin had finally reached a decision to find a surrogate to carry a baby for them. They’d ruled out adoption after exhaustive research, concluding that with her past, they were unlikely to be approved as adoptive parents. Surrogacy seemed the best option available for them.

Spurred on by Matt and Dalisay’s example of dealing with the heartbreak of infertility by finding an alternate method of having a baby, they’d already begun interviewing attorneys who facilitated surrogacy agreements. Delores’ cousin Karina (and the only member of her family who she was still in contact with), had offered to donate her eggs. Having already conceived four healthy babies, and deciding that her family was complete, her cousin was more than happy to help Kevin and Delores have a much longed-for child, too. Now all that they needed was to find a suitable surrogate. As she cuddled the small raven-haired dark-eyed eight-month-old in her arms, Delores was overcome with the longing to experience motherhood herself. Realistically, she knew that they were still a long way from achieving that goal, a desire that she’d never thought she’d have any chance of fulfilling. A year, more likely eighteen months was a more realistic timeframe… if everything worked out she might be holding her own child in her arms.

Reluctantly, she handed back the baby to her mother with a, “ She’d beautiful, Dalisay,” before she checked her watch and nodded to Matt as they both climbed up the stairs and headed for the director’s office.

Special Agent Anderson had called the director this morning, requesting an appointment to see him and suggested that HR should be present as well. Since the HR manager Marla Sweeten was on annual leave, her 2IC, Delores was attending in her place. She wondered why Matt had requested a meeting with HR and the director. Perhaps Matt and Dalisay had decided to extend his parental leave… he was eligible to take a further three months unpaid leave if he desired and honestly, she couldn’t blame him if he wasn’t ready to come back to work yet.

Delores knew from her own exhaustive research before deciding that surrogacy was the best fit for them, that babies who were adopted could sometimes have trouble attaching to the new caregivers. Much of which was dependent on several different nature and/or nurture factors.

But a federal agent and a nurse didn’t earn huge wages, and Matt and Dalisay had already decided that Dalisay would reduce her nursing shifts by fifty percent, so it seemed unlikely that he would want to take unpaid leave. Delores knew that they had spent a large chunk of their savings adopting Luzviminda – intercountry adoption applications and processing fees were quite expensive.

As they entered Morrow’s office, Tom made small talk with Matt before getting down to business. “It’s good to see you, Agent Anderson, How was your trip?”

Matt grinned. “It was good, we caught up with some of Dalisay’s family in Quezon City and Davao City. My mother-in-law sister Sariaya’s put us up in Manilla while we were collecting Luzviminda, which cut down on our accommodation cost considerably. The ladies all hit the shops for two or three days, so it was lucky we saved so much on hotels,” Matt rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Dalisay and her mother went a bit overboard with the shoe shopping while they were there – we had to pay excess when we flew out.

“Wouldn’t it have made more sense to buy their shoes back here?” Morrow asked curiously.

Matt chuckled, “Filipinos tend to be small in stature and Dalisay and her mom often can’t find clothing to fit them, except in the children’s section. Shoes are even worse because you can’t buy high-heels and sexy shoes in the children’s section…” he shrugged philosophically, “… so whenever they go back to the Philippines, they go kinda crazy, particularly for shoes.”

“And what did you and Matikas do while the ladies were shoe shopping,” Delores said, kind of getting it, because she often had difficulty finding stylish shoes in larger sizes. Often if she needed a pair for a formal occasion, it was very frustrating.

Matt laughed. “Oh we spent a lot of time in Jollibee,” seeing Delores and Tom’s blank look, he said, “It’s the Filipino answer to McDonald’s. Matikas got addicted to Jolly Spaghetti, it’s a sweet Filipino beef sauce with pieces of hot dog and ham,” he explained, noting their looks of incredulity. Plus, we ate a ton of deserts, halo-halo, ube cookies and cake, Taho and we got to practice speaking Tagalog and Spanish with the locals, too.”

Tom smiled, “Sounds like you guys weren’t exactly bored, left to your own devices.”

“No, it was great. Then after the Great Shopping Mission, we spent a few days at Boracay Island because Dalisay and Camille hadn’t been back there since they moved to the States twenty-five years ago.

Delores nodded, “Boracay is supposed to be an incredibly beautiful place.”

Matt nodded seriously. “Oh, it’s magnificent. I can’t wait to go back there, and we want to take the kids to El Nido to visit the turtle sanctuary,” he said eagerly.

Tom smiled. “Well, it sounds like it was a wonderful trip. I’m glad you were able to go along with the rest of your family. And how is the newest addition settling in?”

Anderson became more serious. “Well, it’s had some ups and downs, Director. Luzviminda is a colicky baby, so thankfully we brought back a ton of formula that she’s accustomed to. She rarely sleeps longer than a couple of hours; so having my mother-in-law, Camille around to help us has been a godsend. Matikas was such an easy baby, so Dalisay is pretty stressed at the moment,” he told them.

Delores thought Dalisay was definitely very fortunate that her mother was able to support them; she hoped for their sakes that Baby Luzviminda didn’t have attachment issues.

“Actually, Sir, that’s why I asked to meet with you. The biological attack before I went on leave, really spooked my wife. She’s feeling anxious about my safety and well, as a field agent I can’t guarantee that it’s safe. With the new baby and her still settling in, I don’t want to create more stress for Dalisay.”

“Of course, you don’t. So what exactly are you saying, Matt?” Tom asked gently.

“ I don’t think I can continue as a field agent, Director. I’m just wondering if there is something else that I could be doing like a desk job or something that doesn’t necessitate me being out in the field?”

Tom looked at Delores, speculatively. “I can understand where you’re coming from, and we’ll definitely explore solutions to your situation. Have you spoken to Agent Balboa about this?”

“I have. A few days ago, I invited him over for dinner. He’s supportive – said family comes first. Agent Balboa suggested that I should discuss this with you and Human Resources asap, not wait until my parental leave was up,” he told them.

Delores nodded. If anyone understood the importance of putting family first, it would be Ric Balboa. His family was facing their own health crisis, with their son’s impending surgery coming up soon. Russell was still a kid and looking at a major heart surgery, so Ric was always going to be sympathetic to an agent putting the needs of their family ahead of their job.

Morrow looked contemplative. “Probably we have a few options like becoming an analyst or mission controller. Another possibility is transferring you to the Cold Case Unit. And before you bring up Agent Pacci’s tragic demise, I’d say that the job could be one hundred per cent a desk job – with you as the lead agent of the unit. We envisage that it would be centralised here in DC with any leads handed over to field teams or case agents for follow-up,” he said.

“Another option is to revisit the Missing Person’s Unit, again with all initial investigative work be done in the office before handing off possible leads to field teams. Both units would also allow you to keep regular work hours and be back home again with your family,” Delores pointed out rather smugly.

Matt looked much more hopeful than he had at the start of his meeting with them.

Morrow nodded. “That’s not a bad idea,” he said appraisingly.

Tom was really looking forward to the future. It was definitely looking much brighter than a few weeks ago, so he could understand Agent Anderson’s enthusiasm to remain an investigator, even if he wasn’t going out into the field.

After dealing with the problems posed by the FBI and Mossad’s mole infiltrating Hamas and al Qaeda terrorist cells in the US and the Middle East after Ari Haswari went rogue (or arguably had always been a double agent for the Palestinians), the pressure to make Tom take a sideways promotion to the Department of Homeland Security evaporated. The director of NCIS felt that this was partly because Mossad, specifically Deputy Director David, had lost face since not only was the mission to have Haswari infiltrate the terrorists a long-term brainchild of his, but Ari had turned out to be his son.

The FBI’s championing of Ari, based on the say-so of Deputy Director David had definitely ended up being hugely embarrassed. If not for Balboa’s team and their highly competent investigation into the murder of Lieutenants Westfall and Janssen, the FBI would have had a great deal more egg on their faces. Fortunately, NCIS’s discovery of the heinous plot by Ari and his terrorist thugs to attack the families of service personnel waiting to greet five ships comprising the Marine Amphibious Strike Group returning from the Gulf, occurred in time to prevent a tragedy. Without, the massive joint operation to bring down the cell, the FBI would have ended up with blood on their hands if Ari’s cell had succeeded.

The creepy CIA handler of the murdering paedophile Guyman Purcell whom Gibbs had blackmailed into sacrificing Purcell by threatening to reveal Haswari’s true identity as Mossad’s mole created a lot of angry spooks over at Langley. With Ari’s exposure as a rogue agent/double agent, along with the high probability that Gibbs would end up in a prison cell, they’d stopped clambering for Tom to be replaced with a ‘Gibbs Whisperer.’ Jethro was now out on bail awaiting trial, charged with assaulting a federal agent.

Morrow was very relieved that there was no longer pressure being brought to bear by the CIA and SECNAV to have Jenny Shepard replace him as director. Personally, her close relationship with Eli David and his family, Ari Haswari, and his half-sister Ziva David – a Kidon-trained assassin and Ari’s handler, was not something that he thought was advisable. Then there was the other up-and-comer for his job, Leon Vance, reputed to owe Eli David his life and career. Regardless of Israel being an ally, Tom didn’t think being too close to someone touted as the next Director of Mossad was a good thing. He would feel the same way if Leon was beholden to someone in the echelons of MI6 too. Allies they all might be, but everyone had their own agendas too.

So Tom was ecstatic that the CIA had withdrawn their plan to remove him as the NCIS director happy that he could continue on as the NCIS director. He had plans to create a centralised Cold Case Unit in DC – it would collate and analyse cases across the agency and also had plans for the Naval and Marine Missing Person Unit too. Special Agent DiNozzo had once suggested the idea after being abducted by a serial killer and left to die, locked up in the DC sewers and the case where the Navy chaplain abducted and murdered female Marine and navy personnel. That whacko had chained them up underground after pretending to marry them and as DiNozzo, a former cop had pointed out, a centralised database of missing service people could have saved at least some of those victims had they realised they weren’t UA but abductees. Tom and HR were keen to set up a unit that would then assign cases to field teams to investigate, and they expected to save lives now they’d secured extra funding for them.

Plus, Tom was super keen to look at ways to avoid instances of Bathsheba Syndrome occurring in team leaders or even management roles where it was crucial to maintain strong ethics and principled law enforcement professionals. It may take a lot of trial and error and training of their in-house psychologists so that they were are on the lookout for the signs in vulnerable leaders and have mechanisms in place to deal with them. Tom had struggled to stop Gibbs’ out-of-control behaviour, and he never wanted the agency to be in that situation again. It was going to take time to clean up the mess that was made but he reckoned he had another decade in him at least to make sure that the agency’s integrity and the welfare and reputation of its agency weren’t corrupted again.

—

Notes:

Philippine adobo is a popular Filipino dish and cooking process. In its base form, meat, seafood, or vegetables are browned in oil, and then marinated in vinegar, salt and or/soy sauce, and garlic.

Ube: also called purple yam, or greater yam is a species of yam (a tuber). The tuber are usually a vivid violet-purple to bright lavender in colour

Halo halo: A very popular Filippino desert, traditional versions of halo halo include many types of coconut macapuno strings, palm jellies, sweet red bean, coconut jellies, ube halaya, shaved ice, ice cream toppings, and many more ingredients.

Taho is silky tofu pieces layered with sago pearls and sweet syrup called arnibal. Traditionally arnibal is a simple syrup made of water and sugar.

Chapter 33

Four months after they brought down Ari Haswari, Tony looked around the MCRT bullpen with mixed emotions. Gibbs was gone – his lungs badly scarred from the Y-Pestis that gave him pneumonia and almost killed him. But even if he had been able to pass his physical fitness quals, he never got the chance to be evaluated. Haswari had been taken down by the joint federal agency operation that apprehended him and his minions at the Aberdeen Proving Ground while stealing a decommissioned drone from Danborn Avionics. His ex-boss did not cope well with being kept out of the loop since he wasn’t fit for field duties, had freaked the fuck out and started head slapping him in the bullpen. Unfortunately, right in front of SAC Lena Reyes from the FBI Terrorist Taskforce. Considering the bad blood that existed between Reyes and Gibbs after they worked a case involving Lt Com Micki Sheilds and that their massive egos had prevented them from working cooperatively, Reyes leapt at the chance to take Gibbs down hard.

Charged with a felony assault that most people agreed was a slam dunk, Tony couldn’t help feeling that he was partly to blame. Everyone assured him that he wasn’t at fault, but it didn’t stop him feeling he should have been able to do something. Should have anticipated what was going to happen and stopped the former Marine in his tracks. Instead, there was a damn good chance that Gibbs was facing a custodial sentence and that made Tony want to throw up at the thought. Plus he knew that Gibbs lived and breathed to investigate cases and put dirtbags in prison. ‘Or in the ground’ his cynical side whispered in his mind.

These past months after Delores Bromstead had filed an official complaint against Cate and McGee hadn’t been easy on him; he was plagued with doubts and guilt about that too. Maybe Gibbs might still have been here in the bullpen, shouting at him, Cate and McGee and putting dirtbags away if that hadn’t happened. Tony often thought it would be easier to simply walk away and start fresh somewhere new, but he also knew that Balboa’s team was helping him deal with the crippling remorse and shame he felt at what had happened to his former mentor.

He still didn’t fully understand what had suddenly snapped in Gibbs and made him confront Tony in front of a bunch of FBI agents. He might have got away with his behaviour if it had just been Toby – he and Gibbs were frenemies and shared an ex-wife (despised by both agents) so he might have felt compelled to look the other way. But Lina Reyes was never going to let it go, and even if she had, there was an officiously obnoxious Fibbie, looking to make his bones, a Ronald Sacks who would have jumped at the chance of slapping cuffs on an NCIS upstart, especially a cowboy like Gibbs.

Even though they’d rearranged the former MCRT bullpen when Ric’s team was tapped to form the new MCRT, Tony still expected Gibbs to appear, yelling at them for not having solved the case sooner. The day that Gibbs was infected by the plague, Tony had intended to resign from the MCRT, it was Delores Bromstead (who he thought hated him) who’d persuaded him not to resign but to consider transferring to a new team. In the end, Gibbs’ dramatic departure had made it unnecessary for him to resign, and he’d agreed to serve as TAD on Balboa’s team so Matt Anderson and his wife could take his full six-month parental leave having collected his new daughter from the Philippines and now settling in with the newest addition to their family.

Anderson was a good guy and a good father, something Tony didn’t know much about from personal experience, since Senior sucked as a father… well he sucked as a human being really. Besides wanting to help Matt and his family out, Ric had always been a friend to him, along with Chris Pacci when a lot of the other agents were less than welcoming of a young brash ex-cop who joined Gibbs’ team. He also knew that Morrow tapped him to be Matt’s temporary replacement because as senior field agent, he’d led the MCRT on several occasions – notably with Don Dobbs and Viv Blackadder when he’d cleared Commander Rabb of murder and charged Commander Lindsay with Lt Singer’s death and framing Rabb. But there were a few other times when he’d been acting leader too.

The bottom line was Ric needed a replacement SFA who could step in and lead the team when he needed time off for his son, Russell aka Rusty who was having a lot of medical issues. If Ric’s agents had been anything like Todd and McGee there was no way Tony would have agreed to step in and lead, but Lyndhurst and Zeng were used to following the chain of command. It was wildly ironic that Lyndhurst was a former Marine and she was scrupulous about following his orders and giving him professional respect, unlike his former boss. Charlie thought being an undercover cop with the Mafia for a year was super cool and had watched all of the Godfather movies and treated him with a mild case of hero worship.

Then Matt had decided for the sake of his family, that he was going to take a desk job on the newly formed Cold Case Unit that would look at all NCIS cases, not just the DC ones. Tony thought it was a good idea to have a centralised team to look at cases; it could result in the linking of serial crimes across offices that might prevent further deaths. Matt’s decision to leave Ric’s team and ride a desk, at least for now, meant that Morrow offered him the SFA position permanently. At the same time, he promoted Balboa’s team to form the new major case response team. It was a bittersweet decision for Tony, but ultimately his debt to Ric, and Lyndhurst and Zeng’s enthusiasm and respect had been the deciding factors.

Plus, as Balboa had pointed out with brutal honesty. Tony was way more experienced in murder investigations than Balboa was, and he could really do with an experienced investigator on his team. As for the two junior agents who’d been appointed to the MCRT, both agents might still be a little green, but they had a lot more experience than Cate or Tim. Charlie had just over four years’ experience, three of them with Ric’s team and Em had just over two with NCIS. However, as a Marine gunnery sergeant, she was no wet-behind-the-ears rookie. Lyndhurst learnt quickly and she took direction well if she erred.

So three weeks ago, when Matt returned to his new desk job, Tony officially became Balboa’s senior field agent and they’d moved into the old MCRT bullpen, rearranging it, and adding several spare desks. It was surreal being in Gibbs’ old stomping ground, particularly with the way it had ended with Gibbs being arrested – hence the team’s collective decision to rearrange its configuration and claim it as their own. Although Tony still had bouts of melancholia where he played that useless ‘What If Game’, but he was trying his best to move on.

However, it was easier said than done – Tony felt like it was hardwired into him to feel guilty like he felt like he should have been able to save Gibbs from opening that damned SWAK or convince Pacci into holding off going off by himself until he could manipulate Gibbs into backing Chris up. A part of him understood that some of his readiness to blame himself stemmed from his failure when he was in college, to save little Amber King from burning to death in that fire, particularly when he’d saved her brother Jason. But knowing something didn’t change how he felt…perhaps if he’d gotten proper counselling back when it happened, it might have helped him deal with not being able to save her.

Noting that Ric had disappeared into the break room some time ago and hadn’t come back, he got up and decided to check on their team leader. He looked at Em and Charlie who were both still working conscientiously on their reports, and he smiled.

“Getting a tea, guys,” he said casually.

Entering the break room, he saw Ric sitting at the round white Formica table, nursing a mug of weak crappy coffee in both hands. He looked miles away, and Tony suspected it had to do with his family. Probably Rusty, his fourteen-year-old son.

“Hey Ric, you okay man?”

“What? Oh yeah, I’m fine. We get a call out?”

Tony shook his head. “Nope, all quiet on the western front. Just waiting on reports from Charlie and Em, so we can have an early night. Unless something else comes in,” he said.

“Yeah, we should take advantage while we can,” he said distractedly.

“So if it’s not you, then is it Rusty? If you need to go, I’ll hold down the fort, you know that, right?”

Ric stopped contemplating his cold cup of coffee and made eye contact with Tony before responding

“Yeah, thanks Tony, I do know that. It is Rusty, but not something I need to leave for,” he said hesitantly. “You know he needed to have a mitral valve repair, which was why I needed to take all that time off for pre-op medical tests. And I really appreciate that you were able to hold down the fort for me.”

“Not a problem, happy to help out,” he said. “So is something wrong with the surgery?”

“No, but they found another issue. He’s got an aortic aneurysm that will eventually need surgical intervention. They’re keeping close tabs on it for now, but said that he should recover from this surgery,” he said sounding depressed.

Having seen a fellow cop die from an aortic aneurysm literally in front of him at Peoria when he was just starting out, Tony knew it could be fatal, but at least Rusty Balboa was aware that it was a problem and be closely monitored.

“Aw Man, that sucks. Poor kid!”

“That’s not the end of it. Rusty had always been a tall kid for his age, all arms, and legs. Got teased at school by the other kids. After the aneurysm was diagnosed along with the mitral valve defect, the docs suspected he had a connective tissue disorder. They’ve been running more tests, trying to figure out what if anything he has, and we got the word a few days ago that he’s got a hereditary disorder called Marfan Syndrome. It’s caused by a defect in the production of fibrillin, a protein found in connective tissues.”

Tony scowled. “Oh Ric, I’m so sorry. So if I remember my anatomy and physiology classes at OSU he’s at risk of recurrent dislocations and spinal deformity?”

“And weak joint capsules, ligaments, tendons, hernias, flat feet, and dislocations of ocular lens. Plus the aneurysms and mitral valve failure.”

Both men were silent. Tony could only imagine how hard it must be for a teenager to learn that he had such a grim diagnosis. If Rusty was into sports, this diagnosis was going to severely curtail his activities.

“I take it there is no cure,” Tony asked diffidently.

‘No, but there are some medications that can help, according to the doctors. I can’t really remember…guess it’s all too much to take in at once. But the most crucial thing is that having diagnosed this relatively early, the major danger is the aortic aneurism, and they’ll keep a close eye on it and start him on medication…beta blockers I think, to put less strain on his heart.” Balboa looked and sounded gutted.

“Maybe you should talk to Ducky and ask him to translate the medical jargon into plain English for you,” Tony suggested, not really knowing what else to say.

“Yeah, that’s not a bad idea,” Ric said, before volunteering. “The geneticist suggested having Carrie tested for Marfan’s too, just to be on the safe side,” he said, referring to his eleven-year-old daughter.

Tony didn’t know what to say, except, “Look Ric, why don’t you go home to Heather and your kids. I can finish up your paperwork for you.” Lord knows he was used to doing Gibbs over the years he worked for him.

“To tell you the truth, Tony, I’m kinda envying Matt his nice safe desk job right now. After getting this news, it’s made me think, ya know. After Lt Dolan and his flunkies nearly shot me in the warehouse raid on Tuesday, if you hadn’t been watching my six and reacted so quickly, I could have died. And that would have left all this shit with Heather to deal with on her own.”

Tony really enjoyed working for a boss like Balboa but as much as he was an awesome agent, he was also a great father. He could see how this situation would cause him to reevaluate his professional life. Tony wished Senior had cared half as much when he was eight and his mother died.

“You thinking of retiring, Ric? You must be close to your twenty?”

“I was before this, maybe not right now but possibly in a year or two. But now, this changes everything. My health insurance didn’t pay for all Rusty’s medical bills, ya know, but a lot. Without it, I’d be in debt up to my eyeballs and trying to pay it off in perpetuity. The surgeon estimates that the aortic aneurism will likely need surgical intervention in between 3-5 years but maybe sooner. I can’t afford to retire but I can’t afford to die, either.”

Something made Tony glance up and saw Tom Morrow standing outside listening to their conversation. The director shook his head and Tony nodded as Morrow turned and walked away. He wondered just how much Morrow had heard.

“Maybe you should check the NCIS Intranet about job vacancies pending,” he suggested.

Balboa looked a little more positive. “Yeah, but what are the chances really? Heather won’t want to leave DC because Rusty’s surgeon and internist are here, so it needs to be a local job,” he said despondently. “Still. I guess it won’t hurt to ask,” he said as he stood up to return to the bullpen again.

Tony picked up the undrunk cold coffee and dumped it down the sink, washing and hanging the cup on a hook, before following his boss back outside. Sometimes life really sucked!

~oOo~

Six weeks later Cassie Yates knocked on the door of NCIS federal agent Anthony DiNozzo’s apartment. He opened his door almost immediately and grinned.

“Hey Cass, come in.”

The statuesque agent smiled back. “Hi Tony, do you want to get going?”

“No, I want you to meet Zoe,” he said, dragging her to his living room. On a table was a fishbowl with a goldfish swimming around. “She’s named after my partner in Philly,” he told her, before showing her where Zoe’s fish food was kept.

Zoe looked around the elegantly furnished apartment, noting the beautiful baby grand piano by the window. Cassie played piano for a few years as a kid but never kept up the practice and her parents stopped paying for lessons. Her fingers itched to touch the keys, even though she was little more than a beginner.

“Wow, you have a lovely apartment, Tony. Are you sure you’re okay with me staying here while you’re gone?”

He gave her one of his heart-melting grins. “I wouldn’t have invited you if I wasn’t sure. I don’t invite many people here because this is my sanctuary, but I know you’ll respect my space. Besides, you’re doing me a huge favour filling in as Ric’s senior field agent while I’m gone for the next four months.”

“I’ll look after your team while you’re gone, I promise,” she said earnestly. “C’mon, DiNozzo, time and tide wait for no man,” she said teasingly.

“Or very special agent afloat,” he said sighing. “Let me get my gear,” he said ducking into the bedroom, returning with a couple of duffle bags and his laptop. “We just need to stop off at the building manager’s office to introduce you, so Arlo doesn’t call the cops on you. But first, you need to meet my next-door neighbour Robby, and then we can get going.”

Robby turned out to be a retired District Court Judge, Roberta Hayes, who smiled at her welcomingly. She even invited her to dinner, apparently she and Tony had a standing date every Sunday night, taking in terms to cook for each other. Cassie thought it was sweet that he hung out regularly with the older female and decided to accept her kind invitation as Tony gently hurried her out of the building. They stopped for barely two minutes for Cassie to be introduced to the building manager/de facto security person and she showed him her badge and creds before heading down to the basement parking where she’d parked in Tony’s place.

He’d arranged for a friend to look after the love of his life, his 1965 green Mustang and she was a little sad. It seemed that although he trusted her with his apartment, it didn’t extend to his car. He muttered something under his breath about not wanting the gears stripped. As they stowed his gear in the trunk of Cassie’s car, she looked at him speculatively.

“That’s not a lot to take for four months, Tony.”

He nodded. Yeah, I know but Stan Burley and Paula Cassidy said to travel light because there isn’t much cabin space,” he shrugged. “I’ve packed a dozen DVDs that I don’t mind watching over and over. I’ve got a couple of books and my Kindle that’s loaded up with a stack more, plus my iPod for my music and my iPad for games. It’s only for sixteen weeks – I’ll manage,” he told her optimistically.

“I guess,” she said. “But clothes?” she said incredulously.

“Trust me, I know,” he said liking a good suit as much as she did. And both liked designer Italian shoes too.

“But suits would look ridiculous on board ship. Clothing is much more casual, cargo pants, chinos, polos, and tee-shirts.”

“Hope you packed pyjamas,” she teased him.

“You heard about the chameleon, didn’t you?” he asked in resignation.

“Tony, the whole damned agency heard about it,” she said sniggering.

“Okay, so we better get going if we’re going to pick up your friend who wants to see you off. You’ll have to direct me to his place,” she said, getting into her car, a dark red Camry and he hopped in beside her.

“Have I thanked you for offering to drive me to Norfolk Cass,” he said gratefully.

“Only a hundred or so times. It’s no trouble, now tell me about your friend. You aren’t trying to set me up with him,” she demanded.

“I don’t know, you could do worse than Corporal Yost,” he said teasingly. “ He’s also a war hero, a real gentleman, and a great dancer,” he said contemplatively.

“Tony, I’ve sworn off dating,” she told him firmly.

“That’s good because as beautiful as you are, Cassandra, Ernie is still getting over the love of his life. He was married to his wife for half a century or more.”

“Half a century? Exactly how old is Corporal Yost, DiNozzo?” Cassie demanded archly. “I thought you said he was a war hero.”

“He is. From WWII – he was awarded a medal of Honour for his bravery on Iwa Jima,” he said. “I try to check in with him every three weeks or so if I can. Ernie’s pretty lonely now that Dorothy passed away. Sometimes I drive him to visit her at the cemetery,” he said becoming serious.

“He’s going to miss you when you’re afloat,” she observed, thinking how thoughtful Tony was to keep an eye on the corporal.

“Yeah, I know. But I’ll send him postcards,” he replied, worrying at his bottom lip.

“Maybe since I’m already apartment-sitting and fish-sitting, I could keep my eye on Ernie too,” she suggested tentatively. “If you think he’d be okay with me calling in on him?”

“Are you kidding, he’s a real charmer. He totally bewitched Cate, he asked her to dance in the middle of the bullpen. And he’s modest and unassuming; he’ll love you. I’m going to be so in your debt for doing this,” he said gratefully.

Eager to avoid another session of exaggerated gratitude for doing something that any decent person would do, she decided to deflect with humour, something he did a lot.

“You could show your appreciation by letting me drive the Stang while you’re gone,” she said in mock seriousness.”

He chuckled. “Yeah…no Yates. Over my dead body. I don’t want the clutch burnt out or the gears stripped,” he said firmly.

“Hey, I can drive a stick shift,” she protested, half-jokingly.

“Maybe,” he said, looking down meaningfully at her auto transmission, “but there’s an art to driving a manual and I know that Ducky will care for my baby like it was his Morgan,” he said firmly.

“Seriously, you’re letting Ducky drive the Stang. The man gets lost on the way to the shops,” Cassie said in genuine pique.

“Maybe, but he’ll baby the clutch and the gears,” he said decisively. Subject closed!

“Okay take a left into Park and a right into Juniper,” he said as he started to direct her through the maze of residential streets, arriving on Poplar Crescent where Ernie was impatiently waiting for them out front of his house.

~oOo~

After they saw Tony off aboard the USS Seahawk, Cassie called into her Norfolk apartment to pack enough clothes to tide her over for the next four months. She also picked up takeout for an early dinner, knowing from her own family that older people preferred to eat pretty early in the evening. So her plan was to feed Ernie and drive back to DC after dinner. She was somewhat surprised that he wanted to eat Thai food but apparently Tony had bought it a few times and Ernie loved it.

When she professed surprise at his spicy choices, he’d chuckled.

“Think that as you get old, Doll, your tastebuds stop working so well. Never used to be able to eat spicy food when I was a young buck, but now a lot of food seems to have lost its oomph,” he said with a touch of wistfulness.

“I’ll have to make you my grandmother’s chilli then, Ernie,” she promised.

“Hot diggity dog! I’d really like that, Doll, “ he said beaming at her. “But I know a classy lady like you probably has better things to do with her free time. Pretty sure the fellas are falling all over themselves to take you dancing.”

“Tony was right about you, he said you were a real gentleman and a charmer. And he reckoned you could cut a rug, so maybe you could teach me a thing or two. I’ve been told I’ve got two left feet,” she confessed.

“Okay, pretty lady, you got yourself a deal. My Dorothy always told me I was a real good ducky shincracker,” he bragged.

“A ducky shincracker? What in the world is that” Cassie couldn’t contain he curiosity.

Ernie chuckled, “Oh it’s slang from the 1940’s, Cookie. Means someone’s a really good dancer. Course I’ve slowed up a bit – my jive and the Watusi ain’t what they used to be. That’s only one of the things I miss about being with Dorothy, we understood each other’s slang, even if she was a cradle snatcher,” he grinned.

“She was older than you?” Cassie asked him.

Yep by all of two months and five days, and she never let me forget it,” he huffed. “And I’ll tell you what, I make the cornbread for your Grandmother’s chilli. My Dorothy made the best cornbread I’ve ever tasted, and I have her secret recipe,” he smiled fondly as he talked about his wife.

Cass thought it was really sweet.

“Deal,” she replied, holding out her hand so they could shake on it.

She felt happy to have someone she could spend time with in DC. Although she used to live and work in DC a couple of years ago, many of her friends had moved on or were couples now and there was nothing more awkward than being a third wheel. She’d heard that her old mate, Janie Daniels had hooked up someone in Cybercrimes, but she knew that Paula Cassidy was taking over as team lead of the Pentagon team in about six weeks and as far as Cassie knew she was still single.

Ernie was a great driving companion, talking about Dorothea and how they met during the war when she was a nurse and he’d been wounded when the ship he was sailing on to the Pacific was torpedoed and he was injured. He talked a lot about Tony, in the way a grandfather might boast about a favourite grandchild, so Cass was surprised to learn that he first met Tony on a case in November last year. Ernie tried to confess to murdering his best mate right after Dorothea passed away due to cancer. He’d been grieving and ended up convincing himself that he’d killed his boyhood friend Corporal Wade Kean on Iwa Jima because he was jealous that Dorothea and Wade used to be beaus.

It seriously surprised her that they hadn’t known each other all that long, and he told her how Tony had continued to check up on him after the case ended. Apparently, he’d taken him for a few short road trips in his Mustang as well as driving him to Dorothea’s grave on their anniversary, Christmas, and birthdays. A few times on the open road, he’d even let Ernie drive his car, which he was ridiculously protective of.

“Wow, Tony must trust you, Ernie. He wouldn’t let me babysit the Mustang for him while he’s Agent Afloat,” she told him, a little disconcerted that she couldn’t manage to keep the whininess out of her voice.

“Now then Doll-face,” Ernie scolded her, “ do go bellyaching about it. From what he told me, some creep stole his 1990 Corvette ZR1 and trashed it on the national news. Besides, Ducky drives a stick shift, so he knows how to treat a lady like Tony’s Mustang. She sure is one sweet ride,” he rebuked her mildly.

He fell asleep not long afterwards and didn’t wake until she managed to find her way back to the cute little cottage on Poplar Crescent.

Chapter 34

Cassie pulled her Toyota Camry into the underground parking and switched off the engine. It had been a long couple of weeks and frankly, she was exhausted. First that pile of excrement, Kyle Boon attempted to delay his execution with a play that had partially depended on him playing psychological games with Gibbs – which failed as he was at least officially, on suspension, awaiting trial, charged with assaulting a federal agent.

Unofficially everyone knew that he wasn’t coming back from this, even if the official line was that everyone was entitled to a trial by their peers and were innocent until proven guilty… yada, yada, yada! The problem with that whole argument was that Gibbs had been assaulting federal agents regularly for two years now in front of a bunch of unimpeachable witnesses, i.e., federal agents and despite various complaints being lodged, he continued to get away with his assaults without consequences.

So it was going to make life very difficult for his defence team to dispute his guilt. The consensus was Gibbs was going down, it was simply a case of how long the judge would impose on him…anywhere between one to eight years was the penalty for a felony class D assault of a federal officer.

Strike two that made his return to NCIS less likely than the Government admitting that Aliens crashed at Roswell, New Mexico was that being infected with Y-pestis had left him with scarred lungs. At his age, the practicality of him being able to regain enough lung capacity to pass field qualifications was slim. And the third strike was Gibbs’ age – he was rapidly approaching the point where he would face mandatory retirement as a field agent.

So no, despite Kyle Boon’s demands to speak to Gibbs so he could play his mind games with the ex-agent, that was never going to fly. Instead, he was forced to tango with Ric Balboa – a very different proposition to Gibbs. Ric was a much more self-contained individual and it was a lot harder for the psychopathic killer to manipulate him. He was struggling to get a read on the more enigmatic leader of the new MCRT.

Of course, Boon had no way of knowing about all of the changes of personnel at the DC office when he and his psychopathic attorney set up a plan to throw doubt on Boon’s innocence by the lawyer Adam O’Neill who’d taken over killing women, mirroring Boon’s modus operandi. Plus, the lawyer messed up big time, when he kidnapped Lyndhurst, intending for her to become his latest victim. Even with her hands cuffed behind her, he didn’t stand a chance against Em, who was a former Marine; she’d taken him down, barely breaking a sweat.

The case they’d just put to bed, which was why Cassie was late leaving work and had to take a raincheck on dinner with several of her fellow female agents, was on the surface, nowhere near as horrific as the Boon case, but still, now that it was successfully concluded, she just knew that it would give her nightmares. Staff Sergeant Sorrow, a Civil War re-enactor (and honestly, who knew that was a thing) had been placed in a Civil War sarcophagus while he was still alive (although wounded by a musket ball to the head), and the sarcophagus had been sealed.

Cassie couldn’t think of a worse way to die than being left to suffocate, even if Abby thought death by woodchipper was worse. Plus she and Ducky had almost been shot by the murderer, Dr Elaine Burns a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian. All over a treasure map, Oxbow that one of the Civil War Re-enactors had stolen from Zeng and Lyndhurst after they’d retrieved it from Staff Sergeant Sorrow’s safety deposit box. Turned out their treasure was not precious metal, gold coins or jewels as Charlie had insisted, based on the idea of a treasure map. Honestly, Charlie Zeng reminded her of DiNozzo with his overabundance of energy and child-like glee. However, it turned out that their treasure was actually Confederate weaponry that would have netted Elaine Burns over a million and a half dollars on the black market. Cassie learnt that there were plenty of collectors of Civil War firearms who would pay big bucks to bag one for their private collections.

Having picked up some takeout, Beef Vindaloo, and Naan bread, on her way home to DiNozzo’s place, Cassie was looking forward to a lazy night watching a couple of Tony’s DVDs. She was working her way through some of his classics – having fallen in love with his eclectic collection. Tonight she was in the mood for some mindless escapism. Steve McQueen in The Great Escape fit the bill nicely and if she still couldn’t sleep then Sidney Poitier and Lulu in To Sir With Love. Their team were on call this weekend, but Balboa didn’t make them go into the office so with luck, Cassie was hoping she might get the chance for a rare sleep-in, tomorrow.

She also had a major decision to make this weekend. Director Morrow had informed her that he needed to know by Monday if she intended to accept the position of Senior Field Agent on the new MCRT. She remembered when the director had first approached her to ask if she would be willing to fill in as SFA so that Tony could serve four months as Agent Afloat before he took over leading the MCRT from Ric Balboa. Initially, she’d been surprised that Ric had decided to leave the MCRT – he was the agent who after Gibbs ‘left’ had the most seniority and he certainly deserved to be leading DC’s premier investigative team.

Morrow had just told her that he had opted to take on a desk job but not long after she had joined the MCRT as Tony’s temporary replacement, while on a stake out, Ric had confided why after getting the plum job, he’d decided to leave. It was a horrible situation to be in for the Balboa family – she certainly didn’t envy him. It left her with a decision that had to be made. Morrow had offered her the permanent position as senior field agent on the major case response team under Tony who was going to be promoted to the rank of senior supervisory agent after he returned from his stint as agent afloat.

She recalled her surprise when the director made the offer, and she must have looked surprised because he responded a little stiffly. “I realise that technically you have seniority over Agent DiNozzo, Agent Yates however he also had years served as a police officer. All up, he has five years longer in law enforcement than you do.”

“Oh no, That’s not why I’m surprised Director Morrow. I know that Tony has a lot more experience than me, he worked undercover, in Vice, as a detective and various other positions. He’s also worked on the MCRT for four years, most of that time as the senior field agent and led the team a handful of times, more than adequately from what Chris and I could see from our bullpen. He’ll do a great job,” she said hurriedly.

“Then why the surprise, Agent Yates?” Morrow asked.

“Well because I haven’t worked on an investigative team for over two years now, I’ve been doing undercover work. I guess I was surprised to be tapped to fill in as a SFA when I’ve never done the job before,” she said honestly.

“You may not have officially done the job, Cassie, but you have seniority, and you already have a lot of the skills needed to be a SFA, some of the undercover skills you’ve demonstrated are transferable ones that are a prerequisite for a senior field agent.”

“Such as, Sir?” Cassie asked a little bit sceptically.

The director grinned, “You’re adept at fitting into various groups, successful undercover operatives have to be good at reading people’s non-verbal cues, you are self-reliant, so you’re unlikely to cave under pressure from the junior members of the team and you are very accustomed to improvising when things don’t go to plan. You are also demonstrated that you keep your head in a crisis, or you’d never have survived working undercover for two years,” he said.

“But all the administrative side of being a senior field agent…I wouldn’t know where to start, Sir.”

“If you want to accept the position on permanent position on the MCRT, being TAD as a senior field agent for four months means that Agent Balboa will be able to train you so that when Tony takes over the senior supervisory position, you’ll be well-versed in your duties. Agent Balboa is a very experienced agent and a fine trainer.”

Frowning, Cassie had asked somewhat tentatively, “With respect, Sir, why me?”

Morrow took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “Several reasons, Cassie,” he said without hesitation. “Chris told me once that you wanted to work on the MCRT and left to work undercover after Gibbs picked Agent Todd for his team. Your evaluations by Agents Pacci and Tess Jenkins were always excellent. While you are assuredly an asset to the Drug Unit at Norfolk, you would definitely be a boon on Agent DiNozzo’s team.”

“But aren’t there experienced senior field agents here already who would jump at the chance for a shot at the major case response team?” she quizzed him.

Tom gave her a speculative look. “A few,” he conceded, “but the MCRT is more than just being about who is the most qualified on paper. It’s also a question of team dynamics. I’m not convinced that the other SFA’s would gel as well as you with the team; some have been SFA for as long as or longer than Agent DiNozzo. After all the insubordination issues on Gibbs MCRT and the damage it did to his self-esteem, I’m not willing to take that chance.”

Cassie thought about how the director had assumed her surprise was because she didn’t think Tony deserved a shot at the top job. But then she and Chris had worked with Tony and Gibbs when he first arrived at NCIS, and she saw just how impressive he was as an investigator even then. Plus, he was excellent in the field, a really great partner, competent and with awesome situational awareness, despite his seeming goofiness. She’d always felt safe if they were partnered together.

“You both worked well on the case down at Ciudad de Estes, chasing the CIA spook and when you helped track down our bio-terrorist, so I know you can still work together, even if it’s been a couple of years. And the other big tick is that Chris told me you know about DiNozzo’s age and clearly, it hasn’t fazed you. You’ve been discreet, which is much appreciated by the way,” he smiled at her.

“What does Tony think about this? Is he okay with the idea of me being his senior field agent, especially as I’m totally inexperienced?”

Morrow had given a throaty chuckle as he rubbed his mostly bald pate. “I asked him for a wish list of who he’d pick. You were at the top, although he said that he understood you might not want to give up your spot on the Drug Unit yet.”

“When do you need to know?” Cassie asked, unsure if she wanted to stop doing undercover work yet.

She did know that she didn’t want to do it indefinitely, because too many undercover operatives waited too long to get out, although they didn’t stay alive long enough to regret it. She did recognise however that regretting that you got out too soon was a far better scenario.

Tom eyed her appraisingly. “You have one more week to decide if you want to try before you buy being TAD as Agent Balboa’s senior field agent. Get to know the job and the two junior agents, Charles Zeng, and Emmaline Lyndhurst – good agents that Agent Balboa and Anderson have trained well. If you don’t want the TAD assignment, I’ll need to look elsewhere.”

“Understood, I’ll try and make up my mind faster than that, but I’ll need to talk to my colleagues at Norfolk. If I do decide to do it, how long before you need a decision about me taking on the job permanently?” Cassie asked.

“I’m prepared to let you try the job for three months but if you decide not to take the promotion, I’ll need time to offer it to someone else,” he told her. “Our second and third choices work here and are already SFAs, so they don’t need as long to decide.”

It had been three months tomorrow since she drove DiNozzo to Norfolk to the USS Seahawk and met Ernie Yost. Now Cassie needed to let Director Morrow know on Monday whether or not she was taking the job. A part of her was missing the undercover work, but she was liking being back on an investigative team too. Ric was a good trainer and was helping her get a handle on being a SFA, especially all the administrative stuff and there was a lot of it, but Ric reckoned that DiNozzo had shortcuts that he’d no doubt share with her if she took the job.

Cassie was fairly confident that she could be a good second in charge to Tony, she was enjoying field work again and investigating cases. It was good to catch up with Abby, Paula Cassidy, Maureen Cabot, Ruth Jacobs, and Janie Daniels again, plus some of the newer female agents like Em Lyndhurst who was turning into a solid agent. If she’d had a few more years under her belt as an agent she’d have made a damned fine SFA for DiNozzo.

So her gal pals had become a great support system for each other, and it was good how they were supportive of the newer agents. She just wondered if she would miss undercover work too much. When she expressed that fear to Ric over coffee today, he’d pointed out that Tony still did undercover work as an SFA. There was no reason why she shouldn’t too if the need arose, although it was unlikely she would be able to do undercover missions requiring her to work months at a time.

Feeling happier about the thought that she could still use her undercover expertise if she joined the MCRT, even if it was just on short-term missions, she was warming to the idea. But it is still a huge decision to make. If she chose wrong, she might not be able to get back into the Drug Unit, although her more rational side recognised that wasn’t very likely. They were always looking for people willing to go undercover. Her real worry was that after the high-adrenaline undercover work, she might find being on a regular field team boring by comparison.

Although her logical side admonished her that wasn’t terribly likely, not after the crazy cases they’d investigated in the last three months.

Cassie figured she’d indulge herself in a long hot bubble bath after she ate her curry and then she’d veg out in front of a movie and worry about figuring out what to do tomorrow. As she lay luxuriating in the tub (and she loved that Tony had a comfy bath pillow) and thoroughly enjoyed the scented jasmine and vanilla bean candles she’d bought at the farmers market last weekend, her mind kept returning to the deadline.

She’d mostly enjoyed the three months she’d spent being Tony’s replacement, apart from the dumpster diving and collecting evidence of bodily fluids, but it was a necessary part of solving crimes and she accepted that. She’d just forgotten how gross it could sometimes be. Plus she was somewhat surprised at the amount of work an SFA did, but she reminded herself that Ric said Tony had been able to streamline it with his ‘work smarter, not harder philosophy’ and Ruth had confirmed that he did have shortcuts.

“And trust me, he needed them because after he hired Todd, Gibbs turned over most of his own paperwork to DiNozzo too. Think one of the few things he didn’t surrender was the team appraisals.”

Mo Cabot’s SFA surprised Cassie by giving a massive belly laugh.

“What’s funny about that?” Cassie had asked, bemusedly.

“Gibbs’ idea of appraisals was to write acceptable in every category. He used to just use a tick until Marla Sweeten told him that he had to use words,” she explained, still giggling.

Thinking about Tony doing most of Gibbs’ paperwork as well as his own, it absolutely made sense that he would have found tricks to help him get through it all so he could actually manage to sleep at night. She didn’t think that he would be the sort of team leader to expect her to do his work as well as hers, but that was something she would need to clarify if she decided to take the promotion. Certainly, Agents Lyndhurst and Zeng had been complimentary about how he’d led the team whenever Ric was taking time out to be with his sick son. He’d more than pulled his weight and done his share of the dirty jobs as SFA or acting team leader.

Plus, they were really enthusiastic about his information-sharing method which he called ‘campfires’ although they sounded like brainstorming sessions to Cass. So it didn’t sound like he’d be a dictatorial authoritarian leader, more like a collaborative one, which was how Pacci had been. He preferred to share data and focus on fostering cooperation between the team, not forcing them to compete against each other the way that Gibbs had been doing with Tony, Cate, and Tim. DiNozzo had certainly been collaborative during their mission down to Ciudad de Este but he also wasn’t afraid to take charge and make decisions when necessary. She’d felt safe with him watching her six and she knew he was extremely protective of his teammates. Lyndhurst, their former Marine only had good things to say about his ability to pull his weight and watch their sixes and Marines were always pretty tough to impress.

Eventually, getting out of the bath and dressing in yoga pants and a soft tee shirt, she stretched out on Tony’s comfortable sofa and switched on The Great Escape. She’d seen it before, maybe a decade ago but she loved Steve McQueen and that icon scene where he jumped his motorcycle over the barbed wire fence was sheer perfection. There was one British actor who played Lieutenant Commander Eric Ashley-Pitt looked a lot like a much younger Ducky Mallard, he was kind of cute too. In the end, Cassie didn’t get to watch To Sir With Love as she’d forgotten how long The Great Escape was.

If they didn’t get called out on a case, hopefully, she could watch it tomorrow night. As she made her way into bed, she realised at least the movie stopped her obsessing about her big decision.

Chapter 35

Tom Morrow had enjoyed a rare weekend off and he’d spent it with his lovely wife Lynette. They had a leisurely Saturday, taking a trip to the monthly farmers market to stock up on some treats – fresh produce, artisan sourdough bread, preserves, several varieties of cheese, including what Lynnie claimed was the best damn goat cheese ever. Their favourite winemakers were attending the market this month, often only making it to three or four markets per year as they patronised other farmers’ markets in the Tri-state area. So the Morrows stocked up on a dozen bottles of their favourite wines – six whites and six reds before heading off to purchase some protein. They’d picked up beef from their favourite supplier as well as salmon, fresh and smoked before returning home to refrigerate the meat and seafood.

Since the weather was so nice, they enjoyed a relaxing brunch at one of their favourite cafes nearby, relishing in the rare gift of having uninterrupted time, just the two of them. They finished up taking care of the housekeeping with a trip to their local Whole Foods market to pick up groceries. Lynnie professed a hankering to visit the zoo, saying it had been ages since their last visit. Tom agreed peaceably, spending time with Lynnie was never a hardship, he just hoped that they didn’t stumble across a dead petty officer while they were there. It seemed statistically speaking that Rock Creek Park where the DC Zoo was located was also to be a favourite place for unfortunate petty officers to turn up dead.

He remembered once that Agent DiNozzo had jokingly suggested it might save time if NCIS just opened a satellite office in the park to save travel time from the naval yard in Anacostia. Not surprisingly, that flippancy had earned him yet another head slap from a frustrated Leroy Jethro Gibbs. This also inevitably led to thoughts of the former leader of the MCRT who was now awaiting trial, on an assault without a weapon of a federal agent, a class D felony charge, that if found guilty included a penalty of up to eight years in jail and a $250,000 fine.

While Gibbs’ union rep had procured a lawyer for him, Gibbs was pretty sure the case was going to be a slam dunk. Not only was there the paper trail of agents reporting him to HR and his office that demonstrated that the head-slapping was repeated…habitual, but the prosecutor had also unearthed security footage of him physically assaulting Agent DiNozzo back in January 2004 when visiting the BFF (Bombe Fermentdeckung Fabrik) headquarters, who was a major Navy contractor. The footage was damning, and the prosecutor also found several witnesses willing to testify from that day, too.

Officially, Jethro was suspended without pay but realistically? Tom knew that it was extremely unlikely that Gibbs would ever return to duty. Aside from needing to reclassify due to his physical disability, if convicted it would exclude him from working as a federal agent ever again, even if he got a judge who gave him a minimum sentence. Still, he had plenty of warning that head-slapping team members was not an accepted form of discipline and he’d ignored all the warnings, too arrogant to believe that he could ever be held accountable.

It had taken one pissed-off FBI agent who also happened to be in the right place at the right time (or from Jethro’s perspective, the wrong place at the wrong time) who witnessed his assaults on DiNozzo, and he was going to finally be held to account for his actions. Jethro’s arrogance for observing the law looked like it was going to come back and bite him on the ass. Guess that old saw about a woman or in this case women scorned – Lina Reyes and Delores Bromstead – might just turn out to be his undoing after all.

Still, Tom managed to push all thoughts about Gibbs resolutely to the side, determined to enjoy a pleasant afternoon with Lynnie. They strolled around the various exhibits, holding hands like they’d done when they were first dating enjoying the antics of the Giant Pandas, always a favourite with his wife while he was keen on their smaller cousins, the Red Pandas Then they visited a considerable time watching the exotic lemurs and spectacular tamarins. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute had a strong focus on conservation and education, and he and Lynnette were proud to support that work, being members of the zoo and contributing to the Smithsonian’s fundraising activities.

Sunday was a more leisurely day, they took a stroll around their neighbourhood, stopping to admire gardens and speak to neighbours who, like the Morrow ignored the security detail that shadowed them even on weekends. Most of the time Tom managed to tune them out and certainly after so many years as the director of an armed federal agency, he and his wife didn’t let his protection detail curtail the demonstrable side of their relationship. The Morrows had always been a lovey-dovey couple and they’d agreed not to let the presence of the protection officers negatively affect their marriage.

Sunday evening the Morrows donned their formal wear to attend a fundraiser at the Smithsonian Institute. Lynnette sometimes was called in to consult in her professional capacity as an anthropologist at the institute. Tom was always amused when they attended these shindigs that most of the academics all knew Lynnie well from her working with them and her various academic research findings, they knew him as Dr Morrow’s husband, but most didn’t have a clue who he was. He found it refreshing to be able to fade into the background for a change.

Of course, the political movers and shakers who inevitably attended these fundraisers all knew who he was but generally were discreet, for which he was grateful. Tonight, he was amused to listen to the Smithsonian crowd all agog with the news that Dr Elaine Burns, a forensic anthropologist had been filming a documentary at the Institute for the Discovery Channel. She was ostensibly opening up an iron casket that had been found with its seals found fully intact, which was lie number one, since she had personally entombed Master Sergeant Sorrow in there while still alive, though wounded. The Marine, dressed in the uniform of a Civil War soldier was also found with a cell phone with him that he tried to use to call for help before he succumbed to suffocation.

Dr Burns had deliberately set the whole thing up on camera to draw in NCIS and Dr Mallard (insinuating they had shared an intimate encounter after a forensic conference in Hawaii that did not occur) to manipulate them into investigating Sorrow’s death. Her end game had been to use Balboa’s team so she could get hold of the map he’d left in his safety deposit box, revealing where Confederate soldiers had buried a cache of fifty Civil War-era weapons inside a casket in a cemetery in Manassas, in anticipation of the South rising up again. It seemed that their forensic anthropologist had designs, not on Ducky, but on selling the weapons to black-market collectors worth conservatively, $1,5000,000 while Master Sergeant Sorrow wanted to donate them to the Smithsonian.

Her fabricating of a romantic Hawaiian tryst with Ducky had apparently been done to keep him off balance, suck was his reputation for having a keen mind that Burns felt threatened her plans. Thank goodness that Cassie Yates had taken Anthony DiNozzo’s advice to heart was to never go anywhere without a knife and make sure that it was hidden but instantly accessible. After Burns got the drop on Cassie and Ducky at the cemetery when they confronted her confederates, and fellow CWEs and disarmed Yates, intending to kill them both, Cassie used her knife when Dr Burns was manhandling the medical examiner. Cassie threw her knife, apparently having been tutored on the art of knife throwing by DiNozzo back when she was Chris Pacci’s probie and it saved her, and Ducky’s lives and dispatched Elaine Burns.

As the scientist from the Smithsonian excitedly discussed all the salacious details, many exaggerated or just plain wrong, he and Lynnie who knew the real story smiled conspiratorially. He usually told his wife about cases, always had, except when the details were classified of course. As his wife for many years, she was used to remaining discreet but Senator Valhoores from New Hampshire, sidled up, having been listening to the nerds discussing the scandal.

“Are you going to tell them?” he asked amusedly.

“Nope,” Tom retorted. “I’m enjoying my anonymity. And you aren’t going to tell them either. This is my wife Lynnette’s world, I enjoy being her handbag for a change,” he said seriously.

Later that night, Tom decided to have a brandy in his study to unwind before heading up to bed. Lynette gracefully declined his invitation to join him, opting to head upstairs and take a relaxing bath before bed. Pouring himself a generous measure of his favourite brand, he sipped it slowly, figuring each to their own when it came to unwinding. It was what made their marriage so successful and was the secret to its longevity.

Dismissing the unbidden thought that ten or fifteen years ago, he might have joined her in the tub, his thoughts turned back to Agent Yates. Tomorrow was the deadline for her decision as to whether she would accept the position on the MCRT under the leadership of Anthony DiNozzo or return to the Drug Unit at Norfolk. Although she was a great undercover agent, Tom hoped that she would return to her roots and join the DC, major case response team.

By all accounts, plus his own observations, she’d fitted in well as the acting SFA. Agents Zeng and Lyndhurst had accepted her as their superior graciously, even though it was her first time in the gig. But her two years working undercover had given her credibility, more than making up for her inexperience as an SFA. With Cassie as DiNozzo’s 2IC and the junior agents with several years’ experience apiece, he felt that the newest MCRT was in good shape.

Now ultimately it all depended on Agent Yates’ decision.

His thoughts turned to Matt Anderson and Eric Balboa. Agent Anderson was already settled in as the head investigator in NCIS’ Cold Case Unit. In the coming weeks and months more staff would join the ranks and while he was mostly focused on setting up a centralised database, Anderson, collaborating with a bored Agent Afloat DiNozzo had already found significant leads from cases in Texas, Florida, Great Lakes and LA field agents. Tom had equally high hopes for the Naval and Marine Missing Persons Unit when DiNozzo returned in a month. Agent Balboa had agreed to stay on as a consultant for a further four weeks as Tony eased back into the role of leading the team after four months afloat before moving into his new role.

Tom considered it to be a win-win situation. Balboa had been planning on retiring in a couple of years and NCIS would have lost a valuable agent. While he decried the reason why Ric wasn’t able to retire, given his years of service, he was happy to have helped him to remain at the agency in a less dangerous capacity given his family responsibilities. Hopefully for some time yet. And Agent DiNozzo had come close to resigning months ago, having reached the limits of his patience with the crap that he’d been subject to by a toxic workplace.

With Tom also dodging a major bullet, looking at taking a sideways promotion to DHS to make way for Jenny Shepard who was all but confirmed in the Senate, he was relieved that Jethro’s downfall negated the need by various factions to get rid of him. Either via the sideways promotion or more sinisterly, by his unfortunate death, He and Lynette had a pact that they would both retire in the next five to seven years while they were both young enough to be able to enjoy their retirement together. They wanted to travel and pursue interests that had been put on the back burner due to the all-encompassing nature of his job.

He thought about his legacy, he was reasonably happy with what he’d been able to achieve, the hiring of more female agents, hiring more racially diverse agents than ever and the workplace supports put in place for employees whose sexual orientations weren’t heterosexual. Frankly, all these measures were long overdue and there was certainly a lot more to be done but he was glad to have the opportunity to continue working on those initiatives. But he did have regrets about events taking place under his leadership…Gibbs was the looming pachyderm in the room.

This was why, aside from the complex situation of Gibbs having so many get-out-of-jail-free cards that he never hesitated to use, there was a bigger issue that continued to haunt Tom and he was keen to follow up on it. His hope was that instituting an initiative to counter what was known as the Bathsheba Syndrome, that it may help prevent NCIS from being held hostage to it again. If he could instigate techniques to prevent Bathsheba Syndrome from occurring in team leaders or even future directors while maintaining strong ethics and principles in law enforcement, it would be a fitting swan song to his long career at NCIS.

He wasn’t under any illusions that it could take a lot of trial and error and training of their in-house psychologists so that they were on the lookout for the signs in vulnerable leaders and have mechanisms in place to deal with it, but that was no reason not to try. Tom had struggled to stop Gibbs’ out-of-control behaviour and failed miserably. He never wanted the agency to be in that situation again. It was going to take time to clean up the mess that was made but he reckoned he had another decade in him to make sure that the agency’s integrity and their welfare and reputation weren’t corrupted again.

Realistically, Leroy Jethro Gibbs was always an emotional time bomb waiting to go off. The man had stubbornly refused to seek help for his issues, opting to deal with his emotional shit by avoidance and displacement, so this was an almost inevitable outcome. Aside from the black eye that the agency had copped over Gibbs being arrested for assaulting his own agent, Tom wasn’t all that cut up about it. Truthfully, Jethro had been a crappy team leader, ignoring procedure and the rule of law. He constantly ignored the chain of command on the team, and was at best, borderline abusive to his underlings which seemed to trigger an almost dog-like devotion to the narcissistic bully which some people felt bordered on the agents exhibiting Stockholm Syndrome.

Tom had previously held discussions with an in-house psychologist, Dr Joanne Betts after he’d become concerned that Gibbs exhibited some traits identified by psychologists as consistent with something called the Bathsheba Syndrome. It was something of a hot topic at the moment regarding leaders in various branches of the military. Although Dr Betts was at pains to point out that the phenomenon was not just applicable to leaders in the armed forces. Civilians in leadership roles seemed to be just as prone to falling foul of it too.

The syndrome was named after King David of David and Goliath fame, who after slaying the giant went on to become a wise and ethical king. Yet the ‘wise and ethical leader’ had ultimately impregnated the wife of one of his Mighty Men, in what seemed to be a nonconsensual act, even if some argued that her ceremonial bathing was really an intentional seduction – probably to excuse his sinful actions. King David then arranged for Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite to die so he didn’t discover his king’s betrayal.

According to the researchers what characterised the syndrome was that success ultimately led to leaders who had otherwise longstanding and otherwise spotless records, at the pinnacle of their careers, to act in ways that were anathema to everything they previously appeared to believe in and knew to be wrong, morally, legally, ethically. The social scientists who coined the term Bathsheba Syndrome, Ludwig and Longnecker, theorised that it was their success that also brought out a darker side in these individuals.

According to Dr Betts, the reasons why it was believed that success was the contributing factor were complicated. Success can attract a great deal of attention which leads to the leader becoming complacent. They became less focused on methods and more fixated on actual success. Another factor Joanne explained was that with success came perks where a successful leader gains influence, latitude, recognition, and status which leads them in turn to having more opportunities and ways to behave unethically and also increases their belief that they can get away with it. Betts also said that it was more common when they were surrounded by apologists, sycophants and individuals prepared to look the other way…something that Tom conceded applied in Gibbs’ situation.

Tom wasn’t entirely clear about it, but it seemed that in individuals so affected, their decision-making process shifted towards favouring violating their previous ethical principle whereas individuals without benefit of the benefits of success were more reluctant to violate principles and ethics due to the perception that the risk-reward ratio was too low.

Tom knew that the military brass was interested in the Bathsheba Syndrome in an attempt to understand why previously exemplary leaders, at the very top of the chain of command with decades-long unblemished careers, would suddenly throw everything, including their long-held principles away, having reached the apex of their careers. There had been a slew of such cases where after getting caught out, those high-profile officers were forced to resign in disgrace, to avoid any more scandal for the institutions they led. So naturally, if the armed forces developed a way to identify who might fall prey to this phenomenon, or more likely, a way for leadership training to prepare leaders for success, then Tom wanted to utilise it in staff training at NCIS too. He’d seen the terrible toll that it created and wanted to nip it in the bud.

He thought back to his conversation with Dr Betts who’d identified several other factors that could fuel the syndrome such as a successful leader having more chances and more resources to act unethically. That kind of made sense – a leader had less oversight and therefore more means (to use law enforcement parlance) and more access to resources (think Gibbs’ ability to order McGee to hack databases illegally to get intel) to solve cases. It seemed that good sense became impaired, perceived rewards were exaggerated and possible risks were minimised.

Dr Betts noted that the last commonality Ludwig and Longnecker had identified was that success in these otherwise ethical individuals (who veered away from a lifetime of principled service), was their exaggerated belief in their ability to manipulate outcomes. Ludwig and Longenecker theorised that they overestimated their capacity to determine outcomes that viewed within the prism of Gibbs’ leadership rang true. Jethro’s illogical belief that simply by his force of personality he could order Abby to deliver her forensic results within time margins that were half the time that the brilliant forensic scientist estimated it should take, was a striking example. Or his insistence on gaining data from his agents within time constraints that were only possible to achieve if agents worked illegal hours, ignoring the need to sleep, eat or have an actual life.

But it was something else that Betts had said that struck another chord with Tom and went someway to maybe explaining why a former gunnery sergeant in the US Marine Corps, trained as a leader, would suddenly start rejecting the ingrained need to follow the chain of command. Gibbs had gone out of his way to sabotage Agent DiNozzo’s position on his team as the senior field agent, undermining his authority in front of the junior agents and really everyone else too. It was completely illogical, but the NCIS psychologist had mentioned that the researchers often found that in successful leaders who seemed prone to the syndrome, there appeared to be an inverse relationship to their exaggerated belief in their own ability that coincided with a marked decrease in their confidence in their colleagues’ competence and abilities. That seemed to explain why Jethro had treated Anthony with such a cavalier lack of professional respect and possibly empowered him to believe he needed to assault a highly experienced and talented agent and generally treat him like a piece of dog shit.

He struggled to remember when Jethro had started to change because Tom was certain that his undermining of the chain of command, head-slapping, and creating a toxic and unsafe work environment was not how they started their partnership. After much soul searching, Tom realised that the successful conclusion of the interrogation of Bin Atwa that led to the capture of Hussan Mohammed, the mastermind of the bombing of the U.S.S. Foster had been a catalyst. At that time, DiNozzo and Gibbs had also brought down Commander Theodore Lindsay, a former TAD Judge Advocate General for murder and his botched attempt to frame Commander Harmon Rabb Jr for Lieutenant Loren Singer’s death, earning them a lot of plaudits. Unfairly, Agent DiNozzo had done most of the investigative heavy lifting on clearing Rabb who looked as if he would be found guilty since Gibbs was heavily involved in breaking Bin Atwa at the time. Unfortunately, Gibbs had received the lion’s share of credit for both cases. Perhaps the success had been the catalytic agent that tipped Gibbs into rejecting the principles that Corps training had espoused.

On the one hand, all of this was academic now. Agent Reyes was determined to see that Gibbs was held accountable for his unprofessional behaviour. The fact the assault was against a fellow agent made it a much bigger deal. Even if he was able to pass his field qualifications, it wouldn’t matter. No one, not SECNAV nor the POTUS could save Gibbs from his anger issues or his sense of entitlement that had convinced him that he was above the law. If only NCIS could learn one thing from Gibbs’ debacle and better prepare their leaders, perhaps they could avoid the trap of letting their successes corrupt them.

As Dr Betts had concluded, “All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

—

Notes:

The Bathsheba Syndrome: When a Leader Fails (richmond.edu)

Do fired Navy COs suffer from ‘Bathsheba Syndrome’? | Stars and Stripes

Breaking the Bathsheba Syndrome: Building a Performance Evaluation System that Promotes Mission Command (armywarcollege.edu)

Chapter 36

After a luxuriously rare sleep-in the next morning and a strawberry banana smoothie for breakfast, Cassie decided to go to the pool and swim laps. She preferred to mix it up with her fitness regime, not being a huge fan of running but she forced herself to run a couple of miles, three times a week. The rest of the week she normally swam, rode her bike or did an aerobics class, although Cassie had left her bicycle back in Norfolk. Em had told her there were some great cycleways along the Anacostia and several other locales, so that was good to know if she moved back. Cassie had taken up bike riding with one of the other agents after she departed DC.

If she were to move back here, maybe she could take up rowing again on the weekends, something she had done back in college and briefly entertained dreams of making the Olympics before she hurt her shoulder coming off a motorcycle. Although Cassie still kept up her fitness, using a rowing machine at the gym, she hadn’t had time to do any real rowing since becoming a federal agent, especially working undercover.

As she started swimming laps, she thought about SSA Maureen Cabot’s question about whether she was going to be the new senior field agent for the team.

“What makes you think that Tony’s going to be getting a new team?” Cassie said aiming for a non-committal mien that usually worked when someone was trying to trip her up undercover.

Mo laughed at her. “Scuttlebutt, plus you’re filling in for him while he’s agent a-floating. Elementary, my dear Watson,” she teased the younger agent gently. “Plus, Ric might have mentioned something to me inconfidence. He thought you might like someone to weigh up the pros and cons,” she said.

“Oh thank goodness. It’s been hard not being able to tell anyone. I mean, obviously, the team know Ric is leaving and that Tony’s taking over. But I haven’t decided whether to take the job yet,” Cassie had told her.

“C’mon, let’s get a coffee from the cart and go for a walk. That way, we can talk without anyone overhearing,” Mo said. “Ric has already cleared you for 30 minutes on the proviso that you bring him back a coffee too.”

“So how are you getting on with Agents Zeng and Lyndhurst?”

Cassie had been enthusiastic about the pair, they were keen and hardworking. Balboa and Matt have done a fine job of training both of them. There were absolutely no discipline problems.

Mo nodded. “They seem very competent and willing to take direction.”

“Plus I like the fact I wouldn’t be the only female on the team,” she confessed.

“Yeah, I can understand that it’s more balanced, ” Mo said having Ruth as her SFA,

“It feels like it’s less tokenism, not just having a female for calming distraught victims and witnesses.”

“Okay, sounds like that’s definitely a pro. What’s a con if you were to take the job?” Mo grilled her expertly.

“I guess the main one is leaving undercover work. It kinda gets in your blood, and we’ve had some major drug busts. I like to think I’ve made a real impact,” she said, feeling justifiably proud of all she achieved.”

“I can understand that, although the few times I went undercover to try to catch a serial predator I was scared silly someone would make me. But from everything I’ve heard, you’ve certainly been highly effective, Cass.”

“Plus I’m settled in in Norfolk, even if I have to be careful. I can’t really socialise with anyone from NCIS, in case I get made undercover,” she admitted.

“Sounds like you’ve identified both pros and cons with staying. And isn’t the longer you work a cover the bigger the risk that someone with let slip your real ID?”

Cassie agreed, somewhat reluctantly. “I guess so. Tony says that maintaining a deep cover for too long is risky – that a lot of UC operatives go native.”

“And how do you feel about the fact that you’d have DiNozzo as your superior? You have a couple of years of seniority over him, don’t you? Do you think you could handle taking orders from him?”

“As I told the director, yes I was here before him, but he had six years as a cop and I’m not someone who denigrates cops, so I’d have no trouble with him giving me orders,” she said honestly.

“Well, that’s good. And I know that Caitlin Todd was constantly complaining that he was annoying and a chauvinist. I’ve seen him work with other agents, like Viv Blackadder and Em Lyndhurst, and he’s very different from how he reacted to her. Plus he had a partner in Philly who had nothing but praise for him. I’ve found him to be very empathetic with victims too,” Cabot observed.

Cassie chuckled. “Chris and I used to work with Gibbs and DiNozzo on Cold Cases before Todd was hired. I even worked with Blackadder a few times. Things were different and Gibbs treated him as a trusted 2IC. He was always a consummate professional and Viv never had an issue with him…her issue was with Ducky who was lecherous,” Cassie said in amusement. “DiNozzo and I went down to Paraguay, and he had my back and thanks to his quick thinking, we saved a seventeen-year-old victim from being killed.”

Cabot looked pleased. “Well glad to hear that. I know he’s young to be heading up the MCRT but he’s a good agent and I’ll think he’ll do a great job. Guess you have to decide if now is the right time to leave undercover. Not trying to pressure you, Cass, just think about the fact that a shot like this with a promotion and a shot on the MCRT doesn’t come along all that often,” she said as they stopped off at the coffee cart outside NCIS to pick up Balboa’s coffee.

And that had been a really good point that Maureen made as Cassie made her way up and down the Olympic-sized pool, alternating swimming strokes: breaststroke, freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly, completing her usual twenty laps. She’d really wanted a spot on the MCRT almost three years ago, but Gibbs hadn’t been willing to give her a shot and she certainly wasn’t the only one. Several agents coveted a place on Gibbs’ team despite his histrionics and were pretty peeved when he hired a secret service officer who wouldn’t know an investigation if it jumped up and bit her on her ass. Then a year later, hired Tim McGee, who was a personable young man but also an absolute newbie when it came to investigating.

A chance to work on the top investigative team handling all the major cases was certainly not to be sneezed at. And Cassie was getting weary of the undercover drug scene where she sometimes wondered if she was making a difference. Another thing that Cassie thought about that Maureen had remarked on was that he was young to be given the lead on the MCRT but Maureen, like most people at NCIS didn’t know the half of it. Cassie had only discovered the truth because she was incurably nosy.

Back before he started at NCIS, when he was still a homicide detective partnered with Danny Price of the Baltimore PD, Tony had run into Gibbs. Agent Gibbs was working undercover, trying to catch a suspected money launderer, Navy Lieutenant Floyd, in a case that intersected with the Baltimore homicide detectives and that they’d ended up working together – which for Gibbs was extremely unusual since he didn’t think anyone lived up to his impossibly high stands – not cops, not the FBI, not other NCIS agents. Plus it was also more accurate to say that Tony had run Gibbs down and tackled him, hauling the agent off to the Baltimore PD’s Homicide division to interrogate him.

Cassie knew just from listening to her mentor Chris Pacci when he talked about Anthony DiNozzo that he’d felt somewhat paternal about Tony. Cassie had put it down to the fact that Gibbs had asked Pacci to do a deep dive on the Baltimore PD detective’s background before recruiting him to join his team as Gibbs was not satisfied by the regular background checks conducted by NCIS. It was well known in DC that Gibbs was so damned paranoid, many people joked that he’d want chapter and verse on Mother Teresa – the nun made a Saint for her work with the poor in Calcutta – before he’d ever consent to let her on his team. Well, that was true enough, at least before he ended up hiring Caitlin Todd. He’d never asked Chris to do a deep dive of her but perhaps he possessed greater faith in the Secret Services ability to run checks on their agents – who knows!

Stan Burley, Gibbs’ first SFA had certainly faced an equally rigorous scrutiny as Tony had. Yet things had definitely slackened off when it came to Gibbs hiring Todd and McGee on the MCRT.

At least it made good sense why he’d asked Agent Pacci to research Tony’s history. She knew from personal experience that Chris was one hell of a researcher; he was meticulous and thorough. Cassie had always suspected that something he learned about Tony had shaken Chris, whose own son lived in Italy with his former wife. After their marriage hit the skids, Chris told her that Callista packed up and moved to Naples, deliberately cutting off contact between Chris and his son Rocco, who was five at the time of their divorce. Cassie asked why he hadn’t applied for a job out of the NCIS Naples office, Pacci had shrugged and said his ex-wife had married the guy she was having an affair with while married to Chris. They’d since had two other kids and his ex-wife claimed that Rocco was too young to remember him.

Cassie called bullshit, saying that at five he’d absolutely remember his dad. Chris shrugged defeatedly and said that even if he did, he wouldn’t put it past her to lie to their son and tell the boy his father abandoned him. Sometimes she thought about that whole sordid situation and Chris’ horrific death. What if one day Rocco would come looking for his father and learn the tragic news and Cassie wondered how he would feel about his mother’s actions. Even if he didn’t come looking, eventually, when the young man came of age, he would learn about his real father as he was the recipient of his father’s estate, which was being held in a trust fund until he was old enough to inherit.

She often speculated when Tony joined Gibbs after he left Baltimore, about what it was that had cajoled Chris’s fatherly instincts out of hibernation, was it that Tony lost his mother when he was still a kid. Although, the odd snippets he let slip once in a blue moon, suggested he had a troubled relationship with both of his parents. Cassie finally had become curious since on the very few occasions she’d heard him talk about his mother, the details just didn’t add up. He told her he was eight when his mother passed away, yet another time when he had a couple of cocktails with her and Abby after a tough case and was a bit loose-lipped, he’d talked about her dressing him up in sailor suits, regularly forcing him to perform piano recitals for her society friends when he was ten years old.

Unable to help herself, because she was an investigator too, even if she was still inexperienced, Cassie had done some digging on her own and found that after his mother died, he was shipped off to various boarding schools so that his father didn’t have to deal with bring up a young child. The first of his new stepmothers may have had something to do with getting rid of him, too. Senior never seemed to land a maternal type but that didn’t seem to be high on his father’s list of requirements for marriage. What was seemingly of importance was that they be: young, rich, and beautiful.

Another oddity was that Tony was never in one school for more than a year, often not even a year and while he was assessed as having a high intelligence quotient and did well in class, he never settled in with his peers. He was socially and emotionally withdrawn, unable to fit in. He was also frequently bullied by the other students.

Teachers blamed his sheltered upbringing before attending school, having been home-schooled by private tutors before his mother’s death. One teacher mentioned the fact that he was much smaller than the other children in his year, which might be a contributing factor to his social difficulties. Several school psychologists recommended he be tested for hyperactivity disorder and one suggested that he had unresolved grief issues.

Although he’d obviously struggled to fit in at school, Tony had once joked (again while drunk) that he’d been expelled for being uncontrollable, though Cassie could find no sign that this was true. In fact, the reason why he was so frequently asked to leave had nothing to do with his conduct or his grades, which were exemplary and everything to do with his father falling into arrears with his hefty school fees, since he always sent his son to the most elite of boarding schools. Another decidedly odd thing was that on more than one occasion when Tony started at a new school, he skipped a grade. Curious, Cassie checked his birth certificate on file at the Department of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, and learnt he’d only been seven years old when Catherine Ella DiNozzo passed away. Anthony DiNozzo Senior lied on Tony’s enrolment form, claiming the boy was eight years old.

In another example at a new school, Tony was fifteen according to his school records, but by Cassie’s calculations, he was yet to turn thirteen and would for another nine months. Having gotten this far with her snooping, she’d mentioned to Chris about what she’d uncovered, her mentor admitting that he’d found the same information and raised it with the director since when he was hired back in 2001, he’d barely made the minimum age to qualify as a federal agent. When Morrow and Pacci confronted him with the proof that he was 26 not 29 and asked him why he thought his father might have messed up his age, Chris told her he’d shrugged. Tony revealed that for years when he was young, his father did such a bang-up job of gaslighting him about his age that he truly believed he was born in 1971 even though Chris presented him with his real birth certificate that proved his DOB was 8th July 1974.

Although it confirmed what she’d already discovered, she was still appalled at the confirmation of the suspicions. “But why would his father do such a despicable thing to their son, Chris?”

Tony didn’t know. Chris said he’d told them he could only think of two reasons. It saved his father three years of boarding school fees and three fewer years of supporting him financially. The second possibility, the faked birth certificate would have been three years sooner Senior could con Tony into signing over the trust fund that his mother left him.”

Cass had been outraged. “His father stole his trust fund. What kind of an asshole does that to their own kid?” she raged.

“A con man. A sociopath. A narcissist,” Chris had replied, scathingly.

“But how did he manage to forge his birth certificate and embezzle the trust fund?” she’d demanded irately.

“Unfortunately it was all too easy for a con artist like his father to get around the protections that are supposed to be in place. Tony’s ‘father’ and I use that term purely in its biological sense, took him out to celebrate his graduation from high school, got him drunk, and offered to help him with the paperwork. Except that, in reality, the conman had him sign over his inheritance for his father to manage and he paid a former Rockette to have sex with his fifteen-year-old son. Meanwhile, he filed the paperwork to gain control of Tony’s inheritance, which was immediately transferred to various accounts in the Cayman Islands, even if Tony could have tried to sue him back then.”

Cassie felt sick upon learning about how his father had treated his only child. The man was a monster, even if he pretended to be a suave urbane and highly successful businessman. Truthfully, after squandering his own personal inheritance through a lavish overindulgent lifestyle, combined with atrocious financial decisions, his father embarked upon a career of marrying rich heiresses combined with conning gullible investors out of their money. Pacci told her that he had a great deal of admiration for the former cop, who could easily have become like his father but instead, had chosen to serve and protect others.

“Even after losing his dream of becoming a professional athlete which was within his grasp, he’d refused to let disappointment and bitterness eat him up,” Pacci said. “Putting aside his career-ending injury, he’d looked instead to the future, deciding to become a cop instead.

As an experienced undercover agent, Cassie could now understand why his childhood had made Tony uniquely suited to becoming an undercover expert – his whole life had been a series of undercover roles. Attending so many schools over his childhood, being forced to act older than he really was, coping with bullying, which continued when Tony joined NCIS and managed to partner with the most difficult agent in the entire agency.

Plus, she couldn’t discount the difficulties he encountered living with parents who were both addicts, even if Senior had managed to hide his nastier side until he was in the privacy of his own home. She knew his father fit the profile of a high-functioning alcoholic. Yes, it was a miracle that Tony had turned out to be such an honest caring person.

As Cassie remembered how Chris had become one of DiNozzo’s admirers, she realised that many people seemed to have a soft spot for him, despite the fact he was far from a saint. She huffed – who the hell was perfect? Sure his overexuberance was exhausting at times, but she knew that it also helped buoy up the spirits of those around him because, to be honest, their work could be pretty soul-destroying.

But the three agents who’d seemed to get pissed off at him the most weren’t without faults either. McGee, Todd, and Gibbs had their own incredibly annoying foibles too and as investigators should have realised that his exuberant nature and jokes helped divert their attention and distract them from the gruesome nature of their work. Tony also tried to deflect Gibbs’ all too often out of control anger which he unleashed on anyone who he felt wasn’t as focused on the case as he was or didn’t provide leads quick enough.

The two rookie agents, who were inclined to take themselves much too seriously, worked with him every day and had been capable of seeing beyond his masks. They honestly believed he was just a dumb cop who somehow managed to land a job working for the most angry, obsessed individual who pushed himself beyond human limits and was pissed when others didn’t keep up. Hah, and they all thought of themselves as hotshot investigators or in Agent Todd’s case, a psychological profiler.

So that was why Cassie was one of a handful of individuals who knew that Tony was three years younger than most people believed he was. Seeing that his ex-colleagues had trouble seeing him as the competent professional he was, DiNozzo wasn’t keen for people to know his father had messed around with his age since he was a kid and Cassie couldn’t exactly blame him. But like Chris, Director Morrow and Ric Balboa who’d supported Tony through the maelstrom of emotions that Chris’ deep dive had caused him when he discovered the truth about his real age, they’d agreed that it wasn’t anyone else’s business. His date of birth on his personnel file had been amended but there was no need for other people to know, unless he told them. It was no one else’s business but his.

As to it impacting Cassie’s decision, she didn’t see it as an issue. But since his self-esteem had taken a battering over Gibbs undercutting his authority at every juncture, she could see how he would have concerns that it might cause disciplinary problems with the junior agents. Being aware of the situation, Morrow no doubt thought she’d be able to support him, and she would.

After finishing her twenty laps, she felt very virtuous and went back to Tony’s apartment which she was really going to miss when he came home. She did a load of laundry and went shopping for groceries because if they had a case later on, she mightn’t get time. That night, after cooking a stir fry, Cassie watched Sidney Poitier in the classic movie To Sir with Love and went to bed early.

Tomorrow night if the MCRT hadn’t caught a case, she was going to accompany Ernie Yost to the Senior Citizens recreational centre for their monthly dance night. This was her second one and she loved learning to dance properly. Ernie was a great dancer and he let slip that Tony had come to several dances too before his deployment as agent afloat. As he was steering her around the floor, he’d mentioned that all the ladies at the Seniors Centre loved dancing with him, particularly the Foxtrot and Swing. And again, she thought about why so many people who had actually taken the time to see beyond the brash cockiness, realised his worth, but his old team had not.

Ermie was used to people sucking up to him because he had been given a Medal of Honour and he accepted it as a fact of life, understanding that most were just trying to show respect. He also recognised that Tony was genuinely interested in the real Ernie Yost – not Corporal Yost who earned the MOH but hearing about his life with Dorothy …looking at old photos of Dorothy, listening to their favourite records and watching old movies with him. And no one else on the team knew or even bothered to check up on Ernie once the case was done. In fact, he’d deliberately broken one of Gibbs’ rules – when the job is done…walk away. It was obvious to Cassie that Tony cared about people, he was doing the job to try to make the world a better place.

On Sunday night, arriving back at his apartment at 2200 She had made her decision. And Cassie Yates reckoned that it was only fair for Tony to be the first to know. Sitting down at her laptop, she sent him an email.

To: ADDiNozzo@NCIS_navy.gov

Hi Tony,

If you still want me as your SFA, I’m yours!

Hey Boss, I can still do undercover gigs if we need to for a case, right?

BTW, I call dibs on Ernie, he’s awesome! Thanx for the meet-cute : )

Can your ‘contacts’ help find me an apartment…my last DC one suxed the big one. Perhaps I’m fussy but I prefer not to share with rats.

Cheers Cassie

To: CassieYates@NCIS_navy.gov

Welcome aboard Very Special Senior Field Agent Yates,

You’ll be a fine SFA, Ric says you’re doing great, and the kids love ya!

Absolutely, when a case needs undercover work, you can go in if you want. I was getting tired of playing call girls anyway. All that waxing…

Re Ernie: no way! But I’m willing to share. Joint custody?

And yeah, Cass, those rats of yours were huuuuuuuuge! I’ll put the word out to my peeps and get you settled somewhere, asap.

Give Zoe my love and tell her not long now,

Tony.

To:CassieYates@NCIS_navy.gov

Hey Cass,

Just heard about a spare bedroom in a condo downtown. Lieutenant Maya Lewis who’s a corpsman on the Sea Hawk says you’re welcome to bunk in her spare room since they won’t be returning stateside for another two months after I return. Maya says you can stay permanently or just until you find something else if you don’t want to share – not that Maya is around much.

Stay safe TTYL

Very Special Agent Afloat DiNozzo 🙂

PS How do you feel about campfires?

Epilogue

One year later Delores Bromstead looked around the conference room they normally used for staff training seminars and awards presentations, at the assorted detritus indicating a celebration taking place there. The tables were rearranged around the walls to create more space were littered with empty and half-drunk cups of fruit punch (non-alcoholic, of course), greasy empty paper plates, paper plates with half-eaten party food, food platters with leftovers, streamers, baby-blue balloons, many partly inflated, and she regarded the scene with a sense of wonder.

She’d sort of suspected that her colleagues in Human Resources might feel obligated to throw her a baby shower and she’d tried subtly to persuade them that it wasn’t necessary. After all, she was under no illusions she was well-liked at NCIS, partly because of her job. It necessitated her acting like their mother, following them around and nagging at them when it came to ensuring they were observing rules and regulations. But she also had enough personal insight to know that it wasn’t only her job that had earned her the moniker of the Dragon Lady either. Delores was sure that other deputy managers of the HR department weren’t as feared as she was.

Delores knew that by no stretch of the imagination could anyone describe her as a gregarious ‘people’ person. She was an introvert pure and simple, a shy person who didn’t feel comfortable in social settings, which was why she would never dream of trying to run the human resources department. She was a much better Will Riker than a Jean-Luc Picard, (although she did sometimes wish she had even a quarter of Riker’s charisma and self-confidence), but Delores was a realist. Part of why she was who she was could be blamed on nurture, and the rest was nature. And boy had nature played a dirty trick on her!

Still, she had never been one to focus on things she couldn’t change, preferring to concentrate on changing things within her control. She had a small circle of loyal friends, mostly outside of work. People who belonged to her archery club, a neighbour who lived across the road from her, her cousin Karina, and her life partner Kevin, who she’d married a couple of months ago in a very private ceremony, with Karina and Kevin’s brother, John as witnesses. Dolores knew how blessed she was to have found Kevin, and although he was no oil painting as her granny, Tottie Banks used to say, well neither was she. Kevin might have large ears that stuck out (Prince Charles ears, he often joked) and a receding hairline and was a bean pole, her hands and feet were far from dainty, she was tall and angular, too tall and her jaw too pronounced. However she could see beyond Kevin’s average looks to the kind loving person he was, and he loved the person she was, regardless of the package she came in.

So Delores, while wishing that her co-workers in HR would forgo the customary Baby Shower for the expectant couple, had just enough people-savvy to know that her hints had fallen on deaf ears. Whether it was because those hints had been too understated or that the HR staff were too obtuse, she really couldn’t say. Although, if they were so lacking in perception as to think she appreciated being the focus in a social setting, perhaps she should recommend to her boss, Marla Sweeten (who despite what her name may suggest, was the antithesis of sweetness and light) that they all needed to do A LOT more sensitivity training. However, she was willing to concede that they were most likely being wilfully blind to her hints that she didn’t expect (want) them to throw her a Baby Shower out of some misplaced sense of it being de rigueur.

So she’d been priming herself for the inevitable ordeal. Genuinely expecting it to be awkward for all concerned, but in particular Stu, Barry, and Conrad, who would feel obliged to attend, since it was a work thing. That and they definitely wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of their formidable boss, she was a force to be reckoned with when her mind was made up. Very few people chose to argue with her, knowing the absolute futility of resistance.

But Delores had no idea that the obligatory Baby Shower involved the entire staff in the building and that it had in reality, been organised by Special Agent Cassie Yates and her group of female agents and techies who included Mo Cabot, Ruth Jacobs, Callie Lawrence, Em Lyndhurst, Abby Sciuto, Janey Daniels, and Anna Lopez. They’d apparently co-opted Marla Sweeten, Cynthia Sommers and Matt Anderson and Eric Balboa’s wives: Dalisay and Heather with the planning and execution. When Delores realised the extent of the guestlist, she nearly had a panic attack. She was wondering why all of these people had attended when they hated her guts since she went around forcing them to cross their T’s and dot their I’s on their mandatory paperwork. Her job was an oftentimes thankless one, but vital to the smooth running of the agency, but she recognised that most of the staff resented her acting like a policeman when they had what they saw as more important things to focus their attention on. Agent DiNozzo came back from his four-month stint one year ago with he said, a new-found appreciation for her job, likening it to an agent afloat of paperwork, making them the least popular person on the ship.

As to the Baby Shower, she’d been summoned to the conference room by her boss on some ultimately false excuse and then realised she’d been suckered, Delores entered the seldom-used room, now filled with employees, and she permitted herself a half-audible groan. In truth she couldn’t help herself, as she looked around in dismay, wondering just how she was going to cope with what was her absolute bête noire. Spying her husband Kevin, she was pathetically grateful that Dalisay Anderson and Heather Balboa had the foresight to invite Kevin along to the Baby Shower as she was going to need him as her emotional support person. Delores was grateful that these two women knew her well enough to realise Kevin was absolutely essential to her being able to make it through what for her was, sheer unadulterated Hell.

Thankfully for poor Kevin, he’d spent a few afternoons or dinners with the Balboa and Anderson families breaking bread with them, so he didn’t feel completely out of his depth. At first, when she’d received invitations from Heather and Dalisay to spend time with them socially, she’d been confused about why they’d want to include her but both women had soon set her straight.

Dalisay had patted her hand briefly, seeming to understand she was not comfortable with over-the-top displays of emotion. “I really appreciate all you did to ensure that Matt got to come to Manilla with us last year when we collected Mindi. It was a special time for our family and I’m so happy he got to experience it.”

Delores nodded emphatically. “I get it, Dalisay. It was just as important to you all as Matt being there when Matikas was born. I’m so glad it worked out,” she’d responded honestly.

Because she did get it. Delores might not be able to carry her and Kevin’s own child, a son but thankfully, her cousin Karina was happy to include them both in the pregnancy. She’d absolutely insisted that both of them should be there for the birth and OBGYN visits, especially the ultrasounds. Dolores already felt incredibly connected with their son, who was tentatively at this stage, called Robbie after both of their fathers. She might be estranged from her family, but it was not her choice. One day she hoped they might decide to reconcile with her, despite disagreeing with her life choices and Kevin’s dad died ten years ago in a workplace accident on a building site.

Dalisay smiled at her. “Well, a lot of people don’t understand that the day we met Mindi was as significant to our family as the day Matikas was born. After all, to them, she was already almost six months old,” she said, struggling with her emotions.

“But Matt and I are also so grateful to you and Director Morrow for allowing Matt to remain an agent, heading up the Cold Case Unit,” she said, her dark eyes conveying her conviction. “He still gets to do something he loves, even if he’s not out in the field and he keeps regular hours to spend time with his family. And most importantly, I’m not worried sick about him getting killed by some psychopath, dreading getting a phone call from someone I don’t know to tell me he’s been killed,” she explained, her sincerity transparent.

Heather nodded ardently. “Ric and I are also so grateful to you and Tom Morrow for similar reasons. You know that Ric and I had thought about taking an early retirement and opening a business together, but Rusty’s diagnosis put paid to that plan. While he couldn’t afford to retire, neither could we afford to lose him either – his NCIS health insurance saved our financial bacon,” she said tearfully. “Rusty’s last surgery practically cleaned out our savings, even with NCIS’ insurance plan. Knowing that he’s looking at further heart surgery put Ric in a no-win situation.”

“The Naval and Marine Missing Persons Unit had given him a lifeline and he’s really excited about the difference it can make to service personnel and their loved ones. Plus, he said you’ve personally been supportive in helping with getting everything set up and finding admin staff for the unit and software for their database,” she told her gratefully.

Although Delores was touched, she was also a little discomforted. “I appreciate both of you are grateful, but it’s part of my job,” she protested.

“Maybe, but we’re still grateful,” Dalisay responded determinedly before Luzviminda woke up hungry and demanding a feed. And everyone got to have a cuddle.

Now, a tentative friendship was blossoming between the three women and their support during Kevin and her attempts to have a baby via surrogacy had been much appreciated. Heather and Dalisay had shared their frustrations and then finally their joy when they learnt that Karina was finally pregnant, although Kevin and Delores had held off announcing the pregnancy until after the first trimester. They’d already endured having one false positive result in the fifth week only to be crushed when Karina called to say she wasn’t pregnant after all.

So with the steadfast support of Kevin, Heather and Dalisay (who’d left baby Mindi with her mother), they helped her get through the next few hours. Thankfully most people popped in and stayed for an hour, presented her and Kevin with gifts for the baby, ate cake and snack food, mini quiches, baby goat cheese and fig tartlets, baby pizzas, and various other baby-sized or themed food like petite fours before heading back to their offices, MTAC, bullpens, evidence garage etcetera to continue working as other stopped by. An introvert by nature and nurture, Delores was incredibly exhausted with having to make nice with so many people in such a short timeframe – without Kevin, Dalisay and Heather bolstering her, she had no doubt she’d be a gibbering wreck

She was truly overwhelmed by all the generous gifts – some of the staff like Cassie Yates’ crew had banded together and bought them a gorgeous baby buggy, porta cot and a highchair, while some teams had clubbed together and given them cash. Her HR colleagues had taken up a collection and bought them the Crib that they’d sneakily discovered that they were planning on buying, courtesy of Dalisay, plus a gift voucher for bedding. The folks in Finance in appreciation for Delores and Marla’s swift action dealing with Wayne Finkel’s reign of sexual abuse, gifted Delores a car-seat with the highest safety rating available, plus a baby bath and bath toys. Director Morrow and his wife had sent her a generous cheque with their best wishes.

She and Kevin were deeply touched by everyone’s generosity, she couldn’t believe how supportive everyone was of their pregnancy. But perhaps the most moving gifts were the individual ones that some of the Janitorial Services staff, many of them migrants whose first language wasn’t English, presently her shyly. She was particularly touched because she knew they all worked long hours in low-paying jobs to provide for their own families, often working through the night. Because she was such an early bird into the office, it was her privilege to get to know them all – unlike most of the daytime staff, except Agent DiNozzo. He wasn’t an early bird, more like a night owl who used to regularly return to the office to complete paperwork for his team leader, Agent Gibbs and was on a first-name basis with most of them. Although now that he was the senior supervisory agent of the new MCRT, he rarely worked during the midnight to dawn hours and neither did the team, unless it was an urgent investigation.

Many of the ladies presented her with handmade gifts – knitted or crocheted matinee jackets, booties, and hats, exquisitely made woollen babies blankets and someone made a glorious zoo-themed patchwork comforter, perfect for a little boy. The male janitorial staff often gave them plushies or wooden toys that she had no doubt would become favourites once Robbie was old enough to play with them.

And just when Delores thought she was beyond being shocked after today, Special Agent Caitlin Todd turned up with a present for their baby. She was completely dumbfounded by Caitlin’s appearance since Delores was responsible for lodging the complaint against her and Timothy McGee for insubordination and failure to observe the chain of command. It had resulted in both agents being removed from Agent Gibbs’ elite major case response team. The very last person she expected to turn up today was Agent Todd…except maybe Leroy Jethro Gibbs, although that would be almost impossible since he was incarcerated for his assault on a federal officer.

However, it turned out that Agent Todd, although extremely angry with the deputy manager of HR at the time, was now seeing things from a different perspective. After a rocky start at Norfolk, ruffling more than a few feathers of her new colleagues, Cate said she’d been forced to dial her attitude down several notches on the arrogance scale and finally started listening and learning. Also, it seemed that during an investigation aboard the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, she’d met the current love of her life, Lieutenant Commander Austin Edelson, a nice catholic boy from Wyoming who’d proposed to her.

Cate revealed with an uncharacteristic blush that she was seven weeks pregnant. Delores wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment that the happy couple put the cart before the horse, or because it was an unplanned pregnancy since Caitlin didn’t enlighten her. She did reveal that her parents were over the moon (even if she wasn’t married), while her sister Rachel told her she owed Delores an apology for her big-headed attitude. Delores expressed her well wishes to Cate and the baby’s father and privately concluded that at least this time, Cate and her beau wouldn’t be breaking any fraternisation regulations. Unlike her disastrous affair with the POTUS’ ball carrier, which had posed a serious national security risk and had forced her to resign from the Secret Service in disgrace.

Happy to hear that Cate had turned her life around, Delores opened her gift, resolving to purchase a present for Cate’s baby a little further down the track. She had to hand it to the ex-secret service agent, her gift was unique. She’d given them hemp disposable diapers – cloth fitted diapers with disposable hemp inserts, plus a book titled Toddlers and Tofu and no, it wasn’t a bedtime storybook. It was a recipe book filled with tofu dishes that the author insisted were much loved by toddlers. Finally, two other books did turn out to be storybooks written by Lynley Dodd, called Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy and Hairy Maclary’s Bone, which proved to be an utter delight. She and Kevin went out and bought the rest of the series as soon as they read the books that completely charmed them. They could hardly wait to read them to their son after he was born in about two months. Even their titles: Hairy Maclary Scattercat, Hairy Maclary’s Caterwaul Caper, and Hairy Maclary‘s Rumpus at the Vet promised to provide them with many memorable bedtime stories.

But just when Delores was positive that her capacity to be shocked was broken after Cate Todd’s visit, she was about to be proved wrong on that score, although she and Kevin were currently being entertained, watching Agent Todd peruse the food platters and Kevin remarked that he was reminded of Goldilocks. The Norfolk-based agent was currently looking askance at much of the party fare, eschewing the salad due to the potential for listeria poisoning. Most of the food was adjudged to be too processed or too full of chemicals for a pregnant person to safely consume. However, she did nibble daintily on the goat’s cheese and fig tarts and some crackers and hummus. Unfortunately for Cate, whoever had done the catering hadn’t seen fit to include any tofu on the menu.

Still, when Special Agent DiNozzo showed up in the last hour of the Baby Shower, dragging a red-headed woman in his wake, who was looking rather uncomfortable being there, Delores realised she was still capable of being surprised. It seemed her party was the scene of several unexpected returns with Agent DiNozzo’s companion proving to be none other than former NCIS agent and Agent Todd’s predecessor on Gibbs’ former team. Agent Vivian Blackadder had, very unfortunately for her career on Gibbs’ team, screwed up surveillance on an undercover mission in Rota, Spain. It resulted in Special Agent Gibbs being stunned and taking a tumble down a ship’s ladder onto the deck below. A circumstance that had infuriated him and resulted in him turfing her off his team in no uncertain fashion.

At the time, they were attempting to apprehend Hussan Mohammed, the terrorist who claimed responsibility for the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. Apparently, the former NCIS agent appreciated how kind Delores had been to her when she learned about Rex Blackadder’s death. Delores had expedited her transfer back to the FBI after Gibbs went postal when she froze after clapping eyes on her brother’s killer in Rota.

The FBI agent, who looked much more settled in the years since they’d last met, had bought her a dozen bibs with cute sayings on them. In addition, she gave them a Mouli baby mill for making homemade baby food which pleased Delores because Kevin was a keen gardener and already had a veggie garden. It wasn’t much of a stretch for them to make their own baby food with the food they’d grown, and she knew Kevin would be chuffed.

As Delores thanked Viv for her thoughtfulness, she tried to ascertain if she should be making anything of Tony DiNozzo turning up with Viv in tow. Unfortunately, she sucked at being able to pick up subtly nuanced social interactions and neither agent seemed to be giving anything away. It was hard to tell if they were together, as in the couple thing or just that they were good friends. After all, they were former teammates and they’d seemed to have a fairly good working relationship during their time together on Gibbs’ team, unlike the turbulent ones that he had with Agents Todd and McGee.

After Viv had wandered off to catch up with Mo, Ruth and Cassie, Tony approached her somewhat shyly, handing her a gift bag with a flourish. Inside were a set of classical music CDs guaranteed to provide the baby with calm restful sleep while improving brain development. The second gift flummoxed her – a baby-sized baseball jersey for the Chicago Cubs – Kevin’s team. How had he known since Agent DiNozzo hadn’t even met Kevin before today? The third gift struck a frisson of fear into Delores’ gut.

Tony, a master of interpreting non-verbal cues, immediately realised Delores was upset. Trying to cover up her visceral reaction, she attempted to cover up her slip, by saying, “A doll, perhaps you didn’t realise but Kevin and I are expecting a boy, Agent DiNozzo, unless the ultrasound technicians have made a grievous error,” she tried to joke.

Frowning slightly, Tony replied, “Um no. I heard you were expected a son, Ms Bromstead,” he said. “And that isn’t just any doll, that’s a Knee High Cherry Pie and I have it on good authority that you wanted one the Christmas you were eight years old. The doll isn’t for your baby, it’s for you,” he said uncertainly.

Seeing her look of confusion he explained. “Everyone is giving you stuff for the baby, but I wanted to give you and Kevin something. A little birdie told me he’s a mad Cubs fan and I thought he’d get a kick out of his son wearing one of their jerseys. Can’t start them early enough, I say,” he joked. “And I wanted to give you the doll to thank you for talking me out of resigning when I handed you my letter of resignation.”

Feeling his gratefulness, Delores heaved a sigh of relief. Maybe she’d overreacted. “Oh, well that’s lovely of you, but it really wasn’t necessary, I was just doing my job, you know.”

“No, you could have taken me at my word,” he said. “I admit, I was pretty shocked when you didn’t. I was under the impression you disapproved of me, so I was expecting you to accept it immediately and throw a party to celebrate. That’s why I chose to tender it to HR rather than Gibbs or Director Morrow –thought they’d try to talk me out of it,” he confessed.

The deputy manager of HR felt embarrassed that she’d been so transparent about her disapproval of him, particularly now she understood the reason for all the joking and playing around. It was his way of dealing with the toxic workplace that Leroy Jethro Gibbs created on his team. That man’s sense of entitlement was so massive, that he could get away with doing what he wanted and wouldn’t face any adverse consequences. Agent DiNozzo had been a victim trying to do his job the best way he knew how under intolerable circumstances and the HR department had failed him.

Rather than say that to the leader of the MCRT, she smiled tremulously and admitted, “ I may not have been tolerant of your shenanigans until I heard your impassioned defence of Laura Rowens, Agent DiNozzo but I became a big fan then. It would be a terrible loss for NCIS, had you resigned,” she told him.

“Especially after losing our best agent when Gibbs lost his security clearance,” he said delicately, avoiding saying when he was convicted of a felony and went to jail.

Shaking her head vehemently, she told him, “Mr Gibbs was not our best agent. In my opinion, he was an incredibly selfish leader who had no respect for observing the law, even though he charged others for breaking them which was highly hypocritical,” she said disdainfully with a toss of her head.

“It is clear to a lot of people that you’re going to be as good a leader as you are an investigator and undercover operative. Your case closure stats are excellent but equally as important is that your team’s conviction rates are the best in the agency. I’m really glad I was able to convince you to stay on, “ Delores said with utter honesty.

Typical of when Tony received praise, he didn’t know how to deal with it. Desperate to deflect by changing the subject he looked around the room, before spying Caitlin Todd there.

“Oh wow, is that Cate over there with Abby and Cass?”

“It is,” Delores confirmed, with a knowing little smile. She might be lousy at reading subtle non-verbal cues and tells – but she had Tony’s measure when it came to his total inability to handle positive reinforcement. It spoke volumes about his upbringing to the HR expert who had a post-grad degree in psychology.

“Okay, well I guess I should go say hi?” he said, not sounding fully convinced of the wisdom of such a course of action.

Delores nodded. “Agent Todd surprised me. She’s grown up since going to Norfolk. I think she might welcome having a chat with you,” she encouraged him. “And Tony, thank you for my Knee-High Cherry Pie doll. You have no idea how much it means to me,” she said warmly.

Later that night when she was slipping into bed beside Kevin who was reading Hairy Maclary of Donaldson Dairy out loud to her, her thoughts returned to her Knee-High Cherry Pie doll and her fear that Tony had unearthed her biggest secret. Everyone assumed that she didn’t get what she wanted because the doll had been sold out and while it had been incredibly popular that Christmas, it wasn’t why she didn’t get one. The simple and complicated reason she didn’t get one that Christmas was because her parents flat-out refused to buy it for her.

And she had to wonder. Tony was an experienced investigator – had he discovered the secret that she’d tried hard to bury?

It was a distinct possibility but if so, what did it mean for her? Anthony DiNozzo was no Leroy Jethro Gibbs, going around digging up peoples’ buried skeletons to use against them.

It hadn’t escaped Marla or Delores’ attention what happened after SECNAV failed to secure Gibbs’ freedom. Davenport wasn’t able to persuade SAC Lina Reyes to withdraw the charges against Gibbs, and he’d been found guilty of assaulting a federal agent. Several months later, an investigative journalist broke the story complete with photographs to back their claims that the ‘happily married’ Secretary of the Navy visited a sex worker several times a month where she could swaddle, diaper him, feed him baby food and he could suck on a pacifier. There were other even more salacious details of their activities that were eaten up by an outraged public and ensured his political goose was cooked. The subsequent scandal forced him to retire, his wife divorced him, taking him for pretty much every dime he had, and his kids stopped talking to him. Any hopes of a further career in politics disappeared faster than a toupee on a windy day.

But Anthony DiNozzo Junior wouldn’t use any knowledge he’d uncovered to threaten her. Delores knew that he was better than that!

finis

---