JAG – Meeting before Rose Garden

Summary: What if Harm and Mac met before We the People, would that change their relationship?

Rating: T – for now just to be safe (may change to M in later chapters)

Spoilers: Skeleton Crew(s1e22), We the People(s2e01) and later episodes in later chapters, could develop into crossover with X-Files, Stargate, Army Wives and Good Witch

Disclaimer: JAG belongs to Donald Bellisario, Bellisarius, Productions, Paramount, and CBS. I own nothing but the plot twists and any OC that I will introduce.

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Prologue – Off the record

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2200 Zulu, 2nd August 1996, over Adriatic Sea

The incident itself was bad. The investigation was even worse and now she had to deliver the report and some additional secret info for some off the record Navy Intelligence investigation. So she, Marine major Sarah MacKenzie ended up on board of C-130 on bumpy flight to Naples. The order came from the Washington big shots. The whole screw up was now in the hands if intelligence community and she was caught in the middle.

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0700 Zulu, 3rd August 1996, Naples, Italy

It was another investigation of minor problem concerning US Navy personnel during their stay in port between missions in Adriatic sea. One Chief and few Italian fishermen were involved in fight that resulted in three of them being transported to hospital. Trial, if the events would go that far, was to be held in Naples, but as fleet JAG did not want any international incident during Bosnia operations Harm and Meg was sent here.

Most of the investigation was done with cooperation with Italian police and their department of justice. It should have been straight two or three days stay but Italian officials, at least the one they had to co-work with did not work on weekends so they ended with two free days.

Since he was cleared from charge of murder of Diane Schonke, his partner was more and more involved in operation of Naval Intelligence. And they used her free days to do some off the record help with one case in Bosnia. And as the problem involved marines, army and air force personnel Meg asked for his help, after all, he was still naval aviator, sort of.

So he was now heading to off the main tourist area small cafe in the old portion of Naples. When he entered the restaurant Meg waved to him from the corner table where she and another woman was siting and enjoying what seemed like glass of water.

"Harm, I'm glad you were able to make it this fast here."

"No problem," said Harm and smiled to his partner. "So why you need my help?"

"You know about friendly fire incident from last month. The one when Air Force send few bombs to marine and army posts. Mac, here, was part of the investigation team and,"

Harm looked at the other woman, Mac, for the first time.

Was it possible? Was she a ghost of Diane? I'm only imagining or I already lost my mind from all the summer sun?

Harm had the deer caught in flashlight look was for so long that Meg had to shook him to get some reaction from him.

"Harm, you OK?"

"What?"

"I said, are you OK?"

He had to shake his head to get rid of the picture of murdered friend. "Yes, just déjà vu."

"So, you are Harm? Major Sarah MacKenzie, JAG from our join base in Bosnia. But you can call me Mac." said Mac and with a smile offered Harm her hand to shake. After all he looked great and she was not opposed to spend some time with him.

With picture of Diane still not completely gone, he forced himself to small smile and took Mac's hand. "Hi, its just that you look like my friend from Academy."

Now Meg figured out why Harm had that reaction, this marine looked just like Lt. Schonke, Harm sweetheart that was murdered not two months ago. "I'm sorry, I did not realized this, Harm."

"No problem, I will just have to remember that Mac is not Diane."

Sarah MacKenzie now looked puzzled, who was that Diane and who was she to him? He looked like seeing ghost or something like it.

Now that this was cleared and waiter finely came to them and was asking if they wanted more drinks. "We will have three more," said Meg and soon each of them had cold drink before them.

When the waiter left Meg returned to the center of this meeting. "So back to the problem, the FF incident. It was labeled as pilot error after someone shot at him."

As Mac was part of team that investigated and covered the facts it was her responsibility to tell the true. "What we left out of the report was that the shooting was not by AA guns but by Stingers."

Harm was curious, yes some Stingers handled to Afghan fighters in 80's was still probably ready to use, but most people expected them to be in the hands of Muslim militant groups, not Serbians. "How do know that it was Stingers and not some Russian or Chinese missiles?"

"Easy, the IFF send the Stingers away from our jets. Seems like CIA made sure that our own planes do not get shoot down if our support to Afghans was aimed to us."

Meg was the one who would later need to write the report so she needed to have all the facts straight. "So Harm, would you be able to tell if they shoot at you with our missile or some other one?"

"No, there is no time flying these low recon patrols. The IFF works with the systems in our weapons and the planes have the active parts that says 'I'm friend' its the other side that have to divert the actual attack. Most of our weapons are FF proof, if you have IFF on both sides."

Mac did heard nearly the same during the investigation from both Air Force and intelligence officers. "That's what Air Force pilots said, and our Marines and Army units were just in the same area as the attackers."

"NI thinks that some Serbian commanders wanted us to shoot at our units by firing from the same area where ground units were at the time."

Not that this was out of the question, but Harm did not believed that. "Even with current rules of engagement where pilots could retaliate when someone shoot at them, they should have locations of our ground forces in the tactical maps."

Both Mac and Meg sighed at this comment. Yes that was the theory, the reality was somewhat different. "Digital battlefield is still not as accurate as we would like. You were in Desert Storm so you know about the problem with Air Force/Army systems and the compatibility problems with Navy. Marines still have only few of the new units and with all the patrols our ground forces do, that is not enough. And the times and positions inserted to the maps before takeoffs are not that accurate as there are delays on the ground a lot of the times."

Harm knew that if something similar did happen again and the plane was navy one he would be probably sent to investigate. After all he was former pilot and so most of the problems on carries was assigned to him. "You know that it could had been a lot worse, what if we bombed Russian or some other forces, it would not be covered so easily. Meg, I hope you do not expect me to participate in any digging to find out from where the missiles came and if there are more of them."

"Do not worry, that is not our problem, I was only asked to be part of this on the how part and help with covering up. And Mac did bring me some of the materials that I needed for this and will be returning them later tomorrow. You know, the spooks do not trust our secure communication"

'Good to know that' thought Harm. And since it seemed that the work part of this meeting was over he wanted to get to know the mirror image of Diane. This marine major Sarah MacKenzie. "So how is it going on the ground, Mac?"

She was playing with the glass of tonic water with lemon. All she wanted was to steal few hours on the beach before the return to the Bosnia, not that she would mind spending them with Harm. After all they were not in same chain of command and she knew that with only short time they had getting intimate was probably out of question. And her choices with guys was poor in the past so this could be change to good. "It's not that bad now, but I have less than two months to the end of my tour there. So I try hard to get as much experience of this as possible before my orders get me some office desk somewhere. Not that I do not like trial work, but the cases out here are more challenge."

"You know we have office jobs and we end up leading investigation all over the world. So do not count desk job that boring. We had our share of combat situation on our hands this year."

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Next Chapter – We the People (how would this meeting change the episode)