Part Three
Nashville
-ABS News reporters in Nashville studio have observed dozens of people being arrested outside their bureau building by RUS Army personnel, as protests throughout that nation's capital continue into their fourth day-
-U.S. Air Force Falcons flying out of Barksdale are making regular patrols now along the state border with the RUSA state of Arkansas. This comes less than 48 hours after RUS Air Force Hound Dogs briefly flew over the Louisiana border town of Ida. Ida is less than an hour north of Shreveport, where Barksdale Air Force Base is-
-human rights observers list the RUSA near the bottom regarding treatment of dissidents; LGBTQ rights; and freedom of religion for adherents of non-Christian and non-Jewish faiths-
-"I earned my medical degree at Vanderbilt. One night, the RFBI goons came for me because I participated in the Freedom March there in Nashville. I was sent to one of their 'rehabilitation centers' - gulags - and am here only through the grace of God and an angel who helped me escape over the border into Texas"-
-traffic throughout Metro Nashville will be slower than usual. Drivers should be mindful of checkpoints at all major intersections and on the interstates. U.S. 70/Lebanon Pike is closed to the public from Joint Base Hermitage all the way into downtown, so drivers need to plan on alternate routes. I-40 will be heavier than normal as a result.
In about 40 minutes all streets in the Capitol District, Jefferson to Commerce and First to Davis Boulevard will be shut down. Also, all flights in and out of Nashville International Airport will be delayed until FAA officials give the all-clear. Travelers should plan for a long stay-
Dagan was responsible for getting his team and DiNozzo where they needed to go, and he didn't plan to waste their time in a virtual parking lot.
He got off Interstate 65 at Briley Parkway, which had plenty of traffic that was moving along at a steady pace, unlike the mess on I-65. "We are taking the long way into town and going the back roads," Levi explained.
DiNozzo had long concluded that Dagan was either mute or anti-social, but he was doing a good job behind the wheel. He was also a damned good shot, and DiNozzo didn't want to think about being on the other end of Dagan's scope.
Lemuel, he figured, was a little odd (constantly referencing 'ancient' television shows and movies and streaming internet programs), but came across as a decent guy.
Levi, in DiNozzo's judgment, ran the operation with the other men dutifully following his lead and acting in support roles. Levi also seemed to be holding something back; he glanced at DiNozzo on several occasions as if he wanted to tell him something.
After another one of those looks from Levi, DiNozzo figured it was as appropriate a time as any to push him on his ultimate intentions.
"Look, guys, I appreciate the ride," DiNozzo said as the van drove through miles and miles of trees, government installations and concrete public housing projects. "What do you want with me?"
"Do you not know yet?" Levi answered.
DiNozzo looked at him in frustration. "If I wanted a parable, pal, I'd open a New Testament. You've gone to a lot of trouble to kidnap me and take me somewhere. You're either who you say you are and you have a reason for doing all of this, or you're from the government and you're here to kill me."
Levi smiled. "You are as they said you were," he said; noting the frustration in DiNozzo's face, Levi decided to come clean.
"There is a reason we are freeing you now, and it has to do with what you know," he said. "You were there in Washington, before it was destroyed. You overheard what those men and women intended. You were part of the operation that should have thwarted their plans."
"Sonofabitch..." DiNozzo's voice trailed off. "After all these years...Woods. You're taking me straight to the bastard."
"No, but close," Levi said. "Look around you."
The land along Briley Parkway had been mostly rural up until the last decade; DiNozzo noticed miles of concrete and glass buildings from the I-65 exit to the Cumberland River.
"Some of these buildings are not listed on any maps," Levi told him. "Those are the places the government prefers not to expose to outsiders."
"Outsiders?" DiNozzo said.
"The public. Media, inside and outside the country. Other countries' intelligence agencies, even their Russian 'friends'."
"Because of what they're doing."
"Remember the truck we dispatched? Some of those drugs either came from those buildings, or were to be used there. They are just a few of the places where this nation's government takes its dissidents to eliminate them as threats."
"How do they define 'eliminate'?"
"If the drugs do not render the dissident docile and dumb, then death is the next step."
The rest of the ride over the river into far western Nashville was silent. Lost in thought, DiNozzo didn't notice Dagan pulling onto I-40 West.
"It would explain so many disappearances," he said softly to himself. "Accidents not reported in the news, obituaries not posted anywhere."
DiNozzo then began to think about other things he had seen in the media or heard second- and third-hand; terrorist alerts, public figures disappearing and not being mentioned again, portions of videos and music being revised or erased with no explanation. How much of what he, and the public, had been told was the truth or a lie?
He looked out his window and saw a string of fast-food restaurants, hotels and fuel stations rapidly passing by. The first street sign he could spot told him they were on White Bridge Pike, in front of Southern Baptist Community College.
"Woods was there at that bar," DiNozzo said, turning to look Levi in the eye. "Woods, the junior Congressman who became President of his own banana republic." Levi remained silent. "You're taking me to him, aren't you?"
"No. It is too risky, and you have a greater purpose than to confront him like in some bad movie. You have a story to tell."
"And what if I don't want to tell it? What if I want to be left the hell alone, left to die in peace?" DiNozzo shot back, with anger beginning to grow in his soul. "Nothing's gonna change-"
"It must," Levi interrupted, forcefully. "It must change."
"Took you long enough to get around to doing something. Long enough to grab me from a safe place, dammit! I was safe, secure-"
Levi grabbed the older man by his shoulders. "You are NOT safe nor secure. No one here, no one in this world is safe nor secure. The time has come to act, Mr. DiNozzo, whether you want to or not. And you must act."
"I'm too old to be a hero, son," he muttered.
Levi sighed, pulled out his communicator to open its photo app, and began scrolling through dozens of photos until he found the one he wanted to show DiNozzo. Locking it onto the screen, Levi shoved his communicator's screen right in DiNozzo's face. "She. She is your reason."
A sharp chill went up DiNozzo's spine, and his eyes shot open as shock and sorrow converged upon him. After staring at the photo, he turned to Levi, anger in his eyes.
"Asshole," he growled. "Tali's dead. My daughter is DEAD."
Unnerved, Levi said softly, "look again."
"I know who she is-"
"Look. Again," Levi said. DiNozzo took the communicator and examined the photo. The girl could be Tali, but...she wasn't. Her eyes, her smile, her chin, all reminiscent of his daughter but different enough to confirm he was looking at a different girl. So why was Levi showing him her picture? Was she a long-lost daughter?
DiNozzo started to give the communicator back to Levi but caught himself. He took another close look at the girl in the picture, then looked at Levi, then back at the picture.
A million things seemed to go through DiNozzo's mind almost instantaneously, all of them pointing back at the daughter who he, until now, presumed to be dead.
"Mr. DiNozzo. The young girl in the picture is my daughter," Levi said. "Her name is Caitlin."
"Wait-what, who?"
Levi put a hand on DiNozzo's shoulder. "Her mother is Tali."
DiNozzo fell back into his seat in shock and stayed silent for a while longer, until the truck was near Vanderbilt University.
"Tali's dead," DiNozzo said softly. "They told me she was."
"Whomever told you that was given false information," Levi replied. "Tali wasn't there at the bombing. Mossad spirited her away through a series of safe houses, and finally, back to Israel."
"And nobody thought to tell me," DiNozzo growled.
"We could not, and if you think you will understand why. We expose you, and there were many people who would not hesitate to use her to bring you into the open."
Knowing Levi was right, DiNozzo cursed anyway. "Tali...you fathered her child. That means she grew up...where in hell is she?"
Levi hung his head, and DiNozzo saw a flash of pain in the younger man's eyes. "Upon arriving in Israel in 2023, she was told her father was on a long mission. She was raised by Mossad-"
"'Raised by Mossad.'"
"Like her mother."
Ziva. Another knife to DiNozzo's gut. "Mossad made sure she followed in her mother's footsteps. No matter that her mother was dead. No matter I-"
"Ziva David had sufficient financial holdings and investments to provide for Tali. Mossad is many things, Mr. DiNozzo, but heartless is not one of them. We raised her, and yes, trained her to be Mossad. She was...has been an excellent officer."
"Was? What aren't you telling me?"
"I met her on a mission. We fell in love. We resolved to do our jobs without our relationship getting in the way, and we did, until she became pregnant. And, refused an abortion. She took time off, gave birth to Caitlin, raised her for the first six months before returning to active duty."
"What happened to my daughter?"
"She disappeared three years ago during a mission in the Balkans. We do not know if she is alive or dead, and believe me, we have looked. You must understand, the Balkan War has made things difficult to do anything."
DiNozzo looked out his window and saw many more Metro Nashville police cars on the street - West End Avenue - along with Tennessee National Guardsmen and some people in suits he swore were federal agents.
"Where is my granddaughter? Did you leave her behind while you go on her own missions? And why is she named Caitlin?"
Levi looked at DiNozzo hard. "I am a father, not just Mossad. I have raised Caitlin on my own, going on missions only when necessary. Such as the one to find you. She is in a safe location, in Israel. As to her name, it was Tali's idea. Tali had been told about a brave woman whose life was taken far too soon by her long-dead uncle. She told me she could not learn what her mother thought about that, but she herself thought it an appropriate tribute, one that her father would surely appreciate."
DiNozzo smiled. It had been too long since he had thought about Kate, or anyone else from his previous life with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, without feeling like the devil had shoved a knife in his gut.
The E-500 pulled off West End Avenue into a strip mall near the university. While the Mossad men watched, DiNozzo's beard and mustache were shaved off, his long hair cut and dyed brown; he took one look in the mirror and swore he was 20 years younger.
That would prove to be the easy part.
DiNozzo had kept himself in remarkable shape for his age, despite the artificial hip that badgered him. However, he would be taxed severely by the subsequent long walk from the strip mall to the center of campus. He managed to make it past the university's football stadium to the medical center where his hip was about to give out (he was very grateful for the wheelchair that Dagan pilfered from the emergency room).
As Dagan wheeled him along, they saw an increased police presence - not just campus security, but dozens of men and women whom he pegged to be undercover cops or feds. "I hope they have more important things to worry about than a stolen wheelchair," DiNozzo quipped.
"They do indeed," Levi said, nodding towards the faint shouting DiNozzo suddenly noticed. The four men made their way towards the source of the noise: hundreds of students had taken over the Commons area. As they approached the Magnolia Lawn, the shouts became more comprehensible:
"LET OUR PEOPLE GO"
"NO TO RUSSIA! NO TO RUSSIA!"
"ALL PEOPLE HAVE RIGHTS"
"WE DON'T NEED
TO BE REFORMED
WE NEED OUR
FREEDOM
BACK "
The students were orderly, and campus security (and the undercover cops/agents) seemed content to monitor them. DiNozzo and his Mossad acquaintances surreptitiously moved past the protestors, heading towards their destination. DiNozzo thought that they were pushing their luck, or they had unseen friends nearby...
...or they were about to be made.
On Edgehill Avenue, near 18th Avenue South, the foursome was stopped by an undercover agent, who produced his FBI badge.
Without his glasses, DiNozzo had difficulty reading the man's identification, but he didn't need to. The agent showed the ID to Levi, who nodded to Dagan and Lemuel; the agent then showed the ID to DiNozzo, who took another look at the badge.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
United States of America
Philadelphia, Pa.
"You ever get confused?" he told the agent. "You know how many FBIs there are in this part of the world, now?"
"Tell me about it," he said, turning to look at Levi. "Coast is clear. They're ready for you."
"We're going right around the corner," Levi said to DiNozzo, who saw something familiar about the young undercover agent. He told Dagan to stop and turn around, and the agent walked back towards him.
"CIA?"
"Philly version, sir. Is that what you wanted to ask me?"
DiNozzo took a long look at the young man. "You look like someone I knew...but I can't put my finger on it."
"My name is Ronald Sacks Jr.," he said. "Good luck in there."
Sacks. DiNozzo hadn't heard that name in decades, and thought it to be one hell of a coincidence. Then he remembered what an old friend said about coincidences, and found himself in front of Vanderbilt's First Amendment Center.
DiNozzo was wheeled up the building's handicap-accessible ramp through the front doors. The only people in the building were students and campus security personnel who seemed to know Levi; DiNozzo was wheeled into what looked like an old-style broadcast studio. There were two leather-bound chairs in front of a small hand-held camera propped up on a desk.
"This is the end game," Levi told him. "The reason you are here. You have a story to tell."
DiNozzo got up from his wheelchair, the pain in his hip nearly gone, and settled into one of the plush leather chairs. "Who's going to interview me?"
"No one. You'll just tell the story of how an NCIS investigation led to the dissolution of the United States," Levi replied.
"That's all?" DiNozzo remembered the sequence of events as clearly now as when he lived through them.
In 2020, NCIS Director Leroy Jethro Gibbs called DiNozzo at his apartment in Paris, where he was raising Tali. Gibbs asked a favor DiNozzo couldn't turn down: check up on the Undersecretary of the Navy and his involvement with Russian interests.
David Woods proved to be shifty; DiNozzo found just enough on the man to render him suspicious of something, just not direct involvement with the Russian government.
Several months later, DiNozzo's friend and former teammate - Timothy McGee, now the Special Agent in Charge of the Major Case Response Team in Washington - asked his help. NCIS needed another set of eyes in France; Woods was up to something in Marseille, and neither McGee nor Gibbs trusted the agent in charge of the local field office.
DiNozzo uncovered much more than he expected: Woods had met with Russian interests who were disenchanted with the current U.S. President and desirous of a change in the White House. Woods promised he knew people who could make that happen.
The contents of a laptop copied by DiNozzo onto a thumb drive divulged something even bigger: Woods could be connected to militias and extremists who were known to advocate for the violent overthrow of the federal government. DiNozzo got the information to NCIS, just before the Secretary of the Navy died in a plane crash.
Woods took over as SecNav, and Gibbs ordered an investigation into the plane crash that was all but forgotten in a series of deaths of prominent politicians, culminating with the poisoning of the President himself right before the major party conventions. As the Vice-President was sworn in as the new President, militia groups began attacks all over the nation. Chaos quickly overtook the country, quelled only through martial law.
DiNozzo returned to America out of obligation to his country and to NCIS, working with his former team. The economic crash that December was the beginning of the end for the old United States; by September 2021 six people were claiming to be the President, while secession movements were gaining ground in the states of Washington, Arizona, Michigan and Florida.
Woods by then was Secretary of Defense, supporting rogue generals and admirals who went against the wishes of the White House and Pentagon. NCIS found leads suggesting that Woods was coordinating efforts by American interests to destabilize their own government and military. It took several more months to connect the dots, but evidence was finally compiled that named Woods as the lead conspirator.
The piece that tied everything together was DiNozzo's secret taping of a meeting Woods had with his co-conspirators in February 2022. He took that tape to Gibbs, who packed it up with the rest of the evidence to present to the President.
Gibbs never made it, as his car exploded in flames outside the Navy Yard. The new director - appointed by Woods - ordered a halt to the investigation. DiNozzo, McGee and his team, and the Office of Special Projects ignored the order; days later, DiNozzo received an email hinting at a threat to the lives of he, his family, his coworkers and those he knew and loved.
DiNozzo was helpless to prevent their deaths.
In the end, only he and Tali were left. After Tali's presumed death, DiNozzo could barely function and was placed deep undercover by friendly elements within the FBI and Mossad.
Washington was destroyed by 'domestic terrorists' days later, leading to the formal split of the U.S. DiNozzo changed his identity every so often, always looking over his shoulder.
"And now you're asking me to recount it all over again," DiNozzo said to Levi, who sat in the other chair. "Why? What good is it going to do?"
"There's one more thing I need to show you, Mr. DiNozzo," Levi said. He pulled up a series of documents on his communicator, changed the font size to one that DiNozzo could easily read, and handed the communicator to the older man. DiNozzo read through the Mossad files: Woods, who had gone from SecDef to Congressman to Speaker of the House to President, had his prints on nearly every dirty activity on the continent.
"Woods has ordered the assassinations of prominent political, military and civilian personnel in every other North American country," Levi explained. "He ordered his military to build the mobile nuclear launch sites in the Ozarks and Virginia and central Florida. He ordered the assassination of the Scottish prime minister and the sinking of the luxury liner in the Atlantic."
DiNozzo swore. "What good is mine telling my story going to do?"
"How does it feel, to be the only thing between peace and total destruction?" Levi asked him. "Right now, despite what is going on behind the scenes, the world is at peace. But that will not last very long. The other American countries are, soon, going to take up arms against the RUSA. The RUSA will do the same, and we will be at war."
"Sounds like that's going to happen no matter what I do or don't do."
"There is one thing Woods is afraid of, Mr. DiNozzo. Losing public support...he rose to power through a disinformation campaign playing on the fears of Christian voters. He remains in power, but his America is no longer the free, safe country he promised. His power base is built on intimidation, bullying and lies. He is frightened of losing his base."
"If he loses his base...the whole thing falls apart."
"And that is where you come in. You are well-known, Mr. DiNozzo, by Woods's people who would kill you to protect their secrets, and by the underground who see you as an inspiration-"
"Me? How?"
"You came back and fought. You stayed and fought."
"I quit after Tali...after I thought she died."
"You're here, now, and I don't believe you came all this way to quit," Levi said. "When you tell your story to this country, and the world, that will spark a revolution we hope will dethrone the tyrant and lead to a reunification of the United States."
"You're asking a lot."
"Yes. But if we do nothing, nothing will be done." Levi looked past the camera to the production studio. With a nod from the producers, Levi turned to DiNozzo. "Do not worry about how we get your message out. Just tell your story, and let the people do the rest."
"Tell my story...right," DiNozzo said.
A minute later, video and audio channels across the RUSA were hijacked. Viewers saw DiNozzo's face, and as he spoke, a second revolution kicked into gear.
End