Chapter 3 - NCIS

"Hey, Probie, get me a picture of the Boss-man! On the double!"

"What, Tony, you wanna put him as your desktop image?"

"Yeah, right. Oh come on, have you seen this site? You upload your photo and it makes you look like you're living in the '50s or '60s and so on, you know, really… vintage. Real fun!"

"So it makes you look…old?" Ziva was confused again. Although, Tony suspected, she was just toying with him sometimes.

"No, Zee-vah, you stay the same age, just look … old-fashioned. On second thought, I don't need to make Gibbs old-fashioned… "

"Grab your gear!" Gibbs was pleased to see the speed with which his three agents geared up, DiNozzo of course fumbling to close that stupid make-over site.

"What do we have boss?"

"Dead marine, hit and run, Henry Park. You'll be next if I see myself as a hippie, DiNozzo" he threw over his shoulder as he entered the elevator.

Things looked easy for a change, Tony thought, as they were almost finished processing the crime scene. The ride there was short, much to everyone's satisfaction, evidence in plain sight, plus there were three witnesses who saw the car hitting Lieutenant Kent as he crossed the street. They even had a partial number. So this was going to be a piece of cake, right?

Back in the squad-room everything still seemed easy.

"Ziva…"

"I'll put a BOLO on the car, check with the LEOs"

"DiNozzo…"

"Check his records, see where he was stationed, talk to his CO"

"McGee…"

"Yeah…, boss, we've got a problem here…". That was when things started to be less easy.

"What, McGee?"

"I was checking the lieutenant's cell phone and noticed there were two cards inside. One is what you would expect to find, except there's only a single number he called; no address book, no other calls. The problem is the second card – it's a memory card containing some photos…" he clicked to put the images on the plasma.

There were a number of photos of some reports, Air Force logo, big red 'Classified' stamp on each of them.

Not so easy case then. "Oh crap…"

"Boss, Lieutenant Kent was stationed at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, been there for a year and a half… not much about what he was actually doing at an Air Force base…"

Ziva interrupted "He was getting combat pay though"

"Hey boss, isn't Major Samantha Carter also stationed at Cheyenne Mountain?" Tony grinned widely.

Gibbs just growled. This was not something he wanted to deal with.

"McGee, what's in those reports?"

"You want me to read them boss? They are classified material…"

"They're already up on the plasma McGee, might as well see what this is all about before someone pulls the plug"

They all read in silence for several minutes. Gibbs was, of course, the first to snap.

"What the hell is this? Some sort of a code? What is 'P3X-535' and an 'SG team' and who the hell are the 'Goa'uld' and 'Jaffa' ?"

"I don't know boss, but this is pretty big stuff. What they're describing here is heavy combat, and our victim is mentioned several times…"

"I can see that DiNozzo" Gibbs felt a headache coming. "It's signed by a Major Castleman, SG-5. Show me the next one too"

Scrolling directly to the end of the second report only made things a lot worse.

"This is signed by a Colonel J. O'Neill, SG-1. What is that, Gibbs?" Ziva piped in.

"How am I supposed to know that, Ziva?" he snapped, before feeling somehow guilty. He might as well tell them, they were gonna find out anyway. "I do know he's Sam's CO"

"Oh…"

"Yeah… " They read the laconic report faster than the last one. "Not a big fan of paper-work, huh, O'Neill?" Gibbs thought. Sam indeed had a big role in the report, both in some combat situations and in a scientific capacity, concerning something called 'naquada'. "Double crap!"

"McGee, I'll be in MTAC. You find out what you can about Castleman and O'Neill, and really dig! Just make sure you don't trigger their alerts this time!"

Gibbs was getting more and more frustrated by the minute. With Vance for his diplomatic crap, with Major Castleman and the entire Air Force for their stone-walling and with the bald Major General he knew from the Pentagon party a while back.

"…so you understand Director, this is a matter of national security and we'll be taking over the investigation"

Gibbs butted in before Vance had the chance to agree.

"Sir, with all due respect, we already read those reports, and we have a dead marine down in Autopsy. You might as well read us in, at least that way we won't be able to talk about any of this"

"Gibbs!" Vance's eyes bulged.

"I would advise against that, Agent Gibbs, I'm sure you are aware of the consequences" the general paused for a few moments "However, considering you were almost brought into the program once, I'll see what I can do. Tell your team to stop searching my people's files, though. Right now, agent Gibbs"

"Yes sir"

O'Neill's face was up on the plasma when Gibbs finally exited MTAC. "Abby would like him" he thought ruefully "and so does Sam". Sam – they had met only three or four times in the past year, and not for a couple of months, both of them having very busy schedules. They talked on the phone and e-mailed sometimes but it wasn't exactly the same. He missed her as a friend and, well, he missed their other activities. "No wonder I'm so cranky…" he thought. And now this case which was likely to complicate things further.

Downstairs, Ziva was eyeing the colonel's photo with admiration, and Gibbs was surprised and almost scared to realize he felt a pang of jealousy. He apparently didn't have any problems with his lover carrying a torch for the man, but he was getting annoyed that his co-worker did? "Better to not go there, Jethro" he thought, moving from his spot above the squad-room.

"Stop the search and tell me what you've got so far. And by the way, you triggered the alerts again, McGee"

"What? How…"

"Don't care. So?"

"Not much about Major Castleman. He did a tour in Iraq a while back in a search-and-rescue unit, he was assigned to Cheyenne Mountain as a captain five years ago, promoted to major a year later, no spots on his record. He was apparently injured several times in the last years, all listed as training accidents, has a wife and two sons"

"What about O'Neill?"

"Well, his record is definitely thicker, but most of it is un-accessible. A pilot, multiple tours in Iraq, activity in South America, East Germany and some other places – lots of blacked-out info here; his plane was shot down once in Iraq and he had to crawl to the Kuwait border by himself, with several broken bones. Took him nine days" Tony gasped, and with the corner of his eye Gibbs could see Ziva's eyes widen. He had to admit he was also impressed. "There's more. He was apparently left behind on some op gone bad and he was taken prisoner by the Iraqis. He was held for four months and it took another four until he was able to get back to active duty"

"Jesus…"

"Yeah"

"Special ops, boss?"

"Towards the black-ish side, DiNozzo"

"He and his wife got divorced after his only son shot himself with his service weapon. He never remarried" Gibbs couldn't help the shudder. How the man recovered from that, he couldn't grasp. Or maybe he didn't recover.

McGee continued. "Shortly after he was sent in an unknown location by a general West, on what appears to have been a suicide mission"

"No wonder…" Tony murmured under his breath.

"However, he came back and resigned from the Air Force, was recalled a year later by a General George Hammond at Cheyenne Mountain. Since then, he's been working in something called Deep Space Radar Telemetry, is the team leader for a unit called SG-1 – I have no idea what that stands for- and is also Hammond's second-in-command. Lots of medals and commendations, including some directly from the President. Lots of injuries also, again 'training accidents'. They're either really clumsy there, or…"

"Deep Space whatever sounds like bull. Not even the Air Force would waste someone like that on a desk job"

"Ya think, DiNozzo?"