AN: I'm not sure of some of the terminology here, or whether a search warrant would be necessary... I've thrashed out as much as possible with USAFChief, who's been, again, a very great help – thanks, Chief! If anything's still wrong, blame me, not him; I've tried very hard to be accurate.

Oonagh's Faith

Chapter 6

The sun was quite high, the morning peaceful and still, when Oonagh Rourke pottered out of her bedroom and headed into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Those dear boys... she looked at the empty wine bottle and smiled. She'd known what they were up to, shame on them for getting an old woman tipsy... but she'd slept well, and her heart felt lighter.

She felt, rather than heard, something that could have been a chuckle from behind her; her breath caught in her throat and she turned, as quickly as she was able, towards the door. She looked across at her husband's chair – she couldn't see him, but he'd been there. The kettle forgotten for the moment, she walked across to the chair, and ran her hand along the high back.

"Ach, Acushla... no, I should have known... it's not time yet, is it?" She sat slowly down on the footstool beside the hearth. "You know I want to know how it turns out... And something's in the wind, isn't it? This time yesterday, I'd scarce heard of NCIS, and never of those two young men... but I had faith, Ardal... I still have. Even more now. I don't know how they got here – maybe you sent them – but they're here, and it's going to all be made right." She sat silently for a moment, and the leather of her husband's chair shone in a patch of sunlight. "I know what to do, love..." She patted the arm of the chair, and went back into the kitchen, where the ancient phone hung on the wall, and dialled the number of the kindly community lawyer that Father Barney had once put her in touch with.

NCISNCISNCIS

The team waited for the NTSB man to continue, and he said heavily, "Well, there was nothing wrong with Tim's instincts... " He sighed. "A question. Have you confirmed that the wreckage has been disposed of?"

"We have," Ziva said. "Yesterday, when Tony and Tim were out visiting Mrs Armstrong and Mrs Rourke, Abby and I tracked down the stored copies of all the records we could, and accessed them online. We also accessed the records of the DRMO, which controls re-use of resources, and confirmed that the remains had been scrapped, less than a year after the crash. I contacted them to ask if there had been undue haste, by comparison with others, and they said not, but said there was a note in the file asking to send confirmation to a number at JAG that it had been done. They were going to get back to me if they could ascertain the owner of the number at the time, but have not yet done so. I asked them to be discreet about it, in case there is anyone still at JAG who has contacts with Admiral Charlesworth."

"Hmph. Nice work, Ziva. Abbs."

Ziva smiled inside herself. She knew she was getting better at that side of the job, but what pleased her most was that these days she could be happy about being the one to stay and do it. When she first joined the team she'd have been insulted at being left behind; these days, the Action Woman knew how to be tranquil.

Paul Forrest nodded thoughtfully. "I'm not sure," he went on in the same unhappy tone, "just how much practical help I can be. No, the inquiry was not thorough enough – my team would have been ashamed to have done such a sketchy job. To be fair, reading through, I've seen nineteen different names on interim reports – far too many people to make a cohesive job. There's no proof, but it could have been a deliberate attempt to fog the issue; I don't know how a team could have worked well like that."

"Oonagh said that," Tony murmured softly.

"She was right, Tony. There were other clues, like the fact that I could find no evidence of anyone checking if a new rudder linkage was signed out of the stores,; evidence of that would have helped Rourke. An oversight? One person thinking another had done it? Don't they check? Read each other's reports?"

"Do parts have serial numbers?" Tim asked.

"They do, and on a well run base they'd be recorded, and who took them."

Tim hurried to his desk. "I'll go hunting," he said in a tone that suggested that well-run wouldn't be what he found, but he still wouldn't come up empty handed. Paul thought his slightly sceptical glance had gone unnoticed, until Tony flashed him a look that said 'believe it'.

"I wasn't hopeful about the physical evidence, I was pretty certain it would be gone, and even if you could re-open the case on photographic evidence and the word of one civilian expert witness, you'd never get a conviction on it. There are lots of tiny little technical points – take all day to explain – if you need me to put it all in writing in an affidavit I'll do it, but I still don't think it'd be enough."

"So what makes you certain that it was not Rourke, Paul?"

"Three things, none of which would hold up in court, Ziva. The process of elimination doesn't stand up; they really couldn't determine that no other part had failed, since so much was beyond recognition." The expert snorted. "OK, my feeling is that yes, the rudder was responsible... but there's no proof. Never was. The fact that the rudder's missing – it's too big to go missing. And for me, the fact that Rourke kept begging them to find it, insisting it'd prove he hadn't lied. Why would he say that if he'd not replaced it? Or if he'd tampered with it?" He looked at them all in turn. "If it exists, somewhere, like I said, we have to find that rudder."

There was silence for a few minutes, then Tim looked up from his screen to muse, "It was missing, but the tailplane was otherwise intact – so it didn't go into the ground at the crash site."

"So, it was taken from the crash site, or it landed somewhere else, and was found," Tony said. "How big was it? How heavy? Could a farmer with a tractor take it to roof his hen house?"

Gibbs began to rumble alarmingly, but Paul chuckled. "It happens... although the Navy should have canvassed locally and put the word out about penalties for 'appropriating their evidentiary property'." He made quote marks.

Tony wasn't deterred. "But it wasn't there. If a local didn't take it, somebody did. Like, the bad guys."

Paul nodded. "It wouldn't need a tractor. Two strong guys could get it onto a pickup."

"The most local bad guys were Naylor and Iverson," Ziva added. "It is cold-blooded... If they were ready, because they knew the aircraft was going to crash, they could be there long before anyone else... but how would they know where to be?"

The expert shook his head grimly. "They'd know." All eyes were on him; he couldn't remember ever having a more attentive audience. He looked at Ziva; his eyes had been in the habit of twinkling when he spoke to her or Abby, but not now. "I'm sure you have a map of the airfield."

"Of course," the Israeli said gravely. "Road map, satellite or air map?"

"The last, please." The air map appeared at once. "Here's runway orientation, SW to NE... decided by prevailing winds in the area. That's this symbol here. Standard procedure is to take off into the wind, so you see they were heading north-east. Now, their destination was Norfolk, so they were going to head south east. They had to reach a prescribed altitude before turning, which takes them to about here." He used the cursor to demonstrate. "They'd begin a three hundred and sixty degree turn, keyhole shape... and that's when great strain would be put on a damaged or weakened rudder part. My feeling is that it would fail somewhere on this line -" he used the cursor again - " putting them down here..."

Ziva overlaid the satellite image with the crash site marked on it; it was not far off-centre of the area Paul had indicated. They all looked impressed, but he took no visible pride in being right. "If the rudder tore off," he went on, "even if it landed in the forested area not the scrubland, you'd still find it before the official searchers, because you'd be looking on this line -" he moved the cursor again - "and you'd know what you were looking for."

Once again, he looked round at them all. "You've put together a plausible scenario from what you've learned so far – I'd be prepared to add to it that they got to that rudder first."

Abby spoke for the first time. "What did they do with it?"

"Take it far away from the debris trail, and bury it?" Gibbs suggested.

Tony winced. "We could find it with GPR, but only if we knew roughly where to look."

"They might have destroyed it," Abby said. "Smashed it up into unrecognisable lumps and dumped it in a landfill, or sold it for scrap to someone who didn't care what it was, and if they did that we'll never be able to prove that Oonagh's husband didn't do it, or catch the -"

"We'll catch them, Abbs," Gibbs reassured her. "One way or another."

"Oonagh, huh? Mrs Rourke?" Paul asked curiously. "You're on first name terms?"

"She's a lovely lady, Paul; you'd like her," Tony told him. "If you think you smell bias here, you're right – but only since yesterday afternoon, and we'd started investigating before we met her."

Tim looked up from his computer again. "Her husband was another victim of the crash he was blamed for, and so's she," he said grimly. "I'll tell you about it when we have time... you'll have to meet her." He clicked a few times, and fed some information to the big screen; it was a list of serial numbers. Paul recognised it instantly.

"You found the parts log, then? Why didn't the investigators?"

Tim shook his head. "Much as we expected, there were no parts logs to be found anywhere."

"Then what -"

Tony held up a long finger. "Patience, Chief... he's not called McGeek for nothing..."

Tim raised his eyes to heaven, and went on, "I found out who manufactured such things, and checked their sales records. These parts were dispatched to Lavall Field in the January before the crash." He highlighted two numbers. "These are the only two rudder linkages for those planes. One of those numbers got the blame."

"Well I'll be -" Paul Forrest remembered there were ladies present. He mimed taking his hat off to Tim, who shrugged.

"Doesn't get us any closer to finding it."

Nobody spoke for a while, until Tony noticed Ziva's stillness, and the frown between her perfectly shaped eyebrows. He put his head on one side in that way that Tim was familiar with, and said, "What?" She hesitated. "Zi?"

"Well... what if he did not destroy it?"

"He. Not they. Do you mean Naylor?"

"Tony... I am no profiler, but what sort of a man did Commander Naylor strike you as?"

The SFA thought for a moment. "No substance. Ego without anything to back it up. Had to keep telling everyone how good he was in case we couldn't see it... you, me, that young apprentice he was having a cow at for nothing... all the people he transferred... we learned all that in the first five minutes. What are you thinking, Zi?"

"It is a long shot." She waited to see if she'd got the idiom wrong, but Tony just smiled.

"Long shots are all we've got at the moment."

Ziva sensed another impatient rumble building up from the direction of Gibbs, and said quickly, "Without substance... a man who needs to build himself up... perhaps he needs external things... perhaps he kept the rudder. As a trophy." She waited to be hooted down, but again, there was silence, until -

Gibbs seized his desk phone. "Ducky – ya got a minute?"

NCISNCISNCIS

Tim tracked down a lieutenant who'd worked at Lavall Field in the year before the crash, who confirmed that yes, they'd kept records, not only of new parts, but also the old ones that were replaced. Green, plastic backed ring-bound folders; he remembered them well.

Paul sat re-reading silently, thinking that there were nine men dead, not the original seven he'd been thinking of, and even if one was one of the killers, he'd been murdered himself. He looked at the personal details of the men; Iverson had a wife... another widow... he asked Abby about Oonagh Rourke, and ended up feeling as angry as the agents had.

Ziva, as the instigator of the idea and one of the two who'd met him, sat with Tony, Ducky and Gibbs, listening to the ME's thoughts on Naylor, from looking at his service record, and hearing what the agents had to say. Her Mossad days seemed very far away now... she felt strangely content at her own small (as she considered them) contributions to the team investigation, and marvelled at it all... how good this felt. Ducky had been listing his reasons for agreeing, and she was startled to realise she had hardly heard them. She shook herself and concentrated.

"...in short, yes, I believe Ziva may have made a very important observation. A keeper of trophies... quite likely. Now, how to prove it?"

Tony pushed his chair back and stretched. He grinned round at the others. "Got that covered," he said.

NCISNCISNCIS

They got a warrant, and waited until after sunset...

"Tony, I can't act," Paul protested urgently yet again as the agency sedan approached Lavall Field.

"That is no problem," a black clad Ziva said plainly from the back seat. "Tony can act enough for both of you."

"But -"

"Can you look hard? Like you mean business?" Tony was unperturbed.

"Hell, yeah," Paul said. "I just have to think of nine dead men."

"That's all you need to do, then. Don't say a word." He stuck his badge out of the window at the guard on the gate, and drove to the spot where he'd parked yesterday. "You ready, then?"

Paul nodded, working on the not saying a word angle already. He looked round to see if Ziva thought he was getting it right; she'd vanished into the dark.

"Ya OK, there?" Gibbs' voice sounded in his ear.

Paul checked for the twentieth time that his throat mike wasn't visible, and muttered "Yeah..."

"He's fine, Boss... sssh..." The muffled sound of a door opening... "Commander Naylor, Special Agent DiNozzo – you remember we met yesterday..."

"I remember. I can't imagine what's brought you back, Agent DiNozzo. I told you everything I knew then."

Tony unleashed his most vacuous personality. "Well, just a courtesy call really, and we don't want to duplicate your work... we're on our way up to Great Falls. You know we've been looking again at that C26A crash... you're not going to believe it... but we had reports that the rudder had turned up after all this time. Apparently a farmer thinks he's got it... found this chunk of metal and decided to fill a hole in his fence with it."

"That's ridiculous," Naylor said, his tone betraying nothing more than irritation, although his eyes slid away.

Tony was aware of Paul tensing up to his left; his posture becoming more upright if that were possible. Why? Be alert, DiNozzo...

"Dare say, but we've got to check it out. This is Chief Forrest, of NTSB... he's the expert... I wouldn't know a rudder if it bit me. So... you haven't heard about it? The intel didn't come from you?"

"Of course not. I'd hardly rate that as intelligence. I certainly wouldn't give it any credence."

Paul said suddenly, in a tone of disgust and impatience, "Ah, come on, DiNozzo, we're wasting time. Agent David was right. Let's go and get this over with."

'Agent David was right'... thought the guy said he coudn't act... Tony didn't turn a hair, although in the other car, waiting down the road (they hadn't wanted to arrive in an official looking convoy) Gibbs was thinking, 'what the hell..' ; as they stepped back into the open air, he simply raised his eyebrows. The older man was almost dancing on his tiptoes with glee as he seized Tony's elbow and spun him back to look cautiously through the window.

Naylor had picked up a paperweight from his out-tray, and was hefting it thoughtfully from one hand to the other.

"Ziva was right? That's a... a trophy?"

"That, DiNo," he was having trouble keeping to a whisper, "is a connecting bolt for any sort of linkage that needs strength at the articulation point. Like a rudder... and it's new. Unused."

They watched sickly, as Naylor trailed his fingertips down the four inch long steel rod and then put it in his back pocket. He went quickly out through a rear door.

"I am on him," Ziva said softly in their ears. "He's heading towards the north perimeter fence on foot. Don't let him see you..."

They headed in the general direction that Ziva had told them; they knew she was up ahead somewhere, but "Hey, don't worry, he won't see her," Tony told an anxious Paul.

"A line of concrete sheds, by the windsock," Ziva told them softly. "He is going to the last one on the right... unlocking it... he is going inside. There is no more need for concealment... Hurry...Are you close?" Four affirmatives in the earpieces – Gibbs and Tim were closing in too, and now broke cover fifty yards away. As they got closer, they could see, in the airfield's ambient light, that the shed door stood ajar, and Ziva lay on her stomach on the roof, hanging over the end, her gun drawn.

Paul, unarmed, stood back because he'd been told to. He didn't like it much, but he'd given his word. And Lin wouldn't like it if he went back with holes in him...

The three agents drew their weapons... Tony yanked the door open and Gibbs snapped a huge flashlight on. At the back of the shed, like the well-known rabbit in the headlights, Naylor stood frozen, holding the dusty piece of tarpaulin he'd dragged away to uncover a large, olive-drab painted piece of metal that stood against the wall.

Tony saw Oonagh's face in his mind. "Paul...?" he asked very softly.

The expert stepped forward. "Oh yes," he said just as softly, but his voice still sounded like the crack of doom. "That's the rudder from a C26A."

AN: Only read through once, in tearing hurry. Please excuse any mistakes.