Fallen Angels: Chapter 7

A/N: To everyone who commented in the last chapter how chauvinistic Gibbs is because of the whole 'she's a woman' comment: yes, there is that whole throwback issue (I'm thinking now of the episode Kill Ari, with Gibbs and Ducky and that conversation about how it's different because Kate was a woman), this is actually a somewhat justified statement. It hasn't been too long that the Marine Corps lifted the restriction on females in fighter pilot roles (the Navy was much more progressive), since it is a direct combat role. There were helicopter pilots first (I think there was a JAG episode involving a Marine helo pilot), since that can be a non-combat position, but fighter pilots are, by definition, in combat.

Anyway, I hope you continue to enjoy!


This time, when Gibbs entered the still-darkened hospital room, he wasn't wasting any time. "Captain McNamee," he barked, and immediately, two dark eyes flew open.

"Yeah?" she asked groggily. Gibbs pulled out his badge and held it up, earning him a few seconds of confusion before realization set in. As if trying to wake up as quickly as possible, the fighter pilot pulled herself up in bed before adjusting it to a more seated position. McGee didn't miss the wince on her face, which probably had to do with the sling on her left shoulder. "Sorry," she said once she had gotten herself arranged, now sounding almost awake. "What time is it?"

"About zero-six," Gibbs replied. The captain frowned slightly and nodded.

"And who're you? Navy Air Traffic Control?"

"NCIS," Gibbs informed her. Her frown deepened as she processed that latest bit of information.

"NCIS?" she finally echoed. "I didn't know NCIS investigated fighter crashes." Her eyes remained on Gibbs for a long minute, confusion still in them, before she finally turned to McGee, the first time she looked over at the younger agent since she woke up, and he felt his breath catch in his throat with the sudden memory.

The small freshman, dwarfed by her Johns Hopkins Swimming and Diving sweatshirt; her dark curls, still wet from her shower, pulled back into a quick ponytail; her face flushed in embarrassment at the loud squealing of the door that needed oiling as she entered the room a good five minutes after the study group began. "Take a seat," McGee said with a sigh, knowing that there was nothing he could say that would prompt her to show up on time for the next class session.

"Harley McNamee," he said with realization. The confusion she still wore with the situation deepened for a second, then disappeared, a slight smile playing on her lips.

"Tim McGee?" she asked, a short laugh escaping. "God. What're the odds of running into you here?" She held up her right hand. "Forget I said that. I don't want you to actually calculate it." He felt his face blushing with the reminder of what he had been like as a senior biomedical engineering major, or worse, how he must have seemed to the students in the introductory engineering course he was a teaching assistant for.

Gibbs was clearly uninterested in this trip down memory lane. "I'm Special Agent Gibbs. You obviously know Special Agent McGee. We have some questions for you about the night your plane went down."

McNamee nodded, clearly expecting that, her attention again fully focused on Gibbs. "What do you need to know?" she asked. "And I still don't know why this falls under NCIS' jurisdiction."

"Hoping you'd be able to help us with that," Gibbs replied. A puzzled look appeared quickly on McNamee's face, then was gone.

"We were scheduled to be on the Bush for a fifteen-day training mission," she began, her dark brown eyes quickly darting over to McGee before returning to Gibbs' even blue ones. "We were running all sorts of carrier drills, at all times of day and night. Standard fighter training schedule: there is no schedule." She frowned slightly and looked away, then looked back. "I think we were about ten days into the mission when the crash happened. We were running a night exercise—nothing too fancy, mostly take off from the carrier, get some air time in, then land. Everything looked good on my pre-flight check, but not long after I took off from the carrier, everything went dark. Everything. I completely lost electronics in my plane." She frowned. "I have no idea how that happened," she confessed. "I've been trying to figure it out, but…" She shook her head. "I don't really remember much after that," she continued. "The doctors told me I must have hit my head at some point after I ejected, but the next thing I knew, I was waking up here, in Bethesda."

"Anything like this ever happen before?" McNamee shook her head emphatically at Gibbs' question.

"Never," she said. "Like I said, I don't know even how a total electrical failure happened."

"No problems on your previous flights?"

"Nothing," she repeated. "We had just gotten in a few hours before we took off again, and everything worked perfectly. And like I said, everything looked good on pre-flight."

"Anything else unusual on this flight?" McGee asked. The pilot turned toward him before shaking her head apologetically.

"Other than my plane going dark?" she asked, almost amused. "I honestly don't remember." She lapsed into silence for a few seconds. "I have this vague image of Guido's plane—"

"Guido?" Gibbs interrupted

"Lieutenant Marco Antonellis," she explained. "He was the other pilot in the crash—"

"The one who died."

She flushed at Gibbs' interruption and reminder. "Yeah," she said softly. "He didn't make it. What happened? Did something happen to his ejection seat or his parachute, or was there a fire—"

"Don't know," Gibbs interrupted again, and McNamee frowned.

"I thought you were investigating the crash," she said. "Doesn't that include figuring out what went wrong and leading to his death?"

"We'll look into that."

"Well, why are you here instead of doing that?" she demanded. "What good does talking to me do? Unless you think I purposefully flew my plane into the ocean…" Her voice trailed off, her brown eyes going wide. "You don't think I purposefully flew my plane into the ocean, do you?"

"Should we?"

"I don't see why, because I didn't!" She took a deep breath and shook her head. "No," she said a moment later, now sounding much more calm. "And if I were going all kamikaze or hari-kari, why would I have ejected?"

"Second thoughts," Gibbs said with a straight face, making McNamee frown again. "What about Lt. Antonellis?"

The pilot frowned and looked away, her good hand rubbing her eyes briefly. "I don't know," she said, her voice quiet. "I don't even know what I saw."

"Start from the beginning." Both Gibbs and McNamee frowned over at McGee, who kept his eyes on the pilot. He gave a shrug. "Sometimes it helps when thinking things through."

She gave him a small smile, the same smile he remembered from more than a decade ago, when she began to understand a concept or an equation after he explained it to her. "The beginning," she repeated, before taking a deep breath, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular. "Guido joined the squad about seven months ago," she began, "right out of flight training. He's our most recent addition."

"Any problems fitting in?"

McNamee shook her head at Gibbs' question. "No way," she said definitively. "He's most definitely a Hornet pilot. Which means on a good day, he's about twelve."

"Twelve?" McGee asked with a frown.

"Twelve years old," McNamee explained. "They're adolescent boys stuck in the bodies of fully grown Marines." She closed her eyes briefly, trying to erase the image of Guido's grin as she opened the door to her quarters, only to get her shirt completely soaked.

"What about you?" Gibbs asked.

"What about me?" McNamee asked in return, again frowning. Gibbs shrugged.

"They're twelve year old boys, so what are you?"

She shrugged her good shoulder. "The little sister?" she guessed. "The tomboy friend? Jenny from EuroTrip?" McGee blinked in surprise, just realizing at that moment that with DiNozzo gone, it had been more than four weeks since he had heard a movie reference.

He hadn't expected to miss it.

"I don't know, really," Harlan continued, forcing him to pay attention. "The guys didn't really know what to make of me when I joined the squadron. You'd think they had never seen a girl before, the way they were acting. But Everest—LtCol Perry—straightened them out pretty quick, and after the first time I flew with them, they decided I was okay, but it was still weird. I was their buddy and just another Hornet pilot, but I was also this little girl that they thought needed protecting." She looked away, her lower lip between her teeth, another expression McGee remembered from a time that seemed like a lifetime ago. "Guido laid it on pretty thick when he joined the squadron," she continued, "but the guys let him know straight away that that wasn't gonna happen." The more she talked, the more her Southern accent came out, and she seemed to realize it, stopping to take a breath. When she spoke again, her voice was slower and even and practically unaccented. "We've never had problems. Not between me and Guido or anybody else in the squadron. We all get along. You have to, in that situation. You can't fly with people you don't trust with your life."

"Antonellis trusted you with his life?"

McNamee nodded at Gibbs' question. "Yes," she replied, no uncertainty in her voice at all. Gibbs' blue eyes remained locked on the pilot's brown ones, his expression completely blank, giving away nothing that he was thinking until he spoke again.

"Then why is he dead and you still alive?"