Chapter Ten
To the Death
For the NCIS, day or night, a single vehicle would be dispatched to deal with an investigation, possibly accompanied by the Crime Scene or Medical Examiner vans. Sometimes on special protection assignments a group of cars might move out. It's unheard of to see a convoy of vehicles cross the river and enter Virginia in an attitude of war.
This night thirty vehicles cross the river, their occupants grimly determined that they will confront the enemy on his home ground. They are prepared to either apprehend ... or to kill.
No communication passes between the cars. Everything that can be said has been said. Feelings of anger, rage and revenge, and thoughts more terrible still, move these vehicles inexorably toward their target.
A very nasty surprise awaits them when they turn onto the block where their objective stands. Their progress is blocked by rows of opposing vehicles.
In the lead car Jennifer Shepherd glares, outraged at the squadron of police, FBI and other vehicles that blocks their path and at the dozens of rotating red, blue, yellow and white lights that turn the Virginia street into a scene more appropriate to a 1980's disco. The number of official vehicles rivals their own, but where they had been approaching in stealth, this much light bathing the street can be seen for blocks around. Shepherd nearly leaps from her car, determined to make quick work of the intruding vehicles. She is not surprised to recognize the nearly balding man in his ubiquitous trench coat who comes out to meet her halfway.
"You want to explain what the FBI is doing here, Fornell?"
"I could ask you the same question about this caravan of NCIS vehicles."
"But you won't."
"No, we both know why you're here - and you are way outside your jurisdiction. What do you mean coming into the area looking like you're going to war?"
She struggles to keep her temper under control. "That building is the stronghold of a foreign power that has already cost the lives of nine NCIS Agents."
"I sympathize, believe me. I trust you have proof?"
"Oh, we have proof, plenty of it. We also had the element of surprise until you people decided to turn this street into Club 54."
"Believe me, Director, you didn't have the 'element of surprise', you never did. It was the owners of that building who called the FBI, telling us you intended to stage this assault."
xx
As the caravan left the Navy Yard a half hour before, the trailing two vehicles angled right while the main body of the assault team turned left. These two vehicles move almost silently through the District, no communication between them until they'd arrive at their destination. The only communication between the occupants of these two cars had been a terse, one sentence command from Gibbs to Kelman: "Follow and say nothing."
Now, miles away on the Maryland border, seven black clad figures converge by the black cars and there are many things to say.
They are parked at the end of two rows of houses, many lighted, some not. All are recessed behind large manicured lawns and Gibbs, in unrelieved black, directs the agents' attentions to an unlit ranch house a third of the way down the left side of the block. It's an utterly anonymous home in the row of other equally placid, almost identical homes.
"Gibbs, would you mind telling us," Supervisor Pro Tem Melanie Kelman, in the forefront of her team, demands, "what the hell we're doing here?"
"Did you really think that a day after they're given up, McGillicuddy and company are going to be sitting in their ivory tower waiting for us to hit it?"
"Well, no, but–"
"It's good tactics to cover up a small and quiet operation with a large and noisy one. The Director and the others are that large and noisy distraction. If they hit the tower so much the better, but they won't find the targets. We will."
"How can you know they are here?"
He looks at the dark building. "The airstrip they need is less than a mile away, though they can't get clearance to take off without our say so. Only one person can get them that clearance after NCIS restricted them. That clearance hasn't been requested and will only be requested when it's too late for us to countermand it. Therefore, they can't be anywhere else."
"How do you know?" she demands again, fed up with his 'need to know' reticence.
"These houses are all laid out by the same cookie cutter," he notes, looking at the designs of those on both sides of the streets. The ones on his right are of particular interest, none of them show a door though they do show windows. "DiNozzo, you and Templeton take positions across the street and prepare for a frontal assault. McGee, you and Larsen take the back door. Ziva, you have this side's door. Kelman, you and I will swing wide behind the house and get in through a window."
Kelman restrains herself from answering with great difficulty. Her reply would be neither constructive nor polite.
x
The six agents, all dressed in black without Federal IDs highlighting their jackets, take positions as directed, with Gibbs and Kelman coming in low and then flanking either side of the single window on the far side. There's no light on in the building, yet Gibbs is certain their quarry lies in wait within.
His orders had been specific. In two and a half more minutes, break down the doors and, if resistance is met, shoot to kill.
He carefully and silently slides open the rear side window, ready to enter when he catches Kelman's expression. He ignores her reminder that there are over two minutes to go.
Kelman, having no choice, follows him into the blackness. No sooner do they stand within the building when heavy steel shutters close over the windows and the room's only door slams shut.
"You don't seem surprised, Gibbs," a voice from the blackness observes, "though I think I'd be disappointed if you were."
"I'm disappointed now. Turn on the lights so we can get better acquainted."
"Now Gibbs, I thought you knew me so well."
"Thought I did." The lights come up, revealing a black clad man beyond the drawing room desk, a gun in his steady hand. "Turns out I probably never knew you at all."
Melanie Kelman is outraged to be aiming her gun at the late Supervisory Special Agent Robert DiMarco.
x
"Please put your weapons down," the former agent requests. "I should truly hate to kill either of you."
"Don't be insulting. You know we either take you in or one or more of us die. It was always going to come to this." He steps away from the window, moving into the middle of the room, wanting some space to maneuver. Kelman keeps pace with him.
"I really wish it weren't you." DiMarco says.
"And who did you think would come after you?" Gibbs demands.
"Drop your guns. There is no way any of us can miss at this range."
Kelman looks to Gibbs, hardly believing it when he signals her to comply. She doesn't want to but he's the ranking officer and he clearly knows what the hell is going on. She obeys, her weapon falling to the carpeted floor, the impact muffled by the deep shag.
She is angrier when Gibbs does not relinquish his own gun.
x
Gibbs would have liked to confront the man alone, unfortunately that is not to be. This is the reason he'd removed Lee from the team when he'd discovered, in Abby's lab, who they were hunting. He holds his gun steady upon his old friend. Outside the room simultaneous crashes explode from three sides of the house and the first of the gunshots erupt, shattering the night.
"I knew you'd put it together," DiMarco admits, unfazed by the gunfire. "I'd hoped for another hour and we'd have been gone. How did you find me?"
"This place belongs to your nephew and his family, who use it this late in the season only on weekends. You can thank Delphi for that bit of news. There weren't too many safe houses for you people to hide out."
"You don't seem surprised to see me, Gibbs."
"I'd have been disappointed if you weren't here." Knowing the man as he does, he'd even known what room to assault.
"She's surprised," DiMarco waves the gun in the direction of the woman beside Gibbs.
He won't be distracted. "I'd hoped I could convince you to–"
"To what? Turn myself in? Plead for the mercy of the court? We both know it's gone way too far for that."
"Why?" Of all possible things, this is the only question Gibbs truly wants answered. "You let your own team watch you 'die'. You killed eight of us. You set the bombs in Arlington and at the Café, you broke into the hospital to poison White–"
"I got lucky then. I managed to get into Pediatrics and contaminated a saline IV. Not fatally but seriously enough to spark an emergency. I never expected three 'Codes', but they caused such chaos they almost emptied the ICU."
Gibbs is appalled at the casual way his friend describes the heartless assault on a child, but "You betrayed everyone who trusted you, everyone who knew you!" His voice rises with his rage. "What can they–" he points sharply to the outer hall and the gunfire beyond, his booming voice almost loud enough to drown it out, "have offered that made it worth that?"
"Power."
"Garbage!"
"I've devoted twenty five years of my life to NCIS and what has it gotten me? Where can I go with it? What real chance of promotion unless you play politics like Shepherd? Well, I finally decided to play politics - but not the kind they thought.
"I used to believe in the system, in right and wrong, in the American Way. What has it gotten me? We are living to support a system, but in the end what do we go home to? We support the status quo, what is it that we live for?"
x
"I know what I live for," Gibbs counters, disgusted with the former agent's reasons. "What do you kill for?"
"In the days to come, in the years to come, there will be changes, my old friend. The things we stand for will be gone, the old ways will have passed away and new–"
"Garbage, I said. You killed eight of us, your fellow agents, men and women who trusted you and called you their friend! If you didn't plant the bombs yourself you still made it possible. But the one person who would have caught on to you eventually was Marti, so you used your relationship with her to kill her. But it was the DNA tests – and the Paternity Test – that did you in."
"What do you mean? What Paternity test?" For the first time, DiMarco seems unsure.
"YOU killed Marti?" Kelman demands, surprise overwhelmed by fury as she cuts off Gibbs' answer.
"He was her lover." He turns back to DiMarco. "Your fingerprints were all over that apartment. Marti did a good job in cleaning, but you can't get everything. We might not have caught on for quite some time since we don't normally look among ourselves for a traitor, but we would have caught on eventually, so after you removed her as a threat to you, you had to remove yourself.
"You got lucky that one of these people tried to turn herself in. She never recognized you as a Double Agent but it allowed you to remove a threat and fake your own death - with your Team as witnesses." He can't convey his contempt for the man; it's too great for words. "You'd had your 'out' prepared, C4 hidden in your jacket."
Outside, the shots continue, but they're less frequent. One side is winning. He prays it is the right side.
x
Gibbs holsters his gun, showing he doesn't intend to draw on his old friend, but he isn't going to drop the gun either. Outside the room, gunshots come from all angles as the three sided battle continues.
"Everything since Klein and her people failed to break the 'Delphi Code' has been you. You murdered Janet White. Higgins didn't believe it was you when Nurse Tremont picked out your photo but it was enough for me to check with Ducky. When you broke Parkerson's neck you did it from behind, but twisted to the left, your strong side. But you still haven't told us why."
"It's actually simple. When the NCIS, CID, CGIS, OSI, all those that support and defend our boys and girls and their dependants, fall, the defenseless dependants will be targeted, demoralizing the troops and leading to mass desertions. Men and women will come home in waves to defend their loved ones at home, decimating the ranks and clearing the way for a massive strike on all fronts, a war of terror throughout the nation that will lead to the ultimate collapse of American society."
Gibbs and Kelman, outraged though they are, are now sure of one thing: the man before them is mad.
"What do you get out of this?" Gibbs demands.
"Maryland."
"Come again?" Outside, the shooting steadily decreases. One side is clearly winning. He prays again that it's the right side.
"When America finally falls, I'll be rewarded with what's left of Maryland."
x
"You did all this," Kelman says tightly, unable to believe that so many friends have died for a madman's scheme of power, "you betrayed everyone who trusted you, everything we believe in - everything you believed in - for power?"
"What more is there? Did you think after twenty five years I was going to settle for a gold watch? I've been a Supervisor all these years, there's nothing higher for me to aspire to - in the current system, but -,"
He's interrupted by pounding from the door, a multitude of agents' voices cutting through it. It's clear who's won. DiMarco raises his gun, about to fire.
x
Melanie Kelman has always excelled in math. Before she turns and steps in front of Gibbs, facing him, her mind instantly calculates the reaction time of DiMarco's reflexes, distance of the gun, speed of the bullets and how fast she has to be to get in front of Gibbs before the bullets reach him.
She makes it.
The impacts of the three closely spaced bullets are hammer blows as they slam into the back of her protective vest. She yanks Gibbs' gun from his belt, whirls and that same talent for lightning calculations allows her to put the bullet through the center of the traitor's forehead.
x
The battering at the door increases as Robert DiMarco's head snaps back, utter astonishment on his face as his body topples backward to slam to the floor. Gibbs gets around the gasping woman, grateful for her protection even as he goes to the body of his old friend.
Heavy blows batter the resisting wood as Gibbs kneels beside the body. DiMarco stares up at the ceiling, his sightless eyes lost, the glow of life extinguished. Blood from the large hole behind his head soaks the carpet.
"Is it over?" Kelman asks softly. "Did we win?"
"It's over." He looks from DiMarco back to the pale woman, trying to mask his sorrow. "We won."
"Good," she sighs softly. As the door crashes inward in a shower of splinters she drops to her knees, then pitches forward and slams face down onto the carpet, her back awash in blood.