Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom, NCIS, the frog experiment, or Ghost. Any and all information regarding sentencing of convicted military personnel came from the Code of Military Justice.

A/N: My apologies to my loyal readers for the long wait. Real Life kept me busy for a while, so it was difficult to find time to write. In any case, I finally finished the chapter you've all been waiting so patiently for.

Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed this story, as well as all of you who put this story, and me, on your assorted lists. I offer apples and honey and the candy of your choice to you all.

And now...

Chapter 10: The Confessions

The next afternoon, the team collected the new information into their case file. When Gibbs was satisfied, he announced, "Alright, I want Darvin and Lockerby in Interrogation."

Tony looked up in surprise. "But, Boss, what about Rule #1?"

Confused, McGee asked, "Never screw over your partner?"

Sighing in annoyance, Tony answered, "No, Probie. Never let suspects stay together."

Gibbs said, "In this case, we're making an exception."

Martin Lockerby was very confused. The agents hadn't tried to question him much since his arrest for trespass. Not that he'd said much. Of course, he hadn't been formally charged yet, either. Now, almost a day after his arrest, they wanted to talk to him again. What was going on?

Sitting at the table in Interrogation, the sergeant waited impatiently for an agent to come in. After a few minutes, the door opened again, to admit an agent escorting another prisoner. Martin was surprised to see the prisoner was someone he knew. "Bobby? What's going on?"

The escorting agent left the room without a word. Once alone, Bobby turned to his friend. "I'll get back to that. What are you doing here?"

Martin sighed. "They have some evidence that I was connected to the break-in at Commander Lopez's office. I have no idea how they knew that there was a break-in."

Bobby plopped down in the chair across from Martin. "Well, if you'd done your job right, they wouldn't have known. Martin, all I know is that they connected me to Mr. MacLean's murder. Another thing they shouldn't have been able to do."

Martin yelled, "Forget about what they 'should have been able to do'! I told you this would get attention we didn't want! It was bad enough you killed Evan. What was the point of killing his father?"

Avoiding the question, Darvin simply said, "Evan got too close to the truth. You knew that, too."

"He was a good kid," Martin objected. "Killing him was a bad idea. I might not have thought so at the time, but it was. So he didn't join us... big deal!"

Bobby crossed his arms and glared. "He was too good. He was about to expose us. You agreed that we had to get rid of him to protect our secret."

Martin stood up and leaned on the table. "I hope Gita was worth it for you. I was only in it for the money and a chance to use my skills. Evan's lack of interest didn't have to be a problem."

Bobby grumbled something under his breath, then, aloud, added, "Yeah, well... What did you get during your break-in? Your e-mail was pretty vague."

Lockerby sighed in annoyance, sitting down again as he spoke. "It was vague because I couldn't figure it out. The patents called it a 'ghost shield'. I mean, it's pure nonsense! There's no such thing. They must be using code names to refer to something else."

In the observation room, the team watched the conversation. Tony commented, "They must not have heard about the Guys in White or the Anti-Ecto Control Act."

Back in Interrogation, Martin came back to his earlier question. "Whatever happens with the break-in, the murder brought too much attention from investigators. Why did you kill Evan's father? Evan was our best friend since Basic. David welcomed you into his home, almost like a second son. How could you kill a man that treated you like family?"

Bobby sat forward, leaning on the table. "I got distracted – the old man didn't want to give anything up on new security. He kept talking about how I wasn't supposed to have this information." He rolled his eyes. "Things might have looked suspicious, and I couldn't afford to have him pull all the pieces together."

Martin leaned forward as well, glaring at the other Marine. "You moron – we could have gotten away with information trafficking! You could have gotten away with murder. I know I thought it was a good idea at the time, but killing Evan was unnecessary."

Bobby gave him an exasperated look. "I told you, at the time, why it had to be done! Not only was he going to turn us in, he was going to send the evidence home to his father..."

"He already did." Both Marines spun around in their seats on hearing the cold voice at the door. Agent Gibbs walked in, a thick file under one arm. "He sent it two days before he was killed."

Behind the mirror, Tony quipped, "He does it to us so often, it's nice to see someone else get it from him once in while."

Darvin and Lockerby stared at the agent in front of them. In unison, they chorused, "What?"

Gibbs sat in a chair at the head of the table, putting the file down in front of him. "We found the evidence at his father's store. The package was never opened. But we know everything, now." He leaned forward to make his point. "You've just told us everything. All I want to know is: why?"

Darvin slumped a bit in his chair. "Will it help?"

Gibbs smiled coldly. "No. But I want to know anyway."

The two younger men looked at each other before coming to a decision. "Alright," Darvin said. "We'll tell you everything." Lockerby nodded in agreement.

Gibbs opened the file, pulling out an empty pad and a pencil. "Alright. Go ahead."

Darvin sighed. "It all started when I met Gita on a weekend pass into town. She's the daughter of a local sheik where we were stationed. It was all innocent at first. I'd meet her for a few minutes on my days off. Occasionally, we'd have longer meetings, if Evan decided to go to another part of town."

Gibbs looked up from writing. "When did it get less innocent?"

Darvin sat back to think. "I think it was about four months after I started seeing Gita that she took me to her home to meet her family. They... weren't too pleased that she was dating an American. Her father said I couldn't see her again unless I demonstrated to him that her family was just as important to me as they were to her. To do this, I had to keep him apprised of troop movements in the area my unit patrolled. He said it would help them avoid delays in travel due to random searches."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "I see. And this didn't raise any red flags for you?"

Darvin winced at the agent's tone. "No, though it should have. The thought of never seeing Gita again blinded me to anything else. But Evan did see the changes." He sighed. "When they started paying me for the information I provided, I tried to make up to Evan for abandoning him by taking him out to local restaurants. But that just raised his suspicions, because the places were more expensive than we could afford on our salaries."

In the observation room, McGee commented, "Sounds a lot like the experiments with boiling frogs in hot water."

Ziva turned to stare at him. "What do frogs have to do with this?"

McGee took a breath and explained. "Well, the idea is that when a frog is put into water that's already hot, it hops out immediately. But if the frog is put into cold water, and the water is slowly heated, the frog will stay in until it boils to death." Ziva looked horrified. "The point is that Darvin was brought into the treason so slowly, he didn't even realize it was happening until he was too far in to want to get out."

Ziva nodded in understanding, but still looked disturbed at the thought of the frog experiment.

In Interrogation, Darvin continued. "The money continued to come, gradually increasing as the type of information requested increased in value. Evan was already investigating what I was doing, but I thought I could bring us closer together if I introduced him to Gita's family. Evan wasn't interested: he was very by-the-book, and wouldn't violate orders for anything."

Gibbs glared angrily at the sergeant. "His sense of morals was stronger than yours. Go on."

Darvin sighed as he continued. "Well, the money coming in was pretty good. But more was in the offing if I could gain access to information on the whole region. So, I e-mailed Martin, explaining that Evan wasn't involved. I told him about the opportunities to gain recognition for his skills."

Lockerby added, "I readily agreed. I'm a communications expert. This offered greater scope for my skills than what I was doing for the Corps. The money was an added incentive."

Darvin looked down at the table a moment before continuing. "It was around then that Evan changed his leave schedule. At first, it was just a bigger opportunity for me to meet my contacts without having to make excuses to Evan. Then, I found out that Evan was still investigating me. I still had to be careful.

"When we were rotated home, Martin and I continued to send information. Martin's communications expertise allowed us to receive wire transfers without arousing suspicion on the part of the military. But Evan kept track of things, even at home. He even kept in touch with friends who were still in Iraq, and he seemed very worried about the extra money we had.

"Evan and I went back for another tour, and things began to get more serious. By this point, the information Martin and I were selling was resulting in the deaths of Marines all over Iraq. It wasn't a regular occurrence in any one area, either. They knew enough to spread it out, so no one realized it was because the insurgents knew our troop placements. It looked, to most people, like a series of coincidences."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes. "I'll just bet it did. And this didn't bother you? Watching good Marines get killed this way?"

Darvin shrugged. "By then, all I cared about was seeing Gita and getting the money. That, and the fact that no one knew about my involvement.

"But Evan guessed at what was going on. About a week before Evan's last mission, I saw him put something in his foot locker. I only saw enough to realize he had evidence he could present to our superiors. I had to do something. I convinced Martin, in an e-mail, that Evan was a threat. Then, I went to the captain, who was preparing dispatches for the next communication with the other unit in our area.

"I proposed Evan as the messenger, and the captain agreed that he was a good choice. Then, I went to my contacts and suggested they have a sniper on the route Evan would use. It was easy."

Gibbs growled, "It's very easy when you aren't the one pulling the trigger." The former Marine sniper knew all too well what Evan must have looked like through the sighting scope. "What about after Evan's death was confirmed?"

Darvin shrank a little in his chair at the agent's tone. "Well, as Evan's immediate superior, I was in charge of arranging his personal effects for shipment to his parents. I found his collected evidence, and destroyed it." He rolled his eyes before adding, "Or I thought I did."

Gibbs smiled grimly. "Oh, you got it. You just didn't know he sent copies home before he died. Now, I already know what happened at the store." He turned to Lockerby. "Why don't you tell me about Commander Lopez's office?"

Lockerby blushed. "Well, Bobby hadn't been able to find out anything, so I decided to try. My clearance got me access to names of people who knew enough about the new security system for me to learn how to bypass it if needed. I picked Commander Lopez because her office was easy to access.

"I picked the lock on her filing cabinet and looked for the file on the new security system. The problem was that the information they had in the file didn't make any sense. It was all about ghosts, ectoplasm, and a dome of some kind surrounding the base. This Jack Fenton's logic is incomprehensible."

Gibbs nodded. From what he'd learned, Jack could build any working invention related to ghosts. The man just couldn't explain how it worked to anyone who wasn't as knowledgeable about ghosts as he was.

Lockerby continued. "The thing I couldn't understand is: why all the talk about ghosts? It had to be a code, but I couldn't decipher it. And the patent office had no idea what all those patented inventions were for."

Gibbs closed his file and stood up. "Well, where you're going, you won't need to worry about it." He went to the hall door and allowed two agents in. They each pulled out a pair of handcuffs and approached the two Marines as Gibbs walked out.

Gibbs joined his team in the observation room. They were collecting the tapes of the interview, having shut off the recording already. "Did we get it all?"

McGee looked up from labeling one of the tapes. "Yes, we did, Boss. We got every word."

"Good."

At that moment, a chill entered the room as Evan made his presence known. "Thanks, everyone. This is exactly what I was hoping would happen." He shook hands with all the agents. "So, Agent Gibbs, what'll they get?"

Gibbs considered this a moment. "Just for the espionage... they'll face execution."

Evan nodded. "I know I can trust you to see justice done. I'm ready to go home, now."

Puzzled, Gibbs said, "I thought you were home."

Evan simply put a hand on the older man's shoulder. "You're a Marine, sir. You know what I mean."

They all watched in amazement as a white light appeared, and Evan walked into it, fading away as the light engulfed him. As the light vanished, the team simply stared in awe. Even Tony could say nothing, the obvious movie reference dying before it even occurred to him to mention it.

Finally, Gibbs whispered, "Semper Fidelis."