Chapter 11 - Cyberpunk

By dead-body-number-2

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc., are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

McGee's fingers flew over the keyboard. He quickly took command of a botnet in eastern Europe and redirected it to a new task. Instead of sending out spam with offers for generic V1agra and get-rich-quick schemes he would use it to hack into the Pentagon. He needed to access a very special program he had written to track terrorists for operation Mayfly. He could recreate it of course, but that would take time. Time that his friends might not have.

McGee had been an NCIS agent and a Marine, but at his core he was a computer geek and a hacker and like any good hacker he had left a backdoor in the program. He wasn't supposed to. He was ordered not to, but his experience had taught him that his superiors often lost touch with the reality of what those in the field needed to do to get the job done. Only Gibbs seemed to understand that, but even he would frown on what he was doing now.

McGee forced himself to slow down. He didn't want to get caught and have his son grow up without a dad around because he was doing time in Leavenworth. He triple checked his work and paused for a moment before starting the script that would carry out his plan.

"Now we wait," said McGee as he watched the monitor. As each step in the process completed a line of, what would appear to be, gibberish appeared on the screen followed by the word "OK". At this point there was little McGee could do but watch and hope that nothing went wrong, that the script he created would go in, locate the program on the Pentagon's servers, access it's backdoor and use it to find the people who had Tony and Ziva, then fix the logs so it appeared that nothing had happened and finally erase all traces of itself.

After many long minutes there was beep and a page of results appeared on the screen. "Yes!" McGee jumped up and yelled. He quickly wrote down several locations where the program indicated that cell phones and computers used by the bad guys were. He then checked that the script had finished the job of hiding his tracks and erased it.

McGee shut down Abby's computer, unplugged every cable from it and placed it on the work table. Putting on gloves and muttering, "Abby is going to kill me," McGee opened the PC's case and pulled out the hard drive. Using a small Torx tool he removed the screws securing the cover plate and took it off exposing the inside of the drive. He removed the platters and ran a strong Neodymium magnet over them to scramble and hopefully irretrievably erase any incriminating data. He quickly reassembled the drive and put it back in the case. Just to be sure, he grabbed a power supply and some leads and ran 100 volts through a few of the nonvolatile memory chips until a puff of smoke erupted from each one. Satisfied, he closed up Abby's computer, reconnected the cables and tried to boot it up. Seeing nothing but a blank screen and a few flickers on the monitor he left the lab to find Gibbs.

McGee came off the elevator into the squad room and was relieved to see that Abby and Damon were there with Gibbs and hadn't been lurking near the lab.

"Boss, I need to talk to you in your office." He saw Gibbs look up at him and he added, "Now!"

Once the elevator doors were closed McGee flipped the emergency stop switch and began to speak. "I can't tell you how I found this, but I need you to know that Abby had nothing to do with it."

Gibbs nodded and said, "Okay."

"I have some possible locations of where Tony and Ziva are or at least where the people who took them are." McGee handed Gibbs the list. "These cell phones and laptops have electronic signatures that indicate they've been in communication with the phones and laptop we have down in Abby's lab."

"How reliable is this Tim?"

"I'd stake my life on it."

Gibbs looked at the list.

"Boss we need to move on this. This intel is only a few minutes old and I can't update it. I think going after that first laptop is our best bet."

Gibbs flipped the emergency switch. The elevator doors opened and he strode his desk closely followed by McGee.

"What's up?" said Abby noticing the urgent looks of Gibbs and McGee.

"We got some leads. I'm contacting the other teams to check them out."

"What about the one I showed you? That's only five minutes from here."

"I'll handle that one myself."

"Alone Boss? Let me and Damon back you up!"

"We've been over this. This isn't your responsibility anymore McGee."

McGee was shocked. Gibbs was the bravest man McGee had ever worked with, but going into who-knows-what without backup was crazy. He turned his back to Gibbs and looked at Abby while shaking his head. Gibbs started making phone calls to the other teams updating them on the information he had just received.

McGee suddenly had an idea and started moving toward the staircase.

"Where are you going?" ask Abby as she ran after him.

McGee stopped and grabbed Abby by the arms and said, "I'm going to see the director. Don't let Gibbs leave until I get back."

"Uh, okay. What are you seeing the director?" Abby's eyes went wide as she realized there was only one reason McGee would go to Vance now.

Noticing Abby's expression McGee said, "Abby, are you going to be okay with this?"

"Of course Timmy." Abby smiled. "I'll keep Gibbs here if I have to sit on him. Now go!"

McGee smiled, kissed her and ran up the stairs to the directors office. He dashed past the startled assistant and barged through the door to the inner office.

Director Vance looked up from his desk with an annoyed look and said, "McGee?"

"Director, I need a word with you."

FOOF!