Wanting for Independence: Chapter 11
Special Agent McGee was already at his desk Monday morning when Gibbs walked in a few minutes after six with a cup of coffee. "Morning," McGee greeted, getting an unintelligible grunt in reply. "I finally heard back from Victoria Carter, Vanessa Carter's sister, last night," he continued, knowing better than to wait for a more coherent statement or greeting. For a second, he wondered what it would be like to work for someone more...friendly. Then he remembered being Tony's senior field agent, and decided that there were pros and cons to that approach as well. "She said the boyfriend's name was Jake, not John. Jake Clark. She wasn't quite sure what he did for a living, but she said her sister mentioned him being at a hospital, and that she said it like he was working there, not like he was a patient. Um, I'm running a search for Jake Clark in healthcare fields, but it's quite a lot of data to go through. I already found twenty men with either first or middle names of Jake or Jacob and last name Clark in various spellings, and the computer's not even done with DC yet."
"Keep on it," Gibbs ordered. He looked into the bullpen, frowning as he registered the remaining empty desks. He turned back to McGee. "You talk to Tomblin?"
"Gave her a call yesterday," McGee said promptly. "She doesn't think it's related to terrorism, but she said she'll look into it."
Gibbs nodded slightly at that, his eyes moving over to the elevator with a frown on his face. McGee turned in that direction, trying to figure out what his boss was looking at, but the silver doors remained stubbornly closed. "What time do the analysts come in?" he finally asked.
"Uh, usually at eight," McGee replied. "Dr. Mitchell, the AFRICOM lead, said he'll be in at seven to talk to us before getting to work." Gibbs frowned at that, and after as many years working for him as McGee had done, he knew what his boss was thinking: of course the head of the division would be talking to them after one of his analysts was killed, but there were certainly no guarantees that he would be going to work as scheduled after only an hour. If Gibbs had his way, nobody remotely connected to a crime would be going to work until it was solved, to keep them available to talk to the investigators whenever they wanted. Which reminded McGee of another thing. "Uh, if you're planning on talking to the Army doctors who were at the Mall, Dr. Scott said that she and Dr. Gregory would be at Bethesda by 0500 this morning, and that Dr. Lyon would probably be at WRAIR by 0800." Gibbs frowned again. "Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, boss. It's located with the Naval Medical Research Center in Silver Spring."
"Give Wilson a call, have him swing by and talk to them," Gibbs said before turning his attention to his computer, telling McGee that the morning updates, as brief as they had been, were over. Which was fine with McGee; he didn't have much else to offer, and doubted he would until they could find out from Dr. Gregory what exactly Carter had been working on or heard back from Tomblin.
He gave Dwayne a call and passed along Gibbs' instructions, reminding the junior agent that they didn't suspect any of the physicians of anything, but wanted to find out if they had seen anything. Having questioned doctors before, he also cautioned that they might get annoyed and try to get him to leave, but that he should stick around and keep questioning them until he was satisfied about what they had or had not seen. Dwayne said he understood and joked it was too bad that McGee was already at the office; both the hospital in Bethesda and the research institute in Silver Spring were much closer to his apartment than Wilson's house in Falls Church.
It was less than half an hour later before the door to MTAC opened on the floor above them. "Um, Special Agent Gibbs? Special Agent McGee?" one of the technicians called down. "Special Agent DiNozzo from Bahrain is on."
McGee frowned as he looked up at the technician. "In MTAC?" he asked dumbly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gibbs rise from his chair and head for the stairs, and after a few more seconds, he himself rose and followed, even though he couldn't figure out why Tony would be on in MTAC. They didn't have any cases involving the Bahrain office, and as far as he knew, Tony didn't have any cases with any sort of connection to the Headquarters office.
He followed Gibbs—who was violating the 'no drinks in MTAC' rule, again—into the large room. "We're holding for San Diego," the technician informed them.
"San Diego?" McGee echoed. He checked his watch and frowned; if he thought it was early in DC, that had nothing on the west coast.
"I figured our anti-terrorism field agent extraordinaire would want to be in on this," DiNozzo commented from his desk in Bahrain, where he was sitting in front of a large window that gave a view of the blue afternoon sky half a world away. He shrugged. "And she was the one who called me on this. Tsk, tsk, McGiggle. You have a case that you think involves Somalia and you don't call the office in charge of Somalia?"
"Did you find a connection to Somalia?" McGee asked with a frown.
"I really only feel like explaining it once, McImpatient. I called Kim half an hour ago. She should be on any minute. How's the case coming?"
"We're working on finding the boyfriend, to try to rule him out as a suspect," McGee said. "It's slow going."
"Yeah, Kim said you're working off a first name only. John? Good luck with that."
"We got a little bit more than that, but not much," McGee said just as the right half of the screen went live.
"What the fuck, DiNozzo?" Special Agent Kim Tomblin asked angrily as soon as she appeared, dark circles under her eyes and her black hair in a quick ponytail. "You woke me up at zero fucking three and told me to get to the office without one fucking word about why? This better be good, or I'll… Well, I don't know what I'll do, until the next time we're in the same place, and then I'm going to be knocking you on your sorry ass."
"Morning, Tomblin," Gibbs said mildly.
"Do not get me started, Gibbs," Tomblin said warningly. "If it weren't for your fucking case and the goddamn assumption that anything and everything is related to terrorism, I would still be doing what every respectable human being is doing at three-thirty in the morning, and that's sleeping."
"Actually, there might be something," DiNozzo interjected. "I'm not saying that Analyst Carter was killed by a militant member of Al-Shabaab—"
"Are there any other kinds of members of Al-Shabaab?" Tomblin interrupted.
"Good point. Regardless of who killed Carter, we think Al-Shabaab is up to something." He let that sink in for a minute before continuing. "Between Dardik, Gabi, and our analysts here, we believe that Al-Shabaab has the makings of chemical weapons. Mustard gas, specifically."
"Big fucking deal," Tomblin scoffed. "Anyone with an understanding of chemistry can make chemical weapons. Saddam had them."
"You still believe that that's what the Iraq war was about?" DiNozzo asked in disbelief. "Nobody found any WMDs."
"I'm talking about the Iran-Iraq War, DiNozzo; perhaps you've heard of it? During the 80's? Approximately 45,000 Iranian casualties due to mustard gas? Does any of this ring a bell?"
"The sooner you let DiNozzo finish, the sooner you get to go to bed," Gibbs pointed out. Tomblin flushed, but kept her mouth shut.
"Thanks, Boss," DiNozzo said. "Here's the best part: Dardik says there's been an increase in anti-American statements made by Al-Shabaab. He also says he found something that suggests that their ranks include an engineer, either American or with access to American documents or systems."
There were a few seconds of silence as they let this sink in. "Did anyone find anything that suggests that anyone is planning anything on the Mall on the Fourth?" McGee finally asked.
"Not directly," DiNozzo acknowledged. "We're still looking and Mossad is still looking."
"I don't have anything," Tomblin added. "Then again, this is all news to me."
"Agent Tomblin, we're going to need you to come—"
"No way," the anti-terrorism specialist interrupted. "I'm not going to DC. I have too much stuff out here on this coast, stuff that requires my actual physical presence. I will continue to do what I can via VTC to help you with your case, but I'm staying put."
"This is a murder—"
"Exactly. It's a murder. A murder of an analyst, yes, but a murder. If it turns out that it is about terrorism or about something going down on the Fourth of July, I will advise, but you don't need me to work up a murder."
"The director—"
"Gave me a task force," she interrupted again. "A task force of my very own, with people to manage, people from a whole bunch of different agencies that don't always get along. Between the FBI, ICE, USBC, ATF, LAPD, and SDPD, we have fourteen cases that we're investigating, three new ones in the last week. Of those fourteen, nine of them are possible activities on the Fourth. So I'm already a little bit busy and will continue to remain so after next Wednesday. If the director seems to think that you're not capable of solving a murder on your own and orders me to leave my own cases behind to help you with yours, I will obey orders, but until then, I will add your case to my list and I will do what I can. DiNozzo, thank you for the further information, I will add it to the file and see if I can get anything further. Please keep me posted on anything else you find. Gibbs, McGee, same for you. Good luck finding the boyfriend. Let me know how that goes. Now, if there's nothing else, I'm going to go lay down in my office for a nap before my task force meets in," she looked at her watch, "four hours. Have a good morning, gentlemen."
The right side of the screen went dark once again.
