A/N: As promised, you get to find out what in the world is going on. Well, mostly...

Chapter 11

Eric's yell for Kensi jerked Gibbs back to fully awake. He lay quietly, listening, until he finally identified the anomaly in the night-time soundscape.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It sounded suspiciously like someone banging their head against a wall.

Bishop.

Gibbs swung out of bed and slipped to the door of the analysts' room. "Bishop?"

When she didn't reply, he knocked sharply before pushing the door open. The room carried all the marks that she had been analyzing, with files arranged in an arc on her bed. Gibbs walked slowly to the analyst, gently turning her around to face him.

"Bishop. Breathe."

"It just doesn't—"

"Have a cheese puff." He held out the container.

With her mouth filled, Gibbs guided her back to the file array and leaned against a dresser. "What doesn't make sense?"

"This entire situation! Why would you be running weapons through the boondocks of south Mississippi? Why would 'shiners be involved in the weapons trade? What's a Mexican crime lord doing mixed up in this?"

"If starting at the end isn't working, why don't you start from the beginning?"

"Where's the beginning?" the analyst wondered out loud. "Is it in Mexico, with whoever is buying the weapons, when they started 'shining?"

"Start with what you learned first," Gibbs replied. "All the way back to the ATF."

A large crew of NCIS/Five-0 Agents invaded the Biloxi BATFE office that morning. Nell and Ellie Bishop both were assigned to the group because of their positions as analysts. Because sending all fifteen agents would be slightly overkill, the pair was accompanied only by the three team leaders: Gibbs, Callen, and McGarrett.

The ATF (BATFE was too much of a mouthful for Ellie to even use thinking) agent who greeted them at the door might as well have had "redneck" stamped on his forehead. (Nell was quick to point out, however, that he was not Redneck with a capital R, but didn't elaborate.) Well, his forehead was actually covered by the khaki Stetson perched on his head (Nell correctly pegged him as a transplanted Texan), but from the top of the Stetson to the bottom of his cowboy boots, the agent was one hundred percent southern. He carried a Kimber Model 1911 .45 prominently perched on his right hip, the quick-draw holster attached his wide leather belt. Dressed in a plaid button-down and dark wash jeans, Agent Wilson (as he introduced himself) seemed to confirm the rumors that messing with a Mississippi ATF agent was a very not good idea.

Even if Wilson wasn't a "capital R" redneck, the kid—well, junior agent—working the inside desk definitely was. He didn't look a day older than 18 to Bishop (though when Eric ran a background check, he was actually 21), though his diminutive stature (Callen made him look short) was more than outweighed by the muscle occasionally noticeable under his shirt. Introduced simply as Carter, Jackson "Jack" Carter was a south Mississippi boy born and bred, who wore work boots by choice and a baseball cap as if it was a religion.

It turned out the kid was their saving grace; Wilson pretty obviously neither liked nor trusted the agents. He answered their questions curtly and with no additional information. No, crime hadn't changed significantly in the past five years; no, he didn't know of any heavy or unusual weapons being used or sold; no, he hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary in the past few weeks. There was no organized crime in the Biloxi area to speak of; "only problem worth mentionin' 'round here is white lightning."

Callen was fixing to call Eric and pull any information they had on White Lightning, thinking it might be an up-and-coming local gang, but Nell saved him the embarrassment. "Callen, white lightning's moonshine."

About then, Carter slipped out of the office to offer his assistance. He immediately pegged McGarrett as a SEAL and Gibbs as a marine, and was more than willing to help at least them with whatever information he could scrape together. Not that much scraping was necessary—Carter was either extremely bored or had an encyclopedic memory, because he rattled off the crime statistics for all the surrounding counties from the past five years, from memory. Overall, crime in general and homicide and robbery in specific had been on the decrease, the past year included. As for moonshine, the 'shiners that he knew of didn't consider drugs, drive under the influence, swear excessively, speed, steal, or hurt people. In fact, aside from working in an inherently illegal business, they sounded like model citizens.

He did inform them that there had been some new runners in town who caused some more problems a few months back; all of them either cleaned up their act or were currently resting in prison. Their signature was sports cars and pump-action .410 shotguns; if the team happened to run into any more of that crew, just give him a call and he would be more than happy to arrest them.

Not to keep them or anything, Carter continued, but he had heard rumors about a new pot-to-counter group further out in the sticks who ran much more like a gang then a business. They cooked day and night, guarding their stills with "thugs" and posting signs warning hunters to stay away. Instead of handing the 'shine off to runners as was the custom, they ran it themselves, and way past the usual stop in Jackson. Most South Mississippi 'shine goes as far north as Jackson but no farther; the scuttlebutt was these guys were running at least as far as the state line and possibly to Memphis or beyond. The runners he had mentioned could very well have been with them. He had plenty more semi-information if they needed it, and would be sure to keep an ear to the ground about the new guys.

When Carter saw Wilson stepping into the front room, he hastily gave them a slip of paper with his private number and dashed back inside.

"Sounds like the crew out in the sticks could be our guys," McGarrett commented.

Bishop was inclined to agree with him, but didn't want to jump to conclusions. "If they were hypothetically running guns, Memphis would be a logical place to hand them off to the next guys down the line."

"Or they could be staying in Memphis," Nell added. "It's not exactly the nicest place around."

Callen had called Carter up over lunch to ask where a good place for keeping an ear to the ground might be. The young agent gladly gave them the name of a local diner and bar, complete with the best areas for listening in on conversations.

The crew had filtered in a few at a time, Callen and Sam hanging on one end of the bar, Kensi and Deeks at the other while Gibbs and Tony covered the dining room former closest to the door. Five-0 had set up camp in the back room, while the unanimous decision was for Nell and Ellie to hang across the street in the bookstore to keep a more distant eye on things.

It all started with Nell's Mazda. Her present from Hetty was a red MazdaSpeed 3, a small, fast stick shift hatchback. She and Ellie had intentionally been projecting a bit of the 'bad girl' vibe, but Nell hadn't realized just how much until a man approached her on a bench by the Mazda. "That yours?" he asked. She replied short and to the point.

"New in town?"

"Stayin' a few months," she replied, easily slipping into a central-Mississippi accent.

"You maybe interested in pickin' up some extra cash?" the guy asked. About then Nell noticed another man cut of the same cloth watching her. Thankfully, McGarrett was watching him.

"Depends," she replied nonchalantly. "What kinda cash we talkin' here?"

"The fast, easy, clean kind," the man replied. "We give you a package, you deliver it, you get paid. That simple. Your call if you want to deliver a certain day or don't, we just offer the jobs. Completely anonymous, no strings, no commitment."

"I'm interested," Nell replied noncommittally.

The man nodded. "6th and Elm, 7pm if you're still thinkin' about it. Bring your friend," and he jerked his thumb toward McGarrett.

Within 24 hours, almost the entire team was under cover with little idea exactly what they were getting into. Nell had skillfully dropped a few indicators that she had some illegal activities under her belt while hinting that she had some friends in town with her who were in the private security business and some others who were good at souping up cars. The next morning Kensi, Gibbs, and Catherine were immediately accepted into a car-repair front for upgrading what they suspected were smuggling cars. Two hours after that, Callen, Deeks, Danny, and Kono were hired as security, after hinting they had been kicked out of the legitimate private security business.

After lunch, Nell had gotten a call on her thug-provided burn phone that there was a delivery available for that night if she wanted it. She accepted, and Sam and Chin volunteered to be the tail, leaving DiNozzo and McGee as the available backup.

"Okay, Bishop, assume for a minute that these are our guys. Why are they 'shining in the middle of the woods, and how are they getting the guns?"

"The 'shining is cover, it's pretty obvious that the old blood in the BATFE isn't really interested in hunting down moonshiners who aren't causing trouble so it's a safe one at that. As for the guns…" Her gaze landed on a map pinpointing the operation in the woods, less than five miles from two ports. Just like that, the pieces fell into place.

Bishop dashed into Ops. "Eric, pull the list of estimated dates of delivery here. Please."

Eric tossed the data onto the screen. "Cross reference with dates of active hurricanes in the gulf," Bishop continued.

"That's, like, a 90% match," Eric responded, shocked.

"They're using the cover of all the ships coming into port to move the guns," Bishop concluded.

"Sounds like we get to wait around for a hurricane," Gibbs replied grimly.