Chapter 13

Tony returned to his desk to the insistent buzzing of his cellphone. "Great," he said. "What now?" It was Saturday afternoon and it was far busier than a Saturday should be. They'd picked up a weekend case that involved hours of tedious research and grubby field work. They'd ended up handing it off, but it had still cost them all the majority of the day. He was looking forward to kind of coasting through the last hour of the afternoon if at all possible. Ziva and McGee were out delivering some evidence to DC PD, after which they were free to head home. He was stuck there until Gibbs got out of his meeting with the Director. It had been quiet for about an hour, and Tony wanted it to stay that way. He toyed with the idea of not even looking at the message, but the "good agent" part of him won out, and he clicked to read the text.

"SOS OSP PNCHBWL JJJ"

Tony stared at the message for a few seconds, trying to make sense of it. It had originated from an unfamiliar number, but the last three letters, "JJJ" meant that it was Jess. She'd started signing off that way when Jenny Shepard had become director. Jenny tended to sign off as "J", and Tony had mistaken one "J" for the other just one too many times. He tried to send a return message for more info, but his text bounced back, with a "not receiving" error message.

Tony read the message again and tried to make sense of it. Then he snapped his phone shut and headed upstairs. He burst through the door into the Director's office, Vance's secretary trailing behind. Gibbs was at the table; the two men had papers spread over half the table's surface.

"Agent DiNozzo," Vance said, nodding an 'okay' to his secretary and watching her return to her desk. "This had better be good."

"Oh, I think it is, Director," Tony said, flipping his phone open to share the message. He slid the phone across the table. It stopped just in front of Gibbs and Vance, so that they were both able to see the text. "Is there a reason I'm getting an SOS call from my friend Jess and the Office of Special Projects?"

Ten minutes later, Vance, Gibbs and Tony were sitting in MTAC, awaiting a video conference with OSP in Los Angeles.

"Yes, Director," Hetty said, as the ops center came up on the screen. "What can we do for you?"

"It seems, Henrietta," Vance began, "that your special Pentagon guest has managed to get a distress call through to our Agent DiNozzo. What exactly is going on out there?"

Hetty sighed and looked back at the rest of the team. "We have lost track of Agent Callen and Miss Kennedy, Leon. It would seem that we have all been a bit bamboozled by our fraternal Harper twins."

"What?" Tony said, confused, looking at Gibbs.

"You'll be read in shortly, DiNozzo," Vance said, with an edge to his voice. "For the time being, just go with it." Then, to Hetty, "Go on."

"They took their meeting with Sutton, but he changed the plan and took them with him, instead of the other way around," Hetty continued. "And we have just discovered that Melissa Harper is not who we thought she was. She is, in fact, Laura March." She adjusted her line of sight to be looking at Tony. "The Reader's Digest version, Agent DiNozzo," she said, calmly but gravely, "is that our agent Callen and your friend Kennedy have been made. And we are now trying to get them back."

"Wait," Tony said, needing a second to get up to speed. "Jess … not in Vegas, but in LA? Not on vacation, but on assignment?"

"Correct," Hetty confirmed.

Tony stared at the screen, laughed ruefully and shook his head. "I swear to God I'll kill her."

Hetty's tone turned deadly serious. "You may not be the only one with that thought, Agent DiNozzo."

Callen and Jess had been in the old classroom for hours. It was dark outside and late. There was virtually no noise in the compound. A couple of canteens had been tossed into the room. They were still handcuffed and two guards were at the door.

Jess and Callen had searched the entire room – every corner, every piece of trash, every stray item that had made its way there – to see if there was anything they could use. They couldn't even get out of the cuffs. Callen had neglected to replace the bobby pin he normally slid into the back seam of his pants. At the very last minute, Hetty had switched out his normal jeans for the khakis, on the suggestion of Matty Harper. They would, he'd said, be more believable as "Matty-wear."

"I hate these pants," Callen said in frustration. "I'm not a khakis kind of guy."

Jess smiled a little, which made him feel better. She'd been beating herself up about this whole situation ever since they'd been told about Sutton's plan.

"I'm sorry, G," she'd said over and over again once Sutton had left. "This is all my fault. I followed the trail they left exactly the way they wanted me to. And then I had to go the step further and involve OSP." She shook her head and sighed. "I played the perfect patsy, PLUS I handed them a federal agent."

"Alliteration notwithstanding," Callen said with a small grin, "you also managed to snag a cellphone and send a distress call. So I'm willing to call it even."

Jess shook her head and looked up to the ceiling. "My bosses … your bosses … Sam … Tony … they're all going to kill me."

"I knew this was a bad idea," Sam said, angrily. As the night wore on, everyone began imagining the worst. The longer they went with no intel, the more edgy the two teams got. Sam's voice had taken on a mocking tone. "We do a favor for the Pentagon. We hand over our guy. We should be able to trust them to do the job right." He pounded a fist on the table. "Knew it was a bad idea from the start."

"Oh … you KNEW this was a bad idea?" Tony said, as he approached the screen. "Excuse me, Mr. Righteous Indignation, but you guys didn't find anything hinky in the plan either, or you wouldn't have moved forward." He locked eyes with Sam via VTC. "I've got a friend who's missing too."

"Seriously, everyone, this is my fault," Nate said, joining the conversation. "I spent hours with the Harper twins and never caught on to any sort of subterfuge. Matty has been telling these lies for so long that it's the same as the truth to him. There were no obvious tells … no nervousness, no loss of eye contact. He didn't give up anything." Nate looked at the group. "Same with Laura March."

"Not your fault, Nate," Sam said, staring down Tony from the screen. "We had bad intel from the start. We should have backtraced all the evidence instead of relying on what was handed to us."

"We had no reason to not trust what was given us, Mr. Hanna," Hetty reminded him. "It came from credible sources."

"A credible source who we'd never met before," Sam snapped, frustration clouding his better judgment.

Tony took another step towards the screen. "So this is Jess' fault now?" he said, picking a fight. Tony's eyes narrowed. If Sam had been in the room, the two would have been one click away from a full-out brawl, and everyone present knew it. "What about your guy", Tony taunted. "Your tech expert who backstopped them? He missed it too!"

"Hey!" Eric shouted from the back of the ops center.

"Look," Kensi said, trying for calm. "We both operated on intel from a source we trusted, and we both got played. They must have been planning this – whatever it is – for years. At some point we have to accept the fact that if the good guys know how to create deep cover for someone, so do the bad guys."

Sam opened his mouth to reply.

"Enough!" Gibbs and Hetty interrupted, almost in unison. "There is enough blame to go around," Hetty said, making quick eye contact with everyone on both coasts. "And we will get to that point eventually. But perhaps in the meantime we can work together to find Mr. Callen and Miss Kennedy, as it appears that their cover has been blown but big."

"Where are we?" Gibbs asked impatiently.

Eric sounded frustrated. "They've either got the most effective comm block system in the history of bad guys, or the Angeles National Forest is truly a place where you can get away from it all."

"Director," Hetty said, suddenly. "You mentioned a message." They'd forgotten about the message.

Vance turned to Tony, who quoted, "SOS OSP PNCHBWL".

"PNCHBWL?" Kensi said, puzzled. "Punchbowl. What does that mean?"

"Is it an operation name, or a code word?" Tony asked.

"Nothing that springs to mind," Vance said. "Maybe something they saw or heard."

"A place or a name – a license plate, maybe?" Gibbs offered.

"I'm so not good at puzzles," Nate said, under his breath. Both NCIS groups were lost in thought, trying to figure out the riddle.

Then, suddenly, "Punchbowl!" Eric said, triumphantly. "Of course!" He started typing. "Devil's Punchbowl. It's a hiking area in the middle of the Angeles National Forest." He pulled up a topographical map of the area. "But there's, like, nothing there – no structures, nothing."

"If Jess is sending that as a clue, then it means something," Gibbs said from his chair in MTAC. "Can you get aerial photos?"

"I don't …" Eric began. Then, "Yes!" He pulled up GoogleEarth and started scanning. "Here," he said, putting an aerial photo marked "Devil's Punchbowl CA" up on the screen.

"There are a couple of flat raised areas that could work if there's a compound there," Sam said. "But there's nothing."

The groups on both coasts scanned every inch of the photos looking for any indication that a permanent – or even temporary – structure existed.

"There," Gibbs said, pointing to a spot on the photo. He turned to the MTAC tech. "Can you blow that up?" The photo appeared on the screen in the ops center. "That square area," he continued. "Looks like it could be a building – maybe storage or operations for the hiking trails."

"It's big enough, but there's nothing around it," Tony was saying, almost to himself. "How old are these photos?" he asked.

"About 18 months," Eric said, noting the input date on the screen.

"We need something more current," Tony said. "Is that possible?"

Eric slumped in his chair. "Not without repositioning a satellite."

Hetty walked towards the video conference camera. "Leon?" she said. "I believe it's your turn …"

There was a significant pause as the two stared each other down. Vance sighed and put on his headset. He turned to the MTAC communications staff. "Get me someone at SATCOM," he said.