It was almost eight o'clock when I was brave enough to knock on Gibbs' motel room door, not telling him I stopped by a shop to pick up the knife he suggested. By that time though, I had calmed down from my rant at Todd, but was still pissed off at him. However, I had stewed long enough about Todd and wanted some reasoning (even if it was Gibbs and a possible bottle of bourbon he recently bought) and wanted to appear sane. Also, seeing as how we're supposed to be having a video conference with the other agents in half an hour, I wanted to be professional.
And seriously, I didn't want Tony to know about my disastrous date with Todd Henley. I knew that he could tell that I had one within seconds if I wasn't careful, according to Ziva. And I would never hear the end of it otherwise.
"Where have you been?" Gibbs asked as soon as he answered the door. "I need you to figure out this computer thing before I shoot it again."
I sighed, noting again on the desk the bullet-sized hole on top of the laptop that Director Shepard had us bring along. I didn't want our nosy neighbors to ask about our gun usage again (and Gibbs touching the laptop without me around), so I replied quickly to Gibbs, to reassure him that it will be done ASAP.
"I got into a fight with our friendly escort from earlier," I said, coming in. "But I'll get us online in a second."
"The puppy dog?"
"Yes. He pissed me off."
"I figured as much. Now, are you going to fix that damned thing or am I shooting it again?"
"What about holding your horses and letting me log in?"
"You're supposed to do that?"
While Gibbs' last response was purely sarcastic, I shot him back his own best facial expression as I hopped into the chair and typed in a screen name and password to get to the desktop, one in which the director herself told me (feeling lucky that it was working to begin with). While I figured that I'd try something of his on him (the facial expressions, I mean), I also thought that it would be funny to try to pick on something my own size for once.
Instead, I didn't expect to get a head slap from Gibbs himself.
I rubbed my head, feeling my face turn redder (and it wasn't just from the heat). "Ow, what was that for?"
"Are you getting me to see Tony, Ziva and McGee?" Gibbs asked, kneeling next to me in the chair.
"Not yet, but be patient and I will."
After logging in and getting the external video camera situated, I hopped onto the programming and signed in, hoping that the three agents would be on the other end. After clicking on the NCIS screen name to call, I waited unwearyingly. After a few minutes, nobody was answering my calls. I tried again (Gibbs behind me this time, standing) and waited, only to have a black screen and his hand on his hip. Then –
"Hey, where have you been?" McGee's face popped up first. "We've been trying to call you for half an hour now."
"I was running late," I confessed. "But we have –"
Gibbs pushed himself in. "What do you have?" he demanded.
"Well, Keith Bolton was questioned and we've got nothing," Tony explained with glee as he came into view. "Well, I got nothing. Ziva got nowhere, but the two of them were conversing in Arabic ever so…casually. After a while, when her crazy Mossad interrogation methods came, there was chaos and two people grabbing for power and –"
"Tony," Ziva interrupted as she came on, "we just talked about the murders and he's denied everything. You just got talked to him about some sort of games."
"Ahh, Ziva, they were video games, like the Play Station," McGee chimed in.
My face reddened as the three discussed off-topic things. Poor Keith, that ass of a lug! He never liked government agencies, especially after the Air Force. Even if he did something, he wasn't going to give NCIS anything. If not…well, he knows how to give them a hell of a send-off, even in Arabic.
"Do we have anything else on Marcellin Traver?" Gibbs finally boomed, having enough of the small talk. "You said nothing was found in his apartment."
Papers were shuffled and the three argued about what was found, disappearing from view for a minute as they squabbled like siblings, which left us with the background consisting of the bullpen. Then, McGee came on, holding up some paperwork in an evidence bag. "Boss, we did do another search on the home, like the director suggested. When we investigated the bedroom a second time, we found some loose boards on the floor. We pried them up and found these."
McGee held up the evidence, but Gibbs squinted behind me to see, putting on his glasses finally. "What is it, McGee?" he growled.
"The locations of two of three warehouses and the floor plans to it, where the children are sent to be processed and how in each room," Tony announced proudly. "As senior field agent, I bravely went into the danger and – and…"
Tony trailed and then stopped when he saw Gibbs' expression turned from totally emotionless to very irritated.
"Well, Boss," he continued, "McGeek and I here found them and got them out. While NCIS in LA is handling the one in California, the one in Ashbury Park is the only other we have. The DC one is still under the radar."
"Give me the address of the one here," Gibbs demanded (the millionth time he's been in a very dissatisfied mood).
"Well, it's in the Haitian community…" Ziva began.
Sighing and taking off his glasses, Gibbs recited an address from memory, the same warehouse we had been watching since we questioned the residents.
McGee looked at the schematics of the Ashbury Park warehouse. "That's it, Boss! That's the warehouse in Ashbury Park."
"Then, what are we waiting for, Jethro?" Director Shepard popped into view, blocking the other three agents from view. "I'll send the other three agents up to you. Raid that place. Pick up some extra reinforcements."
"Are we so sure that we should be raiding a place when it could be alerted that they've been attacked?" I asked the director. "If they're starting out in Haiti, where all the main guys are, then somebody would realize that something's up here and remain on high alert and get us. They're a bigger organization than NCIS and are able to hide better. We won't be able to find them in Sud."
"NCIS has been investigating the Sud department in Haiti, since we found out that the murders and the Black Crusade were linked together," the director informed me playfully, as if she knew something that I didn't and it was tickling her. "Because we've been concentrating on the area where the most children are taken, we've found out the exact location of operation in Haiti. Since then, we've taken most, if not all, of the men and women involved, civilian, Marines and Navy, and found out more than the Pentagon files could give us. While all of the children have been sent back to their families in that area, we still need to find out who the head of the Black Crusade is. Henry Austin is still missing."
"We can't find all the children that have been kidnapped and abused," I pointed out logically, happy that the Black Crusade was slowly starting to shut down.
"No, but there's still a chance that we've stopped one of the largest child sex trades in the world without knowing it," the director replied. "We know that one of the main leaders is dead from the shootout, Marcellin Traver. While the three sorting houses in the United States have limited contact with Haiti, we still have some agents posing as members of the Black Crusade in Haiti in case something happens. While things remain normal down there for them, we still have time to shut down the satellite stations. The LA warehouse has been raided already and its workers arrested and children freed to the proper authorities and then their parents."
"So, when does the director want the Ashbury Park warehouse raided?" Gibbs asked quite sarcastically.
"If I get McGee, Tony and Ziva up to New Jersey tomorrow afternoon, make it sometime after that," was the response from the director.
"Oh, yay, road trip!" I heard Tony add in with sarcasm, almost as bad as Gibbs'.
"Do we have anything on Seth Austin and Felix Henderson?" Gibbs then inquired, wanting more information and knowing that these two suspects were not off the hook yet.
The director moved aside so that Ziva, Tony and McGee could answer Gibbs' next question. However, all three of them were silent, not knowing what to say. Ziva even shuffled some papers in order to keep the bad news from Gibbs.
"Well?!" Gibbs barked. It made me jump in my seat.
"Well, they're both gone, Boss," Tony said bravely, feeling the need to say something, since he's second in charge. "We went to visit them in their respective apartments and they're gone. The two apartments were cleaned out and all of the furniture and personal belongings have vanished. There isn't even a fingerprint anywhere."
"The smell of bleach was everything," Ziva revealed, wrinkling her nose in disgust.
"And ammonia," McGee added.
Both Tony and Ziva looked at McGee, annoyed.
"What?" McGee exclaimed. "I took Agent Lee for company. We found out from the landlord for Felix Henderson's apartment that both ammonia and bleach were mixed together when it was 'cleaned out'. He had to clear out the rest of the tenants. One of them died from inhaling it and it was a small child who was taking a nap."
"Meanwhile, the landlord for Seth Austin's was commenting that bleach was used everywhere, even on the hardwood floors," Ziva said. "It was all destroyed."
"A deadly combination that would literally clean out an apartment," I remarked quietly to Gibbs.
"You took Agent Lee with you?" Tony asked McGee with amazement.
"And there's no trace of them?" Gibbs rubbed his forehead with frustration and ignoring Tony.
"I've been tracking any credit card or bank card usage," McGee replied, also ignoring Tony. "There's nothing so far. They might be paying cash for everything. However, I've been watching the bank accounts of the mystery man in the Black Crusade called 'Randall Stephens', from Buxton, Maine. Originally, we had bank accounts in his name stretching from England to China. However, I just found out that his name is also on another account here in the United States and all of the paperwork matches overseas. In Bangor, Maine, there's a TD Bank North account in his name. While there hasn't been any recent activity overseas, there has been here in the US."
"Your point, McGee?"
"Well, Boss, other than there being billions of dollars in this account, it's been cleaned out this morning. One person closed it and we have video surveillance."
"Not much good though," Ziva pointed out. "The man is wearing a basket cap, has a scarf around his face and is covered from head to foot with clothing."
"That's ball cap, Ziva," Tony said to the Israeli. "Ball cap, not basket cap."
"Whatever!" Ziva shoved Tony out of the sight for a moment before he recovered and came back on screen. "We don't even know who the person is."
"But we have one shot where we can see some of his face," McGee said hopefully. "Abby is running a facial recognition right now, using the Black Crusade files she recently added into her computer. We might have somebody soon."
"Good work," Gibbs butted in before the three could argue about something once more. "Get some sleep. We'll see you tomorrow."
"Wait, Boss, we've got something from Captain Sullivan –" McGee started as Gibbs moved to turn the video feed off.
However, before he could listen to McGee or even ask me to log off the computer, Gibbs turned from me and his agents and went to the back of the computer, yanking out the power cord forcefully, which shocked the battery and killed the computer for good. Groaning as I watched this, I put my head in my hands and shook it, aware that he just screwed up the computer.
McGee was going to have to fix it again…
"Get this damned thing out of here," Gibb said to me. "I don't care how. Just take this to your room and get it out of mine! We have what we need and I don't need something from your father unless he's confessing to murder."
Pulling my head up, I sighed again. "I'm on it, Boss," I only said, knowing that there wasn't anything else I could do except obey.