(AN) Hello and welcome to the first proper chapter of Outbreak, I hope you all enjoy and remember to Read and Review.
So in this chapter we'll see Team Gibbs begin their investigation.
Disclaimer; I don't own NCIS, all characters and locations are owned by CBS and Belisario Productions.
Chapter One
A New Mystery
If there was one thing Bishop loved about working for NCIS, it was that you never knew what kind of situation you'd get yourself into when you came to work, and no matter how strange the situation got. Bishop was currently sitting in the front passenger seat of Torres' car while he drove and McGee sat in the back. All three Agents had recived the pre-dawn wake up call and were told to make their way to the Navy Yard at once, Torres had picked up Bishop first, then McGee.
"So what do you think this call was about?" asked McGee sleepily.
"No idea, but it sounded urgent," said Torres, "Hopefully it's nothing too serious."
As Torres turned in the direction of the Navy Yard, the trio saw something that took them by complete surprise.
"Oh my God." cried Bishop in shock.
"What the Hell." said an equally shocked Nick.
Sitting just outside the entrance to NCIS HQ was the burnt out shell of a sports car, three bodies were lying next to the car, two of them were wearing Security Guard uniforms and the third wore a Navy uniform. Gibbs, Director Vance, Sloane and Palmer were standing nearby.
McGee, Bishop and Torres hopped out of the car and headed over to the others.
"Morning boss, Director," greeted McGee, "So what have we got?"
"Well at four-thirty in the morning a black sports car parked itself just outside the building," informed Vance, "The Navy Officer who has been identified as Navy Lieutenant Jamie Richardson got out of the car but was immediately shot. The two Guards, Ben Warren and Max Brown went over to try and help, but they were shot dead by two masked figures, the masked figures then set the car on fire using gasoline and a lighter."
Gibbs tossed the camera towards Bishop who began snapping photos of the bodies and the burnt out car.
"McGee, Torres, canvas the area, find out if anybody saw anything," ordered Gibbs, "Bishop, see if you can find anything in the car."
"On it boss." replied McGee before walking off with Torres.
Bishop walked over to the car and peered inside. The inside of the car was just as burned as the outside, there was nothing left. "Nothing here Gibbs." stated Ellie.
As Palmer went to examine the bodies, Kasie arrived with some staff and together they took the car into the evidence garage.
"Any ideas on what the motive could be, or what Mr Richardson was trying to warn us about?" asked Bishop.
"Well if he parked outside our building, he likely wanted to see me," suggested Gibbs dryly, "Which means it could either be a threat to the Navy or something else."
"I've contacted our counterparts in LA, New Orleans and Hawaii, they're all on high alert." informed Vance.
McGee and Torres walked back to the group. "There were no witnesses," sighed an annoyed McGee, "Absolutely nothing that'll give us a clue as to why Richardson was murdered."
"There'll be something," grumbled Gibbs as he walked towards the entrance, "There always is."
Some time later, Palmer was wandering around Autopsy, Jamie's body was lying on one of the metal tables, naked with a white sheet covering his lower half.
"Well you've certainly been through a lot, haven't you Mr Richardson," remarked Jimmy cheerfuly as he stopped in front of the Autopsy table that Jmie was on.
"Got anything for me Palmer?" asked Gibbs as he walked briskly into the room, clutching a cup of coffee.
"Not a thing," lamented Jimmy, turning to face the silver haired Agent, "Mr Richardson was shot in the back of the head from a short distance, the bullet passed through his Occipital and out through the frontal lobe where it became lodged in the exit wound."
"And the guards?" asked the silver haired man.
"Both died from single gunshot wounds to the head," informed Palmer, "Seems like they were taken by surprise."
"That all?" asked the senior Agent in shock.
"That's all she wrote I'm afraid," replied Jimmy, "Mr Richardson had a perfect bill of health and nothing of interest."
Gibbs' phone suddenly started ringing, he took it out of his pocket and answered. "Yeah it's Gibbs." he said in his usual gruff manner.
"Gibbs, I've got some stuff to show you." came Kasie's excited reply.
"Right, I'm on my way." said Gibbs before hanging up.
The silver haired Agent turned and headed out the door.
Gibbs entered the Forensics lab and spotted Kasie doing a little victory dance.
"You tryin' to do a victory dance there Kas?" snarked Gibbs.
"Figured it would give me a good wake up call, unlike the earlier one which dragged me out of bed," said Kasie cheerfully before seeing the serious expression on Gibbs' face and changing tact, "But that's not why you're here is it?"
"What you got for me Kas?" asked Gibbs, somewhat impatiently.
"Well the car has been burnt to bits, no DNA traces anywhere," lamented the Forensic Scientist before grinning, "However, I did find some interesting stuff on Mr Richardson's phone."
Kasie led Gibbs over to her computer and soon began typing away. "I found a few text messages between Richardson and somebody named FBATV." she explained excitedly.
The message thread then appeared on the monitor. The first one was from Richardson and read, 'I can't go through with this, you've gone too far. I want out of this now.' A reply from the unknown messenger read, 'If you breath a word of the plan, you're dead.' After this was another reply from Richardson that read, 'I don't care, you need to be stopped.'
Gibbs and Kasie looked at each other in concern. "Well that sounded very ominous,"remarked Kasie before shivering slightly, "That conversation was from a few hours before Richardson's death."
"Were you able to get an ID on who he was texting?" asked Gibbs in a hopeful sounding voice.
"Sadly not," answered Kasie, "The texts from the unknown person trace back to a burner phone."
"Good work Kasie." said Gibbs before lightly kissing her on the cheek and walking out.
"Give me an update." ordered Gibbs as he entered the bullpen.
"Navy Lieutenant Jamie Richardson, thirty-four," began McGee as he clicked the remote and an image of Jamie appeared along with all the relevant information, "Born in 1985, joined the Navy in 2003. Currently living in West Virginia with his wife Jennifer and two children, Mark who's five and Chloe who's seven. No priors and no known connections to any criminals."
"Mrs Richardson has been contacted and is on her way in," informed Bishop, "Hopefully she'll have some sort of information."
"And our two Security Guards are Ben Warren and Max Brown." informed Tim as he clicked the remote and brought up their relevant information, "Director Vance is informing their families."
Jennifer soon arrived and was escorted to the conference room. Gibbs, McGee, Bishop, Torres and Sloane soon entered and sat down across from her. Jennifer was a young, thin woman with dirty-blonde hair. After being informed about what exactly had happened, the woman began to weep in despair, Sloane handed her a box of tissues.
"I-I just can't believe it," muttered Jennifer in a distraught voice, "Jamie was such a sweet man, why would somebody want to hurt him?"
"We don't know yet, but rest assured we'll do everything we can to find your husband's killer." assured Gibbs gently.
"Mrs Richardson, do you have any idea on who would want to hurt your husband?" asked McGee.
"Not a clue," answered Jennifer earnestly, "Everybody loved Jamie. Unless it had something to do with the group."
"Group? What group?" asked Gibbs.
"I mean it might be nothing, but Jamie and I are part of an Anti-Vax group on social media," informed Jennifer before seeing the disapproving looks on everyone's faces, "Okay, I know that sounds bad to some, but Jamie believed that vaccines cause autism and so a few years back we joined this group, Fight Back Against the Vax."
"Well as a parent I'd have to strongly disagree with your views," replied McGee, "But what exactly does this have to do with your husband's murder?"
"Well... this group is a bit more extreme than most groups," explained the woman, "The members go out and commit vandalism and thefts on medical facilities, we began to feel uncomfortable about this. Anyway, a few months back the leader of the group held a meeting and according to Jamie they were planning something big, something that would rival 2hat had come before."
"Did your husband share details of this plan?" asked Bishop.
"None," replied Jennifer in a sombre tone of voice, "He just kept saying that he didn't like it and that he wanted out."
Gibbs looked at the others in concern, his famous gut was screaming that this was something serious and potentially dangerous.
"That'll be all for now Mrs Richardson," stated Gibbs, "We'll keep you updated."
Jennifer shook hands with the Agents before exiting the room.
The team soon returned to the bullpen, McGee looked up the website and displayed it on the plasma screen. It was a basic looking site with multicoloured text at the top reading Fight Back Against the Vax, complete with the image of a cartoon stick figure beating up a needle.
"You have to admit that is kinda cute." remarked Nick, grinning.
"Yeah, sure it's cute, but these sites are pretty much every parents worst nightmare." stated McGe as he began searching through the site.
"Find anything yet?" asked a slightly impatient Gibbs as he entered the bullpen, sipping on some coffee.
"Currently looking through the forum on the website to see if there's any sort of clue that'll identify Lieutenant Richardson's killers," informed McGee before smiling in satisfaction, "And it looks like I've found them."
The team looked up at the plasma screen and saw a chat thread between two users, Lewis Thompson and Robin Smith. The first message from Lewis read. 'Richardson's turned against the plan, the boss wants us to deal with him.' The reply from Robin read, 'Okay, let's do it.'
"Not very private are they." snarked Bishop.
"Nope," replied McGee, "These messages were posted just a few hours before Lieutenant Richardson's death, I think we've got our killers."
"McGee, find them." ordered Gibbs.
After getting a warrant, McGee used the users IP addresses to track them down, he soon found that their phones were in use and that the two were wandering the streets.
"Right, grab your gear!" barked Gibbs as he grabbed his gun and badge and headed towards the elevator.
McGee, Bishop and Torres slung their backpacks over their shoulders and followed Gibbs.
(AN) And that was the first full chapter of my Outbreak rewrite, I hope you all enjoyed it.
So in the next chapter, Gibbs and the others hunt down the killers, but that won't be the end of the story for obvious reasons.
Until then, this is TimeLordMaster108 signing out.