MIT 13

Two hours and forty-five minutes into the journey, Kelly was pulling into the driveway of the Gibbs family home. Instead of switching off the engine like she normally would, she made the call as planned at the last check in, and the garage door promptly opened. She drove Tim's Porsche into the garage parking beside her father's yellow challenger, which quickly closed behind the small Boxster. Only switching off the engine once the door was firmly closed.

Tim roused himself from the passenger seat where he had folded his lanky body up into the tiny space. But it had worked, they had managed to avoid all the toll ways and the camera traps, and no one had seen him leave the beach house. Taking the back roads and making up some time before the 0800-hour deadline. Gibbs met the couple at the internal side door with Tony and the Director in tow. "Welcome home, Probie." Tony said softly, pulling his buddy in for a half hug of comfort before moving off Tim to help Kelly grab their bags.

"Tim, glad you made it." Gibbs said, hugging him as he ushered them into the living room. "Tony and I moved the bed from the guest bedroom down into the basement. We think it's best if you and Kelly hang out there for a few days, just until we've got a better handle on what was the cause. OSP are looking into your op and seeing if any lose ends have been tied back to you here in DC. That's a long shot, though."

"My security team has been checking in with the team assigned to monitor Miss Scuito's whereabouts too. We all know Abby has the skills to pull off something like this and we all know she was angry enough with you to pull a stunt like this." Jen told him, patting his arm in a supportive manner. "Rest assured, Agent McGee. We will find out who us responsible for this."

"What's the toll?" Tim asked and watched as Gibbs and Jenny exchanged worried glances with one another. Tim snapped his fingers at Tony, quickly, startling the senior agent. "Tony, the toll?"

"Sorry Probie, last I heard they hadn't found anyone alive. But I have been helping Gibbs here. Ziva's still there, I can call her for an update." Tony said sympathetically. Tony was doing everything in his power to not look at Gibbs or Jenny, knowing the disappointed look that would be on their faces. Finally, he bit the bullet and met their eyes. "What? The man's not stupid, don't insult his intelligence." Tony snapped at his boss and the Director.

Tony, of all people coming to his defence surprised him. Sure, they had been teammates and Tim was their probie, but the man had never really stood up for him before, with the exception of the whole Benedict fiasco. They didn't have to wait very long until Ducky called Gibbs. He was requesting Gibbs return to the yard, asap.

Tim had been laying down on the bed in the basement, mentally replaying the last five months in his head. He knew that Sam and Callen were working on the 'op gone wrong' angle and the Director's security team were working the 'Abby' angle. But Tim couldn't pinpoint the feeling, he just knew in his bones, that the explosion at the apartment complex where he lived, was unrelated to those incidents.

He needed to go into the Navy Yard, he needed his system there. He had a gut feeling, and he didn't like the way it sat with him.

First, he had to call the Director. He called her direct line. He had no answer. He called Cynthia, Director Shepard's PA, who told her that she and Gibbs were "indisposed" which would have been fine, except that it was the weird wording and tone that she had used. It set alarm bells off in Tim's head.

He tried to call Tony and with no answer either, he was getting concerned. He called Ziva and that cell phone went to voicemail too.

He had all but begged Gibbs and the Director to let him go to the scene, but even Tony had been adamant that it was safer for his mental health not to see it.

Now he couldn't get hold of anyone and he was reluctant to admit, he was beginning to worry when no one was answering their phones. Especially since the MCRT team had a rule. Never be unreachable.

Not willing to sit by and wait for someone to call him back, Tim grabbed his gear and his weapon and headed to the Navy Yard. Along the way, he called Balboa, who was just as surprised Tim was calling him as what Tim was when he answered. Balboa was on scene in Silver Spring still, he informed Tim that Ziva was probably sleeping as she had just left the scene and had been awake since the explosion. Tim took a sharp right turn and changed courses, heading to Ziva's apartment. He had taken Kelly's car, instead of the Porsche to avoid detection on the off chance this was related to the case he worked out of OSP in LA.

Arriving at Ziva's apartment, he used his spare key to let himself in, not wanting to be seen lingering in the hallway waiting for her to open the door. Inside her apartment, Tim was conscious to make noise, noise that would tell Ziva it was a friend, not foe, letting themselves in. It wasn't until Ziva had appeared all bleary eyed at the doorway from her bedroom that Tim had thought that how dangerous it could be, breaking into an assassin's apartment. "McGee!" She hissed, rushing to him and pulling him in for a hug. She looked him over to reassure herself, that her friend was ok and indeed unharmed.

"I need your help." Tim rushed out. "I've been thinking. This explosion, it's about me. It's personal to me. They hit my home, Zee." Tim said, as Ziva retreated into the bedroom to throw some fresh clothes back on. "Tony, Gibbs and the Director are all unreachable. I have spoken with Balboa, and he said he cannot contact anyone at HQ either. Something is going down there; we need to find out what. I spoke with Cynthia briefly, she sounded weird and under duress. She didn't use any key words, but from her tone, everything was far from ok."

"I'm in, Tim." Ziva said, returning to the living room. "You are in charge, yes? You are the senior field agent now."

"I guess." Tim hesitantly answered. He and Ziva had always held the same rank and he hadn't officially started on Balboa's team as an SFA. To him, Ziva was his equal.

"Then I shall have your six, no matter who you answer to. We are still family. Let's go." Ziva said, grabbing her keys and announcing that she is driving.

As they approached the Navy Yard, they could see that it had been evacuated, all the personnel lingered on the sidewalk, well back from the entrance to the naval base. In addition to the sidewalk being full of personnel, many were gathered at the park across the street too.

Ziva carefully parked her red Mini in the side alley, that the diner shared a wall with. They sat and surveyed the site a moment before both exited the vehicle and casually entered the diner as if there were no commotion outside at all.

Elaine had come out from around the counter relieved to see half of her favourite team were OK. She noticed the serious looks on their faces and ushered them behind the counter and into the dry storage area. No one saying a word.

Gibbs had once told them a story that during a hurricane, he had evacuated Elaine and her staff in an inflatable raft, through a hidden storm drain tunnel that was in the storage area of the diner and used the underground drainage system to come up inside Building B in the Navy Yard. From there, Ziva was sure that her and Tim could infiltrate the NCIS building through the evidence garage. The subterranean levels of building B were where the evidence locker overflow was stored, and Ziva had tried to persuade Ari to break into NCIS by using the connecting drainage tunnel between the two buildings.

Elaine closed the door behind her, having ushered Ziva and Tim in before her, locking it as soon as she was inside too. Wordlessly she took an old delivery invoice and drew a crude map, showing which turns they made that fateful day three years ago. Tim took in every detail of the map, his eidetic memory coming into play before Ziva studied it too. Both having seen it and memorised the details, Ziva folded it up and slipped it into her sock for safe keeping.

Next Elaine pulled the old and well-worn rug back to show them the hatch under it. In complete silence, Tim and Ziva each hugged Elaine and she handed them each a water bottle and closed the latch safely behind them. Pulling the rug back over the hidden hatch, she unlocked the storage room and returned with a box of breadcrumbs. No one was any the wiser about why she had ever left.

Ziva took the lead; each had their weapons drawn with Tim coming up the rear. Ziva held her Mossad pencil flashlight which illuminated the tunnel enough that they could see but not enough to make it bright.

Luckily, they hadn't had rain in quite a while so there wasn't much rainwater in the tunnel. They took the first left turn and then another left 300 feet down the tunnel. The third tunnel from the right hand turn at the six-tunnel intersection and 100 feet ahead, there was a hatch above their heads. That was building B. The hatch was 8 feet above the bottom of the tunnel, without Tim, Ziva would have struggled to reach it. Tim could easily reach it by using his tip toes. Ziva handed him a stethoscope to listen to the other side. They were going in blind and no idea what awaited them.

Ziva had grabbed her all-inclusive kit from her Mossad days, which had prepared them for most contingencies. The stethoscope was too short to reach and listen, so Tim had Ziva climb on his shoulders to listen, not hearing anything through the hatch, Ziva unlatched it incredibly carefully. Lifting it half an inch and then another half, she could barely see anything. It was unnerving to have the evidence garage overflow in building B so dark.

Lifting the lid of the hatch up another 3 inches the room seemed empty, bathed in emergency lights only. Stealthily, Ziva pushed the hatch up further and looked around. The coast was clear.

Pushing the hatch to one side she hoisted herself in, before Tim managed to pull himself up halfway and Ziva helped him the rest of the way in. Silently they were latched the hatch.

They cleared the lower level they were in, Ziva looked over at Tim. Silently they shared a thought that the security system must be partially offline if the emergency lighting was on and had kicked in.

They moved over to the stairwell, knowing they needed to go up one level and into another hatch to access the main NCIS building and that's where the real challenges would lie.

Together they moved discreetly, stealthily towards the stairs and up the next level, ensuring their weapons were drawn at all times. "Stop!" Tim softly ordered and Ziva pulled up short. "Something doesn't feel right, it's too quiet."

"You are right, where is the FBI? The Marines? Spec Ops? REACT?" Ziva asked. Tim pointed to a door. It was an old storage closet, when Tim had been TAD in Cyber Crimes last winter when flu had taken out half their staff, they had stored the excess computers and parts in there.

Ziva and Tim efficiently and effectively cleared the room and Tim set himself up a brand-new system, straight out of the box and started taking the components he needed to hack the NCIS security feed. "We need the upper hand here Zee, it's us against the unknown." Tim whispered softly. "There is a server room down the hall, once I get this together, I'll tap in, and we can get an idea of what we are up against."

"I have your six." she replied, with a warm Ziva smile.

In no time at all Tim had reconfigured the new computer he had claimed firm the storage room, with all the parts and components he needed to hack the servers of NCIS. He gathered the leads, and his other pilfered items and Ziva cleared the hallway as they slipped across the hall and two doors down to the server room.

Ziva cleared the immediate vicinity before urging Tim to start setting up his gear to get started hacking while she continued to clear the room.

They were confident that they were alone, the lights in the server room were motion activated and Tim had helped design the concept earlier in the year. He knew the ins and outs of how well the system worked.

Tim's nimble fingers danced across the keyboard as he typed in the commands to allow him access to the NCIS system. He had built a back pass access to his account to ensure he had the access to hack anything that Gibbs had cleared him to, and the authorisation to set it up, if the case took them away from the office. "I'm in." He whispered to Ziva. She had crouched beside him to see what he could see. He checked the security system and found that only Cynthia and the Director was logged on, that everyone else had been logged out when the evacuation alarm had sounded. Tim then scanned the CCTV systematically, starting in autopsy, the lab and CCU, before moving on to the evidence garage, the Analyst's den and the main bullpen, before the Director's office, her outer office where Cynthia sat, the Conference rooms and then interrogation rooms.

He reconnected up a cable and entered a series of commands and passwords to bypass the security mainframe of MTAC. He surmised that, that must be where the situation was unfolding. Finally getting into the feed, he didn't want to alert anyone he was in the system, so he took an extra minute to make sure his tracks were well covered as he hacked into the cameras in MTAC.

Once inside, he could see Jenny Shepard, Tony, Gibbs and Fornell all seated in front row with the SecNav and two agents from his security detail in the second row. A man was pacing, back and forth in front of the seven hostages. "Seven hostages, one target." Ziva surmised. "What is the plan, McGee?"

"Got any idea how to access MTAC?" He asked her. He knew she had studied the schematics of the Navy Yard for her terrorist brother. She knew where the weak points were.

"There is not any." Ziva replied. "It is completely impenetrable."

"So, we do it the old-fashioned way, we hack the security lock on the door and hope you shoot him before he shoots us." Tim theorised out loud. "What could go wrong?"

"More than one terrorist, he gets us before we get him. A security breach, he will have someone working with him, I guarantee it. We could be found before we get to the MTAC. It is too dangerous, Tim. We need another way in."

"I have another way in." Tim told her, as he disconnected their laptop, but not before saving the gateways and portal that they'd just hacked into. "We go in as a cyber-attack, sending messages to Gibbs and the Director, before messing with the terrorists, remotely."

"It is devious, under handed. It is brilliant." Ziva grinned at him.

"For this work best, I need to get into the CCU." Tim told her softly.

"They will find you there!" she exclaimed in a high pitch, although trying hard to keep her voice low.

"When we attack, I shall have your back." he promised his friend. He, then proceeded to let her in on his plan.

This madman seemed to be one step ahead, it had started as a simple briefing before the Admiral accompanying the SecNav started asking some pointed questions about Agent McGee and his work here at the navy yard before demanding to be allowed to meet his team. Jen Shepard had been curious as to who the Admiral was, so she summoned Gibbs and Tony into MTAC. Luckily for her, Tobias Fornell had been in the building and had tagged along to her summons of the older NCIS agent.

They weren't bound, not gagged. But they were being held hostage by Admiral John McGee. Tim's father.

He had been making plans for Tim to man up and join the navy finally, after. But Tim had resisted and the two had argued and John had decided he would make Tim's life miserable. He just had to bide his time and attack him where it hurts the most and when he least expected it.

Now he had carried out his plan, he was angry that Tim wasn't here to make him notice what the navy had made him capable of. Now, he was thinking on the fly and he had to work out a way to get his son here to see what he was about to do, in order to protect their family's legacy.