XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Once Gibbs had left the lab and was far enough away to not be able to hear anything, the Major slumped down in her chair, hanging her head, "Man, I really gotta work on that one."
Abby swallowed that last gulp hard and looked up to see what the deal was, "Hey, what do you mean?"
"Agent Gibbs specifically asked me to stop referring to him as 'Sir', but I can't seem to drop the training." The Major had returned to setting up her computer and the digital tablet.
"Oh yeah… He totally hates that whole 'Sir' thing… I think it's a Marine sergeant thing, or something… Anyway, he really hates it, so you better work on that one." Abby spun around in her chair to face her terminal and started working on something.
"Yeah… It's just really hard after spending nearly eighteen years in formal military service." The Major also returned to her work and upon finishing her set up, fired her computer once more.
Abby sat pondering those words until they finally penetrated into her head. "You've been in the military for EIGHTEEN YEARS!" As she turned back around in her chair to face the Major, Abby's eyes were as big as dinner plates. "What? Did you join up when you were ten!" Abby laughed a little at her own joke and continued, "I mean seriously, you don't look much older than me."
Now it was the Major's turn to laugh out loud, "Though I appreciate your words, I'm quite certain that I have at least ten years on you, but I'd have to check to be sure."
Abby sat in total shock, "Wait, you can look that up? Just who the heck are you, lady?"
The Major just shook her head and chuckled, "Well, I can give you name, rank, service number and date of birth, but beyond that… 'I am not at liberty to divulge that information at this time.'"
Abby was still intrigued by the Major's comments, but knew the company line better than anyone, so she decided to drop the matter. Especially when she noticed the Major's left hand and the wedding ring she found glinting off of it. "So, I thought you said you had no life?"
The Major looked down at the visible wedding ring and realized that Abby was trying to perform her own little interrogation, but decided to go along with it anyway, "Yeah, well, he's a Naval Officer, so it's pretty much the same thing."
Abby was now seriously curious of the Major, "So wait, you're a Jarhead and he's Sailor? That had to be a strange combo… How'd you guys meet? And if you say on a boat, I will have to do damage."
Shaking her head again, the Major just chuckled, "No, not at all… We actually met out in Ocean City one summer. I was playing in a volleyball tournament while visiting family and he and his buddies were there on leave from the Naval Academy. We've been together ever since."
While Abby processed the information, she just asked another question to make small talk, "So, how long have you guys been hitched?"
The Major began leafing through some of the photos sitting by her and then absently rattled off her anniversary, "Uh, this June will be eighteen years."
That comment stopped Abby dead in her tracks, "EIGHTEEN YEARS! So, if you've been in the Marines for eighteen years and married that long… How old were you when got hitched in marriage and with the Marines?"
Still not looking up from her work, the Major answered the question, "Um… Oddly enough, I was eighteen."
Abby thought about it a moment and had her smart alec comment ready to go, "So, you're life pretty much ended at eighteen, then."
This time the Major looked up from her task, "Are you kidding! My life began at eighteen… I started my life with a wonderful man, whom I love dearly… I was living my lifelong dream of entering the Naval Academy and I was becoming a Marine… That was the best year of my life, though admittedly, it was also probably the toughest as well."
It was now Abby's turn to stare with her mouth slightly agape at the Major's response. She shook her head in a cartoonish gesture in an effort to clear the cobwebs forming on her rarely pausing brain and came to a realization about this woman: This was someone I could really like getting to know.
"Okay, obviously you and me got off on the wrong foot… So, let's start over, shall we?" Abbby stood up and crossed the room to the Major. "Hey, I'm Abby, and I work here in the NCIS lab… McGee tells me you're some kind of Marine officer sent over by the SecDef to help us on this case, so… Welcome to the team!" And with that Abby took the woman's hand and shook it.
The Major decided it was much easier to go along with this rather unorthodox woman and she proceeded to shake her hand as well, "Major Gwen Cassidy, happy to be here and I hope we can close this case quickly."
Abby nodded her head, "Cool…" She turned to go back to her terminal when something else struck her, "Hey, I'm not really big on the whole title thing; you mind if I just called you Gwen?" Abby flashed one of her amazingly bright smiles as she asked the Major her last question.
"Uh… Yeah, I guess so… Just don't be too surprised if you have to say it a couple times before I answer… You don't sound anything like my husband, and that's pretty much the only time I hear that name anymore." Maj. Cassidy tried to laugh off her reasoning, but in fact it was true. Since entering the Naval Academy, she had barely heard her first name uttered outside of the walls of her own home. She was Major, Cassidy, Ma'am, Sir and another term not meant for her to actually hear, but said often enough she felt like answering to it on occasion.
"You got it… Loud and repeatedly… That should be easy for me." Abby answered with her own devilish look of mischief.
And the two settled in to working on their respective tasks with the occasional interruptions of conversation. They had been working for so long in that when Agent McGee appeared in the doorway they were both a little taken aback by his presence.
"You've got to be kidding, Tim… I can't leave right now… I'm waiting for the spectrometer results on those swabs that Gwen got off the Gunny's noggin earlier" Abby just continued to strike the keys at her terminal as she was looking for something.
"But it's almost 1900 hours, and you guys haven't even gotten lunch yet, let alone dinner. Shouldn't you at least take a break for that?" McGee looked around with a puzzled expression at the amazing change of demeanor between these two women.
"Nah, we got Chinese on its way right now… Besides, the results should be up in about four, three, two, one… BINGO!" Abby immediately took the results that were spewing out of her printer and started reading through the information. "Hmmmm…" She scrunched up her nose and was trying to decipher the findings when McGee simply could not stand it any longer.
"WHAT?!" His words came out much more urgent than he intended, so McGee soon found his cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
"Geez, McGee, you need to learn some patience, or something." Abby teased the junior agent.
"Sorry, Abs, but what is it?" The red to his cheeks was still evident, but he was trying to recover his dignity.
"Well, I think I've ID'd the element that was creating the glow effect, but I've never actually seen the stuff before… A little before my time, and the Major's for that matter… Heck, this might even be before Gibbs' time." Now Maj. Cassidy had become intrigued by the findings.
"What is it then?" The Major asked as she looked up from her computer screen.
Abby wriggled her nose one more time before speaking, "Well, it's Radium, but it also has some kind of unidentifiable petroleum product mixed with it." They all looked a little curiously at Abby, "And there are trace amounts of Glycerin and Alcohol, but because of the collection method, I can't tell if the alcohol was from the wipe or inherent in the makeup of the substance."
They all sat down with this piece of information and pondered what it could mean. Within a few minutes of this the phone beside Abby started to ring, and she reached over to pick it up, "Lab… Oh yeah, that's us… Someone will be right up." Abby hung up the phone.
McGee, being McGee, was the first to ask, "So, who was it, Abby?"
Suddenly broken from her train of thought, Abby responded, "OH! That was the delivery guy… I guess I better get up there and get the food before security frisks him again." She hesitates again and McGee decided that maybe it would be better for him to get the food.
"Go ahead and stay here… I'll grab it." And without waiting for anyone to object or say anything, McGee simply left the room.
A few minutes after his departure, Abby snapped to and realized what had just happened, "Oh cripes! I didn't even give him the money." Abby looked over to the Major to see her reaction, but instead found her engrossed with a search on her computer. "Whatcha got there, Gwen?" Abby began moving over to see what the Major was working on. "Gwen?"
After realizing she was the one being talked to, Maj. Cassidy looked up to respond to the question, "Uh? Oh, yeah… I was just doing a chemical database search for that combination of chemicals to figure out what it might be. But I'm not having much luck… Might need to trade DB's at this point." Maj. Cassidy was still deeply engrossed in her search when Abby began to move back towards her own terminal.
"I might be able to help with that, but let's see who can find what… Maybe if we tag team it, we'll have better luck." And so Abby returned to her terminal and started madly searching through every online database she could think of.
When McGee returned to the lab, neither woman noticed his arrival, so he just pulled out a small rolling table and started setting up the food for them. He was just about to pick up Abby's usual Kung Pao and set it beside her on the desk when she cried out, "GOT IT!" However, it was her turn to jump as she turned to find an equally shocked McGee standing there with her food in hand. "MCGEE! You gotta stop sneaking up on me like that." When she took the food from him, she shot him a wink that let him know he was off the hook; this time.
The Major called over, but did not look up, "What did you find?"
Abby works to swallow her first bite of Kung Pao before answering, "Ummm… There used to be a product called a 'Night Marker' made in the fourties for the Navy. They used it for Naval Aviation Night Operations for marking stuff on the flight deck… Made of Radium and alcohol…" She stopped to sip from her Caff-Pow, "Seems the ocean spray made it hard for the stuff to not wash off, so they would wipe some petroleum lubricant over it to keep it from washing away." Abby looked over to the Major to gauge her reaction, but all she found was the top of her head as she continued to work at her computer. "Whaddya think, Gwen?"
The Major continued to click away at her computer and Abby took this as the perfect opportunity to down some more of her Kung Pao. When McGee reached the Major's workstation with her food from the takeout order, she finally looked up, "Wow! That's a lot of food… There's no way I can eat all that. Have you eaten yet Agent McGee?"
McGee was a little surprised by the Major's lack of response to Abby, but he was actually hungry, and getting hungrier smelling the food that had been delivered. "Ummm… Well, no I hadn't yet, I was ju-…"
"Oh good," the Major interrupted, "Then you can have half of mine." And she takes the plate he had brought over with the food and dishes out less than half of the food in the containers and hands the rest back to McGee. "Thanks, I hate seeing it go to waste, and it never tastes the same when it's leftovers." She took a small bite and enjoyed the flavor of her Lo Mein a moment before speaking again. While she was getting started on her food, McGee walked back to the little rolling table and pulled up a chair so he could join them for their impromptu dinner. Then without warning, the Major pulled up something on her computer and began to explain, "The 'Night Marker' was the first wave of those products, it would seem that an Air Boss Cmdr. Stanley Wychovski requested that the Navy look into another alternative, because his deck crews were spending too much time re-marking everything after a couple of days because the alcohol based markers were not lasting very long. The Berol company came back with a glycerin based marker that had managed to last for three weeks on the hull of a ship docked in Norfolk during the rainy season, as long as the petroleum lubricant procedure (which was developed by Cmdr. Wychovski) was continued to be used." She stopped momentarily to bring up the next screen.
"Wow! Where do you get info like that?" Abby asked through another mouthful of Kung Pao.
"'I am not at liberty to divulge that information at this time.'" The Major had her own devilish grin on this time. "Anyway, it would seem that a diving crew managed to recover a case of these markers about ten years ago while doing some recovery work in the Pacific. When they opened the case and found the markers, they were still working. Seems that as long as the markers were not open, the glycerin base kept them viable indefinitely, which means that anyone finding them would still be able to use them, as well as getting that radiation they would need to become a shining light of their own, after a while."
Abby and McGee both chomped on their food for a little while before they both came to the same realization, at the same time. They both exclaimed in unison, "We're dealing with someone who was in the Navy!"
The Major just casually added, "Or at least someone that has intimate knowledge of and access to Aircraft Carrier equipment and history."
All three sat in silence, enjoying their respective meals as they continued to contemplate this newly revealed information. This lasted for quite a while and was only interrupted by the sound of a tinny rendition of what sounded like a familiar song. When the Major pulled the cell phone from her pocket, it became very clear that it was the Marine Corps theme song, "From the Halls of Montezuma."
She answered the phone and held a quiet conversation, "Major Cassidy… Oh hey… Wow, that was fast… Well, if it was her fourth I can understand… Yeah, I was just finishing dinner… Oh… Fifteen minutes?... You know how to get here, right?... Well, yes, I know you can use it, but that doesn't mean you will… No problem… Yeah, I'll just call the car service and cancel… Out front in fifteen… Copy that… Bye." The Major closes up the phone and starts to clean up her area.
Abby, unable to resist the temptation any longer, made another of her famous comments, "The Sailor anxious to get you home?"
The Major stopped momentarily as she processed the question, "What?... Oh yeah… You know how those sailors are when they make port." The Major then picked up all of her equipment and began to put it all back in the metal case.
McGee once again sat with a confused look on his face. Abby just chuckled as she cleaned up the last of her Kung Pao and tossed the container into the trash can beside her desk. "Yeah, especially when they know what's waiting for them at home." Abby walked over to the Major's work area and was helping her to put away all the files and the evidence box. "We'll just get these things secured and they'll be waiting for y-…" Abby noticed a tell-tale symbol on the documents she was helping to clean up and immediately turned to shoot McGee another glare, "MCGEE! Where did you get these!"
McGee nearly choked on his last bite of food when he realized that Abby had just discovered that the files the major was using were the ones she had stashed in preparation for the FBI taking over the case. "Well, Gibbs wanted the Major to get going on the data and he still needed his copy for their own leads and, well, I kind of had an idea of, ummm, ya know, ummm, where you might have hid-…" McGee was grasping at every straw he could get his hands on, but he was floundering; badly.
"McGee, you and I are gonna have a talk about this… And by talk, I mean I'm going to beat you." The fear in McGee's eyes gave Abby a sense of satisfaction. Even though she knew she would never follow through on her threat, it was good that McGee was honestly afraid that she would..
The Major chuckled at the little exchange between these two younger people as she closed the lid on her metal case. "Well, I can see you two have a lot to discuss… I will see you both tomorrow at 0700… At least, I hope it will be both of you." And the Major slipped out of the lab, leaving Abby and McGee alone to sort out their problem.