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Gibbs had gone straight from Director Sheppard's office to the briefing at 1300 hours, so he had missed all the fun of sorting through boxes of files searching for something that would link them to their suspects. The briefing had been short, but to the point. NCIS now had full control of this case, and the FBI was only there for support (and only then because they had started the case rolling). The SecDef had taken Maj. Cassidy's recommendation straight to the President and gotten authorization to override the Department of Justice's claim on this case. NCIS was in the optimum position to solve the case, and the FBI did not have access to the records they would need to get the job done without a direct mandate from Congress. After everything that he had witnessed today, Gibbs had good reason to have that little hitch in his step, which was odd, seeing as he had only had two cups of coffee since 0400 hours. He only hoped his streak of luck would hold out, and that his team would make a break in the case.
Once he got within sight of the bullpen, however, he had made the decision not to let his people know they no longer had such a tight time constraint. Watching Tony and Ziva trading volleys of waded up paper at each other gave Gibbs the impression that they needed the pressure more. He stood just outside the bullpen for a few moments, watching the paper battle ensue, and waiting for them to notice him for optimum effect. Ziva was the first to see him and she instantly turned white from the shock, "I certainly hope those aren't from the archive boxes DiNozzo?"
Tony looked like he was practically coming out of his skin, which was just the way Gibbs liked him. "Please tell me you are celebrating because you have something more for me… Otherwise, I show you both where the unemployment office is located." Gibbs round his desk and sat down, making sure to give them both the right amount of steely glare.
"Yeah, Boss… I uh… Well, I went and interviewed the auction house people, and they didn't really remember the people from the auction, but they did give me the cancelled checks. I've got ten checks that don't match up to entries from the auction manifest turned in to DFAS (which Ziva found in the stuff from Archives)… McGee is running the accounts down now." Tony was quickly running off everything he could think of to distract Gibbs from their little game, "Uh, how was the briefing, Boss?"
"Uneventful, since you still haven't gotten me my lead… What now?" Gibbs started working on his computer to try and keep his straight face going and intimidate the hell out of his agents.
"Well, we have the personnel records from the warehouse, but McGee thought there might be a database with the same info, so we were waiting to hear back from him, but I guess we could start going through them ourselves as well… Just in case the database doesn't pot out-."
"PAN out, David… Pan out…" Tony crossed to her desk and grabbed one of the manilla envelopes containing the personnel files. "I'll start with 2000."
Ziva also reluctantly grabbed one of the envelopes as Gibbs silently grinned to himself at his victory.
Not wanting his fun to end, he needed to also make McGee sweat, so he put in a page for the young agent to call in to the bullpen.
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BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP McGee's pager was going off, but he was completely entranced by the magic Maj. Cassidy was working on the keys of Abby's computer. It took Abby punching him the arm to finally notice the pager, "Oh crap!" He grabbed the pager and immediately looked around for the phone.
Abby spoke in an almost hypnotic tone, as she too was drawn in by what the Major was doing, "Who is it, McGee?"
"Who else? Gibbs." He grabbed the phone and dialed Gibbs extension, "Yeah, Boss… In the Lab working on those checks and this other thing… Well, it's really complicated… No, I'm not trying to call you stupid, Boss. I would never do that… No, I'm not stalling either… I've got a very complex program running trying to find a match between some personnel records and the names on those checks, and some other records… No, I'm not trying to be vague… Well, because I don't actually know what they are… No, Boss… Yeah… Well, the Major stopped by and she-… Yeah, she's the one at the keys right now… Well, it's my program and I have to change the varia-… Yeah, Boss… Got it." McGee just stared at the phone a moment, completely confused by the conversation he just had.
The Major called back to him, "Problems, Agent McGee?"
He turned around towards the Major's voice, "Uh?" When Abby looked at him, he had the most stupefied expression she had ever seen on McGee's face. "Oh, um… Well, not exactly… I think. Gibbs is on his way down."
"Well, then you better get in here and add this variable into your algorithm, because we just narrowed our search parameters again." The Major pushed back from the terminal to allow McGee room to work.
McGee slid in and was again amazed at how fast the Major was able to work within this environment, "Oh yeah, that will really speed it up now."
"Don't forget to flip that into Boolean, McGee… Otherwise it will spit that data out really fast, but it will look like Sanskrit, and I'm only good at Latin and Sumerian." She winked at the Major to show she was only joking.
"Uh? Oh yeah, no Sanskrit…" McGee obviously missed the joke, "Okay, that should do it, so let's start her up again." McGee executed the program again, just as Gibbs entered the lab to find all three of them crowded around Abby's prize computer.
"Is this some kind of geek fest, or can anyone join?" Gibbs smirked as he took a drink from his coffee cup.
Both Abby and McGee jumped at the sound of Gibbs' voice, but the Major just casually turned to Gibbs and shot her own remark in his direction, "Well, if this thing works like it should, you might have a suspect in the next five minutes."
Gibbs nearly spit his coffee out with his shock, "What!"
Before she could answer, the computer with which they were all working from let loose with a trumpet charge, Dada-dadadudah! "Or less than five minutes."
Now all four of them were crowding around the screen as the Major retrieved the files corresponding to the name match that McGee's little program had discovered. When she was stopped by a security screen she reached into her pocket and pulled out a digitized security key device. She removed the cover and placed her finger on the recognition pad, waited for it to chirp and then entered the device into the USB port of the computer and hit the randomizer button. "Such a mistrusting lot over there in personnel."
When the security screen showed that she now had access Abby simply could not contain herself, "I have GOT to get me one of those!" The Major only laughed at her comment and went about her task.
After another minute she had reached a second security screen, but this time she only had to push the button on the device again. Within seconds she was saving the files to Abby's terminal and sending them to the printer for Gibbs. "Ladies and Gentlemen…" She pressed a key on the computer and up came the picture of a sailor, "I give you the Beta Male, otherwise known as UnSub2."
Everyone just stared into the face of the young man on the screen. Gibbs was the only one to speak, "Well, I'll be a son of a…"