Chapter 11

Tuesday, June 5, 2017

4:30 p.m. EDT

-footage from a drone over International Harvester Field at Central City University showed what we guess are between 30 to 35,000 people in the stadium. The footage includes the drone being shot down and landing in the parking lot. It's being posted all over social media—

-ESPN has learned that FEMA told Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the United States Football League to prepare alternative venues for some of their teams to play in over the next few months-

-I'd like to ask Luthor, Congress, the Justice League, anybody in power: where have all these people come from?—

-White House Chief of Staff Mercy's five-word text to reporters asking any question related to the developing situation: 'Wait until the President speaks'—

-FEMA is not responding to any media requests for comment—

-Birmingham police broke up a fight between a security officer and one of the refugees at the Legion Field site. News11 has learned both men saw each other, thought the other was dead, and then went after each other—

-Fox 5 has learned of members of a family, seemingly reunited, at the Central Park FEMA site. The father and the middle daughter are known to have died five years ago in an automobile accident in Queens—

-Luthor's chief of staff gave the same response to our White House reporter's question about media being able to come and go freely at certain refugee sites around the country. Neil, 'wait until the President speaks' isn't satisfying anyone—

-the Dow closed even with yesterday despite the events of the past few hours—

-the Reds will host the Chiefs tonight at Great American Ball Park. Rumors are the stadium may host other teams for the next few weeks—

-no word from any of the Justice League branches on the developing situation—

-Reuters is reporting Russian military has engaged alleged Soviet military forces outside Moscow and St. Petersburg-

-I've told you for months the government was going to do something like this and not enough of you listened to me because you listened to the lamestream media telling you people like me are insane. Well, WHO'S INSANE NOW, HUH?! The aliens are HERE. Let me say it again. Slooowwwlllyy. The. ALIENS. Are. HERE!-

Washington

RFK Stadium

Something's very wrong here, Gibbs thought as he waited in the concourse area that was gradually filling up with people looking for shade from the afternoon sun.

He listened in on parts of various conversations amongst the people: concern over loved ones and friends, and that they might not be where they thought they should be. Both, especially the latter, were understandable under the circumstances; Gibbs had heard people going through the Pentagon ring ask what the ring was and where it was taking them.

No one with any apparent affiliation to an official government or law enforcement agency said anything at all, much less the truth: the ring was a wormhole taking them to a parallel Earth in another dimension. Gibbs was just beginning to understand the situation he and his people were in; believing it for himself would take a little longer.

The FEMA and stadium security personnel here weren't saying anything of substance, either, just telling people that everything was going to be okay while volunteers handed out bottled water and boxed lunches. Gibbs overheard people talking about that quite a bit. He hadn't heard anyone talk about getting out of the stadium, but he assumed it was just a matter of time – sooner than later – before someone tried. After that, someone else would make an attempt that forced security to act, causing larger numbers of refugees to attempt to leave the stadium, and leading to a violent confrontation that would cost lives.

Gibbs was sure that he didn't want his people here when that happened. He also knew where he wanted his people, and himself, to be; his gut had been telling him to get there ASAP. But he needed a connection.

That's where he thought he had lucked out – if the young woman currently hiding in the women's restroom close by was with her version of NCIS, he and his people already had an important connection. As soon as she got out, he was going to gently press her to contact her team and her director to get them out of this stadium.

Out of the corner of his right eye, he saw Katie walk out the entrance to the suites with a young man right behind her. She saw and acknowledged him with a wave. Gibbs waved back and took note of her body language and composure; she was calm and walked towards him quickly, completely comfortable with the man who was hurrying to keep up with her. That told him he was at the very least a colleague and not an immediate threat.

"Gibbs, this is my friend Larry," Katie said, as the Indian-American man, just an inch taller than Katie's five feet, six inch height – gaped at him.

After a few awkward moments, Gibbs thought a light, firm headslap might be in order. He smiled when Katie delivered a light, but firm, elbow to his side; he then remembered her earlier comment in the stands about Kate's sister helping run the local MCRT and wondered what else the young woman might have inherited from her team's predecessors.

"This is Larry," Katie said, "and he's a friend. He's with the D.E.O. Show him your badge, Larry."

"Uh, sorry, Mr. Gibbs—", Larry said before Gibbs interrupted him.

"Call me Gibbs," Gibbs said as Larry pulled out his badge and ID. "You said D-E-O, not D-E-A?"

"D-E-O, for Department of Extranormal Operations," Larry said. "We investigate aliens, superhumans, ghosts, demons, that sort of stuff. You wouldn't believe some of the things we check out."

"Fill me in later," Gibbs told Larry as he turned to Katie. "Katie, I don't think it's gonna be long before the lid blows off this place—"

"You think?", Larry interjected. "Tension's thick—" Larry shut up right as Gibbs locked eyes on him with his legendary glare.

"—and I honestly want to be out of here with my people at NCIS," Gibbs continued, as he addressed Katie. "My gut tells me that's the best place for us to be. I trust them – I trust you – more than anyone else on this planet right now besides my own people. Can your people get us out or not?"

A few nearby eavesdroppers perked up. "I'd rather have this conversation out there," she whispered, nodding her head towards the suite entrance. "Follow me."

Katie jogged towards the suite entrance, Gibbs right behind her and Larry trailing him; she showed the guards her NCIS badge, said the two men were with her, and all three were let in. They made their way through the suites to the exit that led outside into the stadium, then headed towards the field.

Navy Yard

NCIS Headquarters

MTAC

4:35 p.m.

"I'm sorry, sir, Administrator Manning is unavailable right now due to a developing situation."

Maurice Drake groaned loudly. Was a deputy as high as he could get with the FEMA hierarchy right now? Latisha Andrews – the Deputy Administrator for the Office of Response and Recovery – didn't seem inclined to help Drake in any way.

Maybe if I tell her what I know about the 'developing situation', Drake thought, I might get somewhere. "You're referring to the situation at RFK: tens of thousands of people from another dimension FEMA is helping feed and shelter."

On the big screen inside MTAC, Andrews's eyes grew wide briefly before she caught herself and went back to her polite, smiling demeanor. "Director Drake, there are restrictions in place in regards to information on current FEMA activities being given to outside—"

"NCIS is a federal agency, Deputy Andrews, just like your own," Drake said. "I need to speak to Administrator Manning. Is he available or not?"

Andrews looked off screen for a few moments and though Drake saw her speaking to someone off camera, her feed had gone silent. "I'm sorry, Director Drake, you don't have the proper clearance. Your agency will be given the appropriate information in due time. If you will excuse me, I need to attend to agency business. Thank you."

Drake cursed to himself as the NCIS logo replaced the feed from FEMA on the big screen. "Marianne," he said to a nearby tech, "get the Secretary of Defense on the line, please. Secure line, Gold Clearance…but not here. In my office."

"Yes, sir," the young tech said. Three minutes later, Drake had locked down and secured his office. He picked his phone up and called MTAC. "Patch him through, please."

A minute later, the image of Wynn Crawford, the current Secretary of Defense, appeared on screen. "Maurice, I'm surprised it took you so long to call. It's turned out to be a busy day."

"We're secure, Mr. Secretary. No outsiders," Drake said, although he knew that wasn't entirely true. "I've been in contact with Agent Stewart and Miss Yates. We know RFK Stadium is full of refugees from the alternate Earth. We also know who some of them are specifically. They're…alternates, sir, of NCIS personnel who were killed in 2005."

"Those people?"

"Spitting images. Makes me wonder who might want them and why."

Drake filled in Crawford with everything he knew so far. "I have a team on the ground there trying to get in. FEMA's got control of the situation there but they've got help. My theory is they're using private contractors that the Horne and Bush administrations used in Qurac, Afghanistan, and Iraq; if they're doing this at RFK, they're probably doing this across the country."

"Not a bad theory, Director. Some of those contractors' connections go pretty deep and as high as it gets. You've heard of the saying 'count the cost'? I understand your reasons for wanting in there, but you might want to let the Big Man handle this."

Drake bit his lower lip. "Mr. Secretary, have you heard of the saying 'brother from a different mother'?"

"Vaguely, probably from a movie."

"Those people I'm talking about in RFK are our own, sir. They're not from this planet, they've never been deputized by this agency, they've never sworn allegiance to our country. But they are NCIS, they are federal agents, and have sworn allegiance to the United States. Leaving them at the mercy of…whomever…would be wrong. NCIS is NCIS, and we do not turn our back on our own."

"Are you asking for my permission to go get them or are you giving me a heads up, Maurice?"

"I'm asking if you'll back my play, sir," Drake continued. "And to pull a few strings. You still have a connection to one of those contractors, right?"

"I see you've done your homework."

"Can you get them to create an entrance and exit our people can sneak through, get in and out?"

"I can…see if a former associate or two can do a favor for me," Crawford said. "You better have a Plan B, Maurice. They've done everything they can to lock that place down tight. Even if I got your people in, there's no guarantee some of the other security wouldn't seal that entrance up."

"So, they couldn't get in from the ground level."

"Probably not."

"What about the sky?"

"That's your Plan B, Director?"

"Sometimes you have to think outside the box, sir," Drake said. "I have an idea."

"As long as it doesn't blow back on your agency – or this office," Crawford replied. "You'll probably answer to the Big Man. But I can spin it as NCIS wanting to avoid a repeat of the Earth-3 fiasco."

"Great minds think alike, sir. Before you ask, I don't think these folks are cut from that cloth."

"Let's hope so. Whatever you do, you need to do it now. Have you read the debrief you were emailed a little while ago?"

"Skimmed through it. I know their world was in a war about to go nuclear. I imagine they're scared and confused, and probably have the clothes on their backs and not much else. Put them in a place with former military contractors who want to keep them in—"

"That's a potent combination for disaster, Maurice. If you're going to do something, do it now, and try not to create an incident. And keep me in the loop."

The spinning NCIS logo replaced Crawford's image on the big screen in Drake's office. The director walked back to his desk, sat down in his chair and sighed. He opened his email inbox again and pulled up the file sent to him from Crawford's office.

Refugees from a world that they can never return to because the bastards have blown it to hell by now, Drake thought. He called up his contacts on his cell phone and patched in Stewart and Julie on a three-way call.

Washington

D.C. Armory

4:41 p.m.

"Nice of them to save us a spot," Conners said as Long pulled into an empty space after a private security vehicle pulled out. "I wonder who those guys are?"

"Blackstar?", Long replied. "They made a killing in Iraq when W was in office."

"Dunno, but somebody's coming, and they don't look happy," Dorneget said, looking over his shoulder at four security personnel jogging their way.

"Then we act like we belong," Long said as he opened his door. "As far as I'm concerned, we do. Besides, it took me long enough to get this space."

The three agents got out of the Corvette, then Long took the lead as the security personnel stopped several feet away from them. The NCIS agents saw three men and one woman, all armed with submachine guns and semi-automatic weapons, dressed in black uniforms covered in black body armor, glaring at them.

RFK Stadium – where the agents really wanted to be right then – was well within visual and walking distance of the Armory parking lot. "Special Agent Carl Long, NCIS," he said as Conners and Dorneget pulled out their badges. "Special Agents Brooke Conners and Ned Dorneget."

"You got authority to be here?", said the leader of the security detail, a bald, muscular man who had the look (to Long) of a night club bouncer, and was holding his submachine weapon to the ground with his finger on the trigger.

"We're on NCIS business," Long said with a smile and the intention of diffusing things before they got worse. "We'd appreciate your assistance, or at least let us go about our business—"

"I ain't never heard of NCIS. It supposed to mean something?", said the leader, who (to Long) sounded like a goon with a few brain cells bouncing around inside his skull.

"It's Naval Criminal Investigative Service, genius," Conners said. "We investigate crimes involving the Navy and Marine Corps."

"Ain't no crime around here," the leader said.

"We also investigate missing Navy and Marine personnel," Dorneget said. "We—"

"Ain't no Marines or Navy around here, or in there" – the lead said, pointing to the stadium. "I get the feeling you're lost," he added, clearly a bit irritated.

"And how would you know that?", Conners shot back.

"You see any damn water around here? I think you need to go to Norfolk. There's water there, and there's Navy there, all the Navy you want to investigate. Ain't nothing here for you."

"We'll determine that," Long said, steady and calm. "Now if you would let us through—"

"Ain't gonna happen," the lead said, pointing his semiautomatic at the agents, alternating pointing the barrel between the three of them.

Long, still holding his badge, tapped on it and pulled the other two agents into a huddle. The dime-sized scrambler devices embedded in the agents' badges allowed them to talk without anyone in the vicinity hearing them; someone would have to be right next to them to hear what was being said.

"What are they doing?", one of the other security guard said. "Their mouths are movin' but nothin's coming out."

"Maybe it's a code," the femaie guard replied.

"Lip reading," decided the lead guard, who was losing his patience.

The scrambler devices that kept the guards from hearing what the agents were saying to one another were invented by S.T.A.R. Labs for the CIA in the 1990s, and still used by all federal and military intelligence agencies, usually in covert operations. Since the agents were going into a situation with a lot of unknown elements, Director Drake authorized use of the scramblers on this case. If they did their job – and the security didn't have technology that would render them useless – the scramblers would allow the team to securely communicate with each other in the field.

So far, they were working.

"Do we wait for Marcus and Julie, or call Drake?", Dorneget said, with his hand over his mouth just like Long and Conners were doing. That was standard procedure for NCIS and other agencies using the devices, to prevent anyone else from reading their lips.

"I'd say go through Tweedledum and his dumbasses, but they're packing serious heat," Conners replied. "Carl, do we wait? Or do we fall back?"

"Falling back is not an option," Long said. "Calling Marcus is—"

The agents then heard the faint sound of helicopters in the distance, as did the security personnel.

"Here comes the cavalry," Conners said. She and the others looked to the sky in the direction of the sound and saw the copters, moving in fast.

A dozen Marine helicopters headed towards the parking lot and the stadium in tight formation. Roughly a quarter of a mile away, three of the copters – a Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion heavy lift vehicle, flanked by two AH-1W SuperCobra attack copters – broke away, heading right for the agents and the security guards. Each descended to 15 feet above of the parking lot, and directly over the NCIS agents' positions.

Stewart and Todd both leaned out the passenger door behind the cockpit and lowered a ladder and a dog harness.

"You want a ride?", Stewart yelled.

Long tapped his badge twice, as did Conners and Long. "Yes sir," he yelled, pointing at the gawking security guards. "We ran into a bump."

Stewart looked down and saw the security personnel, and that their leader had lowered his semiautomatic weapon. "I see that," Stewart yelled. "Break twenty on three."

Three seconds later, the agents ran away from security towards a clear portion of the lot. As the Super Stallion broke towards their positions, four drones flew from the bottom of the SuperCobras and surrounded the security personnel before they could get close to the agents. "He's one of us," a Marine yelled from one of the SuperCobras as he gestured to Stewart. "Those agents down there? They're with him, and so they're with us. Got a problem with that?"

None of the four security personnel said a thing as the drones began moving in on them, while the SuperCobras descended to the ground. Four Marines – two per copter - climbed a rope ladder descended from each copter, then ran to the Corvette after hitting the ground. Three of the drones then went back to their parent copters, while one stayed behind. "That's Miranda," one of the Marines said. "You don't want to piss us off, and you definitely don't want to piss her off."

Twenty yards away, Long, Conners and Dorneget were climbing the rope ladder into the SuperStallion. After they were secured, Stewart waved at the Marines standing guard over Long's car, and the copter – flanked again by the SuperCobras – flew towards the stadium.

"Took you guys long enough to get here," Conners said. "I thought I might have to unleash Bessy." Conners tapped the grip on her Sig-Sauer semi-automatic pistol, firmly secured in the holster attached to her right hip.

"That would be a mess we don't need right now," Julie replied.

"What's the plan, then?" Long said.

"Go in there, get our people out, get back to the Navy Yard before anyone notices or stops us," Stewart said from the front.

"In and out," Julie added, "without any problem."

"Famous last words," Dorneget said. "Something crazy always comes up when we go on a mission."

"Then it's business as usual, Ned," Julie replied. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Just another day at the office," Stewart said as the copters went over the stadium and assumed a stationary position. He knew, like they all did, this mission would be different – without knowing what awaited them, they all knew who awaited them.

From his front co-pilot's seat, Stewart looked down and saw a massive crowd nearly filling the stadium. While the pilot talked to his fellow pilots about a potential landing spot, Stewart quickly reviewed their mission

He knew after they were told of the situation and who was there, and after their mission was confirmed, that the reality of seeing the NCIS personnel from the other Earth was already affecting Julie. The loss of the entire Major Case Response Team 12 years ago had greatly affected them both then, and now. Stewart wanted to look at Julie, to get a read on how this was affecting her – would seeing the doppelganger of her lost twin sister throw her off her game?

Stewart thought that was possible, and that they both had been through bad situations since – the death of two of their probies right before Jenny Shepard was gunned down in a deserted California diner, the Reynosa cartel, Jonas Cobb, Harper Dearing, Benham Parsa, even the Chameleon – and gotten through them.

Nobody's dying here today, Stewart thought. We'll get through this and deal with whatever comes next.

"Agent Stewart. We're going to have to hover over the crowd and drop you there," the pilot said. "One of the other SuperCobras has eyes on your targets."

"Where are they?", Marcus said, in unison with Julie, who was looking over her shoulder.

The pilot pointed down to the spot. "We're right above it. I can descend at any time on your order – ah, orders."

"Do it," Stewart and Julie said, again in unison. Julie did that a lot, and Stewart usually let it slide. He'd let it slide now, too, and the copter began its slow descent, while the other 11 copters took up positions around the stadium. "Whatever is waiting for us, whoever is there, we focus on the mission," Stewart said. "Get our targets, in and out, quickly as possible. Copy?"

:"Copy that," said the other four agents.

The Super Stallion descended towards the crowd, and Stewart suddenly got a nagging feeling that things could go SNAFU at any moment.

His team, then, absolutely could not let it get FUBAR.