Back at the Navy Yard, they still had nothing. McGee informed Jethro that none of the victims were high profile and, unfortunately, they were probably about to lose another victim to this damn thing.

McGee had learned from the doctor in charge of treating the anthrax victims at Walter Reed that several of the patients had speech disturbances right before they died, just like the victim he was interviewing, and that none of the drugs that they were using to treat the infections were working. Cipro seemed to be useless against the strain, at least when taken after.

Ziva was still putting together a list of anyone who would profit from the attack and those with access to weaponized spores, but she hadn't had any luck finding something solid yet.

"Any word from the CIA?" he asked, turning to the director. Not that he was getting his hopes up; spooks were a rather unhelpful bunch as a whole.

"They said there are a few overseas terrorist groups with funding and capability," the director informed Jethro. "They're working international. We've got domestic." Vance then glanced at his watch. "On that note, I have yet another meeting in MTAC with the Director of Homeland Security to get to."

The next hour and a half, they didn't fare any better. Abby was working with her friend Carol Wilson from the CDC and another contact at the NMRC, but they still weren't any closer to identifying the strain.

Abby sighed. "You would not believe the mountains of medical data that the NMRC sent over, Gibbs!" she said, pointing to several rather large stacks of files. "Carol and I could be days combing through it."

"Do we have enough to make an educated guess as to the strain?"

Carol shook her head in the negative. "Too early, Agent Gibbs."

He sighed. "Alright. Keep me posted."

As he left the forensic lab and started to make his way back upstairs, Jethro played with his face slightly. He was getting more and more frustrated by the entire mess. He really wanted to call his girls and tell them to not go outside or into town. If something happened to either of them...

It was honestly a huge relief when Agent Cassie Yates finally walked in with the newest Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Jethro'd served under the man, knew his family. He was honourable, and if anyone was going to be able to get the answers they needed from Fort Detrick, it would be him.

He smiled at the man. "Good afternoon. General."

General Ellison nodded with a small smile of his own. "Gibbs." He then gestured to the windows. "Beautiful outside," he said. "Makes me want to go for a little run."

"Remember a few of those, sir!" he replied. "More like a marathon."

The general smirked. "Character builders, Gibbs."

"Either trying to build us up or break us down, sir?" he questioned, pretty sure that he knew the answer.

"Maybe a little of both," the general replied.

"How are the boys? Laura?" he asked after a moment.

"Doing well," the man said contentedly. He gave Jethro a look. "Although, I hear that I should be asking you the same thing. How are Shannon and Kelly?"

"Doing well," he replied. "It's been an adjustment, but a good one."

"I'm glad," General Ellison said. "I know how hard losing them was on you." The man sighed. "So, I've been in contact with Colonel Cox at Fort Detrick."

He dipped his head slightly. "The colonel's scientists are now working with our contacts at the CDC to help decode the strain, but we haven't gotten anywhere."

"I'm fully aware," the general said. "In any case, the colonel has assured me that the additives used to strengthen the bacterial capsules do not exist at his research labs."

"Are there any other labs using these substances?" he inquired.

General Ellison shook his head. "Negative."

"In that case, sir, I would still like that list of all the scientists in the anthrax program." He eyed the man. "They may not use those additives, but they would certainly know how to manipulate a strain. We can rule out the lab samples. but not the people yet."

The general nodded. "You'll get your list, Gunny."

He nodded. "Thank you, sir."

After that, things seemed to really pick up.

The general went to brief a congressional committee, And Jethro met with the director as Vance had a meeting with the president in shirt order and he wanted Jethro's input.

Abby had a lightbulb moment and realized that the earlier attack most likely wasn't their suspect's first test with humans. The person behind it would have likely built up from small animals to a small test run on humans, and then to a larger attack.

Running with that, Ducky was able to find them something to work with.

"I made some phone calls," Ducky told them, "and as it turns out, two days ago, two people in two separate Baltimore E.R.s and one person in a Philadelphia E.R. slipped into comas and then died suddenly." That definitely caught Jethro's attention. "Now, the c.o.d. on all of them was meningitis," the medical examiner continued. "Doctors didn't test for anthrax because the illnesses presented themselves as meningitis, But, I think it could have been caused by anthrax."

"Did they show the symptoms that we're seeing now?" Carol asked. "The lesions?"

"They wouldn't have if the bodily functions expired as quickly as they did," the medical examiner swiftly pointed out.

"How quickly?" he asked.

"All dead within three hours of being admitted," Ducky replied.

"But the first patient died yesterday at ten hours," he pointed out.

"Jethro," Ducky said, "if they inhaled a higher concentration of the strain then it would cause a quicker death. Organ failure without exterior physical symptoms."

He nodded. "What are their names?"

The medical examiner swiftly placed three files down in front of Jethro. "Linda Wu, 31. Martha Rhoden, 48. Matthew Carter, 52."

"Okay," he said. "Ziva, McGee... See if they visited the same place on the 28th."

Ziva nodded. "On it."

It took another couple of hours, but not only did they find out that their three recently discovered victims went to the same bookstore, but they also got that much-needed personnel list from General Ellison and something else that Jethro hadn't expected.

The general showed him a video from 2002 showing a Dr. Henry, who had been forced out of his job for reasons that quickly became clear, raving about the dangers of anthrax and the government's poor response to the 2001 attacks.

Dr. Henry definitely seemed like a damn good suspect at that point, so he and McGee, throwing on pair hazmat suits, went to the man's house - accompanied yet again by a hazmat team who would handle containment.

That hadn't gone quite as expected either. They found their suspect laying on the floor and a vial broken on the ground releasing the white powder into the room. With the air blasting, it was a really bad combination. Thank God for hazmat suits.

"Henry is dead," Jethro said, back outside where he could safely take the face mask off and use the phone. He was on speakerphone with Ducky, DiNozzo, and the rest of his team. "Blunt force trauma to his head. I'd guess he's been dead for more than a day. Probably two or three. I'll need you to confirm though, Duck."

Ending the call and going back inside, he looked around. There were cages filled with dead animals and clear signs of a struggle. Equipment seemed to be missing as well. There was a large desk with clutter all over the surface. But in the corner, there was a smaller desk.

"It's organized, functional," he muttered. Two different workspaces? He moved some stuff around to get a better look. Two sets of handwriting. He noted the framed photo of Dr. Henry teaching. Jethro flipped through a binder with syllabi. It looked to contain course assignments going all the way back to the 1970s. Alright. So, the man kept a scrapbook of himself as a professor. That means that he valued himself as an educator. As a teacher. Maybe he was mentoring someone?

He was pulled out of his musings by McGee. "Boss, I'm looking at instructions on how to boil lab-grade broth, sterilize lab equipment, and transfer spores."

"Dr. Henry would know all that," he pointed out.

"Exactly," McGee replied. "So, why does he have it?"

"Look at this," he replied. "Two handwriting styles. Henry had a partner, maybe even a protege. Let's go back to the Navy Yard; try to figure out who this partner is."

"One second, Boss!" McGee said. "I saw something earlier. I didn't think much of it, but Henry has a study on anthrax." McGee proceeded to grab and show him exactly what he was talking about. "He has an annotated bibliography, table of contents. It's formatted like a thesis."

He glanced over at McGee. "And it has writing in the margins in red ink, like the way a teacher grades a paper. Maybe the partner is a student. Henry valued himself as an educator. He could've been helping the partner with their thesis."

"Maybe," McGee agreed.

Back at the Navy Yard, they immediately started cross-checking with names of former employees or customers with grievances at the bookstore against the list they'd gotten from General Ellison and local Ph.D. students.

Ziva managed to find a Ph.D. student that used to work at the book store. The man's name was Chad Brown and he had been arrested twice at protest rallies. He'd been in the doctoral program on and off for five years and also had a restraining order against him by his former girlfriend.

They all immediately went to Brown's home but found the place empty. Well, almost empty. DiNozzo found the business end of a light bulb in the trash.

"He is using light bulbs to carry the spores," Ziva suggested. "He throws them on the ground — anthrax bomb."

Jethro, in the meantime, held up a stack of subway maps to show his team. "And I'm pretty sure I know where he's going with 'em."

Back at the Navy Yard, he started trying to put a plan into action. They needed to end this and sooner rather than later.

"The park was where he proposed to a girl, Ziva "She said no. The bookstore's where he worked to put himself through college."

"I guess he's bitter about not being promoted," DiNozzo said. He'd been refused a job at Fort Detrick as he couldn't pass the psych eval. Three times.

"So," Jethro said, "both locations represent rejection to him." He glanced back at the subway map. "He won't go for the red line like Dr. Henry stated then. If it's personal, he'll go for the closest station to Fort Detrick." He walked up to the map. "Here." He glanced at his team. "The closest station to the Marc train is Frederick."

He was a little nervous about not deploying teams across the whole line, in case he'd made the wrong call, but pushed that down and tried to focus.

"No gas masks," Jethro ordered as they approached the subway station. "I repeat, no gas masks. Rush hour crowd sees anyone in a mask, there's gonna be a stampede." He eyed his agents. "Ziva, McGee, I want you both to stay aboveground and help manage the crowds. DiNozzo, you coordinate with Army CID. I'm gonna go down by myself."

"Not a chance, Boss!" DiNozzo said.

"DiNozzo," he said, "we're a man down. If the area's infected, I'm not risking the both of us. And I'll have backup; just not you."

"Who?" DiNozzo required.

"Colonel Cox," he explained. "You can join me towards the end, Tony, but the priority is and has to be the civilians. Got it?"

His Senior Field Agent nodded. "Understood, Boss."

They all hustled into the station in question and begin clearing trains while. It didn't take long for Jethro to spot Brown. "Chad Brown, don't move." He immediately pulled his gun. "Don't come any closer! Put the bag down!"

Brown had an expression he couldn't quite read. "I can kill everybody here!"

"And I will kill you before you do," he replied calmly. He wasn't about to let this man kill anyone else. Brown had already taken twenty-one lives.

Just then, Colonel Cox stepped in between the two men. "No, no! Weapons down."

"Colonel," he said, playing along, "what are you doing?"

"Call your Director," the man demanded. "Order from the President. The U.S. Army is taking this man into custody."

"General," he retorted, "the Army has no authority here."

"We do now," the colonel shot back. "He helped create this strain. He's the only one who can show us how it was made.

He feigned anger, not that it was hard given everything that Brown had done. "Sir, he is a danger to the country."

"He is an asset to this country!" Colonel Cox fired back. "And by Presidential order, I'm taking him in." The colonel stepped towards Brown. "Sir, please come with me."

"Where?" Brown asked.

Cox gave brown a small smile. "Fort Detrick, sir.

Brown's eyes light up. "You want me to go to Fort Detrick?"

Colonel Cox told Brown that the government "needs him" to come work at the lab that had rejected him twice before.

Brown was overjoyed to the point where he began to stammer, eagerly insisting that the government name the anthrax strain after him. He was taking the bait, and it made it that much easier for DiNozzo to come around the corner unnoticed.

The colonel just smiled at the man and nodded his head, saying that it was standard operating procedure for them to do so. As soon as Brown handed over his bag of toxic light bulbs, much to Jethro's relief, DiNozzo cuffed the sorry excuse of a man, causing Brown to scream in anger at being rejected once again.

Once Brown was being walked out, the colonel turned to him. "So how did I do?"

He gave him a look. "You were effective."

"I can't believe it worked," the other man said.

"Well," he stated without missing a beat, "Brown was desperate. He needed validation; especially by someone from Fort Detrick."

The colonel nodded. "Thing is, there's still a guy out there who hasn't been caught."

"I know," he said, "and there always will be. But today we made a difference."

Colonel Cox eyed him. "Tell you one thing, if I had a family waiting for me at home, I wouldn't still be standing here."

He dipped his head slightly in acknowledgment. "I'll see you around, Colonel."

With that, Jethro headed back to D.C to get everything that he needed done as soon as possible so that he could go home to his family.

Between writing up his reports and having to debrief Director Vance, the Secretary of Defence, and the Secretary of the Navy, it was just after midnight when Jethro finally pulled into his driveway.

Walking into the house, he noted that Shannon, who was looking quite sleepy, was in the living room quietly watching a show, having clearly opted to wait up for him.

"You didn't have to wait up," Jethro said, walking up to his wife and giving her a quick kiss before he took a seat beside her.

"I did," she countered, "Couldn't sleep." His wife snuggled into him, laying her head on his chest. "Given how you left this morning, I was worried."

"I know." Jethro gently kissed her on the forehead. "I hate that I worried you."

She glanced up at Jethro with a lopsided smile. "Not the first time and I have no doubt it won't be the last. I knew what I was getting into when I married you, Marine."

"Copy that," he said before pulling her in for a kiss.