Jethro's eyes snapped open with a start, his heart feeling like it was trying to escape through his chest, several unpleasant images and feelings of both fear and heartache running through him. After a second, Jethro finally registered that his cellphone was ringing and had been what woke him up from the nightmare.
Noting that it was only 0514, Jethro answered the call with an exhalation that revealed just how awful he was currently feeling. "Yeah… Yeah, Gibbs."
The director spoke rather harshly. "Gibbs, multiple Marine fatalities. Get in here."
He rubbed his face tiredly. "I'll be there."
Ending the call, Jethro sat there in bed for a long minute, no doubt looking as old and tired as the veteran agent was currently feeling.
Shannon who was now awake as well got Jethro's attention. As he glanced over at her, Jethro noted that his wife was looking over at him with some concern. The redhead sat up in bed beside him. "Everything okay, Jethro?"
"Something happened," Jethro admitted, knowing that his wife knew full-well that the pre-dawn calls were generally reserved for very bad situations. He'd tried to reassure her during the Anthrax mess and she'd seen right through it then. It'd be no different this time. He hated worrying her, though. "I have to go in early."
Shannon nodded, leaning in and kissing him. Once they separated, his wife eyed him, concern and trepidation showing in both her eyes. "How bad is it?"
"I don't know much yet," he admitted, "but it sounds pretty bad."
She nodded. "Be careful."
"I will," he reassured her, giving her a peck on the cheek. "I love you."
"I love you too," his wife replied, pulling him in for another kiss.
Breaking apart again, Jethro forced himself to get out of bed, throwing on black dress pants, a white crew-neck t-shirt, and a red polo shirt, Shannon heading downstairs to make some coffee while he got ready for work.
Unintentionally, he ended up waking his daughter up, who ended up quite concerned that Jethro needed to go into work so early as well.
Ah, well, the job was what it was. It couldn't really be helped, even if Jethro didn't like that particular aspect of his career. And, honestly, after the nightmare he'd had seeing both Kelly and Shannon alive and well helped calm him.
Shovelling a piece of toast in his mouth, he hurried out of the house, meeting up with his team at headquarters and throwing on their Navy blue NCIS jumpsuits and caps before checking one of the black sedans out of the motor pole and driving out to what he was informed was a major crash site.
"Anything?" he asked from the driver's seat.
"Plane was a Marine C-130," McGee updated them. "Five crew, six deceased in transfer cases en route from Kandahar to Dover Air Force Base." The plane had almost made it then. "Went down in a field just short of their destination."
DiNozzo sighed. "Any survivors?"
McGee shook his head in the negative. "They're still looking."
"I have never experienced a crash like this," Ziva said, her voice giving away how unsettled she was. They all were. "I'll need to know how to proceed."
"Air Force is handling the site," DiNozzo explained.
"But any sign of criminal activity," McGee said, stating the fairly obvious, "we're there to pick up the investigation."
"They were carrying six dead Marines home," DiNozzo stated, understandably trying to make some sense of the tragedy. "Why blow up a flying hearse?"
He sighed. "They're sending a message."
DiNozzo dipped his head. "Got the message, Boss. Loud and clear."
Ducky and Palmer were already on-site when they got there but the scene they walked into was not just awful but absolutely horrifying. There were emergency crews, pieces of the wreckage, and small fires everywhere. Jethro had seen a lot of things over the years with work, but nothing quite like this. Jethro instantly thought of a good friend that he had been stationed at Camp Lejeune with as a Private First Class. Is this what it looked like when Matteson's helo was shot down over Okinawa?
Sadly, Matteson had been the first friend he'd lost in the corps. She'd been transferred to Okinawa and never even made it there. Gone far too soon.
It was weird. Jethro hadn't thought about that fateful day in quite a while and now the notice posted that announced the fallen Marines who had been shot down and learning that Matteson's name was listed on it was running through Jethro's mind as though it had all just happened yesterday.
Taking in the scene there in front of him, Jethro spotted a shredded American flag over a battered coffin and a lone Marine hat on the ground right beside it. Jethro registered a survivor being carried away on a stretcher some feet away.
Ducky caught Jethro's line of sight. "The sole survivor."
"One more than I expected," he admitted.
Palmer looked around. "There's pieces of the wreckage everywhere."
"A lot of land to cover," Ziva pointed out.
His Senior Field Agent glanced over at him. "Where do we start?"
He walked over to a bit of wreckage with a piece of flag on it. The Marine veteran then kneeled down, removed his NCIS cap, and said, "Right here."
After a break, paying their respects, the team got down to processing the scene. His Senior Field Agent seemed particularly despondent even for such a grim scene, Jethro noted. Talking with the witnesses on the ground, they all said basically the same thing. The witnesses saw an explosion and then the plane began an immediate descent.
Ducky and Palmer were both trying to arrange the remains. Since the bodies of several fallen Marines were headed to Dover Air Force Base for final DNA identification, Ducky took heart that some of the cases were, well, cut-and-dried. But the medical examiner informed Jethro that confirmation of remains was going to be a rather lengthy process because they needed to match the DNA of every fragment of collected tissue.
Ducky and Abby, in particular, were all in for an extremely long day if not week, by the look of things. This was one hell of a way to kick off their day.
As for the rest of the team, they now got to play the waiting game while the Air Force ruled on the cause of accident. The waiting was almost worse.
"Call when you need us," he told Ducky.
"I shall," the medical examiner said, "and I will."
