Hoping that he would now be able to apply enough pressure to finally get Ajay Khan to talk, Jethro went back into the main interrogation room. They needed to get answers sooner rather than later with an attack likely imminent.

"Robert Mellish." He placed a photo of the deceased man from the warehouse down on the table in front of their resident hacker. "We traced info from your computer, and we found him, killed by the Ebola virus. Rare... contagious, deadly."

"You on Twitter, Agent Gibbs?" Khan quipped. "'Cause your natural speech patterns are already less than a-hundred-and-forty characters."

"He was the warehouse caretaker, but he doubled as a bomb-maker." He went through the file and placed another photo down on the table. "This your latest project for MC?" He got no response. "There's two ways this can go."

"I'm not talking," Khan said. "So, what's my second choice?"

"Admit you're stupid," he replied. "A colleague of mine said you're smart. I told him I don't think so. I think you're just as dumb as the last guys."

That caught Khan's attention. "What?"

"Ebola virus?" he stated smugly. "It's been done. Hell, you're not even original."

Khan gave a small shrug. "Well, like you said, all MC's idea."

He laughed, shaking his head. "I knew it. You're not even the brains." Jethro turned to face the two-way mirror before lifting his right hand up to shoulder height. Jethro then rubbed his thumb over the tip of his index finger and middle finger several times as he spoke. "McGee! You owe me twenty bucks, Man!"

"Uh," the man fired back far too smugly for his own good, "If I were your colleague, I'd wait a couple of days before you pay up."

Pleased that he got the young hacker to slip up, Jethro adopted a much more serious countenance. "That's when you plan to release the virus?" Jethro started putting the photos back into the file and eyed the hacker. At least they now had a timeline to work with. He really wanted to make sure that his family took extra precautions and didn't go out unless absolutely necessary until the Ebola threat was handled. Even the mere thought of his family being exposed to the rather nasty virus made him feel nauseous. "Thanks." The hacker eyed him curiously. "That's all I needed."

Khan instantly tried to back-peddle when he realized the verbal slip up. "I didn't admit anything." Jethro started to open up the door to interrogation as the man continued to speak. "My attorney should be here soon..."

He turned back around and stepped aside slightly so that Khan could see McGee there at the door holding an orange prison outfit and handcuffs. "If your attorney does show, we'll be sure and give him your new address."

Walking out of interrogation, Jethro left behind a completely stunned Ajay Khan. Good. He wanted the young hacker as unsettled as possible.

Once the younger man was finished changing into the aforementioned clothing, Jethro, DiNozzo, and Ziva all escorted Khan to Joint Base Andrews in Prince George's County, Maryland where Jethro's little intimidation flight would be flying out of.

Jethro hoped that the flight would manage to loosen the younger man's tongue. Abby had also discovered that Ajay Khan was responsible for a security breach at the CDC, causing tainted Ebola vaccines to be mislabeled as flu vaccines and then shipped to a warehouse in D.C. That explained how their perp got ahold of Ebola samples.

On Ducky's end, although it was not yet possible to prove how the disease had been acquired, the man did have a deep cut on his finger. The medical examiner figured the victim/suspect had acquired the virus about a week prior and had been dead for about twelve-hours by that point. He'd had a weakened strain in his system.

In the meantime, Jethro headed to the squad room and met with Abby and I.T Kevin. Abby had been able to track the rest of the faulty vaccines and, thankfully, Kevin had a new cellphone set up for him. Kelly and McGee had both been trying to get him to try out a smartphone for some time, but Jethro was pleased to note that Kevin had been able to get him a new flip phone. He was considering it somewhat, but then he didn't feel like he needed all of the bells and whistles. Didn't see the point.

Meeting up with McGee, the younger agent got on the phone with Metro while he filled the director in. When Jethro got back, McGee was still on the phone.

Having a free minute as it were, Jethro pulled out his new cellphone and noted that he had a series of unread messages from Tobias, King, Shannon, and Kelly.

He shook his head in a mixture of slight amusement and fond exasperation at the text from his daughter. They'd had the same conversation several days prior. 'What time is Pop-Pop's birthday dinner again?'

He quickly sent off a reply. '1800 on Friday. Are we still taking P for the night?'

The response was almost instant. 'If you can. I don't want to put you or Mom out.'

He rolled his eyes. ''That's b.s. She's our granddaughter. You're not putting us out.'

His phone vibrated again. 'Great then! See you on Friday, Dad.'

He smiled affectionately. 'See you on Friday, Princess.'

Typing back replies to the other messages, Jethro then shoved his phone back into his right pocket and got back to down to business. Although he wanted to tell his girls what was going on, to be careful, Jethro also knew he couldn't do it. It was against protocol, and for very good reason. Still, it was hard to not say something.

With the call to MPD over, both men headed down to the motor pole. Checking out one of the agency's black Dodge Chargers, and McGee headed out to, with any luck, cut off the trucker carrying the Ebola samples while the shipment was en route.

McGee was looking at the GPS coordinates Abby had sent to his cellphone as he spoke. "I'm surprised Metro's willing to help us out on such short notice."

"They know what's at stake," he said. There was a time and place for turf wars and the current situation was neither.

"According to the GPS signal," McGee said, "our delivery van is headed this way."

Mere seconds later, Jethro spotted a big, grey delivery van driving up to the roadblock they'd established with Metro Police. It had a Global Courier logo on the front. He tilted his head slightly in the direction of the van. "Hey, McGee."

McGee quickly saw what the veteran agent was referring to. "Right on time."

Hoping that the stop would go smoothly, both agents approached the delivery van. Not much at work rattled Jethro after twenty years on the job, but he was admittedly quite nervous as he walked towards the van. Ebola was one hell of a way to go.

The trucker was clearly irritated at being stopped in the middle of their route. "I've got a schedule to keep. I don't have time to drink."

Weapon drawn, Jethro identified them to the trucker. "Federal agents." McGee covered him as he approached the truck and opened the driver's-side door. "Get out."

"Okay," the man said, slowly getting out of the van. "Maybe a beer before my last delivery, but that was on my lunch break."

He started cuffing the man. "Where are the samples?"

"What?" the man said, visibly confused. "What are you talking about? What samples?"

Jethro and McGee shared a look. The driver looked genuinely confused, had genuinely thought he was being pulled over for suspected drunk driving. That definitely changed some things. The two field agents didn't have much time to consider that new tidbit of information though, as they needed to clear the area and then ascertain if the samples were in the back of the van or not.

Handing the rather freaked-out delivery driver off to Detective Kemp and his partner to interview, Jethro and McGee both put on hazmat suits. While the two NCIS field agents were doing that, a group set up a large negative pressure tent around the delivery van to help contain the virus if things went sideways.

Feeling rather grateful for their hazmat suits, he and McGee went into the back of the delivery van to sort through the packages.

"The Ebola sample's got to be in one of these," McGee said.

He looked down at his notepad where he had all the package information written down and read it aloud. "Zero-six-alpha-delta-bravo-six."

He moved one of the smaller packages in the front off to the side, trying to check out the packages farther back. McGee quickly spotted the package they were looking for. "There it is, Boss. Right on top."

McGee swiftly scanned the package with an EMF meter before they touched it. Just in case. "This box should only contain our virus," the younger agent stated with a look of concern. "I'm reading electrical components."

That didn't really surprise Jethro. "Eh, it's rigged."

The younger field agent put the EMF meter down and turn reached into his gear pack, pulling out another device. "Luckily, I got just the thing... thermal imaging, so you can see the wires. Been dying to try this thing out."

Unfortunately for them, it wasn't that easy McGee did his best to disarm the explosive device inside, but they quickly realized they'd made a wrong move.

The device started making an eerie sound and they both started running like a bat out of hell out of the tent they were in.

"Code blue!" McGee exclaimed. "Seal it off!"

"Go!" he yelled. "Get back, get back!"

"Turn on the suction!" McGee demanded.

The explosion was a pretty good one, admittedly. Thankfully, everyone listened and all got out of danger, the tent doing its job.

"There must have been a secondary spring under the flap," McGee commented once it had calmed down some on scene. "Maybe if I cut the other wire."

They finally got a thumbs up from the men monitoring the situation and they took off the helmets to their hazmat suits.

McGee glanced over at the tent and then back at Jethro, the relief quite evident in the younger agent's body language. "The negative pressure in the tent prevented anything from escaping. We're in the clear."

Before Jethro could comment, his cellphone rang. He eyed the call display.

He hoped that Ajay Khan's little trip with Ziva and DiNozzo would actually pay off. As it was, Jethro's team and several other personnel stationed at Joint Base Andrews were apparently having to get quite creative. With a little help from Kevin Hussein, as they wanted to put the young man's fluency in Arabic to good use.

Ducky had been right when he called it a bifurcated plan. Khan wasn't stupid and its success hinged on several factors, namely DiNozzo and I.T Kevin's acting and improvisational skills.

Opening his phone, he answered it. "Yeah, Director?"