Jethro woke up quite early on Wednesday morning and, splashing some cold water on his face, threw on a pair of sneakers and then headed out the door for a run. He really needed to get back into the habit of working out.

After about twenty minutes, he turned around and headed back to the house, hopping into the shower immediately and getting ready for work. Dressed for work, he quickly shovelled down half a cup of coffee and a bowl of Grainy O's.

Once it was time to leave for work, Jethro squeezed Shannon's hand and gave his wife a quick peck on the cheek. "See you after work."

She smiled affectionately up at him. "See you after work, Babe. Watch your six."

"You know I will," he said before leaning in to give her another kiss.

"You better," she replied.

Jethro already had his weapon and badge secured to his person, so he just needed to grab his keys off of the white key holder that his wife had picked out two weeks prior. Doing so, he walked out of the front door of their home and hopped into his truck.

He stopped at Elaine's Diner for coffee on the way into work, grabbing the director one as the man had an early start himself that morning and they had a meeting scheduled for first thing that was best done properly caffeinated. Thankfully, their meeting didn't take too long and he was able to join his team down in the squad room shortly before 0730 and turn his full focus towards their current case.

They had just received Lieutenant McBride's service record, apparently, so leaving his Senior Field Agent to go over that, he had McGee and Ziva look into McBride's civilian life and started making his way down to autopsy to speak with Ducky. To his surprise, he saw a man dropping off new protective gear. Jethro could just make out Ducky and Palmer discussing the young man potentially adopting a child with Breena. Apparently, the young couple was already on a waiting list with an agency.

Gesturing to the protective equipment, he eyed Ducky. "What's going on, Doc?"

"Well," Ducky said, "it would seem that our friend McBride has been somewhere a little more exotic than we would like and turned up hotter than Chernobyl."

"The guy pinned at eleven," Palmer chimed in. The young man shook his head slightly. "I really should've run the Geiger counter over him earlier."

Jethro frowned. If they were around the remains long before being made aware of the radiation issue they were at serious risk health-wise. "Have you two been checked out since the body was put into containment?"

Ducky immediately tried to placate him. "We're both fine, Jethro, I assure you."

He raised an eyebrow. "Duck."

"We're fine, Jethro!" the medical examiner reiterated. "And I have already sent several samples taken from the lieutenant to Ms. Sciuto to be tested."

He sighed, knowing he wasn't going to get anywhere with Ducky. "Anything else?"

"No," the medical examiner replied. "We'll have to wait and see just what it is that our dear Ms. Scuito's tests reveal."

"Alright," he said with a small sigh. He turned and started walking towards the autopsy doors. "And get checked out; the both of you!"

Heading back upstairs, instead of going to the squad room, Jethro made his way to the top floor to catch Director Vance up on the little radiation issue and to set up an urgent meeting in MTAC with Lieutenant McBride's commanding officer.

"Appreciate you meeting with me so quickly, Captain!" he said as the man came up on the screen. "I'm sure your hands are full."

Captain Dominick Wayne gave a curt nod. "What can I do for you, Agent Gibbs?"

More than happy to skip over niceties, he jumped right into the explanation. "A JSOC operative of yours, Lieutenant Chad McBride, was found dead last night in Alexandria." His expression shifted slightly. "Well, at least his head was."

That little tidbit of information clearly caught the captain's attention. "How much have you ascertained about the lieutenant's mission?"

"Nothing," he replied. "My team was informed by his wife that he was a Navy SEAL and we got a sense of when he shipped out, but other than that, we're in the dark." The After Action Report from the lieutenant's latest mission had apparently not been included in the records that had been sent over.

"All I can tell you is that he was doing some top-secret recon," the captain stated. "The less you know, the better."

That comment instantly raised his hackles. "With all due respect, Captain, withholding information just doesn't fly when a dead Navy SEAL shows up in my jurisdiction hotter than Chernobyl, putting my people at risk."

The captain eyed him. "Pardon?"

He shot Captain Wayne a pointed look. "You heard me."

"Keep the remains secure while I speak to my superiors," the captain conceded. It was obvious that it was very grudgingly, though.

Why do I feel like I'm being stonewalled? "I'll take care of the victim, Sir, but my team and I need some answers."

"No one," the captain barked. "I repeat, no one, hears about this. Am I making myself clear, Special Agent Gibbs?"

He eyed the other man. "Captain, we owe it to the victim to find out the truth."

"That is something we do agree on," the captain replied with a sigh. "But as I said, the matter is extremely sensitive. I'll speak to my superiors and get back to you."

He dipped his head in acknowledgment. "Understood, Sir." He gestured just out of the captain's line of sight for a long-time MTAC Tech, Sandy, to end the video call. "I'll be in touch." He wanted answers fast but was well aware that the captain did need to go through his chain of command first. If the man was honestly going to cooperate.

As the screen went black, Jethro nodded at Sandy and made his way out of MTAC and straight into the nearest elevator.

Grabbing a black coffee for himself and a Caf-Pow for Abby, Jethro made his way down to the forensics lab to see if the goth had anything for him. He figured it had been long enough since Ducky's rather quick autopsy was wrapped up that at least one of Abby's test results should've come back.

Walking into the lab, however, it swiftly became apparent that the usually bubbly goth was feeling more than a little frazzled. She looked stressed and was talking to one of her machines; not for the first time. "No, no, no."

He placed the Caf-Pow down on the table and eyed her. "Abby, what's wrong?"

"I don't like this one bit," she replied.

"This?" he questioned.

Abby gestured to the machine she'd been talking to. "Major Mass Spec is coughing up results like-like hairballs. Like the big sticky kind that sticks in a kitty's throat for hours and then..."

He shot her a pointed look. "Abs."

Thankfully, the forensic scientist could take a hint. "So I fed everything that Ducky and Jimmy gave me from Lieutenant McBride's remains into Major Mass Spec." She led him over to her primary computer. "We know that he was shipped from Saudi Arabia and his nasal passages were lined with sand and other desert-related microorganisms. You couple that with physical signs of extreme dehydration and..."

"He was held somewhere in the Middle East," Jethro said. "Probably tortured."

She started to pull something up on the computer. "Right, Gibbs, but you can skip the 'probably' part." Jethro eyed the photos up on the screen. "Lacerations to his head and neck indicate that he was beaten with a piece of wood… or a stick of some sort." Abby gave him a brief sideways look while continuing to fill him in. "The shards of wood are lodged inside the cuts. I'm still working on its origin."

"Sends one hell of a message," he commented.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Where I come from, a radiated and tortured head in a box usually means 'Back off.'"

"Nobody's backing off," he replied. That was the last thing he intended to do. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone and dialled his former boss' number. He wasn't above calling in a favour when he deemed it necessary.

The man picked up on the third ring. "Director Morrow speaking."

Jethro started making his way to the door as he replied. "Hello, Sir. We need to talk."

After setting up a meeting with Deputy Director Morrow for that afternoon, he filled his boss in and got some of his paperwork done.

They didn't make any progress on the case the rest of the morning, unfortunately, but they ate some burgers for lunch and hoped that the discussion with Tom Morrow would actually bear some fruit. At least the guy wasn't stonewalling him like Jethro suspected Captain Wayne was actively doing.

Little after 1600, he headed out to meet with his former boss at Elaine's Diner. True to pattern, though, the elder man showed up late.

"I know, I know. I'm late." Jethro couldn't help but grin a little at the comment as he watched the elder man take a seat in front of him. "I was on the phone with JSOC."

He, naturally, had to tease the man. "Punctuality was never your main event, Tom."

"Punctuality is the great thief of time," the man replied. "Oscar Wilde said that."

"Waste your time, not mine!" he fired back in jest. "Jackson Gibbs said that."

The elder man chuckled softly at the retort.

He continued grinning while he teased the man. "And I like him a whole lot better." He then adopted a much more serious expression and got down to business. "Did Captain Wayne tell you about the McBride case?"

The elder man shook his head with a small sigh. "Wish we could have intercepted that package before the wife ever opened it. NCIS would never have been called in."

"What are you not telling me, Sir?" he pressed.

The man leaned in. "You can't be held responsible for what you don't know."

"I'll find out one way or another," he stated.

"The murder of Arash Kazmi opened a political can of worms that was much bigger than anyone expected," the elder man said. "Eli David had originally come to D.C to meet with Kazmi but got run out of town by his daughter."

"Eli and Arash Kazmi wanted to forge a peace," Jethro said, "but Michael Bashan killing Bodnar and Kazmi opened the door."

Morrow gave him a rather pointed look. "Homeland and the C.I.A wait for chances like this to stir the pot. Distract governments so that all sorts of recon can happen." Did he actually just imply what I think he did? "The C.I.A needed Iran to believe that Mossad was responsible."

Jethro eyed the elder man, slightly taken aback. "Are you saying that Bashan didn't kill Kazmi, Sir?" Did Ziva's fight with her father save Eli's life?

"I'm saying that we did it, Gibbs." Morrow sighed. "The C.I.A took out Kazmi that night so that Bashan would end up being the fall guy." To what end exactly? "Iran and Israel could duke it out while we focused on the real threat."

"The real threat?" he reiterated.

"We're all so damn worried about Iran and North Korea," the elder man replied, "when the real threat is here on home soil."

He shook his head. "It's a shell game, isn't it? Keep people distracted."

Morrow eyed him. "Gibbs, you see why I wanted you to keep your distance?"

"What about the Navy SEAL, Chad McBride?" he asked. "How is this all connected?"

Morrow shook his head. "It's not good, Gibbs."

Knowing that he wasn't going to get much more out of the elder man, Jethro wrapped up the conversation and then headed back to the Navy Yard to brief the director. With a full-on migraine, he dismissed his team and headed home for the day.

Just how bad is the mess my team and I have been dragged into?