Purgatory

Chapter 8 - Chemistry

As they walked into the Bremerton NCIS field office McGee noted it was smaller than the DC office. The bullpen for the MCRT (there was only one team at Bremerton) looked similar to theirs back home; desks close together, several computer monitors on each, a large plasma screen mounted to the wall at the far end of the work area easily viewable from any desk. The entire South facing wall of the building was composed of windows looking out over the bay with a view of the various dry dock repair facilities. From his vantage point in the third floor office he could see a Nimitz class nuclear powered aircraft carrier in dry-dock for repair; further east a nuclear fast attack submarine rested in its own dry-dock.

As they approached the bullpen Christopher Bishop looked up and smiled when he recognized them.

"Hey, McGee!" Bishop reached out and shook Tim's hand.

"Hi Chris," McGee nodded his greeting.

Turning to EJ, Bishop's grin grew wider, "Hi, boss!"

"Hey, Chris," she said, smiling back at him. "Only you're the boss now and I'm back to 'Field Agent'."

"From what I hear, that's only temporary. You just need to stop running your agents off," he chuckled.

McGee knew EJ liked Bishop and the smile she returned to him was genuine. But he also could hear the slight embarrassment in her voice regarding her current status of not being the Agent Charge of an active MCRT. Bishop had been one of the initial members of her team after she transferred in from the NCIS field office in Rota, Spain, but he had been transferred to Bremerton about 5 months ago, only two months after EJ's return.

Bishop walked over to EJ, put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her. "It's gonna be alright, EJ," he said quietly. "Whatever you need, I'm here for you." He pulled her into a tight embrace and rocked her back and forth.

The brief look of surprise on EJ's face at Bishop's overt affection didn't escape McGee's notice. As Bishop embraced her EJ hesitated, then slowly brought her arms up and returned his hug. Tim noted that Bishop's hug lasted a little longer than necessary and the intimacy of it suggested more than collegial support. He was surprised as he felt his neck hairs bristle while his breathing quickened, struggling for a moment as he tried to determine why his defenses just went up. A second later he identified the source of his discomfort - he was feeling protective of his partner. On this case EJ was his partner and partners always had each other's back. EJ was vulnerable right now, drowning in the grief of Gibbs' death and Bishop's overt willingness to comfort her struck him as disingenuous at best and opportunistic at worst.

There had been plenty of normal workplace banter between EJ and Bishop back in DC. They exchanged the teasing and jokes typical among team members. EJ's team had been no different than his own when it came to good natured harassment of each other. But there had been an obvious flirtatious attraction between the two; a chemistry that was easy and natural. EJ had tried to keep things light and personal between her team members, but she had also been clear to everyone that she and Gibbs were together and that she was "off the market" regarding potential relationships.

As Bishop slowly released his grip on EJ, rubbing her back with his hand as he stepped back, McGee made a mental note to have a discussion with him later, letting him know in no uncertain terms that he needed to back-off of any thoughts about pursuing a relationship with EJ; that she was too vulnerable and still grieving Gibbs' death.

"Hey, Brogan, Andrews, come over here," Bishop called over to the two men standing by the plasma screen. "This is my team," he said to Tim and EJ, pointing to each agent respectively, "Mike Brogan and Phil Andrews. Guys, meet my ex-boss, EJ Barrett and our NCIS computer guru, Tim McGee." The four agents exchanged greetings and handshakes.

After the pleasantries finished Bishop walked toward the plasma screen and grabbed the remote off one of the desks. When he clicked it a photograph appeared on the screen; an aerial view of a large, triangular shaped dock complex and dry-dock installation on the shores of a remote waterway. The installation was surrounded by lush, green forests that ran from inland all the way to the shoreline.

"OK," he said, "here's what we've got. This is the Bangor Base. As you know it's a Trident nuclear ballistic missile submarine base about 35 miles northwest of here. That's where the computer server was hacked and the document files copied." He clicked the remote again and several pages appeared on the screen. "This is an inventory list of the compromised computer files."

"There must be a couple of thousand files," McGee groaned.

"Over ten thousand," Bishop smirked at McGee.

"What about base security?" EJ asked. "Any concerns or weird things happen lately?"

"Nothing," Mike Brogan said, joining the conversation.

As Brogan spoke Bishop brought the picture of the sub base back up on the screen and zoomed out to show more of the surrounding terrain.

Brogan continued, "You can see the base is pretty remote. The security perimeter is at least a mile in any direction - heck, the road from the base main gate to the actual facility is almost 2 miles long. There's hardly any population out there; it's pretty rural. No main highways, just two lane country roads."

"What about across the canal?" EJ asked.

This time Phil Andrews jumped in. "The Hood Canal is about 2000 yards across at that point, so the shore opposite the facility is a little over a mile away. Because of all of the military installations in the Puget Sound area a synchronous orbiting satellite provides video surveillance 24 hours a day, 7 day a week of the entire region. Base security monitors the video feed closely, as well as copies the feed to a hard drive. They've seen nothing unusual so far."

"And you don't know how or why the server was hacked or have any suspicion as to what the hacker was looking for?" McGee asked.

"Nope," Bishop responded. "That's your job, McGee. Good luck."

Tim rolled his eyes and let out a weary sigh. "Got a computer for me?"

"Yeah," Bishop replied. "Right over there," he pointed to a conference room just off the main bullpen, the wall adjoining the two rooms consisting of a large glass window. "Fastest computer in the office and linked directly into the Bangor network, plus, lots of space to spread out."

"Well," McGee said, looking from Bishop to EJ, "I'd better get at it." He hefted his backpack and travel case and walked into the conference room, unpacked his gear onto the table and sat down in front of the computer which sat on a separate, portable rolling workstation next to the conference table.

As he organized himself to begin his work he continued to glance out of the window into the bullpen. He couldn't hear the conversation but Bishop continued to smile and talk enthusiastically with EJ; occasionally touching her hand and brushing her arm - way too much as far as Tim was concerned. His anger and defensiveness toward Bishop continued to simmer.

About an hour had passed when McGee jumped in his chair, startled by a soft touch on his shoulder. Turning he realized it was EJ. Completely immersed in his work he had not heard her enter the conference room.

"Sorry," she said with a sheepish smile.

Tim sat back and rubbed his fists into blurry eyes. "It's OK. I needed a break anyway."

"What'cha got, McGee," EJ said as she examined the computer screen.

Tim cocked an eyebrow and smirked at her, amused that she had 'channeled' Gibbs once again. He knew she understood his expression when she apologized. "Sorry ..., again," she said. "Gonna be tough to break that habit."

"No need to apologize," Tim said. "It's kinda nice. Brings back good memories of the boss."

EJ returned his smile, but he could see in her eyes that his comment had reopened the door to her grief and it was seeping into her awareness. He gave himself a mental head-slap, took in a deep breath, then let it out and continued.

"From what I can tell the actual hack was a simple frontal attack on the server firewall. Even though all materials at the Bangor base are classified, the information on this particular server consists of low-level, classified materials. So, they're not located on a high security level server, like the ones at the Pentagon."

EJ's attention had returned to the computer screen and she smiled and cocked her head to the side. "So, how much toilet paper did they order last week," she said, sarcastically.

McGee let out a soft chuckle. "Haven't got that far yet." His expression became serious as he turned back to the computer screen. "It's obvious this was a targeted attack. They were definitely looking for something and knew it was on the Bangor server."

EJ frowned. "What do we ... ah, sorry. What do you do now?"

"I need to write a basic sub-routine to search all of the compromised files for specific keywords that could be linked to any type of risk or threat," he said. "Homeland Security has a master list of these types of keywords. The program I write will extract and catalogue those keywords from the scanned information based on Homeland Security's threat priority and from there we have to 'eyeball' the results manually and look for patterns or possible risks."

"How long will that take?" she asked.

"The sub-routine is the easy part. I can write that program in about an hour. But it will probably take all night for the program to scan all of the compromised files and build the catalogue of keyword hits." He sighed and dropped his shoulders. "I have to monitor the search progress, which means I'm gonna have a long night. The hard part will be going over the results manually."

"My team can help with that." It was Bishop. McGee hadn't noticed his arrival in the conference room. He was standing behind EJ, his hands on her shoulders, obviously having heard most of McGee's explanation. "When can we get started?" he asked.

"Tomorrow," McGee replied. "I'll start the scan ASAP and tomorrow morning we should have data we can review."

"Well, since McGee's stuck here all night ...," Bishop paused, looking at EJ, "... dinner?"

She looked at McGee, then to Bishop, then brought her attention back to McGee, a guilty look on her face.

"It's OK," McGee told her. "There's nothing you can do right now. I'll have some take-out delivered. Go and enjoy yourself."

EJ turned back to Bishop. "Sounds like a plan."

"Good," Bishop said. "We'll take off around 1730 hours. Until then, I've got a couple of cases to work on. Want to tag along?"

She looked over at McGee and he nodded, letting her know he didn't need her assistance and that going with Bishop's team was fine by him.

She nodded back to him and turned to Bishop, "I'm all yours."

McGee caught Bishop's grin at EJ's comment, which was a little too enthusiastic as far has he was concerned. As Bishop and EJ stepped out of the room McGee called after the agent, "Hey, Chris. Got a minute?"

Bishop nodded at EJ and she continued out of the room. He turned back to McGee. Tim got up, walked over and closed the door. Facing Bishop he squared his shoulders and sucked in a deep breath. "I just wanted to let you know EJ is still hurting a lot about Gibbs' death. I know it's none of my business, but she's pretty fragile and vulnerable right now and I'm wondering what your intentions are toward her."

Immediately Bishop's face changed to a scowl. "What are you implying, McGee?"

"Nothing. I just don't want EJ to get hurt, that's all."

"EJ's a big girl. She can take care of herself," Bishop said as he leaned aggressively toward McGee.

McGee's throat tightened with anger and fear. He had no doubt that Bishop could hurt him easily if provoked; his Army training and experience spoke to that potential. But Tim was mad now and had a point to make.

"Look, Chris," his voice was strained as he mustered the courage to stand toe-to-toe with the ex-Ranger, "if you're really her friend then you'll protect her, not hurt her."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That her friends look out for her – we're all looking out for her; me, Craig, Tony, Ziva."

"Is that a threat?" Bishop's scowled hardened, his voice was cold.

"I don't know what it is …," McGee's voice trailed off as he sighed and shrugged, growing tired of Bishop's testosterone display; ironically feeling less threatened as Bishop became more tense. "It is what it is. It's what we do for family. Leave her alone, Chris."

"You were right, McGee," Bishop sneered, "it is none of your business. And you just need to … butt … out!" he punctuated the last two words by poking his finger in McGee's chest.

With one last glare at McGee, Bishop turned and stalked out the door.

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