The D.C. suburbs looked like an entirely different sort of country from either L.A. or even New Mexico where Don Eppes had cut his eye teeth on Fugitive Recovery. It made sense; it was an entirely different part of the country. It wasn't desert like New Mexico, not even the rugged mountains with the scrub brush that gave the area its own sort of beauty. There wasn't a palm tree in sight, no transplanted trees trying to eke out a living in the arid soil along the Pacific coastline such as L.A. boasted.
No, this territory had a lush sort of greenery that had supported fertile plantations back when such things held more value than twelve story buildings. The trees were tall and thick with the kind of limbs that told of centuries of growth. This spoke of permanence that the West Coast had yet to discover. The soil on the side of the road was dark and rich with autumn leaves churned into mulch to keep it productive of the green foliage that the trees draped overhead to cover the roads. The air held the scent of flowing water somewhere nearby.
Don couldn't rightly call it suburbs, either; they had passed beyond the carefully planned tracts of cookie-cutter housing onto something that didn't quite qualify as country roads but would within a mile or two if someone wasn't careful and bought up the place.
He sure as hell hoped that Special Agent Gibbs knew where he was going. Gibbs seemed like a man to be trusted, a man that Don himself would like to have on his own team or even would follow, but this was Charlie. This was his geeky little brother, the one whose nose could always be seen beyond the chain link fence at Don's Little League practice sessions, clipboard in hand, keeping statistics as though Don was a player in the nationals. Geek, Don had always thought, and had ignored the little swell of pride inside that came from someone showing that they thought that Don was hot stuff.
He also sure as hell hoped that Special Agent Gibbs could get them where ever they were going in one piece. The man drove worse than Charlie. It was a toss up as to whether they'd bounced off of that tree or whether it was merely a jerk to the wheel that threw Don from one side of the car to the other.
Didn't matter. What did matter was getting to Charlie and the NCIS agent before the code was broken. Don supposed that the NCIS agent would be able to hold out, but he was under no illusions that Charlie could stand up to more than five minutes of what could be dished up. It had been a stroke of luck that the kidnappers had mistaken Agent McGee for Penfield. Penfield would have folded even more quickly.
Not enough. Charlie had already demonstrated over his career that ciphers were like honey to flies. His brother would be forced to crack it, and hand it over to someone who didn't have America's best interests to heart. There were only two ways to stop that from happening, and the FBI and the NCIS were currently working on one of them.
The other would be to kill Charlie. If the NCIS agent was any kind of man, he'd have considered it. He would kill Charlie in order to spare him the torture that would lie in his future.
This could all be too late.
Don refused to acknowledge that possibility. If the kidnappers had lost their source of code-busting, they would have closed up shop and slipped away into the night. The underground bidding for the rights to the message would have stopped, and the intelligence world would have breathed a sigh of relief. The chatter, however, continued, all of which meant that Charlie was still alive, still working on the code, hoping that his brother would pull out one more home run before the third strike in the bottom of the ninth.
The roads turned into meager two lane paths with the occasional ditch on the side of the road to carry away excess water. It felt almost wrong to Don, who had grown up in the desert territory surrounding Los Angeles. The air felt humid, but ripe with the scent of growing things. There were stone fences that stood tall against the edges of the roads, protecting large mansions rising above toward the sky. Don didn't see how they'd be able to tell where Charlie and the NCIS agent were, but this was where his gut told him it would be. He scanned the large homesteads, wishing that there would be some sort of signal. There could be: Charlie could have dangled a small white piece of clothing from a window in a forlorn attempt to send up a signal.
That one. That mansion over there, on the right. There was nothing to suggest that Charlie and the NCIS agent were inside, nothing to distinguish it from any of the other thirty mansions within a five mile radius, but something inside was shrieking, "There! There! Stop right now! There!"
Gibbs's gut was telling him the same thing, because the man slowed the car down to a crawl, eying each mansion as though he could tell if it held the guilty parties just by looking. Behind them, the second car carrying Colby and Officer David coasted to a stop behind them.
"Boss?" It was DiNozzo, his eyes likewise scanning the three story abode.
"Call it in, DiNozzo." Gibbs could have been commenting on the weather. Don wasn't fooled.
DiNozzo did so. "Need to know the owner, Abbs." He named the address, trusting Goth Girl on the other end to run the computer d-base.
It didn't take long. Goth Girl, despite her appearance, could handle a simple computer query. DiNozzo transmitted the information. "Belongs to a Dr. and Mrs. Hector Michaelson."
"Michaelson." Don latched onto the name.
Gibbs too remembered the target. "Dr. Helen Michaelson Levinger." He shoved the car door open. "Want to bet that there's a connection?"
David Sinclair scrambled out of the back seat. "Call for a warrant?"
"No time," Don said grimly. "It can follow us in."
"Doesn't need to," Gibbs added. "Damn tough to tell when it's a cat in heat around here, or whether it's someone calling for help." Cold blue eyes dared Don to argue.
As if Don would. Sinclair, perhaps, but Don knew better. His gut knew better. "The gate's open," he said, putting away a slender wand of metal that had just finished exploring the lock on the gate. "Careless of someone, leaving these things open."
"Big place." Gibbs assessed the territory, looking for the entrances in and out, looking for avenues for escape. "Six of us."
There was a question there: I know my people. Can yours handle an operation like this?
It felt right. It felt as though the two teams had been working together for years instead of hours. Don knew what Gibbs's people were capable of, just as well as he knew his own team. He issued orders. "Sinclair, take the left. Colby, scout out the back; keep anyone from hightailing it out of there."
Gibbs clearly felt the same way. "DiNozzo, take the right. Ziva, on my six."
The three melted into the brush to encircle the mansion. Don took a badly needed moment to scan the target.
The mansion was occupied; it wasn't just the well-trimmed hedges but the trash cans tucked neatly into a wooden shed along the side where DiNozzo had disappeared. Those trash cans bore the remains of food and the detritus of modern life. A forlorn corner of a newspaper stuck up above the rest, and Don thought that it looked like The Washington Post.
Ziva David slipped up along the front to peer in past the drapes to the parlor inside. Empty, she mouthed.
Don nodded. A stroke of luck. He turned to make certain that the front door was as unlocked as the gate, and found that Gibbs—putting away his own lock pick—had already determined that it was.
Still needed to be silent. The front door cooperated, swinging back on well-oiled hinges. Gun in hand, Don slipped into the foyer, Gibbs on his heels.
More signs that the place was in use: today's edition of The Washington Post sat on the coffee table in the room beyond, a coffee mug on a marble coaster next to it. The owner had clearly set the cup down and gone in search of something else.
Don could just bet what that something else was. He listened, and heard the sounds of movement coming this way.
Gibbs gestured to the Israeli woman. A cold light entered her eye, and she moved to the edge of the inner doorway.
A large man stepped in. He caught sight of the two team leaders, and his eyes widened. "Hey—"
She used her hands, and the man slumped silently to the floor. Don chanced a nervous look: out cold but still breathing. He eyed Officer David with respect; here was more evidence regarding the level of training that Mossad handed out.
No time for that; Don had spotted something else, and he pounced on it. Next to the mug lay a leather wallet, and it looked familiar. Don opened it up and found that his instincts had been correct: a driver's license with Charlie's features stared up at him. Nothing appeared to be missing, the credit cards intact along with several bills, but its very presence in this house confirmed their suspicions. He showed the picture to Gibbs.
Gibbs moved in to whisper in Don's ear. "We need to take them out quietly. One mistake, and we'll have two dead hostages."
Don nodded. The NCIS team leader was correct. Losing a national treasure and a Federal agent was something to be avoided, never mind the shared DNA or a missing cipher. He glanced at his watch, knowing that by now his team and Gibbs's other agent would be in place to prevent any hasty retreats by the inhabitants.
Time to put recovery techniques into play: Don held his breath, listening, knowing that both Gibbs and Officer David were doing the same thing. There were several small noises chattering through the mansion, typical living sounds. There was a gentle creaking as two—no, three people moved down the staircase in the back of the house. Wind whistled past the pane in a window, and the smell of something baked suggested that the window was in the kitchen.
There were more sounds of people upstairs, enough stray noises to suggest that there were more than three. Footsteps moved back and forth across carpeted floors, in more than one spot.
Don identified the action: they were moving out. Somehow this bunch had become aware that the FBI and NCIS were close on their tails, and were preparing to move to a new location to prevent exactly what Don and Gibbs were intending at this very moment. Tough; Don had a consultant to recover, and moving to another location wasn't going to happen.
It also gave credence to the concept of a mole somewhere in the FBI, or how else could this bunch have determined that the end was near? There had to be a reason that they were packing up, and that was the best one that Don could think of for the moment. Of course, let Don get hold of these bozos, and he'd be happy to confirm his suspicion.
Upstairs or down? Where were they holding Charlie and the NCIS agent? Don listened a moment longer, hoping for a clue, and wasn't rewarded. People were moving, but there were no words that Don could hear, nothing to suggest the cadences of a man accustomed to public speaking.
The noises told Don that they ought to go upstairs. There were more people up there, which meant it was more likely that upstairs was where the captives were being held. It was also the place where they could take down more suspects, to prevent one of them from escaping.
But he couldn't shake the feeling that it was the wrong move. Something was screaming at him that he needed to head downstairs, and that he needed to do it now.
By the look of him, Gibbs had the same gut feeling, which only intensified Don's own. They couldn't, however, go downstairs and leave Officer David on her own to scope out the upstairs crowd—although the look on the woman's face suggested that she wouldn't mind the exercise and might even enjoy it.
No, not going to happen. They had identified the hot spots, and they needed to pull in the rest of the two teams in order to hit both spots at the same time.
Silent hand signals sufficed; Don got there first and put Sinclair in charge of the integrated team. The senior FBI agent would lead the other three upstairs with the goal of silently taking down any and all, and if they ran across a tied up consultant or NCIS agent, they would be at liberty to rescue them as well.
Don couldn't shake the feeling that his brother was not upstairs, and he was about to trust his gut. The captives were in the basement. That was what his gut said, and that was what he was going to act upon.
Gibbs agreed. The four agents nodded, and slipped upstairs, Colby grimacing as a single tread creaked beneath him.
Nothing to do about that now. He and Gibbs pussy-footed through the kitchen and down the hall, aiming for the open door that led to the staircase leading down.
The staircase had been rough-hewn but someone in the past decade had decided that bare planks weren't good enough for the house and had tacked up some wallboard and then finished the job by splashing on some paint. They hadn't bothered to do anything with the bare bulb over head, but Don's eyes, once they'd become accustomed to the dim light, saw a well-vacuumed carpet on each tread and the same carpeting along the hall that led deep into the subterranean level of the mansion.
He carefully placed each foot on the outer edge of the step, trusting that it would be less likely to creak and give away their presence. Gibbs copied his moves, staying two steps behind, gun in hand.
There were voices up ahead, quiet but still distinguishable. One was female: Dr. Levenger? Don thought it very possible. He held his breath and listened.
The voices came from a room off of the hallway, and the door was open. They would have to go in one after the other, presenting a single front. Not the best plan of attack; it would be too easy for one of the suspects to grab a hostage and put a knife or gun to a throat. There would be two dead hostages, a crowd of dead kidnappers, and no cipher recovered. Don and Gibbs needed a crossfire, and there wasn't any real way to get it.
He communicated that with silent fingers, relieved to find that Gibbs understood exactly what he was saying and that he shared his concern. Don frowned. How were they going to do this? He raised his eyebrows, asking the question.
'Tis a far, far better thing that I do…
Crap. Couldn't he think of his own exit line, something original, instead of quoting Dickens? Apparently not, because his wits would only come up with gibberish before wandering back to a far, far better thing.
Ms. Marple stood in front of McGee; towering over him, actually, since he had collapsed onto the sofa in the work area, the laptop precariously perched beside him. McGee peered up at her blearily, the sight of her wobbling in and out of his ability to perceive. Infection, he diagnosed. Fever dreams, the same fever that was preventing him from opening up Professor Eppes's files to determine the results of the deciphering process. Maybe she was a figment of a fever dream, too. McGee could always hope.
Maybe this was all for the best. He hurt, more than he'd ever hurt before. His leg throbbed, every heartbeat sending more waves of pain from his knee up through his waist to ebb away by his neck so that his headache could take over. He could barely see anything through the agony. Ending his torture with a swift bullet or whatever his kidnapper intended might not be the worst thing to occur.
He should have known that something like this would happen. He'd been so ecstatic when chance allowed him the dream of a lifetime, to sit in on an after-hours debate between the top minds of the century. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if Einstein, Fibonacci, and LaGrange had been miraculously revived from the dead to join the discussion.
McGee should have known that such a wonderful opportunity would be followed by something equally as dire. The world had to remain in balance, and a painful death was the only thing that would come close to equality. He sighed, and squinted up at the author of his impending doom.
"Give me the code."
McGee blinked. He could have sworn that Ms. Marple's voice was accompanied by violins—no, maybe cellos. The undertones were too deep to be violins, though perhaps a viola could manage it. Slightly off tune, too. Flat. Definitely flat. He blinked again.
She slapped him. "Pay attention!" she snarled. "Wake up!"
McGee blinked again, and this time sense penetrated his foggy mind. "Ow." It was followed by a wince, as his leg indicated that movement remained out of the question.
"Give me the code!" Ms. Marple repeated, "or you're a dead man."
McGee managed a feeble smile. "Sorry. Haven't got it."
Ms. Marple turned to one of the two men behind her—or was there just one, and McGee seeing double? Didn't matter, McGee decided. It only took one handgun to do the job, and each of them was holding something large enough to qualify as a cannon. Ziva would be able to identify the exact make and model of the gun, McGee realized. Not McGee. Of course, he could always pretend that he did, since it wouldn't make any difference after he was dead. Ducky wouldn't be able to determine otherwise during the autopsy. Likewise, Ducky wouldn't be able to pull the last words that McGee ever heard out of his dead ears, either, and certainly not his brain. 'Tis a far, far better thing…
"Kill him."