Haboob
12:43 pm
After a gut twisting drive from Norfolk to Washington DC, McGee, Joy and Gibbs finally arrive at Waverly University campus. The place is swarming with police cars, and there are police blocks on the access gates. They show their Federal Agent IDs and are granted access through the first two barricades, but the officers on the third give them a hard time.
"I'm sorry sir, but you can't come in."
"We're Federal Agents," says Gibbs, staring him down, but the officer had already been intimidated by several FBI agents during this hellish day, so he won't back down.
"Sir, right now, half of the people here are Federal Agents, the FBI descended on the place like locusts, they already fought for jurisdiction and won, we don't need another agency stepping in."
McGee loses his patience, and grabs the man by his collar and shakes him, "my sister is somewhere in there."
The man looks down at McGee's hands, and at the desperate eyes of the Agent holding him, "I'm sorry, but I can't let you go through." McGee releases him forcefully, and despite McGee's attitude and Gibbs staring at him with his famous glare, the cop was resolute.
Joy loses her patience and kicks her shoes off and steps on top of the police car, to the chagrin of the angry police officer looking at her.
"What the hell… what do you think you are doing?" He tries to grab her legs, but she ignores him and steps on top of the hood, and starts dialing her phone.
Both McGee and Gibbs just watch her, as she is muttering into her phone.
"Come on, come on, pick up the phone."
"Hey, Faith, it's me, we're already here, but some asshole is not letting us pass."
The officer mutters madly and tries to grab her legs, but she avoids him again.
"Thanks, you're a doll." She disconnects.
"Asshole, I'll show you who is an asshole, you have to learn to respect your superiors, young lady." He tries to grab her again, but she smiles down at him.
"No, you have to learn to not piss off the wrong people." She lifts her eyes, and sees Hope running towards them, and waves at her from the top of the car. Hope waves back, and runs faster.
She looks down, "your ass is grass, buster." She gives each of her hands to McGee and Gibbs respectively, who help her climb down the police car. McGee gives her her shoes back, and she leans against him to step into them.
"Listen, young lady, I'll have you know that…"
"It's Special Agent Buchanan to you, Officer," says Hope coldly, as soon as she's within hearing distance. The officer turns to the mad FBI agent bearing down on him, and says "Listen, miss, I…"
"No, you listen, Officer…" Hope makes a show of reading his tag, "Kowalski, whenever we call specialists to a crime scene, we expect to have them at the crime scene, and we won't have them if some IDIOT DOESN'T LET THEM PASS, DO YOU HEAR ME?"
Officer Kowalski gulps, as the blonde FBI agent, even though she is gorgeous, is extremely mad and seems ready to draw her weapon and shoot him on sight.
"I've asked you a question, officer." She approaches him and stares him down coldly.
"Yes, ma'am."
"So you will let them pass," She says sweetly, her hand on her hip holster, "won't you?"
He gulps again, and steps back, "Sirs, ma'am, you may pass."
Gibbs stares the cop down as he passes through the barricade. McGee doesn't even look at him, as he hurries down towards the building a couple of yards away. Joy simply looks smugly at him, and grabs Hope's arm and they walk hurriedly after McGee.
Hope latches onto McGee's arm, and guides him towards some tents that were mounted to the left of the building. There is an intense movement of rescue workers with wounded or crying students.
It is a scene out of horror movies, or something you expect to see in those vintage scenes from WWII. Everywhere you look you see people lying on the grass, being tended by two or three paramedics. Some seem to be in a more critical state than others, and the paramedics are waiting for the ambulance to arrive so they can be transferred to receive full medical attention. Others seem to have scrapes or minor broken bones. All students are crying.
He looks further to the right, and sees that, unlike the tents on the left, the tents set up on the right don't have that much movement from paramedics. Only crime scene techs are there, bringing body bags and reverently laying them down on the grass, so they may wait for the next empty coroner wagon to take them away.
"Sarah, is she…" he can't even finish the sentence, such is the terror coursing through his veins.
"She's fine," McGee freezes his step, and turns troubled eyes to Hope, "but terrified, we found her twenty minutes ago in an Engineering Lab on the third floor," says Hope, "the shooter killed the majority of the students on the second floor, but besides a professor, no one was harmed on the third."
"I don't understand, what was Sarah doing on the third floor, her classroom is on the second."
Hope fidgets a little, holds his hand and starts dragging him towards a tent further down where they can see Faith talking on the phone, pacing and waving her hands excitedly.
"I don't know exactly how it happened, but it seems that she decided to cut class and dragged Matthew to the third floor for …" she glances briefly back at McGee, "some necking and a petting session, and that ended up saving her life."
"Why?" asks Gibbs, who has been silent until now, studying the movement of the agents and the rescue workers at the scene. Hope opens her mouth to answer, but McGee is looking around, looking for some sign of his sister in the mass of students being tended. Faith turns off her phone and waves at them, and points to someone sitting by her side. She leans down to speak to someone. McGee takes another step and Sarah stands up, and as soon she sees her oldest brother she starts crying.
"SARAH." He abandons all attempts to keep protocol and runs to his sister, who lets the blanket she was wrapped in fall to the ground and runs towards safety, towards her brother, "TIM."
The siblings embrace, and there is no hiding the tears of relief, as for several hours they both almost had the certainty that they would never see each other again.
Gibbs, Joy and Hope and Faith, along with some paramedics and some students, stop to watch the emotional encounter. Many families that day won't be granted the same blessing.
"She was the only survivor from her class," says Hope softly, and Joy and Gibbs stare at the FBI Agent. "The shooter was one student from her class, all her classmates, including her professor, died."
Joy looks at Tim and Sarah, desolated. Tim fell on his knees on the grass and was now lulling his crying sister in his arms, who was trying to hysterically tell him what had happened, between her sobs.
"It's ok Sarah, I've got you, It's ok," he spoke against her hair. She simply stopped trying to talk and hid her face on his chest, and cried.
Faith walks by the two siblings on the grass and goes to stand by her own sisters, and Gibbs. He greets the oldest Buchanan sibling with a nod of the head, and goes straight to the subject that was haunting him the whole drive to DC.
"How many?"
The older FBI agent sighs and looks around, seeing the movement of the CSI teams and paramedics.
"Thirty five killed, twenty nine wounded, of those twenty gravely hurt on their escape by the windows of the second floor." The NCIS agents look up to Wilsburg Hall, and study the drop from the windows to the floor. "They jumped, probably thinking that getting hurt from the fall was a better option than dying in the classroom."
"Any info on the shooter?" Joy is already thinking about a profile for him, and what she was coming up with was bad. Really bad. She is, however, surprised at Faith's reaction to her words.
"No, no no," she shakes her head vehemently, "you are not profiling this guy, I don't want to know that he needed love when he was growing up or just needed a hug so that's why he went mad and shot rooms full of children," she stares into Joy's eyes, and there's deep pain in her eyes, "I just want to know that he's dead, burning in hell, and I want to go home and hug my children, and…" Faith stops, and closes her eyes for a moment.
"I'm sorry," says Joy softly, "I'm so sorry," as she sees how her oldest sister was shaken by this crime. Faith regains her backbone, and looks back at the two siblings. Sarah is slowly stopping her sobbing, and McGee is slowly lulling her, tears rolling down his face without him even noticing, his eyes closed.
Joy notices someone is missing from the picture, and looks around the scene, "where's Matthew?"
Faith and Hope tense immediately, and both Joy and Gibbs look at the FBI agents with wariness.
Faith looks at Joy, and gets her hand in her own, "Joy, that's another thing I have to tell you."
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a/n: Poor Tim, poor Sarah, they were terrified! and things are about to get worst. Much worst.