a/n - Grumble, I really hate it when I post a second chapter in a day and the site doesn't move the story up on the list. If you didn't see it, there was a second chapter posted last night. We're getting close to the end, folks. Are you ready?
The sounds in the hallway were muffled, but Gibbs was instantly alert and rolled out of bed, slapping DiNozzo's leg in the top bunk as he stood. Tony woke almost as quickly as Gibbs and hurriedly swung down onto the floor. They eased the door open to see McGee arguing with Ducky.
Ducky crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at the young man in the wheelchair. "I thought we'd agreed I would examine you before you returned to work."
"Actually, I believe the agreement was that I would resume working on Sunday and you would monitor my condition. It is now Sunday, so…" McGee trailed off with a slight grin as he turned the wheelchair.
Tony looked down at his watch. "It's Sunday by, like, three hours. Aren't you starting kind of early, McGee?"
On the other side, several more doors opened and the FBI half of the task force stumbled out. Myers glared at McGee, but there was no anger behind it as he spoke. "Don't you NCIS people ever sleep?" McGee's response was just as cheeky as he rolled down the corridor.
"How do you think we always get the jump on the FBI?" The rest of the group had to double time it to catch up with McGee as he waited for them at the door into the War Room. DiNozzo looked around as they hurried.
"Where is Ziva? Don't tell me she gets to sleep in." He thought about banging on the door to her room, but when they entered the War Room, Ziva was leaning over the table, laying out files. She nodded at Gibbs before turning her attention to Tim.
"You look much better today, McGee. It will be good to see you at the computer once again."
"Thanks, Ziva." McGee stood up, much to the displeasure of Ducky.
"Timothy…"
McGee just smiled at him and moved two steps before sitting in the wheeled computer chair that was next to him. Still smiling, he rolled back and forth in front of the bank of computers as he adjusted and fine-tuned his network. There was a reason McGee started so early, as he'd just finished his preparations when the first data stream came through.
In the week since his last run at Moore's system, McGee had devised a plan to maximize the short windows of time he had available and it took all the computers from the safe house, plus the large computer capacity in the War Room to pull it off. Other than an occasional barked request to change out a portable hard drive, he didn't say a word for over two hours.
Eventually, his hands stilled and he leaned back, exhausted. "We've got about an hour before the Midwest feed comes in." Ducky started checking him over.
"You need to rest in the meantime. How are you feeling? Are you having any chest pains, Timothy?" Although his pulse was only slightly raised and his heart beat steady, Ducky was not totally convinced the young man was all right.
"What was the deal with all the external drives?" Ron Sacks had sat through McGee's work the previous Sunday and was aware of the difference between the two events. "You didn't do all that last week."
McGee accepted the glass of juice Ducky handed him as he explained. "Last week, I was just copying the files that were being sent to his headquarters and studying the pattern of the transmissions."
Vance quietly made his appearance and sat next to Gibbs. "And this week?"
"This week," Tim handed the empty glass back to Ducky with a smile. "I knew approximately how long each transfer was going to take, so I was able to do a little snooping in their mainframe with one set of computers while the others copied the transmissions."
The technology of cybercrimes intrigued Vance and he tried to keep up with it much more than any of his predecessors had done. "You used the portable drives…"
"To copy as much as I could, yes Sir." Knowing that Gibbs and Fornell weren't following, he explained in more detail. "It's like taking snapshots of the files in the hard drive of their main computer. If I'm able to do enough, we can piece it together." McGee entered several commands into the computer to his far left, watching the screen for several seconds before he was fully satisfied.
"Like a jigsaw puzzle?"
"Exactly, Boss." He turned his chair to better see the rest of the group. "Of course, it's a jigsaw puzzle with five layers of encryption, but it's something to work on."
"So what are you doing now?" Fornell stepped closer to watch the lines of code that were streaming across the monitor.
"This computer is set up to break through their first two levels of encryption. It can run while we work on the rest of the transfers." McGee rolled back to his primary computer and prepared for the second wave of data being sent to Moore. The group fell into a steady rhythm as they continued to sort through the information they had gathered and the less sensitive files from Moore's associates were decrypted.
By the time McGee had copied the last data packet from the west coast, it was midday and Fornell called for a working lunch to sort out what information everyone had found. Everyone joined in; even Hank was wheeled in, his leg still heavily bandaged.
"So, Boss, what kind of food have we got for lunch?"
Gibbs didn't have to answer DiNozzo because Ziva walked in with a case of military MRE's and dropped it on the table. "Lunch is served."
The former Gunny Sergeant grinned at them and dug through the options. "They make a great chicken tetrazzini."
Despite the grumblings they all grabbed a pack and tore into it, watching how Gibbs set up the heating unit that came in the packages. Sacks stared unhappily at the beef stew that looked nothing like what his mother would make.
DiNozzo was the only one brave enough to ask what they were all thinking. "We got real food yesterday, why not today?"
"You guys have already wiped out the supplies that were here and bringing in that much food every day will attract attention, especially on a Sunday." Vance watched as they all picked at their meals, except for Gibbs and Ziva who were well experienced with field rations. "Don't worry, there will be enough activity in the Yard on Monday for us to sneak in a food truck and tonight I'll get us all Chinese. You'll just have to make due until then."
When Palmer and Novak came in from the lab, Fornell gave up trying to squeeze peanut butter out of the little package that came with his meal. Instead, he pulled a white board over in front of the group. "All right, what do we have so far? Mildred, you start. What did you find in the samples from the bodies Ducky autopsied?"
Mildred ignored the pasta dish in her pack and went straight for the package of chocolate. Licking the last of the candy from her fingertips, she shook her head. "None of the tests showed anything unusual in the woman's system."
Nothing, are you sure?"
"I'm sorry, Agent McGee, but every test we could think of have came back negative. She hadn't been exposed to anything that any of the other victims were exposed to. I can keep running tests, but until I have a direction to look, I'm just shooting in the dark." She turned back to Fornell to continue her report.
"The other two had a synthetic poison in their bodies. I've seen it before, but not for the last twenty years. It was developed by the KGB to make sure none of their spies would defect or talk if they were captured. Someone with enough knowledge and the right lab could duplicate it easily enough." Frustrated at coming up blank, she handed over the latest results from the tests still being run at Quantico. "The last group of bodies tested showed the same as the rest, the drug testing and the unknown substances in a small number of the bodies."
Fornell glanced over at McGee who nodded in return. They had spoken in great detail about the direction of the case. "Tell your people at Quantico to concentrate on the unknown compound found in the victims. We don't have the time to spend on what Moore's group has done; we need to figure out what they are going to do next. Ron, do we have results from the burned bodies in New York?"
"Both the NYPD crime lab and our lab in New York are running tests, but we don't have results yet." Sacks tossed the plastic spoon from his stew onto the table. "Do we want to have the remains flown down here for Dr. Mallard to examine?"
Ducky thought about it, while the senior agents waited. "Sid is doing the autopsies personally. He's going to send me his findings later this afternoon. Let me review those before I make a final decision. We only have so much room for bodies here and I don't want any of them moved up to our normal facility until we know what is going on."
Vance started to walk around the table. "What are they up to? Do we have any idea?"
"Let's go over what we do know." Fornell wrote across the top of the board 'drug testing' and followed it with a large dollar sign. "We know that he's doing this to finance his plans."
Ron leaned forward, his recent call to New York still fresh in his mind. "The bodies in New York might be part of his testing program."
"But why go to all the extra work?" DiNozzo's eyes narrowed as he thought out loud. "The homeless victims disappeared first, which means they were held someplace, and why bother burning the bodies? Are we sure they're connected?"
"If they're not, it's a heck of a coincidence." Fornell turned to McGee. "Kid, tell us what you've got on their case so far."
It took just a few seconds for McGee to flip through and find his notes on the subject. "A city like New York has a pretty constant level of homeless that go missing every month, but eighteen months ago, the numbers started creeping up. That was the same time Moore's charity division opened a shelter there. Of the confirmed dead and missing, they've been able to link almost seventy five percent of them to Moore's shelter. They received services there within two weeks of when they went missing."
"That's a hell of a big coincidence."
"And we know what you think about coincidences, Boss." McGee flashed a brief smile at Gibbs before he continued. "NYPD has put somebody undercover in there a few times, but they haven't found anything."
Ziva was sitting across from McGee and was reading his notes upside down. "Why are his different charities only in large cities and in very rural areas and nothing in between?" Tim had noticed it, but he wanted a fresh perspective and just motioned for her to continue. "In the very large cities like New York and Los Angeles his groups are focused on the homeless and the addicted, but only offering them shelter and food. Do not most church run shelters at least offer their religion?"
Myers gave a laugh. "Guess they can't be bothered to save the souls when they just want the bodies for experiments."
"So, what are they doing in the rural areas?" Gibbs' question brought them back on track and McGee pulled up the print out he needed.
"Flu shots."
"Flu shots?" Fornell reached out and McGee handed him the paper. "Why in the heck would he be running a door to door flu shot campaign in the Midwest?"
"How do we know those people are actually getting a flu shot?" DiNozzo's question caught everyone off guard.
Ducky leaned over Gibbs' shoulder and read the findings he'd been given. "Rural farm communities seem to be his target group for these shots. Why would he want to harm the groups that so closely fit his ideals?
Ziva straightened up and stared at Fornell. "Not harm…"
"What?" Fornell was getting there, but Gibbs was faster.
"Protect, but what is he protecting them from?"
"He's protecting them from whatever he plans on doing to the rest of us." Vance looked over at the computers McGee was using to break through the encryption. "We need to know exactly what he injected those people with instead of the vaccines they thought they were getting."
"Could they be giving people the antidote to the poison? The one the KGB developed?" Tony's question caused everyone to turn to Mildred. She flipped back through her notes from the tests she had run.
"The time frame is wrong. The antidote only lasts in the body for a few days before it breaks down. If they spent a week inoculating just one town, it would have worn off the majority of the people before they were finished. The fake vaccine has to be something that lasts longer than just a few days."
"Oh, my God." The whispered words were spoken with such intensity that the rest of the group stilled. McGee repeated himself once before looking first at Fornell, then at Gibbs as he explained.
"Raymond Lacy's son was put through school by Edmund Moore. Kevin Lacy did his doctorial studies on infectious diseases. Maybe it was a real vaccine, but just not for the flu."