a/n - You guys still with me? Get ready, it's going to be a wild couple of days. Especially for me, because I have the flu.
It was just daybreak when Vance returned with Director Haas of the FBI. Using Vance's override code they got inside the evidence garage to park unseen. Vance was proud of both his people and the team McGee had brought in from the FBI and it was time to show Haas what the joint operation had accomplished.
No too many things would have gotten Michael Hass out of bed in the middle of the night, but the update from Vance had been worth it. Getting to see this rumored secret wing of the NCIS building was just icing on the cake. He was a little surprised when Vance opened the trunk of his car and started handing him bags from a local grocery chain.
"The next joint op we have, Michael, you get to feed the task force. Keeping Myers fed is killing our budget."
Haas had to laugh as he juggled the two bags and a gallon of juice. "You should have brought in Ron Sacks' mother to cook for the group. That's what we do."
"Now he tells me." Vance ignored the continued laughter as he led Haas to the elevator. Once they were downstairs, Haas wouldn't be laughing any more. As suspected, Hass stopped laughing when he saw the hidden complex under the main building, at least until DiNozzo walked past in his boxers, a towel slung over his shoulder, brushing his teeth.
With a foamy and muffled "Morning, Directors" DiNozzo banged on the shower room door. "Time's up, Ziva. Get your butt out of there." Before either of the arriving men could say anything, Sacks came out of another door, also dressed in boxers, and DiNozzo handed him the tube of toothpaste as he passed. While this exchange was going on, Ziva exited the small bathroom and Mildred slipped past the Directors and DiNozzo and into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. "Damn it, Mildred."
Smirking, both men continued on, as Leon led them to the kitchenette, passing Jimmy Palmer with a tray of coffee, heading to the War Room. Vance hooked the bag of donuts on one of his fingers to take with him. Inside the kitchenette was packed as Fornell manned the stove, leaning over Gibbs who was checking on the bacon. At the small table, Hank was cutting up fruit, his broken leg tucked safely under the table.
"Director, Director", Fornell greeted them both and pointed at a tray. Haas held the tray as Fornell filled it with scrambled eggs, stubbornly refusing to think about the origins of the deep stainless steel that looked suspiciously like an organ tray from autopsy.
Gibbs added the bacon to the tray as he explained the plans. "Twice a day we all meet to compare notes and plan strategy. Since McGee broke through the last layer of encryption, we've got a lot of ground to cover." Fornell took the bowl of mixed fruit while Gibbs handed Thompson his crutches. The five men left for the War Room and were joined by Ducky who came out of the lab with a large pot of oatmeal.
Haas looked down into the pot. "Please tell me those are raisins."
"Ziva raided the vending machines last night." Vance winced at Ducky's comment, knowing that the raid probably included a liberal use of lockpicks and very little loose change.
After a yell from Gibbs that reminded everyone of his background as a Marine, the stragglers arrived in the War Room. DiNozzo was the last one in the door, his hair still wet and wearing a set of scrubs. Plates loaded, the morning briefing started, Mildred Novak was the first to stand.
"We've confirmed that the three bodies in our possession have all been vaccinated recently against Y. Pestis. Knowing that, we've been concentrating our work on the bodies from New York that died of the plague, and now know that they had specifically suffered from Pneumonic Plague that's been genetically modified to not respond to antibiotics." She gave an apologetic look to DiNozzo before continuing. "We have no way of knowing if they've added a suicide gene into the mutation they've developed or not, but we can expect more than ninety percent of the exposed population to die within the first five days."
The silence that followed her announcement was broken by a whisper from Ziva. "The bulldozers."
"Yeah." McGee rubbed his forehead as he answered her. When the rest of them stared blankly at him, he explained. "When that many people start dying, it will be total anarchy, so they won't want to risk their people getting shot stealing bulldozers. They already have them stashed where they need them."
"But why do they need them?" Jimmy wasn't making the connection, so Ducky softly explained it to him.
'They'll need to bury the bodies quickly before, well, before it gets bad."
McGee quietly confirmed it. "Mass graves for the non-believers."
A soft ding from the elevator had all the agents reaching for their weapons, but Vance waved them back as the SecNav entered the War Room. "This had better be good, Leon, I'm going to be late for my tee time." Instead of trying to justify his call, Vance handed him a one page brief on what they uncovered to that point. Davenport skimmed it quickly and sat down, stunned. "How much time do we have?"
"McGee broke through the last layer of their encryption last night." Vance turned to face McGee, obviously turning the floor over to him. Tim carefully stood and moved closer to the largest plasma in the room, determined to not show any weakness before he dropped his bombshell. "Sometime today the biotoxin will arrive at their main compound in Virginia. Their plan is to send it out to their other sites sometime on Saturday. They have a countdown," Tim brought up the visual on the plasma, "that suggests they plan on commencing with their attack on Monday at approximately noon our time."
The rest of the group was silent as Secretary Davenport got up and stood next to McGee and watched the screen as he fired off his questions.
"How does he plan to spread it? What kind of exposure are we looking at?"
Ziva pulled out the file and handed it to Jason. He turned it over to Vance as he told what was in it. "Through his shell companies, he's amassed a large number of small aircraft, the kind used for crop-dusting."
While Myers talked, Fornell rifled through his own stack of papers. "They've been keeping close tabs on the upper air flows for early next week."
"Dispersal patterns."
"I'm afraid you're right, my dear." Ducky gave a sad smile to Mildred. He knew the answer, but wanted to see the visual. "Timothy, can you bring up a map of the United States up on the computer?" McGee quickly sat at the console and had it up on the main screen, anticipating Ducky's next request.
"Now, let's show all the known locations for his group." A few keystrokes and several dozen black circles showed up, scattered throughout the country and McGee took over the narration.
"Overlaying the air flow charts for the dates indicated will show us how far they expect to spread the plague for the first twenty-four hours." A red pattern showed up on the screen, enlarging every time he clicked the mouse.
Click. "Forty-eight hours."
Click. "Seventy-two hours."
Click. "Ninety-six hours."
Click. "One hundred and twenty hours."
By this point, the red markings had swirled and covered much of the map beyond the borders and were well across most of North America. Without saying anything else, Tim decreased the magnification to show the beginnings of the plague touching distant continents.
The SecNav almost wished he hadn't asked, but forced himself to continue. "Do we know how they're transporting it to their other sites or the route they're using?"
"No sir. Apparently that information was passed along before we started tracking their transmissions." He took a deep breath and summed up what they knew so far. "We have one shot at stopping them before they disperse a biological weapon that will kill almost everyone that is exposed, and we have less than twenty-four hours to plan out just how to do it."
"Gee, is that all we need to do?" Sacks' question may have been sarcastic, but McGee's answer was not.
"Actually, no. I need to physically access their mainframe computer from inside."
"Are you nuts?" DiNozzo stumbled to his feet. "Technically, you're not even supposed to be out of the hospital and you want to be part of the team that goes after them?"
McGee held his ground. "We need the information on that computer; we need to know how far his control went. Do any of you know how to bypass his security and firewalls to transmit the data back here?"
Phillip Davenport studied the young man in front of him before turning to look at Vance, and then the rest of the team sitting behind him. The entire group shared the same expression of quiet acceptance. "I will have to ask the President to authorize the use of military force on American land and bring in the Joint Chiefs."
"No, Sir." McGee handed him a printout before he enlightened the group. "I was able to copy a few files from Moore's mainframe. That is a partial listing of his followers in the government and in the military." He didn't have to explain further, most of the names on the list Davenport recognized. They truly were on their own.
---NCIS---
It had been many years since Davenport had been involved in the planning of an assault, but some things you never forgot. One of those things was how many people it took to pull it off. "We need more bodies to even have a chance at this."
Vance leaned back and rubbed at his eyes. "What we need is a squad of Marines that we can pull in without anyone else noticing."
"Captain Arvidas and his squad." Ducky leaned on the doorframe and waited for the response. Gibbs knew exactly who he meant.
"Aren't they deployed?"
Ducky continued into the room and sat between Gibbs and Haas. "I checked. They're scheduled to leave next Wednesday. A group of Marines, the weekend before they leave for six months in Iraq. Nobody's going to notice if they fall off the radar."
Gibbs was nodding in agreement as he turned to Vance. "Their First Sergeant was killed stateside by an El Salvadorian street gang a few years ago. We handled the case."
"You trust them?"
Gibbs gave Haas a hard look. "Yes Sir, I do."
"Let's bring them in." Davenport needed Gibbs to know the stipulations that would be attached to the mission. "Officially, this can't exist until after it's over. Make sure they know they'll be operating without written orders."