Consequences of Love and War: Chapter 3

Gibbs took his time paying for the two large coffees, buying him a few extra seconds to figure out what exactly he was going to say. He started with, "Here you go, Marine."

"Thanks," Kirkan replied, accepting the cup. Gibbs was satisfied to see that the former corporal didn't add any cream or sugar before bringing it to his lips. "How much do I owe you?"

"First one's free."

"I'm good for it, Gunny."

"You didn't call me to discuss your finances."

"No." The writer sighed. "I have an accountant for that. And a former gunnery sergeant for when my wife goes missing."

Gibbs didn't say anything for a moment as he stared at his former Marine. "Hadn't heard anything from you in twenty years until you called me at 0100 this morning."

"Yeah." Kirkan put his coffee cup down and rubbed his eyes tiredly. Gibbs wondered when the man last slept. "I didn't know who else to call. After I saw Alyse… After that, I tried calling Camp Phoenix directly, which is, not that surprisingly, pretty difficult to do. I finally got hold of someone who told me that the FOB was under communications lockdown, probably related to the attack, although they didn't tell me that. Couldn't even call up the chain of command—didn't know who that would be. Alyse is there as a professional filler, she wasn't part of the unit prior to being deployed. That actually happens more often than not to doctors." He closed his eyes briefly before opening them to stare at Gibbs as if trying to decide what to say. "So I figured NCIS was the people I needed to talk to, and the fact that my former gunny leads the MCRT made that decision pretty easy." He paused and looked away before looking back. "And I knew you wouldn't say no."

"What made you think that?"

"Because it's about my wife." This time, he didn't look away, meeting Gibbs' gaze unflinchingly.

"Tell me about her." Gibbs no-nonsense tone made it very clear to Kirkan that he wasn't interested in tales of how they met or the fact that she liked a particular white chocolate peanut butter that they sold in commissaries.

"She's an internist," he began. "Six months ago, she left for Camp Phoenix as a PROFIS doc - professional filler - only found out two months before that that she was going, right after she graduated from internal medicine residency at NNMC. Well, that's soon to be WRNMC, but I wouldn't recommend bringing that up to Alyse. You'll get her started on the Army take-over of Bethesda." He shook his head slightly and took another gulp of his coffee. "Prior to finishing her residency, she was a general medical officer—a flight surgeon—for two years. She spent a year on the Vinsonworking in the infirmary, and before that, internship, also at NNMC. She graduated from medical school at the University of Washington on a Navy scholarship."

"Enemies?"

"She's a Navy doc, Gunny. She doesn't have enough free time for enemies."

"What about her patients?"

He shook his head. "She wasn't treating any admirals or generals, if that's what you're asking. No high-valued patients. She didn't know any medical secrets about anybody making big decisions."

"Personal life?"

He shrugged. "Married to a reporter-slash-anonymous novelist for almost two years." He tapped his titanium wedding band against the table absently. "No kids. Parents live in the state of Washington, dad's an accountant and mom's a high school English teacher. She has an older brother, Andrew, a tax lawyer. He was a Marine fighter pilot until he was medically discharged, then went onto law school. He moved back home, specializes in agriculture tax law and works at the same accounting firm as their father."

"Nothing worth kidnapping someone for."

"No." He took a long drink of his coffee as he sorted out his thoughts. "I don't think it has to do with anything, but I don't want you to think I'm holding anything back if you find out, or that she was hiding anything from me. She was engaged in her fourth year of medical school. He was another med student, on an Army scholarship. They were going to both do their residencies in the DC area, him at Walter Reed and her at Bethesda, but he ended up assigned to Madigan—the Army hospital at Ft. Lewis, in Washington state. She told me that they were going to find a way to work around the fact that they were stationed on opposite coasts until she found out that he requested Madigan. Got cold feet or something. She called it off, hadn't talked to him since they graduated from medical school."

"Name?"

Kirkan shook his head. "No idea. I never asked. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. I know he's a neurologist in the Army and graduated from medical school at the University of Washington almost six years ago, and that he's a fucking idiot for letting her go, but that's all I know."

Gibbs nodded. "We'll look into it," he said as he made a note in his pocket notebook. "Don't think it's relevant, though."

"Yeah, I don't think so either." He sighed and rubbed his face again. "What are you thinking, Gunny? Is this some sort of terrorism thing?"

"No way to tell at this point." Gibbs took another long drink of his coffee. "We look into every possibility."

Kirkan stared at him for a long minute. "I suppose that means your next question will be about my enemies."

"I don't remember you being interesting enough to have enemies."

The writer smiled thinly. "That's what I always liked about you, Gunny. Your sense of humor." He sighed. "You also don't remember me being a writer. Or, more to the point, a reporter." He was rather impressed with how calmly he had taken a sip of his coffee. "You want a list of people I've pissed off with my articles? You can put Allie on that list. That's how we met, actually. I wrote an article, she didn't like it and emailed me to complain, and practically the next thing I know, I'm trying to figure out how to propose to a woman who is almost a decade younger than me, has almost a decade more formal education, and at that time, had a net worth about three times that of my own."

"Unless you think your wife kidnapped herself, that doesn't help much."

"Yeah." He took another drink of coffee. "I would write you a list, but honestly, I don't know who I've upset. I don't keep track of those things. I can get you a list of my articles, but I've been a regular contributor to S&S for seven years. That's a lot of articles." He shook his head slightly. "And none of them were exactly the type of ground-breaking, Pulitzer-worthy material that creates life-long enemies. You won't see them making a Frost/Nixon-esque movie about anything I've uncovered any time soon."

"And the novels?"

"Fans are insane, but I doubt many have the resources to figure out who I am and who my wife is and how to get to Afghanistan to abduct her." He ran his hands through his hair, now much longer than it had been in his years in the Corps and quite a lot grayer. Alyse liked to tease him about his hair—both the length and the gray—and he protested that it was still far from anything ninety percent of the population would consider to be long, and that she should just be grateful that he still had a full head of hair, unlike his father, who had been just about completely bald by thirty. "What is going on, Gunny?" he finally asked, shaking his head slightly to distract from the random tangents his thoughts were taking. "What the hell is going on? Less than ten hours ago, my biggest concern was finishing an article for a 0500 deadline, and now my wife is missing and I have no fucking clue why. Is it a Navy thing, a doctor thing, something I did? Is she involved in something in Afghanistan that I don't know about? It's all one big Charlie Foxtrot, that's for sure."

Gibbs smiled grimly. "My team is the best, Marine. We'll get to the bottom of this." He took a sip of his coffee. "You just better hope this investigation doesn't require me to talk to Lyndi Crenshaw again."