Consequences of Love and War: Chapter 35
A/N: A little bit sore today--ran the Army Ten Miler yesterday with 20,000 of my closest friends :) It was actually a lot of fun, even with waking up early on one of my few days off to deal with the completely packed Metro and spending an hour after the race to find my friends (the ones I actually came with, not the other 19,995 or so people). Might have to find a way to incorporate that into a story at some point. Maybe a murdered sailor at the six mile mark, Gibbs having to deal with Hollis Mann's replacement... I'll figure something out, I'm sure.
And, thank you, everyone, for your kind words. You have no idea how nice that warm and fuzzy feeling of being appreciated is after a long day.
Strangely enough, Gibbs was nowhere to be found when Tony and Ziva arrived at NCIS with Kirkan. DiNozzo frowned at the empty desk for a minute. "Probie," he barked, his eyes still on Gibbs' empty chair before turning to the junior agent. He smirked at the deer-in-the-headlights look on McGee's face. "Got a job for you. Need to find a medic at Camp Phoenix."
McGee paused, his pen an inch from the note pad. "That's it?" he finally asked. "Tony, the hospital at Camp Phoenix is staffed by both Army and Navy medical personnel. It's one of the largest field hospitals in Afghanistan. Do you have any idea how many medics there are?"
DiNozzo shrugged. "More than ten?"
"Quite a few more than ten, Tony."
"At least you won't have to complain about not having anything to do," DiNozzo said before heading for his own desk. McGee frowned as his eyes went from Tony to Ziva and back again a few times.
"He's definitely ready for his own team," he finally said to Ziva. "He's channeling Gibbs' unreasonable demands already."
She smirked slightly. "You can eliminate everyone with flight training," she said before sitting at her own desk. That didn't make McGee look any less confused.
"My friends Jess and Bryan graduated from West Point," Kirkan explained. "Bryan talked to one of their classmates, who's now a MEDEVAC helicopter pilot, currently deployed to Afghanistan. His rounds include Camp Phoenix. He said that there's a medic who's interested in flight medical training, comes by whenever the helicopter comes in order to learn the procedures, but he hasn't been by since Alyse was abducted."
"You think she's being held by medics?" McGee asked with a frown.
"It makes sense," Ziva pointed out. "She worked with them at the hospital, so they would be likely to know who her husband is. They would also know where her office is and how to take her from it without people noticing."
"And," Abby said with a flourish as she appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Everyone turned to face her, waiting to see what she had revealed. "I tracked the email. I could tell you everything that I did to figure out where it came from—"
"Please don't," DiNozzo interrupted. She grinned.
"It came from Afghanistan," she said with a flourish. "More specifically, Camp Phoenix."
Kirkan frowned in thought. "Do you think she's still on base?" he asked. If so, that was infinitely better than even the best scenario his overactive imagination came up with. On base, she had shelter, probably food and water, and if anything happened and her captors were halfway decent human beings—which was debatable; they had, after all, kidnapped his wife—she was close to medical facilities.
"Looking into the medics now," McGee said, not bothering to answer Kirkan's question.
"All you can eat food in the mess," Kirkan mused, still mostly talking to himself. The NCIS agents stopped what they were doing and frowned in his direction. He blinked as he registered their bewildered expressions and explained, "KBR charges the government more than a hundred dollars a day per uniformed personnel for food—fresh fruits and vegetables in the desert and mountains, all-you-can-eat everything, mess halls open twenty-four hours a day. Alyse and I laughed about it, because it drove Ellie Reynolds nuts. She was Alyse's roommate in college at University of Washington, now an Army preventive medicine physician. She specializes in tropical medicine—she's currently deployed on a humanitarian mission in the Philippines, counting mosquitoes or some such thing—but she did other preventive medicine things in her training, including the whole diet and exercise thing. She always complained that it was too easy for deployed personnel to get too much unhealthy food, but despite the best efforts of her and her colleagues, nothing ever changed—as one colonel explained to her, you can't tell soldiers what they can and cannot eat, when each meal could be their last. Besides, everyone loses weight when deployed anyway, so it was a moot point." He frowned again. "Alyse took advantage of that policy whenever she knew she wouldn't be able to get away from the hospital for awhile—they had take-out containers, so she'd grab a couple of meals worth of food to get her through until the next time she could get to the mess." He shrugged. "Sorry. Just thinking out loud."
"So if someone were to start taking out twice as much food from the mess as they needed, nobody would notice," McGee summed up. Kirkan nodded, feeling strangely like that one sentence meant that things were finally falling into place.
"Ziva, what time is it in Bahrain?" Tony asked, already reaching for his phone. She looked at her watch and frowned.
"Agent Burley might still be at the office," she finally replied. He grinned at the fact that she knew what he was asking as he dialed a number that was all too familiar.
"DiNozzo, I think it's a bad sign that I recognize your extension on my caller ID."
"Believe me, Burley, I'm not exactly thrilled to be talking to you, either," Tony joked back. "How's the desert?"
"Hot as hell with nothing to do. Actually, you're lucky you caught me. Kim and I were just heading out of the office to head over to Freiler's house for a barbeque." The head of the Bahrain field office sighed. "Aachen case?"
"You know me too well," DiNozzo joked. There was a brief pause on the other end.
"Can you get MTAC in about five minutes?" Burley asked. "The base CO wanted to be kept in the loop."
"Not sure he's going to want to hear this," DiNozzo warned. "Ziva and I will be up in five." He hung up the phone without saying anything further and turned to his partner, eyebrows raised. "Duty calls," he said cheekily. "Probilicious. Keep on that medic search."
"Medical personnel not already flight trained. Got it," McGee replied dryly, not even looking up from his computer screen. Tony smirked slightly as he returned his attention to Ziva, nodding up toward MTAC. She nodded and rose from her chair to head upstairs.
Three minutes later, DiNozzo and Ziva were standing side-by-side in front of the large screen, waiting to hear back from Burley. "Bahrain and Camp Phoenix are standing by," the technician finally said.
"Put them up," DiNozzo ordered automatically, and a few seconds later, the screen was split, a stern-looking Marine general on one side and Stan Burley and Kim Tomblin standing close together behind the senior agent's desk on the other. "Sorry to interrupt the barbeque, Burley, Tomblin," he said dryly. Stan grinned.
"We're not," he replied. "You've never tasted Freiler's attempts to grill."
"Or his wife's apple pie," Tomblin chimed in, punctuating her words with an exaggerated shudder.
Burley grinned for a second before his expression became serious again. "DiNozzo, Ziva, this is Brigadier General Mark de la Cruz, the CO of Camp Phoenix. General, Special Agent Tony DiNozzo and Mossad Liaison Officer Ziva David, from the Major Case Response Team at NCIS headquarters in Washington."
"We're glad you can join us, General," DiNozzo said diplomatically, even while he was grimacing on the inside; he hated having to involve the brass. "Not sure if you're aware of the background on the case, but we got involved because the case was brought to our attention by Dr. Aachen's husband, Peter Kirkan, a reporter for Stars and Stripes."
"And novelist Gregory Aachen," General de la Cruz said, his voice somewhere between dry, annoyed, and bored. "I watch ZNN."
"Right," DiNozzo replied. "Sorry, sir." He cleared his throat slightly and purposefully avoided looking at Ziva, aware that she was probably smirking at his awkwardness. "We now have reason to believe that Dr. Aachen is being held somewhere on base, possibly by a medic or team of medics."
"So you think this was an inside job?" General de la Cruz demanded. "A couple of days ago, you were interrogating personnel on base about terrorist activity."
"With what we had at that time, we believed terrorist activity to the most likely explanation for Dr. Aachen's abduction," Ziva said smoothly. Tony was amazed at how well she did this; a couple of years ago, she would have been jumping down the general's throat. Maybe all of the liaising she did was paying off. "The new evidence makes this being an inside job more likely."
"And what new evidence is that?" DiNozzo opened his mouth to reply, but Burley was faster.
"General, there's a lot that goes into an investigation," he said. "We don't have time to go over every small lead with you. You're just going to have to trust that we're good at our jobs." He let that sink in for a moment before nodding to DiNozzo to continue.
"Sir, we'd like to search the base," Tony said. "Obviously, Agent Burley has jurisdiction, but if he can't spare the agents, a team from Washington—"
"I'm afraid not, Agent DiNozzo," General de la Cruz interrupted with a firm shake of his head. "I can't suspend all operations on base just because of your hunch, not when you're now saying that your last one was wrong. We're already on threat level red. All leave and passes have been suspended indefinitely. Guards and security are doubled. And on top of all that—or maybe because of it—morale is at an all-time low. The last thing anyone needs is for a team of NCIS agents to be combing through the base, asking everyone questions about the people they work with and trust their lives to. If you get anything concrete, let me know. Until then, my answer is no."
"Well, that's just the thing, General," DiNozzo said cheekily. "We don't really need your permission. I was asking to be polite."
de la Cruz's face darkened. "I'll have you know, Agent DiNozzo—Commandant Wall is a close friend of mine. So is Secretary Holley." He gave another glare before angrily disconnecting the line.
The three NCIS agents and one Mossad liaison officer stood there in stunned silence for a second. "Well, that went well," Agent Tomblin finally said. Burley gave a low chuckle.
"Next time, DiNozzo, have Officer David speak for you. She's a lot more eloquent. And a lot easier on the eyes," he said with a grin.
"And a lot deadlier," Tony joked, shooting Ziva a quick grin. He quickly summed up what they had, with Bryan Lindemann's relayed conversation and the email from the kidnappers, promising to send more details in an email just as soon as they left MTAC. They signed off which the usual pleasantries and promises to keep each other up to date.
Tony and Ziva descended the stairs to see the entire team—including Gibbs, who had returned from wherever he was—and Kirkan, Ducky, and Abby, gathered around the plasma screen. "What's going on?" Tony asked as they approached, taking note of the pallor of Kirkan's face.
"We got another email," McGee filled him in, "this time to the NCIS account we set up for the case, the one Peter gave at the press conference. It's a video, probably from a cell phone, according to Abby." He restarted it, which was entirely a shaky shot of Dr. Alyse Aachen sleeping on a cot, wearing stained teal-green scrubs, her brown hair knotted and greasy, a gray wall behind her. The voice in the background was very clear, with the unmistakable accent of the American south.
"As you can see, we haven't hurt Dr. Aachen," the man behind the cell phone camera said. "She's just fine, and she'll continue to be fine if we get our money. Set up a private Swiss bank account, deposit the money, and email the account number to this address. We're waiting."