AN: Thanks to Gail Cregg for her encouragement on the subject of credibility... This is the chapter where you can all say 'that's rubbish, she doesn't know anything...' well, I told YOU that.

Please just go with the flow... (literally – it's water we're talking about) and thanks to ytteb for her hydrodynamic encouragement.

Thanks also to the incredible number of people who faved or alerted – and all the lovely kind reviewers. Action next chapter...

Cowboy Tony Rides Again

Chapter 2

He must have slept, because that was pale daylight creeping under the flat brim of his hat. (It was one Amos had given him; more Clint Eastwood than Roy Rogers, he was happy to say.) Doris stood nearby dozing, the blanket still over her back.

"Ow..." Tony stood up slowly, joints cracking a little after his night spent leaning against the tree, and the Morgan mare snuffled a sleepy greeting. He realised he needed a pee, and even though he thought it was crazy, he went round the other side of the tree rather than relieve himself in front of a lady. "You're losing it, DiNozzo... and," sniff, "boy, you could use a shower and a change of clothes."

Well, first things first; he'd stayed up here because he wanted to make sure his assumption was right; he'd thought the night visitors hadn't actually done anything to the dam, but he needed to make sure. Almost six am; he found a couple of sugar lumps for Doris, saddled up, then led her among the trees to the lakeside. He figured she wouldn't be grumpy if she could at least keep an eye on him.

She waited with her usual patience as he set out along the dam, just as he had in the darkness; he was able to take more notice of its construction now he could see it. At each end there was a sluice controlled by a gate that raised from above; he crossed the first one by a bridge, and walked to the other side. The water level of the lake was high enough that if the gates were raised the water would go cascading down the spillways; he'd like to come back some time and watch that. He could see no signs of tampering, at least nothing obvious to his untrained eyes; the mechanism of the sluices seemed fine as far as he could tell. Leaning over the parapet at regular intervals as he made his way back, he stared down the face. He couldn't see any cracks, or dynamite, or... heck, anything his imagination could conjure up. He didn't know why he thought he might; just a baaad feeling.

At the side of the right-hand spillway, about half-way down, there was a concrete outcrop, with a hump of pipe topped by a large valve release wheel, reached by a precarious staircase. Tony grimaced, climbed over the gate with its obligatory warning notice, then made his way carefully down. Thirty-two steps. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the valve either, so he counted the steps as he climbed back to the top, taking care not to look behind him. Doris gave him a dirty look as he reached the top. You're a human, not a mountain goat... "Sorry, sweetheart... won't do it again. Let's go get you some breakfast."

His phone vibrated against his hip-bone, and he pulled it out warily. McGee.

"You're up Mcearly, Probie!" Oops... well, he couldn't never use the name again, could he?

"Couldn't sleep. Stark fear of telling Gibbs you're going to be late."

"Hey, it was your idea!"

"Joking, Tony. Mostly. I er... called to... I was expecting voice-mail... I didn't think you'd – are you OK?" The last words came out in a rush.

"I will be... fine... I..."

"Did you go see Doris?"

"She's right here."

"It's six in the morning!"

"Yeah, well, I'm up early too. On top of a mountain." Tim didn't ask. An idea struck the SFA that he should have had last night. "Hey, listen, where are you?"

"Just walking out to my car."

"Can you do something for me when you get to the Yard? If you're going in early..."

"Tell me."

Tony gave him the plate of the truck he'd seen last night. "Can you see what you can find? Owner, associates, a guy I heard called 'Brew'... you know the stuff... and anything you can about the Appelt Four Dams area. Oh, and someone called Lesniak. Lez-nee-ack. That's how I heard it said. A woman."

"Dare one ask why?" Tim's voice was a very reasonable take-off of Ducky, and Tony actually laughed.

"Found myself a little mystery, could be nothing; I'll tell you as soon as I get in today." He gave Tim the briefest of sitreps. "Just a feeling... There are a couple of people I need to talk to before I head back, if I can find them; you can sweeten things with Gibbs if you like – tell him one of them's Simon Townley. Former marine, remember?"

"I remember. What are you up to, DiNozzo?"

"Nothing... yet. Uh-oh, gotta go!" He shut his phone off as Doris huffed and looked down the hill; a truck was approaching at speed, for all that the climb was steep. Tony uncovered his gun, although he could see it wasn't the same vehicle he'd already encountered. It rocked to an angry halt, making Doris's head jerk up defensively, and sending the mare skittering backwards, and a small, slightly built woman jumped out from the driver's door. A man in his late fifties got more slowly out from the other side. The woman strode towards him. She was maybe thirty years old, with longish, curling chestnut hair caught up in a large comb at the back of her head, and her eyes were grey and stormy.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Tony blinked. He walked deliberately to his horse and ostentatiously soothed her, which stopped the woman in her tracks momentarily; nobody upset Doris without him at least sending them on a guilt trip... He gestured with his phone before dropping it back into his pocket. "Well, I was just talking to a friend, and now I'm planning to go for breakfast and a shower."

"You know what I mean! You were looking at the sluices, then you went down the face! That's trespassing – and why the hell were you looking at the PHV?" She pointed to where a camera in a heavily rubberised case hung below the furthest corner of the bridge he'd just come back across. "We watched you. What were you doing? Who are you?"

The logo on the door of the truck had already given him a clue to who the angry woman was, so he answered soothingly. "Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS, Ma'am." He handed his badge over for her to inspect. "You're from the Four Dams Administration."

She handed his badge back slowly, only somewhat mollified, and a slight frown crossed her face, as if she were trying to recall something. "Mary Lesniak," she said. "Senior Engineer In Charge. Ty Frodsham, my deputy. Us two and two others – we are the Four Dams Administration. What were you doing?"

"PHV..." Tony pointed down the dam face to the valve. "That's that thing, right?"

"Pipeline Head Valve," the engineer told him. "Why?"

Tony outlined briefly the night's events, and his own unease. He left out the name that he'd heard, and the fact that he got the truck's number. Instinct said these two were on the side of the good, but again, it didn't pay to assume.

"Damn," Mary Lesniak said when he paused for breath. "Ross thought he saw something last night, lights, shadows, but the camera... it's tough, but not so good on definition, especially at night. Budget restraints... you said they said something about acting soon? Figures..."

"You've been expecting it? I mean, d'you always have someone on night watch?"

The engineer frowned thoughtfully. "There's a lot I could tell you...We've a lot to talk about. Look, can you come down to our offices? At the Old Dam?" She smiled in an attempt to make peace. "After you and your horse have had breakfast?"

Her deputy hadn't said a word so far; at first he'd stood bristling like a western old-timer. Tony had imagined him with narrowed eyes, brandishing a shotgun and saying 'you a stranger in these parts?'... Like his boss, he'd gradually relaxed, and now he said "Maybe Simon'd like to hear this too."

"Simon?" He hadn't got quite as far as telling them about the Townley remark, when the engineer had complained about her camera. Something made him ask, "Simon Townley?"

The small woman looked at him, and remembered what she'd been trying to before. "Anthony DiNozzo! You're Tony! Simon's friend!"

Tony looked sad. "I would be if the job gave me the time..."

"Young Adam talks about you." There was something instantly softer about the fierce little engineer as she mentioned the young Townley lad. "Hell, yes, Simon will want to be involved. Look, please..."

Tony patted Doris's nose. "I'll come down," he said agreeably. "After I fix Doris's breakfast and my captivating slept-in-my-clothes aura."

Mary Lesniak seriously grinned for the first time, thanked him, and patted the mare's neck. "Sorry, Doris," she mumbled apologetically, and the two returned to their truck. Tony swung up into his saddle and headed back to the Trail Riding Centre.

NCISNCISNCIS

The elevator pinged and Tim braced himself as he looked up. It wasn't Gibbs, it was Ziva, and he braced himself anyway.

"Where is Tony?" she asked without preamble, and with some irritation.

"He's down at Duet," McGee told her pleasantly. "He went to see Doris."

"Oh. I went to his apartment... I was going to take him out for a drink and a talk about things."

Tim put his pen down. "If he wanted to talk, he would, Ziva. He doesn't, and no amount of pushing is going to make him. He needs us all to give him some space... that's why I suggested he should go down to the Frames' place."

Ziva sighed, sat down, opened a drawer of her desk and closed it with a bang. Tim went on with his digging. A few minutes later, his cell buzzed.

"Hi, Tony. You have? I found her too... oh, you've met her? Well I'll send you what I've got on her, nothing but good actually... yeah, I've got some other stuff too... the truck, Brewster Eisley... I'll have more soon. To Amos's PC? Sure... got that... No, wait wait wait... Tony, what are you going to do? No... what I'm really asking is do you need any help? You did saysabotage earlier on...Tony, I'll tell Gibbs. No, I know it's not our jurisdiction, but I'm still going to tell him. Sure. Sending now."

"Tell Gibbs what?" The man himself strode into the bull pen, coffee in hand. "What's not our jurisdiction?"

Tim realised he'd stopped bracing himself, and did it all over again. "Tony seems to have come across some trouble brewing, Boss..."

NCISNCISNCIS

"Hey, McGee... I found Lesniak. No, found her. Her name's Mary. Yeah, do that. I thought so too... anything else? Brewster Eisley, huh? Got to be a dirtbag with a name like that. Great... send it to Amos? Sassmoss at yahoo... " he spelled it, "OK, thanks, McFerret, I owe you. See you - what? Do? I'm going to take a shower. I smell like Doris, only it suits her. Yes, I did say sabotage, but help? It's not our jurisdiction. If you want, McCautious. D'you have the rest of the stuff? OK, thanks."

Amos watched as the information came through, and Tony scanned the screen rapidly. "Easier to read than my phone," he said cheerfully as he loaded it onto a USB.

Both Frames regarded him dubiously.

"How the heck d'you manage it, DiNozzo?" Amos asked testily. "How d'you manage to find trouble in the most harmless places?"

"I don't..." he was wasting his breath protesting.

"Last time you did something like this, Tony, you ended up in bits.," Sally said, every bit as crossly as her husband.

Tony smiled apologetically. "I'm only going to talk to some folks about a dam, guys." He sighed. "Look... what else can I do? And anyway, I need to keep myself occupied right now." Sally gave him a very rude stare. "OK... I promise to come and 'sit by the range', as you'd say, when it's all done."

Amos snorted. "Go get your shower, and get gone. And keep in touch."

NCISNCISNCIS

The first thing Tony noticed as he arrived in the parking lot of the FDA was the fact that the offices were below the dam. Tempting fate or what? Mind you, the whole township of Appelt lay in the valley below the great earth bank, so what did he expect?

The second thing was the silver Denali he recognised as Simon's vehicle.

The third thing was a tow-headed lad sitting on the steps of the building, in the sunshine, with a book beside him, a laptop on his knees, a cast on his ankle, and a pair of crutches on the ground beside him. With the agility of the young and carefree he managed to put the laptop down, grab one crutch and jump to his feet before the agent had locked his car. He yelled "Tony!" and hoppityskipped across the tarmac to greet him. As he reached him, he threw his crutch down, and flung both arms round the big man. Tony noticed he was a good half a head taller than last time they'd met. He returned the hug, and picked the crutch up for the youngster.

"Hey, Adam... this is new, buddy!"

The boy gave him a huge, irreverent smile. "I thought I should maybe not spend all my time reading... I tried playing soccer – this is the result. Sport's bad for your health, Tony!"

"Ha. Did you kick the goal post instead of the ball? Or the central defender?"

"I was the central defender. I got sat on. Yesterday. I can only milk it for so long though, got to go back to school tomorrow. Come on, Dad's inside, with Mary."

If Tony had had ears like Doris, they'd have twitched... hey, they'd have revolved. A year, or not quite, had made a huge difference – Adam wasn't a lost little boy any more... and... Mary liked Adam, Adam liked Mary. Where did Simon come into all this? A burgeoning romance? Stoppit, don't think about it. Jeanne... he shook himself mentally, and a moment later was warmly shaking hands with the former Marine. A few minutes after that, they were seated round a table, himself, Mary, Simon,, Ty Frodsham, and a suntanned young man introduced as Joel Hawks. Ross Macklin, the fourth member of the team, was at home asleep, having kept the night watch.

When the mugs of coffee and tea had been handed out, Tony brought out his USB. "This is what McGee's found out for me up to now, he's still looking," he said. "But fill me in on the story so far."

Ty chuckled. "D'you mind going back to 1861? A guy called Willi Appelt likes the valley so much he starts farming here. Soon there's a settlement. They need water, and they look at the topography, and what the beavers did." He pointed out places on the map spread on the table. "This is Beaver Dam, up the side valley to the east. Above it is Little Dam, also based on an old beaver dam. Now the New Dam's up the main valley, Little Dam's not needed, so we're letting it fall apart, which it is doing, and hoping that with care the beavers might want to return and rebuild it their way."

"That's my job," Joel said with a grin. "I'm the ecologist. They are returning to parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains... we'd like them here."

"Then they built the Old Dam," Mary said. "That's the one looming over us. They did it the best way they could in 1877... which isn't good enough for these days. It's packed earth and rock, with a very broad base, and a very shallow slope, on this side and the water side. It stayed stable for a hundred years, but it needs repair, repacking really, at the base on the far side, which means draining the reservoir. We've known that since before the New Dam was built – that's the one you were up at – in 1955. That took the pressure off the old one, and now we have a good system, three small lakes, well balanced, minimum impact on the area... So now we could go ahead, let the water level here right down temporarily, but the repairs would cost more than Appelt can handle alone, and the businesses further down the valley aren't willing to help."

Ty grunted disgustedly. "They use the water... they pay for what they use, and unless the State decrees a levy for repairs they won't pay a penny more. They want a new dam, down here..." he pointed to a location further down the valley. "With modern techniques, it'd be a good place. Ample water for them to expand their industries, not an area of outstanding beauty, so they just might get Congressional consent."

"If the Old Dam were no longer doing its job, that is," Mary said. "We're having to hold it at below two-thirds capacity as it is, we're still running computer models to figure out how long it would take to fail if it were filled. Current thinking is hours, not days. And if it failed, it'd inundate the town. The flood waters would be sufficient to flatten the place completely."

Joel grimaced. "Human disaster, ecological disaster. We want to save the dam; others – nobody in Appelt, I promise you – would prefer to legally empty it and destroy it. Then they maybe get their nice new dam down at Deepwood."

"And that word legally worries us," Simon spoke finally. "You got more evidence last night, of what we've feared all along. Some people are ready to destroy the dam anyway."

Tony looked at the map again and frowned. "The spot they want is for their dam is beyond Appelt."

Simon nodded. "We're in their way, Tony. While our town's here, they can't have their dam." He paused. "I fell in love with the town, so did Adam. We settled here, I took over the local newspaper. Turns out I'm a good sniffer dog. I poke my nose in places, I hear things. They want their dam more than they want to stay honest, sane people. They're quite prepared to drown us all."

TBC