If Philadelphia had been hell and Peoria and Baltimore purgatory, Washington was heaven.
He had, of course, been there before. Both the private school and the military academy had organized trips for their students to the seat of national government. He knew where things were. But it was different this time. He was going to be a part of the city, live there, work there. He had a feeling it was the home he'd been looking for and never found.
As he drove into the city, the pace of his heart speeded up. He could almost feel the atmosphere, a fizzy mix of steamy sexual heat and the smell of money and power. The town was full of beautiful young women come to find their destinies and ambitious men seeking to fulfill theirs
He had already decided he was going to treat himself to a real home inasmuch as he intended to stay for a long time. Within days he found a spacious apartment in a fine building near Rock Creek Park and the zoo. For the first time in several years, he used the trust fund to buy the apartment and then hire a decorator. The result was both elegant and comfortable, sophisticated and cozy, masculine but warm and welcoming even to the frilliest, girliest visitors. There was lots of wood polished to a warm glow, soft leather sofas, and a thickly padded carpet.
The kitchen was a stainless steel and white showpiece. He called the cook at his parents' place to request her recipes for lasagna and spaghetti. She advised him that it wasn't really necessary for him to become a gourmet cook as long as he could prepare two or three dishes really well.
"Chocolate mousse," she said. "Everybody likes chocolate, and mousse is very simple to make but tastes delicious. Your guests will be really impressed."
For good measure she instructed him on the proper way to make a salad. "Buy a wooden bowl. Season it well with oil. Before you put the vegetables in it, rub it with a piece of cut garlic. Always use the very freshest greens you can find and the best olive oil and vinegar. Never wash it out; just wipe the excess oil out with a paper towel."
To accommodate those visitors who might be overnight guests, he made sure he had a comfortable king-sized bed, dressed in silky smooth Egyptian cotton sheets and the fluffiest down comforter he could find. In the closet he hung several lounging gowns and at least one skimpy, lacy negligee. The bathroom was stocked with hairspray, extra toothbrushes and toothpaste, and a supply of pantyhose in a variety of sizes and colors.
It didn't take him long to move into the new apartment. He had sold most of his existing furniture before leaving Baltimore, bringing with him only his clothes and his entertainment. His library was growing; he had shelves put up in both the living room and the second bedroom. His new entertainment center held the latest and largest TV set plus a killer sound system.
By the end of his first week at work, he had already connected with several women who also worked at NCIS. He used them not only as companions but also as sources as to the hottest clubs and best restaurants. Within a month he felt as though he had lived in Washington for years.
As always, most mornings he got up before 5:30 to run through Rock Creek Park. On Saturdays, if he wasn't working the weekend, he liked to drive across the river to Arlington and run through the almost endless rows of headstones in the national cemetery, pausing frequently to read the names of the heroes buried there.
He found working with Gibbs an interesting experience. The man was definitely a hard ass who worked his team hard. Only once before in his life had Tony actually been recruited for anything: the basketball team at OSU. He was flattered by Gibbs's attention but frustrated that the man seldom found it necessary to offer approval when someone had done a good job. Tony knew in his head that he wouldn't be on Gibbs's team in the first place if he wasn't capable, and he certainly wouldn't remain on the team if he didn't produce results, but sometimes, his heart insisted, it was nice to be recognized.
He had thought he was a good detective, but Gibbs was exceptionally good, providing lots of lessons that he took to heart and put into service in his own work. He quickly developed an awed respect for the man and an almost insatiable desire to please him.
Gibbs surrounded himself with the best, that was for sure. Unfortunately, the job was dangerous, and personnel came and went with almost numbing regularity. He was not surprised when Gibbs recruited a new team member in almost the same way he had recruited Tony—coming in contact on a shared investigation and then co-opting her. At first, Tony thought he and Caitlin Todd might be able to have a romantic relationship, but it turned out neither was the other's type, and the relationship turned out to be more like one between adoring but teasing big brother and adorable but teasable little sister. He was very happy with that—outside of his coaches it was the most intimate relationship he'd ever had—because there was no lack of other women in his life.
Kate's death at the hands of an assassin devastated him. From time to time throughout his life, friends and acquaintances had died, and he had mourned them and then moved on. But he grieved deeply for Kate, and for a long time. For a while he was even unable to date, unwilling to be in the company of women who were alive and vibrant in a way that Kate would never be again.
Her replacement turned out to be a woman also, a different kind. At first he was intrigued by Mosssad Officer Ziva David, but it didn't take long for him to realize that, exotic and attractive as she was, there were just too many differences between them.
So he continued to date, two or three times a week when he didn't have to work overtime. As his 30th birthday came and went, he began to feel a little apprehensive about his life. He liked kids and wanted to have, say, at least one of his own, but there didn't seem to be any women out there that he would like to have a child with. And he was adamant that any child of his would have a mother and a father, that they would live together, work together, and, most important, play together, in contrast to his own lonely and unsatisfying experience of family life.
Even his mother was beginning to worry a little about whether she was ever going to be a grandmother, although her son had never been a major part of her life and he doubted that grandchildren would be anything other than trophies for her to show off to her friends. She sent him a check for his 30th and called him a couple of days later to get caught up on his latest news. When she asked about any future Mrs. DiNozzos, he laughed and told her she'd be among the first to know if there ever was one.
One of his favorite places to run in Rock Creek Park ended at a slight down slope where two paths converged into one in a Y shape. Shrubs grew around areas of exposed rock, and there were groves of trees that kept the area cool and pleasant on all but the muggiest of days. One morning he was running along one of the two paths when he spied someone running in the same direction on the other path. It looked as though they would meet at about the point where the two paths merged.
The person was female, medium height, with a spare, utilitarian body, and she jogged along on legs that were more sturdy than shapely. Her hair, bound in a folded bandanna, was too dark to be dishwater blond and too light to be brunette. She ran easily, looking straight ahead of her.
When she reached the single path, she was slightly ahead of him, so he stretched out his stride slightly to pull up next to her.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi, yourself," she replied.
"Don't think I've ever seen you here before."
"I haven't ever been here before," she said with a smile. She stretched out her hand to him. "Angela Homer. I just moved here from New York to work at Homeland Security."
He reached out to take her offered hand. "Tony DiNozzo. NCIS Special Agent."
He waited for it.
"NCIS? What's that?"
By the time he had explained his job to her and she had explained hers, they were at the end of the path. They stopped to continue their chat.
He said, "If you haven't been here that long, you probably don't know where to find the best clubs and things."
She smiled. "You're right. Where are the best clubs?"
"Well, right now, I kinda like Nikko's. Their DJ plays a mix of music, and the drinks are reasonable and pretty good."
"Do you go there often?" she asked.
He gave her his most ingratiating smile. "Sometimes I go on weeknights. Usually about ten or so."
"Yeah, well, I gotta go. Maybe I'll see you around."
"I usually run here every morning," he offered.
She took off, leaving him with the grin still on his face. It was still there when he entered the bull pen an hour later, and it stayed in place for the rest of the day, leaving his co-workers to exchange glances that asked what was with him.
The team was in the middle of routine work, and everyone was able to head out for the night at 5:00 p.m. At home he tossed a TV dinner in the microwave and, when it was hot, took it out to the living room to eat. He watched the news and then started to watch a movie, but for some reason he was finding it hard to concentrate. The images on the TV screen appeared to be only shadows, moving back and forth without meaning.
Finally giving up on being alone for the rest of the evening, he cleaned up the kitchen and then himself, running his razor over his face and splashing himself with aftershave. He put on a pair of form-fitting silk twill pants and a tight black t-shirt, topping those with a wheat-colored linen jacket with the sleeves pushed up. Combing his hair, he looked with approval at his image in the mirror. Hot, he thought.
He saw her the moment he stepped through the door at Nikko's. She was sitting at a table with two other women, each nursing a glass of something. Immediately she put her glass down and left her friends without a word. Without breaking eye contact, she moved slowly toward him. When she came near, she reached out her arms to clasp his neck; he put his hands on her hips. The song that was playing was a slow, jazzy ballad, and they started moving slowly to it, their eyes still locked together.
His recollection of the rest of the evening was hazy. He knew they danced, a lot, and a couple of times they stopped for refreshment. Mostly, though, he looked at her.
He was never able to figure out why he found her so attractive. She was totally different from most of the other women he'd always been attracted to. For one thing, she was closer to his own age. While he had been getting older, his dates had always stayed at about college age or a little older.
She was not beautiful in the conventional sense, but she looked good, especially in the clingy, black-sequined top and black satin pants. She wore no perfume but the scent of the shower soap she used. She was not obviously made up, although she seemed to be wearing a little bit of lipstick and maybe some mascara. Her eyes were dark, and he was loving looking into them.
He wasn't sure how it happened, but around midnight they were in his apartment, in the king-sized bed. Their love-making was slow and easy rather than hot and passionate, and as he fell asleep smiling, he felt completely sated.
He was still smiling in the morning as he woke up. He threw out his arm, but she was no longer there. She had already gone, leaving behind her scent in the bed and a note on the pillow with her telephone number.
He did not find her running in the park that morning.
If his co-workers had been bemused by his good mood the day before, today they were completely awed. McGee was the first one to comment on it: "I think he must be in love again."
Gibbs's response was "Ya think?"
A new case came in during the afternoon, a particularly messy affair in which a Navy lieutenant appeared to have killed his wife in their home and then himself in the parking lot of a shopping mall several miles away. Gibbs warned the team to cancel any plans they might have had for the evening; it was going to take time to process two crime scenes.
Tony didn't want to call Angela while he was in earshot of his teammates, so it was a while before he was able to talk to her. He couldn't give her an estimate of when they might finish the investigation. She commiserated with him about the assignment and promised that, whenever he called, she would be available.
The case lasted several days, concluding exactly as it had begun: the evidence showed the lieutenant had indeed killed his wife and then committed suicide. During that time the team pulled more than one all-nighter, catching sleep whenever they could at their desks. When the case was finally wrapped up, he finished his report and sent it to Gibbs. It was only 4:30 in the afternoon, and Gibbs told him to go home and take a couple of days off.
Although he was tired, he called Angela to ask her to have dinner with him, and, as she had promised, she was available. When he picked her up at her apartment, she was wearing a pale blue dress that plunged both front and back. It took his breath away, a reaction that surprised him. He realized that he had been anticipating the moment for days and was thrilled finally to be with her. He forgot his fatigue as the excitement of being in her company again re-energized him, body and soul.
Sitting in a steak house eating prime rib, they exchanged personal information that they hadn't gotten around to before. He discovered she had grown up not too far from him, in upstate New York, where her parents had been teachers. She had a younger brother who worked on Wall Street. She had earned a business administration degree from New York University and then went to work for a large company that provided private security services for large multi-national corporations. As part of the job, she had traveled extensively, including a couple of assignments in the Middle East. She was proud of the fact that she had been promoted steadily in what was still basically a man's field. Her position at the time she'd been appointed to Homeland Security was Senior Security Analyst.
He gave her an abbreviated story of his life, admitting honestly that his family had money but that he'd chosen to go his own course. He didn't tell her about the trust fund.
His attraction to her only grew stronger over the next several weeks. As they became better acquainted, he found that they shared similar tastes in movies and music and books, and they began to meet after work for dinner and an evening together to watch videos or listen to CDs. Those evenings almost always ended in bed. Most of the time, it was his bed; the apartment she was living in was an anonymous cubicle rented by Homeland Security for the purpose of housing the consultants it was hiring. She had thought about getting something better but hadn't done anything about it yet because she wasn't sure whether or how long she would be staying in Washington.
In the morning, they would rise together and take their morning run. This happened so frequently that she brought her running clothes and shoes over to his apartment and left them there. Before long, she had moved in more of her clothes and personal belongings. About six weeks after they first met, he suggested to her that she move in with him permanently. She thought about it for a couple of days and then agreed.
The weekend she planned to accomplish the move, he and the team got another case, which lasted through the entire weekend. By the time he arrived home around midnight on Sunday, she was in bed. He thought how comforting it was finally to have someone to come home to. As he wearily crawled into the bed, he tried not to wake her, but she awoke anyway. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him to sleep. He woke up in the morning to find her limbs entwined with his, feeling happier than he ever had in his life. He almost couldn't believe his good fortune that it was finally happening for him.
Now that they were officially a couple, he was ready for her to meet the other important people in his life, and he invited his NCIS coworkers over for dinner. Even Gibbs agreed to come; he was curious to meet this person who had Tony all but dancing through the work day. Over spaghetti and Tony's Bolognese sauce, they chatted and laughed. They all seemed to like her, except for Ziva, who watched her from under her eyebrows with a less than cordial expression on her face.
Later he mentioned it to Ziva. "You don't like her."
Ziva was honest. "No, I don't. There's just something about her…."
"What?" he asked.
"I don't know. I just feel like she can't be trusted."
"Whatever," he replied, surmising that sometimes people just don't like each other, and this happened to be one of those times.
He called his mother and arranged for them to meet at a hotel in New York over a weekend. His mother was clearly enchanted with Angela, but she managed to refrain from asking too many obvious questions about their relationship.
Months passed, during which his happiness continued. He had an important, fulfilling, and decidedly non-boring job, and now he had someone with whom to share his life. He couldn't think of one thing that would improve his current situation, except possibly him and Angela making a more permanent commitment. He began to contemplate proposing marriage.
Every morning, rain or shine, unless he was working, they ran together, chatting about their plans for the day or the current news or what they were working on at the office. One called the other at least once a day to say "I love you." Sometimes in the evening, they dined out. It turned out that she was hardly better as a cook than he, and on the nights they stayed in, they grilled steaks or hamburgers and had ice cream for dessert. Sometimes they watched movies at home or sat close to each other on the sofa reading. They had sex enthusiastically several nights a week, but even more than the sex they enjoyed being together in the big comfortable bed—just like an old married couple, as he put it.
Like him, she had occasionally visited the city during her school days, but he'd had five years more than she to discover all it had to offer. Their weekends were spent exploring its many attractions, including all the monuments, museums and art galleries, concerts, festivals, and restaurants. They frequently exchanged visits with his NCIS friends, and she began to introduce him to some of her co-workers as well.
Cases at NCIS passed by in the usual progression, occasionally a really big case but mostly ordinary crimes perpetrated by foolish sailors or marines. It all changed one morning. When the team arrived in the office that day, the director sent word that she wanted to see them in her office.
"As you may know," she began, "I was at the Pentagon yesterday for a meeting with the Secretary of Defense, the secretaries of the various military branches, and the heads of the CIS teams at each branch.
There's been an increase in intelligence recently from reliable sources, indicating that a small team affiliated with al Qaeda is in Washington with the specific mission of finishing the job of destroying the Pentagon, which they'd hoped to do on 9/11.
"Day before yesterday, a Pentagon employee went into a ladies' restroom and found a woman's handbag just lying there. She called Security, who retrieved the bag, and when they opened it, they found 12 ounces of Semtex in it. That's enough to blow a plane out of the sky, but not enough to take out the whole Pentagon complex. They've been reviewing their security videos, but they haven't found anything yet to identify who placed the bag. The woman who found it is being held as a suspect, although I don't think anyone really believes she's responsible.
"During our discussion at the meeting, we agreed that the bomb and the intelligence about a terrorist cell are probably related. The question is how we're going to go about dealing with this. It was decided that, in an effort to minimize disruption of normal Pentagon business, a team from one of the CIS groups would be assigned to do the initial investigation."
She smiled. "There was quite a fight about which agency had the best team, and I'm happy to say I won, with the backing of SecNav. In fact, he specifically suggested that your team, Jethro, was the ideal one to handle this matter because of your experience and your success at this sort of investigation.
"Accordingly, you are officially, at this moment, placed on full-time assignment to the Pentagon. You'll have no responsibility for the usual cases until this matter is resolved. The facilities department over there will be setting up some office space for you, and you'll all be given the appropriate security clearances. Your brief will include access to all areas of the building. You'll also be able to call upon all other federal law enforcement agencies if you need to, but I expect you to be able to handle this yourselves.
"Does anybody have any questions? No? Good. Happy hunting."
The team returned to their desks, where they had a brief meeting of their own to plan their attack on the assignment. Gibbs decided they would head out immediately to the Pentagon to find their new office space and become acquainted with the rest of the building. First, they packed up their laptops. Then as a group they visited the lab and the morgue to inform Abby and Dr. Mallard of the assignment.
"If they haven't destroyed that handbag," Gibbs told Abby, "I'm going to send it over to you."
"Even if they have ruined the evidence, I will find it, bossman," Abby replied.
At the Pentagon they found their clearances in order. It had been decided that their NCIS ID badges would be adequate for the time being. A young warrant officer led them to their work space in Ring E, which, they found, was basic. There were four desks, bare except for computers on each. McGee began setting up connections between the DOD computers and their own. The warrant officer directed them to the person who provided office supplies, after which he led them on a tour. First stop was the bathroom where the handbag had been found, also in Ring E. Gibbs was happy to find that the room was still sealed behind crime scene tape. Gibbs asked the warrant officer to fetch the woman who had found the bag. When she arrived, she described its exact position. Tony took photos and then sketched the bag's position from the witness's description.
The handbag had unfortunately already been removed from the scene and taken to the Security office. That was their next stop. Gibbs administered a dressing-down to the officers there, advising them any such future lapses in procedure would have dire consequences. Security offered the excuse that at the time the bag was found they were not aware that anyone other than themselves would be involved in the investigation. The handbag was bagged for delivery to Abby, along with what little other evidence the security teams had already lifted from the scene.
Upon their return to their office, they found an aide, a Captain Murdock, from SecNav's office, who advised them that he would be their liaison to the Secretary and, through him, to the Secretary of Defense.
"We're advising everyone in the building that you're here, so there shouldn't be any problems about access, but if anything comes up, let me know," Captain Murdock told them.
They spent the rest of the day studying the reports that Pentagon security had compiled. The signals department sent them copies, translations, and analyses of some of the intercepted communications that were believed to contain the threat from al Qaeda.
At home that evening, while they were preparing dinner, Tony told Angela about the new assignment. He thought it was going to be interesting, and he was eagerly looking forward to it. He knew that, from time to time, she also was assigned to work at the Pentagon, and she expressed the hope they might be able to get together for lunch occasionally in one of the lunch spots there. He wasn't sure that would be possible.
"We're just getting started," he told her, "but once we get going, it's going to be pretty intense, and I don't think we're going to have a lot of extra time."
She pouted a little bit, but he kissed her, and no more was said.
Tony did not run the next morning because the team met at 6:00 a.m. at NCIS. Gibbs had made a list of material they needed to take with them to the Pentagon, and once they had the van loaded, they headed out. Arriving at around 7:00 a.m., they found the parking lot near the Mall Plaza entrance to the building full of security vehicles and ambulances. As they left their van and walked up to the door, they saw that security personnel were turning away the employees who were trying to enter the building. Gibbs made his way to the man who seemed to be in charge.
"What's going on?" Gibbs asked.
"You're the team from NCIS?" the man replied. "Ned Wallace, Pentagon Security. Sorry I missed you yesterday. Damned meetings. Come with me."
Making a path through the employees disgruntled because they had to walk to another side of the building to get in, he led them into the lobby. There they found a crowd of emergency and security personnel looking at something on the floor. It was the body of a young Marine, whose name tag identified him as Lance Corporal Lewis Gonzales.
Wallace explained, "He was on front door security, along with three other Marines. They heard a disturbance down that hall and took off to investigate. They were gone about five minutes and when they came back, this is what they found."
"There's no blood," David observed. "Maybe it's a natural death."
Gibbs glared at her and barked, "Under the circumstances, hardly." He asked Wallace, "What have you done so far?"
"Nothing," Wallace responded, "except seal off this lobby and call emergency services. My people remembered your lecture from yesterday. We knew you guys would be here shortly, and in view of the threat, we thought it would be best for you to do the investigation."
Nodding, Gibbs gave his team their assignments. "DiNozzo, shoot and sketch. McGee, tag and bag. David, start interviewing the witnesses. I'm going to review the surveillance tapes and then send them to Abby for analysis."
As he walked off with Wallace toward the security office, he had his cell phone out calling Dr. Mallard to come pick up the body. Wallace led him off down one of the corridors while his team began their tasks. .
While Tony walked a criss-cross grid around the lobby, Tim was examining the Marine's body. "Tony, come here," he called.
Tony bent over the body to peer at the spot on the back of Gonzales's hand that Tim was pointing to. "It looks like a puncture wound," Tim said. "Did someone give him an injection of poison?" Checking the focus on the camera, Tony took several close-up photographs of the wound.
What with rush hour traffic, it took a while for Dr. Mallard and his assistant, Jimmy Palmer, to arrive. By then DiNozzo and McGee had finished their work, as had David. As Ducky and Palmer were loading the body to return to the morgue, Gibbs returned with the tapes, which he handed to Ducky to take back to Abby. Then he led the team to their temporary office to review what they had so far.
DiNozzo reported that the entrance lobby was clean. Literally. There were no dust bunnies in the corners, no debris on the concrete floor, nothing, not even wax or polish, that would capture an imprint of anyone's shoes. From the position of the body, it appeared Corporal Gonzales had been standing right at the security area facing the outside door. McGee stated he had found nothing that shouldn't have been in the area, except for the small puncture wound, if that's what it was, on the dead Marine's hand. David's interviews of the three other Marines who had been on security duty at the entrance conformed with what Wallace had told them: that they had indeed heard a noise, and Gonzales, who was their team leader, had ordered them to check it out. None of the three had been out of sight of the others during the five or ten minutes it took them to walk to the next corner of the corridor and back. When they had returned to the main entrance, they had found him lying on the floor.
David also noted that at that time of the morning—just before 7:00 a.m.—although there were already a lot of people in the building, it had happened that that particular entry hall had remained empty.
Gibbs told them there were four video cameras focused on the security gate, all showing the Marines in the entrance hall reacting to the noise, Gonzales gesturing to his three team members to check it out, and them leaving to do so. After the others left, Gonzales turned to face the security gate, scratched his ear, and suddenly went down. He didn't even convulse after he hit the floor.
"There's more," Gibbs said. "The signals people have picked up some communications that indicate the cell that's responsible has reported its success to someone else. A message about both the booby-trapped handbag and the murder of the sentry was sent out about an hour ago."
"Where's the someone else?" Tony asked.
"Syria," Gibbs answered.
"Any fix on where the message originated?"
"Right here in the Pentagon."
The group sat silently, processing the information.
DiNozzo said, "Okay. Whoever's doing this is just playing with us, letting us know that they have access to the building despite security. Obviously they have people on staff here somewhere, and I'll bet we'll get several other incidents of increasing threat."
McGee asked, "Are you sure it's the people we're looking for? How could al Qaeda people get on the staff? Everybody has to go through major security checks."
Gibbs replied, "They've made two separate attacks within two days on a building that's under threat of destruction."
"Not a coincidence," DiNozzo agreed. "al Qaeda has changed since bin Laden started it. It's not as centralized as it used to be. Thinking is, people who have no direct contact with the actual leaders of the group are forming their own cells and developing their own actions. It's a lot more dangerous for us that way. There's a whole lotta loose cannons out there. And even the most exhaustive security check can't pick up every red flag."
After calling Wallace to order him to increase security both inside and outside the building, Gibbs and the team worked at their desks for the rest of the morning. They ate lunch together in one of the building cafeterias, comparing the quality of their meal to those they got at NCIS. They concluded the Pentagon's food was better. Later in the afternoon, they got a call from Ducky that the preliminary results from the autopsy of the dead Marine were available, and that Abby was going cross-eyed from watching the security videos.
They packed up and headed back to headquarters. In the morgue, Ducky informed them that the Marine, as was to be expected, had been in excellent health and superb physical condition. The only anomaly was the small hole in his hand, plus another one in his neck that they had overlooked because it had been beneath the collar of his jacket.
He looked at the team, smiling in anticipation.
"What, Duck?" Gibbs growled.
"Our dead Marine was injected with a combination of curare and potassium chloride," he exclaimed with a note of triumph. "The drugs used in lethal injection."
"The holes were from needles?" McGee said in puzzlement. "But we didn't find any needles in the area."
"The puncture wound in the neck was from an instrument that was smeared with curare, and it would have been administered first, possibly with something like a blow dart," Ducky explained. "The curare would have paralyzed him, including, eventually, the action of his diaphragm so he would have suffocated to death.
"Curare, eh? Are we talking Amazonian blow darts here?" said Tony.
"He was scratching at his ear when he collapsed," David noted. "That may have been when the dart hit him."
Dr. Mallard continued, "The wound in his hand, on the other…um…hand, was made with an ordinary syringe containing the potassium. Potassium occurs naturally in the body and is necessary for the proper functioning of the heart, but the addition of a substantial overdose affects the ability of the heart muscle to conduct electrical current, and the patient, or the condemned, dies of heart failure."
"But whoever did it would have had to be right next to him to stick him with the syringe," McGee said.
Ducky went on. "Right you are, Timothy. Ordinarily, in executions by lethal injection or when this combination of agents is used for voluntary euthanasia, a barbiturate such as pentathol is given first, which causes the person to lose consciousness. It's effective in about 10 to 20 seconds. The drugs are usually administered intravenously, to control the rate of administration. Normally, it only takes 20 to 30 seconds for injected substances to reach the brain, the heart, and the lungs. It's certainly possible for the potassium to be almost immediately fatal when injected." Ducky glanced sympathetically at the body before him. "I suspect without the barbiturate he was paralyzed but still aware. He may well have watched the assassin giving him the injection of potassium."
The group was silent.
"Too bad the dead can't talk," David commented.
"But where was the dart?" McGee insisted. "We didn't find anything at the scene like that, and, boss you said the security tapes didn't show anything or anyone near the Marine."
"Whoever did the injection just picked up the dart and took it away," Tony surmised. "Sorta like policing your brass when you shoot."
He glanced at Gibbs, half expecting the usual head rap, but Gibbs only looked thoughtfully at him.
It was Ziva's turn to speculate. "But, if it was a blow gun, how did someone get a lethal weapon like that past the security?"
"And how did they hide from the security cameras when they were injecting him?" McGee insisted.
Gibbs looked at DiNozzo, cocking an eyebrow.
"Well, Ziva," Tony explained," there's blowguns and there's blowguns. You can buy blowguns that are machined metal, just like guns because there are people who like to hunt with them or do target shooting. But the Amazonian Indians didn't have metal tools, so they made blowguns out of natural materials. You could rig an umbrella handle or a cane or something like that to be a blowgun, and if it's all natural wood material, it wouldn't show on the X-rays. And probably no one would think to check if the thing was hollow.
"And as for the security cameras," he went on, "maybe they were looping the tapes, like we did when we caught those Columbian drug smugglers at the base high school a while back."
Gibbs sighed. "I suspect DiNozzo may be right."
Ziva said, "Someone's going to a lot of trouble. Why not just blow up the building? All they're doing is putting everyone on guard."
Gibbs answered, "They're sending us a message. We can hit you anywhere, anytime, anyway, and you can't do anything about it."
"And remember," Tony pointed out, "whoever they are, they're inside the building. We're dealing with people who are employees here or who, for one reason or another, have access."
"So what are we going to do?" McGee asked.
"Screen all the employees?" suggested Ziva.
"Probably not," replied Tony. "At least 23,000 people work in this building. Every single one of them has already been screened."
"Somebody obviously slipped through," Gibbs growled.
Leaving Dr. Mallard with the dead Marine, they went to Abby's lab to rescue her, at least momentarily, from the security tapes. Gibbs stopped along the way to get a Caf-Pow! for her.
As they filed into the lab, she grabbed the drink from Gibbs's hand and took a long sip.
"Thank you so very much, boss man," she said. "I was getting soooo dry."
Turning back to her screen, she said, "So what do you want first? The bad news or the bad news?"
"Whatever you've got, Abs," Gibbs replied with a shake of his head.
"Okay, then. First, the bad news," Abby went on. "There are no marks or prints on or in the handbag. Whatever. Totally clean. Zip. Zilch. It's an ordinary bag, as you can see, made of black canvas. You can get it at any store, but this particular one comes from K-Mart."
"How do you know that?" David asked.
"It does have a brand name tag," the lab tech replied. "Easy to check on."
"We'll have to check area K-Marts to track down sales of that particular item," Gibbs said. "And the Semtex?" Gibbs prodded her.
"Okay, that's the bad news. As you know, it's manufactured in the Czech Republic. It has been a weapon of choice among terrorists for a long time, but since 2002 the supply has been reduced and put under government control for that very reason. We also know that this particular batch was produced prior to then because it does not contain ethylene glycol dinitrate, which the manufacturer began adding at that time to give it a distinct odor."
"So it's probably been in someone's stash somewhere," Tony mused.
"Exactamento, my friend," Abby replied. "This particular sample was wrapped in plastic cling wrap before it was put into the bag. And whoever put it there was probably wearing gloves because it has no fingerprints either."
"These guys are good," Tony remarked.
"Anything else?" asked Gibbs.
Abby shook her head, making her ponytails bob. "That's the other bad news. I've been looking at the tapes from the four video cameras in that lobby. I see nothing except spots in front of my eyes."
"You've analyzed the Marine's death frame by frame?" Gibbs asked her.
"Gibbs!" she protested. "Of course I did. Somehow the tapes were edited before we got them."
"One of the moles is in security," Tony muttered.
"Okay, people," Gibbs said. "It's getting late. Let's go home and get some rest. Tomorrow morning, DiNozzo, I want you to look at those tapes. David and McGee will check on the source of the handbag, and I'll go back to the Pentagon to review their security plan."
When Tony arrived home, he was pleased to see that Angela had come home some time earlier. She came out of the kitchen to meet him with a glass of wine in her hand for him. She had steaks marinating, ready for him to grill. Frozen French fries were ready to heat, and she had put together a salad the way Tony had taught her.
As they ate, she asked him how the case was coming along. He told her in detail about the death of the young Marine.
"It's frustrating," he admitted to her. "Whoever's behind this is playing with us. Committing itty-bitty crimes right now to let us know they're out there, and doing them in a way that's baffling."
"Murdering a Marine isn't itty-bitty," she commented.
"No, but compared to blowing up a building containing 23,000 people…," he replied.
After cleaning up their dinner dishes, they sat down in the living room to watch a video. He had his head on her shoulder while she stroked his hair. Not surprisingly, he felt asleep. When she woke him to go to bed, he walked into the bedroom, undressed, and crawled under the covers, already more asleep than awake. When he felt her get into bed, without waking up he snuggled up against her.
They had time for a quick run in the morning, for which he was glad. He wasn't looking forward to spending hours in front of a screen watching videos that several people had already reviewed to no avail. With Abby's help, he wound and re-wound all four tapes over and over, reviewing them literally frame by frame, especially in the moments before the Marine went down. There simply was nothing visible to the naked eye—no darts, no needles, no other people.
He asked Abby once again if she had checked to see how the tapes might have been doctored. She drew back her head and fixed him with an indignant stare.
"Of course I did, DiNozzo," she bellowed at him.
Giving up with a sigh, he called Gibbs to ask if he could meet the rest of the team at the Pentagon.
"I was just about to call you," Gibbs answered. "There's been another incident, and I need you here."
Several minutes later Tony met the team in the corridor of C ring on the fourth floor. The usual yellow tape sealed off what appeared to be an unused office, from which wafted an acrid odor of burning electrical material.
Gibbs quickly briefed him, pointing to a pile of dirty rags in one corner, near two scorched electrical outlets. "It looks like someone set a fire in here, but they covered over the heat sensors that would have set off the fire alarms and the sprinklers, and they locked the door. The fire was mostly smoldering, probably for several minutes, before anyone smelled it, and then they had to find a key to unlock the door. Building security doused it."
"This room is pretty deep in the building," Tony said.
"Our terrorists want us to know they have free access to the whole building," Gibbs replied. "I had McGee take pictures, but I want you to do sketches before we send this mess to Abby."
"On it, boss," Tony said.
Later they met with Ned Wallace again, who was beginning to show signs of angry frustration.
"What the hell is going on, Gibbs?" he asked. "Why don't they just set off their bomb and get it over with? What're they doing—playing with us?"
"Yes," Gibbs answered. "That's exactly what they're doing."
"Why?" demanded Wallace.
"To show us that they can. To demonstrate that they can pretty much do what they want, and there's nothing we can do about it."
"So, is there nothing we can do about it?" Wallace demanded. "I've got 23,000 lives in my hands, not to mention the defense of the free world here."
"Sooner or later, they're going to make a mistake," Gibbs replied calmly. "We just have to hope they make that mistake before they actually detonate the bomb."
Wallace slammed his hand down on the table. "Dammit, Gibbs. That's too late."
"I agree."
The glare Wallace directed at him was almost the equal of Gibbs's own glare. But Wallace's look collapsed into an expression of anguish.
"Tell me what to do," he said.
"Increase security patrols."
"I've done that."
"Have you called in all your off-duty personnel? Have you delegated non-security staff to assist?"
The exasperated look returned to Wallace's face.
"Gibbs, I've got seventeen and a half miles of corridors to patrol, as well as six and a half million square feet of interior space. There's no way my office can cover all of that. Hell, even if we recruited every employee in the building to do security, we still couldn't cover everything."
"I know," Gibbs answered. "We're doing all we can, but right now we don't have a lot to go on. But if the case can be broken, we'll break it."
"And in the meantime, we just wait?"
"In the meantime we just wait."
After Wallace left the room, Tony commented, "He is not a happy camper right now."
"I don't blame him," Gibbs said. "I'm not especially happy about this either. What are we missing?"
The team spent a long day reviewing and discussing the evidence they had, but as the afternoon wore on they were no further ahead. As he had done the day before, Gibbs told them to go home.
Tony decided to go back to his own desk at NCIS. Once there, he called Angela to tell her he wasn't sure what time he'd be home.
"Case not going well?" she asked.
"We had another incident today," he told her. "It's definitely an insider case. Security is tight, but things are happening inside the building. Somehow the terrorists have slipped moles into the Department of Defense."
"I suppose it's not going to be easy to check on everyone there, is it?"
"We probably don't have time," he answered. "I'll grab something to eat later."
After hanging up, he pulled up information on the Pentagon on his screen. There were several different sites giving information and statistics about the building. No floor plans, though.
As he studied the screen, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Gibbs had returned to his desk as well. The older agent only raised an eyebrow when he saw his subordinate still at work. For the next while the two men remained silent as they each in their own way thought about the case.
At one point Gibbs left, only to return ten minutes later with two cups of fresh coffee. Putting one down on Tony's desk, he asked, "Anything?"
"Nothing definitive," Tony said. "Just more questions."
"Such as?"
Tony's reply was thoughtful. "When American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building, it only damaged a relatively small part of it, on just one of the sides. A plane loaded with fuel is a weapon of mass destruction, but it failed to destroy the whole building, and the hole was repaired just recently."
"Go on."
"The intel we've gotten on our terrorist cell indicates they plan to take out the whole building. Now how are they going to do that?"
Gibbs looked interested. "What are the possibilities?"
"They want to inflict maximum damage. They could release poison gas in the air circulation system, but that would only kill a lot of people. I get the feeling from reading those e-mails that they want the building to crumble too, because it's a symbol of American military power."
"So they need some sort of bomb or bombs that will achieve both ends—death AND destruction."
"Right," Tony agreed. "But it has to be bigger and more lethal than an airplane. And since 9/11 flights through Pentagon airspace are forbidden. They couldn't get a plane near enough to it before they'd be triggering a response that would get them shot down."
"If this is a suicide mission, they wouldn't care about that," Gibbs pointed out.
"True, but it also wouldn't guarantee that they'd reach the target in order to drop a bomb or something."
"They could fire off a missile of some kind," Gibbs offered.
"Same problem as with an airplane. It would most likely be intercepted before reaching the target. At least I hope it would. So again, there's no guarantee they'll succeed in blowing up the place."
"Okay, so they're going to plant a bomb or bombs at the site."
Tony shook his head. "That's certainly possible. They've shown us three times now that they have free run of the building. But they'd still have to make the bombs big enough to do maximum damage. Security right now is tighter than a showgirl's G-string, so how are they going to get it into the building?"
"What are the places they could plant bombs?" Gibbs wondered.
"They could plant them along the outside perimeter. But each side of the building is over 900 feet long. Plus it's five stories high."
"And five rings deep."
"The damage would be similar to what Flight 77 caused—incomplete." Tony paused. "The absolute surest way to destroy the whole building would be to set off a small nuclear device in the inner courtyard."
Gibbs nodded. "Which would have the added benefit of also destroying a substantial portion of the whole city and the area around it."
Both men fell silent until Tony spoke without emotion. "Jesus Christ."
There was more silence.
Tony said, "We have to find them."
"Yup," Gibbs agreed.
Although it was after midnight when Tony arrived home, Angela was waiting up for him, eager to learn what was happening with the case. As he munched on the pizza he'd picked up, he briefed her, ending with the conclusion he and Gibbs had come to, that the terrorists might well be planning to set off a nuclear bomb.
"You're not serious, surely," she said, her eyes widening in alarm.
"It's the only thing that fits with what they've done so far and what they say they're planning to do," he told her.
He seldom remembered dreams, but when the ringing of his cell phone woke him some hours later, he had a severe headache and a sour taste in his mouth, and images of swirling, jagged forms swimming through his head. Glancing at the digital clock on his nightstand, he saw that it was only 4:30 a.m. He knew there was only one person who would be calling him at that time.
"Gibbs?" he asked.
"You need to get to the Pentagon as soon as possible," his boss said. "We have a situation."
Already sitting up and reaching for his clothes, Tony asked, "What's going on?"
Gibbs answered, "One of the sniffer dogs on perimeter patrol found a guy planting a possible bomb right against the foundation of the building. He tried to run and the officer picked him off. He's still alive."
"I'm on my way," Tony responded.
"Tony?" asked Angela.
On his way to the bathroom to splash water on his face, he said over his shoulder, "Someone tried to bomb the Pentagon."
Five minutes later, unshowered and unshaven, he was in his car, driving as if he were Gibbs. He wished he'd had time for the morning run with Angela, but he sensed the physical exertion would not refresh and re-energize him as it usually did. He was feeling psychically sick and out of sorts. The case he'd thought would be interesting was turning out to be a nightmare of threat.
Arriving at the building, he found the action on the northeast side of the Pentagon. Gibbs had just arrived and was making arrangements for the injured man to be given medical treatment and then placed in detention for questioning. Gibbs assigned Tony to question the security guard and his canine assistant.
The guard related, "There are three teams of us, and we sweep the perimeter every few minutes on a random schedule. I came around the corner and saw this guy bent over right at the base of the building." The dog barked her agreement. "I told him to halt and put his hands over his head, but instead he took off. So I shot at him. Did pretty good, too; got him right in the back of the knee. Susie here kept him restrained while I cuffed him."
"Good job, both of you," Tony said, speaking mostly to the dog, who chuffed her thanks back at him.
"Did anyone check the rest of the building?" Tony asked.
The guard replied, "I called base, and they sent out a bunch of people. I haven't heard anyone say if they've found anything else yet."
Meeting up with Gibbs again, Tony found that McGee and David had also arrived. A group of security personnel were milling around the place where the suspicious package still lay on the pavement next to the building. Gibbs assigned McGee and David to process the scene and check with other potential witnesses while he and DiNozzo went inside to question the suspect.
They found him under heavy guard in a small infirmary, having his wound cleaned and bandaged. When the NCIS agents entered the room, the medic who was treating him looked up and said, "He won't be running away again for a while."
Because it would still be a few minutes before the man was ready to be questioned, Tony offered to go in search of coffee for the two of them. It was still early, but he found that one of the half-dozen snack bars in the building stayed open all night for the benefit of the night crews.
Once he returned and the suspect's treatment was done, they accompanied him to a small room near their temporary offices. With two stalwart Marines on guard outside the door, they sat him down. Gibbs favored him with his best stare.
"I'm NCIS Special Agent Gibbs, and this is Special Agent DiNozzo."
The man looked at Tony with interest. "You are DiNozzo?" he said.
Tony cocked an eyebrow at him.
"I am so glad to meet you, Agent DiNozzo. I know about you. You are a dead man, but I am happy to meet you before you die."
The man spoke with a foreign accent.
"What do you know about Agent DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked him.
"I know that he is a dead man." The man smiled an evil smile at Tony, his eyes glittering.
"What's your name?" Gibbs asked.
The man smirked but did not answer.
"You might as well tell me," Gibbs told him with a patient tone. "We're going to find out sooner or later."
The man returned his gaze to Gibbs. "Mohammad Talil."
The interview was frustrating. After giving his name, Talil refused to say anything more, only looked at DiNozzo from time to time and showed his evil smile. Not even Gibbs seemed to be able to break him.
When Gibbs finally gave up on getting any useful information from him, he and Tony returned to their temporary office. McGee and David had finished their investigation of the scene, but it was not any more fruitful than the suspect had been. The bomb squad from Metro police had taken the package to their safe facility to be processed and then disarmed or detonated, if indeed it contained a bomb.
Gibbs ran his hand through his hair. "We're getting nowhere fast."
McGee suggested, "Maybe we should start looking at the people who work here."
Gibbs sighed, "Right now, that's about as good a suggestion as we've got." He picked up the phone and dialed Ned Wallace. "We're going to need to review all the personnel files." He paused to listen. "That's what I said—all of ‘em." Again he paused. "I know, but right now it's all we can think of."
Tony spoke up, "I have an idea."
Gibbs told Wallace, "Hold on a minute" and motioned Tony to go ahead.
"Maybe we only need to review files on people who've arrived recently, like in the last year or so. The intel on the moles indicates they were activated only a short time ago. If we still don't find something with the last year, then we can push the time back."
"Good idea," Gibbs said and passed the message on to Wallace. "We'll be there shortly to help you."
Gibbs hung up, looking thoughtful, while his team waited for his next order.
"You know," he said, "Talil must have known he'd be caught. If nothing else, the security cameras would record him. And he must have known that, even if he succeeded in planting the bomb, someone would have found it."
"They're still playing with us," Tony said. "That wasn't the real bomb. He didn't care whether he was seen on security or whether he was caught."
McGee was looking on the bright side. "At least we've reduced the cell by one member."
"And exactly how large is the cell, Probie?" Tony asked.
They met Wallace and three of his employees who had offered to help in a conference room in the security offices. Each person had a computer. With Wallace's help, McGee was able to call up files on all personnel new to the building in the last year. The two groups divided the list among themselves and began the tedious work of trying to find a terrorist in a haystack.
In the course of the morning, the signals department sent them another intercept from the cell they were chasing. As before, it was routed to a computer in Syria. This message detailed Talil's exploit and concluded with the comment, "The enemy is confused and fearful, as well he might be. The time is almost at hand. Inshallah."
Reading it, Wallace said, "The time is at hand? How long is that? One hour? Two days?
None of the others could answer him. They bent to their screens with renewed urgency.
When lunchtime rolled around, not surprisingly, they had found nothing.
Tony stood up, stretched, and said, "I need to get some lunch. I missed breakfast. If it's nice outside, I think I'm going to try the snack bar in the center courtyard." Gibbs, David, and McGee followed him, and when they went outside they discovered the sun was shining and the air was warm. After buying sandwiches and drinks, they found a table. They ate without much conversation, each mulling the case over in their own minds.
When he had finished his sandwich, Tony looked around the five-acre courtyard. He noticed a cart from which a uniformed man was selling ice cream bars and sandwiches. He was almost ready to go over and buy treats for the team when suddenly, in a flash of insight that exploded in his brain, the pieces of the puzzle that was the case fell into place as if he were playing Tetris, one of his favorite computer games. His eyes narrowed, and his back became straighter as he looked intensely at the ice cream cart.
"Boss?"
"What, DiNozzo?" Gibbs answered.
"If the best place to set off a maximum damage blast is this courtyard," he said slowly, "but security is too tight to get much of anything in here…."
McGee and David looked puzzled, but Gibbs immediately grasped what he was suggesting.
"And food service is provided by an outside contractor…."
Gibbs turned to look at the ice cream cart, too. In the same instant he and DiNozzo rose to their feet, drawing their weapons. Seeing them move, McGee and David, still not understanding what was happening, nonetheless also stood up, weapons in hand, following their colleagues' lead without hesitation. The other eaters watch them with curiosity.
Tony was running to the cart with Gibbs right behind him. Reaching the vendor, Tony said, "Hands over your head." Gibbs ordered David to cuff the man. Quickly, he and Tony inspected the outside of the cart, then bent to open its storage area. Slowly and carefully they removed the two top cartons from the compartment, revealing a package that filled the remainder of the space and that looked unlikely to contain ice cream treats. Two wires protruded from one side leading down to the bottom of the cart.
"How close do you think we are?" Tony asked Gibbs.
"Let's not wait to find out," Gibbs answered, pulling out his cell phone to call Wallace. Tony turned to McGee, saying "Let's get these people out of here."
Gibbs was talking to Wallace. "We need the bomb squad in the center court stat, and we need to evacuate the building stat. Yes, dammit, the whole building." He hung up, muttering to himself, "Not that it's going to matter if it *is* a nuke."
As the courtyard emptied rapidly, Gibbs turned to the ice cream man. He was sweating profusely, even though the temperature was merely warm, not hot, and his eyes were shifting wildly.
Gibbs fixed him with his most compelling glare. "Do you have a bomb?"
The man nodded, fear showing in his eyes.
"Where's the detonator?" Gibbs asked him.
"*She* has it," the man said.
"Who's ‘she'?" Gibbs demanded.
But the man only shrugged.
"When is it scheduled to go off?"
"One o'clock."
Gibbs looked at his watch. It was 12:50. All the people who had been moments before enjoying their lunches in the sunshine were gone now, but workers wearing special gear were running in. Gibbs pointed to the package in the ice cream cart and then motioned to his team. "Let's get out of here ourselves," he ordered.
Back in the A ring, they met Wallace and a team of his employees, who took charge of the ice cream vendor.
Tony said, "This gives a whole new dimension to the term 'suicide bomber.'"
"What do we do now?" Ziva asked.
"We look for the rest of the cell," Gibbs responded.
"Look where?" McGee asked. "There's 17 and a half miles of corridors and who knows how many rooms. We can't look everywhere in less than 10 minutes."
"We'll just do the best we can, then, McGee," Gibbs replied patiently.
"Maybe we don't need to," said Tony, pointing to the radial corridor just in front of them, where they could see three black-clad figures with hooded heads crossing the radial, pushing their way through the last of the crowd of workers evacuating the building.
"They're in the C ring," Tony said, as he began running as hard as he could after them.
When he reached the intersection of the radial corridor and the C ring, he saw that the three people he was chasing had stopped to face him, each holding a weapon. As he jumped to plaster himself to the wall, they began shooting. He heard the rest of his team just behind him begin shooting back, and immediately two of the three figures dropped. The third person disappeared, apparently taking cover in an open office.
"Drop your weapon and come out," he shouted, beginning to move forward toward the open door. He stepped cautiously away from the wall, noting that the door the figure had disappeared through was about 15 feet ahead.
There was no response to his command, so he repeated it. This time he was obeyed. Someone stepped out, no longing wearing a hood but holding in her right hand a pistol pointed at him.
It was Angela.
His brain stopped functioning.
She held up her left hand, palm facing him.
"This is a remote control detonator," she said. "When I press it, the entire Pentagon complex will blow."
"Why, Angela?" he asked her.
"My father's mother was Palestinian," she responded. "She died in a refugee camp because the Israelis destroyed her home. My uncles recruited me and my cousins for al Qaeda."
"Mohammad Talil?"
"My cousin from Syria," she answered.
"And the ice cream vendor?"
"His brother Ibrahim."
"You seduced me," he said, knowing as he said it that it was true. "On purpose."
"Yes," she said. "You were targeted. You provided me with a running commentary on just how your search for us was going."
"You must have known you would never succeed."
"We haven't reached the end of the road yet."
He was aware that McGee and Gibbs were behind him, but they weren't running. He couldn't see, but he sensed that Gibbs had gestured to all the other LEOs watching behind them not to shoot.
"You said you loved me." His voice was low; it sounded as though he might start crying at any moment.
"I do love you, Tony," she replied. "But I love my home land more."
"You're an American," he argued.
She shook her head impatiently.
"Sorry, Tony. No more discussion. We're past the point of no return."
"You're all alone," he told her. "You're the only one in your cell left standing here."
"But I have the detonator."
He shook his head in despair.
Angela said, "It's time to say goodbye, Tony. I'm going to press the detonator now."
Throughout their conversation, they had kept their weapons aimed at each other. Now he sighted along the barrel of his Sig and squeezed the trigger, hoping she was not pressing the detonator at the same time. It seemed to him as though the world had suddenly stopped turning and everything was happening in slow motion. In a macabre dance, her feet left the floor as her body jerked back, her hands flailing in the air. A sickeningly bright red rose of blood budded and then bloomed on her chest. She was falling, slowly, ever so slowly, to the concrete.
There was no explosion.
He sensed, rather than saw, Gibbs and McGee, followed by Wallace and his troops, run by him over to Angela. He watched as time speeded up to normal again, focusing on her form lying in an ungainly sprawl. McGee kicked her gun out of the way, while Gibbs carefully plucked the detonator from her hand and then handed it to McGee. Gibbs stripped off his NCIS jacket and began to press it against the wound on her chest to stanch the flow of her blood. She seemed to be saying something to Gibbs; he put his arm under her shoulders, lifting her head up slightly and Tony heard her say across the gulf that separated them, "I loved you, Tony."
Her head fell back, and he knew she was dead.
He vaguely heard someone repeating his name near his ear. Ziva's voice. She reached down to take the gun from his limp hand where it hung by his side.
"I understand, Tony," she said softly.
She put an arm around his waist and turned him around. Together they walked slowly back down the corridor.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Tony finally finds someone to fall in love with; the team tries to find a terrorist cell that's threatening to blow up the Pentagon.