Prodigal, part eight
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"A mole hunt."
General O'Neill shrugged. "You want to tell me you've never had to investigate one of your own, go ahead."
By the time they'd brought a compliant Lorne back to the Navy Yard, there had been a welcoming committee. Defiant, Gibbs had brought Lorne directly down to Processing instead of up to Shepard's office and told the agents in charge that Lorne was not to be left alone and to be considered a risk for violence. Lorne, small and mild-mannered, had merely cocked an eyebrow at the prospect of a strip-search.
"We don't normally have our agents charged with internal investigations go AWOL and then turn up as prime suspects in half a dozen related murders," Shepard replied archly.
"Our rogue agent's trying to throw you off the scent," O'Neill said, as unaffected by Shepard's icy demeanor as he'd been by Gibbs's more openly belligerent tone. "He's doing a damned fine job of it. Not to mention completely making a hash of our end."
O'Neill's story was plausible but unprovable without more details or more evidence -- which, to be fair, was the same state they were in. He told them that he'd been made aware of a sleeper agent within his unit's ranks, one with a specific but unknown task, and that he'd had to carefully respond with countermeasures that wouldn't tip off whoever it was. With no idea how far up the ranks the mole was or what kind of access they had, he'd been powerless to act until the bodies started falling and then, once they did, he'd been limited in his responses.
"Why Lorne?" Hollis asked. "Wouldn't that tip off your network?"
"He was the one who got the initial intel," O'Neill replied. "And he's... well-suited to the task."
Hollis thought back to Mitchell's vague hints that Lorne was doing much higher-level work than simple assassinations. Which, when you got down to it, were not simple at all. But Lorne was preternaturally laid-back and she could imagine him being seen as unlikely a hunter as he was a killer.
"It cross your mind that he was the mole?" Gibbs drawled.
O'Neill held up his hands, which were scarred. "I didn't get these falling off the turnip truck, Special Agent Gibbs," he retorted. "Of course I checked. I will admit that I really don't like how he acquired his intelligence, but it was solid and so's he."
There was more backing-and-forthing, but with O'Neill unwilling to go into any kind of details and Gibbs refusing to let O'Neill talk to Lorne unless he wanted to appoint himself Lorne's legal counsel, they were at an impasse. O'Neill was waiting for more of his people to show up -- presumably to put together some kind of briefing that he thought would appease them -- and they agreed to disagree until later that afternoon.
"Do you know what you're doing?" Shepard asked Gibbs once O'Neill left. He started to bridle and she held up her hands to forestall it. "This is very high-stakes poker, Jethro. If you have the cards, I'll let you play them. But if you've got crap, let me know that you're bluffing."
Hollis knew that Gibbs understood that their cards were closer to crap than a full house. A pair of fours, maybe, a small victory but no way to win the big pot.
"Let me go talk to him," Gibbs answered. "Then I'll let you know."
They went back down to the bullpen, where DiNozzo, David, and McGee were waiting with thinly veiled impatience. All they'd had to do while she and Gibbs were in with Shepard and O'Neill was put out the BOLOs on Ortilla, Suarez, Reletti, and Safir, none of which were expected to bear fruit, and do the research on the names Abby had put to the faces in Kim's photos.
They hadn't had time or space to carry on an open discussion, but Hollis was sure that Gibbs was thinking as she was -- that this was another diversion, that Lorne was placing himself in the same position he'd put Gillick in. The question therefore became what the other four were up to and whether there was any chance they could be stopped. Or whether they should be -- Hollis expected nothing less than a full defense of Lorne from O'Neill, one that was heavy on exculpation and light on actual facts, but that didn't mean that O'Neill was wrong. A frame-up had looked like a possibility even before a motive for such had been introduced.
Of course, O'Neill hadn't been running a virtually leakproof covert unit by coming up with crappy cover stories for unsavory actions. Shifting blame from the guy in charge of the murder squad to a mythical mole, to be 'caught' or killed before anyone from the outside could verify the story, was extremely convenient. And just because Mitchell and O'Neill insisted that Lorne and his team could be put to better use didn't mean that they were. Sometimes even the number three hitter has to bunt.
"General O'Neill didn't look too happy on the way out," DiNozzo ventured.
"He's got a lot of problems right now," Gibbs answered without any smugness. He turned to McGee. "Get Lorne brought up to Interrogation."
Hollis didn't miss the way everyone's interest perked up, like Lorne versus Gibbs was the feature movie and they'd had enough with watching the previews. Normally Hollis would've been right there on the popcorn line, but while the others seemed to think that this would be another Gibbs virtuoso solo, she suspected this would end up being a well-matched duet and less satisfying for it. Lorne hadn't sent an amateur when he'd thrown Gillick to them to buy himself time and this was a much more important performance.
Lorne had been changed into military costume and was sitting quietly with his hands on the table when they entered the viewing room. If Gillick had had the look of someone who knew that he'd been trained to handle these sorts of situations and that he just had to trust that training, then Lorne had the look of someone who'd internalized those lessons well enough to teach them to others. Maybe he did. There was a profound calmness to him, a relaxation that completely belied the fact that he was sitting on the suspect's side of the table. It did not harbinger good things for the actual questioning.
If there were tacit or explicit orders for these murders, then they were a symptom and not the disease. Treating them instead of the underlying cause would not necessarily solve the problem. And Hollis -- and Gibbs, she suspected -- thought that Lorne was pushing them in the direction of doing just that. By protesting his innocence, he had been challenging them to look beyond him, but he was also steering them directly into the brick wall that was O'Neill's covert unit and its thus-far impenetrable veil of secrecy. It was damned if they did, damned if they didn't. If they persisted in viewing Lorne as their only suspect and focused on building a case against him for as much of this as possible, then they averted their eyes from whatever O'Neill's master plan was and would be distracted long enough for it to be completed. If they tried to dig up what was really going on, then Lorne would be the first obstacle in a world-class stonewall. And he seemed very confident of his ability to not crack.
"He looks like he's made his peace with falling on the grenade," she said to Gibbs as they were in the hallway between the viewing and interrogation rooms.
"I know," Gibbs agreed, not sounding at all happy about it.
Lorne stayed where he was when he saw Gibbs, but stood up when he saw Hollis. It was a message, like everything else that would go on in this room would be. Lorne was showing respect for her rank, not this investigation. The dutiful soldier and the uncooperative suspect all at once.
"Want to tell us what you were doing in Colonel Kim's house?" Gibbs began, throwing the folder down on the table and taking the far seat. Hollis sat in the one closer to the door.
"Same thing you were," Lorne answered. "Looking for evidence."
"From our end, it looks like you were either covering your tracks or finishing the job," Hollis said. She was a little relieved that Lorne wasn't pretending that he was just a pilot caught up in matters beyond his ken, but that, too, was intentional and not a gift.
A shrug from Lorne. "I'm sure it does, ma'am."
"Did you find any evidence?" Gibbs asked. He was confrontational, but not belligerent. Belligerence played directly into Lorne's game.
"Not before you showed up, no."
"What kind of evidence were you hoping to find?" Hollis wasn't going to play good cop to Gibbs's bad cop, not after they'd all sat around a coffee table in Maryland being civil and affable as Lorne lied to their faces.
"I'd have settled for anything, ma'am," Lorne replied. "Body count's getting a little unsettling."
A bitter chuckle from Gibbs. "Says the man standing to face charges for ratcheting it up."
"I didn't kill them."
"That's what they all say, Major," Hollis said. "We're usually safer believing the evidence instead of your word."
An accepting nod from Lorne.
"How did your prints get all over the knife that killed Staff Sergeant Baxter?" Gibbs pulled out a photo from the crime scene and spun it around for Lorne to see. Daring him to look at it. Lorne did and shook his head ruefully. Gibbs next pulled out the photo of the knife and Lorne looked at that one, too.
"I don't know," Lorne said, pushing the photo of the knife back toward Gibbs. He left the one of Baxter where it was, possibly anticipating that Gibbs would shove it right back in his face if he tried to push it away. "As far as I know, mine has never been out of my possession. I've gotten depressingly good at the forms for equipment replacement, but I haven't filled any out in the time frame under consideration."
They'd found a knife on Lorne in Kim's house, along with an M9 and a spare clip. The knife was the same model as the one (ones) that had killed their victims. Abby was still trying to find anything about it that would link Lorne more firmly to the murders.
"You expect that to be exculpatory, Major?" Hollis asked wryly. O'Neill wasn't going to let them look at the requisitioning paperwork and, even if he did, it would be the easiest thing to fake.
An amused smile from Lorne. "I don't expect anything I say to be exculpatory, ma'am."
"You think we're railroading you?" Gibbs gave him a skeptical look.
"Someone is," Lorne answered. "And you don't seem very interested in that part."
"Maybe because we don't have any evidence that suggests another suspect and instead we have you, an experienced covert operative with the resources to commit these acts and a man everyone agrees is capable of killing."
"Everyone's capable of killing, ma'am," Lorne said evenly. "That's not the same thing as committing murder."
"You've lied to us from the start, Major," Gibbs said. "Why should we start believing you now?"
"If I was responsible for this murder spree," Lorne replied, "then why did I suddenly get stupid? You don't have anything from the civilian murders, but suddenly you have a knife with my prints on it as the weapon that killed Baxter. And then I suddenly regain my senses again when it comes to Kim? The right question should be why you don't think that's odd. Or maybe why don't you care?"
"I don't care because it doesn't matter," Gibbs said. "If you didn't do this, then either you know who did or you've got a decent idea. Which makes the right question whether you're letting someone get away with murder to protect your unit or whether you're letting someone get away with murder because those are your orders. Accessory to murder's still a crime."
"If I knew who did it, I wouldn't have been poking around Jimmy Kim's office looking for clues," Lorne said, the first trace of annoyance in his voice. "If I am what you think I am, why would I care about due process and case-building? This won't be something that goes to court-martial."
Gibbs cocked an eyebrow. "Are you sure about that?"
The goal of this investigation was to find out what the hell was going on and if a military program was committing (sanctioned or unsanctioned) murders on US soil. Failing that, though, they had enough to ring Lorne up for Baxter's murder and could probably go for Kim's as well. The break-in at Kim's was a slam-dunk and that might give an ambitious prosecutor enough to bring in the Meade footage. Anything at all on Litorsky, Pal, or Kennedy would look all the more juicy in this context.
"I'm sure," Lorne replied.
"You think O'Neill will throw you enough rope to get yourself out of trouble?" Hollis asked. "Or to hang yourself?"
O'Neill's mole-hunt story could go either way. It could lay the groundwork for a slippery escape -- O'Neill had already waved off the AWOL charge as a necessary ruse -- or he could be setting Lorne up to go down alone, leaving the rest of the organization intact and unaffected.
"You play chess, Colonel?" Lorne asked with a complicated smile. "There's only one piece that has to be standing in the end. Everyone else is expendable."
And there it was. Whether he was pushed or if he had to jump, Lorne was prepared to take the fall. He was all but promising them that the case would end with him.
"You're very calm for someone up against these kinds of charges. I'd be a little more nervous if I was looking at life in a small cage."
"All due respect, ma'am, but I've seen worse than what Leavenworth has to offer," Lorne said.
"Is that a challenge?"
Lorne looked at Gibbs. "I'd rather it not be, but if you want to make it one, go ahead. I've apparently got nothing else on my calendar today."
Gibbs looked like he might want to answer that in the affirmative, but then the door opened and McGee stuck his head in. "Boss?"
Gibbs gave Hollis a look before standing up and following McGee outside.
"Where is your team?" Hollis asked once the door was closed again.
"In the field, ma'am," Lorne replied.
"Are they tasked with committing another murder or preventing one?"
Lorne smiled at her.
The door opened again and Gibbs entered along with two MPs; Lorne was apparently going back down to the brig.
"Lorne's knife's not the one that killed Kim," Gibbs told her after Lorne had been escorted away. DiNozzo and David appeared in the doorway; McGee was probably behind them.
"Which means he either ditched the weapon or he's not the killer," Hollis replied, pushing back in her chair. "I think it's the latter."
"I do, too, but that's not going to get us anywhere," Gibbs agreed. "He's daring us to charge him. God damned true believers."
With that, he pushed up off of the wall and left the room, leaving the rest of them to chase after him.
Back in the bullpen, sensing their boss's mood, the 'kids' started up with the presentations of what they'd learned.
"The marines in the pictures are Gunnery Sergeant Martin Kamber," McGee began, typing. An official photo popped up on the plasma, "and Major Jacob Benoit. Benoit should be in Qatar and Kamber is assigned to the Mountain Warfare Training Center at Bridgeport, but their official contact phone numbers go to Colorado Springs, so we can assume that they are still part of O'Neill's unit.
"The civilians are a Doctor Daniel Jackson and a Doctor Anne Simpson; Jackson's an archaeologist -- he's kind of infamous for some crackpot theories involving aliens -- and Simpson is an electrical engineer. Jackson's been on the Air Force payroll for more than a decade as a consultant; he's a skilled linguist and that's pretty much kept him fed after the alien theories didn't pan out. Simpson's your typical EE overachiever and currently works in the private sector in Silicon Valley."
"Jackson's with O'Neill," Hollis said, operating on nothing but her gut. "Is Simpson?"
"He's got an epidemiologist on staff, why not an engineer?" DiNozzo asked sourly.
"We can ask him later," Gibbs said, holding up a message slip. "He's due back at 1700."
Hollis resigned herself to another late night and another round of takeout. Her wallet and her waist were going to hate her by the time this case was finished.
O'Neill led his parade past the bullpen at 1645. With him were Mitchell and Sam Carter along with two new faces, one a very pissed-off general and the other the kind of O-5 only the Air Force could produce. Hollis looked over at Gibbs, who had on pretty much the exact expression she'd have imagined he'd have, and got ready to be summoned upstairs by Shepard.
Gibbs's phone rang five minutes later.
"More brass than a foundry," he groused quietly as they went upstairs. "And none of them are going to do anything but fling shit around."
"Careful, Gunny," she warned playfully, tapping at her own rank insignia. "Us brass tend to stick together."
She had a hard time keeping a straight face at the glare she got back.
The visitors were already seated when they arrived; Shepard introduced everyone as she joined them at the conference table. The seething general was Landry and the new light bird was Sheppard, which meant required tight smiles at the required joke. Landry was Mitchell's and Carter's CO, it was explained, and Sheppard was Lorne's.
"You the one who sent him off on this adventure?" Gibbs asked Sheppard.
"No, I'm the first one he lied to about it," Sheppard replied, unfazed by Gibbs's tone.
O'Neill gave a short spiel elaborating on his earlier story. Lorne came to him with credible intelligence of a sleeper agent within their organization, but not enough to be able to identify whoever it was or what their goal was beyond general disruption. O'Neill made the choice to exclude Landry, whom Hollis understood to be the operational commander, to keep the mole ignorant. On O'Neill's orders, Lorne assembled his team outside of the organization's view and began an investigation.
"How'd he do that?" Hollis asked. She understood the flexibility that went along with working in a covert unit, but entire teams dropping off the radar at once should have raised flags.
"In plain sight," Sheppard said wryly. "All of them were owed leave. Lorne took a few days for a wedding and it seemed perfectly natural for the others to coordinate. Nobody suspected a thing until they didn't come back."
Within the organization, the connection between the murders was taken for granted, but without knowledge of a mole, it was assumed to be an outside element with an unknown agenda. Mitchell led the official investigation.
"I was the patsy," Mitchell added with a good-natured grin that did not quite cover up the bitterness.
"No, that would be me," Landry corrected, not even bothering with the good natured grin. Instead, he glared at O'Neill.
"And what did that make you?" Gibbs asked Carter. "The double agent?"
"I was the one trying to use two separate data streams to figure out why all of this was happening," Carter replied tartly.
"Did you?" Hollis asked. This was the only part she was curious about, since this was where the real secrecy began, where all of their hypothesizing necessarily had to end because they just didn't know what was going on on the other side of O'Neill's curtain.
"The strategic part yes," Carter replied, making a rueful face. "We were initially making the same mistake that you probably still are -- assuming that this was an attempt to hide something that had happened."
"It's not?" Hollis ignored the swipe.
"It's to keep something from happening," Carter went on. "And what that something is, we don't know yet. The murdered men were never working on the same project together, so whatever it is, it's not straightforward."
"So this isn't over?" Shepard asked.
"It is if Lorne's been the one making sure you don't connect your dots," Gibbs said.
O'Neill made an annoyed noise. "He's not your killer, Gibbs. Even if we doubted his intel -- which we don't -- we can account for his whereabouts for the first murders."
According to O'Neill, the first murder was not the suspicious death of Li Feng, but instead the three murders of foreign nationals who'd worked with the program in the past. It was those deaths that had prompted Lorne's contact to reach out.
"He could have had help," Gibbs said evenly. Hollis couldn't tell if he was egging O'Neill on out of genuine belief or out of his deep distrust of black ops that he wasn't a part of. She suspected the latter. "He seems to have a very large network of convenient assistants."
O'Neill rolled his eyes. "He could also be the Easter Bunny when we're not looking, but he's not."
Sheppard seemed to find this amusing for more reasons than the obvious.
"Don't confuse our unwillingness to be transparent with our inability," Landry said calmly. He was pissed at O'Neill, Hollis understood, not at them per se, although Gibbs's challenging was going to tip the balance if he didn't back down. "We'd rather not be traipsing in here like a Mardi Gras parade with our underwear hanging out, but we are and, believe it or not, that's a favor to you. You haven't kept this case because Director Shepard has superlative negotiating skills, all due respect, madam. You've kept this case because we were keeping secrets from each other and working at cross-purposes, however necessary it might have been at the time. But by arresting Lorne you've united our efforts.
"The fact is that you're nowhere close to solving this and I'm beginning to doubt that you're even interested in doing so, Special Agent Gibbs. You have turned a murder investigation into a temper tantrum because you want a security clearance you can't have. There is a very good reason you haven't been read into this program, a reason that still stands and will stand."
"Even if you have to sacrifice Evan Lorne's career and honor to do so?" Hollis asked, already knowing the answer because Lorne had all but told them.
"Even if," Landry agreed. "There are some things that go on in the shadows for other reasons than that they are dark, Colonel."
Next to her, Gibbs made a small noise of disagreement.
"You said coming here was a favor," Shepard began before the silence grew too long. Hollis could see that she was still smarting from Landry's words, but unlike Gibbs, she could better roll with the punches. Which was why she had made Director at such an early point in her career and Gibbs was still a senior field agent. "You aren't rewarding us for being thorns in your sides. What do you want?"
"We want to talk to Lorne, first of all," Landry replied, holding up his hands to forestall interruption. "We're not asking for his release, at least not yet. But we do need to debrief him. Where we go from there depends on what he has to say."
The group field trip down to Interrogation did not pass through the bullpen area, but Hollis didn't even need to look to know that everyone in it was watching their progress along the concourse to the elevator.
They waited in the observation room for Lorne to be brought up. O'Neill's people discussed among themselves who should go in with Lorne, but O'Neill ended the argument by telling Sheppard to go do it.
"He's got the best chance of getting something out of him," O'Neill explained to Carter and Mitchell after Sheppard had gone. "We dragged him all the way back here, we might as well put him to work. The two of you are going to have to act on what he gets anyway."
Sheppard was sitting -- slouching -- in a chair when Lorne was brought in.
"Hello, sir," Lorne said wryly, flexing his wrists -- he'd been cuffed for the trip upstairs -- and sitting down without any kind of formality. "How's life back at the ranch?"
"There's a killer targeting scientists, then you go AWOL, then you are supposed to be the killer," Sheppard said with a frown. "How do you think life's going back at the ranch? And that's without anyone but Elizabeth and me knowing about--" he trailed off, making a vague gesture next to his ear. "We're keeping that part quiet because there's no way that goes down well and the marines already have their hands full with the panicked civilians thinking you'd booby-trapped their soap dishes or whatever."
A mirthless chuckle from Lorne. "I'm sorry, sir."
Sheppard sighed deeply, frustration seemingly spent. "I know."
"I'd have said something if I could have."
"About your buddy or about this?" Sheppard asked. "I can't believe you'd willingly... After all of the shit we've had to deal with, you go and do it voluntarily?"
Hollis made a mental note to ask about Lorne's 'buddy,' since she didn't think Sheppard was referring to his team or Gillick. Especially because a few feet away, Carter looked distinctly uncomfortable.
"We'd been through a lot together," Lorne said. "I trusted him. I trust him. Although I can't say I was too eager to agree at the time."
Sheppard shook his head in either bemusement or regret or both. "What's done is done. Now we have to figure out what the other guy is doing and make it stop."
For the first time, Lorne looked up at the two-way mirror. It almost looked as if he could see through it, although that was impossible at this distance.
"The gang's all here," Sheppard assured him.
"Yeah," Lorne agreed. "I wish I had more to tell them."
Landry made a disappointed noise.
"I'd have hoped they'd have worked it out by now," Mitchell told Carter. "Wasn't that the point?"
"It doesn't make you omniscient," Carter replied. "Just... crowded."
Back in the interrogation room, Sheppard shifted his chair. "You can start by telling us where you stashed Doctor Crankypants and the Musketeers," he offered. "The squid cops would probably be a little more comfortable if they were in plain sight when whatever happens next happens."
"We'd be more comfortable if there wasn't a when," Gibbs muttered darkly.
"Once Baxter turned up dead, we split up," Lorne explained. "If he was starting to go after... team personnel, then that was going to narrow things down."
"Kamber and Benoit are being watched like hawks," Sheppard told him.
Lorne shook his head. "They were never at risk," he said, sitting forward. "That... version of the team wasn't the target."
"Oh, crap," Carter hissed and everyone turned to her.
"Sam?" Mitchell prompted.
"Do you remember the big marine team shakeup when MARSOC got stood up?" Carter asked O'Neill and Landry, the latter of whose eyes grew wide with realization.
"Half of our jarheads went back to do that instead of this," Landry explained to O'Neill as Carter moved away from everyone else and pulled out her cell phone. "We had to rearrange the rest and bring in new ones."
"You had the Commandant on my ass by trying to replace them with airmen." O'Neill recalled, rubbing his face with his hand. "Who are we looking for?"
Everyone turned to Carter, who was carrying on a hushed conversation.
"Thanks," she said into the phone, closing it and turning back to the group. "Larue, Holden, Baumgartner, and Veracruz."
"Which one's the snake?" O'Neill asked.
Carter made a face. "I don't know. But three of them are the next victims and none of them are at the Mountain."
A knock on the glass drew everyone's attention forward again. Sheppard was standing next to the mirror, apparently waiting for something. Landry tilted his head toward the glass and Mitchell went around to the interrogation room to update Lorne and Sheppard on what had transpired.
"Where are they now?" Gibbs asked, an edge to his voice. Hollis understood why -- they had been reduced to bystanders, props so that O'Neill's people could complete their game. It grated on her, too, and she'd probably have been unable to hide it had she needed to.
"Sirs, we'll have to get teams out to look for Veracruz and and Holden," Mitchell said, addressing the mirror. "Lorne's got his people on Larue and Baumgartner."
"Do a relief in place for Lorne's team," O'Neill told Landry as Mitchell left the room to return to the observation area. "We're never getting him away from these people if something happens on their watch."
Hollis reached out to touch Gibbs's arm before he did something they were going to regret. She was no less annoyed by 'these people' for not being one of these people. It was casual disregard and it stung. He looked back at her, anger in his eyes, and she willed him to stow it with her own matching expression.
"We want in," she told O'Neill. "Sir."
"This isn't your case anymore, Colonel," Landry told her, not unkindly. "You hitched your cart to Major Lorne's guilt and getting him off of that hook is as far as that ride goes."
Next to her, Gibbs was looking suspiciously calm and maybe even a little smug. Hollis gave him a look, but he shook his head no.
Sheppard knocked on the glass again. "If we want to get in contact with Lorne's team, we're going to have to hurry. The next window is in less than an hour."
Lorne had been carrying a disposable phone when they'd caught him and it was returned to him.
"How'd you come up with this system?" Sheppard asked Lorne as they waited for whatever time 1312 AST was. Hollis looked at her own watch; it was too late to be early afternoon in Alaska, Newfoundland, or the Middle East.
"The boys pegged Yoni's average lateness to team meetings," Lorne replied with a shrug. Sheppard thought this was hilarious and Carter stifled a chuckle.
The phone conversation itself was heavily coded, but Lorne assured Ortilla that this was what he wanted and he and Mitchell arranged for the missing quartet to find transport to DC.
It was going to take hours to get everything organized on O'Neill's side and since they were disinclined to do much of anything in front of the little people, the generals and Mitchell and Carter left. Sheppard stayed behind with Lorne, who was still in the Interrogation Room.
"I don't want him getting lonely," Sheppard said with a shrug that was supposed to be casual but instead was quietly challenging. Gibbs left them, disinterested in picking that fight.
Back in the bullpen, DiNozzo, David, and McGee were waiting. Gibbs sent David to the observation room to keep an eye on Sheppard and Lorne, in case they said anything of interest.
"Where did that phone call go?" Gibbs asked McGee as he sat down at his desk.
Hollis smiled. Of course Gibbs would have assumed his team was on the ball.
"Austin, Texas," McGee replied. "Another disposable phone that made a call to a third phone in San Jose."
"DiNozzo, McGee, find all of the Larues, Holdens, Baumgartners, and Veracruzes in the Corps. See if any of them have ties to Austin or San Jose."
DiNozzo set to work. "Can I filter them by MOS or rank?"
"E-5 and up," Hollis answered. "Don't filter by MOS; we don't know what their covers are."
Hollis sat down at her semi-permanent temporary space. She perhaps could have asked for something less contorting than an extra chair and part of Gibbs's desk, but it would have been for status only; she was fine with what she had. Especially because it allowed her to lean in and have semi-private conversations in a place where there was really no privacy.
"What are you up to?" she asked Gibbs. "We can't bring these people in. We can't even find half of them."
That much only if DiNozzo was lucky. And all of this on top of being explicitly warned off by Landry and O'Neill.
"James Kim's kids deserve to know who killed their father and why," he answered, not looking up from where he was squinting at his message slips. "His death shouldn't be one more secret in a life full of them."
By nine, DiNozzo and McGee had a list of fifteen names. Gibbs called down to the observation room to tell David to tell Sheppard that visiting hours were over. And then he told everyone to go home.
"We're going to have a long day tomorrow."
On LJ: One | Two| Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten
"A mole hunt."
General O'Neill shrugged. "You want to tell me you've never had to investigate one of your own, go ahead."
By the time they'd brought a compliant Lorne back to the Navy Yard, there had been a welcoming committee. Defiant, Gibbs had brought Lorne directly down to Processing instead of up to Shepard's office and told the agents in charge that Lorne was not to be left alone and to be considered a risk for violence. Lorne, small and mild-mannered, had merely cocked an eyebrow at the prospect of a strip-search.
"We don't normally have our agents charged with internal investigations go AWOL and then turn up as prime suspects in half a dozen related murders," Shepard replied archly.
"Our rogue agent's trying to throw you off the scent," O'Neill said, as unaffected by Shepard's icy demeanor as he'd been by Gibbs's more openly belligerent tone. "He's doing a damned fine job of it. Not to mention completely making a hash of our end."
O'Neill's story was plausible but unprovable without more details or more evidence -- which, to be fair, was the same state they were in. He told them that he'd been made aware of a sleeper agent within his unit's ranks, one with a specific but unknown task, and that he'd had to carefully respond with countermeasures that wouldn't tip off whoever it was. With no idea how far up the ranks the mole was or what kind of access they had, he'd been powerless to act until the bodies started falling and then, once they did, he'd been limited in his responses.
"Why Lorne?" Hollis asked. "Wouldn't that tip off your network?"
"He was the one who got the initial intel," O'Neill replied. "And he's... well-suited to the task."
Hollis thought back to Mitchell's vague hints that Lorne was doing much higher-level work than simple assassinations. Which, when you got down to it, were not simple at all. But Lorne was preternaturally laid-back and she could imagine him being seen as unlikely a hunter as he was a killer.
"It cross your mind that he was the mole?" Gibbs drawled.
O'Neill held up his hands, which were scarred. "I didn't get these falling off the turnip truck, Special Agent Gibbs," he retorted. "Of course I checked. I will admit that I really don't like how he acquired his intelligence, but it was solid and so's he."
There was more backing-and-forthing, but with O'Neill unwilling to go into any kind of details and Gibbs refusing to let O'Neill talk to Lorne unless he wanted to appoint himself Lorne's legal counsel, they were at an impasse. O'Neill was waiting for more of his people to show up -- presumably to put together some kind of briefing that he thought would appease them -- and they agreed to disagree until later that afternoon.
"Do you know what you're doing?" Shepard asked Gibbs once O'Neill left. He started to bridle and she held up her hands to forestall it. "This is very high-stakes poker, Jethro. If you have the cards, I'll let you play them. But if you've got crap, let me know that you're bluffing."
Hollis knew that Gibbs understood that their cards were closer to crap than a full house. A pair of fours, maybe, a small victory but no way to win the big pot.
"Let me go talk to him," Gibbs answered. "Then I'll let you know."
They went back down to the bullpen, where DiNozzo, David, and McGee were waiting with thinly veiled impatience. All they'd had to do while she and Gibbs were in with Shepard and O'Neill was put out the BOLOs on Ortilla, Suarez, Reletti, and Safir, none of which were expected to bear fruit, and do the research on the names Abby had put to the faces in Kim's photos.
They hadn't had time or space to carry on an open discussion, but Hollis was sure that Gibbs was thinking as she was -- that this was another diversion, that Lorne was placing himself in the same position he'd put Gillick in. The question therefore became what the other four were up to and whether there was any chance they could be stopped. Or whether they should be -- Hollis expected nothing less than a full defense of Lorne from O'Neill, one that was heavy on exculpation and light on actual facts, but that didn't mean that O'Neill was wrong. A frame-up had looked like a possibility even before a motive for such had been introduced.
Of course, O'Neill hadn't been running a virtually leakproof covert unit by coming up with crappy cover stories for unsavory actions. Shifting blame from the guy in charge of the murder squad to a mythical mole, to be 'caught' or killed before anyone from the outside could verify the story, was extremely convenient. And just because Mitchell and O'Neill insisted that Lorne and his team could be put to better use didn't mean that they were. Sometimes even the number three hitter has to bunt.
"General O'Neill didn't look too happy on the way out," DiNozzo ventured.
"He's got a lot of problems right now," Gibbs answered without any smugness. He turned to McGee. "Get Lorne brought up to Interrogation."
Hollis didn't miss the way everyone's interest perked up, like Lorne versus Gibbs was the feature movie and they'd had enough with watching the previews. Normally Hollis would've been right there on the popcorn line, but while the others seemed to think that this would be another Gibbs virtuoso solo, she suspected this would end up being a well-matched duet and less satisfying for it. Lorne hadn't sent an amateur when he'd thrown Gillick to them to buy himself time and this was a much more important performance.
Lorne had been changed into military costume and was sitting quietly with his hands on the table when they entered the viewing room. If Gillick had had the look of someone who knew that he'd been trained to handle these sorts of situations and that he just had to trust that training, then Lorne had the look of someone who'd internalized those lessons well enough to teach them to others. Maybe he did. There was a profound calmness to him, a relaxation that completely belied the fact that he was sitting on the suspect's side of the table. It did not harbinger good things for the actual questioning.
If there were tacit or explicit orders for these murders, then they were a symptom and not the disease. Treating them instead of the underlying cause would not necessarily solve the problem. And Hollis -- and Gibbs, she suspected -- thought that Lorne was pushing them in the direction of doing just that. By protesting his innocence, he had been challenging them to look beyond him, but he was also steering them directly into the brick wall that was O'Neill's covert unit and its thus-far impenetrable veil of secrecy. It was damned if they did, damned if they didn't. If they persisted in viewing Lorne as their only suspect and focused on building a case against him for as much of this as possible, then they averted their eyes from whatever O'Neill's master plan was and would be distracted long enough for it to be completed. If they tried to dig up what was really going on, then Lorne would be the first obstacle in a world-class stonewall. And he seemed very confident of his ability to not crack.
"He looks like he's made his peace with falling on the grenade," she said to Gibbs as they were in the hallway between the viewing and interrogation rooms.
"I know," Gibbs agreed, not sounding at all happy about it.
Lorne stayed where he was when he saw Gibbs, but stood up when he saw Hollis. It was a message, like everything else that would go on in this room would be. Lorne was showing respect for her rank, not this investigation. The dutiful soldier and the uncooperative suspect all at once.
"Want to tell us what you were doing in Colonel Kim's house?" Gibbs began, throwing the folder down on the table and taking the far seat. Hollis sat in the one closer to the door.
"Same thing you were," Lorne answered. "Looking for evidence."
"From our end, it looks like you were either covering your tracks or finishing the job," Hollis said. She was a little relieved that Lorne wasn't pretending that he was just a pilot caught up in matters beyond his ken, but that, too, was intentional and not a gift.
A shrug from Lorne. "I'm sure it does, ma'am."
"Did you find any evidence?" Gibbs asked. He was confrontational, but not belligerent. Belligerence played directly into Lorne's game.
"Not before you showed up, no."
"What kind of evidence were you hoping to find?" Hollis wasn't going to play good cop to Gibbs's bad cop, not after they'd all sat around a coffee table in Maryland being civil and affable as Lorne lied to their faces.
"I'd have settled for anything, ma'am," Lorne replied. "Body count's getting a little unsettling."
A bitter chuckle from Gibbs. "Says the man standing to face charges for ratcheting it up."
"I didn't kill them."
"That's what they all say, Major," Hollis said. "We're usually safer believing the evidence instead of your word."
An accepting nod from Lorne.
"How did your prints get all over the knife that killed Staff Sergeant Baxter?" Gibbs pulled out a photo from the crime scene and spun it around for Lorne to see. Daring him to look at it. Lorne did and shook his head ruefully. Gibbs next pulled out the photo of the knife and Lorne looked at that one, too.
"I don't know," Lorne said, pushing the photo of the knife back toward Gibbs. He left the one of Baxter where it was, possibly anticipating that Gibbs would shove it right back in his face if he tried to push it away. "As far as I know, mine has never been out of my possession. I've gotten depressingly good at the forms for equipment replacement, but I haven't filled any out in the time frame under consideration."
They'd found a knife on Lorne in Kim's house, along with an M9 and a spare clip. The knife was the same model as the one (ones) that had killed their victims. Abby was still trying to find anything about it that would link Lorne more firmly to the murders.
"You expect that to be exculpatory, Major?" Hollis asked wryly. O'Neill wasn't going to let them look at the requisitioning paperwork and, even if he did, it would be the easiest thing to fake.
An amused smile from Lorne. "I don't expect anything I say to be exculpatory, ma'am."
"You think we're railroading you?" Gibbs gave him a skeptical look.
"Someone is," Lorne answered. "And you don't seem very interested in that part."
"Maybe because we don't have any evidence that suggests another suspect and instead we have you, an experienced covert operative with the resources to commit these acts and a man everyone agrees is capable of killing."
"Everyone's capable of killing, ma'am," Lorne said evenly. "That's not the same thing as committing murder."
"You've lied to us from the start, Major," Gibbs said. "Why should we start believing you now?"
"If I was responsible for this murder spree," Lorne replied, "then why did I suddenly get stupid? You don't have anything from the civilian murders, but suddenly you have a knife with my prints on it as the weapon that killed Baxter. And then I suddenly regain my senses again when it comes to Kim? The right question should be why you don't think that's odd. Or maybe why don't you care?"
"I don't care because it doesn't matter," Gibbs said. "If you didn't do this, then either you know who did or you've got a decent idea. Which makes the right question whether you're letting someone get away with murder to protect your unit or whether you're letting someone get away with murder because those are your orders. Accessory to murder's still a crime."
"If I knew who did it, I wouldn't have been poking around Jimmy Kim's office looking for clues," Lorne said, the first trace of annoyance in his voice. "If I am what you think I am, why would I care about due process and case-building? This won't be something that goes to court-martial."
Gibbs cocked an eyebrow. "Are you sure about that?"
The goal of this investigation was to find out what the hell was going on and if a military program was committing (sanctioned or unsanctioned) murders on US soil. Failing that, though, they had enough to ring Lorne up for Baxter's murder and could probably go for Kim's as well. The break-in at Kim's was a slam-dunk and that might give an ambitious prosecutor enough to bring in the Meade footage. Anything at all on Litorsky, Pal, or Kennedy would look all the more juicy in this context.
"I'm sure," Lorne replied.
"You think O'Neill will throw you enough rope to get yourself out of trouble?" Hollis asked. "Or to hang yourself?"
O'Neill's mole-hunt story could go either way. It could lay the groundwork for a slippery escape -- O'Neill had already waved off the AWOL charge as a necessary ruse -- or he could be setting Lorne up to go down alone, leaving the rest of the organization intact and unaffected.
"You play chess, Colonel?" Lorne asked with a complicated smile. "There's only one piece that has to be standing in the end. Everyone else is expendable."
And there it was. Whether he was pushed or if he had to jump, Lorne was prepared to take the fall. He was all but promising them that the case would end with him.
"You're very calm for someone up against these kinds of charges. I'd be a little more nervous if I was looking at life in a small cage."
"All due respect, ma'am, but I've seen worse than what Leavenworth has to offer," Lorne said.
"Is that a challenge?"
Lorne looked at Gibbs. "I'd rather it not be, but if you want to make it one, go ahead. I've apparently got nothing else on my calendar today."
Gibbs looked like he might want to answer that in the affirmative, but then the door opened and McGee stuck his head in. "Boss?"
Gibbs gave Hollis a look before standing up and following McGee outside.
"Where is your team?" Hollis asked once the door was closed again.
"In the field, ma'am," Lorne replied.
"Are they tasked with committing another murder or preventing one?"
Lorne smiled at her.
The door opened again and Gibbs entered along with two MPs; Lorne was apparently going back down to the brig.
"Lorne's knife's not the one that killed Kim," Gibbs told her after Lorne had been escorted away. DiNozzo and David appeared in the doorway; McGee was probably behind them.
"Which means he either ditched the weapon or he's not the killer," Hollis replied, pushing back in her chair. "I think it's the latter."
"I do, too, but that's not going to get us anywhere," Gibbs agreed. "He's daring us to charge him. God damned true believers."
With that, he pushed up off of the wall and left the room, leaving the rest of them to chase after him.
Back in the bullpen, sensing their boss's mood, the 'kids' started up with the presentations of what they'd learned.
"The marines in the pictures are Gunnery Sergeant Martin Kamber," McGee began, typing. An official photo popped up on the plasma, "and Major Jacob Benoit. Benoit should be in Qatar and Kamber is assigned to the Mountain Warfare Training Center at Bridgeport, but their official contact phone numbers go to Colorado Springs, so we can assume that they are still part of O'Neill's unit.
"The civilians are a Doctor Daniel Jackson and a Doctor Anne Simpson; Jackson's an archaeologist -- he's kind of infamous for some crackpot theories involving aliens -- and Simpson is an electrical engineer. Jackson's been on the Air Force payroll for more than a decade as a consultant; he's a skilled linguist and that's pretty much kept him fed after the alien theories didn't pan out. Simpson's your typical EE overachiever and currently works in the private sector in Silicon Valley."
"Jackson's with O'Neill," Hollis said, operating on nothing but her gut. "Is Simpson?"
"He's got an epidemiologist on staff, why not an engineer?" DiNozzo asked sourly.
"We can ask him later," Gibbs said, holding up a message slip. "He's due back at 1700."
Hollis resigned herself to another late night and another round of takeout. Her wallet and her waist were going to hate her by the time this case was finished.
O'Neill led his parade past the bullpen at 1645. With him were Mitchell and Sam Carter along with two new faces, one a very pissed-off general and the other the kind of O-5 only the Air Force could produce. Hollis looked over at Gibbs, who had on pretty much the exact expression she'd have imagined he'd have, and got ready to be summoned upstairs by Shepard.
Gibbs's phone rang five minutes later.
"More brass than a foundry," he groused quietly as they went upstairs. "And none of them are going to do anything but fling shit around."
"Careful, Gunny," she warned playfully, tapping at her own rank insignia. "Us brass tend to stick together."
She had a hard time keeping a straight face at the glare she got back.
The visitors were already seated when they arrived; Shepard introduced everyone as she joined them at the conference table. The seething general was Landry and the new light bird was Sheppard, which meant required tight smiles at the required joke. Landry was Mitchell's and Carter's CO, it was explained, and Sheppard was Lorne's.
"You the one who sent him off on this adventure?" Gibbs asked Sheppard.
"No, I'm the first one he lied to about it," Sheppard replied, unfazed by Gibbs's tone.
O'Neill gave a short spiel elaborating on his earlier story. Lorne came to him with credible intelligence of a sleeper agent within their organization, but not enough to be able to identify whoever it was or what their goal was beyond general disruption. O'Neill made the choice to exclude Landry, whom Hollis understood to be the operational commander, to keep the mole ignorant. On O'Neill's orders, Lorne assembled his team outside of the organization's view and began an investigation.
"How'd he do that?" Hollis asked. She understood the flexibility that went along with working in a covert unit, but entire teams dropping off the radar at once should have raised flags.
"In plain sight," Sheppard said wryly. "All of them were owed leave. Lorne took a few days for a wedding and it seemed perfectly natural for the others to coordinate. Nobody suspected a thing until they didn't come back."
Within the organization, the connection between the murders was taken for granted, but without knowledge of a mole, it was assumed to be an outside element with an unknown agenda. Mitchell led the official investigation.
"I was the patsy," Mitchell added with a good-natured grin that did not quite cover up the bitterness.
"No, that would be me," Landry corrected, not even bothering with the good natured grin. Instead, he glared at O'Neill.
"And what did that make you?" Gibbs asked Carter. "The double agent?"
"I was the one trying to use two separate data streams to figure out why all of this was happening," Carter replied tartly.
"Did you?" Hollis asked. This was the only part she was curious about, since this was where the real secrecy began, where all of their hypothesizing necessarily had to end because they just didn't know what was going on on the other side of O'Neill's curtain.
"The strategic part yes," Carter replied, making a rueful face. "We were initially making the same mistake that you probably still are -- assuming that this was an attempt to hide something that had happened."
"It's not?" Hollis ignored the swipe.
"It's to keep something from happening," Carter went on. "And what that something is, we don't know yet. The murdered men were never working on the same project together, so whatever it is, it's not straightforward."
"So this isn't over?" Shepard asked.
"It is if Lorne's been the one making sure you don't connect your dots," Gibbs said.
O'Neill made an annoyed noise. "He's not your killer, Gibbs. Even if we doubted his intel -- which we don't -- we can account for his whereabouts for the first murders."
According to O'Neill, the first murder was not the suspicious death of Li Feng, but instead the three murders of foreign nationals who'd worked with the program in the past. It was those deaths that had prompted Lorne's contact to reach out.
"He could have had help," Gibbs said evenly. Hollis couldn't tell if he was egging O'Neill on out of genuine belief or out of his deep distrust of black ops that he wasn't a part of. She suspected the latter. "He seems to have a very large network of convenient assistants."
O'Neill rolled his eyes. "He could also be the Easter Bunny when we're not looking, but he's not."
Sheppard seemed to find this amusing for more reasons than the obvious.
"Don't confuse our unwillingness to be transparent with our inability," Landry said calmly. He was pissed at O'Neill, Hollis understood, not at them per se, although Gibbs's challenging was going to tip the balance if he didn't back down. "We'd rather not be traipsing in here like a Mardi Gras parade with our underwear hanging out, but we are and, believe it or not, that's a favor to you. You haven't kept this case because Director Shepard has superlative negotiating skills, all due respect, madam. You've kept this case because we were keeping secrets from each other and working at cross-purposes, however necessary it might have been at the time. But by arresting Lorne you've united our efforts.
"The fact is that you're nowhere close to solving this and I'm beginning to doubt that you're even interested in doing so, Special Agent Gibbs. You have turned a murder investigation into a temper tantrum because you want a security clearance you can't have. There is a very good reason you haven't been read into this program, a reason that still stands and will stand."
"Even if you have to sacrifice Evan Lorne's career and honor to do so?" Hollis asked, already knowing the answer because Lorne had all but told them.
"Even if," Landry agreed. "There are some things that go on in the shadows for other reasons than that they are dark, Colonel."
Next to her, Gibbs made a small noise of disagreement.
"You said coming here was a favor," Shepard began before the silence grew too long. Hollis could see that she was still smarting from Landry's words, but unlike Gibbs, she could better roll with the punches. Which was why she had made Director at such an early point in her career and Gibbs was still a senior field agent. "You aren't rewarding us for being thorns in your sides. What do you want?"
"We want to talk to Lorne, first of all," Landry replied, holding up his hands to forestall interruption. "We're not asking for his release, at least not yet. But we do need to debrief him. Where we go from there depends on what he has to say."
The group field trip down to Interrogation did not pass through the bullpen area, but Hollis didn't even need to look to know that everyone in it was watching their progress along the concourse to the elevator.
They waited in the observation room for Lorne to be brought up. O'Neill's people discussed among themselves who should go in with Lorne, but O'Neill ended the argument by telling Sheppard to go do it.
"He's got the best chance of getting something out of him," O'Neill explained to Carter and Mitchell after Sheppard had gone. "We dragged him all the way back here, we might as well put him to work. The two of you are going to have to act on what he gets anyway."
Sheppard was sitting -- slouching -- in a chair when Lorne was brought in.
"Hello, sir," Lorne said wryly, flexing his wrists -- he'd been cuffed for the trip upstairs -- and sitting down without any kind of formality. "How's life back at the ranch?"
"There's a killer targeting scientists, then you go AWOL, then you are supposed to be the killer," Sheppard said with a frown. "How do you think life's going back at the ranch? And that's without anyone but Elizabeth and me knowing about--" he trailed off, making a vague gesture next to his ear. "We're keeping that part quiet because there's no way that goes down well and the marines already have their hands full with the panicked civilians thinking you'd booby-trapped their soap dishes or whatever."
A mirthless chuckle from Lorne. "I'm sorry, sir."
Sheppard sighed deeply, frustration seemingly spent. "I know."
"I'd have said something if I could have."
"About your buddy or about this?" Sheppard asked. "I can't believe you'd willingly... After all of the shit we've had to deal with, you go and do it voluntarily?"
Hollis made a mental note to ask about Lorne's 'buddy,' since she didn't think Sheppard was referring to his team or Gillick. Especially because a few feet away, Carter looked distinctly uncomfortable.
"We'd been through a lot together," Lorne said. "I trusted him. I trust him. Although I can't say I was too eager to agree at the time."
Sheppard shook his head in either bemusement or regret or both. "What's done is done. Now we have to figure out what the other guy is doing and make it stop."
For the first time, Lorne looked up at the two-way mirror. It almost looked as if he could see through it, although that was impossible at this distance.
"The gang's all here," Sheppard assured him.
"Yeah," Lorne agreed. "I wish I had more to tell them."
Landry made a disappointed noise.
"I'd have hoped they'd have worked it out by now," Mitchell told Carter. "Wasn't that the point?"
"It doesn't make you omniscient," Carter replied. "Just... crowded."
Back in the interrogation room, Sheppard shifted his chair. "You can start by telling us where you stashed Doctor Crankypants and the Musketeers," he offered. "The squid cops would probably be a little more comfortable if they were in plain sight when whatever happens next happens."
"We'd be more comfortable if there wasn't a when," Gibbs muttered darkly.
"Once Baxter turned up dead, we split up," Lorne explained. "If he was starting to go after... team personnel, then that was going to narrow things down."
"Kamber and Benoit are being watched like hawks," Sheppard told him.
Lorne shook his head. "They were never at risk," he said, sitting forward. "That... version of the team wasn't the target."
"Oh, crap," Carter hissed and everyone turned to her.
"Sam?" Mitchell prompted.
"Do you remember the big marine team shakeup when MARSOC got stood up?" Carter asked O'Neill and Landry, the latter of whose eyes grew wide with realization.
"Half of our jarheads went back to do that instead of this," Landry explained to O'Neill as Carter moved away from everyone else and pulled out her cell phone. "We had to rearrange the rest and bring in new ones."
"You had the Commandant on my ass by trying to replace them with airmen." O'Neill recalled, rubbing his face with his hand. "Who are we looking for?"
Everyone turned to Carter, who was carrying on a hushed conversation.
"Thanks," she said into the phone, closing it and turning back to the group. "Larue, Holden, Baumgartner, and Veracruz."
"Which one's the snake?" O'Neill asked.
Carter made a face. "I don't know. But three of them are the next victims and none of them are at the Mountain."
A knock on the glass drew everyone's attention forward again. Sheppard was standing next to the mirror, apparently waiting for something. Landry tilted his head toward the glass and Mitchell went around to the interrogation room to update Lorne and Sheppard on what had transpired.
"Where are they now?" Gibbs asked, an edge to his voice. Hollis understood why -- they had been reduced to bystanders, props so that O'Neill's people could complete their game. It grated on her, too, and she'd probably have been unable to hide it had she needed to.
"Sirs, we'll have to get teams out to look for Veracruz and and Holden," Mitchell said, addressing the mirror. "Lorne's got his people on Larue and Baumgartner."
"Do a relief in place for Lorne's team," O'Neill told Landry as Mitchell left the room to return to the observation area. "We're never getting him away from these people if something happens on their watch."
Hollis reached out to touch Gibbs's arm before he did something they were going to regret. She was no less annoyed by 'these people' for not being one of these people. It was casual disregard and it stung. He looked back at her, anger in his eyes, and she willed him to stow it with her own matching expression.
"We want in," she told O'Neill. "Sir."
"This isn't your case anymore, Colonel," Landry told her, not unkindly. "You hitched your cart to Major Lorne's guilt and getting him off of that hook is as far as that ride goes."
Next to her, Gibbs was looking suspiciously calm and maybe even a little smug. Hollis gave him a look, but he shook his head no.
Sheppard knocked on the glass again. "If we want to get in contact with Lorne's team, we're going to have to hurry. The next window is in less than an hour."
Lorne had been carrying a disposable phone when they'd caught him and it was returned to him.
"How'd you come up with this system?" Sheppard asked Lorne as they waited for whatever time 1312 AST was. Hollis looked at her own watch; it was too late to be early afternoon in Alaska, Newfoundland, or the Middle East.
"The boys pegged Yoni's average lateness to team meetings," Lorne replied with a shrug. Sheppard thought this was hilarious and Carter stifled a chuckle.
The phone conversation itself was heavily coded, but Lorne assured Ortilla that this was what he wanted and he and Mitchell arranged for the missing quartet to find transport to DC.
It was going to take hours to get everything organized on O'Neill's side and since they were disinclined to do much of anything in front of the little people, the generals and Mitchell and Carter left. Sheppard stayed behind with Lorne, who was still in the Interrogation Room.
"I don't want him getting lonely," Sheppard said with a shrug that was supposed to be casual but instead was quietly challenging. Gibbs left them, disinterested in picking that fight.
Back in the bullpen, DiNozzo, David, and McGee were waiting. Gibbs sent David to the observation room to keep an eye on Sheppard and Lorne, in case they said anything of interest.
"Where did that phone call go?" Gibbs asked McGee as he sat down at his desk.
Hollis smiled. Of course Gibbs would have assumed his team was on the ball.
"Austin, Texas," McGee replied. "Another disposable phone that made a call to a third phone in San Jose."
"DiNozzo, McGee, find all of the Larues, Holdens, Baumgartners, and Veracruzes in the Corps. See if any of them have ties to Austin or San Jose."
DiNozzo set to work. "Can I filter them by MOS or rank?"
"E-5 and up," Hollis answered. "Don't filter by MOS; we don't know what their covers are."
Hollis sat down at her semi-permanent temporary space. She perhaps could have asked for something less contorting than an extra chair and part of Gibbs's desk, but it would have been for status only; she was fine with what she had. Especially because it allowed her to lean in and have semi-private conversations in a place where there was really no privacy.
"What are you up to?" she asked Gibbs. "We can't bring these people in. We can't even find half of them."
That much only if DiNozzo was lucky. And all of this on top of being explicitly warned off by Landry and O'Neill.
"James Kim's kids deserve to know who killed their father and why," he answered, not looking up from where he was squinting at his message slips. "His death shouldn't be one more secret in a life full of them."
By nine, DiNozzo and McGee had a list of fifteen names. Gibbs called down to the observation room to tell David to tell Sheppard that visiting hours were over. And then he told everyone to go home.
"We're going to have a long day tomorrow."