Chapter 6

Ron Sacks sat in the passenger seat, silently watching as Tim McGee drove through the morning traffic. He didn't drive aggressively, but he seemed to be able to find the holes in the streams of cars and utilize them without interrupting the flow of traffic. He decided to mend fences a bit. "I like the way you drive. Fornell drives like an LA taxi driver."

"Thanks." Tim didn't take his eyes off the road as he replied, "You should see AJ drive. He's like a fish in water."

"Really? I'd figure him more like Gibbs." Sacks appreciated the fact that Tim didn't throw him around the car.

"No. Gibbs drives like a Turkish cab driver." Tim grinned. "He's not as bad as Ziva was."

"David? Little thing like her?" Sacks frowned, trying to remember more about the Mossad liaison; he'd only met her two or three times.

"You think Gibbs is bad; she drives like a Turkish cab driver on crack. Made me puke at least twice." Tim chuckled. "Heard from her awhile ago. She's doing better."

"I heard she lost it. Too bad. I was actually sorry to hear you lost her."

Tim sighed, "She was good. But she got ... problematical, at the last. She decided, and the shrinks agreed, that she had a combination of PTSD and burnout. She's running the family orchards now. Olives and lemons, if you can believe it."

"Yeah, I can. So ... what are we looking for ... exactly?" Sacks decided to turn the conversation to a safer channel.

"I want to check each laptop for an MMORPG game. If they were all playing the same one, they might have met on line but never actually met in real life. It's a connection that I would make but not many other investigators would. If someone at RenCo made a connection ... they might have thought that our victims had more of a connection than they did. We'll know more when I finish my checks."

They were then at the gate and Sacks got a real earful as Tim exchanged rude jokes with the two men who checked them through. All three of them seemed to agree that Tim's borrowed SUV was somehow not up to snuff with Tony's Hummer.

Sacks relaxed as soon as he realized that the men were good acquaintances at least. He waited until they pulled away from the guard house to ask, "I thought you drove some sort of expensive Italian something."

"I do. I bought a Boxter with the proceeds from one of my books. But I don't drive it to the Yard; it's too tempting to a certain type. They tend to do bad things to it. So I usually come in with either Ducky and Jimmy, or AJ. I drive the Boxter for relaxation." He deftly parked. "Well, let's get started."

They made their way to the squad room and Gibbs' bull pen. Tim pointed to the desk beside his. "You can use that desk. I wouldn't try AJ's, if I were you; he tends to booby trap it. We had an intern who was a snack snitch. Really pissed him off so ... booby traps. The exploding spring snakes were fun, but the paint bomb was a bit of a mess. So ... use the guest desk. Okay?"

Sacks eyed Tony's desk for a moment then moved on. "Okay. So, what are we doing first?"

"I'm going to physically locate the laptops in evidence. Then I'll send down an order to release them to you. While you're getting them, I'll be writing a program to search their hard drives for the data we need. By the time it'll take you to check them out and get them here, I'll be ready to run the search. Abby's gonna be pissed, but we don't have time to cater to her. Love her to death but she can be a bit of a prima dona."

"I've heard that the two of you together cracked some ... extremely sensitive systems." Sacks looked at Tim with a slight smile.

"We did. And that's the other reason I'm reluctant to include her in this. It'll draw the kind of attention we don't need. If I really have to hack something, she's my go-to. But this isn't that sort of have-to-have-it-now-or-else sort of thing. No matter what Jet says. So. You and I can handle it. I know you're fairly good." Tim was slightly distracted, so Sacks forgave him his slightly condescending comments. "Okay, got the locations and item numbers. Grab that page out of the printer and head down to evidence. Okay?"

Sacks took the sheet of paper out of the printer. "Got it. You sure this is going to be okay? I know how Gibbs is about turning loose of a case."

Tim snorted. "Jet hates having someone come in and run rough shod over a case, never mind who it is. In this case, we have to cooperate because it crosses jurisdictions. Jet just hates all the politicking, says it's a waste of time. Which it is. So, please get those machines up here and then you can help me set them up. Scram."

Sacks scrammed, going down the stairs to Evidence, to have the computers pulled from the stacks for him. He refused to try to find them himself, saying, "There's no reason for me to do that. You know exactly where things are. I'll wander around forever." He flirted with the older lady a bit which made her giggle and go to find what he wanted. He thanked her, signed where she pointed, and took the elevator back up.

Tim looked up, smiled, and observed, "Those guys are almost as geeky as I am. What do we have?" He checked carefully, then said, "Ron, if you'd set the tower up on that desk, I'll start hooking things up."

It didn't take Tim long to get everything hooked into an isolated sub-hard drive of the powerful NCIS MainFrame. "Okay, now I'll virus, trojan, click logger, click jacker and ..." He chuckled. "You're not interested. Just makin' sure we don't give NCIS a cold. So ..." he checked his connections, clicked the mouse a few times then sat back. "Okay, now ... we wait." He settled back to work on another project while he waited for results. Sacks just eased into the chair at his assigned desk, careful not to pull a plug or jiggle anything.

A ding made Tim switch his attention from his project to the isolation program. "Okay! We're good. Now to the good stuff. I'll just download everything off their disks and see what's what." He answered Ron's unasked question, "We didn't do it before, because RenCo assured our IT Department that these were private computers and wouldn't have any work-related data. We, and by that I mean Vance, decided not to mess with their private computers, but ... I'm pretty sure that what we want to know is there." Another ding and Tim was clicking through windows of information, quickly seeing exactly what he'd assumed he'd see. "Yeah. They were on the same team." He read a few bits here and there. "They met through a guild and started a quest together. Seems that they had so much fun and got along so well that they formed a permanent team, built their own tavern and ... Not interested, right? So ... we have our connection. I'm going to download all their chat and what-not. I'll have to hack WOW, but that's no biggie." He tapped at his keyboard for several seconds, poked his mouse and waited. His laptop made a "water down the drain" sound for a moment or two, then popped. "Okay. Got it. Now to get back to Mallard Manor and go through the motions."

Sacks sighed. "I suppose you want me to take all this back to Evidence?"

"I do. But I'll help you. Just give me a second to seal this and I'll be right there." He slipped a plastic strip through the holes in the zippers of his bag, sealed them with a device he took from his pocket, stuffed the device and leftover seals back into his pocket, and said, "Okay. Here we go."

Sacks eyed the sealed bag. "Paranoid?"

"No, pissed. Every damn time I go into the court house, Hoover Building, Pentagon, or any number of other places, some jackass gets the idea to turn my computer on, then right back off. Do you have any idea what that does to my system? It's not good and pisses me off. If they really want to examine the contents, I unpack, show, and repack. No one touches anything. And I'm not above simply telling them that I'll leave and they can explain to whoever I'm meeting that I left."

Sacks' skeptical, "And that actually works?" made Tim snort.

"It works. My clearance level is really high. In fact, it's so high, I can't tell you what it is. And when I'm wanted, it's usually something really important and I don't have time to repair my system because some wand-waving bean counter wants to be seen to be doing something… or wants to impress me with how important they think they are. Let's get this done." He put his bag on top of the pile of laptops, all neatly resealed in their evidence bags, and headed for the elevator. "You could get the tower, if you would." Ron picked up the box and followed.

It didn't take them long to log the computers back in, give the lady a quick smile, and go back to the car. Tim put his bag behind the seat and drove away.

Sacks was astonished again as the exit guards just saluted Tim as he drove right by.

.

The ride back to Mallard Manor didn't take that long. Tim was now driving against the flow of traffic; since the way was all four-lane, Tim had a little fun. He goosed it and enjoyed the feel of the powerful engine as it tore up the highway. He didn't even notice that Ron looked very pale.

He parked in the garage and dragged Ron back to the kitchen door. "Okay. I'll get set up and download my analysis. Be prepared, Jet is gonna blow a fuse."

Sacks frowned as he thought over the ramifications of their new intel. "Oh, shit! If what I think is going on is ... this is so ... bad. But how does the theft of RenCo's proprietary data tie in?"

Tim sighed, "I'll tell everyone at once, once I'm sure of my facts."

They were greeted with coffee and food ―sandwiches― and the information that their missing guy was the brother of one of the murdered men, not the Marine's brother. They'd been told so but, as Gibbs often said, "Rule Number Three A: Don't believe what you're told. Double check."

Sacks asked, "And there's a rule b?"

Remy nodded. "Numbering system is FUBAR. Rule Three B is 'Never be unreachable.'"

Tim opened his laptop and checked. "Searches are still running, but they'll be done in about five. Food?" He was given a sandwich and a glass of southern-style sweet tea. Ducky declared such a thing a sacrilege against tea, but they'd all acquired a taste for it at Remy's family reunion. So he munched on his sandwich and drank his tea while he waited for his program to finish.

A ding let them know that the search had finished. Tim checked his results then announced, "Okay. Here's what we got. All three of our vics belonged to the same team in WOW, ran quests together on a regular basis, and knew each other fairly well. Only ... it was all on-line. Our first vic worked at RenCo in development. He was working on some really classified stuff, mostly top secret programs for the company ... proprietary stuff. We really don't need to know what. All we need to know is ... a copy was down-loaded to vic number 1's desk top, probably for bug checking in an isolated environment. I checked twice ... it's not on his tower, which means he probably downloaded it to a USB drive, intending to run it from there. The drive disappeared from his desk, which he reported at once. And that's what I've got. Why someone murdered his two best on-line buds is beyond me." He picked up his tea glass and took a drink.

Gibbs sat with that totally blank look that meant he was thinking hard.

Fornell was also thinking, "Okay, we've got a connection. Question, because I don't know enough about this WOW thing. Is there any way to send email through their system, something with attachments maybe?"

Tim frowned. "Not really, but you can post things in forums and actually speak to team members over the system. But there are mail boxes in every town, and some inns provide similar boxes for residents. If the owner of the inn allowed for it, attachments are possible. Why?"

"Well, what if ... whoever stole the data sent it to someone else over WOW?"

Tim thought for a moment. "Don't think you could, the attachment would be way too big. But ... what if whoever didn't know that?"

Dean nodded. "So ... and this is wild conjecture ... someone knew that the data was missing somehow. But RenCo isn't the one. They're panicking all over the place, trying to find that missing USB. Someone else knows it's gone, knows ... or thinks they know, who has it ... and they want it."

Cosmo said what they were all thinking. "Industrial espionage ... theft of proprietary software ... someone not RenCo knows that it's gone walkabout and wants it. And they're tracking it through the WOW connection without any idea where the damn thing actually is. Or the fact that it can't be sent through the WOW systems."

Fornell agreed. "Right. Now ... all we have to do is locate our missing man. Fun."

Tim was frowning at his computer. "It really can't be this anti-climactic. Can it? Seriously?"

Tony looked over at him but it was Gibbs who demanded, "What?"

"There's a message at the Inn of the Half Moon asking that anyone who wants to go Questing for ... well, never mind but it's obviously a plea for help from ... he's using a game name that's a bastardization of Old Norse ... means Son of Woe. Who the hell would name their character Son Of Woe? Unless they needed real-life help."

Gibbs eyed the computer screen as if it might explode or something. "Okay. What now?"

Fornell, a bit more up-to-date on this sort of thing due to Emily, said, "Offer to join his team."

"Okay. I'll just use my own character, it's already established; I just have to move from another realm to this one." Tim typed and clicked for a moment. "Okay, now I'll offer a quest to him." More clicking and typing. "Now ... we wait. I'll nurse this so I don't miss contact."

It wasn't long before he got a PM asking if they could meet in person. He agreed to the meet and got a string of numbers. He also got an odd code in another PM. He looked the code over and realized that it was the actual coding name of Futhark. He ran the string of numbers against the Futhark alphabet and got a different string of numbers. He ran that through Western ISO Latin 1 as a filter. He got a real address this time.

"Okay. We got a meet. It's at a coffee house on the Georgetown University campus. And it's in one hour. We need to suit up and move out ... now."

They scrambled to gather equipment, vests and whatnot. Tim dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and a t-shirt. He covered his vest with a zipped hoodie, which also hid his shoulder holster and side arm. Fornell started to send Sacks out to get their gear when he realized that they didn't have any. They'd have to go home, get their safety gear, and get to Georgetown; and that wasn't happening as it would take more than the allotted hour.

Gibbs settled the problem by saying, "Stay to the back. We've got enough men to deal."

Sacks eyed him like he'd lost his mind. "We got me, Fornell, DiNozzo, McGee, and you. That's five."

Tony pointed. "They're all more than capable. Seal Team Six. Even Jimmy is vetted now. That makes seven. Stay to the back of the group. If you get your stupid selves shot, I'll be mightily pissed."

Ducky, who'd stayed mostly out of the way, simply supplying food and coffee as needed, agreed, "I will be also. Now, you'd better get moving or you'll be late."

They finished gearing up, checked each other over for tells and wiring up their coms. They left in Tony's huge Hummer and Remy's SUV; even the Hummer couldn't handle all of them.

The drive took just under forty minutes. Gibbs and Tony drove with Fornell on the phone to Dean to keep them together. They stopped down the block from the coffee shop and put in earbuds and made sure their mics were hot.

Gibbs, Tony, and Fornell put their heads together and came up with a quick, down and dirty rescue. Tim would go into the coffee shop, find their tango and retrieve him. Tony, Remy, Dean, and Cosmo would cover the front while Fornell, Sacks, and Gibbs took the back. Jimmy would stay with the vehicles as eyes behind. The only reason Jimmy was even with them was in case they needed a medic.

The extraction did not go without a hitch.

The first problem was, John Bean was terrified and insisted on all sorts of reassurances and identifications. This led to everyone in the coffee house staring at them… and taking pictures and videos which showed up all over the web in seconds; Twitter and Instagram lit up like Christmas trees. Tim finally snarled, "Come with me right now or I'm leavin' your fuckin' stupid ass in the wind. You want to avoid whoever is after you? This is not the way. We're all over the net as we speak. Idiot."

"Well, how the hell am I supposed to know ... and ..." he sighed under Tim's steely gaze and nodded. "Okay, okay. Let's go."

Tim covered John as they headed for the door, but it seemed that the explosion of pictures on the net had led their pursuers right to them. Tim knew that they had to have been close, but now they were right in their laps.

Half a dozen men scrambled out of a panel van half a block away. They headed directly for the shop with guns in their hands. They were dressed in all black with balaclavas covering their faces. Jimmy barked into his com, "Incoming." Tim pushed John in the direction of the Hummer, while John did his best to get them both killed.

"What? Stop pushing me. Where are we going? Who's that? What's going on?" John pulled away from Tim for the third time.

Tim smacked him and snarled, "Be still. I'm doing my best to keep you from getting your damn ass shot the fuck off." He dragged John toward the Hummer by one arm, keeping his right hand free and filled with his Sig.

Jimmy watched as Fornell, Gibbs, and Sacks came charging through the back door of the coffee shop, guns drawn. The customers scattered, screaming; some dove under tables, others jammed the fire door, back door, and side entrance. They avoided the front door as that was the direction the three men were running, except for one man who seemed to think that that was the best way to go. He managed to block the door just long enough to get in Gibbs' way. He grabbed the man, shoved him back and snarled, "That's right, jackass, run into the line of fire. Fuckin' dim-wit."

There was a bit more scrambling around as the team arranged themselves to protect their pickup and the unarmored FBI agents. Tim pushed John into Sacks' grip, saying, "Keep him with you. Dumb fuck-wad is liable to rabbit on us and get his stupid self killed." Sacks just grabbed him and shoved him in the general direction of the Hummer.

While the Pod was getting Bean into a vehicle, the group of mercenaries was making a determined effort to get to him without shooting someone. This led to an out-and-out brawl in the middle of the street.

Everyone had 9mm's of some breed, but no one wanted to draw. Tony, Dean, Gibbs, and Remy produced Stingers, while Cosmo just doubled up his fists. Fornell called in, asking for backup, and Sacks kept Bean from bolting. Jimmy helped Sacks keep a hand on him. Tim scrambled into the Hummer and got on the com to relay any communications from the police, NCIS, or the FBI.

Tony and Remy double-teamed the largest man, Remy punching him in the gut with the butt of his Stinger while Tony hammer-fisted him across the back when he bent over. A quick kick to the head, and he was out for the count.

Dean and Cosmo backed each other and waited for a couple of men to try them. It all went to hell for the attackers when Gibbs kidney-punched one, which put him down and out. That let Dean kick the other man in the knee; the loud crack told a tale of shattered knee caps, and that man was down.

This left three men and the driver still in the van. The driver got out to go help his buddies instead of making a run for it; not that that would have done him any good, as traffic had him blocked coming and going. This left four men for the Pod to handle. The last of the attackers knew that they were in way over their heads but they weren't sure what to do next. Their orders were clear: get the USB drive, no matter what they had to do. The only reason they hadn't started shooting immediately was they didn't want to attract attention too quickly. They'd failed in that, and now they had to either surrender or shoot their way out.

The decision was taken out of their hands as the entire Pod, including Jimmy, Fornell, and Sacks, drew down on them. Gibbs shouted, "Give it up. You're surrounded. We will shoot."

Tony checked up and down the street, then announced, "We're clear, Jet. No civilians on the street. Couple of cops coming up on three."

The two cops added themselves to the group, quickly checking with Fornell, who flashed his badge and ID, then filled them in on what was happening. While this was going on, the rest of the Pod were either watching the men who were still standing, or collecting the injured men and cuffing them.

Tim was keeping NCIS and the FBI updated second by second. Vance was on the phone to an Assistant Director of the FBI; they each had their own feed, but they needed to consult with each other to keep things from falling apart.

Vance ordered, "Take prisoners. I do not want to listen to the city bitching."

Tim replied, "Understood." He switched frequencies and relayed the order.

It didn't take long to cuff the remaining men; none of them were dedicated enough to lose their lives over this. The pay wasn't that good. They all just dropped their weapons and knelt in the street to be cuffed and put in transport vans. By agreement between Assistant Director Skinner and Director Vance, the FBI got half the prisoners and NCIS got the other half. Tony was mean enough to make sure that the FBI got all the injured men. Fornell didn't notice until it was too late. His indignant squawk made the hovering police officers all snicker.

Sacks sighed and rubbed his face. Now that all the excitement was over, he was tired. He slumped against the Hummer wondering if he could get some coffee now that all the excitement was over.

Fornell snarled at Gibbs, "You sent me all the wounded. Jerk."

Gibbs just smirked, "Tough. Suck it up."

It didn't take long to get the rest of the mess cleared up. Fornell agreed that Abby got the SUV; the FBI labs were overloaded.

While all this was going on, Tim was literally sitting on John Bean. The man was a total wreck. He'd been shoved into the passenger compartment and then into the back. He was now huddled in the floor boards between the far back seat and the back wall.

Gibbs eyed him for a moment then announced, "I need coffee. Leave the big girl right there. Sacks, keep an eye on him. What kind of coffee do you drink?"

Sacks grinned at Gibbs. "I like my coffee like I like my women, black, sweet, and strong. Thank you."

The rest of the group joined Gibbs, filing into the coffee shop to order. They were lucky in that the place was empty, unlucky in that the staff was totally shaken up. Tony stepped behind the counter and started making coffee. Jimmy grinned.

Tony sang as he made coffee. He had a very good voice and indulged from time to time; he also sang in the shower. No one said much, as he never did so when people were trying to sleep. It took him about a minute a drink to get everyone's coffee made. He remembered what everyone liked, so he didn't have to ask. The staff crept out of their hiding places to watch. The cashier managed to get himself together enough to actually run the register. Everyone took their coffee and headed out to the street again, Gibbs carrying Sacks' coffee in one hand and his own in the other.

They rode back to NCIS in silence, each man trying to come down from the recent combat. Except for John; he spent the ride alternately whinging and apologizing. Gibbs finally looked over his shoulder and snarled, "Shut the fuck up, you ... jackwad. When we get to NCIS, you better be ready to explain how the hell you fucked up enough to get three men killed."

Sacks finally reconciled himself to the realization that he had been wrong about DiNozzo ... no, AJ. He cleared his throat and said, "LtCmdr, I need to apologize to you. I was wrong and I'm sorry."

Tony replied, "Yes, you were. Apology accepted."

Sacks frowned for a moment then asked the whole group. "So what do we do about him?" he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

Gibbs answered that. "We wait until we're back at NCIS, then we get the whole story."

.

They took their prisoners in through the parking garage, where they could park right at the elevator. After the van was moved, the Hummer took its place and the Pod piled out, leaving the Hummer right where it was. If it needed to be moved, one of the garage attendants would come get either Gibbs, Tony, or Remy, the only ones who were competent to move it. All the attendants had refused to try to drive the monster.

It wasn't long before the men were all in interrogation rooms with attendant agents ready and waiting. Vance was at a full boil and wanted answers right now. John Bean was in the small conference under guard; they were out of interrogation rooms. NCIS wasn't a busy place in that respect, they only had three MCRT's. The rest of the teams were concerned with other crimes, like fraud, assault, and theft.

Gibbs ignored the other prisoners; the interrogation teams would all write a report on their information, and Vance would deal. He'd compile everything into one cohesive document that would be given to Legal. Gibbs knew he would read it, as would the rest of the Pod.

Gibbs and Tony joined John Bean in the conference room. The first thing he did was whine, "You didn't need to put a guard on the door. I need the ..."

Tony snarled in his face, "Shut the fuck up. You don't need anything unless I damn well tell you you do."

Gibbs added, "I'd listen to him if I were you. He's not in a good mood."

John gulped. He was well aware of the concept of good cop, bad cop; but these men seemed more like bad cop, worse cop. "Okay, okay. Just ... I need to pee."

Gibbs rolled his eyes and barked, "Christ on a damn cracker ... go, already."

John opened the door only to be blocked by a huge Marine. "I ... he said ... I need to go."

The Marine eyed him for a moment then said, "Go where?" in a flat tone that said he should just sit back down.

"I need to pee. Please."

"Sir?"

Tony said, "Take him. Keep an eye on him. No cubicle. If he can't piss in a urinal, bring him back."

They were only gone a few minutes during which Tony and Gibbs discussed what they wanted to know. Tony finally said, "Just get him to start talking, and I bet we get all our answers."

It was only a few minutes before John was back in his seat. He eyed Tony, then Gibbs. He said, "I'm not military. You know?"

Tony settled into a chair and said, "Look. We're trying to connect the dots, and I'm not fuckin' with you. Start with how the hell you got your hands on that software, and what you intended to do with it." He slammed his palms on the table and demanded, "Do not make me ask again."

"Okay okay. So ..." he sighed and rubbed his face. "I visit ... visited my brother at RenCo a lot. I had a little problem with my internet connection ... I missed a payment and they shut me off. So ... I just wanted to download some porn. You know? Just ... I saw the USB stick in Mark's computer, so I just sat down and started downloading a bunch of stuff. Mark came back, saw what I was doing and had a fit. How was I supposed to know that all downloads were monitored? Who does that shit? He told me to take my shit and leave ... go home and not come back to RenCo any more. He was scared. Really, really scared. So I went home, then went to his place to play WOW. The next thing I know Mark is home and still pissed as hell. He yelled at me and told me exactly what kind of fuck-up I am. I'm so sorry. He got killed because I wanted to watch Debby Does Dallas. God, I'm such a screw-up." He started to cry.

Gibbs shook his head. "All this because some snot-nosed come-stain wanted to watch porn? Fuck."

Tony eyed the sobbing man and said, "Now all we need to figure out is who found out about the missing software and who they told."

John sniffled himself calmer and said, "That creep LaRoquet was hanging around. He was always sneaking around, trying to get people into trouble. Talk to him." He grumbled, "Public Relations, my ass. More like suck-up."

Gibbs went to the door. "Master Sergeant, send someone to pick up Mr. LaRoquet."

The Master Sergeant just nodded and said, "Yes, sir." He walked away.

LaRoquet was busted the second he walked in NCIS. Gibbs had arranged for one of the mercs to be walked by as he was led off the elevator. The merc sneered at him, which put LaRoquet into a snit. But the merc had one more arrow to his bow. "See they grabbed your ass too. Sorry about that." It was obvious he wasn't. The damage was done, much to the merc's amusement. LaRoquet went nuts, swearing and yelling. And providing everyone in the squad room with plenty of evidence against him.

He cursed and swore and threatened everyone with lawsuits. No one much paid any attention to him. Except the one agent assigned to write down everything he said. It didn't take them long to get him into an interrogation room, the one they'd just taken the merc out of, and planted in a chair.

He lawyered up at once, so they left him to stew until someone showed up to represent him. No one was in the least surprised when RenCo sent to say that none of their lawyers were coming. He demanded a phone call to another and was advised that he got one call. Vance himself came down to tell him that it was unfortunate that he'd used his call to appeal to the company that he'd tried to steal from. He also said that they were trying to round up a Public Defender for him. He smirked as he told LaRoquet that JAG had advised them that, since he'd called a lawyer, they were free to question him until the lawyer arrived, reviewed the interview notes, and advised him.

Gibbs sat down opposite LaRoquet and just looked at him. He waited a few minutes until Sacks came in and settled by him. Sacks leaned over and whispered in Gibbs' ear. "Okay, now what?"

Gibbs leaned his way and whispered back, "We wait. He'll break."

Sacks shuffled some papers and handed one to Gibbs, who glanced at it, handed it back, and said, "No." Sacks tucked the paper back into the folder and settled back.

It wasn't long before Tony ambled in, in full SEAL black with a chest full of fruit salad and a nasty look on his face.

He jerked his head at Sacks, who just shrugged, gathered his papers, and left. Tony sat down beside Gibbs and turned his gaze to LaRoquet. They stared at him, a twin laser-like glower that made him squirm. They kept it up until he demanded a lawyer again. Tony nodded, got up and left the room.

Tony joined Vance and Melody Jones, one of their legal team. "We have to get him a lawyer, he's asked twice."

Melody nodded. "We do. I'll do it." she sighed then said, "There are days when I really hate this job. Man's an entitled jerk." She picked up the file and started reading.

While she was reading, the rest of the legal department was having litters of kittens. The law was clear: If a person asked for legal counsel, it had to be provided. There was a bit of leeway as to how quickly, but the ASAP principle was usually applied as one hour, or travel time from location to location. They were skirting the edge of legal action right now.

Five minutes later, Melody announced, "Okay. I'm ready. As his legal counsel I'm going to advise that he take a plea bargain, tell all, and hope for leniency. Man's an idiot."

Vance eyed the man through the one-way glass. "You think he'll go for that?"

"Yes. He's sweating like a bull, twitchy and slidy-eyed. He can't look Gibbs or DiNozzo in the eye. He wouldn't look Sacks in the eye either. He'll spill his guts the second I offer him any kind of plea deal."

Vance decided. "Since he's not implicated in any of the murders, only the industrial espionage, offer him ... guilty plea gets him ten years with parole after three."

"Okay." She frowned. "He might not go for it."

Vance shrugged. "Tell him the alternative for espionage, theft of proprietary software, and international terrorism. I think it's still life for terrorism, and twenty to life for espionage. Not sure about the theft."

Melody smirked. "Theft of proprietary software intended for, or which can be used for, military applications, is another count of espionage and terrorism."

While they were consulting in the observation room, LaRoquet was fidgeting. He knew he was in a lot of trouble, but he wasn't sure how much. He thought about all the money he'd been offered to help find the software when he'd told someone outside the company that it had been pirated. It hadn't seemed like that big a deal; the shit didn't even work yet. And then someone had started killing people.

The door banged open, and Melody walked in. "Very well, gentlemen, I'm here. I've reviewed what you have so far and all I can say is ..." she turned to LaRoquet. "You're in a boatload of trouble and, my professional opinion, you're only going to get out by a full confession. Name names, places, and dates." She pushed a paper at him. "Read, sign. I'll wait."

LaRoquet signed, then started talking.

The upshot was; he had realized that Bean had software that was in development. He hadn't realized that it was early stages yet, so he'd called a friend of his from a different company and offered him the information on who had it for 350k. That man, James Banger, had hired a mercenary group to recover the information, only telling them that Mark Bean had it. Only Mark hadn't had it, hadn't known anything about it at all. They killed him and investigated his computer on the fly. The only thing they'd understood about WOW was that Mark was talking to Troy and Clark. So they'd gone to both of them to 'encourage' them to give it up. Neither of them had known anything about it either. But the murder of Troy Smith, a Marine, had attracted unwanted attention from NCIS and the FBI.

The FBI came in when RenCo realized that the downloaded program hadn't downloaded to the computer, as Mark had downloaded it to a USB to isolate it from his hard drive. John had simply put his stuff on the USB and grabbed it. Mark had sent an email to his supervisor, unaware that he was out for the rest of the day. He'd then gone home to confront his brother. It wasn't until he was dead that it all got sorted out and reported.

Then someone called John to tell him that his brother was dead and his apartment trashed. He'd run over to check to see what had been stolen, and realized that something bad was going on when the inventory had indicated nothing was gone. He'd had the USB in his pocket, so he'd checked to see what he'd actually down-loaded, as that was the only thing he could think of that might be what the intruders were looking for. At first he'd thought RenCo had sent someone, then realized that they wouldn't kill Mark. They'd just make his life miserable.

He'd gone back to his own apartment, checked it out, and realized what he had and he'd panicked. It hadn't helped that someone shot at him as he scurried down the alleyway behind his apartment, headed for Clark Howard's place. He'd really panicked when he got a text from another friend that both Clark and Troy had been murdered. He'd hidden out at Georgetown until he could figure out what to do.

Since the news had been full of the triple murder and the fact that NCIS was involved, he'd decided to call them.

After everything was sorted, the mercs got charged with murder, espionage, and trafficking in stolen goods. James Banger was charged with the same, as was LaRoquet. John Bean got off as he hadn't intentionally done anything wrong, nor had he hurt anyone. Gibbs' opinion was that losing his brother and friends was punishment enough.

Fornell took the whole lot off their hands to be tried in civilian court as none of them were military. LaRoquet's plea deal didn't go through, as he'd lied several times about how much information he'd passed on.

Just before they left, Sacks approached Tony. "Okay, I get it now. You're so intense that you come off as ... dangerous. I don't react well to perceived threats, so I looked for something, anything to explain my unease. I jumped to the wrong conclusions and right off a cliff. No apologies, just a promise to get my head out of my ass and do better."

Tony grinned, all teeth, without a hint of amusement in his eyes. "I am dangerous, just not in the way you thought. Apology accepted." He glowered, "Do better, Sailor."

Fornell called Sacks to his side, and they both disappeared into the elevator, but not before Fornell smacked Sacks in the back of the head and winked at Gibbs.

DH - Department Head.
TO - Training Officer
UOD - Uniform Of the Day
NWU - Navy Working Uniform (also called blues, A-TACs, and BDUs)
Bug Company - A squad, platoon or Company of men incapable of performing any task correctly, regardless of the rewards or consequences.

I know someone's gonna ask so: a whistle stop is so named because, in the day of rail transport there were two kinds of train, express and local. The express was exactly that, it went fast and only stopped at hubs such as St. Louis, Chicago, or NYC, to off-load passengers and cargo. The local stopped at every podunk town on the line, blowing its whistle two minutes out to give everyone time to get organized and ready to load. Thus whistle and stop became whistle stop.

Bless their hearts is the Southern way of damning with faint praise. In other words it means they should fuck off and die because they're too stupid to breathe.

Toppers has been around for years under one name or another. The general idea is that one person tells a story, then the next person tries to tell a better one, called topping a tale, all without lying. (or getting caught out.)