Rule 39: There Is No Such Thing As Coincidence (Tony DiNozzo Love Story)

Rule Seven

Gibbs's POV

"Abby, I want you take those shoes apart again. Check the tongue and analyze everything. Call me when you find something," I say as I walk in and out of the lab.

"So what now, Boss?" Tony asks. I look around the bullpen to see my team waiting for instruction.

"McGee, pull up the shots from the compound."

He clicks a few keys and the pictures appear on the screen by his desk.

"Pull up the shots of every freight and cargo ship that has traveled through the same time frame as our missing freight."

Clicking through the pictures, I see a familiarity.

"There, that one. Click on that one and make it bigger."

He does and we can see the shot of a distant image of a cargo door being closed and a woman being escorted along by four men.

"Can you get closer?" I ask.

"Uh, yeah." He types away at his computer and soon the image is enlarged and we can see the clear face of our suspect and the thieves.

"Can you trace those freights or that ship?"

"Already on it. It looks like it's making its way to Cuba and will be there within the next twelve hours," he says.

"McGee, I want our ghost transported to a locked down cell here on the Navy Yard. I want her stuck and I don't want her to be able to move more than five feet in any direction. Tony, get a call out that we're going to need an immediate flight to Cuba. Ziva, check on Abby and see if she has anything from the lab," I say as I hurry down the hall and make my way up to Jenny's office.

"Gibbs, she's—,"

"Hello Jethro, I was just coming to see you," Jenny says as she puts her phone down.

"I'm going to Cuba and I'm bringing this thing down."

"Jethro, you can't. This is a job for others, our jurisdiction stops here."

"How can it stop here? We went to Belize for Christ's sake. You're telling me I can't get to Cuba and nail this guy because it's not in our jurisdiction," I say.

"I know you want to get this guy and I would like nothing more than to get them myself, but there's nothing we can do. Officials in the area are already in route."

"This girl we have in interrogation, she know these guys. She knows their plan. She told me that once they hit the dock there's a fifty-seven minute window where we can get them. If those men get to that boat before it even docks, we lose them. We get the shipment, but we don't get them. Now she's the best thing we got and I know that if we follow along her plan, everyone will be happy. We can get this girl to walk away without worrying about living another day. She knows the shipment. She knows that with the kind of money that thing is carrying, that this guy will be there to pick it up. They may be the real person behind the murder of our Captain and Petty Officer," I say and she stares at me.

"I'll make a call. Get your team and move her to a secure cell lock up. I hope you're right on this or else it's your badge." She moves to the phone on her desk and dials. I leave the office as she begins to talk and make my way back to my desk.

"I got our ghost in immediate and complete security lock up. She's not moving until we get back," McGee says as I open my desk drawer and pull out my gun.

"Plane's set to ship out, they're ready for us to make our way over," Tony states.

"Gibbs!" Abby and Ziva come running up to me.

"She was right. I tore apart the shoes and I don't know how she did it. But she hid the manifest and shipment record in her shoes within the liner. All shipments are going to Cuba as it says, but what it doesn't say is which shipments are going. So I did some quick computer work and analyzed the video from McGee's computer. The one with the freight and did some measurements." She clicks a button on McGee's computer and everything pops up on the screen again.

"But look if you see the shipment here and then you take a look at the picture seen of the shipment just a few hours after our ghost's arrest, leaving the port you can see that the freight is different. Now I started thinking, as far as we know the shipment was taken off and moved to the compound with our ghost. But she said she never saw where they took them, but after going G.I. Jane on everyone she found the shipment and cracked it open. From what Tony told me from the interrogation she said that there was over five billion dollars of uncut emerald rocks in there. And being such an expert in hard money, no pun intended, I did the math and figured that the shipment had to weigh at least twenty-three and a half thousand pounds. Now if you look at this, you can see the weight distribution of these freights. Before you can see that the weight is just about my guess, based on the indentions and the water line. Now if you look at this picture just after the arrest, you can see that—,"

"They're the same," I interrupt.

"Exactly, then I started to think. Why would they unload the shipment then load it back on after only a few hours. So I went to check the photo from the shipment from Morocco, the shipment weight is heavier than it is in Belize. So I checked the port in Venezuela." The photos all lined up across the screen.

"The weight is the same as Morocco when it comes in, on the way out—,"

"Its lighter, someone lifted those freights off and replaced them with fakes."

"Exactly."

"Gibbs if she says they unpacked the freight along with her to the compound, either she's lying and she's a part of this; or they unpacked some different," Tony says.

"You got anything else Abbs?"

"Yeah, the shipment order. It's made out to the name of—,"

"One of our guys, these two?" I ask as I point to the images of Jean and Vega.

"No, it's to a discharged Marine, he's got a notable record of doing Force Reconnaissance. He was honorably discharged five and a half years ago, and has many awards and dec's along with a good standing reputation for his work and reputation with the Navy."

"What's his name?"

"First Sergeant Joe Claxton, his last known address was in Cape Canaveral, but that was four years ago. After that he disappeared off the map."

"Until now," I say.

The phone rings on McGee's desk and he answers. He looks up at me and scans the team as the phone slowly moves down to the hook.

"It looks like our ghost just slipped out of secure and intensive lock up. There's no sign of her anywhere on the Navy Yard."

"Rule seven. Tony leave a message with the Director, we're leaving right now. Pack up, we're on that plane and up in twenty."

"The plane is forty minutes away, including a twenty minute check," McGee says as he rushes behind me.

"Best tighten the seat belt in the car," Tony says as the elevator door closes and we get to the garage.