Vertigo (Book Three of The Avengers Reports)

Chapter Three (Picture of Director Vance)

NCIS Navy Yard

Washington DC, Capitol of the United States of America

There were four very alert sentries on top of the NCIS building in the Navy Yard.

After Natasha was done, there were four very unconscious sentries sprawled in the closet within two minutes.

Thor landed on the building a few seconds later, looking around. “You took care of them?” he guessed.

Natasha nodded, wringing out her neck and wincing as she felt a rush of pain run down her back. She grimaced, and Thor looked at her worriedly. “Are you – ?” he asked in concern.

Natasha waved him off. “I’m fine,” she assured him. “Just a little pain from being . . . active after lying in a bed for days.”

Thor grinned as the cape and the gauntlets of his armor disappeared. “Where to?”

Natasha pointed downwards. “We go down to the basement where no one has access to.”

“Except for you?”

Natasha nodded. “I can see how Loki isn’t related to you. He’s not as smart as you are.”

Thor just shook his head as he followed Natasha to the elevator. “You are definitely back, Lady Romanoff,” he commented.

“Good,” she said happily. “It’s good being back.”

 ***

Director Leon Vance hung up the phone in his office and stared at the photo he had on his desk.

It was a very unique photograph. It wasn’t often that he could convince the head NCIS Major Case Response Team to dress up for a photo, especially when it was at SecNav’s ball.

Gibbs, of course, was standing in the middle. He had that right. At his left side, there was NCIS Special Agent Tony DiNozzo. For once in his lifetime, the man looked serious. With a smile, Vance recalled that was one of the reasons why he had kept the photo. Next by DiNozzo, NCIS Special Agent Timothy McGee rounded out the left side of Gibbs. The computer geek still looked like a geek, but he also looked dignified like he was.

On the far right of Gibbs was the most recent hire onto the response team, former Israeli Mossad Officer, now American citizen and NCIS Special Agent Ziva David. The woman was just as serious as her father was, and was just as serious with her training and a gun. And a knife, Vance remembered from what his predecessor Jenny Shepard had told him about when Ziva was first hired as a liaison.

Rounding out the team on Ziva’s left and Gibbs’s right was the longest standing agent on Gibbs’s team: NCIS Special Agent Natasha Romanoff.

She’s definitely special, Vance thought as he continued looking at her. The girl was a natural at what she did. She worked well under cover with whomever Gibbs decided she would go with, either himself or DiNozzo. She was calm under pressure, she was excellent with her guns, and her martial art skills were even better than Ziva’s. There was no time that Vance had ever seen her miss a beat during her times at NCIS.

Except for the past month, starting with the Navy SEALs case of Commander Rosalie Jenkins and Lieutenant Mariana Sears and ending with her being dropped off at a hospital in a coma.

Vance frowned. The entire team of the MCRT had been reporting to him that something was wrong with Natasha. Reports of her being unfocused, freaking out over whenever DiNozzo or McGee tried to interact with her, or just worries in general. Overall, they had thought she was going insane.