Chapter 12
Gibbs was quiet until the plane landed. “You ready for this, Tim?” he asked.
“Honestly, no. But I guess I’ve come this far…” Sighing, Tim unbuckled his seat belt, reaching for his overnight bag.
Gibbs squeezed his shoulder. “If I can, I’ll get you and Ziva together, Tim. You’ll be able to look her in the eye. Tell her everything…you wish you could.” Gibbs paused a long moment, trying to gather the courage to continue.
“My wife and daughter died and the one thing about this place was the hope that I could…” Gibbs trailed off. “But she’s dead,” he finished, not specifying which “she” he meant.
“I know, Tim. I understand. I’ll make it happen for you.”
“Don’t make promises, Mr. Gibbs. You can’t know. Not yet…” He heard the shadows of pain in the other man’s voice. Losing a sister was painful, something that was with him for his entire life. But to lose a wife and a daughter…that was haunting. “I’m sorry, about your wife and daughter. Has it…has it been a long time?”
This was something Gibbs never talked about, but in this place, in an airport in a New Orleans that didn’t seem touched by Katrina, he nodded jerkily. “Eighteen years. They were…murdered.” The word was still ugly on his lips, choking him. He looked away and swallowed, aware that this Tim might look like the one from his world, even though he was a very different man.
“I’m…sorry. I can’t even imagine.” Tim stopped there, knowing if the man was anything like him, there wouldn’t be anything he could say.
“Yeah, you can,” Gibbs said heavily. Sister, wife, child, a little boy’s sudden loss, it was all agonizing. “You went through it too, McGee.”
“So much violence, tearing apart lives, families. And I live my life behind a computer so that I can try to protect myself against that violence. Don’t think I could live through it again.”
It all made a lot of sense to Gibbs, why this Tim was a desk jockey. He stayed quiet as they got the rental car organized, and after he’d consulted his map and started the drive, he turned his gaze to Tim briefly. “Don’t hide yourself away, Tim. Doesn’t benefit anyone, most of all yourself.”
“I don’t hide, not really. But I don’t stick my neck out, that’s for sure. Except for today, except for now. And I have no idea why the sudden change.” He shrugged.
“You know there is something going on,” Gibbs said simply. “You ever hear of Katrina? A hurricane?”
“Yeah, of course. Hurricane destroyed most of New Orleans and this area. Government stepped in. Cleaned and restored the city and surrounding areas. Took care of the people.”
“So some things are the same and others… aren’t…” Gibbs said softly. “We had Katrina hit here too, but probably worse. But also in the fifties we fought a war in Korea and then in the sixties we fought in Vietnam, Southeast Asia. Then in the early nineties, we had a brief war in the Middle East, Iraq.”
“You had a lot of wars where you come from. How have you survived?” Their world was run much differently, everything regulated and accounted for. There were no more wars.
“In Korea, it was a United Nations action. The USA was involved but not solely. North Korea invaded South Korea. The war lasted about three years. Then a few years after that, we became involved in a conflict in Vietnam. We fought there for over fifteen years.” Gibbs sighed heavily. “Then about fifteen years ago, we fought a very short war in Iraq. I fought in that one.”
“I meant, how has your society survived that many wars? The casualties must have been astronomical.” Tim was astonished at the life Gibbs was describing.
“All wars on foreign soil, Tim. We lost fifty-eight thousand men in Vietnam, about three hundred in Iraq, thirty-six thousand men in Korea. And then there was 9/11. You said you didn’t have it, which makes sense.” Gibbs sighed, tightening his hands on the wheel. When they pulled up to a light, he spoke again, his voice and emotions heavy. This was something he had a lot of trouble talking about.
“On September eleventh, 2001, terrorists hijacked four American airliners. United and American Airlines. Two were flown into the World Trade Center towers, one into the Pentagon. The fourth was downed by passengers, but it was suspected it was heading to take out the Capitol building or White House.”
He paused a long moment. “The towers were badly damaged from the heat and fire. And Tim, about ninety minutes after the first impact, they collapsed. Most of the people had been evacuated, but there were still three thousand people lost that day. Many firemen and police responders trying to evacuate the building. Many civilians.”
Though Tim may have disagree with the state of the government, he was almost thankful the loss of life in this world was minimal in comparison. Almost. “What happened, after the attack on the Twin Towers?”
“We attacked back, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. We’re still fighting there, though the president has started withdrawing troops. We couldn’t let that just go.”
“I understand that.” But Tim still shook his head at the loss of life.
“Must be a foreign concept for you,” Gibbs remarked quietly. “Just like 9/11 is so surreal to many of us even now. One of the guys on my team"DiNozzo"he’s a movie buff. Said that day reminded him of a movie. Guess he was killed in an anthrax attack here. Doesn’t sound like you guys avoided all sorts of violence.”
“No, we haven’t. But our violence lies with espionage and subversive attacks rather than all out war. There will always exist those who try to fight the system.” Tim had heard the rhetoric so many times, he could quote it verbatim.
Gibbs shrugged, wondering, wanting to know more of this society. It was starting to sound a little foreign to him, and was raising some alarm bells, but he would wait and see. He nodded, not answering, letting them lapse into silence.
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