Chapter Text
Yankee White: The Redux
Chapter one
United States Secret Service Agent Caitlin Todd boarded Air Force One at Andrews Airforce Base one hour and thirty minutes before the POTUS was due to arrive for his flight to Los Angeles. There was a lot to do before take-off. As a part of the POTUS’ Secret Service protection detail, it was one of Todd’s duties to verify that all of the staff and military personnel scheduled to make today’s flight were present and their IDs verified.
Since the White House press pool was travelling with them on this flight too, she also needed to vet the journalists, most of whom she had a nodding acquaintance with from her previous flights aboard Air Force One. Still, sometimes there was the odd substitution of a press hound she didn’t know personally, who needed to be scrutinized thoroughly.
At the 30-minute mark prior to the POTUS’ arrival, she noted that the reserve Football Carrier still hadn’t shown up yet. The stand-in was cutting things pretty fine, especially since Major Tim Kerry – the rostered Ball Carrier of the Presidential nuclear launch codes - had notified the Secret Service hours ago that he wasn’t fit for duty today. When he also called Kate to let her know he had stomach flu, she’d been sympathetic.
However, when Tim suggested that in the interests of not exposing anyone else, particularly the President, she should probably call in sick too, she’d felt less sympathy and become more than a touch irritated. She countered his reasoning that she was infectious by arguing that Tim could just as easily have contracted food poisoning rather than a stomach bug because she felt fine. Now as the countdown began for Trailblazer’s (POTUS’) arrival she was aware of a faint queasiness in her tummy, but she refused to consider that Tim might be right. Agent Todd put it down to the power of suggestion.
She’d fought tooth and nail to get onto the POTUS’ protection detail – it was the crème de la crème of Secret Service protection duties. Most Secret Service agents could only dream of having her job, so there was no way on earth she was going to call in sick and let some testosterone-laden male Secret Service agent take her prized spot, even for one day. Plus, if she called in sick there’d be the usual jokes about it being that time of the month by some of her chauvinist colleagues or else that she was a delicate little flower, not tough enough to cut it in the big leagues.
Well, screw that! No way would she give them the satisfaction and surrender her place on the flight, she was fine. No, she was better than fine!
Suddenly, as a wave of nausea hit her, she pushed it down resolutely, telling herself it was psychosomatic. Tim had eaten something that disagreed with him, most likely the crab linguine. Yesterday, they’d spent most of the day together, along with one of Kate’s colleagues, Peta Barnes who worked on FLOTUS’s (codename Tempo) protection detail. They’d had late lunch before going to a baseball game and then went to dinner. She sent off a quick email via her Blackberry, asking if Peta was feeling unwell and ignored her queasiness. She was fine!
Kate had known Tim for almost six months, ever since he’d been assigned as a ball carrier and the pair had become good friends. Of course, when they met there’d had been a mutual attraction between them. Fraternization regulations (both of them being on the President’s protection detail) meant they couldn’t have a romantic relationship although, they’d been tempted once or twice.
One night, in particular, Tim dropped her home after going to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl together, Kate’s perfunctory peck goodnight on Tim’s cheek had momentarily become a little bit more than platonic. His aftershave, mingled with his clean male smell had ended up making her a little crazy and more than a bit aroused and she found herself locking lips even if it hadn’t gone as far as open-mouthed kissing, thankfully. It may have proved too difficult to stop things, had it gone further.
She really liked Tim, but Kate’s job was important to her; she’s sworn an oath to protect her President and she took that seriously. She didn’t want to be sneaking around trying to date him (which wasn’t permitted), going to out of the way places and worrying that they might be caught out. Plus, as a Major in the USMC, Tim had had a long and distinguished career and she wouldn’t want to compromise his ethics or destroy his military career, which it would have done.
As hard as it was to resist the lure of sex, they were professionals. They’d agreed that while they were colleagues who had each sworn an oath which they took deadly seriously, it meant they were also bound to abide by the fraternization regs. Therefore, they would remain friends, nothing more.
Sometimes they set each other up on dates with their friends, which were often unmitigated disasters and sometimes worked out well enough, although neither was in a serious long-term relationship. Both of them had hinted that if they were still single and no longer working together, they could perhaps revisit the possibility of a relationship, but that was not a given – there were too many variables. Meanwhile, they both had their own jobs to do but they maintained a close friendship.
As she pushed aside her personal thoughts about Tim, she realised that his replacement had arrived, finally. After verifying Commander Ray Trapp’s identity, she hurried away to check up on the last of the journalists who was yet to show up. Once the POTUS arrived, they would need to be underway asap, Air Force One was far too much of a target to be sitting on the tarmac so Trailblazer would board right before take-off. Any press hound who wasn’t on board would miss the flight.
The President boarded the plane twenty-two minutes later, right on schedule and in a jovial mood. He expressed how much he was looking forward to lunch of baby back ribs and coleslaw, shipped in from his favourite restaurant in San Antonio, acting like an excited kid having junk food. Upon boarding, he’d immediately noted that he’d thought Major Kerry was rostered on today and Kate explained he had called in sick. The Commander-in-Chief stopped momentarily on his way to his stateroom to chat with the aide acting as the replacement football carrier, who was now responsible for the briefcase housing the nuclear codes. He invited the commander to have lunch with him.
Kate would never forget the look on the commander’s face when on his very first time in the role, he received the luncheon invitation to eat with his Commander-in-Chief. She’d even quipped that he was destined for greatness getting to eat with the POTUS on his first day. Commander Trapp had looked so immensely proud that if Kate didn’t have to pinch herself to be working in such close proximity to the President herself, she might have been a bit patronising and teased Trapp over looking as if he might burst with sheer unadulterated pride.
As it was, she felt an indulgent feeling of sympatico with the newbie. The first time personally meeting the President of the United States was unforgettable, but it never ever got old. At least it never did for Kate, even if Agent Todd was an old hand and pretended to be a jaded professional.
She would also never forget the look on Commander Ray Trapp’s face when he returned after eating lunch with POTUS, when he keeled over and died at her feet. It would no doubt haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.
~oo0oo~
When Kate finally arrived back at her apartment in the early hours of the morning, she was still feeling queasy thanks to the stomach flu. Tim had been right. Hopefully, she hadn’t spread it to the rest of the detail or worse, given it to the President. However, she was also feeling frustrated and angry. There had been a monumental pissing competition between the three agencies over jurisdiction regarding who would investigate Commander Trapp’s tragic death.
Initially, Kate felt that the Secret Service should take point on the investigation, but she’d had no choice but to cede the top spot to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Working with the trio from NCIS, she came to appreciate just how little she really knew about conducting a murder investigation. Particularly one as significant as Ray Trapp who was presiding over the briefcase containing the Presidential nuclear codes at the time he died.
Sure, she'd taken the 12-week course at FLETC down in Glynco, Georgia roughly nine years ago when she first started with the Secret Service, but nine years was a long time ago now and even back then, Caitlin Todd had been determined to one day become part of the President’s protection detail. She hadn’t felt that she needed any of the data about investigations. It wasn’t her intention to go into the Treasury (the only investigatory section of the USSS) because she’d always wanted to be in the protective service section. Now it was apparent that she’d never bothered processing what she’d learnt on the Criminal Investigators Training Program (CITP).
Back then, she had far bigger fish to fry. Kate was determined to prove that women were just as capable as men. While she wasn’t able to become a Navy SEAL or Army Ranger because Special Operations didn’t permit female recruits to serve in their elite special op teams, she could become a Secret Service agent. Now she was guarding the Commander-in-Chief and she happened to think it was a pretty huge deal. The fact was that only a tiny percentage of Secret Service agents would reach the dizzying heights that she had. It took a whole lot of focus, dedication, and skill to gain a spot on the presidential detail and she’d achieved it. She was their golden girl and determined to revel in her achievements!
So, when the FBI and later on, the NCIS crowd showed up, clamouring to take over, she’d been understandably territorial, even if she’d belatedly begun to realise that the USSS didn’t have the specialised medical or forensic expertise required to investigate properly. That was how she was strong-armed into agreeing to a joint investigation between NCIS who’d outmanoeuvred the FBI (by tricking them into getting off the plane) and the Secret Service. The Secret Service participation was based solely upon the fact that Commander Trapp’s body was situated on the President’s plane. Plus, as she asserted, he’d been guarding the nuclear codes at the time of his death, clearly making it their bailiwick.
When Gibbs told her grudgingly that she could be part of his team, Kate was outraged, immediately challenging him. She was part of the elite presidential protective detail, Gibbs and his lackey were Navy cops, pretending to be medical examiners’ assistants. Why should she play second-fiddle to a couple of glorified cops? When he asked about her crime scene experience, she’d deflected, telling him she was a Secret Service agent. When he’d called her on it, she’d had to back down, leaving him to take point on the investigation which had really rankled.
It was not how she preferred to play things. Todd preferred to be the one on top, both professionally and in relationships. Kate had always wanted to be in charge, even as a child and had supreme confidence in her abilities.
The only problem was that Gibbs also wanted to be the top dog. He was quick to slap her down when she’d demonstrated her unfamiliarity regarding investigative matters. He’d called her out for her challenging Ducky’s time of death of Ray Trapp, her failure to keep three potential suspects separated before they were interviewed and her anger when Gibbs wanted independent medical confirmation that Tim was sick, rather than taking her word for it. By the time he finished cataloguing her lack of knowledge, culminating with her not knowing why both photographs and crime scene sketches were needed or the blueprints of the plane, Kate felt like she’d not done herself or her agency any favours in demonstrating Secret Service competence.
She’d rather effectively confirmed that her taking point on the investigation as she’d initially demanded, would have been an unmitigated disaster. Although Gibbs refrained from saying ‘I told you so,’ he was undoubtedly thinking it and knowing he was feeling vindicated had pissed her off, even if he’d saved her ass by insisting he took point. If she had prevailed and been in charge of the investigation, her lack of competence would have screwed up the investigation and the Secret Service would have borne the blame when the inevitable inquiries began looking for a scapegoat.
It also infuriated her that aside from Gibbs, the other NCIS agent never made any attempt to rub her nose in it either even if she was sure he was probably laughing his ass off the secret service chick. It wasn’t until now that she was aware of just how little she had retained from her FLETC investigative training. Ducky was terribly understanding in fact – much more gracious than she would have been in his shoes at his expertise being questioned. Especially after she’d made an even bigger dumbass of herself asking him about whether he was going to perform the autopsy in situ, when he was merely inserting what she learnt was a liver probe to determine the time of death. How embarrassing was that?
Agent DiNozzo had also explained very politely about the difference between a photograph and a crime scene sketch even when she rudely told him he was pathetic when he picked up a magazine with the bikini model on the cover. Even then, he remained polite and professional using it as a teaching aid to succinctly illustrate his point in a few sentences. In hindsight, she conceded that the magazine wasn’t his. She saw him pick it up off the top of the pile on the table and she knew it had been there before NCIS boarded the plane. One of the ball carriers had left it there, it may even have been Tim’s, so she could hardly blame DiNozzo that it was lying around, she supposed crossly.
Yes, he’d speculated about the model’s bust size but was that objectifying her? Kate wanted to say yes, yes it was, but she didn’t react the same way when he wondered about the model’s height. If it had been a female agent explaining to her instead and she’d shown Kate a picture of a ripped male model in a pair of speedos and been trying to guess his height and penis dimensions, would she take offence? Would she complain or feel outrage that it was a demeaning sexual objectification of males? No, probably not – she possibly would have even joined in a bit of banter about its size.
So, her rational, fair-minded side told her it was a bit hypocritical for her to judge Tony based upon her asking a rookie question and his responding with a visual aid that was lying around on the president’ plane. Except, she whined that he’d disrespected her by calling her a chick! Perhaps it was why she was so quick to label him as a sexist pig.
Okay and maybe, it was also because it also hurt her pride that the three men knew more than she did. Having three older brothers who always treated her as clueless and needing to be looked after sucked. It made her feel like the odd one out or dumb and she resented it majorly. Although, as much as it pained her to admit it (given how Gibbs and his posse had usurped control) working with the three NCIS agents made her realise as they collected physical evidence and investigated the commander’s death that they were highly competent professionals.
Well, except that Agent DiNozzo had sat in the President’s chair and Gibbs had used the president’s bathroom, which she felt was highly disrespectful of them both. At least Dr Mallard behaved with suitable decorum, and he wasn’t even American. But aside from those transgressions, they’d conducted their investigation with a suitable degree of gravitas, including the interviews of everyone who had left on board after the President transferred to the backup plane.
Hell, they’d been such damned professionals that they’d even made her vomit into an evidence bag and bagged and tagged it for forensic testing, even when she’d insisted it wasn’t necessary. They’d also made sure she received prompt medical attention, even if it were creepy to have a medical examiner…um examine her because she was alive, and he cut up dead people. Still, the three men had been concerned about her, worried that she’d been poisoned like the commander.
Kate felt embarrassed as she recalled unceremoniously tossing her cookies into an evidence bag after the queasiness she’d been feeling had spiked as Gibbs showed her how to ‘bag n tag’ every bit of food left uneaten from the President’s lunch with Commander Trapp. Even as she felt warmed by their solicitousness over her health, it occurred to her that had she and Tim had been breaking the fraternization regs, she would have well and truly outed them both after losing her lunch in such a dramatic fashion.
Good Lord, they would have been in so much trouble because she wouldn’t have thought it through. She’d been very insistent in the face of their concern (wanting to have the pilot make an emergency landing) that it was just a simple case of stomach flu. Once Ducky had given her an antiemetic injection to stop her nausea and she was feeling better, Gibbs had wasted no time in interrogating her. The NCIS agent demanded to know why she was so sure it wasn’t the same thing as Commander Trapp had died from, the implication being unless she had killed the commander. Realising that he wasn’t about to take her word for it, Kate felt she had no choice but to tell him that she’d spent most of the day with Tim and she’d caught it off him. Although she’d hastened to assure him that she thought it was just a case of food poisoning until she fell ill too.
Plus, she’d revealed more than she’d intended with her snide remarks to Gibbs about it being a waste of time, him getting independent confirmation that Tim was genuinely ill. She realised later her response could have been enough to tip Gibbs off, had they been doing the horizontal tango. Seeing his suspicions, Kate had been forced to explain that when he’d called her this morning to tell her he was ill and that she might also be infectious, which she’d disputed. She stopped in to bring him some ginger ale and crackers to find him worshipping the porcelain god and looking like death warmed over. She conceded albeit reluctantly, that Tim had been right – she was probably infectious and should have called in sick.
Of course, initially, Gibbs had been sceptical, assuming that they were breaking the fraternization regs, but Kate was able to swear that they were just work-friends. That they did recreational stuff with others on the protection detail or sometimes just the two of them since they shared similar tastes and often had congruent work hours. Where else were you supposed to find people who had a work schedule as crazy as hers if not her workmates? If necessary (and she knew it would probably come down to it), she was happy to take a polygraph to prove that they were good friends, nothing more.
Gibbs' stony face made her realise just how serious it would have been if they had been sleeping together, especially for Tim. As a USMC officer, he could have earned brig time or been given a BC discharge and sure, she would have been fired in disgrace, but it wouldn’t have been half the shitstorm as it would have been for him. Thank god they hadn’t let their hormones rule their heads.
Her parents would have been mortified and her mother would have broken her heart. Her father still thought she was a virgin for Pete’s sake!
~oo0oo~
As she slipped into the shower before heading to bed, Kate thought about the conversations she’d had with her boss, SAIC William Bauer. Both of which had left her fuming. He’d called her the first time when she was on board the presidential plane, on approach to Andrews Air Force Base, ordering her to relinquish the commander’s body to the FBI when they landed. She tried to tell him that she’d agreed to a joint jurisdiction between the Secret Service and NCIS, but he refused to listen. She’d pointed out that it was the purview of NCIS to investigate the death of US Marines and members of the navy, but Bauer was obdurate.
It was obvious that he’d made a deal with the FBI and despite her trying to change his mind, Bauer had given her a direct order to comply or be fired, which infuriated her. She could see NCIS was competent and professional. and they were invested in solving Ray Trapp’s death. Yes, they’d pulled a fast one with Special Agent Fornell, tricking him into getting him off the plane, but it was their jurisdiction when all was said and done. Obviously, they cared about the sailor. She doubted that the FBI agent cared about a random naval officer, more likely Agent Fornell thought it would earn his agency and himself kudos to investigate. Still… her hands were effectively tied. As she’d told Special Agent Gibbs, she wasn’t going to disobey a direct order from her boss. Somewhat surprisingly, he hadn’t seemed all that upset about it…she’d expected a Mount Vesuvius blow.
She should have smelled a big stinky rat when Jethro turned over the body to a smug Fornell and his entourage with just a token fight, considering how hard he’d fought with her, playing dirty to maintain control of the investigation into the commander’s death. Hell, Gibbs, DiNozzo and Dr Mallard had flown from DC to Wichita on commercial flights after Ducky called in favours with the state coroner to stop anyone else taking custody of the body.
It should have occurred to her that it was highly unlikely they’d just give up like that. In her defence, Fornell was so incredibly obnoxious when they deplaned at Andrews, taunting the NCIS agents, calling them bush league, retread cops, and military police, obviously trying to rile them up. It certainly wasn’t professional or conduct befitting a law enforcement professional towards fellow federal agents.
It seemed patently clear that the FBI agent didn't believe in respect for their fellow LEOs. However, his jackass attitude had played right into Gibbs’ plan to pull a switch. Even if NCIS were the little fish swimming in the pond with the much bigger arrogant ones, they definitely got the last laugh over their bigger brethren.
Kate had felt extremely outraged earlier in the night when Agent DiNozzo referred to her as the Secret Service chick when telling Gibbs something about the pilot. She loathed being called a chick; found it demeaning. But unlike Fornell who deliberately intended to offend, DiNozzo thought she was down on the tarmac with the Wichita coroner getting release forms signed for Trapp’s body. When he realised that she’d heard him, at least he’d had the grace to look chagrined, even if he didn’t have the guts to apologise to her.
While she was still seething over the disrespect, she was beginning to rethink her indignation when she compared DiNozzo’s faux pas to Fornell’s extraordinarily unprofessional conduct. He’d been a real jerk and deserved to get his butt kicked.
Tim had always told her when she got on her high horse about ‘chick’ being sexist and demeaning, that he’d known women over the years who’d frequently referred to themselves as chicks. He pondered if they did it to reclaim the word. If so, he suggested that the strategy may have been successful to some extent since it was his opinion that especially guys in his cohort, tended not to see it as a pejorative term nor intended for it to be patronising.
Tim told her that for him personally, when he heard ‘chick’ he associated it with being a kick-ass individual, not a featherless baby bird. For him, it meant strength and resilience, although he did concede that most older guys used it, consciously or otherwise as a putdown.
He suggested that given the ambivalent nature of the word, she should simply speak up and inform people that she found it an offensive term, instead of immediately categorising someone as a sexist pig. He often called her on her views, pointing out that there were times when she wrongly attributed behaviours to gender biases when it was based on rank or other factors unrelated to her ovaries.
He also most annoyingly reminded her that on other occasions she was quite happy to accept reverse discrimination when it involved her not having to do unpleasant, inconvenient, or distasteful stuff. When she demanded an example, he immediately said, “Well putting out the rubbish during a downpour or shovelling snow after a snowstorm.”
She was irritated that she had to admit that she was perfectly happy for Tim to do it for her even though it went against the ideals of gender equality she so loudly championed. Gah, she’d hated it when he was right!
He also reminded her that yes, sexism existed but so too did racism and also blatant bias against people from minority subgroups including those of different cultural, religious, or sexual orientations. Often, white females along with white males, engaged in discriminatory behaviours towards those subgroups. If not by actively discriminating against them, then by default they still benefited from being in the privileged in-group, not so dissimilar to her so-called patriarchal structures which favoured males, even when they didn’t consciously set out to take advantage of them.
To some extent, Tim reckoned it was social behaviour, that there were always going to be in-groups who wanted to exclude groups on the periphery. Dominant groups instinctively tried to attain and control more resources which seemed to be human nature, according to Tim who had a major in sociology. The difficulty was when one group controlled all the resources and wealth.
Her youngest brother Creighton was less diplomatic. “Stop lumping all guys together as sexist, misogynist pigs, Baby Sis. We’re not and treating us as your enemy does you no favours, Patty Kate!”
As she stepped out of the shower, her lavender and lime blossom body wash helping her to relax after her day from Hell, she thought about being called back into the office when she was halfway home. Her Boss had been furious, and she’d turned her exhausted and still queasy self around and headed back into work to find it in a complete uproar. At first, she assumed the worst; that there had been an attempt on the POTUS but thankfully, it was far less serious.
Amidst the pandemonium, SAIC Baer accused her of disobeying a direct order and conspiring with NCIS to steal Commander Trapp’s body out from under the FBI and Secret Service’s noses. Kate was shocked as well as justly incensed since she’d done no such thing. It was hardly her fault if Gibbs et al had pulled a switcheroo and successfully smuggled a dead body off the plane, and in the process, made the FBI and the Secret Service look foolish.
The bottom line was that Fornell’s people should have checked the body bag before loading it for transport back to Quantico. They didn’t do that. Instead, they’d been too busy gloating about getting the upper hand and rubbing NCIS’ noses in it that they had won their who had the biggest dick competition. Well, they were looking mighty foolish now.
Kate had expressed her innocence vehemently and demanded to know how NCIS had managed to achieve such a feat. Surely the two bigger agencies had held all the cards, there was no way it should have happened. She had to admit upon learning about the switch, that they’d been sneaky, really very sneaky and prepared for the possibility of having to surrender Trapp’s body to the FBI. DiNozzo agreeing to pose as a dead body also seemed to suggest an extreme commitment to getting the job done. She wasn’t sure she could have gone there!
If Kate hadn’t been under suspicion for helping in the substitution, she might have even admired such dedication to the job, but right now she was still smarting from William Bauer’s accusation that she’d been involved. Yes, she’d tried to convince him to let NCIS run the investigation, but that didn’t mean she had conspired with Gibbs. She would never jeopardise her job by disobeying a direct order; she’d fought too hard to get onto the president’s protection detail to do something that foolish.
As she drifted off into a dreamless sleep, she wondered if Tim had known Commander Trapp. She should have called to let him know but if she knew the Secret Service, the rumour mill would be in full swing. Chances are he'd heard about it, hours ago.