Countdown to Looking Glass (NCIS/DC Universe crossover)

Do cities like Coast City, Central City and Star City exist.

Thanks for the the city answer Brky2020, and sad to see both Queen and Palmer missing.

They did not join the Legends of Tomorrow dis they.

That's an impossibilty in this universe, sadly.

Chapter 48

Saturday, June 2, 2007

Washington, D.C.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs’s home

1:07 p.m. EDT

Believe me when I say to you,
I hope the Russians love their children too
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology.
But what might save us, me and you,
Is if the Russians love their children too

“What a load of SHIT!”

Palmer kicked over a couple of boxes filled with his belongings in the living room; hs outburst drew everyone’s attention, startling some of the suits in the process. No one in the living room, though, disagreed with his sentiment.

“I can’t believe it,” Kate added, looking as if she wanted to kill Khalinin. “He’s lying about everything. All of it. Two hundred thousand dead back home. My family. How many others dead, and he’s saying it’s our fault?!?”

Heads turned throughout the room.

“Our fault? He’s the one at fault!” Kate yelled. “Put me back on the President’s detail. I’d have begged him to nuke Leningrad in response.”

Abby stood up and began walking towards Kate, then stopped when Kate put her palm out towards her. “I’m fine, Abby.”

“Kate, we’re here,” Abby said, standing three feet away from her friend. “You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t I?”, Kate growled.

“No, you don’t,” Gibbs said quietly. “That’s not you.”

“I’m with her,” Palmer interjected. “I wouldn’t mind dropping an atom bomb on his ass myself.”

Palmer saw the disapproving glance Gibbs thrust his way, and locked eyes with the older man for a moment. Gibbs saw pain, rage and bitterness in the young man’s eyes, even as Palmer finally looked away.

“You of all people, Gibbs, ought to understand,” Kate replied to Gibbs before Abby again caught her eye. The tall, black-garbed woman had an innocence about her that Kate found charming, and even attractive. Kate suddenly thought she may have just yelled at Abby’s inner child.

“I love you, Kate. We all love you. You’re family and if you hurt, we hurt too,” Abby said, trying to project an open, nonthreatening posture. “I just wanted to...you know, let you know that."

Realizing the forensic scientist meant no harm, Kate blushed in slight embarrassment. “I know,” she said more softly, but with an anger-fueled edge.

“Caitlin,” Ducky interjected, “We all know the truth.”

Kate had kept her emotions locked down tightly in the days since Indianapolis. Ducky, in particular, observed her behavior; he had recently earned a master’s degree in forensic psychology, thinking it would be an asset personally and for the team to have another profiler who could provide another perspective on persons involved with a given case.

After the explosion in Indianapolis, Gibbs told Ducky to watch Kate closely, and he had done so, as he was doing now. Kate saw the sympathy in his eyes, and it calmed her down enough that she didn’t protest when Abby wrapped her in a tight hug.

“This madman’s actions and words are meant to provoke and antagonize,” Ducky continued. “He knows we will respond to him, but not as recklessly as he hopes. His day is coming.”

“Better now than later,” Palmer said. “I’d like to drop a nuke right on his—”

“We do that, they do it to us,” Tony said. “That’s what that guy wants, Palmer. We’re not going to give him that.”

“But the Allies will respond, eventually,” Ziva said. “We were briefed on Khalinin during my days in Mossad. He thinks of himself as the successor to Stalin, to finish what Stalin began after World War II.”

“Bastard is what I’d call the man,” Franks said. “You ask me, we should’ve killed him back in ’97.”

“What happened back in ’97?”, McGee asked.

“Remember when Bob Dole resigned after he drank that coffee spiked with anthrax, and we blamed the Westboro cult?”, Franks replied. “That was a front. CIA traced it back to Khalinin. We knew he did it, but we couldn’t prove it without any doubt. The people around Colin Powell convinced him to back down, to keep from starting a war.”

“How come we never heard that before?”, Palmer said.

“Lot of things we’ve all never heard before, Palmer,” Gibbs answered.

Abby sat in front of the TV and began changing the channels while the rest of the group debated government secrecy. She found only news on all but a few channels.

The Disney Channel was showing a Mickey Mouse marathon, while the Cartoon Network showed a similar marathon for Bugs Bunny and other Looney Tunes characters. MTV showed a music video of a song hastily recorded two weeks before by John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen and Bono. EWTN showed the Pope holding a Mass from the Vatican (with glimpses of armed guards in the vicinity), while TBN aired a Billy Graham crusade from what looked like 1977.

She went through the dial, and stopped at WUSA, the Washington CBS affiliate, which was carrying network news coverage.

“--again, the President’s response to the Soviet leader is imminent. CBS will carry that live. In other news, briefly, Finland announced that it has closed its air space to both Soviet-led and Western military forces, claiming neutrality; France and Belgium have opened their borders to refugees fleeing from West Germany and Austria; U.S. Navy ships have begun evacuating all civilian and non-essential personnel from the Panama Canal Zone Territory—"

“Cassidy’s flying up through Mexico into San Antonio,” Gibbs said.

“—North Korea announced on state-run media that it would support the Soviet Union and threatened Western forces in the region. Sources tell CBS News the South Korean city of Seoul has begun evacuating residents.

Anti-war protests have descended into violence in several major U.S. cities, including here in New York, along with Chicago, Boston, Miami, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In Manhattan alone, at least 13 protestors and counter-protestors have been arrested within the last hour.

And in Israel—excuse me, we’re being told the President is about to speak. This is CBS News, I’m Katie Couric, with me is former U.S. Secretary of State and U.S. Army General Alexander Haig, along with my colleague, Russ Mitchell. We will discuss the President’s response after his speech. It’s 1:19 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Here now is President Boehner.”



My fellow Americans,

We have just heard from the leader of the Soviet Union. He has spoken and claims to speak the truth. I assure you, Marshal Khalinin lies. He lies about Indianapolis, he lies about the attacks in our own country, and he lies about the attacks in Europe, Canada, Korea, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Africa, South America, Mexico, and in his own and his allies’ borders.

The Soviets are behind it all and he is their puppet master.

We want peace, yes. But we do not want peace at any cost, at the cost of our freedom. We will not bow now, nor ever, to the Soviet Union’s demands that will end with the Communist boot imprinted on the faces of every free man, woman and child now and forever.

Marshal Khalinin talks about the ‘noble’ Soviet bear, standing side by side with the ‘warmongering’ American Eagle.

Make no mistake, Marshal Khalinin. YOU are the warmonger.

But you will not be allowed to rampage through the globe unimpeded.

We, the free people of the world, will stand against you, will fight you, and we will prevail. You will not destroy us. The convictions that guide us are greater than your dogma. The Creator who empowers us is greater than the gods of your own making. The fight for freedom, liberty and justice will prevail. You have sowed the seeds of your own demise, Marshal Khalinin.

Today, the first Selective Service lottery since the Vietnam War will determine who among our nation’s young men and women will be the first to be drafted into military service. Three hundred and sixty-five balls, one for each day of the year, will be drawn. Those whose birthdays are on the date on the first ball drawn will be the first to be drafted. The lottery will continue, from the second ball drawn thru the 365th, and last, ball. The exceptions and loopholes that plagued our military during the Vietnam War do not exist this time around: all who are eligible, poor, rich, middle-class; white, black, Hispanic, and other races; those from all 50 states and America’s territories; all will serve in one way or another if needed, whether it is on the front lines or in support positions.

Congress is in session right now, discussing how America should prepare for all possible scenarios. It is ready, should the time come, to vote on a declaration of war. No one in this government wants war. No one in our military wants war. We want peace, as surely as the American people want peace.

The peace we want, though, is not the peace that Marshal Khalinin offers. His ‘peace’ is the classic picture of a boot print embedded in a human face.

America will NEVER settle for that kind of peace.

I want to speak now to the American people. You have gone through much in recent weeks. Your lives have been turned upside down. Many of you have lost someone close to you, or someone you work with, or worship with, or were neighbors with, due to the Soviet-backed terrorism. Much more will be asked of you in the coming days. Yet your faith, your resolve, your integrity never wavers. I am heartened by your resilience and your persistence.

The days ahead will be trying, and dark, perhaps the darkest our great nation has ever known. But the enemy does not have the greatest resource any country could hope to have, a resource we are blessed with: you. You are the reason we stand in the face of the greatest threat the world has ever known. You represent the greatness of our nation’s past, the strength of our nation’s present and the promise of our nation’s future. I promise you today, as long as one of you lives, the United States of America, and all that she represents, will never, ever perish from the face of the Earth.

May God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.



“That was President John Boehner, speaking from the Oval Office, with armed Marines standing behind him both inside and outside the window behind his desk. This is CBS News. I’m Katie Couric, with me are CBS News anchor Russ Mitchell and—”



Having picked up the remote a couple of minutes before, Tony hit the mute button. “Well, aren’t they all bright and cherry,” he snapped.

As the rest of the team, besides Gibbs, debated what they had just heard on the television, Ducky pulled Roscoe aside and gestured towards the front door. “I suppose, Roscoe, this is as good a time as any to bring Mother to be here with the rest of us,” Ducky said in a whisper, as he didn’t want to draw the others’ attention to the matter yet. “Jethro has offered his bedroom for her use as long as she needs it. The issue now is getting her safely here, which is where you and your associates come into the picture.”

“Say no more,” Roscoe replied. “I can have a helicopter there in an hour, and we’ll clear a path down the street for it to land.”

“That’s…that’s marvelous news!”, Ducky blurted, not expecting arrangements to be made quite this soon. “I apologize for imposing, but—”

“It’s no problem,” said Roscoe, who noted Gibbs looking their way from the kitchen area. “NCIS takes care of its own. Tell Agent McGee we’re working on getting his sister here. She might make it ahead of your mother.”

“I will,” Ducky said.

3 p.m. EDT

The first draft lottery since the Vietnam conflict is held from an undisclosed room within the Pentagon. Francis Gomez, a U.S. Army Lieutenant from Dos Rios, Texas, has the responsibility of drawing 366 balls from a machine that is the same model used in the popular Powerball lottery games.

The first ball drawn is for the date of September 24, meaning that all men and women with that birthdate born between the years from 1976 to 1988 are the first to be drafted. The next ball drawn is February 29, and those with that birthday born between from 1977 to 1989 are in the second group of draftees. The next ball drawn is July 17, and the draft goes on.

3:03 p.m.

A Marine helicopter lands at an intersection down the street from Gibbs’s house, and Mrs. Victoria Mallard and Sarah McGee are ushered into an SUV that will drive them a block down the street. Both are greeted with a hug from Abby, and then Ducky and McGee, and then the rest of the team. Mrs. Mallard's seven corgi dogs are left at her home, under the supervision for the time being of two suits fresh out of FLET-C in Georgia.

At that moment, a hurricane warning is issued for central and south Florida. Stan Burley is ushered onto a C-130 at Homestead Air Force Base near Miami, Florida, and four minutes later the plane takes off, heading north towards Washington. Burley looks out the window a few minutes after takeoff and catches a glimpse of a nightmarish traffic jam on Interstate 95; he’s told by a Marine that “everyone from Orlando down to Key West was told to get on a highway and go north” and that state and local officials are expecting little to no help from the federal government when Hurricane Barry makes landfall between 9 and 11 p.m.

3:18 p.m. EDT

Gibbs’s basement

Gibbs left Abby to play hostess for Mrs. Mallard and Emily McGee; he had business to attend to. The first order of business at the moment was to check on as many people as he could, starting with Fornell.

“You find Diane?”, Gibbs asked regarding the woman who was married to, and later divorced from, both Fornell and himself.

“She has Emily,” Fornell said of his and Diane’s daughter, of whom they had joint custody. “I sent one of our people, Derek Morgan, to pick them up. FBI’s housing immediate family at a secret location—”

“Bring them here, Tobias.”

“Your house? How many you got over—”

“Bring them here, Tobias,” Gibbs said, in a tone he hoped would settle the matter. “And don't forget to bring yourself, too.”

“Your whole team’s already over there, right?”

“And Ducky’s mother and McGee’s sister. Everyone else is unreachable or refuses to come.”

“What about your other ex-wives?”, Fornell said of Stephanie Flynn and Rebecca Chase, the other two women Gibbs had married, and divorced, after his first wife Shannon and their daughter Kelly were murdered. “You try to reach them?”

“Unreachable.”

“Jethro, I’m sorry—“

“Can’t reach the JAG team in Falls Church, either. Got stonewalled by a secretary I’m not familiar with. Do me a favor, Tobias, and I’m sure you owe me, get your ass, and my ex-wife and your daughter here ASAP.”

“What’s there that we can’t get from the Bureau?”

“Safety,” Gibbs said, in a softer tone than Fornell had ever heard him use. “Trust me. Please.”

Fornell was stunned. Gibbs never said ‘please’, to anyone. Then again, the world was on the edge of falling straight into hell, so Fornell supposed anything was possible.

“Give me one hour and we’ll all be here,” Fornell told him. “You better be ready to level with me, Jethro.”

“I’ll tell you everything I can,” Gibbs said.

Let me clarify. 

Time travel is currently beyond the ability of anyone in this universe to pull off. It could be done, especially by someone from outside the universe who knows what they're doing, but there's another complication: because no one's tried it, no one knows how it works here. We'll cut to the chase, then: it's way more difficult here than it is in, say, Earth-1 (Superboy going forward to the Legion's time, back to Smallville), or in the Arrowverse corner of the multiverse (where Legends of Tomorrow is possible). 

I'm happy to do so.