Episode: South by Southwest

Wilderness Desert

It had been literal decades since Tony had been near a horse and those had been the ones used at his old boarding schools before RIMA. Brad had been after him to get out into the dry air of the southwest, but this was ridicules as his allergies long forgotten were making up for the healthy air the dry air was giving him.

Gibbs, of course, had the rifle from the local rangers, while he only had his handguns and both had their numerous knives on them.
Gibbs and the others were treating him like a city kid, which granted, it had been a while since he’d been out camping or roughing it beyond what they did for Rock Creek. But they never took into consideration that his times out in the wilderness had been back east in the forests and not bloody deserts. Even RIMA had been located in Rhode Island with its cold weather camping times and dug outs and igloos.

As it was, he still was the only one who thought to bring a military desert resistant sat phone with them. Which he used to get a call out as soon as their witness gave the description of the man who was the rep of the big business who wanted the land for cheap. Matching the description with the man claiming to be from Homeland. From there calling Morrow to make sure the man that showed up was the real McCoy or a fake. Fake and a warrant for impersonating a fed was out for the man from that business with the business now going under the federal microscope for its head of security trying to pass himself off as a fed. Another warrant was sent out by Morrow for the company’s files, and a raid was now planned. All of which Gibbs and company ignored Tony trying to explain to them as he was only a city boy and what would he know.

Well, he knew enough to know that they would be out in the desert camping for no reason as the city boy who couldn’t get away from his city boy phone knew the man who tried to attack them had been arrested at the airport when he tried to get hold of the company chopper.
Something he kept trying to tell everyone but was ignored about, so they spent a week out in the wilderness desert to Morrow’s amusement. And the smack that followed when Gibbs realized what Tony had been trying to tell him all along when the local rangers finally got them out of hiding from the imaginary bad guys.

For everything that they had done to him that week, he had, oh, so, subtly, been doing his reports via dictation to Morrow’s people, so at the airport to head home, he headed for his well-deserved vacation instead and left ALL the paperwork up to Gibbs to finish out in his stead.
After all, California’s beaches weren’t that far from where they were at……

Fin
8/4/2026