Summary: Gibbs and DiNozzo risk everything to rescue McGee from Russian pirates. Featuring Tim, Tony, Gibbs, Abby, Admiral McGee, and Ziva. Hurt/comfort, family, angst. MCGEE WHUMP.
The Wrong McGee
PenPatronus
Chapter 1 of 3
Rage's Revenge
Six Russian submarines emerged from the Atlantic's dark throat at dawn. They hit the Dreadnought class Navy vessel with three torpedoes, and then waited patiently for the crew to surrender. After a quarter of an hour, they spotted a white bed sheet fluttering in the morning breeze. Dozens of men on inflatable boats with small mobile engines went from the subs to the ship and boarded it with an entire armory of weapons.
Their leader, Rage, had a scar on the tip of his nose, dark sideburns, small brown eyes and hair, and thick muscles in his neck. He got his nickname for a reason. He was never happy or sad. He never even got angry or frustrated. There were two settings in his brain: neutral, and rage. He was in neutral mode when he watched his men escort the crew to the top deck. The four hundred sailors, thirty officers, and four NCIS agents were made to stand still as they were stripped of their weapons and phones. When the entire vessel was searched, and Rage's target was nowhere to be found, he ordered his men to find their mole, a young petty officer called Griffin.
The slim, ginger-haired Griffin was ghostly pale. He knelt in front of Rage like a servant before a king. "Sir, I'm s-so s-sorry," Griffin stammered. "I heard my CO say his name and I – I just assumed it was him."
"Where is he?" Rage asked. He spoke the words with a nursery rhyme lilt to his voice. "Where is the admiral?"
"He – he isn't here, Sir. He isn't here."
"Your orders were to contact me when Admiral McGee boarded this ship. I received your message, summoned my little fleet, rushed here from Russia to get my revenge, and now you're telling me that there is no McGee here?"
"No!" Griffin said. "I mean, yes. Yes, there's a McGee here. Timothy McGee. The wrong McGee. It's the admiral's son." Griffin pointed towards a group of people standing on the starboard side of the deck. "He's standing right over—"
The gunshot cut off Griffin's sentence. Rage's lips curled and his nostrils twitched when the officer's bloody face landed on his freshly shined black boots. Calmly, he pocketed his gun and wiped his shoes off on Griffin's uniform. The group that Griffin pointed at consisted of the captain, his first mate, the ship's physician, and the four NCIS agents. Rage gestured for a dozen of his men to surround them. He approached the captain and gave him a sincere salute. "Captain Neal. Sorry about the torpedoes. I hope you won't sink."
Captain Neal, a blond man in his forties, didn't even try to suppress his fury. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded.
"I am a man with one question to ask," Rage said. "Where is Timothy McGee?"
Half a moment of silence, and then a silver-haired man in one of the dark blue NCIS jumpsuits stepped forward. "I'll tell you where he is."
Rage cocked his head to the side, and his eyebrows towards his hairline. "Splendid. And you are…?"
"Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. I'm Agent McGee's superior." Gibbs didn't even blink when Rage stepped into his personal space. "Agent McGee is in Arizona. Utah, maybe. He's on leave this week. Went on a road trip out west with his sister."
Rage gestured at Griffin's body. "My source told me that he's here. I came for Admiral McGee, of course, but it looks like I'll have to settle for his son. A silver medal is better than nothing."
Gibbs shrugged. "Wish I could help you."
"You're lying."
Gibbs didn't respond.
Rage slipped a calloused hand into his front pocket. "You're a good man, Agent Gibbs," Rage purred. "A kind man, protecting your agent like this. I'm trying to be kind as well, so I'll kill you quickly." Rage pointed his gun at Gibbs' face.
Two men and one woman appeared, lightning-fast, between Gibbs and the bullet. "Stand down!" Gibbs barked at his agents.
"You don't have to protect me, Boss," one man said. He took his baseball cap off and tossed it to his feet. "I'm Tim McGee. I'm the Admiral's son."
Rage lowered his gun. "You're McGee."
"My friends call me Timmy." The agent flashed a movie-star smile. "I graduated from MIT – computer forensics and biomedical… uh, biomedicals. I'm a novelist. I have a grandmother named Penny and a dog called Jethro. I hate superglue. My life's greatest ambition is to meet Leonard Nimoy."
The sun's rays highlighted the redness spreading up Rage's neck and across his cheeks. He'd be neutral for another minute, tops. "Tell me, Agent, if you're McGee, why does the patch on your uniform say DiNozzo?"
"Does it?" The man yanked his shirt up to his eye line. "Must have mixed up my uniforms with Special Agent DiNozzo's. Subconsciously, I probably did it on purpose. It's an honor to wear that man's clothes. I really admire—"
Neutral mode no longer. Rage pointed his gun at the woman's leg, and fired. The woman shrieked and crumpled and hugged her bleeding knee. "Ziva!" Gibbs shed his overcoat and wrapped it around the wound.
"You son of a bitch!" the man with the DiNozzo patch spat.
"Surrender McGee!" Rage bellowed. He cocked his gun again and pointed it at Tony's head. "Surrender him now or I'll kill you!"
"Stop—Stop! I'm right here!" a new voice shouted. The other male agent shoved his way to the front of the group. "I'm Tim McGee. Look, look!" He held up a laminated ID and pointed at the name and face. "Please, I – I'll come with you – just don't hurt anyone else."
"Dammit, McGee!" DiNozzo growled through clenched teeth. He grabbed his arm.
Tim shook Tony's grip off. He shared an apologetic look with Ziva, a resolute look with Gibbs, and then he raised his arms in surrender and walked up to Rage. "I'm all yours," he said through a slight tremble in his voice. "Now let the rest of them go."
Rage reverted back to neutral. His polite smile returned and his voice softened. "Brave boy. Like your father. Some would call it brave, what he did when he killed my brother. Why don't you give your daddy a call, Timothy? Have him meet us for breakfast."
Tim smirked. "Admiral McGee is in Arizona. Utah, maybe. He's on leave this week. Went on a road trip out west with—"
Rage stopped another sentence, but this time with his fist. A pair of pirates grabbed McGee by the elbows and dragged him to the side of the ship and the boat waiting below. Rage joined them after a final word with Gibbs. "If Admiral McGee doesn't make a public statement about his sins against my family, against Moscow, against all of Russia, I will execute his son. He has twenty-four hours."
Rage and his men returned to their submarines. Gibbs and DiNozzo watched them circle the ship like sharks for a few minutes before diving underwater to disappear.
Tim was gone.
Tony looked at Gibbs' icy face. "What do we do now, Boss?" he whispered.
Gibbs took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "We get Ziva to sickbay," he said quietly. "And then we get McGee back."
Timothy McGee woke up on his side in the middle of a four-square court made out of masking tape. His ankles were twisted, and one knee was folded over the other so tight that it cut off the blood circulation. Tim stretched his limbs out as far as possible and wiggled his fingers and toes until the sensation subsided. He blinked the dust out of his eyes and noticed, suddenly, that he was dying of thirst. The dark, empty room didn't care. It smelled like a church, but looked like an abandoned Kindergarten classroom. Piles of books, boxes of toys, brooms, paper, puppets, curtains, pictures, furniture, candles, and every type of writing utensil imaginable filled the place. "Church basement," McGee concluded. "Why am I in a church basement?"
"Because it is perhaps the very last place anyone would think to look for Russian pirates," a voice said. The man who called himself Rage strutted through the single wooden door. "Your friends, the ones you threatened me with, are undoubtedly searching for you everywhere in the world except for their own backyard."
McGee slowly sat up. "We're in Washington D.C.?" Rage nodded. "The Navy can track your submarines, you know."
"Oh, I'm counting on that." Rage found a dusty old wood chair and pulled it over to the four-square court. "You remember getting into my little motorboat, yes?"
"Before you knocked me unconscious, yes."
"Well, we didn't take that boat to a sub. You, me, and two of my men traveled straight to D.C. The subs spread out in every other direction." Rage smiled so wide that McGee could see every tooth. "They will never find you." Rage clapped his hands together and leapt to his feet. "Now, we need some entertainment to pass the time, don't you think?" Rage went outside and returned right away with a small television that he plugged in and turned on to a news station. He scooted the chair over to McGee and took a handful of zip ties out of his back pocket. "Did you know that a man can literally die from the pain of torture?"
To Be Continued