- PART II -
It's getting hard to hold onto the walls; his clothes are getting heavy. He sucks in a breath and tries to float, but they drag him down and he panics.
He can't climb out. He tried it, nearly broke his fingers doing it too – there's no grip on the walls. If he could see, maybe, then he could find the best rocks, but it's just the pads of his fingers and he thinks he might be stuck down here.
Do they even know he's gone? What if he dies here, and they don't even know he's gone?
There's a metal pole on the side, slightly above his head. He holds onto it, grips it tight. Cold is starting to gnaw through his skin into the muscles, and his stroke is becoming weaker.
The thing that gets him is the sound. It's water, quiet smacks against the stone and the slow swish of him moving, but they are contained; trapped by the walls they bounce round and round until it's almost deafening. He tried talking to himself to drown it out but the sound echoing was far, far worse. When he yelled before it came out as one long groan like from the bottom of the earth.
He wishes he could block his ears, but he has to keep his head above water for as long as he can.
What if they've forgotten him?
"Got the FBI and the other teams on the case. I just wish you'd told me before you send David and DiNozzo in."
"Didn't want to set off a false alarm, Director."
"With you, Gibbs, it's never a false alarm."
…
"Is she alright?"
"Oh her way to Emergency with DiNozzo."
"And the man?"
"The morgue."
"That's unfortunate."
"Unfortunate may underchange the situation slightly, Leon. But she wouldn't…"
"I know your team, Gibbs. I don't need you to try and justify it. She wouldn't have shot unless she thought she had to."
…
"What we need to focus on now is the phonecalls. That's our only lead so far, and the dead man."
"Warrant for the phone company?"
"Legal's on it, and Abby's tracking them as best she can. We've got your phone bugged, too. He calls again, she'll be running a trace and trying to match the voice. Ducky and Palmer are waiting for the body, and Agent Farnsworth's team are sending evidence even as we speak."
…
"Was there any sign in his apartment that Agent McGee…?"
"None."
"Then Agent McGee is not dead until we have proof."
He's not dead.
She knows this with every fibre of her being; every cell from the pads of her feet to her head is vibrating with it. McGee is not dead. The man on Gibbs's phone can say it, the dead man in the morgue can say it, but until she sees it for herself she will believe nothing.
The pictures from Agent Farnsworth are starting to come in, and it makes her shake; empty rooms, and a man's body across the floor.
Did you take him?
The cell phone company is resisting her attempts to break through; it cuts her to see the firewalls pop up, because McGee could have gotten through them without a blink. They've put her in the Catch-22, and if she ever finds who did it they'll wish they could disappear.
Another screen locks her out. She bares her teeth at it, then takes a breath.
I'm trying, McGee. I'm trying.
"Gibbs?"
"Tony? You still at emergency?"
"Yeah; she'll be fine, looks like it was just cuts from the knife. She's getting stitches and a blood transfusion now."
"Good, good…"
"They're really after us, aren't they?"
"Stay at the hospital. We're sending agents."
"Body guards again, huh?"
"Yeah."
"Just an ordinary Monday, then. See you in a bit, Boss."
He can't keep this up; his muscles are starting to shiver, his grip is gone, and he swallows mouthfuls of water. Right now he's trying to keep his feet rammed up against the walls, but he can't do it forever.
Water's getting colder, and his grip on the pipe is slipping. Breathing hard again, but from tiredness. He's so tired, he just wants to shut his eyes. If only he could stop for a moment and sleep... there is a flash of water over his face as he sinks. The cold knocks him awake, and he swims back up with limbs that feel heavy and sleepy. Then he remembers.
The rope; it's somewhere below him now. He can use it to tie himself to the pole, and he won't have to swim anymore.
He extends a foot, kicks a little to see if there is a bounce off effect of the water. He's almost forgotten that there is a sense like seeing; It's all touch now.
Nothing.
He hesitates. He doesn't want to put his head underwater. Doesn't know how deep it is, and the cold is like poison. But if he doesn't, he dies.
He sucks in a breath, goes under. The odd, silent water gnaws at his cheeks as he sinks. Pressure is starting to build in his ears when his foot hits something hard. The bottom. He swims back up, takes a breath. Okay, not that deep. Just keep diving until he can find it.
Down again. He sinks deep, brings his hands down carefully. It feels like mostly mud; rocks and dead wood stick out from the surface. He recoils as his hand hits something with sharp edges. A stone, probably. Could he use it to cut the rope, maybe….?
He touches it again. The bottom is jagged, but the top is a round dome. His hands move down, and fingers lock into two cavities in the front.
"Have you worked out who you managed to piss off?"
"Don't know. We've been looking over our last few cases, but so far…"
"The poisoning on the USS Franklin, Petty Officer Stanmore's suicide, the shipment of AK-47s in Norfolk, the shooting of Lieutenant Lisa Fanshaw and George Kim…"
"There's nothing."
"Nothing?"
"The poisoning was an accident. The AKs were a tip off from the Egyptian Intelligence Service…"
"...and we confirmed the suicide and Fanshaw got hit by a junkie."
"Must be something old, then."
"Then we won't have time."
"Leon…"
"You've got a long list of enemies, Gibbs. McGee can't wait that long."
He nearly drowns from fright. Inhales water, throws himself away and up. His lungs jerk at the water and there are flashes in front of his eyes. He breaks through the surface, floundering and gagging up water.
He knows what it was down there, and is too scared to do anything more than whimper.
No, no, no.
God, he wants to get out of here. Someone, anyone, just pull him out. Even if they kill him at the top, at least he isn't here in the dark with that thing underneath him.
Water sloshes over his head as he struggles to keep his head up; his fingers are too cold to hold the pipe.
Over his struggling, there is a quiet voice in his head.
If you don't get that rope, you will sink down there with them.
No. He doesn't want to go back down there.
But you will, one way or another.
He grips the metal tight for a moment, as long as he can. Steadies his breath, then takes a big gulp of air and sinks back down.
He knows it's not twigs anymore, but he keeps his hands moving. He has to go up for air and back down twice before he finds the rope near the edge, half buried in mud. It's soaked with water, lags behind as he tries to swim back up.
He manages to loop it over the pipe, yank it hard. The circle that had supported his foot on the journey down is big enough to pull over his head and under his arm. He wraps it round and round himself, till he is caught like a fly. He can barely move, and if it comes loose he's going to be in big trouble.
But for now it holds him up, away from the water. He can at last shut his eyes.
"Got anything, Abbs?"
"No. Just twigs and cigarettes and guy who's supposed to have been dead for six years. What about you?"
"We're up to E through G of people who Gibbs pissed off. If you want to papier-mâchée the Eiffel Tower later, I've got you covered."
…
"So… you gonna take this Caf!Pow?"
"I think if I drink anything I might be sick."
"Sometimes you feel better afterwards when you do that."
"I don't want to feel better. I can do that after we find a lead. I mean... we've got nothing, Tony. We don't even know how they got rid of his furniture. How can no one have seen anything? You think fourteen guys walking around with a bed in the dead of night would have made some noise, would have at least woken the neighbours dog, or, or…"
"They have to have been planning this for a long time."
"Then they're going to get you, too."
"I…"
….
…
"Put this on."
"What?"
"Remember when you went missing with Jeffery White, Tony? The GPS chip?"
"Oh, yeah! I remember that. Actually, I remember that it didn't work. My shoe got wet."
"If you go missing, we can find you. Okay?"
"Abby, we—"
"Please."
"Okay."
"Don't step in any water this time."
"I'll do my best, Abbs."
They've got nothing. A hundred people from two separate agencies working, but they can't manage to work out how a man and his possessions managed to vanish overnight. There is no where to look. He has as good as evaporated from the face of the earth, and they cannot follow him.
There is a thought gathering at the back of his mind, that grows louder for every dead end they find.
Maybe they'll never find him.
There is vibration through the wood of his desk, and he glances down at his cell. Text message. It's blank, but he knows exactly what it says.
Fifteen hours. Tick tock.
"Vance just called; state troopers found McGee's car abandoned by the I-70 W, near Bedford in Pennsylvania. They've got teams searching."
"No sign of him?"
"No sign."
…
"Warrant's come through for the cell company's files."
"Send Agent Goh's team out."
"Sure."
…
"What, Tony?"
"Boss, I'm no use here. You know I'm no good at paperwork."
"I know."
…
"Vance is sending a van to pick up Ziva from the hospital. Go with the agents and debrief her on the way back."
"Thanks."
He can't feel his legs anymore.
He's just realised. Floating on the surface of the water, he notices that he's got no legs. He can barely feel a thing below his waist; just a torso floating in the water. Only stumps for hands as well; when he moves them, he feels nothing. The rope is cutting into his shoulder, but even that is starting to fade.
Doesn't seem to bother him anymore.
"Ziva?"
"Hello, Gibbs. Did I get the time I was supposed to be picked up from the hospital wrong?"
"Haven't they got there yet?"
"No. I am still with the security guard."
"….Call you back, okay?"
"...sure."
…
…
…
"C'mon, DiNozzo. Pick up. Pick up…"
They find them dead.
All three of them, shot between the eyes, still in the van at the bottom of the hill.
And Tony is gone.
He'd barely seen it before his cell starts to ring.
"That's two."
"What the hell did I ever do to you?"
"What makes you think this has anything to do with you, Gibbs?"
"..."
"You made yourself known. The Reynosa drug Cartel, La Grenouille. Now those AK-47s. You've got some big game hanging up on your walls."
"What was so special about the guns?"
"Nothing, really. It did cost a certain someone quite a lot of money and clientele, though. Besides, it's so very hard to live down, a loss to Leroy Jethro Gibbs. If it's any consolation, my Boss would rather have just shot you and be done with it. Man doesn't have a romantic bone in his body."
"Would have been nice. A fair fight, at least."
"No, Gibbs. It wouldn't have been fair at all."
The call ends. He stares at the phone, and the three dead men being dragged from the car.
Not a romantic bone in his body.
It spikes him through the throat, catches like a hook. He's heard that before, not so long ago from a man who had tried a similar thing with Gibbs, and failed. Alexandro Reynosa, right before he'd hung himself in jail. Said it to him on the last visit where Gibbs had told him he was never getting out.
You would make a good one of us. You've got an art to the way you kill.
He said nothing to that, walked away without a backward glance, but it dug at an old wound. Not the first time one sibling has killed another in front of his eyes, that he orchestrated to some degree; it's a pattern that he doesn't like to think about.
But worse, he understands the sentiment. It was the same back home, growing up with hunters. There is no joy in taking out a stag with a machine gun. These people are no different. The odds are so much in their favour, it's no fun at all to just kill as they could.
Not even they can take the unfairness of it all.
So they use their smallest gun, and wait and watch him run for the exit. Give you a sporting chance, Gibbs. That way when you lose, you know you could have stopped it.
Two of his men are gone.
Ziva is sitting across from him in the armoured van, watching him with a white face. Because now there are two, and she's worked out what will happen next.
"What's happened? People are going crazy up there."
"Abbs, they found the van."
"...what do you mean, 'found'?"
"Tony's missing."
The trunk opens at last, and he blinks up through the blood.
Rough hands haul him out, dump him on his feet. He staggers, legs weak after being cramped so long. A gun jabs him in the back, and tells him to walk. He turns his head, tries to get a better mark on them; the gun smacks him across the shoulder, and he keeps his head down.
He knows they will, if he gives them the slightest reason. They killed three men in front of his eyes without so much as pausing.
He tries to tell himself it wasn't his fault. Some distant part of him notices that there are three of them for the guards, enough to take their place. They would have gotten her on the way back from the hospital, and it was just his dumb luck to be there in between when they hit.
But a deeper part knows that he still walked away when they did not, and so he is somehow at fault.
Sorry, Boss. I don't know how I do it.
They drag him up the hill, into the woods. He tries to dig his heels in, leave a trail. But one man lingers behind, and slowly erases their path through the woods.
They stop. Rocks and leaves are kicked away, revealing the metal plate with a heavy rock over the top. Two of them move it aside, and he starts to feel sick. It's only the fear clenching his throat tight that stops him when they pull back the metal to show the crack in the earth.
Far below, there is the sound of water.