Four.
Kate noted the dented roof, the shattered windshield and the flaming front of the car immediately. McGee pointed out the splatter of blood inside the car, on the front seat with ill thoughts of his Boss and Tony injured, dragging themselves along the forest, attempting to run from the people who'd shot at them.
When the team, plus several other policemen in their search party spread out and began to scavenge across the forest floor, in hopes of finding Gibbs and DiNozzo, they instead came across the dead body of Corporal James Durant.
"Is this not our dead marines' room mate?" Ziva wondered out loud, not bothering to bend down and check the mans pulse. There was a large fist sized bullet hole in his throat and the corpse was starting to smell, an indication that Durant had been dead for more than a couple of hours at this point.
Kate nodded, "Definitely." she pointed to the cabin way up ahead as she spotted it. "Looks like he was running away. Gibbs and Tony are probably in there as hostages."
McGee and Ziva secured their weapons and trailed behind Kate as they headed for the ominous cabin, two other uniformed officers following the teams lead cautiously. They came upon yet another dead corporal before even reaching the cabin. He was clutching a heavy duty gun, a bullet hole-also the size of a fist-on the side of his head. Liquid and brains and blood leaked from the mortal wound. "Holy shit." one of the officers muttered.
The two officers snuck around the back door and Gibbs team broke in through the front door, shouting 'NCIS!', guns held high.
"Oh my God." Kate had been trained in the field plenty well never to let her guard down, but she couldn't help but drop her weapon to the floor upon the sight that greeted them when they entered the cabin.
Six men lay dead across the room. It looked as if they'd all had their guns drawn aiming at each other at one point, except two, who had apparently stabbed one another.
"They must have gone mad..." Ziva uttered.
"Did they...did they really just kill each other?" McGee cringed.
"That's what it looks like." Kate regained her composure, picked up her discarded weapon off the floor, just as the two officers came in from the other room.
"Clear in the kitch-what the hell?" the officer gawked, after stumbling into the bloody room.
Kates head shot up. "No trace that agents Gibbs and DiNozzo were here?"
The other officer shook his head, "No ma'am."
The walkie talkie at Kates hip started sending through static, then a voice. "Special agent Todd?"
She quickly answered, aware of her team members anxiously leaning in behind her. "Speaking; did Team B find anything relevant?" she got right down to business.
"We've located your missing agents, the ambulance is waiting out on the road now, one of them is wounded, but not fatally. We're leading the men back now."
Three simultaneous sighs of relief could be heard from the agents listening on the other end. "Thank you Officer Jenkins, we need to call in reinforcements. We've got eight dead corporals on our hands back here at the cabin."
Two hours later they were back in civilization-a hospital, to be specific. Gibbs had been admitted purely for the sake of getting an IV in him to compensate for the dehydration. Tony was admitted for the same reason, that and the fact that he needed stitches for the gash across his abdomen, as well.
The three remaining members, plus Abby, Ducky, and Palmer, were all seated in Gibbs room, where he lay, disgruntled in a hospital bed with an IV attached to his wrist and a heart monitor-just for precautions sake, the doctors had said.
Just as Gibbs was complaining about not needing to be here, a nurse brought Tony in on a wheelchair, which he was telling her would look great with some flames painted on the back.
"Your roomie for the rest of the evening, Tony." the nurse introduced, as McGee and Palmer helped the injured senior field agent up onto the bed. She took the wheelchair with her on her way out, winking at Tony blatantly.
"Charming the staff already?" Kate rolled her eyes.
Abby curled up at the agents side on the large hospital bed next to Gibss' and smooched his cheeks. "Why would you go and get yourself shot? I was worried sick about you guys!"
Tony put an arm around the Goth and smiled. "I'm sorry for getting shot Abby."
"Good." she pouted, tucking her head firmly against his breast bone.
"How did you guys find us?" Gibbs inquired, feeling a lot better now that he knew Tony wasn't in harms way.
"We woke up and realized that you two were no longer in your room. We each tried your cell phones with no luck. McGee tried to locate their signals but there was none. Finally, Abby located the GPS in the car and that lead us here. We called a search party after we saw the wreckage." Ziva surmised concisely.
"You guys should have told someone where you were going so late at night." Kate reprimanded the two, as if they were children, hands on her hips.
"I wanted to but Gibbs was all macho man and said 'We got this'." Tony said, in a bad imitation of Gibbs, smirking broadly when Gibbs glared at him gently from his bed.
"Lucky I can't reach you from here DiNozzo." he growled, only half-meaning it.
"Tonys' hunch cracked the case wide open." McGee commented. "The Corporals were all in on our dead marines death. In fact, two others died in their barracks in the last three years, a few other men injured-it was supposedly hazing gone too far."
"What I do not understand is why they would kill each other like that? Two of them fought with knives, one slicing the others' neck just as he embedded the knife in his chest, no? And then the two outside, one running from the scene, the other wanting to stop him shot him point blank, and then committing suicide? It does not make sense to me. The other four men also shot at each other sporadically." Ziva questioned as she recalled the details of the scene.
Gibbs frowned. "It's a damn good thing for us that they did, but you're right. It doesn't really make much sense."
Kate shrugged. "They obviously went too far when it came to hazing, maybe it started as a knife fight between two of their men and eventually just escalated to a full-blown killing spree amongst the group? Not to mention they had two feds outside, and knew more police would sooner or later get there and they'd be screwed anyway."
Tony silently sat there, Abby wrapped in his arms, as the team, and Ducky too, discussed the oddness of the case. Tony knew exactly what had happened to those men. Seeing eight men instead of the six he'd initially thought to encounter was a surprise, yes, but not an impossible task to carry out.
He'd snuck in, unseen by the men, who were all armed or cleaning their weapons in the living room of their little cabin out in the forest, loudly gloating about their previous kills, about how they'd hunt down the two agents and keep their heads as trophies of their glory.
He hid out in the kitchen until he saw two of the men exit the cabin, their large guns at their sides, to guard against any threats outside the cabin. Waited a bit longer until two more men decided to get up and hit the sack, walking into the bedrooms at the side of the cabin.
With four men left, Tony decided to strike. Just then one man, a big burly man with a bald head and marine tattoos all over his muscled arms stood from the couch, gun in hand, stood up to get something in the kitchen. That's when everything kind of just happened all at once in a blur of frenzied activity. Bloody frenzied activity.
He wasn't a huge fan of sneaking about when he went for the kill, but this was the man he'd just heard talking about what a good beating he gave his wife last week when dinner wasn't on the table upon his arrival-so Tony couldn't bring himself to feel too much remorse over it.
Stabbing someone in the trachea without getting any blood on you is hard to do, but Tony managed. What he failed to do was keep the dying man quiet.
He sunk his blade into the second man who rounded the corner, took his weapon, and shot the third, then just as he shot the fourth, two alarmed corporals ran into the room, awakened by the gunfire, their own guns raised. Tony shot them both the moment they set foot into the blood bath. Hoping the other two guarding the cabin hadn't heard much and run off, Tony had dropped the weapon, picked up another, his bare fingers not touching the pistol, and strolled off to finish the job.
One of the men was asleep just outside the cabin, and Tony awed at what a sound sleeper he must be, to have slept through all the screaming and gun shots so easily. Killing the man whilst he slept seemed cowardly to Tony, so he nudged him. Nothing. Nudged him again. This time the man fell over, and Tonys' eyes widened a fraction. "Oh my." he said, thinking he sounded very Ducky-like for a moment there.
The man had shot himself on the side of his head, Tony saw now, as he leaned in close to inspect the heavily bleeding wound. "Well, at least one of you had enough shame to do it." he thought out loud, looking at the large pistol the man was gripping in one hand.
The other man spotted him from a few yards away, and immediately started shooting at Tony. It was pure luck the guys' aim left a lot to be desired, that not one bullet pierced his skin. Tony took the dead mans lifeless arm, aimed, and pressed the trigger another time with the corporals finger. "Bullseye." Tony muttered under his breath when the angry man went down after the first shot.
He'd then taken a couple of hours to rearrange each body just so, make sure to clean up the kitchen, wipe any traces of evidence he had ever even been here. Wiped down all the guns, shoved them into the hands of the corporals instead, and snuck out the back, just as the sun was setting. It was a nice view, surprisingly not clouded by the tall trees in the forest, Tony thought, as he made his way back to Gibbs, who he'd hoped hadn't woken up anytime during that night.
"What do you think Tony?" Abby asked curiously, dragging him out of his thoughts.
"I think Kates' right. They were all probably anxious and panicked about getting caught if reinforcements showed up in the morning and decided to shut each other up the only way they knew how."
Yeah, that was a neat concise story. They'd killed each other in a fit of temporary madness. It wasn't unheard of. Tony leaned into his pillows and listened as the conversation continued.
He'd killed seven men last night. They may have deserved it, sure, and it was probably their only chance at survival, had the men gotten to them before the team had. But Tony knew he was in the wrong, even if some would call what he'd done a gray area between good and bad.
McGee had freaked out and panicked and felt so much remorse after learning he might have killed someone.
So why was it that lately, taking a human life came as easy to him as breathing?