A/N Well here is the next instalment of the story. Pack a lunch because this is a massive chapter – sorry about that but I didn't want to chop it up. Huge amount of kudos for my BR Arress for tackling this monster (almost 13 000 words) and doing it while she was sick as a dog. Gotta love betas, they are the unsung heroes of fan fiction. Thanks also to everyone who reviewed, alerted, faved or read the last chapter. This one comes with a glossary at the end - no seriously, it really does as it has a distinctly Aussie flavour and may at times be totally incomprehensible. I'll be interested to see if anyone has a clue by the end of the chapter about what Gibbs is planning and you'll be pleased to hear that Tony will make a welcome return in the next chapter.
On a totally unrelated subject, I wanted to share with you the link for a story that I'm sure would appeal to a lot of you. It was posted yesterday for a very short period of time before someone complained that it should be posted on the crossover list. As it is the NCIS crew located in a different setting but the cast of the alternate universe isn't present or interacting with Tony et al, I don't agree that it is actually crossover at all abut sadly it is now languishing in crossovers unfortunately so much harder for people to find. I'm sure that wasn't the intent of course. Hence my supplying the link to make it easier for people to locate. because for it not to be read is a travesty :) I really recommend you read it and have a good laugh. It's a wicked parody by moonstone glows and the link is: s/10295827/1/Wizard-of-NCIS I particularly liked the frogs!
An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everybody Blind
Chapter 10: Fair Dinkum You're a Galah
Jimmy Palmer DC: 6th April 2012
I sank down onto one of the cots in the Doctors' on call room, sighing in relief as my butt made contact with the mattress. I was hopeful of getting at least a 20-minute powernap, although I wasn't foolhardy enough to articulate the wish either verbally or mentally. That was a sure fire way to tempt the Gods and they would fight back hard and fast.
Honestly, tonight had been horrendous so far and seeing that your average Saturday night was always pretty bad, often like a war zone, well, I guess you get the picture, huh? Several OD's, alcoholic poisonings, cardiac infarcts, a stroke, a multiple MVA involving a tour bus and five vehicles, a meth head running amok in the ER (scary that one since he'd managed to get hold of a scalpel), a GSW and a tragic case of a good Samaritan who had gone to help two young women being dragged into a car by a couple of drunk guys against their wills. The hero was a young 23-year-old Australian who had ended up being run over by the would-be kidnappers and presented in the ER with a crushed pelvis and severe head injuries. His friends were understandably distressed, and I had to his call his family in Melbourne, Australia, to inform them that their son had been injured and was in critical condition.
Suddenly the ER waiting room and cafeteria… well, pretty much the whole hospital was full of Aussie's holding vigil for their friend. I was surprised at how many expats there were in DC and it seemed that they were all here willing him to survive. Tony had always expressed a fondness for Aussies; I remember him telling me about a case where they'd proved pivotal to the case. It was before my time at NCIS, and they helped crack a case when he'd questioned a couple of bikini clad Australian girls who witnessed the dirtbags while B-B-Qing shrimp on board a yacht at the marina. He'd managed to drag some info out of the pair that the DEA agent had missed which ended up cracking the case.
He concluded with "I Love Aussies."
I was trying to remember, but I think that Tony told me he'd had an Australian roommate in college. He'd shared a couple of stories about the colourful slang that his roomie used that had left everybody confused. Tonight after listening to the mob waiting on word of the young Aussie tourist, I had to agree that they often seemed to be speaking a foreign language. Which was weird, because they used words that I was mostly familiar with strung together in a sentence, that's when they often lost me. For example, I heard someone describe himself as having been pissed as a fart at a club tonight. He was laughing when he said it and didn't look angry, but I guess after Gibbs and his monumental anger everyone else just appears quite jocular. But I am a bit puzzled by what flatulence has to do with anger.
Sighing again as I settled down and closed my eyes, I cleared my mind of all the crap including angry Aussies and Meth addicts and drifted off to sleep, glad that years of yoga and meditation had given me the skills to clear my head. Waking to my pager going off, I checked and found that I'd managed 40 blissful minutes of peace and marvelled that I hadn't been disturbed sooner. Rolling out of the cot, I made my way back to ER, pausing at Triage to see what was going on. Judy Jacobsen, RN, smiled as she studied me.
"You look like you managed to grab some down time, Jimmy. Sorry to bother you, but the MR results are back for the Aussie tourist, Kelvin Riley."
She handed them over and I studied them, grimacing. "Do you know where his buddy is, Jude; the one that brought him in?"
"He said he was going off for a sanger, Doctor, that he wouldn't be gone long."
"A sanger? Hope that wasn't an Aussie-ism for a joint or E. Enough stoned people in the ER for one night," I replied rolling my eyes; I so hate working Saturday nights. "Give me a yell when he gets back please, Judy."
Disappearing back into the ER, I decided to make a cup of green tea while I was waiting. I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but it was something we ER docs had to do far too much of. At least Kelvin still had higher brain function even if there was a lot of swelling and possible damage that may be life-changing. Still, the brain was in some ways a mysterious organ and our understanding somewhat limited.
Sitting down, I cast around for a more cheerful topic to focus on and for a change I thought of Tony. After 32 hellishly long months, it was now looking more promising. Agent Fornell had managed to confirm with a couple of indigents that someone sounding a lot like Tony had been helping out the cops in several locales that Spencer had tagged as being places where they'd solved some tough serial killer/sexual predator cases unexpectedly. Not that the cops had confirmed the sightings, though. It seemed that Tony had an enclave of loyal buddies that were watching out for him and had closed ranks. It was frustrating since we were closer to finding him than ever before, but reassuring nonetheless that he had people watching his back. Not that it was unexpected; he'd always engendered a strong sense of protectiveness in his friends, who saw all his good qualities, even if he couldn't.
Now, Dr. Reid was trying to find a pattern in where we thought he'd been to predict where he might go next. It felt like we were so damned close, finally. Of course, we had to be damn sure no one led Rivkin to him, though. It would be a tragic irony to find Tony after all this time and then lose him to the psychopathic Israeli assassin. I had a flash of that movie I'd watch years ago with Tony - The Blues Brothers - where John Belushi and Dan Ackryod had the cops, half the US Military and a battalion of Neo Nazis all chasing after them, and it had been his ex-wife, Carrie Fisher, who had gotten close enough to kill Belushi. Although the Fibbies, State Department and the Diplomats, not to mention his former team all wanted DiNozzo back, too, we needed to proceed slowly and cautiously and not let them put his life in danger.
Actually, I'd expected Gibbs to be all gung-ho and try to marshal as much man power as possible to track Tony down, now that they had a really solid lead, but I have to admit he kinda shocked me. He'd actually advised caution. He'd returned from his latest fruitless road trip, and instead of an ever increasing air of desperation and obsessiveness, he'd appeared calmer, less distracted somehow. And that was before he'd even heard about the progress Spencer or Fornell had made with the new profile and Spencer's statistical analysis. Apparently, he'd come up with a plan of his own and was in the process of convincing Fornell to go along with him. We're all meeting at Gibbs' house in Alexandria for a cookout tomorrow – umm, make that later today - for a sit rep.
Abby and Dr. Mallard had been nagging him for months now about accepting the inevitable and moving on with his life. That was looking about as likely now as our signing the Kyoto Protocol or China and Russia voting with the rest of the UN Security Council in voting for sanctions against North Korea. If anything, it looked and sounded as if Gibbs had gotten his second wind.
Pennsylvania: 1 week earlier
Driving back from yet another fruitless sighting that proved to be a false one Fornell had supplied them with weeks before, Gibbs felt exhausted and also more than a little bit peeved. Yesterday, Lieutenant Cameron had paid him one of his impromptu visits while he was trying to take a shower and given him another ass whooping, which was nothing new, unfortunately. He'd done it when he was alive as his XO, but also somewhat creepily, since he'd started dropping by almost three years ago when Ziva had died while attempting to murder Tony. Yesterday, after riding his ass as only an officer can do, he'd also offered him something of a lifeline during this last visit; at least he hoped it was, 'cuz he was still trying to figure out exactly what Dave was trying to tell him. Now that Gibbs had finished checking out the final lead in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which unsurprisingly was another false sighting, he found himself craving a properly cooked meal and a good night's sleep in a real bed.
He'd been in a tearing hurry to get back to DC, always desperate to make contact with Fornell and get hold of the latest batch of DiNozzo sightings and head off again after another failed road trip. If he was honest, it was more about his obsessive behaviour so that he didn't have too much time to dwell on his failure to find someone he'd been arrogantly certain would be a piece of cake to run to ground. But it was also a strategy so that he didn't have too much time to play the hopeless 'what if' game. What if he didn't ever find DiNozzo… what if he'd taken his side when this mess with Michael Rivkin had erupted…what if he hadn't been taken in by Ziva and Eli David…what if he'd taken his SFA to watch his back that night in the basement with Ari Haswari instead of taking Ziva…what if he hadn't felt like he was beholden to the pretender?
Things would have been a Hell of a lot different… no doubt better on a lot of scores, if he'd taken Tony to watch his back all those years ago instead of Ari's handler. He'd been so driven to prove he was right and Mossad was wrong, he'd wanted a witness from the Israeli Intelligence Agency - not realising the joke was on him and that Eli David, damn his soul, had already known that Ari was rogue. In hindsight, he could see that if he had involved DiNozzo that fateful night in the basement when Ari was killed, a lot of things might have been different for them all, not the least of which Tony might also have been able to put his own obsessive guilt over Cate's death behind him. He'd found a degree of closure over Cate's death that he'd selfishly denied to DiNozzo and McGee, although Tim had been pretty green back then, nor had he been the one to wear her blood and brain matter across his face when she died, unlike Tony.
Apart from robbing them of the same closure he'd gotten in capturing Ari, his so-called 'secret' with Ziva that she'd shot down her own half-brother to protect him, had very effectively driven a wedge right down the middle of the team when she had joined the MCRT. It had created a 'them' and 'us' situation in his mind, or as the eggheads like to say, an in-group of him and his adoptive daughter with their secret with him and Ziva on one side, and an out-group consisting of DiNozzo and McGee on the other. The secret looks, the whispered or oblique comments between him and Ziva, deliberated uttered sotto voce to keep the others in the dark, had of course done immeasurable harm to the team dynamic, even if he'd convinced himself otherwise at the time.
In hindsight, he doubted that McGee noticed the rift that had settled over the team since he had only been on the team for just over a year and didn't really have the experience to call upon to compare what was SOP for good team dynamics. Not to mention in retrospect, Ziva had skilfully enlisted him into her scheme to weaken DiNozzo's position on the team as his SFA and the one that he trusted to have his and the team's six. The time when she'd wormed intel out of Tim about his sexual history that Tony had explicitly told him not to share with the Mossad liaison officer on several occasions as well as her infamous dinner party were two examples of how she'd conned McGee into feeling like he was part of the in-group, them against Tony.
And to his shame, Jethro admitted that he hadn't done anything to stop it. In fact, he'd spilt the beans about Tony and his horrible childhood experience at the Civil War Re-enactments to McGee and Ziva. That was despite knowing how painful the subject was for his SFA, which at the time seemed to make it even funnier, even if DiNozzo was struggling manfully to find his feet after losing Cate in such traumatic circumstances. What a miserable rat bastard he was!
Looking back after so many years and possibly, he had to concede, a bunch of ass kicking courtesy of Dave the friendly spirit, he could finally admit to himself that in her newly anointed position as his surrogate daughter, he'd revelled in Ziva getting one over on her teammates, although in truth it had been DiNozzo that had been hurt. He'd foolishly convinced himself that after such a traumatic experience killing her brother, it was a sign that she was bouncing back and finding her feet. He secretly admired her Machiavellian streak; it reminded him of his own cruel sense of humour and he felt like they had much in common.
And honestly, he was a right royal bastard when it came to DiNozzo, getting off on knowing his insecurities and using them against him. He wasn't sure why he did it, except it made him feel better, and no doubt Rachel Cranston would have some sort of deep explanation. All he knew was the more loyalty and trust that DiNozzo showed him, the more pleasure he took in making him squirm, and that just about summed up what a miserable SOB he really was and had never deserved Tony.
In the spirit of what ifs, he never should have capitulated to Jenny's insistence that Ziva be placed on the MCRT when clearly she wasn't in any way eligible to be on it in the first place. And her constant harping about the damage of keeping secrets within the team during her time with them should have struck him as hypocritical, except that when it came to 'do as I say, not as I do' behaviour, he was particularly bad on that score himself. The 'secret' that had turned out to not really be a secret at all, except from the team, also resulted in him treating Ziva differently to how he would have treated other junior agents. Mostly because he felt he owed her, mostly, but also because he hated her father with a passion for siring a monster and turning his daughter into a killer that led to her killing her own blood.. What sort of monster did that to his own flesh and blood? And so that affected how he reacted, not wanting the Mossad Officer to return to her monster of a father who didn't deserve her.
A case of him having double standards where Ziva had been concerned was his response to what had happened to that suspect, Brian Dempsey. Her completely over-the-top reaction that lead to his death in the NCIS elevator might have been ruled as death by natural causes due to a brain aneurism, even swept under the rug by Jen who was eager not to open up a can of worms. But it didn't mean that it wasn't totally inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour and a serious overreaction - simply because the dirtbag wouldn't shut up, she had lashed out. If that had been DiNozzo, or even McGee who had done that and effectively been the catalyst for a suspect dying in custody in those circumstances, he would have kicked their sorry asses off the MCRT so fast they would have had whiplash. Because it was Ziva, he rationalised and justified the inexcusable and let Jen cover it up.
And as Dave had pointed out on more than one occasion, he'd let her get away with constant insubordination and flagrantly disobeying of orders, even his own. When they'd found the bomb in the warehouse and he'd ordered them all out to wait outside the building for the bomb disposal squad, she'd snuck back in to defuse it with Tony following her in and trying to stop her, risking his own life so he could have her six. After her disastrous undercover mission where she'd failed to follow Tony's orders and slept with a suspect, he'd ordered her to go to the hospital to get checked out after having the crap beaten out of her and having been grazed by a bullet, and then ordered her not to come into work the next day, and she'd disregarded both of those direct orders. When yet another rogue Kidon assassin was trying to set her up and she'd begged him to come back from Mexico after he resigned, he'd ordered her not to go to confront the Iranian assassin alone, and she'd disobeyed his orders then, too.
Also, not long before the whole FUBAR with Rivkin, she had disobeyed his explicit orders not to engage the Marines who were guarding Domino and again endangered DiNozzo when he responded by having her back per Rule #1, which he observed with an almost religious-like fervour, even when it meant that he disobeyed the order not to engage as he tried to protect Ziva, and got hurt because of it. And he never held her accountable, not any of the times, and even after she had managed to get her partner injured, he'd accepted her lame-ass excuse that it had been a reflex. She'd spent two years in the Army before joining Mossad and knew damned well that if she'd still been in the military, she would have been court-martialled for that failure to follow orders. And as a former Marine himself, if it had been anyone else he would have fired their sorry ass in a New York minute, yet for Ziva there'd been no consequences. So, yeah, as Dave had said, he had favoured her shamelessly.
All of which left him feeling smaller than a snake comparing itself to a hippo, but right now he admitted he wanted… no, he really needed, to see a friendly face. So, he turned the truck around and headed back towards Stillwater and Jack's general store, wishing he didn't feel like such a forlorn whiney little kid all of a sudden. Maybe when he got home to his dad's he could just stop and process the ambiguously frustrating information his XO had very magnanimously shared with him yesterday. He felt that if he could just separate his outrage about the ass kickin' from the rest of what Dave had to say, he might just have a fresh lead that could finally crack this case wide open. So, while he'd stopped off at Jackson's plenty of other times since DiNozzo went AWOL, it had always been a lightening quick visit. An overnight stopover before getting back to the chase had always been the order of the day, but now Gibbs decided to stop and spend a few days with his dad. Take time out to smell the manure so to speak.
As he headed to the provincial little town of his birthplace, which until fairly recently he'd pretty much always despised, he couldn't stop thinking about how he'd effectively led a team divided these past six years, and it had been all his own doing, no less. Something was almost guaranteed to go wrong under the circumstances, especially involving Tony, since it had been Ziva and himself versus DiNozzo and McGee, and Tim had been happy to side with Ziva, too. Especially since Ziva had effectively managed to manipulate McGee with a skilful mix of fear, intimidation and boasting about her proclivities and assassin skills. To Thom E. Gemcity, easily impressed by superficiality and not bothering to seek the hidden depths in individuals, as demonstrated by his books, and who was, at least back then, seriously lacking a backbone, he was easy pickings for a skilled Mossad operative. And she'd shamelessly manipulated him like a professional thief taking candy from a baby. Hell, the way she'd played him like a pro, too, using the daddy card; how could Gibbs criticise McGee for falling for her wiles when he had as well?
Right from the beginning, she'd tried and failed to manipulate DiNozzo, despite her dossiers, which was just an indication that he was much more complex than any of them gave him credit for. Gibbs was sure he'd sensed a physical attraction between them from the get-go, what with the mutual flirting, yet Tony had never acted on it, which wasn't exactly in keeping with his skirt-chaser image. Gibbs, being scrupulously honest with himself for a change, admitted that a part of him had always been disappointed… that he'd have turned a blind eye to rule #12 for Ziva. Frankly, it would have solved the problem of how to permanently separate her from Mossad, and more importantly, from Eli David, if she'd married DiNozzo. Although, while shamelessly flirting with Ziva, he'd never made a move and slept with her, and Jethro for the life of him, couldn't figure out why the heck not.
After all, Rule #12, not to mention Gibbs' disapproval… okay, his extremely strong disapproval and head slaps plus his dislike of Special Agent Paula Cassidy, had never stopped DiNozzo from pursuing an affair with her, or ever bothering to hide it from him, either. So, when Gibbs had temporarily retired to Mexico, it would have been the perfect opportunity to hook up with Ziva, as he wouldn't have even been breaking any rules, and yet he didn't. And Jethro was pretty sure that Ziva would have leapt at the chance, if for no other reason than it would have given her a way to manipulate him like she did with the other team members. But they both had misjudged Tony completely, since he proved harder to control than expected.
She'd tried seducing him, no doubt taken in by his frat boy, skirt-chasing jock façade, pretty much expected to be leading him around by his dick. When that didn't eventuate, she'd changed tactics, turning all super assassin, dialling up the intimidation factor, but that hadn't worked either. Sure, DiNozzo appreciated her 'super ninja skills' as he'd labelled them, much the same way Gibbs realised now that one might admire the nature of a panther or a lioness as the ultimate predator. It didn't mean you wanted to adopt them, or Ziva, as a house pet, even if he wasn't overawed by her. Impressed by her skills maybe, but definitely not intimidated by her, or there was no way that he would goad and tease her on a daily basis. McGee certainly didn't have the stones to poke the bear, and no one else in the bullpen did either!
Gibbs thought back to a conversation he'd had Ric Balboa, a long-standing colleague and highly experienced NCIS team leader at DC. He'd talked to him after DiNozzo had disappeared and he was trying to come to terms with what had happened, and the fact that he'd been duped. Ric had shared his observations after years observing Gibbs' team on a daily basis in the bullpen, and while Gibbs usually didn't care one whit about what others thought, Ziva's actions combined with his own epic screw-up had left him feeling vulnerable and doubting himself, so he'd been more receptive to seeking opinions. And Holy Hell, Balboa had been furious with him for pissing on Rule #5, and didn't hold back anything either!
Ric's less than flattering assessment about what had gone wrong between Ziva and Tony was damning. According to him, when the Mossad officer had failed to seduce his SFA despite her rather extensive training as he'd phrased it in Mata Hari-ism Ph.D at the University Mossad in Tel Aviv, she'd tried to come up with a different strategy to control him. He went on to observe that when seduction and then physical intimidation didn't work, she'd obviously decided to divide and conquer. Of course, Balboa had no idea that Gibbs had already ensured there was a freakin' huge schism within the team already – talking tectonic plate proportions here. By Ric's reckoning though, the team deliberately excluding DiNozzo from that stupid damned dinner at Ziva's had done immeasurable damage to both him and the team. He actually growled at Gibbs, pointing out that Ziva's timing was exquisite and deliberate - right after Tony had effectively sacrificed his life for her when they were undercover, even though, highly capable agent that he was, against probability, he'd managed to extract himself from a dangerously volatile situation.
Of course, Ric retorted, that it must have infuriated the Mossad liaison to no end to be forced to confront DiNozzo's skills, especially in light of all her scathing comparisons of NCIS agents and their level of training compared to all things Mossad. But DiNozzo had had his partner's six just like he always did, even one that was so new and had in DiNozzo's and everyone else's mind, borne at least partial responsibility for Cate's death. It hadn't escaped anyones' attention that if nothing else Ziva had put together the psychological profiles that had allowed Ari to identify that Gibbs' Achilles' heel was his female team members Cate and Abby, yet Tony had still had her six.
Team members after all were all-important to him, just like he'd rallied around behind McGee right after the Op when the Probie had accidentally shot an off duty cop. Tony had helped him get through a very tough situation. Gibbs remembered that case and how he and Ziva had been exchanging deep and meaningful conversations when the team was already under attack, which hadn't exactly been good for building morale. Actually, it had divided them even more. Finally, Ric pointed out that DiNozzo had been comprehensively attacked by being framed for murder, all by the weasel-faced Charles Sterling, and commented on just how much it had affected him.
Gibbs had silently agreed, remembering the scene that he alone had been privy to – for once, Tony had been so badly rattled he'd let down his mask, and Gibbs had gotten a rare glimpse into the very troubled psyche of his senior field agent. There was no way that his release from jail had been enough to resolve that degree of angst and pain, he'd just subsumed it again below the surface of the DiNozzo iceberg, especially after Abby had been attacked and traumatised. Balboa had pointed out that such pivotal incidents, had all been serious external attacks upon the team that needed to be healed, especially for DiNozzo. Coming right on top of the trauma of him being infected with the Yersinia Pestis they couldn't have had worse timing.
Even without Ari's attacks, starting with the attempt on Gibbs' life in the restaurant, the car bomb meant to kill as many of the team as possible, and of course the particularly viciously cold blooded murder of Caitlyn Todd, his abduction of Gerald and Ducky, and Abby's near miss with Ari's sniper rifle occurring, the team, and specifically Tony, had had more than enough to deal with. Unfortunately, it had occurred, and Tony had taken it as personally as Gibbs had. So, at a time when they should have been banding together as a team and building morale and being there to support each other, yet another attack on the team, and specifically DiNozzo, had taken place, but it had been brought about from within the team. That od course made it much, much worse.
Put like that, it was simply inexcusable and Gibbs felt an overwhelming sense of failure. He hadn't just broken Rule #1, he'd thrown it on the floor and stomped all over it, and then laughed and joked about it when his agent had been wounded in the course of doing his job. Balboa was more than justified in his righteous indignation. If had been anyone else, Gibbs would have handed them their ass on a plate, too.
As Ric pointed out, given how much importance Tony placed on the team and his partners, their exclusion wasn't just cruel and thoughtless. As far as Balboa had been concerned, it had been malicious and minutely planned by Ziva to inflict maximum impact. Frowning fiercely at Gibbs, he'd commented that he wasn't sure why anyone else, let alone the whole box and dice of them, had gone along with her vile plan. After all, in some ways, she at least had an excuse. She was an outsider attempting to infiltrate and had used typical Mossad tactics of divide and conquer to do so, but the others didn't have the excuse of being outsiders with a hidden agenda. They had no excuse for their attack on their teammate, who'd already been put through the ringer.
As far as the experienced team leader was concerned, if Gibbs had simply transferred him off the team, it wouldn't have been as damaging to him, and ultimately the team, long term as not inviting him to a team dinner that even the ME's assistant had attended. And to be brutally honest, Gibbs agreed; in light of Ric's scathing analysis, how could he not? He couldn't come up with even one pathetic reason why they had done what they did to DiNozzo.
Of course, Ric had noted cynically what Ziva had failed to appreciate about DiNozzo was that she might have failed to control him sexually or through intimidation like she had with Tim and many others at NCIS who were afraid of her, especially in light the death of Brian Dempsey in the elevator, she'd only failed to drive him off the team. Despite successfully ostracizing him from the rest of the team with their tacit assistance, mainly because when it was all said and done, he was a loyal Saint Bernard. And Balboa noted wearily that the irony was that she'd never understood that she already had power over him and she'd never realised it. When Gibbs had looked askance at Balboa, he'd scowled at his obtuseness.
"Tony felt a sense of loyalty to her because she was a teammate and his partner, and to the former cop that meant something intangible but undeniable, much like your Semper Fi, I imagine, Gibbs. It was why he went to talk to her without backup that night that Rivkin was killed. If he'd followed procedure and not your damned Rule #1 and had taken other agents along with him for back-up, things would have been very different for him. Rivkin would probably still have tried to resist arrest violently, since he was drunk, belligerent and thought he was so much better than us. Hell, you, Ziva and Vance thought he was better than Tony, too.
"Ziva would have ended up in jail for obstruction of justice and being an accessory after the fact in the death of ICE Agent Sherman. And with her unauthorised passing on of classified intel to Mossad and her Kidon lover - that would have been uncovered after further examination of the laptop. That at the very least should have had her kicked out of the country or thrown in Gitmo for a decent stretch." He'd stared off into the distance as he pondered what may have been and also what was, before he continued.
"The truth was she'd owed Tony big time for having her six, Gibbs! But because Ziva never truly understood what it meant to work as part of a team or came close to understanding the true nature of loyalty, she was singularly ill-equipped to recognise it when she saw in her teammate or appreciate just how much of a gift he had offered her, so she threw it back in his face constantly, seeing it as weakness."
Gibbs had never thought about his team like that and realised that there was value in seeking an outsider's opinion, especially when that analysis came from someone who was also an experienced team leader himself. So, he steeled himself and asked Balboa why he thought Tony hadn't slept with Ziva despite the liberal dose of flirting that had gone on in the bull pen. Jethro smirked at Ric's amazed expression. Granted, his willingness to seek someone else's opinion about his team was extremely out of character for the Marine, but he'd also only just learnt that he'd been duped by his so-called surrogate daughter, her sperm donor, not to mention Jen Shepard, SecNav and Leon Vance, and his team had effectively ceased to exist. So, he'd been in a morosely masochistic mood and more than ready for a pity party. Nor had Ric disappointed him, typically not pulling his punches.
He barked out a sardonic laugh. "David might have been easy on the eye, Jethro, but there was nothing subtle about her when it came to sex. Her idea of foreplay was probably cleaning her fingernails with one of those damned knives she was always playing with. In my humble opinion, she had major castration fantasies when it came to men. DiNozzo told me that while on that undercover op where they played the Ranier's, she slept with a loaded gun under her pillow and pulled it on him in her sleep; he likened it to sleeping with a praying mantis. Did ya know that thirty percent of the females will bite their mate's heads off after mating with them? Definitely put me off sleeping with her. Understandable when you know who her father and brother are, I s'ppose, but I've gotta say it isn't something I'd find conducive to great sex. And then there were all her blatant and clumsy attempts to woo Tony, if you call interrogating McGee about his sexual history wooing. Well, let's just say that our young chameleon didn't need or appreciate Miss Mossad emasculating and belittling him on a daily basis."
But Balboa was just winding up and he turned his sights on Gibbs. "He might well have become your team whipping boy, Jethro, but that didn't mean that her unrelenting nastiness and the disparaging attacks she made to and about him were ever going to get her past the famed DiNozzo mask. Ziva, with her constant attempts to make him feel weak and ineffectual, was always going to be too much like…" And here Ric paused significantly, glaring at Gibbs, who while not known for picking up subtle nonverbal nuances, managed to comprehend the implication before continuing.
"…like his father for him to want to have to deal with it away from the team as well. He was always pointing out his weaknesses; giving him a set of rules that were ridiculously contradictory. He made sure that Tony was never able to meet his unrealistic demands for perfection, never let him know his achievements were ever good enough. I certainly would have no wish to sleep with someone who reminded me of my bastard…b… um, father and neither would Tony." He concluded wistfully.
Gibbs traversed the last mile through the town of sleepy Stillwater, which was already gearing up for the homecoming of both adults and children in time for dinners as families settled in together for the evening. He recognised wryly that Balboa had really delivered a painful coup de grace to his already morose bout of self-flagellation. Which, not surprisingly, had led to even more painful introspection on Jethro's part. He needed something to keep him company at night during these long solitary months past, spent on the road. Had Ziva learnt how to wound DiNozzo after observing his own behaviour towards his SFA?
He'd certainly been guilty as charged of treating DiNozzo like shit, and he admitted, with an uncharacteristic amount of regret and shame, that he hadn't been a whole heap better than Tony's father when all was said and done. He'd never publicly praised him, but took delight in publicly castigating, belittling and mocking him. He'd abandoned him, not just when he'd gone to Mexico, telling McGee what a great agent he was, but left his SFA with a paltry 'you'll do'. He didn't fight to stop Vance dragging him to Israel and he'd, like various stepmothers who'd sidelined him or sent him away from his home, allowed Ziva's presence to divide the team and drive a wedge between the two of them, long before he'd broken his most crucial rule over Rivkin. He'd fought for McGee when he'd killed the cop to keep him out of jail, he'd fought for Ziva when she'd been set up by yet another rogue Mossad operative to keep her out of the clutches of the FBI, but he'd abandoned DiNozzo to Vance and Director David and left him to sink or swim alone.
The fact that DiNozzo had bested the Mossad Director during that interrogation hadn't meant he was ready to deal with Ziva and her anger, though. Tony's weaknesses were his deep sense of empathy he experienced for victims and his readiness to accept blame for things that he bore no responsibility for, and everyone on the team knew it. And that left him wide open for Ziva David to drive a huge double B truck straight on through his defences, and Gibbs hadn't been there to watch his six.
As he slipped in the clutch on the truck as he pulled up out front of Jackson's general store, shifting the gearstick into first before pulling on the handbrake, he sighed. He was looking forward to spending some time with a friendly face.
An Eye for an Eye
Sitting with his father as they polished off a meal of meatloaf, mash potatoes, gravy and lima beans, and cherry pie for dessert courtesy of one of Jack's lady friends, Jethro's tastebuds were practically crying out in relief to be eating something that had been home cooked. Groaning contentedly, he sipped his coffee, trying to ignore the elephant in the room. Jackson knew about his team, of course, and that he was searching for DiNozzo. His dad was in regular contact with Abby, but ever since their reconciliation, Jack had been on tenterhooks around him, always trying to avoid setting off his infamous hair-trigger temper. Perhaps he thought that Gibbs would disappear for another 15 years if he made him mad, and DiNozzo's own disappearance was probably not helping all his insecurities, either. Jethro wasn't sure if Jack knew exactly what led to Tony leaving – he surely didn't feel like confessing his screw-up to his father. But still, Jack had probably gotten the truth out of Abby or Duck, and he certainly knew that he was combing the country trying to find him.
As was their custom when he'd call in overnight on his way back to DC or off chasing down a sighting, they'd both dance around the topic and finally when he was on the way out the door again, Jack would venture the question tentatively, "No luck finding Tony, Son?"
To which he would always reply in his usually garrulous fashion, "Nope." And that would be that… on your bike and see you next time.
But he wasn't just passing through this time, he was going to be hanging around for a few days… get his head on straight, and he was damned if that was gonna happen if they didn't at least acknowledge the elephant in the room.
Taking a large gulp of coffee, Gibbs bit the bullet. "Need some time, Jack, think I might have a way to finally fix this pile-o-crap and bring him home. Just need some time to come up with a plan."
His dad looked shocked, no doubt that he'd actually broached the subject without prompting "So, you haven't found him yet, Leroy?"
"Nope, but soon."
"Well, you know you can stay for as long as you like. It's good to see you, Son."
Jethro was glad that they'd addressed the elephant sitting with them at the table. They'd done the dishes before going inside to watch a movie and he'd felt relaxed for the first time in a long while as Jack picked up two movies and told him to pick one. He noted that they were Paul Newman and Robert Redford classics and then he frowned, seeing one particular title. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, he tried to avoid the painful memories that it evoked. A baby-faced DiNozzo, bitterly disillusioned by his Baltimore partner's betrayal, him ordering the cop to apply as an NCIS agent because of Rule #5 … you don't waste good. Quoting Butch, "Boy, I've got vision and the rest of the world's wearing bifocals."
It had become an in joke between them back when they were partners, and now it was just one more painful reminder of how much he'd stuffed up. How badly he'd let DiNozzo down. He'd taught him his Rule #5 when he'd quoted that movie line, but then he'd disregarded his own rule when he let Vance throw Tony to the wolves. Pointing to the other one, he said, "The Sting, Jack; haven't seen that one for a long time."
His dad nodded agreement. "Tony gave me a list of movies a few years ago. Said these two were all-time favourites of his. I'm still workin' my way down his extremely long list, Leroy. Lordy, that man did like movies more than anyone else I've ever encountered.
Gibbs tried to ignore the fact that his dad was talking about Tony in the past tense. Standing up he said to his father, "Wanna a beer, Jack?"
When his dad said no he grabbed a cold one and wandered outside to look up at the velvet indigo starry sky, marvelling that it never looked so clear as it did when you got away from the built-up city lights and smog. Wondering where DiNozzo was right now and if he was staring up at the self-same night sky, he thought back to Celestial Dave, AKA his own pain-in-the-butt Angel. Although the hard-bitten stubborn Marine was still in denial about his buddy, and he figured it might have something to do with his CO Colonel William Ryan being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. No way was Jethro about to mention seeing the Lieutenant to Abby, Fornell, Ducky, or even Jack. There was no way he was losin' his marbles. And no one was locking him up. He preferred to go with the notion that his XO was a physical manifestation of his conscience or subconscious. Yep, that worked just fine!
Of course, there was just one tiny problem with this neat explanation, and that was while Gibbs would beat himself to death over things he viewed as failures, he didn't see that many of his actions as worthy of actually beating himself up over. Not being there to save Shannon and Kelly, letting Ari escape after shooting Gerald and killing the FBI agent after the hostage fiasco, the subsequent death of Caitlyn Todd and letting Ziva fool him had been what kept him up at night. Perhaps letting Jenny fool him that she'd taken out Svetlana Cheritskaya in Paris and not verifying the kill might also make it on the list, too, he admitted quietly.
'Angel Dave' on the other hand couldn't help but castigate him mercilessly every time he paid him a visit over what he considered to be a long list of his mistakes, character failings and cockups and they were a Hell of a lot longer than his own personal list. Case in point, this last visit he'd leapt on him like fleas on a dog, after he'd wanted to know if Gibbs was the slightest bit concerned that he might lead Rivkin to DiNozzo if he found him. Gibbs had gotten pissy with him, telling him, "for the love of Mike, I'm Black Ops trained, not to mention a Marine sniper. I think my gut will let me know if Rivkin is trying to shadow me. How could you even suggest that I would lead him to DiNozzo," He demanded in outrage.
So then 'Angel Dave' took great delight in pointing out that Gibbs' gut wasn't as infallible as he liked to think. Damn, he could kick himself for walking into that one.
"Let's talk about when your never-fail gut didn't warn you that a paid assassin had infiltrated the MCRT posing as a Homeland Security agent to find a witness, or when you traumatised a serving Marine Sergeant's wife when a killer had tried to rape her and you decided he was the victim, not her. Man, if that had been Shannon, you'd have been so damned pissed for the way she was treated. Or what about when you had a mole serving on your team for four months and you were none the wiser, even though your director 'supposedly' broke up the team so that the famous Gibbs' gut could root out the traitor. You never even knew that there was something wrong until Vance told you. Or let's talk about how you never picked up on the fact that your forensic scientist had a deranged and disgruntled forensic technician working beside in her lab collecting trace evidence to set someone on your team up for murder because you and your old girlfriend were having territorial disputes…"
"Stop it, Loo. Enough already! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"
"Your gut's for garters sounds like a good place to start. Seriously, Gunny, I want you to stop being such a horse's ass and listen for a change. You are not infallible. Sometimes YOU ARE WRONG!" His not-so-friendly apparition roared at him in a fashion that would have done Jethro's meanest drill instructors proud. "Stop chasing your tail, put your guilt aside and remember this isn't about you, it isn't about punishing yourself," His former XO continued. "It should be about DiNozzo."
"Damn it, Dave, what do you think I'm doing? I'm trying to clean up my mess."
"No…no, you're not! You are punishing yourself, fooling yourself and avoiding dealing with the Shannon and Kelly mess and at this rate, even if you find him, Rivkin will take advantage of your arrogance and use you to catch and kill him. And then you'll self-flagellate even more. I actually think that you get off on feeling guilty. Do you enjoy it, does it give you a permanent hard on and is that why you're such an unrelenting bastard all the time? Is that why you never let your girls go?" He kept prodding at him unrelentingly.
Gibbs was just about ready to put his hands around Lieutenant Cameron's throat and squeeze until the asshole shut up once and for all, but then he remembered his XO was already dead. "DAMN IT, TELL ME WHAT YOU EXPECT ME TO DO?" He roared, his head feeling like it was on the point of exploding.
"I want you to work smarter, not harder." He frowned at his gunny as he stopped in his tracks.
"That's what DiNozzo always said." Jethro mused, still pissed off, but beaten down enough to be open for the first time since all this happened and he'd set his sights on his current Great White Whale.
"Exactly," His not-so-friendly ghost granted approvingly.
"What the Hell is that supposed to mean? Exactly… how in any universe, is 'exactly' in any way, shape or form useful, Dave?"
"It means that after almost three long years that you're finally getting warmer. And that if you're ready to acknowledge that you haven't got all the answers, I'll break the rules and give you another hint. I'll probably get my ass kicked badly for it, but I always had a soft spot for you and your girls, not to mention the utmost of respect for DiNozzo for putting up with you for so long." He looked at Gibbs as if to size up the receptivity of the stubborn former Marine for the sacrifice he was about to make. Actually, it was his second since he'd already given his life to save Gibbs in Kuwait, before nodding, apparently reaching a decision.
"WWDD," Lieutenant Dave Cameron stated quietly and calmly.
Gibbs felt his face flush as his anger stepped up a zillion fold. "That's it?" He demanded furiously. "What the Hell does that mean?"
Sighing a world-weary sigh, he looked at Gibb carefully. "It's a variation of WWGD." Seeing the frustration, but a tiny light beginning to go off in the back of Gibbs' brain, he offered one final hint. "WWGD is something that DiNozzo used to say." And the way he pursed his lips and crossed his arms, Gibbs realised that his XO was done. This was something that he needed to figure out for himself, but for the first time in a long time he felt that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel. At last, he might have another way forward; a better way. Now, it was up to him to stop chasing his tail and figure it out.
Looking his XO in the eyes he said one of the phrases he had always found the most difficulty in articulating. "Dave… thanks."
End of Flashback:
Gibbs sighed and decided to head back inside before Jack sent out a search party for him. As he drained his beer, he stopped off in the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee, which was when he had a sudden memory of Tony sitting on the stairs in his basement. He'd come around after the hostage bomb drama with 15-year-old Kody Myers to ream his supervisory senior agent out about putting himself in danger and not reading him in before walking into the classroom hostage situation. His SFA ripped him a new one for acting like a lone wolf, again, and Gibbs ruefully remembered how Tony could get his face like no one else ever dared to. He also remembered sitting at his desk the next day after they'd reunited a family and saved the classroom full of teenagers and read the report from Marine Captain Daniel Wise. He was the team leader for the Special Response Team who was outlining about what had gone down in the command centre when DiNozzo had been in charge of the hostage negotiation. How Ziva had insisted that Kody was a terrorist and Tony should order the sniper to take the shot and take him out, and how Tony was under enormous pressure from Ziva, the Director and Captain Wise not to mention Major Myers, Kody's dad, about whether to order the shot. Major Wise reported that DiNozzo had finally refused and had told Ziva WWGD.
As he sipped his coffee as he sat beside Jackson watching Paul Newman as Henry Gondorff and Robert Redford as Johnny Hooker as they perpetrated The Wire con against the vicious crime boss, Doyle Lonnigan, played by Robert Shaw, he felt a ping as a light bulb went off in his head. He knew now exactly what WWDD meant and how to use it. Thinking about the fact that they'd just happened to sit down to watch this movie tonight, Gibbs was reminded of his conviction that there was no such thing as coincidences. As far as he was concerned, it was no fluke that tonight Jack had chosen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, along with The Sting. He firmly believed that he was meant to see this film tonight, and if it had been any film other than Butch Cassidy, he might not have chosen to see it, but just like DiNozzo used his blasted movies to solve crimes, he now knew how to bring him home.
Los Angeles: 4th April 2012.
"Our target is Ronald 'The Rottweiler' Mills, a 44 y/o white Caucasian male who failed to show up for his trial in Florida on gun running and drug importation charges. Our intel is that he is hiding out in a fortressed compound in Carlsbad, New Mexico, so we only get one shot at this and if he smells a rat, The Rottweiler will slip over the border into Mexico. I've blueprints for the compound and satellite data for you guys to study. We meet back here at 1400 and I expect everyone to familiarise themselves with the data and we'll come up with a plan." Michael 'Croc' Katerson instructed his four employees, before pulling out his cell phone to instruct his pilot to file a flight plan from LA to Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Croc Katerson ran a highly successful Licensed Bail Bond Agency with several smaller satellite offices in Las Vegas and San Diego, too. He also ran a second business as a highly successful skip tracer and accepted high profile contract jobs to hunt down and capture bail jumpers from other licensed Bail Bond Agents right around the country. When they had difficult or dangerous retrievals of bail jumpers, Croc was the man others called to solve their problems. He had an impressive retrieval rate of 97.6 percent, and if Croc couldn't bring in a scumbag, chances were that no one could. Croc was one mean SOB who had assembled a formidable team of skip tracers who were also highly skilled at what they did. It was why they earned the astronomical fees they commanded.
When they all came back together at 1400 in the conference room it was to formulate an extraction plan, and the team was uniquely qualified to do so. Croc looked around at his team, confident that they could get Mills, but he knew that they would get one chance and one chance only before the bastard slipped over into Mexico, and if that happened they were sunk. The Mexicans took a grim view of bounty hunters, as one high profile reality television star and his family could attest. Croc had no intention of heading south of the border no matter how much money was offered. Truthfully, if he was retrieving a fugitive that his agency held the bond agreement on, it might be a different story, but The Rottweiler was a contract job so if the unthinkable happened and they failed to bring him in, then all he lost was the finder's fee.
Listening in to the team as they brainstormed about how to extract the target, he glanced around the team with the satisfaction born out of pride of ownership. All bar one of his retrieval team was ex-military and not just military, but Special Forces. He'd served as a Trooper in the Special Air Services Regiment (SASR) in the Australian Army joining the elite Tactical Assault Group Tag West, Rogers was a US Navy Seal, Marsh and Carrington were US Army Rangers. Gator, his little brother, was the odd man out - he'd served in the Australian Federal Police, but in the Tactical Response Team, but like Croc had been educated at a military school. In fact, it was at Rhode Island Military Academy that they'd met Steve Rogers. The two Rangers had attended RIMA, too, which was how they had come to work together, although the two Army Rangers had enrolled a couple of years after the older trio graduated.
So, all in all, they were one hellacious team and Gator's law enforcement background had its compensations, which was why they'd make an exception in his case (that and he was the bosses baby bro). Still, his cop instincts were useful, especially since they were chasing scumbags instead of tangos, except when the bail jumpers also happened to be terrorists, which thankfully was exceedingly rare and only occurred when authorities didn't know who they arrested. As they calmly formulated their plan and fine-tuned the details, Croc nodded approvingly. They were his team and he wouldn't change any of them for quids.
"Okay, boys, that all sounds like a go. We leave at 0700 tomorrow and let's get it together, shall we? We're all going to be as busy as a blowfly at a barbie," He concluded, ignoring the rolled eyes that inevitably occurred when he used one of his colourful Aussie-isms.
Croc was an Aussie expat who had married an American girl and settled in the States when she became too homesick living in Sydney, Australia, for her friends and family. As to his name, he'd been gifted with the nickname Croc - short for Crocodile - because he bore an uncanny resemblance to Steve Irwin, aka The Crocodile Hunter, and was infamous for carrying a knife identical to the one seen the movie Crocodile Dundee where Mick Dundee disarms an LA gang banger. As the name stuck, and especially after he opened his own business, Michael realised how useful it was to play up the dumb ocker Aussie persona. It had disarmed many a fugitive and they were less likely to smell a rat and run.
Of course, there was also his not-so-secret ambition to become the next big reality star, and Croc was not a naïve newbie. He knew that you had to have some shtick, first to attract a producer's eye and then to keep the audiences tuning in every week. So, he dialled up the Bogan Aussie and made his brother, August 'Gus', lay on the Aussie slang and strine, too, lengthening his vowels and not overly opening his mouth. The truth was that before his dad had been transferred to the US when he was a teenager, his family had lived a very middle class existence and lifestyle, residing on the pricey Northern Beaches in Sydney and attending a private school where colourful colloquialisms had been frowned upon. Aussie strine was also strongly discouraged as was lengthening of vowels, higher pitch at the end of words and sentences and lazy enunciation. So, he'd had to bone up on some of the more outrageous phrases that he now used frequently and study Paul Hogan and Steve Irwin's speech patterns.
Of course, when he'd decided to enlist in the Australian Army, he'd come in contact with some characters whose language had been definitely colourful, mostly off colour actually. He smirked, recalling some of the more outrageous phrases. His former Troop Commander had taught him some of his favourites including dry as a dead dingo's donger, make sure to point Percy at the porcelain, too useless to grow chokos on a backyard dunny wall and useless as a handbrake on a Holden. The last two were particularly useful and pretty polite insults to berate subordinates with. He chuckled softly to himself as the others gave him weird looks.
Shrugging at his team since he was used to their reactions, he turned to head into his office. If they were going to be away on a job, he had things to organise to ensure the Bail Bond Agency ran smoothly while they were gone. He would need to brief his manager and make sure that he finished up any outstanding paperwork, which as a Bail Bond Agent was a good percentage of the job. His Bachelor of Arts (Law) from Sydney Uni had finally come in handy, he mused.
Stopping briefly, he called to Gus, "Gator, arse front and centre, mate," before disappearing into the office.
Trailing after him Gus closed the door and hooked the leg of a chair with his foot, pulling it in closer before plonking down into it casually. "Yeah, Mike?"
Frowning, he corrected, "Croc when we're working, Gator." Ignoring Gus' eye roll by pretending to be reading a report, he decided to get to the point. "Need for you to chase up Candi Landis, make sure she turns up for her pre-trial hearing tomorrow."
"Sure, Croc, get right on it. Call me nosy, but tell me, if you thought Candi was a risk, why'd you underwrite her bail?" Gus enquired curiously.
"'Cause I owe her big time, Gus. She gives me heads up and intel about our clients and she's scared. Tell her we'll stash her someplace safe, if necessary." He looked at Gus intently. "Just don't go on your Pat Malone, okay?"
"Wasn't going to, Mikey! I'll take Suze. She can do a mean working girl," Gus mused.
"Sue is already on another job for me, Gator. Take J.J. with you, and before you spit the dummy, I need you to help train her. What's your prob, Bob?" He demanded.
"Just shut up, Croc, and can it with the Aussie slang would you? I get that you do it when you're on the job cuz you think it'll get you noticed, but when it's just you and me, why bother? We both know you don't sound anything like Paul Hogan or Steve Bloody Irwin."
"Ah, come on, Gus, I can't switch it on and off like you can. You're better at all that acting crap than me. I'm just a simple soldier," His brother claimed.
"Yeah, pig's bum," Gator stated cynically.
"Now who's stooping to ocker slang?" Croc sniggered, clearly amused. "And I repeat, what do you have against J.J.?"
Gus glared at him before relenting. "She's gotta a crush on me, alright?"
"Ah!"
"Yeah, ah."
An Eye for an Eye
J.J. Jessop cast an appreciative eye over Gator as he drove back the office. Damn, she was a sucker for a masculine guy with long locks. His wavy gold-blonde hair brushed the collar of his long black leather duster coat and she fantasized about running her fingers through it, along with other equally intimate explorations that made her pulse race at the thought, but as many hints as she dropped for the longest time, he seemed to be just plain dense. She was Croc's newest trainee skip tracer, formerly an LAPD traffic cop, and she had sadly resigned herself to sleeping with the Aussie in her dreams exclusively. What a waste!
She'd been working for Croc as a trainee skip tracer (as her boss preferred, although her friends called her a bounty hunter) for almost six months now. Sadly, Ruby James, another skip tracer and ex vice cop, was the one that was responsible for her day-to-day training, not Gator, which was a bummer. Sometimes though, Croc would send her out with Gator, who was the only skip tracer who routinely worked for Croc's own bail bond agency and also carried out missions with Katerson's elite Fugitive Retrieval Service, taking contract jobs from other bail bondsmen. They handled mostly high profile, dangerous fugitives and/or seemingly impossible retrievals, and the team had an unprecedented success rate. Gator was the only one of Croc's elite team that hadn't served in the military, but he seemed to be accepted into the team of ex-Special Forces.
The boss' little brother always joked that he was the brains and the rest of the team were the brawn, but the truth was that while the Aussie was definitely smart, he was highly lethal, too, and J.J. felt safe with him watching her back when they were in the field together. Although, she also didn't mind watching his back either or as the FRS guys would say, watching his six. And what a six it was… well, Croc had a mighty fine ass, too, but he was married and had an eight-month-old baby. Didn't stop her admiring the view, but she wasn't a home wrecker, so she'd set her sights on Gator instead. The brothers were both good looking enough to be male models with their long blonde hair, six-foot plus height and lean and muscular bodies, although Croc was the more muscular of the two. Mind, the oilskin coat he habitually wore that he said was an iconic Driza-Bone from Oz was pretty shapeless and tended to hide his well-honed physique, which was a waste, but maybe his wife preferred it that way.
Gator favoured a classically tailored long black leather duster coat, which J.J. heartily approved of, and when he teamed it with a black leather Aussie Driza-Bone NuBuck Jackaroo hat, the ensemble made for a totally hot package when worn by the Aussie ex-cop. If only she could persuade him to go out with her. Her friends, fed up listening to her crushing on him endlessly, told her he was probably gay, but J.J. knew that wasn't the problem since he often went out on casual dates with other female team members. After yet another refusal he must have seen the despair in her eyes because he told her it wasn't anything personal, but he wasn't looking for anything permanent and she had the look. When she enquired somewhat grumpily what the look was, he'd replied sadly, "The ring, the white picket fence and the husband and 2.5 kids, forever in love look."
Gator then told her that a renowned psychic, Oda Mae Brown, had told him he wouldn't make old bones so he'd decided to live life as if each day was the last and avoid long-term commitments. "You, Jonquil Joi Jessop, are a keeper and I'm not about to lead you on." He said with that damned cute Aussie accent that was not OTT like his brother's, more Hugh Jackman.
Of course, her friends pointed out later that Oda Mae Brown was a character in the classic movie Ghost starring Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg. Nevertheless, even if he'd been treating her like a mushroom and feeding her BS, the fact was that he'd managed to find out what J.J. stood for when no one else ever had. The daughter of two refugees from a hippy commune, she'd legally changed her name to Jonica when she turned 18 and most people thought J.J. stood for Jonica Jessop. The fact that Gator had managed to find out about her real name just made her want him more.
Was she destined to stay single for the rest of her life or had she fixated on August 'Gator' Katerson because he was unattainable? Damn, her love life sucked!
An Eye for an Eye
Croc sank down in the seat beside Gator in the company jet as they prepared to fly down to New Mexico on another high profile fugitive retrieval contract for FRS. He pulled out his iPad, wavering between playing Angry Birds or Tetris, before watching in amusement as Steve Rogers and Jonathon Marsh jostled each other like a pair of adolescents as they made their way up the aisle. Despite there being plenty of seats from which to pick, they sauntered up and parked their asses down opposite the boss and he grinned at them, laying down his iPad with a sigh. Gus gave an amused snort, obviously reading his thoughts and empathising, even as he also engaged in the light hearted banter with the two other team members.
Leyland Carrington III, or Jack to his friends, was sitting down at the back of the plane busily checking his emails before the plane took off, and once they were in the air he unbuckled the seat belt and made his way up to where his friends were teasing each other. Perching his well-muscled gluteus maximus on the armrest of the seat across the aisle, he proceeded to give them the low down on the chatter surrounding their quarry. Jack was in charge of intel as their computer guru, and he was damned good at his job. As of now, he informed them, The Rottweiler was still bunkered down in his compound, well, as far as the Carlsbad LEOs could tell without tipping off his posse of goons about their interest in him.
Croc looked across at Jon who as their supplies officer was in charge of any equipment the team would need in order to carry out their mission, apart from weapons, which was Steve's responsibility. Jon also collaborated with Gator, who came up strategies about how the five of them could merge into the background and avoid suspicion from the locals. "So, Jono, you get everything we need to carry this off, mate?"
"Yeah, Boss. Gus and I figured with the Carlsbad Cavern National Park right on the doorstep, we'd pose as tourists to explain why we're visiting a pretty provincial city. You and Gus… my bad…" He corrected when he saw his boss' glare, " You and Gator can go in as a couple of green Aussie backpackers, and we're going in as hockey players who are into spelunking, which explains our rather obvious physical attributes, since we can't exactly hide them."
Croc snorted, channelling his inner Bogan, "Well, yeah you are built like brick shithouses."
Jack, whacked him, "Hello – pot kettle?"
"What happened to us being football players, man?" Steve protested. "I hate hockey!"
"Well, at least you don't have to wear trackie daks, ugg boots and cut off flannelette shirts," Gator whined crankily.
"Well, if you don't like your outfit, I'll put you into King Gees so you can show off your bum crack, or better yet, what about budgie smugglers and Pinky Zinc?" Croc teased him, chuckling evilly at the filthy look his brother shot him.
"Okay, WTF are trackie daks, ugg boots, flannelette shirts, King Gees, budgie smugglers and Pinkie Zinc?" Jack wanted to know. "You Aussies are so weird!"
Gator grinned. "Track pants, sheepskin boots, brushed cotton shirt, usually plaid, although known as tartan in Oz with the arms removed, short shorts often worn on building sites that leave little to the imagination and Zinc Cream for the sun," He supplied succinctly.
"Ya forgot budgie smugglers, Gator," Steve sniggered.
"They're speedos, alright?" He responded.
"Why are they called budgie smugglers, dude?" Jono demanded. "What are budgies?"
"Budgerigars are native Australia parrots that lots of Aussies keep as pets, and I'll let you figure out the rest," Croc explained. "Now, can we get back on track? We're so far off track we're 50 ks south of Whoop Whoop."
Steve, deciding to wind his boss and best friend up, inquired innocently. "What's ks and where's Whoop Whoop, Croc?"
Before he exploded, Gus supplied the info quickly. "Ks are kilometres or klicks and Whoop Whoop is Aussie slang for the middle of nowhere or sometimes the back of beyond." He grinned widely, knowing that Steve was pulling Mike's leg.
Still not finished, the former SEAL wanted that last word. "I still want it on the record that I don't want to be a hockey player."
"So, you two get to stay in a cheap motel," Marsh continued, addressing Croc and Gator and ignoring the objections of Steve. "And Jack, Steve and I will hire a Winnebago and hang out at a trailer park in Carlsbad.
Steve smirked and kicked his old school buddy in the shins. "So, Croc, you weren't yanking my chain when you said if we wrap this up quickly we could swing by Roswell on the way home?"
His boss, who had obviously regained his good humour, grinned his patented Aussie larrikin grin. "Bloody oath, mate, too bloody right! I've always wanted to visit and have a close encounter of the fourth kind. But it'll probably be a wombat visit," He warned his team, who understood that meant a lightening quick visit even if they didn't get the joke, when he explained that a wombat eats, roots and leaves.
But he was busy focused on the subject of the place in New Mexico that had managed to capture the imaginations of so many UFO fanatics. "I can't wait to check it out. I've seen the telemovie Roswell with Steve MacLachlan, Martin Sheen and Dwight Yoakam several times."
Gus rolled his eyes, "And the rest, bro. More like a dozen, and let's not talk about Roswell, the TV series."
Jack stared at his boss. "No…seriously, man? You're telling me that you watched that drivel?"
Ignoring the flushed appearance of their employer, Gus chuckled. "Oh, yeah, addicted to it. If you look on his iPad you'll even find a bunch of Roswell fan fiction stories he's got bookmarked to read when we have down-time," He teased his brother affectionately.
Scowling in an attempt to regain the upper hand, their boss the Aussie punched Gator on the bicep. "You're a galah, fair dinkum, mate. You know I only watch it because of Emilie de Raven starring in it. I've had a soft spot for her since I went on a couple of dates with her back when she was attending NIDA and living down at Coogee Beach in Sydney." He glared at his men. "And you do not need to share that intel with Molly, either." He ordered, referring to his dearly beloved. "And before you ask, I might have pashed her one or twice."
Seeing the confused looks from the Americans, Gus snorted. "Tonsil hockey, locked lips, exchange of saliva, made out," He translated. "In your dreams, Mikey. I bet she wouldn't even remember you if she fell over you."
"Don't be a dipstick, Gator."
"I thought you watched Roswell because of Katherine Heigl? And what about watching it because of the cool guest stars, Nelly Furtado and Jonathon Frakes? Oh, and don't forget that John Doe played Jeff Parker." He quoted teasingly, laughing at Croc's expense, as the other guys joined in, too.
Slapping his hand across Gus' mouth, his brother glared at the team. "Shut up, numb nuts, or you can pose as a spelunker, too. Know how much you love bats," He chuckled seeing Gator's alarmed expression.
Before the situation could escalate, Carrington interrupted. "Croc, you asked me to keep my ear to the ground re your old RIMA buddy, Anthony DiNozzo? Well, it's been pretty much same ol' same ol' with all the players up til now. All of a sudden, there's chatter that they might have a solid lead on DiNozzo. Think they might have a new psych profile on him and the buzz is they've been hassling some of his old cop buddies." He looked at the rest of the team who were all suddenly serious. Although he and Jon hadn't attended RIMA with DiNozzo, he was a legend for his basketball and football prowess, not to mention excelling at drill, too. The Staff at the Academy were all surprised after he blew out his knee at OSU that he didn't end up enlisting with his buddies. But all that aside, none of them wanted to see anything bad happen to such a popular alumni.
Carrington looked at Steve, Gator and Croc. "Don't tell me cuz I don't wanna know, but you can get a message to him and warn him in case he doesn't have access to the same intel that we do, right?"
Steve looked impassively at Croc before responding. "Yeah, thanks, Jack, we'll find a way to let him know, if he doesn't already. Keep your ears open and keep us in the loop, bro. Something tells me that it's all about to hit the fan. Just hope he's got himself a raincoat!"
Glossary
Pissed as a fart = very, very drunk, sanger = sandwich, busy as a blowfly at a barbie = very busy or hyper, wouldn't change any of them for quids = don't want to change anything, dumb ocker = uncouth Aussie, dry as a dead dingo's donger = very thirsty, make sure to point Percy at the porcelain = males urinating carefully, too useless to grow chokos on a backyard dunny wall = chokos are a vine growing vegetable that grows like a weed ie they literally grow themselves and dunny is Aussie for an outback toilet, useless as a handbrake on a Holden = Holden is a national brand of Aussie car and obviously their handbrakes for the longest time weren't much chop, on your Pat Malone = on your own (rhyming slang) spit the dummy = throw a fit or tantrum, pig's bum or pig's arse – you are talking rubbish or I disagree, bum crack = butt or ass crack, bloody oath = damn straight, NIDA = National Institute of Dramatic Art (graduates include; Cate Blanchett, Baz Lurhmann, Mel Gibson, Judy Davis, Sam Worthington, Hugo Weaving and of course Emilie De Ravin) you're a galah = you're an idiot (galah is a large grey and pink parrot) , fair dinkum = for real or honestly, dipstick = a loser, idiot