Chapter 29: Free

They realized Gray was done when he stood up.

Gibbs glanced at his watch. It had only been half an hour. It felt like a year.

CIA Boss and the kid switched seats again, but just before he sat down the boss hesitated. "Anyone like a break before we continue?"

He eyed Tony and Ziva, but no one moved, or spoke. Gibbs taught his team to do the job, and right now the job was this meeting.

Gibbs had known all along, obviously, or at least suspected. Gray knew from the beginning. But they had gone on, both of them, because that's what you did.

"I suppose we'll continue then. Anything significant to the larger operation about the remains from the fire, Gray?"

Gray was either thinking about not answering at all or taking a long time to organize his thoughts. "Weren't any guards, that I could see," he said finally. "Was all workers."

CIA Boss moved on. "We understand that you were separated at one point, the NCIS agents captured by a patrol. Was there anything of note before that? Agent Gibbs, would you like to pick up the narrative?"

Gibbs hesitated, strangely. Tony and Ziva glanced at him quickly. Gibbs didn't hesitate.

"We came across a two-man patrol not far from the camp," he said. "Agent David went in as a diversion and Agent Dinozzo and I approached from behind. There was risk of detection by other patrols if we used firearms, so we took them by hand."

"And the guards?"

Gibbs kept his gaze on CIA Boss's. But he could sense Gray's eyes on him.

It was ridiculous, feeling uneasy about killing two men after the grotesque parade of death they just sat through. But he was.

"We didn't get to them fast enough," Gibbs said. "They saw David." Could have provided a description of her. It seemed obvious that Londono had a grudge against Gibbs, but no one else on the NCIS team – as far as the cartel knew – had been dragged into it.

CIA Boss nodded, seeming to understand Gibbs' reluctance to spell it out. "And then?"

"Nothing until we ran across the larger patrol."

"Right. If you would describe that incident?"

Gibbs fixed his eyes on the man and talked, steadily, pretty much more than either of his agents had ever heard him say all at once before.

"We were single file in a trench, came to a point with a high bluff to the right. Ambush, eight men, M4s all around, one machine gun. Gray went into the brush. We were disarmed and taken back up to a truck on a road, maybe two miles out. Four hours in they stopped and dropped two of the men. Drove on until sunset, stopped for the night at a clearing. Chained us to the truck. Patrol camped by the river, outside the clearing. Gray took two guards by the truck with a knife and was wounded. The last of that fight was loud enough to be heard by the rest of them. He took cover, took two guards that came up from the camp. Swung around to the camp itself and the remaining pair of guards." Gibbs readjusted his shoulders a little, like he was checking to be sure his posture was still ramrod Marine. It was. "Despite being wounded he led us to safety and called for the bird back to your base the next night. If he was eligible I would recommend him for the Medal of Honor for that action. We didn't meet up with anything else on the way out."

The CIA people didn't understand the significance of that sermon. Its length or its quiet praise. Tony thought he might get the same compliment if he singlehandedly saved the entire nation from some spectacular collapse. But even so, it wouldn't be delivered like that.

CIA Boss just nodded and flipped through some images in front of him. "Were you recognized by the patrol?"

"No."

"How about you, Gray?"

"No."

"But there are two guards that separated from the patrol and presumably made it back to Camp Six. They'll have identified all of you." CIA Boss nodded toward the agents.

"No."

They looked at Gray, and CIA Boss's eyebrows went up fast. "No?"

"I took care of them. As Gibbs says."

"They're dead?"

"Yeah."

They all took a moment to adjust to that. Two more. Gibbs actually felt a physical tightening in his chest, something black clawing at his heart.

"Okay. That's good news for Agents David and Dinozzo, at least." CIA Boss frowned and leaned into the table again, glancing from Gray to Gibbs. Not sure where the answer might be. "I am surprised that the guards weren't keeping a closer watch on their prisoners, since they knew one of the group was unaccounted for."

The man waited, looking at Gray and Gibbs, and then Kort, but there wasn't any indication they were going to say anything. It was Ziva who spoke up. "They did not consider him to be a threat."

CIA Boss glanced sharply at her. "And you know this how?"

"The guard who went after Gray and the leader of the patrol discussed it when they first caught us. Gray was not carrying a rifle or any other visible weapon, while the rest of us were heavily armed. As a result, and because of his youth, they assumed that he was not armed at all. Gray also apparently left us behind. The patrol speculated that he was not really part of our group. They seemed to think he was a local boy we hired or bribed as a guide, or even in some way forced into our service."

"Hmm." CIA Boss thought that over.

The agents were a little confused by his confusion. What other explanation could there be? Did he think that the patrol had recognized Gray and let him go? That Gray then came back and slaughtered them all anyway?

"There is also the fact that we were in a truck," Tony said, voice flat. Ziva seemed to do this sort of thing effortlessly, at least she seemed to, from where Tony was sitting. She always had. But his own head felt strange, out of control, like a rubber ball careening down an empty street - still reeling under the weight of dead faces.

CIA Boss encouraged Tony to go on. Tony cleared his throat, shoved the horror away, and came back to himself. Back to the surreal reality of life goes on, for some at least, played out in a colorless conference room. The room they were in now was the total opposite of the jungle. Even the arguments here were clean, bloodless. And yet life there laughed and bled and died by the whim of men gathered here, or in rooms just like this one. Tony was sure Londono had a fleet of them.

And Tony was one of those men now, no denying that. He buried it, deep and fast, and swung back to to the present. To all its beautiful distractions.

"I guess you aren't curious about this," he said, voice steady now, "since you haven't asked. But Gray was on foot while we were in a truck. We weren't exactly hitting Autobahn speeds but we were going faster than feet go, especially through terrain like that. Unless the guards were in on the secret too, whatever that secret is, they wouldn't have expected him to be able to catch up."

It was clear to everyone in the room that "secret" was one of Dinozzo's least favorite words.

"Ah," CIA Boss smiled a little. "Good point. We have some imagery from NCIS here that may help to clear up that mystery for you."

More shuffling.

"Gray appears on these screen shots of Calera land as a sort of blue cloud. Apparently you were . . . infused with low-level radiation?" CIA Boss turned to Gray.

Gray looked at Tony and quirked an eyebrow.

"A completely harmless isotope that we could track but would be undetectable to anyone searching for a bug. A safety measure for our youngest recruit." Tony smiled brilliantly at Gray, and then at CIA Boss.

The man frowned down at the photos. "That's . . . interesting. I haven't seen a similar method employed here. Would be a great method of tracking unfriendlies," the man mused. "A bug they couldn't see or get rid of. Of course, if the Hague found out you were irradiating people without their consent they'd invite you for a visit and never let you leave."

He smiled briefly at a frozen Tony, then went back to his pictures. "These images show Gray taking to one of the waterways almost immediately after your capture. The river is a more direct route to where you ended up, and of course in that kind of terrain a good swimmer will move even faster than a good runner. Presumably you knew where the river would meet up with the road the patrol was using?"

Gray just looked at him. Kid was quieter than Gibbs on a quiet day.

"You then left the river and moved fairly rapidly on foot, following the truck as well as the men that split off from the group. You should go out for track, Gray."

Kort made an odd sort of snorting sound, a choked-off laugh. Gray grinned at him, cold eyes transformed in that instant to something entirely different.

Gibbs chalked another emotion onto the tally. They'd just shared an inside joke, apparently. Whatever it was, Gray thought it was funny.

Meanwhile Tony shuddered in actual, honest-to-god horror. "You swam in that? And nothing ate you?"

Gibbs' eyebrows came together a little. "I thought the waterways were too exposed to travel on." It was a little absurd to be concerned now that the route hadn't been safe. Still . . .

Gray shrugged. "They are, for you. I'm not a threat."

Right. The kid told him before, but Gibbs hadn't understood it then. Más seguro, sin. Safer without the rifle. It's what kept him off the radar of that patrol.

The man at the front of the table leaned back in his chair and stared into nothing for a minute, turning the pen that he held but never used over and around in his hands. Then he focused on Gray.

"We're grateful that you went back for the NCIS agents and were able to free them. But I know you were encouraged not to engage. To withdraw if you were discovered by a patrol."

The agents' eyes flicked to Kort. His face was back to its normal indifferent distain, all traces of humor gone.

"And I happen to know you haven't gone out of your way to help people trapped in that jungle before. I'd like to know why you did this time around."

Gray returned the man's gaze steadily. He looked as if he wasn't going to answer. And then . . . he shrugged, as if it was no big deal. "Agent Gibbs and I had a heart-to-heart," he said.

CIA Boss frowned at the cryptic answer and turned his keen gaze to Gibbs, hoping for more. "Agent Gibbs?"

Gibbs shook his head. No clue.

CIA Boss narrowed his eyes, but closed the folder in front of him. "Alright. Well, if there's nothing else I believe we're done here. Again, we may be in touch to follow up on details in your reports, when we have them."

The man was about as subtle as the alligator Tony was sure would eat him if he ever went swimming in the Amazon. Seemed he wanted those reports yesterday.

"Agents Gibbs, Dinozzo, David - our men can escort you to your homes or to an NCIS safe house, if you prefer. I believe your director would like to see you tomorrow, after you've had a chance to rest."

Dinozzo and Ziva slumped slightly in relief, and Tony took a moment out of his day, right then, to bless Leon Vance from his great bull head right down to his probably bully toes. They could go home.

CIA Boss smiled, tell-tale eyes crinkling. "Thank you for bearing with us. Welcome home."

Kort and Gray were up from their seats and out the door like twin shots. It was the last the agents saw of either of them for months.

Gibbs followed, almost as fast.

When he got home he found a thin brown envelope with the CIA seal sitting on his work bench, 'Londono' scrawled across it in familiar black lettering.

A gift – another one – from Kort.

There were also four shiny new bottles of bourbon, lined up on the tabletop like soldiers on parade. From the team, he guessed. But why four?

Gibbs shook his head, poured himself a mugful, and drank it down, staring at the folder and thinking ominously on one of his father's favorite sayings.

'There's nothing in this world that's free.'

End Part One


a/n: But no worries. Part Two will continue in the usual space and time.