"Let's move." Harry barked at Tony, who finished the waffle he'd been having in two bits, following Harry as he strode out of the diner to the car.
"Sterling's way over, just north-west of Dulles." Tony announced; "Take the Interstate Four-Nine-Five up to-"
"I know where I'm going." Harry snapped as he strapped into the driver's seat; "And I'm not risking the Dulles traffic, we'll take the Four-Nine-Five to Langley and head across-country and come down to Sterling from the north."
The Lister erupted with a bellow as Harry started it, slamming the gear stick into reverse and mashed his foot into the carpet. The car spun up its wheels in reverse before he swivelled it around in a J-turn before moving into first gear.
The NCIS Dodge Charger screeched to a halt at the kerb, just missing the oncoming Lister. Harry pulled in next to Gibbs and climbed out, followed by a slightly seasick Tony.
"All staff are regarded as suspects." Gibbs said brusquely as they approached the loanshark's office. "Keep an eye out for anything that could connect them."
Harry unbuttoned his blazer, pushing back the right-hand side of it to expose the gleaming NCIS badge and the holster containing his loaded revolver. They stepped up to the door of the office and Tony entered first, swiftly stepping to the left. Harry followed, stepping to the right as Gibbs stormed in.
"Mister Simpson, I have a Federal Search Warrant for your loan files and you will also divulge to me which members of your staff had access to the batch of phones you bought from Tech and Tone store in Harrisonberg." Gibbs barked, presenting the man behind the counter with the warrant.
"I'm not Mister Simpson, I'm Rick Johnson, loan... representative." replied the man behind the desk, whose head was flicking back and forth, as if looking for an escape route.
"He's the dead marine's brother." muttered Tony to Harry.
"Then get Mister Simpson here, now." Gibbs ordered, and the man fled into the back of the office.
"Gibbs, Tony reckons that's Sergeant Johnson's brother." Harry told Gibbs.
"Get around the back and make sure he doesn't do a runner." Gibbs ordered; "I'm bringing him in anyway."
Harry slipped out walking down the side and around the back of the office, pulling back the hammer on his .454 revolver. The door in the back of the building opened at the same moment as a small girl of no more than six years old wandered into the alley from the other end. Rick Johnson's eyes snapped to Harry and then the child.
"Stay back!" he yelled, holding a handgun to the girl's head.
"Let her go Johnson, you won't shoot her." Harry said, fingering the record button on a small device by his left hand in his pocket.
"I will. Stay there and don't move." ordered Johnson as he began backing away.
"You wouldn't shoot a child." Harry repeated, hand not moving from the butt of the revolver.
"Oh yeah, then what happened to my bastard brother's spawn?!" demanded Johnson; "But then, you Feds already knew that."
Harry was caught between disgust at the man, but also he was pleased, giving him reason to shoot him.
"There's nowhere for you to go Johnson. Drop the gun and face justice or my colleagues behind you will employ lethal force." Harry told him.
Johnson twisted around and turned his gun to face where Harry had told him that the NCIS agents were. There was nobody there, but it was too late. An exceptionally good gunslinger can draw and shoot in a fifth of a second. Harry was prepared, arm tensed and finger ready to fall on the trigger, and he took a third of a second. At twenty feet away, the .454 Casull would hit its target in about nought-point-nought-one of a second.
The most highly-trained athlete could react to stimulus in one tenth of a second. An office-occupying murderer didn't have time to react before Harry fired. Tensing his finger on the trigger, the gun recoiled back and up, the shockwave going through his arm. But even as he released the trigger, Harry's finger was tensing again, the cylinder rotated and the revolver fired again. The first bullet punched through his heart between the ribs, while the second flattened itself on the wall after going through Johnson's head, and he collapsed to the ground, pistol still in-hand. Harry ran forward and helped the girl to her feet.
"Hey little one, you're safe." he whispered soothingly, keeping the girl's face away from the body, who was rather gruesomely missing the back of his head.
"I was so scared." whispered the little girl.
"I'm Harry, I work with the police, that bad man's never going to hurt you again." Harry said quietly as he waited for his fellow NCIS agents to catch up, holstering the revolver. On one knee with his arm wrapped around the shivering and trembling girl, he kept his eyes up and one hand resting near the grip of his gun until Tony and Gibbs burst around the corner, guns drawn.
"A bit late." grumbled Harry; "Johnson pulled a pistol, and took the girl hostage. You can see the result."
"Good." Gibbs grunted, holstering his pistol.
"Aww, Harry's going soft." Tony couldn't resist the urge to comment upon seeing the usually cold, occasionally explosively irritable and angry young man looking so sweet with the young girl with her head buried in his shoulder.
"I still have three rounds unexpended." Harry warned, although a close look revealed the fact his lips nearly twitched into a smirk, the closest that had recently been observed as a smile on his face.
He helped the little girl, Maria according to his surface Legilimency scan, into the back of the NCIS Dodge Charger as a couple of police cars arrived at the reports of gunfire.
About an hour later, Harry was sat behind his desk as Gibbs stormed in
"Local LEOs are giving us hell. Apparently we should have called them in instead of employing lethal force." grumbled Gibbs.
"Tell 'em to fuck off." Harry told him; "He was holding a semi-automatic handgun on a hostage and as the recording I got told us, he was responsible for two murders. Between the murdering bastard living and escaping, with the possibility of the kid getting hurt, I took the only course of action I thought reasonable, given that, despite a passing familiarity with SCARS, MCMAP, Krav Maga and several eastern martial arts, I wasn't confident of incapacitating or disarming him without the girl coming to harm."
"Agreed." Gibbs nodded.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish writing the dissertation for my newest degree, then I have paperwork for my investments to complete and a property development company to oversee, I need some sleep, a Havana Cigar, a week's worth of un-drunk whisky and a meal." Harry said irritably; "And between you and me, rapists and child-abusers were amongst those who get no quarter from me. I only gave him the option because I was recording myself."
"Apparently the girl, Maria, had wandered off from a 'bring your child to work' day and her parents left to contact her grandparents, so I'm going to keep her with me until they get back." Gibbs commented; "Though I think she might be a bit more at ease if you're around. Dinner?"
"Sure why not." Harry replied. To him, young children were some of the few who didn't judge him, be it judging his intelligence, or his lack of age, or any one of a thousand things.
After setting Maria up in one of the spare bedrooms of Gibbs' house and layering wards over it, Harry departed quietly and headed to his own home, spending a few hours on a translation of a Carthaginian scroll from around the time of Hannibal's campaign against the Roman Empire, and spent the rest of the evening working on his dissertation on crusader warfare and Saracen warfare during the twelfth century. On the far side of a night's sleep and a hearty full English breakfast, he drove to the Navy Yard, only to be greeted at the gates by a crowd of journalists, the chatter of cameras and the accompanying flashes.
"Sorry kid, someone leaked your part in last night." said Tony, poking his head into the car, "It has been blown a bit out of proportion and you're the 'Hero of America's children'. CNN and a good few others have heard about it and that you were photographed leaving NCIS HQ yesterday with the little Maria clutching your hand just makes you look more of a hero."
"There is nothing heroic about what I did Tony, remember that. It was simply a matter of what was right." Harry advised softly, remembering when he was eleven and some dark wizards tried to take out old man Patheroy. While none of the dark wizards survived, Harry suffered for months with the nightmares of killing them.
Between the nineteen attackers, the old man easily killed off twelve, but seven had cornered his adoptive son. Harry had gone berserk and left them dead, rather gruesomely so. Simple spells utilised with great powers, summoning charms ripping apart their internal organs, rope-binding spells crushing their rib-cages, levitating spells shooting them into the ceilings, it still occasionally haunted his dreams.
Far more perceptive than many gave him credit for, Tony glanced at Harry, suddenly realising Harry, in just a few moments had aged, not so much physically, but emotionally. His eyes looked tired and there were a few lines in his face which hadn't been prominently noticeable before. Then Harry closed off any emotion and blanked his face. He smiled slightly when, as he pulled up outside Admiral Willard park, Maria approached, tugging on the hands of two adults he assumed were her parents.
"Can't thank you enough Mr. Potter." began the father; "We were working, she went to the loo and simply vanished even though we were on the same floor of the same building."
"Don't worry." Harry replied with a slight nod; "I did my job, and Maria's a good girl, couldn't let anything happen to her. Just look after her and be careful, there are some scum out there who don't care who they do what to, and a bored child will often wander off."
After that, he confronted the press vultures, telling them that he had 'simply been doing his job' before departing to the far side of the NCIS security. New cases were always coming in and he was intuitive with these kinds of things. That was why he was usually in charge of the extensive cold cases file, in two months, he'd solved five cold cases which had been classed as 'never going to be solved'.
Behind him, Abby and Tony, the usually laboratory-bound forensic scientist and the field investigator watched Harry's swiftly-retreating back.
"Did you know he can show emotion other than extreme anger or complete apathy?" asked Tony.
"Does the latter count as emotion?" asked Abby; "But he would probably be nicer if people gave him hugs."
"I honestly think that he'd rather shoot himself than be hugged. Or maybe shoot the hugger."
Leaving work at NCIS satisfied, Harry settled into the Lister, taking a few moments to settle his mind before starting up the car, which barked into life attracting more than a few looks from other people heading home. He had work to do. Peeling out of the car park and heading north to the edge of the Navy Yard and then west to one of the checkpoint exits, Harry waved his ID to the guards before flooring it. Racing onto M Street South-West until, near the Washington Channel, he headed north, pulling up outside a glass and concrete monolith on E Street South-West.
Climbing out, Harry straightened his tie and picked up a briefcase from the boot before locking the car. Walking in, his pistol carefully hidden under his jacket and the badge in a pocket, he waved a different ID over a scanner which admitted him. Crossing the lobby, he stepped into a lift and pressed a button for the seventh floor. Deposited on a nondescript office floor, Harry made his way to a door marked 'Dr. Daniel Mulville – Deputy Administrator'. Rapping smartly on the door, he was bade to enter.
"Sir." Harry greeted the besuited man on the far side of the desk, who stood and shook his hand.
"Harry, how's law enforcement doing?" he asked genially.
"It sharpens the mind I'll admit." Harry shrugged; "And occasionally I think I might be helping the world."
"Indeed. Down to business, the schedule for the TDRS-J launch has been narrowed down to somewhere between the fourth and fifth of this month." Doctor Mulville stated; "We need the tracking aircraft in place."
"I'll do what I can, but that only gives me three days." commented Harry disapprovingly.
"I know. Weather, and the worries over whether this last rocket is still serviceable has prevented a confirmation of launch until this morning." apologised Mulville.
"However, I'll do what I can. We'll get the Foxbat and the NF-104 down to Cape Carneval as soon as possible." Harry sighed; "I will need to work out the flight profiles with my number two, practice the profiles. Then we need to get the measuring equipment, sensors and cameras on, test fly them and then do calibration runs."
"How long?"
"Every minute of the two days I'll have between arrival and launch."