Deep Lacerations: Chapter 14

A/N: Thank you for reviews! I like feedback. Keep them coming, and I'll keep the story coming :) Just kidding, I'll finish the story even if nobody says anything to me about it.

Agent Gibbs stepped off the elevator and turned into the Cyber Crimes unit of the subbasement, vaguely aware of the former Army pathologist trailing him. "What've you got?" he demanded, getting the attention of everyone in the room. The computer geeks all stopped in mid-type, their jaws hanging open and hands poised above the keyboards, in awe of the fact that they were in the presence of the entire Major Crimes Response Team, but Gibbs ignored them in favor of the three agents at the far console. McGee was at the computer, his broken leg propped up on an open drawer; Ziva was perched on the desk, cleaning her fingernails with her knife; and Tony was sitting backwards in a chair that, judging by the computer specialist standing a few feet away, he had taken from someone's desk.

"Oh, hey, Boss," DiNozzo said, half-turning in the chair. "We've been looking into Calypso. You're going to want to hear this."

"We, Tony?" McGee asked. DiNozzo smacked him the back of the head.

"You wouldn't have known to look if it weren't for us," he scolded the younger agent. "Ow!" he exclaimed as Gibbs, in turn, smacked him.

"The point, DiNozzo," he demanded.

"Right. So, Calypso is this top-secret satellite surveillance system—ooh, I like that—sorry, Boss. McHacking-The-Army's-Computer-System has the details about what exactly that means, but it's not that important."

"Hey!"

"Anyway, they were good. A month after Calypso went on-line in Iraq, the number of insurgents arrested tripled. I'm sure they managed to make themselves a few enemies in the process, but if anybody said anything to the complaint department, they must have forgotten to file them."

"Major Scott Gracy was the Executive Officer of the unit from their arrival in Iraq until he was captured and killed," Ziva said, ignoring Tony's comments to take over smoothly, leaning over McGee's computer to activate the plasma screen. Instantly, Major Scott Gracy's personnel file was displayed, complete with a picture of the major in his green class A uniform, black hair buzzed short, an almost cocky expression concealed entirely in dark blue eyes. "He was the logical choice for information. As the unit's XO—"

"He knew all the men in the unit, as well as all the information," Gracy interrupted, stepping into the room from where she had been standing, just outside the door. The agents turned to face her, taken slightly aback by the scrubs, red eyes, and haunted expression. "He wrote some of the software used, so he would have known how to hack into it and change what Calypso was looking at, making it as useful as a night-vision scope at noon or a spy satellite pointed at Antarctica. Oh, and he went out on missions with his men, and spoke Arabic with the accent of an upper-class Jordanian, because that's what his mother is." She gestured toward the personnel file on the screen. "I can tell you a lot more about him than that can," she said softly.

"He was tortured," Gibbs began. She nodded.

"For over a week," she replied, her voice still soft and distant. "He was beaten, he was tied up. He had ligature marks on his wrists, dislocated shoulders from his arms being held behind his back and over his head, water in his lungs from high-pressured hoses directed at his face, and one hundred seventeen cuts all over his body, which they spent the entire week giving him."

"He did not last long," Ziva commented. Gracy turned to face her, her eyes not quite focused.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "He didn't. They were too aggressive. He died of accelerated heart failure as a result of his injuries."

"Would he have talked?" Ziva pressed.

"Would you?" Gracy shot back. "I know Army Intelligence training isn't quite the same as Mossad's, but it wasn't a day at the park, either. He went through some pretty twisted stuff. He couldn't have resisted torture forever—nobody could—but he could hold out awhile."

"I do not have a family that can be threatened," Ziva replied. Dark brown eyes met lighter ones with a look akin to sympathy. "How long could he hold in against someone threatening you?"

"Hold out," Gracy corrected without thinking. "If they were threatening me, a while. It was something we talked about. I was an Army officer. I knew the risks of wearing the uniform. He knew that if it came between me and national security, the nation came first." She paused, her voice tight. "He didn't like it, but we both knew that that was the way it had to be. If they were threatening Maddie or Nate-." She shook her head, her voice lowering to a whisper. "He couldn't have done anything to jeopardize the kids."

"No father could," Gibbs commented. Gracy turned to face him, seeing something familiar in his eyes, something she had seen in herself. Turning to address the entire group, Gibbs continued, "We have to assume that our murderers got Hawke's name from Major Gracy, and we have to assume they have others. We need a complete list of everyone involved with Calypso and we need to know what they were working on." He turned to Gracy. It didn't take much to see the anguish in her eyes; he had, after all, essentially just accused her husband of giving away state secrets. Still, they had a job to do. He had to distract her from what he just said. "You know Colonel Hauser?"

She blinked to try to redirect her thoughts before nodding. "Very well. He worked with Scott for years."

"Good. We're going to Ft. Belvoir in the morning to talk with him. And let your bosses know what's going on. Since your husband was the original case, this is now a joint operation."

"It was already a joint operation, Gibbs," Gracy informed him. "CID and Intelligence. I believe now it would be a task force."

"Fine," he said, rolling his eyes at the semantics. "Oh, and wear your uniform tomorrow."

"My uniform?" she asked with a frown. "What's the point? I already told you, I know Colonel Hauser. I've socialized with his family. He's seen me out of uniform."

"It's psychological, my dear," Ducky said from the doorway. "A subliminal message that you're one of them." He frowned slightly. "I came to apologize. I should not have involved you."

"You did what you had to," she said, her voice stiff. She turned away from him and back to Gibbs. "I'm not in the Army anymore. I don't even have rank."

"You maintained your rank equivalent when you joined CID, right?" She nodded. "Good. Go home. Spend some time with your kids. And we'll see you in uniform tomorrow, Major."

Gibbs reached over and picked up the receiver as his phone began ringing. "Gibbs," he said, sounding almost weary. Weary enough to give the voice on the other end pause.

"I think I have something you want to see, Gibbs."

He sighed. "I'll be right down, Abs," he replied, replacing the receiver as he rose from his desk.

In contrast to most of the rest of the building, the forensics lab at NCIS was still well-lit and filled with noise—in this case, the heavy metal blaring from Abby's sound system that she somehow managed to requisition—at 2030 in the evening. Approaching through her office, Gibbs stopped the music before stepping into the lab.

"What, no Caf-Pow?" Abby asked with a pout as Gibbs appeared in front of her.

"Abby," he replied wearily.

"Right," the forensics scientist replied. "So, about our dead guy. Captain Hawke. Ducky told me to tell you two things about him. First of all, he said that Hawke definitely wasn't tortured. Well, that is, aside from all these little cuts all over his body, which, if you ask me, couldn't have been all that comfortable. Sorry. Back to the point. Ducky also said something about the lacerations not looking quite right, especially the ones on his chest. It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about, because lacerations are lacerations, right? I mean, you can't mess up while cutting someone. Well, I guess you can—"

"Abby, it's already been a long day," Gibbs interrupted with a sigh.

"Sorry, Gibbs. Anyway, Ducky took a picture of Hawke's chest and sent it to me and I studied it for awhile before I realized what he was talking about." The picture of Captain Hawke's chest appeared on the plasma screen and Abby's monitor. "So, there are three types of laceration on his chest. Actually, two types of laceration and a stabbing. Ducky told me this was the fatal wound," she said, highlighting a deep stab wound in the middle of the left side of Hawke's chest. "His murderer stabbed him right in the heart. So that's not really relevant." Pressing a few keys on the keyboard, the wound disappeared. "That leaves us with the two types of cutting wounds—lacerations. Some of them are red around the edges, and the others aren't. The ones that are red are the ones he had while he was still alive, and when the other ones were made, he had been dead for a couple of hours already. So, I used a spectral subtraction technique—"

"I don't need the details, Abs."

"Okay. I took out all of the cuts that were made while he was still alive." A few more keystrokes, and the red lines disappeared, leaving Gibbs squinting as if at a Magic Eye image. "That leaves us with this. What does this look like to you?" She highlighted a pattern of cuts in the middle of Hawke's chest and enlarged it. Gibbs frowned before his eyes widened in recognition.

"That's an oak leaf," he said.

"Why would someone carve an oak leaf into our victim's chest?"

"It's a sign of rank," Gibbs explained. "Majors and lieutenant colonels in the Marines, Army, and Air Force; lieutenant commanders and commanders in the Navy."

"But Hawke was a captain, right? So he should have had those double bar things," Abby commented, confused about what one had to do with the other.

"Railroad tracks," he said absently, studying the image and shaking his head. "Marines don't wear their rank on the middle of the chest. Only soldiers do. This is an Army rank." He frowned. "Zoom out on the whole chest again. There," he said, pointing at the upper right of the image. "Those lines. What are they?"

"I'll have to clear up the image," Abby said, typing frantically into the computer. Little by little, the picture became clearer. "Does that say what I think it says?"

"'Gracy'," Gibbs read. He slammed his palm against the lab table in what was a rare show of anger around Abby. "This isn't about Hawke at all. They wanted to make sure we knew it was about Gracy." He frowned. "Now we just need to figure out what it is about Gracy."