Chapter Six

All thoughts flew out of Tony's mind as the loud sound of a gunshot echoed through the wire. The silence that met his frantic calls to Gibbs was deafening.

Tony ran for all that he was worth.

A few minutes earlier:

The timing of their arrival at Santos' house had been totally unplanned. One would say it was a pure coincidence, and regardless of what Gibbs may believe, coincidences do happen, and one of them was just about to turn his day upside down.

Questions and suspicions were already forming in his mind as he approached the house; why did Santos take off the way he did? The man was definitely involved, but to what extent? What or who was in the house? His senses were trained on the house, so that he almost missed the slight movement behind him, and only managed to turn at the last minute to avoid a devastating blow to the head. If it had impacted, the blow would have been strong enough to render him unconscious immediately. As it was, his right arm took the brunt of the bone-cracking blow, and his numb fingers released the gun which clattered to the ground.

Gibbs assessed the situation in seconds; his unknown attacker was wielding a fireplace log, and seemed to have no other weapon. The man was just swinging for another punishing blow when Gibbs tackled him to the ground, using his own weight and his left arm, as the right arm was now out of commission. The man wasn't expecting such a brisk move, and they both went down noisily with a force that jarred Gibb's right arm, and made the pain reach almost an unbearable level. However, Gibbs had enough experience dealing with painful injuries, so he let the pain feed his anger, and lend strength to his body. He finally managed to deliver a blow that left the other man stunned, and gave him a moment to catch his breath, and look for his gun.

As Gibbs started to pull himself to his feet with some difficulty, the deafening sound of a gunshot and a searing pain in his thigh brought him once more to the ground. He had been busy grappling with the first attacker, and had not seen the other man come out of the house until it was too late. No matter how skilled a man is, and Gibbs is definitely skilled, there is just no way for a person to watch his own back completely.

The combined pain of the fracture and the gunshot wound kept him in a semi-conscious state, and he was losing blood, but, fortunately, not at an alarming rate. Through his blurred vision he could see the man who shot him walk quickly in his direction, and pick up the gun he had lost earlier. The man came to stand over him, and, noticing the earwig, crouched in front of him, he pulled it out roughly and smashed it.

He then turned to his silent companion who was swaying a little as he got to his feet, "come on, let's get the damn marine out of the house, and head over there, we're late already .. the other Fed could come back at any moment, he must have heard the shot."

The second man looked around nervously as he hurried to join his companion, "What about Santos?"

"He will have to fend for himself. Let's hope he hasn't been caught yet, because this will give us a few more minutes. What happened out here, huh? You were supposed to give him a good whack on the head, not a tap on the arm!" The other man just grumbled something unintelligently. His companion shook his head with some disgust, and turned once more to look at Gibbs. "He took a good look at you.. probably at me, too. May be we should do something about him."

His companion shook his head emphatically, "Hey, we were not given orders to kill anyone."

"Yeah, but I'm not going to let myself get killed or caught."

Fortunately for Gibbs, the other man insisted, "Killing a Fed is not a good idea, besides, he will be out of it for a while, we will get our payment, and we will be long gone before he gets a chance to find us."

"All right, I will get Moore, he shouldn't give us anymore trouble." He handed the gun to his companion and ran to the house, "watch for the other Fed, and don't try to hit him with that stupid log, just shoot him."

Gibbs was not used to feeling helpless, but his brain, as sluggish as it was at the moment, insisted that he had one option left, and that is to hang in there, and wait for DiNozzo to figure out a way to get both himself and Lance Corporal Moore out of this mess. His last conscious thought was that it shouldn't be nearly as difficult as getting him and Maddie Tyler out of a tightly locked car in the bottom of the Potomac River.

Two possibilities came to Tony's mind as he raced back to Gibbs, either that his boss was busy subduing a suspect who came out of the blue, or that it was Gibbs who had been subdued. The continuous silence made the first possibility unlikely, so Tony settled for the second, and that was bad enough; however, he totally refused to consider a worse, or rather the worst, scenario. He had actually faced that horrible scenario last year, on that desolated pier, and he thought it would be really unfair to expose him ever again to the sight of a dying, an almost dead, or a literally dead Gibbs.

There was also the real possibility that Gibbs was not the only one in peril here, they may well have found their kidnapped marine, though not where they expected, or how they expected. Tony knew that he should not just go charging in there, and that he will have to lose a few precious minutes in order to circle around the house and come from behind, though he wasn't sure what will meet him, if anything at all, once he got there.

He jumped lightly over a couple of half-fallen fences, and was really grateful for the absence of residents and / or dogs. As he plastered himself to the side wall, and crouched low to the ground, the sight that met him was alarming. A few steps away, Gibbs was lying still, with blood pooling beneath his leg. It was hard to tell, from this distance, how bad he had been hit, or whether he was just unconscious or worse. Another man, carrying a small hand gun stood close to a car parked in front of the house, looking around warily. The man's attention, as well as Tony's, was diverted by another man coming out of the house while supporting and dragging a familiar figure. The three of them were heading to the car and Tony had only a few seconds to consider his next move.

The two men were struggling to get a swaying and uncooperative Moore into the car, when Tony's warning startled them: "NCIS! Drop your weapons!"

Tony trained his gun on them, as he stood over Gibbs to shield him from any flying bullets. Tony was outnumbered; he was desperately worried for Gibbs, concerned for Moore, and wondering if he was doing the right thing for both of them. He could tell that one of the two thugs was getting ready to shoot regardless of the consequences, and Tony readied himself as well for an inevitable confrontation that may not end well for him. But, at this precise moment, Lance Corporal Philip Moore proved that Ducky and Kisarios' assessment of his character was accurate, the dazed man used his own body weight – the only weapon he had – as he sagged against his captor, dragging him to the ground, and giving Tony a precious advantage. The man went down cursing, and Tony's bullet found its target in the arm of his companion.

Tony was beyond furious, though you couldn't tell by looking at him. He had let his training take over, and had remained detached in the last few minutes, but his inability to check on Gibbs and to make sure of the other man's condition was taking its toll.

His voice was feral as he warned them, "You shot my partner, if you want to live to regret it, don't move a muscle."

Things might still have turned ugly, but the sounds of police sirens added weight to Tony's warning, and the two men gave up.

Police officers and paramedics swarmed the area, and as soon as he cuffed the two men, and made sure that a paramedic was checking Moore, Tony flew to Gibbs' side. There was no way to hold back the anxiety and dread coursing through him as he kneeled on the hard ground, and waited for the paramedic's verdict. Tony had enough experience to tell that the bullet hadn't hit any major arteries; otherwise it would have been too late for Gibbs. There was also something wrong with his right arm, as the paramedic also confirmed. However, he had not regained consciousness and that fact worried Tony even more than the bullet wound, did he hit his head falling down? He wondered. The prospect of Gibbs going into another coma was scary, to put it mildly.

As much as he would have liked to, he couldn't give Gibbs his undivided attention, and he couldn't follow him to the hospital. He was in charge of the scene, and now in charge of the case as well. He needed to call Ducky to tell him to meet the ambulance at Bethesda, he needed to call Ziva and McGee, and probably Vance too, and he grimaced as he thought of that one. He felt the absence of Ziva and McGee keenly, and not just because he had badly needed their backup. He was an expert at dealing with strangers, police officers and hostile thugs, but, now, he found himself needing the comfort that can only be brought by his teammates, and by their shared affection for a man who was more than just a boss.

Tbc.

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