Disclaimer: See chapter 1 for the disclaimer.
N Old Dominion Drive/September 15, 2010, 1755 Romeo
McGee had been forced to take the alternate route to McLean by heavy traffic on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. It'd add three minutes in driving time, but that was a drowning man complaining about the rain when traffic was considered. An hour and four minutes, an hour and one, it was still almost an hour longer than the last time he'd been to McLean.
Then again, it would've still taken him longer anyways because he didn't drive like a man with a death wish, as was Gibbs's style.
The needle on the dashboard decided it'd add even more time to the drive, however, as McGee noticed that the last person to drive the sedan had neglected to stop for gas, and it was now near-empty.
McGee shook his head and sighed. "Great," he mumbled. Five minutes later, at six o'clock on the dot, he pulled the navy blue Dodge Charger under the awning of a gas station and convenience store.
Stepping out of the car and shutting the door, McGee looked around and found that he was the only person parked in front. As he filled the tank, he ran his eyes over the windows and examined the station's interior. It seemed only slightly more occupied than the parking lot: McGee could only see the clerk at the front counter and one man sitting at one of the dining tables before the windows with what appeared to be a laptop.
Eventually the loud thunk of the nozzle handle assured McGee he could definitely make it to McLean. Squeezing out what last few drops he could, he returned the nozzle to the pump and made his way inside.
The store's layout was a simple, large rectangular room. To McGee's right, as he stood in the doorway, was the front desk, which was perpendicular to the front wall of the store. It had the usual small wall of candy before it, as well as various nick-knacks that could be purchased on impulse for less than a dollar (usually). Further down the counter was a metal stand under a heat lamp, on which small boxes of Hunt's Brothers pizza slices were displayed and kept warm and fresh, all the more convenient for a would-be traveler with a hankerin' for a pie.
And of course, the wall behind the counter was covered in brands of cigarettes and ads for those same cigarettes, and even cigarettes that weren't there. McGee shook his head, figuring there was enough nicotine, arscnic, methane, butane, methanol, toluene, and ammonia to bring down a bull elephant in almost every individual store across the country.
"Am I the only one havin' one of those days?" he conversationally asked the clerk as he approached the counter.
"No, brother, you definitely are not," the clerk, a beer-bellied man in a Washington Redskins jersey, replied. After he relayed the price of the gas, McGee dug through his wallet and handed the clerk a couple bills. The clerk punched in the numbers, and when the cash drawer didn't pop out, a look came over his face.
"Oh, sorry," he said. "I need to go find the key, it'll only take a minute."
"Alright then," McGee said with a smile on his face that said it happens to all of us, and then dropped it the minute the man was turned and walking away. He watched as the clerk came out from behind the counter and walked down a hallway across from the main doors. It was a T shaped hall, with a sign saying that the right way lead to the restrooms and the manager's office, while the left way lead to the rear exit.
McGee turned around and examined the rest of the store. The back wall (or far left when entering the front door, one could say) was the wall of coolers which contained all forms of beer and soda. The vast majority of the floor was, naturally, occupied by shelves of various foods, small supplies, and (naturally) candy.
He was gazing over small the magazine rack at the counter-end of the shelf nearest the store-front when he felt a sensation of a stone settling in his stomach, and somehow knew it was because his peripheral vision had registered something familiar and dangerous. Listening to what he didn't even know was his first true Gibbsian gut feeling, he carefully and indirectly looked at the man on the laptop, and did what he felt was a good job keeping his face from showing the shock he felt.
The man sitting at the table and reading from his laptop wore a gunmetal gray t-shirt with an image of Jim Morrison over a long-sleeved white shirt and had a fuller beard than the image McGee had seen, but it was short and trimmed. His hair was also a bit shorter on top, but still neat and clean. They were minor changes, but he was still very obviously Vince Hauser.
For a moment, time seemed to stand still. Then, with the kind of inspiration a truly good agent has, McGee approached the magazine rack and took a housing magazine from it, as if he'd suddenly thought of something to check. Flipping through the pages and stopping at a random one, he pulled out his iPhone, dialed Gibbs, and hoped this would work.
In Vance's office, the Special Agent in Charge of the MCRT and the Director of NCIS had just narrowed down three safe houses for use by the surviving members of the force deployment committee and worked out a rotation of agents to guard them when Gibbs's phone rang.
"What'chya got McGee?" he answered after checking the caller ID.
On his end, McGee froze for the briefest moment before he finally found his voice. "Yeah Bo- uh, Bob. How's it going?"
To say Gibbs was puzzled by this question was a bit more than an understatement. "McGee? What the hell're you talking about?"
"Yeah, that's right," McGee replied, for all intents and purposes ignoring Gibbs and focusing only on what he was saying. "Hey, you remember that, uh, Thom guy from the One Club and the, um…whole Vinny Housing thing? Well, I'm looking at it right now."
Gibbs had been damn close to hanging up and straightening this out with McGee when he got back, but those words stopped him. His memory finally dredged up where One Club came from: when McGee had gone quasi-undercover to get into the club for a case. Undercover as his best-selling alter ego Thom E. Gemcity…
Vinny Housing…
Vance could see the moment on Gibbs's face when whatever the hell he was hearing made perfect sense.
"McGee, you can see Hauser?" the team leader asked.
"Yeah, I'm tellin' ya, I've got it clear as day. Uh, right in front of me, too," McGee responded, trying his damned hardest to appear as if he was reading the magazine, when in truth his only concerns were to get his message across, keep an eye on Hauser, and leave the SEAL none the wiser.
Gibbs leapt to his feet and made a brisk walk out of the director's office, destination: the bullpen.
"McGee, where are you?"
"'Uh, yeah, I just stopped at the BP on Old Dominion North halfway between McLean and D.C. I needed to fill up and, um, uh figured I'd grab something to eat, stretch my legs, you know. Then I'll get back on the road and should hit the District in about, uh, thirty minutes."
By this point, Gibbs was storming into the bullpen and snapping at Tony and Ziva, whose heads popped up like dogs'.
"McGee, listen carefully," he said as he whipped his drawer open to retrieve his firearm, the cell phone carefully cradled between his ear and shoulder. "Don't approach him, don't let him know you're on to him. We'll be there in ten minutes at the most, if he leaves, follow him and call me, ya got that?"
When McGee replied, Tony and Ziva were already quickly gearing up as well. "Oh, totally. Yeah, uh see you too, bye-"
Gibbs flicked the phone closed. "McGee spotted Hauser at a gas station about half an hour away, let's move!"
After pocketing his phone, McGee had set a boxed pizza slice by the register to buy when the clerk came back. He decided to spend the wait "reading" the magazine he held. Only a few seconds had passed since hanging up when Hauser pulled a carrying case onto the table, closed his laptop, and stored it in the case. After zipping it closed, he returned it to the seat from which he'd grabbed it, stood, and started walking toward the front counter.
McGee kept his face even and his eyes on the magazine, and time seemed to crawl as Hauser was mere feet from him. Then the moment passed, and Hauser continued on his way to the back hallway, likely headed for the restroom. McGee sighed in relief before returning the magazine to the stand and looking for something he'd actually enjoy skimming. After almost a minute, he'd almost decided on the newest Reader's Digest by default, wondering what that weird thrashing fabric noise he was hearing was, when he heard a distinct cry of "Oh my God!" from the back hallways. It sounded like the clerk.
McGee had just started to walk there when the clerk did indeed come scurrying from the hallway.
"Mister, mister, you gotta help!" he cried in panic. "That guy's on the floor having a seizure! There's blood comin' out of his nose and, and, I-I don't know what to do!"
While McGee's mind wondered what would cause a forty-year old man with no history of epilepsy to start seizing and bleeding from the nose (and settled on brain tumor as a likely answer), his feet rushed him to the hall where, indeed, Vince Hauser was having a seizure on the floor. Letting instinct take over, McGee knelt beside him and began to reach for his head, intending to hold it still so he didn't bash his own brains out on the floor.
He had just started to think Wait a minute, where's the blood when Hauser's seizure stopped, and his palm struck McGee's throat. The agent was knocked back, all breath gone from him and his heart hammering. He'd just started to reach for his waist when he felt an impact in his chest, right between the sternum and the stomach, and everything essentially went limp.
As he struggled to breathe, unable to move in seemingly even the slightest way, Hauser regained his feet and dragged him. Next thing McGee knew, he was lying on his back on cold, dirty tiles, looking at the roof of what could only be a public men's restroom.
"Thanks," a voice that wasn't the clerk's said. Right as McGee found he could sort of twitch in a groggy, useless way, he heard the sound of dollar bills scraping together, as if counting out an amount. "Can't tell you how much I appreciate this."
"Don't mention it," the clerk replied from somewhere out of McGee's view of the lights. "Far as I'm concerned, any man who thinks he has the right to sleep with another man's wife deserves what he gets. S'funny he happened to walk in while you were here, huh?"
"Yeah," Hauser replied. "Life's funny like that."
McGee heard the door open and close, leaving him alone with Vince Hauser. He'd just started to lift his head, struggling to do so, when the ex-SEAL appeared kneeling beside him, emptying his pockets and removing his sidearm. Right when he was able to move his arms and try to stop what was happening, Hauser stood, placed the sole of his boot on McGee's forehead, and stepped down, slamming the back of his head into the floor and dazing him even further.
"Special Agent Timothy McGee, NCIS," Hauser said as he read off the badge folder in his hand. "Been awhile since I've seen that acronym." He dropped the folder to the floor, then examined McGee's sidearm. "SIG Sauer P229, right? I think it was the DAK variant your agency adopted." From his spot on the floor, McGee noted that Hauser didn't seem overconfident or antagonistic. Hell, he seemed conversational and relaxed.
That wasn't good. McGee doubted he'd be able to goad someone with such an attitude into making a mistake, but he knew he'd have to think of something. He heard Hauser remove the magazine and eject the chambered round. ".40 Smith & Wesson, huh? Figured all the ARMFEDs used nines or .45s."
McGee was able to lift his pulsing head and watched as Hauser swiftly and expertly disassembled the SIG piece by piece, first removing the slide, then the firing pin, then dumping it all in the garbage can by the door. He then dropped McGee's iPhone onto the floor and crunched it under the heel of his boot. Finally, the SEAL walked over, bent down, and lifted McGee by two fistfuls of shirt and jacket before forcing him up against a wall.
"Alright, here's what's gonna happen," Hauser said calmly. "I'm gonna ask you a question, and you're gonna tell me the answer. If you refuse to answer, I will hurt you. If you try to dodge or redirect the question, I will hurt you. If you answer with a cute comment, I. Will. Hurt you. Oh, and don't lie to me, Agent McGee. I'll know, and I don't like it when people lie to me. It'll only make me hurt you worse. Got it?"
For a moment McGee only stared at him before finding his voice. "I-I don't know what you're talking about. I was just, uh, just-"
Before he could breathe, Hauser pulled his right hand back and thrust it into McGee's stomach. The agent doubled over, his air gone again, and he never saw the second strike coming until Hauser's fist slammed into his left eye. The sheer force of it sent McGee's head whipping back into the wall, making more pain explode behind his eyes like a white light. Hauser's hands grabbed his shirt again, and the SEAL gave him a good shake to regain his attention.
"I said 'don't lie to me,' Agent McGee. I was nice and just gave you the normal treatment that time. Do it again, and it'll be worse. Now, let's get started. What does NCIS know?"
McGee groaned in pain before he was able to speak. "I'm tellin' you, I don't know what you-"
Hauser cut him off by grabbing his forehead, pulling his head forward, then slamming it back into the wall. McGee's vision almost vanished entirely, leaving only dim shadow. He felt fingers on the skin around his left eye, holding the lids open. He never even saw the middle knuckles on Hauser's right index and middle finger as they were thrust into his open eye.
The pain was so intense that McGee didn't even know he was screaming. Hauser saw it fit to stop the screaming by dragging McGee around in a circle, picking up speed as he went, and slamming his face into the cinder wall. McGee felt a distinct break somewhere around his eye, and a wet trail slither around it and down his cheek. Then, he was held against the wall again, back where he'd started.
Hauser ignored McGee's shaky and uneven breathing and held open the lids to his left eye again. The agent tried pulling back on reflex, and only found the wall. His eye hurt so much that the mere pressure from Hauser's fingers on the lids was actually making him whimper in pain and fear. That fear intensified when he saw what appeared to be black flakes of…something floating around as if in water in the left half of his vision. It was like the world's scariest snowball, only the flakes were large black…leaf-looking things.
"Ocular hemorrhaging, a small laceration over the eye, and a broken orbital bone," Hauser commented as he examined the red circle around McGee's iris, the source of the small blood trail down his face, and the not-quite-right shape of his eye socket, what he could see under the already forming bruises that is. He then moved the hand down and gripped McGee's chin so he was looking directly at him. "It'll only get worse from here if you try to lie any more. Now tell me, what. Does. NCIS. Know?"
McGee tried to think of something to say, but all that came to mind was what Tony had told Gibbs after speaking to an old teammate of Hauser's: …and, brother, he hurts people. The meaning of those words finally hit McGee as he realized: this was not an out of control hulk like Damon Werth, this was not an everyman gone crazy. This was a trained man whose sole purpose seemed to be hurting - and even killing – others. And the pain he was in now was already so bad…
He didn't even realize he was gonna talk until he'd started, his words sprinkled with attempts to catch his breath. "We know you killed…Callaway and Stockwell. You're after…three others, because…because they left your team."
"Stockwell's murder wouldn't be your purview. Who's investigating it?"
"The FBI…we've formed a…joint investigation…just to catch you…don't you feel special?" McGee didn't even know where that last part came from, but he wished he wouldn't get anything else from there.
"Don't get cute," Hauser said simply. "I'll let that one slide 'cause you weren't answering a question. Who was that you called?"
McGee almost managed to say Just my friend Bob, but the instinct for survival overtook his need to stall.
"My boss…Special Agent…Leroy, Jethro, Gibbs…"
"How long until he gets here?"
This time McGee's survival instinct lost the quick draw. "Uh, thirty minutes?"
Even he knew that had been a mistake.
Hauser grabbed McGee by the back of his neck and ran him into the nearest mirror. His head felt like a fireworks show as he fell to his knees, his face hovering over the sink as shards of glass that were slow to break fell around him, leaving small cuts or gashes on the back of his neck and right ear. He could see blood drops falling into the sink from his face, no doubt from more lacerations.
"Try again, Agent McGee. How long until Gibbs gets here?"
This time instinct clearly came ahead.
"Ten minutes."
Hauser nodded as he mulled this over and gauged how long he had to get as much info as possible out of his new intel source. "Do you know who my other three targets are?"
McGee thought for a minute on how best to answer this. Hauser had just raised his hand to speed him up when he finally answered.
"Hanson…Margott…and Stan Merdetzky."
"Stan? You know his first name?"
McGee's eyes opened wide as he realized his mistake. Oh crap.
"What else do you know about him?" Hauser asked, now leaning close to McGee.
The agent knew he'd been busted, that if he didn't do something he was gonna give information to a calculating killer and lead him right to his next victim. His screw up was gonna get another man killed…
"N-Nothing," he finally managed to squeeze out, but even he could hear how much of a lie it was. But he didn't care. He pushed on, hoping that his bravado wouldn't break before Gibbs showed up…or he was beaten to death. He'd take either one over helping this man. "I don't know anything about Stan Merde-"
Hauser grabbed McGee by the back of the neck, brought his head up, and slammed it into the inner edge of the porcelain sink. McGee's ears rang from the impact, and before the ringing subsided even a little, Hauser delivered a vicious punch to the back of his head. The force followed through and sent McGee's face and forehead breaking through the outer lip of the sink, leaving McGee sprawled on the floor in shards of porcelain and blood. In his confused haze of pain, an odd thought came at him out of nowhere: I had a dream like this once.
Before he could even wonder when he'd had a dream like this, McGee found himself being held up by Hauser's fists again, and only now did the SEAL seem frustrated.
"Agent McGee, I've only known you for two, maybe three minutes, and I already know everything I need to know about you: you're a horrible liar in every way."
Hauser's knee thrust out and collided with McGee's, bending it in a way it wasn't designed to be bent. His scream drowned out the sound of his kneecap dislocating and then popping back into place.
"First I saw when you recognized me and tried to cover it up. If you'd been even another step to the side out of my peripheral vision, I wouldn't have even seen it. Then you made that 'discrete' call, and I heard your horrible lying in action. Newsflash: the SpEd School Idiot's bastard child could figure out Vinny Housing means Vince Hauser."
The next knee shot went into McGee's side, and it was followed by three right hands. Somewhere, three ribs broke and left McGee in utter agony to breathe.
"Now you're lying to protect a bunch of selfish rear-echelon-mother-fuckers who decided that a title in front of their name was more important than the lives of good men who actually had the balls to put on a pair of combat boots and stay in The Sand."
Hauser didn't even hesitate before delivering a strong headbutt to the damaged left eye area of McGee's face, sprawling him onto his back. As the agent lay on the floor, sputtering in pain, Hauser came to stand beside his head. He then knelt down, pushing his knee into McGee's throat.
"And I don't care if I have to shove you into my trunk and take you to a mechanic's garage, break in, and take a soldering iron to your ball sack. I. Will. Find them. Now tell me: where does Merdetzky live?"
McGee could only try to catch his breath for a few moments before he could finally speak again, his voice quiet and slow.
"McLean…he lives in McLean…"
"You know the address?"
"…Yes…"
"And the others'?"
"…No…"
Hauser studied him for a moment before nodding. "Can you find out?" he asked.
McGee didn't answer, apparently deciding to use his rights under the Fifth Amendment. Hauser applied a bit of pressure with his knee until the agent under him started flailing his arms and weakly slapping Hauser's thigh. When he started making choking noises for about three seconds, Hauser let off the pressure, allowing McGee to gasp and swallow wondrous oxygen.
"…Yes!" McGee answer once his breathing went from panicked to labored. "Yes I can find them!"
"What do you need?"
"…A computer…and an internet connection…"
Hauser nodded before standing. "Don't go anywhere," he said before opening the door and stepping out, letting it close behind him. Minutes seemed to last hours, and then finally Hauser returned, with his laptop case slung over his shoulders, and lifted McGee, putting one arm over his shoulder and using his left arm to hold McGee around the waist.
"Come on," he said as they staggered out the door, across the hall, and out the door marked by the glowing red EXIT sign. "We're goin' for a ride."
The sky was now showing tints of orange in its vast blue blanket. McGee wasn't paying much attention to it or anything else, though, he was only focused on breathing and the floating black flakes. He heard a door opening, and then he was lowered into the passenger seat of a small car. It was hell on his ribs, and he was moaning in pain by the time Hauser shut the door. Seconds later, he appeared in the driver's seat, started the car, and pulled out into the road.
Two minutes and thirteen seconds after they left, a navy blue Dodge Charger pulled into the front parking lot, its three occupants hoping to end this. They would be sorely disappointed.