Disclaimer: See chapter 1 for the disclaimer.

BP Gas Station and Convenience Store, N Old Dominion Dr/September 15, 2010, 1807 Romeo

McGee hadn't called by the time Gibbs pulled the Charger into the smaller parking lot behind the gas station where one car, likely the clerk's, was parked. That told him that McGee hadn't needed to follow Hauser, because he was still there. The reason Gibbs was parking in the back was to not spook him: it didn't take a genius to figure that one man in a suit in a Charger plus two men and a woman in suits in a Charger equals feds lookin' for a bust.

After parking, they stepped out of the car.

"Tony, you watch the back, make sure he doesn't make it out if he tries to run," Gibbs ordered.

"Do you think a trained killer of his scale would try to run, Gibbs?" Ziva asked as the two of them walked around the corner and continued along the building's side.

"If he was smart and he knew he couldn't take three of us, yeah."

"And if he could take the three of us?"

Gibbs shrugged as they rounded the front corner and approached the door. "Good for him."

The bell over the door jingled as they entered, Ziva splitting off to the side and walking along the front windows, while Gibbs simply walked forward.

"Hello there," the clerk said from Gibbs's right. Gibbs simply grunted in response, his eyes scanning the aisles. Before long, he was standing before the hallways leading to the restrooms when Ziva regrouped.

"They're not here," she said, her voice not showing the concern in her eyes.

"Get DiNozzo in here, search the back," he instructed before turning to the clerk, who was now working his way around the counter to see what the fuss was about. "Sir," Gibbs grabbed his attention before showing his badge and ID. "We're looking for two men who were here about ten minutes ago. One's about this tall, kinda skinny, came in the Charger? Have you seen them?"

"Yeah, why?"

Before Gibbs could continue, his phone rang. Holding up one finger, he retrieved it.

"Gibbs."

"Jethro, we've got the info on the other committee members," Fornell said from where he stood in the bullpen over the shoulder of his loaned specialist. "I called McGee but he's not answering, and now you guys are out 'n' about. There something goin' on I should know about?"

"Yeah, and you'll know about it when we get ba-"

"Boss!" Tony's call grabbed his attention. He looked to the hallways just as Tony emerged. "We need a forensics van up here. We've got a crime scene."

Gibbs only looked at him for a moment, ignoring Fornell's calls from the phone. He finally returned it to his ear and simply said, "Tobias. Get up here now."

Thirty-two minutes later

Gibbs's eyes trailed over the bathroom from where he stood. It was a single large square room with one urinal, one stall, and one sink. From his spot in the corner opposite the door, he could see all the important things. Traces of blood could be seen to the right of the door, but the real mess was on the floor and in the broken sink. It didn't look close to fatal amounts, or even dangerous amounts, but it certainly meant that whoever it belonged to had been beaten badly.

Gibbs reviewed the facts as Ziva and an FBI agent continued to process the scene, while Tony had the task of questioning the clerk: McGee had called and covertly alerted him that he had eyes on Vince Hauser. Gibbs instructed him to not approach Hauser, keep an eye on him, and follow Hauser if he went on the move, calling Gibbs if he did so. McGee was a damn good agent and knew how to follow someone without being noticed (not as well as the rest of the team, true, but he could handle himself just fine), and he certainly knew how to follow instructions. If he had had to follow Hauser, he would've called.

The fact that he didn't, in addition to the fact that McGee's Charger was still at the gas pump, told Gibbs that he hadn't followed Hauser anywhere. Yet neither man was here, nor was there a third car for Hauser to have used.

And then of course, there was the blood that the nameless FBI agent was in the process of photographing, the broken mirror, and the broken sink. Signs of a struggle.

Gibbs let out a sigh at the obvious answer, the one he'd been hoping to somehow make untrue by pushing it away, but wants don't change the facts: McGee had been made and then nabbed.

The sound of brisk footsteps was followed by Tony entering the room, walking around a squatted Ziva as she took photographs of her own of the various spatters on the floor. When he stopped beside Gibbs, the furious sigh he released from his nose matched the equally furious look on his face. It made Gibbs think of a boiler letting off pressure in hopes of not blowing its stack.

"No cameras, Boss," he said, his livid eyes jumping from spatter to spatter to sink to spatter. "They're in the process of upgrading the systems, so the old ones are basically just there for show until the new ones arrive. I showed the clerk the pictures, and he confirms that Hauser and McGee had both been here."

"Did he know what happened?"

"Know? I'm havin' him hauled in as an accomplice," Tony lowered his head and ran a hand through his hair with another sigh. Letting off just that much more pressure. He raised his head and continued, this time looking at Gibbs. "When McGee tried to pay for his gas, the clerk had to get the register key from the back because it was busted. He was just comin' out of the office when he bumped into Hauser, who stopped him and fed him this story about McGee being some guy who slept with his wife and broke up their marriage. He paid the clerk six hundred dollars to give them some alone time for a 'chat' and make sure nobody walked in on 'em."

Gibbs felt his own anger rise as well, but only set his jaw and nodded his head. The two only stared at the scene for a moment longer before Tony broke the ominous quiet. "What's your gut tellin' ya Boss?"

"Nothin' good," Gibbs replied. "This was an ambush. That means Hauser somehow knew McGee was onto him. Question is, what exactly did he to him."

"FLETC teaches Defensive Tactics and Ground Fighting Tactics," Ziva said just before flashing another photograph. "But Hauser's training as a standard SEAL would have negated that. Add to that his training in DEVGRU and whatever he picked up along the way over fifteen years of covert operations and-"

"We get it, Agent David," Tony cut her off. "Hauser was able to do whatever he wanted."

"I think he probably just beat your guy and then shoved him in his trunk to dump somewhere," the FBI agent said before flashing another photograph of his own. He figured that if he finally said what they were all very carefully not saying, they would finally be faced with the reality of the situation and put their full attention where it needed to be: solving the case and catching the bad guy, rather than putting effort in some hopeless cause to find someone who was likely a goner. When he turned and looked at them though, he did not see the faces of three agents accepting the painful truth, and then moving on like professionals.

He saw three sets of eyes glaring at him with such seething, violent, and furious rage that he literally lost all sensation and feeling in every part of him below his hairline. His mind was a total and numbed blank rock, but his instinct for survival made him stand and leave, not one moment too soon.

Eventually the three NCIS agents calmed down enough to breathe normally. After another few moments of the ominous quiet, Gibbs was able to get back to the matter at hand.

"Ziva," he said, grabbing the woman's attention from the mirror shards on the floor. "If you were wanted for two murders you actually committed, knew a plainclothes cop was on to you, and ambushed him, what would you do to him?"

Ziva looked off into space and furrowed her brow as she thought it over, then looked back to Gibbs.

"I would try to get information out of him," she said. "Find out how he became 'on to me' and anything else he knew about my case."

"Alright, so let's imagine that happened here. What does McGee know?"

"Everything we know," Tony said. "Well, except where Colonel Hanson and Eaves Margott live, he only knew-"

He froze, and like a brick wall, it hit all three of them.

"McGee knows where one of his targets lives,"

"Sonuvabit-" Tony intoned, the end of his intonement drowned out by Gibbs.

"Tobias!" he yelled, rushing out into the main store where Fornell was updating his own director by phone.

Fornell excused himself quickly and hung up. "Whadduya got Jethro?"

"Tobias, we need men at Stan Merdetzky's house now," Gibbs said as he walked past Fornell, who gave chase to hear what he was being told. "We're thinkin' Hauser's using McGee as some kinda GPS to find his targets' homes. Get some people out to Hanson and Margott's too, just in case we can't get him at Merdetzky's."

"McGee only knows where Merdetzky lives, how can he lead him to Hanson and Margott?" Fornell asked his friend, but they both knew the real question: Wouldn't he outlive his usefulness?

Gibbs stopped and thought about it for a moment. "If he tortured McGee and found out he specializes in computers, he might use him to find out."

"Shit," Fornell mumbled. "Alright, I'm on it."

With that the two men split, Gibbs heading for his Charger with Tony and Ziva right behind him. The doors weren't even closed before the tires screeched out onto N Old Dominion.

Outskirts of McLean, Virginia/September 15, 2010, 1842 Romeo

The orange and purple sky cast the alley on the outer edge of the main urban area of McLean in utter shadow. This made it perfect for the gray 1998 BMW 7 Series to pull into and cut its engine. In the driver's seat, Vince Hauser unbuckled his seatbelt, reached into the back seat, and brought a bag into his lap. Rummaging through it, he brought out, of all things, a package of baby wipes and handed it to McGee. The agent looked at it for a moment before taking it, his movements sluggish from pain and exhaustion.

"Clean yourself up," Hauser instructed, motioning towards McGee's bloody and lacerated face. "I'll get those cuts closed up, then we can get on to business." A dull thunk signaled the trunk opening before Hauser stepped out and closed the door. While the SEAL went to the back and shuffled through the trunk, though, McGee made no move to simply clean himself up. Dropping the package into the floor well, he instead bent over, moaning in pain as his broken ribs protested greatly, and pulled up one of his pants legs. There was an ankle sheathe, and in it was a small knife.

Rule Nine, he thought. He drew the knife and righted himself as Hauser shook the car with the closing trunk. McGee had to close his eyes and grit his teeth, his ribs protesting the rising as much as the bending, to keep from moaning louder than he was. That moan had a share of worry, too, as the black flakes in his vision were a constant reminder that something wasn't right. With his eyes closed, he didn't have to focus on them.

The door opened beside him, and McGee opened his eyes and turned his head to see what Hauser had. It was a first aid kit, a large red bag weighed down by supplies. Hauser squatted down to McGee's level, and had just opened his mouth to say something when McGee struck with the knife.

Either McGee's eye was affecting his aim, Hauser simply had better reflexes, or it was a mixture of both. No matter the cause, the results remained the same: Hauser dropped the bag and threw himself to his left, not fast enough to completely dodge the blade though. Hot pain sliced into his side like, well, a knife as the blade punctured his shirts and skin to leave a gash just under his rib cage. McGee didn't see the wound, only Hauser falling to the ground. McGee saw Hauser already rising, and knew his time and opportunity to press the advantage were running out. He moved to get out of the car and go on the offensive.

Intense pain, however, has a tendency to make one sluggish. He'd barely gotten his good leg out of the door when Hauser locked a hand around his right wrist, the one which didn't hold the knife, and yanked as hard as he could. McGee's position on the seat made his balance weak to begin with, and the sudden pull almost brought him out of the car. Hauser's left elbow colliding with his broken orbital bone ended whatever fight he'd had, and he limply fell to the ground.

The SEAL picked up the knife McGee had dropped, examined it, and chuckled, shaking his head as he threw it toward a dumpster a few feet away.

"Never seen a fed who carried a knife before," he said, looking and picking at the cut in his shirt. Blood covered the cloth around the wound, which itself appeared black as night in the dim alley. "Just full of surprises, Agent McGee, and you still even try to do something about it. I like that."

McGee then felt hands on his jacket as he was lifted up and plopped back into the passenger seat, this time facing the side so his feet were resting on the ground. As he leaned sideways against the seatback in pain, Hauser picked the baby wipes off the floor well and dropped them into his lap.

"I really suggest you clean yourself up, Agent McGee, 'cause if I have to do it myself, I won't be gentle," Hauser said, circling his hand around the area of his left eye as he did so.

McGee closed his eyes for a few moments before opening them, opening the wipes package, and extracting a wipe for use. As he tenderly cleaned what blood and dirt he knew was on his face, he looked to see Hauser was doing a bit of first aid of his own. He'd removed his Jim Morrison shirt and was holding a side of his white undershirt up as he cleaned the wound in preparation for suturing. What caught McGee's eye, however, was the shoulder harness-like rig Hauser wore under his overshirt. It looked like a shoulder holster, only he'd removed the holster itself. There also seemed to be a thin belt-like strap around his torso below his rib cage.

"Here's how this is gonna go down," Hauser said, his eyes never leaving the wound he was working on. "You're gonna tell me how to get to Merdetzky's place, I'll head out there and take care of him, then I'm takin' you to a place where you can get that computer. Now, I can close your wounds and clean 'em, but you'll still look like shit. On the off-chance we run into someone who brings it up, here's our story: you're an old friend of mine with a drinking problem. You've been sober for seven months, but you just couldn't hack it without the booze and so you've fallen off the wagon. In your first bout of drunkensess in so long, you got into a fight and called me to help you out. We've gotten you cleaned up at the hospital, and we're on our way back to my place for you to sleep it all off, got it?"

"Rule Seven…" was all McGee said in reply.

"What?" Hauser asked, this time looking at the battered agent.

"My boss has a list of rules he lives by…" McGee said weakly as he continued to clean what he could. "Rule Seven is 'always be specific when you lie.'"

"Hm," Hauser grunted in response before returning his attention to his wound. "What other rules does he have?"

McGee thought for a minute, wondering why he was having this conversation with a man who'd so brutally trashed his well-being. Better he be chatting with me than stomping my eye out, he decided.

"Rule Nine…'always carry a knife.'"

Hauser looked up again, then to the dumpster down the alley, then back to McGee. He chuckled and shook his head again before going back to his suturing.

"Think I'd like him," he noted. "Sounds like a SEAL to me."

"Marine," McGee corrected him. "Scout sniper for fifteen years."

"Why'd he stop?"

McGee thought his answer over. "Knee injury in the Gulf."

Hauser heard something in his voice that made him stop and study the agent. "That's not the full story, is it?" he asked.

"No…but the rest isn't your business."

Hauser studied him for a moment longer before his eyes went down and he nodded his head. "Fair enough," he said before returning to his suturing. The time passed between them in silence until finally Hauser had his wound closed and bandaged before standing, opening the rear passenger door, and leaning in to rummage through his bag. As he did, McGee watched him and saw the purpose of the shoulder harness.

It was, indeed, a shoulder holster with the holster removed. He'd also added a vertical strap going down his back where it perpendicularly met with the horizontal strap that went around his waist. These two right angles made a snug spot for a horizontally mounted handgun holster, which held whatever .45 of choice he used. It wasn't quite holstered at the small of his back, but it was close enough to count in horseshoes. Hauser then stood with another gunmetal grey t-shirt in his hands, this one adorned with the four symbols from the fourth Led Zeppelin album. He slipped it on over his head, concealing his wound, the bloody gash in his undershirt, and the .45.

"Alright Agent McGee," Hauser said as he turned to the seated and battered agent. "Before we get started, I wanna make something particularly clear. I like that you've got a little fight in you, but don't do it anymore. You know what I am, and what I'm capable of, and you're just a discount G-Man who's probably never even heard of Krav Maga, let alone seen it in action. You are an underdog in every sense of the word, and you cannot fight me and win. So stop trying, and everything'll go a lot smoother, got it?"

Whether he actually expected an answer or not, McGee didn't know, and he didn't give him one. Hauser finally just nodded, apparently taking his silence as an answer in itself. With that done, he put on a new set of gloves and grabbed various things from the first-aid kit.

"This might sting a little."