Poisoned Poison

Chapter 2

Tony went back to his room, not too shakily, on tip-toe, in the throes of an inner debate. He'd promised Gibbs twenty-four hours, and he wanted not a moment longer. This damn' case still wasn't over, and he needed to be involved. Fuller would be struggling if things got any bigger; his unit here in DC had always been considered large enough before, but this business was putting an unusual amount of strain on it. Their own cases had to come first, but NCIS would help if they could – so by that reasoning, the extra manpower that was Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, needed to be out of here.

He looked over at the sleeping Probie. There was the difficulty. He was needed just as much, but he also needed to be right where he was. A bullet in the shoulder is what it is, you know how to deal; a head injury is something quite different. So, he'd try to make sure McGee got all the rest he needed; and hope that twenty-four hours were all it took. But should he tell him or not?

Oh, yeah, let's be brutal here… 'Hurry up and sort your vision out, Probie, so I can be out of here in twentyfour.'

Because of course if McGee wasn't out of there, then there was no way he could be either…

If he told him, then come the deadline, the kid would pretend. He was congenitally incapable of lying, but he'd say his sight was back to normal, because he'd know that was what Tony wanted. So, tell him and put him under pressure… or don't tell him and that's not being straight with him. Hey, both morally wrong; just which was worse? He lay back against his pillows and came up with the answer – a guy who wouldn't lie wouldn't want to be lied to. Right… if Gibbs knew, the doctors must already have told McGee about the twelve hour thing, so all he had to do was make it clear he was happy to stay here too. And do it without actually lying… back to square one… he was starting to get a headache.

"You want out of here, don't you?"

Smart. Tony thought of that device they use in movies, where the screen fragments into tiny pieces, that all drop to the floor like sand. OK, shelve the whole debate. Truth only.

"Course I do. I hate hospitals. But I don't think I'm quite ready yet." OK, that was true. He wasn't lying by leaving out the bit about it never having stopped him before.

"Never stopped you before."

Too damn' smart. "Stop probing, Probie. I thought you were supposed to be sleeping."

"I'm resting. But you know how it is… they won't tell you what's going on cuz they don't want you to worry, so you worry because you don't know what's going on."

Tony sighed softly, because he did know how it is, and he moved silently across to sit on the end of McGee's bed. He was pleased to realise he was much steadier on his feet now, even though he could only balance with one arm. The nurses had seen how he cheated with two handed things, pushing the hand of the arm that was strapped to his chest over the sagging neckline of the old sweatshirt; they'd given up on even trying to stop him. "On your own head be it…" they'd said direly.

He kept his voice low. "OK… think about this, if you like. But you and I are in here until they say we can go…"

"You could go…"

"Promised Gibbs. And before you start feeling guilty, he's doing it as much to keep me tied down as you."

"I'd already worked that out. He was pretty mad about those tubes… figured he'd find a way to make you behave."

"Make me behave, McNyah-nyah? And that had better not be a grin!"

Tim's smile was huge. "Tell me what Fuller said."

As Tony explained what Kent had told him and Gibbs, the younger man concentrated for a while, and then began to doze again. As soon as the SFA stopped speaking, however, he murmured, "Not asleep yet…"

Tony grinned to himself and kept going. "…The point is, Probie, you can think about it as much as you like, but we stay here until your vision's been normal for twelve hours, like they say."

"S' normal now… told them so jus' b'fore you came back…" This time, Tony thought, he really was asleep. He absolutely resisted the temptation to call the nurse and ask her if McGee was lying for the first time since he'd known him.

NCISNCISNCIS

"What have you got, Abbs?" Two men walked into the lab.

"Gibbs! I knew you'd be down – you always know – oh, hi, Agent Fuller. Did Gibbs tell you he always knows when I've got something for him? Well, for you actually, because of course it's four days worth of your films I've been running since early this morning…"

Kent waited politely; he was getting used to the fizz that was Abby. Gibbs wasn't so temperate. "Abbs…"

"Well, I found the point where the contractors emptied their dumpster… you can see there's a holding area before anything's sorted." She froze the scene and enlarged it. "And there's your sack of sand. It didn't move for the day and a half that the camera was pointing at it. All the cameras were realigned at the same time on the afternoon before you visited. This is five am, on the morning that you went there later with Izzy. The site opens at seven. You can see a car approaching the main gate. It slows down, but goes past. I got a schematic of the site, and there's a small entrance to the staff car park just beyond camera range. It has no coverage. I couldn't get the plate, and the driver's indistinct, but Tim's still working on that – oops…"

"McGee? McGee's working on it?"

"Yes, Boss," a guilty voice came from the back of the lab. Tim and Tony sat looking like naughty schoolboys.

Tony stood up. "We didn't sign ourselves out, Boss."

"My eyesight's been fine since four o'clock yesterday afternoon. They said I could go at eight o'clock this morning. And Tony wouldn't get involved; he said he'd promised you."

"Did they say you could come here and start staring at computers immediately?"

Tim's expression was one he was more used to seeing on Tony. "They didn't say I couldn't, Boss."

Gibbs glared at his SFA. "Did they say you could start wearing a sling over your clothes?"

"No, Boss, Ducky said that."

Gibbs rolled his eyes. "I should never have let them put you two in the same damn room…"

"I warned you I was a fine example, Boss. But don't forget you were back in the field three days after you got shot in the shoulder."

"You saying I should let you back in the field, DiNozzo?"

"Well, maybe not…"

"Gentlemen, if I may…"

They turned back to Abby's screen. "Now, the way the camera's been set to point, the spot where the sack has been lying for thirty-six hours is directly behind it. Two minutes after the car arrives… Watch." She slowed the action down. A shadow passed across the screen, thrown by the low early morning sun, then vanished into the larger shadow of a building. The shadow's hair was worn in two bunches. Abby advanced the film, then slowed it down again. The shadow came back moving slowly, this time less clear, as the figure was bent double, and much more bulky. One bunch of hair could still be seen swinging.

"Five fifteen," Abby said. "You arrived unannounced at eight fifteen. She didn't know she only had a window of three hours. She was lucky."

"She?" Gibbs asked.

"Oh, yes," Kent Fuller said calmly. "Only two people on the site have hair that long. One's the forklift driver, all twenty-one stone of him, he'd never have to bend double to carry a sack of sand; the other's Sandra Strothers, the manager."

Tony rattled some keys and brought her details up. "Perk of being the manager, maybe. Looks over the stuff to tell them where to put it, spots the white against the brown sand. Realigns the cameras, which, by devious means we discovered are remotely driven from inside the office, where she only has to avoid letting two people see her doing it, and comes back later. She drives a Chevvy Impala, Boss, which is what we'll find that car is on the film. McGee'll get us a closer look, but even without it, I'd say we've enough to bring her in for a chat. Or… hey, I mean, Kent has." He stood up eagerly.

"Fine," Gibbs said shortly. "Me and Ziva'll go."

Tony stiffened, then decided that he'd pushed both his own and McGee's luck just about as far as he could for one day. It was only, he knew very well, the fact that deep down the Boss admired their persistence and devotion to duty – 'don't forget deviousness' McGee had added as Ducky had driven them away from the hated hospital – that had prevented a tearing off and a throwing out of the building. Privately, he thought that with Abby was the very best place the Probie could be right now, and he was willing to bet that Gibbs felt the same. Not that the Boss would ever tell him he was right.

He'd no sooner stalked out than Fuller's phone buzzed.

"Dom? Hey… calm down, man…what's up? Where? Yeah… no, stay low. I'm on my way."

The other three looked at him anxiously, hearing trouble in his tone.

"Those kids who buy for us," Kent said tensely. "One of them's in trouble." He reeled off an address for Tim, who was already preparing to alert LEOs. "McGee," he said over his shoulder as he hurried out, "make sure they know he's one of mine, huh?"

He added as he ran towards the stairs, "Don't want them thinking he's some punk dealer…" and then gave his head a mental shake when he realised who he was talking to. DiNozzo was about three stairs behind him, and beginning to breathe hard, but he was grinning like the wolf, with the three little piggies cornered.

"DiNozzo, you're not coming with me."

"I just said that to McGee – he believed me, though."

"Dammit, you're not cleared for field work…"

"And I'm not packing. But I'm another pair of eyes, and I guarantee you won't have to waste time looking out for me."

"You're an idiot!"

"So I've been told." They ran across to the DEA truck that seemed to spend half its time at the Navy Yard these days, and Tony glanced back only to be disappointed, as Blossom wasn't there.

"She's having a day off," Fuller said. "She worked so hard the last couple of days…"

Tony nodded. "So this kid… what sort of trouble's he in?"

"We call them scouts. They can be trusted. They buy random stuff, so we can test it and know what's around. Dominic went to his usual spot and got jumped. They hit him, and asked about the 'spark', which is their latest street argot for pure cocaine apparently. He ran, and he's hiding in a boat repair yard somewhere near 17th…" Tony was glad Blossom wasn't in the back as Fuller took the next corner on two wheels. His face was dark. "I'm not losing another of my people," he said flatly.

"You're not going to rush in and get yourself killed either," Tony said just as plainly. "There. Boat yard… you think that's it?" He was answered by the sound of a shot. They drove into the yard and slewed the truck round under the shadow of a large hull that was held up by trusses.

Kent hit speed dial. "Dom… where are you? You OK?" He held the phone so that Tony could hear the reply.

"In the timber store… I'm OK… they've got a gun, they just shot at a cat, must have thought it was me. They've not found me yet but they're getting closer… I'm scared, Agent Fuller…"

"We're coming, Dom. Stay hid. Now… timber store?"

Tony said "Over there. Get in the back."

"You what?"

"I'll drive. You concentrate on dealing with them until the LEOs get here. I'll protect the kid."

Kent grimaced, lousy plan's better than no plan at all; but he was already squeezing through the gap. A guy his size could never have done it in an average sedan. Tony was across to the driver's seat, and pointed to three figures running from cover to cover. One of them was pointing right back at them. Another raised a gun. Tony shoved the truck unkindly into drive, and trod on the gas. The Ford leapt forward with a squeal of tyres, and smashed through the crumbling wooden doors into the timber store, where Tony had to brake sharply, because although the place didn't seem to have been used in a while, there were plenty of piles of stacked timber to crash into. He left the engine running, as they both jumped out of the vehicle.

"Dom? DOM?"

"I'm here…" a voice called nervously from behind a load of curved timbers stood on end against a wall. A shot from the other end of the building pinged off an old circular saw close by. Kent fired back and ran for cover behind a stack of planks, while Tony ran, doubled up, to where a fair haired young man with wide, scared china blue eyes crouched. Shots from at least two guns went by over his head as he reached the cover of the timbers.

"This is the DEA," Kent roared. "Backup's on its way… give up now if you want to stay alive! Why the hell are you still shooting anyway?" He figured he knew… shooting at one unarmed kid – or a cat that they thought was an unarmed kid…that was easy. If they didn't have the sense to stop once help had arrived, they were the low end of the drug chain. Not over bright, sent to do a simple job like beating a guy for information, quite likely on the down from coke… they were trigger-happy, in over their heads now and volatile, and they had at least two guns to his one.

Another flurry of shooting was the only reply he got, and he saw Tony push young Dominic down and throw himself across him, as splinters and ricochets flew. His friend raised his head, gestured at the truck, and called softly, "Cover us…" He came up to a crouch, pulled the boy up into the same position, and hissed at him, "Go for the rear passenger door."

The young man nodded, wide eyed, Tony nodded to Kent, and as he began to empty his magazine, the NCIS agent hauled his charge to his feet, and ran, pushing him ahead of him, back to the truck. Slamming it into drive just as rudely as before, and not really caring if the back door wasn't shut, he cramped the wheel over, revving hard, and holding the parking brake on, so the truck did an untidy spin, hurling timbers in all directions. By now Dominic had actually got both feet in and closed the door, and he had the good sense to throw himself across to open the other one. As Kent threw himself at the truck, he reached for his collar and dragged him in, head first. Tony gunned the engine, and they accelerated back towards the shattered doors. A figure with a raised gun appeared in the doorway; Tony opened his door and sideswiped him mercilessly as he went by.

"We go back for that one later, yes? What d'you bet his mates won't wait around for him?"

"I'm not betting against you on that or anything else, DiNozzo… let's hope he can tell us who's wanting to know about spark, and why… oh, look, here come the locals." He yelled nasally, "Too late!"

Tony yelled back, just as nasally, "Don't look, Ethel!"

They pulled up alongside the first police car laughing uproariously - Dominic looked at them as if they were both barking mad.

AN: Anyone remember that song? 'Oh yeah they call him the streak…' we used to go around twanging 'don't look, Ethel' at the slightest excuse. Ah, those were the days….