"Ducky," Gibbs tried to complain.
He looked at the wheelchair in distaste. Hospital personnel had already stripped him of the wet shirt that he'd tossed over his shoulders, leaving his chest bare for every Dr. Tom, Dr. Dick, and Nurse Harry to view. He'd drawn the line at losing his pants, no matter how much they tried to cajole him. Likewise, sedation had been out of the question. Local only, he'd told the trauma doc, and silently suffered through the process getting the bullet pried out of his shoulder. Putting a heavy white bandage over the spot had been better; the tight dressing seemed to take away some of the throbbing, and it was almost a relief to drop his arm into the sling that they'd given him.
But a wheelchair? Not a chance. He was going home. "Ducky," he started to say.
"Jethro, these lovely nurses just spent several minutes making sure that your bandage is white," Ducky told him in no uncertain terms, gesturing at the pair of ladies in scrubs hovering in the background. "They also administered some rather potent narcotics for pain control."
"I'm aware of that, Ducky." He was. His backside still felt the supposedly pain-killing drug burning its way into his flesh.
"Then you are clearly not aware that the pain medication is likely to cause extreme dizziness and that you will fall over onto the floor and onto your injury and muss up those dressings, Jethro." Ducky indicated the wheelchair once again. "Sit down, Jethro. Or I will ask these two gentlemen to assist you."
Gibbs eyed the two that Ducky had indicated: fellow Marines. They were the pair that Director Shepard had requisitioned to act as bodyguards for each of the NCIS team until McGee woke up and gave them the intel that would lead to the capture of the Hacksaw of Hormuz. Gibbs scowled. His fellow Marines ought to help him out of this mess; esprit de corps, and all that. Not here. Shepard and Ducky had gotten to them first, telling them that not only was Gunny Sergeant Gibbs wounded in combat but was also at risk for being shot at again by foreign agents who thought that he too possessed McGee's information.
He sighed.
The next day...
Abby tiptoed into the hospital room, carrying a laptop and followed by Gibbs, Ducky, and Shepard.
Shepard tossed a glance at the two bodyguards that were assigned to Gibbs. "You can wait outside," she directed them. "You, too," she added to the pair that were stationed inside the hospital room. "Believe me, this is not something you want to overhear."
"Yes, ma'am." The second pair joined the first in the hall, and the group approached the two patients.
"Director Shepard." DiNozzo was looking better, Gibbs decided, sitting up in a chair beside his hospital bed. A rainbow of hues still decorated his face, but they were lighter in color than yesterday and Gibbs chose to interpret that as an improvement. Looking under the one-size-fits-nobody hospital gown to see the rest of the damage wasn't going to happen. However, speech was clearer and the gaze that DiNozzo offered the world was significantly better than yesterday's, which meant that healing was taking place no matter how bruised the man appeared.
Shepard put on a welcoming smile. "How are you feeling, Tony?"
"Much better," DiNozzo lied, carefully not shifting aching muscles in the uncomfortable chair. "Twenty four hours has made a world of difference."
"Oh, Tony," Abby wailed, her eyes big. "I can't believe that they did that to you. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Abbs." Accuracy was fine for her lab but outside Abby Sciutto preferred to live in her own world, a world that didn't include friends who were hurting. DiNozzo's eyes narrowed as he took in the sling hung around Gibbs's neck. "Gibbs?"
"A scratch." Gibbs wasn't above a few lies himself.
"You should have seen the other guy," Shepard put in, trying for normalcy.
Didn't work. Dr. Mallard didn't cooperate. "I did, Director," he said testily. "Both at the cabin when called to attend several more living victims, and then again in my morgue with the other poor souls."
"Yes, well." Shepard sent him a glare, which the medical examiner prudently ignored, and turned to the occupant of the other bed. "Tim?"
"Director." It was tough to come to attention when flat on one's back, but McGee tried. And failed. Keeping his eyes open over the plastic tubing bringing oxygen to his nose was the challenge. A forest of IV lines dangled from hooks on the ceiling, and a small box showed a little green line tracing out his heartbeat. Gibbs couldn't decipher all of the information that green line was sending, but the rhythm was regular and that would be enough for now.
"Are you sure that we need to do this at the present time, Jenny?" Ducky asked. "The boy will be much better able to give us a description in another twenty four hours. The intravenous antibiotics will have cleared out much of the infection."
"We can't wait, doctor." Shepard's voice held a warning. She turned back to McGee. "We let leak that you and DiNozzo were at another hospital. It was attacked last evening; another grenade in the lobby. We can't wait."
"Was anybody hurt?"
"Nothing serious. We didn't expect such a rapid response to the leak, and we were lucky. We can't wait," Shepard repeated, as much to McGee's team mates as to the man himself.
"We can't wait," McGee agreed. "Abby, you've got the Facial Recognition program on the laptop? Can you get a signal out from here?"
"It'll take a couple of minutes to boot up," Abby said. "It's a tiny little thing. The laptop, I mean, not the program. It'll take a while to get to where it can be used. In my lab, I can just keep the computers on all the time so it doesn't take very long, Director, but this is different. I can't keep the laptop here. I mean, I could but someone would probably come along and take it—"
"I think we understand, Abby," Shepard reassured her.
It was McGee's turn. He coughed awkwardly, wincing as the movement pulled on yet to heal flesh. "Boss, I understand that I owe you my life—"
"You'd have done the same for me, McGee," Gibbs interrupted, clearly uncomfortable.
"Yes, but—"
"So just forget about it, McGee," Gibbs told him with more force. "You can thank me by giving us that damn head shot of al-Hamid. Get to it." Under the circumstances the 'head whack' was verbal only, but the intent was there. If asked later, Gibbs would insist it was because his 'head-whacking arm' was still in the sling.
"Okay, McGee, we're ready." Abby swung the screen of the laptop around to face her friend. "Shape of face?"
"Square. Make it a little bit longer, Abby. That's better."
"Eyes?"
"Brown. Round. Try the third set. No, that's not quite right; use the fifth instead. That's it. No, maybe not. Try sixteen."
Shepard drew Gibbs back. "This is going to take a while, Jethro. Let me buy you some coffee."
Gibbs, seeing the pair of geeks going at it, had to agree.
They re-entered the hospital room to find Dr. Mallard firmly removing the laptop from the overbed table so that McGee couldn't reach it. DiNozzo too had retired back to his bed, putting his feet up but still watching the scene with exhausted interest. Ducky took Abby by the arm, physically insisting that she cease and desist. "You've done quite enough, Timothy," he said firmly. "Both of you. Timothy needs a break."
"We haven't finished—"
Gibbs took one look at the man. McGee was pale and sweating, his eyes almost rolling back in his head but still determined to work. "You're finished for now, McGee," he told him. "Get some rest."
"But, boss—"
"Shut it down, Abby." There was no mistaking his intent; that was an order.
"Wait a minute, Jethro. How far did you get?" Shepard wanted to know.
McGee started to shrug, then thought better of the movement. "A good start, but it's not really the picture that I remember from the data stick. I need to work on it some more."
Shepard swung the laptop around so that she could see the unfinished portrait along with the others in the room. What McGee had come up with so far was the head shot of a swarthy individual who possessed clean and even features. The nose was long and straight, and the eyes a deep brown that seemed to pierce into each person's innermost thoughts without even trying. The dark eyebrows were over-large, not quite fitting on the rest of the man's face. Thin lips stood above a pointed chin, compressed into an expression of impatience. A slender scar was almost unseen on the right cheek, indicating that it had imperfectly healed many years ago.
Gibbs stared at the picture. There was something about it…
"Of course there's something familiar, Jethro," Shepard reproved, which was how he knew that he'd said something aloud. "You've been staring at Middle Easterners for two days. They've been shooting at you."
Gibbs shook his head. "No. There's something more. Something that I'm missing." He sighed heavily, annoyed with himself.
"You'll figure it out after you've rested," Ducky told him. "You too need to recuperate, Jethro."
Yeah. His shoulder hurt like a—Gibbs wasn't about to even think the phrase, not with ladies present. But he'd seen this man, or someone rather like McGee's portrait, and recently.
He'd have to remember where.
"Ducky, I need to hit your morgue," he said, trying to drag the memory out into the open. "I've seen someone who looks very much like this. I need to see the bodies of the ones killed, and I need to see the captives."
"Before the FBI gets to them," Shepard agreed. "Let's go. Gentlemen," she called to the Marines/bodyguards. "Resume your stations. The two of you with Gibbs, check out the front lobby. I don't want any grenades getting in our way."
"You can do it, McGeek," DiNozzo wheedled. "Look, I can even bring the laptop to you so you can work. You don't have to get up out of bed."
"That's good, Tony, because I don't think I can get out of bed," McGee shot back. "At least, not without falling on my face. Can you?"
"Sure," DiNozzo told him stoutly, tossing back the white hospital blanket to expose bare legs. One of those legs possessed a long and viciously dark bruise that had to hurt, but DiNozzo ignored it. "Want to see?"
"No. I'm tired, Tony. I want to rest. Without talking. I want to go to sleep."
DiNozzo took that to mean that McGee most enthusiastically did want to play with the laptop that Abby had left behind for when McGee felt up to working again on the portrait of the Hacksaw of Hormuz. There was very little danger of the computer ending up in the wrong hands; the bodyguards were still posted both inside and out of their room, charged with making sure that only cleared personnel could get in to see the two wounded NCIS agents and that only appropriate personnel and materials left. Dinner trays went in and out; laptops stayed put.
"Besides, you aren't supposed to use cell phones inside a hospital," McGee pointed out.
"That's for making calls, McGrasping At Straws," DiNozzo said, trying not to double over as he slipped both feet into the paper excuses for slippers that the hospital offered for its inmates. "We're not making calls. You're transferring the pictures on my cell onto the laptop and then emailing them to my email. C'mon, McGee," he wheedled. "I need to clear out space in my cell memory so that I can take pictures of some of the nurses around here. You know, the pretty ones."
"You mean, the ones you've been hitting on," McGee grumbled. "This is mis-use of government property, Tony."
"Only counts if you get caught," DiNozzo scoffed.
"Gary will be back any minutes." McGee was referring to one of the bodyguards who was on his dinner break at the moment. The other bodyguard was stationed outside, scanning the visitors who walked by.
"He won't mind. He likes looking, too, McGroper. You can't tell me that they don't have some good looking nurses around here."
"Tony—"
DiNozzo pulled the bedside table over, setting up the laptop and pushing buttons on the bed controls until he had McGee where he wanted him. He dropped himself onto the edge of McGee's bed, pulling his own cell phone out of the drawer where it had been deposited.
"It got wet, Tony," McGee said. "It may be damaged. I may not be able to pull anything off of the memory."
"So I'll put in for a new one. I got some really good shots at the conference. Remember Amy, the agent from the Milwaukee office? Blonde, blue-eyed—"
"Married," McGee put in pointedly.
"Details, details. There's more good shots that I took. Plug 'em in, McPhotoShoot."
"I should really be working on the Facial Recognition stuff," McGee said wistfully, allowing the computer screen to draw him in.
"Looking at lovely pictures has healing properties," DiNozzo justified the task. "More healing equals better work. Think of it that way, McGee."
It wasn't easy to download the pictures from DiNozzo's cell phone and it took a lot more time than DiNozzo would have liked. The second bodyguard, Frank something-or-other, stuck his head in once to make sure that everything was okay when DiNozzo whooped over one of his less sedate photos by the indoor pool at the Philadelphia hotel. Another time McGee had to hurriedly minimize the screen when a nurse entered to give him some pills and McGee realized that DiNozzo had already embarked on his photo journey through DC General and that the nurse now administering his meds was the same one in DiNozzo's picture.
DiNozzo made McGee go through every one of the pictures. "No, don't bother with that one. In fact, delete it. The other one of her bending over is better."
"You're a pig. You know that, DiNozzo?"
"I hear that enough from Ziva, McPrim and Proper. Go to the next one."
"You took pictures of the lecturers at the seminar, Tony?" McGee couldn't believe what his partner sometimes chose to do.
"Sure. Why not? I need a new poster to paste over my dart board. The nose on this one goes right over the bull's eye. Her schnozz is big enough to drive a truck through."
McGee stared him, trying to figure out a good riposte to that remark. Brains weren't working properly, he decided. He'd think up something forty-eight hours later, when it didn't matter. It was the way of the world.
"C'mon, c'mon. Next picture, McGee."
The next picture was another lecturer, an older woman that McGee was certain would retire in the next week or so. She had taken a liking to McGee, and McGee had prudently removed himself from whatever part of the room that she was in. Courtesy would only go just so far, he reflected, working to pull in the next of DiNozzo's photos.
The picture after that took a great deal of reconstituting, re-instructing the laptop's graphics program to put the colors where they belonged and filtering the edges back into hard lines. It took several tries before the picture finally resolved into the last lecturer of the first day, someone who had taken great pride in instructing the various NCIS agents from across the country on how to refrain from profiling in violation of several equal rights rules and regulations. Since the man seemed to be of a Middle Eastern background, he'd spent a great deal of time and effort castigating the FAA's attempts at improving airport security, pointing out the deficiencies in facial recognition programs as well as the drawbacks of similar names, with an emphasis on how he himself had had difficulty coping.
"For this, we spent five minutes getting it to come clear? This is not a picture I want to keep, not even for dart board value." DiNozzo was disgusted. "Delete it, and let's move on, McGee." He reached to hit the 'delete' key.
McGee knocked his hand away. "Wait, Tony!"
"Hey! They're my pictures."
"Tony, it's him."
"Of course it's him, McGoogleEyes. He lectured at us for a very long time. This is one lecture that I don't want to remember. In fact, I don't want to remember any of those lectures."
"No, Tony, I mean, it's him!" McGee started getting excited. "Tony, it's him!"
"Him? Him, who? What do you mean…" DiNozzo let his voice trail off, the implications sinking it. The fun died away. Senior Agent Anthony DiNozzo, clad only in an ill-fitting hospital gown, took over. "Are you saying what I think you're saying, McGee?"
McGee pointed to the picture. "It's him. That's Jameel al-Hamid, the Hacksaw of Hormuz! Tony, he's part of NCIS!"
Ziva looked up as Gibbs ambled through the door, his arm still in a sling, navigating around the various desks that dotted the floorplan of the NCIS building. She frowned. "What are you doing here, Gibbs?"
"Last time I looked, I worked here, Officer David."
She brushed off that comment. "You are on sick leave. Where are your bodyguards?"
"Ditched 'em at the front door. Where are yours?"
One corner of her mouth curled upward. "I, too, 'ditched' them," she informed him. "They are relaxing over coffee in the cafeteria. It seems unlikely that anyone would be able to kill us in here."
Gibbs dropped himself onto his chair behind his desk. "You hear anything from DiNozzo or McGee?"
"Ducky checked with the nurses, who said that they were doing fine. One noted that she was looking forward to discharging Tony as soon as possible. Or administering something with a large hypodermic needle in an appropriate portion of his anatomy, whichever came first."
Gibbs ignored that tidbit. "McGee get any further with the Facial Recognition program?"
"I doubt it. We would have heard if he had. Abby has said that she intends to return to the DC General this evening to help. At the moment she is processing several of the bullets and guns found at the cabin where we recovered McGee, in an attempt to trace back where the terrorists acquired their weapons. She will assist McGee later tonight, when hopefully he is stronger and better able to remember the details."
Gibbs grunted. "Good. We need that picture. The CIA is pestering Director Shepard, and she's breathing down my neck. They've already kidnapped our suspects. The living ones, that is," he clarified. "Ducky's still got the dead ones in his morgue, although the CIA is agitating for those as well." He grimaced. "At least they can't kidnap McGee. He's ours, and likely to stay that way. I want that damn portrait of al-Hamid."
"We will get it shortly," Ziva predicted. "McGee will not rest until he recalls all of the details. And I believe that DC General will be more than pleased to dismiss DiNozzo, McGee, and all of the guards we have stationed there."
A shadow fell on Gibbs's desk, and he looked up. A man was there, a man with swarthy skin and fine features and a briefcase dangling from his hand. Gibbs recognized the face immediately, if not the name. "Gibbs," he said, inviting the man to introduce himself. "You're from the seminar in Philly, right? Can I help you with something?"
"Al Mason," the man gave back in return, offering his hand for a shake. "Actually, I'm here to help you." He produced four large cardboard envelopes from the briefcase. "Your certificates, Agent Gibbs, from the seminar. You'll need them for your files. Compliance with ethics courses is mandatory on a yearly basis, and if your jacket doesn't have one of these, you'll be on suspension until you retake the seminar. I recommend that you make a copy for your personal files at home to prevent that, unless you enjoy listening to the sound of my voice," he added dryly. "Here's yours," he said, handing one over.
"Thanks." Gibbs had better things to do than to collect pieces of paper to add to his dust collection. "I'll get 'em to my people."
"Not a problem. I see one of your people right here. Officer David," Mason said, handing over another of the envelopes to the Mossad agent. "Where are Agents DiNozzo and McGee?" He consulted the labels on the envelopes to be sure of getting the names correct.
"Not here," Gibbs said curtly.
"On assignment? When will they return?"
"You can give 'em to me," Gibbs repeated. "I'll see that they get them. Is it standard protocol to come all the way to DC to hand these things out, Mr. Mason?" Is it standard protocol to waste my time, standing here chatting over stupid regulations?
Mason gave in, and handed them over. He mellowed a bit from his stiff stance. "Thank you, Agent Gibbs. No, not standard, but I was coming down this way. I have relatives in North Carolina, so I decided to save the cost of the postage. We are all on a budget, you know, and my department more than most. Thank you again for your time, Agent Gibbs, Officer David. I hope you enjoyed the seminar."
"Very much," Ziva lied, her attention already turned to something on her screen, hoping that the man would go away and stop bothering her.
Gibbs's desk phone rang, and he also turned to it gratefully, dismissing the seminar leader without a second thought. He had more important things to attend to, and the trip to that seminar had turned out to be one of the less enjoyable excursions that he'd taken. Certainly the trip home qualified as an unmitigated disaster. "Gibbs."
Ziva automatically tried to listen in, an activity that became significantly less covert when Gibbs's next words were, "Slow down, DiNozzo. McGee did what?"
Pause for DiNozzo to repeat whatever he was reporting.
There were several ways to utter the word 'who': mild was the most common, as an interrogative. Ziva had also occasionally heard both Abby and Ducky partake of the word in reference to a large predatory bird. This was neither. The way Gibbs spoke gave the word the same force as a curse as well as an expostulation. "Who?!"
It was fortunate that she was listening to one side of the telephone conversation, because Gibbs's next words sent her flying. "That seminar guy, Ziva! Get him!"
Ziva was on her feet in an instant. She leaped across her desk and dashed through the building, heading for the entrance. She scanned the people passing by, searching for the man who had been at her desk mere minutes previously. No one—she jumped on the front guard. "A man came through here, just moments ago. Where is he?"
The guard looked at her as though she was crazy. "Ma'am?"
"A dark-skinned man!" she all but screamed at him. "Where did he go?"
"Guy in a suit? Briefcase?"
"Yes! Him! Where is he?"
The guard blinked. "He left."
"Which way?"
"He took a cab, ma'am. Downtown."
Ziva ground her teeth. Too late.