Al Mason—AKA Jameel al-Hamid, AKA the Hacksaw of Hormuz—strode into DC General Hospital, carefully keeping the fuming under tight control. Only two of his quarry! Only two!
He reviewed the details leading up to this point: the computer hacker that al-Hamid had recruited, only to find the man putting duplicate files onto a data stick to use as blackmail against al-Hamid himself. Jameel al-Hamid had a wonderful way of dealing with those who turned on him: he killed them. Slowly and painfully he killed them, and laughed as his enemies died.
He wasn't laughing now, though he had as he'd killed the man, back in Philadelphia immediately following the seminar. This shouldn't have turned into this mess. The hacker had told him, his breath bubbling with blood, that he'd put the data stick into the laptop case of one of the DC NCIS agents. al-Hamid had sent a team to retrieve it before the data stick was found by the NCIS man.
His people had bungled the task, not just once but several times to the point where al-Hamid himself was now endangered. What was the infidel dog cliche? If you want something done right, do it yourself. Because of their ineptitude, 'Al Mason' would most likely need to disappear. However, if al-Hamid took certain precautions, there was no reason why he could not continue to study his enemy at close quarters. Those precautions included making sure that his face was still unknown, and because of his incursion into NCIS headquarters he was now confident that he could move forward.
al-Hamid would do the deed himself. The first pair, the leader and the Israeli woman, they did not know his face or they would have taken him down long before this. There would have been NCIS and FBI agents at his home as soon as the news broke, and that had not happened. That meant that the only other possibilities who knew what he looked like were the two NCIS men in DC General. Either one or the other or both knew that 'Al Mason' was Jameel al-Hamid and had been unable, by dint of injuries sustained, to transmit this information. Or perhaps neither was aware and this whole mission was unnecessary; al-Hamid might be putting himself out over nothing.
If al-Hamid killed them, the question would become moot.
He would need to act swiftly. Fortune had smiled upon him; the female Mossad agent had spoken of DC General Hospital as 'Mr. Mason' had walked up. They had not suspected—why should they? They were 'safe' inside NCIS headquarters. The poison on the certificates wouldn't act for several days, long enough so that the certificates wouldn't be suspected. The only ones al-Hamid needed to be concerned with were the pair still hospitalized.
There would be bodyguards at DC General. There would be checkpoints. Neither problem bothered him. His NCIS ID would get him past those checkpoints and as for the bodyguards?
Well, a few more dead bodies would only help his cause.
The man entered through the main lobby of DC General bearing a modest bouquet of flowers, wearing a tee shirt that bore the logo "Pauline's Flowers" on the back. He consulted the card on the plastic stick set in the center of the bouquet before approaching the front desk. Bright brown eyes twinkled from a face covered in smooth brown skin, a thick black mustache gracing his upper lip. "Hey, there," he greeted the woman behind the desk, with just a trace of an accent in his husky voice. "You new here?"
"Yup," she agreed, chewing on a wad of gum. "Who ya lookin' for?"
The man consulted the card again. "It says Margaret Walters, room 308, just like usual, just a different day, doll. She still there?"
The woman pushed short red hair behind her ears. "The computer says she's been in that room like forever. Who's sending her flowers?"
The man shrugged. "She must have family somewhere." He glanced around. "You've got a lot of security today. You got some kind of celebrity here?"
She snorted. "Geez, you think they'd tell me?"
He shrugged again. "Doesn't matter to you and me, doll. See you on the way back down." He shuffled off toward the elevators, ignoring the scrutiny by the two burly guards positioned beside them.
The woman at the desk waited until the man got onto the elevators and the doors closed behind him before picking up the phone and dialing. "Paging Dr. Caldwell, to the third floor."
Her phone rang almost immediately. "Director Shepard?"
Jenny Shepard no longer looked like a poorly paid hospital worker assigned to greet visitors at the front desk. Determination came onto her face, and she leaned back in her chair, feeling the welcome steel of her handgun hidden behind her back waistband. "Flower delivery man, carrying a small yellow bouquet. Five foot ten, dark skin, brown eyes, thick mustache. The card says room 308. Stay alert, Ziva. It may be him."
Up on the third floor, a 'nurse' dressed in green scrubs hung up the phone. "Dr. Caldwell," she called to the man across the station. "There's a patient on his way up to see you."
Another woman, heavy-set, also dressed in scrubs but with a stethoscope hung around her neck, stage-whispered to her, "Honey, if you really want to sound like a nurse, keep your mouth shut. We don't go around telling doctors that their patients are coming up. That's a good way to get a doc to disappear on you."
"Sorry," Ziva said, not sorry at all. "I needed to tell him—"
"Here he comes," 'Dr. Caldwell' interrupted. "Get inside the med room, and out of the way," he instructed the real nurse. "Stay there until this is over." He carefully turned around so that he could observe the people coming out of the elevator by the reflection in the window in front of him. He adjusted the sling around his neck, well aware that the handgun hidden there was not standard hospital equipment. It was, however, for Jethro Gibbs.
The man was just as Shepard had described him. He held the card in his hand, searching for the room that the flowers were destined for—and passed right by room 308. He headed for the room where two burly Marines stood guard.
A hand signal, from 'Dr. Caldwell'. 'Nurse' David picked her head up from where she'd buried it in a medical chart, her hand reaching back for her replacement Beretta hidden underneath her utilitarian scrubs. Two other 'visitors' who were 'watching' from the doorways of two rooms on the other side of the floor responded to the action by abruptly heading to cut off any escape by the fire exit down at the far end. The two 'real nurses' who had been stationed there to make the scene look reasonably accurate, did as they had been instructed previously by melting away into the inner recesses where they wouldn't get hurt.
It went fast. Gibbs stepped around the corner, his handgun secure in his hands, aiming at the man's head. "Freeze!" he barked. "NCIS! Don't move!"
The flower delivery man responded by whirling around. Ziva almost shot him for that alone.
The bouquet dropped to the floor and spilled petals everywhere, the water in the shattered vase seeping out on the floor. The man shrieked in sudden terror.
"Freeze!" Ziva yelled at him again. "Hands where I can see them!" She advanced, keeping her Beretta trained on him, Gibbs moving in from the other side.
"Look, I ain't got no money on me!" the man squealed, clueless as to what was going down. "You can have it all! Just don't kill me!"
"Turn around!" Ziva slammed the man against the concrete cinder block walls, forcing out another yelp. "Hands behind your head, fingers locked."
"Search him," Gibbs ordered. "He got anything on him?"
"Nothing," Ziva reported grimly, finishing the task. "He's clean. And I use that term only to mean free of weapons," she added, wiping her fingers on her scrubs. Something brown from the man's skin had gotten onto her fingers--dirt, perhaps. "You are filthy," she told the suspect. "Don't you ever bathe?"
Gibbs had more important things on his mind. "What are you doing here?"
"Delivering flowers, doc." The man was shaking in his shoes. "That's all I'm doin', I swear!"
Gibbs toed aside some of the bouquet on the floor, looking for anything out of the ordinary—and not finding it. He picked up the card. "This says room 308. Why'd you go past it?"
"Doc, there was this guy outside who told me to. He gave me twenty bucks. Said all I had to do was go past room 308 for like a room or two, then double back and deliver the flowers like usual." The delivery man wasn't holding up the wall; the wall was holding up the delivery man. Without its support, his knees were going to dump him onto the floor.
Gibbs felt cold suddenly grip him. "Quick—what did this guy look like?"
"Kind of average, doc. Kind of like me; same color skin, same height. What's going on?" the man asked, voice still quivering with fear.
"Go back downstairs and wait in the lobby. Don't leave this building," Gibbs ordered the delivery man. "Ziva, you're with me. Siler, stay on guard here," he directed one of the bodyguards. "The rest of you, search the building. He's here! Decoy, Jenny," he tossed to Director Shepard, the woman racing out of the stairwell with her own gun in hand. "He sent up a decoy: this guy. He's clean. Good thing we moved DiNozzo and McGee off of this floor," he added grimly.
"Just as we thought. al-Hamid's no fool. He knows that we were expecting him to make an attempt on our people." Shepard kept her cool. She pulled her comm. link to her lips. "Shepard here. The target is in the building. Close off all exits. No one enters or leaves without my say so. Check in."
"Check point one: secure."
"Check point two: secure."
"Check point three: secure." It went on for several more guards.
Gibbs didn't wait. Jameel al-Hamid was here, inside this hospital, and Gibbs was not going to let him get anywhere near his people. The Hacksaw of Hormuz was going down! He dashed for the stairs—it would be faster—with Ziva on his heels. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the delivery man enter the elevator, still white and trembling with fear.
He came out of the men's room, scratching his scalp. The wig had been hot, but necessary. Without it he would not have been permitted to enter. The wig, white-haired and curly, was now in the trashcan in the men's room on the fifth floor. The cosmetics that had lightened his skin tones had been washed away.
He had walked in without being challenged almost half an hour ago, heading first for the elevators and then to hide in the men's room. They were expecting him, that much was clear. There were guards everywhere, looking at everyone three and four times, trying to determine whether or not this one or that was the person they were looking for.
He had walked past them, undetected. Fools. They would pay for their stupidity and al-Hamid would remain a free man, secure with the knowledge that his face was unknown to those who sought to kill him and his cause.
Room 412. That was where the two NCIS agents had been moved to. More computer work had determined that, hacking into not the secure patient files but the easily accessed database which showed which patient had been moved to where. There was a blank in the records where DiNozzo and McGee's names ought to have been, and another blank in room 412, and from that it was determined that the pair had been moved to the new room to avoid retribution. It would have worked, had al-Hamid not been so clever.
He moved among others, doctors and nurses, visitors and candy-stripers, all unsuspecting. There were no guards on this floor, none that he could see. The guards would be inside the patient room so as not to attract attention, he knew. The attention would be directed toward room 310, where he was supposed to think that the two NCIS agents still rested.
Deep breath. Time to move in.
The door to room 412 was closed. It couldn't be locked; there was no lock on it, not on a hospital room. No one was watching him, and there were no guards that he could see. In a split second it would be over. He would walk over infidel dog American brains spilled out onto the linoleum.
Fast: hand pulling out the handgun. Push open the door—first shot at the guard. A chest shot; the man never had a chance to pull his own weapon. He toppled to the ground, landing on his face.
The assassin calmly emptied the contents of his handgun into the two huddled lumps lying in the identical two beds.
Jenny Shepard and Ziva David stepped out from behind the door and the closet. They each pointed their handgun at the man's head. He froze; his jaw dropped in shock.
"Give me an excuse," Ziva invited him as Shepard removed the gun from the man's hand. Shepard pulled out a pair of handcuffs, pulling the man's hands behind his back, a grim smile of satisfaction on her face.
The 'dead guard' got up and brushed himself off, plucking at the bullet lodged in his bullet-proof vest underneath his shirt. The protection had made him look bulky, but things had moved too quickly for the assassin to notice. "Putting in for an Oscar, Director," he grinned.
"You'll have it, Johnny," Shepard promised, "just make sure that we retrieve all the bullets that our friend put into those dummies." She reached up to yank off the fake mustache that their suspect had used to look like the flower delivery man—and the man yelled.
Shepard stared. It wasn't fake. The mustache was real, grown over many months. This wasn't al-Hamid. This wasn't the man who had taught at the Philadelphia seminar, although the resemblance was close.
"That's right, American whore-bitch!" the man taunted. "I am not Jameel al-Hamid! He is my leader, and he will destroy you! I help him with my sacrifice! al-Hamid goes free!"
Shepard whirled around. "Jethro was right," she gasped. "Ziva! Get on the phone! Get hold of Gibbs!"
"Too late, American whore-bitch!" the man sneered. "The deed is already done. Your people are dead!"
The elevator chimed, and al-Hamid--the real one--stepped off onto the third floor once again. The thick and bushy mustache tickled his nose and, irritated, he pulled it off and threw it to the floor. He would not be needing it any further. He considered his long term concealment options for the years ahead: not blond. That would be too time-consuming to maintain. Red head? Perhaps. There were several redheads of Middle Eastern background and, while somewhat unusual, would look sufficiently different that he could continue to hide in this country to wreak more havoc. With his recently acquired experience, perhaps he could seek to infiltrate the FBI. He smirked to himself; he could offer his services as an expert translator. Yes, that would be a worthy goal. He would consider it further once he had finished eliminating the pair of NCIS agents, the only two who had any chance at identifying him.
Room 310, just beyond 308, where they had stopped him before. It had been a useful diversion. These Americans, they thought that they could outsmart him by making him think that they moved the location of the NCIS agents. No, al-Hamid had seen through that, and had taken it one step further. He himself had created the diversion on the third floor so that the stupid Americans would seek to apprehend him on the fourth where they tried to direct him like a lamb to slaughter. He had used cosmetics to cover up the scar on his cheek, and to alter his appearance so that a casual onlooker would not recognize him as 'Al Mason' from the Philadelphia seminar, even if any others had attended from this DC unit. Try to deceive the Hacksaw of Hormuz himself? al-Hamid snorted; it was astounding that these American dogs had advanced as far as they had.
He listened for the sound of bullets—yes, there it was, on the floor above his. He would need to move swiftly; the Americans would not be fooled for long and he needed to be gone before the deception was revealed. Feydoun had sacrificed himself in a noble gesture, though there was little that they could charge him with.
He walked forward, taking note of the details, passing room 308. There was no one in this corridor beyond a pair of nurses huddling behind the desk, making worthless notes on their papers. You will not have your patients for much longer, female spawn of the Devil!
He pushed in the door of room 310. Two beds, two NCIS agents. One was sleeping—he would die last. The second opened his eyes at the sound of the door opening, though only one eye responded; yes, that was the one that his people had caught, that they had tortured for information before being taken themselves. The man's face was bruised, one eye blackened. It was a handsome face, or would have been if not covered with bandages, and al-Hamid wished savagely that his people had killed this agent, and the other one, so that al-Hamid did not have to be troubled with the deed. They were incompetent, and had received their reward of death or imprisonment.
Time to finish this task. Crossing the room swiftly, al-Hamid grabbed a pillow—flat and worthless for comfort, yet excellent for smothering a man silently—and shoved it over the NCIS agent's face. The man's instinctive yell disappeared into the fabric of the pillow, and al-Hamid felt joy at the feeble thrashing of the man trying to save himself.
Not a gun. No, this deserved good, old-fashioned physical contact. A knuckle sandwich.
Gibbs felt no pain as he once again removed his damaged wing from the sling. Fury blocked out everything but the man in front of him who was seeking to kill his people. Retribution was at hand, and it needed to be done right. The gun was in his holster and there it stayed. Gibbs came out from his hiding place behind the door.
Gibbs grabbed al-Hamid by the shoulder, swinging him around.
The look of shock and horror on al-Hamid's face made it almost all worthwhile.
Smashing his fist into that face completed the satisfaction.
Hitting al-Hamid a second time only increased the pleasure. After all, Gibbs had two agents recuperating in this hospital room.
Abby plunked herself down in the uncomfortable plastic chair located between the two beds in the hospital room containing both DiNozzo and McGee. She crossed her arms and her legs and looked ready to stay.
Tony DiNozzo was the first to comment on her actions. "Abby, is there a problem?"
Abby looked at him. "Yes, Tony, there is."
"And what might that be?"
"It's you. And McGee."
DiNozzo blinked. It would have had more effect if he had been able to get both eyes to blink at the same time, but one, although improved, was still swollen. The black had faded to a deep purple, and DiNozzo had chosen to be cheered by the progress. "I will agree that McGee has a problem. He always has a problem."
"Tony, you and McGee are going home tomorrow," Abby wailed. "Do you know how dangerous that is? People die at home."
"People die in their beds," McGee pointed out, "but they're usually much older and dying of some disease. Hi, boss, Ziva," he greeted the other two entering the room. "I assume that al-Hamid is somewhere safe so that he can't get to Abby?"
"McGee!"
"I don't know about 'safe'," Gibbs grumbled. "Damn FBI showed up on our doorstep this morning and took the bastard away before we had a chance to drain him dry."
"I could do a much better job at interrogating him." Ziva too was annoyed. "Your people do not speak Arabic with my fluency."
"Nor with your flair at cursing," DiNozzo added dryly, "or pressure points."
Ziva beamed. "Thank you, Tony. I shall remember that, next time that I question you as to your whereabouts."
Abby wasn't finished. "Who knows what else he did, in case this frontal assault failed? Guys, you know that I checked out your seminar certificates thoroughly?"
"Yes, Abby," Gibbs said patiently. "I also remember handing them over to you and asking you to do exactly that."
Abby ignored him. "And do you know what I found on them?"
McGee put in the straight line. "What?"
"I don't know. The mass spec hasn't finished with it yet, but believe me it was some kind of deadly poison. One touch, Gibbs, and you would be in the bed next to DiNozzo," she announced, ignoring the shiver that went through both DiNozzo and Gibbs at the image that the thought provoked. "Those certificates, all four of them, will be going into Evidence as soon as I finish identifying the compound. You guys can run down where al-Hamid got the ingredients, maybe figure out who else was involved."
"Probably someone innocent, some simple shop-keeper," Ziva thought.
"Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, the point is: what if al-Hamid set up some other devious plot, in case this one failed? What if he put a rattlesnake in DiNozzo's mailbox, or a bomb in McGee's car?"
"A bomb in McGee's car would be a blessing in disguise," DiNozzo told her. "Do you know how old that thing is?"
"Tony, it's a classic—"
Ziva interrupted. "Any rattlesnake in DiNozzo's mailbox is more likely to be from a disappointed ex-girlfriend, Abby."
"Hah, hah, Ziva—"
Director Shepard entered, taking in the scene. "Gentlemen. Ladies."
"Director." Gibbs rose to offer her his seat.
She waved him away. "I'm not staying long; Susan has the car double-parked. I'm on my way to San Francisco in an hour. I just wanted to check in on these two, make certain that they hadn't gotten into any more trouble."
"I won't let them," Abby vowed.
Shepard smiled. "I'm sure you won't, Abby." Her smile grew a little more wicked. "Oh, and Jethro?"
"Yes, Director?"
"I understand that you and your team have not completed your mandatory ethics compliance classes for this year. None of you have a certificate in your personnel files." Director Shepard looked oh-so-innocent. "I've signed you up for the next seminar: it's in Cincinnati." She escaped before any of them could protest.
Ziva looked blank. "What's in Cincinnati?"
"Nothing, Ziva."
"Oh." She thought for a moment longer. "Considering what happened in Philadelphia at the previous seminar, that may not be a bad thing, Gibbs."
The entire group reflected on her words. And agreed.
The End.