Chapter 4
"How is he, doc?" Gibbs asked the surgeon as he pulled down the facemask and left the operating theatre were he'd been working on Dinozzo.
Abby teetered up behind her friend wearing a pair of high-heeled platform knee-high leather boots, black fishnet tights with 'fashionable' additional holes, a black pleated mini skirt and a black and red t-shirt with the slogan:
'Vampires bite,
and so do I…'
emblazoned across her chest. Around her shoulders she was wearing an NCIS field jacket belonging to McGee who was trailing behind her by about five paces.
"Any news on Tony?" Abby asked immediately.
"Well," began the doctor.
"Is Tony okay, boss?" McGee interrupted.
Gibbs silenced them both with a stare before returning his attention back to the doctor.
"He's lost a lot of blood, but the prognosis is good. The wreckage from the accident has damaged the muscles and tendons in his leg but, with rest and physiotherapy, I see no reason why he shouldn't make a full and complete recovery."
"Thanks doctor," the three NCIS personnel chorused.
Gibbs, McGee and Abby stood around Tony's bed gazing down at their semi-conscious colleague.
"Hey Tony," Abby greeted, tears welling in her eyes and emotion snatching her voice. Gibbs put his arm around her shoulders to comfort her.
Tony looked around from face to face, finally coming to rest on Gibbs who bent down and whispered quietly "Good job, Dinozzo!" Gibbs straightened up, looked down at Tony again and in a voice the whole group could hear joked "I'll make sure one of the nursing staff come and give you a sponge bath!"
"Thanks boss," Tony smiled as he eyed a couple of pretty young nurses head in his direction.
Gibbs turned to leave, got halfway and stopped to talk to a severe looking woman in her early fifties and pointed to Tony, before continuing on his way out the door. "McGee! Abby! Time to go!" he called.
"No! No boss, you can't do this to me…Haven't I suffered enough?" fear and panic clouded Tony's thoughts as he had visions of the 'dragon' nurse getting way too familiar with his anatomy. "Boss, don't do this to me!" Tony's words had fallen on deaf ears because Gibbs, Abby and McGee were gone.
Outside the hospital, Gibbs stopped and handed Abby the evidence bags Tony had salvaged from the wreckage that was their car. "Abs, I want you to tell me what you can about these," he gently shook the bags enough to make them flutter in midair, but not so much that its contents could jingle together. "McGee, you go with Abby. I'll use your car…"
McGee looked sceptically at his boss.
"Is there a problem Special Agent McGee?" Gibbs enquired in his intimidating 'in-your-face' manner.
"Er, no boss… It's just that my car isn't quite what you're used to…" McGee handed over his keys attached to a key chain that claimed 'computer operators use both hands'.
Gibbs stared at the novelty fob. McGee blushed involuntarily as he tried to defend himself. "It was a gift from a friend of mine…"
McGee and Abby climbed into the front seats of Abby's hearse and pulled away. Gibbs looked down at the keys in his hand; he was looking for a BMW. He counted the parking bays until he found the one he was looking for and, as McGee had suggested, the car parked in the space was not what Gibbs was expecting. It was a Mini Cooper! "McGee…" Gibbs cursed. "At least Dinozzo has a car with a driving seat that isn't intended for an 'Elf Lord'!"
Ziva was in the middle of a telephone conversation when Gibbs entered the office. "That's right," she stated. "I'll let him know."
"Let me know what?" Gibbs startled the female agent as she scribbled her notes onto a yellow sticky pad sheet.
"That was ballistics. The rounds we retrieved were from a Smith and Wesson 9mm. Metro PD found the weapon when they arrested a man called," she checked her notes, "Karl Brooks." Ziva flashed up his criminal history onto the plasma screen together with a photograph taken at his arrest. It showed a tall balding man in his late forties and pure hatred in his eyes.
Gibbs turned from the screen, something was obviously bothering him. "Ziva, check did Brooks have any family – a son in the marines?"
Ziva keyed in Gibbs' query and a name popped up – Sergeant Raymond Brooks. "His son was killed in Kuwait when Iraqi soldiers ambushed their unit."
"Who else was killed?"
Again Ziva searched the database. "Corporal Alan Reines. The rest of the unit seem to have survived the attack."
"Greg Kovak and I were on the recon mission for that unit. When we returned to base we were too late," Gibbs reminisced.
"Many men died during the occupation, you cannot feel responsible for every death out there…" Ziva's words were of little comfort but Gibbs knew she was correct.
"I want Brooks brought over here for questioning." Gibbs instructed. Ziva was immediately on the phone to Metro PD to organise the transfer.
Brooks sat alone in the Spartan interrogation room. He showed no outward signs of anxiety or fear. Instead he just stared blankly at his own reflection in the one-way glass, but Gibbs could see it; the malevolent anger that had led to the series of events which had already claimed two lives.
Gibbs entered the interrogation room carrying a manila file in one hand and a carton of coffee in the other. He pulled out the opposing chair, turned it away from Brooks and straddled it with his folded arms resting on the chair's back. Gibbs tilted his head to one side as he watched Brooks' unwavering expression.
"You think you're so clever, don't you?" spat Brooks as he turned to look his interrogator in the eye. "What you don't seem to comprehend is that I have lost everything… My wife, my son, my whole life is gone and there's nothing you can do or say that will change any of that, is there?"
"No. No, I can't change the past, but you have the power to change the future…" Gibbs responded calmly.
This tone seemed to unnerve Brooks, making his expression soften from the harsh vengeful features into a sad and lonely grief-stricken soul. Gibbs placed the crime scene photographs taken of the two shooting victims in front of his suspect. Brooks looked down into the stony expressionless faces of the two corpses and immediately had flash-backs to his son. His mind tricking him into seeing his son, Ray, as the dead man in both photographs. His eyes began to well with tears as he broke down.
"He shouldn't have been there. He was only a kid!"
"I know," Gibbs comforted. "So was Lieutenant Thorpe."
"What do you know? Sat there in your fancy office, what do you know about losing a son?"
He knew alright, but Gibbs wouldn't elaborate. It was still too painful to think that he had let down his wife and daughter whilst he had served in Kuwait. "Who's the other person in this photograph?" Gibbs showed the image taken from the memory card.
"Kovak, that bastard let my son die; and so did you! I'm not saying anything without a lawyer," his hostility renewed.
Gibbs scooped up the photographs and left Brooks to grieve alone, his gut telling him Brooks was not a murderer.
Gibbs' cell rang as he exited interrogation, it was Abby.
"I've got something," she offered simply.
"On my way," he responded equally.
Abby was stood alongside her computer waiting when Gibbs joined her in the lab. She was smiling as McGee continued to tap away at the computer he was working on.
"I have identified the two mystery men in the image!"
"Petty Officer David Weston," declared Gibbs.
Abby scowled at him. "You know, I really, really hate it when you do that!"
"Yeah, I know," Gibbs responded with a cheeky smile. "So who's the other guy?"
At that moment the forensics lab doors opened and Ziva entered. "Samuel Reines," she announced.
"Some days," Abby muttered. "I wonder if you guys actually need me at all…"
Gibbs leaned over and kissed Abby on the top of her head. "Just wouldn't be the same without you Abs! Call me if you get anything else…"
No sooner had he taken a couple of paces than his cell rang.
"I've got something!" Abby smirked and Gibbs rejoined her at the computer. "The bullet casings Tony and Ziva found from the rooftop across the street had an unusual grey residue on them." She clicked a few buttons and a gas chromatograph printout was displayed on the plasma screen. There was a definite peak approximately one third along the graph. "The results show very high concentrations of the chemicals found in C4 -cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX). I have checked the chemical configuration against the fragments collected from the 'Truman'…"
"And?" Gibbs asked expectantly.
"No match. The explosives used on the F14 were not compatible with the C4 found on the bullets."
"So, Sanchez is out there building a bomb and we have no idea what or where his next target will be…" Gibbs surmised.