Thanks to all the reviewers and returning lurkers. To those who wondered when there would be more action, I hope this chapter fills the need.
Warning [rather belated] for language throughout this story. Warning for potentially disburbing images below (but I'm just being safe; there's nothing particularly gruesome).
Hope you enjoy!
After paying their bill and receiving multiple apologies from their waitress because she couldn't find Collins' receipt from the night before, then briefly speaking with the newly arrived hostess who had been on duty last night who ended up having no memory of seeing their dead Midshipman, Gibbs and DiNozzo set out for the police station.
Tony brooded in the passenger's seat, ignoring Gibbs' non-standard routes around the now traffic-filled area. He hopped back on the highway and DiNozzo stayed silent. Traffic seemed to be moving better than he'd have expected there, given the time of day and mucky road conditions.
Then he remembered it was Saturday. No weekday rush hour to contend with.
How many times had he lost track of the days recently…of the time of day? He was handling his case load and his side investigation, but it was starting to take a toll.
If Gibbs would really give the matter consideration, though, maybe Tony could finally gain access to some of the resources he so sorely needed.
"Gibbs."
"Mhmm."
"I don't have any support for this theory."
"Kinda figured that."
"And I'm just a homicide cop."
"You like telling me obvious facts?"
"I don't have access to details of homicides from the surrounding areas, definitely nothing across state borders."
"You think this guy might be killing in an even larger area than Baltimore?"
"No. I don't. At least not now. The bodies I found that fit the pattern were mostly found in a small area of downtown. But maybe he started somewhere else and worked his way here. Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe he's killing all along the eastern seaboard. Better to know."
"We can look into that."
The sudden feeling of relief that passed over DiNozzo was so intense he was momentarily afraid he might relieve himself on the seat. He looked up with a real grin on his face, trying to figure out what to say in thanks to the first person who had listened to him in a long time.
His grin turned to horror and he wordlessly shouted when he saw a white pickup ahead of them suddenly skid and ram into a blue Subaru, which in turn slammed into an old red Toyota Tercel that went into an uncontrolled spin in the left lane of the highway.
Gibbs had already seen, was already reacting. Cars were braking everywhere, most too quickly for the icy road conditions, and suddenly the two cars to their immediate right crashed into each other. Gibbs put on a quick burst of speed just in time as both cars spun to the left in a macabre dance of grinding metal and slammed into the concrete divider right behind them.
More and more vehicles made undesirable contact all around them, like a thriller version of a bumper car ride. Gibbs hands were steady on the wheel as he wove and dodged, braked and sped up to avoid the hulking catastrophes lurking in every sightline.
All at once, they came to a stop. Cars lay smoking, sideways, upside down all around them, but they hadn't been touched.
Tony looked over at Gibbs, eyes a little wild. "I will never comment about your driving again."
Gibbs started to smile just as a mass of skidding metal hit them from behind, pounding them into the minivan ahead.
One of them groaned as they were thrown against the door and dash. Slowly DiNozzo realized that the car had come to a stop again, it was just his head that was still spinning.
He looked up, and the airbags went off.
Everything went black for a few seconds, but he didn't completely lose consciousness.
DiNozzos don't pass out.
Fighting his way back from the lure of nothingness, he coughed at the acrid smoke now filling the car and shoved away the offending airbag. "Gibbs?"
No answer. Tony struggled to move only to find himself locked in by his seatbelt. He was pinned, the buckle wouldn't release.
"Gibbs!"
The man came awake with a start, hand going to his weapon, an obvious indication that he didn't know where he was.
"Gibbs, it was a car accident. We're stopped now, but I'm pinned. Where's your knife?"
"Knife?"
"Your knife Gibbs," Tony urged, "you just yelled at me this afternoon for not having one. You win. I'll carry one from now on. But I need to borrow yours for a minute. Gibbs, where's your knife?"
Shaking his head in a futile attempt to clear it, the agent fumbled at his waist and drew out the requested item, passing it to Tony. Quickly cutting himself free, Tony leaned over to do the same for Gibbs, then patted the man on the cheek. "You with me?"
Gibbs groggily pushed him away. "Fine. You're bleeding, Tony." He reached up and poked a raw scrape on the side of DiNozzo's head.
Taking stock, Tony decided he was just banged up – again. Tomorrow would really suck, but he was ultimately fine. Gibbs might have a slight concussion, but he was looking more alert, and knew who he was with.
They looked at each other, and both opened their doors and jumped out at the same time.
Neither wasted precious seconds looking around that the carnage that surrounded them. They leapt into action straight ahead of them, Gibbs slightly to the left and Tony a set of cars one or two to the right, but always within sight of each other.
The first motorist Tony came upon had a broken leg, but was otherwise fine. He told the man to stay put and call 911, then pulled a neighboring driver who seemed shaken but not majorly injured out to keep Broken Leg Guy company.
Moving through the line of cars, he tied off a tourniquet on one leg, cut several people free from their seatbelts, checked probable broken bones to make sure there were no compound fractures. Everywhere he went, he put people together to keep an eye on each other before he moved on. He could easily have stayed with any of the injured parties, but always he saw Gibbs checking in and moving on to his side, and he kept going, kept him in sight.
It wasn't long before he came across a fatality. No pulse, chest caved in by the steering column. He wanted to pull her out, try CPR, at least be able to tell her family that someone had tried to save her. But honestly, it wouldn't work. And he was only halfway through the mass of tangled cars that lie ahead of their own sedan. And there were more behind that.
No fucking way would he ever have survived as a doctor or EMT. Triage was even worse than his own job. At least triaging case files was juggling the already confirmed dead, just shuffling around the order in which they were investigated.
Sure he would puke as soon as he stopped moving, DiNozzo moved on.
Tony's ears were ringing from his impact with the airbag, there were shouts of people all around and a fire somewhere behind them that added a distant roaring. Despite this, he had no problem hearing Gibbs' shouted, "DiNozzo!" from several cars away.
Memorizing where he left off on his own uneven progression up the line of broken cars, he hustled over to where Gibbs kneeled by a Jeep that rested on its side.
He looked up, determined and in control, but with the first hint of fear Tony had ever seen from the man.
A woman lie on the ground behind the agent, crying hysterically, bleeding heavily from her head and right thigh. Gibbs waved Tony away from her, and quietly said, "Baby."
Sure enough, there was an infant strapped to a car seat on the back seat of the Jeep. Gibbs was having problems worming into a good position to grab the silent, unmoving child. Together they ripped off the topper of the convertible Jeep and Tony twisted in among the debris, cutting all the straps binding the kid to the car seat while Gibbs waited beneath to half catch, half pull the boy out.
Tony feared his partner had lost it when he started laughing. Gibbs looked up at Tony, then walked over to the sobbing woman. As DiNozzo watched, the baby yawned and blinked his eyes open, reaching for his mother when he saw her.
Gibbs laughed a little harder, and Tony went to help him up after he surrendered the baby to the lady, worried. But Gibbs wiped a hand across his dirty, bloody brow and huffed, "Kid slept through the accident. Must be nice."
With a hand on Gibbs' shoulder, Tony waved forward two nearby women who were cautiously approaching. Neither looked too badly hurt, so he tore off another strip of his dwindling shirt and instructed them to apply pressure to the woman's wounds and stay with her until the paramedics got to her.
Gibbs scrubbed his hands across his face and issued a more-or-less steady, "Let's go." The crashes were worse in this area, towards the beginning of the pileup where the cars had still been going fifty or sixty miles per hour.
They could hear sirens now, but no emergency vehicles were in sight yet.
It would take them a while to get through. It would take a legion to clear this all away once they did reach the scene.
Again, they forced themselves not to stand and look around, not to think about where they were going, just to follow the path of destruction and stop at each window. There were two more fatalities and an overturned car, smashed so badly that there were no windows to look into. Tony wanted to stop, to try to turn it over, but when no one responded to their calls, Gibbs grabbed his arm and forced him to move on. They didn't have the equipment to deal with something like that, and there were at least a dozen more cars ahead of them with serious damage.
Together, they managed to pry loose a door on an SUV that had also ended up on its roof, but stayed structurally intact. A grateful man and his four kids crawled out of the newly made opening and stayed sitting on the nearby pavement, as though the ground was too untrustworthy to walk upon.
Gibbs suddenly hustled, and Tony followed, unsure what made the man skip the next two cars until he himself rounded the last one and say the old Pontiac balancing precariously on the edge of the overpass. Somehow the car had jumped on top of the guardrail on the right side of the highway, and now teeter tottered back and forth in a sickening motion.
There were still people inside.
Gibbs moved to the driver's side and Tony to the passenger's side. There was a young man behind the wheel, a young woman next to him, and a kid about three or four in the back seat. All were rigidly still.
The front windows were both down – or blown out, hard to say for sure. Gibbs spoke calmly to the driver. "What's your little girl's name?"
"Holly," the driver said, his head never turning and his face never moving.
Tony turned to the cars behind them, quickly searching through what trunks and tailgates he could open looking for rope.
Gibbs, still talking to the occupants of the deathtrap car, softly encouraged, "Why don't you have Holly crawl up in the front seat, real slowly, and we can take her out the window here?
Face white, both young parents complied, urging the little girl to crawl up over the drink console and onto her daddy's lap. The car tilted faster in each direction, but Gibbs plucked her out of the car, and once she was safe on the ground everyone breathed a little easier.
By then, Tony had found two lengths of rope, and was shimmying under the front end of the Pontiac, looking for a good place to tie on to. Finally settling on one, he quickly secured a knot, then another with a second length of rope, then slowly removed himself and found Gibbs tying the other ends to nearby SUVs – the heaviest the ropes would reach to.
Nodding to Tony, they silently returned to their former positions: Gibbs by the driver's side and Tony at the passenger's door.
"Are both of you free from your seatbelts now?"
Two affirmatives.
"Real slowly, we're going to open the doors. Stay still until we tell you to move, okay?" Gibbs looked back to Tony. "On the count of three. One…two…three."
Both opened the doors halfway and paused. Together, they each reached in an arm and took their respective victim solidly by the hand, urging them to move swiftly out of the car.
One minute later, they all stood back safely, staring as the car continued to teeter totter on the guardrail.
Now Tony wanted to laugh. Running a dirty hand through dirty hair, he let out a little giggle and waded back into the sea of wrecked cars.
A few minutes later and a half dozen cars away, a shriek of metal caught his attention and he looked back, afraid the Pontiac was about to finally crash despite the ropes, and seriously hoping there were no cars below.
The noise was definitely from the Pontiac.
And the Pontiac was definitely about to go.
And Holly was crawling across the hood.
The breath left Tony's body as he started to run, weave between the cars, to try to get there.
The car tilted back and this time didn't tilt forward.
He wasn't going to make it.
Suddenly, Gibbs ran in from the side, reaching out, but Holly was too close to the windshield and the car was slipping away.
He jumped on the hood, grabbed the girl, and tossed her, screaming, safely onto the road.
Gibbs disappeared over the edge just as Tony arrived.
He thrust his arm over the edge desperately, searching, and encountered…
The rope.
The rope was still attached! He glanced back and saw a black SVU slowly moving towards him as the weight of the Pontiac dragged it over; the other rope had snapped already.
Throwing his entire upper torso over the guardrail, Tony saw Gibbs trying to climb up the rope as it slowly slipped down. He reached and yelled, stretching and screaming at the Marine to push harder, climb faster. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Gibbs gained a little ground and came infinitesimally closer. Finally, Tony was able to grab one of Gibbs' wrists with both of his hands and yank.
That might have been the safe end to it if the SUV acting as a weight hadn't suddenly slipped faster, slamming into the guardrail and grazing Tony in the process.
Silently straining, he refused to let go, but almost lost his own purchase on solid land. Both feet left the ground, and he threw his weight backward as best he could, jamming his feet against the side of the rail and twisting to stay in place. He felt his body go weightless for a moment as he nearly went over himself, but dug in, twisted harder, strained back.
He felt something in his knee give way with a searing tear, but only ground it deeper, pulling, pulling, pulling…
Falling.
Backwards, as Gibbs finally came over the edge.
They both lie panting on the ground as the guardrail finally gave way with a grating metallic groan, and the SUV followed the Pontiac down to a fiery landing below.