26 Tony DiNozzo approves this arrest

At 1200 the additional MPs from the Reagan come ashore, and Gibbs parcels them out around the base, seeding his few NCIS agents as carefully as possible. He walks back and forth to the dock, his sniper's eye raking over the grounds, asking himself what vantage he'd choose. The search teams now have a definite face to watch for, but the searches of the area near the docks are fruitless. The explosive-sniffing dogs find nothing.

At 1300 Gibbs waves off the helo. It's just making noise and the comm. channels are overloaded as it is without everyone shouting at the top of their lungs. He orders out the scent dogs, though he knows it's a longshot because the perp's jacket is contaminated. The dogs lead their teams on a chase from the parking lot to the NCIS office to the commissary to the basketball court to the MP office and back. Allen has the idea to ask Tony—who, Gibbs is relieved to note, has been silent until now—if he's been down to the docks recently. No, not since Friday, and it had rained on Saturday and Tuesday afternoon. Good idea, Gibbs says, and the scent dogs are taken down to the dock 3 ramp. They amble for a bit and then pick up a scent and go trotting off, with Gibbs and Burns and Allen in pursuit. But the search ends at a trashcan, which holds Tony's missing jacket and cap.

"Hey, Tony," Allen says, "you won't have to break in a new one."

"I'm thinking this one was too big for the perp," Burns says.

"Hey," Tony says. "Today you found my kid, my car, and my favorite cap. You find my three-point shot and it's bonuses for everyone."

"It's official," Burns says. "You're the strongest-smelling man on base, Tony."

"Is comedy hour over?" Gibbs asks. "We've still got nothing. We'll have to go ahead and try and flush him out." He tells Abby to send the go signal to Chad from Chad and takes Burns, Green, Allen, and McGee down to the docks; Ziva, Hancock, and their detachment of MPs are sent back up to the base, ready to move if shooting breaks out.

Allen asks Gibbs, "Are we wrong about this? Maybe there's no one on base. Maybe Hamilton just wanted to get Tony."

"Doesn't explain the bug," Gibbs says. "The bastard's here. He's just waiting."

Tony has been biting his lip through most of the afternoon, half-listening to Becks as she alternates between Ducky's lap and his bed, talking about her Tetris game and Abby and Caf-Pow and her new knife and telling a complicated story about Bunny. He struggles to follow the action and tries not to listen too hard for any mention of Ziva. He knows he's worse than used up, and his tired mind fixates on the cap, not the dock. "I wonder why he ditched them."

"Perhaps he realizes everyone's in MP gear," Ducky says.

"But how? We could just be sitting in the office waiting for the go signal." Couldn't know that they're in MP gear; they hadn't discussed that until this morning, there certainly can't be another bug in this hospital room, and McGee's disabled the one in his office. Why take the cap and jacket and then ditch them? Why does the cap matter? At this point, Tony thinks, I'd have been headslapped at least twice. Give it up already. Is this guy smart enough to know the car would be found and we'd be looking for a guy in an NCIS cap? When he has no intention of using it?

The launch has left the Reagan and will be at dock 3 in 5. Tony knows he should stay out of this, but he asks Abby, "Is there anything in this Guyadev's file about him being a sharpshooter?"

"Interpol has him as a close-up wetwork guy. But he's Russian, so we could be missing a lot. They don't share much information with Interpol, especially about their home-grown bad guys. I have no way of confirming whether the guy did any army service."

Russian. Russian? "Abby, is he Russian Russian or Chechen Russian?"

"He's from some place called Bamut…Chechnya."

"Boss," Tony says.

"Yeah, Tony, I heard," Gibbs says. "I don't think he's going to try anything on the dock."

"If he had a backpack, could he carry something big enough to take down a cargo plane?"

"If the pack's big enough he could have a Stinger. But the best shot with a Stinger would be after the plane's in the air, and he doesn't need to be on base for that. How many cargos are on the tarmac now?"

"Six, counting the refrigerator…no, seven. We were supposed to have seven in today, and they're all on tight turnarounds, dump and jump."

"That's a lot of gas trucks. For a gas truck he'd only need an RPG."

Yes, that's a lot of gas trucks, and it's a hell of a lot easier to hit a gas truck—or four or five of them—than to hit a cargo plane hard enough to bring it down. "My God," Tony says, "he won't have to find Hassan. He hits enough gas trucks and we could lose half the base."

"Where would he go?"

"Uh…"

"Tony, damn it, focus. It's your base. Where would he go?"

"There's…there's a lot of ground cover there. North and east of the main hangar. He could see the road from the docks from that angle and have a short shot at the trucks."

Gibbs: "Burns, you drive the truck. You drive slow, and you stop as soon as you can see that corner. You pop the hood like you've got trouble. I want this guy to think that there's just a hitch in the delivery. Everybody else, with me."

A few minutes later the link goes quiet. Tony imagines them bunched around Gibbs, getting silent instructions. Becks, too, goes quiet. She looks at him, puzzled. "Don't worry, Becks," he says to her. "Everything's okay."

"Tony," Ducky says, "should we get her off base? If you're right…"

"Everything's okay," he says again. "They'll take care of it." He thinks: I should have reminded Gibbs that Win's a great shot, but since when does Gibbs need a sharpshooter? Bill was the right one for the acting job….

And there's a single shot, so loud that even Becks jumps. Please, God, Tony thinks, no more. No more. But there are a few more quick pops, and then Gibbs: "Drop your weapon! Drop it! Step back. Allen, cuff him. Green, make sure that RPG's not hot. Good shot, Hancock. Sitrep, David?"

"No one else out here. He must have been alone, Gibbs."

Allen says, "Sergei Guyadev, you're under arrest for attempted murder, kidnapping, extortion, theft, and trying to barbecue without a license."

"What'd he say?" asks Green.

"He says we're violating his rights under the EU Human Rights Treaty."

"My God, he's a lawyer. Shoot him again, Win."

"Now what's he saying?"

"He says he's injured and needs medical attention."

"It's just a flesh wound."

There is a bit more of this, ending with a remark about settling all the DiNozzo family business today. Allen says, "Godfather reference?"

"Check. Monty Python reference?"

"Check. Noseless bastard?"

"Check. It's official. Tony DiNozzo would approve this arrest."

"Jesus," is all Gibbs can manage. "Hancock, take the canno—don't forget the RPG."

By 1430 it is all over. By 1500 Hassan, who had been brought ashore at 1200 in uniform with the Reagan MPs, is on a plane with Chad and another NCIS minder. And by 1530, launches start landing sailors for their Rota liberty. Except for the additional MPs and the throngs of high-spirited young men and women, it looks like an ordinary afternoon at Rota Naval Station. The next day local papers report that the man who had carjacked an American agent had been caught on base. There is no mention of a second man or a thwarted terror attack. And the story quickly fades away. For Leon Vance, it is a two-toothpick day.