| Subject: ...For Meritorious Service, part two |
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TxJAG_b
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Date Posted: 13:22:50 04/29/08 Tue
In reply to:
TxJAG_b
's message, "...For Meritorious Service" on 09:04:26 05/08/07 Tue
A/N: Thanks to my triple beta team - Karen, Jan and Mary Ann - as for three parts this month - my muse said 'unt uh, only two, bright boy' On with the story....
Forward Operating Base – Metz
Alpha Company positions
The volume of fire coming from the enemy blockhouses was definitely dropping. Lieutenant Sloan was now able to raise his head enough to look out towards Amariya. All he could see was gray and white smoke. He counted their blessings. Thankfully, no one had been badly wounded in that exchange. (Only one stretcher case; the rest were ambulatory, thank God…)
But this smoke ‘cover’ wouldn’t last forever. As soon as the wind changed, they’d be right back at the O.K. Corral. (The Colonel had better—)
The thumping of double rotors ended that thought. Colonel Livingston had come through. He watched as the blue gray ‘Phrog’ settled onto the rise behind him and unloaded the reinforcements he had requested. One team quickly set up their 81 mm mortar in the weapon pit adjacent to his position.
Once they were sure everything was in working order, the team began pumping more rounds in the direction of Amariya.
*~*
Gibbs banged open the door, startling both Sturgis and Phillips. “Your friend’s dead.”
Phillips face morphed from irritation to dismay. “My friend?” he said slowly as if he wasn’t sure what to make of this pronouncement.
Gibbs tossed the folder on the table, the photos of Rathum’s gruesome remains slid toward Sedrick Phillips.
Phillips’ eyes widened in disbelief as he looked at the photographs.
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” former NCIS Regional Agent in Charge said hurriedly, but it was obvious to Gibbs and Sturgis that he did know.
“That’s your friend, Sergeant Charles Rathum, or at least, what’s left of him.”
“You’re lying!” Sedrick sputtered.
Gibbs had just about had it with Sedrick Phillips’ tactics. The guy asked for immunity, but rather than telling everything he knew he had been even more vague and uncooperative than he had been before. It was time to end this. The Senior NCIS Agent walked over to the center of the table and flipped open the folder.
“Nope, I don’t think so; this is his tattoo, isn’t it? ‘Course it’s probably hard to tell after someone tried to obliterate it like that….” He pushed the photo showing the badly hacked up tattoo over to Sedrick. Despite the killer’s best efforts, the image could still be seen.
“No, this can’t be.” Breathed Sedrick, “It’s a fabrication, a trick--!”
“No fabrication and no trick, Mr. Phillips,” Sturgis said evenly going along with Gibbs. Anything to get this man to help them. “That’s his body. If you start dealing with us now, I might be able to prevent you from going to Guantanamo.”
“Guantanamo?” Sedrick seemed to choke on those words. Gibbs guessed that when Sedrick asked for immunity, he thought that any talk of him going to Guantanamo Bay would disappear.
“Yeah, Sedrick, Gitmo.” Gibbs smiled that devilish smile of his. “You know, where they send terrorists? You probably sent several there yourself. Bet they would love to get the chance to talk to you again….”
Sedrick Phillips tried one last time to show he was in control. “I told you before; I haven’t had any dealings with terrorists--”
“But your friend, Charles did…Sedrick.”
Sedrick’s eyes flared in surprise “He--”
Gibbs cut him off. “We’ve got witnesses who saw you and your friend Charles associating with known terrorists. And we’ve got this….”
Gibbs handed the piece of paper to Sedrick Phillips. Sedrick cleared his throat as he scanned the page.
“Who did this?” Sedrick asked quietly. There was anguish in his voice. It was clear that what Lieutenant Roberts had given Gibbs out in that hallway had finally broken down Sedrick Phillips’ resistance.
“We think you know who turned on you.” Gibbs growled.
“If you want to stop them Mr. Phillips,” Sturgis said smoothly, “you have to work with us… and more than you have been up to this point.”
Time unknown
Amariya, Iraq
Williams had one hand over his silencer-equipped pistol as he watched this new development unfold. During his time in Iraq the recon soldier had picked up a smattering of Arabic – not enough for intelligent conversation, but enough to make him appear to be a bit ‘slow’. It came in handy more times than Williams cared to count.
“You!! Take your truck to the blockhouses! The Americans might break through at any moment!!” The insurgent barked at the driver of the Dodge pickup.
Before Sergeant Williams could reply, the Soviet built jeep roared away, headed toward the blockhouses and the sounds of battle.
Williams opened up his door and look up to ‘Master Guns’ Wilbane.
“Take the scenic route to the blockhouses, Sergeant. The ladies and I are gonna pretend to be panicked townspeople and see if we get a bead on where that Soviet airborne tank might be….”
Female Officer Quarters
USS Patrick Henry
Harm looked around the room. There were tale-tell signs that Nicole and Sandy hailed from Chicago – little postcards of various Chicago tourist attractions on the wall near the computer. On the wall so they could see it from their bunks - a worn and slightly faded poster of Chris Chelios -- when he was with the Blackhawks.
“I don’t have a problem with you, Commander.” Nicole said honestly.
“But you have a problem with lawyers,” Harm replied, sounding like he was talking to a recalcitrant witness.
He gave her a wry smile to try and soften his words.
“Who told you that?” There was a hint of a demand in her voice. Nicole immediately recognized that and had enough sense to look embarrassed.
“Who told you that, sir?” she repeated more respectfully.
Harm decided that the lawyer/witness approach probably wasn’t going to get him too far with Nicole. “Commander, can we leave our ranks outside for the moment?”
“Absolutely sir.” Nicole knew it sounded like she was caving in to him, but maybe at this point that was a good idea.
Harm gave her another wry smile. “Then its Harm or Hammer, not Commander or sir.”
She gave him a brief smile. Sandy was right, he did have a certain charm. “All right, Hammer.”
“So what do you have against us Washington based legal weenies, Supergirl?” Again Harm smirked showing he was trying to be diffident, not accusatory. He pointed to the chair next to her computer chair indicating they should sit down.
Nicole complied and Harm did the same. “I really don’t have anything against JAGs sir, I’m sorry if some of my comments have made you feel that way.”
“It’s not your comments, Supergirl, it’s the undercurrent in your comments. Commander Aldridge had mentioned, to me, the same thing….”
“You’ve done your homework,” Nicole said soberly. Then the aviator switched gears showing she was the person he thought she was. “For the record…Harm…I have nothing against Commander Aldridge either.”
“So where is this coming from?”
Harm didn’t want to tell her, but he had also checked into her background. No legal problems, not even a single write up for bad conduct. That was unusual among pilots, who, by their very nature, tend to bend the rules on occasion.
Nicole looked down at her hands and let out a long slow sigh. Then she looked up into Hammer’s blue green eyes.
“A couple of years back,” she began, “my younger sister was carjacked. She’d been running some errands for our mom….”
Rather than saying anything, Harm nodded silently, urging her to continue.
“She was pistol-whipped pretty good, but managed to get out of the car before he could do anything else to her.”
Harm understood what she meant. He had heard this kind of a story before from victims and witnesses. “I’m sorry,” he said earnestly, “did they catch who did it?”
“That was the easy part. The guy must’ve been a runner up for the Darwin awards – he was wearing an old army jacket with his name stenciled in bold block letters on the name tag.”
The tall aviator/attorney would have smiled at this point, but he knew there was something unsettling that was waiting to come out.
“So what happened?”
“Seems he was a bored rich kid out for some kicks. His daddy got him a slick lawyer on retainer. Just because my sister was wearing shorts and a tank top, he made my sister look like white trash who was asking for it. Talked about how ‘boys will be boys’ and that he had gotten ‘carried away’ with himself during the ‘heat of the moment’.”
Harm knew his face showed his disgust. There were those in his profession that made a small part of him wish he wasn’t a JAG. Bottom feeders, ambulance chasers, whatever the name that applied to these kind of people – they shouldn’t be allowed to be attorneys.
But then another part of his mind reminded him that all of them – he, Mac, Sturgis, Bud had used similar tactics at one point or another either to discredit a witness or defend someone because they were ordered to. Was he really any better than this guy? This sleazy lawyer was probably ordered at all costs [including his job] to get the kid off the hook. Probably the prosecutor also didn’t do all that he should have, but he was sure Nicole didn’t want to hear anything about that.
Harm hoped he was better than the man Nicole so intensely disliked.
“He got off, I take it,” it was more of statement than a question.
“Yeah and three weeks later he did it again – only this time he carjacked a young girl on her way home from a babysitting job. They found her body sprawled out on a downtown highway exit ramp.”
Harm didn’t know what to say. Was there anything at this point he could have said that would not have sounded trite?
“I’m sorry my feelings for that slug transferred to you and Commander Aldridge, Hammer. I guess you could say I haven’t had many good experiences with attorneys of any sort.”
“Well let’s start with some new ones right now.” Harm held out his hand.
Nicole chuckled. For a lawyer, he was pretty human. Not at all what she had expected. “All right.”
Hill 521
Near Amariya, Iraq
“Any movement on the hill, Calapango?” Ebbits asked quietly as he settled down next to the Samoan Marine.
“No sir. Not a quiver. They’re not taking the bait….”
“Give it a few more minutes, son.”
*~*
“You!! Where are you three going?!”
Rudy Wilbane shifted the weight of his two ‘ill’ or ‘injured’ friends so that he could face the man questioning him.
“I am taking my brothers’ back to my house….” His dark skin had been one of the reasons Darcy had sought him for Force Recon. It probably also didn’t hurt that his family moved from Iraq to the States back during the first Gulf War and changed their last name to ‘Wilbane’.
The name ‘Rudy’ had been given to him by his father to help him ‘blend in’. Rudy had always told people his mother was Saudi and his father an oilman—that bit was partially true. He spent days talking with friends picking up on every nuance of being an American, but he never forgot his Iraqi roots – even though his parents had desperately wanted him to…they were afraid of Saddam’s agents even in America.
“Are they wounded?”
Before Rudy could say anything another 81 mm mortar round smacked into the middle of the street sending up a geyser of shrapnel and hard packed sand. All four instinctively ducked.
“Go!” Motioned the guerrilla. “Get them taken care of!!”
“Thank you, brother.” Rudy called after the black clad solder as he ran toward the direction of the blockhouses.
Once the insurgent was gone, the three separated and began to scout the area, looking for tale-tell signs of the BMD.
*~*
“I’m sorry I misjudged you, Lieutenant.”
For Tony DiNozzo, these words were extremely rare and despite the sincere tone he used, Bud Roberts couldn’t help but feel suspicious.
“We all make mistakes,” Bud found himself saying. It was exactly the manner Sturgis had used on him when the Lieutenant had screwed up Commander Turner’s defense against that dereliction of duty charge before the Navy/Marine Corps Court of Appeals.
Tony studied the junior JAG Corps officer for a moment, wondering how the junior JAG really felt. “I mean it, Lieutenant. And for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
Now Bud found himself facing the same situation that he and Commander Turner had played out a few short months ago. Would he hold onto his grudge?
“I appreciate that, Special Agent.” Bud wasn’t sure whether or not he should shake the NCIS Agent’s hand. A small part of him wondered if he did, would he get all his fingers back or perhaps feel the sting of a joy buzzer….
“Have…have you ever worked a case like this before?” Bud wasn’t sure why he was asking this, maybe it was to cover not going any further into the apology department.
Tony smiled. “There was a case a few years ago when I was working with the Baltimore Police Department….” When the NCIS Agent paused, Bud wondered what Special Agent DiNozzo was thinking about.
Then Tony looked Bud right in eyes. “No, Lieutenant,” he said a serious voice. “I…really haven’t worked a case like this one. Not in a long time.”
“Gentlemen,”
Major Barnett and Captain Johnson looked at the coffee maker and then at the two men.
“Sorry sirs,” Bud said as he scuttled out of the way. Tony had already moved and was now leaning against the wall as he finished his drink.
Bud and Tony waited until the two Marine legal officers got their coffee and left the room. Then Bud asked what he’d been wanting to ask.
“What did you mean by ‘not in a long time’, Special Agent?”
Tony DiNozzo let out a sarcastic chuckle. “Ever the attorney, eh, Lieutenant?”
“Sorry, it comes with the job,” Bud responded with a half-embarrassed smile.
“Yeah,” Tony doubted that was true in this particular situation. Lieutenant Roberts was trying to figure out this case. By Tony’s estimations, it would take the combined efforts of Thomas Magnum, Hercule Poirot, and Columbo to solve this one. Well, maybe his story would at least entertain the junior attorney….
“It was about eight years ago. My first law enforcement case. Wasn’t even a detective yet. Found this guy bludgeoned to death while he was watching TV. It was an all night Magnum marathon…”
“How do you know that?”
Tony smiled. “Because it was still going on when I got there. Anyway, there he sat, in favorite chair, television on, a bowl of munchies at his side, but he was never going to finish those goodies – not with that mouth…or those teeth, for that matter.”
Bud shuddered at the blood spattered image that appeared in his mind. Tony painted a very vivid…and very gruesome portrait.
“Couldn’t pin the murder on anyone in the town or even figure out a motive. Then one day we got a tip…’check the snack tray’ was all the caller told us.”
“Check the snack tray?” Bud repeated. He wondered what they could have found there?
Tony nodded, getting into his story. “Yeah, weird isn’t it? So I did; nothing unusual there. And then I talked to the crime lab about what was on the snack tray…a bag of chips, a watered down soft drink…nothing special there…until we looked in the chip bag.”
“What did you find?”
Tony began to smile that impish grin of his. “Mostly a few burned kettle-fried potato chips, but we did find a false eyelash toward the bottom of the bag.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Right down toward the bottom. With the help of the local forensic specialist, and some of my own diligent footwork, we were able to track down the girl who was missing a false eyelash. Once we showed her that we knew it was hers, she cracked. Said it was done in the heat of the moment, lover’s spat; you know…the usual…guy loves girl, girl loves guy, guy cheats on girl, girl bashes guys brains in. Except….” Here the NCIS Agent paused.
“Except what?” He had Bud hooked on his tale.
“She wasn’t a jealous lover. She had been told to kill this guy…make it look like a lover’s spat….”
“That’s incredible!” Bud had heard of these kinds of cases before, but not one so…complicated.
Tony really warming to his story. “That’s not the half of it. Shortly after we got her, another ‘person of interest’ surfaced. She was the distraught best friend of the deceased and confessed to being the ‘other woman’. Said she felt sorry for the jilted lover. Then the two of them started arguing and then they started fighting. While all that uproar was going on, some of evidence, including the chip eyelash vanished from evidence lockup…or it would have vanished, if I hadn’t spotted a guy heading down to the crime lab while everyone was…occupied.”
“Turns out he was friends with the two women…” at this point Tony stopped smiling. “When we started investigating him, we found he had instructed the women on what to do. The jealous lover would bash the dead guy after the ‘other woman’ had lured him away from his ‘girlfriend’. And his confession lead us to the person who had started it all. In effect, he had gotten three other people to do his dirty work for him.”
The similarities in the way people had been assigned to do different things, all being little pieces of a much larger plot; it was chilling. Bud didn’t like what he was thinking.
“Do you think Darcy is like that guy? She gets others to do the dirty work?
Tony shrugged his shoulders. He could tell that Bud was unnerved by that thought and now the NCIS Agent wished he hadn’t told him that story. But maybe it was better for him to know what they might be facing. “We haven’t got enough evidence to prove that yet, Lieutenant. But based on the information and suspects we’ve uncovered so far, yeah, I think she’s a lot like that guy.”
[To be continued in part three]
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