SquidgeWorld Archive

Chapter Text

Prologue

"You sure you're doing it right?"

"Yeah, sure. I saw it on the internet. You just file this down, shorten that spring and you're got yourself a full-auto. Add in the twenty round clip that I've modified to hold fifty and you've got the baddest piece around. Nobody gonna mess with us when they see this thing."

The skinny teenager slammed the clip into the weapon, not having a clue what he was about to unleash. With the safety destroyed and the internal firing mechanism mangled beyond recognition, the first round fired the moment it hit the block, the bullet barely missing his heavier friend. The self-taught gunsmith dropped the gun in a panic as it continued to fire. Both boys ran, neither making it far, as the gun bounced and skittered across the floor until all fifty rounds had been expended.

"Gear up, got two dead teenagers in an abandoned warehouse in Annandale." Gibbs tossed his coffee as he grabbed his gun and clip from the drawer.

Tony was the first one to join Gibbs. "Couple of dependents, Boss?"

"Nope, but one weapon was left behind and it's a P226 SCT."

Nothing more needed to be said. They'd been tracking a stolen shipment of the specialized Super Capacity Tactical SIG Sauer handguns for months now, ever since the crate vanished on its way to arm the Navy SEAL teams based at Little Creek.

Gibbs wasn't happy when they arrived in Annandale, but the local LEO's weren't happy to be losing jurisdiction, either. The bodies had already been moved out to the waiting county's medical examiner's van and the spent casings were already bagged up. What the team could see looked like the remnants of a massive gun fight, with bullet holes through every wall of the empty building. There was little left to do at the scene except to try and find as many bullets as they could. The flimsy walls hadn't slowed down the shots and only a half dozen spent rounds were collected by the time darkness fell. Five more hours on hands and knees with flashlights in the dirt and gravel had yielded only an additional four mangled bullets.

Moods were dark and tempers short by the time they returned to the Yard and Gibbs started barking out orders. "DiNozzo, figure out how our missing weapons ended up in Annandale in the hands of a gang. David, take it from the other direction. Identify those bodies and track the connection to the stolen shipment. McGee, work with Abby to reconstruct our crime scene. Figure out how many people were there and who shot who."

"Umm, Boss, I can do that from up here." McGee looked nervous to be down in the lab with the Goth and Tony started laughing.

"What's the matter, McWhine? Abby still on a rampage that you stood her up?"

"I didn't stand her up, I told her weeks ago that I wasn't interested in going to that concert. It's not my fault that..."

"Oh, yeah, Probie, it's always your fault. You should know that by now." Still grinning, Tony threw him a sloppy salute. "It's been nice knowing you, my friend."

"Yeah, right." Ignoring his smirking teammates, McGee threw one last desperate look at his boss before passing the cleaning crew and the night shift as he left the squad room.

As soon as the elevator doors closed, Tony held his hand out to Ziva. "Dead man walking. Twenty bucks says Abby nails him before he even gets through the door."

Ziva crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. "That is a sucker bet, Tony."

Behind them, Gibbs had to laugh at their antics. "She got that one right, DiNozzo."

Abby glared at the mountain of evidence on her table. Most of it had been collected by somebody other than her team, which meant that it was incorrectly labeled and bagged and most likely contaminated. Fingerprint powder residue was all over the one recovered weapon, meaning she would have a hard time pulling any trace. The local yokels hadn't bothered to turn over any of the fingerprints they'd lifted from the gun, but their work had destroyed any remaining fingerprints she might have been able to recover.

She removed the long, extended magazine from the pistol, hoping that there might be a few prints they'd missed on the top half of the clip. Grind marks were evident where it had been altered and she made a mental note to check in the original case notes to see how many of the missing guns were prototypes.

Setting the weapon down on the workbench, Abby walked into the ballistics lab to retrieve a standard 9mm magazine and loaded it with two rounds. It was well after midnight and she was running on nothing but adrenalin since the Caf-Pow machine was empty. Add to that the concert the night before that McGee refused to attend so she'd been without a designated driver and it all made for a testy, tired and short-tempered forensic scientist.

Loaded clip in hand, she realized that the gun was still sitting on the workbench. Annoyed at the extra steps, she cranked up her music as she went back out and picked up the gun, shoving the clip into place as she turned.

Full autopsies would wait until morning, especially since most of the shots were through and through's, but Ducky removed the one bullet that was smashed against John Doe #1's femur and dropped it into the evidence jar held by his assistant. "If you would run that up to Abigail, Mr. Palmer?"

"Of course, Dr. Mallard. Are you sure you don't want to do the autopsy tonight?"

Ducky sighed as he looked at the two bodies laid out on the tables. "I believe fresh eyes will do us more good that the few hours gained by working all night."

Jimmy set the jar on the desk. "You're right. I'll put them to bed for the night and then drop this off to Abby on my way out."

"Very good, Mr. Palmer. I will see you in the morning." Ducky picked up his briefcase and coat as Jimmy started the familiar routine to close down for the night. By the time Jimmy was ready to leave, the elevator was again in use, so he took the stairs. Arriving one floor up, he grinned as he heard the familiar music before wincing as the volume suddenly increased. Down the hallway, near the door to the lab, he saw the same reaction on McGee's face before he suddenly dropped to the floor.