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"You JAG or NCIS?" A man dressed in camo asked the four as they approached him in the air hanger.
Lauren snorted as they came to a stop, the bold acronym on her cap should've given him a clue.
"Do I look like a lawyer?" Gibbs drawled to the man.
The man put his hands on his hips and leaned in Gibbs' face, "Words all over base by now. My men can't even call their family and let them know they're not the one who died."
Lauren glanced over at the soldiers on the floor on the other side of the hanger. They sat with their focus clearly on their Captain.
"Was Sergeant Fuentes married?"
"He has a wife and son."
Gibbs nodded, "Notification detail should be there to talk to her by now. Word will get out who was killed."
The Captain scoffed, "Sergeant Fuentes was under my command. I'd like to see her."
"After we finish questioning you and your men," Gibbs told him firmly.
"How long is that going to take?"
"I don't know."
The Captain shook his head, gesturing to his men. "These men have another jump again at 2100."
Lauren frowned, adjusting her hat. "They're jumping again tonight?"
"We don't stop for casualties in war, miss."
Lauren raised a brow at the man, crossing her arms unamused.
"Neither do we in training." He finished.
"Not true, Captain." Gibbs tilted his head down to meet the man's glare, "They don't jump off a lower bunk until we find out what happened."
"I don't take orders from NCIS cops." The Captain grit out.
"Special Agents. And you'll follow this order."
"Or what, Special Agent?" He squared his shoulders as Gibbs took out his phone, "I don't take orders from your boss either."
"I'm not calling my boss. I'm calling yours...Commandant May?" He spoke into the phone as the Captain stared him down. "Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS..."
The Captain silently admitted defeat and took a step back, out of Gibbs' face before walking toward the plane.
"I don't have a commandant of the Marine Corps on my speed dial." Tony drawled as they walked through the hangar.
Gibbs smirked, "Captain didn't know that."
They passed the soldiers sat on the ground, Lauren gave the one on the end a small awkward smile before turning to Gibbs.
"All right, Kate, shoot and DiNozzo sketch."
Lauren frowned, glancing towards a confused Kate. Painfully, she handed the camera to her new colleague and took a step back as Tony climbed his way smoothly into the aircraft.
"Especially the static lines. Ren and I will start the interrogations." Gibbs continued. Ren's brows furrowed at the man, bewildered as to why he had changed the roles up.
Tony held his fist out for her to bump just before he held a hand out to Kate who shot him an icy cold look just as she gracefully made her way up into the aircraft. Snorting, Lauren sent Tony a teasing look taking a step back to stand by Gibbs.
"Jumping's got to be so cool," Tony said, taking a look around the craft.
"Hey, you want to play paratrooper?" Gibbs raised his brows, "Pay 180 dollars, take a class like all those other weekend warriors."
Lauren tailed behind Gibbs as he walked away with an amused smile on her face as Tony groaned.
"Yeah, I have so many weekends free." He quipped before disappearing inside the craft.
...
"Sergeant Fuentes lead your stick?" Gibbs asked the soldier 'Dafelmair' who looked to his superior quickly before nodding.
"Yes, sir. I was number two." He then inclined his head towards the two men beside him, "Ramsey was three, Brinkman four. After my shoot deployed, I looked around...I saw Brinkman's chute open above me. When I looked down I only saw one canopy below. I didn't know if it was Paul or Thumper."
"Thumper? Is that what you called Fuentes?" Lauren asked, crossing her arms.
"Yes, Ma'am." The Sergent confirmed.
"Sounds crazy now," Ramsey said, "But he was the squad's good luck guy, Ma'am."
"He was a walking rabbit's foot." Dafelmair continued pressing his lips together.
Lauren sent the two a small smile, "So Thumper," She murmured.
"Yes, Ma'am." Dafelmair confirmed, "He always seemed to dodge the bullets. We could tell you a million stories."
"Why don't you tell us just one," Gibbs spoke up, sending the Sergeant a hard stare.
"Well, Sir. Bought himself a new bike last week. Car ran a red light, he went over through a plate glass window." He told them, his brows furrowed remembering his friend.
"Dinged his collarbone a little." Ramsey continued the story, "Other than that, not a scratch."
Gibbs tilted his head, "Dinged it a little?"
Dafelmair nodded, looking between the two NCIS agents, "A day or two, he was fine, sir."
Lauren pursed her lips and shared a glance with Gibbs, she sighed at him. He was always so suspicious. "Who reached him first?" She asked the soldiers.
"I did, ma'am," Dafelmair confirmed. "I saw him Roman candle short of the field." He gulped, looking down, "Soon as I got out of my harness I took off to find him."
"You two?" Gibbs turned to the other soldiers.
"I hung up in a tree. Dave gave me a hand." Brinkman told them, a grimace on his face. "Saw Paul yelling, and we joined him."
"Can't believe the way that Thumper died," Ramsey's voice cracked, he schooled his features as Lauren frowned at him and cleared his throat, "It was like a bad movie."
"Was he dead when you reached him, Corporal Dafelmair?" Gibbs crossed his arms, his expression grim.
"Yes, sir." Dafelmair straightened and met Gibb's gaze, "He died on impact. I'm sure. Well, at least I hope he did." He trailed off.
Lauren shuffled in place, "I'm sorry, why didn't he pull his reserve?"
"Jumping from 1,300 feet, your main fails..." Brinkman shook his head, "You have three, maybe four seconds to react, ma'am."
"Okay," Gibbs spoke up, "Each of you needs to prepare a statement detailing what you saw."
"Yes, sir!" All three men stood to attention before turning to grab their stuff.
"No, no. Leave 'em." Gibbs interrupted them, "Your gear is ours now."
Lauren watched them leave with a frown. She sighed crossing her arms, her mind racing as she went over each step of the event that they laid out for them.
"Ren, what did you get out of that?" Gibbs asked her.
Shaking her head, she adjusted her cap and huffed. "He didn't have time to pop his reserve."
"Why not?"
Lauren shrugged her shoulders throwing her hands up, her aggravation beginning to show. "His reaction time could've been too slow? Maybe? I'm not even sure."
"Nuts," Gibbs shook his head.
"Dinged his collarbone?" Lauren proposed.
"Injured clavicle hurts like hell and takes more than a couple of days to heal." He spoke leading the way through the hanger.
Lauren pursed her lips, "So you think Corporal Dafelmair was lying?"
"He was if he knew that Thumper was taking painkillers, so he could jump."
Lauren scoffed, stopping in place as she looked up at Gibbs who followed her movement and stood in front of her.
"That's stupid."
"No," Gibbs raised his brows, flicking the brim of her cap, "That's a marine."
...
"Our victim sustained a broken neck..."
Lauren grimaced the longer Ducky spoke, she slowly chewed the bite she had taken from her energy bar and slowly wrapped it up slipping it back into her pocket as she painfully swallowed the mush in her mouth. She looked around the morgue for the nearest bucket in case the bite decided to come back up
"Crushed vertebrae, multiple leg fractures a shattered pelvis-"
"What about his clavicle?" Gibbs interrupted Ducky as the man pointed to each radiograph.
Ducky looked questionably at the man, "With all this massive skeletal damage you're curious about his clavicle?"
Lauren snickered, nudging Gibbs' side as Ducky rolled his eyes.
"Humor us," She smiled as the older man sighed and reached to take down a radiograph.
"Well, what do you know..." He hummed, "There is a fine hairline fracture on the left clavicle."
"Which happened recently, but not last night." Lauren nodded.
"No, it begun to mend." He jumped and looked over his shoulder, "You two are beginning to scare me."
Lauren grinned at the man, crossing her arms as she leaned back into Gibbs.
"Ducky, would that fracture pain him much?" Gibbs asked, after poking Lauren's side playfully. Chuckling when she twitched.
"Oh, nothing too severe." Ducky shook his head, barely acknowledging the two's usual silliness. He was glad to see Gibbs smile, however, especially on a day like this one. "Of course, the shock of a parachute opening would have hurt like blazes. How did you know?"
"The girl in the SUV said she heard him moan." Gibbs grimaced, "Was he alive after impact?"
Ducky clenched his jaw before nodding, "Briefly." He told them with a sorrowful glance towards the body.
Lauren winced, closing her eyes for a moment. The poor man must have been in so much pain and so scared, she could barely stomach the thought.
They followed Ducky over to the body, he stopped Lauren from getting too close and put his face shield down.
"Not too close, Ren. I'll put it on the monitor." He cleared his throat and moved the large light above the body for better sight, "Yeah, he most certainly would have died of massive trauma but the technical cause of death was the severing of the femoral artery."
Lauren sighed, walking towards the screen to see the footage linked to Ducky's camera. It was morbid to watch as he showed the area in which the fatal wound was though Lauren could almost say she was used to it by now. Seeing such horrible things.
"Yes, our young Marine bled to death."
...
Gibbs and Lauren made their way down to Abby's crypt, a coffee in hand for both of them.
"You have my tox screen results?" Gibbs asked, his way of announcing his presence to the room.
Lauren rolled her eyes and stopped by Tony, smiling up at the man who playfully tugged at one of her curls. She felt as if it had been ages since they had last spoken - she still hadn't forgotten Gibbs giving Kate her job.
She looked around for Kate who had followed Gibbs over to where Abby was showing the two the tox screen results. She sent the woman a small wave and smile before looking up at the artwork on the wall.
"Abs! Is that new?"
"Yes!" Abby grinned, her ponytails whipping around as she turned to Lauren. "You know what it is?"
Lauren pressed her lips together, her brows furrowing as she analysed the colourful photo. "Gunshot?"
Abby clapped her hands together excitedly and laughed, "Self-inflicted gunshot wound to the abdomen!"
"Ooo nice one!! Very Chagall." Lauren grinned back.
"You two are scary sometimes," Tony murmured from behind her though whined out a breathless grunt as Lauren elbowed his stomach.
Without so much as a glance, she traipsed over the others standing by Gibbs who raised his brow at her, hands on his hips as she shrugged at him.
"The victim tested positive for Percocet and Vicodin..."
"Double your pleasure..." Lauren murmured.
"Double your fun." Tony completed, smirking as they low-fived.
"What kind of levels?" Gibbs asked.
"Point-one-seven. He was slow-juiced like a koala bear." Abby told him, glancing over to Lauren who 'awed' at the mention of the small bear. "My guess is that he popped right before he dropped."
Gibbs turned from the screen back to his team, "The marines we questioned in his string probably knew," He looked at Lauren who sighed.
"They should have just told us," She frowned rounding the corner to stand by Gibbs. He was their friend, they should try to help them solve this not hinder the investigation, "Why didn't they just tell us?"
"Semper Fi," Abby spoke up, "You rat, you fry." She smiled at Lauren before Gibbs sent her a look and she apologised.
"Was his reserve chute okay?" He asked after taking a sip of his coffee, he almost turned to share with Lauren but stopped himself remembering he had got her a cup of her own. An action he regretted already.
"Yeah, it was perfect. All he had to do was pop it."
"Well, he might have if his reflexes weren't slowed down by opioids," Kate said, leaning her hip against the desk.
"Opioids?" Tony questioned.
"General term for opiates and synthetic analgesics," Kate explained.
"Go, Kate," Abby lifted her hand for Kate to bump which Kate gladly did.
"You sure you were a Baltimore cop?" Gibbs drawled, his eyes on Tony who sarcastically laughed, rolling his eyes.
"Soooo," Lauren took her cap off and turned to Abby with squinted eyes, "He was too juiced at the time to even pop his reserve?" She flicked her cap along with her hand gestures.
"Maybe. Maybe not." Gibbs looked down at his notebook, "You pump adrenaline when you jump. Your main shoot doesn't open it would really kick into high gear."
"Well Gibbs, if he had the reflexes to use it, why didn't he?" Kate followed the man around the desk expectantly.
"I don't know." He admitted before looking to Abby, "What did you find from the shroud lines of his main chute?"
Abby swooped past them to the other lab room with all four agents following close behind, "Fiber disintegration. But not from textile fatigue. It's fluorescin as some sort of cleansing agent but that didn't cause this kind of damage." She told them, stopping by the desk and showing them the shroud lines.
Lauren passed Tony her coffee and leaned closer to the fabrics as Abby shined the blue light over them, "The edges look melted, Abs."
Abby nodded, "I haven't tagged it yet, but it was definitely an acid that shredded the lines holding 300 pounds of jumping marine."
"How long to find the acid, check out the rest of those chutes?" Gibbs asked.
"I'm flying solo," Abby shrugged, "So at least a day."
"Go faster if you had an assistant?"
"Yep."
Lauren beamed, opening her mouth to volunteer but was stopped mid-breath as Gibbs gave Kate the job.
"I get to do forensics?" Kate raised her brows.
"No. You get to schlep for Abby. She gets to do forensics." He told her, nodding for Lauren and Tony to follow him from the lab.
Lauren frowned giving Abby a quick hug and Kate a gentle pat on the shoulder for support before she left to catch up with the boys.
She shared a confused look with Tony once she matched their pace. Lauren couldn't help but feel glad that she wasn't the only one thinking that the boss was acting a bit strange. He knew how much Lauren loved working side by side with Abby as she rarely got to see her when on a big case.
...
Lauren took another photo of the dark and dingy high ceiling before turning to Tony and Gibbs.
"Why didn't you tell up you were a rigger, Corporal?" Gibbs asked the man as he worked on a pack.
"I thought you knew, sir."
"Did you?" Gibbs replied, distrust clear in his voice. The Corporal didn't say another word so Gibbs let it go for now. "What's next?"
"Sign the log and stick it in the chute pocket." The Corporal explained showing Gibbs where to sign before writing in the log.
Gibbs snatched it from the table and held another log against it, "Same signature."
"That was the log from Thumper's chute, wasn't it sir?"
"Yeah," Gibbs confirmed, "You packed it." He turned and began to walk away from the Corporal.
The Corporal took a few quick steps to catch up with the man as Lauren and Tony flanked them.
"Sir, I didn't know he'd get the one that I packed. The chutes are handed out randomly, even when we jump."
They walked the length of the room in between two long desks that had packed chutes lying atop them.
"Do riggers usually go on jumps?" Lauren asked from behind them.
"On training run, yes, ma'am." He told her, looking over his shoulder.
"How many riggers jumped last night?" Tony queried, glancing from Lauren to the suspicious Corporal.
"Uh, Corporals Ramsey, Brinkman and Thumper, of course. He was senior rigger."
Gibbs clenched his jaw and continued walking, "Figure we knew that, too?"
"Sir, we weren't trying to hide anything."
Gibbs stopped and turned to the young Corporal, "Oh like hell you weren't, Corporal." He scoffed, "You all knew Thumper was using painkillers for that dinged collarbone." He said plainly, hopping up onto one of the desks just as Tony leaned over to pull one of the packs. A small cloud of fabric weakly shot out onto the table.
"He died because he was too juiced to pull his reserve," Tony told the man.
"Sir," The Corporal started, his voice shaky, "There's no way for anyone to sabotage a chute and count on it getting to a specific jumper."
Lauren crossed her arms and leaned on the table by Gibbs' legs, "Are all those chutes packed here?"
"Yes, ma'am. We prepped them at 0900, put them on the trucks for the jump at 1800."
"They were there unattended for nine hours?"
"Under lock and key, ma'am."
Gibbs leaned forward, his shoulder brushing Laurens gently. "Who has the key?"
"Captain Faul and Thumper, as senior rigger, both have keys, sir."
The trio shared a look before Gibbs asked Lauren for the red folder, he opened it to show a photo of the Corporal and a few details on the young man.
"You had a criminal record before entering the Corps, Corporal."
The man looked defeated as he looked at the agents and sighed, placing his hands on his hips, "Made a few mistakes, sir." He admitted in a small voice.
"Shoplifting, Drug possession."
"That was a long time ago, sir."
"Three years," Tony spoke up, "Not so long."
The Corporal brushed a hand over his buzzed head and briefly closed his eyes, "Look, sir, you have my file. You know the judge gave me a choice, prison for the service. The Corps gave me a second chance, sir and I would never do anything to hurt it or one of my brother marines. Never, sir."
Lauren watched the man as he was stared down by Gibbs - a man who could get anyone to confess with that glare of his, it was enough to make her weak at the knees most days...though...no one needed to have that information - The young man almost winced at the piercing gaze but didn't falter.
He seemed genuine she thought, or she was just a softy for sad stories. The idea that a marine hurt a fellow marine was unforgivable but happened and that's what they were there for. Lauren couldn't help but feel that the young Corporal was telling the truth.
...
"Go!" Someone yelled as they walked through the grass. Lauren watched as a soldier jumped off a platform curling into a ball and landing in a small sandpit. He rolled to the grass before leaping up and running back to the platform.
"You ever jump?" Tony asked Gibbs.
"When I get an electric shock," Gibbs told him in a dry tone.
Lauren snorted and adjusted her cap, shaking her head at the men.
"Explains the lack of power tools."
Gibbs rolled his eyes and gestured to the direction they had to go, "You going to do it?"
"What?"
"Spend 180 dollars to defy gravity," Lauren finished for the man, curious as well if her friend would really try to spend that much money.
"Yeah," Tony breathed out, "I think I am."
Lauren pursed her lips about to say something but got distracted as she heard footsteps running up behind them. A soldier with a brown paper-wrapped box stopped behind them and handed Gibbs the box.
"This came for you, sir. I just missed you at the para loft."
"Thank you, Lance Corporal."
"Yes, sir." The man bowed his head in respect before dashing away back to his post.
"Who is it from?" Lauren nosed her way between the two men to watch Gibbs unwrap his present.
"Ducky."
Tony picked up a yellow note that had fallen from the wrapping and unfolded it, "Jethro, the bean counters couldn't find you so they gave this to me. I suggest you read the instructions on the call blocking-"
"That addressed to you?" Gibbs smirked, flicking open the phone.
"or get Ren to help you." Tony finished the note with a sardonic smile just as the phone began to ring. "It works."
Gibbs squinted at the small screen looking for the right button before lifting the phone to his ear, "Gibbs," He answered, his nose scrunched as he listened before he checked his watch, "Yeah. Be there in 20." He hung up and flicked it closed.
"You know," Gibbs breathed out, watching as Lauren stole the phone from his hand and flicked it back open. He didn't even try to stop her. "You know," He repeated back on his train of thought as he looked at the soldiers practising jumps, "Some of these guys freeze of their first jump."
"Not me," Tony shook his head.
"No," Gibbs agreed before shoving the box into Tony's arms and walking towards the car. He was handed back his phone and slipped into the driver's seat. Curiously he flipped it open and the small screen lit up to his contacts.
A small smile played on his lips as he read the first name 'Lauren :)' He turned to the passenger seat as she slipped in. The smile grew as he watched a flush of red make its way up her neck to settle on her cheeks.
He chuckled under his breath and slipped the phone into his blazer pocket.
...
A/N
Hii
So sorry. I was quite literally on the other side of the world where frankly they didn't have the show on any of my subscriptions which was heartbreaking.
Thank you to all that have stuck around and hello to the new readers!! Its lovely to have you all. Thank you as well for the comments you guys have left, they really warm my heart and help me out so much.
Now that I'm back, I'm going to try and write tonnes more so I can just sorta bulk write then just edit when I want to upload so please be patient with me!
I also have some news...I am hoping to move to Australia next February which is actually crazy. If anyone has any advice that would be fantastic, I am kinda scared as I will be doing it all alone but any help from you guys would be greatly appreciated!!
Anyway! Thank you all for reading this chapter, I hope you all enjoyed it and as usual, if you have any thoughts or opinions please let me know. I love hearing what you think!!
Have a lovely day, my friends...I'm here if you need me.
- El