Gibbs carefully made his way to each of his people and the police in the surrounding woods. Once he had cleared the entire area, he released the cops to go back to their patrols. His team walked back to the van still waiting on an explanation that might not be forthcoming from the silent man walking their way.

They were in the van driving back to the office when Gibbs spoke. "Whoever Carly spotted in those woods thought better of booby trapping the area. I found markings on two trees where someone wrapped wire around them, probably to set off some type of explosive devise."

"It doesn't make sense that they would booby trap that area unless someone was doing a trial run." Ziva stated. "Hardly anyone goes in that area from what we saw studying the grounds. The only people out there were the person Carly spotted and us."

"Exactly, Ziva. So who was out there and what are they trying to do? And why do we have six dead Marines and one UA?" Gibbs asked.

Silence reigned on the rest of the trip. They were all trying to find answers to a puzzle they hadn't known was there.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Gibbs, Tony!" Abby shouted as the now tired team filed into the bullpen. "Abs, if it isn't important we can't worry about it right now." Gibbs told her, taking his gun out and putting it away.

"Well, in that case, I'll let Carly tell you all about it since she found it." Abby said with a fake look of disappointment. She clicked on the control to bring the pictures up for everyone to see.

"What did you find?" Gibbs asked Carly.

"Well, when I was taking photos at the scene today, I froze when I saw the light in the woods."

"We know that already, Carly. That's why we just spent three hours searching those woods."

Carly bent over his desk to look him in the eye. "You didn't let me finish, Jethro." The whole team looked on in surprise at her calling him by name and Abby grinned at their reactions.

"As I was saying, I froze when I spotted the light coming from the trees. My finger pressed the shutter button on the camera and took a burst of photos, about fifteen in all. While Abby and I were looking at them earlier, we realized it was like a slideshow of the person in the woods." Abby clicked the remote and the pictures flew by on the screen. Everyone tilted their heads but didn't see what was so important about them.

Carly waved her hands. "I know; it doesn't have the same effect. Look, it's like old school cartoon animation. You take the first photo and put it on the bottom and so on until they are all in a stack." She handed them to Gibbs. "This is exactly what we've done here. Flip through them and see if you notice it."

Gibbs flipped through once not looking closely, more annoyed that they wouldn't come right out and say what they were seeing. He flipped through once more because something in the pictures caught his attention. He looked up at Carly to see her nodding her head at him.

"That's why we couldn't just tell you, you wouldn't believe us." She said defensively.

"What else have you found out?" Gibbs asked with a little more patience.

"The man in the photo is ex-military. He was a Marine back when Officer Granger was in Afghanistan. His name is Brian Bethay. He was dishonorable discharged six months ago based on the testimony of his fellow Marines. There were eight total men in his unit during the operations they were involved in at that time and Granger and Bethay are the only two left alive." Carly finished and took a deep breath.

Ducky walked off the elevator. "Jethro, I'm glad your back. I was performing the autopsy on one of our fallen Marines and sent the bullet to Abby. I came looking for her to see if she was finished testing my theory."

All eyes turned to Abby and she hopped off Tony's desk. "Oh, yeah, Duck-man. I ran the tests on that bullet. It was from a rifle not a pistol. Bethay shot the Marines from the woods, probably tried to draw out Granger to take him out as well."

"A rifle?" Ziva questioned. "The wounds were consistent with a close shot, not long distance."

Carly made a noise and said, "You didn't see them when Ducky rolled them over."

"Carly's quite right; we only did a cursory exam of each of the bodies on the scene. Jethro had already sent most of you into the woods when Mr. Palmer and I started loading the bodies. The shots were meant to do maximum damage and drop each man where he was standing. We did have a bit of a time of it keeping all the organs with the correct bodies while getting ready to put them in the body bags."

Ziva nodded. "I've seen wounds like that. They aren't pretty to clean up after."

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs shouted, after hearing all the information.

"Already on it Gibbs. McGee here has already found Bethay's DMV records, we've got a BOLO out on him and we're in the process of getting the search warrant as we speak."

"Let's go." Gibbs said, taking his gun back out his desk. "The warrant should be ready by the time we pick it up."

The team filed out and only Carly noticed the look that passed between Tony and Abby when he silently said, "Dinner, later."

The two women were left alone and they went down to the lab to get their coats. Unless the team found something, they wouldn't be needed anymore that night.

Carly sighed as they walked to their cars. "You know, you should teach Tony to sign. That way he won't have to worry about you lip reading his message right."

"No way!" Abby said. "If Tony started signing, Gibbs would definitely know something was up."

Carly smiled thinking it was so funny that they knew about it but the men were oblivious. "Night, Abs."

"Night Carly."

They started their cars and drove home.