Rating: T for language and depictions of violence. Disclaimer: Not mine and no money made here.
Posted with Thanks to Leiru!
The whistle of the bullet whizzing right by his head is what finally forces Tim back behind the telephone pole. Not that there's really much space behind the pole to protect Tim from the gunfire coming at him from two different trajectories, but at least the thick wood can help shelter him from the worst head and body shots. That is, until their suspects pivot again, widening their angles and making the small space behind this lone telephone pole about as useful as an umbrella in a hurricane.
Wood splintering all around him, Tim squeezes his eyes shut and breathes, struggling to force himself to refocus and figure out how to get a shot off without getting some part of him shot off. He knows his team has to have heard the gunfire. He knows they're on the way, but he doesn't know if they can make it to him in time. It's only by chance that he's on the opposite side of this section of warehouses from the rest of them. The fact is, that the odd receiver array Tim had initially spied in the casefile pictures from Metro likely didn't have anyone guarding it on a regular day. Though the array would be expensive to replace, it'd be significantly more expensive to guard. There's no reason for these men to be here today aside from Tim's bad luck or maybe, Tim can't help but reconsider, his heritage.
A shard of wood splinters off the pole and into the back of his neck, Tim barely feels the sting except as a signal that he's running out of time. He's almost desperate enough to drop and roll for the gutter to try to get a semblance of a shot off at the assailants, maybe even take one of them out with him, when the squeal of tires and the honk of a carhorn give rise to hope in his chest. Tim doesn't even need to turn to see the car coming—the driver literally parks the tire against the pole. In seconds, a tank of a man with a shock of black hair emerges from the back seat, a bulletproof vest across his broad shoulders. He grabs hold of Tim, yanking him down and tucking Tim into his immense chest, not giving Tim any other choice but to move with him. As they're running for the still open rear door like that, Tim remembers being in this exact position before—in Leningrad where first Taras and then Liev fell beside him before Andrei yanked him into the bowels of the terrifyingly deep and dark subway system and the Muscovites lost them in the tunnels. Then Andrei died, too, three days later from the wound he got in his back as he shielded Toli with his body.
Tim lets himself move with his huge rescuer, knowing from experience that it's safer for them both if he lets his bodyguard guide their movements and only contributes to their forward motion rather than their direction. In seconds they're both in the back of the sedan, Tim's facedown in the floor with the hulk of a man covering his back, yet placing no weight to speak of on him.
The sweet, familiar grumble of the V12 engine soothes Tim as the sedan backs up and then speeds forward. He calms further as he feels the competence of the driver—the quick economy of his motions in the front seat and the smooth rocking that the reinforced shocks barely allows. It reminds Toli of safety, of Papa and home.
"My team," Tim hollers, a demand and question, both, as the shock of gunfire becomes more distant.
Tim hears movement from the right side of the front seat. As a child, Tim called whoever rode in the front passenger seat the Bullet Man because it was usually their job to locate and return fire. It was years before he understood that riding shotgun in modern times usually had nothing to do with weapons handling.
"Your team is safer than you are right now," the Bullet Man's light Muscovian accent makes Tim tighten his grip on his still unholstered gun.
Tim's jaw locks, his mind shifting rapidly through possible scenarios of how fast he can shoot through them and whether he can jump out of the car with the hulk of the man still at his back and the vehicle moving at several tens of miles an hour. The only thing that keeps Tim aiming his weapon to the floor is the knowledge that these men must realize he still has his gun. Would they have really let me keep my sig if they were Muscovites? The very idea that a Moscow-born man wouldn't immediately disarm him is ludicrous, yet the Bullet Man's pronunciation is unmistakable.
The man at his back shifts behind Tim, noting his tension, as well as seeming to understand the cause for his stiffness right away. "Do not worry," his new bodyguard speaks roughly above him, tones of Petersburg liberally splashed throughout his Russian speech. "This swine," the bodyguard taps the front passenger seat, "is loyal only to the Markov House despite his upbringing in that filthy city," the words are relaxed, teasing the Muscovite that—unbelievably—just helped to save Tim's life.
Still, Tim remains tense, "Let me call my team. Warn them," he clarifies, trying not to give away that he understood the Russian reassurances—not yet.
There is silence in the car, all three of the men who just rescued Tim seem to be waiting until the Bullet Man—theMuscovite!—says, "He needs to make a phone call." The accent is actually more frightening to hear in Russian than in English, but immediately after the words are spoken, the bodyguard at Tim's back offers a few more inches between them, allowing Tim to reach into his pocket with his right hand and get to his phone, though he doesn't yet let Tim up from the floor.
Tim keeps a careful grip on his gun and calls Boss, not knowing what the hell to say, but at least needing to tell them about the shooters that ambushed him.
"Are you safe?" Boss demands in lieu of hello. Tim listens as closely as he can, but there's no gunfire in the background of the call.
Tim responds, "Sort of," immediately, though he's not sure whether that's remotely true. "The team?" Tim prods without giving names, not wanting to give the men in the car with him a start on their list if they're actually Muscovites. On the off chance that they don't already know who his team is, that is.
Gibbs' hesitation is so brief as to be almost unrecognizable. "We're fine. We heard gunfire. We called Metro and are driving towards your position." There's a bare pause before Gibbs continues, "But you're not there anymore, are you?"
Tim squeezes his eyes shut and doesn't answer directly, "There were two shooters at the array. Had a couple 9 mils and a .38," Tim details. "I couldn't get a bead on them. They had me pinned."
Again there's that extra instant of silence before Gibbs demands, "Where are you right now?"
Tim swallows, "Headed west," he judges by the way the sun is reddening through the window above him. "In a car with three Russian-speakers that I don't know," he concludes, trying not to let his unease come through, trying not to allow the sick feeling in his gut to escalate beyond mere uneasiness.
A squeal of tires on the other end of the line confirms that Boss is coming for him. "Ziva," Boss demands, "Tell Metro they're on their own with the shooters. We're headed for McGee."
"Boss, are you sure you want to talk on the phone while you're driving like this?" Tim hears Tony's tinny voice through the receiver. "Not that there's anything wrong with your driving!" Tim wonders morbidly if it's the last time he'll hear his partner's voice, even though he knows that if these men were really a part of the Moscow-based syndicate and not a part of his father's, then he never would have been treated so respectfully, never would have been allowed to keep his sig, let alone make a phone call inviting rescue. Unless, of course, they were exceedingly clever and overconfident Muscovites, and the truth is, Tim had never met anything but.
Boss ignores Tony, "Can they hear me?"
Tim considers the man above him, how his breathing seems to have gotten closer in the last minute, "Unknown," Tim declares, but means, 'probably.'
"Do you have anything else you need to tell me?" Boss asks, carefully neutral.
Three days ago, the day after Tim had first come to Boss about being followed, Boss demanded that they agree on a code system, so Tim could convey information in otherwise compelling circumstances. Invoking Kate's name or history in any way would tell Boss he was in danger. Talking about fireworks or the Fourth of July would let Gibbs know Tim was free. Referring to the dog bite he'd gotten on the job years ago would let Boss know Tim had to run.
"I'm in the backseat in the floor of a modified dark sedan. It's at least a V12," he clarifies, "bullet proof glass and reinforced steel. There are two Caucasian men, late-thirties, early-forties, in the front, and there is a Caucasian man, maybe thirty, dark hair, in the back above me. At least two of the men are definitely Russian speakers." Tim hears a slight echo as he finishes, letting him know that at some point, Boss' phone got switched to speaker.
"The license plate is Virginia XKF-6302," the Muscovite adds from the front seat, "and we will take the wayward son to the Navy Yard," he pauses, and there's a humored undertone when he continues, "Door-to-door service."
Wayward son, Tim's heart nearly stops, as the words repeat on a loop in his head. "Boss?" Tim asks a moment later, wondering if he heard, if he realized.
"Virginia XKF-6302," is all Boss acknowledges. "Ziva, look it up. Tell me if it matches Tim's description." All sound goes out from the other side of the line, and Tim hopes it's because Boss had Ziva put the phone on mute so Tony can call Abby on his own cell to try to get a lock on Tim's phone.
Tim adjusts the phone to scratch at a slight itch on his arm as he waits for any information to come back, even as he knows that if it's bad news, his team can't share, and moreover, that whatever his team finds likely won't fit into good or bad categories until the whole thing is over anyway.
Tim exhales slowly and scratches his arm once more. Idly, he glances over to the itchy right bicep, honing in on the distraction. He blinks at the bright red stain he finds on the green sleeve of his light jacket. Did I get shot? he wonders for half a second before he looks at the behemoth above him.
"Oh, no!" Tim mutters under his breath as he drops his phone. "Hey, get off me! Get off me!" he yells at his protector.
"McGee! McGee!" Ziva's yell is but a bare, boxed sound as Tim's ears roar, and he tries as gently as he can to get the man at his back to flip around and lie down on the seat beside him.
"What's wrong?" the driver speaks for the first time.
"He's hit!" Tim answers immediately and holsters his weapon without really thinking about it. "If you can't flip over, then just move to the seat, so I can look at it!" Tim demands of the man above him.
"Yurok Pavelovich?" the Muscovite turns his attention to the backseat even as Tim can hear him double checking the magazine of his weapon. Bullet Men are always prepared to shoot. "How bad is it?"
"I've had worse," the newly identified Yurok, son of Pavel, insists, but his breathing is labored and his weight is suddenly heavy across Tim's legs, and more than that, Andrei had repeatedly used the same phrase 26 years ago in the twisted tunnels below Leningrad to keep Toli's mind on running and away from comprehending the fact that the bodyguard he'd had his whole life was dying.
Toli locks his jaw. There's no reason for this to happen again. "You can't protect me if you're dead! Now stop bleeding on me, and get on the seat you fucking *govnosos!"
Yurok Pavelovich complies at once with the order, shifting over rather than rolling onto the seat. Tim shoots out of the floor, staying on his knees as he tries to find and assess the wound. It becomes immediately apparent that there's even more blood than Tim initially thought, the back of Yurok's bulletproof vest is slick with it. It's coming from somewhere on Yurok's right side just beneath his arm where the vest can't cover, but Tim can't even see where to apply pressure. Tim makes quick work of the Velcro holding the vest together and then yanks up Yurok's shirt in one go, hoping it might hurt less that way.
"I'm sorry," he winces down at Yurok and slips his own jacket from his arms as the wound in his bodyguard's flank becomes apparent, "but this is going to hurt." He doesn't give any more warning, just puts as much pressure as he can on the wound, hoping his jacket is clean enough so not to introduce any infection into Yurok's bloodstream, knowing, after huddling in the floor, that his hands are not.
Yurok's resulting screams of pain aren't enough to make Tim ease the pressure. Instead, Tim grimaces feeling his lips downturn even farther while he feels the anger rise up his spine at his own uselessness. "We need to get him to a hospital, now," Tim yells behind his shoulder to the driver.
Peripherally, Tim spies the driver erratically shaking his head. "I can't," the man whispers. "Pakhan would never per—"
"Pyotor Pavelovich," the Muscovite interrupts the driver, and at that brief hint, matching patronymics to go with their matching black hair, Tim realizes that his bodyguard and the driver must be brothers. "You have been given an order, and you will follow it."
Tim glances back at the driver, at Pyotor Pavelovich, and while he can't tell anything by the set of the man's shoulders, the Muscovite must see something Tim doesn't, because he nods at Pyotor slowly. "Yurok has done his duty, today," the Muscovite declares. "Pakhan would request no further sacrifice."
The nearest hospital is GW. Tim can't check his watch to see how long it takes for them to get there, but Yurok is still breathing—still conscious even by the time they get there. Pyotor lays in on the horn, jerking the car in park even as he's opening the door to get to his brother. Meanwhile, the Muscovite has gone inside the ER. He comes out a moment later pushing both a large male nurse and a gurney in front of him. It takes all four of them to load Yurok to the bed, but he's inside the building within less than a minute. A throng of doctors and nurses quickly descend upon him, assessing the gunshot wound and taking him past the waiting room to work on him.
Pyotor tries to go back with his brother, but he's stopped at the door by a too-young, wild-eyed security guard who's a little tighter in the shoulders than he should be for such a common and understandable mistake. A moment later, Tim spies the security guard nervously glance at Pyotor's belt and presumably, his weapon. Then, without a word of inquiry, the guard pulls his gun.
"Hold on a second!" Tim keeps his voice as even as possible, given there's a gun shakily pointed at him and Pyotor. "I'm a federal agent," and those words are just as magical as they were the first day Tim spoke them because the security guard's aim, immediately points upward by a few degrees, and his frightened eyes become hopeful. "I'm going to reach my hand into my pocket, and pull out my badge, alright?"
But Pyotor must not understand English at all, because he angles himself more in front of Tim like Tim's the President or his Prince or something equally as impossible. The movement makes the security guard twitch.
"Pyotor, it's okay," Tim's particular to reduce the first vowel sound, Americanizing his accent as best he can. He lays his opposite hand atop Pyotor's shoulder, trying to direct him out of the line of fire as well as to allow the security guard a better view of the hand Tim's reaching into his pocket, but Pyotor won't budge. "He's just trying to do his job," Tim tries to soothe Pyotor with his tone and the guard with his conciliatory words.
The gun goes right into Tim's face, the guard probably only just having seen Tim's own weapon, "I don't think you'd better do that, sir!" The security guard barely yells the words before quick hands dart from beside him, disarming him and disabling his gun in two quick motions. Tim's never even seen such a move outside of the Bourne Identity, not even when they traveled to Mossad headquarters with Ziva.
"You thick headed fool," the Muscovite spits his first insult in Russian while the security guard cradles his arm where he sits on the floor of the waiting room. "A monkey with encephalitic syphilis would have a better handle on his weapon than you!" he concludes in English.
Tim takes a moment before more security guards or the police show up to pull his ID from his pocket. He squats down in front of the security guard and lets the kid take a long look. "Agent McGee, NCIS," Tim introduces himself. "You have no idea how lucky you are that you didn't kill me just now." Tim shakes his head, almost smiling, though the expression feels bitter, ironic, on his lips. He watches the young guard flush before standing up and backing away, pausing for a brief moment before taking the radio at his shirt collar to radio his superior.
In another second, Tim's standing back up with Pyotor and the Muscovite. Tim takes a moment to study them both. Pyotor is dark-haired and blue eyed like his brother, smaller in stature, but with a sharper chin and a crooked nose, like he's seen more fights than his baby brother. The Muscovite, by contrast is fair-haired, though not quite a true blond, and the twisted smile on his face can't hide the underlying symmetry of his features. The dark brown, maybe even black, coloring to his irises seems an odd contrast to his light hair. Tim wonders if it's a common eye color in Moscow.
"Give me your gun," the Muscovite demands of Pyotor in their native tongue. When Pyotor looks back at him in confusion, the Muscovite continues, "They have rules about hospitals. They do not care about the permit you have to carry it. They will not let you keep it."
Pyotor purses his lips, and looks to Tim.
"They will not take the boy's gun. Do not forget, he is a policeman. Besides," the black-eyed man's smirk gets deeper, "he's a better shot than you, anyway, Pyotor."
Pyotor nearly smiles at that and hands over his gun to the Muscovite. Even with everything that's happened so far, that one act of trust is perhaps the most unbelievable thing that's occurred since Yurok rescued him from behind the telephone pole.
"I'm going to go park the car," the Muscovite switches back to English to tell Tim. "You will translate for him?" the black-eyed man asks, but doesn't wait for an answer. He's already outside by the time Tim catches back up to him.
"Translate?" the bottom goes out from Tim's stomach as he repeats the word. "I-I can't," Tim shakes his head. He loves the way Russian feels in his mouth, the words always feeling closer to the tip of his tongue than English ever could, but simply speaking the language gives too much of Tim away: His accent is as purely Petersburg as if he were born there. "I've never even studied Russian." He knows he should clarify his words, to say that he has no way of explaining to others how he knows the language, but the other man apparently doesn't need these facts explained to him.
"You must have bought Rosetta Stone, eh?" the Muscovite shifts the guns to some pocket in his jacket, although how he can wear leather in the heat of June is beyond Tim.
"No," Tim shakes his head. "You don't understand," he whispers. "I couldn't just—"
The Muscovite lays a hand on Tim's shoulder and brings his mouth close to Tim's ear, so close that the security cameras probably can't tell when he moves his lips, "You were speaking Russian in the car, Anatoli Nikolaievich." The Muscovite moves far enough away to look Tim in the eye as Tim's guts begin to churn even harder to hear his real name spoken aloud. "The phone line was open when you spoke. Your friends would have heard you," he explains with kindness. "You bought the Rosetta Stone software and joined a group of Russian speakers who meet for Turkish coffee in the cafe across the street from the Orthodox Church that's on your morning jogging route. They invited you to join them when they heard you conjugating Russian verbs as you jogged. They wanted to teach you to speak properly. You meet them on Tuesdays at 6 am. That's why you've been later to work three of the last five Tuesday mornings," the Muscovite concludes. "Okay?" he waits for the nod that signals Tim's compliance.
Swallowing hard, Tim tries to remember the last few Tuesdays. He doesn't doubt that he was tardier than usual to work, even without remembering precisely about those occasions, but he finds it unsettling that this Muscovite knows so much about him.
The black-eyed man drops his arm from Tim's shoulder, pivoting as he prepares to go.
"Wait!" Tim says too loudly in the still slight space between them. "What's your name?"
The Muscovite narrows his eyes at Tim, "My name stays in the Bratva, only." Tim lifts his chin, for a moment, hearing only the potential and profound insult inherent to the Muscovite's words—as if Toli no longer belongs to the Brotherhood—but then the other man places his hand back on Tim's shoulder. The black-eyed man blinks, showing weakness for the first time. "My name is Alexander," he begins to Tim in Russian, faltering for but a moment before starting anew, "I am Alexander Nikolaievich." The man licks his lips, and the hand at Tim's shoulder spasms in what feels like an involuntary movement, "I hope you will call me Sasha, little brother."
NOTE: *govnosos means shit-fucker