AN: Well, another miracle that anything ever got done… I spent the day looking after Aiden, aged three, second youngest grandsprog. Yes, I know what you're all thinking… I can see it in your faces… 'Come on, Scouse, you can't be old enough to have grandchildren, you look so young…' Deprecating cough, modest smile, indeed, oh, how kind. Yeah, not fooling anybody but myself, I know.
But that kid is wired. Took him to feed the ducks… he had four very impressive attempts to fall in the pond… looked at stuffed toys in a local shop, elephants, tigers, zebras… he wanted a rat. Apologies, Cheeky, I know your rats are lovely…
BTW, Genevra, have a good hol!
Hey ho, on with the story….
Flying to Die
Chapter 4
Everyone looked over at the radar console, where the tough cookie airfield manager sat, white as a sheet, tears running down her cheeks. She pointed. "Ninety… a hu-hundred and t-ten…" she stuttered. "A hundred and eighty… h-holding… she – she's coming back."
Tim took two rapid paces back to Paula, and leaned into the mike. "Izzy… Margaret says you've turned back… tell me it's true…"
"I'm coming back, Tim… you were right…"
"You're crying… you don't need to… we'll fix things."
"It's still a mess, Tim, my little girl… Cas, I left her… and yet she still wants to know me…"
"Tell you what," Paula said, keeping up the slightly abrasive, reproving tone that had got through to the Naval Officer side of Isabella, "Since you've nothing else to do up there, why don't you tell us what's gone, on while you're coming home?"
The pilot actually laughed slightly. Then,"It's bad…" she said in a small voice.
"You don't have to tell us everything, Izzy," Tim said reassuringly. "Just what you want to." Tony wrote 'good cop, bad cop… oh, yes!' and Tim nodded, with a weary smile.
The disembodied voice began its narrative with a sigh.
"I told the parish priest I was pregnant. He put me in touch with the nuns at St. Claire's in Annapolis. They were kind…"
She had told her parents, from whom she'd concealed five months worth of pregnancy simply by wearing loose clothes, and by the fact that they would never have imagined such a thing of their daughter; that she'd been offered work in Annapolis that would help to pay her way when she went to the Naval Academy in the Fall. The nuns, after conscientiously trying to persuade her to tell her parents and keep her daughter, understood her position. She had signed her new born baby away for adoption, and the same day had fled the convent in a mess of guilt and pain.
"I went to the Academy…I had a good career… I worked hard because the guilt drove me… since I had taken the Navy over my daughter, I had to make it mean something… to be the best I could… I never forgot her, and I never felt good."
Then, three years ago, she'd met Ken again. In fifteen years in the Navy their paths had never crossed, but he'd retired, and almost at once they'd met at an air rally, and fallen instantly in love again. They married, and Izzy had begun to dream about telling him one day, and finding their daughter. A year or so ago, she'd decided to retire when her next tour was over, and that was when the first strange cracks began to show in the marriage. Ken wasn't thrilled, although he said he was; he had a secretive side that she'd ignored but now felt uneasy about; phone calls he'd go in the garage to take, callers who hung up if she answered. She suspected another woman…
Then last week, the bombshell. She'd received a letter at her place of work at Whiting Field; a lawyer in Philadelphia wrote that Inez de Falla had reached the age of eighteen, and was hoping to make contact with her birth mother, and asking for her thoughts. After a day when she could hardly concentrate for a moment, she'd claimed family emergency, climbed into the Europa and flown home. It was an even bigger bombshell to Ken, and once again, in the end he declared he was thrilled. Once again, Izzy didn't believe him, although this time, well, she could hardly blame him. She returned to work the following morning with growing unease, and arranged administrative leave.
At this point Tony had to stop listening, as he stepped outside onto the top landing to answer his phone. Ken Starling was on his way. Tony simply told him that his wife was in the air in a distressed condition, and to come to the airfield. He rang Dan Robinson to pass on the information. No, Dan said, he'd not been by home first… but a big van with darkened windows had cased the house, going up the street then back down. "My unit was round the corner… so the only thing they saw was no cars and the house closed up." Tony thanked him, and went back in, exactly in time to hear Isabella telling about the van she'd seen in the road in the middle of last night.
("I said he wouldn't be there…"
"He said last night he wouldn't take it to the house while his old lady was around. Why did the damn fool get married when he had such a good thing going? It paid for his nice new plane, didn't it."
"And the stuff's still on that 'nice new plane'," a third voice added sarcastically. "I don't care how he's trying to get round the problem; I can't have $500.000 worth of coke so far out of my control."
"So, we going to the airfield to get it ourselves?"
"Oh, you've noticed the direction we're taking, then?" This was the sarcastic voice again.
The driver of the anonymous dark van braked sharply. "That was a DEA vehicle…" The unseen occupants looked back down the road. "You think they've found it?"
"Only one way to find out. Call McBride, tell him to meet us there – bring a friend. Or two.")
"Heard him on the phone," Gibbs said tersely. "Said stuff couldn't come to him, his wife was home. She woke in the middle of the night, felt the house shake as if a door had been slammed. Said she knew all the door sounds in the house, it wasn't right, but it came from the garage. Got out of bed, saw the van, husband talking to the driver. They were loading something. Reckon that's where your table and scales went, DiNozzo. He came back to bed, told her these guys'd got the wrong house, she was scared, didn't argue."
Tony nodded, called Kent and Ziva over, and filled them in about the van.
Kent thought briefly. "We get him to roll on the others, d'you think?" The four of them looked at each other. "We think." He answered his own question with a mean, anticipatory smile.
Isabella was describing finding the door. In the morning Ken had said he really didn't know if contacting Inez was a good idea, and gone to work leaving her feeling frantic. She was pretty certain of what he was up to; and was thinking that if she were to meet her daughter it had better not be here. She phoned the lawyer and explained she had problems but wanted to meet Inez. The lawyer had been helpful, and explained there were many ways of going about things, he specialised in this sort of work, and would act as a go-between. She'd rung off feeling better, and decided to do something she could never do on active duty, but that she enjoyed…
As she began to bake the cookies, Ken rang. He was quite positive that bringing Inez into their lives was a bad idea, and although he couldn't actually forbid her, he wanted nothing to do with it, and she wasn't ever to bring her to the house.
"Oh, Izzy…" Paula said, bad cop forgotten.
(Five miles away, a frightened little dog emerged from the bushes where she'd been hiding. She nervously approached the van that lay halfway down a slope, its hood crumpled against a tree. Whimpering softly, she crept up to the still figure of her handler, face down at the back of the van, where the doors had been forced open. She licked his face hopefully, but he didn't respond. She stood looking round her, and thought for a moment, then chose a direction and set off at a run.)
"What did you do?" Tim prompted quietly.
"I cried so much I almost burned the cookies. Then I heard a door bang across the street, and I remembered the sound in the night…"
From then on Isabella's account of finding the door, and the book, and the effect it had had on her, confirmed what Tony had suspected. He repressed the smug grin that threatened to emerge as he saw Ziva looking at him with surprised approval. "There," he thought, "you never thought DiNozzo had the brains for that." But he kept the mask in place; this wasn't the time for feeling smug. He was still worrying about that van.
Margaret answered the phone; Annapolis was handing over radar control. "Izzy?"
"Margaret? I'm sorry for all –"
"Sorry, schmorry, hon. Just get yourself back here safe. We've got you on home radar now… just over ten minutes out. Stay safe."
"I will. Tim… you know what's on this aircraft, don't you?"
"Yes, Izzy, we do. I've got a friend here from DEA… he'll deal with it. Honey… you do know this will have consequences for Ken, don't you?"
"Yes…" Isabella choked back a sob. "If I'd known earlier… I'd have begged him to get out… why did he marry me, if he was already involved in this?"
"I guess… because he really did fall for you all over again, and he had to try to make things right with you… even if he knew deep down it would lead to trouble. Perhaps…people don't want to do the sensible thing when they're in love."
Both Paula and Ziva looked at the young agent with approval, and he almost blushed.
"It's going to be so hard… I want to be friends with my daughter… and I have to be there for him as well…"
Bad cop Paula couldn't help a slight snort. "Well, Iz, I just hope he realises what he's put you through… and appreciates your loyalty."
Fuller said suddenly, "Is that him?" and pointed through the window at an approaching car.
"Oh, yeah," Gibbs said, and headed for the door. He looked back at Fuller and DiNozzo. "Ya coming?" The three agents hurried down the steps to meet the worried husband; Gibbs and the DEA chief stood back.
Tony stepped forward. "Mr. Starling? I'm Special Agent DiNozzo. Thanks for coming."
Starling was the absolute picture of a frightened husband. "How's my wife? You said she's in the air, distressed… what do you mean? Can I talk to her? We had a terrible row this morning…"
The two senior agents left the talking to DiNozzo; the unorthodox interrogator had the light of battle in his eyes…
It wasn't as if they needed a confession, Tony thought, but he really wanted to nail this guy for the pain he'd caused; and the more off-kilter they could make him the better if they wanted him to roll over on his partners. Drug dealers were usually pretty scary people, and if Starling had time to think, he'd have time to clam up.
"Yeah, of course you can talk to her… but you need to know, she's pretty upset. What did you quarrel about?"
"Our daughter… poor Izzy… it's a long story…"
"Oh. Cuz she's been talking about a devil plane…"
Starling's eyes jerked towards the hangar, and a puzzled look came over his face. "I thought you said she was in the air," he blurted, and pointed. "That's her aircraft there… she can' be –"
"No," Tony cut in innocently, "She's flying your plane."
"She's got my plane?" Starling's voice was strangled with horror. "She's got –" he shut up abruptly.
"Yeah, we know," Tony said coldly. "She's got something on board you thought she didn't know about. The devil plane – paid for with pain, she said, and she's intending to crash it into Chesapeake bay." He watched the frantic look crawling across the other man's face and leaned in close. "So who is it you really care about, Ken? Your wife, or your friends when they find all those expensive smuggled guns are at the bottom of the bay?"
"It's not guns –" Starling sagged against the nearest car.
"We know that too. Heroin or cocaine? My guess is coke… whatever. You know what trouble you're in? You know what sort of people you've been in bed with? You'll be lucky to get out of this alive… and that's more than can be said for your poor innocent wife."
"I tried to hide it from her… that's why I didn't want her to get involved with Inez…" Tony was going to say, 'to protect your daughter', but Starling went on, "It would have been harder to conceal from two people."
Tony turned away in disgust, his jaw working. Gibbs took over. "You're a fine man, Mr. Starling," he said, reaching for his cuffs. "You're going to tell us all about your friends, because we're the only ones who can protect you now." Starling simply nodded his acquiescence, lacking the will to speak.
"Allow me," Kent Fuller said, producing his own bracelets. "I thought you wanted to talk to your wife, Mr. Starling." He got no answer, and began to read him his rights. Starling was hardly listening; he was looking out across the field at a small speck in the sky that was becoming more distinct as it got closer. Long before the red and grey Piper Sport touched down, it was obvious which plane it was.
"You bastard," he yelled at Tony. "You lied to me!"
The SFA smiled thinly. "No, I didn't. Everything I said was true. I just didn't bother to tell you that people who care convinced her to change her mind."
"But don't you worry about the stuff," Fuller told him. "I'm DEA, and it's mine now."
"I didn't want them to find out… I wanted to keep them out of it," Starling said weakly. "I never knew before that I had a child… I wanted to protect them."
Fuller, father of three teenagers, looked at him without favour. "Funny how you see things when it's close to home," he said baldly. "I'm sure that all the parents of addicted daughters out there would sympathise with you." He shoved him into the back of his vehicle, hands cuffed behind him. "I'll ask your wife if she wants to speak to you," he said, and locked him in, swearing under his breath as he walked away.
Tony-the-dog, who'd taken one look at the radio shack steps when they arrived, politely declined to climb them and spent the entire time since lying dozing in a puddle of sunlight near the bottom, looked up at him curiously as he went by. Kent pointed to the DEA truck. "Guard!" he said. The German Shepherd grinned, scratched himself and went back to sleep.
The Piper had turned off the runway onto the grass and travelled about halfway towards its hangar, before coming to a halt, the engine dying. Isabella didn't move for a while, contemplating the morning with a whirl of emotions too many to define, but the sight of Margaret, Paula and Tim racing down from the shack and across the grass towards her, made her shake herself from her trance and open the cockpit with shaking hands.
She greeted the two women who were her friends with a wan smile, and they supported her as she climbed out of the aircraft on unsteady legs. "I'm sorry… I'm so sorry – " she looked past them at the earnest, fresh faced young man who hesitated to join them, and knew who he was at once. "Tim…" she said, and stumbled across to him. She didn't hesitate, but threw her arms round him in an emotional embrace. "Thank you…" Since she was a good head shorter than him, the words were spoken into his shirt, but he understood the depth of the feelings.
He hugged her back, looking down at the top of her head; beyond her he could see Tony and Ziva watching, grinning all over their faces. The light in Tony's eyes told him he was going to be teased about this for weeks to come, but he saw something else there, and in Gibbs' eyes too, that ensured that he didn't care. They were proud of him.
Gibbs went to the aircraft, Kent Fuller followed him, and they looked into the luggage compartment. Fuller ran a practised eye over the contents. "Half a million, maybe," he said quietly. "I'll call for LEO back-up… somebody'll want this back. Remember that van?"
Gibbs nodded thoughtfully, just as Tony came up alongside them. "Not forgotten it for a moment," he said. "We need to get Husband of the Year to tell us who his friends are."
Margaret came over and asked if they wanted her to taxi the plane back to the hangar. "No," Gibbs said softly. "You know what's on board… leave it isolated, and warn everyone to stay well away from it." She nodded, and they all moved back towards the equipment store, and the steps to the radio shack above. Isabella's step faltered as she saw her husband sitting in the cramped backseat area of the DEA truck; she took a step towards him, but he looked away. Paula put an arm round her to steady her, and Margaret suggested they all go across to the common room, which was between two of the hangars, and where there was coffee, and sit down while they sorted out what to do next.
The murmur of agreement was interrupted by a loud, warning bark from Tony-the-dog, who was looking across towards the gate, his ears pricked. They all turned in that direction, and Tony, but not the dog, swore and dropped to his knees, as a small, black and white blur hurtled towards him, leapt up into his arms, and pushed herself up against him, cowering and shaking.
"Hey, li'l lady," he whispered soothingly, in a way that would have had Ziva laughing any other time, "What's happened to you?"
Blossom's heart was banging, there was road dirt in her coat, and her pads were scratched. Her muzzle and feet were red with blood. Fuller looked at her in mounting alarm. "Pearson…"
AN: I don't think this flows too well; sorry… me stamina's not what it was….
