"GIBBS!"

The end of his name was lost in a cacophony of gunfire that erupted out of nowhere.

Before he could react, something collided into him from behind, sending him stumbling into the car. His head connected with the door frame with a crack, and pain flared through his skull. For a moment, he was certain he'd been hit, but when the pain of a gunshot wound never came, he knew in his gut something even more grievous had happened.

The world slowed down, and the tatatatat of automatic gunfire seemed to last an eternity before the first pause came. It was only then that he was finally able to turn to check on his team.

DiNozzo had crouched instinctively, slamming the door closed behind the Director, to serve as a barrier against the unexpected gunfire. From what he could see, his agent was unharmed, and no bullet holes perforated the door the Director had disappeared behind. But the senior agent squatted too far from Gibbs to have been the one to shove him out of danger.

Then, with a sinking heart, Gibbs turned another ninety degrees.

And there, just two feet behind him, Ziva lay sprawled on the pavement.

For a moment, she seemed as though she had fainted.

She'd managed to turn her head at the last moment, so that she did not break her nose on her way down. One arm was trapped beneath her, pinned between her abdomen and the hard surface of the street. The side of her face Gibbs could see was unmarred, but her eyes were closed, as if she were sleeping. Her black blouse disguised the damage that had been dealt, for the first long second he saw her broken form.

But then the jagged edges of the ripped fabric stood out glaringly in his vision, and then the fabric became soaked in what could only be blood.

She'd been hit.

When he saw the blood that pooled beneath her, he knew that at least one of the rounds had been a through and through. For a long moment, he feared she was already dead, but then, like music to his ears, she groaned, then coughed harshly against the sudden pain that accosted her. Her free hand moved to press against the concrete, weakly attempting to push herself to her feet.

And then Gibbs felt the eyes on him again, and he looked up to find Eli David staring at them both from across the street. His eyes burned with the cold rage of one whose plans had been thwarted, and even had there not been another officer standing beside him with an automatic rifle, chills still would have run down Gibbs' spine.

Gibbs knew at that point that he had been the target—Ziva had taken the bullets meant for him.

And then the rifle was leveled at him once more, and the world snapped back into focus.

"GET IN THE CAR!"

Tony moving even before Gibbs' bellow echoed through the alley, yanking the door open to slide in beside Vance. With nothing but adrenaline and pure instinct prompting his actions, Gibbs hooked an unceremonious arm under Ziva shoulders and yanked her towards the car.

She uttered a guttural moan as his efforts put pressure on her injuries, but there was nothing he could do for her. He could tell she was still barely conscious, and there was no time to take extra precautions. Either he got her in the car, or they all died. And so his movements were clumsy and fumbling as he maneuvered her into the passenger seat next to him.

The first of the gunfire peppered the car door moments after Gibbs slammed it closed, making Gibbs instantly grateful for the bullet-resistant metal the car's frame had been manufactured from.

He slammed his foot on the gas pedal, and then they were squealing away from the Mossad. Navigating the crowded streets was not unlike traversing DC at rush hour, and Gibbs found himself able to finally take a moment to wrap his head around what had just happened. With a quick glance to his right, he saw Ziva's head rolling limply on her neck as she fought her way into full consciousness.

His eyes darted back to the road, his gut burning with the knowledge that she was now hurting because of him. She had deliberately shoved him out of harm's way. Those bullets that were now somewhere inside her body—he didn't know how many there were, or how many passed through—had been meant for him.

It made sense. Tony was an unexpected challenge, and Vance an obstacle, but Gibbs was seen as a viable threat to Eli's control. It made sense for Eli to eliminate him first. The rest would have been easy to mop up as collateral damage. But Ziva had saved him, though her actions had resulted in being gunned down by her own father.

But there was no time to think about it, no time to thank her, even if she could hear him. Somehow, he didn't know how, he managed to get them away from Mossad. He took random turns and refused to stop for anything. The traffic and buildings thinned out around them, he knew they were on their way out of the city.

Something tugging at his belt caught Gibbs' attention, and he looked down to see shaking fingers attempting to pull his cell phone from its holster. Ziva had somehow managed to push herself away from the door she'd slumped up against during one of many of the careening turns he'd forced the SUV through, leaving sanguine smudges on the window and the armrest protruding from the plastic interior surface.

She was pale, too pale, and her eyes were barely able to focus against the pain. But her face was a mask of woozy determination, and her fumbling fingers refused to be dissuaded from their target. Once the phone was in her hands, she collapsed sideways against the seat, coughing breathlessly from the exertion. She had to wait several long moments before she had the breath to open the phone and punch a few numbers sharply into the display.

Gibbs kept his eyes on the road as she first listened, and then began to speak in a raspy Hebrew. He caught only a ken and a lo, with something that sounded vaguely like America thrown in. The rest of it was unintelligible, obscured by his ignorance of the language, and the pain that clouded her voice. He let her work, knowing that despite her injuries, her mind was still clear. Her conversation was clipped and short, but seemed lucid enough.

But as the conversation progressed, Gibbs could see that she was having increasingly more difficulty keeping her eyes open.

Fear gripped Gibbs, and looking in the rearview mirror, he could tell that Tony had noticed her deteriorating condition as well, but when the younger man tried to reach over the seat to offer aid, she flinched away from his touch, and he quickly withdrew his hands.

But the threat was there—if she lost the battle to stay awake, it would only be a matter of time until she lost the fight to keep breathing. It was that realization that prompted Gibbs to spin the car around, and head back into the city.

The motion seemed to bring Ziva back into focus, as she snapped the phone shut with a quick toda and glared at Gibbs.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

Gibbs didn't take his eyes from the road. "Taking you to a hospital."

"No—"

"You need medical attention!" he growled.

"Nothing will be helped by going to a hospital!" she said forcefully back to him, her voice stronger than he would have thought possible. "They will already have armed guards at all the major medical centers, and it will only be a matter of time until they track this vehicle."

"Then we'll switch cars—"

"There is no time for that! We must return to the airfield. There will be a helicopter waiting that will take you to Paris. Once there, you will be able to take refuge at the American consulate."

She coughed wetly, a harsh, ugly sound that made Gibbs' gut twist painfully. For a moment, she gasped for breath, but if anything, it only made her following words more striking.

"If you do not leave now, the only way you will ever leave will be in a body bag."

Gibbs' jaw clenched painfully. The air thickened in his lungs, and he had to struggle to keep his breaths even. She was giving him a statement of fact, but he knew that because he was the one at the wheel, he had decision to make. He had to choose—saving her life, or saving the lives of himself, DiNozzo, and Vance.

It was either her, or the team.