I'm back with another update! One month sooner than the last. I'm setting records of some sort. I know a few of you - both with accounts on this site and without - were really anxiously awaiting the next chapter, so I apologize again for taking so long and having you wait as long as I do. That tear I was talking about, last update? Not consistent like I hoped. Still there in bursts, but some personal stuff derailed be pretty good.
My goodness, people. You guys are awesome. We're rocketing way beyond the averages of any story I've written, and we keep climbing. Thank you, and I do hope you enjoy this update.
Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.
Gibbs holstered his sidearm and walked down the steps. Ziva remained on the stool, drinking bourbon, watching him easily. There was a pistol on the table behind her. A Glock 19, fitted with a silencer. If Abby were to test it, he knew it would come back as belonging to one of the hitmen.
He stopped three paces from Ziva and stared at her. She stared back, her eyes haunted and, he realized, pained, and not just from her injury. She looked thinner than she was when she left. Not unhealthy. Lean. Fit. As much as she had been when she first arrived at NCIS, fresh from field assignments from Mossad.
What had she gotten into in the last months?
Gibbs turned right and grabbed a jar, then dumped its contents onto the table. He turned back, pulled out another stool, then poured himself bourbon. Then he sipped his drink, like it was water instead of hard alcohol, and looked back to Ziva. He said nothing, silently staring. Expecting.
"I know what you are thinking," Ziva said.
Gibbs sipped his bourbon.
"That I should not be here. That I should be dead."
"No. ID'd Diana."
"Mossad should have the first time. I had thought my history I would have warranted a better investigation, but I was mistaken. Or maybe I have just been expired by you and your team."
Spoiled, Gibbs silently corrected, taking note of the tone she had in her voice when she spoke of the team. It was blunt. Guarded. She thought herself an outsider. A stranger, like she had been years ago.
"Regardless, you did not expect me after all this time. After you, you think, why would I leave my child in the cold night, watching her home burn down? Only a horrible human being and horrible mother would leave their child, and surely, you think, if there was one thing I would commit myself to, it would be my child. Surely, you think, I would have returned to her, if I had been somehow lived through the inferno. And I should have. I should have made a different choice, that night—that night where I added fuel to the fires so that Mossad would send help. That night where I watched them from afar, as they took Tali to safety. I should have gone with her."
Gibbs heard the slight tremor in her voice. The slight glisten to her eyes. But no tears. No sobs. No total break in her armor. She didn't let that happen. He took another sip from the jar.
Ziva stared at him, her glistening eyes hard. Then after several seconds, she sighed, looking down to the floor. "Do not hold back because I have been gone, Gibbs. Yell at me. Shout. Rage. Scold. Do something!"
So she wanted him to explode. Get angry for not contacting him. Not coming back with Tali. She wanted a reaction. He would give her one.
Gibbs stood up from his stool, putting his jar on the table. He advanced the rest of the way to Ziva, standing right next to her, his taller frame towering now that she was sitting down, his eyes iron. He could see her tense when she looked up at his approach. She her steel herself for the verbal lashing she expected.
Then he reached down and hugged her, careful of her wounded side. "Welcome home."
He felt pure anxiety melt from her body. She hugged him back, though with one arm; she didn't move the one on her injured side. They stayed like that for only a few seconds, then Gibbs broke away, pulled his stool closer, and sat down again. Then he waited.
"Thank you," she said, her eyes showing hints of a smile, before that hardened quality took over again. "Tony and Tali. Are they okay?"
"What have you heard?"
"Little. I was in the air when their hotel was attacked. I did not even know it was attacked until my first layover. Are they okay?" There was a little more force behind the repeated word. A desire, no—a need to know.
"Physically, they're fine," Gibbs said. He decided then not to share anything about the incident with the C-130. Not yet. She'd already had quite the day. "DiNozzo changed rooms when he saw them coming."
Ziva nodded, taking a breath. He could see some of the tension leave her body at hearing Tony and the child they made were safe. "And what about emotionally?"
"Shaken." That, at least, needed to be shared. "Tali's shutting down, seeking what's familiar. Tony's at his limits."
"But he won't say."
"No."
"And they are safe."
"Yeah."
Ziva looked at him for a long moment, her gaze analyzing. "You have said nothing of Tony's father."
He'd been hoping to avoid that, if he could. Gibbs knew her. Knew how she placed blame squarely on her own shoulders, no matter the situation. "Nope."
"Gibbs," she said, and leaned as far forward as she could with a freshly-patched hole in her side. "What is wrong with Tony's father?"
He avoided the topic of the plane, or the second plane ride that would be happening right now, but he told her all he knew of Senior's condition. How serious it was. How it was affecting Tony and Tali. What the docs thought of his chances.
When he was done, Ziva closed hers and leaned back into the bench behind her. "It is my fault."
"You aren't the one who hit his head."
"If I had just been more careful, none of this would have happened," she went on, heedless of his words. "None of those people would be dead. Tony's father would not be in a coma. Tony and Tali would still be alright. I sho—"
"Hey!"
Ziva started, looking back to Gibbs as if she had forgotten he was there.
"Stop. You can't change what happened. It's over. Figure out how to move forward."
"There are a lot of dead bodies behind me, Gibbs," she said. "You saw four of them this morning. They are a fraction of the ones I am responsible for. The Ritz-Carlton was simply the most death in one place."
Gibbs' eye twitched, recognizing that familiar, self-hating tone at the same moment his mind registered her words. What happened to her in these last months? "You order terrorist attacks?"
"No."
"Then you aren't responsible. You're alive."
Ziva sighed, closing her eyes and leaning her head back. "The faces I see when I close my eyes disagree, Gibbs."
Gibbs frowned, but knew he had to let it go for now. In her current state, the more he pushed her, the more she'd retreat. Instead, he asked the question he'd wanted to ask her from the moment Abby confirmed she was alive: "What happened?"
Ziva opened her eyes and looked at him. "To what?"
"To you."
She smiled grimly, a humorless chuckle escaping her throat. "Where should I start?"
"Diana."
"We were friends in school, when I was very young. Close friends. Part of that came from my father inviting her parents over so often—his politics in play even then. Most of it was just us. We got along, Gibbs. I was devastated when she had to leave. She and I kept in contact until our teens, then our futures beckoned. We hadn't spoken in nearly fifteen years when she called me."
Gibbs finished his bourbon, then filled it again a quarter way up. "What happened after that call from the restaurant?"
"I took her to my house," Ziva said, holding out her own jar for a small refill. She didn't look surprised Gibbs knew about the call. "She had been shot twice. Once in the shoulder, once in the side. The one in her shoulder was a through-and-through, but I had to remove the one in her side. She screamed a lot. I tried to keep Tali busy with a game outside, but…"
She trailed off. Gibbs saw the road her mind was going back down: her daughter. The hurt Tali had been through, both while Ziva was there and when she was not. "You didn't have enough supplies to treat her injuries," Gibbs said, bringing her back.
"No," Ziva said, eyes snapping back to the present. "I used all I had, then I had to improvise."
"Homemade kit."
She chuckled. "Diana found it… Lacking in pain management. But it helped her. Got her just beyond that threshold from slow death to slow recovery." She finished the last of her bourbon, then froze, her eyes distant, unmoving. Focused on a narrow point only she could see.
Gibbs had seen that look before. Many times, in fact. Her almost sixth sense for danger. And a second later, he knew why it went off.
There was a car in the street, but there was no sound of an engine. No one on his street had an electric. That meant the vehicle was coasting. Using its weight and momentum to bring it the final leg of the journey to its destination. His gut tensed. There was only one reason for that.
Maintaining stealth.
"Expecting visitors, Gibbs?" Ziva asked. Her voice was cold, despite the joke.
"No."
Artur Popov was familiar with the routine.
Get a call. Grab a gun. Shoot a person. Get paid. That was the routine. The formula. And that formula had been his life from the age of sixteen, when he finally went from being a nobody Shestyorka, to a Bratok, then—later—from Bratok to Avtoritet—Authority. He was someone, now. Someone others feared. Hated. Loved. Exactly what depended on the other.
Today, someone was going to fear him. At least for a little while.
"Engine off," he ordered the driver of the SUV, one of his Brigade of three men not including himself. It was small for a Brigade, but that was intentional. They were a special Brigade. Trained by very dangerous people to become very dangerous themselves. One of his men was worth three normal Brodyag.
Alexi turned off the SUV's engine, letting the large vehicle roll down the road in relative silence. Behind him, Artur heard one of his men load a magazine into a SP89—a civilian variant of the widely-used MP5K. Artur was impartial to the German people, but damn if they didn't know how to make a good gun.
"That house, there," Artur said, pointing to the target house. He spoke his native tongue with a Central accent, unlike the Northern accents of his Brigade. Some would have looked down on them for that, but Artur knew better.
He wasn't sure who they were supposed to kill; details had been given hastily by the Sovietnik above Artur's Brigade and three other, standard Brigades. All they knew was there was someone inside the house that needed to die, and that this someone had killed four men like him already today. But they had been American, and like Americans, they hadn't prepared for someone prepared for them.
He had.
That was why everyone had body armor, a handgun, and an SP89 with two spare clips of 9×19mm Parabellum. Each SP89 had been modified for full-auto fire. An easy process, if one knew the right person. They would not going to be discrete, but the Sovietnik had given him freedom to fulfill the contract—a rare and valuable one, as Death's contracts always were—as he saw fit.
The SUV rolled to a stop in the target house's driveway, right behind an American car with a dark paint job. Probably a piece of junk. Anything American-made tended to be.
Alexi put the vehicle in park, and Artur turned back to his Brigade. "Remember what happened to the Americans earlier today," he said. "Whatever's in that house, you kill."
"Understood," they said, each in their own way.
"Let's go."
They all filed out of the SUV. Artur used a hand signal to send Alexi and Vladimir to the back door, while he and Dmitriy went for the front.
"Blueprints show stairs straight ahead," Artur said to Dmitriy, the youngest of his Brigade. "Clear your corners to the left and join me up there. Understand?"
"Yes."
He and Dmitry flanked the front door. He looked at Dmitry to make sure he was ready. The younger man was. Artur moved away from the wall, then kicked in the door.
It gave more easily than it should have. Perhaps it had been unlocked. Either way, splinters of wood from the doorframe flew inward, shattered from the impact of his heavy boot. Dmitry went in first, SP89 up and ready to fire. Artur went in after.
There was little on the right; just a closet. Artur it open and found it empty save two coats and a suit. He turned, weapon still up, and started climbing the stairs. Out of his peripherals, he saw Dmitriy move to follow him as Alexi and Vladimir sweeped the kitchen. It was a small house, as almost all houses in this accursed American city were.
They reached the second floor. There was a single hallway lined with several doors. None of the doors were open. Someone could have been hiding in any one of the rooms, ready to ambush them. Artur wouldn't have that.
He gestured for Dmitriy to take a door at one side of the hallway, while he took another. When Dmitriy got into position, Artur kicked in the door in front of him. The sound of heavy boots slamming into wooden doors was loud in the confined space of the second floor, but Artur didn't let it distract him. He entered the room.
It was a barren room. No pictures on the walls. No clothes on the floor. No trash. No one in sight. The furniture was covered up in plastic, as if to preserve it.
The same was true with the second room he entered. And the next. And the last one, too. All rooms that, once, had served different purposes. Now, left alone. Covered. Neither he nor Dmitriy found anyone present.
Had they been given the wrong house?
"Clear," Artur reluctantly called out from the last room he entered, a child's room, then walked into the main hallway.
"Clear," Dmitriy repeated from the floor's shared bathroom. He reentered the main hallway at the same time Artur did. "Now what?"
"Regroup."
They went back down the stairs—weapons at sling ready, since no shots had been fired or calls made from the others—and entered the living room once again. The room was bare, much like the upstairs. A couch. An old television. A fireplace. The owner must be a simple person. Artur thought there weren't people like that in this country.
Artur looked to the kitchen. The others weren't there, and the door leading down to the basement was slightly ajar. "Alexi, Vladimir—get up here!" He called.
There was no response.
Artur was back on edge immediately. Gone was the calm safety of standing, armed, inside an empty house. Gone was the frustration of not finding a target. Back in place was the razor-sharp focus of an experienced killer.
He gestured Dmitriy to his side, and, as one, they advanced on the basement door, weapons up. When they were at the door, Artur—with Dmitriy positioned just to the side where the door would open—reached out for the handle.
That was when Dmitriy's head exploded.
The shot was quieter than a shot should have been, but still rang in Artur's ear. A silenced, sub-sonic round, fired from the crack in the door. Blood and brain matter and skull fragments splattered across the floor and wall behind them, and Dmitriy fell without so much as a sound. The look of tense preparation remained on his unmoving face, even as the life left his eyes.
Artur went to fire his SP89 through the door, but he didn't get a chance to. Something hit him in the back of the head. Hard. Another, quiet-loud pop sounded out. He saw stars and fell, collapsing in a heap right next to the still-forming pool of Dmitriy's blood.
Muddied voices called out to each other. He felt his weapon pulled away from him, followed quickly by his handgun and the knife Artur kept strapped to his boot. He felt something cold and metallic placed on his hands.
He regained his vision. There was woman to the side, though Artur's attention was grabbed by a man standing over him, a handgun pointed down at his face face. The man was old, Artur could see, and not overly tall or well-built, but the look in his eyes was one Artur had seen in few others.
Dangerous. Not to others. Not normally. No, these were the eyes of a man who was dangerous to those who threatened him.
Those dangerous eyes stared at him coldly as he came to. An old warrior daring a younger one to challenge him. Then he spoke, "I don't recall inviting you."
Law enforcement responded quickly.
One of his neighbors had seen the men when they stopped in the driveway. One look at their getup and weapons was enough for anyone to know they didn't belong. In less than five minutes, four separate police cruisers had arrived, each carrying a pair of officers ready to face armed assailants. After they'd found him alive and well, and most of the assailants less than so—courtesy of Ziva's near-superhuman aim—they stuck around to keep the neighbors back and the scene untouched until investigators arrived.
That took another fifteen minutes. Two cars from Metro, two from NCIS. NCIS brought the only truck for the bodies.
Gibbs stood in the living room, watching the investigators take pictures, evidence, and the dead away. Two separate Investigators—one from NCIS, another from Metro—took his statement and the statement of the neighbor who called 9-1-1. Ziva stayed in her seat in the corner with her back to the wall, staring vacantly ahead, her eyes blank, silenced handgun in an evidence bag. Gibbs had kept all but a medic with actual bandages from approaching her.
She hadn't said anything since he confirmed he wasn't expecting company. She'd only acted. He'd only followed her example. No plans had been discussed as they prepared for the gunmen. No ideas, no commands. Ziva had wordlessly walked under the basement stairs; he'd followed. She'd headshot both of them without batting an eye. Headshot the third man just as easily. She would have killed the last one, if he—having seen her mindset—hadn't taken the initiative and positioned himself in the empty kitchen pantry.
Even then, knowing he was in the kitchen, she'd almost hit the last man through the door.
Gibbs turned back to look at Ziva. She didn't give an indication she noticed him. She just kept staring ahead, her eyes unseeing, her face vacant of expression. If hadn't been able to see her breathing, he'd have thought she was dead.
This wasn't the Ziva he remembered leaving NCIS to live a quiet life in the Israeli country. This was the Ziva he hadn't seen before. Not really. This was the cold Mossad assassin. The huntress. The woman who shot first and never missed. Only she was fractured. Because even stone—as resilient, rough, and strong as it was—had a breaking point. A limit. She'd been stretched to hers.
But by what?
"Ziva," he said.
She blinked, but otherwise gave no sign she heard him.
"Probie!"
His heightened voice drew a few looks, but he didn't care. Ziva blinked again, her eyes snapping into focus. She looked right, then left, searching for threats. Then she looked at him. "Yes?"
"You good?"
"Yes."
Gibbs stared.
Ziva stared back.
He could see the look in her eyes. The tension in her body. She was a wound up coil, ready to spring. The stress of the day was getting to her. The people around her were making her nervous. She was struggling just to remain motionless. This wasn't the time.
Gibbs straightened and returned to his guard duty. His team arrived not long after that.
Tim came in first, wearing his suit since he'd come from the Navy Yard. He walked through the door with an urgent spring to his step, already looking in Gibbs' direction. Then he saw Ziva sitting in the corner, and stopped dead. The urgency in his step vanished. The concern in his eyes faded. He looked at Ziva with wide eyes. Believing what they saw but still processing it. At last, he spoke.
"Hey."
"Hello, McGee."
"You're… You're really here." He smiled, but didn't approach. Gibbs knew McGee would have seen the look in Ziva's eyes. He was a good Agent, and a better friend to those he cared about. He'd know what it meant, and that close contact wasn't something she needed right now.
"Somewhat," Ziva said.
Bishop and Torres came in at that, wearing her gear. Recognition entered Bishop's eyes when they landed on Ziva. Not one stemmed from a personal relationship, but from seeing someone else's face on a computer screen for hours upon hours at a time. Gibbs saw nothing in Torres' eyes.
"So this is where you went after this morning," Bishop said.
Gibbs was facing the wrong direction, but he could feel Ziva staring at Bishop.
"Oh, right. Sorry," Bishop said, offering a slight smile that didn't quite hide the self-depreciation from her eyes. That would be her blaming herself for a mistake. "I'm Ellie Bishop."
"My replacement," Ziva said, blankly.
"Yes, well—you left."
"I did." Gibbs felt Ziva's gaze move to Torres. "I do not know you."
"Nick Torres." To his credit, Torres held Ziva's look. Barely. His eyes flicked to Gibbs, and in that moment Gibbs knew the younger man wanted nothing to do with Ziva. Survival instinct, honed sharply by Agents who went undercover. It was usually triggered by meeting a more dangerous person. "I'm new."
"Very new. You have the look of an eel out of water."
"Fish," McGee said. "Expression is fish."
"Same difference." Ziva stood up, wincing at the movement and putting a hand to her side, where a fresh bandage now covered her gunshot wound. He moved to assist her, but she waved him off. "I am fine, Gibbs. Or I will be, when we are safe."
Gibbs noted her use of that word. Safe. A word that carried an emotional connotation, unlike a similar word like secure. She felt trapped in his house. He did, too.
"McGee," he said, looking back to his Senior Field Agent. "Quinn back at NCIS?"
"Stayed behind to talk to the Russian you caught," McGee confirmed.
"Take Ziva in your car, then. We're heading back."
"What about Saunders' apartment?" Bishop asked.
"We only had time to search the living room when we got this call," Torres added.
"It can wait," Gibbs said, nodding to McGee.
"Come on," McGee said to Ziva, smiling again. "I picked up tea on the way over."
"Mint?"
"Green. All I could get on short notice."
"It will do."
Ziva and McGee exited the house first, then Torres and Bishop. Gibbs took up the rear. He heard them talking to each other. Torres and Bishop in normal tones; McGee and Ziva in quiet, intimate ones. Two new teammates contrasting with the reunion of two close friends.
They entered their respective vehicles—parked at the curb—and started the drive back. Gibbs got into his own, pulled out of the driveway, and followed. He accelerated to catch up, then slowed down so that he was behind McGee's car. He was on rearguard. A prime position to block potential threats coming from behind.
He stayed there all the way back to NCIS.
The man in the suit woke up.
He'd slept for three hours. The maximum amount of rest he allowed himself per day. Any more and his highest-level Operatives would be without direction. If they were without, so, too, would the lower Operatives below them. And so on and so forth, until nothing got done.
He did not tolerate such inefficiency.
The man showered, ate, and dressed into a new suit. He made his way out into the still-dark Tel Aviv morning sky, members of his personal guard in tow, a cleaning crew already waiting to the side to wipe any trace the man had left behind in the house.
A motorcade of black Land Rovers were waiting outside. Each had diplomatic plates that would be changed whenever they crossed a national border. Each was identical, and each was rated to withstand chemical, electrical, and biological attacks along with the standard bullets, mines, and shaped charges. A suite of electronic sensors ensured that each vehicle constantly painted an image of its surroundings, much like most modern jet fighters did while flying at supersonic speeds. A different suite of electronics provided additional security to all phone and internet signals within a certain radius.
The man climbed into the Land Rover in the center of the convoy. There was a suitcase there. He opened it. Inside, in foam holders, were his phones for the day. The first call would be due soon.
One of his guards closed his door and climbed into the front passenger seat, leaving the man alone in the back. The convoy set out soon after, all obeying traffic laws, and all holding at least three men who once belonged to a Special Forces unit of their respective country.
The first call of the day arrived three minutes into their journey to the airstrip. The man answered. "Representatives from black-listed groups have reached out. They seek ammunition and explosives." The Operative spoke Arabic with a Saudi accent.
"Type and grade?"
"7.62×51mm NATO for the ammunition. C4 is their requested material."
"Approve the sale. ¢22 per round, $325 per kilo."
"As you wish, Almawt."
The man in the suit hung up the phone, but didn't destroy it. No place to do that in the SUV. Instead, he simply disconnected its battery and placed it to the side. A lower Operative would dispose of it later.
Another phone rang. The man answered. "The scouts are in place." It was the same American Operative that had contacted him twice in the last day.
"What airports?"
"Two civilian, one military. The most likely routes they will take to NCIS."
"And the Target?"
The Operative said nothing.
The man's eye twitched. "The contractors failed."
"Yes, Death. Three are dead. The last is in custody at NCIS."
"Options?"
"Few. We have only one Operative within the building. A desk worker. Not suited for WET work."
Now it was the man's turn to fall silent. He sat in his seat, staring ahead as the motorcade rolled through the security gate leading to the tarmac and continued to the civilian hangar. The Target was still alive, in spite of all attempts to pacify her. Outside contractors. WET squads. Operatives. All had failed. Ziva David continued to be a threat. He could no longer abide by that. Only one option remained.
If you wanted something done right…
"Change of plans. Enact a Decree."
There was a pause from the Operative. A silence that came from genuine surprise. "Understood. We will prepare for your arrival, Death."
This wasn't as fast-paced as I wanted it to be, and I feel it didn't advance the plot forward enough. At the same time, I couldn't gloss over a reunion with Ziva. I just hope the chapter, despite not being filled with as much plot movement as the others, was an entertaining read.
The credit song for this chapter is "The Hit House - Propellant" Some may recognize this one from a trailer to Game of Thrones, but I found it fit with the ending scene. It has an increasingly intense feel to it, which, in my opinion, fits with the tone I attempted to establish with the chapter's final line.
Thank you all for reading. If you enjoyed reading, please share or recommend this to a friend or friends. And if you really enjoyed reading, please leave a comment. They are the lifeblood of all writers, and they do not take long to leave.
See you soon.
